"Well, is this how Shurik squeezed you, huh? This way?"
For some reason Svetka makes no move to tear herself away from Eddie's hands but merely lies there, breathing heavily. And hardly believing it, Eddie understands: "Svetka's waiting for me to fuck her." This discovery astonishes Eddie. He clearly sees that Svetka, breathing heavily, no longer a doll but a living girl flushed from the fight between them, is waiting for his penis.
"He fucked you, didn't he?" Eddie says maliciously, feeling his penis grow erect as it fills with vital blood, fills just because he is saying that word to Svetka for the first time. "He fucked you in the cunt," Eddie says. "I know, he fucked you in the cunt," he feverishly repeats as he unbuttons his pants and takes out his penis…
Svetka shudders when Eddie touches his penis to her mound covered with blond hair. She shudders again when Eddie's penis bumps into her bone. The third time, however, Eddie stops bumping into Svetka's bone and freely enters into her somewhere. Freely, because it's wet and slippery inside her. "Ah!" Svetka moans.
"Did he fuck you like this?" Eddie asks, guiding his penis into Svetka. "Like this, huh?" Eddie sees Svetka licking her lips, but she says nothing, as if listening not to Eddie's words but to something else. "She's listening to my penis," Eddie thinks with horror. "Who taught her to do that?" he wonders. "Or maybe she was born with it." He too falls silent as he fucks Svetka, moving his penis in and out of her. Each time, as Eddie moves his penis into her, Svetka moves forward a little in response, and when he moves back out, Svetka moves as if to follow his penis.
He suddenly realizes that his penis and Svetka's cunt are making a smacking sound. The same way that the blonde girl's cunt smacked when the Tyurenka punks gang-raped her. Remembering that girl and comparing her to Svetka, Eddie mentally changes their places and suddenly thrusts several times in Svetka, thrusts faster and faster in her and to his own surprise suddenly comes in her. At the same time, he feels bad, as if ashamed of something, and even vile. Coming in Svetka is entirely different from coming when you're masturbating, and for some reason Eddie feels humiliated, as if he has revealed an awful weakness unworthy of a man…
He lies on Svetka for a while without saying anything, unconsciously kissing her on the neck. When he finally lifts his head from her neck, he sees that Svetka is looking at him in a mockingly pensive way, or even in a slightly contemptuous way, through her dried tears.
"Well, what of it?" Svetka asks quietly. "As you see, you're too late."
Eddie at first doesn't understand what Svetka means by "late." He looks suspiciously at her.
"As you see," she says, "I'm no longer cherry." She says it calmly and cynically, as if a completely different woman and not the Svetka he has known up to then were talking to Eddie-baby. "Cherry" sounds disgusting on her lips, as if Vovka Zolotarev or Slavka the Gypsy were saying it. It sounds dirty somehow. "So that's what she's really like," Eddie thinks.
"Shurik?" he asks.
"What's Shurik got to do with it?" she asks contemptuously. "One of my father's friends humped me two years ago; he was drunk. My father had just died of alcohol poisoning, and his friends were still coming to see us. 'Concern about the single widow and her child,'" Svetka says sarcastically, mimicking someone.
"But what about Shurik?" Eddie asks.
"You've got Shurik on the brain," Svetka says in an almost friendly tone. "Well, I did it with him too," she adds in a bold voice, and grins. "But don't worry," she says, "I don't love him. I don't love anybody."
"Not even me?" Eddie asks maliciously. He lifts himself up onto his elbows and looks Svetka in the eye. He still can't believe this is the same Svetka he parted with before the holidays just three days ago. Just three days ago.
"You're a boy," Svetka announces pensively. "And I'm a woman. A man should be a lot older than a woman, since women mature much faster. So for them to be equal's in bed, the man should be a lot older. At least ten years," Svetka concludes.
Eddie-baby shyly pulls up his pants, stands, and buttons his fly while Svetka continues to lie on the floor. From below, from down there on the floor, she suddenly says to Eddie,
"I was really afraid of you – I'm sorry. I actually had been planning to tell you everything, but I kept putting it off – I was afraid… My mother says that you're so touchy you have to be approached in a special way. Besides, you're always carrying that awful razor around…" Svetka falls silent.
"Have I ever hurt you?" Eddie asks.
"Once you waved your knife at me…" Svetka says.
Eddie-baby picks up his notebook of poems from the floor. It fell out of the pocket of his jacket during their scuffle.
Svetka gets up and puts her mother's robe back on. "Are you leaving?" she asks sadly.
"Answer one question for me," Eddie says to her thoughtfully. "Were you just screwing around with all that? You know… the kisses, the wine, and me, like an asshole, reciting my poems to you… If you didn't love me, what was the point?"
Svetka is silent, and then, picking her words with difficulty, she says,
"You see, you can't understand… The fact is that in a certain sense I loved you then, and I love you now…"
Eddie mockingly and maliciously shakes his head. "I see," he says. "You love me…"
"Yes, I do," Svetka says, "but not as a man. I always liked talking to you, and there wasn't anybody else I felt as comfortable with. The time we spent together was very interesting… You're an exceptional guy -"
"Stop it." Eddie frowns. "We can do without that."
Svetka falls silent.
"Well, I'm on my way," Eddie says. "Farewell."
"Never say, Farewell! It's too sad," Svetka answers, frowning. "Say, 'See you!' Can you come over, tomorrow for dinner? My mother will be back in the morning, and she's going to make a holiday dinner. She asked me to be sure to invite you. She likes you a lot," Svetka adds.
"Well, see you!" Eddie says, and followed by Svetka's pensive gaze, he walks out of the apartment. He knows that it's not "see you" but "farewell." He'll never go back to Apartment No.14 again. Never.
When Eddie turns around on the landing, he finds himself face to face with Svetka, who is still standing in the doorway. Uncertainly she asks him, "Do you want to stay with me? All night?" But Eddie doesn't answer her.
Outside it seems to have gotten even colder, and Eddie shiveringly pulls his jacket tighter around him. "People deserve to be killed. When I'm completely grown, I'll definitely kill people," he thinks.
The dominoes are still lying on the table as he walks past it. All Garik did was to arrange them in a large, closed circle.
30
Early the next morning Eddie emerges from Vovka Zolotarenko's shed, where he spent the night completely frozen. He didn't feel like going home. He didn't want to see the sleepy face of his mother, he didn't want to answer her questions, and he didn't want to refuse the food she would offer him and have to listen to her complaints about the fact that everybody else has children who are children, whereas her son is a rogue who comes home at four in the morning. Eddie-baby wanted to be alone and think.
Vovka gave Eddie the keys to the shed a long time ago, "just in case." Eddie had never used them until now, when that "in case" finally came along. Vovka didn't tell Eddie that the shed was full of rats, although it's possible he didn't know about that.
Clambering up onto an old door that he had placed on top of two barrels, Eddie lay there calmly for a little while, or rather, not so calmly, since he was thinking about what Svetka had said to him, but at least the first few minutes in the shed were quiet. Then Eddie heard the first rustling sound, and soon the whole shed was filled with an invisible clamor. Eddie-baby first thought it was mice, but in the dull light of the shed's single half-meter window, he suddenly, even with his nearsightedness, saw eyes. He was chilled to the bone, and he started lighting matches one after another in an attempt to see what was going on…