Kolia by Perrine Leblanc Page A

Aleksandr’s chest, right between two ribs, with enough force to guarantee that the man would be in pain all night long, and he repeated, word for word, what he had just told him. Kolia sat down just as Masha returned from the kitchen. He looked at her with his best smile.
    Once a month, he took the long train ride from Moscow to Rostov. He stayed at Bounine’s rather hastily constructed dacha, which the master had had renovated before he arrived. It was pretty cold during the winter, but it was habitable on the condition that he got dressed as soon as he stepped out of the bathtub. The outhouse was a real shit hole, but during the summer, apart from the foul stink, it was a tolerable arrangement. Winter was a little more complicated, he would have to think twice before heading out to empty the chamber pot in the prescribed spot. Kolia had stayed away from Masha’s house since the incident with Aleksandr. He preferred to meet her at the train station. It was a neutral location that he was fond of. He could while away his time watching people to his heart’s content, especially on Sundays.
    In December of 1986, Yulia quit the act to go out on her own. It was something that Kolia had expected. Since the summer, she had taken more and more liberties in the ring, and one day she announced that she felt fenced in. They performed together for the last time on a cold damp night. François Mitterrand was in the country on a state visit.
    Kolia began to think that a change of scenery might not be such a bad idea. He decided to quit the circus and leave the city that had given him employment for thirty years. Since the day the troupe had welcomed into the family, the only real attachments he had formed were with Bounine and Pavel— and, of course, Masha.
    One Sunday morning in June, he sat down and composed a dry, formal letter requesting a reassignment. There was no farewell party. No one just up and left the circus. It wasn’t done. Members of the troupe were members for life. He emptied the apartment — most of the furniture went to Eva, the old tarot card reader — and one night when it had stopped raining, he jumped into Masha’s car and left Moscow without a single regret.
    A small travelling circus based in Rostov welcomed him with open arms and awaited his arrival gleefully. Kolia moved into the old master’s place and bought himself a Slavutich TS-202 so he could watch old movies and keep up with what was happening. A comrade had to stay up late if he wanted to outwit the Party’s efforts to educate him.
    As soon as he arrived, he removed all the mirrors he could find inside Bounine’s house, including the one in the bathroom. The old man, who cursed at the world with the regularity of a cuckoo clock, didn’t seem to be bothered in the least by this new decor. In fact, it suited him just fine not to run into his face as he made his way from one room to another. Bounine did, however, keep the large round mirror in his bedroom.
    It was in this mirror that he could watch the ass belonging to the young woman who came to the house every week, in exchange for food (sausage, milk, bread, chocolate, fresh fruit), or products that women were always trying to get their hands on (bath towels, tampons, toothpaste), and sometimes luxury items (face cream, Fidji by Guy Laroche, designer clothing by Zaïtsev). He called her his “mistress” because “whore” excluded the notion of mutual attraction, and Bounine liked to imagine that she enjoyed it, too. During their “lovemaking,” she had to be on top, not only because of his general frailty, but also because he could only manage half an erection at the best of times. While she sat astride him without making so much as a whimper, he would bawl and pant like a charging bull, right up to the pinnacle of his pleasure, which resounded in the solemn and redemptive silence of his bedroom as if it were an empty