The Kukotsky Enigma: A Novel

by Ulitskaya, Ludmila

  Skinhead chuckled.

  “I’m not too sure myself …”

  “Well, fine, but maybe you know at least approximately how long I’m going to be held here and when I can go back home?”

  Skinhead sighed—empathetically, it seemed to the Professor.

  “I can’t really say anything about your term either. As far as home goes … I’m afraid you won’t be returning home ever again …”

  The Professor gasped with indignation, but kept his calm and asked almost frigidly: “On what grounds?”

  At this juncture Skinhead stood up and ran his hand over the fire. The flame went out, as if sucked up into this hand.

  “We’ll have occasion to return to that conversation. For the time being let’s leave it at that your wife will be informed that you’re all right, Professor …” The Professor imagined that there was a certain malice to the way Skinhead had pronounced his academic title …

  11

  THE NEWLING WANDERED THROUGH A MULTISTORIED building complex with long corridors and flowerbeds along the walls. An enormous number of doors led off from the corridor, each with a marker that was at once neither a number nor a letter but, as often occurs in dreams, very distinct. The Newling, skilled as she was in dreams, immediately guessed that these markers belonged to the category of things that exist only in dreams and never squeeze their way through to anywhere else when the dream is over. There existed a certain simple formula according to which some things, events, and impressions transformed themselves into another state just as they were, while others changed in strange ways in the process, and still others simply disintegrated. The Newling did not even attempt to impress the door markers in her memory: they were of the category that simply disintegrated. She walked past each of the doors and realized at first glance: the wrong one. The one she needed was connected to some elderly woman.

  She had already rushed through miles of corridors and had a feeling that the marker she needed would appear at any moment. And, indeed, it did, and she opened the door. The room was bright, modest, and resembled a cheap room in some hotel off the beaten path somewhere in Vologda or Arkhangelsk. There was a sink in the corner, and an electric samovar stood on a table covered with a red-and-white checkered oilcloth. The bed was voluptuous, like the kind you find at home, with an abundance of pillows. There were flowers on the windowsills. Next to the door, on a bentwood chair, sat a chubby old woman, the bridge of her nose notched by her glasses and with a dog-eared book in her hands. On another chair slept a calico cat that was so fat it barely fit on the seat. It was around midmorning in the room. The old woman was waiting for her: they were either very good friends or distant relatives.

  “Should we have our tea?” the old woman asked.

  “With jam?” The Newling smiled.

  “How else? I’ve made gooseberry, and strawberry, and forest berry.” The old woman immediately opened the cupboard, where quart-size canning jars sparkled under paper lids.

  “And wild strawberry?”

  “How else? I gathered them myself … In the fields nearby …” From the bottom shelf she pulled a jar already opened, removed the paper lid, and lumped a large spoonful of thick, aromatic jam into the jam dish.

  The Newling looked at the jam. “You didn’t overcook it, did you, Marya Vasilievna? It’s terribly thick.”

  The old woman waved her hand with annoyance: “I did overcook it just a bit. But it’s better to overcook it than undercook it. It gels better.”

  “That’s true,” the Newling agreed.

  The old woman plugged in the samovar and reached for teacups.

  “It boils fast: I like it …”

  The old woman set two cups on the table; the Newling asked for a third.

  “Why three?” the old woman asked in surprise.

  “For your Nadya,” the Newling explained.

  “Oh,” the old woman seemed anxious. “I thought we were going there, but it turns out she’s coming here?”

  “What difference does it make? The main thing is that we get to see each other.”

  “That’s true. She’s having a very rough time these days,” the old woman nodded.

  “You should tell her that Misha gave instructions to say hello and to let her know that everything is all right.”

  The old woman continued to nod, while the Newling continued.

  “And how are you doing, Marya Vasilievna?”

  “Me? I’m good … I’m reading this book. There I was illiterate, but here I’ve learned to read.”

  “What are you reading?”

  “This.” The old woman slid the dog-eared book to the Newling. “The Young Guard by Fadeev. Nadya said a lot of good things about it … It’s a good book. But it’s so sad what happens to those kids. Only, is it all really true or did he make it up?”

  “Something like that really happened.” The Newling opened the volume. “To our dear Tanechka on the day of her acceptance into the Young Pioneers. Valya and Misha Remen. May 1, 1951.”

  The memory stabbed at her heart, and she woke up. The campfire barely burned. Everything was as usual. The wind had calmed down. People were relaxing. She herself sat a bit off in the distance, two dogs alongside her: a light-colored mutt with a tail that curled upward, and a large shepherd.

  The mutt was the most ordinary, while the shepherd raised doubts: something about its canine essence was not right. There was something unusual about its faithful attentiveness toward both its human companion—you could hardly say master—as well as all the others. What was more, it did what no other dog could: it nodded and shook its head in response to questions: yes, no …

  Dog Whisperer was a likeable man about thirty-five years old, with the posture of a professional soldier and a nondescript face. A reddish scar—like the trace of a hat band worn many years—crossed his forehead. He came up behind the Newling, and both the dogs turned toward him.

  “You should go sit on the lee side … The wind is picking up,” he advised the Newling.

  “What?” she asked.

  “So that it doesn’t blow in your face …” He offered her his hand, and the dogs stood up, precisely as if making way for her to pass.

  “How good it is that you and the dogs are here.” The Newling petted the shepherd’s dense fur. The shepherd smiled. “When I was a little girl I had dogs when we lived in the country … But in town I have only cats.”

  The man was pleased. “That makes a lot of sense. I also have only cats at home. I’m a professional dog handler, you know. Twenty years with dogs. Trained hundreds of them. I’m convinced: dogs should not be kept in apartments.” His lips quivered and let drop sadly: “And in general …”

  “What ‘in general’?” the Newling wondered.

  Dog Whisperer spoke heatedly and quickly. It was obvious that the idea had been brewing in him unspoken for a long time.

  “You see, there’s a lot of deep meaning in the expression ‘they fight like cats and dogs.’ Cats and dogs are two entirely opposite types in terms of their relationships with humans. A cat generally has no need for humans. What does it need? Warmth, food. That’s true. But it has absolutely no need for humans. I would even say that cats despise humans. They’re smarter than humans. Humans think that they’re keeping cats, while in fact, cats keep humans. Cats can’t be forced to do anything. They don’t even like to be asked … I’m a trainer, I know: they don’t want to submit for anything. They have their dignity. They need humans to serve them. And you know, I, for one, like their independence. Cats never grovel. For example, a cat may rub up against your leg and you might think that it’s expressing tenderness … No, it’s stretching its muscles and scratching itself against your legs. It’s giving pleasure to itself, not its owner. You, you serve the cat and not vice versa. With dogs everything is different.” He placed his hand with two disfigured fingers on one dog’s head. “Happy will confirm that.”

  The dog looked expectantly at Dog Whisperer: confirm what?

  �
��A dog in an apartment is like a handicapped child. It needs your constant attention. Your help, your attention, your caring … Dogs, excuse my mentioning it, dogs even need to be taken out for walks because a trained dog will sooner die than do its business inside.” He looked at Happy, who sadly nodded its head. “Who besides a human being will go to its death for the sake of an idea? Only a dog!”

  The Newling was amazed: that had never occurred to her.

  “Yes, yes … Search dogs, for example, will search for land mines … During the last war dogs attacked tanks! That is, I don’t mean to say that they went wittingly to their deaths ‘for the Motherland! for Stalin!’ The dogs died for their own idea: in service to their masters …” Dog Whisperer turned polemically to Happy: “Tell me that’s not so!”

  The dog sighed a human sigh and nodded. Suddenly Dog Whisperer’s vigor subsided, as he fell into silent thought for a bit, then, without raising his eyes from the ground, continued.

  “That’s my job nowadays: I work as a guide for dogs. They’re all mine, my little dogs. I raised them in a kennel in Murom, trained them, and then they get sent wherever: some go abroad, to Afghanistan. Happy’s an Afghan vet … I’m about to guide my twenty-fourth …”

  “Where are you guiding it?” the Newling asked quietly.

  “Where, where … Abroad … To the other shore …”

  “Ah-ha,” thought the Newling. “That means that some people here know where we’re going … To the other shore.”

  12

  THEY WALKED ON AND ON THROUGH THE MONOTONOUS, sad, and undulating desert space until they arrived. The sandy desert ended. They stopped at the edge of a gigantic fault filled with a gray fog. Somewhere off in the distance loomed the other shore, but it could also have been an optical illusion, so tenuous and imprecise was the jagged strip that could be either heavy clouds pressed to the ground or distant mountains or a forest closer in …

  “We need to take a rest,” Skinhead said, extending his fire-bearing hand over the dry branches. As always, the warmth and the light of the tiny children’s campfire far surpassed the capabilities of the pathetic fuel.

  Warrior—who had assigned himself the task of bringing several dry skeletons of former plants—looked into the fire and asked Skinhead: “Why does it require fuel? That fire of yours burns just fine on its own.”

  “Yes, I noticed that myself not long ago.” Skinhead nodded, and then stretched his arm over an empty spot. Another campfire ignited. On its own, without any fuel … “You see how we’ve all grown a bit wiser of late …”

  “Even too wise,” the Warrior quipped morosely.

  Skinhead pulled out of his pocket several dry square cookies with dotted symbols, just like ancient hieroglyphs, and gave each of them one. “Eat. You need to get your strength up.”

  The Newling long ago had ceased to be surprised. The taste of the cookies was indistinct, herbal, and reminded her of the flat cakes her mother had baked in lean years from dried goutweed seeds mixed with a handful of flour. They were pleasant to eat.

  “We’ll rest here for a bit, and then we’ll make our way over in that direction.”

  They sat, absorbing the heat with their fatigued bodies.

  Skinhead called Longhair over; the latter followed him unwillingly. Together they began digging at the top of a nearby hill. A while later they brought a bunch of whitish-yellow rags that seemed as if just removed from the linen sterilizer. They tossed them on the ground, and a multitude of tie-straps flew out in all different directions.

  “Put on gloves and booties,” Skinhead commanded.

  Reluctantly they began to sort out the strange garments: the sleeves had long straps on the wrists, and the canvas leggings tied just beneath the knees. The garments were as cumbersome as they were uncomfortable, and it was particularly difficult to knot the strap on the right arm. The Newling helped Longhair cope with the dangling ties …

  The Professor, who had begun digging through the pile trying to find a pair that matched, suddenly flung the rags aside and barked: “This is a mockery! You’ll answer for this! You’ll answer for this mockery! I’m not going anywhere! I’ve had enough …”

  Skinhead walked right up to him.

  “Quit your hysterics. There are children, women, and animals here, after all … If you don’t want to come, you can stay here …”

  The Professor regained his self-control and modulated his tone of voice.

  “Listen! Would you just tell me why I’m here? What is going on here? What kind of a place is this?”

  “The answer to that question lies on the other shore,” Skinhead answered curtly. “But if you insist, you can stay here.”

  The Professor turned away, slumped over, and moved away from the campfire … He easily transitioned from overbearing bossiness to humble subordination.

  Skinhead tied his own two booties and helped Longhair secure his case to his back.

  Both campfires had burned down. Cold flowed from the fault, and it was incomprehensible how Skinhead intended to transport them all to the other side. He approached the edge of the fault. The others crowded like a herd of sheep behind him.

  “We’ll take the bridge. Come stand at the edge.”

  Cautiously, they approached the precipice. They craned their necks: there was no bridge.

  “Look down, down there.” People made out a metal construction looming in the unfathomable depths of the gray fog of the fault.

  Skinhead jumped, and the entire monstrous construction swayed like a rowboat. His face, turned upward toward them, barely shone from below. He waved. Each of them standing up above shuddered, feeling trapped between necessity and impossibility.

  “Manikin!” Skinhead called, and the latter obediently approached the edge. Its feet in their canvas bags sweated and felt heavy as stone. There seemed to be no force strong enough to make it follow Skinhead. But there was: far off in the distance a sound arose, barely audible to the ear, forewarning of an intolerable shower of black arrows. Manikin, doomed, did not jump—suicidal, it collapsed headfirst and disappeared in the fog.

  The construction swayed again. At that same moment the Newling felt the sand under her feet move and shift. The sandy soil behind the crowded handful of confused people began to cave in and loosen, and an avalanche began behind their backs. It grew and widened, and a whole sandy Niagara whipped up behind them …

  The next to plunge was Longhair. Then the pair of women chained together—Longlegs first, and Tiny screaming downward after her. With great dignity the former Limper approached the edge, sat down, and lowered himself, as if lowering himself into a swimming pool or bath. Warrior. The dog. One more woman in a running suit. A man with a briefcase. Strange Animal. A blindfolded little girl. The Newling stepped downward as one of the last …

  None of them fell like a rock—they all descended slowly. Either the air streamed powerfully upward and supported them or the force of gravity in these parts was weaker. Down below the wind gusted. It carried them relatively far from each other in different directions. Some landed on the bridge’s large crossing planks; others, like Longhair, were less fortunate. He stood on the intersection of thin pipes, and the closest vertical support was located at a decent distance and beyond reach. He rolled back and forth to maintain his balance. His case got in his way.

  Worst off was Manikin. It lay horizontally, grasping a wide rail at the level of its chest, its arched soles pressed against an unsteady vertical support, and its entire enormous torso spread out in midair as if posed to do push-ups …

  The uneven rocking of the entire construction caused by their fall slowly began to settle, but just at that moment they heard a hoarse howl: fear of being left alone in the sand overcame all else, and the Professor plunged into the gray fault. The bridge construction rocked violently, Manikin’s soles slipped from the unsteady vertical support, and it now hung by its arms alone …

  The wind would die down, then gust madly from the fault. The construction shuddered, s
haking unevenly in response to each gust, and responded as if alive to each contact. The fog gradually began to dissipate, and the people could make out an artful steel labyrinth, constructed by some mad troll or insane artist. The Newling studied the construction with a professional’s eye: she would never have agreed to draft a working design of this construction, which, she saw, contained strange gaps and inside-out turns, as if the façade and infrastructure had been reversed.

  “It’s fictive space, the thought occurred to her. It cannot exist in nature. And if it is fictive, does that mean that it’s impossible to fall? The fall would be fictive then as well … But I’m not fictive …”

  Skinhead demonstrated the agility of a circus performer as he jumped from pipe to pipe, changing levels. He went to each of them, lightly touched their hands, heads, and shoulders. And said something, explained something, inquired. He was tender and convincing.

  “We have to keep moving. We have to make it to the other shore. Don’t rush. We can go slowly. Even if we have to inch our way. None of you will be lost. We’ll all make it there. Just don’t be afraid. Fear impedes the ability to move …”

  His words possessed a heightened effectiveness, and the people, who at first had frozen in the ridiculous poses the construction had caught them in, slowly began to maneuver.

  Manikin tried to lift its legs and to rest its enormous body on the rail from which it hung by petrified fingers, but its strength failed it, and its hands, fatigued from the tension, were losing their grip, its chest was dropping lower, and it now hung solely by the tips of its tensed fingers. The stone weight of its body slowly pulled its fingers from the rail, and it waited indifferently for the moment when its fingers would pass over the rib of the rail and slip from the rail’s side surface.