The Kukotsky Enigma: A Novel

by Ulitskaya, Ludmila

  Within its murky consciousness a heavy thought turned like a lump of unrisen dough: I will fall, I will be dashed to pieces, everything will come to an end, and those arrows-bullets-wasps will no longer sting me in the head and stomach …

  At the last moment it sought out Skinhead: he was nowhere to be seen; there was only Longhair rocking off in the distance, hugging some black object … Manikin unclenched its fingers and flew downward. Not like a stone, not like a bird, but like a crumpled piece of newsprint carried by wind blowing garbage …

  Despite the lightness and slowness of its fall, the blow of its landing was shattering. Broken into pieces, it lay on the stony bed of a long-ago dried-up river among the remains of ancient boats, petrified shells, and two unmatched running shoes. Its body, shattered in all directions, was surrounded by small—larger than squirrels but smaller than rabbits—not entirely solid creatures, perhaps entities—the same kind that appear in dreams and then, on awakening, leave behind not a visual image, but only a kind of spiritual trace of warmth, tenderness, affinity …

  The creatures gathered in a crowd, like inhabitants of a desert or tundra around airplane wreckage. Some, the most sensitive, sobbed, while the others shook their heads and lamented. Then one of them said: “We should call the Doctor.”

  Others objected: “There’s no need for the Doctor. That’s a corpse.”

  “No, no, he’s not a corpse,” said still others.

  Someone with a young voice squeaked challengingly: “So what if he’s a corpse! Corpses can be revivified!”

  A kind of discordant meeting ensued.

  Then the largest and eldest of them was wheeled in. He was so decrepit that you could see through him in places. He wheeled up close, accidentally running over Manikin’s broken fingers with his front wheels. He sighed a bit and announced:

  “He’s a corpse. Condition zero.”

  The gathering stirred, burbled, and rustled.

  “Can’t anything be done for him?”

  “There’s nothing you can do.” The Doctor shook his head flatly. “Except donate blood.”

  They all fell silent. Then one of them with round eyebrows and big eyes said, “There are a lot of us. We can do it.”

  One with a long nose interjected: “What about blood substitutes? There are substitutes for blood!”

  But the Doctor did not even look in his direction.

  “Six liters of live blood, minimum. Or there’s no getting him on his feet.”

  “We’ll do it, we’ll do it,” the gathering rustled. The Doctor in his wheelchair seemed angry.

  “How are you going to do it? Each of you has six milliliters of blood. You can’t donate more than half. You know that I gave five milliliters and my legs never returned to normal.”

  The squirrel-rabbits grew agitated and chattered again.

  “If we bring him back to life, he will be … handsome … intelligent … They have children … and can build and draw things … Let him live …”

  “Very well,” the Doctor agreed. “But I have to remind you of the following: before you lie the remains of a criminal. A murderer. A very cruel and merciless one. And senseless.”

  They all took fright and fell silent. Then the curly-headed one with perky African hair quietly spoke.

  “All the more reason. What’s there to discuss? He needs to be given a chance.”

  “I don’t disagree,” smiled the Doctor. “I just want to remind you that according to the law of the Great Ladder, when you sacrifice your own blood you descend downward and lose part of your mobility, while he rises upward and acquires the qualities that you sacrificed for him …”

  “Yes, yes … We know … We want to … We’re agreed … agreed …”

  They encircled the battered Manikin, and from out of nowhere there appeared a white sheet, and a mysterious medicine set to work …

  THAT PART OF THE LABYRINTH WHERE THE NEWLING had landed held a chaotic accumulation of small landings a good jump apart, with the vertical supports underneath the landings, making it impossible to shimmy down them. The Newling successfully made her way across the landings until she reached one from which only a trained jumper could advance: all she could do was turn back.

  She sat down in confusion. Looking down terrified her. She raised her head and looked upward. Up above ran a parallel chain of landings whose weight-bearing supports were relatively close, and she decided that after resting a bit she would try to modify her route. True, she got the impression that the upper path ran somewhat off to the side. But there seemed to be no other way out. Amazed by the lightness and responsiveness of her body, she hugged the scratchy metal pole and, pressing her entire body to it, shimmied up. Her canvas stockings and gloves protected her from the touch of the cold metal. But what was most surprising was that this exercise turned out to be quite fascinating, and her entire body rejoiced. What was there for it to rejoice about? Perhaps that it was so easily training itself to retract like a spring, push off, then recover in the air, and relax slightly before landing. Each ensuing shimmy was easier and freer, and she totally forgot any sense of constraint or danger …

  That’s probably what’s so wonderful about sports, she guessed as she pulled herself to the landing above. Here there was more light, and from here the other shore seemed not so murky …

  The Professor made his way along a crooked slippery pipe to an angled bollard and sat down on it. Two rusty rails hung in the air to the right, about six or seven feet away, but he decided not to attempt the jump. He sat morosely, intent on trying to comprehend how he had managed to wind up in this absurd, entirely fantastic situation. The wind blew from somewhere below, the bollard swayed, and everything was enveloped by a nasty, damp, oppressive cold.

  “Maybe it’s a dream, after all?” The Professor returned to this redeeming idea for the umpteenth time. He ran his fingertips across his face and head. He touched his gums with his tongue: his dentures were missing! How had he not noticed earlier? Where could those fine dentures made at the Fourth Department’s dental clinic have gone?

  He sat in a strange and uncomfortable pose, dressed in his best suit, wearing all his medals, but without a single document, and having lost his dentures. Or had someone pulled them out of his mouth? This is awful … Awful …

  “Have I really died?” His fidgety brain, which had studiously avoided the word, suddenly slammed right into it …

  In the dim fog to the Professor’s left a familiar bald spot flashed by.

  “Listen! Your Eminence!” shouted the Professor, and Skinhead immediately headed in his direction.

  “Now, we need to gather our strength and, without rushing …” Skinhead began in his always low-key voice, but the Professor grabbed him by the sleeve of his white shirt and bawled.

  “Will you just tell me finally, did I die?”

  Skinhead stared with a lingering gaze at the cringing Professor and said exactly what the Professor did not want to hear from him.

  “Yes, Professor. I can’t keep it from you any longer. You died.”

  The Professor shuddered, and then he sensed a burning emptiness in his chest familiar from his heart attacks. His hands and feet grew cold. All these sensations were obviously signs of life, and this calmed him, and he began to laugh, placing his hand in the area of his heart.

  “You’re joking. But news like that really could kill me.”

  “I’m not joking. But if putting it another way makes you feel better, you can consider your worldly life over!”

  “So am I in hell?” The Professor fidgeted on his bollard. “Keep in mind that I don’t believe … in any of that!”

  “Yes, I myself don’t believe in hell. But for the time being you’re going to have to reconcile yourself to the current state of affairs. It’s very important right now that we make our way to the other shore …”

  Skinhead took two large strides in the direction of the rusty rails, pushed them lightly with his foot, and they immediately fell in line with t
he bollard. After which Skinhead walked off.

  The Professor sat in stunned silence. The fact was that Skinhead strode with his wide feet in their canvas surgical booties right through the air. His steps were sure and fast, and it seemed like the whitish fog yielded slightly beneath his feet, while he himself swayed like a circus performer walking a slack rope. Maybe there was a rope?

  The Professor stepped cautiously onto the unsteady rails …

  Longhair just rocked and swayed, and there was nowhere for him to move: the nearest landing was about ten yards away. The movement of the pipes he stood on had a certain complex rhythmic pattern to it, but he could not figure out what it was, despite his sensitive musical ear. For some reason he knew that as soon as he understood the numeric formula he would be able to direct his movement. He listened closely to his feet, to his tibia and femurs, to his thirty-two vertebrae-conductors—and the resonator of his skull … He was beginning to make something out … a kind of polytempo, one line superimposed on the other … Five thirds … That was it. His body responded and adjusted. Falling in step with the rhythm, he sensed that the swinging poles beneath his feet had become controllable to an extent. The amplitude of their motion around their axis increased. But this movement occurred parallel to the closest landing and did not bring him in any way closer to it. In addition, the second tempo got in the way and grew ever more recognizable … He had it: seven-eighths! The second axis of motion appeared immediately …

  Something swung him violently, and he almost dropped his case. But he held on. He pressed it to his chest. He stroked it. His canvas glove kept him from feeling it, and he wanted to remove the glove. Swinging back and forth with a nervous, broken trajectory, he attempted to undo the ties on his left hand. The knot was tight and tangled; he bit at it with his teeth … He felt unexpected help coming from the air itself. It was helping. The familiar vortex was spinning around him once again, but it seemed to have fingers and lips, even a woman’s loosened hair curling under its own wind. This vortex of air turned out to have a woman inside.

  The knot loosened and undid itself. Longhair dropped his left hand, tossed off the glove, and felt that the knot had loosened on his right hand as well.

  “Quickly, open it up, open it up,” sang the living plait of animated air. It was warm, even hot; it coaxed, caressed, nestled close, and hurried him …

  His movement corrected itself of its own, directed itself, and little by little brought him closer to the landing. Longhair pressed on the latch, the mechanism clicked, the vortex pulled the wonderful thing from its case, and placed it in Longhair’s hands.

  “Play …”

  His hands held an instrument. An instrument for … With the help of which … It was the most important thing for him, but he did not know how … His right hand placed itself where it should go: his fingers fell in place and recognized the keys. His left hand searched … It was followed by tormenting confusion.

  Hot fingers ran along his neck, his chin, and touched his lips.

  “Play already, please. It’s still possible to go back.”

  The wooden mouthpiece nestled against his lips … And the swinging pipes carried him back and forth, the rhythm of their motion penetrating his body and insistently demanding his complicity. His total complicity. He gathered air through his nose, relaxing his diaphragm to fill his lungs completely.

  The vortex subsided and hung in the air. Longhair pressed his lips around the wooden mouthpiece: there was the promise of pleasure, of the most subtle part of it. His lower lip nestled against the wooden stem, his tongue touched the plastic reed. All together it was like a missing part of his body, an organ from which he had been separated. He was exploding from within: with his breath, with his whole self he needed to fill this queer creation of metal and wood that was as much a part of him as his lungs, his throat, and his lips … He exhaled—carefully, so as not to frighten away the emerging miracle … The sound was music, the intelligible word and living voice all rolled into one. The sound made the center of his bones ache sweetly, as if his bone marrow were responding with joy …

  Poor humans—a head and two ears! Malleus and incus … Stapes and habenula … Three turns of the cochlea, the middle ear plugged with wax, and the Eustachian tube filled with scales of dead skin … Ten clumsy fingers and the crude air pump of the lungs … Music?! The shadow of a shadow … The approximation of an approximation … A suggestion suspended in the dark …

  The most sensitive wipe away the tear spreading under their lower eyelid … A yearning for music … Suffering for music …

  Lord God, come among us! He came. And stands behind the impenetrable wall of our earthly music …

  The Professor heard and began to weep. His last hopes had dissipated: he truly had died, for such things did not occur on earth. He had always been proud of his musical ear, had sung in tune to the guitar, could pick out a tune on the accordion, although he had never taken lessons, and even his blockhead son had inherited his musical talent from him … But this was another kind of music. It spoke clearly and distinctly of the senselessness of and necessity for beauty. It itself was beauty—indisputable, heavensent, carefree, and with no practical application, like a bird’s feather, a soap bubble, or the velvet violet face of pansy petals … It also spoke to him something that grievously shamed the Professor for those aimlessly lived years … No, that’s not it, someone else had said that. The Professor was tormentingly ashamed of everything about himself, from birth to death, from toes to head, from morning till night …

  All movement, all the clambering and grasping stopped. All fell quiet and still. Even the tiny creatures bustling about Manikin splayed at the bottom of the fault lifted their large-eyed little heads and listened …

  But Longhair was almost not there. He was entirely dissolved in his music; he himself was music. Of his entire being there remained only a single crystal suitable only for recognizing that miracle in the making. There remained only a single point—of acute pleasure, before which all bright earthly pleasures were not even a prototype of perfect happiness, but a vulgar deception, like an inflatable woman with a hole that smelled of rubber …

  He did not notice as the tender vortex lifted him upward, above the wobbly constructions, then higher, so high that there was nothing around him except the whitish fog. The music continued to mount and to fill the world; it was the world, and the dot that remained somewhere on its edge grew smaller and smaller, until it disappeared entirely. And with that he pushed with all his being against the springy membrane, and exerting certain pressure he pushed through and emerged from it, preserving in himself the echo of the bursting film …

  13

  ON THE SHORE MORNING WAS BREAKING. THE DAWN WAS strong as undiluted alcohol, bare as a freshly laid egg, and irreproachable as the alphabet. Behind the Newling’s back the fault smoked with fog, and she experienced it as a rough seam between two fabrics of different textures. What was more, it now was of absolutely no interest. The world unfolding before her eyes resembled the best of everything she had ever seen in her life. She remembered now all of her past—from early childhood, from the stove that had burned her childish hands, to the last page of that school exercise book whose last dozen pages were scribbled with lame tortured letters …

  The light of two searchlights of a past and perfect morning resurrected in all its details illuminated the moment. The long torture of unanswerable questions—Where am I? Who am I? Why?—had ended in an instant. It was she, Elena Georgievna Kukotskaya, but completely new, yes, the Newling, but now she wanted to gather together all that she had known and at one time forgotten and all that she had never known, but seemed to have remembered.

  She took several steps through the grass and was amazed by the wealth of impressions communicated by the touch of her bare feet to the ground: she felt every blade of grass, the mutual positioning of stalks, and even the vulvar connections between the thin blades. As if the blind soles of her feet had acquired sight. Something s
imilar happened with her vision, her sense of hearing, and sense of smell. Elena sat down on a hillock between two bushes. One, just about to bloom, was a jasmine, with a simple and strong smell; the second was unfamiliar, with dense leaves highlighted with a light border along their edge. Its smell was sour and cold, peculiar. The earth emitted a multitude of smells—damp earthy mustiness, the juice of a crushed stalk of grass, strawberry leaf, wax, bitter chamomile … And even the scent of a person who had stepped there not long ago … She immediately recognized who.

  Animal sense of smell, that’s what it is, Elena noted. There were also too many sounds for such a quiet morning—the grasses rustled loudly, each with its own quality: the rigid grasses sounded more shaggy, while the softer ones emitted slithery sounds. The leaves of the shrubbery rubbed up against each other with a velvet swishing sound, and a bud exploded with the sound of a taut grunt. A titmouse flitting from a tree produced a chord with its wings and tail that left behind the light, bent whistle of air flowing over feathers spread out in flight. Moreover, Elena saw something she had never noticed before: as it flew by, the bird’s tail feathers stood up almost vertically, while the pointed ends of its wings dropped downward, and its matchstick dark-gray legs pressed tightly to its gray belly … It slipped downward, and then, as if having changed its mind, turned its tail, dropped the tips of its wings, and soared upward … The geometry and aerodynamics of flight—study it as you would in school … How is it I never noticed that before, Elena wondered.

  She sat atop the hillock, inhaled, watched, and listened, as she accustomed herself to the new earth and to her own self, also new. She hurried nowhere. Soon she felt that she had tired of the unaccustomed intensity of the sounds and smells, stretched herself full length on the grass, and closed her eyes.

  It’s silly to sleep when everything feels so good … But maybe I’ll have a dream?