of all my sins, ‘at last no more to roam,
Into my Father’s house, my heavenly home.’ ”
Still, Butonov would not leave Masha alone. She went to him in Rastorguevo three times more. It seemed that the note she had struck was so high that there was no going higher—her voice would break, everything would break. Only now, when every meeting felt as if it were the last one, did Butonov admit to himself that Masha had so far eclipsed her prototype, half-forgotten Rosa, that he could no longer even remember the face of his lost horsewoman; and now he no longer saw Masha as being in the likeness of Rosa, but that fleeting love affair seemed to have contained the promise of the present one. The inevitability of parting intensified his passion.
He had dropped the two or three other women who had been a simultaneous but less-than-crucial part of his life. One, whom he actually quite needed to keep sweet for his work, a secretary of the sports organizing committee, had given him to understand that she was offended by his neglect; the second was a client, a young ballerina for whom he had made an exception to his rule that the massage table was a work surface and not a suitable place for dalliance, who had fallen out of contention automatically when she moved to Riga. He really hadn’t seen Nike since December. They had phoned each other a few times, expressed a polite desire to meet, but neither had made the least effort to do so.
Butonov had a major career decision looming. He was fed up with sports medicine, the unvarying impact injuries he was constantly dealing with, and the no-holds-barred politicking associated with trips abroad. A timely offer had materialized: a rehabilitation center was being set up for high-ranking Communist Party and government officials and their families, and Butonov was a likely candidate to manage it. This held out a number of interesting possibilities. At the age of thirty-five his wife Olga had reached her professional ceiling, as happens with mathematicians, and she was egging Valerii on: a new direction; state-of-the-art equipment; you can’t spend your whole life running your fingers over the same old pressure points, etc.
Ivanov, by now wrinkled and yellow and with the passing years looking ever more like a Buddhist monk, warned him, “You don’t have the brain for it, and you don’t have the stomach for it.” His remark contained both respectful appreciation and a subtle put-down.
Butonov rated Nike’s judgment highly, especially since her very successful intervention in his interior decorating, and decided to consult her. He met her by the Maly theater and they went to a ghastly little restaurant on Taganskaya Square which, lying at the intersection of their routes, was at least convenient.
Nike was looking on top of the world, although everything about her was slightly de trop: the long fur coat, the short skirt, the large rings, and her flowing mane of hair. They chatted about this and that in an easy, cheerful way. Butonov explained his problem to her. She became unexpectedly severe, frowned, and told him abruptly: “Valerii, you know, in our family we have a very good tradition, which is to stay as far away from the authorities as possible. I had a close relative, a Jewish dentist, who put it splendidly: ‘In my heart I love Soviet power so much, but my body just won’t react to her.’ If you take this job, you will have to spend all your time cuddling that body.” Nike swore just within the bounds of acceptability, fluently and with great artistry.
Butonov felt a huge sense of relief. Her jocular swearing had answered his question. The Fourth Directorate’s rehabilitation center was off, as he gratefully informed Nike there and then.
Their friendly feelings for each other reached a sufficient temperature for them to finish their shashlyks and get into Butonov’s beige Moskvich and for Butonov, without needing to ask any further questions, to make a U-turn on Taganskaya Square and head for Rastorguevo.
Masha was suffering the most unbearable form of insomnia, when all possible sedatives have been taken and arms, legs, back, everything is asleep except for a small center in the brain which is transmitting the same signal over and over again: “I can’t sleep . . . I can’t sleep . . .”
She slipped out of bed, where Big Alik was sleeping with his knees drawn up to his chin, looking very small in this fetal position. She went to the kitchen, smoked a cigarette, put her hands under the cold tap, washed, and lay down to rest on the couch in the kitchen. She closed her eyes and again heard: “I can’t sleep . . . I can’t sleep . . .”
He was standing in the doorway, her usual angel, clad in somber dark red raiment. She couldn’t see his face clearly, but his eyes were deep blue, as if he were looking through the slits of a theatrical mask. Masha noticed that the doorway was a false one: the real door was farther to the right. He stretched out his hands to her, placed them over her ears, and even squeezed a little.
“Now he’s going to teach me clairvoyance.” She understood that she had to take off her dressing gown. She stood there now in her long nightgown.
He was behind her and pressing her ears and eyes closed, and with his middle fingers began to massage across her forehead and right down to the bridge of her nose. Delicate waves of color floated toward and away from her, rainbows extending to a great range of hues. He was waiting for her to stop him, and she said, “Enough.”
The fingers stopped immediately. In a beam of pale yellow light with an unpleasant green tinge, she saw two people, a man and a woman. They were very young and slender. They came nearer as if she were watching through binoculars until she could recognize them. They were her parents. They were holding hands and aware only of each other. Her mother was wearing a familiar light blue dress with dark blue stripes, and she was younger than Masha herself. What a pity they could not see her.
“This can’t go on,” Masha understood. He began stroking across her forehead once more and pressing on some particular point.
“Butonov’s art, pressure points,” Masha thought. She stopped the beam of yellow light and saw the house in Rastorguevo, the closed side gate and herself beside it. The car was inside the main gate, and the small light was burning in Grandmother’s half. She passed through the side gate without opening it and approached the lighted window, or rather the window approached her, and rising easily into the air, she flew up and dived smoothly inside.
They did not see her, although she was right beside them. Nike had thrown back her long neck, and she could have touched it. Nike was smiling, even perhaps laughing, but the sound was turned off. Masha ran her finger down Butonov’s gleaming chest, but he did not notice. His lips trembled and parted, and revealed his front teeth, one of which was set slightly off true.
“Turn around, please, and go back,” Nike said quietly to Butonov, looking out through the window at Ryazan highway.
“Is that what you want?” Butonov asked in some surprise, but did not argue, engaged reverse gear and turned the car.
He stopped in Usachevka. They parted warmly, with a good, live kiss, and Butonov was not in the least put out. He could take no for an answer. In these matters nobody owes anyone anything. It was still early evening, light snow was falling, and Katya and Liza were waiting up for their mother.
“So much for Rastorguevo,” Nike thought, and lightly ran up the stairs to the third floor.
Masha was standing in the corridor between the kitchen and the living room in an icy draught and had a sudden revelation, as if she had been struck by lightning, that she had once before stood in her nightgown in this exact same freezing current of air. The door behind her would open in a minute and something dreadful would be behind it. She ran her fingers across her forehead to the bridge of her nose, rubbed the middle of her forehead: wait, stop . . .