The Miracle-Worker - The Kuznetsov-Adoratsky Parable [2/8]

Instructions

[ tw: disturbing imagery ] The date Leonid Romanovich Kuznetsov and Dmitry Matteovich Adoratsky agreed to have dinner together had sprung quicker than either man had anticipated. Dmitry Adoratsky stood on the doorstep of the prince’s brilliant manor, and though he was a poor man, like most of his fellow citizens, he did not seem out of place there. Perhaps this was due to his confident manner, or maybe to his dark-colored suit (he had chosen his best one for the occasion). Dmitry’s knock was answered quickly by Leonid, who had been practically waiting on the other side of the door for his arrival. The two looked into each other’s eyes for a moment, as Dmitry thought Leonid was going to greet him and invite him inside— as might be customary— and Leonid was so unused to having guests that he did not know the right procedure. “Good evening,” Dmitry said, once he realized he would be first to speak, after all. “Good evening,” the prince returned politely. Getting the hint, he opened the door wider and went on, “do make yourself comfortable.” The manor was both elegant and enormous. The snake was immediately struck by its magnificence, so much so that he stood in the entryway for a few moments, his jaw agape, as he took in his surroundings. The walls were covered in either towering windows, European rococo paintings, or huge bookshelves stocked with antiques. The ceiling was so high that Dmitry could not have touched it if he had stood on Leonid’s shoulders, even as Leonid was a remarkably tall man. The floor was wooden and carpeted by red-and-gold rugs authentically from the Ottoman Empire. Over all of this beauty there lay a thick layer of dust and cobwebs. Upon the death of the prince’s mother and father, the manor fell into a steady decline, and Leonid Romanovich was preoccupied with too much else to worry himself with the tidiness of his abode. He needn’t worry over how he would pass down the manor to his heirs, because he had none, and he supposed that the manor would simply die when he did. All of the dirt aside, the place was striking, and it was a few moments (as aforementioned) before Adoratsky the Snake regained himself and was able to form a sentence. “Well, you have quite the house,” he said, in a shamelessly awestruck manner. This flattered Kuznetsov, who had not received anything moderately like a compliment in quite some time. “Thank you. Are you very hungry?” “Very,” Adoratsky said, and followed him into the dining room. Where Adoratsky had been expecting a diner, Kuznetsov had prepared a feast, which was altogether even more remarkable when the fact is considered that the prince had no chef nor maid, and had made the whole arrangement himself. This goes to show, in some literal sense, the deep, boundless devotion that the man had tucked away within his soul, ready and waiting for a subject to be unleashed upon. The prince was selfless in the purest form, and his commitment knew no bounds. Where he fell short in his expression of his emotion he made up for in his profound understanding of both his own vivid feelings and the feelings of others, which he could sense as easily as one could sense that rain was coming from the gray clouds overhead. Dmitry Adoratsky had become some sort of abstract idea within the prince’s romantic mind, a symbol of interest or society or persuasion or something similar in sentimentality. Of course, the snake was none of those things; at least for a long time yet he would not be. “Where are you from?” Dmitry asked between bites of juicy beefsteak and salad. This was certainly out of politeness rather than interest, but Kuznetsov leapt at the opportunity just the same. “I have lived here all my life. This house belonged to my father, who was Russian by blood. He married my mother, a sentimental and well-travelled Frenchwoman, when I was six years old. I was an orphan, you see, and they adopted me not long after their marriage.” “My! That’s quite a story,” Dmitry said. “What of yourself?” “Ah, I am nothing special. I was raised in eastern Russia, and thus as a young man the west confounded me to the highest degree, but now I am becoming more open minded. My father was a farmer and my mother was a peasant woman.” “I see,” Leonid said. Unlike many people who use that phrase, he really did see— he could picture the Adoratsky family as if looking through the window into their countryside house, he could see a young Dmitry helping his mother in the kitchen as his father washed the dirt of the fields off his hands…