Jacob's Ladder

by Ludmila Ulitskaya

  The sense of being unhappy was alien to Jacob. He did not permit himself the luxury of such feelings, and was ashamed when such thoughts occurred to him. Even in the most vexing circumstances, he tried to derive joy from the small, quotidian gifts of life: the sun peeping out, a green branch outside the window, a pleasant person he met along the way and chatted with about this and that; and, most important, good books. Marusya also knew how to derive joy from small things, but for this she needed Jacob to be beside her. Joy did not come easily to her if there was no spectator to witness it. An actress always needs an audience.

  Jacob was certain that he could conquer Marusya’s despondency with his masculine authority and power, with that rare and wonderful intimacy that had always enhanced their conjugal life: to smooth away, caress, kiss, and bring her to the peak of mutual pleasure, and even beyond, into a realm of pure bliss that left the joys of the flesh behind.

  But, despite his virtuosity with the pen, and however deep and tender his letters to his wife may have been, his physical absence was an insurmountable obstacle for them. He felt this in her letters to him, in the irritation that broke through, in the jabs and reproaches, and, mainly, in the increasing expressions of ideological protest on her part. She called herself a “nonpartisan Bolshevik,” and accused Jacob of political myopia, of floundering in a petit-bourgeois swamp. She had become irreversibly alienated from him.

  He knew Marusya’s impressionability and the enthusiasm with which she always adopted new projects—her infatuation with pedagogy during her studies at the Froebel Institute; pedology, the rejected sister of pedagogy; the new religion of “movement” in the Rabenek studio; followed by theater, then journalism … He was moved by her touching conviction about the “higher good” when one infatuation replaced another, and then hoped that her enthusiasm about Bolshevism, in its nonpartisan variety, would not give way to Party membership. In fact, they would not have accepted her, anyway—the wife of a “wrecker,” an enemy of the people.

  There was still another obstacle, one that lurked in her own character: a boundary that Marusya would not have been able to cross. She was essentially bohemian in nature, and any kind of orthodox discipline, strict Party discipline in particular, was anathema to her. It was Jacob who had reported dutifully to work from a young age; until the end of her life, Marusya was never willing or able to tie herself down with routine work. Her worst fear, the greatest bugaboo to her, was punching in and out—that is, showing up on time for work every day, and leaving at a certain hour, and registering one’s arrival and departure on the time clock.

  There was one other thought that alarmed Jacob. He knew Marusya’s susceptibility and suspected that she might have fallen under the spell of a new, different kind of infatuation. With a man. Jacob was not jealous, although when they were young Marusya had unconsciously provoked him with stories of important, interesting men who had sought her out. She conveyed this primarily in letters. Yet Jacob had actually been inclined to feel some pride in these reports. He completely understood the men who showed an interest in his fiancée, then his wife. Her attractions were such that Jacob could not even imagine comparing her to other women. She surpassed all others in her charms. Even in the fits of jealousy to which she was prone, she never lost her fascinating appeal.

  Her jealousy was unfounded: Jacob never betrayed his wife. That is not to say that Jacob didn’t like other women. He did; he liked them very much. When he was young, he had been desperately in love with a fellow student named Lydia, but she preferred another to him. Back then, at seventeen, he went through the experience of rejection. Even before that, he had liked very much the daughter of the family’s neighbor, the architect Kovalenko; he had been attracted to the sister of one of his friends, and another girl he knew, who attended college. Later, when he was already married to Marusya, he was enamored with a nurse, Valentina Beloglazova, who had given him glucose injections when he was stationed in Kharkov; he also liked Nadezhda Belskaya, secretary at the People’s Commissariat of Labor, where he often found himself. She liked him very much, too, and she gave him to understand this. It was not his eyes, but another organ greedy for pleasure that gave him a signal, which he immediately refused. He kept his own body under control, and didn’t let its demands overmaster him. All in all, accepting the postulate about the primacy of matter and the subordination of the spirit to it, the couple made wonderful mutual use of the body for promoting conjugal happiness, while still considering the Seventh Commandment to be sacrosanct.

  Yet, on this particular issue, Marusya experienced some sort of psychological or emotional malfunction. For some reason, it was terribly painful for her to feel that her husband was attracted to another woman. He never betrayed her, or gave in to his desires—this he swore to her—but if he was attracted to another woman, and only refused to give in to his desires out of moral considerations, what was this morality, then? Was it not purely spiritual? Was it not higher than the flesh in that case? At this point Marusya grew weary, and began to cry. But, at the same time, she insisted on complete honesty in their relations, and constantly tormented herself with the confessions she forced from her husband about how his body reacted to this, that, or the other woman.

  Now this had all receded into a realm of Jacob’s memory that only called up a sad smile in him. Since he could not change his wife’s mood, he postponed the clarification and restoration of their good relations until such time as he could put his arms around her thin shoulders, and chased away the jealous suspicion that someone else was occupying Marusya’s feelings and thoughts, embracing her small shoulders, and doing with her all the mundane things in which there was no beauty, no mystery, but only mutually coordinated movements. Small details seared his imagination—her head thrown back, the blue vein in her neck, the grayish mother-of-pearl of her eyes looking out from under the half-closed lids, and the elongated dimple in her chin. Jacob chased away these thoughts and memories and devoted all his energies toward what he called “productive life.” He went to work, invented all kinds of extra sources of income for himself, such as private language and music lessons; he arranged and settled his life, and sent money and parcels to Moscow, though it was customary for such “care packages” to travel in the other direction—from Moscow to Biysk, to those in exile.

  The letters from home were not comforting. Marusya dredged up all their disputes, artistic or political, and invested them with new energy. Jacob tried to explain himself, which added fuel to the fire; everything became a pretext for new reproaches, until Jacob understood that Marusya simply wanted to pick a fight, no matter the reason. His replies became more reserved, and the intervals between letters grew longer.

  At the same time, his eczema flared up again. His hands and feet were covered with a dry crust that erupted in tiny wet pustules, and it itched, burned, and made him generally miserable. During the day, he kept himself in check, but at night, when he was asleep, he scratched himself until he bled. He would wake up from the pain, then fall asleep again, reaching some strange state of semiconsciousness in which he came to an agreement with the unbearable itching: I’m sleeping, and in my sleep I can scratch the wounds …

  The subject of health became one of the safest in their correspondence. He once wrote his wife that the eczema was playing up to such a degree that it freed him from all the sad thoughts that would otherwise preoccupy him.

  A few days after she received this letter, Marusya’s wrists began itching. The connection between herself and her husband turned out to be much stronger and deeper than she would have liked. Jacob was to a certain degree correct in his surmises. She wanted to free herself from him, but was unable to do so, and she was unconsciously seeking masculine authority and power.

  She was no longer the young, bewitching actress with an undefined and exciting future ahead of her; older men no longer turned around to look at her. But she was not seeking a man so much as an idea that would free her. The ideas about emancipation that had long preoccu
pied her stalled at this point: the bearers of ideas, Marusya’s protests and objections notwithstanding, were men.

  Jacob, with his intelligent love, knew how to quell the mixture of pride and uncertainty that created a room-sized hell in her soul, but she was not alone. Their son, Genrikh, was also in need of support. Like Marusya, he, too, was preparing for flight, but in the most concrete terms: gliders, airplanes, air, the sky … Yet life had deposited him in a place that was the polar opposite of his dreams: the Metrostroi, construction of the subway system. Yet even underground he managed to find the communist romanticism that was so dear to him. Marusya supported him in any way she could, but she had her own problems to deal with.

  Then Ivan Belousov reappeared. A person from the past, from her Kiev youth, a friend of her brother’s, who once was desperately and hopelessly in love with her. He had spent summer evenings in the courtyard of her family’s home, at a long wooden table with a small table adjoining it for the samovar. Incidents seemed to follow Ivan all the time: He would burn his fingers on the samovar, or overturn a glass of tea on her father’s duck-cloth trousers. Once he stepped on an old dog lying beneath the table, and it bit him. It was probably the first time in its entire life that this dog had bitten anyone, and more out of fright than pain. Everyone laughed at Belousov constantly, and there was no person on earth who was more good-natured about the jokes and jibes leveled at him by Marusya’s brother Mikhail.

  Belousov, unable to conceal his feelings for Marusya, watched the sixteen-year-old girl like a child staring at candy. Though Marusya pretended to be angry, she was really flirting with him, always flirting. Several times, she went with Belousov to the theater, and felt uncomfortable and disproportionately small next to him. At six feet six inches, he was twice her size. When he took her by the arm, she yanked it away and advised him to bring a collar and a leash next time—that would make it easier for them to walk together. His excessive height inspired mockery in the Kerns, who were all rather small in stature. He was embarrassed by his height, his long thin hands, which stuck too far out of the sleeves of his shirts, and his enormous boots, which were specially made for him by an Armenian cobbler who charged him for one and a half pairs instead of just one. Ivan turned red, then bunched up his handkerchief in his sweaty hands and rubbed his forehead and his prominent nose, with its large nostrils. To all appearances a mild-mannered, gentle, awkward fellow.

  Meanwhile, Ivan Belousov was a genuine revolutionary, one of the few Bolsheviks in Kiev who knew how to write leaflets. The first one he wrote was about the death of Tolstoy, very cocky and self-assured, summoning people to band together “under the banner of the Social Democratic Labor Party, to struggle for the overthrow of the government of robbers and thieves, against the violence and tyranny of the Tsar’s henchmen, against the deadly etc. evils and of the disintegrating bourgeois-capitalist system.” Tolstoy would hardly have approved.

  At first, Marusya didn’t see him as a real activist. In the fall of 1913, however, when Kiev was reeling from the Beilis Affair, he brought her a leaflet from the RSDRP with a call to protest against the oppression of the non-Russian peoples of Russia, and to strengthen the international union of workers of all nationalities, and informed her that he was the author of the text. That was the moment when Marusya began to regard him with seriousness and respect. But nothing more. She was already eternally, as she thought then, bound to Jacob.

  At about this time, Ivan Belousov was expelled from the university, became a member of the Kiev committee of the RSDRP, and ran a propaganda study circle to which he invited Marusya. He was no longer comically in love with her, although he still blushed and bunched up his handkerchief in her presence. She visited this semi-underground gathering several times, but her enthusiasm for the Froebel movement outweighed her interest in revolutionary politics.

  Shortly before the start of World War I, Ivan disappeared. Marusya didn’t think about him anymore. Twenty years later, in 1935, when she attended the courses on the history of the Communist Party for journalists, in the Institute of the Red Professorate, she met him again. The lecturer, a large bald man in a gray service jacket, was one Comrade Belousov, a professor.

  He began his first lecture with a quote from Lenin: “You can only become a communist when you have enriched your memory with the entire wealth of knowledge accumulated by humanity.” He went on to discuss Marx and Engels, whose ideas Marusya knew already but now listened to attentively. Ivan spoke distinctly, clearly, with careful diction. The only thing lacking in him was artistry, and Marusya had something to compare him to: she had attended lectures by some world-class pedagogues at the Froebel Institute.

  After the lecture, Marusya approached Professor Belousov—not to renew their acquaintance, but to ask him about the program of study. And to get a good look at him … and … just because …

  “Marusya? How did you end up here?” He blushed, took his crumpled handkerchief out of his pocket, and mopped his brow.

  There he was, Ivan Belousov himself. It could not have been said that she liked him in his new guise; rather, he interested her. He walked her home. From the Strastnoy Monastery they walked along the boulevards to the Nikitsky Gates, then turned toward home. He didn’t hunch over to talk to her, as he had before. On the contrary, Marusya strained her long, graceful neck to look up at him, and it seemed to her that he was looking down at her tenderly. They said goodbye at the entrance to her building. From then on, they renewed their friendship and saw each other regularly. Talked about things. Discussed politics. Marusya valued his proletarian rootedness in life—that which was lacking in her.

  At the beginning of March, Marusya’s cousin Asya Smolkina, whom she rarely saw, called her and asked whether she could drop by for a minute. It was inopportune, but Asya said she was already in the neighborhood, and Marusya had to agree. Among her many cousins, Asya had a reputation as the kindest and the stupidest. It is likely that these two qualities share a common core; but perhaps people who are intelligent and unkind yoke them together only to justify the absence of goodness in themselves. Be that as it may, Asya showed up, both good and stupid. Since childhood, she had looked up to Marusya, extolling her many talents, authentic and imaginary; her beauty, which had faded somewhat by now; her intelligence; her education; and, of late, the bitterness of her lot. But, for all her admiration of Marusya, she held Jacob in even higher esteem.

  Her relatives didn’t appreciate the selfless and unquestioning help that Asya bestowed on all of them, distant and close, without exception. They took her empathy and altruism for granted. Only once had Asya received a sign of gratitude for her invisible exploits and deeds—lancing abscesses, giving injections, preparing poultices, and administering enemas to old ladies on their deathbeds. Her whole life, Asya had remembered how Jacob, after returning to Kiev from Kharkov during a three-day furlough, came to her house with a bouquet of flowers, a nearly forgotten sign of gratitude, kissed her hand, which was desiccated from constant exposure to alcohol (the hand of a surgical nurse), and thanked her for saving his son’s life, and his wife’s breasts, with her healing arts. But where had he managed to get hold of flowers during the harsh privations of 1916?

  “My goodness, Jacob, what do you mean? You’re exaggerating. I’m only glad I could help,” Asya murmured, feeling as though she had received a decoration. From that moment on, she had considered him to be the noblest person she had ever met in her life.

  During the rare celebrations when all the relatives got together, Asya usually sat at the far end of the table and devoured Jacob with her eyes, unaware that the other cousins were winking at one another and exchanging glances at her expense. She didn’t consider her raptures over Jacob to be anything like being in love, because since childhood she had been certain that no man would ever marry her, and that it wasn’t even worth dreaming about. The best thing she could do was to serve all the people who surrounded her, without exception. The notion of people who were “near and dear” was unknown
to her. She did not suspect that she had taken a kind of monastic vow, and she didn’t even know she was making sacrifices. Well, is that not what others would call stupid?

  She entered Marusya’s house, smiling her bland, foolish smile. She had tender hairs on her upper lip that promised to become more mannish with the years. Her close-set eyes shone. When she smiled more broadly, her long mouth opened to reveal perfect, white, evenly spaced teeth that looked as if they had been intended for someone else. In her hands she was holding a paper bag with pastries. Marusya boiled the teakettle on a hot plate she had in the room—she tried to avoid going into the communal kitchen if she could help it. Drinking tea and eating éclairs, they discussed the relatives. Marusya didn’t mention Jacob. When Asya asked what news she had of him, Marusya told her about the eczema, which had grown worse. Asya opened her arms wide in a gesture of surprise, exclaiming: “Really? But what a coincidence! Vera’s Annechka also has eczema.”

  Marusya just shrugged. Which Vera was she talking about? Who was Annechka? What was she so thrilled about?

  “I mean that I’m happy because my colleague Vera discovered some old lady in a village near Moscow, an herbalist or some such person. And she gave Annechka, her daughter, some kind of poultice. It stank to high heaven—black stuff, God knows what’s in it—but it helped. It worked wonders! Two weeks later, she didn’t have a single spot. It was just recently. If you want, I can find out about it, and get some of it for Jacob.”

  Marusya promptly forgot about this herbalist and her miracle cure, but a week later Asya called her on the phone. Brimming with excitement, Asya informed her that she had managed to get hold of the potion, that the old woman was simply remarkable, that she lived in the village of Firsanovka, that her whole house was covered with icons. The woman was a fervent believer, but not slow-witted—very sensible and wise, and even rather well read. She had books on botany … A genuine herbalist, and her own grandmother had been an herbalist, too. So folk medicine really was better than any newfangled treatments; Marusya should make sure to get this potion to Jacob, and right away! Otherwise, within two weeks it would go bad and lose its healing properties.