Lyalya played truant in the morning. Sometimes when Sasha and Grisha were at school, she would come to drink coffee with Zhenya. Either her artist was busy, or she just didn't feel like sitting at a school desk. Zhenya couldn't simply turn her away. After all, what if she went and threw herself out of the window? Zhenya obediently listened to what she had to say. And despaired. As if she didn't have problems enough of her own: she had kicked her own husband out because she had fallen for a completely unattainable gentleman, an Actor with a capital A. Well, a theatre director actually. From a beautiful city which almost counted as being abroad. He was phoning every day, begging her to come. And now on top of everything else she had Lyalya.
Zhenya was at her wits' end.
«Lyalya, dearest, you must bring this relationship to an end immediately. It's madness!»
«But why, Zhenya? I'm so in love with him. And he loves me too.»
Zhenya believed her, because Lyalya had been looking much prettier lately. She had beautiful big, grey eyes with black, painted eyelashes. Her nose was long but slim, and aristocratically aquiline. Her skin had improved a lot, and her neck was quite amazing, a thing of rare beauty: slender, tapering even more upwards. And her head was set so prettily on this lissom stem. Wow!
«Lyalya, dearest, if you don't want to think about yourself, do at least think about him. Do you realise what is going to happen if people find out about this? They'll put him straight in prison! You don't want that to happen, do you? He'll get eight years or so in prison!»
«No, Zhenya, no. Nobody is going to send him to prison. If Mila guesses what's going on she'll kick him out, that's for sure. And she'll take him to the cleaners. For his money. She is so-o greedy, and he makes a lot. If he went to prison he wouldn't be paying her alimony. No, no. She won't make a fuss. Quite the opposite. She'll hush it all up.» Lyalya elaborated a cold, calculated scenario of the future which, Zhenya had to admit, monstrous though it might seem, rang true. Mila really was a money grubber.
«And what about your parents? Do you think they aren't going to be upset? Imagine the situation if they find out,» Zhenya tried a different angle.
«They'd better just keep very quiet. My Ma is screwing Uncle Vasya.» Zhenya's eyes popped out of her head. «Didn't you know? Pa's own brother, my uncle Vasya. Ma's been crazy about him all her life. The only thing I don't know is whether she fell for him before she married Pa or after. As for Pa, why should he care about it? He's not a real man anyway, know what I mean? He isn't interested in anything other than his formulas. Including me and Misha.»
God in heaven, what was to be done with this under-age monster? She was, after all, only thirteen. She was a child in need of protection. And who'd have thought our artist was up to it? He was a watery aesthete who wore a kid jacket and a cravate! His immaculate hands were tended by a manicurist who did home visits. He had once said in Zhenya's presence that his work demanded faultless hands, like a pianist's. She'd had him down for a poof, but now it turned out he was a paedophile.
Then again, Lyalya was not a child. In olden times the Jews married girls off at the age of twelve-and-a-half. So from a physiological viewpoint, she was an adult. Her brain was more than adult: the way she had dissected Mila's motivations was something precious few grown women could have managed.
But what should she, Zhenya, do now? She was the only adult who had been told this tale, so she it was who bore the responsibility. There was no one she could turn to for advice. She certainly couldn't go to her own parents. Her mother would have a heart attack.
Lyalya came to talk to Zhenya nearly every week, telling her all about her artist, and everything she said convinced Zhenya that this nightmarish liaison was really quite firmly rooted. If a family man was taking the risk of receiving an under-age lover in his own home every week, he really was head-over-heels in love. Zhenya did buy contraceptive pills, which set her back quite a bit, without, needless to say, imposing on Mila. She gave them to Lyalya and told her to be sure to take them every day without fail. Even after buying the pills, Zhenya felt deeply implicated. She knew she needed to do something before a scandal blew up, but wasn't sure what approach to take. In the end she decided the only thing she could do in the circumstances was talk to the godforsaken artist.
Meanwhile her theatre director was phoning, begging her to fly out if only for a day. He had a premiere coming up, he was working twelve hours a day. But if she were to fly to that warm, marvellous, sunlit city, she would be in trouble. And if she didn't?
Something had to be done about this ridiculous business of Lyalya. It wasn't even so much because ultimately there was bound to be a scandal, as that here, after all, was an adult perverting the life of a child. Lord, how lucky she was to have boys. What problems did they create? Sasha's astronomy questions, and having to drag Grisha away from his books: he read at night under the blanket using a torch. They still fought occasionally, but ever less frequently of late.
Finally she decided to ring Lyalya's lover. She rang during the day, after two o'clock on a day when Mila had an afternoon surgery. He was delighted to hear from her and immediately invited her round, since luckily it was no distance. Zhenya said she would come round to visit him next time, but for the present they needed to meet on neutral territory.
They met beside the Art Cinema, and he suggested going over to the cafe in the Prague Hotel.
«Has something upset you, Zhenya? You're looking a bit dishevelled, somehow,» the artist asked amiably, and Zhenya remembered that he always behaved well towards his relatives. He once helped a really quite distant lady relative when she needed a major operation; and another time he had paid for a lawyer to defend some black sheep in the family who had proved incapable even of stealing a car properly. What a thing is man, how much diversity he has within him.
«I'm afraid this is going to be rather unpleasant. I need to talk to you about your lover,» Zhenya began abruptly, not wanting to give the indignation she felt about this whole disgraceful episode a chance to dissipate.
He was silent for a long time. Purposefully silent. Little muscles were working under his thin skin. He proved not actually to be as handsome as she had imagined. Or perhaps his looks had faded with the years.
«Zhenya, I am a grown man. You are not my mother or my grandmother. Tell me why I should have to explain myself to you?»
«Well, because, Arkady,» Zhenya exploded, «because ultimately we are all responsible for our own actions. And as a grown man, you should take responsibility for the stuations you find yourself in.»
He took a big gulp from the small coffee cup, and put the empty cup on the edge of the table.
«Tell me, Zhenya, has somebody sent you, or have you had an access of do-goodery?»
«What are you talking about? Who could have sent me? Your wife? Lyalya's parents? Lyalya herself? Well, of course it's do-goodery, as you put it. That dumbcluck Lyalya has told me all about it. Of course, I would prefer to know nothing at all. But from what I do know, I am afraid. Both for her and for you. That's all.»
He suddenly softened and changed his tone.
«To tell the truth, I had no idea you knew each other. How interesting.»
«Believe me, I would prefer not to know her at all, and the more so in these circumstances.»
«Zhenya, tell me what it is that you want from me. This affair is not in its first year. And forgive me if I say that you and I are not on such close terms that we should be discussing delicate aspects of my personal life.»
At this point Zhenya realised that things were complicated, and that there was more behind these words than she knew. Arkady himself was looking half-guilty, but also half-perplexed.
«I thought this had only recently begun, but you are saying it is not in its first year…» Zhenya forced out, cursing herself for ever getting involved in these intricacies.
«If you are a private detective, you aren't very good at your job. To be perfectly frank, it has been going on for more than two years,»
he shrugged. «I just don't understand why Lyalya had to talk to you. Mila knows all about it, and she is prepared to put up with anything to avoid a divorce.»
He moved his elbow, knocking the coffee cup off the table. It crashed to the floor.
Without getting up, he leant under the table with his long arm and collected the pieces, placing them in front of himself in a heap. He began sorting the white china shards of the broken cup as if assembling them for gluing. Then he looked up. Actually, he was really rather handsome. His eyebrows were so open, and his eyes tinged with green.
More than two years? So he had been molesting a ten-year-old girl? How could he talk about it so casually? Men really must be from another planet.
«Listen, Arkady, I just don't understand. You talk about this so straightforwardly. I can't get my head round it. A grown man sleeping with a ten-year-old girl?»
He stared at her in astonishment.
«Zhenya, what are you talking about? What girl?»
«Lyalya was thirteen a month-and-a-half ago. What is she to you: a babe, a chick, a bird?»
«Who are we talking about, Zhenya?»
«Lyalya Rubashova.»
«What Rubashova?» Arkady asked, genuinely puzzled.
Was he pulling her leg? Or?..
«Lyalya, of course. The daughter of Stella Kogan and Kostya Rubashov.»
«Oh, Stella. I haven't seen her for a hundred years. She did have a daughter, didn't she. What has that to do with me? Can you explain yourself clearly?»
That was it. End of story.
He understood what she was talking about, was horrified, guffawed with laughter, expressed a desire to take a look at the girl who had dreamed up a romance with him. He had no recollection of her. Any number of little girls who were friends of Dasha came into the house.
Then, casting off a terrible weight from her heart, Zhenya laughed too.
«I hope you realise, esteemed Arkady, that I have nevertheless uncovered the fact that you have a lover?»
«Well, okay. I do have a lover. She isn't ten and she isn't thirteen, but as you can imagine there are certain difficulties. I was so angry when you came and…»
The waiter took away the broken china and summoned a cleaner to wipe under the table.
Zhenya waited for Lyalya's next visit. She listened to all her latest revelations, let her finish, and then said, «Lyalya, I am very glad you have been coming to me all this time to share your experiences. You probably needed very much to act out in front of me all these things which have never happened, but which will come to you in good time: love, and sex, and your artist…»
Zhenya didn't manage to deliver the whole of the speech she had prepared. Lyalya was already back in the hallway. Without a word, she grabbed her schoolbag and wasn't seen again for many years.
But Zhenya too had other things to think about. Winter, which had been frozen in darkness, was jolted out of its rut. The director had his premiere and himself flew to Moscow. He was simultaneously on top of the world and rather melancholy, and constantly surrounded by his numerous fans — Muscovite Georgians languishing in a rather abstract way for Tiflis, and Muscovite intellectuals in love with Georgia and her bibulous, free-and-easy ways. For two weeks Zhenya was happy, and the «brooding forest gloom» of «half her span on earth» grew lighter, and March was like April, warm and light, as if bathed in reflections from that faraway city on the wild River Kura. She became less restive. Not because she had been happy for two weeks, but because she had understood in the depths of her heart that the holiday would not last forever, and this fun person who had landed in her life was like a great big present, so big you could only be allowed to hold it for a short while, but not to take it home with you. Zhenya told him the tale of Lyalya. First he laughed, but then he said it would make a brilliant play. Then he left, and Zhenya flew to see him in Georgia several times, and he flew more than once to Moscow. Then it was over, as if it had never been. And life went on for Zhenya. She was even reconciled with her second husband whom, as became clear with the passing of time, it was simply impossible for her to leave: he was as firmly stitched on to her life as her children.
She did not meet Lyalya again for a long time. She didn't show up at family birthdays, and funerals were hardly the right moment.
Only many years later did they meet at a family party, and by then Lyalya had grown into a very beautiful young woman who was married to a pianist. Her little daughter was there too. The four-year-old came up to Zhenya and said she was a princess. That's all. End of story.
About the Authors
SVETLANA ALEXIYEVICH, born in 1948, graduated in journalism from Minsk University then worked on various papers while trying her hand at short stories. In her search for «a literary method that would allow the closest possible approximation of real life», Alexiyevich evolved a writing style all her own: she constructs her narratives out of «live voices» culled from interviews with witnesses to and participants in 20th-century cataclysms. Says Alexiyevich: «That is how I hear and see the world — as a chorus of individual voices and a collage of everyday minutiae.» Alexieye-vich's books have sold some 2 million copies in Russia and been translated into more than twenty languages.The War's Unwomanly Face, Alexieyevich's first book, detailed the lives of Soviet women who fought in WWII (pilots, parachutists, snipers) while The Last Witnesses looked at that war's children. Boys in Zinc (1989) addressed the problem of post-traumatic-stress syndrome in veterans of the Soviet-Afghan war. Enchanted by Death (1993) focused on those driven to suicide by the collapse of the Soviet Union and their socialist illusions. 1997 saw the publication of Alexiyevich's requiem for the victims of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, The Chernobyl Prayer. All of Alexiyevich's books grapple with the question: «Who are we and what country do we live in now?»
Her latest book, The Wonderful Deer of the Eternal Hunt, is a series of Russian love stories while «Landscape of Loneliness» excerpts three female voices from the book.
MARIA ARBATOVA, born in 1957, holds degrees from Moscow University (Philosophy) and the Literary Institute (Drama). An award-winning writer and dramatist as well as an outspoken feminist, she has been hailed as «Russia's Erica Jong». Her best-selling books include: My Name is Woman (published last year in France), A Visit from a Middle-aged Lady, Mobile Affairs, Reading Plays.Her latest book, Farewell to the 20th Century, is a revised and supplemented version of her autobiographical novel I'm Forty (published in 1998 and excerpted in GLAS 13, A Will and a Way).
NINA GORLANOVA, born in 1947, grew up in the Siberian city of Perm where she lives still and where most of her stories and novels are set. By returning to one and the same place, she creates a somewhat fantastic world populated with curious characters and possessing its own mythology. The life in her invented Perm is squalid but merry, risky but indestructible. Gorlanova's short novel Love in Rubber Gloves won first prize at the International Competition for Women's Prose. Her Learning a Lesson was short-listed for the Russian Booker Prize (1996).
ANASTASIA GOSTEVA, born in 1975, a graduate of Moscow University (Physics), belongs to the first generation to come of age in post-Soviet Russia and to travel freely beyond it. She works in Moscow as a journalist and translator while writing poetry and prose. Her Samurai's Daughter won the Znamya prize for Best Debut Novel of 1997. Next came Travel Agnus Dei (1998) and a number of short stories in leading literary journals. Her latest novel, The Den of the Enlightened, looks at modern-day love affairs conducted over the Internet.
LUDMILA PETRUSHEVSKAYA, born in 1938, is the author of The Time: Night, short-listed for the Russian Booker Prize and translated into over 20 languages. In 2002, for life-time achievement Petrushevskaya received Russia's most prestigious prize The Triumph. Petrushevskaya's rather eccentric style — her black humor and over-the-back-fence style — is often described as critical realism mixed with postmodernism and elements of the absurd. In Petrushevskaya's stories even the most unpalatable reality is made beautiful by the perfection of her
art. The author of Immortal Love (also widely translated), On the Way to Eros, The Mystery of the House, Real-life Tales, and Find Me, Sleep, Petrushevskaya has been called «one of Russia's finest living writers». (See also her «Fairytales for Grownups» in Glas 13, A Will and a Way.)
MARGARITA SHARAPOVA, born in 1962, graduated from the Cinema Institute and then the Literary Institute. As a writer of short stories, she draws on her past life as a circus animal trainer and often uses the road as a connecting element. Her heroes are circus performers, gypsies, would-be writers, alcoholics and vagabonds. Driven by their emotions, a personal sense of duty and determination to preserve their inner freedom, they live their hand-to-mouth lives as best they can. Sharapova has won a number of prizes, including those of the Moscow Writers' Union and the International Democracy Foundation.
OLGA SLAVNIKOVA, born in 1957, grew up in Yekaterinburg in the Urals where she majored in journalism. A literary editor and critic, Slavnikova is the author of three widely acclaimed novels: A Dragonfly the Size of a Dog, short-listed for the Russian Booker Prize (1997); Alone in the Mirror, short-listed for the Anti-Booker and winner of the Pavel Bazhov Prize; and Immortal, awarded the Critics' Academy Apollon Grigoriev Prize and short-listed for both the Belkin Prize and the National Bestseller Prize. «Krylov's Childhood» is the first section of Slavnikova's new novel, Period.
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