He got along famously with my wife — their thoughts and words, and even their movements, coincided. The two of them looked like brother and sister. I felt I was standing on the threshold of the secret. Sometimes I got the urge to track Justinas, and sometimes I unexpectedly felt sorry for her, or more accurately, for the pathetic remains of my Irena that would at intervals flare up in her. A human is weak: I would caress her secretly in the dark of the night, examine the body, lost in dreams, with the tips of my fingers. A human’s sensations are deceptive: sometimes it seemed that I didn’t feel the triple rolls under her breasts, I didn’t find the disgusting globs of flesh between her thighs, I didn’t feel the coarse hair tangled around her nipples. I was completely deranged: sometimes I talked to her, sometimes to my Irena. I had to resolve to do something, but I didn’t know what. I kept trying to lure her out into the yard when I heard Jake barking. I wanted to bring the two of them eye to eye, and see either bristling hair on the nape, insane eyes, and bared fangs, or a tail wagging hysterically and a tongue trying to lick. But as soon as Jake’s yelping sounded, she would find piles of work that couldn’t be put off. The longer I failed to bring the two of them together, the more I believed the dog would decide everything. Sooner or later the two of them had to meet, and then. . “Then” came one gloomy Saturday morning. She was bored and, of her own accord, suggested we go outside. I was about to argue against it; I wanted to read, but I glanced out the window and saw Jake romping around the yard. I went down the stairs with a numb heart; I almost wanted to grab her by the hand and drag her back home. I secretly hoped Jake would have run off somewhere.
But Jake was lying next to the bench, all tensed up, ready to jump up and bound towards us. She turned to him first, squatted carefully, stretched out her hand and, crying out, jumped back. A bitter smell of mold suddenly spread through the yard. My leaden feet wouldn’t carry me closer, I didn’t want to know anything, and for a few long moments I didn’t know anything, but suddenly, almost against my will, I understood it all. It would have been better not to. The dog was dead. His infinitely lifelike pose, his open eyes gazing forward, completely did me in. An instant before he was energetically romping about, even now his doggy soul hadn’t yet entirely left his body, but at the same time he was somehow especially, hopelessly dead. She wailed out loud, caressed the rigid, curly-haired body, and I dare say even forced out a tear. I didn’t believe a single one of her wails, not a single one of her movements. That time she played her role badly, no one in the world would have believed her. The yard immediately got sickeningly colorless; the smell of mold or decay became unbearable. I was seriously frightened; I was afraid to even get close to her. The cowardly, nervous little person deep inside my soul just wanted to run, to escape as far as possible, to dig under the ground, to crawl into a cave and tremble there. The other — the brutal man who had gone through hell — wanted to strangle her with his bare hands. I wanted to howl, when suddenly she turned around and looked at me with Irena’s pure, sad eyes.
I hardly moved all day. I was half paralyzed, and on top of it all, Justinas showed up that evening and tormented me with his talk about women and his sexual prowess. He had never spoken about it before. This time you’d think he’d opened a bag of obscenities and uncovered his filthy insides. He never said the most important word aloud, but it was heard most, without actually being said a single time; all the talk, all of Justinas’s thoughts, revolved around it. It seemed he wasn’t in the least concerned about the women themselves, just their vaginas. In Justinas’s world, the streets were full of walking vaginas with completely unnecessary appendages: arms, legs, heads. The more I listened, the more I started becoming some kind of vagina maniac myself. To my own surprise, I praised my wife’s erotic talents in a mysterious whisper, and wasn’t in the least ashamed. He infected me with his mania; it was only a good deal later that I became disgusted. They really are capable of infecting people with all the forms of their plague; this must be strictly guarded against.
I needed to run off somewhere as soon as possible and think things over. I signed up for a business trip to Moscow and packed my bag in an instant. She didn’t seem to want me to go, and she kissed me just like Irena when I left. I was stunned. She was intentionally driving me insane. I stood on the stairs for a long time, but I went to the station anyway. Too well I remembered the neckless ruler of the Narutis neighborhood. Too well I remembered the hopelessly, irretrievably dead Jake. Suddenly I felt there was no turning back. In the station bar, all my doubts began to bubble up again; once more, the simplest question arose: what’s going on here? Suddenly I realized that people, entire nations, the greatest countries come to ruin in just exactly this way — they fail to ask out loud in time: what’s going on here? (It’s enough just to remember the birth of Nazi Germany.) Of course, man became man because he’s able to adapt to anything; however, that adaptability will be his ruin in the end.
I hurried back home; I prepared to press her into a corner and force it out of her. I was brimming with resolution. I opened the door quietly (as it happened, I had greased all of the locks and hinges in the house a few days before), went down the corridor, stepped into the living room, and came to a dead stop. Now I’m standing in the doorway of my living room, still in my wet coat, water dripping from my hair (it’s probably raining outside), heavy drops pressing on my eyelashes, but I see everything very clearly — it’s impossible to see any more clearly. She has fallen back voluptuously on the couch, half undressed, her thick, knobby thighs spread out, repeating as if she’s insane — don’t, don’t, we shouldn’t, but she’s ripping off the remains of her clothing herself, savagely grasping at Justinas, pulling him closer and continuing to senselessly repeat — don’t, don’t, we shouldn’t. With horror I see how the globs of flesh between her thighs join perfectly with Justinas’s hips, I see (or maybe I’m imagining it) how his fingers lie perfectly in the triple folds under her breasts, how they assemble themselves into a single thing like some mechanism: all of the parts sanded smooth and fitting perfectly. We shouldn’t, we shouldn’t, don’t, but she herself paws at him, sucks him into herself, moans with her head thrown back, my heart will jump out of my chest any minute, but I can’t move from the spot, my feet have grown to the floor, even my eyelids have turned to stone, without blinking I watch him screwing my Irena, my one and only Irena, I watch her body relishing him, endlessly, without respite, hypocritically and perversely, I watch Justinas fling himself on the rug completely worn out, and she kneels, her legs disgustingly spread, no longer repeating we shouldn’t, we shouldn’t, don’t. My eyes hurt, my heart hurts, I no longer know myself who I am now, what I will do the next instant — trample them both under my boots or fall headlong into despair; I know nothing, my soul is gone, completely gone, but it hurts all the same, that supposedly non-existent soul of mine hurts piercingly — after all, she was once Irena, my one and only Irena. The two of them move again, come to life, and start doing something weird. Suddenly I realize that everything that has happened was no more than a prelude, a meaningless, primitive prelude, and the real things are only just beginning.