The Tool & the Butterflies Page 5

  The third call sounded, and the guests settled into their seats. Iratov put his arm around Vera, and they disappeared into the shadows of their box. The chandeliers traded their sunrays for moonbeams, the last cacophonous notes ascended to the uppermost vaults of the theater, there was some faint coughing in the hall—and then silence, the magic of quiescence! It only gets that quiet right before a hurricane or in a theater … From up above, I had a good view of the conductor flicking his baton. The orchestra opened harmoniously. The burgundy and gold curtains swept to the side, revealing the first scene of Tchaikovsky’s great opera.

  I knew that it would be an avant-garde production. The advertisements had made that clear. There were rumors that it was going to be quite edgy, but the fact that I found myself observing not the Larins’ country estate but an abandoned factory with profanity written all over the walls simply shocked me, just knocked me out. It was as if someone had drawn a black eye on the Mona Lisa. There were also some strange, howling, ghoul-like people carrying the lady of the manor, who was dressed in jeans and bearing not the celebratory sheaf of wheat but a bundle of some kind of withered herbs. It smelled painfully familiar. St. John’s wort, perhaps? But then the Larins’ nanny, dressed in ripped leggings, started boiling some kind of mixture in a big cauldron, stirring her stew with a wooden ladle. Pushkin’s words came in from the wings in the voices of jazz singers—Olga and Tatiana Larin, apparently.

  “Oh how I love to hear the notes of song, let dreams carry me off somewhere far, far away!” Tatiana sang.

  “Oh Tanya, Tanya, always dreaming. I am so unlike you—when I hear singing, it makes me cheerful!” Olga answered.

  Filth! Absolute filth! Disgust boiled up inside me. Maybe it’s avant-garde, maybe I just don’t get contemporary art, but this is certifiable insanity! The director is schizophrenic!

  It was then that smoke started drifting off the stage. The workers had lit the bundle of herbs. That smoke was so familiar that it felt like every nose in the hall took one harmonious sniff, drawing in the blue eddies rising from the smoldering grass.

  “Marijuana!” came a whisper from behind me. “That’s definitely marijuana!”

  “What a disgrace!” The little fat man behind me had finally forced something out, but his cow of a wife responded by bidding her spouse shut his trap, saying something to the effect that he had the intellect of a bookkeeper, so what could he know about contemporary opera?

  “Shut your ugly face!” she added, getting really nasty.

  I was so shocked by what was happening on the stage that I could not utter a single intelligible sound. It was as if my neck were suddenly filled with concrete, and now it couldn’t turn, and my Adam’s apple dropped nearly to my lungs. I thought I was going to suffocate.

  One scene gave way to the next. Lensky, stripped to the waist, sang the grand tenor part in his tremendously deep bass voice, and the corps de ballet performed as a chorus of bare-breasted Greek odalisques, singing of fields and rivers.

  “I love you,” went the bass Lensky, an actor with a most formidable frame, like an old-school bodybuilder. Well, actually, Lensky was no spring chicken. “I love yo-u-u-u-u!”

  “He’s probably singing about pot,” I thought. “That’s the thesis of this production! That’s the director’s surrealist genius!” The stalls broke into gentle movement and whispering, some inquisitive, some irate.

  “I love you!” Lensky sang with mounting vocal power.

  The audience in the dress circle is always a heterogeneous mass, rarely familiar with classical art. So those movers and shakers of the food processing, automotive, and other industries sat there as if this was precisely what Pushkin and Tchaikovsky had intended. But the cow behind me hissed to her husband that the civilized world had long since acknowledged the health benefits of marijuana.

  “Gala Shmonina has late-stage cancer, and her doctor secretly recommended marijuana!”

  Only one part of the hall, the opera’s great peanut gallery, fully aware that a full-blown bacchanalia was underway on the stage of the Bolshoi Theatre, suddenly burst into coordinated whistling, as if they were at a soccer game, jeering and throwing crumpled-up programs into the stalls.

  “Boo!” the chanting spread upward. “Sha-a-a-me!”

  “The director’s a fag! Lysistratov’s a fag!” said a bass voice from above, so loudly that it drowned out the mounting uproar, and even what was happening on the stage. It must have been some young bass singer from the conservatory. “Fa-a-a-g!” the gifted young artist sang.

  The stalls took a while to get going, but they soon began to express their agreement with the peanut gallery in their own way—by trying to clap the actors off the stage. The actors apparently didn’t give a damn what the audience thought, so they continued enacting their director’s innovations with even greater gusto. The pot had probably helped, as had a heads-up from Lysistratov—that was probably a pseudonym. Their director must have told them that this was exactly how things would go. This is what he was counting on. A scandal. These days, if there’s no scandal, there’s no show. There was a stupendous scandal at the Bolshoi Theatre today, one for the ages.

  A light suddenly came on in the government box, and everyone instantly turned in that direction, seeing a hand extended, followed by part of a pale face.

  “Curtains, please,” said someone’s quiet voice, accompanied by a commanding wave of the fingers.

  The conductor threw his hands up, stopping the orchestra. The action on the stage came to an end, and the musicians rose from their places, faced the government box, and began clapping. The actors joined the musicians in applauding the wisdom of the authorities. At that point, the hall could no longer contain itself. Such an ovation had not been heard in the theater for nigh on twenty years. The curtains closed, like two express trains racing toward each other. The light in the box went out, but the lights in the rest of the hall flared up so brightly that the masses clamped their eyes shut.

  A gentleman who looked to be from the Caucasus ran in from the wings and proclaimed in perfect Russian that the show had been canceled due to technical difficulties. Tickets would be returnable until the 31st of December.

  Once they’d had their fill of pot smoke, the audience in the stalls moved toward the exit. Hardly any of them were disappointed; most of them were laughing, gesticulating, and jostling by the doors. The dress circle was also heading for the exit, sweeping me along like river water.

  “Young man!” said a voice behind me. “Young man, please return my opera glasses!”

  “Ah, yes.” Catching myself, I turned around, removed the eyepiece, and held it out to its owner.

  “Who was that?” the middle-aged lady asked. “Up on the balcony?” I shrugged, acting like I didn’t know because I was a foreigner. That irritated the lady, who had already noticed that I had the facial features of Russia’s titular nation. Her husband kept muttering to her the whole time.

  “Rita, what’s the hurry? I haven’t even gotten hold of the driver yet.”

  The only one who didn’t leave his box was Mike Tyson. The champ didn’t understand what was going on, why everything had ended in a flash. He still had three bottles of champagne and a bowl of black caviar left. He’d gotten a bit of a contact high and didn’t feel like leaving his nice seat, so he called his manager and instructed him to arrange for a couple of cute black girls to be delivered.

  Down in the lobby, I saw Iratov and Vera. Iratov bent toward her and whispered something, and she blushed. Then Iratov stealthily licked her little ear …

  No. No!

  My heart was bursting with rage! My cheeks were burning! “Such lewd behavior!” my soul protested. “And in a theater!”

  Instead of slapping him in the face for his depravity, Vera burst out laughing. Many people noticed her beautiful smile, framed by moist eyes and the thin tongue touching her perfect teeth. What a funny little habit! She ran her fingers through Iratov’s long locks and kissed him on the shoulder.


  Pain. Extreme mental anguish made every muscle in my body clench. My spirit shouted silently along with my soul …

  Iratov turned around unexpectedly, and we bumped gazes. Just two guys who didn’t know each other. But our eyes locked for an abnormally long time, which drew a polite grunt from Iratov.

  “Hi there!”

  And I answered.

  “Hi there!”

  Iratov turned around, probably thinking that my countenance was vaguely familiar, and gently took Vera’s waist and led her toward the coatroom.

  Old Man Fedorych, who has served the theater faithfully since the sixties, deftly produced her ermine mantle. Iratov intercepted the furs and draped them over his companion’s shoulders, then took a heavy Chaliapin-style coat with a beaver collar from Fedorych. He slipped the coatroom attendant a generous tip.

  I have a coat with a warm zip-up liner. It’s universal, good in any weather. I wear it in the spring and fall, then winter rolls around and I unroll my liner. It never goes out of style. Made in Yugoslavia.

  Swept away by a human current, I found myself on the street, sadly watching Iratov opening the door of the limousine and Vera disappearing into the soft blue light within. Iratov paused for a moment and then looked around, as if trying to spot someone in the crowd. He looked for a long time. His black hair, streaked with gray, fluttered in the wind … Then the limo took off.

  I had store-bought dumplings—Palych brand. Then I sat down in front of the television and dialed the number. Long, endless ringing was the only answer I got …

  A long time ago, I was told that once the worst was over, I’d finally get through and someone on the other end of the line would answer … I was very worried that the number was no longer in service—it was given to me a long time ago, when there was no such thing as cell phones, country codes, and so on. The possibility that nobody was ever going to answer frightened me. I tried every possible variation over and over again, every combination. The numbers had all been disconnected, all except one, and its endless, icily unresponsive ringing tormented me …

  In a panic, I wrote Iratov a letter, saying that the son he’d had with Vorontsova had died almost twenty years ago, that he was cursed for disowning his own flesh and blood. Just like twenty years ago, I received my answer at Moscow’s main post office, via general delivery, on a single sheet that read “eat a dick!”

  The Bolshoi Theatre scandal was already all over the news; they even aired an interview with the director, Edmond Lysistratov, in which the hack, flashing a delinquent’s smile, shared his views on what had transpired. The young monster explained how it took quite a long time for audiences to accept Tchaikovsky’s own opera. His own concept for transforming old into new was being rejected for the same reasons—Russian art was almost always backward; it was an ossified country that was only prepared to accept bland academic formulae! Lysistratov went on to declare that now was plainly not the time to work in the Motherland, and that he intended to accept an invitation to work at a Western theater—he had a dozen to choose from. As a parting shot, the monstrous Lysistratov thanked the management of the Bolshoi Theatre for affording him the opportunity for artistic experimentation, and, for some reason, saw fit to inform the country that he had a Swedish passport. In parallel with the interview, they reported on the arrest of a young man with an athletic build, a shaved head, and a thin, shoulder-length Chinese-style braid who was charged with using profanity in a public space. It has to be him—the bass who sang the word “fag” from the peanut gallery! A tremendously colorful character, a tremendously talented singer! The conservatory student stood there in handcuffs, facing the camera, and his eyes shone purely.

  “Fag!” the student confirmed, on live TV, but they managed to bleep it out. Everybody knew what he was getting at, of course.

  I dialed the number that was so important to me one more time and listened to it ring, like it was some miraculous music sent down from the heavens. Hope, why do you comfort me in vain?!

  I wasn’t even that mad at Iratov anymore. Vera’s shining image was tickling my imagination—that’s all. No, I didn’t like her in the commonplace sense of the word; I felt no physical attraction to her at all, and I harbored no amorous feelings, of course. I simply worshipped her, one of the Supreme Being’s creations, as one might worship true works of art or delight in the laconic genius of mathematical formulae, or even just the sun.

  I went to bed early. In despair, I had decided to reveal Iratov’s story to the general public in about a month’s time … Just as soon as I woke up …

  3

  He could feel, but he didn’t know who he was. It was very hot, and he was trying to move, to crawl, to find a cooler spot. But the whole universe was hot. He could hardly see anything, just blurred outlines, as if he were a hatchling with a film still covering his eyes. A little pale pink face expressed unendurable agony, and tiny drops of sweat stood out on the forehead.

  “Who am I?” asked his awakening consciousness. But it was lethargic and overheated, unable to respond to its own question. It was only capable of moving its tiny little hands and feet. The creature reflexively began crying—the way a newborn lets the mother know that it is hungry or uncomfortable. Hurry up and furnish me with your milk-filled breast.

  But it had no mother … It didn’t have anyone! It was tormented, body and soul. It just couldn’t figure out where it was, or, more importantly, what it was … and why it was.

  The creature was suppressed by the heat. Eventually, it lost consciousness, incapable of latching on to reality, and its minuscule body relaxed …

  A girl of about thirteen, named Alice, enrolled at School Number 1 in the town of Sudogda (which is located in the Vladimir Region), was walking home after class. She had to make her way to the edge of town on foot, and then walk another six miles to the village of Kostino, where she shared a simple wooden house—two rooms, big stove, entryway—with her grandmother and their cow, Glashka. Alice got lucky that day: she’d caught up to a horse that was barely stumbling along, hitched to a sleigh carrying a drunken redheaded shepherd—it was Shurka. He was sleeping, revealing to the sky a mouth with half the teeth missing. The girl hopped on to the sleigh, took the reins out of his hands, settled into the malodorous hay, and urged the horse forward with a “get a move on!” It seemed like the mare was as drunk as her owner. She was moving sideways, plodding through the freshly fallen snow. But that wasn’t it, of course; the poor critter was just getting to the end of a long life in which she had eaten meagerly, worked a great deal, and seen little joy. She tried to trot when the girl yelled, of course, but her arthritic right foreleg couldn’t keep up with her intentions; her hoof skidded, and she nearly fell.

  “Come on, you old nag!” Alice said angrily.

  The horse responded by trying to turn around, but the bridle stopped her; the iron mouthpieces pinched her tongue and pressed against her worn-out teeth. All she could do was exhale puffs of steam into the frost and move ahead at her crippled pace.

  Shurka woke up about half a mile into their ride. It took roughly a minute for his moonshine-sodden eyes to bring the world into focus, and then he noticed that he wasn’t alone on the sleigh.

  “Alice, my dear!” the coachman said happily, heaving an alcohol-laden sigh and embracing the girl. He was trying to feel her breasts through her sheepskin coat.

  “Back off!” she commanded formidably and whacked Shurka’s leering countenance with the reins. Blood dribbled out of his nose and down to his pockmarked chin.

  “You’re so nasty, Alice!” the red-haired shepherd scowled, but cracked a toothless smile as if he hadn’t felt the blow at all. “Who else is gonna hug you?”

  “I have some takers! Half the school’s trying to feel me up!”

  “Yeah,” Shurka agreed dreamily. “Your mother was the same way. Her boobs came in early. We went to the same school, she was in the other class, though. By the time we were in seventh grade her tits was bigger than the ones on
the assistant principal! Those boobies of hers—like two fishbowls! And boy, your mama let us feel her up, too! She was like ‘whatever, there’s plenty to go around!’”

  “I’m in seventh grade, too,” Alice said with a nod. “But all the girls at school are F-A-Bs, even the tenth-graders.”

  “We said the same thing back in the day! F-A-B—flat-as-aboard!” He sniffed, but the blood had already stopped, frozen in the chilly air. “Well, how ’bout you and me get hitched, Alice?”

  “Hitched?” the girl asked, wrinkling her nose. “I’m thirteen!”

  “I’ll give ya another year.” The red-haired drunkard tried putting his arms around her again.

  “I said back off!” Alice hollered, so formidably that the horse lurched to one side and almost overturned the sleigh. “Or I’ll slug you for real!”