My Mistress's Sparrow Is Dead: Great Love Stories, From Chekhov to Munro

by Jeffrey Eugenides

She made herself seem more real than any of the visible people around him, the people who were still breathing, who were supposed to be alive.

  When I heard, shortly after that, that John Smith was dead, I wasn’t surprised.

  When we were arguing on my twenty-fourth birthday, she left the

  kitchen, came back with a pistol, and fired it at me five times from right across the table. But she missed. It wasn’t my life she was after. It was more. She wanted to eat my heart and be lost in the desert with what she ’d done, she wanted to fall on her knees and give birth from it, she wanted to hurt me as only a child can be hurt by its mother.

  I know they argue about whether or not it ’s right, whether or not the baby is alive at this point or that point in its growth inside the womb.

  This wasn’t about that. It wasn’t what the lawyers did. It wasn’t what the doctors did, it wasn’t what the woman did. It was what the mother and father did together.

  n a t a s h a

  dav i d b e z m o z g i s

  It is the opposite which is good to us.

  —Heraclitus

  When I was sixteen I was high most of the time. That year my

  parents bought a new house at the edge of Toronto’s sprawl. A

  few miles north were cows; south the city. I spent most of my time in basements. The suburbs offered nothing and so I lived a subterranean life. At home, separated from my parents by door and stairs, I smoked hash, watched television, read, and masturbated. In other basements I smoked, watched television, and refined my style with girls.

  In the spring, my uncle Fima, my grandmother’s youngest brother,

  married his second wife. She arrived from Moscow for two weeks to get acquainted with him and the rest of the family. Dusa, our dentist, had known the woman in Russia and recommended her. She was almost forty and my uncle was forty-four. The woman was the latest in a string of last chances. A previous last chance had led to his first marriage. That marriage, to a fellow Russian immigrant, had failed within six months.

  My uncle was a good man, a hard worker, and a polymath. He read

  books, newspapers, and travel brochures. He could speak with equal authority about the Crimean War and the Toronto Maple Leafs. Short months after arriving in Toronto he took a job giving tours of the city to visiting Russians. But he wasn’t rich and never would be. He was also honest to a fault and nervous with people. My grandmother’s greatest fear was that he would always be alone in the world.

  Zina, the woman, had greasy brown hair cut in a mannish style. She was thin, her body almost without contour. The first time I saw her was

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  when my uncle brought her to our house for dinner. She wore tight blue pants, high heels, and a yellow silk blouse which accentuated her conspicuously long nipples. The top buttons of her blouse were undone and a thin gold chain with a Star of David clung to her breastbone. When she kissed me in greeting she smelled of sweat and lilac.

  Zina strode into our house as if she were on familiar territory, and her confidence had the effect of making my uncle act as though he were the stranger. He stumbled through the introductions and almost knocked over his chair. He faltered as he tried to explain how they had spent the day and Zina chided him and finished his sentences. When my mother served the raspberry torte, Zina fed my uncle from her fork. In Russia she was a “teacher of English” and she sprinkled her conversation with English words and phrases. The soup my mother served was “tasty,”

  our dining room “divine,” and my father “charming.” After dinner, in the living room, she placed her hand on my uncle ’s knee. I was, as usual, high, and I became fixated on the hand. It rested on my uncle ’s knee like a small pale animal. Sometimes it would arch or rise completely to make a point, always to settle back on the knee. Under her hand, my uncle ’s knee barely moved.

  After her two weeks in Canada, Zina returned to Moscow. Before

  she left, my mother and aunt took her shopping and bought her a new wardrobe. They believed that Zina would be good for my uncle. The last thing he needed was a timid wife. Maybe she was a little aggressive, but to make it in this country you couldn’t apologize at every step like him. My grandmother was anxious because Zina had a young daughter in Moscow, but she conceded that at this age to find a woman without a child probably meant there was something wrong with her. My uncle did not disagree. There were positives and negatives, he said.

  The decision was made quickly and days after Zina’s departure my

  uncle wrote her a letter inviting her to return and become his wife. One month later, Zina was back in Toronto. This time, my entire family went to the airport to greet her. We stood at the gate and waited as a stream of Russian faces filtered by. Near the end of the stream, Zina appeared. She was wearing an outfit my mother had purchased for her. She carried a heavy suitcase. When she saw my uncle she dropped the suitcase and ran

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  to him and kissed him on his cheeks and on his mouth. A thin blond girl, also carrying a suitcase, picked up Zina’s abandoned bag and dragged both suitcases through the gate. The girl had large blue eyes and her straight blond hair was cut into bangs. She strained toward us with the bags and stopped behind Zina. She waited patiently, her face without expression, for her mother to introduce her. Her name was Natasha. She was fourteen. My mother said, Meet your new cousin. Later, as we drove my grandparents home, my grandmother despaired that the girl’s father was obviously a shaygets.

  One week after their arrival, everyone went down to North York

  City Hall for the civil ceremony. A retired judge administered the vows and we took photos in the atrium. There was no rabbi, no chuppah, no stomping of the glass. Afterward, we all went to our house for a barbecue. One after another people made toasts. My uncle and Zina sat at the head of the table like a real married couple. For a wedding gift they were given money to help them rent a larger apartment. My uncle ’s one-bedroom would not do. This wasn’t Russia and the girl couldn’t continue to sleep in the living room. The one time my grandparents had gone to visit, Natasha emerged from the shower naked and, without so much as acknowledging their presence, went into the kitchen for an apple. While my grandparents tried to listen to my uncle and Zina talk about Zina’s plans to get her teaching certificate, Natasha stood in the kitchen and ate the apple.

  At the barbecue, my mother seated Natasha between me and my

  cousin, Jana. It was our duty to make her feel welcome. She was new to the country, she had no friends, she spoke no English, she was now family. Jana, almost two years my senior, had no interest in a fourteen-year-old girl. Especially one who dressed like a Polish hooker, didn’t speak English, and wasn’t saying anything in Russian either. Midway through the barbecue, a car full of girls came for Jana and Natasha became my responsibility. My mother encouraged me to show her around the house.

  Without enthusiasm I led Natasha around the house. Without enthu-

  siasm she followed. For lack of anything else to say, I would enter a room and announce its name in Russian. We entered the kitchen and I

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  said kitchen, my parents’ bedroom and I said bedroom, the living room, which I called the room where we watch television since I had no idea what it was called in Russian. Then I walked her down into the basement. Through the blinds we could see the backyard and the legs of our newly incarnated family. I said, That’s it, the whole house. Natasha looked around the room and then shut the blinds, rendering the already dim basement almost dark. She dropped down into one of the two velour beanbag chairs I had in front of the television. Chairs that I had been earnestly and consistently humping since the age of twelve.

  —You have all of this to yourself ?

  —Yes.

  —It must be nice.

  —It is.

  —What do you do here?
/>
  —Watch television, read.

  —That ’s it?

  —That ’s most of it.

  —Do you bring girls here?

  —Not really.

  —Have you had sex down here?

  —What?

  —You don’t have to say if you don’t want to. I don’t really care. It doesn’t mean anything.

  —You’re fourteen.

  —So what? That doesn’t mean anything either. I’ve done it a hun-

  dred times. If you want, I’ll do it with you.

  —We ’re cousins.

  —No we ’re not.

  —Your mother married my uncle.

  —It ’s too bad. He ’s nice.

  —He is.

  —I feel sorry for him. She ’ll ruin his life.

  —It ’s hard to imagine his life getting worse.

  —She ’ll make it worse.

  —She ’s your mother.

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  —She ’s a whore. Do you want to know how it sounds when they

  do it?

  —Not particularly.

  —They do it at least three times a day. He groans like he is being killed and she screams like she is killing him.

  A month after the wedding, my uncle, Zina, and Natasha rented a new two-bedroom apartment ten minutes’ walk from our house. This was in the early summer and I was on vacation from school. Instead of going off to camp I made an arrangement to work for Rufus, my dealer. Over the course of the year we had become friends. He was twenty and, while keeping up his business, was also studying philosophy at the University of Toronto. Aside from providing me with drugs, he also recommended books. Because of him I graduated from John Irving and Mordecai

  Richler to Camus, Heraclitus, Catullus, and Kafka. That summer, in exchange for doing the deliveries, I got free dope—plus whatever I shorted off potheads—and a little money. I also got to borrow the books Rufus had been reading over the course of the year. This, to me, was a perfectly legitimate way to spend two months, although my parents insisted that I had to find a job. Telling them about the job I already had was out of the question, and so the summer started off on a point of conflict.

  A week into my summer vacation, my mother resolved our conflict.

  If I had no intention of finding a job, she would put me to good use.

  Since I was home by myself I would be conscripted into performing an essential service. I was alone and Natasha was alone. She didn’t know anyone in the city and was making a nuisance of herself. From what I could understand, she wasn’t actually doing anything to be a nuisance, but her mere presence in the apartment was inconvenient. My family felt that my uncle needed time alone with his new wife and having Natasha around made him uncomfortable. Besides, she was difficult. My uncle reported that she refused to speak to her mother and literally hadn’t said a word in weeks.

  The morning after my mother decided that I would keep Natasha

  company I was on my way to my uncle ’s new apartment. I hadn’t seen

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  him, Zina, or Natasha since the wedding and the barbecue. They hadn’t been back to our house and I had had no reason to go there. In fact, in all the years that my uncle lived in Toronto I had never been to his apartment. Despite occasional invitations, I avoided the place because I preferred not to see how he lived.

  By the time I arrived, my uncle had already left for work. Zina met me at the door wearing a blue Soviet housedress that could have passed for a hospital gown. Again, she wore no bra. I was greeted by nipples, then Zina. She put her hand on my arm and ushered me into the kitchen, where she was filling out forms to obtain credentials from the school board. A stack of forms was laid out on the table along with black bread and cucumbers. She made me a sandwich I did not want and told me

  what a wonderful man my uncle was. How she was very fortunate to find such a man and how good things would be as soon as Natasha became accustomed to their new life. We were co-conspirators, she and I, both working for Natasha’s well-being. She was convinced that I would be able to help her. She sensed that Natasha liked me. Natasha didn’t like many people.

  —I’m her mother, and no matter what she says, I would cut off my right arm for her. But she has always been different. Even as a baby she hardly smiled.

  Zina led me to Natasha’s door and knocked. Through the door she

  announced that I was here. After a brief pause Natasha opened the door.

  She was wearing blue jeans and a souvenir T-shirt from Niagara Falls. I could see behind her into the room. There was a small bed and a table.

  On one wall was an old poster of Michael Jackson circa Thriller. In bold red letters a phonetic approximation of Michael Jackson’s name was written in Cyrillic. I read the name slowly letter by letter since I was effectively illiterate. It gave me something to do while Natasha and Zina glared at each other in acrimonious silence.

  —I’m an enemy because I took her away from her criminal friends.

  I’m an enemy because I wanted to give her a better life. Now she won’t say a word, but one day she ’ll thank me.

  Without breaking her silence, Natasha grabbed my hand and led me

  out of the apartment. As we went past the door Zina called after us tell-

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  ing me to watch out for Natasha. I was to make sure that she didn’t do anything stupid. Natasha should remember what it would do to my uncle if something were to happen to her. Even if she didn’t care about how Zina felt, she should at least consider my uncle, for whom she was now like a daughter.

  In the stairway Natasha released my hand and we descended to the

  back of the building and the parking lot. Outside, she turned and spoke what must have been her first words in weeks.

  —I can’t stand looking at her. I want to scratch out my eyes. In Moscow I never had to see her. Now she ’s always there.

  We wound our way out of the parking lot and toward the subdivi-

  sions leading back to my house. On the way I decided to stop at Rufus’s and pick up an eighth for one of our regular heads. Rufus had a house not far from us, and since it was still early in the morning I knew that he would be home. I walked ahead and Natasha trailed along, more interested in the uniform lawns and houses than the specifics of where we were going. Aside from the odd Filipina nanny wheeling a little white kid, the streets were quiet. The sun was neither bright nor hot and the outdoors felt conveniently like the indoors: God ’s thermostat set to

  “suburban basement.”

  —In Moscow, everyone lives in apartments. The only time you see

  houses like this is in the country, where people have their dachas.

  —Three years ago this was the country.

  We found Rufus on his backyard deck listening to Led Zeppelin, eating an omelette. Although he was alone the table was set for four with a complete set of linen napkins and matching cutlery. Rufus didn’t seem at all surprised to see us. That was part of his persona. Rufus never appeared surprised about anything. At twenty years old he had already accomplished more than most men twice his age. It was rumored that aside from dealing Rufus was also a partner in a used car lot/body shop and various other ventures. Nobody who knew him had ever seen him sleep.

  Even though I had only intended to see Rufus for as long as it took to get the eighth, he insisted on cooking us breakfast. Natasha and I sat at the kitchen counter as Rufus made more omelettes. He explained that even when he ate alone he liked to set a full table. The mere act of setting

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  extra places prevented him from receding into solipsism. It also made for good karma, so that even when he was not expecting guests there existed tangible evidence announcing that he was open to the possibility.

  While Rufus spoke Natasha’s eyes roamed around the house, tak-


  ing in the spotless kitchen, the copper cookware, the living room with matching leather sofas, the abstract art on the walls. If not for the contents of the basement refrigerator, the house gave no indication that it was owned and inhabited by a drug dealer barely out of his teens. This was no accident. Rufus believed that it helped his business. His clients were all middle-class suburban kids, and despite his bohemian inclina-tions, a nice house in the suburbs was the perfect location. It kept him local and it meant that, for his customers, a visit to their dealer felt just like coming home.

  Back on the deck I explained to Rufus about Natasha, leaving out

  certain details I didn’t think he needed to know. As Rufus and I talked, Natasha sat contentedly with her omelette and orange juice. Since we ’d left my uncle ’s apartment her attitude toward everything had taken a form of benign detachment. She was calibrated somewhere between

  resignation and joy.

  I noticed Rufus looking at her.

  —Did I mention she was fourteen?

  —My interest, I assure you, is purely anthropological.

  —The anthropology of jailbait.

  —She ’s an intense little chick.

  —She ’s Russian. We ’re born intense.

  —With all due respect, Berman, you and her aren’t even the same

  species.

  To get her attention Rufus leaned across the table and tapped Natasha on the arm. She looked up from her omelette and returned Rufus’s smile. He asked me to translate for him. His own family, he said, could be traced back to Russia. He wanted to know what Russia was like now.

  What it was really like.

  With a shrug Natasha answered.

  —Russia is shit but people enjoy themselves.

  *

  *

  *

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  After that first day, Natasha started coming to our house regularly. I no longer went to pick her up but waited instead for her to arrive. Through my basement window I could see her as she appeared in our backyard and wandered around inspecting my mother’s peonies or the raspberry and red currant bushes. If I was in a certain mood I would watch her for a while before going upstairs and opening the sliding glass door in the kitchen.