There Once Lived a Girl Who Seduced Her Sister's Husband, and He Hanged Himself (2 page)

There Once Lived a Girl Who Seduced Her Sister’s Husband, and He Hanged Himself

A Murky Fate

T
his is what happened. An unmarried woman in her thirties implored her mother to leave their studio apartment for one night so she could bring home a lover.

This so-called lover bounced between two households, his mother’s and his wife’s, and he had an overripe daughter of fourteen to consider as well. About his work at the laboratory he constantly fretted but would brag to anyone who listened about the imminent promotion that never materialized. The insatiable appetite he displayed at office parties, where he stuffed himself, was the result of an undiagnosed diabetes that enslaved him to thirst and hunger and lacquered him with pasty skin, thick glasses, and dandruff. A fat, balding man-child of forty-two with a dead-end job and ruined health—this was the treasure our unmarried thirtysomething brought to her apartment for a night of love.

He approached the upcoming tryst matter-of-factly, almost like a business meeting, while she approached it from the black desperation of loneliness. She gave it the appearance of love or at least infatuation: reproaches and tears, pleadings to tell her that he loved her, to which he replied, “Yes, yes, I quite agree.” But despite her illusions she knew there was no romance in how they moved from the office to her apartment, picking up cake and wine at his request; how her hands shook when she was unlocking the door, terrified that her mother might have decided to stay.

The woman put water on for tea, poured wine, and cut cake. Her lover, stuffed with cake, flopped himself across the armchair. He checked the time, then unfastened his watch and placed it on a chair. His underwear and body were surprisingly white and clean. He sat down on the edge of the sofa, wiped his feet with his socks, and lay down on the fresh sheets. He did his business; they chatted. He asked again what she thought of his chances for a promotion and got up to leave. At the door, he turned back toward the cake and cut himself another large piece, then licked the knife. He asked her to change a three-ruble bill but, receiving no reply, pecked her on the forehead and slammed the door behind him. She didn’t get up. Of course the affair was over for him. He wasn’t coming back—in his childishness he hadn’t understood even that much, skipping off happily, unaware of the catastrophe, taking his three rubles and his overstuffed belly.

The next day she didn’t go to the cafeteria but ate lunch at her desk. She thought about the coming evening, when she’d have to face her mother and resume her old life. Suddenly she blurted out to her officemate: “Well, have you found a man yet?” The woman blushed miserably: “No, not yet.” Her husband had left her, and she’d been living alone with her shame and humiliation, never inviting any of her friends to her empty apartment. “How about you?” she asked. “Yes, I’m seeing someone,” the woman replied. Tears of joy welled up in her eyes.

But she knew she was lost. From now on, she understood, she’d be chained to the pay phone, ringing her beloved at his mother’s, or his wife’s. To them she’d be known as
that woman
—the last in a series of female voices who had called the same numbers, looking for the same thing. She supposed he must have been loved by many women, all of whom he must have asked about his chances for promotion, then dumped. Her beloved was insensitive and crude—everything was clear in his case. There was nothing but pain in store for her, yet she cried with happiness and couldn’t stop.

The Fall

T
hat summer we watched a transformation by the sea. We were staying across the street from a resort for workers; she was one of the guests. We couldn’t ignore her—she was too vulgar. We overheard her laughter on the beach, at the local wine seller, on the way to the market—everywhere. Just imagine her: a tight perm, plucked eyebrows, gaudy lipstick, a miniskirt, new platforms. It was all cheap and tasteless but with an attempt at fashion. She strained, pathetically, from her curls to her heels, and for what? To look no worse than the others, not to miss her chance—her last one, perhaps—for a little womanly happiness (as imagined in soap operas). A blue-collar Carmen, searching for some seaside romance.

So here’s the setting: the sun, the sea, a new perm, and—attention everybody—she’s off to the fruit market with a pack of admirers representing every breed. At the head of the pack parades a tall one in a heavy wool suit, despite the heat (we nickname him Number One). He is followed by a potbelly in a shapeless tank top; next comes, incongruously, a skinny youth with hippie locks; and the procession is finished by a runt in a tracksuit—he’s obviously there for a drink. Our Carmen laughs shrilly, but not as shrilly or loudly as one would expect—her laugh is not the war cry of some neighborhood whore who invites all and sundry to her table; this Carmen laughs softly. She doesn’t want to collect every male in sight—she’s already got plenty; any more, and things could get out of hand. The tall one, in the meantime, maintains his position at the head of the pack. He’s the hungriest and toughest in her entourage, the alpha male with the most serious intentions.

Seriousness rules the ball—soon, the other suitors vanish, and Carmen and Number One are now seen together. Number One has changed his winter suit for a pair of sober gray shorts, which she must have selected for him here at the resort. Carmen and Number One walk about with dignity: she’s curbed her laughing; he carries her purse. They follow the resort’s regimen of eating breakfast at the dining hall, then taking in the sun on the beach, then visiting the produce market for fresh fruit.

On the crowded bus to the market they stand as a single unit, the top of Carmen’s head barely reaching Number One’s chin, even with her in those atrocious heels. She keeps looking up, not meeting his eye—the sign of a serious crush, by the way. Number One gazes abstractly over everyone’s heads, looking out for his little lady—and suddenly anyone can see these two are in love, that they have separated from the crowd. And so the crowd shuns them, spits them out. In this sweaty pell-mell they are marked, singled out, doomed.

Yes, it’s happened to them, the biggest misery of all—a doomed love. Both look sad, on the verge of tears.

In the elapsed days Carmen has mellowed and acquired a golden sheen. Her ridiculous curls have loosened up and lightened in the sun. Blond and delicate, no worse than any movie star, she seems lost, consumed by her doomed passion. Number One hasn’t changed, only darkened from the sun, like a workhorse in the summer that will lose its color in winter. But he, too, seems marked by the grief that shadows hopeless romance. He seems tense and steely, like someone facing the end point of his fall. What awaits them is worse than death. What awaits them is eternal separation.

Yet there they are, trying to dance, clutching each other to the beat of that summer’s pop anthem. Her purse is still bouncing on his arm. A few days remain. At the beach they walk away from the crowd, from cots and umbrellas sunk into the sand, and disappear in the sunlight.

The new season has begun. The beach is crowded with shapeless white bodies and smug new faces. Our golden couple has departed. The delicate Carmen and her faithful husband, Number One, are jetting through the frozen air away from each other, back to their children and spouses, back to the cold, and to hard, grim work.

She’ll wait for his long-distance call in a phone booth at the post office. For ten prepaid minutes they’ll become one soul again, as they did over the twenty-four prepaid days of their vacation. They’ll shout and cry across thousands of miles, deceived by the promise of eternal summer, seduced and abandoned.

The Goddess Parka

A
.A., a schoolteacher in a provincial town, decided to spend his summer vacation near a lake and woods, not far from where he lived. He rented a screened porch in a cabin (he couldn’t afford a whole cabin) and began to live there very quietly. He left in the morning with a backpack and returned late at night; he never asked for anything and refused offers of dinner leftovers, to the chagrin of his landlady, who had planned to charge him for food or, at least, for the use of a hot plate.

A.A.’s search for privacy and independence didn’t take into account a certain Aunt Alevtina, a resident of Moscow and his landlady’s distant relative. Alevtina visited the cabin every summer. She’d stay two weeks and leave in a van loaded with fresh preserves. She lived in a small room in the landlady’s shed, a room she had equipped with a small television and refrigerator. She paid the electric bill by a separate meter at the end of her stay. Again, the landlady was left without a profit, although, to be fair, her grandkids did stay with Aunt Alevtina in Moscow over Christmas holidays and got to see the Kremlin.

On the night of Alevtina’s arrival, the landlady was boiling a samovar on pinecones. She opened the conversation with complaints about her miserly tenant. “Stingy like you wouldn’t believe: first thing he tells me is he isn’t going to use any power! Unmarried,
too.”

“Huh?”

“I said
unmarried
. Thirty-five years old. Not a crumb on his porch. What does he
eat?”

“Maybe he catches the bus to town, goes to the cafeteria there.”

“Ha! The bus doesn’t stop here most of the time. . . . Well, so how about my black currant—will you buy any this year?”

“Only if the berries are large.”

“Large! After all the work, all the watering . .
 
.”

And the irritated landlady went on to recite the virtues of her black currant, hungry for a deal. Alevtina, rumor had it, lived in Moscow in great comfort and even wealth. At the thought of Alevtina’s riches, the landlady wanted to boast; she mentioned two magnificent apartments she’d given to her daughters and their worthless husbands when her old house was demolished. One husband was a policeman, the other a fireman at a factory; he worked one day and slept two, but try to get him to fix the roof and he’s too busy watching soap operas. His brats are shipped to Grandma’s every summer, and she’s expected to provide all the meals, and so forth.

At this moment, A.A. slipped through the gate and climbed onto his porch. He reappeared with two buckets, filled them with water from the well, and began washing himself down to the waist. The two Penelopes watched him over their teacups.

“Alexeich,” the landlady called out with dignity, although a bit uncertainly. “I say, help yourself to what fruit’s on the ground.”

“Excuse me?” The teacher quickly retreated and disappeared.

Alevtina giggled, but the landlady, undaunted by the teacher’s clever escape, pressed her point loudly.

“Thirty-five, like I said, and nothing.”

“What do you mean, nothing?”

“Well, you know, a waste . . . of goods.”

“What goods?” pretended Alevtina. In fact, from the moment the landlady mentioned A.A. she’d been poring over all those women she knew in Moscow who were withering from drudgery and loneliness, while right here was a healthy specimen with four limbs who didn’t stammer and was mentally stable (with some luck).

“You don’t think he has a lady friend in Komarovka, eh?” Alevtina asked.

“How would I know?” the landlady croaked, and then stood up to go to bed early because, she explained importantly, she was allergic to the sun and got up to pee at four. She relieved herself under the berry bushes, “for fertilizer,” and shuffled inside.

Little stars sprinkled across the darkening sky. Alevtina sighed deeply in the direction of the porch. Nina, that’s who he needs. Thirty-seven years old, a pharmacist, mother died recently, lives in a studio on the outskirts. Her few admirers had been shooed off by the old witch, who had been correct: where would the newlyweds sleep—under mama’s bed? (Nina’s mom was a distant relative of Alevtina’s husband.) Well, well, hummed Alevtina. She held her breath and waited. The unborn child also waited in the dark. Nothing stirred. Black silhouettes of the apple trees loomed in the twilight. The warm air smelled of phloxes.

A.A.’s shadow cut through the orchard in the direction of the outhouse. Alevtina liked his deftness. A few minutes later A.A. emerged and exhaled the foul air. Alevtina pounced.

“Good evening, sir. How can you explain yourself?”

“Excuse me?” A.A.’s foot froze in midair.

“I don’t need your excuses. How much do you
owe?”

“Who, me?” A.A. thought for a second that the woman mistook him for someone else, and instead of fleeing to his porch and hiding under the blanket, he took the first step toward the samovar.

“I’m not going to yell at the top of my lungs—there are people sleeping,” Alevtina remarked drily.

A.A. approached her gingerly. In the twilight, heavy Alevtina resembled a bust of a Roman emperor. She addressed A.A. imperiously.

“So, how are we going to solve this problem?”

All of a sudden A.A. began to babble something about the well, saying it wasn’t his fault the well was empty by the end of the day, he took five gallons and used his own buckets, others took fifty to water their vegetables, and so
on.

“I see. Well, we’ll find a solution somehow. Remind me your name again?”

“Excuse me?” That was one of A.A.’s favorite evasion techniques, perfected on his pupils.

“It’s Andrey, correct?”

“Could
be.”

“So how about a cup of tea? I have all this hot water left. What do you say, Andrey Alexandrovich?”

“No, thanks. Actually, I’m Andrey Alexeevich. . .
 
.”

* * *

It was the height of summer, the blessed time when fruit and berries ripen and fall. Alevtina hired a van and loaded it with jars of preserves. A.A. did all the loading, while the driver, a local resident, watched him idly. (Tormented by rumors about fabulous Moscow wages, local men had stopped working altogether and were swiftly turning into full-time alcoholics.) The landlady, too, watched Alevtina’s evacuation without offering to help. But suddenly she jumped: the teacher grabbed two huge canvas bags off his porch, threw them into the van, waved her good-bye, and left with Alevtina! The landlady had been right in the middle of a fantasy in which she got rid of the useless fireman and married her younger daughter to her tenant.

In the van, Alevtina, too, was thinking that A.A. was the husband she’d want for her daughter if only she had one, but instead there was a son and a leech of a daughter-in-law, and an only grandson, the light of her life. The boy was fourteen; he spent most of his time examining his pimples, and he refused to speak to his grandmother even on the phone. For him Alevtina had spent her vacation sweating over the stove, boiling and pickling—the boy loved her cooking. Her own son ate hardly anything—he preferred homemade liqueurs to food—but her daughter-in-law shoveled it in by the pound. (She also smoked and cursed like a plumber, and frequently suggested they discuss “future arrangements” concerning Alevtina’s property.)

At the end of this golden summer day, the van wheeled into the beautifully maintained yard in front of Alevtina’s building. They loaded all the jars into the elevator and then carried everything into Alevtina’s spacious one-bedroom apartment, which was decorated with rugs and a crystal chandelier. On the train back, A.A. fantasized about an apartment just like that, in the same neighborhood, and also a sweet wife, and a boy of his own whom he could teach everything he knew. He’d quit his wretched public school where kids munched on sunflower seeds and wore headphones to class. All this came to pass some years later.

He met Nina at Alevtina’s birthday party (Alevtina had wired him money for the train). By that point Alevtina must have broken off with her daughter-in-law, because none of her family showed up. Nina didn’t impress A.A. She was heavy, very shy, with large pale eyes. But he did notice her casual, almost indifferent manner when she was examining some old prescriptions of Alevtina’s—the manner of a true expert. The next time he saw Nina was at the hospital. He had come to see his dear Alevtina at his own expense, significant for his small salary. Alevtina spoke in a clear voice, though with some effort, and gave him a considerable sum—“for books.” She managed not to add “to remember me by.” Although A.A. didn’t cry, he must have looked pretty miserable, because Nina’s eyes filled with such sympathy and kindness that he had to turn away. Only after they were married did he find out that Nina alone had looked after Alevtina, feeding her pureed soups and fresh juices and staying with her every night after work.

It was Nina who sent him the final telegram. His train was late, and A.A. had to run through the subway. He then took the wrong exit and got lost; for directions to the morgue he asked the only person who was out in that terrible neighborhood, a woman with a dog, and she told him precisely—she must have known the place from personal experience. At the morgue he was asking small groups of people where they were burying such and such, but then he saw Nina and throughout the ordeal stood next to her. Everyone else in the party stared at him wildly, but later, at the crematorium, they asked him to help carry the coffin, as if accepting his presence. Nina didn’t cry, just trembled. Alevtina looked serene and very young; she had lost a lot of weight. They closed the coffin and hammered down the
lid.

The crematorium bus took them back to the city and dropped them off in the middle of an unfamiliar street. Tipsy relatives crowded the sidewalk. Finally one of the cousins announced that close friends and relatives were invited to the wake. He avoided looking at A.A.; they all avoided him. Suddenly a drunk woman, a cousin, pointed at him and inquired loudly, “And who is he? What’s he doing here?”

“This one’s looking for a drink,” explained the grandmother.

Alevtina’s fat son, Victor, sidled up to Nina.

“So how are things? Married yet? Come to the wake, get something to eat, to drink. You should come to all our get-togethers, you know. Where else will you go? And who is
he?”

“A friend,” Nina said after a pause.

“Right. Look, you’d better make me your heir—you never know what to expect with out-of-towners.”

“What do you mean, my heir? Don’t I have sisters?” Nina seemed shocked.

“Idiot! If you marry him, he’ll inherit your apartment! He can kill you just to get
it!”

Here A.A. spoke up in his teacher’s voice, “Nina! It’s getting late.” And Nina simply turned her back on Victor and walked away. She walked slowly, with the put-on dignity of a freshly insulted person. A.A. tore after her: at the very least he had to find out how to get to the subway, and he guessed she was headed there. He was too cowardly to ask his future wife for directions and just trudged behind her. He was leaving for home on a night train.

Suddenly a small truck drove up onto the sidewalk in front of A.A. and began unloading. A.A. wanted to walk around it, but a wave of pedestrians forced him back. By the time he made it to the other side, Nina had disappeared. He didn’t know her last name, and there was no one to ask. Alevtina used to speak so much about Nina, about her wretched life with a difficult, ailing mother whom Nina had endured to the end after her two sisters couldn’t take it anymore and left the old woman. A.A. used to listen to these stories with an inward smile: he understood perfectly well what was behind them, and he also knew why Alevtina had called for him at the hospital. He’d always resisted Alevtina’s scheming—he had been resisting Nina silently for a long time—but now that Nina had disappeared, there was no one to resist, and his life lost its meaning.

Ten hours remained before his train. He stood in front of the subway station in the freezing wind, cold and hungry, aching from unrelieved tears. Then he turned around and walked back to the truck where he had last seen Nina. From there he returned to the subway station. He shuffled back and forth between the truck and the subway, and then he saw her: she was running in his direction, crying, her enormous eyes searching for his. They fell into each other’s arms. He scolded her for running off like that—he’d almost lost her! Then he begged her to calm down, to stop crying—everything was fine, they’d found each other—and he took the heavy bag from her unfeeling hand, like all husbands do, and they walked off together.