Valentina Fyodorovna took an immediate dislike to her son’s fiancée, in the first place because she was four years older than Valerii, and in the second place for her lack of thrift. But Olga just smiled unconcernedly and, to Valentina Fyodorovna’s considerable annoyance, failed even to notice her dislike.
Their connubial bliss was exceedingly moderate. Butonov, who from childhood had sought out muscular pleasures, had somehow neglected a small group of muscles controlling quite special delights. Achievements in this area of endeavor didn’t win awards or get you onto teams, and his instincts were faced down by youthful vanity.
There was one more factor contributing to his surprising reserve toward women, and that was that they had been falling in love with him from the moment he wore his first trousers. Their wearisome infatuation pursued him like a rain cloud, and as he got older, he began to feel this relentless interest in him as an intrusion on his body and tried desperately to safeguard his most prized asset, whose value was only emphasized the more by the amazing availability of women’s hungry bodies and the endless propositions he was bombarded with.
His first sexual experiments were neither particularly successful nor particularly significant: a thirty-year-old neighbor; the dinner lady in the Central Sports Club canteen; a swimmer in his class whose face appeared to have been washed off by her sport; and all of them really keen, gasping for it, eager to continue the relationship. For Butonov himself these encounters ranked little higher than an agreeable wet dream climaxing on the boundary of sleep before the image of his temptress was finally dissipated by the banging of doors in the corridor and the sound of the toilet flushing on the other side of the wall.
All was tranquil and well ordered in the Butonovs’ life. They got married three months after Olga defended her doctoral dissertation, and three months after that she became pregnant; and three months before her thirtieth birthday she gave birth to a daughter. While she was carrying, giving birth to, and feeding with her large but nutritionally disappointing breasts the very small baby girl produced by two such large parents, Butonov completed his sports medicine course and sold himself to the tennis players.
His job was to keep an eye on the health of the healthiest people on the planet, treating their injuries and massaging their muscles. In his free time he did exactly the same thing, but on a private basis. He earned good money; he was independent. His patients were referred to him by his teacher, and all doors opened for him, from the restaurant of the All-Russian Theater Society to the Communist Party Central Committee’s ticket office.
A year later, international tennis did finally take him abroad, first to Prague—he finally made it to Prague—and later also to London. What more could anyone aspire to?
To Butonov’s credit it needs to be said that he received his high fees for work well done. He maintained the bodies of the tennis players, ballerinas, and actors entrusted to him in a state of irreproachable fitness, but additionally busied himself with heavy posttraumatic rehabilitation. His vanity had finally found a worthy foundation. It was said that he could work miracles. The legend of his hands grew, but he had no illusions as to what legends were worth and worked now as he had as a gymnast to the fullest extent of his abilities, and these gradually extended further and further.
The achievement he was proudest of was Ivan Muzzetoni, on whom he had been working from the moment Ivanov showed him the first techniques and approaches to the spine. Butonov brought Ivanov to see Muzzetoni more than once. On one occasion Ivanov sent an illustrious Chinaman to singe Ivan’s back with aromatic herbal candles.
The main labor, however, was Butonov’s. For six years in a row, twice a week, almost without fail, he wove his spells over the paralyzed back, and Ivan rose up and could walk around the apartment supporting himself on a special walking frame, and slowly, very slowly, was restored to life.
Anton Ivanovich, his face now even more wrinkled, worshiped Butonov. His granddaughter Nina, who had fallen in love with Butonov at the age of twelve, evaluated men on the basis of only one criterion: the extent to which this or that admirer resembled Butonov. Bad-tempered Lyalya Muzzetoni, who had been planning for ten years to divorce Ivan, was transformed after his accident into a quite different person: admirably controlled and optimistic. She knitted sweaters to order, taking over as the breadwinner and never complaining. She usually presented Butonov with a woolly masterpiece on his birthday.
In the middle of October, Butonov came to see Ivan, looking fed up and generally out of sorts. He worked on Ivan for an hour and a half and was about to leave without his usual cup of tea or coffee. Lyalya waylaid him, brought in the tea, and got him talking.
Butonov grumbled that he was off the next day on an idiotic trip to Kishinev, a town which was of no use to anyone, accompanying a group of athletes making guest appearances.
Lyalya suddenly livened up and said enthusiastically: “Oh, but you must go! It’s absolutely marvelous there at this time of the year, and so that you don’t get bored, I’ll give you an errand. You can take a present to my friend.” She dug about in a cupboard and pulled out a white mohair sweater.
“They live on the outskirts, Chovdar Sysoev’s famous equestrian troupe. Haven’t you heard of them? He’s a scary old Gypsy, and Rosa is his rider.” Lyalya pushed the sweater into a plastic bag and wrote the address.
Butonov took the parcel without a great deal of enthusiasm.
His first half-day in Kishinev was free and, having slept the night in a hotel, he went out into the street early in the morning and headed off into the unfamiliar city as instructed, in the direction of the bazaar. The city had little to recommend it, lacking any hint of architectural interest, at least in the part which revealed itself to Valerii through the morning mist as it dissolved before his eyes. The air was balmy, though, southern, with the smell of sweet fruits rotting on the ground. The smell must have been coming from far away, because there were no trees at all in the streets of the new town. Only crimson asters, which had completely faded and had no scent whatsoever, were growing out of rectangular lawns bordered by concrete slabs. It was warm and the place had a touristy feel to it.
Valerii came to the bazaar. Horse carts and oxcarts and their attendant horses and oxen completely clogged the small square; dumpy men with warm fur hats and drooping mustaches were dragging baskets and crates, while women arranged mountains of tomatoes, grapes, and pears on their counters.
“I should take some home,” Valerii thought fleetingly before spotting right in front of him the battered back of a bus with the number he needed. The bus was empty. Valerii got in, and a few minutes later the driver climbed into the cabin and, without saying a word, drove off.
The road ran for a long time through the suburbs, which became increasingly more attractive, past modest little houses and small vineyards. There were frequent stops. In one stretch of the journey children piled in, then they all got off simultaneously when they reached the school. Finally, almost an hour later, they reached the end of the bus route, a strange, transitional place, neither town nor country.
Valerii did not yet know what an important day in his life had begun that morning, but for some reason he remembered every detail very clearly. Two small factories stood on either side of the road blowing smoke in each other’s faces, in total defiance of the laws of physics which dictated that the wind should carry their grey smoke in the same direction.
The observant Butonov shrugged. Greenhouses were ranged along the road, and that seemed odd too: what on earth did they need greenhouses for, when it was seventy degrees in late October and everything was ripening splendidly without them?