My guts are being eaten away by an unknown insect with a perfectly rounded belly and uneven antennae, its little feet bristling out in all directions; it gnaws, gnaws away. I grab it by one little leg, pinching tightly on one spot, thinking: “Aha! Got you! Now you’re in my hands!”
But no, the insect crawls out and starts once again to burrow into my innards. And I grab its belly, round like a circus ring, or an antenna, and again I dangle it in front of my eyes.
That reminds me of Uncle Gleb’s lice hunt. One day at my new school was enough for me to catch lice, and so Uncle Gleb—who strangely enough had no women or visitors around that day—plucked the insects out of my hair and put them on a white sheet of paper, catching them with his fingernails by their round, bursting bellies, full of my blood. Having squished a dozen, he got tired of groping through my coarse curls and suggested we go to the hairdresser and shave it all off.
We went out of our block and winded our way between the other blocks, coming out on Muranovskaya Street where we took our place in line for the hairdresser. First, Uncle Gleb got his own hair cut so as not to arouse suspicion, then asked her to shave mine.
The hairdresser was shocked: why shave such a mass of curls, like Angela Davis’s?! But Uncle Gleb blamed the hot summer, and the hairdresser began to shear my curls with her electric razor. Having shorn half my head, she suddenly let out a squeal: “Lice!” and flung the razor to the floor.
“Lice!” she shrieked, her voice carrying through the whole salon.
“You should have stayed in Africa and not come down from the trees!”
At first I didn’t understand what Africa had to do with lice or trees, but as Uncle Gleb grabbed my hand, I understood that she was referring to me, not to the lice. Everyone was shouting, scolding, chasing us out, and we retreated: with my half-shaved head, Uncle Gleb fully humiliated…
Back home, Uncle Gleb first read the Handbook of Home Medicine, then went downstairs to get some petrol from the neighbors who had a car. Then he made me wash my hair with that disgusting stuff and then again and again with household soap. Having dried my half-hair with the hair dryer, he started to lop my curls off with a pair of scissors. When every inch of the bathroom was covered with my hair, he once again made me smear my head with household soap, and he shaved my head with his safety razor, changing blade after blade.
If Mommy could have seen me she would have died back into this world from that other one. But fine, lice can be drowned, if not with kerosene then with petrol, and if not at the hairdresser’s then with a simple razor at home. But how do you get rid of this unknown insect, crawling through the darkness, with a round belly, antennae of different length, legs that bristle out in different directions? How do you get rid of the insect growing inside me?