Moscow Noir полностью

Buratina is silent, and for a moment her back is tense under Ryabets’s hands, but then it goes slack. He holds her down with his knees and moves his hands to her neck. Blood drips black on her hair. He smells fresh urine. Finding the thyroid cartilage, he presses and presses on it from both sides, vividly imagining her anatomy. A quiet whistle like from a bicycle tire, and then silence. Off to the side Polkan’s shadow is wagging its tail, baring its teeth. “Nadya, Nadya!”

“You never read The Decameron?” Boltyansky exclaims.

Ryabets doesn’t like Boltyansky. That he’s fat is bad enough, but he has those sticky little hands and those manicured nails, damnit. On top of it all, Boltyansky keeps bringing porn to school, photos blurry from being copied so many times. Girls with big tits and grayish bodies (the result of the copying) straddling muscle-bound guys. Or offering up their cushiony asses. Or spreading their lips. One look is all it takes and then there is strawberry jam all over the floor.

Boltyansky shows the photos in his hand, gripping them with his little pink fingers. If for the others the viewings are a standard diversion, it’s different for Ryabets. The sticky feeling has degenerated into horror at a female’s touch, be it a hand, elbow, accidental breast, or innocent hair. Even his mother’s touch—extremely rare, fortunately—repulses him. If Praskovya Fyodorovna so much as strokes his head when she’s tipsy, it turns his stomach and make his insides clench up.

“Droll Stories too. That’s Balzac,” Boltyansky preaches. They’re walking home from school.

“Can I read it?”

“I’ll bring it tomorrow. I’ll bring The Decameron, not Balzac. Balzac’s in a series. My parents would notice. They don’t let me lend books. The Decameron’s better than Balzac anyway. Balzac just has one weird story, about how he disguised himself as a woman so he could fuck her. Well, I mean, first he’d make friends and all that, you know, and then he’d fuck her. The rest is just boring. The Decameron’s more interesting.”

Boltyansky does bring The Decameron, a fat blue volume with an elegantly lettered title, and gives Ryabets a two-week deadline. Ryabets skims the yellowed pages and sets it aside. Final exams are starting soon.

“Wouldn’t you know? The minute I climb off her, the bell! She goes to the door and wipes off the blood, all scared. ‘Who’s there?’ Boltyansky: ‘It’s me, Nadya.’ Her: ‘Damn! What do you want?’ Him: ‘Want to go for a walk?’ Ha ha ha!” Mesropov nearly falls down laughing. “Just imagine. A walk!”

“What did she say?” Ryabets’s lips are dry. He and Mesropov are standing in the schoolyard. The graduation party is starting in half an hour. Everyone’s already been drinking and they’re sharing the news half-soused.

“She’s practically rolling in laughter. Well, I sneak up from behind while she’s talking to him through the door and give it to her good! If only Bolt could have seen what we were doing four inches away!”

Six months before, Mesropov had vowed that before graduation night he was going to pop the cherry of one of their classmates. Fiercely handsome and ox-eyed, he drove the girl crazy.

“I just came and he says again, ‘Nadya, Nadya’”—Mesropov mimicked Boltyansky’s squeaky voice—“‘Let’s go for a walk …’ Well, I yanked the door open! Just as I was, no underpants, only a T-shirt! And a rubber flapping in my hand. Catch! Bolt’s eyes bug out and he runs! Ha ha ha!”

“What about her?” Ryabets is breathing fast.

“Who? Nadya? Nadya’s fine, Ryaba, just fine. She plays along! We fucked like bunnies for hours. Whoo! I can barely stand up. So we’re going to Silver Pine Forest tomorrow, right, Ryaba? Nadya’s got this friend, Lidukha. She’s little but she’s got titties out the wazoo! I’d rather have Lidukha, but Nadya … It’s nice there, in the forest. Never been? Tons of bushes! ‘Under every bush she kept a table set and a home!’ Ha ha ha!”

Some other classmates come up and Mesropov starts recounting his adventure.

“Bolt gave me The Decameron to read,” Ryabets says when he’s finished.

“What? The De-cam-er-on? Give me a break! That Decameron’s kid stuff. Ever heard ‘Luka Mudischev’? The actor Vesnik does it. ‘The Mudischev clan was ancient, it had a patrimony, villages, and giant firs!’ Come over, I’ll play it! The Decameron. Hah! Kid stuff, Ryaba, kid stuff!”

“It all depends on your imagination,” Tregubov the intellectual interposes weightily. “Some guys can get off on a keyhole. I don’t think The Decameron’s half bad. Quattrocento, feast during the plague … Italy! It’s not ancient Russia. Signorine, not girls! Pinos, not pines!”

Tregubov knows what he’s talking about. In his not quite seventeen years he’s the only one in class who’s been abroad, he even lived in Italy. His father worked at the Soviet consulate in Rome.

“Pinos? Is that like a blowjob?” Mesropov.