The Tool & the Butterflies Read online

  Nine months later, Alice would give birth to a boy who would become the first male in their chick-laden lineage. Of course, this future was beyond her ken—all she knew was the entrancing pleasure that had seized her whole being. She was swimming in warm, primal happiness, letting out involuntary groans, and he covered her mouth, now with wet kisses, now with his strong hand. Then her breath was seized by a spasm, her whole body became suddenly hot, and Alice pronounced a short “Ah!” like the toll of a bell, rose to where angels sing, and then soon, so soon, returned, remitting her rapid breathing and detached reason to their tenuous balance. She noticed that Eugene was breathing heavily, too, his hot cheek resting on her breast. Alice embraced her prince powerfully.

  “Stay!” she said plaintively.

  “I can’t,” he whispered in reply.

  “How can you leave me … after everything …”

  “You will remain renewed, and you will remember me all your life.”

  “But I love you!” The girl held the young man even tighter, as if she thought she could keep him in her life that way.

  “Everyone’s first love is short. That is how it is meant to be. Either you will remember it as none too happy, or it will become your guiding star. You will measure everything that happens in your life by this first feeling!”

  “Are you Jesus?”

  “Who?”

  “Jesus Christ, I mean.”

  “Who’s that?”

  “‘Who’s that?’ God, that’s who!”

  “No,” Eugene answered firmly. “I am not God.”

  “So who are you?’

  “I … I don’t know … All I know is that I have to go to Moscow!”

  After that, she cried for a long time, not like a little girl, but like a grown woman, furtively wiping away the tears, and he stared into the vast sky, or maybe not into it; maybe he was directing his gaze into his own stupor. They sat there in silence until morning. Alice heard the door squeak. Granny Ksenia had set out on her journey to Vladimir.

  “Soon?” the girl asked.

  “Yes,” Eugene answered dryly, and Alice realized that he wasn’t there with her anymore. Her prince was already out on the road, leaving her alone forever.

  “You need clothes …”

  “Yes.”

  “Ksenia’s got some in her closet. Some gentleman caller left them here … twenty long years ago.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “But you’ll never get there without any money!” This change in Eugene’s mood hurt Alice’s feelings, but, oddly enough, she wasn’t mad or upset. She somehow understood that her prince had his mission and she had hers. She came back with the clothes. “Here, try them on!” As the young man was getting dressed, the girl got a little bank shaped like a formidable owl out from under the bed and smashed it open with a hammer. Eugene jumped and turned around.

  “What’s that?”

  “Money. You won’t even get as far as Vladimir without it.”

  “Oh yes …”

  The young man, dressed in a black shirt, black pants, and an ankle-length black coat, bent over the shattered bank and began gathering the coins. He nicked himself on one of the shards and stuck his finger in his mouth to stop the bleeding. She loved him so much in that moment! Alice thought that her heart would never be capable of such an acute, powerful feeling ever again. She decided to throw herself into the ice-fishing hole.

  He stuck the money in the deep pocket of his coat, then put on a pair of black wingtips. He looked at himself in the mirror and permitted Alice to comb his black hair until it fell in waves on to his collar.

  “Ksenia’s gentleman caller worked at the funeral home in Sudogda … is it okay?”

  “It’s perfect.” Eugene turned to face the girl and kissed her on the lips. There was no passion in that kiss, much less love. That is how a man kisses a person he is indifferent to, a person he will never see again. “Farewell.” When he was on his way out, Alice told him that Shurka, the red-haired drunk, would be heading to Sudogda.

  “He’ll drop you off. Just tell him you’re related to Alice …”

  He crunched swiftly through the snow, away from Alice’s house. His rapid stride spoke to his determination, and his long black hair fluttered in the wind.

  “A demon!” Alice whispered behind him. “A demon …”

  4

  I’ve slept …

  I’ve scratched …

  I’ll resume …

  The boy’s mother, an English teacher, came up with his first name. There was no need to come up with a patronymic, since that was derived from his engineer father’s name, Andrei. Hence, his name, in total, amounted to Arseny Andreivich Iratov, born 1960. Immediately after he was born, Mr. Iratov made a face like he could already tell that he was to be a millionaire.

  There is no reason whatsoever to linger on Iratov’s childhood. It was just like everyone else’s, until he was around fifteen. That’s when he suddenly found himself with a handsome face. His whole appearance held rare allure for women both older and younger. Iratov made good use of that gift, and by seventeen, he had already gorged himself on the fairer sex to the point that he was utterly spoiled.

  When the young man was in college, he often had five relationships going at once, and there were times when he was skillfully shuffling a hand of up to seven girls, not to mention winning the affections of the provost. He enjoyed spending his nights with Ms. Ivanova. The provost was of that age when the flower is still full of beauty and vitality, but you can feel the little fissure at the very peak of its blossoming, inevitably followed by barely perceptible wilting. There is such sweet enjoyment at the onset of that rapid plunge, when you catch the petals’ piquant scent …

  Iratov’s other partners all seemed like the same chick: pliant body, greedy and insatiable as teenagers pouncing on a bowl of ice cream. He welcomed their attentions cordially, but the lack of variety wearied him, thoroughly exhausting him when they were only a third of the way through the night. Iratov would have pleasant dreams of his partner leaving before he woke up.

  It wasn’t like that with Ms. Ivanova. She was in no hurry, and she encouraged her student to be the same way.

  “There’s time,” she promised, looking into his eyes, her warm fingers tangled in his tar-black hair. “For everything.” And she twirled dark strands around her fingers.

  She cooked for him. Simple, tasty meals. She got his clothes in order, mending and ironing and gently instructing him that a man ought to pay attention to his wardrobe and select his things exactingly—if he has the means, of course.

  “Just don’t look like anyone else! Dressing simply, yet tastefully is fine, but, for God’s sake, don’t make yourself look like a puppet!”

  There was a certain slowness about both her motions and her thoughts. Iratov examined her in the first rays of morning light, and it seemed as though she was floating, “as stately as a peahen,” as Pushkin once penned.

  Her movements were so slow, just fluttering along …

  He recited English poetry to her in the original: Milton, Keats, and, of course, Shakespeare’s sonnets.

  Never once did he want to run away from Ms. Ivanova—Svetlana, she was Svetlana to him then—in the middle of the night and go back to his youthful life. When it happened on the weekend, he would always sleep in and open his eyes to meet the dark, moist gaze of his lover.

  “What?” he’d ask.

  “Nothing,” she’d answer.

  “Did something happen?”

  “No, I just wanted to look at you.”

  “What for?”

  “You’re handsome …”

  “And you’re beautiful …” her young lover whispered in reply.

  “I know …” Then she would stroke his hair again, and his breath would quicken—and he’d fill up again …

  He gave her an expensive French nightgown for Valentine’s Day—a size too large, so when Svetlana bent over him, he could steal a glance down her silken neckline and s
ee her breasts.

  Then Svetlana—Ms. Ivanova—married a distinguished scientist, the jungle explorer Gryazev, a well-known dandy, and left the Soviet Union soon thereafter.

  Mr. Iratov was very upset—even he was surprised at this unfamiliar sense of loss, which had seemingly been completely absent from his life. He even tried to make himself puke to purge that torturous sensation.

  Six months later, he found a package slip from the Congo in his mailbox. He fiddled with it, knowing full well it could only be from Svetlana, studied it nervously, and found that her message consisted of only three words: “I have wilted.”

  Arseny wanted to rush to the airport; he was sure that Svetlana wasn’t happy with Gryazev. But what could he do as a kid of eighteen? Just hitch a ride to Sheremetyevo, face the suspicious eyes of the cops he knew all too well, and withdraw into terra incognita?

  Iratov turned in the slip at the post office and received a little crate with wax seals, but then, for the longest time, he couldn’t bring himself to pry it open—or go back home, either. He just sat on the back of a bench, smoking anxiously and watching the stoplight change. By the two thousandth flicker of yellow, he was chilled to the bone, so he ran all the way to the top floor of his five-story, prefab Soviet apartment block and locked himself in his room without even saying a word to his parents. The little crate was on the floor and the young man was on his pull-out bed, smoking cigarette after cigarette. He eventually mustered up the nerve …

  Under the thin, non-Soviet paper was Svetlana’s smell … or, more precisely, a French nightgown that smelled like Svetlana, a gift she was now returning to him. There was nothing else in the parcel, not even the shortest of messages.

  Long into the night, Iratov pressed his nose into the nightgown, kept breathing in Svetlana’s smell, down to the very roots of his lungs, until it hurt. Then he got mad, flung the nightgown into the far corner of the room, hissed, “Bitch … bitch …” and fell asleep.

  For a few months after that, second-year architecture student Iratov put Svetlana’s nightgown on all his pliant chicks and had rough sex with them, as if he were taking revenge on her. Volleyball girls, Communist Youth League girls, Ready for Labor and Defense of the USSR girls—they were all delighted by the young man’s zeal, and they didn’t give a damn what was in Iratov’s head; so long as he kept up the pressure and kept the orgasms coming, those patriotic young ladies were happy.

  “C’mon, Iratov!” wailed Katya, an attacker from the volleyball team. “Spike it!”

  “Whoa mama …” sighed Shevtsova, the secretary of the student Communist Youth League. “Now I know who’ll be getting their Party card next!”

  “Can you go again?” Mykina, the fifth-year swimming champion would ask—she’d usually wake him up at around five in the morning. “You’re as big as a dolphin!”

  “You’ve been with a dolphin?”

  Then the smell was exhausted, and Iratov tossed the nightgown on top of his wardrobe and forgot about Svetlana. He continued his studies and used the female population so much he practically used them up.

  Just a few months later, Arseny was leafing through Tourist magazine in the barbershop when his eyes stopped on a photograph of a middle-aged man with a face like Aznavour. Dressed in shorts, sleeves rolled up, looking lean and muscular, he was posing in front of an Egyptian pyramid. There she was, standing next to him, leaning on a closed parasol. Svetlana! The caption read: “Distinguished archeologist and traveler Dr. Gryazev and spouse.” The next photograph showed a reception at the Moscow Geographical Society, where the same Gryazev was smiling broadly at the camera and holding a glass of champagne. “Dr. Gryazev returning to the USSR after a series of unique discoveries.”

  It was the latest issue. Iratov suddenly realized that she was in Moscow.

  He rushed out to go to her place. He couldn’t wait for the bus; he ran faster than the speed of thought, so the tension of his muscles was too much for the top button of his shirt, which shot off, and then he was already at her building, running up the stairs to her seventh-floor apartment, at her door, almost knocking his forehead against it. He pounded on it with his fist so hard that it almost ripped off its hinges.

  “Open up!” he yelled. She opened the door. His Svetlana.

  “What are you doing, honey?” Her voice hadn’t changed, or at least it seemed that way. Her soothing, melodious tone suddenly made his contorted mouth mute. “What are you doing, honey?” she repeated, stroking his bare chest. “What happened to your poor buttons?”

  All he could do was grope for air with his mouth and hoarsely utter her name. Then he threw himself on her and dragged her to the bed.

  Then he loved her and she loved him, and later they were sitting in the kitchen—naked. Svetlana told him that Gryazev was at his own apartment, that they’d had an unforgettable trip, and maybe now it was time to start a family.

  “Good lord, the things I’ve seen!” she said, talking a mile a minute. “The pyramids, an Aztec city, the Great Wall of China, Sophia Loren, the Eiffel Tower! And boy, Gryazev knows so much about wine and fashion!”

  The melodious quality had disappeared from her voice. He was hardly even listening to her. His nostrils flared, as if he were a hunting dog, trying to detect just one molecule of Svetlana’s smell, but something had stamped it out—either her French perfume or something else. Svetlana gesticulated vigorously and exclaimed ecstatically, while he stared at her bare, slightly saggy breasts …

  He realized that he didn’t love her anymore. Yes, she had wilted … He left in surprise, citing his workload and promising to drop by later that week, went home, took the silk nightgown off the wardrobe, and threw it out the window like a useless rag. It hung on a tree branch until the sweeping winds of winter arrived, an old banner of love and rabid sex just dangling there, and then disappeared in December. Apparently someone had found a use for it.

  Incidentally, about a year and a half later, Gryazev went to the States and never returned. He petitioned the American government for political asylum. Svetlana was left alone with a year-old baby in her arms, practically no means of sustenance, and the disdain of every neighbor in her apartment block.

  It wasn’t because she was the wife of a traitor, but because she had been abandoned. How good could she be if she got dumped like a dog by the railroad tracks?

  Thus concludes the story of Iratov and Svetlana. It seemed as though she hardly left a trace on his young, promising life, but many years down the road … Well, who knows what’ll happen?

  Iratov was about to graduate from the Moscow Architectural Institute, and he was planning to become an architect and build something that would stand tall for all of Moscow—well, all the world, obviously—like that young Japanese guy, Kenzo¯ Tange. He fancied himself the capital’s next Boris Iofan … But, during his fourth year, he got involved in speculating—foreign currency checks, which you could use to load up on valuable goods from the special stores that offered Western clothes and electronics. The young Iratov was fantastically successful in that difficult and dangerous business. He would appear by the foreign currency stores in the mornings, dressed like a real fop, and use his rubles to buy dollars, deutsche marks, and francs. He was saving up, determined to leave the USSR by hook or by crook and become a world-renowned architect. To hell with Iofan. He had no real political motives; it was just that his tremendous desire to create something beautiful and live inside it was so passionate that it overcame his fear of prison. He knew very well that he was risking his freedom, that this was practically a firing-squad offense, but he wasn’t afraid. Go big or go home!

  Even the KGB spooks had taken a shine to him. The handsome, ever smiling fellow knew the names of their wives and kids—and, more importantly, their needs. Perfume, children’s clothes, Swedish treats for the holidays … Basically, he was a good guy to have around.

  The department that oversaw the Tishinka district was headed by KGB Captain Alevtina Vorontsova, who personally arrested Irato
v near a foreign currency store. She was thinking about sending him up the river, but by the first interrogation, his demonic beauty had already conquered her. The young man evinced no fear and seemed eager to take her to bed. That’s how it looked to her, at least.

  “Why should a good-looking guy like that rot in prison?” she reasoned. “He can work for the good of the Motherland!” And work he did—he went to work on the captain’s portly body like a tractor. Alevtina, still single, nearly fell in love with the young speculator, but she suppressed her tender inclinations with the help of her KGB conditioning.

  “You’ll bring in a thousand dollars a month!” Vorontsova declared. Those were her conditions.

  “But that’s …” Iratov had a curse on his lips, but he restrained himself and started to say that she was talking about enough dough for a working man to get by for a year and a half in the “white” economy.

  “Oh yeah? But you aren’t a working man! You’re wearing two-hundred-ruble jeans and a pullover—and you’ve got gloves on in the middle of summer! Why? Is that supposed to be stylish or something?”

  “They’re motorcycle gloves!”

  “So you have a motorcycle?” Alevtina sipped from her glass of Martell cognac, bit into a slice of lemon, and sent a stream of smoke from her Camel at the state-owned, Czechoslovakian-made lamp hanging from the ceiling of the safe house. “And cowboy boots,” she continued. “I’ve got a guy in an eight-hundred-ruble outfit talking to me about being a working man! Speaking of which, you’ve got some work to do in the bedroom …”

  “It’s either the grand a month or the bedroom!” Iratov had never been that angry in his life.

  “Nice one!” Alevtina neighed like a horse. Her plump body trembled, and she coughed hoarsely from all that noxious nicotine. “Oh, you’re fuckin’ killin’ me! You young people, I tell ya!” Then she was instantly serious, her large features stony. “Two thousand and two safe house nights a week!”