St. Petersburg Noir

THE NUTCRACKER by Anton Chizh Haymarket Square ^{Translated by Walt Tanner}

The White Night, a night without darkness, fanned out into early morning. Leaden clouds, pregnant with June rain, hung over St. Petersburg like a thick shroud, threatening to break into a deluge. Roofs and houses, empty streets, and lone passersby all merged in a gray gloom. The wind had abated, but the chill air seemed to ooze through to the bone. Indistinct rustlings floated in the air, like the pitter-patter of claws on tin. A grubby burgundy house loomed over Griboyedov Canal in the fog. The stucco was coming off in chunks, and the jointed sections of the rain pipes met in rusty rings. The building was in dire need of repair. Despite that, someone had hung up a sign that read, Hotel Dostoevsky. Although the grim classic of Russian literature had no connection to the building, tourists seemed to like the name. But other than its name, nothing else distinguished this hotel from any one of the dozen or so such lodgings in the Haymarket Square area.

A black car marked with a taxicab checkerboard shot out onto the canal embankment, darting past randomly parked cars until it came to a screeching halt under the letter D. The cab driver demanded one hundred dollars. He was politely reminded that the fare agreed upon beforehand was half that amount. But the driver remained adamant until he got the green bill he wanted. He refused to help carry in the luggage, saying that wasn’t his job. The cab took off into the fog, raising a cloud of grit in its wake. A young woman with a backpack and large suitcase was left standing on the sidewalk with a twelve-year-old girl, who perched exhaustedly on the luggage, ready to sleep standing up.

The woman glanced around. The embankment, the closest intersections, a partial view of Haymarket Square—she examined them all carefully, as though checking them against a mental map. Rousing the sleepy child, she shouldered her backpack, grabbed the suitcase, and mounted the small flight of stairs to the hotel with a light step.

In the dark lobby she woke the receptionist, a moonlighting student who was dozing on the keyboard of the laptop in front of him. He yawned without bothering to express any stock pleasantries. Scratching his T-shirt, with a picture on it of mice drinking beer, he said there were no vacancies. The woman gave him her reservation code. The receptionist tapped his nail on the keyboard and, yawning again, asked for her ID. He copied the Russian surname from the American passport, refused to take American Express, accepted Visa, and tossing a key, as ancient as the building itself, onto the counter, promptly lost all interest in the guests. Taking the luggage in one hand, and her exhausted companion in the other, the woman went up to her floor.

The reservation website had promised a charming place in the very heart of St. Petersburg, “where every stone is saturated with history.” The other virtues it extolled included comfort, coziness, reasonable prices, and a lovely view.

The door opened into a tiny narrow room, permeated by the smell of dirty socks. The windows, which looked out onto a dull courtyard and a garbage heap, were haphazardly covered with tattered tulle curtains. Pushed up against the wall were two beds, each covered with a gray blanket. The bedsheets, laundered to a dirty yellow, lay folded in a pile on the windowsill. Hanging from just one hinge, the door of the wardrobe gave out a plaintive squeak. A note had been taped above the hot water faucet that read, Off until September. The room, however, did not strike the requisite horror in the guests. The child dragged herself over to the bed, where she collapsed without undressing. This was the very hotel the woman wanted.

She sat down on the edge of the mattress. She had hardly noticed the twelve-hour flight from Chicago, or the terrible bout of turbulence over the Baltic Sea. Now she had to be sure of herself, for there would be no turning back. She had to see it through all the way, or she would never be able to forgive herself for the rest of her life.

She took off her wristwatch and gave herself exactly 120 seconds of restful quiet to take control of the nervous tension that was building within her. She breathed deeply, just like she’d been taught, to clear all thoughts from her head.

Her name was Kate. Ekaterina Ivanovna by birth, but for as long as she could remember, she was just Kate. She’d wanted it that way. She came to the United States at the age of one with her parents, who were trying to save the family from the debris of the collapsing Soviet Union. She had grown up like an ordinary American girl. The language was the only thing she’d held on to. At home they spoke Russian to her and forced her read the classics. Kate had always considered this a whim of her folks: knowing a difficult Slavic language in the modern world was totally useless. Unexpectedly, however, that language had now come in handy. Otherwise, she might not have dared.

Time up. Kate opened the suitcase, trying not to wake Annie. She dressed in a pair of jeans and comfy sneakers, put on a thick T-shirt and a sports jacket over it. She felt the left sleeve, as though there were something inside it, put on a baseball cap, and turned into an ordinary girl in the crowd, just one among thousands. That was the best camouflage for this city, they had explained to her. She left the room and locked the door, turning the key as far as it would go, but didn’t drop it off at the desk.

A humpbacked bridge led over Griboyedov Canal to Haymarket Square. Kate walked slowly, looking around. Returning to the city of her birth did not stir any emotions in her. She was neither touched nor excited. All of her senses were poised for another vital task: Kate was getting a feel for these real streets, which she had examined before on Google Earth.

The square was empty. The occasional car cut across the paved area, paying no heed to traffic lights. Kate stopped on the corner of the square and closed her eyes so that nothing would distract her. She waited for the signal; it was the thread that had led her this far. The secret voice made her wait, but did finally answer. Weak, barely audible, but clear. That was a good sign after so many long weeks of waiting.

She opened her eyes.

Kate recalled reading Dostoevsky with distaste. It was on this square that the killer Raskolnikov fell to his knees, begging forgiveness from the people. He wouldn’t have been able to do that anymore: all the open space had been turned into a parking lot. The view was stunningly unreal. A mall in the far corner of Haymarket Square towered like an iceberg of mercurial glass. The red ruins of brick walls were visible just behind it. A Roman mansion with columns from a neoclassical epoch abutted the square at the other end. Nearer to her was a multistory monstrosity from the beginning of the last century. A building with a corner tower, recalling the boulevards of Paris, stood opposite. Round-roofed trade pavilions huddled underneath it, just as they had a century before when the market bustled and carts of hay stood all around. It seemed as though holes had been ripped in the fabric of time on the square, connecting various eras and centuries.

Both power and enmity lurked there. That was what Kate sensed, anyway. There was something about it—what exactly, she couldn’t say. It was as though some unknown force was hiding behind every corner and observing her, an uninvited visitor. She shivered, as from the morning chill.

By then it was seven a.m., and still the square was almost empty. Just an old man dressed in rags, with a pushcart stuffed with grimy bundles of paper. A shadow darted past his feet; Kate didn’t realize what it was at first. She wasn’t afraid of mice or hamsters, but it was shocking to see a live rat in the center of a European city. The little gray creature pressed itself to the stoop of a meat shop, then, sniffing the air, it casually went on its way.

Moving around the sprawling square in a circle, Kate overcame her fear of the unfamiliar space. On her way back to Griboyedov Canal she dialed the secret number. For a long time there was no answer. Then, finally, the ringing cut off. Someone coughed on the other end of the line and a husky male voice said, “What do you want?” Kate said the code word. There was a hacking cough at the other end again that went on for some time, followed by the gulping noises of a throat swallowing something with difficulty. The line fell silent. Then the same voice, but in a completely different tone, started arranging their rendezvous. No unnecessary questions. They would recognize each other.

Strolling around, Kate arrived at the venue ahead of time. In an all-night café, she sat at the far table. There were four customers there besides her, tending their mugs. Instead of the aroma of fresh coffee and cream, the place was permeated by a mix of chemical scents used to mask the smell of decay. Rousing techno-pop was piped through the loudspeakers. The waiter, with a hairy wart on his lip, took a long time writing down her order but returned almost immediately with a large coffee and glass of water. Kate did not so much as sip the murky water: she was keeping her eyes on the door. Nevertheless, she missed his arrival. He had been at the café for a long time, observing her and making his assessments. He stood up swiftly and seated himself at her table.

Porphyry looked exactly as he’d been described to her: a week-old stubble, rheumy red eyes, and the persistent fumes of a heavy drinker. Even in the summer, he wore a fur jacket with a greasy shirt sticking out from underneath it. He was a tramp, a lowly nobody. Yet he was the one her Facebook friends had recommended. They said that this unpleasant person reminiscent of a polecat could take care of any problem in the city. He could deal with any kind of trouble. Even something as serious as Kate’s situation.

“Who told you about me?” he asked, swallowing a mouthful of her coffee.

“You helped some friends of mine.” Kate recalled a few names.

Porphyry accepted her explanation with a curt nod. He fixed her with an unblinking stare, as though testing her mettle. Kate kept her composure and said, “I have a serious problem.”

“That’s the only reason people come to me.”

“My sister is missing.”

“Since when?”

Not long ago her parents had been seized by the idea of showing their youngest daughter, Sonya—who was born in America and spoke no Russian—the country of her roots. A gift of sorts for her twelfth birthday. They got their visas and had arrived in St. Petersburg one month before.

“Then what happened?”

Sonya had just disappeared. According to her parents’ incoherent account of events, she asked to go out for a walk around the hotel and never returned. Their parents only noticed her absence when the girl had been gone for a full three hours. They called the police, who refused to help, saying they couldn’t do anything unless she had been gone for more than a week. Dad paid the lieutenant a bribe to persuade him to start the search immediately. The officer came back the next day to say that nothing could be done: Sonya was gone.

Kate listed many more relevant details, but she didn’t divulge the most important one of all. When her parents had broken the news to her, she immediately knew it was her mission to save Sonya. It was like a revelation. Kate dashed to the Russian embassy, but despite her Russian name, tears, pleas, and an envelope with a hefty bribe, they said that the procedure for issuing a visa would take a month. She decided then and there that she would spend the intervening time not on prayer, but on preparation: she took leave from her job at a law firm and hired a trainer, a former marine, to teach her skills that would come in handy for rescuing someone. Killing, in particular. She trained with a desperate zeal. Now she could finish off the slight man sitting in front of her using nothing but a teaspoon. Except she couldn’t let anyone know. The trainer had said, “Never let your enemy know your real strength.” And Porphyry looked more like a foe than a friend.

He snapped his fingers nervously. “Got a photo of your sister?”

In the last picture of her, taken at the airport in Chicago just before their departure to Russia, the child stared with grudging severity into the camera lens. Porphyry wanted to keep the picture, but Kate refused to let it out of her grasp.

He scrutinized the image for a long time. Then he said, “You know my rates?”

Kate quoted a price.

“Half up front. No refunds. No matter what the outcome.”

Ten bills were counted out for him. Porphyry carelessly shoveled the pile into his pocket and made to leave: “I’ll keep you posted.”

“No.” Kate said it with such conviction that he sat down again. “I am going with you. I might be able to help.”

“Oh yeah? How?” Porphyry sneered.

“Sonya is being held somewhere on Haymarket Square.” “How do you know?”

Kate had only accepted the news of her sister’s disappearance because she was certain that Sonya was alive. She couldn’t explain it, but she could sense her sister even at a distance. It had always been like that. They could never play hide and seek: Kate always found Sonya instantly. An inner voice whispered to her. “Sonya is somewhere nearby,” she said.

“Just keep in mind that I haven’t promised I’ll find her alive. Got it?”

“She’s alive.”

“Hope is a good thing.”

“She’s alive,” Kate repeated obstinately.

“We’ll find out soon enough. Listen up, now. Here are the rules: You do exactly as I say. No objections, no questions. Keep a cool head no matter what happens. No hysteria. Got it?”

Kate accepted all of his conditions.

“Oh, and uh… pay for my breakfast,” Porphyry said, walking out of the café.

A low-vaulted underpass diving into the bowels of the subway cut across the insides of Haymarket Square. Even in summer a wind blew from within it. Kate was told to keep her distance.

Porphyry descended the stone steps and headed for a motley pile of rags. He stopped beside it and said something. The pile began to stir, as though there was a mole burrowing within it, and a human face emerged. It was a swollen, cadaver-colored lump. Staring at Porphyry, the creature belched. Then the castoff clothing began to rustle, and a paw appeared, clutching a new iPhone. The face muttered a few short, incomprehensible phrases into it, switched off the phone, and disappeared once more into the heap of rags.

Leaning back on the wall of the underpass, faced for some reason in white marble, Porphyry lazily lit a smoke, paying no attention to what was going on around him. Close by, a couple of swollen-looking men of indiscernible age were sitting on their haunches. One of them produced a bottle of Coca-Cola, into which the other fellow poured some varnish from a can. Some alcoholic tinctures contained in pharmaceutical vials were also added, and the concoction was shaken. They drank the “Haymarket Square Cocktail” straight from the bottle, passing it back and forth, gulping greedily and wincing.

Kate turned away, waiting.

A tall young man dressed in a leather jacket and leather pants approached Porphyry. On one hairy finger, adorned with a massive diamond ring, he twirled a Mercedes keychain, which made a soft whirring noise. A thick gold chain glinted on his furry chest. The cocky young man’s angular face broke out into a smile.

The men talked. The hairy dude gave Porphyry a friendly left hook on the chest. They summoned Kate with an imperceptible nod. Looking the woman over, the hairy man smirked.

“Let’s see the photo,” he said.

Kate didn’t let go of it. She didn’t want the greasy macho fingers touching Sonya’s little face.

Giving it just one glance, he said, “Nope, not her.”

“What about the neighbors?” Porphyry asked.

“I’d have heard something. A good specimen like that, I’d have taken her for myself. Could’ve made some good money too.”

“You can make some good money right now.”

“No. Never seen her.”

“Come off it, Alik. She disappeared in your territory. You know everything that goes on here.”

Alik just shrugged. “There’s no telling. Maybe the Nutcracker got her.” He gave Porphyry a clap on the shoulder and withdrew, whistling and twirling his keychain.

“Who’s that dude?”

“He’s the lord of the local beggars,” Porphyry replied sternly. “Very rich. If children go missing here, chances are they end up with Alik. He makes them into good workers. Although sometimes he maims them. Makes them sniff glue, gets them hooked on vodka and drugs. To keep them in line. But girls are usually put to different use.”

“He could have been lying,”

“There’s no reason for Alik to lie. He’s not afraid of you. And a doll like your sister he would have gladly taken for himself. He loves kids in his own way… You ready to go on?”

Kate was ready for everything. She only said, “Who is the Nutcracker?”

Porphyry screwed up his face. “Don’t take it seriously.”

“I want to know.”

“It’s total bullshit.”

“Please!”

“You really want to know? Fine. Supposedly there is an old man who lives in basements and kidnaps children to feed them to the rats. It’s just an urban legend.”

Kate was ready to believe any story she heard. “Why do they call him that? The Nutcracker fought rats, and in Tchaikovsky he was a good guy.”

“Tchaikovsky or Dostoevsky, it’s all the same. This is Haymarket Square, and it’s a whole different ballgame,” Porphyry said darkly.

“Where are those basements he lives in?”

“Not my line of work.”

“I am paying you to find my sister.”

“It’s not about money. It would be like looking for a ghost. You got time to waste?”

She had to desist.

Porphyry led her away from the square to where the pass-through courtyards began. They traversed these for a distance of several blocks. Kate tried to remember the way, but the dirty yellow walls seemed to run together into one turbid stream. She had lost her bearings and had only a vague sense of the direction of the square.

In one courtyard, Porphyry yanked open a shabby stairwell door and went up to the fourth floor. Kate was allowed to do as she pleased: she could wait outside or go in after him. She followed, close on his heels. At an unmarked apartment door, Porphyry made a call on his cell phone and growled something into it. The bolt clicked and the door opened to reveal an obese fellow in a bathrobe hanging shamelessly untied. The next moment a little face, caked in heavy makeup, poked out of the doorway. Her eyelashes were stuck together with blobs of mascara. The little mouth was swollen under a thick coating of lipstick. Dressed in a transparent nighty with wine stains all over it, she was no more than ten years old. She licked her lips and she asked in a hoarse voice: “Hey, handsome, could you buy me some ice cream? My throat’s all dry.”

The fat man kicked her away with his knee, sending her sprawling. Her nightie flew up, revealing her stomach, which was covered in yellow bruises. She got up, straightening the flimsy garment, and hobbled off, tunelessly singing a nursery rhyme: “Quiet, quiet little mice! The cat’s on the rooftop, she’ll leap in a trice.” The smell of chlorine and vomit wafted out from the apartment hallway.

“Porphyry!” the fat man exclaimed, smiling sweetly. “You haven’t been over here in ages, buddy! Want to try something fresh?

“I’m interested in used goods.”

“Anything you wish. What exactly are you looking for?”

“This one.” Porphyry waved a hand at Kate as though summoning a waiter.

She approached them but did not let go of the snapshot. The fat man squinted like a well-fed cat and made clucking noises with his tongue.

“What a honeybun! Wouldn’t mind snuggling her myself. Sorry, Porphyry, that one didn’t come my way. I wouldn’t have let her get away if she had. What a doll! May I offer you another one? Perhaps your lady friend would like something? Some of the boys I have are pretty good. I highly recommend them.” He snapped his fingers in affirmation of the high quality of his product.

Kate went downstairs without saying a word. A sudden downpour detained them in the stairwell. The rain came down in torrents, as it does in the tropics, pounding the asphalt with its coarse watery arrows and clattering on the rooftops. Porphyry lit up, exhaling the thick smoke.

“Doesn’t look good,” he said, flicking the ash underfoot.

Kate waited for him to elaborate.

“Liolik runs all the child prostitution rings. Eight out of ten will end up with him. Girls are always in demand. Sometimes he’ll take care of an order personally, if the client is after something in particular. But she’s not here. Even if you broke his neck, it wouldn’t get us closer to what we’re looking for.”

“Why do you take his word for it?”

“Liolik would sell your sister back to you. If he had her.”

“That’s good news.”

“You don’t get it. That asshole Alik could easily have been lying, like you said. Sonya could have ended up with him. But after a month, he would definitely have sold her on to Liolik; he has no need for used goods. That way, at least your sister would still be alive. But if Liolik doesn’t have her—”

“She’s alive,” Kate said, repeating the words of her spell. “We just have to keep looking.”

“Whatever you say.”

“What’s our plan?”

“Keep doing everything we can.”

The rain subsided sharply, tapering off to a fine spatter.

Haymarket Square turned out to be just behind the building. It was highly likely that Porphyry had been walking around in circles intentionally, so that she—an outsider—could not find her own way back. He was right to do so. Kate wanted to go back there and wring Liolik’s fat neck. And she had stopped trusting her partner.

Inside a glass kiosk, a pyramid of meat rotated slowly on a skewer. A swarthy young man wrapped in a dirty apron was cutting off slices of the roasted meat with a long knife. Eastern music and the stench of burning oil floated from the open window. Resting on a low stool beside the counter was a gray-haired man in a black shirt. Prayer beads clicked; his face betrayed an inward gravity. He opened his eyes and rose to greet Porphyry. They hugged and pressed their cheeks together. The woman was told with a gesture to keep her distance.

Porphyry spoke with exaggerated politeness. He respectfully inquired about the state of Aslan’s health, and received a cordial reply. Then he muttered something abruptly and, moving in close, whispered in the man’s ear. Aslan listened to him attentively. Then he answered: “All right.”

Now she was allowed to approach.

Aslan examined the girl’s picture carefully, running his fingers over the beads, and spat out: “No.”

Kate didn’t know who he was or what he did, but she understood the obvious: this was her last chance. She didn’t have anything to lose now.

“Could the Nutcracker have gotten her?” she asked pointedly. “Do you know where I might find him?”

Aslan looked as though he’d seen a ghost, “lnshallah.”

Without saying goodbye, he recoiled into the booth, grazing a saucer of milk that stood on the threshold for some reason.

Porphyry gave her arm a sharp tug and dragged her aside.

“Who told you to speak?” he hissed. “Do you know what you’ve done?”

Kate pulled away. “I want to find my sister.”

“You won’t be able to, now.”

“Why?”

“At Aslan’s kiosks, they make shawarma. You know what that is? It’s a pocket of bread, stuffed with fried meat. Real cheap, because they fry up everything from rotten chickens to stray dogs. Sometimes people bring Aslan dead bodies—they don’t let them go to waste either. Human meat really hits the spot. If your sister was killed, it is more likely than not that she would have ended up in Aslan’s shawarmas. But you just ruined everything. After your rude behavior, Aslan won’t bother asking his people anything. That’s it. That was our last chance. End of story.”

“She’s alive,” Kate repeated. “How do I find the Nutcracker?”

Porphyry slapped his palms together and brushed them off. “Our contract has just expired. Don’t call me again.”

The fur jacket disappeared into the bustling throng of people.

Kate stood by herself amid the crowd filling the Haymarket. People hurried about their business, and nobody cared about a missing little girl. The wind got rid of the few remaining storm clouds. The sun came out, and it became as humid as a Turkish bath. Shiny puddles dried up right before her eyes.

Porphyry hadn’t worked out. She was going to have to use Plan B.

She dialed a new number (also recommended to her by Facebook friends) and gave the code word. In less than an hour, she handed over two thousand bucks right there on the square, in exchange for a heavy metal object that fit snugly behind her belt.

Annie was still asleep.

Kate sat down on her own bed. She did not feel any need to rest, nor did she want to eat or drink. Yet she was faced with the most difficult task of all: three hours of waiting. Then she would reenact the events of a month ago, every last detail, up to the moment Sonya disappeared.

Kate spent the next few hours killing time, letting her fingers get used to the grip of her new Walther. The weapon had been used recently. Kate had learned how to tell by the smell. That was why it had been sold. But she didn’t care how many people had died at the end of the barrel of that gun. All that mattered was that it work without fail when she needed it to.

She also decided not to let Annie in on things. She had sworn to protect her just as she would her own sister. In order for the whole thing to work, Annie couldn’t have any idea what was going on. Otherwise, she would get scared. It had not been easy to persuade Annie’s parents to allow the girl to go with her. But after all, she and Sonya had been best friends. Sometimes you just have to back up your friendship with deeds.

The wait was over. Soon the hour would strike.

Kate was ready. She stood up, touching Annie’s shoulder gently. “Wake up, honey, it’s evening already. Time to take a walk.”

Annie blinked rapidly, and smiled. “Kate, do they have hamburgers here?”

“Let’s go and find out.”

“When are we going to see Sonya?”

“Very soon, I hope.”

Yawning noisily, Annie jumped up on the bed. “Ready when you are!”

Kate opened up the big suitcase. “First, we have to change.”

A McDonald’s took up the ground floor of a large building on the far side of the square. At around ten o’clock in the evening, a little girl came out of it. She was wearing a white polo shirt and light-blue jeans. A backpack hung from her shoulders and she had a camera around her neck. A funny-looking pair of glasses nearly slid down her nose. She was holding a large milkshake and drinking it through a straw. The little girl stood in front of the restaurant, turning this way and that, then strolled leisurely about the square. A month before, Sonya, a girl of similar height and build and dressed in similar clothes, had found herself at that very same spot, without her parents’ supervision, for approximately half an hour. Kate’s empathic powers told her that this was where it had all begun. She was certain of it. They wouldn’t let such appetizing bait give them the slip, would they?

Kate was on the lookout for anyone who moved close to Annie. So far, the young tourist had gone unnoticed. Annie walked halfway around the square, then something in her gait changed abruptly. She paused for a moment, as though straining to hear, then bowed her head, walking in a manner that seemed somehow too rigid, like a windup doll. Kate took note of the change, but couldn’t figure out what had caused it. There was no one near her, and she hadn’t been approached by anyone either. Then Kate thought she heard someone cracking his knuckles close by. The sound was so soft that it dissolved into the hubbub of the square.

Dropping her milkshake, Annie seemed to quicken her pace, pressing her head to her shoulder. She made a large circle, looping her way back to McDonald’s, then turned sharply onto a side street. Kate lost sight of her. She’d been taught not to hurry when tailing someone, but now she had no choice. Darting around the corner she was just able to catch a glimpse of Annie going into the nearest archway. Kate made it to the stone entrance in three bounds. The stench of stale urine assaulted her nose. She had a partial view of the courtyard from the end of the tunnel, yet Annie was nowhere to be seen. Slipping through the gate, Kate found herself in what looked like a jail, surrounded by rows of windows reaching five floors up. Opposite were the large kitchen windows of McDonald’s, and employees scurried to and fro. The courtyard was dirty and empty. Someone had nailed a handmade sign on the side of the building that said, NO EXIT.

No sign of Annie.

Kate dashed to the door of the stairwell and tugged it. It was locked. She peered into the kitchen, which was buzzing with activity. She had lost Annie. The girl had disappeared right from under her nose. She’d been outwitted. She had wasted her last chance to save Sonya. This really was the end.

Stifling a fit of panic and the desire to scream at the top of her lungs, Kate forced herself to think. This was the only way to get the situation under control. She had to take a good look at everything around her.

A shadow darted along the base of the wall. Then another one. Two more were not far behind. The rats were all moving toward the same target—a crack between iron shutters that covered the basement trapdoor. Kate jerked the rusty handle with all the strength of her despair. The massive lock barring entry swung open easily. She’d blown its cover.

Kate dove down inside.

The concrete walls of the basement ceiling forced her to keep her head low. Above her was the floor of McDonald’s. She searched around, moving in the direction of a flickering light. Small gray bodies scampered right alongside her sneakers. She had taken no more than ten steps into the basement when she caught sight of Annie. The girl was walking as though hypnotized, following a tiny creature that was whistling softly, snapping its fingertips in a ragged rhythm, as though coaxing a frightened little dog to come nearer.

Snappity-snap…

“Hey you, boy, what do you think you’re doing?” Kate shouted. “Stop!”

His face was eaten up by deep wrinkles. Kate couldn’t make out anything else. Something came crashing down on the back of her head and she sank into blackness.

The pain brought her back to conciousness. Her wrists had been bound and the skin beneath was burning. She shook her head and was overcome by a wave of nausea. When it subsided, she was able to take a look around her. The shallow space had become more crowded. Sitting there cross-legged on the floor were Alik, Liolik, and Aslan. There were other men she didn’t recognize, including one dressed in what appeared to be a police uniform. She was the center of attention.

“Damn busybody,” said a familiar voice.

Porphyry was sitting beside her, smiling. “I told you not to go after the Nutcracker, but you wouldn’t listen. Now you’ve only got yourself to blame.”

Stretching cautiously, Kate felt that the thick rope holding her wrists behind her back was bound so tightly that it offered no possibility of escape. They hadn’t bothered searching her, though. The barrel of the gun had slipped deep between her buttocks. The Walther was still with her.

“You’re lucky. You get to witness something few people ever live to see.”

Bending her fingers down to her wrist, Kate groped the edge of her sleeve, where her trainer had taught her always to keep a razor hidden for just such a situation.

“Only you won’t live to tell anybody about it. Too bad.” The joke was followed by sinister laughter.

With the tip of her finger, she pressed the edge of her sleeve until a thread gave way.

“What an excellent specimen you brought along with you! The Nutcracker will be very pleased.”

The seam ripped. A strip of metal slipped out.

“You stay quiet or we’ll have to sedate you,” Porphyry said, fiddling around with a set of brass knuckles.

Kate slowly leaned back and felt the wall with her shoulders. No one would notice what she was doing with her hands. And who would pay much attention to a girl whose hands were tightly bound?

The boy with the face of an old man came out of the darkness. He closed his eyes and whistled softly. The floor began to move. A pack of rats crawled out in a dirty stream and then froze. Letting out a thin, barely audible whine, the midget bent over in a low bow. Everything went so quiet that Kate held the razor in place, afraid that her rustling would betray her.

There was a soft tapping of claws in the distance, as though someone was snapping pieces of brushwood in half somewhere in the darkness. It grew nearer and nearer until a rat the size of a large cat appeared next to the boy. Its bushy whiskers stuck out, and the fur on its snout was gray with age. The men bowed their heads. Lifting its nose, the rat studied Kate intently with its black beady eyes. The boy bent down even farther.

“The Nutcracker is talking with the Mother,” Porphyry whispered solemnly. “He is finding out what she wants… Oh, beautiful! The Mother is prepared to accept his offering. It’s going to happen now!”

The razor was making slow progress.

The Nutcracker disappeared into the darkness and re-emerged carrying Annie, who was completely naked. The girl was unconscious but alive. The Nutcracker whistled, then declared, “In honor of our eternal union, we bring offerings unto you, O Mother Rat, the gift of innocent flesh.”

He set the body on the stone floor. The rat raised her whiskers and nodded. At least Kate thought she had. She couldn’t be sure of what she had seen. Her head was throbbing, the razor was cutting into her finger, and the rope was not quite giving way.

Following some secret signal, a furry wave of gray-coated beasts lunged forward and began devouring the child. Greedy gnawing and the sucking pop of meat being ripped apart could be heard amidst the frenzied hubbub. Annie disappeared beneath the fangs.

Kate winced, closed her eyes, and went at the rope frantically, with redoubled energy.

When she opened her eyes again, it was all over. The last of the rats were busily picking over the remains. Their snouts were coated in a thick layer of blood.

Porphyry was ecstatic.

“The offering has been accepted,” the Nutcracker intoned. “Our union is strong.”

The announcement was greeted with a buzz of approval from the men.

“Now, for the most important part of all,” whispered Porphyry.

The Nutcracker disappeared again. When he returned, Kate guessed right away what he had brought with him. It was Sonya. They had put her in what looked like a doll’s dress. She was in a deep sleep, but still alive. Kate had no doubt about that. She knew.

Brushing away the remains of his first victim with a sock, the Nutcracker put Sonya down in a pool of blood. “Today is a great day,” he said. “Our union with the Gray Tribe has lasted for over three hundred years. The time has come to pass it on. Many years ago, Mother Rat rewarded me with her bite, so I can understand the language of the Gray Tribe and speak her will. Soon, the hour will arrive when I must leave. We have waited for so long for someone fit to continue in my place. Finally, we have found her: a blond girl with green eyes!”

The men let out cries of adulation.

With a sharp gesture, the Nutcracker commanded utter silence. “O Mother Rat! Favor the chosen with your bite, and I vow to bestow all my knowledge upon her, so that she may take my place honorably.”

Kate worked in furious haste.

“What an honor, you should be proud of your sister,” her former partner whispered to her.

Mother Rat twitched her nose and fixed the newcomer with a stare. Did she suspect something?

Please, not yet.

The rope gave way. Trying not to change position, Kate shook off the knots that bound her, and eased her palm under her belt.

“May the great union with the Gray Tribe last forever!” screamed the Nutcracker.

Her fingers slid down to the grip of the gun. The safety mechanism went up ever so softly. Now, in one fluid movement, just as her trainer had instructed her.

Mother Rat sniffed Sonya’s wrist and licked her chops.

Scraping the skin on her back with the clip, Kate placed the cartridge into the chamber and withdrew her arm, straight out, extending it so that it became one with the weapon, and gently pulled the trigger. A nine-millimeter bullet smashed through the rat’s snout, spattering the Nutcracker in blood. The thunderous shot was enough to shake the basement. No one dared move. Five more seconds of shock.

One…

Without bending her hand, Kate aimed the gun at the stunned face of Porphyry.

Two… Crack!

A fountain of brains and shards of the skull once belonging to the specialist at solving other people’s problems spewed upward.

Three… Crack!

The bullet pierced Liolik’s belly. The fat man moaned as his face hit the stone floor.

Four… Crack!

Alik’s hairy chest was ripped to pieces with a juicy burst.

Five…

The muzzle of the gun was trained on the graybeard. Aslan’s chin was trembling slightly.

“If you want to live, run! Get out!”

People and rats scattered every which way in the smoke from the shooting spree. Only the old man-boy, drenched in blood, remained motionless. He was sitting on the floor with his legs spread wide apart, stunned.

“Who are you?” he whispered.

Slowly, shaking off the last coil of rope, Kate stood up on legs that had grown numb and her knees cracked. The ceiling was low enough that she had to stoop. She disengaged the Walther peaceably.

“I’m her big sister.”

“What have you done? People and rats live in peace. Once a year we bring them sacrifices. I communicate with the Gray Tribe. I know their language. It’s all over now. You killed Mother Rat. Now chaos will reign!”

“That’s your problem. You kidnapped my sister. She belongs to me.” She picked up Sonya, soft and warm, and pulled her against her chest. She was with Sonya; Sonya was here. No one would ever be able to separate them again. Even if the horde of rats attempted a counterattack.

“Rats are everywhere! You can’t hide from them. They’ll never forgive you!”

“That may be, but I can shoot ‘em up real good.”

The Nutcracker wanted to say something, but suddenly his wrinkles seemed to draw together into one, he began to whisper quietly, and his parched fingertips started snapping out a rhythm. Snap-snap-snap…

A sense of calm surged through Kate’s exhausted body. She felt like sitting down to rest, or maybe even lying down. That would feel so nice, wouldn’t it? After all, the boy was so sweet.

Snappity-snap…

Enervated and drowsy, Kate extended her arm mechanically, then pulled the trigger, almost without aiming. Faster than lightning, the Nutcracker was blown away into the darkness. The midget’s brains seeped out of a hole in his forehead. His body twitched in the convulsions of death, then grew still. Lying on his back, his arms spread wide apart, he looked like a discarded toy. Kate’s swoon burst. Pain and clarity returned.

“If you can snap, you should know how to crack,” she whispered. “You rat.”

She hugged Sonya close to her. “Time to go home, sister.”

Kate carried Sonya with one arm, not noticing the weight. With her other hand, she hid the Walther in the folds of the doll dress. She was ready to kill anyone who crossed her path. Her sister, lolling on her shoulder, was floating in deep sleep. They had strung her out on sleeping pills, but her breathing was regular. She had not even lost weight in the month she had spent in captivity in the basement.

Haymarket Square was bathed in the soft light of the White Night. The passersby glanced back, startled at the woman dressed in sports clothes carrying a large doll in her arms, all smeared in blood.

Dashing past the new receptionist on shift, who couldn’t be bothered to notice her, Kate hurried up to her room and locked the door behind her. That was unnecessary: who would dare come in? Still, she didn’t have much time. She changed the clothes of the sleeping Sonya, ripping the doll’s dress to shreds. Only then did she wash the remnants of Porphyry’s brains off her face. The rest took almost no time at all: leave the suitcase behind, toss the backpack over her shoulder, carry her sleeping sister under one arm.

Running out onto the street, Kate flagged down the third cab that drove by, just like her trainer had told her to do. Casually opening the door, she said, her voice calm and confident: “One thousand dollars to the border with Finland. Three if you take us all the way to the airport.”

The driver agreed without a moment’s thought. He only noted politely, “Your jacket has some spots on it. Looks like blood.”

Kate settled herself in the backseat with Sonya on her knees, and said, “I was taking care of a rat problem.”

The taxi driver stared at her in the rearview mirror.

She managed to muster a weak smile. “Just kidding, it’s all right. You mind your own business, and I’ll mind mine. Just steer the wheel and earn your three grand.” Kate didn’t want to waste another bullet. “Excuse me, but we’re running late for our flight.”

The car sped through the empty streets of a city that would forever be alien to her. Haymarket Square dissolved into the soft pale gray of the White Night.

Sonya stirred lightly and opened her eyes. “Hey, big sis! You know, I had a dream about the Nutcracker.”

“Don’t worry, sweetie, it was just a dream. There is no such thing as the Nutcracker.”

“No? Where did he go?”

“He burst.”

“Like a balloon?”

“No, like a rat. He went kaboom!” She made a loud snap with her fingers.

Sonya sighed and settled down more comfortably. “I missed you.”

“I missed you too.”

“The Nutcracker fed me Big Macs. It was nice…”

Kate was calm. Absolutely calm. She still had four bullets left.

Crackity-crack…

PARANOIA by Mikhail Lialin Lake Dolgoe ^{Translated by Margarita Shalina}

But the main distinction lies in this, that whereas wine disorders the mental faculties, opium, on the contrary (if taken in a proper manner), introduces amongst them the most exquisite order, legislation, and harmony.

—Thomas De Quincey, Confessions of an English Opium Eater

Eighteenth of August in the year 20—

H elp yourselves.”

Three-mile-long lines. Uh-huh.

“Walk your mile.”

Amphetamine. The rush begins.

“What do you suggest?”

“You can put it up your nose. I’ll put it in my coffee. I don’t like to snort—get a runny nose after.”

K sweeps his line into a mug of coffee. I turn to C.

“What do you say?”

“Snort half, the other half—with coffee.”

“That’s what we’ll do.”

C rolls a tight straw out of a hundred-ruble note after a few tries. Checks it, makes sure it fits in a nostril. Divides my line into two parts. Passes me the straw.

“Well… your substances reflect your money.”

I put the bill in my right nostril. The paper squeaks. I inhale. Pass the bill to C.

K throws the remaining half into a mug. I take the mug and begin to drink slowly.

We’ve cleared the glass tabletop. We sit.

“Nah-nah, nah. Absolutely no way.”

K takes the used hundred-ruble note from C, sticks it in the center of a wad of cash. Adjusts it, turns it over, and folds it in half. “This’ll be the first thing they see.”

C crawls to the computer, puts on music, a video.

The room we’re getting loaded in is located on Komendantsky Prospect. It’s K’s apartment, he’s painted the room all white. A wardrobe lines the entire side of a wall, which has a big heart drawn on it.

We sit on a sectional sofa near the window. There’s a table in front of us, holding up a monitor, mugs, a rolling kit, tobacco, a brown cube of hashish.

There are shelves in the corner on the wall behind us. K claims that he gathered the wood for the shelves from the shore of the Gulf of Finland. The boards are nautical—veiny, warped, the grain is gray.

There are a lot of things stacked on the shelves. There’s a bust of Pushkin in the corner. K tells of how he dug it out from under a heap of trash last spring. The bust is primed for painting. Across from us is a carpentry table. K works with wood professionally.

It’s midnight by the clock. The three of us came here in a Deo Matiz. They picked me up at Petrogradskaya.

A small terrier walks around the room slowly. The first thing its owner did upon entering the apartment was put a bowl of food down. The dog’s called Rogue.

K cuts hashish into thin squares on the tabletop. Gathers them into a spliff, mixes them with tobacco on rolling paper, rolls with a filter, seals it, and passes it around the circle.

I’m not feeling the speed. “Nothing so far.”

“Yeah, there was a little something there.”

The hashish dulls any reaction, I move over to the leather armchair beside the sofa. It’s deep. I slide down the back, stretch out. Feel a small spark in my cerebellum, which flows down my cheeks to the heart.

“Fellas, let me tell you that it is friggin’ awesome to have sex in that chair,” K says.

He takes a scale out of an extravagant ebonite case. Next, a blue parcel with white substance. He places the parcel on one side of the scale, a counterweight on the other. The scales are even.

“Thirty grams.” K takes a lighter and seals the parcel.

We sit drinking coffee.

“Well, should we talk about why you’re here?”

I get up, go into the hallway. K has stacked books to the ceiling and painted them silver. The books reach the top of my head. I take a napkin that’s been folded several times out of a bag. Return to the room.

“My grandma called her friend and said: Get here as fast as you can! My K has gone crazy—he’s drilling into books. That’s when I was making that sculpture.”

I hand the napkin to K. “You’ve even got Marx in there.”

K unwraps the napkin. In it are sugar cubes that I swiped from home. K takes an insulin syringe and expels a small amount of antiseptic or iodine. Fills it and checks it in the light. Holds it over the two pieces of sugar. Carefully lets drops fall. Checks the syringe. Wraps the pieces in foil, each one separately, puts the instrument away.

I had handed over the money to C for two drops of English LSD while we were still in the car.

“Well, there it is, it’s ready.”

K throws himself against the back of the sofa. His shirt is open and his athletic torso is visible. Although he’s thirty-five, K looks more like twenty-five or thirty. He’s short, swarthy, lean, but somehow exceedingly slow and graceful in his movements.

The mug of coffee is half empty. I recline in the chair.

C is still rooting around the Internet—putting on different songs and videos. C is also athletically built, but it’s a different kind of athleticism. In his youth he played basketball professionally. C is blonde with blue eyes. K is a brunette with brown eyes. C’s big, almost childlike lips betray his sensitive nature.

It’s nearing one a.m. We sit smoking a second joint. Watch a funny video. Finish up the coffee.

On the glass tabletop are the two little parcels wrapped in foil.

K walks into the room with a pistol. Black, heavy, big. K walks up to the carpentry table and with a strange contemplative expression he holds the pistol up to eye level.

After that he throws it on the table. The sound is abrupt, loud, unpleasant.

I get up, come closer. “Is it real?” I break the tension, pointing to the barrel.

“Yeah, don’t be afraid, I filed down the hammer.”

I can feel the room exhale; even C brightens up.

“What do you need it for?”

“I have to make it inoperable.”

I take the pistol, twirl it in my hands. “That’s funny, a gun that can’t shoot. It’s lost its destiny.”

K takes the barrel from my hands and with white plaster he tightly stops up the openings beneath the screw with a palette knife.

The doorbell rings. C and I flinch. Rogue barks.

Two enter. One is red, tall, with a full beard, his eyes are racing. The second is shorter, a bit heavier, with gray circles under his eyes. His name is P, I crossed paths with him in the Siberian city of U. He’s a musician.

We greet each other. The fellas sit on the floor. K takes the sealed parcel of speed, places it on the edge of the table.

“You got lucky, fellas. Seriously lucky. The goods are pure. This hasn’t happened in a long time.”

The fellas nod. They stare at the little blue bag with hungry eyes. Especially Red.

We sit, lazily talking things over. K lights up a new joint. We pass it around.

“I think I’ll pass,” Red says.

P takes the joint from my hands. I put my legs up on the armrest of the chair. P passes it along, sets his smartphone on the table. Presses it. The glass tabletop and this device merge into one another. P places the little bag of amphetamines on top.

“So you, like, make music?” K asks.

“Something like that,” P replies.

“Well, put something of yours on for us.”

P becomes flustered, but then gets up and heads to the computer. “Here, this is from the old demo.”

An IDM beat begins to play. I hear a recorded voice from the radio. I focus my eyes on the screen, try to read the name of the band. Aurora Baghdad.

We finish smoking the joint.

“Well, I guess we’ll go.”

The fellas get up. We say our goodbyes. C and K go into the hallway to see them off, I remain in the room.

I hear: “We rode here on kick-scooters.”

“It’s the first time that I’ve ever ridden a kick-scooter.”

“How did that go?”

They walk out the door, continue talking there.

I move over to the sofa. Try to find something online.

K and C return. K rolls another joint.

I tell you, it’s really cool here at his place.

“All right, you haven’t even seen the whole apartment.”

K’s converted half the kitchen into a carpentry workshop. He’s got a workbench there, a carpenter’s vise, a lathe. The floor is covered with wood shavings.

“Before, I used to make lots of little things and give them away as presents. I called them pleasantries. But then I realized they were much more dear to me than anyone else.” K stares off somewhere beneath the ceiling, lost in thought. “So now I make them for myself.”

We return to the other room. K leads us to the wardrobe with the heart. Opens it. There’s a small illuminated nook in which miniature items are arranged on red velvet. K removes a perfectly smooth egg from a stand.

“This is what they look like.”

Among the items are a box for wedding rings and Escher’s staircase made of wood.

K returns the egg to its place and closes the drawer.

I take a seat on the sofa and lift my arms out across the shelves that begin where the back of the sofa curves.

“Feel it. Doesn’t it feel like the wings of an angel?”

There’s definitely something to that. I throw my head back. Pushkin’s turned upside down. My arms on the nautical boards, I’m ready to start flapping them and fly away.

K sits down, rolls yet another spliff.

“What do you think? Should we trip?” I offer.

“Why not?” C responds.

The original plan was different. Drop in on K, take acid, and go see P and company. They rent a studio apartment right here on Komendantsky where they record music. Half of the group came here from E especially for that. There’s a boom in the Urals right now of new music with a slant toward reggae.

But it’s evident that something didn’t line up with C and P

C and I unwrap the foil, toast symbolically. Let’s ride. It’s one thirty.

C’s at the computer again, searches, finds, puts on.

I notice a female mannequin in the far corner with a replica of the heart from the wardrobe on its left breast.

“Cool,” I say. “You’ve even got your own mannequin.”

“That’s my ex-girlfriend’s.” K walks up to it. Studies it a couple of seconds, then turns abruptly on his heels. His black shirttail lifts up, revealing that solid torso. “She sat indoors while I worked all the time. I just needed a couple of pieces of scotch tape. I love creating something out of nothing.”

The conversation turns to The Portrait of Dorian Gray. K leaves the room, but quickly returns with a book.

“Here, I haven’t thrown this away only because of the cover.” Against the soft yellow of the cover is the white profile of Wilde. The book is passed from hand to hand. “These are the little pleasantries I’m talking about.”

The book is laid on the carpentry table next to the pistol.

K takes a baggie from the shelves, unseals it, sprinkles white powder onto the table, divides it into three parts, and goes off to the kitchen. We sit terrified of blowing away the powder.

Rogue climbs up onto the sofa and lies down next to me. She starts to lick. Her rough tongue goes up and down my arm. I close my eyes. I feel the tongue with a thousand granulations on it. Open my eyes.

“Good, Rogue.”

The dog stops, looks at the body prone on the couch, and continues running its tongue here and there. It’s not unpleasant, it’s good. Rough. C and I chuckle lazily

K returns. In his hands are mugs of coffee. He sprinkles the lines one after the other into the mugs.

“Gentlemen, coffee’s ready.”

I add three spoonfuls of sugar.

K gets up, leaves the room, and returns with a seven-branched candelabra. He places it on the carpentry table in the corner in front of the mirror. Turns off the overhead light.

Rogue doesn’t stop for even a second.

“Why don’t you give her a rest?” C says.

“She’s doing it herself. It’s not like I’m forcing her.”

“Take your hand away.”

Warmth is radiating from the dog. I don’t remove my hand.

“So how are you both doing? Good?” K distracts himself from his activity.

We nod.

“It’s hard to enjoy yourself if your guests aren’t happy.”

We slowly pull at our coffee. Two in the morning. Time for the LSD to show itself.

“I know what you need,” K says, and leaves again.

“So how are you?” I ask C.

“Not bad, I’m starting to feel it already. That was a great idea K had about the candles.”

The flames break apart as soon as I try to focus my attention on them.

We deliberate about what film to put on.

“Have you seen Baraka?” C asks.

“Obama?”

“No.”

“Then no.”

C burrows through the Internet, finds it, reads the description.

“Listen,” I say. “It sounds a lot like this one film that I’ve wanted to see for a long time. I can’t remember the name. It starts with a K.”

We search. The director of Baraka leads us to Koyaanisqatsi.

“That’s it.”

We read about the thirty-five thousand meters of film used on the movie.

K returns. “Here, this should be just the thing for you both right now.” Two jam dishes appear on the table, filled with white globs.

“What’s that?”

“Fruity ice cream. Little cocktails.”

We try it, a soft sweet taste, it flows smoothly into the stomach.

“C, pass Alexander Sergeyevich over.”

C climbs onto the sofa, lifts the bust of Pushkin. “Behold the power of art,” he says.

I take the bust, it really is heavy. Pass it over to K.

K places Pushkin on the carpentry table, starts painting the white poet. C puts on Koyaanisqatsi. We eat the fruit cocktail, drink the spiked coffee. Rogue finally calms down and falls asleep.

“Koyaa-nisqatsi, Koyaa-nisqatsi,” a voice repeats against the background of mournful ceremonial music and clouds of fire.

After a minute we understand that a rocket is taking off in slow motion. It’s the beginning. Time passes quickly and imperceptibly. Hours fall away, leaving only perfunctory minutes behind them. The echo of Koyaa-nisqatsi traverses the entire film. The final scene. A rocket goes skyward. So does the mournful ceremonial music of Glass. Something has gone wrong, the music only reinforces this sensation. A torrent of air flows over the body of the rocket in a white plume. A second, then an explosion. The camera watches for falling debris. One piece stands out. It falls, tumbling and burning. For a second it seems as though it could be the astronaut’s seat. But no, it’s a piece of the rocket. Twirling in a final dance, it slowly falls to earth.

“All is senseless and futile.” I’m quoting Mujuice here.

K sits at the computer, searches for a color picture of Pushkin. In the time it took to watch the film, black kinky hair has appeared on the bust of Pushkin on the table.

I register the change. Colors have intensified. Trails have begun in my peripheral vision. I think of Kesey and the Pranksters’ tests. Put the jam dish with the fruit cocktail to the side. C finishes eating it to the very last.

“How tall did you say your ceiling is?” K ask unexpectedly.

“It’s, like, normal,” I reply. “Average.”

Outside the window we hear a guitar being played, singing.

“It seems our musicians didn’t get far.”

I go up to the window. A seaside neighborhood. Komendantskaya Square, at the center of which is a shopping center that resembles a flying saucer. Right beneath the windows is another big shopping center, overlaid in gray paneling. The frightful tastelessness typical of a residential neighborhood. Seemingly the only signs read, Secondhand. Beyond it, bunched together, are high-rise homes.

A young man sits on the grounds of the shopping center and strums a guitar. Beside him stands the yellow-green Deo Matiz. I step away from the window.

K has printed out several color images of Pushkin, and C is at the monitor again. He finds and puts on Baraka.

“I’m going to the store,” K says. “Got to buy food for Rogue. Anyone need anything?”

We shake our heads.

C closes the door. Baraka begins with the same images as Koyaanisqatsi.

The film is more vivid, the colors more vibrant. The camera moves along the corridors of a temple, a mosaic appears all around the monitor. It’s literally like looking through a kaleidoscope at the center of which you find yourself. You open all of these doors, walk through all of these corridors. You’re on the inside, while your eye is a camera. The music is extraordinary, it blends with the landscape in a very soothing way.

I grasp at something important. There’s something encased in the center of the universe. Some sort of simple and at the same time fundamental truth. Another second and I’ll understand it, seize it.

I need to get rid of this sensation. I recall the story of the banana. The story goes like this: Friend K faithfully wrote something on a scrap of paper during a moment of insight in the middle of an acid trip. The next morning K discovered the scrap. On it was written: The banana is cool. But the peel’s thick.

C sits with his legs tucked beneath him, and has gone quiet. I want to talk, share my perceptions with him. But something interferes, some strange and unknown barrier. It could be that the whole matter lies with K, since we’ve never had problems like this arise before.

K has now returned from the store, filled the dog’s bowl, cut up fruit in the kitchen, and brought it into the room on a big tray along with other edibles.

C goes for the pretzel sticks.

I try one too. The taste of salt is very pleasant. Words can’t begin to describe. It fluidly dissolves into the walls of the mouth. Even the cheekbones take it in. It’s also interesting to just gnaw on the pretzel stick. To bite into it, feel as the stick crumbles in your mouth, as crumbs from sharp edges scratch at your tongue, cheeks. As they slowly lose their rigidity.

I’m discussing this with C, whose attention is taken up mainly by the grains of salt, before he grabs an apple. The apple is undergoing a metamorphosis too. It’s succulent, spraying sweet juice along the walls of the mouth cavity. Biting, chewing it gives pleasure, bordering on ecstasy.

“There it is, fellas. That’s what I’m talking about. Now acid is going to eat away your entire brain.”

Hmmm, strange. Eat away the brain … The white jam dish. The fruit cocktail. Orange juice. Kesey’s tests.

Baraka culminates in a scene with cave paintings, also shown at the beginning of the film. I observe: “It looks like the director made another Koyaanisqatsi. He realized this and decided to mix in different scenes.”

Pushkin’s face is beginning to reveal itself. K works with inspiration, he periodically sticks out his tongue without noticing it.

It’s five thirty. The sky slowly grows light at the window. Soon it will turn turquoise, a pleasant color in every sense.

K pulls himself away from the bust and rolls a joint.

“Was that your girlfriend saying goodbye to you? I mean, when we drove up?” he asks.

“Yes, that’s her.”

Why is he asking this?

Rogue has eaten her fill and jumps up onto the sofa again, lies down next to my arm, gives me a reproachful look, and goes at my hand anew.

We pass the joint around. How many has it been tonight?

C puts on a video of Jefferson Airplane from 1968. The band performs on the roof of a building. Judging from the architecture, people, and taxis—it’s somewhere in New York. But something’s not right. The music is wondrously good. It’s reminiscent of contemporary “desert rock.” Yeah, even cooler! No, there’s something conspicuously not right here.

“Look at how it’s filmed,” I say. “How contemporary the camera angles are!”

I wait for a reaction, but it seems that no one is paying attention to this anymore.

“They’ve even got Bonham on drums. Perhaps it’s an omnibus show. Or maybe he’s replaced a sick drummer.”

“Perhaps,” C responds.

I look at him, he’s completely lost in the video. He sits right in front of the monitor with his feet tucked up beneath him.

The people in the video look as though they’re cut out and pasted. They jump off the screen toward the viewer. The background is glued to a wall, but it’s the opposite with the musicians— they move about their environment freely.

There, Polanski just walked behind the musicians.

“No doubt! This is a new video, styled after the 1960s. With all the attributes of that era. Even Polanski’s there. The music is a giveaway—it’s got a contemporary beat.”

C shrugs his shoulders. The video ends.

“That must be it,” I say. I get up, start to walk around the room. “Did you see Polanski there? It was so cool how they did that, and I was all ready to believe it. And Bonham’s planted there. It’s like, he who knows will understand. A subtle hint for us. Plus it’s only a year before Manson murders Sharon Tate.” I cut off the verbal fountain. Stop in the center of the room, throw my arms wide open, and say: “Now tell me, how is it possible to kill anyone in a state like this?”

It was worth it to voice this thought—the idea of murder no longer seems so absurd. Suddenly the urge arises to grab a knife and cut someone. Not out of hatred, but out of love. No, that’s not it. Out of an irresistible desire to show the world in my eyes, though such an attempt would be total depravity.

I go to the bathroom.

It’s good here, cozy. A soft glow comes from below, having something to do with the toilet. There are reeds on the red walls. Glassed-in pipelines of communication. Hieroglyphs.

I exit.

The top pocket of the bag that I came with is open. I remember that I retrieved the napkin with the pieces of sugar from there. What about my keys? The keys have been here the entire time in the pocket of a green Adidas Original jacket.

Knucklehead! I grab the jacket, feel the pockets. The keys are in their place. I retrieve them. The metal shines. But of course someone could have made a copy while I was out of the room.

All right, calm down. Right now it’s important to not show what you’ve figured out. Just go back to the room like nothing has happened, sit down, and think everything through all nice like.

All right, go on and think: You were sitting here, they arrived. You didn’t like Red from the start. His eyes were racing. What do they live off of? Music?

“C, what do those fellas live off of? Red, for instance?”

C slowly (way too slowly!) turns, he’s beet-faced. What’s wrong with him? Is he afraid of something?

“Well, he put this website up overnight.”

Spoken unpersuasively. Is he lying? Or does he just not know?

Fine, go on then. Next they got up and made their way to the front door. How much time did they spend in the hallway while they were saying their goodbyes? Enough to pull off the deal with the keys.

I have to ask where they went. The answer will calm me down. If they went to record music, then everything’s okay. However, if C lies, then I’ll know it right away. And then I’ll have uncovered their plan. They’ll know that I know. No, that’s not the way to do it. I have to be more careful.

Fine. They made a copy. Then what? They went to my house! No one is there but my sister, and she’s totally helpless. They’re drug addicts, after all. What did Hunter S. Thompson say? You can turn your back on a person, but never turn your back on a drug. They hold nothing sacred, they have no qualms.

To try to ease the trembling, I head back to the bathroom. Wash my face. K walks by.

“Well, is that helping any? It usually calms me down.”

Calms me down? That means he knows something.

The water is definitely pleasant, velvety.

I return to the room. Begin walking around in it. I notice that the pistol is no longer lying next to The Portrait of Dorian Gray.

K gave the barrel to those two drug addicts. He took it out of commission, so that they wouldn’t misfire at something. But now they’re at my house with a pistol and my sister…

The height of the ceiling. K asked me about the height of the ceiling. They want to go through the window. Of course, that’s it! They’ve got it all planned. There are cameras everywhere over there. They must have planned it all in advance. And they need to know the height of the ceiling, so as not to get the apartments mixed up.

I have to call my sister right away. It’s six thirty. I’ll wait until seven, then call her, wake her up for work.

What was up with the questions about M, my girlfriend? They want to kidnap her. Or rape her? Rape her. God, how did I not figure this out sooner? They want to ravage her. There were some characters hanging around the place where they picked me up. Stop. She sent me a message as soon as she reached home. But they could have forced her. They want to take it all away from me in one go.

All this is how clowning around with acid, amphetamines, and hashish affects a body—it is making me stupid, shutting off my brain so that I can’t comprehend.

And there sits C, all gloomy. He definitely knows the truth, which is why he won’t look me in the eyes.

“C, everything okay?”

“Yeah, yeah, everything’s good.”

I don’t believe him. Could it be, e tu, Brute? You’re embroiled in this mess. But of course! Why didn’t I think of this sooner? They forced him. He alone knows where I live. He knows everything about me. Trust no one. He needs money just like everybody else. He doesn’t have a job, his mother has probably stopped sending him money. He asked to borrow two or three thousand from me not long ago. E tu, Brute!

K is all well and good. Him I can understand at least, I’m no one to him. But you! I trusted you, you and I lived in Siberia together for a month.

And Rogue. She was looking at me as though she wanted to say: Oh, you! You’ve squandered your good fortune. You’ve been blown full of hot air. They say that dogs possess a certain intuition about these matters. So she wasn’t just casually licking my hand.

It’s all good—I try to focus and make sense of everything. Quit being so jumpy!

Facts, only facts are needed here.

What do I know about K: he made a cross for a local church in the small Siberian city of U and at the age of thirty-three carried it throughout the entire city.

But how does K earn a living? Could it really be from those piss-away-the-day handicrafts? It’s not possible to live off of things like that now. He’s a drug dealer. People like that are dangerous, and you trusted him without even knowing him. All the clues were right before your eyes, he was just toying with you. And the pistol, and the amphetamine sale… Amphetamines! That was payment to those drug addicts for their services. Remember what their eyes were like when K gave them the blue package? Craving, thirsty. They couldn’t wait to use. That kind will be up for anything. That whole charade about “music”… it was really clever how they managed to cloud my brain.

K—that’s brain surgery. He thought this all up. He’s the one who’s maintaining contact with them, that’s why he keeps going out, that’s why none of these questions are lining up.

He went out to the street and passed them something. But what? The barrel? The keys? How long was he gone? Long enough. You can’t trust how time passes while on LSD.

Or maybe this is all because of a robbery. They went to attend to their affairs. I dropped out while on acid. So much time passed, but I didn’t know how to occupy myself. I’ve only watched two films. They’ve mugged someone, and they want me to take the fall for it. It’s obvious that I’m on drugs, I can’t argue against that. My statement will be nullified after they test my urine. God, what a drug combo I have in me right now!

Stop! All of these quaint little jam dishes with cocktails, little bits of fruit on trays—all this was intended to keep me calm. Distract me. While they…

Oh God!

They’ve broken into my house, raped my sister, taken anything of value—they could even still be there. I can only guess what they’ve done with M. And I can’t do anything about it. Because if I go to the police, they’ll just arrest me. I’m a drug addict, after all. They’ve thought of everything.

“Let’s take a walk,” K suggests. “It’ll be good for you right about now.”

He’s read everything on my face and he’s going to hand me over to those drug addicts. I shouldn’t have stomped around the room like that. Idiot!

Seizing the moment I tell C: “It seems that I’ve stepped into a web of betrayal.” And I tell him about Manson, about the keys, about the copy. I’m telling him, while laughing myself.

It gets better. Or does it?

“Do you know what one of the most popular questions asked on Google is?” C replies.

“No.”

“What do I have to do to come down?”

A good attempt at changing the subject. Still, I need details about a few things. “How much did P purchase the goods for?”

“Twelve bills for everything. He’ll take it to E, sell it there for three times the price.”

Sounds good, but he’s not very convincing when he says it, his intonation is off. It’s too precise.

“Did they definitely go off to rehearse? And where’s their space?”

“Yeah, not far from here. Let’s go for a walk, you definitely need it.”

We head out onto the street. The sky is turquoise. People are rushing to work. It’s beginning to rain.

Rogue runs ahead, K and C follow a short distance behind.

I hang back, call my sister.

“Hello?” Her voice is drowsy.

“Get up, it’s time for you to go to work.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

Her voice is strange somehow. It’s hoarse. Could this be a consequence of the night?

It’s starting to get chilly. The only thing that calms me down is this rain. It’s fine, practically dust, a fog. Drops of it land on my face. They soothe an inflamed brain, a body feverish with paranoia.

We walk along the green stripe that divides Marshal Novikov Prospect. Overhead is a power line, stretching its veins through the body of the sleeping neighborhood. Underfoot is wet grass. My Adidas Originals are quickly getting wet, they’re suede. But you don’t pay any attention to this. Look at how green the grass is. Wet, luscious, bright. It’s such a color that you just can’t avert your eyes. And it matches the color of your jacket so well.

In one of the yards we find outdoor exercise equipment. It’s painted wild yellow, blue, red. K and C throw themselves at it and attempt to try each one out.

This would be a little weird if seen in passing—three grown men with a dog at seven in the morning in a playground dressed in tracksuits.

“You’ve got to try this,” says C. “Stand over here.”

We try the treadmill. I slide off it fast. “Somehow I really think I’m stuck in a web of betrayal. C, tell me that everything is all right.”

C gets off the treadmill. “No, everything’s bad.”

I walk off to the side, call my sister.

“Hello?” That hoarse voice again.

“Get up. You have to go to work.”

“Yeah, yeah. I’m up already.”

That frog in her throat. If I wasn’t sure it was her…

We walk around the neighborhood. I feel a little better out on the street. K walks ahead with Rogue.

“You look like a baseball player from the ‘60s in that Adidas jacket.”

“C, I have such intense paranoia. I can’t shake it off.”

“A sleepy neighborhood. No matter where you look everything is gray. It’s totally depressing. Everyone here’s paranoid.”

“Listen, you said that P and company have a rehearsal space in this neighborhood. Where is it?”

“Over there.” He gestures in an offhand manner to a building with a round tower just beyond the high-rises.

Rain and grass—that’s what soothes. And also this bright green jacket. The acid jacket of a baseballer.

We return to the apartment. I sit in the easy chair. Rogue settles down on the sofa next to my arm and begins to lick it.

As a force of habit—K packs a joint. We smoke ourselves out. Next K makes coffee, spikes it, hands it out.

I need to call M, but it’s too early, she’s still asleep. Maybe if I hear a loving voice, it’ll save me. Or ease the suffering.

The next hours pass unnoticeably, they flow one into the other. We drink coffee, smoke spliff after spliff, play a game of finding the wildest video on YouTube. We end up with an Italian commercial for window blinds and East German agitprop. After that we get bored.

Some of the videos are frightening in their wildness. I cower in the easy chair. I want to be on the street, it was better there. The enclosed space is intensifying my paranoia. I want to leave, but it’s still too early. I might get rounded up. Shaken down.

“Pushkin and I don’t see eye to eye,” says K. “I lost a girl who I was in love with, to him.”

Pushkin continues acquiring color.

“Of course, not to the poet himself. His distant relative.” K approaches the window. “That sign over there,” he points out beyond the window. “It makes me crawl out of my skin every time.”

I approach, look. It’s the big signboard in lights that reads, Secondhand.

“We have to go there right away,” he says.

We get ready, go out.

For ten in the morning there are plenty of people in the store. Items are hung in a strict order, which distinguishes this shop from similar places, where the merchandise is typically piled up in heaps.

C and K browse through the hangers. The average price of merchandise—two hundred rubles. For a bill you can get an entire ensemble. C tries on some checkered pants and grabs a cloth bag with a logo for the 1980 Olympics. K gets lost in the rows of clothing. Above the aisles two heads can be seen moving about, each with a white earpiece. The heads look around and monitor the surroundings. They move to intersect with us.

I rush C, but he’s soundly carried away with shopping. I’m starting to feel ill at ease. I have to leave right away. But what if they’re out on the street waiting? What if they take us away right on the street? Two-two-eight. From four you get eight.

Of course, that’s the arrangement! K got busted on a sale, he cut a deal: K and C pump out drug addicts, they lure them onto the street, they pass them along. Statistically, the neighborhood does not suffer from this.

The two heads tighten the circle, I rush to the exit. The cashiers watch me go. Even they are involved in this? You’ve thought this through on a grand scale, fellas. I hold my breath and exit.

Rain. Nothing’s happening. No one is ambushing me, throwing my hands behind my back, pressing me into the concrete with a massive knee, removing baggies of gray-yellow powder from my pockets, yelling in my face. There’s nothing but the rain. I walk around in it, and then I return again.

The two with the earpieces cruise through the aisles of clothing as before, scanning from side to side. It’s in these moments that you start to understand Philip K. Dick.

I find C in the fitting room, we go to the checkout. C’s total is rung up as half the value of what he’s purchased. What’s that about—plain negligence or payment for services? We’ll find out as we exit. I hold my breath anew.

Nothing.

We walk beneath the cables of the power line. I look up, the black cords blend with the gray sky. The rain intensifies, but I don’t get a pleasant feeling from it. Since the grass has lost its succulent brightness, I want the rain all the more. Perhaps it’s capable of cooling an overheated brain.

We separate. K goes off to buy some things. C and I walk around the neighborhood. People look sideways at us.

“It didn’t turn out so well this time,” I say. “I’m not on the same wavelength as K. Although he’s pretty generous. What’s that about?”

“Yeah, I don’t know. Next time he needs to drop acid too.” C doesn’t look me in the eyes. What could he be hiding?

“I’m going to ask you one last time. But please answer me in all seriousness. Is everything all right? I don’t have anything to worry about, right? And P went off to rehearsal, and not to some other place?”

C looks sideways. “Yeah, everything’s all right. P went to rehearsal after he left us.”

“Then why didn’t they take us with them?”

“I guess they didn’t want anyone interrupting them. They wanted the speed for themselves.”

C’s answers calm me, but not for long.

“You and I have had trips that have turned out awesome. Remember, on New Year’s Eve?”

“Yeah. We must have a soul connection, we’re a good match when it comes to these things. We’re on the same wavelength.”

We walk in the rain, we’re soaked through. We stumble upon K. Go home. I beat my hands in the pockets of my jeans.

At home, K returns to Pushkin, C heads to the kitchen to write a poem.

I go to the bathroom, wash my face. The water carpets my face with velvet. I look in the mirror. Something’s changed in my face: either the cheekbones have grown sharper, or there’s a diamondlike glint in my eye. Something subtle, it scares me.

I call M. She picks up, answers cheerfully. I ask if I can come over tonight.

“Of course, come over. I’ll be waiting.”

Calm. There it is.

I try to write in my notebook, my hands shake, some food for thought about love and self-sacrifice comes out. Then I unexpectedly make a note: Looking in the mirror, you never know what kind of creature you’ll see.

K rolls a joint, spikes coffee. I’m sick of having to run to the bathroom but take the mug anyway. K asks that I check the Internet to make sure he recites the poem “The Bronze Horseman” correctly. He reads the opening.

I search for poems more to my own taste. I read Mayakovsky (At the very least allow this final tenderness to pave your departing step), Brodsky (Neither country, nor graveyard…),I finish with Okudzhava: He knew how to sully the page by the glow of a candle/ So what did he have to die for at Chernaya Rechka?

It’s two in the afternoon. Still too early to descend into the metro. But it’s imperative to rejoin the living. It’s become stuffy and cumbersome here. We say our goodbyes.

C and I go to his place, he doesn’t live far from here. We walk down veinlike streets. The drug doesn’t want to leave my body, it’s giving me the shakes. My hands are in the pockets of my wet jeans.

Before we settle in at C’s we move along the wasteland surrounding Lake Dolgoe. This wasteland borders the new multistory homes, although just two years ago the city ended here. Clay swims about at our feet from the rain. A lone car, the driver of which looks back in bewilderment. Ducks. The ripples on the water turn into the ripples of the sky.

At C’s we drink it off with green tea, have conversations on near-literary topics.

P comes over with a girl, looks in on us. She’s a poet in one of the groups from the Urals who are ushering in a wave of new music. I’m still very much on speed, my pupils take up the entire rainbow of the iris. I study P closely—the last thing he looks like is a human capable of doing anything horrible.

“Want an amphetamine?” P asks in the hallway.

“No. I’m loaded up to my ears.”

We speak of music, of Shulgin’s acid, of enlightened states of being. The girl spiritedly speaks of her own experience with substances.

I go to the bathroom, check my pupils. At least I don’t look like a person who’s had a blood hemorrhage in his eyes. I can go.

On the street along the way to the metro I’ve gathered myself together, I’m oriented and prepared for anything. In this green jacket with my brain dried out after the acid I feel like an ancient Viking, one who’s just gobbled down mushrooms and is making his way through uncharted land.

I want to get home as fast as possible and make sure that everything is all right. But I can’t show up there in this burned-out state. I go to M, on Petrogradskaya. That’s the lesser of two evils. I text C from the metro: We’re superior to single-celled, organisms. People in the metro aren’t real: typical specimens for a drug addict. Let’s be superior to this.

I think: That’s my “banana.”

It’s nine at night. M joyfully greets me at the doors. We go to her room. She sits on my lap. Looks into my eyes.

“You have pretty eyes.”

I’m silent.

“What did you do for fun?”

I’m silent.

“How did you spend the night?”

“I haven’t slept yet.”

“Uh-huh.” She carefully studies my face. “Well, how many hits did you take this time?”

“Two.”

“Uh-huh. Understood.” M turns away. Her wavy hair conceals her face. She brushes it away. I want to hold her, but she’s distanced herself. We sit in silence for a long time.

“I haven’t had anything to eat since our dinner last night at the café.”

“Let’s go. I’ll make you something to eat. Demon spawn.”

M wipes away tears. In the kitchen she prepares an extraordinary omelet with white bread and tomatoes. I pour myself cognac.

“This will help me come down.”

M is silent. I take a big swig and am barely able to finish the omelet. I begin to conk out. I drag my body to the bed, undress, collapse, and fall asleep immediately.

Several hours later the smell of tobacco wakes me. I cautiously open my eyes.

Quiet. The dead of night. The table lamp has been turned on. The window is thrown wide open. M sits on the wide windowsill and slowly and very seductively smokes a cigarette. The scarlet tip is visible through the billowing half-transparent curtain. I can’t remember the last time I saw her with a cigarette.

THE HAIRY SUTRA by Pavel Krusanov Moika Embankment, 48 ^{Translated by Amy Pieterse}

D emyan Ilich had a good grasp of the essence of man: he looked at a peach and saw the pit. That was the way he was. Some are preoccupied with the question: what kind of man are you? While for others, it’s: what are you capable of? Demyan Ilich wanted to know: who is inside of you?

As for who was inside of this young maid, he, of course, knew. She had the following cast of mind and habit: with strangers and those she took a liking to, or at least didn’t dislike, she was kind and friendly. But with everyone else she was given to caprice, and if her upbringing did not allow her to slap someone across the face with no good reason, nothing prevented her from kicking them from behind. Demyan Ilich was disgusting to her. He knew she was a graceful and obtuse creature; but he couldn’t help the way he was.

What was she to him? When Demyan Ilich saw her, he was beset by strange, conflicting thoughts and emotions. Evil has matured in my mind, he thought, smiling to himself. Yet at the same time he wanted to touch her tenderly, to stroke her, maybe even try to lick that girlishly plump cheek covered with dainty apricot fuzz. It was so easy, so frightening…Such thoughts made Demyan Ilich’s heart throb dully; his blood ran thicker, and his chest grew tight and hot. Oh well, if they couldn’t be together, they could still be close. In his head a plan began to hatch. A whim? No, the curator never acted upon a whim—that was against his principles. But this was a special case: Demyan Ilich could not control his feelings. If they couldn’t be together, they could at least be close to each other…

The plan fell together piece by piece. People in whom unrestrained passion lets loose become terrifyingly resourceful.fhe plan ripened, writhing in his brain amid heated thoughts like a sterlet in a broth of fish soup. The plan fell into place inexorably. And, finally, it was ready. No, Demyan Ilich did not wish upon her the same fate he had dealt so many others. But what else could he do? She must stay and be with him. This way or another, ne wasn’t going to give her up.

“Ahem.” The curator cleared his throat. And picking his way through the mess reigning in the house, a mess grown familiar and cozy to him, he went off to the bathroom to freshen up. For even the best news could be ruined by the foul breath of its messenger.

Take the platypus, for example. It was no doubt in deep trouble, which is why it was on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. This meant that it was next to impossible for a museum to acquire that beast (stuffed) for an exhibit by legal means. First, hunting the platypus in Australia is illegal and severely punishable under Australian law. Second, the export of the platypus, procured by illegal means on the territory of Australia, is outlawed. Third, in accordance with a plethora of international conventions and agreements, any attempt to import a platypus that has been illegally procured and exported from Australian territory to most any country that abides by the laws of the international community is also a highly punishable offense. It is a three-tiered system. Naturally, one could always try to obtain a stuffed platypus on the secondary market, but the availability is rather limited, and chances are that the platypus would already be moth-eaten and gray with dust. There is, of course, the practice of museum exchanges, but this is a privilege of larger institutions with better funding. Finally, there is the shadowy world of illegal commercial zoology—but how legitimate would the exhibits be? And at what price…

Here, in contrast, they had no less than three stuffed platypuses adorning the glass display cases. Not bad for a small museum—just one crowded hall, really—at the Zoology Department of a university bearing the name of a perfectly respectable writer. (His life had been wrecked by the Decembrists, who had awakened the revolutionary democrat within him.) The museums’s collection was started almost two centuries ago at the Lohvitskay-Skalon Gymnasium for Ladies, and in 1903 the museum moved here to the then brand-new Imperial Pedagogical college for Ladies on the Moika Embankment. Since those bygone days, the display cases of the museum had housed two particularly rare exhibits: a stuffed Cuban red macaw (Ara tricolor), an extinct species of parrot, the last of which was shot in 1864 in the Zapata Swamp; and a gigantic Taveuni beetle (Xixuthrus terribilis)_y housed in a glass entomological box. The beautiful macaw had suffered for its splendor: its feathers were used in ladies’ hats, and when at last people thought to replenish the population or at least preserve a small number of the species in captivity, it turned out to be impossible. The Taveuni beetle, brown and branchy as a mandrake root, has since become extinct. It once inhabited Fiji, where natives stuffed themselves with its thick, oblong larvae, which looked like sausages carefully and obligingly prepared by nature herself. In the end, not knowing when to stop, the natives gobbled up the entire population of the species.

From the year 1909, and for a quarter of a century to follow, this Department of Zoology was chaired by a renowned professor, an academician whose name was recognized throughout the world. During his tenure the museum was able to augment its collection and become one of the best university collections in the country. Among the rare exotic objects that an astonished visitor would encounter was an African pangolin, covered with brown boney scales like a huge pinecone, a lesser hedgehog tenrec, a seven-banded and a nine-banded armadillo from the pampas of South America, a short-beaked echidna, a three-toed sloth, and a Tamandua tetradactyla. The imaginations of medieval bestiary writers would have paled at the sight of such creatures, just like a jellyfish, pulled from the deep, pales in the sunlight.

The list of exotic species was not limited to the aforementioned exhibits, however. Inside antique showcases, and upon the shelves of glass-covered oak bookcases, the round eyes of lemurs and capuchins bulged, and patas monkeys, drills, colobuses, and marmosets smirked and pulled faces. Not to mention polar bears and brown bears, sea otters, koalas, flying foxes, monitor lizards, crocodiles, walruses, manatees, and dugongs. Birds? Indeed, they ranged from the green woodpecker to the marabou stork. How about the ascarids preserved in alcohol, and tapeworms in thick glass flasks? Mollusks, you ask? Hundreds of shells, from the giant clam to the rapana, spiky and smooth, bivalves and twisted, with nacreous curls and opaque gaps. And what of the echinoderms and starfish…

And the Entomology Department itself? There you would find a hundred square feet of one wall were occupied by boxes of various collections, plus entomological cabinets and drawers, and a large glass cube with exhibits of insects and arachnids from Southeast Asia. And fish? Sponges? Here, among other things, was a glassy sponge, which according to Japanese tradition is given to newlyweds as a symbol of eternal love. The sponge was occasionally inhabited by two shrimp of the opposite sex. They crawled inside through the pores of the sponge as larvae, and when they grew into adulthood were unable to get out. And so they lived inside the sponge, feeding on the plankton that the sponge itself fed upon; and when the sponge died, they had no choice but to die with it. And reptiles, amphibians? What of marine arthropods? And the horns and heads of ungulates on the walls just beneath the ceiling? The senses and imagination were overwhelmed, and taking in the entire collection at one go—a collection that numbered more than three thousand items— was out of the question. By the same token, it would have been impossible to squeeze the collection into the limited space that was allotted to it, so some of the less valuable exhibits were displayed in the lecture halls and auditorium. For some museums such numbers would be undeserving of notice, but here it was a source of discreet pride.

These premises were not often disturbed by mere members of the public. Groups of curious students would visit from time to time. The exhibits amused guests taking part in the occasional scientific conference, and once in a while someone from the chancellor’s office would show off the museum to an important person, as one of the college’s most valued and prestigious assets—but that was about it. The rest of the time, the museum’s doors were kept firmly shut, and the key was kept by the gloomy Demyan Ilich, who had held the position of collection curator for the past three years.

Also under the supervision of the curator was a tiny closet with a workbench, tools, and a spacious freezer. At the workbench he performed small maintenance jobs on the exhibits, and in the freezer, waiting for their turn under the taxidermist’s knife, he kept his materials—pelts and carcasses of beasts and fowl, which he had come upon by chance or which were presented as gifts by the chair of the department, who was an occasional hunter. Demyan Ilich spent his working hours in primeval solitude like Adam, surrounded by the deathly somnolence of Eden, opening only at the knock of a teacher who had stopped by on some matter that needed attention, and venturing out himself only now and then to get water for the electric kettle.

And yet…although the museum covered an area of no more than two hundred square yards, one could get lost there. Not simply get lost: one could disappear altogether.

“I just don’t know what came over me. I must have been in some kind of fog,” said Lera, the laboratory assistant, and behind the lenses of her glasses her eyelashes fluttered up and down like the feathers of a large fan.

“You weren’t in any fog,” thundered Tsukatov. “It was pure negligence, which is far worse!”

“Off with my head. It’s my fault.”

“Of all the parasites that eat away a human from the inside, the only one worse than treachery, and the one I most despise, is slapdash work—a careless job trying to pass itself off as something up to the mark,” said Professor Tsukatov to Lera, as he examined her poorly composed request for reagents, materials, and laboratory utensils. “Watching those nature programs with names like The War of the Giant Beetles fills me with black bile. Yes, technically, the series is impressive. Yes, the camerawork is flawless. But that’s where it ends. They have spiders and crickets, praying mantises and scorpions, they have wasps and ants, giant centipedes and grasshoppers. Damn, they even have crabs and tiger leeches! What they don’t have are giant beetles! They don’t have any beetles. And instead of informative commentary they have some half-witted blather. They are professional go-getters out to make a quick buck on the side. They have been eaten away by the parasite of slapdashery, corrupted by audiences of ignoramuses, who not only no longer wish to educate themselves, but insist on bringing knowledge down to their own paltry intellectual level.”

Doctor Tsukatov, professor of biology, was a parasitologist, and a well-known specialist on nematodes. He saw worms everywhere and in everything. Throughout years of work, nematodes, those tiny creatures, had made nests in his thoughts and had grown to unbelievable proportions. They had gained so much weight that they—his thoughts, that is—sailed heavily along the smooth surface of his consciousness, much like the barges that used to float along Lake Ladoga centuries ago, loaded with travertine for the construction of the then newly-founded city of St. Petersburg, ponderous and inexorable. His thoughts themselves seemed like worms to him, parasitizing their host and forcing him to act according to their own wormy demands.

“I understand. I’ll rewrite this,” the stately Lera said, fluttering her thick eyelashes, she was in the wrong, but believed that she deserved leniency. She was exhausted by the remodeling that was underway at her home, which she blamed for this little slipup. “Two desiccators, pipettes, test tubes with sixteen-by-eighteen caps, paraffin strips, ethyl acetate, diethyl ether—”

“No, we don’t need diethyl ether,” Tsukatov corrected her.

Outside the window of the chair of the Zoology Departments office, the year’s first snow was falling. It powdered the courtyard, stuck to the trees, and swirled above the black waters of the Moika, afraid of touching the twinkling dangerous gloss of the surface. In the summer, the green treetops partially obscured the view, and the water wasn’t visible. Now, before it would be covered in ice, the black water of the river could be seen through the tree branches and the embankment railing, snaking slowly along. Set off by the fresh ocher color of the buildings, the clean snow looked festive, like a childhood memory.

Farther down, past the Red Bridge, the green Jugendstil steeple of the S. Esders & K. Scheefhals Trading House, topped with a caduceus, could still be discerned through the falling snow. Right behind it the gilded cupola of St. Isaac’s Cathedral shimmered dimly. The boat weathervane on the spire of the Admiralty had vanished—the northwest wind had turned it sideways to the viewer.

Tsukatov’s eyes were still smoldering, but he himself had already started cooling off—the spirit of righteous anger had left the professor in his usual state of pedantic severity, which did not seek a victim intentionally, and was even kind by nature. Tsukatov was the chair of the department, but he was also a man, still strong and not old, and as a man, he was prepared to forgive a woman her little foibles because of her nice figure.

“Microscope slides and cover slips, filter paper,” muttered Lera, “smooth tweezers and serrated tweezers, alcohol, diethyl ether—“

“No diethyl ether, we don’t need that,” Tsukatov corrected her once again.

The door of the office opened without a knock and Professor Chelnokov appeared. He was stocky and thickset, and despite having long ago entered the sixth decade of his life, he looked youthful and energetic. He had just finished giving a lecture and he was excited by the vivacious spirit that had poured into him. A renowned ornithologist, Professor Chelnokov enjoyed talking to young people, and young people answered him in kind—he had been called Chief Bird by at least four generations of students. Chelnokov could boast of having a fine memory, but with time, the fullness of detail began to fade, and although he remembered many stories from his life and the lives of others, he couldn’t recall to whom and how many times he’d already related these stories.

In his day, Tsukatov had been Chelnokov’s student, and he too had affectionately called his teacher Chief Bird (though not to his face, of course). Now Tsukatov shared the office of the department chair with him. Their desks stood near each other on a low platform by the window, hedged away from the rest of the space by a bookcase and a short wooden banister. Although obliged to become neighbors due to circumstance—Chelnokov’s office was in a perennial state of reconstruction—they both sincerely enjoyed one another’s company. Besides, Chelnokov himself had recently been the chair of the department, but had to abandon the post due to his advanced age.

“Y-you know, we don’t have a single decent primate in our m-museum. I mean, an anthropoid,” said Chelnokov, stuttering elegantly, resuming the conversation they had been engaged in before he had gone off to give a lecture. Their discussion was about how to utilize the unexpected funding that had been allotted for the museum’s needs. “We have macaques and other short-tailed monkeys all over the p-place, but not a single gorilla. Or an orangutan, b-beautiful and orange, like a tangerine. It’s just not right.”

“There are many things we don’t have yet,” said Tsukatov. His personal preference was to augment the reptile collection, and he was considering acquiring a Galapagos tortoise. A thought he shared with all present.

“Who is the Galápagos tortoise to us, anyway? A son-in-law? A brother?” Chelnokov countered, producing a can of coffee from the bookcase they had adapted into a cupboard. “Now, a ch-chimpanzee is basically family. A distant relative, at the very least.” And then to Lera: “Care for coffee?”

Tsukatov pursed his lips into a fine line. A supporter of hierarchies, he preferred not to mix ranks, assuming that as long as he remained on formal terms with both his subordinates and his superiors, neither of them would feel emboldened to indulge in chummy manners with him. Especially his superiors. Why on earth should they? Professor Tsukatov wasn’t looking for their approval. He knew what he was worth, and he knew he was worth a great deal. Hence, his deeply held belief was that laboratory assistants ought to drink their coffee back in the laboratory.

“No,” continued Chelnokov with gusto, “the first thing on our list should be a decent primate…Uh, an anthropoid. Perhaps we could even section off a c-corner as something of an ancestral temple, like a Chinese fanza.” He was playing the buffoon. “My daughter was in Jiangxi. Uh… in their houses the Chinese have a special c-corner they use as an altar, with the ashen remains of their ancestors where they b-burn incense. And they talk to their ancestors in Chinese about everyday matters. Girls talk about their beaus” —Chelnokov winked at Lera who was stifling her laughter with her palm—”and the paterfamilias might talk about the harvest or consult it on matters of monetary investment.”

Chelnokov’s arguments were flippant, empty, and unfounded. In fact, it would be unjustified to call them arguments at all. But as Tsukatov listened to his colleague, he felt that in fact he really had nothing against the idea of a stuffed ape, and that perhaps it would be a better idea than getting a tortoise. After all, the vice-chancellor of science had moved to the administrative position from the Department of Biology. While he was still a practicing zoologist, he had participated in some ridiculous project for acclimatizing chimpanzees to the Pskov region. It stood to reason that he would still feel affection toward anthropoids. This also meant that it would be easier to get the paperwork through.

Ever since the university’s reputation had improved and the Ministry of Education had named it one of the leading institutions in the country, their financial situation had changed for the better. The department’s scientific projects won grant after grant, and they were able to rig up a new laboratory. Some tidbits even trickled down to the museum itself. That was when they realized that they needed a museum curator—a specialist whose obligations, among other things, would include replenishing the museum’s collection, restoring old exhibits and museum furniture, as well as any other matters that came up.

Demyan Ilich had excellent references and extensive experience working at various institutions, including the Russian Academy of Science’s zoology museum. Tsukatov made a special trip to the spit of Vasilievsky Island to make inquiries about the applicant with the assistant director of the zoology museum, who was an acquaintance of his. The latter attested to the fact that Demyan Ilich was an impressive specialist with a deep understanding of his field, although, as a person, he was a handful: gloomy and unsociable. His coworkers found Demyan Ilich difficult. He had a way of putting people on their guard, which is why he changed jobs frequently. He had his own secret (albeit quite economical) ways of obtaining materials for exhibits. He could get hold of some of the rarest, most improbable exhibits, and his taxidermy skills were held in high esteem by the museum staff.

Tsukatov was not put off by the gloomy nature of his future employee. For him, a supporter of hierarchical discipline, warm relations with coworkers meant absolutely nothing. The most important thing to him was how well they did their jobs, and he was certain that he knew how to get them to do their jobs well. Tsukatov was one of those people who didn’t have to play around, gnashing his teeth and crunching the knuckles of his clenched fists. Everyone could see full well that he was a heavyweight. Demyan Ilich’s ability to get hold of whatever was needed was nothing to turn up one’s nose at, either. As a matter of fact, it would prove very useful for replenishing and expanding the museum’s collection. The only problem was that the materials he managed to get hold of—pelts, corpses, and even complete stuffed animals—often lacked the necessary paperwork. But even this did not deter Tsukatov. During the course of his work with the for-profit organizations that delivered the museum its collection of shells of crustaceans, and the glass cube with the display of insects and arachnids from Southeast Asia, their employees had offered, rather unambiguously, to produce the necessary papers for just about anything—any beast, even a diplodocus, hunted in a safari in the swamps of equatorial Africa. For a reasonable fee, naturally. Through their fly-by-night branch offices he could also cash the official funds earmarked for acquiring new museum exhibits, since the suppliers used by Demyan Ilich accepted cash only.

Since hiring the curator, Professor Tsukatov had already used the services of these fly-by-nights twice. First, when at his request Demyan Ilich obtained a wonderful, brand-new stuffed female alligator so large that they had to set it on the highest shelf, just beneath the ceiling, opposite the Steller sea lion, which had been placed in a similar fashion. The second time was when, on his own initiative, Demyan Ilich suggested that they acquire a new stuffed peacock to replace the old one, which had become tattered and frayed during its hundred years of service.

Professor Tsukatov went over to the window and gazed out at the snow, the trees that had turned white, the glass dome of the atrium of the trading house behind the Red Bridge, the chains of black footprints made by students trudging through the courtyard, the sky that promised an early twilight, no longer murky, since the downy winter had already spread itself all around. The calm of the snow-covered earth slowly spread within him.

“Chinese cuisine is also quite p-peculiar,” said Chelnokov, removing the bubbling kettle from its base without interrupting himself. “I’m rather afraid to go to their restaurants. Have you ever noticed how m-many of them live in our cities? Yet they don’t seem to have any cemeteries. Why do you think that is?”

“Call Demyan Ilich in,” Tsukatov said to Lera, who already knew she’d been forgiven, and was poking about in the cupboard searching for a coffee cup. Then, turning to Chelnokov, he said, “Yes, a chimpanzee. I suppose a chimpanzee would be best after all.”

The untidiness of Demyan Ilich’s abode did not concern its master in the least, and was in fact merely a semblance of disorder—every item here had its place. Just reach out, and the necessary tool was in the palm of your hand. Toss it, and it would fall into position. Joiner and furrier tools, vials with acids, salts, alkali, alums, varnishes, and arsenic solutions, molds for plaster casts of the slim ankle bones (distal limb sections) of some ungulates, piles of glass eyes with hand-painted irises and highlights on the pupils, cans of construction foam, glue, rags, bits or hide, feathers…

Demyan Ilich was to the business of taxidermy what Stradivari and Guameri were to the art of violinmaking. He had invented a special solution for preserving fresh materials, a wonderful lotion that worked for pickling bird pelts, and a brilliant tanning solution for animal hides, which changed the qualities of the inner side of the hide, making it flexible and resistant to decay and fungus. He had solved many a riddle of the trade, and he knew quite a few special tricks that were unfathomable to others. Soaking, cleaning the inner side of the hide from any leftover muscle tissues, quill preparation, rinsing and fat removal, pickling, drying, and softening—he had his own secret recipe for every stage of the process. The fur of the hides that he had dressed remained glossy and didn’t wear thin, and the feathers never fell out. The recipes of his shadowy secretive art quickened the dressing process, making it five or ten times faster. No other taxidermist could complete the process so quickly. Assembling a beast or bird with unfinished hide would mean that it would rot, develop a foul odor, and lose its fur and feathers. And if it didn’t rot, then the hide of the stuffed animal would dry up, become deformed, the seams would rip, and the edges of the hide would curl up on the bare mannequin, which then couldn’t be rectified by any number of bandages or clamps. Demyan Ilich was able to get excellent results in a short time: the gloomy bliss of genius had chosen to descend upon him.

“Involution…Ahem…” The curator’s index finger shot upward. “Involution… yes. A serpent shall give birth to an angel.”

He talked to himself when he was in a colorful mood. Demyan Ilich had finally come up with a plan for luring the little devil into his lair. She would come of her own accord. She had all that remodeling going on at home, and he had offhandedly set her up with a ceiling plasterer. The man was a spurious wretch from the joiner’s shop of the museum on the spit, who was greedy and dumb as a cork. He would bring her to Demyan Ilich, as if to show her his work: I did the ceilings over there a few days ago, come and see for yourself what a great a job I did. Demyan Ilich would give the handyman his due later—he’d invite him over to pay him, and then he’d awaken the polecat within.

Lera didn’t like the museum curator, and was even a little afraid of him. Demyan Ilich’s gaze was sharp and piercing, his eyebrows thick and disheveled, his face sallow and bony, his character unsociable and nasty. Once, seeing him in the hall in front of the genetics kitchen, where students in thrall to science brewed porridge for fruit flies, Lera automatically smiled at him with her large mouth and fluttered her eyelashes. Only after she had passed him had she heard him mutter, “Ahem… Quite an ostrich.” Lera’s ears blushed scarlet and her back became covered in goose bumps. What a weirdo!

Then Lera studied herself in the mirror. Yes, sue was tall, slim, wide-hipped, and, well, yes, she had a long neck, large mouth, and large eyes beneath her contact lenses. She was young, healthy, beautiful, and lively. In a word, Artemis. What did he mean “an ostrich”? What nonsense!

Demyan Ilich was in the museum. He answered, “Yes, yes,” from far off, but didn’t open the door right away. He was a long time shuffling behind the closed door. When he finally opened it, he gave her a sullen look. His white lab coat was stale, his hair unkempt, his shoes dusty and worn to the point of indecency.

Coldly, without hiding her aversion to him, Lera conveyed Tsukatov’s message to the curator. Without waiting for his reply, she turned around haughtily and headed off to the lab assistant’s room, high heels clicking, to rewrite the letter of request for reagents, materials, and laboratory utilities. Her shoulders felt cold from the gaze that followed her from behind.

“A little flea went walking in the garden, the louse did bow, and that flea did swagger…” Demyan Ilich muttered to Lera’s back. His eyes, which had been sharp as an awl a moment before, were now glazed over…

“I need an answer now; will you take this on or not?” Tsukatov was talking to the curator, who looked at the professors with a gray, imperturbable owl-like gaze, as though it was already in the bag. “There’s not much time. We need to spend the money before the end of the year. So we have one month left.”

There was a long pause. Tsukatov stretched the truth. On several occasions he would submit the paperwork for equipment that had been purchased but hadn’t yet shipped out. It would ship eventually, but no one checked and Tsukatov was clean. The chair of the department wasn’t afraid of responsibility—he had made the choice between what was necessary and what was easy once and for all. It didn’t matter how many living beings had to be killed in the name of science to develop an elixir of immortality—he would kill them all without hesitation.

“Ahem, Demyan Ilich’s voice grated on the ears as though it was an old machine. The curator grimaced, his face clearly unused to smiling, and wriggled his furry brows uncertainly. “I’ll have to look around…”

Another pause. The silence in the curator’s presence was so heavy that it took on an almost physical weight, producing an effect that was even more intolerable than conversation itself. When he was silent, it was as though he became all-powerful. There was no doubt about it: if you asked that man to get you a platypus, he’d get a platypus. Never mind the platypus, he could even summon out of nonexistence the extinct red macaw.

“Well?” If Tsukatov deemed a matter important, he could be patient.

“Ahem. It’s not really enough money.” Demyan Ilich’s brows undulated nice two furry caterpillars. “Yes, well, I can ask around. Maybe something will turn up.” His nostrils flared as though he had already caught the scent of his prey, hiding nearby.

“How soon will you know?”

“I’ll get back to you in two or three days.”

When the door closed behind the curator, Professor Chelnokov exhaled as though he had just surfaced from a murky darkness, where he would surely have suffocated had he hesitated for even one more moment. He had a hard time dealing with forced silence. Chelnokov felt that when he was silent he no longer existed. And even if he did still exist, he was becoming ever smaller and more insignificant, like a devaluing currency.

“Getting him to talk is like pulling teeth!” Tsukatov said testily. “A very difficult fellow,” Chelnokov agreed, taking a sip of his coffee, already grown cold. “I’m dumbfounded. If one were to believe Lombroso’s anthropological c-criminology, he’d be nothing less than a serial killer. Those students of ours—could that be his handiwork?”

Two years prior, a female student had disappeared, and half a year later a male student went missing. The latter, however, was from the Physics Department, which had some of its classrooms on the same floor as the Biology Department, in the right wing, opposite the Genetics kitchen. At the time there were numerous rumors floating around—that a cannibal maniac was on the loose, or that the victims had been sold into sexual slavery, or that they had been butchered by surgeons dealing in human organs. For a while the chancellor’s office was full of police operatives who questioned teachers and students; but soon things quieted down. The victims weren’t found. In fact, it never became clear exactly when and where they had disappeared—at the university or off the premises, somewhere in the city.

“Being difficult isn’t a crime.” When Tsukatov deemed someone useful, he became lenient. “It’s not like we’re getting married to the guy.”

“Him?” Chelnokov cried indignantly. “What do you mean married? I’d be afraid to turn my b-back to him. He’d just as soon b-b-brain you!”

People don’t talk about things that are important; things that are important are felt. Those feelings burn the heart, and the heart tosses and turns like a rose chafer beetle inside a closed fist. Demyan Ilich knew his materials and was rarely mistaken. That kid was definitely suited for the job. Of course, it would take a lot of work, pressing, crushing, and occasionally giving him a good shake to awaken his true nature, forcing the sleeping essence to hatch and crawl out of its eggshell… But he looked very promising. To himself, with his distinctive brand or humor, the curator referred to this process as awakening the beast.

Demyan Ilich stopped him in an empty hallway. Lectures had already begun, and the fellow, it seemed, had arrived late, or had perhaps shown up earlier than necessary. He was an ordinary student, with loose pants hanging from his buttocks, a sweatshirt with a hood, and a bag hanging across his stomach. He had a backpack, and his movements were loose, as though his joints had too much play. He had dark fuzz on his upper lip, pimples, and shifty eyes. The curator asked him to help bring the reagents for the laboratory class. The fellow agreed. Why not? Demyan Ilich let the boy go into the open storage room ahead of him, closed the door, and click-click, he turned the key, locking them both inside.

One moment there were two people in the hallway, the next moment there was no one at all.

After the third class had let out, Lera took the key to room 452 and went off to rescue the wild boar’s head. A hunter, a general who was an acquaintance of Tsukatov’s, had given his hunting trophy to the department a year ago. It was the excellently dressed head of an enormous male boar with terrifying fangs. There wasn’t enough room for it in the museum, so they hung the head in the lecture room. From that time on, unable to rely on the vigilance of instructors, Lera was responsible for unlocking room 452 before class and locking it after class was over. Otherwise, the students, due to someone’s forgetfulness and/or lack of supervision, might give way to their curiosity.

Lera locked the room, plowed her way through a crowd of vociferous sophomore girls, passed the wide stairwell that veered off sideways, and went into the laboratory, where she picked up the IKEA catalog she shared with her friend, a graduate student. They chatted briefly about this and that, the trouble and inconvenience of the remodeling and so on, before she headed back to the lab assistant’s room. As she passed the storage room of that loathsome Demyan Ilich, above the noise in the hallway she seemed to hear a muffled voice coming from behind the door. That was unusual, since the curator never let anyone into his lair. Lera stopped, hesitated a moment, and then carefully put her ear to the crack between the door and the frame. The door was well fitted, but what if… yes. That is, no—she couldn’t have been mistaken.

“We’re gonna friggin’ acquire some new habits now.” The custodian’s muttering growl came through the closed door, almost indiscernible, as though from underwater. “We’re gonna do it one friggin’ step at a time. Ahem. First were gonna make a real guy out of you. Then… Sure you are. What did you think? I’m gonna grab your throat and hold it like that a little, and then you will… What was that? How’s about I kick your balls? And your Adams apple?Don’tbitch, out on me. Ahem. Yeah, that’s the lesson were gonna learn now—were gonna have a little talk and learn how to behave. Yeah. And eat sunflower seeds too. It’s called the hairy Sutra Awakening. Ever heard of it?”

Lera recoiled from the door, her ear burning. What was this nonsense? She could only hear one voice coming from inside. Even if there was someone answering the curator, that voice was inaudible. And who could be in there? No one. No one could stand Demyan Ilich here… Suddenly Lera’s thoughts stood on end like iron shavings on a magnet: Why, he’s a maniac! He can’t even be trusted with a fork! My goodness, he’s really lost it. He’s talking to himself…

But unable to stifle her own curiosity, Lera put her head to the door one more time.

“Are you gonna make trouble? Don’t just stand here, sit down on the floor. Ahem… No, damnit, not like that! Not on your ass, you moron. That’s for our next lesson. Squat down… Yep, now were talkin’. Tuck your knees below your underarms and let your arms just hang… Good. Now spit. Spit between your legs… No, not that much. Count to seven and then spit. Ahem… Good boy. You’re almost a real man now. Now, let’s eat sunflower seeds… No, who told you you could get up? Stay put. Here’s your seeds. Wait! Gotta learn how to eat them right. Empty the whole bag into your pocket. That’s right. Now grab a fistful… Okay. You take a seed from your fist with your thumb, and use your nail to stick it between your teeth. Like this, see? Now, snap it open with your teeth. And keep your nose to the grindstone. Say if you’re at a watercolor exhibit, or the subway, or at somebody’s house or whatever, and you can’t spit the husks on the floor, you’re gonna have to put them into your other hand. But if you see that no one cares, you spit them anywhere you want to…”

Lera thought that the voice was getting closer, she sprang away from the door of the storage room and hurried away, clicking her high heels and glancing back over her trembling shoulder all the while, then rushed into the lab assistant’s room. Jesus! There was a whirlwind of thoughts in her head. He needs to be locked up! What is Tsukatov thinking? I’m scared to work with him!

There are usually two paths for man to choose from: the path of truth and the path of lies. Lera had always preferred the third path: somewhere in-between. The chair of the department wasn’t in that day. It was time to renew his hunting rifle license, so he had gone off to see the license inspector. That was too bad. Lera was desperate to report what she’d heard. It was no use telling the Chief Bird—he was spineless and just as scared of the curator as she was.

The snow that had fallen the day before hadn’t stayed. The Baltic wind had licked it clean with its rough tongue. First from the roofs and cupolas, then from the ground. There wasn’t even any slush left, except perhaps on the asphalt of the courtyard and on the Moika Embankment, where a few damp dark lines could still be seen. It wasn’t uncommon for the green grass to still linger and buds to come out on the trees around New Year’s. The boat weather vane on the golden spire of the Admiralty sailed bravely through the turbulent skies over the Neva River. The southwest wind had turned it ninety degrees.

Three days passed and Professor Tsukatov called Demyan Ilich into his office again. Lera, the impressionable lab assistant, first made another blunder with the request form and then started imagining things. The girl seemed to have gotten entirely carried away. Shivering uncontrollably, she wrapped a light scarf around her shoulders, and demonstratively drank a few drops of herbal sedative. Instead of the sedative, thought Tsukatov roughly, you should have a hot water bottle on you from head to toe. To calm Lera down, Tsukatov had to promise her that he would personally test the curator’s sanity. It just so happened his acquaintance, the hunting general, had invited him to go on a bear hunt. Tsukatov had never hunted bears before, and he needed a consultation on how to skin prey in the field, just in case. Down there in Vologda, where the general had invited him, everything was covered in snow, and had been for some time. The bears were hibernating, and the huntsman had found a den.

“Ahem. If the skin is for a rug, then you need to take it off in one layer,” croaked Demyan Ilich, and his thick brows stirred. “First you cut it straight from the chin to the scrotum. And if it’s a female, then take it down to her privates. Start from the jaw, about a palm’s length from the edge of the lower lip, and cut down. Make sure you start all cuts from the underside of the hide so you don’t mess up the fur. Ahem. Well, you’re a hunter yourself, you know what I’m talking about. Right, then the paws.”

Tsukatov seated Demyan Ilich at the large desk in the middle of the office, and sat across from him. He listened carefully, occasionally jotting something down on a piece of paper. Chelnokov, who was at his desk in a nook separated from them by a bookcase and the wooden banister, put on his glasses and pretended to be reading an article in the Journal of Ornithology.

“Ahem. The cuts on the paws all have to come together in the same spot by your main cut.” The curator made a gesture with the nail of his protruding thumb from his throat to his belly. “And you finish coming out at a straight angle. The front paws, from the palm callouses to the elbows and then across the armpits…” To illustrate the point, Demyan Ilich pointed out where to cut on himself. “Right. The hind legs you cut from the heel callouses to the knees, and then from the inside of the hip to here.” He got up from his seat, bent over, and demonstrated. Then he sat down again. “Ahem. If you’re taking the hide to a taxidermist right away, you can snip the paws off right at the carpals, and you don’t have to skin the head—just chop it off at the last vertabra and you’re good. Ahem. But if the hide is going to be lying around for a while, then you cut the callouses from three sides and take the paw out. Just leave the last phalanxes of the toes. Right. And the head… you’ll have to take the hide off the head too.” Demyan Ilich fell silent in yet another unnecessary pause. “Then you salt the hide thoroughly. Where there are muscles and fat, make incisions and rub in some salt. Then fold it, the inner sides facing in on themselves, roll it up, and hang it on a stick so the brine can drip off. Ahem. It’s best to freeze it.”

“What if I want it mounted? Full-size?” said Tsukatov, “How do I go about it then?”

The curator went silent—as usual, for longer than was comfortable.

“Then you’re not going to want to take it off as a single layer. Ahem. You make a cut from the back. Then the seam on the belly won’t show. There’s usually not much fur on the belly. It’s hard to hide the seam. Right.” Demyan Ilich spoke weightily, as though he was moving rocks, but Tsukatov listened without prompting him. “And it’s best to take the beast’s measurements if you want to stuff and mount it. From the tip of the nose to the corners of the eyes, and from the tip of the nose to the base of the tail. One more thing: once you’ve skinned the bear, measure the girth of the neck—behind the ears—and the chest, right here, around the stomach. You need the measurements so the taxidermist knows the right proportions.” As before, Demyan Ilich indicated on himself where exactly the bear’s stomach was. “So, we cut along the spine from the tail to the back of the head. Right. And the paws, from the callouses to the elbows and knees. Ahem. Then you skin it. Right.”

“I’m not quite clear on the head,” said Tsukatov. “I’ve never had to take the hide off a head before.”

“Now that’s tricky. Right, first you make a deep cut where the lips and jaws meet. You pull the lip back with one hand and cut with the other, so that the knife slides right along the jaw-line. Right up against the jaw. Ahem. If you don’t do that, you’ll rip the lips when you remove the skin from the head.” As Demyan Ilich spoke, he became more and more excited, which was unusual—for three years everyone at the faculty had known him as a gloomy, silent man. “Ahem. Cut the auditory canals as close to the scalp as you can, and make sure you slice the skin around the eyes right up to the sockets, so you don’t damage it. You’d be better off with a scalpel instead of a knife. Right. Cut the nose off whole, along the cartilage. Ahem. Next, the ears. The ears will be difficult.” He ran his fingers through his hair, and then simulated some careful handiwork. “From the back of the ears you separate the skin from the cartilage, slowly turning the ear inside out. Then, of course, you salt it. Make incisions in the lips and the nose and rub salt in.”

“What about the tail?” asked Tsukatov, jotting down the instructions. “Do I dissect the tail too?”

“Naturally. Ahem. Open it up along the inner side, starting a little ways down from the hole, and pull out the vertebrae. And then you salt the inside again.”

“Thank you, Demyan Ilich.” Tsukatov was pleased. “Now what about our ape? The chimpanzee. Any news?”

Demyan Ilich went dead silent. “You’ll get it,” the curator finally said in a Spartan manner. “Money up front.”

When Tsukatov and Chelnokov were left alone in the office, Chelnokov tossed his Journal of Ornithology aside and popped out of his nook as quick as a flash. Of course he had listened to the entire conversation, and of course he was tormented by the silence.

“The girl is just imagining things,” Tsukatov said, surprised. “He’s all right, damnit!”

“As healthy as the goat-legged Pan,” Chelnokov agreed. ‘Although, if you think about it, we all have our idiosyncrasies. The Chinese, for example, they have no interest in b-bear hide. They only take the spleen, and the paws for some reason. P-peculiar p-people they are. By the way, do you know why there are no Chinese cemeteries here?”

“You already said they serve their dead in their restaurants.” Normally Tsukatov listened politely to Chelnokov’s stories over and over again, but today he didn’t have the patience. “Lera is the one who should get checked. I once brought my dog to the department, and she got so scared she nearly jumped up on the table.”

“As a rule, women are more wary of d-dogs than men are,” Chelnokov said. “And there’s a reason for it: women are cats at heart.”

Three weeks later, Tsukatov, who had just returned from his vacation in Vologda, was telling the story of the bear hunt in Chelnokov’s office. The story was colorful, adventurous, epic, and unbelievable, like the Iliad. The synopsis of his tale is as follows:

They approached the bear’s den on skis. Tsukatov stood behind a tree, not more than a dozen paces from the entrance. Behind him was the hunter, with two huskies on a leash. The general moved cautiously counterclockwise around the den, to get an idea of the surroundings. If you didn’t kill it right away, the bear would attack the dogs and run around his den from the entrance in the direction of the sun. So the general set out, and Tsukatov took off his skis and began packing down the snow beneath him with his feet—when you’re near a bear’s den, you want to feel solid ground beneath you. The bear must have heard them approaching—perhaps it was sleeping lightly, though the hunter had taken care to tread quietly and keep downwind. The hunter hadn’t even had time to let the dogs loose, when suddenly the bear emerged. He was shaggy and enormous, his head pressed to the ground, his chest hidden. Even if you shot, you wouldn’t kill him with the first bullet, and Tsukatov didn’t even have his rifle cocked. Fortunately, the bear didn’t attack them, but instead followed the general’s ski tracks. The hunter let the dogs loose, and Tsukatov finally fired his rifle, although the bear was already escaping. As it turned out later, the bullet hit the bear in the behind. Then the huskies got in on the action, nipping the bear in the haunches. The bear was enraged. The general didn’t let them down: he fired the fatal shot. Tsukatov had brought bear meat back with him, and the hide went to the sharpshooter as trophy.

Chelnokov listened greedily. He had the habit of reconstructing other people’s stories and telling them as his own in other company. He was like that.

Outside the window, everything was white again, except the black water of the Moika River, which had still not succumbed to the icy clutch of winter. Snow lay on the roofs and the glass dome of the atrium. The wings of Hermes’s caduceus on top of the trading house were also covered in a fine web of snowflakes. Yet St. Isaac’s and the spire of the Admiralty shone a bright gold against the gray skies.

“By the way,” said Chelnokov, apropos of nothing, “another student d-disappeared. A freshman. It happened ten days back but they only began searching a little while ago. Everybody thought he’d gone back home to Slantsy, but it turned out he wasn’t there either. Police inspectors came to see the dean.”

“This time it’s definitely a UFO.” Tsukatov’s thoughts were still at the bear’s den.

“And Demyan Ilich inquired about a van yesterday. The stuffed animal was delivered to his place, so it’s ready to be p-picked up. We should ask someone at the garage to drive over there.”

“Why didn’t he tell Lera?” said Tsukatov.

“Lera and Demyan Ilich don’t really g-get along very well,” Chelnokov reminded him. “And then again, she’s been so busy with her remodeling: first it was the plumber, then she had to choose the laminated floorboards, then the ceiling. Remodeling,” Chelnokov sighed, remembering the ongoing work in his own office. “That’s no beetle sneeze for you.”

Tsukatov drew in the corners of his mouth sharply, as a sign that he understood. No, no one could be trusted to do anything in his absence. Throwing his sheepskin coat over his shoulders with the firm step of a man who knows his own worth, Tsukatov headed down to the garage without delay.

Demyan Ilich dreamed that an ostrich nipped him on the finger. He gasped and woke up from the pain. His finger was intact, but somewhere within, underneath the skin, was a memory of that recent ephemeral adventure. The memory, though still pulsing, was quickly melting. It was indeed a most nonsensical dream.

For some time Demyan Ilich lay still. Then he turned his head to the window. At that instant his neck started throbbing with a burning sensation—the scratch, disturbed by his movement, seemed to be actually on fire. “My, some claws are just too nasty,” Demyan Ilich said aloud, wincing. Nothing would be nipping him now. She would stand there, beautiful, proud, and foolish, and he would stare at her. In the closet, wrapped up tightly, the material was shifting quietly. Demyan Ilich had no plans to give his would-be project away to some third party. Of course, he wouldn’t make any good money on it, but this was a special case. Really special. It wasn’t the first time he passed up the opportunity for profit, but he was pleased that he had decided things for himself.

Carefully turning his scratched neck, Demyan Ilich examined the room, flooded with light from the streetlamps—pale, cold, no discernible colors. The room was a mess. There were objects strewn everywhere, unrecognizable in the twilight: clothing, tools… and a mounted stuffed animal in the middle. Baring its teeth, it sat slightly back on its hind legs, leaning on the knuckles of its forepaws. The room seemed like some sort of uninhabited utility space, and looked more like a workshop than a living room.

“Ahem,” rasped Demyan Ilich. Examining his finger, he thought about the ghostly nature of suffering.

The next morning, in the interests of edification, Tsukatov decided to send Lera, along with two young men from the Student Scientific Society, to Demyan Ilich’s to pick up the stuffed animal. But she wasn’t in the lab assistant’s room, and no one had seen her at the department since yesterday. The van left without her.

Dismissing the matter from his mind, the chair of the department disappeared into his office and sank his teeth into writing an article full of new ideas about Dirofilaria nematodes—completely unprecedented ideas. Tsukatov had been working on the article for Parasitology for a long time, and the end, it seemed, was now in sight.

In the middle of the second lecture period, under the guidance of Demyan Ilich, the students brought in a large object, tightly packed in bubble wrap. They worked quickly, like grave-diggers. Demyan Ilich’s neck showed red around the coagulated crust of an angry scratch.

Having brought the parcel into the museum, they sent for Tsukatov. The chair of the department came in, accompanied by Chelnokov.

The parcel stood in the passageway by the oak cases housing the primates. In solemn silence, Demyan Ilich cut open the adhesive that held the bubble wrap with a pair of scissors and set about stripping it off the bulky exhibit, taking his time. A minute later the bubble wrap was lying on the floor. Chelnokov threw up his hands in rapture, and the severe wrinkles on Tsukatov’s face relaxed; for he had seen things, but this exceeded all his expectations. The chimpanzee’s fur shone. Each hair seemed to have been combed individually. The figure, frozen in motion, radiated a gush of fury. The teeth gleamed with moisture, the yellow fangs were bared threateningly, the skin of the face seemed alive and warm, the dark lemurlike eyes burned in watchful fury. The ape looked even better, brighter than it could have when it was alive. It seemed as though it wasn’t a stuffed animal at all, but rather a pure idea, the very essence of a new creature, as the Creator had imagined it before giving it life. It looked as fresh, as new, as clean, and as perfect as a beetle that had just emerged from its chrysalis, before having tasted the dung of life.

Chelnokov regaled it with superlatives. Tsukatov walked around the animal, staring at it, touching it, kneeling beside it, and stroking it. He didn’t try to conceal his satisfaction: exceptional mastery had obviously gone into the making of the piece.

“Ahem,” Demyan Ilich croaked behind his shoulder. “I have another offer from the same source. Right. A bonus. From the manufacturer.”

“Oh?” Tsukatov now felt trust and respect for the curator. These were things not inherent in a person, the way having red hair, protruding ears, or a nose like a duck was. One had to keep on earning them, again and again. Having won them, these qualities would begin to melt away. And one had to start all over from the beginning. Now Demyan Ilich had won Tsukatov’s trust and respect, at least for the time being.

“Ahem. I can get you something special. Right. If you make the decision sometime this week, it should turn out pretty cheap.”

“Cheap? How cheap?”

“Ahem. Almost free of charge.”

“And what is it they’re offering?”

Demyan Ilich grinned, the scratch on his neck turned crimson, and a chain of indescribable emotions ran across his sallow bony face. He came close to Tsukatov, and uttered in a whisper like a conspirator: “An excellent, ahem, an excellent African ostrich.”

A CABINET OF CURIOSITIES by Eugene Kogan Kunstkamera ^{Translated by Margarita Shalina}

“Mama,” Ilka’s heartbreaking cry rang out. “Ma-a-a-a-ma!”

Olya bolted to the nursery. She was much too young, skinny as a reed, with long black hair and enormous eyes that seemed to take up half of her face. “What is it, my son?!”

“Mama, he’s back again.” Ilka sat pressed into a corner of the bed with a blanket he’d gathered into an enormous heap —that heap was supposed to barricade the child from whatever it was that his eyes fixed on.

“Son, Ilyusha.” Olya sat down on the bed and embraced her child. “There’s no one here.”

Immediately, Ilka began to wail, pressing himself to his mother.

Peter Alexeyevich disliked the journey from the very start. The second week of March was well under way by the time the delegation had arrived at Riga, which found itself under Swedish ascendancy. His mood had been ruined by General Erik Jönsson Dahlbergh, the regional governor—who’d refused Peter’s request to visit a fortress and survey the construction of fortifications.

“Damn this place,” muttered the czar as he cast off the city.

The mighty delegation moved along slowly, and Czar Peter Alexeyevich was traveling incognito. But to not notice him was difficult—his enormous figure stood out among the rest. It was practically impossible for the czar to conceal his own presence.

Ilka had just turned five. For his birthday, his mother baked him a very beautiful pirog with chocolate filling and she even drizzled it with chocolate icing. Six candles stood atop the tort. Ilka knew how to count to five and was very proud of the fact that he was able to tell everyone about his age. “There was four, and before that three, and before that two, and before that one, and now five,” he declared, laughing at how big and bright he was, and all those around him laughed as well. But the candles turned out to be incomprehensible. Ilka counted up to five and realized in astonishment that something else did indeed come next, but what was a mystery. “Mama,” Ilka looked at Olya questioningly.

“After the number five comes the number six,” smiled Olya.

“Six,” repeated Ilka and calmed down. He liked six as well.

Ilka was small. At a glance, he seemed no more than four years old. He was smart, cheerful, found a common language with other children easily, always shared his toys in the courtyard. When he was three, he gave a shovel and a red plastic bucket as a present to Sveta, the girl next door. But all the neighboring children were taller than him, and Olya worried. Ilka, however, hadn’t yet noticed that he was smaller than everyone else, he didn’t dwell on it—such foolishness is not dwelt upon in childhood.

By August they’d reached the Rhine and descended to Amsterdam. They didn’t linger there though, and carried on further to Zaandam. The czar spent over a week there under the name Peter Mikhailov, a junior officer of the Preobrazhensky Regiment. In Zaandam, Peter Alexeyevich stayed on Krimp Street in the little house of the nautical blacksmith Herrit Kist, whom he’d become acquainted with back in Russia; the handy Dutchman had been at the wharves of Archangel, sharing his expertise. Now Peter Alexeyevich worked in the Netherlands on the wharves of the East India Company—everything had changed, however he did not share his expertise, but drew from others, attentively observing how the clever Dutch shipbuilders labored at their craft.

News inevitably spread that the Russian czar himself resided in that unassuming little house belonging to the nautical blacksmith, so visitors from all countries were drawn to Zaandam. Peter Alexeyevich was forced to quickly leave the city behind—beneath the sail of an acquired iceboat he reached Amsterdam in just over three hours and remained in the capital for some time, carrying out excursions to Utrecht, Leiden, and other places.

Olya dropped out of university when she was in her second year. She was alone, with her small son. At first she’d wanted to continue her education after a year-long maternity leave. She did return, but couldn’t keep up—there wasn’t enough money, work had to be found, the child demanded attention. So, she forgot all about university.

That first year, Ilka was horrid—he bawled ceaselessly, surpassed all the rest when it came to being sick, anything imaginable, he didn’t sleep nights, refused to eat, and generally created a merry life for Olya. Olya feared that his behavior wouldn’t improve. Her mother helped however she could, but she didn’t have the strength either—who can argue with a job and an ailing heart? And there were no men in the family.

But later, when Ilka turned one, everything changed. With what seemed a wave of a magic wand, the likes of which Olya occasionally dreamed of when she forgot herself in a restless dream during the breaks between Ilka’s hysterics. Once, in the middle of the night, the child became dreadfully frightened—either he’d dreamt of something horrible, or perhaps he’d seen something, all he did was wail the whole day, finally he couldn’t even wail— he was hoarse. Then he abruptly calmed down and everything changed. Ilka began to sleep, eat with an appetite, and caused a scandal only with good reason—like if he’d painfully knocked against something or lost his favorite toy. Olya was able to exhale in relief.

In Utrecht, Peter Alexeyevich became acquainted with William of Orange—ruler of the Netherlands and king of England, a vast reformer and navigation enthusiast. Enthralled by shipbuilding, the Russian czar gazed with delight upon the foremost European wharves and scaled one of the whaling vessels himself.

Then, by accident really, he found himself in the anatomical cabinet of Frederik Ruysch, a botanist and professor of anatomy. A specialist in the embalmment of corpses and proprietor of a renowned anatomical museum, Ruysch stupefied Peter Alexeyevich with his art. Once, upon entering the professor’s laboratory, Peter saw the body of a child on a surgical table—the child was dead, but it looked as though it was alive. The talents of the Dutch professor captivated the Russian czar, and Ruysch was extremely pleased.

Olya did calm down somewhat, of course, but then she’d regard this change in her child’s character with disbelief all over again. What would cause a one-year-old to exchange rancor for sweetness in a single day? But the weeks passed and Ilka continued to behave himself well, or as well as a child who had just recently turned one could be expected to behave.

After a month, Olya asked her mother to babysit Ilka and set off to her girlfriend’s—they had drinks, gossiped about everyone, like before when Olya didn’t have a child. A little later, Olya said that she needed a job—it would be ideal to start off working from home, some modest freelancing, then later she could think about something more serious. As things go, money was badly needed. In three days time her girlfriend called and offered her work transcribing text; precisely the kind of work that she was best suited for had fallen into Olya’s lap. Some money began to appear, and life began to improve.

Under the guidance of Professor Ruysch, Peter Alexeyevich got so carried away with anatomy that he forgot about shipbuilding for a time. Being who he was, or course, he didn’t forget for a second that that the czar of a superpower must spend every minute thinking about vital matters, so he continued to call on fortresses, shipyards, meet with heads of state and engineers, but Peter Alexeyevich’s thoughts were always there, in the anatomical theater.

In the anatomical theater of Herman Boerhaave in Leiden, Czar Peter participated in the dissection a cadaver, and then another. He was good at it, and he liked it. In his diary he wrote of being struck by the sight of a dissected human body—the heart, lungs, kidneys, the “tendons” of the brain… There remained one last thing to do—establish something similar at home, in Russia.

When Ilka turned two Olya found steady work as a typist. She wasn’t paid much, although she supplemented this by freelancing. Plus, the daily trip to the office forced her to take care of herself once again, and interacting with people was really quite pleasant.

During this time Ilka continued to behave like an angel. He was indeed an angel for the most part, only with dark hair. He and his mother had the same face—thin, with big eyes. He’d attentively monitor the world around him, feeding on information. Because he didn’t know how to speak yet, he would point his fist at whatever interested him and peer up into his mother’s eyes. Olya loved explaining everything to him and couldn’t wait for him to begin asking questions. More than anything in the world she wanted to speak with her son.

Having purchased several collections from various biologists and anatomists across the border, Peter Alexeyevich returned to Russia with steadfast resolve to establish Kunstkamera in the motherland—a cabinet of curiosities following the example of his new friends in the West. In St. Petersburg it was decided that the collection would be housed at the Summer Palace, and Peter personally supervised what went where.

But the collection kept growing and growing. The last time he set out for Holland, Peter Alexeyevich made the acquaintance of the well-known apothecary and collector Albertus Seba—the very one who drowned in one of the canals some twenty years after meeting the Russian czar. Peter Alexeyevich had the opportunity to purchase an enormous collection—an entire pharmaceutical assemblage—from Seba. The collection was moved to St. Petersburg and it became clear that the Summer Palace alone could not contain it.

Ilka had a breakthrough as soon as he turned two and a half. He literally spilled everything that had accumulated onto his mother. Everything interested him—a lamp, a door, the wind at the window, the neighbor’s cat, droplets on glass, a mirror, a television, a sandwich with butter and kielbasa, the chamber pot, day and night. He posed hundreds of questions and listened attentively to every answer.

Olya was happy. Finally, she didn’t just get to read her son a story for the night or sing him a song, but could carry on a more or less comprehensible conversation with him. She got the impression that Ilka was attempting to dig down to the truth of the matter. He didn’t just listen to everything that his mother told him, he comprehended, and it seemed that he even analyzed. Olya occasionally marveled at how Ilka remembered what she told him. That’s how it was—her son didn’t ask the same question twice, though often the next question followed the prior for the most logical reasons.

Olya and Ilka would have long talks now. Ilka would ask, and Olya would start explaining whatever it was that interested him with pleasure. Neither he nor she grew weary of this.

They began to search for a place. Various suggestions were made, but Peter Alexeyevich didn’t care for them. The only thing that could be agreed on was that the future museum must be located somewhere on Vasilyevsky Island. The question was where.

One day Czar Peter was strolling around Vasilyevsky. The weather was fine—a rarity for Petersburg, which is accustomed to rains and the low-hanging gray sky. Only a gnat pestered him, but nothing could be done about it. Peter Alexeyevich was lost in his own thoughts when two pines, the likes of which he’d never seen, suddenly appeared before his eyes. The pines grew very near, and the fat branch of one had grown into the trunk of the other. Peter stopped before the trees—Siamese twins that had grown into one common bough; he touched the trunk with his hand, circled it, and grinned. The question of where the cabinet of curiosities was to be located had been decided.

When Ilka was almost three, Olya decided to place him in daycare. Out of two daycares located not far from home, she chose the one that seemed best to her—anyway, there was no money for anything specialized, private, or extravagant, but here at least the nursery-governess who had a name found in stories and jokes, Maria Ivanovna, smiled in a kind way and Ilka seemed to like it. At the very least it didn’t scare him, even though he understood right away that Mama was handing him off to someone else.

Ilka looked at Olya with woeful eyes and asked: “When are you coming back?”

“Soon, my son, soon.” Olya suddenly had a feeling that her heart would tear apart.

“All right,” Ilka said sadly. Taking Maria Ivanovna by the hand, he went off into a large playroom to join the other children.

Olya wasn’t herself at work. It was one thing to leave her child with his grandmother, but another matter altogether to leave him with some nanny who is a stranger, even if she did have a kind expression. Olya was perpetually distracted, jumped each time the phone rang, made a ton of mistakes, and as soon as the workday was over, she sprang from her seat as though she’d been stung and raced in the direction of the daycare. Ilka was already waiting for her—calm, carefree, and full of new information. Olya calmed down.

The future Kunstkamera building was placed under the direction of a German, Georg Johann Mattarnovi, who’d had a hand in the finishings of the Summer Palace where the collection was being housed for the time being. For some reason construction moved along slowly; it wasn’t easy. The years passed, yet still there was no building. For Peter Alexeyevich, the erection of Kunstkamera was one of the most important works of his life, but he didn’t live to see the completion of construction—he died seven years following the laying of the foundation stone, even though by his death just the walls had been completed. Then the architect died as well, and others carried on construction.

After another year, they began moving the collection from the Summer Palace. Yet construction went on and on. Rumors spread that the Nevsky land was refusing to house a collection of dead monstrosities. But enlightened people didn’t pay attention to such rumors—they’d say the collection had been in Petersburg for years already, so there was nothing to talk about. And soon, the rumors dissipated to nil.

In no time at all Ilka became Maria Ivanovna’s favorite and the soul of the daycare gang—as much as three- and four-year-old children can become a gang. An inquisitive, courteous, smart boy, Ilka never vexed anyone, knew a great deal, and was always polite and even-tempered. He took part in merry and noisy group games organically and happily, enjoyed racing around during outings, and didn’t really separate from those around him. He never caused mischief, nor raised a ruckus, nor cried without cause, behaved calmly during nap time, and ate whatever they served in the daycare cafeteria. Barely a day passed that Maria Ivanovna didn’t sing his praises to Olya, and Olya was utterly overjoyed.

It was only later that she noticed her boy wasn’t really growing. Of course, he didn’t stay the same small size that he’d been the day Olya had brought him to daycare. But his height had radically slowed—when he and all those around him had turned four years old, Ilka was considerably shorter than the others. This was definitely something to worry about.

Only then did Olya realize that she was recalling the nightmare that had changed her son’s character overnight all too frequently. But why she was remembering it was unclear.

Soon after laying the foundation for Kunstkamera, Peter Alexeyevich decided to construct a special building in Petersburg specifically for the growing collection of anatomical and other curiosities. For research purposes, he visited the French port city of Calais, located directly on the strait of Pas-de-Calais. There, he met a man who was so tall that his height left the czar in a state of shock; Peter Alexeyevich was over two meters tall himself. In no time at all, Peter Alexeyevich prevailed upon the Frenchman to relocate to Russia in private service to the czar— he was appointed the position of chasseur.

The Frenchman died in seven years’ time. By the decree of Peter Alexeyevich the giant’s skin was removed, tanned, and stuffed—the result was something like a tarantula. The Frenchman’s gigantic skeleton was situated next to it—and both the tarantula and the skeleton were immediately absorbed as components of the future museum.

The Frenchman was called Nicolas Bourgeois, or Nikolai.

Olya waited a long time—maybe it would right itself. But it didn’t. It seemed Ilka had stopped growing, just dead stopped. They decided to see a doctor. Through friends, they found a good endocrinologist—a gray-haired old man with attractive hands. He examined Ilka, ran every possible test, then disappeared. After a week he called—Olya felt as though the stress had caused her heart to stop beating. The endocrinologist said no pathologies had been found as far as health was concerned, and from a medical standpoint he had no explanation for the growth problem. That is, speaking strictly from the perspective of his own specialty. He advised not to waste energy worrying about it: “Ilka will probably begin to grow—this happens with children sometimes, they don’t grow, don’t grow, then suddenly they erupt, and then there’s no catching up to them.”

The doctor’s words didn’t make Olya feel any better. Again and again, throughout the course of the next year, she took her son to various endocrinologists, each one better than the last, but all the doctors spoke as one—there are no problems with the boy’s health, he’s healthy as an ox, and it’s totally possible that his not growing is just the individual predisposition of this particular developing organism, and it could happen to anyone. Olya began to calm down a bit, although she occasionally cried at night—very softly, so that Ilka wouldn’t hear.

Then the nightmares began.

Over twenty years had passed since the death of Czar Peter Alexeyevich when a terrible fire occurred on the premises of Kunstkamera. The cupola burned atop the steeple, both the collection and library were badly damaged. Among the pieces lost was the skull of Nikolai Bourgeois. Time passed and the museum’s curators began to speak of strange occurrences. They recounted an enormous headless figure that wandered through the corridors of Kunstkamera by night, no doubt in search of something. And it was clear what he was searching for, the museum’s curators said, nodding.

The specter of Kunstkamera, and that’s precisely what they called him, spent many long years wandering the dark halls of the museum finding no peace. Just as he’d disappear for a time, compelling his own existence to be forgotten, so he’d reappear.

Later he began venturing beyond the confines of the premises. Not very far at first, but with time he ventured ever farther into the city, appearing here or there. True, no destruction came from him—he harmed no one, just frightened them. How they pitied him, this wretched one. Finally they decided something had to be done—they found a skull with no owner and attached it to the skeleton of the French giant. And the giant calmed down. At the very least he no longer appeared to people. Or perhaps it’s just that no one has spoken of it since.

The first time it happened was almost immediately following his birthday, after they’d celebrated Ilka turning five. That night Olya was awoken by a blood-curdling howl that emanated from her son’s room. Olya sprang up and threw herself headlong at the cry. Ilka sat wailing on the bed, crammed into a corner. He couldn’t speak, only trembled.

Olya got him to calm down with some difficulty, remaining nearby until he fell asleep. First thing in the morning her son explained that he’d awoken in the night with the sensation that someone was in the room. He’d focused his eyes on the wall and seen an enormous shadow cast by a strange figure. And he was scared that this person would take him, Ilka, away—but where was a mystery. He was afraid to go to sleep alone for several nights after and asked Mama to sit close by. Olya sat, stroking his head, gazing into the darkness.

“Mama, he’s back.” Ilka sat, pressed into a corner of the bed with a blanket he’d gathered into an enormous heap, which was supposed to barricade him from whatever it was that his eyes were fixed on. “Son, Ilyusha,” Olya perched on the bed and embraced her son, “there’s no one here.”

Ilka pressed against his mother and started to sob, his hand pointing to the wall across from them. “There he is.”

Olya gazed into the dark—and was horror-struck. The enormous figure of a man was suspended midair before her. Olya screamed and covered Ilka’s eyes with her hand. At first the figure didn’t stir, but then it began to sway and, slowly, with seeming difficulty, float in the direction of the bed.

“Don’t move!” Olya yelled. “Don’t move! What do you want?! Why have you come here?!” She was so frightened that she couldn’t figure out what to do. She was only aware that Ilka had stopped crying. “Go away!” screamed Olya. “Please, go away.” Then she began to cry, repeating through tears, “Go away, go away, please, don’t touch him, go away!”

The figure stopped for a moment, hovering in the center of the room. Then it began moving in the direction of the bed again. Olya was crying, shielding her child, but there was nothing else she could do. What could she have done?

Meanwhile, the figure had stopped very close by. The giant floated above the floor, so that he had to bend his head to keep from knocking it against the ceiling. Ilka didn’t stir, only shuddered occasionally. Olya didn’t stir either; she’d stopped crying and it seemed that she’d folded into herself from fear. The figure hung in the air a bit longer, then slowly circled around the bed and stopped again. He extended his fleshless hand and touched Ilka’s head. Ilka noticed nothing; Olya’s hand covered his eyes, and Olya thought that at any moment her heart would burst from her chest. But it didn’t burst. The figure of the giant hung suspended in air another moment, then dissolved. He never appeared again.

After that Ilka began to grow, and everyone knows what people say is the cause.

HOTEL ANGLETERRE by Vladimir Berezin Hotel Angleterre ^{Translated by Amy Pieterse}

H e was staring at the ceiling, his feet up on the desk. It was an absurd habit he’d picked up from the Americans, but had now come to love. The plaster molding overhead had started to crack in the seventh year of the revolution, forming an intricate pattern that seemed to augur something. Whether it augured well or ill was unclear. The longer he stared at it, the more it resembled a man with a sack and bludgeon, or a rider with a sword.

He lived in the middle of an enormous city, in a hotel whose windows were beleaguered with monuments. Nearby was a church that had taken many years to build. Now that it was finished, time sought to undo its fate, and everyone said it would soon be closed down.

In light of all that had already happened in this city, it seemed a new life was in store for the church. And he had heard about life here during the siege and the civil war.

Shpolyansky was the one who had told him. A well-known graphic artist had drawn Shpolyansky right here. In the portrait, one of Shpolyansky’s buttons is loose, hanging by a thread. He had grown bald, and quite suddenly. He talked about the city abandoned by the government in 1918. Demoted as the capital, the city continued to live according to its old habits for a time. Then its most illustrious inhabitants started leaving. It was that old law of nature: when the lid is removed from a pot, the fastest molecules of water begin to escape, and the pot cools down. During the recent war, the city cooled down quickly.

And so he lived in a hotel, built by an unknown architect. The building had undergone reconstruction several times, but one thing didn’t change: the architect was still unknown.

Obscurity seemed to consolidate the mystical power of the place, so nobody was surprised when a famous industrialist—a foreigner, one of the wealthiest people in the empire—died in one of the rooms.

Now the empire was gone, and the golden epaulettes of the capital had been torn from the city. It stood before enemy fire like a demoted officer on the breastwork.

The city was still enormous, but it had been dying for several years.

A crazy old woman had wandered the streets, announcing to all and sundry that there would be three floods, the first one in 1824. One hundred years later, a second flood would occur; and a hundred years after that, a third would submerge the domes of the doomed city once and for all. Then the floodwaters would subside, taking everything with them: the cupolas, the crucifixes, and the buildings themselves. Where the city once stood, there would be flat marshland, overgrown with osier for the rest of time.

And the old woman went up to one of the statues, the one prancing on the square, its back turned to the river. Twirling about in her foul-smelling skirts, she ate something from the palm of her hand. The hotel’s inhabitants watched her in fear, as belief in the prophesy grew within them like grass through pavement.

Grass had indeed sprung up in many streets after the revolution, especially those paved with hexagonal wooden tiles. The grass grew tall, and goats grazed here and there, as they did in the Roman ruins. The goats were especially numerous in the outlying districts.

Shpolyansky told him about those times, and his stories were permeated by a foreboding of flight. Later, Shpolyansky did in fact flee. He escaped across the ice on the Gulf of Finland to a different part of the empire, which had gained independence. Many fled that way, and the first to do so was the father of the revolution himself. Now he was the one they were fleeing. The city was empty, and the grass grew taller.

Shpolyansky spoke feverishly, saying that in the demoted city people’s wounds did not heal and women had stopped menstruating.

All around the hotel, new times were afoot and streets were being renamed. No one knew for certain what the street beneath his feet was called.

Shpolyansky’s friend Dragmanov liked to quote two poems about the large church that was visible from the windows of the hotel.

“This temple serves two kingdoms: above, of brick; below, of marble.” But they rebuilt the church almost immediately, he said, so the words had been changed: “This temple serves three kingdoms: marble, brick, and devastation.”

Dragmanov included these poems in his novel, and the novel seemed very promising. The church had long been a place of central importance to the city. The square derived its name from it, the massive black church looming through the cold mist. But the man with his feet on the desk in the hotel room couldn’t think about the novel.

He felt changes in the air acutely. And change was definitely on its way. The city that floated past the Angleterre like flood-waters was pliant and soft—always the case before a change of fate. The city was fluid like the dark waters of the river, or the shadowy water of the gulf pulsing beneath the ice.

It will flow for another hundred years, until the prophesy is fulfilled and the bronze horseman rides on the water as though on solid ground, until the waves swallow the Finnish rock beneath him.

And the hotel—a beehive for the masters of these new times—was ideally suited as that point of fracture.

He had just tried out some new sleight of hand, as was his habit. His friends always found his tricks amusing. Once he concentrated on a mug for so long that he actually made it disappear. “Where’s the cup? Where did it go?” his mother had said, perplexed, as she stood in the middle of the room, waving her arms in dismay. Even then, he didn’t share his secret with her. And to think she’s still alive, my old lady; and I too am alive. There is probably a wisp of smoke coming out of the roof of her little hut right now.

In any case, he had performed for her so often that the trick with the mug would have seemed like a childish prank.

Spoons, as it happened, succumbed to mystical practices far better. The world of Russian objects seemed to yield to his manipulations easily, while objects from abroad were less obedient. The same was true of Russian words: the letters seemed to line up neatly one after another, like rye in a field. The Latin alphabet was more stubborn.

A long time ago he had known Latin, but time seemed to have purged him of all languages except for Russian.

Many knew him as Seriozha, but when you’re pushing thirty a nickname is embarrassing. Yet he knew he would never grow up. He simply didn’t know how to get older.

In his hand Seriozha gripped a glass. A bottle of Rykovka vodka that had just skyrocketed in price stood on the desk, its contents lukewarm.

At last, the heavy fretted door creaked. The man in black leather, who had Seriozha’s own face, had come. For a moment, Seriozha was astounded at the plan—indeed, the mirror reflected twins: one in a suit with his feet up, the other in black leather and a Russian peasant shirt.

“We meet at last, Seriozha,” the man in black said with a slight accent.

I wonder how they did it. Makeup? Doesn’t look like it. Probably a mask.

“Your time has come,” the man continued, sitting down at the desk.

The poet sighed to himself: this called for a display of terror; but how much did the interlocutor know about all of this?

He could look the man in the eye, stare him down as he had stared into the eyes of a killer with a knife in hand, the one who had accosted him at Sukharevka. He had given him a certain look, and the killer desisted, slinking away along the wall and dropping his switchblade.

But Seriozha restrained himself. “You remember Ryazan, don’t you? Konstantinovo? Remember when we were kids?” That would be the perfect move. Except that Seriozha had in fact spent his childhood in a completely different place.

Ryazan? Of all the nonsense! He had been born in Constantinople.

During the second year of the revolution, Seriozha met Morozov, the Schlüsselburg prisoner who had just been released into the world. Captivity seemed only to have preserved the elderly member of the People’s Freedom Party—he was fresh and ruddy, with a formidable snow-white beard. Morozov had dedicated himself to studying errors in historical chronicles. In them he had found references to him—Seriozha. He found out that the copyists had mixed up his documents (if only he knew how much this would cost him), changing “Constantinople” to “Konstantinovo.”

It was here they had strolled, to their left the gloomy bulk of St. Isaac’s Cathedral, the famed church; and to their right, this very hotel, where fates were decided. The old man sought to avenge history, and decided to start with him, the poet.

Underneath their feet grew the sickly grass of the streets and squares of Petrograd.

The old man waited for an answer.

Seriozha smiled, peering into his eyes. Who would ever believe you, old man? Unless maybe one day some academic follows your lead and starts shuffling the deck of centuries and scepters—but no one will believe him either.

He himself could recall in great detail, though, that hot May, five hundred years ago, when the crackling of fire, the yelps of Fatih’s warriors, and the shrieks of the inhabitants surrounded the temple. The doors were torn off their hinges with a thunderous clatter and a crowd of Janissaries broke inside. There were a few who stood out even within the ranks of Fatih’s select band of cutthroats. The boy knew that these warriors who looked like dismounted horsemen were dark angels. Their faces were covered in slashes, as though carved out of wood.

The sounds of the Liturgy had not yet died away, and one by one the priests entered the stone masonry which parted to let them pass, carrying the holy gifts before them. The youth rushed in after them, but an old monk grabbed him by the arm and led him through a long underground passage toward the sea. They ran past cavernous cisterns, and heavy droplets from the ceiling beat down on their backs.

The monk put him into a fishing boat with two Greeks who watched solemnly as the city burned.

The two were brothers—Yanaki and Stavraki. They took the young boy along the coast, careful not to lose sight of land. He read them Greek and Latin poetry. The sea censored some of his words, filling the boy’s mouth with the salty water of the waves. They soon found themselves in a strange land where the steppe met the water, and the boy took his first breath of foreign air. With each step toward the North, something inside him changed. He felt his soul transforming. His body would remain unchanged forever.

He became the Wandering Russian, a lonely soul attached not to earthly love, but to that of the heavens. Yet he never forgot the wooden horsemen, for it was said of them in the Holy Book: And there was a great battle in heaven—Michael and his angels fought with the dragon. That battle was eternal

The visitor in black was mumbling something, looking at him from time to time. He must have thought Seriozha was completely drunk.

The boy who had come by the day before had thought so too. Poetry was what had led him through life; but now he would have to end this phase. He would be mistaken about time, however. The Wandering Russian had been duped. Duped like a little boy whose daddy takes him to the big city. The little boy runs away on the sly and goes to the bazaar, where he is swindled out of all his coins wrapped up in a little scrap of cloth.

Poetry was his destiny; but there would be no poetry here.

Without poetry, eternity means nothing, and everything else is meaningless too. Like the time he fought Celery, the famed poet, and suddenly felt his opponent’s special hatred for him. It was only now that he realized Celery had hated not him, but fate. Fate saw to it that the Wandering Jew, the eternal Jewish poet, was not he, Celery, but the lowly Mosstamp. Celery couldn’t fully comprehend it, but with his sensitive nature he felt fate’s cruelty. It was fate he was fighting, not his comrade and fellow poet.

His fate was that of a man destined to die in his own bed, having known early love and late love, having suffered abuse and praise. But whereas he would die forever, Mosstamp would crawl out from under a mountain of dead bodies during his exile to the Far East, and wander the earth forever.

The man behind the door shuffled his feet awkwardly, anticipating the business at hand, and Seriozha grew very sad. He felt offended by the crudeness of it all. He recalled meeting the Wandering Scotsman at a bar in Berlin. Seriozha immediately recognized him by his wavy hair. They roamed around Berlin all night long. In his cups, the Scotsman showed him Japanese Bartitsu moves. Growing animated, the Scotsman pulled a sword out of his bag, which he waved about like a hay mower on the banks of the Oka. In one fluid motion, Seriozha dove sideways, jabbing a fork he’d stolen from a restaurant into the man’s side. The Scotsman stood there blinking, hiccuping, waiting for the wound to heal.

He eventually admitted defeat and they read poetry until dawn. The Wandering Scotsman read a poem by his friend about the dry heat of Persia and doe-eyed maidens whose arms wound about like snakes. And Seriozha read the Scottish poem about a wayfarer caught out on a winter night, and a northern maiden who takes the stranger in; how she drifts off to sleep between him and the wall of her humble dwelling. In the morning she sews the wayfarer a shirt, knowing that she will never see him again. And Seriozha knew that those lines were about them, about the shelterless life of eternally wandering poets. As they parted ways on a bridge over the Spree, Seriozha gave the Scotsman the ill-begotten fork, which the Scotsman put in his sword case. Robert MacLeod, or Burns, as Seriozha usually called him, disappeared with his ungainly sword into the rays of the German sunrise, the wind ruffling his hair.

Now, sitting here in a false trap, Seriozha knew that he could kill both of the Cheka officers (for he had no doubt who they were), pluck them from life like two worm-eaten mushrooms from the soil, leaving only small, nearly invisible indentations in reality. He could carve them out, using, say, a fork. Or a spoon. No, the spoon had disappeared during his extrasensory experiments.

But he didn’t need to do that. He was a poet, and so was moved by a greater aim than the bestial thirst for blood.

He had to leave his place, like a beast must leave its lair, because he had chosen the wrong word to rhyme with revolution.

His visitor produced a grimy book from the depths of his overcoat, and thumbing through the tattered pages began to read some filth aloud. It was probably one of Galyas tearful letters (usually a mixture of complaints and pleas). It was in bad taste, and embarrassing in the extreme. He allowed himself not to listen any further to these stories of happiness and broken arms, of wooden horsemen.

He really did know who the wooden horsemen were, who appeared suddenly in tall grass just as he was getting off the train at Konstantinovo. He had to convince his relatives of his own existence (which he did); but the wooden horsemen were always after him wherever he went. One of them he recognized as Omar, one of Fatih’s warriors, who had almost killed him in the church five hundred years ago.

Wooden horsemen—now, that would be truly terrifying, because they alone had power over wandering poets. One of them had chased after the automobile he rode in with his wife. The wooden horseman started losing ground. He knew he could not reach Seriozha with his crescent sword, so he tugged at the woman’s blue scarf, pulling her out of the car and under the hooves.

Seriozha could not forgive himself her death—though he did not love his wife. Revenge was senseless, for the wooden horsemen had special, invincible powers. He cried then, listening as the din of oaken horseshoes on the paving blocks grew fainter.

The dark angels are no naive and trusting Cheka officers. Why, if he had heard the wooden neigh of their horses on St. Isaac’s Square just now, right under his windows, the whole plan would have been ruined! As for these two, let them think they had caught him in a hotel-room trap they had set.

At that very moment the visitor said something about some high school students, and Seriozha poured himself some vodka, spilling it on purpose. The vodka tasted of disappointment. Yes, beautiful illusions should be left behind.

All of a sudden, the man in the overcoat jumped on him, and in the same moment another man dashed into the room. Together they wrestled him down, and the second one threw a thin cord from a suitcase around his neck.

The poet stooped resisting and surrendered his body to them.

The trap they had set had worked. But then his own plan began to unfold. First let them think they had succeeded.

The man in black punched the poet in the stomach a few more times, and Seriozha felt a belated surprise at human cruelty. He waited for his death as though for an unpleasant procedure— he had died many times before, and it was unpleasant, like a coarse male nurse administering an enema.

With a dull pop, the little ventilation window flew wide open, and he felt himself hanging, the steam-heating pipes searing his side.

This won’t do at all, he thought, looking down through his long eyelashes at the Cheka officers who were stamping their feet, brushing themselves off, and straightening their sleeves, as though after a snowball fight. One left, while the other began to search the room.

Hanging like this was terribly uncomfortable, but soon the man in black grew tired. He stood up, then disappeared behind the bathroom door. The poet quickly loosened the knot and hopped onto the floor. Then he slipped into the armoire.

He didn’t have to wait very long. From the depths of the armoire, he could hear a wild cry from the fellow who discovered the body was missing. He listened to the halting explanation, interrupted by threats, and heard them send someone down to the morgue to look for an unclaimed dead body.

A dead body was found, but it turned out to be a suicide who had slit his wrists. By then, however, the Cheka officers had no other choice. Time had them in a stranglehold, chafing their throats, pulling them toward the open window.

The poet watched through a crack between the doors of the armoire as they smeared glue on the gutta-percha mask, which they now pulled over the face of the hapless suicide.

He caught sight of the dead man’s feet, then a lifeless arm— and then a new body was hanging from the noose, and the poet listened to their unsteady breathing.

When at last they had left, Seriozha climbed out of the armoire and looked sadly at the lifeless face of his double. Bidding himself farewell, he touched a cold dead hand and left the room.

Seriozha closed the door using a copy of the key, and went out into the corridor, past the receptionist in a paramilitary uniform who was fast asleep.

Leningrad was black and still.

The damp cold struck him in the chest, honing his senses. The wolfhound had missed—and the poet’s trick had worked; as had the Cheka officer’s trap, for that matter.

Now he could move far away, to the east, to hide beneath Siberia’s snowy quilt, where cities and towns have peculiar and wonderful names like Ol’ Erofei Palych. Or Winter. Winter sounded like a good name. Why not settle down there?

A new page of his life was beginning: with the dawn snow and the pale sun—a fair copy right off the bat.