Ye-es, I think to myself, if I don’t teach her common sense right away, when will I be able to teach her? And taking off my strap, I went up to her and she the fool grins and tempts like a cat. I grabbed a pillow, covered over her snout and marked her with a criss-cross. Like a snake she , writhed and rocked, so much so that her bones rattled, but I didn’t stop—striking crosswise—until the strap stuck to her skin.
I pulled away the pillow, sat down next to her and said:
“Just tell anybody this and I’ll kill you on the spot. I’m that kind of guy. Capisci?”
“Uh-huh,” she says through tears.
“I don’t want to have to see you naked anymore. Your goddess-like looks tempt me the way turpentine tempts a cat.”
6.
After these intimate relations, perhaps, we’d live like dumplings in butter, but our mom shriveled up. Now as the incomparable Lolita she’d only be able to satisfy the kind of guy who’d been sitting in prison for 15 years, and only if you got him good and drunk.
Our whole family gathered together around the rectangular table and begin to think how to get out of this difficult situation. Since our mom wasn’t there as before, I suggested that we should rope our auntie or my beloved wife into this business.
Hey, you should’ve seen how Uncle reacted! All of a sudden he springs up on his bow legs and starts pounding his fists on the table:
“I won’t allow it! I won’t give her to you!” He said, along with similar things flavored with peppery words.
His three nitwits grabbed for the knives and forks, as though they had taken me for a cooked turkey.
“Aha,” I say, “when my momma has been overstraining herself for the sake of the communal pocket, then you don’t say boo, but when it comes to your turn, right away you hit the brakes?!”
“I’m too weak for that kind of work,” Auntie said.
“She’s very weak,” Uncle reiterated. “I don’t wrestle with her more often than once every two days, and even then it’s scratch-scratch to get it over with quicker.”
“And that’s only when I get smacked across the mouth,” Auntie moaned. “Cause for me even every two days is too hard. It’s good that I take out my lower plate at night, cause my whole mug would be smashed otherwise.”
“Those guys are all some kind of heretics,” Momma shook her head. “Once one guy came to me who wanted just to cut out a part of my rear-end. He said that when he sees it, he begins to slobber and wants to wolf it down. When I done heard that, he never saw me again without my undies on.”
“But how did he?...” Auntie got interested, but Momma, casting a look at the children, whispered into her ear. Auntie said: “Aha!” And she got lost in thought.
“Well, good,” I thrust in. “You’re right about Auntie. Keep her exclusively for your own little rich farmer needs. Pound her muzzle and sniff if she’s breathing. But I’m a guy of the present, my morality isn’t messed up by bourgeois superstition. I’m giving up my beloved wife for the communal business.”
Ruzya, when she heard this, flared up like a fire, and lowered her eyes. It was immediately clear that she valued my sacrifice as the greatest gift fate had offered her. Finally she would shake off the heavy shackles of innocence from herself and sate her thirsty flesh.
All the rest ponderously redigested the proposition, feverishly calculating their percentages of the take. To ease those calculations, I continued:
“Since I’m her complete owner, I require 40% of the profit for myself.”
I knew what I was saying. Uncle, catching wind of money, suddenly forgot that we were talking about his daughter, and threw himself into the negotiating, knocking down the price. Auntie inserted her own:
“And how much for me? I gave birth to her! Carried her for nine months with a constant backache! Please pay me for every month.”
“Not nine, but seven,” my momma said. “I remember well. That’s why she was born so emaciated.”
“How’s that seven?” Uncle was put on the alert. “I counted well. I know what I was doing. Everything went according to plan. It can’t be seven, because they would have taken me into the army right after the wedding.”
“But Ruzya was born in the seventh month, I remember that as if it were right now. You were already serving your ninth month.”
Auntie sat with her eyes directed at the ceiling and was completely white.
Uncle slowly turned to her, looked meaningfully and, without thinking long, drove so hard into her teeth that Auntie thudded together with the armchair, throwing up her arms and legs. In her left hand she clutched her lower plate, which she had managed to pull out.
“Yep, it’s this way with dames,” Uncle shook his head and gulped down ten double-shots of moonshine without munching anything. “Twenty five and not a percentage point more.”
“Good,” I agreed.
Ruzya didn’t even grumble about her share at all, because she got all that she could ever dream of—every night five or six boys, sometimes more. This wasn’t just life, but paradise. I’d be envious if I were a girl.
That was the start of our problems. The ex-Lolita had concerned herself only with containing the voluptuous shapes that tumbled out of her clothes, but the newly cooked up Lolita, on the other hand, had ribs that jutted out like a ladder.
In order to survey well which parts of her body in fact required the hand of a maestro, Momma ordered Ruzya to undress completely. By that time Auntie had convalesced, having gotten two cuffs on the mouth from Uncle and a cup of water on her head. She put in her lower plate and started to work on business. Momma and Auntie circled around Ruzya like bumblebees, discussing what to do with this treasure.
“I’ll make titties from oakum,” Momma said. “I’ll sew them around with cheesecloth so they hold together when the client feels them up. And you, Ruzya, should moan heartily, because even though it’s oakum, when somebody grabs a girl by the tit, she has to moan and roll her eyes. That’s the rule. But what can we do with the ribs? You can play marches on them. I’m surprised, son, why you haven’t knocked on them from time to time.”
“Maybe we can cover them with dough so they don’t stick out so much?” Uncle asked, chewing pork rind.
Auntie took a spoon from the table and knocked herself on the forehead, looking Uncle straight in the eye at the time. But Uncle, for sure, didn’t understand her transparent hint, because he stretched for a pickle and not for his strap.
“There’s no other way out,” said Momma. “We’ll just have to feed her with dog lard for several days. That’ll make her fill out real fast.”
“I don’t want dog la-a-rd!” Ruzya began to shriek.
“You need to add a little honey, whiskey and whipped eggs to the melted dog lard,” Momma added. “This is a solid-as-a-brick-wall recipe when someone wants to put on weight quickly. And it’s not as vile as you might guess. I used to drink it, and it wasn’t bad.”
“And what kind of eggs?” Auntie asks. “Chicken?”
“No. Cat testicles,” Momma answered.
“Oo-oo-ooh,” Ruzya grimaced.
“Hush,” Auntie interrupted. “If you needa, you needa. We have enough testicles, why spare them?”
“It’d be nice to broaden her rear end a bit,” Momma said, “because this is a lump and not a rear end. How does the poor girl sit on it? Well, bend over.”
Ruzya obediently bent over, showing us a butt that was hard as a knee cap, at the sight of which Uncle grievously and very quickly swallowed ten double-shots.
That very same day they tied poor Ruzya to the bed and every hour began to feed her with a cocktail made of dog lard and whipped cat balls. And so that the lard would satiate her body and as little as possible would be lost, Ruzya didn’t get up from the bed, so as not to shake off any of her fat. Toward evening the whole family would gather near her bed and carefully follow after the results of Momma’s diet.
Ruzya’s muzzle virtually glistened from the lard, but she looked sad and o
ppressed. Little by little her body took on the fat, and the extra even came out all the time. Her body veritably beamed in the darkened room. It was thick with the odor of dog and whipped cat balls.
Hard as Momma and Auntie tried their sorcery, after a week Ruzya hadn’t put on enough weight to let her loose among the clients, and they were forced to continue fattening sessions. In another week Ruzya looked so elegant that my own saliva drooled, and I felt like having a taste of this morsel, but, recalling what kind of seasoning it was stuffed with, I quickly lost my appetite.
Ruzya had now become puffy and round everywhere. Her ribs disappeared, in their place, layers of fat appeared, and even on her chest two pastry fluffs dangled and with each step cheerfully hopped. Momma also taught her to walk in such a way that her rear end stuck out as eloquently as possible, and my Ruzya turned into such a mare, on which hardly anyone could refuse to take exercise.
That’s how it happened. Ruzya enjoyed constant success, and our business blossomed in all its many colors.
7.
When the police surrounded our farm-yard we were completely unprepared to defend ourselves.
Uncle and Auntie were busy with their cats, Max was boiling soap in his cauldron, Ruzya was upstairs entertaining her next client, and Momma was making hunter’s sausage from cat intestines. At that time I was sawing wood for smoking ham, and my brothers-in-law were distilling their beloved animal dung.
And right at such a peaceful time, when the sky above our heads poured out in translucent azure, unexpectedly sirens and brakes began to screech, triggers were cocked on carbines, tens of voices commanded us to raise our hands and give up one by one.
“Better death than slavery!” My momma shouted out, and in seconds we hid in the house.
Everyone armed himself, as well as he could. Uncle placed his double-barreled Austrian rifle, which he’d been using to hunt cats, through the window, and Auntie dug out on the thatched roof an ancient machine gun that looked like it was from the Neolithic period.
From upstairs, Ruzya ran down with her client, completely naked. The client screamed that he was here by accident and was going to give himself up on the spot.
“Good,” Uncle said. “The road is clear.”
Ruzya gave him a ta-ta kiss, and the client jumped out into the yard, shouting:
“I’m one of yours! One of yours!”
Perhaps if he’d chosen a different password, everything would have gone well, but the police sensed an insult to their dignity in that shout. The machine gun lines sewed through him—up and down at first, then sideways.
After this the police moved to the attack. The machine gun in the attic began to snarl. The bullets skipped along the trees, then the plank fences, and Auntie swore at the police royally, and, I think, those curses annoyed them more than the machine gun bullets. At the same time somewhere from the basement the three brothers dragged out a cannon painted orange. The cannon looked more ridiculous than threatening.
Attentively, Uncle frightened the police with his double-barreled gun, heavily snorting with his potato-like nose.
Max and Momma took pitchforks and occupied the defense by the doors.
In that time I gathered everything into the basement that could give evidence against us, and poured gas over it liberally. At any moment it would be enough to throw a lit match in there, and in a single blow the police would lose all their evidence.
Finally they loaded the cannon, and opening the doors, directed the barrel at the assault force. On seeing such a monstrosity, the police instantly fell to the ground.
Bodyo lit a fire, raised it to the end of the barrel and shouted:
“Fire!”
How can you describe what happened? A deafening explosion resounded, so the whole building shook. And all around a poisonous black smoke wound through. I don’t know how they managed to aim at the police. One shot broke open all the windows and frames, the doors with their jambs, and for some reason behind our backs, right across from the doors, the pith knocked another door out of the wall. For sure, the cannon had shot in the wrong direction.
When the smoke had cleared I saw two ragged heads. The twins had done their duty virtuously. Bodyo was luckier—they just tore off his hand.
Uncle coughed heavily.
Momma and Max shook their heads and beat themselves on the ears.
Auntie in the meanwhile had already crawled out on the roof, because she had a restricted field of vision from the attic, and shouted to us:
“Lodzyo!”
“Whoa!” The old man’s throat rattled.
“You alive?”
“Who got killed?”
“The twins.”
“I never did get any joy from them. Even on a day like this they got on my nerves.”
And in a minute:
“Lodzyo!”
“Whoa!”
“Tell Ruzya to put on her underwear because the police are almost here.”
After this the machine gun began to rattle, and Ruzya threw herself into finding her underwear.
I understood that not much was left for us.
Bodyo was stubbornly loading the cannon with one hand.
Now it didn’t matter which direction it shot because the police thrust forward from all sides.
Momma and Max stuck out their pitchforks through the windows and then through the door so the enemies would know what kind of threatening weapons awaited them.
Uncle asked:
“Bodyo, you going to shoot?”
“Yep.”
“Well, then take care.”
The cannon thudded so that another door appeared on the opposite wall, and one of the police cars flared up. Too bad that Bodyo didn’t see that.
A rattling reverberated on the roof, and Auntie’s voice announced:
“Lodzyo!”
“Whoa!”
“I’m flying off!”
“May the heavenly kingdom be yours,” Uncle crossed himself as Auntie crashed solidly in the yard. All our mouths had blackened from the cannon fire and we looked like angelic insurrectionists.
Ruzya finally put on her underwear and crawled along the attic to the machine gun.
Max asked:
“What’ve we done to them that’s so bad?”
“We’ll die like heroes,” Momma answered.
Upstairs the rattling of the machine gun rounds reverberated again. I could really take pride in my wife. And a strange thing: never having slept with her even once, in that decisive moment I felt for her such an insurmountable attraction, that I was ready to rush to the attic and make love to her beneath the bullets to spite our enemies.
And, perhaps, I could have done that, but at that moment a rattling reverberated in the attic and Ruzya’s voice said:
“Daddy!”
“Whoa!”
“I’m flying!”
“The Heavenly Kingdom to you, too!”
Ruzya fell along with the machine gun.
Uncle slowly turned his head away from the window, and I saw his mouth fill with blood. His body fell heavily onto the floor.
I picked up the double-barreled gun and knocked off some policeman’s cap. The weapon, it seems, didn’t pretend to be anything more.
Momma and Max defended the door courageously, but it was an uneven battle. The police wanted to take at least some of us alive and shot above our heads. And when Momma stuck one of them like a dumpling on the pitchfork, the infuriated policeman tore her stomach apart with bullets.
“You bandits!” Max violently became enraged and threw himself into the attack with pitchforks.
The end was in sight. I quickly jumped from the window, struck a match, and the flame struck hard in the basement. Max’s pre-death scream could be heard from outside.
I raised a small log from the floor and with all my strength whacked myself on the head.
I found out what happened later at the trial.
They, of course, put me on trial, because I alone survived. The
evidence burned up completely, and I stubbornly played the role of a crazy guy, feigning that I didn’t understand what they wanted from me.
I got what I wanted. They designated me as sick and sent me off to the asylum at the Park of Culture.
Right now I’m sitting by the window and admiring the wintry park. A fine snow is falling, crows are cawing, I’m wearing clean pajamas, and on my knees—a plate with sweet porridge. Life is beautiful.
When Spring comes, I’ll ask the cleaning lady Olya to take me for a walk in the garden. I behave so well, that all the personnel can’t stop wondering how I could have done such evil deeds earlier. Some even say that I’m suffering only because I was left alive, everything was thrust on me alone. Olya the cleaning lady brings me candies, pats me on the head and says: “So young, so nice, but terribly ill!” I try to lick her hand, but she hides it behind her back and laughs.
The cleaning lady Olya will say: “He’s earned it,” and will take me for a stroll in the springtime. At that time my pants and shirt will be hidden beneath my pajamas so I can get changed.
“Be careful that the head guy doesn’t notice,” the nurse in charge will smile to the cleaning lady Olya and will open the door.
We will be going to walk slowly, very slowly, since over the past year I’ve grown unaccustomed to walking. The cleaning lady Olya will hold me beneath my arms and will order:
“Careful, a hole... Careful, a bump...”
There in the garden’s depth behind the thick bushes I’ll smile to the cleaning lady Olya, take her by the throat with both my hands. Her neck is so fragile, swan-like. Her cartilage will crumble so easily, and her body, small and tender, will hang on my hands.
Maybe I’ll kiss her good-bye, and maybe not.
Quickly getting changed, and rearing back on a branchy linden tree, I’ll take respite on a wall. A farewell look at the house of crazies, and—welcome, Freedom!
But for now it’s winter. I politely chew my porridge, and when the cleaning lady Olya asks about a second helping, I quickly lick her palm and say:
The Fantastic Worlds of Yuri Vynnychuk Page 16
