The Kukotsky Enigma: A Novel

14

TANYA DID NOT WAKE UP, SHE CAME TO. THE ROOM—A shoddy double with a pair of wooden beds and a bedside table between them—was filled with hot dense light, like an aquarium filled with water. There was not the slightest movement, not the least flutter, and none of the bustle that often occurs in the early morning. It was as quiet as noon, at the hour when the sun is at its peak. An instant of life in freeze-frame was what it was.

“And I’m at my peak.” Tanya smiled, placing her palms on her convex belly and stroking it from the sides. “We’re at our peak!”

The high point of life, the top of the mountain, and the mountain of her belly—all these things were related.

“Do you feel it?” she asked her belly.

“Do you feel it: you and I have fallen in love . . .”

Her belly for some reason was her accomplice. She looked at Sergei sleeping alongside her. She had been studying his hands since the night before: not large, with the distal phalanxes bent upward, with enlarged joints under the horizontal folds of skin on his knuckles, fingernails with white spots—signifying either some sort of vitamin deficiency or an unexpected present prepared for him by destiny . . . She squinted to the side: his hand, opened trustingly palm upward, lay on her shoulder. In the middle of the flesh of his mons pubis she found a deep scar. There was another one on his forearm. There were many more details of this boyish body that she had not managed to note the night before, but already loved. The big toe on his foot stuck out forward, the foot itself was narrow and not large, like a woman’s. There was the plush of thick white hair on his shin . . . He lay on his side, one leg bent at the knee. In the shadow of his private parts, among the light curly hairs, lay his sleeping tool, and it was not at all without its own character. Previously it had seemed to Tanya that men’s penises differed only slightly in size, but in all other respects were absolutely identical. This one had a characteristic bend that replicated the line of his lips and expressed naïveté and a capacity for self-oblivion . . . With her hand Tanya touched his milky-white skin, the small strip on his hip not covered with a suntan. His skin was as soft as a woman’s. His chest was covered with soft growth, light-colored, like sun-bleached moss. She touched the scar on his palm. “This will be my favorite place.”

He rummaged his other hand along his side, then pressed her to his body.

“Where are you going? Don’t leave . . .”

“Never,” Tanya laughed. “But can I go to the bathroom?”

“No way.”

He pressed her to himself: everything fit wonderfully. Never before had he experienced such a coincidence. Without opening his eyes, he asked her: “Where did you come from?”

“Nowhere. I always was.” Tanya laughed.

“Apparently,” he agreed, running his hands over her neck, breasts, and stomach.

“Open your eyes,” Tanya said.

“I am afraid.” He smiled, but opened them.

“And?” Tanya got up and edged away slightly.

“Terrific,” he said to calm her and, perhaps, himself. “Everything was terrific, only I just couldn’t remember your face. You know, once at just this point I had a terrible trauma. I woke up, and alongside me . . .”

Tanya clamped her hand over his mouth.

“Forget it. Immediately forget everything that ever was before. You are Sergei, I’m Tanya, and nothing else matters.”

Sergei chuckled. “Good. But I just happen to have a wife.”

“And I have a husband. Two, even. And I’m going to have a baby soon . . .”

“In what sense?”

Sergei pulled himself up and leaned on his elbow. Tanya took his hand and placed it on her belly.

“In three, three and a half months.”

Her belly was taut, full. Sergei pulled back his hand as if he had been scalded by a teapot.

“For real? Nothing like that has never happened to me before . . .”

“Or to me either.” Tanya laughed. “There’s always a first time . . . This is the first time I’ve ever been with you.”

He got up and went to the shower. He stood under the thin warm stream for several minutes. Then he drank some of the nasty water from his palms.

“The girl’s nuts. I’m going to kick her out right now,” he decided, and stepped out of the shower. She was already standing alongside the door and slipped inside. She had a wonderful figure, and breasts, and waist. Her belly was not large, but entirely noticeable.

He went back to bed and lit a cigarette.

“Get dressed and leave,” he requested when she sat down next to him on the bed.

She shook her head.

“What, are you scared? Everything is all right. I’m not going anywhere.”

“You’ve got a child inside you, and I could break something in there. Are you supposed to be screwing in your condition?”

“Did it seem to you that I shouldn’t be?”

“No, I just didn’t notice.”

“Well, I think that I’m very much supposed to. After all, I came to the South in order to make life pleasurable for him.” She clasped her belly with her arms.

“In what sense?”

Tanya laughed.

“Go swimming, roll around in the sun.”

She dove into bed under the sheet and hugged him around the neck.

“Everything I like, he likes. Word of honor.”

She was a wonderful girl, and his fear had passed, while his desire remained. And in fact there was even a certain appeal to that taut belly of hers, those tense nipples, and the intensified womanliness that derived of her being pregnant. They spent the whole day in the hotel room, leaving only once to get mineral water . . .

In the evening the musicians gave another concert, and Tanya could not take her mind off Seryozha’s music for a minute—it was the continuation of their new love. Then they spent the night together, collected some very respectable money for their performances in the morning, and left. Tanya ran over to Nanny Goat’s place for a minute, grabbed her travel bag, planted kisses on the top of Misha’s head and on Vika’s cheek, and disappeared from Nanny Goat’s sight forever.