But the corpse of that bum did not vanish without glory: it had a short but successful career as an actor in an anatomical theater. The medical students showered him with bouquets of twinkling scalpels …
She was impressed that her students—Chuniaev and Golotsvan—were not only falling behind in every subject, while also, as it turned out, committing murders. This permitted her hatred toward them to acquire some firm ground. The testosterone was jumping out of Chuniaev’s and Golotsvan’s mouths, ears, noses, and even from under their fingernails …
Once, on television, she saw a news segment about a group of students who raped and murdered their phys-ed teacher. This happened somewhere on the outskirts of the city, which Danaë, a Muscovite, could imagine about as vaguely as she could the Flemish city of Brabant. Watching Golotsvan as he shuffled at the blackboard with his hands in the pockets of his wide jeans, which were covered with chains and trinkets, Danaë imagined him, with hands shaking, hastily unbuttoning his foul-smelling pants and throwing himself at her with his horn-shaped prick. She, Danaë, is lying crucified in the tar, naked, while Golotsvan’s partners in crime hold her by the arms and legs; she struggles in their trap like a deer knocked onto her back. First Golotsvan, and then the rest of the goons, one by one, press against her with their unwashed genitalia, toss on her for a bit, then sprinkle her with what God gave them, and … experience a piercing guilt. Then, ashamed, they break her neck, or choke her with a wire, or stab her to death with penknives …
“And that’s all you deigned to learn, venerable Golotsvan?”
“I didn’t have time, Dana Innokentievna, my cat had kittens last night.”
“How many did she have?”
“Six. Would you like a kitten, Dana Innokentievna?”
“Take a seat, Golotsvan. You get a ‘satisfactory.’”
“Why ‘satisfactatory’? Please, Dana Innokentievna—”
“Take your seat.”
Grumbling under his breath, with his lower lip jutting forward, Golotsvan went back to his seat, jangling the chains and trinkets on his foul-smelling pants. His hands in his pockets. Danaë picked up a piece of chalk and turned to the board.
“Jewish bitch …” Golotsvan muttered.
Without turning around, Danaë grinned at the mouse-gray smoothness of the chalkboard. A thought came to her:
It would be natural to assume that since Danaë had a father, she also had a mother. Danaë didn’t like assumptions, particularly if they came from strangers. First of all, the mom she did in fact have at some point, she had no longer. Second, Mom loved her little Danaë for only a very short time: from zero to nine years old, plus the nine months that she spent carrying her daughter in her womb. And when the nine years were over, Mom placed a big down pillow on her sleeping daughter’s pretty little face, and then sat on top of it. Dad had lifted Mom off the pillow—and thus also off the red face of their daughter—just in time. After that, Danaë never saw her mom again. With the exception of that one time, which she had mostly forgotten: she and her dad had, it seems, visited Mom in some sort of yellow basement that smelled like medical syringes. Now, of course, Danaë knows all too well, and had known it for twenty-plus years, that the awful trick with the down pillow secured for Mom her demise in the mad house.
“Mom loves you,” Karaklev assured his nine-year-old daughter as she cried herself to sleep. “She just needs a little medical treatment and she’ll be with us again. Mom loves you.”
“And do
“And I do too,” Dad replied, taken aback that she would question his feelings. “Very, very, very much. Daddy loves his little pea, his clever girl.”
* * *
