There Once Lived a Woman Who Tried to Kill Her Neighbor's Baby

by Ludmilla Petrushevskaya

  Cold desolate space spread out around us on all sides.

  One time my father turned on the radio and tried for a while to hear what was out there. Everything was silent. Either the batteries had died, or we really were the last ones left. My father’s eyes shone: He’d escaped again!

  If in fact we’re not alone, then they’ll come for us. That much is clear. But, first of all, my father has a rifle, and we have skis and a smart dog. Second of all, they won’t come for a while yet. We’re living and waiting, and out there, we know, someone is also living, and waiting, until our grain grows and our bread grows, and our potatoes, and our new goats—and that’s when they’ll come. And take everything, including me. Until then they’re being fed by our plot, and Anisya’s plot, and Tanya’s household. Tanya is long gone, but Marfutka is still there. When we’re like Marfutka, they won’t touch us either.

  But there’s a long way to go until then. And in the meantime, of course, we’re not just sitting here. My father and I have commenced work on our next refuge.

  The Miracle

  THERE ONCE LIVED A WOMAN WHOSE SON HANGED HIMSELF.

  Which is to say, when she returned home from the night shift one morning, her boy was lying on the floor next to an overturned stool underneath a length of thin synthetic rope.

  He was unconscious, but his heart still beat faintly, and so the paramedic who came with the ambulance suggested that the son wasn’t really trying to hang himself.

  Even though there was a note on the table: “Mom, I’m sorry. I love you.”

  And it was only when she’d returned home from the hospital, having held her son’s hand as they rode in the ambulance, and then with him into the hospital as he lay on a stretcher, right up to the doors of the intensive care unit, where she finally had to let him go—only upon returning home did she discover that the wool sock in which she kept her savings was empty.

  She kept the sock at the bottom of an old suitcase. It had contained two wedding rings, all her money, and her gold earrings set with rubies.

  The poor woman then saw that the tape player—the one valuable thing she’d ever bought, because it was the only way she could get her son to return to school—was also gone.

  Looking around some more, she found a number of empty bottles under the bed and in the kitchen, a mound of dirty plates in the sink, and traces of vomit in the filthy bathroom.

  She knew the minute she walked in the door that there had been a party—her son was being drafted into the army and had wanted to invite his friends over, but the mother kept objecting.

  And yet when she stood at the entrance to their studio apartment that morning and took in the crooked lamp, the table that had been moved, the overturned stool, and, above all, the rope and the body on the floor, all her angry thoughts left her.

  Only now did she move the fallen chair aside and pull the old suitcase from underneath her bed.

  It wasn’t locked properly; one of the two small locks was broken.

  That loose lock told her a great deal, and she opened the suitcase hopelessly, with unfeeling hands.

  The wool sock was in its place, under all the clothing, but it was empty.

  That sock was her last hope. She had made all sorts of plans, whether to buy a television, or to bribe someone to allow her son to take his high school exams (he’d dropped out in the middle of his senior year).

  Other times she dreamed of moving to a bigger apartment, with two rooms. She’d have to scrimp and save, but she could do it, and her boy could have his own room. It wasn’t easy living with him, it was true, but he was her only remaining family. The others had died, all her relatives—her parents, aunts, uncles, and husband had died young; an evil fate seemed to trail them all.

  And now her boy wanted to leave her, too.

  In truth he’d been talking about this for a long time. His army service was approaching inexorably, and he’d always been a quiet, gentle boy. He didn’t like fighting—he always said he couldn’t hurt another human being, and because of this he was often beaten up at school. There were three boys in particular who liked to pick on him. They’d laugh and say he never fought back, and they’d take everything he had in his pockets, right down to his handkerchief.

  Which, incidentally, didn’t mean he was above threatening his own mother when he was drunk. In fact he’d changed a great deal since he’d started hanging out with some older kids who lived in their building.

  They’d taken him under their protection. He told his mother so himself, he came home one day and said, That’s it, no one’s going to bother me anymore. And from then on he would walk around strangely exhilarated.

  That was a few years ago, when he was fourteen. That’s when he began asking his mother for a tape player. The other boys would give him tapes to copy, and he couldn’t admit to them that he didn’t have a tape recorder of his own, so he just sat there miserably, staring at the tapes.

  He’d bragged to his friends—apparently—about his tape player and now couldn’t take it back. He knew his mother had some money—she was always working several jobs, saving, scrimping—but she told him pocket money would spoil him, he might even, she said, start drinking and smoking, as if they didn’t already have enough problems.

  He did in fact start drinking and smoking—the older kids must have paid. He also knew his mother’s hiding places and would steal from her a little at a time. She was disorganized and never remembered exactly how much money she had in her stash.

  One time he wouldn’t stop screaming about how much he needed a tape recorder. He kept at it until he actually became ill—he had a fever, and he refused medication. He said he wanted to die.

  His fever grew worse, he refused all food, and finally his mother broke down—she went out and bought him a tape recorder, the cheapest one, though it still cost a fortune.

  Her son woke up right away, and he looked wide-eyed at the tape recorder. The mother was crying tears of joy, seeing how shocked he was, but then just as suddenly he lay down again, turned his back to her, and said it was the wrong model. It wasn’t what he needed at all.

  The next morning they crawled together to the cheap little kiosk to exchange the tape recorder for a better one. They had to pay a ton of money, again, for the upgrade—and clearly the people at the kiosk tricked them, seeing the condition the mother was in, that she was ready for anything.

  After that he truly went out of control. He listened to the tape recorder day and night without a break, dubbed cassettes (which also cost money), and then soon there was the problem of a new leather jacket, designer jeans, and American sneakers.

  Here the mother finally said no. After all, where would it end?

  Since you’re not going to school anymore, she told him, why don’t you go to work like me? I’m ready for any kind of work for your sake.

  He replied that he would never slave for pennies the way she did.

  He refused to do what other boys in his situation did—sell newspapers or wash windshields at traffic lights. Maybe he was afraid of getting beaten up again—his mother, too, was afraid of everything, and maybe he’d grown up that way also, not having a father to set an example.

  But things soon got to the point where he refused to go out in his shapeless pants and jacket, became depressed, didn’t do his homework, rendering his attendance at school senseless—why show up just to be embarrassed by his teachers? He hated being lectured, couldn’t stand it.

  He spent more and more of his time with the neighborhood kids, his protectors, and they—thought the mother, sitting before her violated suitcase—must have drank, and smoked, and he alongside them, at their expense.

  And now the time must have come when they’d reminded him of this, of their long-standing hospitality, and decided it was time to get their money back.

  That must have been why he wanted to throw a going-away party, for his induction into the army. And she kept putting it off, saying there were still two months to go, they’d have time,
it was early.

  Of course all children know the secret places in the house where their parents hide the money.

  Whereas the mother might forget. There was even a time when this Nadya, the mother, couldn’t find her money sock, when she needed to buy her Vova new shoes. He was eight years old, and he pointed beneath the wardrobe—that’s where she’d hidden her sock. Now he was seventeen.

  The mother sat there, in shock, before this bankruptcy, this humiliation—someone had also scrawled obscenities on the bathroom walls, and the jars in the kitchen had been emptied of all their grains, as if the partiers were searching for something—she sat there and thought that this was the end, and there was nothing else she could do.

  In the calm of the waiting room, the doctor had told her that her boy was alive and well, that they were putting him in intensive care only as a formality, but that soon he’d be transferred to the psychiatric ward.

  If the psych ward declared him clinically insane, that would be his worst nightmare—because he’d secretly hoped he would someday get a car, but you can’t get a license with a record of mental illness.

  And in that case, too, the army wouldn’t have him, and he’d continue living off of her and just tumbling further and further into the abyss.

  On the other hand, if they didn’t declare him insane—also quite likely, since he would fight against the diagnosis and insist he was just trying to scare his mother—then he’d be drafted, and that would be the end of him. He’d told her himself: I won’t accept humiliations. You’ll have me back in a casket soon enough. Please bury me next to Dad.

  There was nothing else she could do. Nadya got through the evening, night, and morning, and then staggered over to the hospital. There she was met by the head of the psychiatric ward, a cheerful woman who told her the boy had only pretended to commit suicide, his friends were in on it too, he’d told the doctor so himself.

  “But there are marks on his neck!” Nadya cried out.

  “It was a very flimsy rope,” answered the doctor. “He did that on purpose. He said if he’d wanted to kill himself he’d have used a thicker rope, a cord—he said you have one in the house. He remembered everything you said to the paramedics and what they looked like. He was just pretending to be unconscious.”

  “And the bloody foam on his mouth?” Nadya protested, but the doctor was no longer listening. She said the boy was still very upset and didn’t want to face his mother after the joke he’d pulled.

  “But he robbed me,” Nadya wanted to say, but instead just began weeping right there in the waiting room.

  “You should also seek some help,” the doctor suggested in parting.

  After that Nadya wandered back home again and began calling all her friends for advice.

  Then she went down to the yard, where the old ladies convened on the benches, and sought their advice, too.

  Somehow she couldn’t help talking about what had happened, just couldn’t stop her racing tongue. She stopped people on the street, people she barely knew, and insisted on telling them everything, as if she were at confession.

  People had begun looking at her in a funny way, agreeing with everything she said, prompting her with questions.

  She finally got help from an old woman who used to live in their building but now lived far away with her sister. She had been diagnosed (she told Nadya) with a fatal disease and had only two weeks to live, which is why she’d stayed away for a while. Before the old woman moved Nadya had occasionally brought her groceries, and the woman would tell her everything—how she’d transferred ownership of her apartment to her beloved grandson so that she could live out the last years of her life without worries about his future, and that the grandson had immediately decided to remodel the place, pulled up the floors, changed the parquet, and in the meantime moved his grandmother out to her sister’s place, so as not to bother her with all the repairs. Then the grandson disappeared, and the apartment was occupied by a family no one knew, who had bought it from the grandson fair and square. So it went. Everyone in their building knew the story.

  The poor exiled old woman used to go around to all the neighbors and cry about what had happened, but now she seemed to have calmed down. She didn’t even mention it, said she was living well (“With your sister?” asked Nadya, but the old woman answered, “No, without my sister now,” and Nadya was afraid to ask further, for fear that the sister had died), she was growing all sorts of flowers (“On your balcony?” Nadya asked, and the old woman said, “No, over my head,” which seemed like a strange answer, and Nadya did not ask anything more), and in any case Nadya had to tell her own story, too, so she did.

  The old woman said, “You need to find Uncle Kornil.”

  And that was it. She immediately began to walk away and then disappeared around the corner of her old building before Nadya could ask her anything else.

  Amazed, Nadya raced around the corner and then the next corner, but the woman was gone.

  There was nothing else to do. Once again Nadya called all her friends and acquaintances and anyone else she could find, to ask them about Uncle Kornil, and finally, when she was waiting in line at the post office, a woman told her that Kornil slept in the boiler room of the hospital near the metro.

  Uncle Kornil was near death, the woman added, and couldn’t be allowed to drink.

  But the local bums who also lived in the basement wouldn’t let you in to see him unless you brought them a bottle of vodka.

  Nor would Kornil tell you anything unless he got a bottle, too.

  What you needed to do was put down a fresh towel for a tablecloth, and shot glasses, serve the vodka, something to eat, and so on in that vein.

  The woman explained in great detail where to go and what to do. She herself didn’t look very well: she was pale, as if she’d just come from the hospital, and dressed all in black, with a black kerchief, but she had lovely, kind eyes.

  Without even thinking, Nadya bought the vodka bottles, prepared the towel, packed everything neatly into a bag, and went off.

  When she was near the hospital somebody directed her to the boiler room, the gathering spot for all local drunks. It looked like every bum in the neighborhood hung out there.

  Two or three loitered near the basement door, either waiting for someone or just passing the time.

  Worried they’d steal her vodka, Nadya made for the door like a tank, sweeping the drunks from the way and knocking loudly on the door. It opened just a sliver, then welcomed her fully when Nadya flashed one of her bottles from the bag. The drunks outside tried to get in behind her, and there was some commotion as she entered the basement.

  She was immediately relieved of one of the bottles; the person who did so informed Nadya that Uncle Kornil was very ill and mustn’t be allowed to drink under any circumstances.

  He pointed her to a corner where a man lay next to an old wardrobe with its doors missing. He looked like he’d just been picked out of the trash. He lay with his arms outstretched. This was Kornil.

  Nadya did as the woman at the post office had directed—she put down a fresh towel, placed a bottle of vodka atop it, cut up some bread and pickles, and also put down a little money to help Kornil with his future hangover.

  Kornil lay there like a corpse, his mouth open, his forehead covered in tiny scratches, though there was a particularly large one, like a wound, right in the middle.

  There were open sores on his hands.

  Nadya sat there and waited, then opened the bottle and poured a large shot into the glass.

  Uncle Kornil stirred, opened his eyes, crossed himself (so did Nadya), and whispered, “Nadya”—she shivered—“do you have his photograph?”

  Nadya did not have a photograph of her son with her. She could have died of grief right then and there.

  “Do you have anything of his?”

  Nadya started rummaging through her bag. She took out a little purse, a packet of milk, and a used handkerchief. That was it.

  She’d
used that handkerchief to wipe away her tears on her walk home from the hospital the first time.

  Nadya brought the full glass to Uncle Kornil’s lips.

  Uncle Kornil raised himself on an elbow, drank off the glass, chewed a pickle, and fell back down again, saying, “Give me your handkerchief.”

  Then, holding the handkerchief (there was a large leaking sore on his wrist), he said, “If I drink another glass, that’ll be the end of me.”

  Growing frightened, Nadya nodded.

  She was kneeling by his side, on her knees, waiting for him to speak. Her dried tears were on that handkerchief, the traces of her suffering, and in a way those were also the traces of her son—so she hoped.

  “Sinner,” Uncle Kornil managed, “what do you want?”

  Nadya answered right away, beginning to cry: “How am I a sinner? I have no sins on my conscience.”

  Behind her, at the table, she heard an explosion of laughter—one of the drunks must have told a joke.

  “Your grandfather killed one hundred and seven people,” croaked Uncle Kornil. “And now you’re about to kill me.”

  Nadya nodded again, wiping away tears.

  Uncle Kornil went quiet.

  He lay there silently; meanwhile, time was growing short.

  He needed more to drink, apparently, before he would continue.

  Nadya hardly knew anything about her paternal grandfather—he’d disappeared at some point. And as if there hadn’t been enough wars in which people killed one another, involuntarily, without anger.