Jacob's Ladder

by Ludmila Ulitskaya

  Marusya looked out the window, intoxicated by the breathtaking speed at which the train moved, almost flying over the ground, and feasting her eyes on the sights flashing by. She thought of it as a humble prelude to the enormous adventure of life, in which she had already found love, and her studies. Learning to understand the world, and active, exciting creative endeavor, all lay ahead.

  At the station in Moscow, her brother hired a cab, and soon they arrived at an enormous building on Myasnitskaya Street, unprepossessing by Kiev standards, with a gloomy aspect and no intriguing architectural details or flourishes. It had towering entrance doors that looked like they were made for a giant. Inside was a vestibule, a mirror, and an elevator, behind a severe wrought-iron door of simple design.

  Her brother was immediately waylaid by a huge gentleman in a fur coat, who slapped him on the back amiably and began talking in a voluble, lisping stream of words. Marusya turned away tactfully so as not to disturb their conversation. Mark nodded to her gratefully, called out, “Just a second,” and stepped aside with the gentleman. They talked for quite a while, but Marusya was not at all bored. She watched the people entering and leaving. Some people got into the elevator; others chose to walk up the broad, shallow staircase. This building made the first and most lasting impression on Marusya during her visit to Moscow: the men and women who bustled through the lobby dressed differently, rushed headlong, with purpose and confidence, and spoke rapidly, animatedly, as though they were all actors. The house itself was “modern,” and the people who lived there were “modern,” and the whole of life in Moscow was also “modern.” From the very first, it was clear to Marusya that Moscow was where she had to live, not in provincial old Kiev, stuffy and second-rate. Jacob should finish his studies and come live here. Both of them would live here together, in a house just like this one, and they would have a “modern” life, not a vulgar, pokey existence among Jewish relations, craftsmen, merchants, and bankers.

  Her brother finished his conversation with the man in the fur coat, ending it in a strange way, with some sort of double handhold and a clap. Mark grabbed Marusya under the arm and guided her not to the lift but to the stairs, saying, “Hurry up, hurry up, Marusya. The elevator is too slow, and we’re just on the second floor.”

  The apartment was wonderful, and also, in keeping with the whole building, unique, with an enormous alcove, and wood paneling—but no kitchen, just a stovetop in a small recess. There was, however, a real bathroom. Mark took some papers out of a desk drawer and whistled under his breath while he perused them. Then he picked out a clean handkerchief and said, “Marusya, I’ve got to rush. I’ll be home in the evening; here’s a key, here’s some money; don’t do anything foolish.”

  When she was alone, Marusya stood for a while in front of the window, which was protected by wrought iron in a simple, stylized pattern. She imagined how she would look, with her upswept hair held by a velvet ribbon, if someone outside could see her. On the opposite side of the street, there was an identical gloomy building, but the snow that had just started to fall obscured the view into the windows. That meant no one could see her, either. Marusya fixed her hair, securing it more firmly under the ribbon. She exchanged her old dress for a skirt and a roomy blouse cut in the latest fashion, put on her little boots and an unseasonably light coat. She had left the despised winter coat at home; there was no place in her new life for that frightful old thing.

  She hadn’t had time to ask her brother how to find Maly Kharitonievsky Lane, so she asked the doorman downstairs. He told her it was nearby and explained how to get there. Marusya was not even surprised at the coincidence that her brother’s apartment was just a stone’s throw from the Courses. In five minutes, she had reached an imposing house with huge windows on the first two floors; that was where the Courses were held. She had arrived right on time—the students were getting ready for their class, and Ella Ivanovna herself was standing by the door to the room, dressed in a light-colored tunic, with her hair swept up, like Marusya’s. It was usually painful for Marusya to talk to people she didn’t know, but this time she approached the teacher without any timidity, surprising even herself. She mentioned the recommendation from Madame Leroux.

  “Yes, yes, I remember.” Rabenek let Marusya go ahead of her into the room, and she followed. “You sit and watch the class for now. We’ll talk afterward.”

  The room was fairly large, with a raised stage and enormous windows lining one entire wall. There was a rug on the floor, and the walls were covered with white fabric. A small black piano was pushed up almost against the wall. Then a young lady with a powerful build came in and moved the instrument out into the room. She pulled out the round swiveling stool, opened the piano, and began playing some quiet music that was unfamiliar to Marusya. Jacob would have recognized the piece and known the composer, of course.

  Marusya looked around unsuccessfully for a chair, then went out into the hallway to search for one. She didn’t find one there, either. While she was wandering through the hallway, a flock of young girls appeared in the room, barefoot, wearing short tunics. Ella Ivanovna began to address them, but they seemed not to be listening to her. They milled aimlessly about, over the stage, stretching their arms and legs casually, spontaneously, without any coordination with one another. The musical accompaniment continued quietly.

  “Now, then; here we are … Natasha, Natasha, I’m saying this again for your benefit—every movement is made with the least expenditure of energy. You lift your arms beginning from your wrists, from the elbows; you need only a slight tension of the shoulder muscle, and all the other muscles are completely relaxed. This is the foundation of all foundations. Free your arms from unnecessary tension and your movements will become fluid, natural. Stop. Freeze. You must feel the weight of your arms, of your body, the weight of its extremities … Natasha, look at Eliza … Yes, like that … In this way, the unity destroyed by our unnatural clothing and absurd customs is restored. The plastique that we observe on antique vases, in Greek sculpture, returns to us. We have lost it. Raise your arm, lift your knee, twist your torso! Better, that’s better already … Fine, now everyone stop. The rope, please!”

  Marusya, who never found a chair, stood by the door at first. Then, so that she could better hear Ella Ivanovna’s words, which were muffled somewhat by the music, she moved along the wall and sat down on the floor, tucking her legs up under her. She already knew about antique sculpture from Ella Rabenek’s lecture, about bas-reliefs, and about the inner logic of gesture. Now her whole body ached, so urgently did her arms, her legs, and her back long to respond to the music, to skip and jump, to express themselves without words.

  Meanwhile, they tugged on the rope, and Rabenek herself ascended the stage. She waved her hand at the accompanist and called out a single name, unfamiliar to Marusya: “Scriabin, please!” The pianist began to play some other music, different from any she had ever heard before. Ella Ivanovna jumped over the rope with a strange, slow movement, as though she were rolling over it. Then everyone began to jump, but not ignoring the still-resounding music. Now the teacher requested that the music cease, and each one carried on according to her inner rhythm.

  “Search for your own rhythm, your very own rhythm.”

  They all pranced about the stage, together, and individually, and Marusya took off her little boots and went up to prance with them.

  “Excellent! Excellent! Here’s true artistic talent!” Ella Ivanovna said, praising Marusya. Marusya, filled with lightness and strength, galloped about with all the girls until the break.

  During the break, Ella Ivanovna came up to Marusya.

  “One of the girls will give you a tunic in the changing room, and you may continue the lesson with us.”

  That evening, Marusya wrote a letter to Jacob. She told him that she had passed the test, that in the fall she would begin training in the Rabenek studio, and that they had to do everything possible to move to Moscow, because she was sure of it: their future life w
as bound up with this city.

  This was the first letter of that long correspondence that continued for twenty-five years—the correspondence, carefully tied up in a bundle, that had lain on the bottom of the willow chest in the communal apartment on Povarskaya Street until Marusya’s death, and had then migrated to Nikitsky Boulevard, to the home of her granddaughter, Nora, where it waited to be read.

  14

  A Female Line

  (1975–1980)

  Yurik was growing up. Nora grew up with him, always aware how indebted she was to her son for so much. When the other “playground” mothers and grandmothers talked about child-raising in her presence, she only smiled. She understood early on that the child was raising her to a much greater degree than she was raising the child. The child demanded a patience that she was completely devoid of by nature; but each new day required her to exercise this indispensable ability. The hardness of her own character, her resistance to the imposition on her of someone else’s will, and even someone else’s opinion, had complicated her relations with her mother during her adolescence. Now she had learned to see everything from Yurik’s perspective, as a two-year-old, a five-year-old, a first-grader …

  From his first days of life, Nora had shared hers with Yurik, which the baby sling that Marina Chipkovskaya had given her greatly facilitated. In it the baby traveled with Nora to exhibits, to the theater, to visit friends. At that time, this blue baby sling had been an imported novelty, but in later years, throughout the entire world, it became one of those objects that fostered a new relationship between mother and child. Now the child was not left at home with a babysitter, a grandmother, or a neighbor, but was brought along to places and events to which one would never have thought to bring a child in former days. The sling allowed for a certain freedom of movement, making the connection between mother and child yet more profound. Nora thought about this when Yurik started walking. Even after he was sure on his feet, he was still reluctant to stray too far from his mother. Nora devised a new strategy, diametrically opposed to her earlier practices: when Yurik took one step away from her, she would increase the distance between them by one step in the other direction. This was how she encouraged his independence. Fully aware of the dangers inherent in their double introversion, she made a conscious effort to establish some distance, baby step by baby step. It didn’t take long for him to develop a taste for freedom.

  Taisia spent more and more time with Nora, to their mutual advantage. She had been working for time-and-a-half pay at the polyclinic, but Nora asked her to cut back her hours and to come to relieve her two days a week. Taisia agreed. Nora’s child-rearing methods seemed too harsh to Taisia, however, and she spoiled her charge with all the means at her disposal. Nonetheless, Yurik was learning to be very independent and self-reliant. Sometimes Nora detected signs of Vitya’s self-absorption, his introspective unwillingness to engage with his surroundings. Yurik had a hard time accepting new people. Sometimes it took him a long time to call by name another child he played with every day on the playground. He knew how to amuse himself, and didn’t necessarily need someone else to play with.

  During the first years of Yurik’s life, Nora thought a great deal about her own family history. Only now had she come to understand why she had so wanted a son, and had rejected even the possibility that she might give birth to a girl. The thought alone had frightened her. Her memories of her maternal grandmother, Zinaida Filippovna, were vague. She had died before Nora turned seven, and had been bedridden the last two years of her life, growing weaker and weaker. She always wore a woolen cap and lipstick, and from time to time she shouted at Amalia—vociferously if rather indistinctly, though the individual curse words were completely audible.

  Much later, after she had grown up, Nora asked Amalia to tell her about her mother. Her story was quite short. Zinaida had had an unhappy life. Her parents, former merchants whose finances had been ruined, threw their daughter onto the street when she was only sixteen. Though Amalia didn’t know exactly why, she suspected it was because her mother had had a secret lover. Zinaida left for Moscow and worked as a servant in various homes. She married the last master she worked for: Alexander Ignatievich Kotenko. He was much older than she was, a widower, and half blind. In his younger years, he had been a precentor in a choir, and continued to sing in the choir in a deep, booming bass, for which Zinaida called him the “Trumpet of Jericho.”

  The marriage was difficult. Her husband drank too much and beat her from time to time. Not to be brutal with her—just to teach her how to behave. Into this joyless marriage, Zinaida’s daughter, Amalia, was born. Kotenko claimed that the child was illegitimate, that he had not fathered it, but he didn’t throw his wife out. He was indifferent toward Amalia, but for the most part treated her well. True, Kotenko, who remained in doubt of his own paternity, insisted on having her christened as Magdalena; but she later changed the name to Amalia on her official ID. This was Zinaida’s life, putting up with silent battering and verbal abuse at the hands of her husband, now completely blind, until he died, in 1924.

  “I remember the funeral service at the church where he sang in the choir, somewhere in the neighborhood of Dolgorukovskaya Street, on a small lane. If Mother ever knew any peace in her life, it could only have been after her husband’s death; but she was never happy. She was afraid of everything, especially her husband. I felt so sorry for her. And she was very beautiful; everyone turned around to look at her when she walked by. Perhaps her beauty annoyed your grandfather—I don’t know. Sometimes I think that there was someone else she loved. She was aware of her own beauty—she curled her hair, used lipstick. She didn’t pay too much attention to me. At the end of her life, she was senile, and she cursed up a storm. At the end, I put up with a lot of grief from her, but all in all, no, there was no love lost between us…” Here Amalia ended her brief account.

  In her childhood, Nora had been very attached to her mother, in part out of protest against her father, and the hostility she had felt toward him from an early age. Her relations with her mother were uneventful and calm: no childhood passions or conflicts. The alienation between them occurred later, when Andrei Ivanovich entered their lives.

  In her adolescence, Nora considered her mother’s relationship with him to be a betrayal. The way her mother shone in his presence, the way her voice changed, and the coquettishness and tenderness that appeared when her mother looked at him filled Nora with fastidious irritation. This was exacerbated by the fact that her mother took Nora, not very wisely, into her confidence, extolling the high moral virtues of her chosen one. Finally, Nora remarked very sharply that it was impossible for one and the same person to be an exemplary husband and family man, and at the same time someone’s devoted lover. Amalia sighed sorrowfully. “You’re too young to understand, Nora, that such a thing is possible. Andrei doesn’t want to cause his wife and children pain, and I am prepared to put up with the equivocality of my situation for his sake. You realize that he would have left his family long ago if I wanted him to. But I know how much he would suffer.”

  “What about you? Don’t you suffer from this ambiguity?” Nora said hotly.

  Here Amalia started to laugh, her pretty face beaming.

  “Ambiguity? Don’t be silly! It’s a very small price to pay for love.”

  “Well, I find it humiliating. I would never stand for that kind of relationship. I would break it off. You have no character, you’re just weak! It should be one way or the other.” And Nora lifted her chin, proudly and defiantly.

  Amalia laughed again. “You silly girl! I’ve left two husbands. I didn’t love either Tisha, my first husband, or Genrikh. I didn’t even know what love was. I only began to understand it with Andrei. And you’re still too young to understand.”

  Their secret love affair lasted for years. Until he finally decided to leave his family, he stood next to the entrance of their apartment building every morning at quarter to eight, waiting for Amalia to come out, so he could wal
k her to work. She had already divorced Genrikh long before …

  At exactly five in the evening, she would rush home and make dinner for Andrei. Nora never got home before seven. This was their agreement—don’t disturb. If Andrei was working the second shift, Amalia met him by the sound-recording studio where he worked; now it was she who accompanied him, to the train station. He lived out of town and took the commuter train to work, until he bought a car in the late sixties.

  This was their routine, every day except Sundays and national holidays, for many years. The lonely New Year’s and May Day holidays were only a small sacrifice for Amalia. She never visited other people on these days. Society viewed single women with hostility; they made married women uneasy. Amalia had no desire to spend time in the company of other single women, sharing in their complaints, their gossip, and their wounds and hurts. She spent these holidays at home. She put on her nightgown, smeared her face with cold cream, and went to bed with a good book and the telephone (which she had moved into her room). Sometimes Andrei called her from home; when she picked up, he either remained silent or said, “Excuse me, I must have dialed the wrong number.”

  Chicken; silly goose—this was how Nora dismissed her mother. But these judgments were in fact about herself, herself alone … As the years passed, a peaceable alienation set in. There was one other curious angle to Nora’s relations with her mother. When she was about fifteen, Nora discovered that in one sense she was more mature than her mother. Amalia acknowledged this seniority with a cheerful equanimity. She had a simple, open heart, but she was no fool. She sensed in her daughter a maturity that exceeded her age, and she surrendered without a struggle. Not only did she stop trying to manage Nora; she even stopped trying to guide her with advice, especially after the scandalous school episode.

  After Yurik was born, Nora realized that the entire female line to which she belonged suffered from some general defect—an illness, as it were—the daughters didn’t love their mothers, and protested against the model of behavior their mothers represented. Nora herself inherited this deep-seated negativity, this mistrust and concealed enmity. Where did it come from? About such matters, Grandmother Marusya would have said, “It’s all in the genes.”