He pressed his hand harder to her face. She kissed his hand and then pushed it off her face.
“Venya, stop, I can’t breathe like that. Kiss me,” she whispered.
He started greedily kissing her long neck and delicate collarbone. Her skin smelled not of cheap perfume but of lily of the valley and slightly bitter pine needles. Venya’s heart started pounding, and he could feel how fast and hard her heart was pounding, too.
It’s going to be just like it is for everybody else. My hunger will pass—these thoughts raced through his head. She’s very pretty and she loves me… I’m a normal boy, and it’s all going to be just like it is for everybody else.
But a black film fell over his eyes. His body wouldn’t obey his will. His hands were living their own, independent life, and he didn’t understand what they were doing.
“Quit it. That hurts!” Tanya cried out suddenly.
His hands couldn’t stop. They squeezed her small, firm breasts, and his nails dug into her delicate skin.
“Venya, quit it! That hurts a lot!”
She was shouting too loudly. Her shout grated on his ears.
“Easy, easy… It’s supposed to hurt,” he said quickly. “It always hurts.”
“No, I don’t want it this way. We shouldn’t. You’re crazy.” She attempted to break away. He didn’t even notice his hands crushing her delicate neck. She tried to break away from his hands, tried to knee him. It was like combat between two enraged beasts fighting not for life but for death.
With the tiniest corner of his receding human consciousness, Venya understood that this was exactly what he’d wanted, exactly what he’d been expecting.
Tanya Kostylyova was stronger than Larochka. He had to wind her graduation dress, which was lying nearby, around her head. The dress was made of a thick white Crimplene that didn’t let air through.
The body beneath him jerked and fought back. A wave of acute, wild pleasure washed over him. It felt as though some new, blinding, invincible power was rushing through him.
A massive shudder ran through the girl’s body, piercing him through like a flash of lightning. He felt himself getting stronger now with every movement and every sigh. He felt almost immortal as he satisfied his fierce, animal hunger.
He didn’t know how much time had passed. Satiated, he came to his senses, rolled up the white Crimplene dress, and in the light of the moon saw two frozen, vividly blue eyes looking straight at him.
That scared him. Was this really what he’d wanted? Was this the only way he could feed the insatiable beast in his soul? Tanya wasn’t breathing, but the satisfied beast could at last take a deep breath.
The blinding strength pouring into him now was the life of Tanya Kostylyova. This and only this was how he could satisfy his hunger. There was no other option. It was her own fault. She’d teased and tortured him for so long. She’d ignited the hatred in him, played her vile, hypocritical, romantic games with him.
He felt hot, bitter tears running down his cheeks. He cried out of compassion—not for the girl he had murdered, but for himself, the obedient little boy who no one loved and everyone lied to. The tears made him feel better. His head cleared.
Quickly looking around, he pulled up the panties on her still-warm body and fixed her bra. He mechanically noted that her underwear wasn’t ripped, and he had left no bruises—at least, none he could see in the moonlight.
He neatly hung Tanya’s white dress on the trunk of a fallen birch and set her patent leather shoes nearby. Undressing and leaving his own things on the trunk of the tree, he dragged her body to the river, pushed it in the water, jumped in himself, and swam leisurely to the middle of the river, where it was deep, pulling the body behind him.
Lots of people drowned in the Tobol, especially the good swimmers. Usually they had to search a very long time for drowning victims because the current carried them toward the broad Irtysh and there was solid taiga stretching along the banks. Sometimes they were never found.
When he finally climbed out onto shore, his teeth were chattering from the cold. Without dressing, in just his underpants, he started toward the park exit. He walked very quickly and then started to run.
A wet and trembling Veniamin Volkov—graduate of School No. 5, top student, the quietest and most obedient boy in his class—ran into the police station. He had only his underpants on, tears were rolling down his cheeks.
“Help!” he yelled. “Please, help! Tanya’s drowned! We were swimming together, and it was dark, and we were talking, and then she wasn’t. I looked over and she wasn’t next to me. I dove and searched…”
He couldn’t go on.
They found Tanya Kostylyova’s body two weeks later, far from the city, in the Irtysh.
The Young Communist Culture Department chief remembered he’d left his cigarettes in the office of the Pioneer Palace director. Returning, he heard music coming from the auditorium. It was a song from an old American movie. Tanya Kostylyova was doing a leisurely Russian step dance on the stage. Her slender partner was assiduously repeating every step after her.
“No, try it again! Wrong again!” she said. Her light feet in their black gymnastics shoes seemed to fly over the wooden floor by themselves, without any effort, lightly and gaily.
The dead don’t rise up, Volkov thought. He softly shut the auditorium door and strode down the corridor toward the office of the Pioneer Palace director for his forgotten cigarettes.
CHAPTER 6
Moscow, March 1996
Lena packed her husband’s things in a large gym bag. A van was supposed to come for him from Petrovka, as his workplace was called, in two hours. In the next room, Seryozha was attempting to put Liza to bed and was reading her the first chapter of Winnie-the-Pooh for the fifth time. For some reason, Liza didn’t want to read any farther, and as the chapter was coming to an end, she would demand it be read all over again. She had no intention of going to sleep, even though it was already past eleven.
“Papa, Papa, Papa!” she said, sighing sadly.
No one had told her her papa was going away. She’d figured it out herself.
“I’ll be back very soon,” Sergei reassured her. “What should I bring you, Liza?”
“Pooh! Bring Liza Pooh!”
“You want Winnie-the-Pooh? A teddy bear?”
“Yes.” Liza nodded gravely.
“A big one or a small one?”
“A big one,” Liza informed him in her lowest voice and spread her arms expressively, showing him the size of the bear she wanted. “And a little one,” she added after a moment’s thought.
“And are you planning to go to sleep tonight?” Sergei asked cautiously.
“Papa, Papa, Papa!” Liza’s lower lip jutted out, corners down. That meant she was just about to belt out a magnificent howl. The only way to avert that was to pick her up and walk her around the room. The moment Sergei carried Liza to the window and started showing her the pretty lights shining in the dark, Lena looked into the room.
“So that’s how we go to sleep?” She shook her head.
“Oh, we have no intention of sleeping at all,” Sergei informed her hopelessly. “Our parents are bad. They have no discipline.”
“Fine, then go see how your papa’s bag is packed.” Lena sighed. “What if your bad mama forgot to put in something important for your bad papa?”
They checked his bag and drank tea, but Liza still had no intention of sleeping.
“Tell me, please,” Lena asked pensively, “if someone—a righty—would ever inject drugs into his right arm, especially his hand?”