Theodore Odrach - Wave of Terror

“What? Just shut up.” Sobakin ignored her.

“Did you look at me? Did you take a close look at me? Didn’t you notice I have bags under my eyes and my forehead is broken out? You’re worse than a bull. Even a bull knows when to leave the cow alone. Don’t you know about a woman’s monthly cycle? Hah! A fine time you’ve chosen, Simon Stepanovich!” She laughed hysterically.

The NKVD man, confounded by her strange behavior, pulled back a moment. He muttered, “What? You mean you’ve got the woman’s curse? You’re menstruating?”

Raising his body, he staggered to the table, and grabbed the vodka bottle. Marusia jumped off the bed, picked up her coat, and rushed to the door. She could sense him coming after her — any minute now he would seize her by the neck and pound her to the ground, maybe even kill her. Clutching the doorknob, she heard him call after her, “Marusia! Marusia!” His voice sounded unusual, distant, even muffled. Turning her head, she was startled to see him slouched on the bed, his head hanging. He mumbled, “Well, Marusia, it’s too bad, we could have had ourselves such a good evening. Maybe next time.” He got up and, dragging himself to the window, called down to his driver, “Eros! Go fetch me another girl!”

Outside, the girl ran frantically in the direction of Luninetska Street. She was terrified that she was being followed, that Simon Stepanovich was on her heels, that he would catch up to her, rip off her clothes, and discover she had tricked him. Then he would beat her mercilessly and defile her. Paralyzed with fear, her head pounding, she ran through the deserted streets, every few seconds pausing to look over her shoulder. After about twenty minutes, breathless, she found herself safely on the doorsteps of her house. Slamming the front door open, she flew past her father in the hallway and stormed into the kitchen, where she found her mother stoking the wood stove.

“Mother, mother! Oh, mother it was awful!” She could not stop crying. Efrosinia stood dumbstruck. Marusia ripped the Persian lamb off her back, threw it to the ground, and stomped on it. “Damn bastards, all of them! Mother, he stank of drink and corpses. He was so repugnant.”

“Settle down, my darling, shh, settle down. It’s over. It’s all over.” Efrosinia took her daughter in her arms and gently patted her, while she asked in a low whisper, “Marusia, tell me, did anything happen? Did he …”

“No, mother no, no, no, nothing happened.” Marusia was now even more hysterical. “Nothing! Nothing!”

Efrosinia pulled a handkerchief from her pocket and wiped her daughter’s cheeks. “My poor, poor child. What are we going to do now? There’s nowhere for us to turn. We should really go to the police, but how can we go to the police when Sobakin is the police? What are we going to do?” She wept, feeling her daughter’s pain, as if it were she herself who had just gone through the ordeal. She stroked Marusia’s hair and rocked her in her arms. “I took care of you when you were sick, I sang you lullabies to get you to sleep at night, I marveled at your first steps. And now a filthy bastard appears and like a wild cat attacks a harmless lamb. May his teeth rot and fall out in Hell. Damned NKVD man! Lucifer!”

In their tight embrace mother and daughter did not notice Valentyn standing in the doorway. Shaking his head and tugging at his beard, he sang out to them, “Didn’t I tell you? Didn’t I say all along that Kulik would have been a better match?”

It was no longer a secret that Iofe Nicel Leyzarov was having an affair with Dounia Avdeevna. In the beginning it was all quite hush-hush because Leyzarov went out of his way to exercise extreme caution: every other night, late, after everyone was asleep, he set out for Dounia’s house in the village of Morozovich and returned to his quarters in Hlaby by early dawn. For the longest time this arrangement went on undetected. Then one day everything changed. For some reason Dounia insisted that Leyzarov either spend the entire night with her and return home some time after breakfast, or visit her directly at lunchtime and return to Hlaby before nightfall.

This new schedule did not affect Leyzarov too much, since Dounia was more than capable of satisfying his sexual needs as easily in broad daylight as in the dead of night. But what did bother him was being seen by the villagers. Almost instantly, to his great dismay, gossip broke out and spread like wildfire, and before he knew it all eyes were on him. He heard people whispering behind his back, and at the Clubhouse meetings the snickering never stopped. On a number of occasions he overheard villagers chuckling and murmuring, “That Dounia sure knows how to reel them in,” “She has them begging for more,” and “There’s certainly enough of her to go around. Hah! Hah! Hah!”

What bothered Leyzarov most about this gossip was not so much that he had been found out, but rather that it seemed to suggest Dounia was involved with more than one man. And it was not long before he began to suspect that there was indeed more to the picture than met the eye and that he just might be the brunt of an even larger rumor. As the days passed, he felt as if his presence in Dounia’s life was beginning to play a smaller role and even that she was growing indifferent to his needs. Gradually he became convinced that Dounia Avdeevna had taken up with another man. It troubled him deeply to think he no longer held exclusive rights to his love nest and that after six long months he was about to be cast off like an old shoe. He waited for the moment to come, for that proverbial slap in the face, but happily, and to his surprise, nothing happened — at least not for a while.

As the days passed, Leyzarov basked blissfully in the warmth of Dounia Avdeevna’s bedroom. With all his fears of unfaithfulness quashed, he felt infinitely grateful for the attention she was bestowing on him. In fact, in his heart he began to feel the birth of a new sensation — could love be taking the place of infatuation? His urge to be with Dounia was uncontrollable. Separation now seemed inconceivable to him; if anything, he felt their special bond strengthening. This woman, Dounia, had been his lover for almost half a year, and he began to feel their affair could go on for another six months, maybe even forever.

At the same time, it seemed incredible that he should have fallen in love with her. She was not a beauty by any means, and often when he looked at her, he couldn’t quite figure out what it was about her that kept him coming back: she was fat, her face was lumpy and crude, and her long stringy hair looked like a dirty old floor mop. There was no gentleness or softness in her gestures, and her vulgar laugh repelled him. She was the loudest and most grotesque woman he had ever known.

But despite all that, there was something exceptional about her. She was passionate, cruel and sensual, always bursting with new appetites and adventures. The blood in her veins boiled and when she shivered it was with a kind of drunken excitement. She was skilled in the art of lovemaking, always throwing herself frantically and shamelessly into the pleasures of the flesh. Her caresses were brutal, wild, and she did not hesitate to succumb to the dictates of her body. Leyzarov had never known a woman like this, so ready to lose herself again and again. He felt a deep lust inside him and yearned after her day and night, like a famished animal.

Interestingly enough, it was not only the force of lust that bound Leyzarov to Dounia but also the force of the palate — she was as good a cook as she was a lover. Dounia Avdeevna worked wonders in the kitchen, concocting the tastiest omelets, the most succulent cabbage rolls, and her boiled beef was mouth-watering. In her cellar she stored an assortment of cured foods like pickles and sausages and she always had a generous supply of potatoes, beets and carrots. And if that wasn’t enough, with her many connections in the Pinsk marketplace, she always made sure that her pantry was stocked with Iofe’s favorite foods, one of which was pickled herring. Iofe really lived the good life and believed that indeed everything was better and happier under Stalin’s Constitution.