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

by Ludmilla Petrushevskaya

  In this way a summer passed, and the autumn came. All the produce stores were selling young firm cabbage plants, but the woman couldn’t bring herself to go out on the balcony yet. She was afraid she wouldn’t find anything there. Or she’d find a wilted cabbage plant and inside a little clump of red silk, the dress of poor Droplet, whom she’d killed with her own hands, just as she’d once killed her unborn child.

  And then one morning the first snow fell, unusually early for autumn. The poor woman looked out her window, terrified, and rushed to open the door to her balcony.

  As the door began to open, reluctant, with a heavy creaking sound, the woman heard a frightened meowing from the balcony, persistent and shrill.

  “A cat!” the poor woman cried, thinking a cat had come over from a neighboring apartment. “There’s a cat on the balcony!” And everyone knows how much cats love to eat anything that is small and runs around.

  At last the balcony door opened, and the woman ran out into the snow just like that, in her slippers.

  Inside her pot was an enormous, glorious cabbage, covered with numerous curly leaves like rose petals, and on top of the plant, lying on its many curls, was a thin, ugly baby, all red, with flaking skin. The baby, closing tight its tiny eye slits, made mewling noises, choking with sobs, shaking its clenched little fists, wobbling its bright-red toes the size of currant berries. And as if that weren’t enough, the baby had, stuck to its bald head, a little scrap of red silk.

  “But where’s Droplet?” the woman thought to herself, bringing the whole cabbage plant and the baby into the room. “Where’s my little girl?”

  She put the crying baby on the windowsill and began digging into the cabbage. She lifted every leaf very carefully, but her Droplet wasn’t there. “Who left this baby here?” she thought. “Is this a joke? What am I going to do with this thing? Look at the size of her. They took my little Droplet, and left me with this . . .”

  The baby was clearly cold, its skin bluish, its cries more and more piercing.

  But then the woman thought that after all it wasn’t this girl-giant’s fault that she’d been dumped here, and she picked her up carefully, without pressing her to her breast, took her to the bath, washed her with warm water, cleaned her off, dried her, and then wrapped her in a clean, dry towel.

  She brought this new girl to her own bed and covered her up with a warm blanket. As for herself, she got her old matchbox and took out the little half-bean where her Droplet used to sleep and began kissing it, and crying over it, remembering little Droplet.

  By now it was clear that her Droplet was gone. She’d been replaced by this enormous, ugly, clumsy thing with its big head and skinny arms—a real baby, and not at all hers.

  The woman cried and cried, and then suddenly she stopped. She thought for a second that this other child had stopped breathing. Could it be that this girl had died, too? Oh God, could she have caught cold on the windowsill while she was digging through the cabbage plant?

  But the baby was sound asleep, her eyes closed tight—a baby that no one needed, and really in fact an ugly, pitiful, helpless little baby. The woman thought there wasn’t even anyone to feed it, and took her in her arms.

  And suddenly she felt as if something had struck her powerfully on the breasts, from within.

  And, like every mother on earth, she unbuttoned her blouse and placed the baby to her breast.

  After feeding her little girl, the mother put her to bed and then poured some water into a jug and watered the cabbage plant before placing it on the windowsill.

  With time the cabbage plant grew—it developed long sprouts and pale little flowers, and the little girl, when she in her turn got up on her weak skinny legs and began to walk, immediately headed over to the window, swaying, and laughed, pointing at the long, wild shoots of the cabbage-patch mom.

  Marilena’s Secret

  THERE ONCE LIVED A WOMAN WHO WAS SO FAT, SHE COULDN’T fit in a taxi, and when going into the subway she took up the whole width of the escalator.

  When sitting down, she needed three chairs, and when sleeping, two beds, and she had a job in a circus, where she lifted heavy things.

  She was very unhappy—though a lot of fat people live quite happily! They are known for their kindness and sweet temper, and most of us, in general, like fat people.

  But the enormous Marilena carried a secret inside her: only when she returned at night to the hotel (the circus is always traveling, after all), where, as usual, three chairs had been set up for her, and two beds—only at night could she really become herself, which is to say, two average-sized, very pretty girls, who would begin, right away, to dance.

  The enormous Marilena’s secret was that, once upon a time, she’d danced on the stage as two twin ballerinas, one of whom had golden blond hair, whereas the other, for variety’s sake, had curls black as tar—this made it easier for the sisters’ admirers to send their bouquets to the right sister.

  And, naturally, a certain magician fell in love with the blonde, whereas he immediately promised to turn the second twin, the brunette, into an electric teakettle, a very loud electric teakettle, which would always travel with the married pair to remind them that this second sister, before she was a teakettle, took just one look at the magician and immediately tried to convince her sister to break off the acquaintance.

  But just as he was pointing his magic wand at the brunette, her sister, the blonde, got so red in the face, and so sweaty, and irritated, and started hissing and bubbling, exactly like a teakettle in fact—that the magician realized this wasn’t going to work.

  “Brides like this,” said the magician, who knew a thing or two about them, having been married seventeen times, “wives like this are even worse than teakettles, because whereas you can turn off a teakettle, you can’t do anything about a boiling woman.”

  He decided to punish the troublesome twosome.

  Now, all this took place in the hallway backstage, where he’d cornered the twins after the show so he could meet the blonde and propose his marriage plans right away.

  It’s hard to tell about his other skills—but this he certainly knew how to do.

  Incidentally, if anything didn’t go right for him immediately, he’d lose interest and grow bored and just abandon the whole thing halfway through.

  He usually transformed his old girlfriends and wives at random into whatever came to mind: a weeping willow, or a water faucet, or a fountain in the center of town.

  He liked to make them weep for the rest of their lives.

  “You’ll do your share of sobbing, trust me,” he told the girls now, blocking them in the crowded hallway on the way to the dressing room.

  “Oh, really?” answered the sisters. “And do you know that when we were born, the Fairy Butterbread said that if anyone ever makes us cry, he’ll turn into a cow! And he’ll be milked five times a day! And he’ll spend his whole life up to his knees in manure!”

  “Oh, really?” The wizard laughed. “In that case I have a present for you! You’ll never be able to cry again! That’s one! And two—you’ll never see each other again! Now that we’re at it!”

  But the sisters replied:

  “The Fairy Butterbread thought of that, too. She said that if anyone separates us, he’ll be turned into a dysentery germ, and will spend the rest of his life in hospitals, in terrible conditions!”

  “That’s even better!” said the failed bridegroom-wizard. “I’ll keep you two together forever and ever! You’ll always be together—the Fairy Butterbread will be very pleased. Unless of course”—and here he laughed quietly to himself—“someone tries to divide you in two, in which case I agree that the guilty party should indeed be turned into a dysentery germ! I think that’s fair—really your Fairy is a mensch. But who will even think of cutting you in half?”

  Then the twins answered:

  “That won’t work! By the Fairy Butterbread’s enchantment, no matter what, under any circumstances and in any weather, we need t
o dance together every night for two hours!”

  The wizard thought about this and said:

  “That’s not a problem. You can have your two hours. When no one sees you, you will dance two hours every night—and you’ll live to regret it, believe me.”

  Here the twins turned pale and threw their arms around each other and began saying their good-byes—but already they were unable to cry.

  Meanwhile the wizard, chuckling to himself, waved his magic wand, and right away a girl-mountain rose up before him, pale and frightened, with a chest like a big pillow, a back like a blow-up mattress, and a stomach like a bag of potatoes.

  This girl waddled heavily to the mirror, took one look, let out a groan—and fainted.

  “And that’s that,” the wizard said sadly, and disappeared.

  Why sadly? Because life always appeared to him in its worst aspects, even though he could do anything. Really, he had no life to speak of.

  No one loved him, even his parents, whom he’d once, after a minor argument, turned into a pair of slippers.

  Naturally his slippers were constantly getting lost.

  The wizard took vengeance on everyone who failed to love him. He literally laughed at all the poor, powerless human beings, and they paid him back in fear and hatred.

  He had everything: palaces, planes, and ocean liners, but no one loved him.

  Maybe if some kindly soul had come along and taken care of him, he’d have brightened up, like a copper pan that has a dutiful owner.

  But the trouble was that he himself couldn’t love anyone, and even in the passing smile of a stranger he saw some evil scheme and a hidden wish to get something from him for nothing.

  Here however we’ll leave him—he walks through the wide world, not fearing anyone (which is too bad), while our fat girl was immediately kicked out of the theater by the guards, who said she had no right to be there. She wasn’t even able to take the twins’ purses, with their money in them—who was she to be grabbing other people’s things?

  Marilena—formerly Maria and Lena—nearly died of hunger in those first few days. She lived at the train station, then in the municipal gardens. She couldn’t dance anymore to earn her living, and who’s going to give their spare change to someone like her—who ever heard of a fat beggar?

  A beggar like that needs to go away somewhere quiet and lose some weight; otherwise she’ll starve.

  And she’ll lose that weight quickly, believe me.

  But our Marilena couldn’t lose weight, even if she’d stopped eating entirely: the wizard had made sure of that.

  Incidentally, many overweight people seem to be cursed in just this way: no matter how much they diet, the weight comes right back, as if by black magic.

  In any case, no one invited our Marilena to perform her dancing duets anymore.

  First of all, because you can’t dance a duet by yourself!

  Second, because she was too fat.

  Finally, no one recognized her, and everyone knows that you can get on in show business only if you have connections.

  However, late at night in the park or among the back-yards of the train station, the big fatty would turn into two very slim ballerinas and very sadly, stumbling from hunger, dance a Charleston, a tap number, some rock and roll, and the pas de deux from the ballet Sleeping Beauty.

  But at those times no one saw her, just as the wizard had promised.

  Finally she figured out a way to make things better: she went to the circus and proposed a booth in which she’d eat a fried bull in ten minutes.

  The directors of the circus thought this a grand idea, and they set up a trial run, in which the hungry Marilena ate an entire bull in four and a half minutes!

  The bull was, truth be told, rather petite and definitely underfed, as the directors of the circus didn’t want to spend too much money.

  But after eating the bull, Marilena felt such a burst of strength that, in her excitement, she picked up the director and the head administrator, each with one of her pinkies, and carried them around the arena.

  Here she was immediately signed up at the circus as the world’s strongest woman—hailing, it was announced, from the islands of Fuji-Wuji, where she was a world champion.

  No one mentioned the bull-eating anymore, as that could have incurred serious expenses.

  Instead, every evening Marilena put on a show wherein she picked up a horse and buggy, a steamboat, and, as an encore, the entire first row of the audience, who sat on connected chairs.

  That’s the only way she could make money at the circus. In art you must always shock your audience; otherwise you’ll quickly starve to death.

  Breathing heavily, she’d go after every show to a restaurant, where she’d eat a whole fried lamb, drink a jug of milk, and then, without paying, take a taxi to her hotel.

  Her supper was an advertisement for the restaurant—gamblers would gather there to bet on how quickly Marilena would eat her lamb.

  She also went shopping in the same spirit of fun. Tailors would sew dresses for fat Marilena and then invite the television crews and photographers: Here’s Marilena BEFORE, and here’s Marilena AFTER. Look how she’s been transformed by the dress!

  And the magazines printed photos of the big happy fat girl with her pretty face—it’s true that, because it was now double the size, her nose was bigger, but, on the other hand, her eyes were simply enormous, and her teeth were so big and so white that all the toothpaste and toothbrush companies threw themselves at her feet, begging her to advertise their pastes and brushes.

  In other words, she became much richer than she’d ever been.

  And now she became seriously annoyed by her nighttime dances, which she’d brought upon herself by making up the Fairy Butterbread when confronted by the gullible wizard.

  Because by now she’d begun to forget that inside of her were two souls, and these souls kept quiet and cried without tears in the dark prison of her powerful body. In their place there grew inside Marilena’s body a whole new soul, fat and gluttonous, obnoxious and fun-loving, greedy and tactless, charming when this was advantageous to her, and grim when it wasn’t.

  It’s no secret, of course, that souls sometimes die within a person and are replaced by others—especially with age.

  Marilena’s new soul knew perfectly well which journalists from which papers needed to be treated to dinner before an interview, and when the best time was to visit the dance club for oppressed overweight people, and when she should deliver the companies’ presents to the orphans (the companies paid her for this, too).

  She no longer cared about her nightly dances or about the two souls that were allowed for some reason to appear for two hours every evening, miserable and lonely. They disrupted her entire schedule; they didn’t know the way things worked, that she’d had a hard day, that there was a flight to catch at six in the morning. They didn’t know how to count profit and loss, but instead would suddenly start to remember their hometown and their poor mother and father, who’d died, and this just got in the way of the whole evening’s fun for Marilena.

  They became especially troublesome when Marilena acquired a fiancé, a young man named Vladimir, with very plump lips, who quickly took all her accounts upon himself, and all her calculations and negotiations.

  And he became very annoyed that every evening Marilena would disappear for two hours and come back looking like a horse run ragged, and refuse to talk with anyone and turn off the phone.

  He’d taken over Marilena’s whole life, and he couldn’t understand where these two unpaid hours were going, and he’d throw loud tantrums about it.

  Marilena loved him and gave him an enormous salary, and even hired his sister Nelly. But for some reason she was too shy to tell him about those two hours.

  One day, Nelly, the sister, announced that Vladimir had set up a vast ad campaign about dieting for Marilena. It was for two companies that specialized in diets and cosmetic operations.

  And they’d be paying her
an enormous sum of money!

  They couldn’t let this opportunity pass them by, Nelly insisted. Vladimir was off on a business trip, to both South and North America, and would return just in time to see his new, young, thin bride.

  “I’ll be able to dance,” said Marilena—forgetting that if she became too thin the two souls inside her would die of hunger.

  Nelly answered by saying that she was also going into the same clinic for some plastic surgery—she, too, would be getting younger and changing a few things about her face, she said. “So you won’t suffer alone,” joked Nelly, who was usually very grim.

  So Marilena was taken to the clinic, where experienced surgeons photographed her from all sides, then hid these photographs for later (when they’d cause a sensation), and then led Marilena down the corridors of the clinic, farther and farther down, and finally locked her in a room—a very nice room, except it had no windows in it.

  Marilena couldn’t understand what was happening. She wanted to call someone, but there was no telephone. She knocked on the door, but no one came.

  She started knocking harder, then simply banging on the door—and don’t forget, Marilena worked as a strongwoman at the circus—but still it was in vain.

  Having bloodied her hands with all her knocking, Marilena collapsed on the floor. But suddenly she heard some distant strains of music, as she always did before the dancing began, and then she saw her thin little sister, and she herself became Maria again, and together they danced.

  Apparently it was time for their evening dance, and, cursing everything in the world, the two twins danced with their bloody hands.