Ludmilla Petrushevskaya - There Once Lived a Girl Who Seduced Her Sister's Husband, and He Hanged Himself

“Come with me, then. Tsarina will let us both go.”

“I have a little grandson at home.”

“But this is during work hours!”

“Why would I go there? I’m no one to him, a stranger.”

“He won’t yell at me so much in your presence.”

“I’m afraid,” Pulcheria said, and pulled out the next package of old letters.

“You didn’t happen to see where he went after he took you to the bus stop? Because all this time he’s been living with someone; he hasn’t slept with me, that much I know.”

“Not my fault,” Pulcheria responded coldly. “You should have heard what he said about my old man.” Pulcheria pointed at the portrait of her scholar, the one in which he had a mustache like Hitler’s and pince-nez like Beria’s. “He said I’m wasting my time on the old bastard.”

“Yes, that he does well: humiliate and devalue; that’s his defining trait. He is the only genius; the rest of us are retards. He thinks the apartment belongs to him alone, but they gave it to all of us! He actually wanted to exchange it for a one-bedroom for our son, a studio for himself, and the dregs for me. How he screamed, that son of ours! I’ve got to get him to a psychiatrist, too. He claims my husband has signed all the papers, but that means nothing. I’ll declare him legally insane and become his guardian! They want housing? He, and especially she, will get nothing!” Here Olga added a few invectives.

Suddenly Pulcheria blushed, but Olga didn’t notice—she herself was purple in the face and kept on cursing and threatening, but all in vain.

“You should take Tsarina with you,” Pulcheria calmly advised.

“Forget it,” said Olga, deflated. “I’ll go by myself—it’s not the first time.” And with that she left Pulcheria alone.

Pulcheria, having passed Olga’s exam, continued to sweat over her letters in her tiny windowless office. She worked in a great misery. It was almost March. She knew she had to wait patiently. One thing was certain: it wouldn’t cost Olga anything to set Pulcheria’s house on fire or to bribe the orderlies to get rid of him quietly. She also knew that he, her formerly mysterious guest, could have forgotten her already. Love likes secrecy and playfulness; it flees too much devotion and heavy emotional debt. It was possible that under the present circumstances he didn’t care for love games anymore. It was even possible that he blamed ridiculous old Pulcheria for his troubles.

Pulcheria waited. The only change she accomplished was a quiet transfer to another division. Along the way she lost more weight, and almost fainted from weakness. It was the end of June when, coming home late from the library, she saw his gray suit and disheveled hair. Her guest stood up and opened the door. She stumbled shamefully. He supported her by the elbow and led her to the elevator.

Polina’s life reached its final, happy phase when her aunt died and left Polina an inheritance. Polina had seen that aunt only once in her entire life, right before the end, when the doctor told Polina there was nothing she could do: the aunt was raving and didn’t recognize anyone. Soon the hospital called to ask if Polina was planning to bury the body. Polina, who lived on a state pension, told the hospital she wasn’t sure; she’d try to raise the money.

The next day Polina rose early and took a train to the small town where her aunt had lived. Naturally she wanted to look into whether her aunt had left an inheritance, for it was one thing not to have money for a funeral and quite another to let family possessions go to waste.

Polina didn’t consider her aunt as family. As far as she was concerned, her only family was her son, but sometimes she didn’t speak to even him for months. As for her husband, Semyon, Polina had hated him ever since his stay at a health resort years ago, after which he gave Polina gonorrhea and told everyone at the clinic that she had given it to him. Her only son had married and moved in with his wife; he did try to come back, but where was he going to stay? There were two rooms, and their son was pushing forty—he couldn’t sleep with Papa or Mama, could he? Shame and tears—that was Polina’s family life.

Polina loved only her grandson, Nikola, who visited them on holidays and occasionally stayed the night. He slept on a little folding bed and played chess with Grandpa and cards with Grandma. Polina adored her little angel until one day the entire family—the son, his fat wife, and the boy—moved in with her because of a burst pipe. The poor son returned to his flooded home to dry it out and paint and fix everything, while his family slept on camping beds borrowed from Polina’s neighbors. One night Polina asked Nikola to bring her a glass of water to wash down a pill, and her angel asked indifferently, “What’s wrong with your legs?” Polina didn’t cry; no, she got up and walked to the kitchen on her poor, swollen feet while her grandson and his mama continued to watch a soap opera.

In time Polina began to think about ways to get away, to escape her circumstances, especially after her husband retired and stopped leaving the house. He lost the ability to converse in a normal voice and bellowed at her all day; in return Polina called him Clapper (her nickname for him since the gonorrhea episode), to which he responded with a string of obscenities, and so on. To an outsider their daily exchanges sounded like the blackest of comedies, but the spouses didn’t laugh. After each screaming match they would crawl into their respective lairs, shaking with unspent tears, to pop heart pills; Polina would also call her college friend Marina to complain about Semyon and in exchange listen, bored to death, to Marina’s complaints about her middle-aged daughter.

Polina—and this was her main problem—was tired of people. There was a time when she’d been capable of friendship; when she attended anniversaries and birthday parties, went swimming with her girlfriends, relished phone conversations about her friends’ private lives. But all that ended when she became infected. She started to hate all gatherings, including family holidays, which she spent at the stove cooking while her son and his wife gobbled down all the food and then left to carouse with friends. She used to have hopes and dreams—to sew a new dress, to travel—but now she tossed and turned all night, captive to her thoughts, looking for but not finding a way out. She had heard of a mother who lost her child and then lay down in the snow, in an empty potato field, and fell asleep—they found her only in the spring. Should she do the same? By the time Polina got the call from the hospital, her last remaining love—for her only grandson—was essentially over.

When the call came, Polina considered what to do. She wanted to keep her plans secret from her husband, her son, and especially his wife, Alla, who would gladly poison both Polina and Semyon to get her hands on their apartment. On this subject the spouses understood each other perfectly—for the first time in ten years. One night at the dinner table, their son began mumbling about the advantages of a legal gift over a will “if something happens.” “If what happens?” Semyon yelled back, and Polina echoed that it was beyond tactless to sit and wait for that to happen—look, your father’s blood pressure is up; come, Senya, I’ll check your pressure. With gentle care they checked each other’s pressure, swallowed some pills, and retired to their respective rooms without saying good-bye to their son.

For a few days things were quiet in the house, but then their refrigerator broke down. Semyon accused Polina of leaving it open all night and refused to pay his share of the electric bill—things were back to normal.