After the fire he found out that Buratina had survived and was in the hospital, pregnant. He was afraid to visit her. But he did visit the burn site right before he went into the army. His three years’ service were pretty cushy, stationed at a garrison kitchen in Baltiisk. He was eventually discharged and went back to those windows, but Buratina was gone. Her Kalmyk father was watching television in the next window; her mother was bustling around the kitchen. He kept going back there for two weeks. After dark. He started culinary school, graduated, and wound up at the cafeteria where he’d worked to this day. He’d lived unsociably, especially after his hard-drinking parents both died. He never married. He gratified his urges (occasionally, on days he got an advance or a paycheck) with train station prostitutes, whom he threw out after coitus. Had they known that he could barely stop himself from strangling them as he was ejaculating, they would have thanked their lucky stars.
Later he moved on to self-service, thanks to progress: there probably wasn’t a better collection of porn films in Moscow.
“Bolt was better than you, just fat. He didn’t jerk off under my window. He came to me honestly and said, ‘Give me some, Buratinachka, just once. What’s it to you?’ Hee hee hee! He’d come down to my place. We lived near each other, remember? Like he had a question about biology.” (Buratina was good at biology; she’d wanted to go to medical school.) “He’d come and sit down and breathe hard, like a sperm whale … He’d bring me that book … what was it? About the Italians who told stories.”
“
“That’s it! He said he’d taken it from his parents. He’s reading it out loud and squeezing his thigh … And he stinks to high heaven, Ryaba, from cologne. He must have poured half a bottle on himself so I’d give him some. I even thought maybe I should. Why let the guy suffer? But I decided—first Mesropych … I wanted him to pop my cherry, hee hee hee! Then we’d see! I had some real studs, didn’t I, Polkan boy?” Buratina scratches the dog’s scruff again. “I’m a whore! I’d give some to Polkan, but the animal gets me all scratched up. What do you expect? Hee hee hee!”
Ryabets remembers. He remembers very well. He remembers Buratina being the only girl in their class—to the envy of the other girls and the greater dissatisfaction of Pichuga, their homeroom teacher—to wear lacy stockings, which made Ryaba’s heart race.
“Remember, Ryaba, the story in that book when one woman arranges to meet him at her house? He comes, and the maid says, ‘Wait a little, her husband’s there …’ And she—the maid, that is—gets it on with the man. That guy was out in the cold all night! Just like you! Hee hee hee. But later he had his revenge, he drove her out on the roof, I think … Right?”
Buratina takes the bottle and finishes it off in one swig.
“Whoo! All right, Ryaba, what the hell. You can’t bring ’em back. Not Bolt, not Mesropych, not Lidukha. I don’t remember the others.” She suddenly falls over, first on her side, then facedown. “But you, Ryaba, you’re not getting any. I was going to give you some, but I’m not. Sleep, my beloved children.”
Her hands stroke the rough grass and fall still.
Ryabets has a headache. He shuts his eyes. He should be getting up. It’s late. He’s not going to spend the night here, on her children’s bones. Or is this crazy woman lying? Though no, she said some sensible things too. Such a strange day. But there’s still the newspaper. His mother didn’t give him up when that detective came poking around. He’d asked,
Crackle, pain, heat. Ryabets opens his eyes and sees Buratina, her arm raised, holding the bottle—the moon’s predatory reflection on its jagged edges. She’s going to kill me! He moves to the side, Buratina falls—crack!—a red rose plunges into the sand.
“Bitch,” he whistles, clutching her shoulders and pressing her to the ground. “You wanted to kill me?”
