Read Online There Once Lived a Mother Who Loved Her Children, Until They Moved Back In by Ludmilla Petrushevskaya - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Ludmilla Petrushevskaya
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with a colleague, took a look at the walls and floor in my hall, and drew the right conclusion about my affairs. The door, he declared, was wrong, the lock didn’t fit, the ceiling was too low, but I implored them, telling the truth: that we needed protection from a former convict who was registered here. I didn’t cry, just trembled. They quickly lost interest in me; their standard game of claiming the job was impossible without extra pay lost its thrill in the face of my genuine misery. I collapsed behind my new lock, but it didn’t prevent Andrey from robbing me once more—he got a taste for milking my miserable ass.
That month we were in a craze: I beat forty more letters out of Burkin, telling him that I owed money, which he understood. Anything else—childbirth, illness, jail—failed to move him. Only booze and money for booze touched his sympathy; my life tragedies only made him uncomfortable. And how lightly I danced around his office! I fluttered from desk to desk, showering everyone with compliments; my face tightened into a youthful smile; my washerwoman hands, calloused like hooves, had been groomed and the nails trimmed. The little one waited downstairs, with the guard—children were not allowed upstairs. There, on the third floor, I was an unrecognized poet, and the alcoholic Burkin a stern but fair patron of the arts. He ignored my groveling, my “you are my savior” blandishments; he opened and closed his desk drawers, where empty bottles rolled around—a useless hint, since I don’t give bribes; I simply can’t afford them. He chatted on the phone, stepped out, came back; his beautiful young assistants dropped in one by one and almost flopped on his lap; men from other departments also dropped in to wait for someone to take them to the bar next door, while downstairs Tima was stewing, running out of patience, and I had only one thing on my mind: Letters! Give me letters!
Who knows, maybe those girls were unrecognized poets, too, maybe they too needed letters, but Burkin couldn’t support everyone—besides me, the letters fed a widow of one of his friends who had drowned but whose body had never been found, so his two children couldn’t get a pension. Burkin taught her how to write five types of answers. The widow wrote: “Dear Comrade: Unfortunately the subject of your poem (novel, short story, novella) doesn’t fit our publication.” That was answer one. If, miraculously, the subject did fit, “The style leaves room for improvement. Very best.”
What kind of letters did I write? I wrote epic poems. My nights were filled with conversations with the invisible authors—all those retirees, sailors, accountants, students, construction workers, inmates, night watchmen. I quoted, advised, praised, criticized extremely sympathetically. When I submitted my letters to Burkin, he looked as if someone had died. But how could I write differently? Behind each manuscript I saw a living person, some of them ill and bedridden, like Nikolai Ostrovski. Sometimes they wrote again, addressing their manuscripts personally to me, but those Burkin firmly set aside for the “Dear Comrade.” New authors scared him like fire.
• • •
Not long ago I wrote a vignette in prose, surprising myself. It was nighttime, and I was keeping vigil in the kitchen. I wrote in my daughter’s voice.
• • •
Better like this, in the street. The landlord came to inspect his property, found the toilet seat cracked. He had been working in the Far North making big bucks; now he’s back and wants to bring women here, he tells me. You may step out with the baby, or stick around if you want; we’ll have a threesome.
• • •
(Horrible things come to mind when you imagine your daughter completely helpless! Unfortunately, most of this is true. She herself told me about her landlord and her life in general.)
• • •
I was staying over with Katya at Mama’s. In the middle
That month we were in a craze: I beat forty more letters out of Burkin, telling him that I owed money, which he understood. Anything else—childbirth, illness, jail—failed to move him. Only booze and money for booze touched his sympathy; my life tragedies only made him uncomfortable. And how lightly I danced around his office! I fluttered from desk to desk, showering everyone with compliments; my face tightened into a youthful smile; my washerwoman hands, calloused like hooves, had been groomed and the nails trimmed. The little one waited downstairs, with the guard—children were not allowed upstairs. There, on the third floor, I was an unrecognized poet, and the alcoholic Burkin a stern but fair patron of the arts. He ignored my groveling, my “you are my savior” blandishments; he opened and closed his desk drawers, where empty bottles rolled around—a useless hint, since I don’t give bribes; I simply can’t afford them. He chatted on the phone, stepped out, came back; his beautiful young assistants dropped in one by one and almost flopped on his lap; men from other departments also dropped in to wait for someone to take them to the bar next door, while downstairs Tima was stewing, running out of patience, and I had only one thing on my mind: Letters! Give me letters!
Who knows, maybe those girls were unrecognized poets, too, maybe they too needed letters, but Burkin couldn’t support everyone—besides me, the letters fed a widow of one of his friends who had drowned but whose body had never been found, so his two children couldn’t get a pension. Burkin taught her how to write five types of answers. The widow wrote: “Dear Comrade: Unfortunately the subject of your poem (novel, short story, novella) doesn’t fit our publication.” That was answer one. If, miraculously, the subject did fit, “The style leaves room for improvement. Very best.”
What kind of letters did I write? I wrote epic poems. My nights were filled with conversations with the invisible authors—all those retirees, sailors, accountants, students, construction workers, inmates, night watchmen. I quoted, advised, praised, criticized extremely sympathetically. When I submitted my letters to Burkin, he looked as if someone had died. But how could I write differently? Behind each manuscript I saw a living person, some of them ill and bedridden, like Nikolai Ostrovski. Sometimes they wrote again, addressing their manuscripts personally to me, but those Burkin firmly set aside for the “Dear Comrade.” New authors scared him like fire.
• • •
Not long ago I wrote a vignette in prose, surprising myself. It was nighttime, and I was keeping vigil in the kitchen. I wrote in my daughter’s voice.
• • •
Better like this, in the street. The landlord came to inspect his property, found the toilet seat cracked. He had been working in the Far North making big bucks; now he’s back and wants to bring women here, he tells me. You may step out with the baby, or stick around if you want; we’ll have a threesome.
• • •
(Horrible things come to mind when you imagine your daughter completely helpless! Unfortunately, most of this is true. She herself told me about her landlord and her life in general.)
• • •
I was staying over with Katya at Mama’s. In the middle
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