The morning after he and Vera fought and then made up proved depressing. The gray sky was falling along with the snow, causing fits of some peculiar despair. The inadequacy he felt upon making a trip to the bathroom only deepened his foul mood. Iratov caught himself thinking that he wanted to grab his tool like a real man and send a taut stream into the toilet—or at least near it.
For some reason, he didn’t want to see Vera at all. Some new attitude toward her had settled in his chest. He understood that a person who can’t do it almost always experiences feelings of enmity toward those who can … and do. Iratov tried to chase those thoughts away, telling himself that he could overcome all of it, and that what he’d lost wasn’t the most important part of his relationship with the woman he loved.
He drank some coffee with a splash of cognac.
“It’s a bit early,” he thought. “Not even nine yet.”
With a menacing squeak, all the computer monitors in his study turned on at once. Leaving his unfinished coffee behind, Mr. Iratov ran over to the desk, glanced at the graphs displayed on the screens, sat down, visited several business websites, and realized that he’d lost something on the order of fifty million dollars that morning. The stock markets of China, Japan, and all of Asia had collapsed, falling by almost 7 percent.
One must give Mr. Iratov his due, though. He always kept his head in those situations. He held that both triumphs and reversals on the market were inevitable, and they generally balanced each other out. There would always be busts, various Black Mondays and Fridays, but there was no precedent for markets failing to return to their historical maximums, even if it took them a while. Patience was the most important quality for an investor. Slumps come and go, but the green rally will still lead humanity ever upward. Iratov wrote a few emails to his brokers and instructed them to minimize his losses by betting against the currencies of developing countries, telling them which pairs would be most advantageous.
Mr. Iratov turned away from his financial affairs and looked at the news. Not finding anything of interest, he could think of nothing better to do than type his own name into the search bar and press enter. There was no news about him personally either. Not even knowing why, he pressed the “images” button and saw numerous versions of his face. He looked at his young self winning various architecture prizes, then posing in his Bentley with some hip girl band, whom he’d unhurriedly plowed one after another, followed by endless parties and gatherings of every kind. He saw a rich, steady, confident man with a magical face that had enchanted a great many members of the opposite sex, from small-town airheads to Hollywood stars. Next came photographs where he was already with Vera. Formal events, the fashionable catwalks his wife loved, theater premieres, and even an official photograph of Mr. Arseny Andreivich Iratov receiving the Fourth-Class Medal of the Order of Merit for the Fatherland from the President of the Russian Federation.
Iratov finished with the public photographs and moved on to his personal collection. He looked through the shots from his life, sometimes happy and sometimes less so. He even had a photo from his trial, when he was young—full face and in profile. He found himself remembering the prison camp near Vladimir, but he chased away those negative thoughts by clicking on the album labeled “USA.” Then he was young again, a rich speculator from Moscow who had just emigrated to America through Israel—tremendously rich, in fact, by the standards of the time … There he was, meeting the drivers of his own fleet of taxis. A hundred émigrés who owed their medallions to him, assembled and harkening to his speech. Iratov had been the one who figured out how to chase the Indian drivers and the other old-time aces who had historically dominated the New York taxi business out of Brighton Beach. Outsiders and yellow cabs were only allowed to bring passengers into Brighton. There was no taking them the other direction; they’d always run empty. The residents of that half of Brooklyn could, and did, hire their own drivers—and much more cheaply, too. It couldn’t have been done without the help of the numerous boxers who had come to seek their fame and fortune in the American ring, only to fall one after another, like unripe apples in a strong wind. It was them, the sorcerers of pugilism, hungry as wolves, who ousted the interlopers from Brighton Beach … Then some gangster types tried to gain influence over him. They had arrived in the Land of the Free to hide from the Motherland’s justice and were once again appropriating other ethnic groups’ spheres of influence. They even knifed a couple of young athletes, who retaliated by gunning down some gangsters … But as a young man, Iratov had sworn that he’d never get mixed up with the pigs, and he had kept his word, despite all the problems dealing with gangsters had caused him. He resolved them quietly, with the help of a few diplomats who were actually GRU agents. Dealing with cops was beneath him, but spooks were cool … Photographs of his mother and father. They had both died while he was abroad. His father had a massive heart attack, then his mother followed him into the next world—quietly, the English way. She withered away without her husband and son … But for some reason, Iratov thought of his father more often—his head hunched over his drafting table, a funny little man with nearly red hair …
Then he returned to Russia, a renewed country concealing within itself unlimited opportunities for those seeking to rise to Olympian heights of success. Mr. Iratov thrived. Thanks to his enormous financial resources, he opened his own architecture firm and assembled an energetic young staff. Within three months, he had designed an apartment building for major theater and film figures, which was erected right in the heart of Moscow. He ran around like an errand boy, visiting all those Honored Artists and Actors of the Soviet Union, making sure everything was set up properly, the interior design was comfortable, and the bathroom containing both toilet and shower—nearly unheard of in the Soviet Union—wasn’t too much of a shock … In memory of his father, who had given him his unrealized talent, Iratov had decided to bring his ideas to life, though he modernized them and added his own visionary spin. Naturally, it was impossible to put up buildings like that in Moscow; it was just boxes full of tiny apartments there—no creativity, not a drop of innovation. On the other hand, his ideas were in great demand elsewhere, both East and West. He built in Dubai, Japan, and Panama. He signed every design with his father’s name as well as his own.
Iratov would sometimes visit Staroglebsky, the former president of the institute who had allowed the ex-con to graduate and receive his diploma as an architect, and his wife. He’d bring the elderly, poverty-stricken old couple the finest groceries and, just as in his college days, present him with pipe tobacco and her with Lucky Strikes.
All his girlfriends from the institute—Shevtsova the Communist Youth League organizer, Katya the volleyball star, and all the rest—had long since gotten hitched and popped out kids. They were women now, not girls, and good for them! Iratov remembered when Shevtsova visited him after he’d returned from abroad. He had only just bought the office and started to put things in order. Chubby-cheeked, broad-bottomed, with DD breasts, she had asked nothing of him, not money, not special treatment for her husband. She just took a bottle of Moskovskaya out of her shopping bag, along with a half pound of choice sausage. She poured some vodka into the glasses she’d brought, proposed a toast to their reunion, and poured hers into herself. Iratov didn’t know how she got him going, how he wound up squeezed between her mighty legs, but Shevtsova neighed and rode him like a cavalryman. Iratov was as happy as his old girlfriend, especially when he saw her huge, firm breasts bouncing up and down—like basketballs … Then they sat there, naked, on newspapers spread across the floor, their bodies smeared with fresh whitewash, and finished the vodka.
“Do you know who invented those table glasses you brought?”
“Do glasses really have to be invented?” Shevtsova asked with a surprised laugh.
“The famous architect Mukhina came up with the idea of a glass with facets. She improved the design of nails, too!”
“No kiddin’?”
“Yeah.”
“Don’t worry, Iratov. I won’t come here again. I’m not unfaithful to my husband. I just wanted to remember the old days!”
“Where’s Katya?”
“Katya?” The former Communist Youth League girl was already dressed and adjusting her skirt. “She was working the Hotel National for a while, then she bought the farm in Turkey …”
“Strange times …”
“I’m off,” Shevtsova declared. “Gotta pick the kids up from school. Take care!” Iratov never saw her again.
Once he had finished setting up the office and gotten to work on the practical aspects of architecture—in close collaboration with the mayor of Moscow—the line of visitors at his door was as long as at Lenin’s mausoleum. These were people who had come to see him personally. Some of them were proposing joint projects, going into oil or what have you, but he always refused.
“Me, go into oil, really?” he’d say. Others suggested doing some joint design work. It was a boundless field, but he knew what he was about. What the hell did he need partners for? But mostly they were petitioners: old acquaintances, his friends, his parents’ friends. He threw the swindlers and interlopers out on their ears but helped the ones he actually recognized as best he could.
One day, when Iratov was busy negotiating with some shifty businessmen from Singapore, his assistant, Vitya, informed him that an older woman had showed up with a kid of about fifteen.
“Move it to tomorrow!” Mr. Iratov instructed.
“She is prepared to wait. She said she won’t have the nerve to come again.”
“Why can’t it be tomorrow?”
“She is not certain that she wants to see you, but this seems important.”
“Did she introduce herself at least?”
“Yes,” Vitya replied. “She says her name is Svetlana.” He turned that name around in his mind for a while, but it didn’t ring a bell. He still asked his assistant to have the petitioners give him another fifteen minutes.
“Bring them in during the break.”
“Very good, Mr. Iratov.” When the aging, simply dressed woman and the kid stepped into his office, he was fully convinced that he had no clue who she was, but the boy … He said hello, asked them to sit down, and inquired to what he owed this honor.
“I told you he wouldn’t recognize me,” the woman said, turning toward her son. Iratov really didn’t recognize her. But that voice! There was something in its melody that sent his soul into the past, into his late teens. He thought hard … “Let’s go,” she said quietly to the kid.
They rose from their cozy armchairs, the woman apologized for disturbing him, Iratov nodded in both parting and pardon … He sat there for a few minutes, his gaze detached, still lost in remembrance of his youth. When he had almost broken loose, flown out of his heavy meditative state, when his thoughts had nearly jumped over the boundary dividing past and present, Iratov burst from his stupor, suddenly remembering. It couldn’t be! He sprang out of his chair and, leaving his jacket behind, his collar unbuttoned, charged after that strange pair, running down the street, looking in every direction, searching for her with pain and passion in his eyes. When he saw them standing by the trolleybus stop, poplar fuzz falling on their shoulders, he shouted as he had once shouted in his youth, in blinkered impotence and despair.
“Svetla-a-n-a!” The name carried down the avenues and alleyways of Moscow. “Svetla-a-n-a!”
She turned around. He was already running toward her, and his hair fluttered in the wind. He stopped in front of her, still breathing rapidly.
“Svetlana! Is it really you?”
She nodded. He convinced her to come back to the office and led her into his private room, where he made coffee and broke up a big chocolate bar.
“So … how are you?” he asked, taking her hands in his. Her palms were soft and moist.
“Well … how can I tell you about my whole life?”
“You’re right … Maybe the boy can take a tour of the office in the meantime? We have a big sheet of Whatman paper you can draw on,” Iratov said, turning toward Svetlana’s son—and once again, he felt like he had seen that face before. “We have a thousand felt-tips!”
“Okay,” the boy agreed, and a minute later Vitya had taken him away to explore the architecture firm.
“Well, how are you?” “You already asked that,” she said with a smile.
“Yeah …”
He sat there in silence, suddenly realizing that he had nothing to say to her. Their shared past had been so fleeting, like a single night and day, but it contained his first love and his first true suffering.
“How’s that husband of yours?”
She shrugged, and Iratov felt an unbearably strong desire to hold the past against her: the package sent from an exotic land, stealing his naiveté. But he just couldn’t. It’s impossible to be mad at the aging woman who saved you from spending your life with an aging woman. You just have to thank her!
He put his head in her lap, and she stroked his hair just as she once had, twisting his black ringlets around her fingers. Iratov realized he could only do this with her—bury his face in her lap and let himself be a little weak. His mother was dead, and it had never even occurred to him to put his trust in the women who came in and out of his life. He asked her son’s name.
“Arseny …”
“Like me. Did you name him after me?”
“No, after the poet, Tarkovsky.”
“Oh yeah … that’s good … Arseny Gryazev.”
“Arseny Iratov,” Svetlana corrected him, and her knees were suddenly tense.
He had never given serious thought to children before, nor was he inclined to now. Hearing such startling, fateful information that could change his life forever didn’t even make Iratov flinch. For an instant, he thought that Svetlana was pinning Gryazev’s kid on him, but he immediately understood that it wasn’t like that. He also realized what he had recognized in the boy’s face—himself, his own face at thirteen.
“What should I do?” he asked, lifting his head from her lap.
“I don’t know,” Svetlana replied. “I just thought that you should know about your son.”
“Why are you only telling me now?”
“You wouldn’t have believed me before. I was never your wife … and why ruin your life? You were a splendid young man …”
Iratov looked out the window, and, for a moment, he felt like he could see it—the nightgown he had once given her, fluttering on a crooked poplar branch, saturated with the smell of all those bitches who had slept in it after Svetlana, whom he’d banged in it with primal, animal intensity, as if he could eradicate her smell from his nostrils …
“I don’t want to be in his life,” Iratov stated harshly. “The decision to keep the child was yours. You were living with Gryazev back then! While I was almost dying.” She rose from her armchair. Her expression had not changed.
“I had to tell you at least. All the best.” She left the room. Embarrassed by his surge of nostalgia, he wasn’t planning on running after her again. That embarrassment had turned into vexation mixed with resentment, and he had to drink a large serving of cognac to expand his blood vessels and neutralize his adrenaline. Vitya reappeared.
“Your son?” he asked, smiling widely and showing his luxurious white teeth.
“Go screw yourself!” Iratov growled furiously. His face was contorted with rage his assistant could not comprehend, and his eyes were protruding from their sockets. “Go screw yourself!”
He stopped remembering. It wasn’t any fun …
Let it be noted that he later tracked Svetlana down and helped her out with some anonymous bank transfers. He wasn’t driven by a sense of duty; it just seemed like the sensible thing to do.
Iratov turned off the computer and went into the kitchen, where he made himself three fried eggs with tomatoes in silence. He ate, trying not to dwell on those bad memories, and then drank about two shots’ worth of cognac.
Mr. Iratov decided not to go into the office that day. Instead, he had to go up to Vera’s apartment and try to sort out how the current state of affairs would affect their relationship. He wanted to play a doubles game at four and then visit the massage therapist … actually, he could forgo the massage for now …
He was already closing the door behind him when he heard his phone; he’d forgotten it on his desk. He had to go back and answer it. It was his assistant, Vitya, calling, the one he’d chewed out not half an hour ago.
“What do you want?” he asked somewhat gruffly.
“May I connect you with downtown, Mr. Iratov?”
“Is it urgent?”
“The young man did not introduce himself, but he is being terribly insistent—as if his life were at stake!”
“Come on, Vitya, somebody’s life is always at stake …”
“Shall I tell him ‘no’?”
“No, connect me, if it’s life and death …”
“Okay …” Iratov heard background music for a few seconds, and then there was a click, followed by an unfamiliar voice. The man it belonged to was apparently quite young indeed.
“Yes …” The man didn’t sound nearly as desperate as Vitya had led him to believe. “Who am I speaking to?”
“Yourself …” the voice informed him.
“I regret to say that I do not have the time to spare for idiotic jokes!” Iratov answered harshly, already planning to give Vitya another tongue-lashing—one more screwup like this and he’d find himself out of work. Mr. Iratov wanted to sever the connection, but then he heard a warning on the other end.
“Don’t hang up! I’m calling about something very important to you!”
“Is that right?”
“I know what happened to you.”
“I don’t follow …”
“Have you lost anything important recently?”
“Start making sense or I will end this call.”
“Have you lost a certain part of your body recently?”
“Who was it?” Iratov wondered. “Did that prick Sytin sell me out?” Nobody but him and Vera knew … No doubt about it, they were trying to blackmail him, a mighty man as hard as stone.
“I don’t give in to blackmail!” Mr. Iratov warned him. “Moreover, I respond to such acts harshly, and, rest assured, you will soon find out how harsh I can be.”
“I know very well how harsh you can be. More precisely, I know everything about you, down to the most trivial detail … Well, for example, you lost almost fifty million dollars today and made a big bet against the yuan. I know that you personally gave the order for Interlopin to be tortured in prison …”
“Who’s that?”
“That petty criminal who once caught you sharking when you were in high school. Then they punched you in the face every day for a month, and so you got the nickname ‘Yakut’ because your face was so swollen. The year before last, when they cornered Interlopin in the Vyatka prison camp and stuck a shank in his liver, they accompanied the deed with the words ‘Remember Yakut?’ You’re Yakut, if I’m not mistaken. No, I’m not mistaken! By the way, while Interlopin was dying, he still couldn’t remember who Yakut was …”
Iratov didn’t say anything. Powerful legs spread, head down, he looked like a bull enraged by brazen picadors. He wasn’t afraid, but, unlike a bull, he had no target in front of him, which made his belly burn from the inside with crackling fury.
“What do you want?” he muttered into the phone.
“Want? Well, nothing at all, really. Perhaps something to eat? I’m hungry.”
“You want some money for a couple of hot dogs?”
“Let me visit you. I’ll only need an hour. Meanwhile, you can have Vera whip something up. I’m far from finicky.”
“Now you listen here—I don’t know your name—” Iratov said with a scowl.
“Eugene. My name is Eugene.”
“Well, Eugene, Vera has nothing to do with our …” He wanted to say ‘business’ but he edited his own inclination. “Problems. She can stay right where she is—but you can come see me.”
“At your apartment?”
“Precisely.”
“As a matter of fact, Vera has a great deal to do with our problems,” he said, emphasizing the last two words. “A great deal! I know you’re fuming right now, but please believe me, I am not a toreador, and I have no desire to thrust a sword into your heart!”
“Fuck! Just get over here, you weasel!”
When the buzzer went off and Mr. Iratov went over to the door, he’d already regained his composure, his powerful fingers gripping an engraved Makarov pistol. The desire to kill the stranger was so strong that Iratov was afraid he would snap and shoot him right through the forehead instead of in the leg.
“Who is it?”
“It’s me, Eugene. However, I must ask you to put the weapon away. It has the potential to harm both of us.”
Iratov raised the hand with the pistol, intending to strike the blackmailer with the butt when he came in while the other hand opened the lock for him. When Mr. Iratov saw the man’s face, he instinctively lurched back. Standing in the door was … him—just thirty years younger. The black-clad youth was smiling, pale, and feeble-looking. Mr. Iratov lowered the pistol.
“Are you Svetlana’s son?”
“Whose son? Ah, of course … No. I’m … how to put it … well, don’t blow your top. Let’s not stand here in the doorway, I really am quite hungry …”
“Follow me!” Mr. Iratov commanded, still holding the pistol, the barrel pointed at the ceiling.
“Alright …” They went into the kitchen. Mr. Iratov opened the grand refrigerator. “Be my guest!”
Eugene broke off a third of a baguette, grabbed some sliced pork roast with his hands, and began eating greedily. He took a bite out of a tomato and a red splash painted the wall. A fly—God knows why it had awakened in winter—instantly went for the bloody stain. He drank a bottle of Mozhaisk milk and politely released the air he’d swallowed into his clenched fist.
“You were saying?” Iratov inquired when the young man was finally wiping his mouth with a napkin.
“Yes, of course.” Eugene coughed briefly, clearing his throat. “I am not Svetlana’s son … I am … Well, how should I put it … The flesh and blood of Andrei Iratov and Anna Rymnikova. Your parents …” Iratov felt an overwhelming desire to shoot him. His knuckles went white.
“Are you trying to say that we’re brothers?”
“What? What are you talking about? Of course not!”
“So who are you?” Iratov was losing his composure again.
“I’ve already told you. Do you really not get it?”
“I’ll blow your head off!”
“I am you! What don’t you get?”
Mr. Iratov went up to the young man and pressed the muzzle of the pistol to his forehead. “Start talking. You have twenty seconds!”
“A short while ago, you lost a body part, a rather important one, under strange circumstances …”
“Who gave you that information? Sytin?”
“Oh no, Sytin has his own problems to deal with. May I ask you to move that pistol away from my brain?” Iratov trained it on Eugene’s heart, worrying that Vera may’ve been the one responsible for the leak.
“Keep going!” he commanded.
“Your blood pressure is through the roof!”
“Yours is about to be nothing!”
“Why are you so dense?” Now Eugene was getting angry. “I’m trying to explain to you that I am the body part you lost! That’s me!”
Iratov gave the young man a short, sharp blow to the head with the butt of his pistol, and he slid down the wall and on to the floor, staining the silk wallpaper with blood.
“Bastard!” Iratov barked, but Eugene couldn’t hear him in his newly unconscious state.
Mr. Iratov settled into an armchair and studied the pale, placid face of this new arrival. His resentful rage had passed, and he was struggling to understand what all of this meant. These events seemed strange, to put it mildly, rather peculiar and theatrical. Iratov tried to systematize this information, starting with the recent past. The loss of his copulative organ, Sytin, the sapphire, the market downturn, his darling Vera … it all interwove into a knot of meaninglessness, but he had the strangest feeling he could see something inside.
“What nonsense!” Iratov said aloud.
He kept staring into the new arrival’s pale face, seeing himself as a young speculator. He unexpectedly realized who the injured man was, got up, took a bottle of water out of the refrigerator and dumped half of it over his head. Eugene groaned but opened his eyes almost immediately.
“You really did hit me!”
“You really managed to piss me off.”
“You just aren’t listening to what I’m saying!” The young man touched his head and then looked at his bloody fingers. “Why did you have to go overboard like that? I didn’t ask you for anything. I didn’t do anything to you, and you’re whacking me in the head with a gun …”
“Are you Vorontsova’s son?”
“Oh come on! You have a logical brain. I’m barely eighteen, and Alevtina was killed in ’84. So if I were her son, I would be thirty, at the absolute least. Do I look thirty?”
“No …” Iratov admitted, throwing his guest a kitchen towel. “Clean yourself up.”
The young man gathered his wits and suggested deferring this conversation, inasmuch as it was going so poorly.
“Perhaps we should meet in the afternoon, once we’ve all settled down a bit?”
Mr. Iratov did some figuring. What might the risks be if this young man revealed such compromising information about him? “Well, how do things stack up?” he thought. “Suppose he says I’m missing my sexual organs. Who would believe him? What if he talks about Interlopin? There’s nothing to tie me to some small-fry con getting murdered on the inside—I’m a distinguished citizen. He knows I lost some money. Who gives a damn?” No, he didn’t see anything dangerous about it.
“Where?”
“Where will we meet, you mean?”
“Precisely.”
“How about the Donskoy Cemetery?”
“Why a cemetery?”
“You’ve never been to your parents’ grave before. I hope that being in their presence will make you calm enough to be no danger to me. Would five o’clock be convenient for you?”
“Sure.”
Mr. Iratov did finally muster the resolve to go up to Vera’s place. She greeted her husband with a bright-and-early smile, though it was fast approaching noon.
“How are you?” she asked, kissing him on the cheek.
Iratov thought back to the events of his day, from hearing that the market had crashed to paying himself a visit—nuts, right? Granted, he was about forty years younger, but still …
“Everything’s fine, my darling.”
“Well, that’s marvelous. Have you had breakfast?”
“Yes, I got up very early. I’ll have some coffee, though.” Vera smiled her sublime smile and headed into the kitchen. Iratov studied her from behind and thought about how perfect she was: back straight as a ballerina’s, flawlessly cast butt, and legs that made your head spin with their sheer interminability. His eyes filled with tears. Mr. Iratov turned away and hopelessly put one hand between his legs.
“Lord,” he whispered. “I really do believe in you. And I believe that your acts are always just … ! I give thanks to you, my Lord. May your hallowed name shine through the ages!” He thought of the suffering of Job, comparing it to his own and regained his confidence that instant. Job was the one who really had it rough … The Lord giveth when he sees fit and taketh away when he sees fit. Granted, the angels were the ones who stirred things up this time, but still …
Vera returned with a tray. She served the coffee and inquired if he would like a newspaper. He thanked her, but since he had already heard the news of the day, he ventured the opinion that it would be far more enjoyable to drink his coffee and look at her.
“Have you thought of something to do with the sapphire?”
“No … should I have?”
“No, not if you weren’t so inclined. Would you like to come to the cemetery with me?”
“Has someone died?”
“Oh no. I’d like to visit my parents’ grave …”
Iratov didn’t know why he had invited Vera. It was like one of those troublemaker angels had pulled him along by the ear. But she was so happy for him she was nearly glowing; he was finally ready to do something he’d never done before, and not doing it for so long must have been weighing on his soul like some great sin. Perhaps now that sin would be forgiven, and his soul would be at peace …
“Good for you!” she said approvingly. She was also very pleased that he was taking her with him, treating her as the person closest to him, as his wife. In that instant, her desire to become a mother returned very strongly, to have this man’s child and live happily ever after with him. He had seemingly overheard her longing.
“You do understand that my member is gone, right?” he asked in such a casual, everyday tone that he might have been telling her he’d just had a shave.
“Yes …” Vera replied, her large eyes downcast.
“What do you think about a prosthetic?”
“That’s for you to decide.”
“Of course …” He finished his coffee, rose from his armchair, and promised his wife that he would come back for her at 4:30. For now, he was off to play doubles, as he did every Tuesday. “I have to sort myself out! I’m either half dead from quitting my meds, or I’m … well …” he said resignedly and then left.
Stacking the coffee service on the tray again, Vera thought despairingly that things would never be the same … The word “never” was as frightening as a terminal diagnosis. She was scared! Really scared …