SHE SAID, HE SAID

TRANSLATED BY AINSLEY MORSE AND MAYA VINOKOUR

(With a few exceptions, the stories in this cycle are purely the product of authorial invention rather than “overheard conversations.”)

—…I mean, half a year, can you imagine? To be honest, they’d already given up. Well, I could tell that at least Sveta had given up. Her mother had been driving him into the grave her whole life anyway, seems like she really couldn’t have cared less. So here they are, going to the dacha, her mom wanted to fix up the dacha to sell it, because she’s like: Sveta, ever since he went missing I just can’t stand being there. So then, Sveta tells me: “I’m upstairs sleeping and suddenly I hear my mother downstairs screaming, just screaming bloody murder, and I’m like: ‘Huh? Wha?’—and I race downstairs—and then I see my father, can you imagine?” She’s like: “Tanya, I’m telling you: it was like I saw a corpse. Another second and I’d have gone crazy. He looked so scary, standing there, hair down to his shoulders, dirty all over, thin, all eyes, Tanya, I was about to lose it, my legs were shaking…” Can you imagine? They had basically already buried him. So, what happened was, he was a sleepwalker. All summer he’d been walking around at night digging himself a burrow, and when the first frost came, when they were getting ready to leave the dacha, he went there and slept through the whole winter. And then he woke up in April. No, I mean, really, can you imagine? Crawled to the dacha, doesn’t remember anything, an-y-thing. I mean, talk about being sick and tired, right?

—…the mother split the bedroom in half and made one half into a museum. I mean, she really divided it: she put up the wall like right down the middle of the double bed, so you have to roll over across the bed and lie on his spot to see the other half of the room. And she left everything there just like it was that morning when he left for work. Socks, and like, a wrinkled shirt, a glass on the nightstand. She fills it up with beer—it’s been thirty-one years now, you understand, right?—because the beer dries up—so that it’s all like it was that day. And nothing else. Just a room cut in half, frozen in time. And on the wall that’s, like, facing out, right? She has his picture, and underneath it says “missing,” they searched for him for like three days under the rubble, he worked on the top floors or else they’d have searched longer. I was there once, stuck it out for two minutes, so fucked up. And that was when she wasn’t home, so she wouldn’t be watching. They wrote about it in some newspaper, and their house is in a couple of tourist guides, she lets people in for a couple of hours on a certain day of the week.

—…do you know how I realized spring had come? I found a skull in the vegetable garden. Right away I tried to find the hole. Nah, no hole. Just some bastard croaked in the vegetable garden.

—…practically shaking. And all day, I mean all day I’m staggering around like a sick man, I honestly felt like I was coming unscrewed. And I decided I’m not going home, because I’m just fucking sick of her. I mean, six years, I’ve been living with this woman for six years now, and she pulls this kind of shit over some fucking detergent? I’m telling you, she’s sick in the head, just completely obsessed with her cleaning. She’s lost it. So she screams at me: “I’m fucking sick of this, get out of my sight, get the fuck out of here, you only think of yourself, I hope you die!” I say: “Listen to yourself, the words coming out of your mouth, you’re raising a daughter and this is how you talk?” Then she threw that sweater at me! And then Friday after that detergent—what can I say?—that’s it, I decided, we’re done. You say get out—fine, I’m gone! And that whole day, walking around, you know, I was thinking: OK, so I’ll spend the night at my mother’s, then tomorrow I’ll swing by to pick up some stuff while she’s at work, she has money right now, I’ll leave another couple hundred on the table too, you know, for my conscience—and that’s it, and she can go…I’ll talk to Natasha myself…And then, so we’re already on the way to lunch, but I forgot my phone, so I was like: hey guys, I’ll be right there, and I go back and—the phone’s ringing. And I pick up, thinking—whoever you are, go to hell—and then I hear—well, bawling. For real, she’s bawling like a beluga, sobbing and sniffling. My heart sinks, right away I think—something’s happened with Natasha. I’m like: “Lena, what’s wrong with her, what happened? Lena, tell me, what happened to her?” And she’s like: “Waaahhh…With whoooo?” I felt a weight lift right away. I really can’t handle it when she cries, it breaks my heart, I forget everything, no bad blood or anything, just, you know…And I’m like: “Kitten, kitten, what is it, tell me?” And she’s just bawling. And she says: “In the paaaaper…” I’m like: “What, baby, what was in the paper?” I’m thinking, maybe some relatives or something. But she’s like: “Waaahhh…in the paper…that all men…uuuhhhh…That in twenty thousand years…I mean, not twenty…That you’ll all be extiiiinnct…the chromosome…Waaahhh…” “Lena, baby,” I say, “what are you talking about?” And she’s like: “The chromosome is disintegrating…waahhh…In a hundred thousand years you’ll all be goooone…It’ll just be uuuuussss….” And I’m like: “Lena, so what?” And she’s like: “Lyosha, my Lyosha, don’t go extinct, please! Come home, right now, pleeease!” And I forgot to buy the detergent again. She’s crazy, right?

—…I mean, fifteen years old. So she was still in high school. They’d just started teaching the older grades Safe Sex and Sexual Health, and there she is, seven months along. And all of them—girls and boys both—had to carry these dolls with them around the clock, in order to understand what it means to be responsible for a child. So there she was—one hand on her belly and the other holding the doll.

—…without the kids for the first time in something like six months. I spent the entire dinner telling poor Danya all about how I’m restructuring the whole legal department, poor guy, probably didn’t understand half of it, but I got really into it. But you know, the main thing is, now I’m a partner, I’m holding 20 percent, that’s around another forty-two thousand a year, I mean, just a completely new life for us, a completely new life. So then we’re in the car, I’m all sleepy and drunk, and Danya keeps harping on about how we have to transfer Eva ASAP out of “that den of liberalism”—that’s what he calls Sevenston—into Cornwеll Spring, and I’m sitting there thinking that Eva’s going to blow her stack, but I don’t have the energy to explain it to him…And I’m just listening to him, listening, he says something about the mortgage, that we have to do something…And I’m sitting there thinking: so does this mean I’m a grown-up, then? Am I a grown-up now or what?

—…they’re on the plane already when they say: “Jacqueline, perhaps you’d like to change your clothes?” She’s all covered in his blood, her stockings are bloody and her white gloves too. And she’s like: “What? No! I want the whole world to see what those bastards did!” The rest of the movie’s kind of so-so, a bit long if you ask me, but still, for three days afterwards, you know what I was thinking about? That I would never take those gloves off. I wouldn’t be able to. If I were as much in love as she was, I would have worn those gloves for the rest of my life. I mean, well, probably I’d go crazy first and then I’d be a crazy old lady wearing gloves with President Kennedy’s blood on them. And I’d call them “John.” Both of ’em. Or maybe one of them John and the other one Robert. But I’d have gone crazy beforehand and wouldn’t know about Robert. I’m not making any sense, sorry. But she really was all covered in blood, even her stockings, and she was so…There was something in her eyes…A great woman. And Misha’s never even gotten beat up, you know? Not even just roughed up on the street.

—…and he tries to talk to me for like two hours at a time. But I just don’t even have the energy for it, I just don’t. But he just keeps dragging it out, you know what I mean. And he keeps calling like that every night, every night, and I just don’t have anything to talk to him about, but he just needs to do it, you know? And I sort of understand, I do, but I just don’t have it in me…So yesterday he calls and is like: “So how’s it going?” And I’m just blah, I’m sleepy, and I tell him: “I’m sick, I want to go lie down.” And he asks: “Where does it hurt?” And I just say: “Everywhere.” And then he’s like: “Want me to kiss it…everywhere?” And I got so turned on…

—…talk to somebody, I’m a person after all, I can’t go on like this either! But who can I talk to? Papa? He’ll just start crying, I mean, no way, what good would it do to talk to Papa? No point. But who can I talk to? Alik gets home from work every night at ten and plops down on the couch, shoes and all, one time I said something to him, and he was like: just let me die in peace, as if I’d somehow, you know, said something…I don’t know what. But I’m a person too, you know, I mean, I have to talk to someone! So one time I got out at the Lubyanka stop, on Pushechnaya Street, and there’s the big Children’s World store, and I just thought—well, you can all just go to hell! I went in and on the first floor, you know, where they have that carousel, I bought myself a plush rabbit. You know, the kind with long legs, made to look like it’s already worn-out? You know the kind I mean? Six hundred rubles, no joke, but can’t I do it, after all? The last time I bought myself jeans was nine months ago, well, don’t I get to spend six hundred rubles? Anyway, I shoved him in a bag and brought him home and then, when Alik went to sleep, I shut myself up in the bathroom, sat him down on a shelf and just told him everything, you know, poured my heart out till there wasn’t a drop left…That first night I was up till six in the morning. I was bawling, and taking pills, just doing all sorts of things…And after that there wasn’t a night when I couldn’t find a minute at least. I kept him hidden in a bag in the closet, you know, where the pipes are, we have a bag there with the enema stuff so no one ever even looks in there, and that’s where I kept him. And yesterday my dad had that thing again, so I gave him his meds and put him to bed and went off, to the rabbit, and once I started telling him about it I just couldn’t stop, I went on and on, talking and talking, and then I gave him a shake, you know, and I’m like: “Why so quiet?” And then he looks at me and says: “Listen, did it ever even occur to you to ask what’s up with me?”

—…the wife comes home and the cat smells like someone else’s perfume.

—…some milk, yogurt for him, you know, the kind of stuff you buy every evening. When we first moved there—such service! I could never believe it. Like, if you bought something once in one of the departments, when you come in the next time, they’re like: do you need some of that? How about some of this?—you know, like, what you usually get there. Marusya’s like: “Mama, everybody loves you.” And I’m like: “No, it’s just a nice supermarket, that’s good service,” and she says: “No, when you went to get your card I was watching, they don’t talk like that with the other customers.” I’m always the one to do the shopping, I swing by on my way home from work. So anyway, Papa was sick and I was trying to get home sooner, and I run in all, I’m all, you know—whew!—and the security guard’s like: “Haven’t seen your papa around in a while.” And I’m like: “What do you mean?” And he’s like: well, he usually comes by here every day, we all know him. “What???”—I say. And he’s like: “Well, you know, he makes his way through all the departments and says: ‘Sorry to bother you, my little Natasha is always forgetting everything. So when she comes by after work, would you please remind her about these cookies?’ And he’ll go to another department and say: ‘My little Natasha forgets everything, so please, if you don’t mind, when she drops in after work, do remind her about the Maasdam.’ Or, you know: ‘My daughter’s going to come by, you know, the tall one in the blue coat, so if you could just remind her about the mayonnaise, she’s quite forgetful…’ That’s what we call you, he says, we’re always like: ‘Little Natasha’s here.’” I turned right around and went home, I was practically shaking. And then Papa opens the door, sees that I don’t have any grocery bags and is like: “Little Natasha! Did you forget to go to the supermarket?” I swear to God, Olga, I’m going to hang myself.

—…so just imagine you’re looking at a copy of 1950s Amateur Erotica and inside, on like page ten, there’s your mom covering up her left breast with a hand mixer. Sure, there’s really nothing wrong with that. But some book to get as a present, right? Anyway, I would never in my life have recognized her. Ever. So then the other day I come in, and she’s sitting there looking at it. She practically jumped. And I’m like—fuuuuuuck!!! And I just stand there. And then, you know what she says? She’s like: “Don’t tell your father or he’ll divorce me.” And she’s crying. And the thing is, she’s covering up her breasts with her hands, in a robe! I about fucking lost it. I’ve been thinking, can I sue them? I really wish I could just kill them and be done with it.

—…this lady, not too old, you know, pretty good-looking actually, wearing a stole with little tails, good makeup, and a girl with her, maybe around twenty or so. And I’m really enjoying, like, just looking at them, it’s nice that they’re sitting in a cafe in the middle of the day on December thirty-first, having coffee. I sit there half listening to them while I’m reading the menu and I’m thinking: probably an aunt and her niece, they’re really close, and here they’ve met up to say Happy New Year to each other, there’s really something very nice about this, then later the girl will probably go celebrate with her friends—basically, a nice familiar scene. So the girl’s telling the lady, you know, all about what’s going on with her, and I’m listening, I really love other people’s conversations. And she’s saying something about some Anya, that Anya’s dating her boss, and he took her on some trip, and then someone there got fired, the lady’s nodding, and then the girl’s like: “Anya, you know, her mom abandoned her too, but not like how you abandoned me…”—and then the rest of the sentence. But I couldn’t make that last part out, my ears just stopped working at that point.

—…during the war. He made it all the way to Berlin and sent her a package from the front, with some children’s things for Mama and Pasha, tablecloths, some other stuff, and this gorgeous negligee. I mean, no one here had seen anything like it, you know what I mean? She unwraps it—and there’s a noodle stuck to it. As if the woman had been eating and accidentally dropped one. She threw up for twenty minutes, then she packed up the kids and that was it. He spent half a year looking for her afterwards.

—…two whole weeks before I menstruate my breasts hurt so bad that even walking is hard, every step hurts. And it’s like that e-ve-ry month! And that’s before I menstruate! And during I just want to howl all the time, but I have to go to work. And just survive. Forget about it! It’s just awful. And then if you think about it, the worst is yet to come. There’s still, you know. Try to get pregnant eight times, actually go into labor twice. And I bet one of those will be a C-section. Jesus God. Then get your tubes or your ovaries removed or some other thing. Not to mention menopause. And uterine cancer! Lordy, sweet Jesus, I just don’t want to be a girl, I just don’t want to, I don’t. The one good thing is at least I lost my virginity. At least that’s done, thank God.

—…from the cemetery, and that’s when she started smoking again, my nerves are shot to hell too, and I should have just left her alone on a day like that but I just freaked out. She hadn’t smoked since her first pregnancy. And I walked right up to her from behind and tore the cigarette out of her mouth, and she turns toward me so slowly, and she’s got this expression on her face and I know: she’s just going to deck me right here and now. She’d had a bit to drink there at the cemetery, too, and I’m standing there thinking: all right, come on, bring on the hysterics—because, well, I just felt so bad for her…And she’s looking at me, you know, scowling, and she says slowly: “And now, Volodya, we’re going to play daddy and mommy.” I just look at her, and she says: “Daddy and mommy. You’ll be my daddy now, and I’ll be your mommy.”

—…whenever his mom isn’t around he’s like this tender lover.

—…I grabbed Lena by the hand and we ran to the neighbors’. And it’s like that once a week now, he gets plastered and just goes after her, paws out, you know, lunging like a backhoe. We’ve already got it down: jump into your boots and off we go. But otherwise, Natasha, I really can’t complain. Everyone always said: no guy’s ever going to love someone else’s kid, well, go figure.

—…so I’m walking along and all of a sudden I feel someone looking at me. I had that coat on, the black-and-white checked one, back then it was the latest thing, Inka managed to get it for me, two months’ salary. So I’m walking downhill on the side of the street where, you know, there’s like an art salon or Art House, what was it? You know, where the Indian restaurant is now. And I can just feel that someone’s watching me, you know? Well, so I kind of carefully turn my head, and there on the other side there’s this young man and he’s, you know, not even hiding it. And there’s something about him…he looks somehow…maybe he looked like some famous actor…But I just, you know, just right then I realized: well, that’s it, that’s my future husband. I mean, do you believe in this sort of thing? I looked at him for just a second and just knew everything. So I’m going along all proud, towards Neglinnaya, but my heart’s going boom-boom, boom-boom, boom-boom. I sneaked a peek and saw that he’s, like, walking on the diagonal, like towards the edge of the sidewalk. And I realize that we’re going to meet right there on the corner. And I don’t even think about what I’ll say ’cause it’s like I get it already, you know? Like I get it without anything being said. And I’m just walking and thinking: I could have gone to pick up those heels first, and that would have been it! And I can’t think about anything else, except that I might have gone to pick up those stupid pumps and then I would have never met my husband! And I peek over again—and he’s already stepping off the sidewalk and even speeding up, you know, to intercept me. And right then, like right there a car backs out—like, screeeeeeee!!! Literally, I mean literally an inch away from him. Like really less than an inch. I’m standing there, I mean, my heart stopped. I can’t move a muscle. And he’s standing there like a statue. And you know, he turns around—and heads back onto the sidewalk, and starts trotting up the stairs to, like, the subway…And I’m just standing there thinking: I bet my pumps aren’t even ready yet.

—…and until the dog kicks off he won’t move out of that apartment.

—…taught myself, so my brain just turns off at moments like that. I’m a robot. I could tell a block away from the smell that it was fucked over there. I was right—there was nothing left of the café, just a single wall. That’s when I just flip the switch in my head: tick-tack. I’m a robot, I’m a robot. Then for three hours we, you know. We generally break up into groups of three, two do the collecting and one closes up the bags, so there I am zipping—zhzhik, and it’s like these weren’t people, we’re just collecting various objects and putting them in sacks. We were in four groups, finished in three hours. Zvi says to me: let’s do one last walk-through, just in case. Sure, what do I care—I’m a robot. We walk around, look in the corners, the wreckage, where we can we rummage around a little. Looks like we got everything. And then I notice, like out of the corner of my eye, some kind of movement. And I’m like: “What’s that?” I look, and by the one wall that didn’t collapse, there’s a display case, still in one piece, and there’s pastries in it, rotating. And that’s when I threw up.

—…how old is he? Probably pushing fifty. Gray hair, I always loved that type. You know, he did ballet as a kid, then worked for the KGB, so, like, basically a real inspired dude.

—…forgot it on the desk. I put the pencil case in my schoolbag, and the, uh, folder, but I left the notebook. So at recess I see it’s not there. I got a clean notebook from Masha, I’m like: “Masha, give me one of those, you know, a notebook,” so I start writing out the homework, but didn’t have enough time. So she’s like: “Give me the notebook,” but it’s only half-done. So she’s like: “That’s it, you get a C, I’m calling your father in tomorrow morning.” I’m walking home all…thinking: man, that’s it. ’Cause I never had any Cs before, he’s going to really bawl me out! Well, he wasn’t home, still at work, and I’m sitting there waiting for him, it’s almost dark out, like seven o’clock. And I think, well, I’ll go outside so I can tell him right away when he gets home. And it was raining, well, like just a little. So I went out. I took Chapa and we went out. I’m standing there all wet already and I see my father coming. Chapa ran up to him and I go too and say right away: “My notebook, I forgot it, and, uh…At recess I started on a new one, but I only finished half, and she gave me a C. And you have to go in to school tomorrow, but I really did it, honest, just forgot the notebook, that’s all. And I promise to fix the C, I mean, I’ll…” And he’s like: “Come on, you little slacker, let’s go home.”

—…screaming. And it’s always the same dream: his mama’s slapping him in the face and asking: “Did you eat the chocolate?!” He’s bawling and saying: “No!” Mama slaps him: “Did you eat the chocolate?!” Him: “No!” Mama slaps him: “Did you eat the chocolate?!” Here he breaks down and screams: “YES! YES!” And his mama bitch slaps him, screaming: “What did I tell you—never admit to anything!!!” Isn’t that horrible? For like six months I couldn’t get him to tell me anything about this nightmare of his, he would just be like: aw, what nightmare, everything’s fine.

—…when he loved me I was never jealous, but when he didn’t love me—I got jealous. I started calling him, driving both of us up the wall, until one time they had to call an ambulance for me.

—…I belong to this one rich man and I have to sing whenever he says. Because if I do it for one more year, then our group can get some decent money together and really get somewhere. But he’s totally unreasonable, he doesn’t try to be understanding, he doesn’t care—you can be sick, tired, have problems—go sing. Vera went to her sister’s wedding, and he fired her. But I know what has to be done, because otherwise there’s no way we’ll get anywhere, it’s tough out there. So I put up with it. This one time he and his friends were having a cookout somewhere, he calls me—come over and sing. This is outdoors, and it’s September already. I get there and he gives me this huge coat, I mean, like a barrel. And I felt so gross singing in that coat, like crying, I mean really. I explain to him that you’re not supposed to sing when it’s cold out, singing is all about breathing, if I breathe normally out in the cold air then tomorrow my vocal cords’ll be shot, and if I don’t breathe, I’ll be singing using only my vocal cords and blow them out anyway. This is all going on at his dacha, it’s huge, pheasants, peacocks, dogs. And a silent pregnant wife following him around. And I’m thinking, this is probably a good match, she’s living well, but her life must be awful is what I think. “No,” he says, “sing.” I’d have quit a long time ago, but our group can’t get anywhere without his money and I want to get somewhere. But I’d still have quit a long time ago, only he comes to me after we’re done singing, sits down and cries. No, he hasn’t touched me, why the fuck do you keep asking me this bullshit, huh?!

—…every Christmas people set up those little scenes from the life of, you know, Jesus, little cradles and all that. So he bought like five pounds of meat and went around his neighborhood that night and switched out all the Jesuses with, like, hams…It was super conceptual, really great. Not like just sitting at home with the family, smiling like dumbasses.

—…a day. I spent the whole morning trying to write the screenplay, but I just kept coming up with cheap melodrama. Because real life just doesn’t produce tragedies of that magnitude. Either everybody dies, or, you know. Some kind of inexpressible spiritual torment. So I go out to pick up my suit and the whole time I’m in the subway I’m thinking: is this really OK? Because art is all about being able to see greatness in small things. The drama, you know, in simple things. And the more I think about it, like, the worse I feel. And suddenly at the Lubyanka stop I decide: aw, screw it, screw the suit. I’m going to get out right now, walk to The Captains and just get a drink. OK. I get out, and upstairs I get three texts in one go. From three different people, obviously. “I’m in the loony bin, they’re keeping me here for now”; “Anya died yesterday. I’m not flying in”; “Dad’s crying and begging for me to take him home.” I read them once, a second time, a third, and suddenly I realize I’ve been looking at my phone and walking in circles around the lamppost for fifteen minutes.

—…And when my daughter accidentally crushed the hamster in the door, he cried. He kept saying: “He was a great guy!”

—…I’m walking around shaking. The place was already full of people, super crowded, everyone’s coming up, like: “Oh dude, so cool!” and all that, but I’m still scared shitless. I’m walking around behind everyone’s back so I can see who’s looking at what. I mean, on the one hand it’s not OK to walk up real close to people, ’cause you really can’t eavesdrop at your own show, but, you know: at least you keep an eye on who stops in front of what, you know, how they look at it. So I walk behind this one column in the gallery, near where that dude of mine is standing, you know, the one with the spindly legs. And I see Tultsev himself standing in front of him with his notepad. I’m all: “Jackpot.” And my heart goes: “Boom!” I stand there real quiet and watch. And he’s there, looking at my dude, and, like, super focused. I’m like: “No way.” And he stands there for like three minutes, looking, or five. And he even, like, I mean, he starts to smile a little bit. He’s standing there looking and smiling, I mean, well, like a person who’s feeling just fine. And I’m all: “Ahhhh!” So then at some point he walks away. I think: why don’t I stand there too and have a look at my fan-fucking-tastic sculpture. And I stand right on the same spot where he was standing. Fuuuuuuck!!! There, right behind my dude, I mean, a little to the left, there’s a cat cleaning itself. Licking, and licking, and licking…

—…I ask: “Mama, what do you want for New Year’s?” And you know what she says, the old bag? “Don’t buy me anything, sonny, who knows if I’ll even make it till then…”

—…we’re at the end of our rope, fighting like cats and dogs. So then Milka tells me: go see the priest. I come in and I’m like: “Father, I just can’t do it, it’s horrible, I’m ready to throw him out. He’s my husband, after all, but the way we live, I’m ashamed in front of my own kids!” He asks me right away: “Do you have an altar in the house?” Well, no—I say—we don’t. “Then how,” he says, “how can you want there to be room for your husband in the house if you don’t have room for God? You should go,” he says, “right now”—and he told me where to go and what to buy: you know, that little shelf for the icon, something to put under it, and a candle, holy water too. And he told me how to do everything, how to pray, where to hang it, and with the water, I mean, everything. I hauled over there after work, I was totally beat, came home…What can I say, I hung it all myself, set it all up, and what do you call it, sprinkled it all with the water. And I did the bows and said everything I had bottled up inside—that he’s my husband but there are times I could really kill him, like, it’s enough to see him and I’m ready to kill him, and help me Lord, and all that. And you know, somehow I felt…better, and I’m already thinking—well, OK, maybe with God’s help we can start living like human beings. I turned around—and he’s standing there. I say to him: “What do you want?” And he’s looking at me and says: “Zina…But there’s no God…”

—“…all my life I wanted to become a real grown-up lady that all the little girls would talk about, saying: ‘Wow, what a cool dollhouse she has!’”

—…everyone hates us, but it’s not like we’re having a great time. Like, on New Year’s the boys call me up: lieutenant, sir, they say, there’s a guy climbing the Christmas tree here. You know, near Lubyanka, on that street, Nikolskaya. He’s climbing right up like a monkey. And it’s a holiday. And I think: so now I tell them to take him down and bring him in, and it’ll just be one more police asshole sticking it to someone, on New Year’s to boot. So I’m like: “Is he climbing kinda calmly?” They say, “Yeah, pretty calmly, just climbing along.” “Then screw him,” I say, “let him climb.” The boys don’t care, it’s a holiday for them too, they want to do like everybody else. So I’m sitting there thinking: I did a good deed, like they say—how you start off the year and all. So I’ll have a good year. Then fifteen minutes later they call again. He crashed down out of that tree and broke his neck. Soon as they got to him he’d already broken it. There’s your good start. And you tell me everyone hates us! Why don’t you climb on down here with your ID ready, don’t fuck with me, you smartass!”

—…I’m straight up beating myself on the chest and begging her: “Lusia, I swear, never again in my whole life! I won’t even look at any other woman! I won’t even look, just forgive me! So then she’s like: “Swear it.” And I’m like: “I swear.” And she says: “Wait, no, not like that. Swear on your mother’s life.” “Aww, Lusia,” I say, “not that. If anything happens to my mother, you’ll be like: ‘Aha! You’ve been out with her again!!!’”

—…at two in the morning some kind of angel flew in. Totally drunk; he was hanging there outside the window, refusing to fly over the windowsill. Kept calling me Natalya. Sobbed, kissed my hands, said that he’d sunk so low, couldn’t get any lower. Kept asking if he could still be saved. I said sure, didn’t want to upset him.

—…I always loved my wife, loved her like you can’t even imagine. But she—well, it seemed to me anyway—she thought I was just OK. My mother says to me: “Get a lover. Your wife’ll love you more.” I started seeing this one woman. I mean, I didn’t love her, of course. I loved my wife, didn’t love this one. But I would go see her. Then I thought: my wife needs to find out. But I can’t tell her. She’s why I started the whole thing, but I can’t tell her. My mother says: “Tell the kids, they’ll make sure she finds out.” My kids, like I told you, I’ve got two sons, one of them had just started college then, and the younger one was fifteen. I called them over, I got home and sat them down, I say: “Boys, listen to me. I’m going to tell you something terrible, I hope you can forgive me. Boys, I have another woman in my life besides your mother.” And I don’t say anything else. They looked at each other and all of a sudden just crack up! And the younger one slaps me on the shoulder and says: “Good work, dad!” And the older one says: “Cool. We won’t rat you out.” So to this day I’m still seeing that broad. Goddamn.

—…Well, because a grownup shouldn’t confuse love and sex!

—…the Judgment Day, incidentally, already happened, but nobody noticed. Just for some people everything’s been great ever since, and for others it’s been really bad.

—“…sorry, can you point me to a McDonald’s?” And then this pompous ass strikes a pose and informs me: “Oh my, miss, I’m afraid I don’t know my way around the McDonald’s of our great Moscow!” I didn’t even get it, I’m like: “Excuse me?” And he’s like: “Personally, I orient myself using city squares! Museums! Cultural monuments!…” Ah, I say, uh-huh. People like you are always the first to die.

—…I am just a totally non-confrontational person. Absolutely. True, me and my brother are constantly fighting like you wouldn’t believe—but he’s straight.

—…I saw her yesterday. I’ll tell you what—it doesn’t even matter what she looks like and that she’s beautiful—well, yes, she’s beautiful, I won’t argue, what’s true is true—but it doesn’t matter. What matters is what I saw: it’s not going to work out for them. No way. Eight years of marriage is quite a length of time, Marina, I know him so well, I mean, so well, like the back of my hand. So I know, nothing’s going to work out between him and that woman. She’ll suck him dry, turn him inside out, and he’ll come crawling back to me. You’ll see, mark my words. It even calmed me down. ’Cause otherwise, you know, when I first found out about all of it, I couldn’t eat for two weeks, I mean, nothing. I lost fifteen pounds. But this is so great, it’s such an amazing feeling!

—…I was buying marigolds from her, over by the market. So I ask her: “Granny, how much?” And the old lady’s like: “Are you giving them as a gift? ’Cause you know, usually you don’t give marigolds as a gift.” And I’m thinking, fine, you have to have your finger in every pie, like I didn’t know that myself! “No,” I say, “I’m taking them to the cemetery.” I give her thirty rubles and start to pull one flower out of the bouquet, to make it, you know, an even number, and she says: “Don’t worry, it’s already even!” See, sometimes you think badly of a person and it turns out they have your back.

—…he ate one hot dog and left. I mean, tell me, Lena, do I need this?

—…I don’t even know how to explain it. Well, just imagine: you’re sitting in the subway. And there’s a girl sitting across from you. One of those girls, you know, blond with translucent skin, like she’s got strawberry yogurt inside instead of blood. And she’s leafing through something, something that…I mean…I mean even if it has “Till Eulenspiegel” written on the cover you still know it’s all kittens inside. Know what I mean? And she has this bag, hot pink and it’s fur. See what I mean? Get it? And you’re looking at her and you just…You can just feel that this is not a human being. This is a heavenly creature. A different essence, you know? A higher one. One that’s all, you know. And then in a year she’ll give birth to a kid with Pyle’s syndrome. And that, Pasha, is what you call God’s plan.

—…that day everyone really showed their true colors. Like, my friend Cattail calls me up and yells: “Dude, do you have any idea what’s going on over at the White House?!” “Yeah,” I say, “I know, I’m watching TV, so what…” “No,” he yells, “dude, you don’t know! There are these chicks here! You can fuck ’em right on the tanks!!” So I went to my wife—we were still married then—and I’m like: “Darling, I have to go to the White House, to the barricades—to defend freedom and democracy.” And she wouldn’t let me go! I forgave that bitch everything, but that heartlessness I can’t and won’t forgive.

—…I don’t like people like that. She makes three thousand bucks a month, but her cat craps in that seventy-ruble Soviet litter.

—…decided to do an experiment. “So,” I say, “I’m going to start going to the gym. I’m signing up Monday.” “Oh,” he says, “great! Good girl!” A normal reaction, right? I perked up, I’m like: “Except I feel so lazy, I don’t have the energy…” “Oh, come on,” he says. “Going to the gym’s so great. While you’re working out endorphins get released…Oh shit! I’m outta Prozac and I forgot to buy more!” Do you see now? Like whatever I start talking about with him, we always end up in a conversation about his complicated soul.

—…lately it’s been really hard going. My texts have started coming out slow and short, there aren’t many words in them, so every word carries tremendous weight. Earlier I would never have thought you could spend two and a half hours trying to place one word in a line. Literally: one. Two and a half hours. And they’re in your head all the time, of course, if you’re writing that slowly, because there’s no way to push it all out of yourself—and that’s it: now that word just keeps spinning around in your brain, spinning…Your head starts throbbing. Yesterday for the first time I actually felt that thing Kosinovsky always used to say: “We are translating our lives into words.” That suddenly became true for me: life gets monstrously difficult if everything’s all…Drawn-out in your head. It takes the place of everything else, you have no strength left for anything because you can’t just ponder a single line for the sake of that one word, you have to—no matter how banal this might sound—you have to be there completely. And, as we know, it is monstrously unpleasant there. And terrifying. And painful. It’s like being a shaman, you know—for every word you have to cross over into the spirit world. So basically, I had a great day, obviously, writing about kids in Berlin in forty-four. Like a little poem. This autistic kid gets tracked down and killed, his mother had told everyone he died of pneumonia but was keeping him hidden in a cave down by the river. But the other kids thought he was a spy. They tried to grab him, he attacked them, bit somebody, but they had a knife…And afterwards one little boy, the youngest, was crying and saying: you bastards! Bastards! I was the one who found him, he was mine! I was supposed to be the one to kill him, I was the one who told those bastards about him, why did they go without me, the bastards?! So that’s the poem. Well, what do you expect. While you’re writing you’re shaking all over. You write two lines, sit there and think: Christ, why am I torturing myself, what good is any of this? You go and willingly open a door from your life into hell, and then you go back and forth, back and forth, and meanwhile hell quite naturally starts creeping in, creeping in like smoke…And of course you want to toss that poem, because—well, the hell with it, but then you think: no. Because finishing it is the only way to close that door. At least for a while. And you go on sitting there—one line, then another line, and you keep on having to talk yourself into it…For instance, yesterday I kept myself going with the thought that any minute now I’ll finish writing, get up and me and Anya will finally go to La Marée to eat oysters. Otherwise we haven’t been able to get out of the house for three weeks now, one of the “-ber” months is already over and we haven’t even started yet this year.

—…she is a weak, cowardly, clingy, totally incompetent, very difficult, very unhappy woman. And we should feel sorry for her and not talk shit.

For Julia Idlis

—…they say: “It can change your whole life,” and you think: “What idiots! How can some dumb crap that I come and do along with ten or even fifteen complete strangers change my life?” We all think like that, right? How can something you do for two hours a week change your life? So, listen, that was exactly what I thought too. I went once…I mean, I just went, and that was it. So listen when I tell you: yoga really changed my life. Really. ’Cause I was always like—bzz-bzz-bzz-bzz, always scared, always worried about something, all wound up like a spring. But here you come in, change clothes, sit down on the floor in a corner and cry for an hour. It’s another life. Now I can’t even understand how people live without yoga.

—…we’re standing there and then Mama whispers to me: “Weeell, look who it is!” So I look—there she is, all decked out in high heels, walking on tippy-toe and trying not to fall down in the mud. I’m telling you, the way she looked—the nerve! No, I mean, she’s all in black, the whole nine yards, but you can tell she got dressed like for a big party. You know, like six-thousand-ruble boots, with those things in the back…I mean really. My little Lena says to me: “What a pig!” I mean, really, twenty minutes late, must have been doing her makeup. Dark glasses, but you can still tell, her cheekbones and everything…knee-high boots and a skirt. See what I mean? What a stunner…I can see everyone literally turning away, ’cause it’s shaaaaameful! I mean shaaaaameful! We’re standing there—I mean, it’s obvious that people are grieving, we don’t have clothes on the brain. Lena was wearing that sweater of mine, the one with, you know…That one. I don’t let her wear it ’cause it’ll snag, but she was like: “Marina, I don’t have anything black”—and I gave it to her, I swear, I didn’t think twice—could I worry about a sweater at a time like that, what do you think? And she didn’t snag anything, I can probably let her borrow stuff to wear now, she’s a big girl. So then she shows up—even her earrings are black. And you can tell she picked them to match. Awwwwful. Thank God she didn’t try coming over to us. Stood a bit further off. Afterwards when we were leaving, I said to Mama: “Well, we should probably go say hi at least,” but she was like: “What’s your problem?” Afterwards I thought: yeah, what is my problem? This one time, I ran into her at the train station, like literally bumped into her—and I just walked past, like right through her, so what’s with me now? And you know, she’s only like five years older than me, but she has these little wrinkles already, you can see them even with the sunglasses. And she got so skinny, I mean, she looks like a herring. So we were leaving, but Lena keeps turning around, and then she’s like: “She’s still standing there, you know.” Mama says: “She didn’t have to come, not like anyone wants her here!” And Lena says: “We didn’t have to come either, Mama,” and Mama’s like: “I’m the one who didn’t have to come, my dear, but he was your father, got it? When he left us for her he was your father, and after he left her he was still your father.” I kicked Lena—like, what’s your problem? But she thought I was trying to get her to look back over there. Lena turned around, I did too—and she was just standing over there like she’s frozen. Then all of a sudden she starts waving her arms around! I think, what’s going on? And then I figure it out: she was trying to walk off, but her heels got stuck. I bet it’s hard to stand on your tiptoes for half an hour.

For Ira

—…these aren’t just any old ruins, let me tell you. This is a German airfield, they were flying out of here to defend the city during those very last few days, the hopeless ones. This here is a bomber hangar. And over there, that was the barracks, there’s some stuff written on the walls there. See these concrete slabs, they go all the way down to the water—they’re all broken now, of course, but back then the German “amphibians” would drive out of the hangar on them. Come on, I’ll take you up to the roof, the stairs are fine, there’s just no railing. But the roof holds, just don’t step in any of the holes, otherwise the roof is totally solid. Every year on the twenty-third of February I come out here with this one band I know and we dance barefoot.

For S.K.

—…by the way, last time your phone didn’t turn off and I sat there for five minutes listening to you walking through the snow. Clop, clop, clop. I almost started crying.

For Nelly

—…Ira couldn’t stop sneezing, it was just awful. She was like: “Mama, you’ve lost it, this stuff has probably been in this cupboard for twenty-five years, it’s practically dust now! It’s not even red anymore, just some kind of sky-blue pink, you can’t even tell whether it’s crepe-de-chine or some old sack! Let’s toss it!” But there’s a lot left! Back then Lena and I sewed so much out of that piece, we sewed and sewed, and, you know, we would walk back and forth, back and forth in front of Dom Knigi, and everyone would look at us.

—…a little dog running along, very dirty, but with these little pink see-through ears. And right then I thought: God, who knows, maybe I should have had that baby.

—…where are you all going, come on, don’t walk! Don’t you see the stoplight? It’s a red light and you’re crossing! There was a guy before who tried this. And where do you think you’re going, young man? Don’t cross! They all stopped, but you’re walking, and now the cars on that side are going! They’re going to start turning, and you’ll start walking and you’ll only make it halfway across! There was a guy before who walked on red. Come on, lady, where do you think you’re going? Those cars are about to turn left now, you’ve been waiting all this time, you just have to wait five more seconds! There was a guy before who tried going across and look how that ended! I told her, don’t marry him, he’s an idiot! But she says: “He’s not an idiot!” And I say: “No, he’s an idiot!” And she says: “No, he’s not!” But does anyone listen to me? You’re not listening either, well go ahead, go ahead, you’ll all see each other in hell!

—…the worst nightmare of my life. Ever. I almost died. I was an observer, watching everything from the outside, which is obviously even scarier. It wasn’t a cartoon, but you know, a pretty abstract narrative. There was a little girl and boy cutting each other up with knives and eating each other. So fucking terrifying. And plus, that part was totally not abstract—there’s blood, it’s horribly painful, they’re screaming, and I can feel fucking everything. And they’re stuffing pieces into their mouths…I mean. And at some point the little girl tears one of the little boy’s eyes out and shoves it in her mouth. Blood, all that. And she can’t swallow it, she’s trying and she can’t, and that eye is rolling around inside her mouth. Chriiist almighty! And I—I mean, he, but I was like his eye—with this eye of his he can finally see what’s inside her head. And her whole head, it turns out, is stuffed with these…like these little bits of paper, totally crammed full. And you know what’s on the bits of paper? “Wilhelmina von Düsseldorf,” “Frederique le Perrois-Roger,” “Jasmine Laclement”…And those are all the names she would have had if she were a countess and married to a prince.

—…because the Lord will make any wish come true, if your intentions are pure. Grandma taught me—you always have to wish good things for people, even if something is going on, no matter what. It works, for real. Like for instance when that bitch said I was pale ’cause I’m a junkie I decided: no, I’m not going to, you know. I’m just not going to. So what did I do? That evening I prayed real hard, I said: “Lord! Grant good health to all my friends and acquaintances!” And the next morning that bitch fell down the stairs and kicked the bucket for real.

—…at first I was ready to kill myself and be done with it, but then more and more time passed, and I figured out so much…Now it seems wrong to even admit it, I know it’s wrong, but I’m telling you: I never really loved her. Don’t look at me like that, I’m drunk, let me talk. I didn’t love her, period. Because love—do you know what it means to love? My dad got hit by a car when I was six. He and my mother used to fight like you wouldn’t believe. The things he would pull…He would throw us out and they would scream and he would make off with our stuff, you name it. And lay into her sometimes…He would drive her to the point of…It was awful. So when they carried him in from the street, people standing around, all that—and Mama was screaming: “You finally croaked, asshole! You finally croaked, asshole!” And kicking him, kicking…But she’s soooobbing. Just sooobbing. And I understood everything, whatever you might think, I was six, but I understood already. And I’ve never had a love like that. Before all this…happened, I didn’t even realize.

For S.B.

—…worse than family. Do you know, for instance, that there are Germans who decided to become Jews? They do the whole giyur wear kippah, the whole nine yards. It’s usually the ones whose grandpas really distinguished themselves. And everyone who knows about this oohs and ahs about how it’s such a complex and delicate decision, a burden, a partisan-type heroism. But then I heard this one classic story. One of these Germans found out about the Holocaust when he was seventeen, blah blah, his grandpa was a real big shot, Nuremburg was made for guys like him, and so on and so forth. So this German at seventeen got in so deep that he completely stopped talking to his grandparents and basically dropped out of the family entirely, lived somewhere at the ends of the earth, studied the history of the Jewish people, then the Torah, then something else too, so basically he went through the whole giyur. Put on a kippah, got married, had kids. So then his rabbi tells him: move to Jerusalem. Like, acquiring roots, until you’ve moved there, the process can’t be complete. He had wanted to go for a while anyway, he was that deep into it. Took the kids, left, he was so crazy about all of it, wanted to see everything, I mean wanted to sniff every little clod of promised land. He begged his wife and she let him take a week off, so he rode off on his motorcycle, he went all over. So basically, he rides out into the territories, he doesn’t know the area. And out there you have those young freedom-fighting types with stones. They’re closing in on him, closing in…And he realizes that his goose is cooked, ’cause it doesn’t matter how loud he yells, they’ll kill and bury him and sell his motorcycle for parts, no one’ll ever even find his body. He lifts up his visor and says: “I’m not a Jew, I’m a German.” They’re yelling at him, they don’t understand, one of them gets him with a stone in the leg. Then some kind of grownup comes out, seems to speak a little English. And our guy’s like: “I’m a German! German!” But he can’t take off his helmet, he’s got his kippah on. The other guy’s like: take off your helmet right now! And he says: “I can’t, what if one of your kids here throws a rock at my head?” And the guy smirks and says: “No, you’re a Jew. Only Jews are that cowardly.” And lets him go. So he rides off. Fucked up, right? Wouldn’t want to be that guy. And you go saying there’s nothing worse than family. Ha.

—…and everything’s so…unbearable. Because it all has to do with real people. So, we were at Fanailova’s reading, just sitting there, and then in the middle of everything some guy announces loudly, you know…“I’m going outside to smoke!” And the whole room was hissing at him: “Shhhhh! Quiiiieet!” But his wife was like: “Put on your coooat! Put on your cooooat!”

For Sasha Barash

—…it seemed like a bad idea from the very beginning, but the package said: “remove the animal out and take further action at your discretion.” I hadn’t even thought about my discretion. Well, I’ll just let it go, for instance. If I was living by myself, I’d just live and let live, but when your kid’s a year old, and they’re running around, the food, etc. So we bought it. It’s like this box, inside it’s all sticky, like flypaper, that paper that catches flies, anti-fly paper—but thicker. I touched it. Lena said, “Don’t stick your finger in”—and I really did have a hard time unsticking it. Really strong stuff. And so put it out for the night, went to bed. I think Lena was sleeping, but I couldn’t sleep for some reason. I was thinking—there are apples in the kitchen, it’s hot, I should put the apples in the fridge or there’ll be kvetching in the morning. So I get up and even had forgotten about that thing, and then I hear this—“Eeeee! Eeeeee! Eeee!” And I stand there like in the movies, by the wall, my heart’s going boom-boom! and I’m afraid to turn the corner. Like who knows what might be there. I’m standing there wet as a drowned rat. What is this, I’m thinking, I’m forty years old! I go in and there it is. It had this cardboard lid, I lift it and there it is, backed up against the side, one paw lifted and three stuck to the floor. And everything inside is covered in fur and blood, and it’s all bloody too. I started screaming. Then Lena came running and I said: “I can’t pick it up,” and she picked it up, said: hold the bag. We put it into a garbage bag, a white bag, and I carried it out to the garbage bin. And you know how it is in Jerusalem? They keep the garbage bins in this special enclosure, behind a grate. It’s kept locked, so I’m carrying this garbage bag with my arm outstretched and it’s inside there and…It’s screeching. And then I dropped my keys. It stinks to high heaven. I start looking for them but I can’t put the bag down, I’m groping around on the ground with my right hand, and it really smells bad. And suddenly there are headlights on me and a megaphone voice says: “Sir! Don’t move.” I get up really slowly and it’s in there twitching! I move my hand away and they say: “Hands on your head!” Well, this is it, I think, what can I do. I lift the bag over my head, and the mouse rips through it! And falls onto my neck, and then runs down my whole body! I screamed and jumped like you wouldn’t believe! And then behind me: bam-bam-bam! The cop had shot into the air. I kept standing there, she came up behind me and said: “What’s in the bag?” I said: “Nothing, nothing, just blood.” Well, and…What difference does it make how it all ended? The important thing is how it started, you know? Plus, that I dropped those keys…The next morning in the car Lena said to me: “By the way, pigeons have started building nests on the balcony, we have to do something about it.” You see what I mean? You can save that natural selection stuff for your students, I don’t need to hear it.

—…one of my patients, a cultured woman. I ask her, “You haven’t skipped any doses? You’re certain?” Of course not, she says, I’m completely certain. Then I ask her, “And you didn’t have any additional exposure?” She thinks for a while and then asks, “How is it transmitted? Oral-oral and oral-anal, right?” No, I say, only oral-oral. She thinks some more and then says firmly, “No, in that case there was definitely no additional exposure.”

—…wait, what are you talking about, driving a car is very important for a woman. It’s freedom, what a feeling…it really helps with stress. Whatever happens, you get behind the wheel and just whoooooshhh…. What a feeling. Like, say you get in a fight with your lover, he’s like: “Blah blah, whatever,” like, “you’re old and I’m twenty!”—and you slam the door—bang! And then you go, get behind the wheel, turn the ignition—and right away, you get that feeling…Just because you’re your own boss. And you can do whatever you want and you’re in charge of this modern, powerful machine.

For P.

—…what do you think? You know what it’s like for me? Like a justification of my existence in this apartment. Anya’s first husband hung them, I even knew him a little, not well, we saw each other a couple of times. He was a wonderful guy, really, and so handy. He did all this, did you see the shelf? That embossed metalwork in the hallway, the map, the black one, and all that. And he hung these spears too. He brought them back from a dig, he would go on those excavation trips and they would write them off or just give them to him, something like that. Anya says, “I told him let’s put them in the foyer,” but he said, “Noooo, I want it to be more interesting!” He was such a remarkable person, always wanted to make things “more interesting,” wouldn’t know how to do it any other way…So he trimmed them and hung them up. He wasn’t very tall, and my Anya, you can see for yourself, is teeny-weeny. But you see how they get me? Look: bang! Bang! Bang! Eh? Right in the eye! And now just imagine how many years I’ve been walking around here, at night, running to the baby through this hallway, half-asleep, practically sleepwalking—and I didn’t get poked once! For me it’s like a justification, like that I can be in this apartment. Like nothing has changed since yesterday.

—…haven’t been to a supermarket in ages. You know, that’s where I want to go.

—…he showed up with flowers. I mean, not the nicest ones, but asters, that’s still nice, right? And you know, we’re eating, talking about this and that—and I can feel, like, you know—it’s all coming together. Just like pieces fitting together, like he says something, then I say something, bang! And I was so, you know, I felt so good, just happy inside. We’re sitting there, he’s ordered ice cream already and he’s already so familiar, like we have three kids already. And right then some chick walks up to the table, alright-looking, bad skin but otherwise OK, but then I didn’t really get a good look. She stands there and says: “Hi, Lyosha.” And I’m all smiley, I’m like: “Hi!”—but she doesn’t even look at me, looks at him and says: “You deaf or something? What, you can’t hear me?” My jaw dropped, but he just stayed sitting there like a statue, staring into his ice cream. She’s like: “Fine, bye then”—turns around and goes back to her table. How d’you like that? I’m like: “Uh, Lyosha, I’m sorry, but who was that? “Oh, nobody,” he says. “She just has the same name as my dog.”

—…I came up with a story idea. There’s a poet and a critic. The poet runs off with the critic’s wife. And after that the critic drops everything and spends his whole life studying the poet’s work, he can’t stop.

For M.

—…thank you for taking me, sweetie. It’s not just that I haven’t been to a movie theater in an age, I really did want to see this very movie, I hear about it all the time on TV—“The Chronicles of Narnia, The Chronicles of Narnia,” and I haven’t even read the book. Do you know what this movie is about for me? When I was little they would take me to holiday parties at the Student Palace, and it was so beautiful there, marble and all, and these endless long hallways, endless. Of course I didn’t know then that it was the Potemkin palace, Catherine gave it to Potemkin, no one told us about that back then, it was just so beautiful…And every time, I wanted to go down those hallways so badly! But we weren’t allowed! And it seemed to me that there had to be something there at the end…Something…incredible. So thank you so much for taking me. Because now it’s like I went down those hallways all the way to the end, feels like. And there’s really nothing special there at all.

—…he’s styling my bangs and talking away as he goes—and he’s this glamorous young man, a real stylist—so he’s prattling on about all sorts of well-bred trivialities entirely appropriate to our discourse, like how young Sofia Rotaru looks. And suddenly he says: “By the by, I grew up with foster parents. My real parents worked a lot and put an ad in the paper: for someone to pick up the kids from school, and we’ll take them on the weekends. One elderly couple responded,” he said, “their thirty-year-old son had just drowned. They were very unusual people. The granddad had lost one arm in the war, but before that he’d dug canals and been in the camps and everything. I don’t really remember much about him. I do remember, he always used to tell me, he had this hoarse voice: ‘Eeegor, if anyone esks you what time is it—ponch ’im upside the chin.’ But why, I don’t know,” he says. And then more blah-blah, blah-blah about bronze highlights in dark blonde hair. I asked him cautiously: “Igor, it was probably his left arm he lost?” “Yes,” said my hairdresser, astonished. “In that case,” I say, “it probably makes sense why he would tell you about people asking the time.” “What do you mean?” said my hairdresser. “Well,” I say, “just think about it—If someone wanted to make a cruel joke…” He looked at me silently in the mirror, then lowered the blow dryer and was like: “Oh wow.” Then he turns the blow dryer back on, then puts it down on the little table, walks off and sits down on a stool. “Just give me a second,” he says. “I have to think about this.”

For V.

—…my son’s a sniper, he was in Al-Amin at the time, when there was that whole business with the little boy getting shot. Well, he was wounded later, but they saved the leg. And I got married then, she’s a year younger than my son, a Russian girl. And so then she says to me: “I won’t live in the same house with him, he has the eyes of a killer.” She says: “My papa was in the war too, but he never killed anybody.” Over and over again: “Papa never killed anybody, Papa never killed anybody.” Listen, I say, your papa is three years younger than me and it’s not like I’m a hundred years old—which war was this that he was in? And she says: “None of your goddamn business. The right one.”

—…I just bought season tickets to the opera. I’m going to live the normal life of a single person.

For O.

—…I do the same thing myself, but for girls it’s their God-given right. That’s true across the board, not just on the road. But like when I have to get all the way over on a six-lane highway, for instance, I start repeating like a mantra: “I’m a girl and I need to. I’m a girl and I need to.” And it always works, it’s really just God-given, like I said.

—…it was back in high school, we climbed up on the roof, two girls and two boys. So we’re sitting there, nothing to talk about, we were throwing pebbles down, there were these pebbles up there, construction stuff. Then one of the boys threw down a brick. It flew right by these two guys, barely missed ’em. They didn’t waste any time, climbed up to the roof and clobbered our boys. And they said to me and Tonya: “Girls, why are you hanging out with these guys?” But those boys actually—one with a split lip and the other with his kidneys all smashed in, for real—they walked us home afterwards. It was really nice.

For T.

—…I’m playing like crazy, I totally can’t help it, like, I’m not sleeping or eating, not going to class, nothing, it’s nuts. There was just one day I didn’t play, when their server went down, God it was awful, I really didn’t know what to do with myself, just waited around. It’s a hell of a game, half the department plays. You have to have a team, we put one together—two girls and two boys. The boys are like super macho, we kind of hang back behind them. Like me, for instance, I can’t get hit, I’m a sorceress, if you hit me I just lose a bunch of my magic percentage, and the other girl can’t get hit either, she has this enormous intellect but very little health, she can only take like two or three hits over the whole time because she takes a long time to regenerate. So we have our boys, like “rawr!” and we’re like “oh my!” One of the boys is like twelve, he lives in Novosibirsk, and the other one’s thirteen, don’t know where he’s from. The girls are me and this other woman, she’s thirty-seven, her daughter died a year ago, she really can’t do anything besides this.

—…for some reason I don’t feel like selling anything at all today, don’t feel like anything, they’re gonna fire me. I just don’t get it, lately I don’t even have the energy to get up in the morning, everything’s so horrible, I’m so depressed. Don’t want to do my makeup, don’t want to do my nails. I stand at the counter and feel sick even. Like there’s no reason to wake up in the morning. I just don’t understand what’s going on. I never felt like this back in school.

—…they were saying the worst shit about you behind your back! That you’re pregnant, married, and you have a three-year-old! Can you believe it? The bastards!

—…we’re nice, middle-aged people, you see, the whole situation is really complicated. We started this thing nine years ago just so people could relax, take a break, so that everyone could enjoy themselves. Back then everyone was officially unmarried, well, almost everyone. Our girls were spectacular, really something…Wonderful. And the guys too, everyone was on the same page. We get together once a week at my place, I have a two-story apartment, a huge Jacuzzi, it’s a really nice spot. You and Natasha should really come, seriously, I would be really happy if you came—even though it’s not how we do things, you understand, we don’t invite guests. But seriously, I really want you to consider it. We need for some new people to start coming, little by little—but no, we’re very picky, very very picky, it’s a whole process, I won’t even get into it right now, right now it doesn’t matter. What matters is that we need new people—like nice normal people, like you and Natasha. Because over nine years things have just kind of settled into the current situation, all we have is the name—“swingers’ club”—but actually, you know, no one even gets into the Jacuzzi. We have a drink, settle down in the kitchen and sit there late into the night talking about our kids. And that’s sure not what we started it for.

—…stop freaking out! Stop freaking out! All right, look right here, look at me! At me! Good. Picture her standing here in front of you. Picture it, Marina! Come on! OK, now imagine yourself saying to her: “What do you think you’re doing here, huh?” Repeat after me, I’m her, come on: “Just what do you think you’re doing?!” Good. Now say: “Just look at yourself, you old bag, empty-headed shitbag with fried hair!” No, say the whole thing: “…fried hair!” Dirty mop! Good! Look at me, I’m her! Now say: “You’re pathetic, you’re a miserable animal! You’re fifty years old already and can’t earn enough to buy yourself decent shoes, you’re a fossil with a pathetic salary! You’ve sat out your whole life in that dead-end department of yours!” OK, “shitty department”—“sat out your whole life in that shitty department of yours, you have some pitiful dull fuckwit of a husband, you, I mean, you don’t exist!” OK, but keep looking at me, not the ceiling. And say: “You’re not here at all, you don’t exist, you lifeless insect, you don’t exist! You don’t!” You don’t! You don’t! There. Now look at me, I’m her. Do you feel like shit? That’s right. Because now you are shit. But you didn’t say all that to her, right? You didn’t. Whatever, so you said to her: “Don’t scream at the students.” That’s hardly a reason to feel like shit, you know.

—…I’m coming out of the bank and he’s coming in. I go left, he goes left, I go right, he goes right, you know how it works—we can’t get away from each other. I go left again, and he goes left, I go right, he does too…And then he suddenly stops. He stops, closes his eyes—and he waves his hands around at me like a magician and says: “Shoooo! Shoooo! Shoooooo!” I couldn’t believe it, walked around him carefully, thinking: “What a psycho!” But then as I’m going along I think: you know, that’s the way to do it.

For B.

—…I’ll tell you a story that is totally St. Petersburg. I don’t know why Petersburg, I mean it happened in Prague, but it’s really just so Petersburg. I went with Katya, she was twelve at the time, me and Ira had just gotten divorced and the kid was all agitated. I mean, our breakup was actually pretty fine, but there had still been, you know, stuff. But I said to her, how about I take a vacation, take Katya to Prague. So we went. The first night, around eleven, I put her to bed and went out to walk around the city, and suddenly I have this thought: here I am, divorced already, and my whole life I’ve never been with a prostitute. Well, and here I am in Prague, everyone’s partying, I decided—well, I’d better do it. And this is where the story goes totally St. Petersburg. So I set off, there’s this one street, you know, hot girls standing around in fishnets and miniskirts…And somehow I just can’t bring myself to do it. And Katya’s back there at the hotel sleeping, and I start getting all nervous: like what if she wakes up—maybe feels sick—and I’m not there, and she’s all sick without me. I look at my watch: eleven-thirty—OK, I think, one more hour and then back home. I’m already bugging out, I’m walking past the girls and saying: the next one!—and then again: no, that one’s no good! And again and again and the clock’s ticking, and I’m already getting sick of it…And then, walking towards me, I see this—well, old mama. Knee-high to a grasshopper, probably fifty years old, carrying this massive walking stick! Don’t snicker, I’m not kidding, she seriously had a crutch. All tarted up…And she winks at me. And then, you won’t believe it, I find myself walking towards her! And I’m like: “How much?” Thinking all the while: “You’ve lost it!” She says: “A hundred dollars.” A hundred bucks! And I don’t even know why, I go and blurt out: “Let’s go.” And then things really got going…She leads me through some courtyards, into a totally Petersburg doorway, I swear, it smells like some sort of meat cooking, a stairwell, the light bulb smashed…I’m walking along and all I can think is: fuck, I’m turning around right now, I’m turning around right now—but that’d be bad, I came all this way! I look at my watch, it’s five to midnight and I’m still twenty minutes from the hotel, Katya’s alone, I feel all shaky…So basically, we go into an apartment, and there in the kitchen! There’s big burly guys! Drinking! Vodka! See what I mean? All that was missing were paintings of hunting scenes, for chrissakes. I say to her, no, there’s guys here, I’m leaving, but she drags me into the bedroom—it’s a one-bedroom apartment!—this bed with no sheets, pure Dostoevsky, it stinks…And she says: “Well, take off your clothes!” And then, I don’t even know what happened. I started unbuttoning my pants and all of a sudden I came. She looks at me and I look at her, and she says: fifty, and I’m like: “Whatever, here, take the hundred”—shoved the hundred in her hand and took off! So at twelve twenty-eight, right, I ran into the hotel, Katya was sleeping…So here’s the point: Christ, I felt so good! So peaceful, so happy, I mean, it was the best. Afterwards, of course, I had other prostitutes, but it was never like that again.

—…likable people. His wife, by the way, is almost Romanian, but her granddad’s buried in a mound on our side.

—…me and Natasha are walking around the ponds at Chistye Prudy, like, just strolling. This lady walks by, nice-looking, comes up: “Hey, girls, do you have a lighter?” I give her the lighter from my pocket, I’m getting it out, giving it to her, and she’s like: “Thanks,” lights up. Then it hits me, I’m like: “Whoa, how did you guess that we smoke?” She gives me the lighter back and is like: “Probably same as how your mama guessed.” And took off, I mean, she left, and Natasha screams after her: “Go to hell! You snake, I’m not coming home at all today!”—crazy, right, like I’m never coming home, and she yelled something else too: “Go to hell, trying to follow me around, I’m not coming home at all!”—like, screw you, right. And she’s standing there shaking, like there’s tears running down her face, I say: “Wow, holy crap,” and she’s like: “Whatever, fuck her!” like, let’s go, come on. What are you dragging me for, I say, where do you want us to go, what are we even doing, I’m going home, I totally said I’d be home by now.

—…I spilled tea in the bed. A warm wet spot. I thought, screw it, went to sleep lying down like kind of around the spot; fifteen minutes later I woke up sobbing, can’t remember what I dreamed.

—…There’s nothing worse than Israeli men. I mean, I travel a lot, right? Well, so some places they’re one way, some places another, but Israeli men—that’s just some irredeemable, barefaced fuckery. A month ago, in Paris, I’m going along in a piss-poor mood, it had gotten really hot all of a sudden, I’m schlepping to the hotel, been on my feet all day long. And it’s hot, all the cafés have their tables set up outside. So I’m walking by, right, and suddenly I hear someone saying behind me: “Eizu rusia kusit!” I don’t know how to translate it, I mean basically it’s like a dirty compliment, but the point is, it has “Russian woman” in it. Like, look at that Russian, you know. That is, he saw that I was Russian, well, fine, but this isn’t home in Tel Aviv, it’s in Paris for crying out loud—that is, they just, he and his little friend he was talking to—they really had no idea that I understand Hebrew. They were such pigs, I can’t even tell you. I mean they weren’t even hoping that I would understand, it wasn’t an attempt to make a connection—they were just being pigs, just pigs, total pigs. And so I’m walking along, and it was hot already to begin with, and I’m so fucking pissed, and I think: you really don’t see that anywhere else in the world, well, maybe among savages, but this is supposedly a civilized country, look at the export numbers. And I keep walking and thinking: I mean, it’s just shameful, it makes me personally ashamed for my country, you know? I keep going and I think: dammit, I’m thirty-two, I’m running around, all frazzled, in my old jeans, no heels, no makeup, my hair’s a rat’s nest, wearing glasses—and I get people saying “Eizu rusia kusit!” behind my back. Oh, thank you God, thank you, thank you, thank you thank you thank you!

—…we have a family tradition—doing idiotic deeds for absolutely no personal benefit. For instance, my grandfather was the first Gypsy in history to die in a plane crash.

For Tigger

—…we get some interesting class-related scenes in the ward as well. Like for instance we have this girl in with us, real positive, cheerful, with a giant black eye. And every day she sits down and puts on mascara for half an hour. Layer after layer, piles it on and on, makes them gigaaaantic, so thick. Then she’ll do her mouth up with bright red lipstick and go out to the bench to smoke. With her black eye and lashes. Same thing every day. Yesterday I went down—I think someone came to check on me—she’s sitting there flicking her flip-flop. She says: “Well, don’t I look pretty?” And I think to myself: “Uh-huh, just like a salesgirl!” I mean, I didn’t say that, of course. I went three more steps, something keeps running through my head, and then—bang!—I remembered: damn, she is a salesgirl. We have this old lady, too, she says—they’re giving us cheap pills, they’re bitter, probably made of wormwood.

—…because all of this is a chain of unforgivable crimes we’ve committed against each other.

—…I don’t go to class reunions so as not to fall into pride. Otherwise you always come out of there feeling, well, a decent person isn’t supposed to experience that kind of feeling. Like, the majority of them are living these lives, like, even Google isn’t looking for them.

—…don’t get distracted by bullshit, Pasha. You’re always getting distracted by bullshit. Me too, this one time I saw this lady, just some stranger, but then I looked closer and I knew her, she used to work in my office, it was just a bad angle and she’d cut her hair, you know, a bob, she’s got a bob now. I adjust the sight a bit, look again: well, she’s changed, of course, time takes its toll. She was eating something. I zoom in again: popcorn. She’s walking down the street eating popcorn, where’d she get it? I even got kind of hung up on it: where’d she get the popcorn? I started picturing it: that’s really something, she gets a craving for popcorn, goes into a popcorn, I mean a movie theater, she goes into a movie theater, like, buys popcorn and leaves so she can eat it on the go. I could picture the whole thing, and she was always like that, stubborn as a mule. She was walking across the square and eating. I followed her to the corner, focused the sight again, she’s got a ring on. See how distracted I got? I got that distracted, and they’re talking in my ear: “Mr. Blue, what’s the delay, Mr. Blue, are you working or what?” And the guy had taken off while I was distracted. I got him, of course, but you see, sometimes you get distracted by some bullshit and then you walk around all pissed off for two days afterward.

—…what’s it like in Dagestan? In Dagestan you take a funnel and walk and walk until the water doesn’t go in a circle at all anymore—that’s where the equator is. They have different constellations there, it’s the southern hemisphere, after all; and grapes, pineapples, figs, and gingerbread too, and these enormous birds, and forests, waterfalls, ice cream, girls, dwarves too, and penguins. You should really try to stay awhile, sonny.

For K.R.

—…I said, can you give me something to put on. He gave me one of his t-shirts, thin material, really soft. Then he went into the closet and said, “You want pants too?” I said, “Sure.” He comes out wearing these like soft brown sweatpants, and gives me another pair of the same kind, and goes to take a shower. I pulled on the pants, they were so soft, and I’m standing there kind of tripping on them and I heard him turn the water on, and then he suddenly comes back out and says, “OK, no way, matching pants is just too much, I can’t do it.” He took those away and gave me a different pair.

—…What a life we had, Natasha! I remember this one time, I called him up and he was in the supermarket, and I said to him: “Buy that bread with holes and the black cheese.” Meaning, sodium-free bread and truffled cheese.

—…What did I learn from that relationship? What I learned is that the corner of a pillow can leave a bruise.

—…how do you say “nails” in Hebrew? Like, all those nails, nuts and bolts, all that shrapnel?

For T.

—…I don’t know what to tell you about therapists. Like I had this thing, right? I started waking up with my head in the wrong direction. I would fall asleep normally, but then I’d wake up with my feet on the pillow. Right away, the therapist says: “Uh-oh.” But I’d already figured it out for myself: I was looking for Zhenya in my sleep. I’d slept next to him for so many years, and now I’m alone in the bed. And so all night long I’m trying to put my arm around him, like reaching to the left—and turning a little bit in my sleep. Then I reach again, turn a little bit further, and then I wake up with my feet on the pillow. I got so fucking sick of it. Said to myself: you’re just doing a crappy job looking for him! Don’t give up, keep on looking! What’re you giving up for! And that was all it took, now I wake up normally again.

—…we actually support the idea that you can talk to children about absolutely everything, about illness, about war, as long as you’re positive about it. Like, we talk to Kusya a lot about the Second World War, but for instance, at the end we always say that all the legs and arms that got blown off came back home to the soldiers afterwards.

—…friends and other loved ones! And Mama! I invited you all to come to this restaurant, this excellent restaurant, because I have a story that’s connected to this place. And I want to share it with you now. Do you see the little hutch there at the end of the veranda? Usually that hutch is for rabbits. But not because of what you might think—wait a sec, wait a sec!—the rabbits are just there so that the guests can pet and feed them. And there’s this special hay kept beside the hutch for feeding them. But right now there aren’t any rabbits there. But it’s not what you think—let me finish, quit giggling!—it’s because right now they’re detoxing the rabbits. That’s right: the restaurant guests fed the rabbits so much, they got overfed, and now they’ve been taken away: they’re on a diet and detox regimen. You get it, right? At the restaurant, everyone fed the rabbits so much they got overfed, and now they’ve put the rabbits on a diet, and then they’ll bring them back to live here again in peace and happiness, and to eat more hay. Because right now in our country we are living in this wonderful time of peace. So listen: I brought you to this particular restaurant very symbolically, because this is my dearest wish: that our parents get to live out their lives without ever having to experience war.

—…I have this friend who’s a Protestant. Me, I’m a boxer, I got into it on the train—the dude was getting beat by some hoods, I stepped in, and I got stabbed, look, I have this hole here, like a cavity. My wife yelled at me afterwards: “Why’d you get involved?” She loves me. I said: “How can you say that, you should be proud, you have a real man!” And I didn’t hit her. Vitalik, he’s an important guy, one of the top Protestants in Moscow, I went over to see him and he said: “Pray with me.” Got down on his knees. But I can’t do knees. I mean, I’m wearing a hundred twenty-six grams of gold, see, bracelets, this ring—and I drive around the city like this, at night too, and nobody’s ever even touched me, you know? No one’s ever lifted a finger. That’s how tough I am. So Vitalik says: “That’s fine, just stand then, but just repeat after me word for word, we have the same Bible, after all.” I have this one woman, Tonya, Little Tonya, she’s Korean. She got me into “Amway”—it means “American Way”—she got me in with them, brought me over there. People say to me, “Ew, America!” But what is Amway really? Like, there was this ad: “Then we’ll come to you!”—and they wouldn’t say something like that in Europe, something so direct, they like to reel you in. That’s how Amway works, you know? I’m not just giving you detergent, I’m reeling you in, I give you a sample and say: “I’m not going to tell you anything, try it yourself, you’ll see.” Like, you think I’m just selling detergent? I’m on a mission: I’m using this good product and educating my friends, I’m teaching them something good. I tell them: try it for yourselves, read about it for yourself, don’t let anyone blow smoke. And then I teach them how to properly represent the company, too, I don’t need people with those crappy plaid shopping bags who ride the trains, I ride the same damn trains, I’m a boxer, too, believe you me, the shit that goes down there…My wife, her brother, he was a priest. He rode those trains all the time…I don’t care if people say this is women’s work, for a dude to be talking about makeup. I couldn’t care less. That’s what Koreans say, it’s a Korean saying. I showed my knife right away, it was that kind of conversation. The point was: the main thing is to try to be good. To do your work well, day after day. And not “Then we’ll come to you!” What kind of a scam are they trying to pull? Let people take a sample, let them read it all themselves. Like me, I drive a foreign car, because I do my job well. I have to turn my phone off ’cause so many people want to drive around with me. I work nights and days, my wife yells—it’s ’cause she loves me, she misses me. But I tell her: “You should be proud of me, bitch, I’m a boxer, I’m wearing a hundred and twenty-six grams of gold, I’m not just driving a cab, this isn’t just detergent—I’m on a mission. I’m teaching people good things. Lots of people are jealous.” Protestants don’t have that envy. Not for my gold, or anything else. This woman, Little Tonya, Tonya’s her name, she brought me to Vitalik, he’s the number one Protestant in Moscow. I can’t kiss a priest’s hand, he’s just a guy like me, right. But Vitalik got me. “You,” he said, “you don’t have to get on your knees, that doesn’t matter. The main thing is,” he said, “repeat after me, word for word.”

—…had to buy a couple of diamond pendants so I could wear them with something simple.

—…looking for a woman the way you’re doing it, Sergei—you’re doomed. The kids’ll ask you: “Where did you and Mama meet?” And what’ll you say? “At karaoke”? I recommend only doing it through mutual friends. Then, like, if you leave her—somebody remembers some detail about you, they can tell her later, tell the kids. A human drama is under way and you’re not just a blank spot.

—…turns out when I was little my parents taught me how to play Mortal Kombat, strip poker and the first “Prince of Persia” on the computer, because the nanny dumped me when I was four months old and from that point on they had to figure out some way of systematically tuning me out.

—…remember that strange little girl, who wouldn’t nod or smile? So get this, that was Brezhnev’s daughter. And the little one was Brezhnev’s granddaughter, Brezhnev’s daughter and granddaughter. I said: “Thank you, but I don’t want to see this stuff, I don’t need this, I didn’t ask for any of this.” Why did they make me dream it? I guess they just didn’t have a choice.

—…everyone knows how to talk big, but it’s really hard to get a brand going in developing markets. A whole lot depends on everyone’s concrete participation, on turning the situation to your advantage. Like us, we’re moving vodka from Iran into Iraq. It’s a nightmare. Most of our stuff is in Russia, but for that region production is concentrated in Iran. And so at first we had two couriers, former mountaineers. They’d take backpacks, pack the bottles and take off on foot, making their way through. But one of them got blown up, there’s minefields, you know, and the other one still got shot, in the end. So now we have a donkey doing it. He’s so smart, such a cutie, does it all himself without anybody else. He goes along the path between the minefields, clip-clop, gets there all by himself and comes back all by himself. You know how much we love him? We adore him. Treat him like a king.

—…complain about my kids, but sometimes I just can’t help it. It can really hurt. We raised them as equals, well, like everybody does now—with respect, we spoke politely, didn’t order them around. But that comes with some big minuses. Because they also respond to you as equals, that is, they can just ignore you, they can just be cold. That hurts, of course. ’Cause you think that actually it’s not just that you’re equals, but that you’re equals plus something else, plus some special something that doesn’t need to be explained. And that’s how it really is! But not always. And then it’s really hard. I didn’t order them around, I never dragged anybody out of bed, I didn’t even say: “Hop to it!” I just said in a calm voice: “Boys, Mama doesn’t feel good, who wants to go to the store to get Mama some beer?” And nothing happened. That kind of thing really hurts, of course.

—…What could I possibly pass on? I don’t expect anything from myself anymore. Not counting on it. Two days ago I turned on the TV and saw my father playing some asshole in a series. And even there, someone came up and popped him—and there he goes, sliding down the wall.

—…fish, something else expensive. And like always, he takes out his card to pay for all three of us. And I said: “How about I pay this time?” Because no matter how rich he is, this isn’t the first time I’m having dinner with him, and he pays every time—it’s awkward. I said: “Let me get it?” He’s like: “No, no,” and so on. And he leaves his card, kisses her or whatever and goes to the bathroom. And then she started looking at me all intently and asked: “What, are you sweating it that he’s paying?” “Well, yeah,” I said, “of course I’m sweating it.” And then she leans across the table, squeezes my wrist and says really quietly: “Well, don’t.”

—…it’s so light there, so peaceful, and beautiful, like in an airport.

—…I’m not superstitious, but some things are sacred. Lying about your child’s health is going too far. When I don’t want to visit my mom, I tell her: “Mama, Sonya doesn’t feel like coming over!” And then I explain to Sonya why she doesn’t want to visit grandma. And that’s it, no big deal.

For Т.

—…maybe when they name their cat Smokey or Tiger they really feel like they’ve come up with something cool, really funny. You know, like if I name my fridge Al or call the piano Edward. But then I think: maybe this is pride. Maybe they’re naming their cat that ironically, and it’s really funny. And that’s how I keep myself in check.

—…a dreary schmuck isn’t someone who constantly thinks about death; it’s someone who always has it in the back of their mind. And that’s what he’s like, unfortunately. Let me tell you. We were at The Papas, having something to eat, and then Rita started talking about how she’s part of the last generation of Jewish women who know how to feed a family of three for three days on one chicken. That her grandma taught her, and her mother knew how, and Rita knows how too, but it’s already lost on the younger generation. Everyone was like: “Tell us, tell us!” And I can tell you too, why not: first you take out the giblets, you skin the chicken, then cut off the fat. You boil the neck, wings, and butt, and make a noodle soup with the broth, and with the skin you make gefilte gelzele with rice and fried onions, and that’s a dinner and a half. Everyone was like: “Awesome, wow, Rita, your grandma was so thrifty!” “And then,” Rita said, “Grandma would cut up the chicken so that there’d be roast chicken and potatoes for two more main courses, but she’d boil the breast and slice it thin to have on sandwiches in the morning!” And everyone was just hanging on her every word, like a thriller. Only I can see that our Lyosha is looking all pissy. “That’s nothing,” Rita kept going, “you take the giblets and fry them in the schmaltz, mash them with onion, salt, and flour, and spread that on bread for supper!” Everyone was like: “Rita, can you make it for us, we’re drooling, this is so cool, we could film it, make a video, etc.” Rita was like: “Yeah, yeah, good idea, in memory of my grandma, let’s do it!” And right then Lyosha announces in this icy tone: “I wouldn’t do that if I were you.” And everything went totally quiet, right…Somebody asked: “Lyosha, what’s the deal?” “The deal is,” he said, “that your grandma didn’t love her family, Rita.” Rita’s jaw drops, she was like: “Wha…?” And Lyosha said: “If she’d loved them, first she would’ve cut off the legs and fried them up right away: one for her husband, one for her kid!” So now you tell me: why would I need a person who thinks like that at my wedding?

For D.N.

—…last Tuesday I was walking home from work when this kid stopped me, like maybe ten years old, and asked if he could make a call from my phone, because he’d run out of minutes on his. I dialed the number for him and held on to his sweatshirt hood with a death grip the whole time he was talking. I’m going to hell for this and when I get there I’ll keep doing the same thing.

—…volunteering, it was right before Christmas, our congregation’s small, about sixty people, but only like eight or so really active types. Well, and if you count this one girl—she kinda runs hot and cold—then it’s, like, nine. Our priest says: “How much did we get in donations?” Like five thousand rubles. Well, maybe someone else gives three thousand, so something like ten. But we have to divvy it up among like fifteen families, at the very least. And he says: “No, not like that, let’s do it how they do in America: we’ll stand out in front of the supermarket”—this one’s run by Armenians, good guys, we set it all up already, they’re like: “Yeah, yeah, great idea”—and we’ll tell people we just need basic groceries: canned goods, crackers, shelf-stable milk is good, that sort of thing. And they’re already shopping for themselves, they can just grab something extra. We set up these crates, printed out labels for them and got to work. And people really went for it, that one girl was saying: “You’re nuts, you know what folks are like, they’ll think we’re stealing the food for ourselves.” But no, they really went for it, like: “Sure, yeah.” And some of them even started putting in vodka, “like, they’re people too, they should get to celebrate too.” They put all kinds of stuff in there, lots of cookies, like cheap ones, but nice ones too, with chocolate and other stuff too. Chocolates too, the kind sold in bags, but quality ones. There was even this one insanely expensive box, like this red box with golden, like, those little Mozart bonbons. Really classy. People put in dried fruit, all kinds of nuts, beer snacks. And it wasn’t just members of the congregation, it was like all the shoppers, they’d ask about our church, we gave them flyers. Like, what an adrenaline rush. The owner of the place even came, the Armenian, and we were like: “You should do this for yourselves at Easter,” he was like: “No, we get a good amount in donations,” but still, like, props to you guys. So at two a.m. we brought six full boxes to the priest. Six! We had only planned for three and had to run out for more, plus the Armenians gave us some plastic crates. We started dividing it up into bags, should’ve been really wiped, but the adrenaline was still there, wow. And I grabbed that box of Mozart balls and it spilled out all over me, it was open. I picked it all up and carefully put everything back in place, but there’s empties—two of them were missing. Like, there’s ten little wells and only eight bonbons. We started taking everything out of the crate—but they hadn’t fallen out, there was nothing there. Like, the person who put it in had eaten two of them. So then I took the box—I don’t even know why—and I threw it, like hurling a plate: smash! Right at the wall. The priest was like: “What are you doing, what’s your problem!” and scrambled to pick it up. “We’ll take them out of the box,” he said, “put ’em in a bag, make it look nice, what’s your problem?” Like, this person didn’t eat eight of them, gave them away. Well, so our girls did it up, made a nice cone out of red paper, put them in there, tied it up with a gold ribbon, it looked fine. But fuck, man, let me tell you: have you seen those bonbons? Each one’s like the size of a potato. Well, not a potato, but like…this big. You’d have a hard time getting three of them down. I mean, maybe you could cram a third one in, but that’s pushing it.

—…I went in there once, what’s it called, “Pennysavers.” No, wait, “Nickels,” it was “Nickels.” Fucking rough in there, like I didn’t recognize a single brand.

—…he was an OK guy, but obviously, if he caught anybody in the warehouses, he’d sic the dogs on them right away. You can’t run, that’s the worst, you have to drop and cover immediately. They’re scary, these bitches, this one guy had to get his leg amputated right there in the camp, they tore him up so bad. But then they transferred that guy to Berdyansk and this one came. On the third night it was light out and we went to the warehouses, three of us. We were just getting ready to leave when we saw him heading toward us with a dog. We sat there holding our breath. It was some new dog. They’d almost passed us, then the bitch sensed something and went for us. But he couldn’t see us behind the crates, he just saw the direction she was barking and said: “I’ll give you a ten-second head start.” And that dog turned out to be shit, like, she just chewed on me a little, chewed up my back some. But we got him later for that head start.

—…five-twenty, they repeated it a hundred times afterwards, five-twenty a.m. She woke me up screaming: “The baby’s gone.” He was four months old, like, a little over four months. Well, so that was that, we spent the whole day, like, you can imagine. The baby isn’t in the apartment, right? The police, those, you know, detectives. I thought I was going to die. The things I was thinking about, let me tell you. I don’t want to say it out loud, but you pretty much get the picture, right? So, the police were there all day, of course, obviously they’re interrogating us. Her, me. Anyway. I was crying so fucking hard, I’m telling you, like where you can’t breathe, like “uhhh…. uhhhh.” Sat down in the corner and like rocked back and forth. Went at one of the cops…No, well, like I tried, I took a swing at him. The questions they were asking. As if you aren’t thinking all that stuff yourself. At one in the morning we went into our building, got home. I couldn’t even turn on the lights, you know? Such a wreck. And then she said: “OK, here’s the truth. The baby’s with my aunt. I just wanted to show you that you’re the kind of father where you can take the baby out of the apartment and you don’t even wake up. You see?” I was that kind of father. With the second one, with our daughter, it was better, it was different. I made way more of an effort.

—…that when Anya calls her phone says ‘Baby Girl’ but when I call it’s just ‘Katya.’

For D.N.

—…it’s not a question of ethics, but of effectiveness. Look, here’s a situation for you. We’re in line for ice cream. There’s a man, OK? Normal-looking, nothing fancy, but normal, with a beard. And he grabs the woman who’s with me and without saying anything slams her head into the corner of the freezer. OK? Just like that—bam!—pushes her head down. Real simple, silently. Because he thinks that she’s a gay boy. Even though she looks basically like Tanya. That’s just an aside, doesn’t really matter. And I’m standing there too. Well, of course, I’m like: “Aaaaahh…aaaaah….” Trying to breathe, what could I do? What am I supposed to do? She’s bleeding, her forehead’s busted, right? And then she turns around and he sees that she’s a girl. And he gets down on his knees and starts crying and saying: “Forgive me, forgive me. For Christ our Lord’s sake, forgive me.” He’s bowing down to the ground, on his knees. And so that’s the situation: what do I do? According to the basic rules I’m supposed to fuck him up. I’m supposed to punch him in the face, in this situation that’s what I’m supposed to do, right? But if you think about it—what’s the point? The man is on his knees sobbing. What’s the point?

—…was crying, Marina was crying, I was crying, Voloshina had basically dissolved in tears, but Tushevskaya wasn’t crying. She caught the bouquet and when they brought the cake she said: “Oh, give me a big piece, you know, I eat so much and somehow I just can’t gain the weight back!” That’s what Tushevskaya’s like. I think if you’re a widow it still doesn’t give you the right to shit all over people.

—…that was way back when, I was still at university, but, you know, pretty far along, I was finishing my second year—anyway, the girls came running: “Marina, this puppy’s dying!” So, we dashed down the stairs, they’re sitting by the building, they’d found this puppy, this little pup, like—teeny-weeny, and it’s really cashing out, you could see its eyes rolling back into its head. Its little heart—its heart was like the size of a pea, like half a pea, and you could see it beating under the skin. They were like: “Marina, come on, you give it the shot!” meaning, put a shot of adrenaline right into the heart—but my hands were shaking, what if I miss, or get the dose wrong…So basically I have no idea, I don’t understand how anyone could want to be a veterinarian, you need nerves of steel. I mean, we have to have strong nerves too, but it’s not the same thing as with those teeny-weeny little creatures. So two days after that I dropped out, spent the next year studying at home, and that was it, I switched to medical school. Cut myself some slack.

For V.

—…not my business, of course, I’m just the driver, you don’t have to answer or anything, but let me tell you: you were just asking someone over the phone: “What for?” or like “Why?” I’m just saying, you don’t have to give me an answer: I know just what you mean. A year ago now I said to myself: “You’ll be thirty-two next year. If a man still has questions at thirty-two, he’s an idiot, a waste of space, he doesn’t deserve to live, no one can live like that.” And I started answering all my questions, posing every question and answering it, for several days, even a week, one after another. “Why are we here?” I thought about it and figured it out. “Why are women”—well, why are they like that and not some other way. Thought about it—figured it out. Then, like: “What does a man owe his children?”—answered it. And now I just turned thirty-two, in September, and I don’t have any more questions, none. Well, I’m not talking about practical questions, those still come up, obviously. But all the questions relating to the soul and not the body—I thought about all of them and figured them out. What are the practical questions? Like, the ones you can answer or not answer, it won’t really change anything, won’t change your soul. Like, here, I had this parrot, and you know, they live a long time. Well, he died, like, he was sitting on my shoulder and all of a sudden I thought he’d flown off, but then I felt his claws on my back—he’d fallen backwards. Well, I even, you know, I even cried. He lived a long time. So I couldn’t throw him out, I put him in a plastic box and buried him at my dacha. So, it’s been years now, and when we have those warm days, you know, like the last ones in the season, when you’re closing up the dacha for the winter, I dig him up and take a look: he hasn’t decomposed. Why hasn’t he decomposed? That’s a practical question. It’s a good question, but a practical one.

For B.F.

—…I can’t agree with your dad. I’m not sure that you’re supposed to hate a person, even someone who has done very bad things. Really, this is a very old conversation, there’s even a saying: “Love the sinner, hate the sin.” But to put it simply, hating a person is a very strong feeling, and not a good one. I tell myself: if someone put that person in front of me right now and gave me a pistol, would I be able to kill him? And I think, no, thank God, I wouldn’t. And that means I don’t hate that person. I can dislike him, scorn him, blame him for all sorts of things, sure, but I don’t hate him. But if I think, yes, I’d kill him, it means I have to ask myself—why? After all, it’s bad to kill people, right? So it means I have to start working on myself, it’s a problem inside me and not in the other person, I’m the one that’s bad, not him, since I want to kill another person…But you know, Sasha, really, don’t listen to me, I’ve got cobwebs in my head, don’t pay any attention to me. Your dad has it right: we hate Putin, Putin’s bad. Don’t listen to me, listen to your dad.