Life Stories

by Ludmila Ulitskaya

  "Walid," he sighed... "Walid..."

  He was so attractive in his dark-blue galabiya with a snow-white scarf on his head and shoulders, with his full salt-and-pepper mustache, and the shiny red fruit in his hand.

  Arkady was lost in admiration.

  "Walid is very sick," the old man said at last. The young man glanced up at him fleetingly, without turning his head, merely squinting.

  "Sick?" Arkady nodded his head sympathetically and respectfully. "I thought I saw him not that long ago."

  "Sick, very sick." The old man cut a neat red section of the nectarine and using the sharp tip of the knife, conveyed it to his mouth. He chewed it slowly and set about cutting another piece. "His heart's sick. Last Wednesday he had an attack. My nephew—he's a doctor—saw Walid and said: Let's go to the hospital!'... But he didn't want to!"

  Arkady looked at the old man... It seemed as if this was true. They could all cover up, but to make up details, to invent a nephew-doctor! Not likely... Then what do we have, my friends? If last Wednesday the doctor visited the patient at home... and the poor maiden was already dead... then... four days earlier... it turns out the doctor examined Walid at the very same time the daughter was upstairs dying in agony!

  Well then, that's a quite fresh musical idea, Stanislav Borysych, my dear...

  He remembered how Walid, opening his bovine eyes wide and grabbing his chest, had tossed the autopsy form on the floor and cried, "Don't do this to me, Arkad!!! Don't you do this to me!!!" Yes, what was most painful was that this family wasn't strangers... And it appears that the father really did have a weak heart.

  Now to have Varda confirm the existence of the nephew-doctor, and the main thing—the time frame!

  He stood up, put some coins down on the counter, and asked for a can of orange soda. It wasn't worth it, of course, buying this carbonated junk; he'd have heartburn again that evening.

  Then he left...

  The fog was growing thicker in the sky. In clear weather, Safed resembled a white nest on its hill. But now only gray mist hovered over the peaks of dark hills. That meant that up there, on top, it was pitch dark.

  He dialed Varda's number on his cell phone and said:

  "I'll be there in about twenty minutes. Have them bring in the younger son... Salakh."

  2

  After opening the door quietly, he entered the apartment and, in the darkness, without removing his jacket, tiptoed into the kitchen. It was a little brighter in there: the light from a streetlamp outside the window stretched lazily to find at least a few meters of the front garden. At the same time a slice of damp light shone on the medicine chest by the wall.

  It was amusing to grope around in cabinets in one's own kitchen, like a thief at night...

  He reached his hand deep onto the upper shelf where there was supposed to be a jar of baking soda, but the sleeve of his puffy jacket brushed against some bottles: he began to pull his hand out and... damn!!! The sound of broken glass crashed in the silence of the sleeping house like the explosion of a shell on an artillery range.

  There you have it... All because he didn't turn on the light, not wanting to wake anyone... so ve-ry thought-ful! Now go ahead, you asshole, turn on the light, take off your jacket, and clean up the mess of glass and the soda. And suffer with that damned heartburn until morning! Meanwhile, there were only two hours left until morning...

  He started sweeping, while behind his back could feel Nadezhda standing in the doorway. But he didn't turn around, allowing her a minute to normalize her mood.

  "Go-oo-od Lord," he heard the usual, sleepy voice. "What time is it, huh? Am I ever going to have even one peaceful night's sleep? What mischief are you up to—heartburn again?"

  He suddenly choked up in gratitude: what a sweetie, she remembered about his heartburn!

  "Nadya," he said and sat down on a chair with his back to her, broom in hand.

  She approached, embraced his head, and pressed it against her soft bosom, quickly stroking his forehead, cheeks and throat with both hands... muttering something, in an almost sing-song voice...

  She had nice hands, Nadezhda did; they radiated something or other. Even a visiting psychic from Nizhny Novgorod who performed here last year in the Palace of Culture, the one who conducted mass hypnosis séances for women who wanted to lose weight, even he had said that she possessed some special gift.

  And in a few minutes Arkady really did feel a bit better; the poisonous spasm in his chest that had made it hard for him to breathe was relieved. He bent his head to one side and gratefully squeezed his wife's hand between his shoulder and his burning ear.

  "I spilled the soda," he said guiltily. "Such terrible heartburn, Nadya, it reduces me to tears!'

  "What's soda have to do with it?" she cried. "What utter nonsense! Here, take some Alka-Seltzer," and she filled a glass with water, began to stir a tablet into the glass, repeating something he'd heard from her a hundred times—that it was all nerves, it had nothing to do with his esophagus, that sooner or later all normal people become accustomed to such work, that it's absolutely normal for normal people, understand? That, after eight years, he shouldn't give a damn when a run of the mill wog bumps off one of his own... But he can't get used to it in any way, and no tablets can ever help him—you remember what happened last year, when there were shoot-outs in the village near Akko, and the bastards from one band murdered a three-year-old infant from another band, and your section was the one to conduct the investigation, do you remember? You stopped sleeping and went reeling from wall to wall... You just have to quit this damned police work once and for all. How many times do I have to tell you?

  Then she couldn't help remembering his late mother, who insisted that after his third year he leave the conservatory and enter the law faculty. She was concerned about his earning a crust of bread, of course. A crust of bread is a good thing, lodged in the throat of the whole family! And now, if you please, you can see the result—soon he'll wind up in the madhouse! If only he could have a job in a normal office, make out wills, try insurance claims—no, he's managed to get into the thick of it, in the middle of this criminal brutality!

  In half an hour they were back in bed, although the alarm clock would soon send out its loathsome sound...

  Arkady didn't feel in the least like sleeping, and, skipping the hours of exhausting interrogation that would be impossible to convey in words—Nadya, it was like explaining a Mahler symphony note by note—he started telling her about things from the moment when Salakh, the younger son, the deceased sister's favorite, whom she'd taken care of—telling her how he behaved during all those hours, what self-possession, what will-power—how he blanched at the photograph of the dead Jamilya suddenly tossed onto the table, then his face grew pinched, and he fell silent. Only the spot under his eye twitched and pulsed.

  And in the ensuing silence Arkady said to him:

  "So... Be a man!"

  He lowered his fist to the table heavily, like the lid of a coffin in which they bury the deceased, and he said in a muffled voice:

  "I've had enough... Start writing!"

  "That's how it went down, Nadya, this business. His sister had fallen in love with a poor soldier and had begun meeting with him... The soldier was about fifteen years younger than she was, and the father would never give permission for her to marry someone like that. It was impossible for her to go on meeting him, extremely dangerous; the relatives would quickly snitch on her... She used to leave the house at night in men's clothing, a black cloth wrapped around her face."

  "Insane... Medieval! A masquerade," Nadezhda said.

  So rumors began to circulate in the village, someone had seen a stranger in a black mask. At last, her own uncle bumped into her one night. He grabbed her, tore the cloth off her face, recognized his niece, and was stupefied... He spat right into her face and immediately went to see Walid. He told him everything. That very day Jamilya was sentenced to death. She lived only another three weeks after that.

&
nbsp; "How medieval!" Nadezhda repeated in a fit of temper.

  Propping herself up on her elbows, she peered into her husband's face. She suffered for him... He lay there on his back, and using his elbow to shield his eyes from the light of the bed lamp—very cozy, but still too bright at this moment—he spoke in a monotone that became hoarse at night, barely moving his lips. At times he seemed to be dozing, his voice would drop to a mutter, but Nadya didn't want to stop him, understanding that he was in the process of healing...

  "Apparently the uncle couldn't restrain himself and told his wife everything, even though Walid had begged him to hush it up... And she spread it around to her sisters, and then it made the rounds... The rumors proliferated, and one fine day..."

  ... The most interesting thing was that he could imagine with absolute clarity and accuracy that fine day, one of those when nature in the Galilee delicately reacts to the early, fragile warmth, still only February, and almost overnight miraculous grass of a piercing green color, almost hysterical in intensity, penetrates the red softness of the earth—as a result of a thick covering of pale-yellow mustard plants.

  That morning Salakh went to see his older sister and said:

  "I can no longer face the shame. One of us has to die."

  Jamilya leaned back against the wall, as if he'd pushed her. She closed her eyes.

  They stood facing each other in that room where both sisters lived, where their mother had previously fallen ill and died. And where after their mother's death Jamilya used to bathe the young Salakh, because the room was sunny and warm.

  "I will," she said. Her thick, masculine eyebrows instantly appeared black on her chalk-white face. "I'll be the one."

  "How?"

  He stood before her, a tall, strong man, a twitch quivering under his eye, more likely, a small scar; when he was three, standing on the staircase, Salakh turned when his sister had called him and he fell; it was a miracle that the eye itself wasn't injured. She carried him on her back until he was five or so and she remembered those warm hollow places under his sharp knees, when, pausing in the middle of a game, she would hoist him up into a more comfortable position.

  "How will you do it?" he repeated insistently.

  "I'll swallow pills," she whispered.

  "I'll give you two hours," he tossed back. "In two hours I want to find you dead!"

  He left, got into his police SUV, and for the entire duration of her death sentence, drove around the village, furiously turning the steering wheel, terrifying hens and dogs.

  Two hours later, he turned into the courtyard of their house. Getting out of his car, he glanced around and saw a wide open hand, then another, emerge convulsively from the well in the middle of the courtyard... and grab onto the stone edge; then the drenched head of his sister appeared, her eyes protruding, lips trembling...

  For a few moments they looked at each other—he and that horrible, pale-yellow face with a burning red stripe on her neck.

  He rushed forward, ran to his sister, caught hold of her under her arms and helped her climb out.

  "What can I do, what?" she muttered, hanging onto him, weeping and spluttering, just like a child. "I took twenty Vaben tablets—and vomited... I went to hang myself in the cellar—but the rope broke... I jumped into the well—but it was too shallow and I merely got hurt. What can I do? Tell me, what? So, you kill me, kill me!"

  "Let's go," he said and dragged her into the cellar where sacks of fertilizer stood in a row along the wall; a skull and crossbones were depicted on each with the words: "Danger, poison!"

  She collapsed onto one of the sacks, with her wet dress clinging to her; she sat there, staring ahead senselessly. Water was dripping from her hair, her face was blue from the cold, and her nose stuck out as if from someone else's face. Two murky streams were flowing slowly from her nostrils.

  Salakh took a large measuring cup from the shelf, scooped up crystalline powder from an open sack, poured in some water, stirred it, and handed the cup to her.

  "Drink!" he ordered. He stood over his sister and watched as, choking, she swallowed the fatal swill.

  She vomited at once.

  Then he mixed more chemicals with the water and once more ordered her:

  "Drink!"

  She drank and straightened up... She staggered... Slowly she began to climb the cellar stairs... But on the threshold she fell flat on her face.

  Salakh called his other sister. She came rushing down—in a moment she understood everything and shrieked! But when he slapped her across the face with the back of his hand she quieted down and began to help him willingly, her red cheek burning.

  Together they lugged the body upstairs, undressed her, dried her with a towel, dressed her in a green sweater with a high collar to hide the marks left by the rope, and lay her in bed...

  "Four days and four nights she suffered agonizing torments in silence," muttered Arkady. "Agonizing torments... Finally her heart failed."

  The day, as always, began with a conference call. Arkady listened to the voices, recognizing each one even before they identified themselves.

  "Greetings, Akko."

  "Hey, Karmiel, what's up?"

  "Last night we had... (two spoons of sugar, please)... Last night someone broke a store window on Herzl Street and carried off only a few small items—most likely it was some kids making mischief... And one young lad was wounded in a skirmish at a discotheque... Other than that, nothing much..."

  "Good morning, Rosh-Pina, Rosh-Pina... we have something to report. You remember, in December a vagrant froze to death in a grove by the gas station..."

  He listened to the voices... noted on his pad what had happened last night in the Galilee, at the same time trying to accept and come to terms with his own morning news, not that it was resounding, but an hour before the beginning of the investigative experiment, Salakh retracted his confession of his sister's murder, declaring that he had given evidence under the duress of the investigators and that in fact he was completely innocent of any crime—Jamilya had committed suicide of her own free will, for the sake of his family's honor, since she was unable to bear the disgrace.

  So what? He, this gallant policeman, could sincerely consider that the truth. After all, he had only helped her to die, just as she'd asked. Had it not been for his pallor at the sight of his dead sister's face, so tormented by suffering...

  "Safed! What's up with you? Why are you so quiet? Hey, you turkeys! Have you fallen fast asleep there in your fog?"

  He coughed. He began speaking quickly and calmly...

  Then Arkady conducted the routine meeting. He wrote down recommendations on various cases, distributed them among those very same turkeys—Varda (who was soon to retire) and Jonah, who, even without Arkady's errands, was kept awake every night by his five-month-old twins... After lunch, which he didn't eat, he left for the prosecutor's office, to refresh his memory on an unsolved case he'd worked on a year ago. Then, already almost evening, he went to see what had been recorded on the surveillance cameras...

  From time to time the image of a scar pulsating on Salakh's face arose before his eyes, and the heavy hammer of his fist dropped from his side onto the table: "Write!"

  That's it. I no longer have the right to keep him behind bars. No one would extend the arrest order, no one... You lost, old man, it happens, in the sense that West is West, but interrogation is merely interrogation, as much as you feel like ripping his guts out, so he could understand how his sister died. Very well, resign yourself to it... All the same, the case will be handed over to the Ministry of Justice; people there are serious... who knows, perhaps...

  At home, very late that evening, refusing supper, Arkady remembered that he hadn't eaten all day. And, what was more interesting, he still didn't feel at all like eating.

  His heartburn was right there; a soldering iron was leaving its black burn mark somewhere down his throat...

  But you can only remotely imagine what that poor maiden suffered before her death
...

  He looked in the medicine cabinet and hurriedly mixed a tablet of Alka Seltzer in water so that Nadezhda wouldn't see, or else she'd latch onto him with all sorts of questions. He went to lie down for a minute in the bedroom, just as he was, still fully dressed.

  There, he could hear the amusing and poignant music of the French composer Kosma; his wife and daughter were watching an old film with Pierre Richard. In the darkness, Arkady's limp hand came across the cover of a book lying upside-down on the bedspread. He stretched out his arm, turned on the bed lamp and discovered the same glossy rubbish that Yulka had yet to finish. That miserable wretch is abusing a book again! Squinting in the half-dark room, he ran the angry glance of his eyes scanned down the page: "In France, the persecution of witches began very early. One of the Jesuits at the time wrote, in 1594: Our prisons are filled to the brim with witches and wizards. A day doesn't go by when our judges don't sully their hands with their blood...'"

  Desperate rage suddenly seized Arkady by the throat. He swung his arm and, in a frenzy, hurled the stupid book on the floor.

  Have you gone crazy, or what? Why on earth are you obsessed by the medieval execution of this unfortunate maiden? You have a whole truckload of similar affairs. Why, just last Friday in a small grove near Akko, once again they found the charred corpse of a woman in a car... Another "restoration of family honor." They've lived that way for centuries and will live like that for another hundred centuries. Do you intend to reeducate them? How the hell do you know, you unfortunate West-is-West, that in their place and in their skin, you wouldn't kill your own Nadezhda, or even Yulka here, because she doesn't take good care of her books?