Medea and Her Children

by Ludmila Ulitskaya

  “Three guesses!” Nike snorted.

  “A new romance!” Masha said, bursting into laughter, swallowing the bait without a moment’s hesitation.

  “Top marks and then some!” Nike rewarded her perspicacity.

  “Your place or mine? Yours is better. I’m on my way,” Masha exclaimed, burning with impatience.

  “Let’s meet at Uspensky Lane instead,” Nike countered. “Mother must be at her wits’ end after having them for three days.”

  Having taken the children to Alexandra on her first day back, Masha had quite forgotten about them. Alexandra and Ivan Isaevich were celebrating a festival of love with their grandchildren and were not in the least tired of them. Ivan Isaevich would, though, have liked to take them to the dacha: much better than having them cooped up in town.

  “No, no. It’s better if I come to your place. We couldn’t talk there,” Masha begged, and Nike surrendered. There was no escape, and she knew in advance that she would be receiving Masha’s confession.

  From that day Nike was cast in the role of confidante. Her position was ambiguous to say the least, but it seemed too late now to admit to her own involvement in the affair. In her ardor, Masha was bursting to tell Nike about every meeting with Butonov. It was terribly important for her.

  Over many years Masha had got used to sharing even her most insignificant experiences with her husband, but she could not talk to Alik about this, so she dumped everything on Nike, including the poetry which she was constantly writing. “Pushkin’s Boldino Autumn, my Rastorguevo Autumn!” Masha joked.

  If before she had been no stranger to insomnia, in these months Masha slept a ragged and fitful sleep full of sounds, lines of verse, and disturbing images. Unreal animals came to her in her dreams, animals with many legs, many eyes, half-birds, half-cats, with symbolic allusions. One, fearfully familiar, rubbed up against her, and its name was also familiar to her. It consisted of a series of numbers and letters. When she woke, she remembered its strange name: Zh4836. She burst out laughing. It was the number printed in thick black ink on the linen ribbon she sewed to the bed sheets before sending them to the laundry.

  All this nonsense was imbued with significance. One time she dreamt a completely finished poem which she wrote down while half-asleep. She was amazed when she read it the following morning. “It isn’t mine, it isn’t mine. I could never have written this myself.”

  Through lust to love and into the abyss

  of destinations reached past our contriving:

  I give the words that tell of you and this,

  I serve as target too of all your striving;

  and in the brooding darkness of our blood

  the instant blazes like a blunderbuss,

  and all is swept away as in a flood

  and leaves no brim between the one of us.

  “It’s exactly as if I had written it under dictation. Look, not a single correction,” she crowed, showing Nike the record of her nighttime inspiration.

  Nike did not like these poems. They frightened her. On the other hand, she found it hilarious that, with Masha informing her about every word Butonov uttered, about his every movement, she knew minute by minute how he had spent the previous day.

  “Any fried potatoes left?” she would innocently ask, because Masha had told her she had been peeling potatoes for him the day before and had cut her finger.

  Butonov did not speak to Nike about Masha and she never said a word about her rival, but Butonov had the impression they both knew perfectly well how things stood and were even sharing out the days of the week between them, with Masha coming on weekends and Nike on weekdays. There was no such deal, of course. It was just that during the week Nike went to the dachas to visit the children: either Liza, who was staying with Alexandra, or Katya, who was living with her other grandmother. Little Alik was staying with Alexandra too.

  Big Alik was trying to arrange his duty roster so that emergency calls fell on the weekends, so that he would not lose laboratory time; and Masha, preferring not to lie but to keep a more honorable silence, left home when Alik wasn’t there. Although of late he had had very little time to spend at home.

  Alik was steady and good-humored, and didn’t ask awkward questions. Their conversation centered on emigrating. They had already arranged for an invitation from Israel, but although Masha contributed to these conversations, their emigration seemed unreal to her.

  When Nike went off to Tbilisi in September, Masha was devastated by her absence. She tried ringing through but found it impossible to catch her at the hotel. She wasn’t able to contact her through Nina either.

  In September, Butonov finished his renovating and went to stay with his wife in Khamovniki, but the redecorated house in Rastorguevo drew him back and he would sleep there two or three times a week. Sometimes he came to collect Masha, and they drove there together. One time they even went to gather mushrooms in Rastorguevo, found nothing, got soaked to the skin, then dried their belongings by the stove and one of Masha’s stockings caught fire; and this too was a little event in their life, like the cut finger, or a scratch or a bruise Masha suffered in the course of their amorous endeavors. Whether Butonov’s house was inimical to her or whether she brought out a tendency to sexual horseplay in Butonov himself, she had not a few of these little injuries, and was even rather proud of her souvenirs of passion spent.

  When Nike finally came back from Tbilisi, Masha related all these trivia to her at great length, and finally mentioned in passing that their invitation from Israel had arrived. Nike was amazed at how Masha’s head had been turned, when she couldn’t see that receiving the invitation was what really mattered.

  Emigrating meant parting from your family, perhaps forever, yet here was Masha showing off her bruises and reading her poems. This time Nike too had something to relate. She was getting very deeply involved in her new affair and had decided this would be a good moment to dot Butonov’s i.

  She waited a whole week, like Penelope, for her Vakhtang to come from Tbilisi to Mosfilm for his auditions, but his arrival kept being postponed, and in order not to get out of condition Nike took herself around to see Butonov. As Masha constantly reported on her own movements, there was no problem in finding a suitable moment.

  Butonov was very pleased to see Nike. He wanted to show her the newly redecorated half of the house. Nike was, after all, his personal interior designer. He now loved the idea of the exposed beams, but Nike was horrified to see that the logs had been drenched with varnish. She comically berated him at length and ordered him to clean the varnish off with solvent. She moved the furniture around and pointed out to him what needed repairing and what was best left alone. She had lived many years with a stepfather who was a cabinetmaker and with her talents had rapidly understood the ins and outs of his profession. She promised to bring Butonov some colored glass to replace what was missing in the buffet and to sew curtains for him in the theater workshop.

  At some point in the proceedings Nike’s head scarf slipped off and insinuated itself snakelike between the sheet and the mattress. Nike couldn’t find it, although she looked for it for a long time in the morning. The scarf was one she had made herself when she was learning batik at college.

  When Masha, barely through the door, crumpling the scarf in her hands, fired the question straight at her as to whether it was true, Nike sternly cut her short: “Well, what did Butonov say?”

  “That you and he have … for ages, since the Crimea. It can’t be true, it can’t. I told him it was impossible.”

  “And what did he say?” Nike asked, keeping up.

  “He said, ‘Accept it as fact.’ ” Masha was still screwing up Nike’s scarf, the embodiment of the fact.

  Nike drew the scarf out of her hands and threw it under the mirror. “Well, accept it!”

  “I can’t, I can’t!” Masha wailed.

  “Masha,” Nike suddenly softened. “It’s just how things turned out. What do you want me to do, hang myself? Don’t
let’s make a tragedy out of it. God knows, it’s Les Liaisons dangereuses all over again.”

  “But, Nike, my sunshine, what am I to do? You want me to just get used to it? I don’t understand myself why it hurts so. When I pulled this scarf out, I almost died.” She became flustered again. “No, no. It’s impossible.”

  “What do you mean? Why is it impossible?”

  “I can’t explain. It’s as if anyone can do anything with anyone. Nothing matters. It doesn’t matter who you choose. One person is just the same as another. But here, I just know, there is something unique and special, against which nothing else has any meaning. Unique.”

  “My angel,” Nike stopped her. “Aren’t you just imagining that? Every case is unique, believe me. Butonov is an excellent lover, but you measure that in centimeters, minutes, hours, the level of hormones in the blood. They’re all just parameters. He has a good body, no more than that. Your Alik is a remarkable person, intelligent, talented. Butonov isn’t worthy to lick his boots, but Alik just hasn’t given you enough—”

  “Shut up!” Masha screamed. “Shut up! Take your Butonov and all his centimeters. You’re welcome to him!”

  She rushed out, for some reason seizing the head scarf she had just returned to Nike from the pier table.

  Nike did not stop her. Let her rage. If people have idiotic delusions, you have to leave them to get rid of them. When all was said and done, Butonov had put it quite correctly: “Accept it as fact.” But then … to her annoyance Nike recollected Masha’s poem: “Accept too that beyond all measure, like heaven’s grace on heaven’s grace …” Well, go ahead and accept it. Accept it as fact.

  Dear Butonov! I know that correspondence is not your forte, that of all the forms of human interaction the most important for you is tactile. Even your profession is like that—everything in the fingertips, in touching, in delicate movements. And if one stays on the superficial, the surface level, in both a literal and a metaphorical sense, then everything that is happening is perfectly proper. Touches have neither faces nor eyes, it is only receptors at work. Nike tried to explain that to me too: everything is determined by centimeters, minutes, hormone levels.

  But this is just a matter of faith. I evidently belong to a different confession; what is important for me is the expression on someone’s face, their inner impulse, a turn of phrase, what they feel in their heart. And if that is not there, then we are only objects for each other to use. To tell the truth, that is what torments me most. Are there really no relationships other than those of the body? Is there really nothing between you and me other than embracing until the world disappears? Is there really no communion higher than the physical, when all sense of the distinctness of our two bodies is lost?

  Nike, your lover, my more-than-sister, told me there is nothing more than centimeters, minutes, hormones. Say no. Tell me it isn’t true! Was there really nothing in what took place between us that can’t be described by parameters of one kind or another? If that is true, then you don’t exist, neither do I, neither does anybody or anything at all and we are mechanical toys and not the children of the Lord God. Here is a little poem for you, dear Butonov, and I beg you: say it isn’t true.

  Play on, centaur, play on, chimera of two breeds,

  burn, fire, along the boundary dividing

  the human soul and its immortal needs,

  the stallion, his lusts unbridled riding.

  Your destiny it is to mediate, to ferry,

  to ply shores which forget how close they used to be,

  and heedlessly you plunge into those waters merry

  which care no more than you if you remember me.

  Masha Miller

  Butonov read the letter and groaned. Knowing Masha’s personality well enough, he was expecting major ructions when she discovered her rival but had never imagined that her jealousy would be expressed in such a complicated, elaborate manner. He really had pissed her off.

  Ten days or so later, having given things a chance to settle down a bit, he rang Masha to ask whether she fancied a trip out to Rastorguevo. After much hesitation, periodical yeses and nos (Butonov could tell even over the telephone that it was exactly what she wanted), she agreed.

  At Rastorguevo everything was new. There had been a heavy snowfall, so heavy that the path from the gate to the porch had been buried, and in order to drive the car in Butonov had had to scrape the snow up with a wooden shovel into a large snowdrift.

  It was cold in the house: it seemed colder inside than out, but Butonov promptly gave Masha such a workout that they both started feeling too hot. She moaned through her tears, and kept pleading, “Say no!”

  “What do you want ‘no’ for, when it’s all ‘yes, yes, yes’!” Butonov laughed.

  After that he lit the stove, opened a tin of sardines in tomato sauce which had been around for ages, and ate it himself, Masha barely touching it. There was nothing else in the house.

  They decided not to go back to Moscow and walked to the railway station. Masha rang home from the public telephone and told Debora Lvovna that she wouldn’t be home that night, as she was visiting friends at their dacha and didn’t want to come back so late.

  Her mother-in-law flared up: “Of course not! You don’t care two hoots about your husband and child! If you want to know what that’s called—”

  Masha hung up.

  “That’s all fixed. I told them I wouldn’t be home.”

  They walked back to the house along a path of white snow. Butonov showed her the windows of the apartment block where Vitka Kravchuk lived.

  “Want to drop in?” he enquired.

  “God forbid,” Masha laughed.

  It was cool in Butonov’s house. It did not hold the heat.

  “Next on the list is a new stove. I’ll put one in next year,” Butonov resolved.

  They settled themselves in the kitchen, where it was at least a bit warmer, and dragged mattresses in from all over the house. They had no sooner warmed up, however, than Butonov got pains in his stomach and went out to the toilet in the courtyard. He came back and lay down. Masha, running her finger over his face, began talking about the spirituality of sex, and the personality which expresses itself through touch.

  The tinned sardines had Butonov running out to the courtyard all night. His stomach was churning, and the tender voice of unsleeping Masha cooed on in tones of neurotic enquiry.

  To give him his due, he was polite and didn’t ask her to shut up. Only sometimes, when the pain subsided a bit, he slumped into sleep. In the morning as they were driving back to Moscow, Butonov said, “One thing I really am grateful to you for at this moment is that when I was suffering from the runs you did me the favor of not reciting any poetry at me.”

  Masha looked at him in astonishment: “But I did, Valerii. I recited ‘Poem Without a Hero’ to you from start to finish.”

  Masha’s relations with her husband did not come unstuck, but recently they had been seeing less of each other. The invitation they had received had not been submitted yet because Alik wanted to resign from his job before filing the application, and before that there was a series of experiments he needed to finish.

  He disappeared into the laboratory until late at night and turned down any further emergency-duty work. He periodically carted a rucksack full of books to the secondhand bookshop, since he was going to have to say goodbye to his father’s library. He could see Masha was disturbed and jumpy, and treated her solicitously, like a patient.

  In December, Butonov went off to Sweden, for a couple of weeks, he said vaguely, although of course he knew perfectly well which day he would be back. He liked his freedom. Nike barely noticed his absence. She had a children’s play to get ready in time for the school holidays, and in any case Vakhtang had finally arrived and she spent all her free time with him and his Moscow Georgian friends. Life was a busy whirl of restaurants, sometimes at the Cinema Club, sometimes at the Theater Society.

  Masha pined. She kept trying to get thr
ough to Nike to talk to her about Butonov, but Nike was incommunicado. Masha had no wish to talk to other friends about him, and in any case it would have been impossible.

  Insomnia, which until then had only been sharpening its claws, overwhelmed Masha in December. Alik brought her sedatives, but the artificial sleep was even worse than the insomnia. Her obsessive dream would start at any random place but led always to the same ending: she was trying to find Butonov, to catch up with him, but he kept slipping away, spilling like water, turning into different objects, as if in a fairy tale, dissolving, vanishing into smoke.

  Twice Masha went to Rastorguevo just for the sake of making the journey from Paveletsky Station, taking the train to his stop and walking to his house, to stand for a time at the gate, see the house shrouded in snow, look at its dark windows, and go back home. In all, it took around three and a half hours, and the journey there was more enjoyable than the journey back.

  Two weeks passed and still there was no sign of him. Masha rang his home in Khamovniki. An elderly woman told her in a weary voice that he would be back at around ten; but he wasn’t there at ten, or at eleven, and the next morning the same voice replied, “Call again on Friday.”

  “But has he come back?” Masha asked timidly.

  “I said ring on Friday,” the woman replied rattily.

  It was still only Monday.

  “He’s come back and hasn’t phoned,” Masha thought, hurt. She called Nike to ask whether she knew anything about Butonov’s whereabouts, but Nike didn’t.

  Masha set off for Rastorguevo again, this time in the late afternoon. The snow had been cleared away from the gates of his house, and they were closed and locked. His car stood in the yard. In his grandmother’s half a faint light was burning. Masha yanked the icy side gate. The path to the house was deep in snow, and as she walked along, she sank almost up to her knees in it. She rang the bell for a long time, but nobody opened the door.

  She wanted to wake up, so much did all this feel like one of her dreams, just as vivid and hurtful; and Butonov gave some flickering sign of his presence in just the same way: his beige car parked there with a blanket of snow on the roof. And she couldn’t get hold of Butonov himself.