Ice Trilogy

by Vladimir Sorokin

  “You’re so great...” She stroked his shoulder. “So round...like Winnie the Pooh. And your penis is awesome. I come right away.”

  He grinned. “Cut the bullshit. Pour some wine.”

  “Seel vous play.” She reached over. Pulled a bottle of white wine, Pinot Grigio, out of a bucket of ice. Poured two glasses.

  Andrei took his wine, lifted his sweaty head, and drained the glass. He lay back on the bed.

  “Jeez...you’re one cool babe.”

  “Pleased to hear it.”

  He looked at the empty pack of cigarettes.

  “Run into the kitchen, there’s some cigarettes on the shelf.”

  “Where?”

  “Next to the vent. There’s a glass shelf.”

  “Andriush, can I take a shower first?”

  “Sure. I’ll go and get them.”

  Nikolaeva got up. She held her vagina with her palm. She ran into the bathroom. In the bath she stood under the shower. Turned on the water. Rinsed her whole body quickly. Washed her vagina for a long time. Turned off the water. Shouted: “Petya! Sheesh, I mean...Andriush! May I take a bath?”

  “You may...” came the reply from the bedroom.

  Nikolaeva sat down in the cold tub. She turned on the faucet, took some shampoo from the shelf, and squirted it into the stream of water. Bubbles spread across the bath. She started singing. The water rose to her armpits. Nikolaeva turned off the water. She drew her knees up and slept.

  She dreamed about Liubka Kobzeva, who’d had her throat cut in the Solnechny Motel. They were in the kitchen of that very apartment on Sretenka in Moscow that Liubka rented and shared with Billy-Goat-Gruff. Nikolaeva was sitting at the window, smoking. Outside the window it was winter, snow was falling. It was cold in the kitchen. Nikolaeva was dressed lightly, for summer, though she wore high gray felt boots. But Liubka was barefoot and wearing a blue robe. She was fussing about the stove and making her favorite dish, Uzbek meat pies.

  “What a stupid idiot I am, really,” she muttered, kneading the dough. “I went and let myself be stabbed! I mean, really...”

  “Did it hurt?” Nikolaeva asked.

  “No, not too much. It was just scary when that SOB came at me with a knife. I completely froze. I should have jumped out the window, but me, idiot that I am, I just stared at him. He goes and gives it to me, first in the stomach, I didn’t even notice, and then in the neck...and then it was like, there’s blood all over everything, tons of it...Hey, Al, where did I put the pepper?”

  Nikolaeva looks at the table. All the objects can be seen quite clearly: two plates, two forks, a knife with a cracked handle, a grater, a salt cellar, a rolling pin, a packet of flour, nine round medallions of dough. But no pepper shaker.

  “That’s always the way it goes when you need something — it disappears into thin air,” said Liubka, continuing to look around. She bent down. Looked under the table.

  Through the open collar of her robe Nikolaeva saw the crudely sewn incision reaching from her neck to her pubis.

  “There it is...” Liubka said.

  Nikolaeva saw the pepper shaker under the table. She leaned over, picked it up, and handed it to Liubka. Suddenly, she felt quite intensely that Liubka’s HEART WASN’T BEATING in her chest. Liubka was talking, muttering, moving around, but her heart was motionless. It was standing still, like a broken alarm clock. Nikolaeva was seized by a terrible sorrow. Not because of Liubka being dead but from this stopped heart. She felt an overwhelming pity that Liubka’s heart was dead and would NEVER beat again. She realized that she was about to cry.

  “Liub...do you...put onion in the stuffing?” she asked with incredible difficulty, standing up.

  “Why the hell do you need it when there’s garlic?” Liubka looked at her attentively with dead eyes.

  Nikolaeva began to cry.

  “What’s wrong?” Liubka asked.

  “I need to piss,” Nikolaeva’s disobedient lips babbled.

  “Piss here,” said Liubka with a smile.

  Sobs overwhelmed Nikolaeva. She cried for the GREAT LOSS.

  “Liub...ka...Liub...ka...” escaped her lips.

  She grabbed Liubka, pressed her to her breast. Liubka moved her aside with her cold hands, covered in flour and dough.

  “What’s wrong with you?”

  Liubka’s icy chest was HEARTLESS. Nikolaeva sobbed. She understood that this could NEVER be fixed. She heard the beat of her own heart. It was alive, warm, and TERRIBLY dear to her. This feeling only made things even more painful and bitter. She suddenly understood how SIMPLE it was to be dead. Horror and grief filled her. Warm urine flowed down her legs.

  Nikolaeva woke up.

  Her face was covered in tears. Her mascara was running.

  Andrei stood next to the bath in a red-and-white terry-cloth robe.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked impatiently.

  “Huh?” She sniffled. She began to sob again.

  “What happened?” he asked, frowning sleepily.

  “I...ummm...” She cried. “I dreamed about my girlfriend...her...she...was murdered six months ago...”

  “Who did it?”

  “Oh...some guys from the market...some Azeris...”

  “Ah...” he said, scratching his chest. “Listen, I want to get some sleep. I have an important meeting tomorrow. The money is on the kitchen table...”

  He left.

  Nikolaeva wiped away her tears. She got out of the bath. She glanced at the mirror.

  “Jesus...”

  She spent a long time washing her face. She dried off, wrapped herself in a big towel, and left the bathroom.

  The apartment was dark. The sound of Andrei snoring came from the bedroom.

  Nikolaeva crossed the bedroom on tiptoe. She found her things and went into the kitchen. The light on the vent above the stove was the only one on. Two hundred dollars lay on the table.

  Nikolaeva got dressed. She put the money away in her wallet. She drank a glass of apple juice. She went into the foyer, put on her overcoat, and left the apartment, carefully closing the door behind her.

  Upper Lip

  02:02, Komar and Vika’s Rented Apartment, 1 Olenii Bank

  “Work your fist a little.” Komar tied a tourniquet around Lapin’s forearm.

  “There’s nothing to work — you can see everything,” laughed Vika. “Wish I had veins like that!”

  “Komar, you fucker, you could do me first!” said Ilona, watching angrily.

  “Guests first, jeezus fucking Christ. Specially ’cause he’s bankrolling....” Komar inserted the needle into the vein. “Shit, I ain’t seen such spotless ropes in a blue moon.”

  “So Ilona, did you really see Leningrad?” asked Vika.

  “Uh-huh...” Ilona looked at Lapin’s arm.

  “Was it hot?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “What did they play? Old stuff?”

  “Old stuff! Old! Old!” said Ilona, shaking her wrists crossly.

  Komar pulled the plunger toward himself: 27 years old, shaved head, big ears, skinny, stooped, long arms, sharp facial features, wearing a torn blue T-shirt and wide black pants.

  Blood appeared in the hypodermic. Komar tugged on the end of the tourniquet. He smoothly injected the contents of the hypodermic into Lapin’s vein.

  “There we go.”

  Vika held out a piece of cotton: 18 years old, small, dark, plump, long-haired, purple polyester pants, a light blue top.

  Lapin pressed the cotton to his vein. He bent his elbow. Flopped back on a filthy pillow.

  “Oh, shit...”

  “Well?” said Komar, smiling.

  “Yeah...” said Lapin and smiled, parting his lips with difficulty. He looked at the rusty water stains on the ceiling.

  “You fucker, are you gonna hit me or not, for heaven’s sake, Komar?” Ilona shouted.

  “No problem, Madam.” Komar unwrapped a new hypodermic.

  Vika poured the white powder from the packet into a t
ablespoon, added water, and boiled the spoon over a candle. Komar sucked the semitransparent liquid in the spoon into the hypodermic.

  Ilona tied the tourniquet around her upper arm herself. She sat down opposite Komar. Stretched out her arm. In the bend a few tracks could be seen.

  “Ilon, I didn’t get it, did they just play old stuff?” asked Vika, lighting up a cigarette.

  “No, not only,” Ilona answered irritably, pumping her fist.

  “‘When summertime comes, we’ll go to the dacha and leave the town / A shovel in hand, we’ll mess around, mess around...’ They did that one?”

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Ilona muttered crossly.

  “I really like the one they do: ‘Ta-ta-ta...some people shoot up / me, I do booze / but I could speed up, after a snooze...’”

  Komar took his time and found a place for the needle.

  “Hmm, it’s good you don’t overdo things, sweetheart.”

  “You think I’m an idiot or something?” Ilona laughed nervously.

  “Women! Go figure!” The needle entered her vein.

  Lapin smiled. Stretched. Rolled his shoulders around. “Yeah...now...this is...totally different...”

  “What’s different?” asked Vika. “Speedball? Of course it is. It’s heavier than plain old smack.”

  “Heavier. But I don’t like all this bullshitting: speedball, speedball, and they haven’t really tried a fuckin’ thing...There are so...so many...ummm...mediocre people around here...hacks...no talent...”

  “Why?” asked Vika with a happy smile.

  “Because every asshole wants to be smarter than he really is. Smarter and more authoritative. Everybody’s all buzzed about their authority, that’s all they think about. As if a human being’s main purpose on earth were to achieve a position in society at any price, even at the price of other people’s suffering.”

  Vika and Komar exchanged glances.

  “Yeah. Well, one thing’s for sure, if we got a lot of anything, it’s suffering...leaking right outta our assholes...” Smiling, Komar injected the dose into Ilona’s vein.

  “Oy...” She closed her eyes. Bent her arm at the elbow. Coughed.

  Vika stretched her arm out for Komar. It was riddled with needle tracks. “There’s still another little place here.”

  “Just don’t breathe on my forehead.”

  “Sorry, Kom.”

  Ilona stretched.

  “Awesome!”

  She kissed Lapin. He embraced her awkwardly.

  “Only don’t go too fast, Kom.” Vika looked at the needle.

  “Are my pupils big?” Ilona leaned over Lapin.

  “Yes,” he replied seriously.

  “Are they pretty? What color?”

  “Something...like...you know...” Sweating, Lapin looked at them carefully, straight on. “Here’s the thing...it’s those balls...you know, those Chinese equilibrium balls...you have to roll them around in one hand, they’re made of different precious stones, like, maybe jasper or something, and when a ball like that...the yin or the yang, I think it’s the yin...so...and one ball lies there, that is, there’s this energy, this bioenergy that flows from it, and there’s also all these electrical accumulations, and all this stuff together...the energy of the stones, too, we hardly know anything about the energy of stones, I mean stones are so fucking ancient...but you know they used to be soft like sponges, and then over time they petrified and became real stones and there’s all this...this unfuckingbelievable information stored up in them, so it’s kind of like a super memory chip, there’s all this stuff written down there, so mucking fuch that...I mean, so fucking much of everything, about everything, different events, people, everything that happened...It’s all in stones, man...And who needs computers, you just have to know how to use the stones, find the right approach...a normal, competent approach...and then the shit’ll hit the fan, I mean, human beings will become the fucking lords of the world.”

  “Your upper lip is really incredible,” said Ilona happily, touching his lip with her finger.

  Sand

  12:09, Warehouse of the Cargo Trading Company, 2 Novoyasenevsky Prospect

  A large semicircular hangar, a multitude of boxes and packages containing food products. A one-meter-square sheet of thick plywood lay on top of four cases of canned vegetables. Around the plywood several people sat and smoked.

  Volodya Straw: 32 years old, medium height, a thickset body, brown hair, a sullen disposition, a motionless face with a small broken nose, a short sheepskin jacket.

  Dato: 52, pudgy, small, bald, with a round face in a permanent grin, an unbuttoned white raincoat, delicately knit white sweater, beige silk shirt with a high collar, white leather trousers, a gold Tissot watch, a gold bracelet, and a gold ring with a ruby.

  Khmelev: 42, medium height, thin, dark brown hair, a thin, narrow, calmly worried face, steel-gray jacket, a dark blue three-piece suit, white shirt, and a light-blue-and-red tie.

  Khmelev’s cell phone rang.

  “Yes,” he said, putting it to his ear.

  “They’re here,” a voice informed him.

  “How many?”

  “Six...seven guys in two cars.”

  “Okay, just let Blindeye and a couple of bodyguards through.”

  “Got it.”

  Dato tossed a cigarette butt on the cement floor. Crushed it with his black patent-leather boot.

  “Two of them won’t be able to carry it in.”

  “That’s their problem,” muttered Khmelev.

  “So, like usual?” said Straw, sniffing as he stood up.

  “Like usual, Vova,” said Dato, slapping his fleshy knees.

  The door opened.

  Gasan Blindeye entered the hangar: 43 years old, short, puny, swarthy, balding, hook-nosed, wearing a black leather coat. Two strongmen carrying a heavy metal coffer followed him in with some difficulty.

  Dato stood up. He stepped forward to greet Gasan. They embraced, touched cheeks twice.

  “Hello, Dato.”

  “Hello, my friend.”

  The two guys set the coffer on the floor.

  “Put it here,” Dato pointed to the plywood with his small, pudgy hand.

  The two lifted the coffer. They carried it over and set it down. The plywood cracked, but held.

  “Sit down, my friend.” Dato nodded.

  Straw moved a case of macaroni toward Blindeye.

  “Dato, let everyone leave us alone.” Blindeye unbuttoned his coat.

  “Why?”

  “We need to talk.”

  “These are my people, Gasan. You know them.”

  “I know them, Dato. But let them leave.”

  Dato glanced at Khmelev. Khmelev nodded.

  “All right then, my friend. We’ll do it the way you say. Go on, go out for some air.”

  Khmelev, Straw, and the other two went out. Gasan sat down on the box. He rubbed his cheeks in exhaustion. Dato waited silently.

  “I’ve changed my mind, Dato,” Gasan said.

  “I don’t understand. What did you change your mind about?”

  “I’m not selling.”

  “Why?”

  Gasan clenched his hands. He touched the tip of his sharp, crooked nose with his thumbs.

  “Just because...I’m not selling. That’s all.”

  Dato chuckled louder than usual.

  “I don’t understand you, Gasan. Why aren’t you selling? The price doesn’t suit you? You want more?”

  “No. The price is the old one. It always suited me.”

  “So then what’s the deal?”

  “No deal. Just — I don’t want to.”

  Dato looked at him attentively.

  “What’s with you, brother? Are you sick or something? You got problems?”

  “I’m not sick, brother. And I don’t have problems. But I’m not selling the product.”

  Dato didn’t say anything. He took out a gold cigarette case, removed a cigarette, and took his time lighting it. He wal
ked around, then turned to Gasan.

  “But why did you bring the product if you don’t want to sell?”

  “To show you, brother.”

  “I saw it before. More than once.”

  “You take another look at it. Look carefully.”

  Gasan stood up. He opened the locks on the coffer and pushed back the metal lid. Under it was a white plastic lid. Gasan pulled it. It opened. Under it was a refrigerator — completely filled with sand.

  Dato froze for a minute with the cigarette in his lips.

  “Now you understand, Dato, why Gasan does not want to sell you the product.”

  “Now I understand.”

  Gasan went up close to him.

  “We have rats, brother. Fat goddamn rats.”

  “Does Tractor know?” asked Dato.

  “Not yet. Why the hell should he know?”

  Dato stuck his hand in the sand, felt around, scooped up a handful. He threw it forcefully on the floor:

  “Crooks!”

  “But it’s definitely not the ice cutters.”

  “Then who? Your guys?”

  “I know my own. And they know me. I would cut off my hand, that’s how I trust them.”

  “Hand...foot...” Dato spat angrily. “Your own guys could also turn into rats. Fuckers! Crooks! Gasan, look for them yourself. I’m not going to those blonds. I’ll give the money back. And that’s it.”

  “Just wait a minute, brother.”

  “What’s to wait? One of your people skimmed some off the top, it’s your problem. You go talk to them.”

  “Don’t get all overheated, my friend. It’s not my problem. It’s our problem.”

  “No fucking way! They pinched it from your place, what’ve I got to do with it? I’m not involved.”

  “You’re involved because the rat lives in your house.”

  “What? What fucking rat?”

  “A fat one. And it sleeps in your house. It eats your bread.”

  Dato stared hard at him.

  Gasan rummaged in his pockets. He took out a round wooden tobacco box, opened it. It contained cocaine. He shook a little onto the lid. He took out an ivory straw and a plastic card.

  “Let’s have a snort, brother. I haven’t slept for three days.”

  “And what about...the rat? In my place? You ready to answer for what you’re saying?”