Людмила Улицкая - Medea and Her Children

Nothing unique, nothing personal. All of it boring and bereft of talent. Are we free or not? Where does our awareness of shame and indecency come from? By the time she got back to Moscow, she had written Nike a poem:

A rift between the tree trunk and its shadow;

a rift between the thirst and taking drink;

across the abyss a poem’s swaying ladder

the only way to help us pass the brink.

The shades of sleep, the corridors all gaping,

my only light a captured German torch;

and from contrition there is no escaping:

we do not kill, no ironing we scorch,

don’t slop through puddles, try to hide our errors,

don’t sing forbidden songs, don’t practice guile,

but know, and live in superstitious terror:

the two of us are doing something vile.

She got home around midnight. Alik was waiting for her in the kitchen with a bottle of good Georgian wine. He had finished his experiments and could file their application to emigrate tomorrow if they liked. Only then did it finally sink in for Masha that she would soon be leaving forever.

“That’s splendid. It will put an end to this whole shameful, grisly affair,” she thought. She spent a long evening with Alik, which continued until four in the morning. They talked, made plans, and then Masha fell into a dreamless sleep holding Alik’s hand.

She woke late. Debora Lvovna had not been home for several days. Recently she had often been away on lengthy visits to her ailing sister. The Aliks had already had breakfast and were playing chess. It was a picture of domestic tranquility and even included a cat lying on a cushion on the sofa.

“That’s good! I seem to be recovering,” Masha thought, turning the stiff handle of the coffee mill.

Later they took the sled, and the three of them went to the ice hill. They fell off into the snow, got wet, and were happy.

“Do they have snow in Boston?” Masha asked.

“No, they don’t. But we will go to Utah and ski there, and that will be just as good,” Alik promised.

He always delivered on his promises.

Butonov rang that same evening.

“Not missing me, by any chance?”

The day before, he had seen Masha stamping her feet by his gate but had not opened the door to her because he had a lady visitor, the nice, if fat, translator who had been on his trip with him. They had exchanged glances for the two weeks but no opportunity had presented itself. A soft, lazy woman, very similar as he subsequently realized to his wife Olga, she had writhed like a sleepy cat in Butonov’s arms to the trilling of Masha on the doorbell. Butonov had felt acutely irritated by the translator, Masha, and himself. He needed angular, sharp Masha with her tears and her sighs, not this fatso.

He had been ringing Masha since morning, but first there was no reply because the telephone was unplugged, then Alik picked it up twice and Butonov hung up, and only toward evening did he get through to her. “Please don’t ring anymore,” Masha said.

“When? When can you come? Quickly now,” Butonov said, not hearing what she had said.

“No, I’m not coming. Don’t ring me anymore, Valerii.” Then with a strained, tearful voice she added, “I can’t take any more.”

“Masha, I’m missing you terribly. Have you gone crazy? Are you hurt? It’s a misunderstanding, Masha. I’ll be at your house in twenty-five minutes. Come out then.” He hung up.

Masha was in total confusion. She had decided so splendidly, so firmly, not to see him anymore and had felt a sense of, if not liberation then at least relief, and today had been such fun, with the ice hill and the sunshine. “I won’t go,” Masha decided.

But thirty-five minutes later she threw on a jacket, called to Alik, “I’ll be back in ten minutes!” and rushed down the stairs without stopping to call the lift.

Butonov’s car was waiting by the door. She wrenched the door open and sat down beside him.

“I have to tell you—”

He scooped her into his arms and shoved his hands under her jacket.

“We’ll talk all about it, of course we will, little one.”

The car moved off.

“No, no. I’m not going anywhere. I came out to say I wouldn’t go with you.”

“But we’ve already gone,” Butonov laughed.

This time Alik was offended. “What an appalling way to behave! Can’t you see that?” he berated her late that night when she returned. “Someone goes out for ten minutes and comes back five hours later! What am I supposed to think? That you’ve been run over? Been killed?”

“Please forgive me, for God’s sake. You’re absolutely right, it’s a terrible way to behave.” Masha felt profoundly guilty. And profoundly happy.

Next, Butonov disappeared for a month, and Masha tried with all her might just to accept his disappearance “as fact,” but it was a fact that burned right through her. She ate almost nothing, drank sweet tea, and conducted an interminable inner monologue with her absent lover. Her insomnia was becoming ever more acute.

Alik was alarmed: it was obvious she was on the verge of a nervous breakdown. He started giving Masha tranquilizers and increased the dose of sedatives. Masha refused to take psychotropic drugs.

“I’m not a lunatic, Alik, I’m an idiot, and you can’t treat that.”

Alik didn’t insist. He saw this as just one more reason why they needed to emigrate as soon as possible.

Nike came to see her twice. Masha talked only about Butonov. Nike cursed him, felt very penitent, and swore the last time she had seen him was in December before he went to Sweden. She also said that he was empty-headed and that the only good thing to come out of the whole saga was that Masha had written so much splendid poetry. Masha obediently read her poems and wondered whether Nike could be trying to deceive her now and whether it was Nike who had been with Butonov when she was ringing at the door.

Alik was doing the rounds of all manner of bureaucratic institutions, assembling a whole mountain of documents. He was in a hurry not only for Masha’s sake: he wanted to get to Boston to carry on with his work, the lack of which was making him feel ill too. They were not emigrating in a straightforward manner: first they would travel to Vienna under the provision for Jews, and then go on to America. It was possible that between Vienna and America they would have a spell in Rome. That depended on the speed with which documents were dealt with by, at that stage, foreign bureaucrats.

To all these complexities there was suddenly added a rebellion by Debora Lvovna. “I’m not emigrating anywhere. I have a sick sister, the only person close to me in the world, and I’ll never leave her.” There then followed the canonical text of a Yiddish mama: “I’ve devoted my whole life to you, you thankless boy, and now . . . that damned Israel: it’s because of them we’ve had troubles all our lives. That damned America, may it come to a bad end.”

In the face of such arguments Alik held his peace and took his mother by the shoulders: “Mother of mine! Can you play tennis? Can you ice-skate? Is there anything in the world you can’t do? Could there maybe be something you don’t know? Some little detail? Be quiet, I beg you. Nobody is going to abandon you. We are going together, and we will support your Fira from America. I will earn a lot of money there.”

Debora Lvovna was quiet for a moment, but then worked herself up into even more of a lather: “What do I need your money for! To hell with your money! Your father and I always despised money. You will ruin the child with your money!”

Alik clutched his head and went out of the room.