The Kukotsky Enigma: A Novel

by Ulitskaya, Ludmila

  The next day, an investigator showed up in the courtyard. The “partment” was searched, but no instruments or medications were found.

  “Yeah, right, like the idiots are going to leave a trail of evidence,” the yard joked. The inspector, a young kid with a thin neck, interrogated the neighbor women and blushed. No one said anything. But, as always, an informer turned up. Zudina’s neighbor from the other side of the partition, Nastya-the-Rake, did not hold out, because she was a born champion of the truth.

  “I won’t say what I don’t know. In Liza’s case I didn’t myself see her do it, but she’s stuck it in others, and it works real good,” she whispered directly in the investigator’s ear.

  “Did you yourself ever use her?” the inspector inquired.

  “God forbid, I haven’t had the need for a long time,” the Rake pleaded.

  “So how do you know?”

  Here the Rake led him over to the plywood partition, tapped it with her nail, and immediately heard a reply.

  “Whattcha need, Nastya?”

  “Nothin’,” the Rake answered zestily, then whispered directly into the investigator’s ear: “You can hear everything, down to the last kopeck. Around here you can’t sigh or fart without your neighbors knowing …”

  The inspector wrote it all down in his notebook and left: now he had a lead.

  The atmosphere of investigation, bickering, and hostility was so strong it penetrated even Pavel Alekseevich’s peaceful abode. It all started the evening of the day Lizaveta was taken away. The Polosukhin children were put to bed in Tanya’s room, and she moved to her parents’ bedroom.

  Only the adults gathered for a late dinner—Pavel Alekseevich, Elena, and Vasilisa Gavrilovna, who, though reluctantly, occasionally sat down at the table with them. For this to happen the occasion had to be special—a holiday or some event, like today’s. She preferred to eat in her room, in peace and with her prayers.

  Having finished his food, Pavel Alekseevich pushed aside his plate, turned to Elena, and said: “Now do you understand why I’ve spent so many years trying to legalize this?”

  “Legalize what?” Elena, sunk in her own thoughts, asked. Polosukhina’s children gave her no peace.

  “Legalize abortions.”

  Vasilisa almost dropped the teapot: her world was shattered. Pavel Alekseevich, whom she so esteemed, was, it turns out, on the side of criminals and murderers, working on their behalf, on behalf of their shameless freedom. And he was a murderer himself … But that was impossible to imagine … How could it be?

  Pavel Alekseevich confirmed it and started to explain. He was good at that.

  Vasilisa clenched her dark lips and said nothing. She did not drink her tea, and pushed her cup aside, but she did not go to her room. She just sat there, silent, not raising her eyes.

  “It’s horrible, horrible!” Elena lowered her head to her hands.

  “What’s horrible?” Pavel Alekseevich was irritated.

  “It’s all horrible. That Lizaveta died. And what you’re saying. No, no, I’ll never go along with it. It’s legalized infanticide. It’s a crime worse than murdering an adult. A defenseless little … How can they make that legal?”

  “Here we go: Tolstoyism, vegetarianism, temperance …”

  She unexpectedly took offense on behalf of Tolstoyism.

  “What does vegetarianism have to do with it? That’s not what Tolstoy meant. Three of those creatures are sleeping in Tanya’s room. If abortions were legal, they too would have been murdered. Lizaveta didn’t have much need for them.”

  “Are you feeble minded, Elena? Perhaps they wouldn’t exist. Then there wouldn’t be three unfortunate orphans doomed to poverty, hunger, and prison.”

  For the first time in ten years a serious quarrel was setting in between them.

  “Pasha, what are you saying?” Elena was horrified. “How can you say such things? Maybe I am feeble minded, but the mind has nothing to do with this. They’re killing their own children. How can that be allowed?”

  “And how can it not be allowed? They’re also killing themselves! And what do we do with them?” He pointed in the direction of the wall behind which the pitiful, sickly children slept, children their mother had not succeeded in getting rid of in time. “What would you have done with them?”

  “I don’t know. I only know that you cannot kill them.” This was the first time her husband’s words had ever elicited in her a sense of disagreement, and he himself—a sense of protest and irritation.

  “Think about the women!” Pavel Alekseevich shouted.

  “Why should we think about them? They’re criminals, they kill their own children.” Elena pursed her lips.

  Pavel Alekseevich’s face turned to stone, and Elena understood why his subordinates feared him. She had never seen him like this.

  “You don’t have the right to a vote. You don’t have that organ. You’re not a woman. If you can’t get pregnant, then you can’t judge,” he said to her morosely.

  Their family happiness—easy and unstrained, their chosenness and their closeness, their unlimited trust for each other, all of it came crashing down in an instant. But he seemed not to understand. Vasilisa directed her single eye at Pavel Alekseevich.

  Elena got up. With a trembling hand she lowered her teacup into the sink. The cup was old, with a long crack running through it. Coming in contact with the bottom of the sink, it shattered. Leaving the shards, Elena left the kitchen. Slouching, Vasilisa scurried into her pantry.

  Pavel Alekseevich was about to go after his wife, but he stopped in his tracks. No, so it was cruel. How could she pick up stray cats and not feel any compassion for unfortunate Lizaveta? Who was she to judge … ? Let her think …

  Elena thought all night long. She cried, and thought, and cried again. Alongside her, in her husband’s usual place, lay warm little Tanya. Pavel Alekseevich went to his study.

  Vasilisa Gavrilovna also did not sleep. She did not think. She prayed and cried. Now Pavel Alekseevich was the villain.

  Pavel Alekseevich woke up several times, troubled by vaguely dark dreams. He tossed and turned, dragging the slippery sheet off the leather sofa.

  Morning began very early. Vasilisa came out of her pantry as soon as she heard Pavel Alekseevich put on the teapot. She announced that she was leaving them. It was not the first time. It happened that Vasilisa would take offense at who knew what and ask for her separation pay. Usually, having stored up her discontent in her soul, she would disappear for several days, but return soon after.

  “Do whatever you want,” Pavel Alekseevich blurted, not yet recovered from yesterday.

  HE FELT MISERABLE AND EVEN OPENED THE CUPBOARD and looked inside. There was no bottle. He did not want to send Vasilisa and, besides, it was still too early. He poured a glass of tea and went to his study. Elena did not come out of the bedroom. Vasilisa gathered her things. In Tanya’s room Lizaveta’s children were waiting for breakfast and tussling over toys they had never seen before and that belonged to someone else. Toma was trying to get them to argue more quietly.

  When Elena came out to the kitchen to cook morning porridge for the pack of children, Vasilisa Gavrilovna appeared at the stove dressed in a new sweater and new scarf and with a mournful and solemn look on her face.

  “Elena, I’m leaving you.”

  “What are you doing to me?” Elena gasped. “How can you leave me?”

  They stood there, looking at each other, both tall, thin, and severe. One an old woman who looked older than she in fact was, the other close to forty, also getting up in age, but still looking twenty-eight.

  “You do as you wish, but I’m not living with him anymore. I’m leaving,” the old woman snapped.

  “What about me?” Elena implored.

  “He’s your husband.” Vasilisa darkened.

  “Husband … shmusband,” was all Elena said.

  She could not imagine life without Vasilisa, especially in this unexpected situation, with someone el
se’s orphaned children in the house. Elena persuaded Vasilisa Gavrilovna to postpone her departure at least until the fate of the Polosukhin children was decided.

  “All right,” Vasilisa said gloomily. “As soon as we bury Lizaveta, I’m leaving. Start looking for another housekeeper, Elena. I’m not living with him anymore.”

  THE FUNERAL TOOK PLACE ONLY ON THE SIXTH DAY, after the autopsy had been completed and they had established scientifically what had been clear without it. The relatives showed up, nearly all of them women: her mother, two sisters, and several old women of various degrees of kinship from sister-in-law to godmother. The one crooked little man called himself a brother-in-law. When she and Toma once dropped in at the “partment,” Tanya marveled at these people and quietly asked Toma to explain who was related to whom.

  The entire Polosukhin clan came from the region around Tver, but from different villages—the father’s village and the mother’s village. Toma’s birth father had perished during the war, her younger brothers were not his—no one knew whose they were—but had inherited his name for free, and his family did not look favorably upon Lizaveta.

  You might even say that her relatives were feuding. These people quarreled noisily and concurrently, crying and accusing each other of some prewar insults and injuries, kept bringing up something mysterious called a “carucate” and a “half-carcass” … It all sounded like they were speaking another language. Tanya got the impression that they were playing some adult game, divvying up things for fun … But they were divvying for real …

  ELENA PLANNED TO TAKE TANYA WITH HER TO THE CHURCH service and the burial, but Pavel Alekseevich would not allow it. Elena thought that Tanya should go because of Toma: “just to stand alongside her in this moment.” This disagreement further deepened their silent enmity. He insisted, he grumbled, he demanded that Tanya be left at home.

  “She’s an impressionable child! Why are you dragging her into all this? It’s a profanation! I can see Vasilisa! But what’s Tanechka going to do there?”

  “And what makes you think you have the right to a vote?” Although meek and not at all vindictive, she nonetheless delivered a shattering blow. She herself did not know how it came out. “You aren’t Tanya’s father, after all …”

  It was mean revenge. The blow hit its target. It was one of those rare cases where both duelists lose. No one survived.

  But Tanya did not go to the funeral: she had a temperature and stayed in bed.

  The day after the funeral Lizaveta’s elder sister Niura left, taking her two nephews with her. According to their agreement, Fenya, the younger sister, was supposed to take Toma. But something did not work out; Fenya had to swap some “furrings.” Tanya, to whom Toma related all this, pictured a flower-bedecked village dance with grown-up girls crowned with wreaths of cornflowers and daisies exchanging rings of fur. Tanya could not understand what sort of problem there could be with furrings. But soon Fenya herself showed up—a large, dark-haired woman who resembled her tiny fair sister only in her rare unattractiveness.

  She sat for a long time in the kitchen with Vasilisa and Elena, first crying, then laughing at something, and drank two teapots of tea. They agreed that for the time being she would leave Toma here, in the city, and as soon as she was done with the furrings, she would come to fetch her. All through the conversation Toma stood hunched in the corridor with her bulging school satchel and her winter coat bunched in her arms, awaiting their decision.

  Late in the evening, when everyone had dispersed, Toma crept into Vasilisa Gavrilovna’s pantry—she felt more at ease with the help than with the other members of the family, including Tanya. Toma looked Vasilisa in her one live eye and fingered her hem.

  “Aunt Vas, I can wash floors and do laundry. And stoke the stove … I don’t want to live at Fenya’s: she’s got enough of her own …”

  Vasilisa pressed the girl’s head to her side.

  “You silly bird. We don’t have a wood-burning stove. And we don’t wash the floors ourselves; the floor polisher comes and polishes them. But don’t you worry: there’s more than enough to do in this house …”

  BUSY WITH THE FUNERAL ARRANGEMENTS, ELENA HAD forgotten Vasilisa’s words about leaving. Over the past few days her quarrel with her husband had hardened, as if having grown a scab. They almost never spoke—only about household necessities. The first evening when the Polosukhin children had shown up in their house, before their quarrel, Elena had made her husband’s bed in his study and taken Tanya into the room with her. At that point, it had not signified a quarrel, but was just a household necessity: there was no place for the three children to sleep … And so it remained the whole week, until Lizaveta’s funeral.

  Who knows: if the necessity had not arisen, might Pavel Alekseevich have found words and gestures to soften the insult, and would his wife, reassured of her husband’s love, have had a good cry on his broad, hairy chest, and would everything have returned to usual … ?

  The morning after the funeral Elena found Vasilisa Gavrilovna in the kitchen dressed in the new silk headscarf they had given her at Christmas and wearing new shoes … She sat up straight in her chair, a small fiberboard suitcase alongside her together with a large bundle with her linen and pillow.

  Elena sat down next to her and started to cry. Vasilisa lowered her seeing eye, pursed her lips, pressed her hands to her breast in a cross, as if preparing to take communion. Silence.

  “Where are you going to go, Vasenka?” Elena had not expected such resolve from Vasilisa.

  “Wherever it was I came from that’s where I’m going back to,” Vasilisa answered sternly. “God be with you, Elena.”

  Vasilisa looked straight ahead, one eye white, the other blue. A hideous gaze.

  “Does she really not love us at all?” Elena was horrified by the thought. She took from her purse all the money she had and silently handed it to Vasilisa.

  Vasilisa bowed, picked up her belongings, and set off …

  Just like that. As if she had not spent twenty years together with Elena. Disappeared, without saying good-bye to Tanya, or Pavel Alekseevich. Without looking back.

  11

  VASILISA KNEW EXACTLY WHERE SHE HAD COME FROM and where she was going: from the soil to the soil. Putting it in today’s terms, she had the mindset of someone sent on a business trip to perform some assigned task and then return to her permanent place of employment.

  The circumstances of her time on this earth since birth had been such that her own mother had used to say about her daughter, who was born late and unexpected: girl got no luck and no smarts.

  Her older brother and the sister who had grown to maturity and not dissolved into the earth at infancy, as had the six or seven—Vasilisa’s mother did not remember the precise number—babies buried at the rural cemetery, had long ago separated from their parents and left. Her older sister Dusya worked as a domestic in Moscow, and her brother Sergei was married in the neighboring administrative district.

  The first misfortune to befall Vasilisa occurred very early. She was two years old when the only rooster in her parents’ yard—an unsightly, voiceless creature—jumped up and pecked her in the eye. The little girl yelped, but no one noticed. A white spot began to develop on her eye, and by the time she was seven the eye was entirely clouded over by a white film.

  Year by year Vasilisa’s parents grew poorer, fell ill, and when Vasilisa was ten her father died. Her widowed mother knocked about for a year, then moved in with her oldest son, who had a prospering farm near Kozelsk. At her brother’s place mother and daughter were treated like extra mouths to feed, told to live in the bathhouse, and not invited to the table. Vasilisa and her mother worked in the garden and lived off practically the garden alone. Sergei would bring them bread on holidays or when he was in a good mood, after he had drunk wine.

  About thirty miles from those parts the renowned Optina Pustyn monastery prospered, although already on its way to decline. Spiritual life by that time had turned partly in
to a commercial commodity, of particular value to the owners of inns and taverns, not to mention the monastery’s own hotels. People came there on foot from all over Russia, thousands of people of all social castes. One of the roads passed through the village where Vasilisa’s brother lived. But he did not belong to that clever breed who knows how to extract profit from their conveniently located living quarters. Just the opposite—he was constantly annoyed by the poorer pilgrims who asked for lodging for the night, or panhandled, or walked off with anything that was not chained down. The majority of those streaming by on foot were beggars and half-beggars, monks and half-monks, and Vasilisa’s brother hated all of them and considered them rabble and idlers. Sergei himself had never been to the renowned site: he attended services at the village church three times a year, and of all the church’s dictums he observed only one: he never worked on major feast days.

  Vasilisa was afraid of her brother: he never talked to her, and she knew only from her mother that when he was young he had sung and danced and been handsome, but that his temperament had changed after a girl he had fallen in love with rejected him. Their mother pitied him, but he took pity on no one—not on his wife, or his children, and even less on deformed little Vasilisa. That winter their mother caught cold and died. Vasilisa remained with the large family, for whom she was only a hindrance.

  Soon after her mother’s death a neighbor took Vasilisa to a celebration at the Optina Pustyn. Vasilisa was exhausted before she got there and barely managed to stand through the long monastery service, which brought her neither pleasure nor relief. But on the way back a miracle occurred, although it was almost impossible to describe because it was so small and insignificant, just Vasilisa’s size. Her fellow travelers decided to have a rest, and she lay down about thirty feet from the road, in a dense hazel grove, and fell asleep. She had not slept long when she was awakened by voices beckoning her to move on. While she was asleep, the gloomy overcast day had brightened, and just as she opened her eyes the clouds parted and a wide ray of sunlight as thick—and just about as heavy—as a log broke a hole through the clouds and fell on the field right in front of her, illuminating a circle on the ground … Basically, that was the whole miracle. She knew that the circle was Jesus Christ, who was alive and loved her. In addition, she was completely convinced that she had seen this miraculous vision with both her eyes—the picture had been so three-dimensional and unlike anything that she had ever seen in her life.