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  She got acclimated in Moscow by unloading freight cars for a year. She searched for love, not chaotically, like thousands of other girls her age, but by relying on her powerful instincts. She believed that her one and only love would not pass her by unnoticed but would declare loud and clear: "Here I am. It's me." Indeed, once she started library school and wrote home to her mother that she was becoming cultured, she met Yasha, a Young Communist League activist at the school. A romance began with a swarthy boy who barely came up to her breasts. There was no sin in that relationship, no touching of sensitive parts, only stories about the Far North where she had spent her childhood, Yasha's tales about community organizing and other trifles, which they followed up with ice cream and inhaled along with the spring wind of their young years. Then, when the first school break came, Yasha secretly expelled himself from the Young Communist League—an action which he recorded in the official minutes and authenticated with a stamp—sent an article about a man without a motherland to a newspaper and, having submitted these documents to the Emigration Office, soon got an exit visa which allowed him to leave for Israel for good. She was unhappy for a long time and, getting invitations from Yasha, cried entire nights on end and pined away for him, but she was not strong enough to join him over there. She had to live in the North. That was her destiny.

  It didn't happen often, but people did fall in love with her occasionally. There was an excitable figure skater with a passion for everything out of the ordinary. But she waited, turning down everyone, and waiting bore fruit once more. He was common, not especially good-looking, but she gave herself to him on their first night together. Calmly like all large women, like a large boat, she plied the waves of pleasure of which I became an end and a reward. She carried her large belly the way other women carry their pocketbooks, and she gave birth to me calmly and easily. I came out like a bullet from a well-oiled gun.

  "What a good boy," smiled the old obstetrician, but seeing how Mother crossed her legs he became angry. "You can't do that! What are you doing, for God's sake?"

  She was embarrassed to be lying all uncovered in front of a strange man. What's the big deal, anyway?

  Father spent six months at a stretch on Sakhalin Island, where he headed a geological expedition. Mother worked late at the library. After I got the indentation on my forehead, I was sent to five-day care, where I was successfully assimilated into society. Five-day care eventually gave way to a six-day boarding school, albeit with a specialization in German. At the time, Father was on the Kola Peninsula. Mother was mad at him for that and, as a result, she was too strict with me when she took me home on weekends. I was not a good student by any measure, and certainly not an angel. Picking me up on a Saturday, she checked my report card on the bus home and for the remainder of the trip I steeled myself mentally for a whipping. We came into our room and Mother got an officer's belt from behind the armoire, pulled me out of the corner by my hair, in a single powerful motion jerked my pants off along with my underwear and laid the first lash on my boyish buttocks. Opening my eyes wide, I began to cry silently. The next lash elicited an incredible scream, while the third sent my tiny fist hitting fiercely at Mother's leg. There followed the fourth and then the fifth, and so on. While I writhed in pain, Mother sat on the floor leaning her head against the radiator and stared at the ceiling. Perhaps she thought of Father, then me, who at that time felt the sweet sensation of receding pain, and then she leapt upon me like a wild beast. She kissed my skinny ass and shed hot tears, and I told her how I would be embarrassed again to show up at gym and that I didn't love her. At that moment of over-the-top caresses I adored her, but since I did feel insulted and humiliated I was childishly cruel and called her a fascist Hitlerite and she cried bitterly at night into her blanket and I stared at her spread-out breasts and they seemed to me transparent, as though made of glass and filled to the brim with water. Tiny exotic guppies swam in water, bumping against the freckled skin and dreaming of a big river. Then I went to the kitchen, got a piece of bread, came back and fed the fish. Mother groaned heavily, the fish went away, and my attention shifted to the place from which I had emerged into the world. I touched it, and it felt warm and strange, and I was taken aback because she was built so differently, as though we were strangers. She woke up and, half asleep, passed me the bedpan. My bladder deflated pleasurably and I fell asleep tucking my face under her arm, which smelled of noodle soup.

  When Father came to visit, I would be moved from the sofa to the folding armchair, which was inhabited by bedbugs. They'd bite me, and the next morning I would be covered with red spots and stay home from school for a week because of a sudden allergy attack. Mother thought it was caused by nerves. That it was my reaction to Father's visits, that I was so overjoyed to see him. In fact, I couldn't have cared less for good old Dad, since I saw him very rarely and didn't remember him from one time to the next. Besides, he took my place on the sofa and pawed Mother for nights on end, while I was being eaten alive by the blood-sucking bedbugs.

  On one of his visits, Father used his bonus to buy Mother a tiny Zaporozhets, a ladybug of a motorcar. At first she took it as an insult. How would she fit into that matchbox with her magnificent bodily proportions? But then, once she had squeezed into it and circled the courtyard, she was overcome by limitless joy. I was happy, too, of course, even though I was one hundred percent sure that I would not be allowed to drive it. At least I would go to the boarding school in a car, while stinky public transportation carried the rest of the world. After that, Father came to visit less and less frequently, explaining that he was too busy. Whenever he did come, he got drunk every day. When he was drunk, he would drag me to the bathroom to wash. Drunk, he would fill the bathtub with boiling hot water, put me in and start a theological discussion with himself.

  "I'm not doing at all well," he would say.

  "Nothing to be done," he would answer himself. "Bear your cross and have faith."

  "I do bear my cross," he would add, sighing heavily. "But I don't have faith."

  I would stare at him glassy-eyed and beg him to get on with the bathing. He would catch himself, fish me out with unsteady hands and, smiling like a dog that had been kicked, carry me naked back to our room. Fyodor Mikhalych would bump into us in the corridor and, striking a deliberate pose, declare:

  "You walk around naked yourselves. How come I am not allowed? Where is the equality? Where is it, I ask you?"

  Father would apologize, saying that I was still small and that he was taking me straight to bed.

  "You probably got a woman ready for him," the neighbor would say, growing bolder. "He is not so small. Just look at his thing."

  Father would carry me to my bed and lay me down. He would then return to the corridor and, pushing Fyodor Mikhalych into a corner, pummel his stomach with his fists. After that, the old exhibitionist would weep for a long time. I would hear his bitter sniveling through the wall and pity the poor bastard, getting angry at old Daddy and the damn cross that he had to bear. Father had stopped pawing Mother, and I would soon fall asleep and dream of being behind the wheel of the Zaporozhets, running over boarding school teachers one after another.

  Then, Father stopped coming completely. The last time he telephoned and said that he would be exploring without a break until he found what he was looking for. A friend whispered to Mother that he had already found a mother lode, one with two tits and a respectable-size posterior. It was on a Sunday. Next morning Mother took me to the boarding school and asked them to keep me over next Sunday. She took unpaid leave at work and filled up the Zaporozhets. She placed her breasts on the steering wheel, set her enormous feet on the pedals, started the motor and headed for Sakhalin.

  By then she already had an enlarged thyroid, and her eyes, which were once normal size, protruded from their orbits. She pushed the pedals to the floor and, like a hippopotamus astride a bug, pressed forward. The middle stretch of Russia, with its churches, bad weather and scrap metal littering the fields, spooled u
nto her wheels one faceless kilometer after the other. She stopped only to eat, drink and answer the call of nature under the odd fir tree. The wolves stumbling upon those spots recoiled in fear from the smell of a mighty female, and ran back to their lairs without a backward glance. Only when the night sky became lit with the trinket of a moon, did she slow down, looking inside herself as though she were on the moon. Then, the road again, the crossing of rivers large and small, the jazz on the radio and the memories of Yasha. When the car broke down, she pushed it for miles to get it to the nearest service station. She lost weight, shedding her northern flesh. Sometimes she regretted setting out on such a long trip. Yet, with every passing day she got nearer and nearer to Sakhalin. Somehow she managed to find somebody high up who informed her that Father's expedition was camping very near some elevation or other, on the very spot where, some years ago, during the darkness of wartime, one man ate another. At long last, she can make out the tents, and next to one of them she sees Father, resting his foot on the carcass of a bear he has just killed. Father then watches as his gift, the Zaporozhets, stops, a woman-soldier gets out, approaches him quickly and, after a short wind-up, slaps his face. The blow echoes around the elevations. Then, just as quickly, the woman gets back in the car and, pressing the gas pedal, drives away from the monument to cannibalism. She no longer can see Father, who only a moment ago stood upright like a hero, but who now bends down and, pressing his face into the stinky pelt of the dead bear, begins to cry bitterly, like no man ever should. Next to the tent stands a woman in a wolf hat. She has a flat chest and an ass as big as a baby's fist. She stares at Father and cries, too, and nature all around them sheds tears of Sakhalin rain.

  Exhausted, the Zaporozhets can bear it no longer and, at the start of the trip back, breaks apart. Mother has no regrets. She dumps Father's gift at the side of the road and, as in her youth, there is once again the train and the boat. But this time there are no lice, no unusual incidents and no hope. This time it is a tired, suddenly aged and bug-eyed woman, coming home.

  That Saturday, Mother took me home from boarding school and for the first time didn't give me a whipping. I couldn't forgive her the dead Zaporozhets, as a result of which no teacher would ever be run over. But by way of compensation, she promised to take me out of the boarding school and to send me to Grandma. Fine, let it be Grandma then, whatever. I'd smoke right under her long nose. Grandma—she was Father's mother—would feel guilty toward me.

  Then Mother met Zhorik the Dwarf. Well, perhaps he wasn't a real dwarf, but he was extremely short. He was also divinely handsome. He batted his doll-like eyelids at Mother. He worked as an actor in the theater. It is a known fact that, in the old days, it was a sign of great sophistication to make love to various abnormal people. Even queens amused themselves with dwarves. To say nothing of Mother. Besides, they said that Zhorik was a talented actor but had an excessive weakness for the female sex. He had mounted every actress at his theater and he was very proud of himself, the little devil. He lived with Mother for six months. Then, he got the title role in a play about the French Revolution. The rehearsals were brilliant. At the end of the play, a guillotine was set up on the stage and a crowd of frantic women was supposed to chop Zhorik's character's head off. At the last moment, a doll would be substituted for Zhorik so that the scene looked extremely realistic, complete with blood and fainting fits in the audience. But on the opening night all those previously mounted actresses stuck the real Zhorik's head under the sharp blade instead of a doll. His head was severed from his body, rolled down the stage and fell into Mother's lap, since Mother sat in the front row. The audience screamed and employees at the mortuary worked hard to sew the head back on. After that, Mother was overcome by sadness and joined a team of skydivers. She spent almost a full year boning up on theory and, when given an opportunity to jump, did so without a parachute. She turned spectacular pirouettes in the air, spun around and fluttered like a bird. Witnesses claimed that had it been an official competition, the previous world record would have surely been shattered.

  Mother's first parachute jump became the first case of an imaginative suicide in my collection.

  "So that's the story, Galya."

  "Did they ever find those two?"

  "Are you kidding?"

  "And what about your sister?"

  "My sister? Oh, my sister. Well, she grew up, got married and went to live abroad."

  "This is so amazing. How could your mother do that to you?"

  "What would you have done in her place?"

  Galya is a short woman with a bird-like chest. She listens to me holding her earlobe between her little fingers and sighs sadly, showing uneven teeth. She is older than me, but her neck is like a girl's, with soft, smooth skin. But when she gets excited, two veins appear on both sides of her neck. Seeing them, I realize that she is older than me and that she has already had a life and that now it is nothing but an echo. She sighs sadly and I can't tell by looking into her eyes whether she believes my stories or not. The important thing is that she doesn't accuse me of lying or being childish. Well, experience is important. She lies in a fetal position. She is wearing an undershirt and panties. She takes them off only when she is in the shower or when there is absolutely no way to keep them on. It's a whim or a habit with her. Her body has no flaws, or at least none that I could find as yet. A man needs a woman to have a flaw that makes her different from all the other women. When he finds such a flaw, he tries to conceal it. The very thought that somebody else knows about this flaw plunges him into a murderous jealous rage. Imagine a woman with a perfect body and you'll see that there is nothing to conceal in her. A perfect woman is a mannequin.

  "Is there anything about me you don't like?" Galya asks.

  "There is something I don't like about all women," I reply.

  "What?"

  "Myself."

  "What do you mean?"

  "What they think of me is always worse than I am in reality. I like myself to be good, because in reality I'm worse."

  "I don't get it."

  "I don't either."

  She changes position, turning to the wall. Her shoulders bend backwards and become sharp. I'm sorry to be looking at her with an artist's eye. Not the slightest desire stirs in me. My dear little nail did its job and discovered a source of pleasure compared to which a woman is only a charming diversion. She is a mannequin when she is perfect and a mannequin when she is not. This is why they love me, because of what I think of them. It's a shame that the nail discovered it but the surgeon covered it up.

  Galya's husband is a cosmonaut. He has been on a mission for an entire year, spinning around the Earth. He is a future hero, maybe even a hero twice over. I have never asked her about him. Let him go up there to spin even thrice, it's an important task. Galya sniffs loudly. She has a stuffed nose. In outer space, a stuffed nose would be a disaster. Imagine if you blow your nose and fail to catch the stuff, you might be hit by it a week later. Taking a shower is also a problem.

  "What do you do for a living?" asks Galya

  "Nothing."

  "What do you live on?"

  "I got an inheritance from my grandmother."

  "Why are you her heir and not your father?"

  "Father found gold. He doesn't need money."

  "Aren't you bored?"

  "I have a collection."

  "What do you collect?"

  "Postage stamps. Nothing is fun in life. Life is boring. No matter how you look at it, no matter how you spin it, it's still boring."

  "I used to keep fish when I was a child."

  "Guppies?"

  "Yes. Guppies, too."

  When you have nothing to talk about it's better to say nothing. Why did Freud think a man seeks a woman who resembles his mother?

  Draping my dressing gown over her shoulders, Galya heads for the shower. She doesn't need to cover herself, only to protect herself from the cold. Dear Fyodor Mikhalych. Where are you now? Can you see anything from up there
in heaven? Do you care about us and our little vanities? Do you still show your belly, or maybe everybody up there is an exhibitionist, too? Your dream has come true. Naked, you stand upright in formaldehyde at the Institute of Physical Culture, and visitors admire you. The five hundred rubles they paid you for your cadaver were sent to your daughter. How come you never spoke of her? She lives in your old room with her husband the cosmonaut, and now she went to take a shower. Should I tell her that you were an exhibitionist who earned the right to show his magnificent body forever? I doubt she'll understand. In some ways, women are hopelessly stupid. Your neck bears a telltale mark of a rope. You are number forty one in my collection, even though your departure from life was ordinary. But the end result in this case is more important: a giant vial with a unique object.