There Once Lived a Mother Who Loved Her Children, Until They Moved Back In

by Ludmilla Petrushevskaya

  The Thirty-Third was notorious for its inhumane treatment of the bums and homeless.

  At the hospital Lelia got out, thanked the driver, immediately found another car, and asked to be taken to the Children’s Hospital. There she explained that the children seemed to have been poisoned by some bad candy. She gave different names and promised to bring their IDs in the morning.

  The children were so weak they couldn’t talk.

  She sat the night out at the waiting room; there was nowhere else to go.

  In the morning she was told her children had been poisoned by some untraceable substance and that it had affected their hearts.

  They were in the ICU. Lelia immediately went to human resources. They didn’t have a vacancy for a nurse; Lelia was hired as a janitor, to wash miles of floors, plus the toilets. No one else wanted to do the job for the money they paid. But at least she could see the children. They were almost invisible under the covers, but they were still alive.

  In the evening Lelia went to check on her home. The lights were on; from the stairs she could hear Nikita talking to a woman.

  “Imagine how much renovations will cost!” he was complaining.

  “A terrible dump,” the woman confirmed in a fat, confident voice. “How can one consider herself a mother and live in such conditions?”

  “Forget it, it’s over,” Nikita responded. “I’ll go to the hospital to make sure they are gone.”

  2

  Rivals

  Sometimes instinct compels a young man to pursue his prey, especially if there is a rival panting next to him, nose to nose. That’s how they felt, those idle young men, the convalescing surgical patients at a large Moscow hospital. Their prey was a very young nurse, a real angel in white, Lelia, with soft, gentle hands and a sweet smile—an ideal wife.

  Nikita was recovering from an appendectomy. After one look at Lelia he knew what he wanted. Compared to Lelia, he said to anyone who listened, proud city ladies were just overeducated whores with tiny salaries. Lelia even made her own clothes! She looked like a heroine from an American hospital drama: a little makeup, kitten heels, and a thick braid under her green cap. She came from an educated family and knew foreign languages.

  Unfortunately for Nikita, there was another suitor, a certain Danila, who used to work at the hospital and was now back as a patient. He showed up every time Lelia was on duty and took her home. Every time he brought her chocolate—Nikita and the other patients already knew that Lelia loved chocolate. Nikita asked his sister to buy him the biggest and most expensive box, which he handed to Lelia one night during her shift. That shift he wouldn’t leave her alone; they ended up talking all night. In the morning, however, Danila ran in panting, complaining about traffic—so he owned a car.

  By profession young Nikita was a biochemist. That night he bragged to Lelia about inventing a perfect poison that doesn’t leave a trace—people simply die from a heart attack. Nikita, it’s true, seemed a little loopy: he was taking some self-made pills, supposedly for pain, and wouldn’t shut up about his brilliant future, when he would have a beach mansion, a car, and six children. In the meantime, all he had to his name was a Moscow registration: he was registered at his grandmother’s two-room apartment; the grandmother was bedridden, in the full throes of dementia; his mother and sister were taking care of her.

  To all this Lelia replied that she didn’t plan on getting married just yet; that first she wanted to study, but of course medical school cost money, and even with her own vegetable patch and overtime at the hospital she couldn’t afford it. Since her grandfather’s death, Lelia had lived alone in his half of the house. Little by little she told Nikita everything.

  “Well,” Nikita announced. “True, we have nowhere to live just yet, but we already have a summer house. You are a bride with a dowry.” As if everything had been decided!

  Nikita found out that Danila was married to a woman seven years older with a child of her own.

  A day after Nikita was discharged, he turned up during Lelia’s night shift. He was very excited, his pupils dilated. He handed her a box of chocolates and announced that tomorrow morning they were going to apply for a marriage license. Then they would rent a room in the city to save Lelia her ninety-minute commute.

  “As you wish,” Lelia responded with a sweet smile. No more “I’m too young,” “I want to study.” Lelia never contradicted anyone, but did as she saw fit.

  “Let me see your passport,” Nikita demanded. “I want to make sure you are not married.” Smiling sweetly, Lelia took out her passport from her locker and gave it to Nikita, who opened it, closed it, and put it in his pocket. Just like that.

  In the morning Danila arrived and walked straight into the surgery, where Nikita told him to go back where he came from. “Let’s step out and talk it over,” offered burly Danila. But at this point the chief nurse interfered and asked Danila to leave—he was no longer their patient. “What about him?” roared Danila. “He came to remove his stitches. . . .”

  The stitches were removed the previous night during Lelia’s shift. That night Nikita, for the first time in his life, raped a woman. Lelia was afraid to call for help—he came to see her secretly, unofficially—and only cried and tried to avoid his kisses when he was forcing her painfully on the floor. As soon as he was done she ran away.

  As Nikita later admitted, that night he experienced the full spectrum of emotions: passion, rage at the victim’s resistance, pleasure, pride from the conquest, even anxiety for her—the girl, he said, was completely unprepared and fought back desperately, so he had to forget about caresses and just hammer his way in.

  Danila waited outside in vain: Lelia and Nikita left through the basement door and took the train to Sergiev Posad.

  Nikita spent two days in bed with Lelia in her house, which was clean but modest beyond his imagination: a brick oven in the room and the kitchen, handwoven runners on the floor, water in the buckets (brought from the outside well). The only object of value was an oak bookcase containing classics in Russian, French, and English.

  The next day they took the train to Moscow and applied for a marriage license. Lelia submitted completely to Nikita’s orders. She was mortally scared of him. For his part, Nikita seemed terrified of his mother and sister and didn’t tell them about the impending wedding.

  Three months later they got married.

  It was summer. Nikita lived at Lelia’s like at a resort. They had their own young potatoes, lettuce, parsley. Lelia didn’t tell Nikita about her pregnancy.

  After reading a manual, Nikita built a hothouse in the orchard. He and Lelia were proud that no one helped them. Nikita commuted to Moscow three times a week. He came back exhausted, physically and emotionally: mother and sister were nagging at him that he didn’t help to care for his grandmother, and every time made him work on her bedsores, ostensibly because he knew biology. Once he cried out in exasperation that he wished his grandmother’s apartment might rot in hell, he didn’t care.

  Lelia offered her services, but Nikita snapped at her that she shouldn’t get involved. She knew then that he hadn’t told his relatives about her.

  As for Lelia’s aunt, the owner of the other half of the building, she clearly was afraid of Nikita, who had promptly moved the fence back where it used to be and even a little farther out.

  Now they had wonderful black currant, cultivated by Lelia’s aunt over the years.

  3

  Family Life

  Although Nikita refused to introduce Lelia to his mother and sister, he was extremely jealous of her and didn’t want to leave her alone in the house. He thought he saw Danila on the platform once when he was waiting for the Moscow train. He stopped telling Lelia about his schedule at college, because he didn’t want her to have trysts in his absence.

  Next, his inflamed brain focused on her work at the hospital. More chocolate from patients? Why d
on’t you bring it home? Without explanation he demanded that she switch hospitals, but Lelia explained calmly that it wouldn’t be easy: she was in her fourth month of pregnancy.

  Nikita almost fainted. “When did this happen? What about an abortion? How will we live through the winter with a baby? Mother and sister will fly off the handle!”

  Lelia was arranging green tomatoes on the windowsill. She didn’t say a word.

  Nikita left, seemingly for good. Lelia didn’t look for him. At the hospital she now had to work additional shifts for the two nurses on vacation. She didn’t complain but looked so exhausted that Nadya, the chief nurse, prescribed her free vitamin shots. Lelia was certain that her husband had left her, but a week later he reappeared at the hospital at the end of her shift.

  “Grandma died, had to bury her, this and that,” was all he said.

  He looked awful: his was the face of a murderer. He couldn’t look Lelia in the eye. He spent two days by himself, on the cot behind the oven, getting up only to use the outhouse or to have a sip of vodka from his briefcase.

  Lelia left for work; when she came back the nest was empty again. Three days later Nikita returned without a word of explanation. Again, he stayed in bed drinking.

  Lelia was too scared to ask what was happening to him. Those days he attacked her without warning, felled her to the floor, and raped her, like the first time at the hospital. Lelia knew it was a perversion that wasn’t going to change, and always tried to leave the room facing him, which irritated him beyond words. “Why do you keep curtsying to me? What are you, a slave?”

  Some nights he would twist her braid around his arm, pull her up, and stare at her face. Lelia always closed her eyes.

  “Why aren’t you looking at me?”

  Silence.

  “Every female is a predator who consumes the male after she gives birth. That’s what you are doing to me, understand? Consuming me.”

  As it grew colder, there was more work to be done around the house: someone had to chop firewood, but Nikita refused to lift a finger. Lelia continued to live as if she were alone: chopping wood, feeding the furnace twice a day, carrying water from the well, washing, cleaning, cooking.

  On her payday she bought, as she had done in the past, some cheap pork from the neighbor (in exchange for administering him shots), and cured it in jars for the winter. Lelia was constantly hungry; she was so thin her pregnancy still didn’t show.

  Nikita gobbled down all that meat in a month. He couldn’t stuff himself enough, and kept asking for more. From all that food, he gained weight and stopped attacking Lelia; now he did his business quietly in bed. He seemed to calm down somewhat but still didn’t give her a penny.

  Lelia didn’t ask. She lived off her preserves, pickled cabbage and potatoes. At the hospital cafeteria she asked for leftover bread—presumably for a pig she kept. All she lacked was meat.

  Then one night Nikita said, “Well, there’s no crying over spilled milk. Pack your rags, we are moving to Moscow.”

  “But where in Moscow?”

  “I’ve got Grandma’s place, haven’t I?”

  In the late grandmother’s lair the stench was indescribable. Every pipe leaked; the ceiling in the kitchen was black with soot. Most of the furniture had been taken out; what was left was broken, unusable.

  4

  Renovation

  Between shifts Lelia scrubbed the place and primed it for painting. At the hospital she spoke to the painters who worked on the second floor, and they promised her plaster and paint. She asked Nikita to help her transport the heavy buckets, but he refused vehemently and again attacked her.

  So Lelia called Danila and asked him to come to the hospital. Danila saw her belly and stopped in his tracks. They loaded supplies into his old car and drove to Lelia’s apartment. There Danila moved all the furniture to the center of the room, after which Lelia ordered him to leave. Before leaving he kissed the hem of her robe. He seemed about to cry. Thank you, he whispered. Everyone knew how much he respected and feared his older wife.

  Lelia worked quickly. She peeled the old wallpaper and washed all the ceilings, walls, and windows. While the ceilings dried, she quickly painted the doors and window frames. In the evening Nikita came home, drunk. He yelled that she’d messed up his apartment, kicked the chair, and left.

  Lelia had plastered the walls with old newspapers, but now she needed wallpaper. She took a bottle of medical spirits to the hospital painters, but they couldn’t help her—they used only paint.

  So she had to call Danila again, and ask him for money. They went together to an outdoor market, and chose wallpaper; Danila also bought her some paint for the kitchen.

  Lelia treated Danila as if he were her husband, and in a sense he was.

  He used to work on Lelia’s hospital floor. Later he transferred to a different hospital, but when it turned out he needed surgery, he came back to his old workplace—he didn’t want to convalesce among his own patients. His old colleagues adored him; as for Lelia, she practically worshipped him. He was everything to her: friend, adviser, and longtime lover.

  She hoped that the baby that was growing inside her was his.

  Danila helped her carry the wallpaper and paint to Nikita’s apartment. They had tea. Lelia didn’t cry.

  In the evening the gloomy Nikita interrogated her about the origins of the wallpaper. Lelia explained that the hospital painters exchanged it for a bottle of spirits. “But I can’t hang it myself,” she added. “Then fuck off,” and he marched into the kitchen, where he saw a pot of unpeeled boiled potatoes.

  “What’s that supposed to be—my dinner?” he yelled, and hurled the pot onto the floor.

  Quickly, before he hit her, Lelia picked up the potatoes and fried them with onion and a couple of carrots. Nikita was eating sardines straight from the can, for an appetizer. “The husband,” he lectured her, slightly mollified, “must be greeted with a hot dinner and a full glass.”

  Then he gobbled down a jar of pickled cucumbers and a pan of fried potatoes. He announced that his sister and mother wanted to pay a visit. “But first you must finish putting up the wallpaper—I can’t invite them to a hovel.”

  In the morning, after Nikita left, Lelia called Nadya, the chief nurse, and Raya, one of the cafeteria workers. By eleven at night they had papered both rooms. Lelia made them potatoes with salted pork, and Raya ran to the store for a bottle.

  At eleven thirty Nikita arrived. “And who is this?”

  “Don’t you recognize them? Our chief nurse and Raya from the kitchen.” Toothless Raya opened her arms to hug him. “My goodness, patient, come sit with us.”

  He sat down and ate and drank everything, then they showed him the rooms. Nikita couldn’t believe his eyes. For the hall, they explained, they didn’t have enough paper.

  “Can’t you ask the painters for more?” he asked.

  “What painters?” Raya asked.

  “The painters on your second floor.”

  “Ah, those,” Nadya jumped in. “They already left.”

  Raya began to sing.

  As soon as the women left, Nikita interrogated Lelia to the third degree, aiming for the belly. Lelia kept saying that she didn’t have enough to live on, that he needed to chip in—there wasn’t enough for food. Nikita screamed that she took money from lovers. The conversation ended, as always, on the floor.

  When Nikita fell asleep, Lelia packed her things and went to the hospital. There she changed and lay down on the cot in the nurses’ room—her shift began at nine in the morning. The next day she was on her way to Sergiev Posad, with Danila.

  As a precaution she allowed him to take her only as far as the train station. From there she took the train to her unheated nest. Going through the familiar motions, she stoked the furnace, made herself some soup, and fell asleep until the next morning. She woke up from the bitt
er cold, fed the furnace again, and so on. She would have stayed there, but Nikita’s demon couldn’t leave her alone.

  As she explained to Danila, Nikita needed a slave who would cost him nothing and whom he could kick whenever he wanted. “I can’t leave him, do you understand? He’ll kill me and the child; he already suspects the child isn’t his.”

  Nikita showed up at the hospital at the end of Lelia’s shift, and made her come back with him to the apartment.

  Lelia saw the filthy hall and bathroom and announced that she was leaving—she’d had enough of his beatings.

  “Ha! You haven’t seen any beatings yet,” Nikita promised her, beaming, and proceeded to take her on the dirty floor.

  When he was done, Nikita opened the closet and showed her rolls of wallpaper—for the unfinished hall.

  “Alone I can’t.”

  Nikita softened. “I’ll give you a hand—Mom and Sis are threatening to come.”

  Together they hung the paper, helter-skelter. Only then Lelia caught a quick nap.

  In the evening there was a long ring on the doorbell, and Nikita opened the door to two massive ladies in furs. The ladies threw a glance at poor, swollen Lelia, then took a tour of the apartment.

  Mother: “My God, where did you find such wallpaper? Like at Aunt Tosya’s in the village.”

  Sister: “I’d be ashamed to live like this.”

  Mother: “Nikita, it’s time you started making some money.”

  Sister: “I’ll find him a job!”

  Nikita: “Bartending?”

  Sister: “And why not?”

  Nikita: “Because I’m working on a thesis! Because I’m a research fellow!”

  Sister: “Junior research fellow.”

  Nikita: “You’ve never made it this far, fucking speculator.”