LITMIR.BIZ

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a liter of milk in a cardboard carton; he would place it beside the weight he was pressing and drink it up in the course of his workout. He had read in some magazine that by doing that he would sharply accelerate the growth of his muscles. On one of his workout days a women’s volleyball team was practicing in the gym, and in order to retrieve their flying ball the women frequently ran out to where Nar was devotedly lifting weights. One of them asked him, as she grabbed the ball, why he was drinking milk. Nar explained, and she giggled stupidly. Not long after this the volleyball team took a break, and they settled down not far from Nar. He tried to ignore them, since he felt certain that a large portion of the team was watching him. While pressing his weight, he started drinking his milk in very small, slow swallows, in the manner prescribed in the magazine. At the same time he turned, showing the women, as if by chance, the various sides of his body. The one who had run out after the ball asked him, from where she sat, how long he had been involved in body building. Nar answered her, raising his voice so that she, and the rest, would be able to hear it.

      “And is it true that body builders shave their bodies?”

      “Yes, you have to for competitions,” Nar confirmed, remembering that it was time for him to shave his chest and armpits.

      “And how much milk do you drink?” asked a curious girl.

      “One liter per workout,” Nar answered readily, and in order to prolong the conversation added, as he took his next swallow: “But, you know, the milk that they sell these days is just like water.”

      Suddenly all the girls were rolling with laughter. It developed that, when Nar had left the room to use the toilet, the girls had drunk up almost all the milk and replaced it with water, and Nar, on his return, had continued to drink it, suspecting nothing. When the girls explained the joke to him, Nar indulgently joined their laughter, although in his soul he felt uncomfortable – it was the first time that so many women had laughed at him, and it had occurred precisely when he was fully armed – that is, when his body was nearly nude.

      This incident contributed to his accumulating dissatisfaction with women. In general, what Nar liked best in a relationship was the beginning, which consisted of admiration for his body. But liaisons soon wearied Nar, because he had to indulge the women and force himself to admire them for some reason. Besides, his workouts and his studies took a lot of energy out of Nar; and the more sharply his muscles protruded and the deeper became his knowledge in the sciences, the more rarely the female body sparked any interest in him. For this reason he began to feel as an importunate reproach to himself the eternal readiness of the female body for intercourse, which some women had had the audacity to point out to him. The greatest pleasure he received was when a woman gave him a massage, since while she was doing this she was perforce admiring his body. But during an embrace it always seemed to him that it was all one to the woman whether he or another man held her; and the tighter the embrace, the less she could see of his body. Also, Nar was afraid that prolonged movement of the hips, which women so greedily demanded from him, would lead to disproportionate growth of the muscles encircling his waist, and so spoil the silhouette of his figure. He therefore preferred to have the woman sit on top of him, so that his body would be visible to her at all times, and besides in this position it was hardly necessary for him to move at all.

      He saw one particular girl for about a year and even considered the possibility of marriage. But one day she mentioned that she had once suffered a uterine infection, and Nar pricked up his ears and began questioning her in detail: how long did it last, had she had to go to the hospital.

      “What are you so upset about?” she said in amazement. “This was all a long time ago.”

      “But I read that a woman can get sterile from that,” explained Nar. Sometimes he liked to imagine his future son gazing with admiration at his strong father. And the more he thought about it the more he realized that he didn’t want to throw away his life so lightly – if she couldn’t get pregnant it would be better to split up and break off the whole relationship. But he continued to see her; she very conveniently lived next door.

      Her birthday arrived, and Nar gave her a very handsome card. He presented her with it in an envelope with such solemn ceremony, and he showered her with so many elaborate felicitations, that the girl was forced to cut him short. All day Nar tried to find out from her why she was in such a bad mood. And when he phoned her the next day she told him that she didn’t want to see him anymore.

      “Why?” Nar asked with sincere astonishment. “Maybe I did something wrong – come on, tell me.”

      But she had no desire to explain anything and asked that he not phone her in the future. At first he resolved to go to her and demand an explanation, but then it occurred to him that this would be beneath his dignity, and he sat down to write a circumstantial letter, in which he proved with five pages of logic how important it was for them to remain together. “And if this doesn’t convince her I don’t intend to degrade myself further,” he said to himself, foreseeing quite clearly that she would not reply.

      The most expensive item in Nar’s budget was food. He had to maintain hefty muscles – and they required a rich and abundant diet. His stomach accepted chopped meat grudgingly, and insistently demanded brisket, filet, and other choice cuts of meat. If a bowl of fruit happened to sit in front of him he was incapable of stopping until he had eaten all of it. So he behaved at friends’ houses with feigned casualness, as if everyone in the room possessed an appetite equal to his own. On being invited to eat he agreed at once, but always added: “Only a very little bit for me, please.” While waiting for the soup he helped himself to the largest piece of bread, which he thoroughly smeared with a thick layer of butter, until the surface of the bread was completely invisible. Then he covered the butter with thick chunks of meat or sausage – cheese he despised as low calorie. After this Nar graciously accepted a bowl of soup, consented to a second helping, thoroughly cleaned his plate after seconds and was ready for dessert. He loved chocolate, but tried not to eat much of it for fear that it would ruin his teeth. Since eating fruit nonstop was awkward for him, Nar would get up from the table and then, as he chatted with one person or another, would contrive to walk past the bowl of fruit and help himself, as if unconsciously, now to an apple, now to a pear, now to some third item. Thanks to his considerable digestive capacity, Nar’s muscles were soon bursting from beneath the thin film of his skin, which was somehow reminiscent not so much of a film as of a fine-meshed net thrown over the muscles and held in place by blood vessels.

      On one of his summer vacations Nar went to relax by the seaside with a friend. They spent all their days on the beach, where they tried to make the acquaintance of every goodlooking girl. Spotting his latest victim lounging in the sun, Nar led the attack. His friend was a little behind him, and Nar, brandishing his muscles and blocking the sun with his hulk, intoned in a solemn, official-sounding bass:

      “I hope we won’t disturb you if we recline in the neighborhood of your charming back.”

      Every time he did this his friend winced inwardly at the stiffness of this opening, the more so when the girl responded with obvious irony; so the friend would start talking himself, thus saving the situation. His body looked like a weakling’s with Nar as backdrop, but Nar’s friend had a knack for conversing with any girl whatever as though he had known her from early childhood. Nar simply could not understand why girls so often gave preference to his friend, and, feeling wounded, tried hard not to look it and straightened his shoulders.

      Once a day they ate in a restaurant, and they had agreed for the sake of convenience that each day one of them would pay for both; they would take turns. Thus it developed that when it was Nar’s turn to pay he ate twice as much as his friend, and when it was his friend’s turn to pay he ate three times as much. The friend noticed this, but felt awkward about discussing it. Something similar happened with the food they cooked at home, since again they split the cost fifty-fifty.

      One evening, as he was preparing to go out for a stroll, Nar was sitting by the mirror, and, having cruelly disposed of an unwanted pimple, was patching the crater with an ointment of some sort. His friend approached and asked for some ointment, since the skin between his toes was chapped from spending time on the beach. Not budging from the mirror, Nar said, “I can’t give you any; it’s very expensive ointment. I had a lot of trouble getting it, and I only

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