The unemployed Karpenko tried this and that, and finally got hired to sell vegetables two days a week at a big outdoor food market. Her situation was dire—she was four months pregnant.
She rented a cot in the kitchen of an alcoholic couple who were themselves children and grandchildren of alcoholics. Pasha was the husband’s name. His enormous wife was called Elephant. Their two sons were in jail. In the summer the couple paraded in shorts and lavender panamas donated by some international aid organization, and hunted promising spots for cans and bottles like experienced mushroom pickers. In the winter Pasha and Elephant impersonated blind beggars. They stashed their equipment—dark glasses, two canes, and for some reason a dog’s leash—under Karpenko’s cot, behind her suitcase.
Luckily Elephant never cooked; she visited the kitchen where Karpenko lived only by mistake, when she wandered the apartment on the verge of delirium tremens. At night the couple relaxed in the company of select neighbors. Their room filled up with the local elite—prominent alcoholics and their girlfriends in various stages of decline. The excluded spent the night banging on their broken-down door. These soirees invariably ended in fights that were occasionally interrupted by sleepy patrolmen.
Every day, Karpenko scrubbed the toilet and the tub; she replaced the broken glass in the kitchen door with thick plywood. At night she stuffed her ears with soft wax, like Odysseus on his ship when he sailed past the sirens.
Once, she dropped by the new theater dorms and left some fruit for the girls. Just in case, she also left her new address. Misha soon came to see her. She had nothing for him to eat beyond some potatoes and carrots, which she was allowed to bring home from the market where she worked. Misha stayed the night, but he couldn’t sleep because of the drunken screaming and banging; in the morning he scrambled away as soon as the subway started up. Karpenko, who hadn’t mentioned her pregnancy, didn’t expect him back.
Three days later Misha reappeared with a keyboard: he had written a score to a musical. While he performed his score for Karpenko, the landlords and their visitors gathered outside the kitchen door and treated themselves to an impromptu dance party, obviously approving of Misha’s music. Karpenko, inspired, pulled out her most precious possession, an old typewriter, and wrote a play.
At that time theaters were interested only in plays translated from Italian. Misha and Karpenko invented an author, “Alidada Nektolai, as translated from the Italian by U. Karpui.” Their cast included a philandering lawyer and his skinny wife; the wife’s girlfriend, who slept with the lawyer and was married to the mayor; the mayor and his mafia friends, named Kafka, Lorca, and Petrarch; and so on. The heroine was a beautiful aspiring singer named Gallina Bianca. Misha observed that Karpenko would never get the lead, and so they created a character for her, a television executive named Julietta Mamasina who spoke entirely in Elephant’s morning monologues.
One day Elephant returned home covered in bruises and carrying a box of powdered milk that she’d discovered in an expensive supermarket’s Dumpster—the scene of many a fight over discarded goods. Pasha and Elephant sent a few packages to the market with Karpenko, but it seemed no one wanted to buy expired milk, and Elephant lost interest in the box. (Her guests did try to mix the powder with vodka, but the combination made them itchy.) The milk was left for the undernourished Karpenko, who added to her diet of raw carrots and beets, cottage cheese, and one boiled egg a serving of oatmeal cooked with milk.
The play was retyped, the songs recorded, and the arrangement copyrighted. Misha went to see the theater’s general manager, Mr. Osip Tartiuk, who received the play with indifference. Three days later, however, Tartiuk invited Misha to a staff meeting, where he sang and played his heart out. The play was accepted on the spot. Everyone was excited, until Misha announced that Alidada Nektolai demanded four thousand dollars for his play. Osip nearly lost his voice.
“We are young! We are poor!” he squeaked.
“Nektolai says that every company tells him they are young and poor. You want the play, pay up. Otherwise, there’s a long line.”
Osip cautiously inquired if there were other options.
“Another option would be to pay the translator directly, half that amount.”
“But I know her! She’s a regular centaur!” Here Osip gestured with his hands. “An ass like hers… she’ll give us a discount!”
“I seriously doubt it. Theaters like yours are a dime a dozen, and they all want her.”
“We’ll offer her a thousand dollars! A whole thousand!”
“If she gets a thousand, then so do I, as the author of the score.”
“Who needs your score? We’ll put some soundtrack together!” Osip glared at Misha’s poor little keyboard.
“Translator Karpui insists her lyrics and my music stay together,” Misha piped up nervously. “It’s a musical—don’t you get it? Every theater in Moscow makes money on musicals except you in your dump!”
Osip looked deflated. He promised Misha an appropriate solution and pulled him into his office.
After a lengthy discussion Misha was promised $1,500 and, for Karpenko, a room in the theater dorm, a part in the play, and a permanent position with the company.
“What’s going on between you and this Karpenko, young man? Has your wife been informed?” Osip asked suspiciously.
“We are getting a divorce,” Misha blurted out, surprising himself.
“And do you actually know this Karpui?”
“Karpui is Karpenko—she wrote the play herself. We hold copyright to both the play and the music.”
“You can shut up now! This Karpenko and her play are worth maybe a hundred dollars on a good day. If you want, I’ll make her a janitor; we need one in the theater.”
“Great! We’ll sell the play to the best theater in Moscow for my price!”
“Two hundred?”
At this moment the maestro walked in, beaming, and announced he’d never seen such enthusiasm among the actors about a new play. “I can see it onstage! And you”—here the maestro called Misha several names—“are in my way with your music!”
Enraged, normally meek Misha lost his composure and demanded a thousand each—immediately and in dollars, not rubles.
“Immediately? I can’t,” Osip replied peevishly.
“The translator and I will come in on Monday.”
“On Monday I can’t, either. Mmm… make it Wednesday.”
“So on Wednesday you’ll meet my conditions, right?”
“Look, Misha!” Osip started yelling again. “I need a janitor! Renovations are almost over; who’s going to clean up this mess?”
A pause.
“By the way,” Osip announced to the confused maestro, “your former student Karpenko has just returned from Finland, where she’s been working in television.”
“From Finland? That’s where she was! Suddenly my student disappears…. So she’ll play Gallina Bianca; she’ll be perfect! In the first act she’s a skinny little thing; in the second she’ll have big boobs and high heels—”
“Actually, she wanted to play Julietta Mamasina,” interrupted Misha.
“Who cares what she wants!” screamed Osip. “Fine, let her play already,” he finished quietly.
At the dorm, Karpenko moved into a room belonging to two girls who had been forced to move into a double, which now became a triple. The aggravation intensified as new parts were assigned. Oh theater, the snake pit of snake pits! The question suddenly arose as to why Misha was living in the dorm without any registration, while the rest of them had to pay extra for gas and electricity. Also, did Misha’s wife know what was happening? Somebody should inform her. The wife and their ten-year-old son once came to see Misha, waiting for him until the last train. God knows how Osip found out, but he warned Misha, and he and Karpenko hid at the Domodedovo airport.
The new season opened with previews. Karpenko made sure her costume provided room for her growing belly. Fake bust, miniskirt, red wig, high boots on
flat soles—comic in the extreme. The premiere was a great success. Julietta sang off-key and danced like an elephant, a model for future starlets. In the dorm everyone knew about Karpenko’s pregnancy and positioned themselves to take over her part.
A few weeks later Osip Tartiuk stopped by Karpenko’s room. Karpenko was lying on the bed. Misha, wearing headphones, was bent over his keyboard.
“So what are we going to do?” Osip inquired. “When are you due? We need time to replace you!”
“December 31.”
“So what do we do? We have two weeks left.”
“Let Misha do it. He knows the part. You don’t have any actresses who can play it.”
Tartiuk looked stunned.
“Misha!” Karpenko shook him by the shoulder. Misha took off his headphones. Karpenko ordered him to change into Julietta’s costume. Twisting his arms like a flamenco dancer, Misha squeezed into it. He looked beyond funny: a miniskirt, enormous breasts, a butt like two watermelons, and, under red curls, an unshaved sallow mug with a huge schnobel.
“A regular centaur…. Well, well. Have a safe delivery. Ciao!” Osip left. Karpenko lay in bed, swallowed by her belly. Misha saw nothing notable in her swollen body. He was used to large women—his previous wife was the biggest centaur in the pack. A week later he took over Karpenko’s role.
On December 31 the show ended at nine thirty. Misha called Karpenko’s phone, but no one answered. He tried the dorm; the line was hopelessly busy. He changed, threw flowers into a cab, and arrived at the dorm ahead of everyone else. The phone’s receiver was lying on the floor. Their door was open. The floor was wet. Everything in the room was turned upside down. What had happened here? Where could she have gone in such a condition? She had talked about doing some tests… He checked under the bed. There, by the wall, he found her purse. A passport, mobile phone, her medical history… Okay, let’s see: Nadezhda A. Karpenko, pregnant, due December 31. Pregnant? He dialed the medical emergency number. An hour later he found out that Nadezhda Karpenko hadn’t been admitted to any hospital, including any maternity wards. Misha collapsed on the floor. Suddenly he heard explosions in the street. New Year’s fireworks.
Karpenko had dragged herself to a nearby maternity ward. She knocked for a long time. Finally a tipsy nurse admitted her. “I’m not feeling well,” Karpenko whispered. The nurse, who didn’t look too good either, announced, “Lisssssssten… ,” sounding exactly like Elephant, but she couldn’t finish the sentence and stumbled off. Karpenko lay down on the bench and closed her eyes. A fiery canon ball was rolling in her belly, trying to make more room. A young woman in white loomed over her. Karpenko managed to recite her lines: “Couldn’t find my papers, somebody took my purse, everything was there—my phone, my passport, my medical history…. Had some cash in my coat but couldn’t get a cab…. My father flew away…. No one wants us, no one….” Someone kept asking her name and date of birth. “I’m an actress,” was all she could manage before passing out.
She awoke in a large room with tiled walls that looked like a swimming pool. People in white masks stood over her.
“Hey, you! Open your eyes,” she heard. “There you go. Are you planning to push or what? What’s your name?”
“Karp…”
“Lovely name. Hey, don’t you die on us—don’t ruin our New Year!”
The pain came. Her body was turning inside out. Inhuman torture began.
“Push, push! Okay, stop for now!”
She felt them stab her with a knife and then twist it. They’ll cut the baby!
“Don’t, don’t stab me!” she screamed in her stage voice.
“Calm down. It’s the baby, not us. The baby’s pulling you apart. There, I can see the crown!”
Suddenly she heard a low sound like a train whistle.
“Mom, look up! It’s a girl! A real beauty! Somebody, give her salts. What’s your last name?”
“Karpenko. Nadezhda Alexandrovna Karpenko.”
“Finally! Now take a good look: it’s a girl—see for yourself; we don’t want any complaints afterward!”
Eyes over white gauze masks. Laughing. One of them was holding a little baby doll, tiny, unwashed. All crinkled up, crying. She’s cold! Never before had Karpenko felt such heart-wrenching pity.
“Rejoice, Mom! Such a big, beautiful gal! A happy New Year!”
“Just give her to me…. Give her to me, please…. Just give her to me….”
Milgrom
A girl is sewing herself a dress for the first time. She has bought three yards of cheap gingham (barely more than a ruble per yard), but it’s surprisingly pretty, black with bright circles, like a nighttime carnival.
This girl is a penniless college student. She has broken out of her schoolgirl shell, literally so—she managed to make a new skirt out of her old school uniform. The skirt came out messy, crooked, and off-center, but that’s the end of the uniform, anyway.
Nor did the skirt turn out to be fit for spring. It’s May, the hottest spring in memory, and still there’s nothing to wear.
So the girl, following the “Sewing Ourselves” page from a women’s magazine spread out before her (chest measurements, front panels), tries to make the dress herself and fails utterly.
The dress is lost, as are three rubles’ worth of fabric. Her monthly stipend at the college is only twenty-three rubles.
Here the mom intervenes. Her whole life, Mom relied on a seamstress, but then difficult times befell her; her girl turned eighteen, and she stopped receiving child support.
The seamstress is out, and Mom considers what to do, except here’s the problem: there’s no money.
There’s no money, the girl is eighteen, it’s a hot May (the kind you feel maybe once every hundred years), and there are exams to take. But her daughter can’t go outside. She’s lying behind the wardrobe—that’s where her cot is—weeping and moaning like a puppy.
So Mom calls her wise older friend, Regina, a Polish Jewess from the clan of the Moscow wives (that is to say, the new wives) of the Third International. In the thirties this whole communist contingent left the countries where it lived underground, came to the USSR via mountains and seas, remarried in Moscow, and then went up to heaven from their labor camps. Regina had served her time in Karaganda, was rehabilitated after the war, got back her old apartment on Gorky Street. The girl’s mother, who’d also seen some things in her time, latched onto her to learn about life. Regina was a good friend of the girl’s mother’s mother, who has also been serving her time and is expected to return this spring.
Regina always dresses with Warsaw chic. She’s sixty now and still has suitors, and she listens with sympathy to the confused mother of the girl.
Regina has a houseworker named Riva Milgrom. Regina is a European lady; she has soft white hands like an empress, and her house is always in order, as Milgrom makes sure.
That’s what she’s called: Milgrom—her last name, according to the old Party habit. Milgrom has a Singer sewing machine. The girl walks with the bundle of material through the May heat in her brown wool skirt. We know where the skirt came from—the mother had a dress she wore down until the underarms had sweat stains in the form of half-moons, at which point the dress was bequeathed to the girl, who wore it to school but could never raise her hand in class, her elbows clinging to her sides like a soldier’s; it was hell. Finally the top with the sweat stains was cut off, and though the mother protested that it could still become a nice vest, the girl ran out of the apartment and threw it down the trash chute. Still the crooked skirt remained, and that’s the skirt she’s wearing as she walks clumsily through the heat of May.
Over the skirt, to cover the tear, which was hemmed crookedly with the wrong thread—the hands sewing them were the wrong hands—the girl wears her mother’s blouse, which also has sweat stains at the pits, so, again, elbows at her sides like a soldier’s.
The girl walks like a draftee, head down, watching her green winter shoes with their thick soles, her el
bows at her sides. She passes by Patriarch Ponds; there’s a gentle May smell in the air; young men are marching by, observing proud young girls in their new summer dresses.
Milgrom meets her little customer in her room, which is high up, right beneath the scorching Moscow sky—it’s practically the attic—and here is quiet Milgrom with her big moist eyes, very white skin, and total absence of teeth. Milgrom looks like an old lady—her nose almost touches her sharp chin.
She opens up her sewing machine, produces a tape measure, and as she records the girl’s measurements Milgrom launches into a saga about her darling son, the beautiful Sasha.
Sasha was so beautiful, people on the street would stop and stare; once his picture appeared on a box of chocolates.
The girl looks at the photograph on the wall that Milgrom points out to her: nothing special—a little boy in a sailor’s outfit, big black eyes, a thin, elegant nose. The upper lip protrudes like a visor over the lower one. A cute kid with curls, but nothing more. The lips are too thin for an angel’s—he has the Milgrom mouth.
At this point in her life the girl not only has no thoughts of children herself, but she also doesn’t have an admirer even, not a single suitor, despite all her eighteen years.
For her it’s all work, exams, library, cafeteria, shapeless green shoes, and a horrible brown dress with her mother’s pit stains.
The girl looks indifferently at the wall and notices another portrait, an enlarged passport photo of a scrawny young officer in an enormous military cap.
That’s the same Sasha; now he’s all grown-up. While they were measuring her waist and noting it all down and ruefully examining the cut-up fabric, Sasha got married and produced a granddaughter, Asya Milgrom.
Old Milgrom pauses to console the girl and tells her she’s not the only one who’s clumsy, that she herself couldn’t do anything when she was young—boil an egg or hem a diaper—and then she learned. Life taught her.
There Once Lived a Girl Who Seduced Her Sister's Husband, and He Hanged Himself Page 6