"Kurt, this is more than I can handle," Natasha said a short time after her salon started to take off.
"You will do as I tell you," he said, and that evening when Natasha was getting ready to go out, he insisted that she wear a tight leather corset and an obscenely short miniskirt.
While Natasha felt awkward at first, she was pleased with all the attention she received that night.
Soon she was being written up in trendy magazines; an art collector gave her financial backing to open up a bigger space that became even more successful.
After six months, some of Kurt's friends began to wonder if he was sick; he was losing quite a bit of weight. "Well, I'm not getting much sleep," Kurt said. "Natasha's up all night."
Yet Natasha, who was forced to cook elaborate Russian dinners night after night, dressed in only a G-string (this made frying uncomfortable, as often grease would spatter from the stove), was more voluptuous than ever. Kurt found he couldn't concentrate on his work the way he once had. It took up so much of his time to think of humiliating things for Natasha to be commanded to do; and so often, just when he thought he had broken her spirit, he would find her chuckling to herself as she scrubbed the floor with a toothbrush.
In the fall Kurt had another show, but though he expected that sales would start out slowly and pick up during the latter days of the exhibition, this year not a single painting sold.
One day Natasha's sister came to town. She was almost an exact replica of Natasha—the same full breasts, slanted Tatar eyes, white skin—but she was much smaller than her sister. As they looked so much alike, it was hard to tell that Natasha was so much larger unless they stood side by side. Kurt wouldn't have thought anything about it, had he not been walking down the street with Natasha's sister, when he realized he was barely as tall as she.
Yet only the year before, he had been taller than Natasha.
While Natasha was onstage, during a performance, he took her sister into one of the back rooms at the hair salon, and, after bandaging her mouth with tape, made violent love to her. When he peeled off the tape, Natasha's sister began to giggle. "That was fun," she said.
As he was lying in bed that night, Kurt thought about how great sex with Natasha's sister had been. He thought he would leave Natasha and go off with her. Then something occurred to him. At home, Natasha had two, three, or perhaps even more sisters. He imagined them, each one a replica of Natasha, each one progressively smaller in size, like those wooden Russian dolls that fit one into the next. And he saw himself, over the years, growing smaller and smaller, as each sister matured and it was time for him to accommodate her.
In the morning, while Natasha was in the shower, her sister. who was staying with them, tried to get into bed with Kurt, but he pushed her away. "What skinny little arms you have."' Natasha's sister said.
A short time later, Kurt threw Natasha out of the house. At first she wept, saying that she had thought they'd always be together, growing more famous. Also, she had spent a year fixing up his apartment trying to make it inhabitable, and what kind of payment was this in return?
But after a week or so, Natasha met an artist who told her it was a well-known fact that Kurt was a has-been, and she ended up going off to live with the new man.
Kurt discovered he missed Natasha more than he had expected. He found other girls to tie up and practice bondage on, but somehow it wasn't the same.
He tried seeing a psychiatrist on Sixty-second Street. In the waiting room a parrot kept screaming, "Ach du, Herr Freud?" and other German phrases. The doctor explained that the acorn for Kurt's neurosis landed in fertile soil during his first postnatal feeding months. Therefore, Kurt both adored and feared women. There was no use coming back, the doctor said —the problem was incurable.
By now Kurt was quite tiny and had no inspiration for new constructions or paintings, though his apartment had deteriorated back to the way it was.
Once, while standing on line to use the bathroom at a party at Natasha's hair salon, he tried to squeeze into the bathroom with Natasha, who was in front of him. She was now so huge she almost filled the doorway, but Kurt was able to push his way inside.
"Natasha, Natasha, Natasha," he whispered in a tiny voice. "I need you, therefore I am!"
In the bathroom he took out his roll of adhesive tape. Yet before he could break off a piece of tape and place it over Natasha's mouth, she thrust his head to her bosom and snatched the tape from his hand. He found himself smothered in her tremendous breasts, and he could hear her muffled laughter as she ripped the tape and started to wrap it around his wrists.