Life Stories

by Ludmila Ulitskaya

  Translation by Alexei Bayer

  Notes for All Alone

  1. An infamous quote attributed to Stalin.

  Oedipus Complex

  (A short story)

  Dmitry Lipskerov

  To My Sweet V.G.

  A guppy is swimming. Her tail is like an oil slick on the water. Her tiny body surrenders itself to the current, weaving now right, now left. The fish likes weak currents. She is trusting, light and graceful. Far too beautiful and too small for the big river full of warm water. She is probably stupid, and her life is practically worthless.

  She will soon spawn. Her viviparous belly is swollen and it weighs her down and pulls her toward the bottom. Her tiny mouth moves incessantly, as though she is chewing a tiny piece of gum. She trails a black string. The string is thin but it thickens here and there. She tries to jerk herself free, but the string becomes longer and longer and coils like a snake, making it more and more difficult for her to swim, and she eventually starts to get mad. She must choose whether to try to get free or spawn. Tiny eyes and tails show through the translucent film of her belly. The mother must make this effort to provide more food for larger fish. Of course, the entire brood won't become food, but a large number will be damaged in the spawning and will be eaten and transformed into other strings.

  Looking at the river from above, it turns out that there are a great number of similar little fish swimming together and getting ready to spawn. At first glance, it might seem that a quantity of oil has been dumped into the water. Thousands, even tens of thousands of guppies, those exotic fish, are about to spawn in a single coordinated effort. Still more hundreds of thousands of identical fish are ready, in their utter stupidity, to fill round fishbowls and square aquariums, to die by the thousands, thanks to inept amateur fish keepers, and to spawn in tight spaces as well as in an unlimited expanse. They all expel tiny strings, which drop to the bottom of glass bowls like black spider webs, muddying the water.

  When I was two and a half years old my mother experienced a hideous shock.

  One day, lying in bed and craftily pretending to sleep, I was taking great pleasure in watching my parent mete out punishment to my older sister who, being almost four years old, could not restrain herself, and, thanks to some fantastic dream in the early hours of the morning, had sent forth a brief jet, spraying not only her half of the sofa bed, but infringing upon Mother's sacrosanct half, as well. Now, Mother was heartily spanking her wet behind.

  I have no idea what my dear sister's dream was about, perhaps a giant piece of hard candy in the shape of a rooster, or naked Fyodor Mikhalych straggling back to his room from the bathroom. It should be mentioned that his cyanotic belly used to scare the little girl badly when she stared avidly at our neighbor. Be that as it may, I don't want to hazard a guess whether the child's bladder had failed her from happiness or horror, but she got her punishment on the spot. When my sister's sobs had nearly stopped and I, having greatly enjoyed the spectacle, was yawning sweetly, our door flew open and two men came in. Both were young and apparently cultured. One even had a thin moustache that twisted upward. An edge of a handkerchief protruded from his breast pocket. The other was more common-looking. He now began to speak, seemingly a little embarrassed in front of my dumfounded mother. She had a dirty nightgown on, with those silly frills on the shoulders, and her right underarm was quite sweaty.

  "We must apologize," said the common one. "We have burst into your room. We even have the key to your door." He took out a key from his pocket that was, in fact, an identical copy of ours.

  Our building was built before the 1917 Revolution and our lock had endured from those prehistoric days, so it was strange to see a copy of our key. Mother had tried many locksmiths and they had all told her that supplies of such blanks had run out by the time our country marked Stalin's sixtieth birthday.

  The one with an upturned moustache got a gun out of his pocket. Nothing like this had ever happened to us before.

  "You've got a choice," continued the common one, holding the key as though it were a gun. "Either we kill your daughter or your son. You have a few minutes to think it over."

  "There is no alternative," added the one with a moustache and wiped his gun with the handkerchief from his jacket. "Do not offer to sacrifice yourself, it will not work. We don't want money, either. And we are not interested in your body," he added quickly, looking at Mother as she pushed aside the blanket.

  Mother was sweating so much her breasts showed clearly through her nightgown, as though a bucket of water had been dumped over her. Her right underarm was tinged with black. My sister let out another installment of urine, now surely out of fear, and began to kick her legs in discomfort. Where had it come from? She didn't seem to drink much before bed.

  "Please, don't waste our time," said the one holding the key. He twisted it around a finger and assured Mother that once she made her choice, he would give her the duplicate and they would never return to our apartment.

  "Otherwise we'd have to kill all of you," added the other one and pointed the hole in the barrel at my uncomprehending face. Suddenly I also had to go to the bathroom. I did not fear punishment because I was too small, and therefore I promptly emptied my bowels—to the great displeasure of our guests. They immediately began to fuss and grew jittery.

  The one with a moustache kept shifting his aim from me to my sister, muttering through his clenched teeth: "Come on, come on. Make your choice." The common one squeezed the key so hard that his fingers turned white. It was getting light outside; the first ray was just about to slip from the tallest roof into our window and work was about to start at the distillery in the basement of our building. In the light of day the one with a moustache turned out to have a hairy birthmark on his hand, just like the one Fyodor Mikhalych had on his belly.

  "I give you one more minute."

  The hole of the gun aligned with my sister's belly button.

  "The son or the daughter?" they asked the question one more time.

  Everything intermingled in Mother's bed: sweat, a child's fear, horror, despair, the inevitability of making a choice and the suffering that would follow it.

  "The son or the daughter?"

  Mother replied:

  "The son."

  She shut her eyes and passed out.

  I don't know why she made this choice. Maybe because a daughter is closer, she could grow up to help my mother and share her common distrust of men. Or maybe because I was still too young and it would be easier for me to die, not understanding what was happening. I don't know. Oh, how my sister's eyes lit up with genuine joy. She opened her eyes wide and raised herself on her elbows in order not to miss the moment when I was punished. She was still very silly. She couldn't be expected to understand that this punishment would be very cruel and final. That she would no longer have a younger brother to play house with. It was then, at two and a half years of age, that I knew I must never wish ill to another being, because otherwise I would be paid back with the same coin. Never rejoice when your sister gets punished, because you too foul up your sheets every night and even now you lie there sticking to the mattress.

  The one with a moustache put the gun to my forehead and squeezed the trigger. A shot rang out and everything was immersed in sadness.

  Ever since then I have had on my forehead a square indentation with uneven edges. I survived thanks to Providence, but after that morning my mother stopped loving me. Perhaps it was because she chose me, and not my sister.

  It isn't true, of course. My mother loves me like any other mother loves her child. No one ever burst into our room and offered her such a preposterous choice. I don't even have a sister, and never had one, which always made me feel sorry and sad. Why do I have such fantasies? Maybe because I'm bored?

  As to the square indentation on my forehead, I do actually have one. It measures the length of the phalanx of an index finger. When women kiss me, they always ask me why I have such an indentation. When they hear my next f
antasy, they stick their wet little tongues into the hole. I'm the only person in the world who gets his brains licked.

  When I was two and a half years old, I had no tin soldiers. I had ordinary nails instead. I stood them on their heads, lined them up in the corridor and played with them lackadaisically. Fyodor Mikhalych used to say that I was a bad boy, and that was why they had never bought me real tin soldiers. Once he stepped on a nail, but he didn't dare to whip me then. Father had just come home for two months and he kept his gun in the armoire. That was why our neighbor temporarily covered his shame with a waffle towel as he walked to the bathroom and why he didn't dare to whip me.

  "You enjoy other people's misfortunes," I told Fyodor Mikhalych. "Don't." I added, killing one nail after another. "My sister enjoyed it so much when I was being killed, she never even got born."

  Once I fell over the threshold and with all my might drove a nail into my forehead. The nail entered my brain all the way to its head. But instead of feeling pain, I felt great pleasure such as couldn't be compared to anything I had ever felt before or since. It was as though thousands of erotic climaxes were joined together. Everything felt by men and women, and by flowers as they are pollinated by a bumblebee, and by stars as they are born was granted to me alone. I rolled up my eyes, stuck out my tongue and began to wheeze. That was how my parents found me when they came back from the kitchen. Besides, my pale little face was covered with a trickle of blood. Apparently, the nail, before reaching the spot in the brain that was responsible for pleasure, hit a blood vessel along the way. In short, my parents thought my innocent soul was headed straight to Heaven. Mother collapsed, hitting a wall with her head, and Father got his gun out of the armoire. But my soul was actually nailed down pretty well and I groaned with pleasure, reviving hope for my precious life. Father stuck his gun into his pants. Mother quickly exhaled, grabbed me in her arms and hopped down the stairs to the exit like a kangaroo. Father followed her, his face contorting. Fyodor Mikhalych would have run out with them, too, but at that fateful moment he happened to be wearing nothing but his underwear. But he promised himself that when I came of age he would buy me real tin soldiers. In the event, the industry stopped making them long before I came of age, and therefore our neighbor could absolve himself of this promise.

  Mother stood in the middle of an empty highway, holding me in her outstretched arms like a Madonna with the dead Child. Blood dripped from a lock of my light hair and fell onto the concrete. Disconsolate, Father sat on the curb but the horizon remained empty. The tires of a late bicyclist swished on the road and the silent horizon froze once more. Surrendering myself to Mother's arms, I breathed very softly, overwhelmed by a wave of pleasure. I withdrew from the outside world and even my mother's wolf-like howls and my father's dog-like whining could not bring me back to this base world of ours.

  Several minutes later a covered military truck at last appeared on the road. Father took out his gun and threw himself under its wheels as though it were an enemy tank. The vehicle managed to brake at the last moment, a sergeant fell out of the cab in a paroxysm of swearing and a moment later we were on our way to the Filatov Hospital.

  "What a blue-eyed angel," said the elderly nurse. "Such a good-looking boy. A pity he isn't breathing."

  Coming through a thin partition separating the operating room from the corridor, the nurse's words served as a catalyst for action.

  Mother opened the window and deliberately stepped onto the precipice.

  The nail was successfully removed from my head, but my heart registered its protest by stopping for a few minutes. What is the value of life if it is emptied of pleasure? The doctors were competent enough and after receiving an electric shock my heart began to pump with redoubled force. I broke into genuine tears, unhappy to be coming back to reality, while they put Mother's leg in a cast. Her fall from the first floor window was an unlucky one and she broke her ankle.

  They discharged us simultaneously, having reassured us that I would be all right. Overjoyed, my parents attempted to make love on and off until sunrise but, full of vengeful resentment, I kept piping up at critical moments. Fyodor Mikhalych's anxious voice kept coming through the door:

  "Shouldn't we call an ambulance?"

  This is a fairly truthful account of how I got the indentation on my head.

  "Come over," my friend's voice came over the receiver. "I've got something interesting for you. Don't delay. I have another surgery."

  "I'll come over right away."

  I put on my pants, ran outside and hurried to the Sklifosovsky Hospital. It was early, public transportation functioned irregularly, and it took me a full hour to get to the hospital. My friend was no longer in the staff lunch room, because he was in surgery. His "something interesting" excited me so much that I got sterilized scrubs from the closet, put on plastic shoe covers, and went to the operating room wearing a surgical mask. All the operating tables were empty except for the last one, at which sat my friend. His eyes were enlarged by horn-rimmed glasses. His yellow hands, covered with rubber gloves, were rubbing iodine onto the shaved head of the patient on the operating table.

  "Sorry. There was no bus."

  "I see."

  There was a pause during which Kazbek—that's my friend's name—made a scalpel incision on the shaved head.

  "Will he live?" I asked, sympathizing with the patient. Perhaps he felt as good as I had felt when I was little, but they, acting against his wishes—

  "Who the hell can tell," replied Kazbek, taking a drill from the instrument table and aiming it at the head. "Thank God it's the last one for today. In an hour, I'm going home to sleep and there is no force on earth that could keep me awake."

  "So what is it?" I asked impatiently.

  "Wait."

  The drill successfully penetrated the skull and Kazbek gathered fragments of bone onto a special rag. Then he placed a finger into the hole he had just made and was silent for several minutes, as though he was sucking in the brain. Then, coming to, he withdrew his finger and examined it. It was red and had brain matter all over it. He said:

  "He won't live."

  "Why not?"

  "See the fluid?" he passed his finger in front of my nose. "In our department almost everybody dies. It's the Severe Trauma department, you see. Mine is the night shift. This one got hit by a fender."

  "Maybe you could try to do something for him?"

  "There is no brain left in there, only mush. We'll keep him on life support, but he'll die in another half an hour."

  Kazbek began to put the head back together. He covered the fragments of the skull with special glue, placed them over the hole like a mosaic, sewed the skin and, having rung the bell, walked out of the operating room. A surgery nurse hurried toward us. She smiled at the Kazakh face of the surgeon and placed a drainage tube into the dying man's mouth.

  Kazbek swallowed the dregs of some tea from a dirty glass and closed his slanted eyes.

  "A friend called from Cholpon Ata yesterday. They have built a gas pipeline over there. Three hours before they were due to start it, one of the welders cut the pipe open and took a mini scooter in there. He welded up the pipe and rode the scooter up and down. He kept riding in there for two hours, until they sent the gas down the pipe. Naturally, there was an explosion and so on. That was all I had to tell you."

  The surgeon opened his eyes.

  "What number is this one?"

  "Forty nine," I replied quickly. "It's one of the most impressive ones. It's extraordinary. Thank you very much. I'll add it to my records right away. Nowadays, suicides with any kind of imagination are becoming increasingly rare. This one is a real gift to me."

  "I'm going to leave this place," Kazbek stated firmly and yawned. "What have I got going here for me? I'm transferring to neurosurgery. I've been invited to Alma Ata. What do I care about this Moscow of yours? At least, there will be fewer people dying on the operating table over there. Besides, everybody over there has slanted eyes, just like me
."

  I wasn't listening to Kazbek. Instead, I thought how I would add his charming story to my files, which would greatly enhance my collection. I had not added such a valuable gem to it for a long time, and because of that I felt joy and elation in my soul.

  After packing her things in a small knapsack and placing her breasts in a travel bra to keep them from swaying, she departed for Moscow. An eight thousand kilometer journey lay ahead of her, and she would have to travel by train and by boat. Six hours on a train and two more on a boat.

  A hugely tall girl with thighs as though cast in concrete, a bright-red braid as thick as the trunk of a birch tree, and enormous breasts as large as fishbowls, she climbed on board the train and headed toward the center of Russia. She had just turned eighteen and her body demanded action. Eventually she will become my mother, but she is, as yet, virginal and pure, and train wheels rattle, bringing her closer and closer to the present.

  Hard-boiled eggs, a dismal landscape out the window, snoring neighbors in the third class car and she, unable to wash for four days. Fat lice crawling on her head, and the braid which she let grow unimpeded since she was a baby has to come off. Nothing to cover the cast-iron behind with, and tears roll down her face, washing off the freckles. Plus, her money gets stolen. It is a story that is familiar to all mothers who come to Moscow from the provinces as young women. Then there is a boat and everybody is sitting together on the deck. Because she is so nervous, it starts early, ahead of schedule. There is no water, even though the sea is right there. She must wash, or else she would die of shame. She goes below deck, where the mechanics are playing cards, and, suddenly tongue-tied from misery, she tells those obscene mugs about her misfortune. They guffaw, touch her hands, deal the cards, put the girl in play and begin to gamble for her in earnest, suddenly becoming sweaty and angry. She stands there, half-dead with fear, frozen like an elephant in hot weather, and it just ends there as suddenly as it began. The lucky runt who wins the hand slinks toward her with a bucket of water in his hand and pushes her behind the engine with his thin hands. He offers to pour water for her in a sweet voice, and lust drips from his eyes like overripe honey from a honeycomb. As if in a dream, she slowly strips her large body, uncovering her red nudity, a body that bears a natural wound. She strains her strong legs that are made for stomping in the fields and through her numbness she feels his animal gaze on her stomach. At this moment, the kind old Lord, saving her for a bright future, runs the boat onto a sandy shallow. Everything breaks up around them and falls down. The mechanics' dried-up arms break off, red-hot coals pour down on them from the furnace and their lust-filled eyes go dark. She stands alone amidst the chaos on her cast-iron feet, her head shaved, and washes her saved body. As though made with condensed milk, wholesome, not diluted by civilization, like a chunk of ice that is golden from the sun, she is saved, preserved, and she sails toward the promised shore, a future woman.