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 use it on my face.”

This staggered the friend, who said slowly, “You’re a rotten shit.”

“You watch what you’re saying.” Nar turned toward him menacingly, holding the tube of ointment between two fingers.

Until it was time for them to leave the resort Nar’s friend spoke with him no more, although Nar frequently turned to him with remarks like “I don’t understand why you’re mad at me” – until the friend finally explained that he didn’t wish to know him any longer. After this revelation Nar shut up out of pride.

In place of friendship, Nar was beginning to feel something else surrounding him. After working out, while washing in the shower, Nar often became aware of admiring glances from men. Their glances were flattering to him, like the glances of women, and he managed to suppress the feeling of embarrassment that they roused in him for some unknown reason. One day in the locker room, as he was carefully toweling himself after showering, a man struck up a conversation with him. The man’s back was covered with bushy hair, and his chest was completely hairless. Nar had noticed him before, since they habitually exercised at the same hour. Nar had observed that the man watched him with a fixed stare while he worked out, and had interpreted this as the natural admiration of an amateur for the musculature of a professional. And indeed, the man now began to compliment Nar on his physical attainments and clapped him on the shoulder. Then his hand slid to Nar’s waist and after this he gently touched Nar’s buttocks and significantly looked him in the eye. At this the true nature of his admiration dawned upon Nar, and he violently pulled away from the man. And when the latter put out his hand again, Nar hit him with all his strength, and the man struck his back against a locker.

“Get away!” Nar bellowed with menace in his voice, although really he felt no rancor.

“Idiot!” the man said calmly. And, supporting his bruised back with his arm, he went off to his own locker at the other end of the room. Nar hastily dressed and went out to the street in confusion. As he walked he thought that, probably, everything that he had previously interpreted as friendly masculine admiration for his well-developed body was in fact far from friendly. He recalled how several times in the men’s shower, men had started talking with him, admiring his body with too bright a gleam in their eyes. Once a man had slapped him on the rump, but this was by way of a joke – “look,” he said, “even here you have muscles” – and Nar, who had been on the point of getting angry, had calmed down at once since the slap had been in jest.

Nar also remembered the wisecracks of friends on the subject of his walk. He had tried to create a manly gait for himself, but the wiseacres claimed that he wiggled in back, like a woman. Nar walked back and forth in front of a mirror, and what others called wiggling Nar saw as well-defined workings of the muscles of the buttocks. And now, as he walked along the street, he tried to picture himself from the side – not that he was thinking of changing the way he walked; he was merely trying to ascertain, by glancing at passersby, who among them might find his walk seductive. These thoughts struck him as indecent, but he comforted his embarrassed conscience by reminding it that he couldn’t be responsible for other people’s feelings, just because he happened to have such a handsome body.

Nar constantly returned in thought to the incident in the locker room, and was forced to admit that he had felt no revulsion, but only a sort of reflex terror. Furthermore, this aggressive admiration for his body, the like of which he never got from women, suited his taste. In female admiration he always sensed excessive tenderness and a latent cupidity which inevitably led to a desire to be admired by him in return. The female body excited him to the degree that it was adapted for meshing with his own. Lately he often caught himself thinking that the female body impressed him more and more as something alien. He compared it with his own body, and found his own decidedly more to his liking; so, when the picture of that man’s body rose suddenly and unexpectedly to his mind, it seemed somehow nearer to him, because it more closely resembled his own.

For a month now Nar had not gone out with women, since he was intensively preparing for an important championship. Nar was firmly convinced that sexual relations were detrimental to his physique. He measured with a tape his waist, chest, calves and neck, and gleefully confirmed that his measurements approximated the ideal, as laid down in his special tables. When he glimpsed his aggressive admirer while working out, Nar pointedly refused to notice him. The man in return merely smiled, but never approached or tried to start a conversation.

In the championship Nar took fourth place, which, generally speaking, was not bad, but it carried with it none of the applause and other rewards conferred on the first three prizewinners. So Nar was out of spirits; the most upsetting thing to him was that he had not been invited on stage when the winners were announced, and that he had received none of the flowers and kisses that were being handed out by pretty girls. Wrapped in these gloomy thoughts, Nar failed to notice when someone approached him. And only when he felt someone’s hand in his shoulder did he turn around sharply. Before him stood his man.

“What do you want?” Nar said rudely, and tensed his muscles.

“They were unfair to you,” said the man, with fervent inspiration. “I was there and saw everything. The first prize should have been yours. Nobody has a more beautiful body than you.”

Nar involuntarily felt a hot pleasure in these words, and out of habit cast a glance at his reflection in the mirror on the opposite wall. “There’s no harm in just talking with him a little,” Nar said to himself. Aloud he said:

“I was sure myself that I would get first prize. I have ideal proportions.”

“That’s it, exactly, ideal,” the man took up eagerly.

“Listen, I’ve always wanted to photograph you. I’m a professional photographer, and I have a little studio at home. I think that you need to send photos of yourself to some magazines. Only through the press can you achieve true recognition.”

Nar’s heart began to beat faster than usual. “Recognition” – that was so precisely the right word. His ideal musculature deserved universal recognition. Nar imagined to himself how people would open a magazine, look at his enormous muscles and begin to burn with undying envy and irresistible delight.

“If you want, I’ll do some trial photographs,” Nar heard.

“When?” The word shot out of him.

“Now, if you like.”

It occurred to Nar that this was the first time in his life that he had experienced such persistent interest in himself, and the sensation was extremely pleasant. “Probably women feel like this when I come on to them,” he said to himself.

And although he knew that the offer to photograph his body was not wholly innocent, Nar tried to suppress this knowledge with the iron rod of logic, and told himself that if the fellow gave him any trouble he’d show him who was boss.

“Well, OK, but just for a little while,” Nar agreed, and again was reminded that women, when asked to go home with him, had frequently answered him thus. The man had not been lying – his apartment consisted of a heap of photographic equipment, in the middle of which sat a large sofa, the sole indication that this was someone’s residence. The photographer produced a bottle from somewhere, but Nar refused to drink. All the while the thought would not leave Nar that he was in the position of a woman, and he liked the attention he was getting, the flattery, the wooing.

The photographer unrolled a large screen, plugged in his bright lamps and told Nar to undress. Nar hurriedly removed his training outfit and remained clad only in his shorts. The photographer, who turned out to have long, deft fingers, looked appraisingly at Nar; and his fingers swallowed the camera and froze for a moment.

“Take off everything. Haven’t you ever heard of a ‘nude study’?”

“I’ve heard of it,” said Nar, and thought, “Oh well, why not?” – and removed his shorts.

Now for the first time he felt a keen embarrassment in the presence of the man, and his ears turned red.

“Come here,” said the photographer, and tenderness could be heard in his voice.

He positioned Nar in front of the screen – an irrefutable pretext for gently touching his body – and then dove under his black velvet hood, while his fingers remained on the camera’s surface to skim over its various parts. Nar struck several different poses, and the photographer clicked the shutter.

“Well, maybe that’s enough for today,” said the photographer, and the bright lights died.

Nar felt uncomfortable in the ensuing half-darkness, and started in the direction of his clothes. But the man turned up at his side and said in a pleading voice as he embraced Nar’s waist, “Allow me to touch your god-like body. Please, don’t go away. I’ll make a celebrity of you – everyone will dream of looking at you. You’ll be rich and famous, and I will guard and cherish your beauty.”

In his imagination Nar sketched the picture of his life of wealth and fame, and his body felt not the man’s hands, but each of his fingers individually. Nar realized that he would never forgive himself if he let such an opportunity slip, and he tried to go limp.

After an hour Nar, worried and disillusioned, was on his way home. He was worried about the pain the man had caused him; and this pain was not going away. Nar took a taxi, but even sitting down he felt pain. Fear seized him that irreparable harm had been done to his body, that body around whose beauty and health his entire life was built. Nar would have liked to go to a hospital, but shame held him back, and he decided to wait until morning.

And he was disillusioned by the man’s indifference to his body, which had become evident as soon as his desire was quenched. Nar felt cheated, since for a short time he had believed that he had found a human being who really appreciated the beauty of his body.

By morning the pain was almost gone. Nar firmly resolved never to see the photographer again. For three days, as a precaution, he refrained from exercising, waiting until the pain was completely gone. When he first went back to the gym, he saw him right away. They remained at different ends of the gym while working out, and he did not approach Nar, as if perhaps he felt guilty. In the locker room he materialized in front of Nar with a large roll of paper in his hands.

“This is for you,” he said, “your photograph, the size of a whole wall. It turned out fantastically. I have the other photographs at home; if you like, we’ll go look at them.”

Nar accepted the roll: “Thanks for the photo, but nothing of that sort will ever happen again,” he said, and it flashed across his mind that he had honestly earned this photograph.

The photographer didn’t try to insist but only followed Nar’s retreating walk with his eyes.

When he got home Nar spread the roll out flat on the floor. He placed books at the corners, so the photograph would not roll up again; and there before his gaze, staring him right in the face, an ideal body lay revealed. The play of chiaroscuro on the muscles was so skillfully done that they looked even bigger and more prominent than they really were. Nar lifted the photograph from the floor and pinned it to the wall. “I’ll have to make a handsome frame for it,” he thought, stepping back to the opposite wall and unable to tear his delighted gaze away. He studied every sector of his body in the photograph and found not the slightest flaw. He had been shot with a very serious expression on his face, which always appeared when he tensed the muscles of his arm or abdomen. Nar considered that this facial expression gave him a look of handsome nobility. In the photograph his arms were bent at the elbows and raised to the level of his shoulders – the classic pose of the body builder – and the only thing at all out of the ordinary was his nonregulation nudity. Letting his gaze rest on his genital organ, Nar suddenly realized that it was every bit as beautiful as the other parts of his body. As he thought about this he began to feel a growing lust for himself. His hands instinctively reached for his trousers and undid them. Then, not taking his eyes from the photograph, he brought himself to an ecstasy that staggered him with its power. What he had experienced with women could not be compared with this. And what thrilled him most of all was this delighted admiration which the photograph never ceased to evoke in him even after he had heaved a sigh of relief and release. In fact, this admiration seemed to be growing in strength. After a few minutes his desire revived anew – which also had never happened with him before – usually he required about an hour for this. Nar exulted, gazing at his enormous image; now he identified it with himself, now he saw in it a fabulous demigod. Only now he understood what is subsumed under the word “love.” Love filled his entire soul with an immense joyous lucidity, which was understood by his body as neverending passion. Devouring his image with his eyes and attempting again and again to splash out his rapture, Nar suddenly felt a sharp pain in his chest, and, without having time even to fear for his body, crashed to the floor.

When his body was discovered, and with it the unseemly cause of his death, it was decided that Nar should be buried as quickly as possible and without fanfare. Perhaps because of this decision, the sole mourners at his funeral, aside from the unfortunate parents, who flew in from their home town, were two official representatives of the college. On the day following the funeral, when his parents came to plant flowers on his grave, they found to their astonishment that a lone white long-stemmed flower was already blooming there.