And so she traveled to that faraway provincial town (an hour by train, an hour by bus, another hour by foot) all by herself. She found out the cost of a proper funeral and realized that even if she sold her earrings she couldn’t afford to bury her aunt, who was going to be wrapped in plastic and thrown in some nameless hole. What could she do? Her son was again without work, Semyon was useless, and she herself would probably end up like Aunt Galya. She also found out that she could claim her aunt’s apartment if she gathered the necessary papers.
On the train back Polina wept out loud. Her aunt’s apartment was her only hope of escape. Also, this was the first time she was doing something just for herself; until now, everything she had done was for him, for Clapper—all the cooking, the cleaning, even her haircuts. She was a good-looking woman, but here she was, her charms wasted on one man, her only love, and he’d had to go and get a disease.
Back in Moscow, Polina flew around gathering paperwork, ignoring her husband’s screams, which now sounded more like pleas—yes, Semyon suspected something. Two months later she lawfully entered Aunt Galya’s apartment. She was met with the familiar smell of heart medicine and old clothes; saw peeling wallpaper and locked chiffoniers, which she easily pried open with a penknife. Inside she found pressed layers of ancient dresses that used to clothe generations of her family, all those women who had been buried in a coffin or without one, like poor Aunt Galya. For the past thirty years her aunt had lived alone in that squalid apartment without ever asking her, Polina, for assistance, although she had Polina’s number and kept it in a visible spot on the wall. She also kept a shroud, slippers, and a cross—her funeral outfit—in a little bundle next to the bed; it was as though her aunt were asking her, Polina, for a last favor. Next to the bundle was a checkbook with some savings, to pay for the funeral, but the money was now worthless. Polina tossed the bundle with the other trash and kept only a family album and an ancient record player with some records wrapped in cloth sacks. Polina took these treasures home, thinking she’d impress her grateful family.
She arrived home late at night, and listened to Semyon’s screams that he wasn’t going to let a venereal slut use a shared bathroom; that first she must bring a note from the clinic, et cetera. Polina said nothing: she suddenly felt a surge of joy at the thought that soon she would escape this nightmare—that she had a way out. So that Semyon wouldn’t lose his last marbles when she disappeared, Polina told him about an old aunt who was completely paralyzed and whom Polina wanted to bring home, to Moscow, because the aunt’s children refused to take care of her. On hearing this Semyon yelled that he refused to clean up after some old hag, spat at Polina’s family pictures and records, and disappeared into his room—his dungeon, as Polina called it, where the window was always open and the lights didn’t work.
The next Saturday Polina celebrated her birthday. She cooked a meal, her trio of a family arrived, and after they stuffed themselves the shining Polina offered to play some old records and show family photographs (she slyly had added the best pictures of her young self to the album). She hoped that Nikola, the heir, would express an interest in family history, but he looked indifferently at the faded snapshots and shifted his attention to the TV to watch soccer. Polina’s son and daughter-in-law again brought up the housing question: now they wanted Polina and Semyon to register Nikola as a resident of their apartment. “The fuck I will,” yelled educated Semyon. “So that five years from now you could kick us both out? Ain’t gonna happen! The Liapins,” he continued, “registered their son at his grandmother’s. The next day he announced he was going to have the place renovated, and he moved his grandmother to her sister’s for three days; in the meantime he sold the apartment and left the country with the money!”
“And we know a certain babushka who lost her marbles and married some old idiot and registered him! Her daughter almost lost her mind! She’d been waiting for the old witch’s apartment for decades!”
“Great idea, thanks,” Semyon replied brightly. “I’ll get married, too. Better than getting old with this venereal hag!”
“As you wish, but remember: I did your son a favor by registering him at my apartment, where nothing belongs to him, and now I’m getting punished for my kindness!” fat Alla concluded glumly, and went to get her coat.
They stomped out, forgetting the photographs. Polina cried a little over the dirty dishes and in the morning departed for her new home. At this point we could conclude our story, but life continued, and soon came the spring. Polina dug a tiny vegetable patch outside her new window and planted a few simple things like carrots and calendula. Every day she woke up and went to bed with a sense of quiet happiness. She tended her plants, walked to the village for goat milk, and gathered herbs in the fields, but after two months of this simple life she ran out of money and had to go to Moscow to collect her pension. She had forgotten the scandals, the constant humiliation, even Clapper—for good, she hoped. Nonetheless, after collecting her pension Polina forced herself to visit her former nest: she needed dry goods like flour and sugar, and also pickling jars. Without taking off her rubber boots she stomped into her old apartment and immediately saw Semyon sitting on her sofa in her room in filthy pajamas, smiling like a baby. His hair was completely white, he was unshaved, his chin was trembling, and the phone was lying disconnected on the floor. “Why is the phone disconnected?” Polina asked calmly. “I couldn’t get through.” Semyon nodded meekly and tried to fit the cord into the phone. His hands were shaking. Polina reconnected the phone, and immediately it rang; their son was calling from out of town, worried because his father hadn’t answered the phone in three days. “I’ll be back in a week!” the son said, and hung up.
Polina toured the apartment. In Semyon’s dungeon she pulled off the stinking sheets and threw them into the tub; in the blackened kitchen she swept up the shards and trash and placed the dirty kettle on the stove. When Semyon, clean and shaved, was lying in a fresh bed and Polina was spoon-feeding him cereal, he stopped moving his toothless jaws, looked at her slowly, and whispered, “You must be hungry. Have a bite yourself.”
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
LUDMILLA PETRUSHEVSKAYA was born in 1938 in Moscow, where she still lives. She is the author of more than fifteen volumes of prose, including the New York Times bestseller There Once Lived a Woman Who Tried to Kill Her Neighbor’s Baby: Scary Fairy Tales (2009), which won a World Fantasy Award and was one of New York magazine’s Ten Best Books of the Year and one of NPR’s Five Best Works of Foreign Fiction. Earlier works include the short novel The Time: Night (1992), which was short-listed for the Russian Booker Prize, and “Svoi Krug” (1988; “Among Friends”), a modern classic about the late-Soviet intelligentsia. A singular force in modern Russian fiction, she is also a playwright whose work has been staged by leading theater companies all over the world. In 2002 she received Russia’s most prestigious prize, the Triumph, for lifetime achievement.
ANNA SUMMERS is the coeditor and cotranslator of Ludmilla Petrushevskaya’s There Once Lived a Woman Who Tried to Kill Her Neighbor’s Baby: Scary Fairy Tales and the literary editor of The Baffler. Born and raised in Moscow, she now lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Review
“Deeply unromantic love stories told frankly, with an elasticity and economy of language … dark, fatalistic humor and bone-deep irony.”
—The New York Times Book Review
“This gem’s exquisite conjugation of doom and disconnect is so depressingly convincing that I laughed out loud…. On par with the work of such horror maestros as Edgar Allan Poe.”
—Ben Dickinson, Elle
“Petrushevskaya writes instant classics…. These, as the title proclaims, are love stories, scored to a totalitarian track that makes the mystery of love ever more murky.”
—The Daily Beast
“Combines the brevity of Lydia Davis with the familial strangleholds of Chekhov. They’re short and brutal, but often elegant in their economy.”
—The Onion A.V. Club
“Full of off-kilter, lurid, even violent attempts at connection.”
—Flavorwire, 10 of the Most Twisted Short Stories About Love
“Heartbreaking, but … also beautiful and touching in describing how, if not love, at least companionship, can save the most lost souls.”
—The Rumpus
“An important writer … Russia’s best-known … She’s a much better storyteller than her American counterparts in the seedy surreal…. Petrushevskaya’s stories should remind her readers of our own follies, illusions and tenderness.”
—Chicago Tribune
“Dark and mischievous … [Petrushevskaya’s] stories never flinch from harshness, yet also offer odd redemptions … comedic brilliance … microscopic precision … several inimitable, laugh-out-loud paragraphs … creepy early-Ian-McEwan style identity disintegrations [and a] formidable way with a character profile…. [The translation, by] Anna Summers, [is] starkly elegant, often wry…. Summers also provides a sensitive, informative and insightful introduction…. Petrushevskaya … ensures herself a place high in the roster of unsettling Writers of the Weird.”
—Locus
“Both supremely gritty and realistically life-affirming … Full of meaningful, finely crafted detail.”
—Publishers Weekly
“Think Chekhov writing from a female perspective…. Petrushevskaya’s short stories transform the mundane into the near surreal, pausing only to wink at the absurdity of it all.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“The fact that Ludmilla Petrushevskaya is Russia’s premier writer of fiction today proves that the literary tradition that produced Dostoyevsky, Gogol, and Babel is alive and well.”
—Taylor Antrim, The Daily Beast
“Her witchy magic foments an unsettling brew of conscience and consequences.”
—The New York Times Book Review
“One of the greatest writers in Russia today and a vital force in contemporary world literature.”
—Ken Kalfus, author of A Disorder Peculiar to the Country
“A master of the short story form, a kindred spirit to writers like Angela Carter and Yumiko Kurahashi.”
—Kelly Link, author of Magic for Beginners and Stranger Things Happen
Copyright
PENGUIN BOOKS
Published by the Penguin Group
Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA
Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario M4P 2Y3, Canada (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.) • Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England • Penguin Ireland, 25 St Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd) • Penguin Group (Australia), 707 Collins Street, Melbourne, Victoria 3008, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd) • Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi – 110 017, India • Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, Auckland 0632, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd) • Penguin Books, Rosebank Office Park, 181 Jan Smuts Avenue, Parktown North 2193, South Africa • Penguin China, B7 Jaiming Center, 27 East Third Ring Road North, Chaoyang District, Beijing 100020, China
Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
Copyright © Ludmilla Petrushevskaya, 2013 Translation and introduction copyright © Anna Summers, 2013 All rights reserved
“Milgrom” was translated by Anna Summers and Keith Gessen. It first appeared on the Words Without Borders website.
“Give Her to Me” first appeared in The Baffler; “The Goddess Parka” in Playboy; “Hallelujah, Family” in Zoetrope; and “The Wild Berries” in The Paris Review.
The stories in this collection were published in Russian in Neva, Octyabr, Aurora, Znamya, Novyi mir, and Literaturnaya gazeta.
Publisher’s Note
These selections are works of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING IN PUBLICATION DATA
Petrushevskaia, Liudmila. [Short stories. English. Selections. 2013] There once lived a girl who seduced her sister’s husband, and he hanged himself : love stories / Ludmilla Petrushevskaya ; selected and translated with an introduction by Anna Summers. pages ; cm
ISBN 978-1-101-60298-0
1. Petrushevskaia, Liudmila—Translations into English. I. Summers, Anna, translator. II. Title.
PG3485.E724A2 2013 891.73'44—dc23 2012029559
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The scanning, uploading and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.
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