Barsukov spent an evening in the city park and rising from the bench realized that he lost the thread of life - if there was one.

Barsukov spent an evening in the city park and rising from the bench realized that he lost the thread of life - if there was one. He ceased putting his thoughts in combinations that led to the favorable outputs. And he was passing the circus building.   
    Along with Barsukov the stars appeared from behind the cupola. He recalled how two years ago he idolized the space above the manege - space skillfully prepared for jugglers, perforated beforehand for tricks, while up to the very top thoroughly uniform, intended for gymnastic flights and the swinging of flexible ropes in compliant air, - in other words, space liberated from flaws to which street space, the space of rooms and streetcars was doomed, not to mention space inside automobiles, perch boxes and empty economic bags.
    Barsukov adored this rapid superficial flight of perception, and was unpleasantly astonished when it suddenly began to slip off. For no comprehensible reasons the objects or the combinations of objects no longer brought him former happiness, yet if it came to someone's mind to ask when all this started Barsukov without hesitation would answer. It began the day he met a woman who practiced the following: appeared out of suites in twilights of dresses, stood barefoot in a basin of water, and chewed on rabbits.
    They met on a late summer day by a furniture store. Chairs, a sofa bed, and a kitchen collection had been carried out to the sidewalk. He sat on a sofa next to the store manager. By a wardrobe, touching its mirror by his jacket, there stood a next-door neighbor, a paralytic. The old man shook his head so intensely as if he did it by his hand.
    Trees have stiffened by their colorless verdure, heavy trolleybuses uniformly were passing down the street. Everything has been predestinated, and was waiting for a jolt.
    It turned out to be the squeak of a drawer advanced by the porter from a chest.
    Following it, she appeared and addressed Barsukov with a question.
    Separating his recollections, moving that memorable furniture around the asphalt and peeping after the place of their encounter from the building hall across the street Barsukov nonetheless could not determine what her question was. Instead, her words appeared uttered after a ten-minute gap that was not preserved by his memory or moved into another - better? part of it:
    "Look what I purchased!" Along with Barsukov she glanced at what was carried by her hand, a luminous, entirely juvenile kerosene burner. He already caught a glance of the gear at the beginning of her appearance.
    Barsukov traced the burner down her stressed and barely bent hand, crossed an armpit, paused on the breast, and slipped behind the shoulder into the small line for tomatoes, managing to note along the way as she set up right, shyly intercepting his glance, the dress that stuck in her armpit.
      The next evening they met at her place. A bottle of wine and two glasses stood on the table. Alongside her silent brother sat, whose right earlobe was well developed while the left one came to naught near the cheek. It took some time to realize his inability to talk, and Barsukov started taking her clothes off.
    The bed was already done, yet they did not dare to go, being shy of the man who arose from the chair, approached his sister and touched her breast slightly with two fingers.        
    The lampshade illuminated the room by more and more dim light. She resiled on the chubby floorboard by impatient feet. However, they did not stir from their spots, until he fell asleep, this twenty-two years moron, tucking under his head a hand with four fingers of identical length.
    The family life rapidly bored Barsukov, but he revealed that he was unable to divorce his wife. A small-hardened inflation under her upper lip, the unexpected and irregular shape of the large separated nipples, and one more important detail of his wife's body, made the divorce impossible.
    In the meanwhile the interest in life was ebbing from Barsukov. Restless and obnoxious was this stealing torpor, the sluggish composition of Barsukov soul, this daily night revived occasionally by bright crumbs of bodily releases. And Barsukov already grew accustomed to this status, it ceased to astonish him, converting itself into a kind of nervous amusement and being able to deliver negative happiness to his indifferent mind.
    Now, during an already night jaunt, rescue thought, whose content he did not know appeared and strengthened before him. And the matter was not that Barsukov contemplated his wife's murder. The thought about murdering of his wife was not particularly new to Barsukov. Thus far it proved senseless because of impossibility to find a unique, nowhere and never existed method he could use.
      In gloomy premonition Barsukov perpetuated and perpetuated his jaunt. He surmised, this scheme was someplace close, it would be enough to change something slightly, and this method, the terrible and astounding method without difficulty entered his mind.
      The night ended. Four excursion buses from Belyaevka village akin to headless riders galloped Manezhnaya Street cobblestones. Forty-year old woman showed up from a building entrance. She yawned without want to cover her unstable mouth, and suddenly Barsukov realized how he would kill his wife. He thrust his hands into coat pockets and broke into a run down the street. He ran along the pavements in fresh epileptic air, and the blinking light hardly riched the eyes.
    Barsukov entered the courtyard, rose to the second floor, produced the key and opened an external door. His wife stood in the kitchen her back facing him, hands hanging above the gas stove. In her left hand, above the hissing frying pan, there was a knife. The other hand held a large piece of meat. Her hair, jumbled from the sleep, hung over her left arm, and lingerie drooped from under the dressing gown.
      He noticed his wife throwing a piece of meat onto the window-sill, entered the kitchen, and, before she discerned his appearance, understood that he would not be able to live without this messy hair, without this wet and red hand, and mentally repeated her toss. He weakened the oblong muscles of her elbow, again strained them and sharply straightened her arm.
    And on the windowsill has lain elastic, with bright smooth surface, of chocolate color with a violet nuance, fresh beef liver.