Free Butterfly Skin by Sergey Kuznetsov Page A

July 1, because Dimochka had phoned and apologized, and promised that nothing of the sort would ever happen again. But then, Marinka’s voice had a familiar vibe of excitement to it, and it occurred to Ksenia that something of the sort could very well happen again.
    “Actually,” said Marinka, “it was quite interesting really, I’ve never had any men so much older than me.”
    All right then, Ksenia told herself. So I was a fool. So I should have kept well out of the whole business. They would have sorted it out for themselves. She felt a bit annoyed with Marinka, but her resentment was weak, as if she was feeling it through a thick layer of felt, or rather, through the cocoon that was wrapping itself round her tighter and tighter.
    Stay home alone, don’t think about Marinka, watch TV, read books. Nothing feels right, you’re all fingers and thumbs, everything’s wrong: it’s your own fault, you’re to blame for everything. You wasted an entire month. You didn’t earn any money, and it doesn’t look as if you’re going to earn any. You waded in to save Marinka, who coped perfectly well on her own. You forgot that first of all you have to think about
Mom.
What are you going to say when Mom comes back from Greece? Leave the curtains closed for days on end, never change your clothes, never go outside, slouch around the apartment in nothing but a T-shirt, smoke the grass you found in Mom’s desk, float in a scalding-hot bath, drink black coffee and feel as if the apartment is full of gray threads of cobweb… they mesh together round your body, weaving into a cocoon, drag across the parquet in pellets, like a convict’s ball. You’ll never achieve anything. You can’t work, not even as a courier. You’re no good for anything.
    You tried masturbating, but that didn’t help for long. At that time you still managed without any additional equipment, your fantasies were enough. Ever since you were little you liked to imagine yourself as a princess abducted by fierce bandits, or a young lady sold into the sultan’s harem. When you got a bit older, the pretentiousness of these scenes began to irritate you slightly, so gradually the settings lost their splendor and everything was reduced to the interaction of two or three bodies, ropes, a gag and a whip. The imaginary torment is better than thinking about what
Mom
will say when she finally gets back: the pain and the shame were the same as in reality, but your dark subterranean fantasies worked like an alchemical retort, smelting them into pleasure. It swept over you in a warm wave and retreated, leaving behind on the seashore snatches of thoughts, fragments of images, a despair so solid, it felt as if you could touch it with your damp fingers.
    Despair? No, this is not despair, it is anguish, concentrated anguish, a stifling feeling, a constant ringing in the ears, the flow of your own blood, darkness, darkness – the dark cloud will hang on the folds of your clothes, cling to the bulges of your face and the hairs stuck to your forehead, the gnawed ends of your fingers.
    One morning you woke up in a puddle of blood. At first you just thought your period had started, but then you realized that when you went to bed, you took a knife with you and covered the insides of your thighs with cuts as you were going to sleep. You couldn’t remember anything, not this time or the others. Fortunately the cuts weren’t deep and the knife hadn’t caught any veins, but you were frightened.
    You had to do something – and you forced yourself to go outside. You bought
Megalopolis-Express
from a newspaper kiosk and an article found by chance gave you the answer to the question “What should I do?” You phoned Marinka, and a week later you met your first dominant lover. He was called Nikita, and your body still responds to that name, even though eight years have gone by now. Nikita is far away, and none of your other playmates can console you either. You put your toys away in