Life Stories Read online

  I like your daughter. She is quiet and tender and can be taught all kinds of things easily enough. Her husband, who went on an extended spin around the Earth for the sake of science, never even had time enough to get her pregnant. All in all, he never liked to waste sexual energy, sublimating it into the Universe. Well, someone has to correct another man's mistakes or finish the job that another man left unfinished. Why shouldn't it be me, if only to honor your memory? Besides, I've turned out to be a good teacher. I'm as cold as frozen steel. My feelings never get ahead of my sober mind and no passionate moan ever elicits an echo in me. It is the greatest achievement in sex. Remember the old metronome in your room? I use it to set the optimal tempo. Of course it is only good at the initial stage, but you've got to get through it first, right? Naturally, as an old sensualist, you would have understood my experiments with fruit juices. I buy them in vast quantities and pour them into the bathtub, first the heavy ones that settle at the bottom, then the light transparent ones that form the top layer. Into that colorful cocktail, the largest I've ever seen, I immerse the subject of my lessons. Even then, your daughter does not part with her panties and her undershirt. Well, it does add a certain charm to our studies. Unfortunately, we had to abandon the juices. They gave Galya a skin rash. But in other ways she undoubtedly has made strides. I have taught her to copulate in public, at the beach, for example, or more precisely in the river, while you're surrounded by dozens of swimming citizens. You stand in the water up to your waist and the girl presses herself against you, as though she is cold. This is when everything happens. The trick is to keep up a bored face. Well, old goat? Are you spinning in your vial yet?

  "Who are you talking to?" asks Galya. She is toweling her wet hair.

  "I'm thinking of your father. He was a great man."

  "I'm sorry not to have known him well," complains Galya, gathering her hair into a pony tail. "Mother used to say that he was a bad man."

  "All mothers are selfish," I say with great conviction. "Whenever something goes wrong, they turn the kids against their fathers. He was a great scientist. He discovered free matter in himself. When he died, all his papers were removed by his colleagues. Fyodor Mikhalych had clearance at a very high level. Like Lenin, he has been embalmed and is being kept at a secret lab, to make sure his fellow-scientists don't forget him. I only found out that he had clearance after he died."

  We sit for a while with mournful faces, paying homage to the memory of the great scientist.

  "What should I do when my husband comes back?" asks his daughter when she's done mourning.

  "What do you mean?"

  "I won't be able to be with him as before. You've taught me so much."

  "You shouldn't worry. Weightlessness makes men impotent. You can divorce him," I suggest.

  "But I love him," she sighs, putting mascara on her eyelashes.

  I need to go out on business. I get dressed, pat Galya on the cheek and walk down the stairs into the fall day. I walk to the notary public, thinking of my business. Then I wait in line for an hour and, finally, when I'm invited to see the notary, I explain to him what I need him to do. He stares at me in surprise, unable for a long time to understand what I want. Then, when he does at last grasp it, he firmly refuses. I try to explain to him that there is no risk, that the paper will have my signature and that he will only have to notarize it. As to the standard fee, we could always find a way around it. At last the document is drafted, the notary puts away a portion of my grandmother's legacy and I depart completely satisfied.

  "Your health, Kazbek," I raise a glass of champagne. "I hope your slant-eyed mug soon finds its way to Alma Ata."

  We drink to celebrate my birthday, and he tells me that he has already submitted his resignation and has only a few more days left to pick half-dead brains. He invites me to visit his native land one day in summer, to swim in cold natural pools and to taste a kebab roasted over saxaul firewood. It certainly sounds enticing and I accept. We raise our glasses to Kazbek's relatives, a huge number of whom inhabit the steppes of Mangghyshlaq. I listen to his nonsense a little longer, and then take out the notarized paper.

  "You see, I have this problem " I start from far away, so as not to scare him off. "I have a professional question to you as a neurosurgeon."

  "What kind of question?" sings Kazbek, accompanying himself by plucking the strings on a saaz.

  "How should I put it Well... Is it possible to find in the brain the mark of an injury inflicted twenty five years ago? For instance, the mark of a shell fragment?"

  "Of course it is," the singer replies easily, suspecting no trap.

  "Can you do it?"

  "What do you need it for?" asks Kazbek more cautiously, tossing the instrument on the bed.

  "You see, I want to find that spot in my brain... I'm a little bored."

  I eye my friend steadily. He understands that I am not joking and turns serious.

  "You're crazy," says Kazbek after a pause.

  "You must help me. I could come at the end of your shift, you'll open up my brain and implant a small tube, so that a nail, when it is inserted into it, could hit the same spot."

  "No."

  "Think of it as though I have been run over by a car."

  "No."

  I hand him the document, which is damp with sweat.

  "This will protect you. It has a stamp and a signature of a notary. You'll need it if I die. You're a great surgeon."

  Kazbek is adamant in his refusal and I'm forced to keep describing to him the senselessness of my existence until morning. Finally, when the night comes to an end, he agrees, saying that he will do it for me but, turning pale and looking not at all like a Kazakh, warns me that he will never shake my hand again and that he no longer wants me to come and eat kebab in sunny Alma Ata.

  "When?" I ask.

  "The day after tomorrow," he replies.

  He stops shaking my hand that same morning.

  All women can sense trouble. Galya lies next to me but she is awake. At night she took off her undershirt and panties, but I found no flaws in her body.

  "Think of it as though your husband were back from outer space," I say to her angrily.

  "Why?"

  "And make sure you visit the Institute of Physical Culture. They have a very interesting exhibit over there."

  Galya goes to her father's room, where he used to sob after getting a beating from my progenitor. I lie staring at the ceiling. The minutes just before sunrise are very sad and dark. Couldn't someone call me and tell me about a wonderfully imaginative suicide?

  Next evening, after purchasing a red wig at a consignment shop, I go to the barber shop and get my head shaved. That makes the indentation on my forehead seem even bigger, and passers-by stare at me. I put on the wig and, having covered the distance to the hospital on foot, appear before Kazbek as a buffoon. Unlike me, he is gloomy, but, having given me his word, he decides to keep it without fresh objections. I wash myself thoroughly in the hospital tub, rub myself down with a stinky liquid and put on a sterile white floor-length hospital gown. Kazbek rolls me to the operating room on a gurney and transfers me to the operating table. I try to make jokes, but the Kazakh doesn't respond and speaks only when it is absolutely necessary. To prevent my head from jerking around, he ties it to the handles and inserts a wooden plank into my mouth, to keep me from biting my tongue. He thoroughly covers my skull with iodine and asks:

  "Should we begin?"

  I blink and start to inhale the anesthesia.

  Twenty-eight, twenty-nine, thirty... They swim out one after the other. Their little bellies are no longer burdened, and the school, enlarged by the newly born, lazily swims down the wide river. The water in the river is very blue, its current is almost imperceptible, and the fog envelops it like gray hair.

  In the middle of the river, barely touching its surface, lies a beautiful woman. Her pale body blends with the fog and almost floats on it. Her large eyes are shut and a small vein throbs near her no
se. Her chest rises noticeably with each breath. A bird has landed on her right breast. Apparently it mistook the tiny brown nipple for an apple pip and is now at a loss what to do. The woman draws her right knee slightly to the side and at the bottom of her belly a little red sun lights up.

  The school of guppies swims through the little sun and the woman parts her lips with pleasure. Startled, the bird takes wing and disappears in the fog. The woman smiles and touches the throbbing vein with a finger. She is being pulled by the current, and the fish, the bravest of them, hop onto her belly in order not to fall behind. The woman's skin seems touched by a rainbow and she laughs gently from a pleasant tickling sensation. The small caravan swims into the night and the fog thins out and settles like down.

  The woman turns over on her stomach and slowly swims to the shore. Her back is wrapped in red hair down to her buttocks. She comes out of the water and gently shakes the stragglers back into the water. She walks away, a large woman on the soft grass. Then she pushes off and slowly floats in the air and turns pirouettes under the black heaven like a skydiver in the sky.

  Coming out of anesthesia is hard. My head is like a cocoon, wrapped in yards of bandages. I touch it and feel a small metal tube in my forehead. Good boy, Kazbek. He found the tiny spot and opened up a path to it for me. Now I need to get out of the hospital as fast as I can, lock myself in my den and—I hope nothing interferes. God forbid some cosmonaut's wife should wish to spin around you like an abandoned satellite.

  The door opens and Kazbek's slanted eyes stare at me. I smile at him in gratitude. He makes his way to my bed moving slightly sideways and, taking his hand out of his pocket, hands me a small package tied with a blue ribbon.

  "What is it?" I ask, barely able to move my tongue.

  "A gift."

  He tosses the package onto my bed and leaves, closing the door tightly behind him. I unwrap the bright paper and find myself with a nail in the palm of my hand. It is brand-new, and it has a dull shine and a checkered head. A perfidious Kazakh. He thinks I won't be able to fight temptation and will make use of his gift right away. Meanwhile, he will spy on me through some hidden hole and conduct an experiment. No way. I'm tricky, too, I can hold out, I can wait and resist the temptation until the right time, and then—

  I get out of bed, find my clothes in the bedside furniture, change and, after mouthing an excuse to a flustered nurse, go down to the exit. At the taxi stand, people let me to the head of the line. I get into the seat and close my eyes. At my house, the driver wakes me up, announces that we've arrived and kindly wishes me to get well. He doesn't know that I'm the healthiest person on earth. He doesn't realize that in a few minutes I'll be fortunate enough to feel the kind of pleasure no man has ever felt on this unhappy planet of ours. Squeezing the nail tightly in my hand, I climb the steps to my apartment. The most important thing is for the exhibitionist's daughter to be out. Like a mouse, I sneak into my room and shut the door tightly. I lie down on the sofa and, staring at the walls, try to steady my breath. Here it is, my nail. I squeeze it in a suddenly sweaty hand. As if alive, it strains to get into my brain. I close my eyes, raise my hand and place it into the little tube. One moment longer. One more. I should press a bit harder on its head. What the hell is happening? Is it too short? Of course it is! Back then I was a child, and since then my brain must have increased in size three times over, so that the nail is too short to reach the spot. I slide down from the sofa and crawl on all fours to the armoire. Mother's knitting needles are still in there; she used to knit sweaters for me. This one will certainly do the job, the one with a sharp end. It's long enough for an elephant's brain. I lean against the armoire and with an unsteady hand struggle to insert the needle into the tube. My hand shakes and the needle tears through the bandages on my head. I need to calm down, count to thirty and steady my breath. Carefully now. Here we go. It's in. It's about to start.

  I sit there with a knitting needle in my head and nothing happens. I crawl to the phone and dial the number of the Sklifosovsky Hospital.

  "You're a bastard," I say to Kazbek in a whisper.

  "Why?" he asks.

  "You tricked me. You're a loser. Nothing happens."

  "I did what you asked me to. It's the right spot."

  "You made a mistake. You're incompetent. All you're good for is to cut carcasses. Not human ones, either."

  "Wait a minute," Kazbek interrupts me. "It's the right spot. I didn't make a mistake. I did everything correctly."

  "Why don't I feel anything, then? Why?"

  Kazbek breathes into the receiver as he ponders the answer.

  "You were a kid back then," he says. "Your brain was clear, like an unexposed film. Everything you learned was new and unexpected. What your child's brain subjectively perceived as pleasure became transformed into commonplace once you have grown up. Only your memory preserves the sensation. In reality, it is a very ordinary spot. It is not responsible for the pleasure function. You had to understand this in order to come back to earth..."

  He keeps telling me other things, too, but I start crying like a hurt child.

  Except now the hurt is no child's hurt, it is far more cruel than a mother's whipping.

  Galya comes in. She sees my bandaged head and my bandages that are wet with tears. She stands there staring and me, and suddenly she also begins to cry. Either she feels sorry for me, or else she thinks of her cosmonaut husband.

  "Get out of here," I say to her.

  "What?" She doesn't get it.

  "Get lost, and quickly. Scram. Don't stare at me. Your Daddy was no hero of national security. All his life he was an exhibitionist and a dirty old man. Now he is at the Physical Culture Institute, in a vial of formaldehyde. Go cry for him if you want."

  Galya leaves. I take a carton of matchboxes from the closet and until evening scrape sulfur off their heads. I fill an entire glass with sulfur. It is brown and has traces of wood in it. Then I take out a fresh sheet of paper and write the number 50 on it. It will be a nice round number for an imaginative suicide in my collection. I fill out the sheet and file it. Then I put the glass with sulfur in it into my pocket, grab an oil can and a length of dry string and go out. My gait is straight and my step is steady. I reach the river, stick the nozzle of the oil can into the tube that leads to the spot in my brain and empty the sulfur into the oil can. I stick in the string, climb onto the parapet, stare at the water for a moment and, striking a match, light the string.

  I'm swimming down a blue river, lazily moving my fins. My little tail is like an oil slick on the water. Hundreds and hundreds like me swim behind me and we are a rainbow on the water.

  In the middle of the river floats a beautiful woman with a large white chest. She is all white, all of her. Only at the bottom of her belly glows a tiny red sun. I lead the school toward it and, slipping through its rays, become born anew.

  Translation by Alexei Bayer

  The Heart of a Snark

  Sergei Lukyanenko

  The dark wood of the deck was damp, rough to the touch where the salt had eaten into it, and very, very warm.

  Robert perched on a coil of harpoon line. He took out his cigarette case and lit up. These were real cigarettes, Earth cigarettes. They'd been properly frozen, so they hadn't lost their shape or taste.

  The clients were late. They were always late, even if they needed to scramble, even if it was down to a matter of days and hours. Everything was new to them: the sky densely shrouded by violet clouds, the mountain peaks to the west, the boundless ocean to the east, the narrow strip of city between the foothills and the shore...

  They called the city a settlement, and Robert couldn't fault them for that. He had seen Earth cities, on video. To earthlings, Lazarus City was no such thing.

  Miguel hailed him from the next boat over, wanting a cigarette. Robert nodded. Miguel called to one of his boys, but the youngster was picking over the standing rigging as only a child in love with the sea can, checking the shrouds and stays centimeter b
y centimeter. Miguel gave up, walked down his gangplank to the dock, and came aboard the Bad Rap. Robert held out his cigarette case. Miguel lit up and hunkered down on the deck, at Robert's feet. For awhile, no one said anything. They were looking northward, to where birds were flitting uneasily over the landing pad.

  "I'm hearing there's only four," Miguel said.

  Robert shrugged. A ship came from Earth every three months. Sometimes it brought upward of a dozen clients. Sometimes, very rarely, just one or two. But Robert couldn't remember a time when no one came.

  "Dennis told me," Miguel explained. "His sister works in the scheduling office. You know her?"

  "Yep."

  Robert spat over the side, and Miguel winced in disapproval. If a boat was near to shore, spitting or dropping a load into the sea was a sure way of riling fate. But Robert did spit into the sea. And at fate too. Robert was younger than Miguel. But things always went his way. And they were friends.

  "Somebody's going to lose out," Robert said.

  "Jose," Miguel said with certainty. "There's no client for him."

  They glanced to the right, looking at the Lucky Break as if they had never seen it before. Jose's boat really wasn't a confidence-booster. Once upon a time, it had been a robust, reliable felucca, but a couple of years ago it had lost a mast. Jose had never bothered to replace it, so now his boat had the look of an inordinately large single-masted balancelle. Compared with a shipshape sloop or cutter, it was clumsy, but in comparison with Miguel's little ketch, it was a lumbering mess.

  "There's no client for Jose," Robert agreed.

  They had finished another cigarette apiece before the earthlings showed up on Port Street.

  Miguel hopped to.

  "May you spend this night with the neighbor's daughter," he wished Robert as he went.

  "She's hideous," Robert replied.

  There were four clients. The few crew members who came with them were in uniform and easy to spot. Robert liked the look of one of the clients: a sturdy kid, dressed right and carrying nothing but a small traveling bag, and he wasn't eyeballing everywhere. That one wouldn't be a lick of trouble on board. The second one was in a wheelchair, laboriously propelling the nickel-plated push rims round and round. A ship's steward was right there with him, helping him along. Robert just shook his head.