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
