Jacob's Ladder

by Ludmila Ulitskaya

  18

  Marusya’s Letters

  (DECEMBER 1911)

  DECEMBER 26

  I received your letter at the studio, on Kharitonievsky Lane. It’s better to write to Bogoslovsky. I’ve lived here for two months already. It’s a nice room. I share the apartment with two women, one an actress, the other a teacher. We all work hard. There is only one servant—provided by the landlord.

  It’s three in the morning, and I’m only now sitting down to write you. I can’t sleep. A button popped off on my shoulder, and I encountered my own body underneath, which made me long for you … Oh, and your last letter … Your words, tenderness, your wonderful manly sensibility shape me. I feel myself becoming more and more of a woman, blossoming, growing more flexible, softer, and more beautiful, with every letter you write me. It’s strange, but until now I was not much of a woman at all. And I’m glad that I’m growing into one. And this is your doing; I’ve become more formal, more rational, even in my dreams. Just as you wish. Everything you wish for is wonderful. And your thoughts immediately become mine. It feels as though that was what I always felt, what I always wanted. I don’t think I’ll ever say (at night) anything that would make you stop and say reproachfully, “Come, now, Marusya.”

  On the other hand, maybe we’ll just laugh about everything, it will all seem funny.

  Remember how we sometimes laughed? I love remembering that.

  Good night! I’m going to bed now … I’m going to kiss you a long, long time, to caress your lips, your body.

  The twilight has ended. I turned on a lamp. Now I feel good: it’s cozy and clean. Only it’s very cold. I rocked in the armchair.

  There is a performance under way at the studio. It has been very well received. Ella Ivanovna praises me. I’m glad. There is a rumor making the rounds that they’ll accept me into the troupe next year, and my apprenticeship will be over. Time will tell. Anything is possible. Both bad and good. What I need now more than anything is money. I was given some lessons to teach by the Froebel Society. I managed to earn fifty rubles. I’m not able to take on a permanent position—I take too many classes at the studio. Lessons are another matter.

  Yesterday B. came to the studio and gave me a “Christmas present”—a porcelain dish with sweets—which I found so touching.

  Soon it will be evening, time for the performance. My head feels a bit dizzy, and I don’t want to go. I want to keep writing and writing this letter to you. About how I spent Christmas Eve, and about Jacobson the musician. I’ll write you later. Goodbye for now.

  DECEMBER 28

  So—your arrival has been delayed for one more week. I just closed my eyes. I felt your presence so strongly, you felt so near. It’s difficult for me. I never thought I could feel so much longing. I walk and walk, marking the minutes—I don’t know where to stash my heart. Whenever will I get used to you?

  You help me, you support me, you have strong, gentle hands and a good heart. I’m afraid of you, my husband, I’m afraid with a wondrous fear.

  Study, study well. Don’t postpone your exams, whatever you do. Otherwise, all our suffering will have been in vain. No—study hard. Don’t give up. You won’t regret it. But come as soon as you can. Oh, I’m waiting, I’m waiting … Well, sleep, then, dear one, my precious one and only.

  I kiss your head, your lips. Sweetly, over and over, all night long.

  DECEMBER 30

  This letter has been lying here for two days. Yesterday I had no time to send it, and today is a holiday—the post office is closed. These are just trivialities. I don’t want to write with a pencil. The words fade away with time, and the letter will die.

  This is better … Lena says that love letters should be written in pencil, so the letter won’t outlive the feelings. “My feelings have died, they’re gone, but the letter written in ink is alive.” No—she’s wrong about this. Could Hamsun ever renounce Pan, or Victoria? Pan outlived Hamsun, his youth. Hamsun is an old man, but Johannes is still young, still in love. And thank God for that. A love letter, my letter to you, is the purest, the most chaste thing I have created. Because it has no form, no strained effort—you know that yourself. Sometimes there is not even any content. But every line I write is inexpressibly dear to me. This is why it is still so galling to me that your letter went missing. Several pages of your thoughts, your caresses, your love, were stolen from me. And one reason it is so painful is that they belonged to me, only to me. Someone stole what was mine, mine alone. And I am very possessive, only my possession is so very far away from me.

  Where is Boris Neiman these days? In Kiev? Why haven’t you written anything about him to me? What about Konstantinovsky?

  Have you told your Yura that I’m an actress? How strange it must sound to him—your fiancée, an actress. I sense that you want to talk to him about me. I have an intolerable need for an interlocutor, too. I urgently need to talk to someone about you. And I do talk. You can tell Yura that we are already acquainted, he and I. Without knowing me, he most likely feels some unconscious hostility toward me—a woman who is a complete stranger to him. Who knows whether she is worth knowing … Just ask him—you’ll see that’s how it is. That’s probably what he thinks. Well, so be it. May God give him happiness and the best of wives.

  It’s time for me to go to sleep. My life will go back to normal on January 1, and I’ll take better care of myself—for you. If only it weren’t so cold! Good night. That’s all.

  Here, take me! My lips, my entire self …

  19

  First Grade

  Fingernails

  (1982)

  Nora bought a bouquet of asters next to the Arbat metro station. It was the last one the old flower-vendor had—a bit wilted, too big, and too bright. Nora looked at it disapprovingly and calculated that the two dangerously red blooms she could toss out, the three yellow ones she would take home for her own enjoyment, and the white and purple ones she would give to Yurik. Tomorrow she was taking him to school: his first day in the first grade.

  She was trying to prepare him for this profoundly life-changing event as though it were both a serious and a joyous occasion, but she herself was full of dark presentiments about it. It was already clear that his skills and his abilities were in part insufficient, and in part exceeded the basic requirements. He read fluently, but didn’t know how to hold a pencil or a pen correctly. He couldn’t write at all. He gripped a pencil tightly in his fist, and Nora had been thus far unsuccessful at teaching him to hold it differently. He wasn’t left-handed; rather, both hands showed an equal lack of dexterity. A good doctor, whom Taisia had recommended, said that a defect in the abductors in his hands was preventing him from learning to write properly. He was sedentary and patient when he did something he liked: he would play chess with Vitya for hours on end, until Vitya was too tired to continue.

  Yurik hated new clothes. He didn’t like to change them. He didn’t know how—or didn’t like—to tie his shoelaces. He sobbed when he had to put a hat on; he couldn’t bear anything to touch his head. Cutting his fingernails was a herculean task for Nora. He loved any kind of construction set, from the metal planks with holes fastened together by nuts and bolts to the wooden blocks meant for younger children; he could busy himself with these things for hours. But it was impossible to force him to do something he didn’t want to do. He refused point-blank to engage in any sports, to draw, or, recently, to play music; though when he heard music being played, he would freeze, with a strange, dreamy look on his face expressing rapt attention mixed with suffering. Nora’s attempt to enroll him in music school the previous year had turned into aversion to the very word “school,” and she had a hard time persuading him that the school he would begin on September 1 was another kind altogether, and that he would like it.

  “It stinks there, it’s really stinky!” he insisted. Nora couldn’t understand how he knew about school smells, since he had never been there. In her heart, however, she had to agree with him. She had completely forgo
tten about the experience of taking Yurik to music school, and she was oblivious to the smell of the music teacher’s perfume, which had so distressed him. Her olfactory experience of school was associated with food smells from the cafeteria, chlorine, and the sweaty stench of the gym, which hung in the air constantly.

  Two days before the first day of school, Nora tried to trim Yurik’s fingernails. She did everything she could, maneuvering this way and that. She told him that germs were living under his long, broken nails. She drew multi-legged and multi-horned monstrosities on a big piece of paper to illustrate her argument; he laughed, but refused to let her cut his nails.

  She tried bribing him—it went so far that she promised to let him bring back Chura, his favorite Chinese crested chihuahua mix, from Grandma’s. Yurik looked down at his nails and said with a sigh, “No, only for a German shepherd.”

  Honest Nora shook her head no; she would only allow him to keep a small dog. She wouldn’t agree to anything bigger than a cat. But Yurik didn’t want a cat. In the evening, after he had gone to bed, Nora managed to trim two nails on his left hand; but while she was working on the third, he woke up and began to howl.

  On the evening of August 31, Nora put Yurik in the bathtub. He played and splashed around in the water for a long time. Then Nora, tense and ready for battle, said in a firm, bitter voice, “And now we are going to cut your nails.”

  Yurik clenched his fists. Nora tried to pry them open. Yurik spat in her face. She lost control. She dragged the screaming child out of the water, clamped his left arm under her armpit as if in a vise, and somehow or other, with great difficulty, managed to cut his nails. Both of them were bellowing. He: “No! No! Don’t cut them!” She: “Yes! We have to! We have to cut them!”

  When she had twisted his right arm around, he began to weaken and give in. The operation was completed. At first Nora even felt a sense of triumph. Yurik, pale and wet, his fists balled up, left the bathroom and walked slowly, his body hunched, to his room. And then Nora felt the horror of loss. Their relations would never be the same again. He would never forgive her this violence.

  Her moment of triumph—a pile of nail clippings on the floor—in fact signaled her defeat. She placed these paltry scraps in front of her, and began to weep. She wanted to hug the boy tight, to ask his forgiveness, but she was afraid to enter his room. She lit a cigarette. Thinking that she had never felt so wretched, she lay down on the floor on her back, her arms spread out like a cross, and moaned: “God, oh God, help me! I’ve done something terrible! What should I do now? Help me!”

  Then she stood up and smiled. I’m losing my mind … I’ve never done anything like this before. She finished another cigarette and opened the door to Yurik’s room. He lay on a striped rug in the middle of the room, just as she had been lying a moment before—his arms outspread like a cross. He was small, naked, and very white in the dusky twilight. Nora sat down beside him, but he seemed not to notice her.

  “Yurik, I’m sorry.”

  “You wrecked my life,” he said quietly.

  Nora realized that he was right. And she had nothing to say. “Forgive me.”

  “Nora, I don’t love you anymore,” he said solemnly, in a grown-up voice.

  No, no. We are not equals. I am thirty-nine, and he is seven. I am responsible for him. What to do?

  “What can I do? I love you.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Well, all right, then. This is how we’ll live from now on. I’ll love you forever. I love you more than anything in the world. And you don’t love me. But you’re still my son, and I’m your mother.”

  Last year, he had asked, “Nora, when did you born me?”

  “At night,” she said.

  “Mama, I’m sorry I woke you up.” And also, “When I was in your tummy, I wanted so much to sing.”

  “Why didn’t you?”

  “It was very tiny in there, and there was nothing else besides me—no plates and dishes, nothing … But it was nice.”

  “I’m going to run away,” the boy said now, not looking at her.

  Nora gathered him into her arms. “Of course you will. All children go away when they grow up. But we still have a long time to live together.”

  “I really don’t want to live with you anymore.”

  “Fine. We’ll decide later. But now I’m going to make you some custard.”

  “Are you trying to butter me up?”

  “Yep. Here’s a towel. Dry yourself off, and I’ll go make the custard.”

  Then Yurik ate the scalded-cream delicacy—still warm, without waiting for it to cool off. It didn’t taste as good as it usually did. But both Yurik and Nora had cooled off, and he came to sleep with her in her bed, as he did when he was sick. They hugged. Nora kissed his still-damp hair. His hair was so thick that it always took a long time to dry. Then, when he was already falling asleep, he said, “Nora, good things always come to an end. And after that, things aren’t nice at all. At first it’s really, really nice, but just when it’s really, really nice, you fall from heaven into hell.”

  How does he know that? Nora thought. He can’t possibly know that already …

  The next morning, it seemed all was forgotten. Dressed in his new blue uniform, his bright, thick hair shining on his large head, holding a bouquet of asters, he mingled with the crowd of other seven-year-olds on their first day of school. Nora watched them attentively, musing that inside each one of them was a secret being, wise beyond its years, who knew things that grown-up people could no longer remember.

  20

  From the Willow Chest

  Jacob’s Letter to Marusya Volunteer Ossetsky

  (1911–1912)

  KIEV–MOSCOW

  SEPTEMBER 6, 1912

  My sweet wife! My treasure! Instead of the tender words that are heaped up inside me since our parting, I’m going to pour out my heart to you. Being together is the only natural and right situation for us. The scrutiny of family members, my parents, relatives, and acquaintances was always dispiriting to me. But our relations exist somewhere beyond all the stuff of daily life, the trivial bickering and disputes, mutual annoyances that are so unpleasant to me. It’s different with us—such banality is impossible. Never before has fate put such a hard choice in front of me as the one I face now; but without your approval I can do nothing. Our future depends on this.

  Perhaps you are not aware that the Kiev Commercial Institute is the first of its kind in Russia, very advanced. When it was established as an institution of higher learning six years ago, quotas were not observed. As a result, almost 60 percent of the current students are of Jewish descent. We have to keep in mind that the Kievan Jewish community donates large sums to the Institute, which is why the administration agreed to educate Jewish young people. This little historical sketch concerns me, too, because I am one of these 60 percent. In a word, this shortcoming in the regulations is being redressed this year, and the usual quota for educational institutions, a Jewish enrollment of not more than 5 percent, has been introduced. Jews are faced with a choice—either convert to Christianity or enroll merely as auditors. Last year, I came out first in my department, and transferring my status to that of auditor, going to lectures and waiting to see whether there is an opening, and competing for this with Jewish students like myself, would be degrading. It’s especially painful now, when I have a good chance of getting a master’s degree in commercial studies upon graduation. I had a talk with Professor Pogorelsky about the possibility of teaching in the future, which appeals to me much more than the practical application of the degree that my father favors.

  The other option, that of conversion, is even more humiliating. You and I have touched on this subject many times before—how living in an Orthodox country, surrounded by its culture, we have come to love Orthodoxy, to sympathize with it. I have spoken to you about my basic religious views. The Ten Commandments passed down by God to Moses are also the foundation of Christianity. The figure of Christ inspires
even more sympathy, as one of the most revered heroes of history, of culture. But I do not accept his divine origin. The Son of Man—this is how he referred to himself. As are all the rest of us, Jews first and foremost, and through them all others who have accepted the Commandments in some form or other. The prospect of being baptized is still more humiliating than transferring my status from student to auditor. Formal philosophical and religious considerations aside, there are many issues I haven’t been able to resolve concerning my worldview; but no religion, neither Judaism, nor Christianity, nor the Chinese religion, has played a major role in building it. This kind of coerced baptism would be pure opportunism.