Moscow Noir, page 13
“Bolt was better than you, just fat. He didn’t jerk off under my window. He came to me honestly and said, ‘Give me some, Buratinachka, just once. What’s it to you?’ Hee hee hee! He’d come down to my place. We lived near each other, remember? Like he had a question about biology.” (Buratina was good at biology; she’d wanted to go to medical school.) “He’d come and sit down and breathe hard, like a sperm whale … He’d bring me that book … what was it? About the Italians who told stories.”
“The Decameron.”
“That’s it! He said he’d taken it from his parents. He’s reading it out loud and squeezing his thigh … And he stinks to high heaven, Ryaba, from cologne. He must have poured half a bottle on himself so I’d give him some. I even thought maybe I should. Why let the guy suffer? But I decided—first Mesropych … I wanted him to pop my cherry, hee hee hee! Then we’d see! I had some real studs, didn’t I, Polkan boy?” Buratina scratches the dog’s scruff again. “I’m a whore! I’d give some to Polkan, but the animal gets me all scratched up. What do you expect? Hee hee hee!”
Ryabets remembers. He remembers very well. He remembers Buratina being the only girl in their class—to the envy of the other girls and the greater dissatisfaction of Pichuga, their homeroom teacher—to wear lacy stockings, which made Ryaba’s heart race.
“Remember, Ryaba, the story in that book when one woman arranges to meet him at her house? He comes, and the maid says, ‘Wait a little, her husband’s there …’ And she—the maid, that is—gets it on with the man. That guy was out in the cold all night! Just like you! Hee hee hee. But later he had his revenge, he drove her out on the roof, I think … Right?”
Buratina takes the bottle and finishes it off in one swig.
“Whoo! All right, Ryaba, what the hell. You can’t bring ’em back. Not Bolt, not Mesropych, not Lidukha. I don’t remember the others.” She suddenly falls over, first on her side, then facedown. “But you, Ryaba, you’re not getting any. I was going to give you some, but I’m not. Sleep, my beloved children.”
Her hands stroke the rough grass and fall still.
Ryabets has a headache. He shuts his eyes. He should be getting up. It’s late. He’s not going to spend the night here, on her children’s bones. Or is this crazy woman lying? Though no, she said some sensible things too. Such a strange day. But there’s still the newspaper. His mother didn’t give him up when that detective came poking around. He’d asked, Could someone have fought with Mesropych, or Boltyansky, or even Burataeva? From their class, maybe someone was getting back at them? Or was it just the drinking and carousing? The detective questioned everyone. With some, he went to their houses; others he called in. Eventually he decided it was an accident, a cigarette butt. Besides, it was so dry there. Like now. Drier even. The peat burned, definitely. There was smoke. People were coughing.
Crackle, pain, heat. Ryabets opens his eyes and sees Buratina, her arm raised, holding the bottle—the moon’s predatory reflection on its jagged edges. She’s going to kill me! He moves to the side, Buratina falls—crack!—a red rose plunges into the sand.
“Bitch,” he whistles, clutching her shoulders and pressing her to the ground. “You wanted to kill me?”
Buratina is silent, and for a moment her back is tense under Ryabets’s hands, but then it goes slack. He holds her down with his knees and moves his hands to her neck. Blood drips black on her hair. He smells fresh urine. Finding the thyroid cartilage, he presses and presses on it from both sides, vividly imagining her anatomy. A quiet whistle like from a bicycle tire, and then silence. Off to the side Polkan’s shadow is wagging its tail, baring its teeth. “Nadya, Nadya!”
“You never read The Decameron?” Boltyansky exclaims.
Ryabets doesn’t like Boltyansky. That he’s fat is bad enough, but he has those sticky little hands and those manicured nails, damnit. On top of it all, Boltyansky keeps bringing porn to school, photos blurry from being copied so many times. Girls with big tits and grayish bodies (the result of the copying) straddling muscle-bound guys. Or offering up their cushiony asses. Or spreading their lips. One look is all it takes and then there is strawberry jam all over the floor.
Boltyansky shows the photos in his hand, gripping them with his little pink fingers. If for the others the viewings are a standard diversion, it’s different for Ryabets. The sticky feeling has degenerated into horror at a female’s touch, be it a hand, elbow, accidental breast, or innocent hair. Even his mother’s touch—extremely rare, fortunately—repulses him. If Praskovya Fyodorovna so much as strokes his head when she’s tipsy, it turns his stomach and make his insides clench up.
“Droll Stories too. That’s Balzac,” Boltyansky preaches. They’re walking home from school.
“Can I read it?”
“I’ll bring it tomorrow. I’ll bring The Decameron, not Balzac. Balzac’s in a series. My parents would notice. They don’t let me lend books. The Decameron’s better than Balzac anyway. Balzac just has one weird story, about how he disguised himself as a woman so he could fuck her. Well, I mean, first he’d make friends and all that, you know, and then he’d fuck her. The rest is just boring. The Decameron’s more interesting.”
Boltyansky does bring The Decameron, a fat blue volume with an elegantly lettered title, and gives Ryabets a two-week deadline. Ryabets skims the yellowed pages and sets it aside. Final exams are starting soon.
“Wouldn’t you know? The minute I climb off her, the bell! She goes to the door and wipes off the blood, all scared. ‘Who’s there?’ Boltyansky: ‘It’s me, Nadya.’ Her: ‘Damn! What do you want?’ Him: ‘Want to go for a walk?’ Ha ha ha!” Mesropov nearly falls down laughing. “Just imagine. A walk!”
“What did she say?” Ryabets’s lips are dry. He and Mesropov are standing in the schoolyard. The graduation party is starting in half an hour. Everyone’s already been drinking and they’re sharing the news half-soused.
“She’s practically rolling in laughter. Well, I sneak up from behind while she’s talking to him through the door and give it to her good! If only Bolt could have seen what we were doing four inches away!”
Six months before, Mesropov had vowed that before graduation night he was going to pop the cherry of one of their classmates. Fiercely handsome and ox-eyed, he drove the girl crazy.
“I just came and he says again, ‘Nadya, Nadya’”—Mesropov mimicked Boltyansky’s squeaky voice—“‘Let’s go for a walk …’ Well, I yanked the door open! Just as I was, no underpants, only a T-shirt! And a rubber flapping in my hand. Catch! Bolt’s eyes bug out and he runs! Ha ha ha!”
“What about her?” Ryabets is breathing fast.
“Who? Nadya? Nadya’s fine, Ryaba, just fine. She plays along! We fucked like bunnies for hours. Whoo! I can barely stand up. So we’re going to Silver Pine Forest tomorrow, right, Ryaba? Nadya’s got this friend, Lidukha. She’s little but she’s got titties out the wazoo! I’d rather have Lidukha, but Nadya … It’s nice there, in the forest. Never been? Tons of bushes! ‘Under every bush she kept a table set and a home!’ Ha ha ha!”
Some other classmates come up and Mesropov starts recounting his adventure.
“Bolt gave me The Decameron to read,” Ryabets says when he’s finished.
“What? The De-cam-er-on? Give me a break! That Decameron’s kid stuff. Ever heard ‘Luka Mudischev’? The actor Vesnik does it. ‘The Mudischev clan was ancient, it had a patrimony, villages, and giant firs!’ Come over, I’ll play it! The Decameron. Hah! Kid stuff, Ryaba, kid stuff!”
“It all depends on your imagination,” Tregubov the intellectual interposes weightily. “Some guys can get off on a keyhole. I don’t think The Decameron’s half bad. Quattrocento, feast during the plague … Italy! It’s not ancient Russia. Signorine, not girls! Pinos, not pines!”
Tregubov knows what he’s talking about. In his not quite seventeen years he’s the only one in class who’s been abroad, he even lived in Italy. His father worked at the Soviet consulate in Rome.
“Pinos? Is that like a blowjob?” Mesropov.
“No, amico mio, it’s a Mediterranean pine tree. A sky of purest blue! The sea! The sun! O sole mio/sta ’nfronte a te!/O sole, o sole mio/sta ’nfronte a te!/sta ’nfro-o-o-onte a te-e-e-e!” Tregubov sings, breaking into a falsetto.
“A goddamn Caruso!” Mesropov says with respect.
Boltyansky enters the yard wearing a black suit and a skinny black tie. His black hair is combed back and slicked so it shines. Seeing Mesropov, he nearly stumbles and his cheeks break out in red spots.
“Hey, pino,” someone shouts, “want to go for a walk?”
Friendly laughter.
Ryabets doesn’t stick around for the party. He takes his diploma and leaves. As he’s walking down the stairs from the auditorium, Boltyansky catches up to him.
“You’re taking off?”
“What do you care?”
“You’re not staying for the dance?”
“I don’t give a damn about that.”
“When are you going to return the book? My parents have been asking. Did you read it?”
“Not all of it. Exams. I’ll finish tomorrow. I’m fast.”
Buratina passes them on the stairs. Powdered cheeks, high heels, short little skirt, lacy stockings, and looking slightly sloshed—she’s giggling oddly. Boltyansky licks his lips. Three more steps up and she stops.
“Ryaba, want a drink? The kids are in the gym. They still have some left.”
“No, I’m going home. I have a headache.”
Ryabets can’t tear his eyes away from Buratina’s legs. She smiles.
“Home, home, home,” she teases. “To his mama … Why don’t you come to Silver Pine Forest tomorrow? Third beach. Know it? We’ll go swimming at 5 or 6, when we wake up. My girlfriend Lida has a dacha there, her parents are taking off, so …”
“Fine,” Ryabets rasps, and heads downstairs.
“What’s with you?” he hears the teasing directed at Boltyansky. “Want to go for a walk? Hee hee hee!”
Boltyansky calls at 4 or so.
“Are you going to Silver Pine Forest? Did you forget?”
“Too far.”
“That’s okay, you can stay over. Nadya’s friend has a dacha there.”
“I don’t know, maybe I will.”
“And grab The Decameron. My parents are pestering me.”
“All right.” Ryabets hangs up.
Followed by a surprise: Buratina. She’s calling! In the whole ten years they’ve been in the same class, this is the first time.
“Ryaba, hi.” A depressed voice, as if she’s holding back tears. “Are you going to Silver Pine Forest? Take me.”
Ryaba’s heart is pounding. Joy! But fear too. Picturing Nadya in a swimsuit, he can’t imagine what he’ll do with himself. His swimsuit’s going to bristle!
“All right.”
“Should I come by then? In an hour?”
Ryabets hangs up and runs to the bathroom. He decides that if he does it a few times he might get by … He twirls in front of the mirror—uses his mama’s powder on his zits, combs his hair back, then parts it; changes his shirt, rolls up his sleeves, rolls them down. What else? What if she walks in, he kisses her, she responds, and—
A ring. Not the door, the phone. It’s her.
“Listen, Ryaba, I’ll wait for you at the bus stop. If I come over, you’ll rape me. You gave me such a look yesterday! Hee hee hee!”
Oof!
Ryabets grabs his bag and towel, throws The Decameron in—he suddenly remembered—and runs outside.
Nadya’s wearing a yellow shirt with the top buttons undone, and there are her breasts. And a miniskirt too. Her face is creased; she drank and partied all night long. She’s got a mark on the back of her neck. A hickey? Her eyes, half-Kalmyk to start with, are swollen; the abundant mascara highlights this. Her perfume—from a long way off. Ryabets stares and joy bubbles up inside him alternately with horror.
It’s a long trip: trolley, subway, transfer, subway, trolley. Ryabets notices glances at his companion—men’s leers, women’s frowns.
Ryabets can’t for the life of him figure out why she isn’t with Mesropov. It’s a puzzle. Going with Mesropov makes sense. Mesropov would take her in a taxi. All the way to the beach. His parents are really rich.
The trolley crosses the bridge toward pines, pines, and more pines. Pinos.
“Lidukha lives way over there,” Nadya points out the window. Tall green and blue dachas with turrets amid century pines. “We’ll go to her place after the beach, tonight. Her parents are off traveling somewhere. Will you go?”
“Maybe,” Ryabets mumbles.
They get out. Ryabets is holding his bag in front for obvious reasons.
They’re walking down the road next to a very high fence.
“Who lives here? Artists?” he asks.
“Big shots, diplomats, and artists too. Did you see the Japanese flag behind the fence at the stop?”
“Lucky dogs … In Moscow, but like being in a forest.”
Nadya shrugs.
They leave the road and walk among the pines across the sand. Nadya takes off her platform shoes. Ryabets lags behind a little. Make up your mind! is knocking in his brain. She went into the forest on purpose, on purpose!
He puts his hand on Nadya’s shoulder. The girl stops.
“What are you doing?” She removes his hand.
“I … I—” He drops his bag and tries to put his arms around her.
She dodges him. “That’d be just great. This place is full of people!”
“I … I … just … wanted … to kiss you.”
“Kiss me?” She gives him a quick kiss on the lips. “There! Later, later …”
“When?” Ryabets rasps.
“Tonight, maybe. Who makes love in the afternoon?”
Mesropov and the gang are already at the beach. Boltyansky’s there too. The others are strangers, dark-haired and guttural, Mesropov’s fellow tribesmen. They greet the appearance of Ryabets and Burataeva cheerfully, by pouring the Armenian brandy. Ryabets doesn’t drink. He takes a whiff and sets it aside. First of all, he’s never tried anything stronger than New Year’s champagne, and second, he’s angry. Nadya’s the only girl in the group. She goes for a swim. She swims for a long time and he watches her. She’s already squealing and giggling, and they’re already pawing at her. Mesropov and his friends. “Bastards! Bastards!” he shouts with his head under water so no one can hear.
They play ball, jump around, roughhouse. Ryabets sits on a lounge and rages. Then they wander over to a beer stand on Krug. Mesropov and Burataeva take up the rear with their arms around each other. Ryabets looks back. He doesn’t go near Buratina at the beer stand or later when they finally show up at the dacha of Lidukha, a little brunette with small, intense eyes. She greets her guests on the porch. Mesropov kisses her hand, and at that moment Buratina remembers Ryabets and glances around. He’s standing at the gate.
“Are you coming or what?”
“No, I’m going home.”
He’ll kill her, the bitch, he will.
Ryabets squeezes his dry fists.
Laughter from a second-story window: “Ha ha ha ha! Ho ho ho ho! Hee hee hee hee!”
That last is hers.
Ryabets feels the rough wall. It’s dry, it’s going to burn, so don’t cry, mama!
First, gasoline. No problem. There’s a car by the gate.
Second, a hose. Where’s the hose? There—the dead snake on the dry grass. Everything’s very dry. Laughter and more laughter. Drunken and insolent. And music. Someone’s puking.
Third, a bottle. Here’s a jar under the porch. Two of them. Liter bottles. Great!
Ryabets uses his teeth to rip off a piece—about a meter long—of the snake-hose’s black flesh. There we go, there. He twists off the gas cap. Now suck—ha ha—suck! Acrid fumes, more, more … till you feel like puking. More, more … E-ro-tic! Boltyansky would say. He wouldn’t have to listen to his, Boltyansky’s, laughing, fearless, or him jerking off in the hall … Not a damn thing was going to be left of him either.
It’s flowing! First down the throat, then into the jar. A liter. Let’s pour. Another liter. That’s it, no more sucks out. That’s enough. It’s so dry it could catch without gasoline.
Now to wait. Cover the jar with a towel at least, so it doesn’t evaporate off, and wait-wait-wait.
Ryabets moves away from the dacha and sits leaning up against a sticky pine trunk. Wait. It’s a good thing there’s no dog. No dog.
Ryabets’s hand slithers into his pants. No, he shouldn’t. If I come I’ll back down. It’s wrong. For three years she’s all I’ve been thinking of. Hands off!
Her short haircut in the window. She’s smoking, tapping the ashes right where he was just standing. Oops! The butt flies like a drunken star and drops next to his invisible feet. And smolders. But it could catch fire. It could. Excellent. She’s gone. Yesterday Mesropov said he wanted her girlfriend. But who wants her? These guys? The Chuchmeks? Bitch.
It’s not jealousy, it’s justice. Like in The Decameron. She keeps him waiting in the yard in winter while she consoles herself with someone else. Italy. And the wife forced her husband to climb into a barrel to caulk it up from the inside. She’s standing there and showing him where … while another guy fucks her from behind. Cheerful folks. And there’s the one who pretended to be deaf and dumb in a convent. That’s the life!
Ha ha ha ha! Ho ho ho ho! Hee hee hee hee!
When are they going to settle down? First brandy, then beer, then brandy. How will he get home? How? The trolleys will stop running. So will the subway. I’ll call my mother. Or maybe I shouldn’t. Evidence. They’ll ask his mother, When did your son come home?
Phooey! He’s in trouble again. Don’t do that. Go home. Jerk off as much as you can. Until you can’t, ha ha.
Shhh. They’ve turned off the lights. Gone to bed? Bolt too? With who? Quietly by myself … Super! The terrace door creaks. Ryabets presses up against the trunk and tucks his feet in. The shadow from a nearby bush hides him. A rustle. Lidukha with the big tits. Mesropov. They stop and whisper.
