The Kukotsky Enigma: A Novel

13

ON THE SHORE MORNING WAS BREAKING. THE DAWN WAS strong as undiluted alcohol, bare as a freshly laid egg, and irreproachable as the alphabet. Behind the Newling’s back the fault smoked with fog, and she experienced it as a rough seam between two fabrics of different textures. What was more, it now was of absolutely no interest. The world unfolding before her eyes resembled the best of everything she had ever seen in her life. She remembered now all of her past—from early childhood, from the stove that had burned her childish hands, to the last page of that school exercise book whose last dozen pages were scribbled with lame tortured letters . . .

The light of two searchlights of a past and perfect morning resurrected in all its details illuminated the moment. The long torture of unanswerable questions—Where am I? Who am I? Why?—had ended in an instant. It was she, Elena Georgievna Kukotskaya, but completely new, yes, the Newling, but now she wanted to gather together all that she had known and at one time forgotten and all that she had never known, but seemed to have remembered.

She took several steps through the grass and was amazed by the wealth of impressions communicated by the touch of her bare feet to the ground: she felt every blade of grass, the mutual positioning of stalks, and even the vulvar connections between the thin blades. As if the blind soles of her feet had acquired sight. Something similar happened with her vision, her sense of hearing, and sense of smell. Elena sat down on a hillock between two bushes. One, just about to bloom, was a jasmine, with a simple and strong smell; the second was unfamiliar, with dense leaves highlighted with a light border along their edge. Its smell was sour and cold, peculiar. The earth emitted a multitude of smells—damp earthy mustiness, the juice of a crushed stalk of grass, strawberry leaf, wax, bitter chamomile . . . And even the scent of a person who had stepped there not long ago . . . She immediately recognized who.

Animal sense of smell, that’s what it is, Elena noted. There were also too many sounds for such a quiet morning—the grasses rustled loudly, each with its own quality: the rigid grasses sounded more shaggy, while the softer ones emitted slithery sounds. The leaves of the shrubbery rubbed up against each other with a velvet swishing sound, and a bud exploded with the sound of a taut grunt. A titmouse flitting from a tree produced a chord with its wings and tail that left behind the light, bent whistle of air flowing over feathers spread out in flight. Moreover, Elena saw something she had never noticed before: as it flew by, the bird’s tail feathers stood up almost vertically, while the pointed ends of its wings dropped downward, and its matchstick dark-gray legs pressed tightly to its gray belly . . . It slipped downward, and then, as if having changed its mind, turned its tail, dropped the tips of its wings, and soared upward . . . The geometry and aerodynamics of flight—study it as you would in school . . . How is it I never noticed that before, Elena wondered.

She sat atop the hillock, inhaled, watched, and listened, as she accustomed herself to the new earth and to her own self, also new. She hurried nowhere. Soon she felt that she had tired of the unaccustomed intensity of the sounds and smells, stretched herself full length on the grass, and closed her eyes.

It’s silly to sleep when everything feels so good . . . But maybe I’ll have a dream?

She fell asleep on the bare ground without even noticing that she herself was naked . . .

Skinhead, like a ship’s captain, came onshore last. What was moving where was entirely unclear: was the fault moving away from the shore, or was the earth itself drifting in an unknown direction? It looked like the wind was pulling the structures up along the shore . . . Everyone he had helped by extending an aluminum, paint-spattered stepladder between the last landing and the edge of the bluff was disappearing somewhere. The last to come onshore had been the big shepherd dog, its paws slipping on the metal rungs. The dog was met by an entire brigade of tiny humanoid and at the same time slightly avian figures in white cocoons. They took it into their arms and hauled it toward a large tree scorched on one side. The landing on which Skinhead stood rocked and floated away from the shore. He almost dropped the stepladder. An unknown force pulled him forward with the flow of the wind, then rocked, overturned, and pounded his landing into the edge of the precipice.

Skinhead set foot on land. The first thing he noticed were the bones of his own foot, all twenty-nine of them, just as on an X-ray. Or twenty-eight? They shone unobtrusively through his skin. Skinhead noticed an unpleasant deformity: the joints between his os metatarsi and the bone of his big toe were enlarged. He addressed what he was accustomed to calling his intravision.

“Well, thanks for not having abandoned me.”

IT WAS A WONDERFUL PLACE, IF FOR THE SOLE REASON that the sun was at its zenith, indicating noon, and Skinhead was delighted that he was once again in a place where there was west and east, north and south, and ultimately, up and down. He looked around and discovered that the fault had disappeared, had healed over, as if it had never existed. Skinhead smiled and shook his head: it wasn’t much needed . . .

The world in which he existed evoked absolute trust, but it demanded he reject his former ways of thinking, and his long-standing ability to adjust to new circumstances prepared him to do this. Everything around him was green, peaceful, and warm. The wind brought the smell of a campfire and food. He set off to the East following the beck of the wind.

The half-scorched tree remained behind, and he did not see how they covered the dog lying on the earth with a big blanket and then drew lines and formulas over it.

“Everything all right? Did it come out correctly?” the smallest asked impatiently.

“I think so. As far as one can tell from the surface,” the largest answered him.

“It will be a nice woman. Beautiful.”

“And happy?” inquired the little one.

“Expect so . . . The potential is there . . . All its qualities are supposed to be transformed: fidelity, the ability to serve, ingenuousness . . . In this case an innate cheerfulness . . .”

“Then why can’t we move to phase out and launch?” The little one bombarded its senior with questions, but the latter was patient.

“What are you saying? How could we do that? On the contrary: it needs to spend some more time here. So that the lower layers fill out. If we launch immediately, just imagine what she will dream of. It’ll be awful! When those animal instincts start breaking through . . . This is Canis lupus familiaris, a predator after all . . . You should know what the results are when they’re underprocessed . . . Well?” The older one awaited an answer.

The little one was at a loss: “We haven’t studied that yet. I just started the third level . . .”

“All right, all right. If you haven’t studied it yet, you will soon . . . But you’ll also know from practical experience—werewolves, maniacs, and murderers of all sorts, from serial killers to those in the general staff . . . Got it?” He offered the clarification with pleasure.

“Oh!” The little one was amazed. “But making sure all the lower layers get filled out—that’s quite a job!”

“And you thought our work was easy?” The older one raised the edge of the blanket. Under the blanket lay a large woman with an upturned nose and a receding forehead. “But if we do a good job now, it will be a very good woman, a loyal friend, and a devoted wife. Come on,” he beckoned the younger one. He placed his sharp paws on the receding forehead and began massaging lightly . . .