“This is for you,” he said, “your photograph, the size of a whole wall. It turned out fantastically. I have the other photographs at home; if you like, we’ll go look at them.”
Nar accepted the roll: “Thanks for the photo, but nothing of that sort will ever happen again,” he said, and it flashed across his mind that he had honestly earned this photograph.
The photographer didn’t try to insist but only followed Nar’s retreating walk with his eyes.
When he got home Nar spread the roll out flat on the floor. He placed books at the corners, so the photograph would not roll up again; and there before his gaze, staring him right in the face, an ideal body lay revealed. The play of chiaroscuro on the muscles was so skillfully done that they looked even bigger and more prominent than they really were. Nar lifted the photograph from the floor and pinned it to the wall. “I’ll have to make a handsome frame for it,” he thought, stepping back to the opposite wall and unable to tear his delighted gaze away. He studied every sector of his body in the photograph and found not the slightest flaw. He had been shot with a very serious expression on his face, which always appeared when he tensed the muscles of his arm or abdomen. Nar considered that this facial expression gave him a look of handsome nobility. In the photograph his arms were bent at the elbows and raised to the level of his shoulders – the classic pose of the body builder – and the only thing at all out of the ordinary was his nonregulation nudity. Letting his gaze rest on his genital organ, Nar suddenly realized that it was every bit as beautiful as the other parts of his body. As he thought about this he began to feel a growing lust for himself. His hands instinctively reached for his trousers and undid them. Then, not taking his eyes from the photograph, he brought himself to an ecstasy that staggered him with its power. What he had experienced with women could not be compared with this. And what thrilled him most of all was this delighted admiration which the photograph never ceased to evoke in him even after he had heaved a sigh of relief and release. In fact, this admiration seemed to be growing in strength. After a few minutes his desire revived anew – which also had never happened with him before – usually he required about an hour for this. Nar exulted, gazing at his enormous image; now he identified it with himself, now he saw in it a fabulous demigod. Only now he understood what is subsumed under the word “love.” Love filled his entire soul with an immense joyous lucidity, which was understood by his body as neverending passion. Devouring his image with his eyes and attempting again and again to splash out his rapture, Nar suddenly felt a sharp pain in his chest, and, without having time even to fear for his body, crashed to the floor.
When his body was discovered, and with it the unseemly cause of his death, it was decided that Nar should be buried as quickly as possible and without fanfare. Perhaps because of this decision, the sole mourners at his funeral, aside from the unfortunate parents, who flew in from their home town, were two official representatives of the college. On the day following the funeral, when his parents came to plant flowers on his grave, they found to their astonishment that a lone white long-stemmed flower was already blooming there.
1984
Translated from Russian by Amy BabichNothing In The Mail[4]
The postman arrived around three o’clock. But right after breakfast Sandy was already sitting in front of the window with a book and a bag of popcorn, waiting. The book lay on her knees on the chance that the programs on television might turn out to be boring, but usually the programs attracted her more than the book. It was hard, however, for her to concentrate completely: her fantasies of what might show up in today’s mail were too strong. Since childhood she had always felt that the mail would bring her important, glorious news. As a little girl, not able yet to read, she felt her heart stop at the rustling sound of the letters the postman dropped against the metallic wall of the mail slot. Sandy wondered why her mother was in no hurry to pick up the mail, and, why, when she had finally gathered it from the floor and placed the envelopes on the living room table, she waited to open it until she had finished her work in the kitchen. “Maybe the letters are about something amazing and exciting,” Sandy thought. Later she realized that it was by no means necessary to open an envelope to know that it contained a bill or unsolicited advertising. But even for the grown-up Sandy, the most detested bill hid within itself a certain mystery and specialness, because it had been sent by mail. Sandy opened envelopes with an ivory-handled knife on which she had spent a week’s pay, in the superstitious dream that so beautiful and so expensive a knife would attract, by magical means, favorable correspondence. It was like sacrificing to a god. She would painstakingly inspect envelope, stamp, postmark and date of postage, after which she would take out the bill and ascertain its source, the sum demanded, the service rendered, the term allowed for payment, and whether there was a fine for late payment. She would then put it in a file with the other bills she had accumulated.
Sandy had been out of work for a month now. She had quarreled with the manager of the pet shop where she was working, collected all her equipment and walked out, slamming the door. Sandy, a dog-grooming school alumna, had managed to contain herself when her supervisor, who had no specialized training, began making comments to her. Finally Sandy exploded when her supervisor started to show her how to clip the legs of a poodle.
“Clip it yourself! And don’t try to teach me! ” Sandy screamed in her face, and left the manager to finish clipping the astonished dog.
During her vacation the many dog bites on Sandy’s hands had healed, and her skin had rid itself of the minuscule tick-bites that caused pain and itching.
Sandy languished in her leisure. Her mother went to work each morning, complaining that Sandy would loaf around all day again. Sandy tried to hold her peace – after all, her mother did not demand money, for either room or board.
After a hearty breakfast, Sandy straightened the house, filling the small rooms with her huge body. “What will come in today’s mail?” she sweetly titillated herself. A month ago an offer had arrived for her from the distributors of various magazines. With a subscription came automatic participation in a sweepstakes. Sandy had signed up for Playgirl, and now awaited with excited shivers not only her first issue of the magazine, but also her possible winnings. She had planned how she would spend the money; first, she would buy a car and rent an apartment downtown. At present she had to ride an hour on the bus to reach the center of town. She often noticed how people looked sideways at her fat body. Her two girlfriends from school had married and borne children, and lived in small towns over two hundred miles away. It was uncomfortable for her to go for a walk by herself, and she went to the movies only rarely.
But Sandy’s large body produced large desires, for whose satisfaction life offered meager possibilities. She had eagerly lost her virginity at eighteen with an undiscriminating fifteenyear-old boy, and since that time fate had smiled on her a countable number of times, and these smiles had been momentary and far from charming.
One day the mail fell to the floor more heavily than usual. It was the long-awaited magazine. Sandy leapt up in delight, and the house shook under her weight. She spread open the glossy pages with sweaty fingers. Oh, what she would give for just a minute with one of these men!
Before curling up with them in the bedroom, she thrust her hand into the mail slot, to check whether a letter might be stuck there. Once there had actually been a letter there, and ever since then Sandy had kept a spark of hope alive by checking the slot several times a day.
She had sent off for a vibrator that struck her fancy in a magazine ad, and had begun awaiting the package with trembling hope, as if it were a date. In the meantime, she routinely beckoned pleasure with her finger.
One morning when she pulled on her jeans, Sandy was unable to fasten the zipper. The jeans had grown unbearably small. Sandy rejoiced that now she had an excuse to roam the shopping mall and buy new jeans. She loved getting out of the house; it distracted her from the tedium of waiting for the mail. And she loved returning home to find mail waiting for her.
But buying jeans did not work out – there were no sizes big enough and she would have to go to a special store where only large sizes were sold. This store was at the other end of town, so Sandy decided to go home – the mail should already be there on her return. Sandy recalled her sensations from several years back, when she had gone on a weeklong vacation trip. All the lonely time of the vacation was colored with the anticipation of collecting the week’s mail. “Six times more letters,” Sandy calculated, looking at an opened book without knowing what she was reading. What joy and hope to open one envelope and see a pile of others waiting for you – she had had the feeling that the world, with all its unpredictable, inexhaustible possibilities, had crept in through the mail slot.
At home, the vibrator awaited her in its package. She threw herself on it and began her honeymoon. Later, the vibrator’s cold, mechanical efficiency wearied her, and after that Sandy used its services with satisfaction, but without trembling. Only the photographs from Playgirl invested her sensations with any romantic coloring. Later, the melancholy of her isolation overcame her, and she wailed with loud sobs – crying quietly was impossible. Sandy thought that if she could cease to be fat her life would change significantly; she had a pretty face, and men would start to find her attractive. Sandy had accumulated an entire library of books on every conceivable diet, and had passionately adhered to each of them in turn for a week. Several times a day, Sandy clambered onto the scale and watched the indicator, which sped around the numbered dial almost all the way around to zero. But she never succeeded in taking off more than ten pounds, after which she would grow weary of dieting and throw herself with new zest into eating. Each diet resulted in her putting on even more weight. Once she had recourse to a special weight-loss clinic. They put her on a diet, and every day Sandy had to go to the clinic to weigh herself, with the condition that if she had not lost a specified quantity of weight, she must pay a fine. It turned out that every time she went she had to pay. Hence, after paying the fine several times, she decided to waste no more money.
More than anything Sandy disliked Sundays, because on this day there was no mail delivery. And then, too, her mother was home on Sundays; so Sandy would go out to the nearby shopping mall and gaze at the shop windows and at the men passing by. Through their tight-fitting jeans it was easy to discern their maleness, and Sandy was unable to tear her eyes away from the variety of men’s thighs. “What if I went up to someone,” she mused, “and said, ‘Come on, let’s spend the night together’ – or – ‘Hey, let’s go to bed together’ – or…” But Sandy knew that she would never have the nerve to do this.
Once she saw a commercial for a computer dating service. Sandy sent off a letter of inquiry, and in a few days received a questionnaire in the mail. This was truly a holiday for her; it opened a season of hope. Sandy read through the questionnaire several times and in the blank for “attitude towards sex” put a check by “very liberal.” She couldn’t remember what she had checked for the other questions. Sandy sent off the questionnaire with the required fee, and began receiving lists of men’s names, addresses, and telephone numbers in the mail. She felt awkward about making the phone calls, but this turned out to be unnecessary – the telephone started to ring every night, non-stop. Sandy’s mother watched her suspiciously as she carried the phone into her bedroom. When Sandy returned to the living room, high from her conversation, her mother asked:
“Who was that?”
“None of your business,” answered Sandy.
“It is my business. When you’re earning money and living on your own, then I won’t care.”
“Then don’t care now!”
“I can’t afford not to care – next you’ll be bringing some infection into the house. Who was that on the phone?”
“Someone I know.” Sandy gave in, not wanting to anger her mother, for she was aware of her own financial dependence. But she could offer no good explanation for her sudden abundance of acquaintances, and she was ashamed of her helplessness. So she pretended it was the same acquaintance on the phone every time. Still, there was more than enough material for suspicion. More than once Sandy looked at her mother with hatred, ashamed yet gratified by this emotion.
Most of the men who called asked how much she weighed and, once she told them, expressed no desire to meet. Then she stopped telling her weight, and merely said that she was voluptuous. By this means she succeeded in meeting three men, each of whom tried to end the date upon seeing her. Once, a fellow phoned her and, without asking much of anything, invited her to dinner. He said he would pick her up. Sandy arranged her thick black hair provocatively and put on a dress with sequins. She slathered several layers of makeup on her face. But no one showed up. Her mother’s snide question – for whose benefit was she all dolled up? – let loose Sandy’s tears without relieving her emotions. Sandy had studied herself, and knew that only orgasm had the power to relax any tension whatever, be it due to anger, sorrow, or anxiety. So she used the vibrator not only to dampen her lust, but also for emotional therapy. She locked herself in her bedroom, and the quivering of the vibrator stilled the quaking of her body.
The next time a new voice called to arrange a rendezvous, Sandy imagined in advance how it might turn out, and decided to meet her date in a bar. First, this would prevent her mother from witnessing yet another fiasco if the date failed to show up, and second, she would at least get to hear some music, after her date, on seeing Sandy, announced that he had an urgent obligation elsewhere. The man gave his name as Bill, and that he would be wearing a leather jacket. Sandy said that she had brown eyes and black hair, and that she would wear a pin that looked like an envelope on her blouse.
Sandy sat at a table in the bar for twenty minutes, observing three men, one of whom was wearing a black leather jacket. She sipped her cocktail and wondered whether this was Bill and whether he would approach her. The men were drinking beer and laughing loudly. Sandy noticed that they were looking at her. She was sure that they were making fun of her weight, and Sandy felt ashamed, as if she were naked. The attention that her heavy body attracted always gave Sandy the sensation of being stripped.