There Once Lived a Girl Who Seduced Her Sister's Husband, and He Hanged Himself: Love Stories

by Ludmilla Petrushevskaya

  That’s why Pulcheria observed the surrounding luxury with indifference, using the party as simply a chance to take a break from the daily drudgery she suffered behind her perfect image of a plump, almost ancient grandmother—though Pulcheria was no more than two months older than youthful-looking Olga. Pulcheria recklessly played at old age at a time when quite a few women picked themselves up and stayed in shape for a long time. Olga, for instance, recently had made herself look even younger with the help of cosmetic surgery. Pulcheria felt a little scared of Olga’s taut face and avoided looking directly at it, a habit Olga interpreted as an admission of inferiority. One could see through Olga at a glance, while Pulcheria was shielded by an ironic guardian angel who understood everything about everyone—which was why Pulcheria just sighed when their third colleague, the genuinely young Camilla, made some wisecracks about Olga’s surgery. Incidentally, Camilla had not been invited to Olga’s party. Olga had probably decided that in her war with the boss, Pulcheria was a safer bet than the rebellious Camilla, who, by the way, would not have wanted to waste an evening with old hags. She had other plans, dreams to pursue, so let’s not worry about this Camilla—she didn’t come to the institute from the street, either; she, too, had relatives in the right places.

  After whiling away in her corner, Pulcheria joined the other guests at the dinner table and continued her inconspicuous existence. She nibbled and drank a little until she realized the guest on her right was asking her name. She told him, and they began to talk about a certain scholar whose life happened to be Pulcheria’s special subject. The scholar had been exposed and denounced; these days his name was mentioned only pejoratively, but Pulcheria knew and loved him as an etymologist might love a bug she’s discovered, even if it’s harmful. In a quiet, reserved voice, Pulcheria firmly dismissed the pejorative note in her neighbor’s tone. Her neighbor brought up some familiar arguments, but Pulcheria didn’t want to debate a layman and just sighed. Only once did she bother to correct him, and her correction was so elegant and to the point that the guest looked at her intently as if seeing her for the first time. Pulcheria, too, focused her tired eyes and through her exhaustion saw a missing front tooth and blinking pale eyes; but what she really saw was an innocent, dreamy young boy.

  The guest kept looking at Pulcheria and smiling. There are people who smile at everything and everyone, and one shouldn’t take their smiles personally, but this man smiled with a purpose. He smiled in admiration of Pulcheria’s intelligence, of her brilliant conversation, and as a result Pulcheria fell in love—a pitying, tender love.

  She blossomed, her angelic soul delivering a ray of kindness, and thus the matter was settled. Quietly but firmly Pulcheria described her scholarly pursuits, but the subject of their conversation was of no importance; only the essence mattered, and the essence was that these two people had found each other at a noisy dinner table, while their hostess flew to the kitchen and back, beaming with purple blush on her new cheeks—although on one of her trips she did stop to whisper something loudly in the guest’s ear. A loud whisper of this kind usually carries an insult for the person nearby, but Pulcheria understood nothing of what was said. When Olga left, their conversation resumed, and when Pulcheria got up to leave, the guest followed her to the door, changed out of his house slippers and into winter boots, and walked out with her. They walked to the metro station in the crisp, cold air, and somehow Pulcheria wasn’t embarrassed by her coat with its hanging threads or her balding fur hat, which she’d been wearing since college. Her face shone; her eyes opened up; her guardian angel worked his way to the surface through the layers of aged flesh.

  They walked down the steps to the train. He rode with her to her station, and then they walked again, for a long time, all the way to her door. There he kissed her hand, then left. They didn’t exchange phone numbers. Pulcheria didn’t even ask his name. She disappeared into the dark entrance, thinking of nothing, but later that night she woke up in despair, realizing she couldn’t ask Olga anything about him, not even his name.

  The next day Olga got into another scrape with their boss, who asked her to fetch a folder from the file cabinet, even though they were in the same room. A hissing exchange ensued, an exchange that Pulcheria, absorbed in her dreams about the Stranger, missed entirely. Olga seemed to avoid Pulcheria and didn’t invite her to lunch, either sensing Pulcheria’s new indifference or feeling indifferent herself. Nonetheless, Pulcheria brought her tray to Olga’s table. In spite of her decision not to ask any questions, she immediately asked, “So how did it end?”

  “What do you mean, how?”

  “Well, I did leave early. . . .”

  “Ah, who cares about washing dishes? But what do you think of her? Treating me like her secretary! And who is she? Just the wife of our idiot director’s friend. And she thinks she can boss us around!”

  Olga then made a short speech about her own connections, which she had, it turned out, at the highest level; and speaking of husbands, her own husband was still very much respected as a mathematician, despite his illness.

  “What’s wrong with him?” Pulcheria asked indifferently, still hoping to shift the conversation back to the party, to the Stranger.

  “The worst,” Olga announced. “Schizophrenia.”

  Pulcheria felt she had to say something comforting.

  “I don’t trust such diagnoses,” she said calmly.

  “He’s had it for a long time, it turns out. He complained about his stomach, lost a lot of weight, quarreled at work, and then they didn’t pass his thesis. . . .”

  “But what’s so crazy about it?” Pulcheria asked. “Dissertations don’t make it through committees all the time!”

  “At the hospital he was smashing his fist into the wall. They thought it was from some sort of pain, but then they asked me, and I told them everything. He was calling for you, they told me, for Anya.”

  “Anya?” Now Pulcheria was really listening: it was as though Olga were trying to tell her something. She didn’t yet know that her entire future was outlined in this conversation.

  “That’s right—Anya. As if anyone ever wanted him except me. At least he doesn’t have my office number; at my previous job he called ten times a day. A jealous nut.”

  “So how are you coping?” Pulcheria asked weakly.

  “How? At least he’s still okay in bed or else I’d hang myself, that’s how. Did you notice the men at my party? My lovers—all of them. And their wives are my friends. So what shall we do about this bitch?”

  Olga’s story confronted Pulcheria with the shadowy, murky aspect of life where photographs get mutilated and then dropped on family doorsteps. These disturbing thoughts alternated with waves of misery. On the outside Pulcheria appeared to be processing the same old letter over and over. Later that evening, approaching her house with heavy grocery bags, she saw at the darkened entrance his uncovered gray head. Casually and simply he appeared before her. They walked to her apartment. The young family’s room was dark and quiet; either they were walking the baby, or all three were resting before the sleepless night, because the baby often cried between three and five in the morning. The kitchen was strewn with drying diapers. Pulcheria invited the guest into her neat little room, which was furnished with shabby but genuine antiques: her grandmother’s little round table, and two bookcases with old books. The guest began looking through the books. Pulcheria brought some tea and fried potatoes; they ate in silence. The guest was absorbed in a book. He read a little longer, then got up to leave. They didn’t touch. After he left, Pulcheria took the book from the table and pressed it to her breast.

  Every night after work she flew home, skipping groceries. She cleaned, cooked, and scrubbed, barely understanding what she was doing. She couldn’t eat, and lost a lot of weight. He came every night, always bringing the same pastry. They had tea, then he read to her or scribbled formulas. Her daughter and son-
in-law quickly got used to the visitor and greeted him politely but didn’t linger with conversation, so purposeful did he look, as did Pulcheria when she arrived home to greet him.

  At work Pulcheria kept her nose to her desk. Olga lost interest in her. In a reverse move, Olga joined forces with Tsarina against young Camilla, who was always late or on sick leave but otherwise got her work done and indeed recently submitted a substantial article. Eventually it became clear that Camilla was expecting a baby and needed to keep her job until her maternity leave. Tsarina and Olga started a search for Camilla’s replacement and interviewed candidates right in Camilla’s presence. Poor Camilla tried to protest but continued to swell and barely dragged her feet. Clearly Olga and Tsarina needed a constant target for their warfare, and at least it was Camilla for now, but Pulcheria knew her turn would come eventually. A rumor spread through the institute that Pulcheria wasn’t all there because she was late with her reports, never came to the cafeteria, and spent her lunch breaks buying groceries. But how could she write her reports if he sat in her room every night like a rock? She worked at night, and in the morning she dragged herself to work, where she scribbled meaninglessly on her index cards, barely awake.

  After eight weeks of this, her mystery guest vanished. Three horrible days later Pulcheria forced herself to go to the cafeteria and to join Olga and Tsarina at their table. They were glad to see her and advised her to get a consultation with a good shrink (Olga offered her contacts). Tsarina praised Pulcheria’s article, which was finally finished; Olga praised her thinness; and then the two resumed a conversation that almost made Pulcheria faint.

  “So I won’t be here till lunch,” Olga announced meaningfully.

  Tsarina replied that she could do as she wanted.

  “Because, you see, he is in the ward for the violent, where he can easily be killed—the orderlies can do it. He needs to be transferred to the second floor, where they know him. Where he is now they’ll make him a vegetable or an impotent.”

  Tsarina smacked her lips in sympathy.

  “When I called the ambulance, he wouldn’t go peacefully and screamed for help—that’s why they put him with the violent.”

  Here Pulcheria asked whom they were talking about.

  “My husband,” Olga said. Her cheeks were ashy. “And guess what he yelled? That I was his enemy! He tried to push the window out with his head, cut himself, and then our cat ran in and began licking his blood like a cannibal. . . .”

  “How did it all begin?” Pulcheria asked, barely breathing.

  “The usual way: he started to disappear from home, then come back a day or two later, dirty and hungry. . . .”

  She’s lying, Pulcheria thought.

  “What else. . . ?” Olga continued. “Couldn’t sleep, didn’t talk to anyone, went to work once a week; but you know what they think of him—a genius! He submits an article once a year, and the whole pack write their dissertations based on it. I went to talk to his boss, who promised to send him to a health spa. . . . Then he tried to jump. . . .” Tears were streaming down Olga’s unlined face.

  Now Pulcheria knew. She just needed to find out where they were keeping him.

  “He’ll be out,” she promised. “My brother was at Kashchenko Asylum, and they let him out.”

  “Well, we haven’t been to Kashchenko yet,” Olga replied wistfully. “We go to the clinic that took him the very first time, when he was calling for Anya. He almost smashed a brick wall there with his fist.”

  Tsarina remarked that everything would be fine—they’d let him out, and things would resume their normal course.

  “Maybe, maybe. . . . Still, how much can one take? Listen to this. . . .” And Olga related that “the bitch”—that is, her son’s wife—wanted to sue Olga and her husband for housing—again!

  “I keep telling that son of mine, ‘Whatever you get through the courts will eventually be hers; she’ll divorce you as soon as you have a place of your own!’”

  It was the righteous rage of a person who fought a long and dirty battle to be alone in a huge apartment.

  Pulcheria, petrified, listened attentively.

  “The funny thing,” Olga observed, returning to her husband, “is that he always finds some slut to look after him. They visit him at the hospital, bring him chicken soup. Thank God they don’t let anyone in now because of the flu epidemic. Only letters. He refuses to eat anyway.”

  “Just like my brother,” Pulcheria said. “But he was a political dissident, so they fed him through a tube.”

  “I don’t know about dissidents,” Olga replied irritably. “This one wouldn’t eat because of schizophrenia; it’s a form of self-cure—that’s what the doctor said. On the floor for the violent, they don’t fuck around, you know. The moment you stop eating they electroshock you: it feels like an electric chair, they say, only you get many jolts.”

  Pulcheria held herself together with her last reserves of strength; she knew Olga was waiting for her to squirm like a lab mouse. Finally the lunch ended, and Pulcheria could crawl back to her desk. Her suffering had ended and his begun, on the floor for the sick animals. From a woman rejected by her lover, Pulcheria had transformed into a woman forcefully separated from him—an enormous difference. She even felt some small sympathy for Olga. She was thinking calmly, resting after the horror of the last three days. Waves of love rocked her over the unwashed floor of her office, over dusty letters, and she whispered words of affection, sending him strength and support. Someday his suffering would end, she told herself, but she must act with the utmost caution, calculate every step until the final victory, his freedom—although, as she knew from her brother’s experience, things were not so simple; and getting the person out wasn’t the end of it. The issue of violated human rights was the easy, formal aspect of the problem; the real problem was forcing the person off his perch, his customary place in life, even when the place was such as his. One must never force anyone; people must do everything themselves. Think of all those who tried to help him before, all those women with their chicken soup—where are they now? They all vanished into oblivion, but she, Pulcheria, must stay in his life, remain his loyal, humble wife. She must wait. Victory would come. What had been done to him was too fragrantly unlawful—his son would get him out. Victory would come, but without her. Oh pain of pains—not to know anything! Not to see him!

  “Would you like to come to the hospital with me?” she heard Olga’s voice over her shoulder. “After all, you were sitting next to him at the party; you talked to him all night, forgot about the rest of us.”

  “So that was your husband?” Pulcheria asked in an even tone.

  “Of course it was. He took you home, didn’t he? I asked him to.”

  “He walked me to the bus stop, that’s all. How was I supposed to know he was ill? I’m afraid of mental patients; I don’t even write to my brother in the U.S.”

  “Still, I wonder,” Olga announced, staring at the dirty wallpaper above Pulcheria’s desk. “I wonder where all these sluts come from—the ones who chase after sick people.”

  “Well, I haven’t chased after anyone,” Pulcheria objected coldly. “He invited himself. We only walked to the bus stop. I had no idea he was sick.”

  “Come with me, then. Tsarina will let us both go.”

  “I have a little grandson at home.”

  “But this is during work hours!”

  “Why would I go there? I’m no one to him, a stranger.”

  “He won’t yell at me so much in your presence.”

  “I’m afraid,” Pulcheria said, and pulled out the next package of old letters.

  “You didn’t happen to see where he went after he took you to the bus stop? Because all this time he’s been living with someone; he hasn’t slept with me, that much I know.”

  “Not my fault,” Pulcheria responded c
oldly. “You should have heard what he said about my old man.” Pulcheria pointed at the portrait of her scholar, the one in which he had a mustache like Hitler’s and pince-nez like Beria’s. “He said I’m wasting my time on the old bastard.”

  “Yes, that he does well: humiliate and devalue; that’s his defining trait. He is the only genius; the rest of us are retards. He thinks the apartment belongs to him alone, but they gave it to all of us! He actually wanted to exchange it for a one-bedroom for our son, a studio for himself, and the dregs for me. How he screamed, that son of ours! I’ve got to get him to a psychiatrist, too. He claims my husband has signed all the papers, but that means nothing. I’ll declare him legally insane and become his guardian! They want housing? He, and especially she, will get nothing!” Here Olga added a few invectives.

  Suddenly Pulcheria blushed, but Olga didn’t notice—she herself was purple in the face and kept on cursing and threatening, but all in vain.

  “You should take Tsarina with you,” Pulcheria calmly advised.

  “Forget it,” said Olga, deflated. “I’ll go by myself—it’s not the first time.” And with that she left Pulcheria alone.

  Pulcheria, having passed Olga’s exam, continued to sweat over her letters in her tiny windowless office. She worked in a great misery. It was almost March. She knew she had to wait patiently. One thing was certain: it wouldn’t cost Olga anything to set Pulcheria’s house on fire or to bribe the orderlies to get rid of him quietly. She also knew that he, her formerly mysterious guest, could have forgotten her already. Love likes secrecy and playfulness; it flees too much devotion and heavy emotional debt. It was possible that under the present circumstances he didn’t care for love games anymore. It was even possible that he blamed ridiculous old Pulcheria for his troubles.

  Pulcheria waited. The only change she accomplished was a quiet transfer to another division. Along the way she lost more weight, and almost fainted from weakness. It was the end of June when, coming home late from the library, she saw his gray suit and disheveled hair. Her guest stood up and opened the door. She stumbled shamefully. He supported her by the elbow and led her to the elevator.