Jacob's Ladder

by Ludmila Ulitskaya

  With Mikhail’s arrival, the house livened up. Even old Kerns—who was deeply affected by the banishment to Siberia of his eldest son, from whom they received only smatterings of news—grew more cheerful. He was a silent presence at the evening gatherings of friends, and was visibly pleased at the young people’s arrival. In addition to Mikhail’s old friends Ivan Belousov and Kosarkovsky, there were new faces, too. A guitar came to replace the all-but-destroyed piano. It was a poor substitute, but the musical repertoire of the guests sitting around the table changed with it, and there was more singing. There was nothing they didn’t sing—Jewish songs, Ukrainian songs, Russian love songs …

  Mikhail bought Marusya tickets to the theater and the philharmonic, five tickets at a time—balcony tickets, it must be said, but this made Marusya very happy, because she could invite her cousins or her girlfriends. Mikhail’s generosity was lavish, and every one of his visits home was like a holiday. Perhaps the only thing that put a damper on these visits was a sense of injured annoyance that arose in her each time: in the capital, Mikhail was moving in social circles that seemed to be populated by semi-celestial beings, and he was in ecstasy over them. For many years, Marusya kept one of his letters from that period. She showed him the letter only years later, during one of their deep ideological disputes, as evidence of his vanity and propensity for idle chatter and name-dropping.

  Self-impressed and opportunistic. That’s what he is! Marusya thought angrily. My brother is just like Khlestakov, in Gogol’s play, The Government Inspector. The letter was preserved in the willow chest, together with the other correspondence that Marusya had intended to sort through. But she never got the chance.

  11

  A Letter from Mikhail Kerns to His Sister, Marusya

  (1910)

  ST. PETERSBURG–KIEV

  NOVEMBER 25, 1910

  8:00 A.M. (ACTUALLY, P.M., BECAUSE WHEN I WAKE UP AT 7:00 I HAVE TO LIGHT THE LAMP FOR THE NEXT TWO HOURS, UNTIL IT GETS LIGHT. OUTSIDE, IT’S STILL NIGHT.)

  My dear Marusya,

  You write me with indignation that the letters I write other people are more serious and filled with more details than the ones I write you. So that I can feed your curiosity and your demands (fully justified) in at least one letter, I will begin with … a description of my daily life. (Don’t be surprised by the change of ink: I’ve just managed to walk down the whole of Liteiny Prospekt, cross Semyonovsky Bridge over the Fontanka River, walk down Karavannaya Street, and along a section of Nevsky Prospekt. I’m now sitting in the offices of G. Block and Partners and continuing this letter.)

  That explanation makes it seem like I must have walked five versts, but the whole trek only takes eleven or twelve minutes by foot. There are bridges everywhere you look, and many of them are terribly grand; you’ll see for yourself. (It often happens that you think you’re walking down a very broad avenue, and suddenly you realize, Oh, it’s Troitsky or Liteiny Bridge.) But to continue: until the end of October, there was sunlight—some clear, sunny days, etc.—but now I’ll be hanged if there’s a single clear patch of sky anywhere in sight! And it will stay this way till the end of February. Not one clear day to look forward to! As for the “daytime nights”—it only really gets light at 9:30 in the morning. Anyway, when it’s winter at home, is it easy to rise at 7:00 to read or write? It gets dark here at 3:00 or 3:30 in the afternoon. Well, what of it—at home we have dark, gloomy days sometimes, too. In short, it’s wrong to slander our Petersburg.

  I continue: After I rise at seven in the morning (night), I light the lamp and begin my morning toilet. I have to shave regularly in S. Pb., since I want to look interesting and young (at least for the editors—there’s no one else I want to impress here). Then, at eight o’clock, Marya brings in the samovar (all this by lamplight). Marya is a sweet old grumbler who spends most of her time talking to inanimate objects: to the stove, the samovar, the lamp, the oven, the broom, etc. A slice of life—here’s a monologue. Marya (with heartfelt tenderness): “Poor little thing! Why aren’t you burning? Oh Lordy! The wick! The wick is too short. What do we do now? Eh? Oh, my little sweetie! Well, never mind, I’ll go out and buy a new wick—and then you’ll burn. You’ll burn nice and strong!”

  When the doorman calls me to the telephone and stumbles over the surname, she is quick to say: “I know, I know. Since you can’t pronounce it, it has to be one of ours!”

  * * *

  I continue: I’m in the office at nine o’clock sharp. I used to sleep until two in the afternoon. Now I work, keep records, write verse, relate anecdotes to all the other employees—there are about fifteen of them—until five o’clock in the afternoon (evening), with a short break for two glasses of tea and a chunk of ham (quarter-pound). At exactly five, I leave to eat dinner. Now I take my meal in the renowned restaurant Kapernaum’s. I’m sure you’ve come across the name of this restaurant in literature, because it has been celebrated by many of our best-known writers. The whole of literary Petersburg eats here. (At the restaurant called Vienna, people only dine late.) Everyone frequented Kapernaum’s in their time: Dostoevsky, Griboyedov, Pushkin, Lermontov, Zhukovsky, Saltykov-Shchedrin, Sheller, Turgenev—the list goes on. I have seen Kuprin, Potapenko, Barantsevich, Poroshin, Gradovsky, Skabichevsky, Artsybashev—all the modernists, the naturalists, the cat-skinners; in short—everyone who’s anyone! I am there every day from five-thirty to seven o’clock.

  Starting at seven, I begin to live with my whole heart and soul. I visit editorial boards, lectures (I never miss a single literary or scholarly talk, because the learning must go on). On Friday I was at a closed literary gathering (i.e., the public was not invited). Vladimir Sergeevich Likhachev read about sixty of his poems. They were very fine. To acquaint you a bit with the circles I now move in, I’ll mention the names of the new acquaintances I like to converse with: Batyushkov, Ovsyaniko-Kulikovsky (the very same), Bogucharsky, Vengerov, Linev (Dalin) (remember his Not Fairy Tales?), Brusilovsky, Andruson, Poroshin (the last three visit me at home), Merezhkovsky (Dmitry Sergeyevich, he’s brilliant), Likhachev, Gradovsky (my protector and friend—thrice my age; he presented me his book Two Plays with a warm inscription in it). Also I. A. Poroshin, Chyumin, oh, and I almost forgot: our darling, whom we all adore—dear Nadezhda Alexandrovna Lokhvitskaya (Teffi)—is now my interlocutor. She’s heard all about you, too. I won’t go on enumerating all my acquaintances; otherwise, you might explode with envy!

  I’m blossoming like an aromatic country burdock. I now read my poems only to other writers and poets, the literati. I have only read once to the public at large—“In the Watchmaker’s Shop” and “Night Visions” (news—“enormous success,” as they write sometimes on posters). I write a great deal, and talk, and feel I’m sprouting wings in the region of my ribs. My poems have been accepted in: The New Journal for Everyone, Education, The Lively Word, The World, and The Dale, among others. Not bad for a start. Some editors give me the same honorarium they give Roslavlev and Dyadya Fedya: forty kopecks a line. I’ll be a millionaire by February. For now, I’m in debt. I don’t know whether I’ll get clear of it by New Year’s. And fifty rubles of my current salary is nothing to sneeze at … But don’t worry, Marusya, I will earn the money for your tuition with my literary labors. It’s not all for Mark. Oh yes! “At the Mirror” will appear in Theater and Art. I moonlight now and then for Averchenko (Satyricon). A ruble here and a ruble there—it all adds up.

  You say Mama is angry that I don’t write. If only she could put herself in my shoes, she’d understand—I’m so busy I don’t even have a spare second. Besides, when I write to you, I see everyone before me and I’m talking to all of you. Explain this to them, please!

  I think that with this letter you’ll be “pleased” for the time being.

  Write to me on thin paper in small script. I’ll send you stamps at some point. What’s going on at home? Are you freezing to death? Lord, it’s so painful to me to think about the daily hardships, about the frost in the rooms, etc.
, etc.

  On Friday, I will go to the Society of Writers and Scholars, where Gradovsky is reading (he was supposed to read last Friday but took ill, so Likhachev read instead). I’m always there on Fridays.

  In fact, Friday is the best day of the week for me, because on that day I float in clouds of “chimera-like propensity” (as dear Ivan Ivanovich Marzhetsky says) and bask in the presence of my radiant literary family. I think I already told you that I received a personal pass to the St. Petersburg Literary Society, and it was suggested I put myself up for nomination. I hemmed and hawed (for show), but my heart was singing. Toward the New Year, I will be selected—for my name is printed (this is the custom) and distributed to all members, to find out whether anyone can point to any of my sins. Then they “announce” me at two consecutive meetings, and only after that is it put to the (secret) vote. It’s something like the ancient feudal custom of bestowing knighthood on someone. I am somewhat timid and apprehensive about the whole thing, because I haven’t made any special contributions yet to literature. Nevertheless, the future is cloudless and bluey! (I think this is a neologism … “bluey”!) I love new words—“speedupping,” “twinx,” “itaksigranstal,” “pokomopstkzhopaktotepel…” I love the “sonorous and impure spirit.” In short, I am a modernist. (I have a dramatic poem called “I am a Modernist” for which I would have myself flogged. In any event, I’ll send it to you.) As a companion piece to the poem “Book,” I wrote a poem called “Newspaper.” It will pass. Where it will end up I don’t know, because I have to think long and hard about it first. I only know that not a single newspaper would ever print it.

  How’s Mama? Is it possible that even now she’s bustling about the stove? This makes me so unhappy. You can’t imagine how much I want you to be able to live well, to be warm and carefree. Oh, how I long to be a leading light! If not for the fame, then for money. It’s all one! I have one poem called “To the Gourmet.” You must read it. You’ll see how much truth it contains.

  Go to Ms. Nelli and give her my regards; kiss Anya-Asya-Basya-Musya-Dusya-Verusya, and all our cousins, who don’t rhyme. Greetings to Boomya. Don’t forget. Why didn’t she respond to my letter? Now I don’t remember; I think I wrote her. Tell Nelli that I’ve become good friends with a Polish writer named A. Nemoyevski. Has she read him? Tell her that a certain gentleman who was sitting with us at the Editorial Board and didn’t say a word to anyone for three days (I thought he was a Brit) turned out to be a Pole, and when I started talking to him in Polish, he nearly threw himself on my neck and kissed me (he’s our Warsaw agent) and wouldn’t let me out of his sight after that. Here I don’t hesitate to speak Polish like a natural-born … Turk! I make tons of mistakes, of course.

  I still have a lot to tell you, but that’s all for today. I do everything in extremes!

  If need be, write me at poste restante, or c/o G. Block and Partners, 62 Nevsky Prospekt.

  I receive several newspapers and journals. I buy books.

  There are many pretty blue eyes here—but none of them are dear to my heart.

  I have spent four hours writing this letter! I’m exhausted. That’s enough.

  12

  One-of-a-Kind Yurik

  Yahoos and Houyhnhnms

  (1976–1981)

  At least a whole year passed after the child was born before Nora realized what profound changes were taking place in her as well. Besides the obvious things, things that were to be expected—that she was destined for lifelong servitude to Yurik, that she was intimately, physiologically dependent on whether her child was hungry, healthy, or in good spirits—she discovered that her perception of the world had become doubled, as though it had acquired a stereoscopic property. A pleasant puff of wind blowing through the window became both frightening and alarming, because Yurik turned over in his crib from the stream of air on his cheeks. The tap of a hammer in the apartment above, which she wouldn’t even have noticed before, was painful to her ears, and she responded to these blows from the depths of her body, just like the baby. Moderately hot food now burned her mouth; the tight elastic of her socks irritated her. These and many other things she now seemed to measure with two different thermometers—one for adults and one for children.

  The habit of constant analysis so quickly took root in her that she became a bit frightened for herself. She hadn’t expected motherhood to alter her entire biochemistry so thoroughly. She hoped that when she stopped breast-feeding him her familiar world would re-establish itself. But this never happened. On the contrary, it was as though, together with the baby, she was learning to know what was soft, hard, hot, or sharp; she looked at the branch of a tree, a toy, any object at all, with primordial curiosity. Just like him, she ripped pages of newsprint and listened to the rustling of the paper; she licked his toys, noting that the plastic duck was more pleasing to the tongue than the rubber kitten. Once, after she had fed Yurik, she was wiping the sticky cream of wheat off the table with her hand and she caught herself thinking that there was indeed something pleasurable about smearing it on the surface. Yurik was thrilled when he saw his mother doing what he liked to do, and started slapping his little palm in the mess of porridge. Both of them were rubbing their hands around on the tabletop. Both of them were happy.

  Nora shared fully in the surprise and excitement of the baby the first time he saw snow falling from the sky and the cold white carpet on the ground. He stamped around in his little boots, examining the ribbed footprints and tracks they made, caught snowflakes, put them in his mouth and wanted to chew them (but they melted, and he didn’t understand where they had gone—he stuffed his mitten into his mouth and licked it). Nora stood beside him and tried looking around through his eyes: a huge dog that towers a head above you, a giant bench you can neither climb up on or sit on, a statue of Timiryazev with only the pedestal visible, the rest of the monument stretching up to the clouds.

  With her son, Nora became reacquainted with the feeling of water—she filled up the bathtub, crawled in with the baby, and enjoyed watching him splash the water with the palms of his little hands, trying to drink the flowing streams and grabbing hold of the water to lift it up, indignant and unable to understand why it ran through his fingers.

  Sensing that the child and his remarkable world were leading her into a volatile, uncertain region, she decided to put down anchor—she acquired a once-a-week lover, youthful Kostya, one of the recently matured young men who had studied under her several years before in the classes for young people. “Dialysis” was how she referred to these hasty evening visits. She didn’t bother to invite Vitya for this purpose: he was angry at her and couldn’t forgive her callous use of him to fulfill her biological needs. Kostya was easygoing, frisky, and nearly mute; he demanded nothing of Nora. Sometimes he even brought her flowers. Once, Nora put these abstract, meaningless carnations into a vase in the evening, and in the morning, when she woke up, she saw something very amusing: Yurik had climbed up onto the table and yanked the flowers out of the vase, and was stuffing a whole flower into his mouth with a frown. Nora snatched him off the table, then slowly and deliberately ate a flower herself. It wasn’t at all tasty, but it was edible. That is to say, if you were certain it was food, you could learn to like it.

  Yet even Yurik wasn’t enough to fill the gaping hole Tengiz had left in her life, and she tried to patch it up with any available material. Once-a-week Kostya didn’t plug the gap; he was just a little bandage on a big wound. The best caulking for the hole was work; she was eager for any task or job that didn’t require her to leave home.

  She bought several watercolor pads of twenty pages each, and every evening, after she put the baby to bed—if she didn’t have visitors from the theater, who had grown fond of her home as a hub on various Moscow walking routes—sketched his fingers and toes, his ear, his back, his folds and fat rumples, and tried to capture his gestures. Only one other body in the world was that intimately familiar to her: a head, slightly flat in back; round, delicate ears, much so
fter than the rest of him; a broad forehead; deep-set walnut-colored eyes; long clefts along his cheeks; an aquiline nose with a delicate bridge at the top; a neat little mouth with a somewhat protruding lower lip; and a number of missing teeth.

  With the tips of her fingers, with her lips, she had explored that body so thoroughly that she could sculpt it in clay. She knew by heart the slightly sagging skin on his neck and in places surrounding the muscles—on his chest and his arms. She knew all the skin folds on his stomach that formed when he sat cross-legged, slightly stooped over.

  Tengiz had grown older through the years she had known him, immersing herself in the most intimate details of his body and mind (with long pauses, though deeper and deeper every time); but her child developed more and more wonderful details with each passing month. As he grew, the soft plumpness gradually turned into his first, barely defined shapes—the soles of his feet flattened and roughened up, his teeth came in (slightly crooked on his upper jaw), and the shape of his mouth began to change.

  Nora tried rebuilding her life in a way that would free her from Tengiz. Or, rather, from the absence of him.

  He appeared again, as always, at the moment when Nora had already begun to think that she had parted with him for good and was already reconciled to the idea that the movie that had been in vivid color with him, and was black-and-white without him, was nevertheless interesting. Just then, he called her and asked whether it was convenient for him to drop by in about fifteen minutes.

  “Sure, come right over,” Nora said casually. It had been two years since she had last seen him.