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

By then Oksana was taking classes part-time, in the evenings, and had found work at a landscape design company. Graduation was postponed by two years. She was paid very little but did impeccable work for both the owner and her bookkeeper. What Oksana missed most was her English class. She always carried in her purse the same book, The Hound of the Baskervilles , and tried to read it on the train but immediately would doze off.

In her free time Nina Sergeevna worked on getting poor Baba Klava recognized as a Russian citizen or at least a legal resident, so she could see a doctor. Moscow’s plutocracy treated Klava as a foreign spy, simply because she was Ukrainian, and denied her all rights. After talking to fellow sufferers in endless lines, Nina decided she needed to go to Poltava to get a piece of paper from the local archive saying Klava had been born in Stavropol and was therefore a Russian citizen. Klava froze up. She was terrified the shakers would find out her address in Moscow. When the exhausted Nina returned with the necessary paper in hand, Klava asked in a fearful whisper whether Nina had visited her house. “Of course not!” Nina told her lightly. “I only stopped by the city hall and came right back. You will now receive your citizenship and a pension!”

When Klava went to watch television, Nina explained to Oksana that she had visited Klava’s courtyard and chatted with some neighbors, that was all; told them she was a Muscovite wanting to move to Poltava—were there any apartments for sale in that building? Nothing, they told her. But, she said, apartment ten had just been sold, she’d heard. No comment. When she was leaving, one of the women caught up with her and took her phone number. Oksana almost fainted. “When will you learn to think? Why did you give that woman our number?”

“You know how I can read people!”

“That’s right, you read that monument from Belarus the other day real well.”

“This woman, Valentina, mentioned Klava: she remembered Misha as well as his mother, who had immigrated, and his dead father, Klava’s son. She used to work as a pediatric nurse and treated Misha as a child. I spoke to her, true, but I knew what I was doing!”

“Oh, Mama. I bet we’ll have visitors soon.” And Oksana was right.

Late at night on December 28, the phone rang out with long-distance calls. “Oksana, get Klava, quick!”

Klava’s body formed a little bump under a heavy blanket. The bump was trembling. “Who is it, shakers?”

“No, no, it’s Misha’s mom calling from Jerusalem!”

As soon as Klava said hello in her metallic voice, the connection broke. “Couldn’t bear to speak to me. Finally remembered Misha. Too late—he’s probably gone,” Klava said, and marched off to the bathroom.

The next day Oksana brought home from her office a small potted juniper—a Christmas tree. “Oh, juniper,” Klava whispered solemnly. “Just like the one on our family gravesite. My two sons are there, and my dear husband. Thank you, Oksanochka.” Klava’s mood was solemn these days. She loved watching TV police dramas in which justice temporarily triumphed. They calmed her down but didn’t make her any more optimistic.

Nina Sergeevna was busily working on the piece of almost-silk from the secondhand store. The prerevolutionary Singer filled the little apartment with knocking. Klava was in the kitchen making a holiday pie with the rescued dacha apples. Oksana was trying to study in her little room when Nina Sergeevna emerged with a pile of golden fabric.

“Our New Year’s present to you, honey,” she tentatively addressed her stern daughter. “To wear when you go out!”

“Mama! Stop imagining things! I’m not going out, and I’m not wearing this!”

“But, honey, Klava worked on it, too! She used to be a professional tailor. Remember the green tuxedo? She made it herself!”

“Tuxedo? Mama! I have finals in two weeks! My boss wouldn’t give me any time off! She says she can’t afford to give me time off—she’s supporting a husband. She yelled at me for an hour. Now think, Mama: Do you really believe I can be interested in your secondhand garments?”

Klava walked into the room, saw the heap of silk, pursed her lips, and whispered, “Sorry, Oksanochka, I used to sew well, but my hands are not what they used to be. Nina, I told you she wouldn’t wear it!” She turned back to the walk-through room and loudly began to pray.

Oksana glanced at the clock: an hour before New Year’s. She took a bath, then sat down with wet hair at her old computer. Nina Sergeevna stroked her shoulder. “Please, baby. Klavochka is terribly upset that you won’t even try it on. What will it cost you? She is eighty years old!”

From Klava’s room came loud mumbling. Oksana gave in. In the bathroom, in front of the little mirror, she changed into the new dress. It was a very open evening gown with a slip and a weightless scarf to cover her bare shoulders. The scarf’s edges were embroidered by Nina Sergeevna. For goodness’ sake, thought Oksana, why did she waste her time on this embroidery? Who’s going to see it? Who’s going to see me? Her future of endless toil, without romance or happiness, flashed before her eyes. A messy office with bookkeeper Dina, an aging beauty from the provinces whose daughter refused to speak to her; her boss Olga, an emaciated workhorse with bags under her eyes, darting from client to client in a broken-down car. And the clients, wives of the new Russians, with their dreams of garden gnomes and potted junipers as seen in soap operas and their contempt of simple Russian trees. Suddenly Oksana reached for her never-used cosmetics purse and brushed her lashes thickly with mascara, shook out her damp hair to create a wave, applied her mother’s blush to her cheekbones, painted her lips generously. Why she was doing all this, for whom, Oksana didn’t know. New Year’s Eve. New dress. Black hair down to her waist. Big, rosy mouth.

Oksana stepped into the hall. The usual bangs and screams could be heard from the apartment downstairs. Oksana opened the door to her mother’s room. Nina’s eyes widened. “Klavochka!” she yelled in the direction of the kitchen. “Come here! Our princess has put on your dress.”

Klava pursed her lips into a tight smile and announced, “Like Penélope like Cruz.” The Moscow like had become Klava’s default expression of strong emotion.

Nina Sergeevna laughed with delight. “Once, at the dacha, years ago,” she said, “we all decided to go mushroom picking, and our neighbor Vera—she was at least eighty at the time—dashed over to the mirror and started painting her lips. My mother said to her, ‘Aunt Vera, we are going to the woods; who’s the lipstick for?’ And Vera replied—I’ll never forget it—‘Who knows? Maybe that’s where it will happen!’”

Klava pursed her lips again, Oksana shrugged, and the doorbell rang. Nina opened the door a crack and saw a strange young man.

“A happy New Year to you, ma’am,” said the man. “You should call the cops: somebody’s getting killed downstairs.”

“Don’t worry, the cops stopped coming here a long time ago. They’ll come when someone finally dies, they told us,” said Oksana’s mother, shutting the door and then rushing to the kitchen, where the chicken was burning. The doorbell rang again and kept on ringing. Oksana sighed, grabbed the phone, and shuffled to the door. Alcoholics are human, too, she thought—let them use the damn phone.

The young man was still standing on the doorstep, holding his expensive leather suitcase. When he saw Oksana, his jaw dropped. “Excuse me,” he mumbled, “may I speak with you?”

“What is it?” Oksana asked impatiently.

Suddenly Klava began screaming, “Misha!” Downstairs a man drunkenly yelled, “Friend, friend, come back!” and a woman begged them to call an ambulance—their own phone had been disconnected. Klava continued screaming, “Misha, is that you?”