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

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.