Petropolis - Softcover

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Anya Ulinich was seventeen when her family left Moscow and immigrated to the United States. She attended the Art Institute of Chicago and received an MFA in painting from the University of California. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.

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An Unspoiled Quality

A CORRUGATED FENCE RAN THE ENTIRE LENGTH OF A STREET WITH NO NAME, until itcrossed another street with no name. At the end of the fence, there were sixevenly spaced brick apartment buildings and a grocery. Just under thebuildings' cornices, meter-high letters spelled: glory to the, soviet army, brushteeth, after eatin, welcome to, asbestos 2, and model town! The letters, red and peeling, were painted along the seams in thebrickwork, which forced the authors of the slogans to be less concerned withtheir meaning than with the finite number of bricks in each facade.

In the fall of 1992, Lubov Alexandrovna Goldberg decided to findan extracurricular activity for her fourteen–year–old daughter.

"Children of the intelligentsia don't just come home in theafternoon and engage in idiocy," declared Mrs. Goldberg.

She would've loved it if Sasha played the piano, but the Goldbergsdidn't have a piano, and there wasn't even space for a hypothetical piano inthe two crowded rooms where Sasha and her mother lived.

Mrs. Goldberg's second choice was the violin. She liked to imaginethe three–quarter view of Sasha in black and white, minus the frizzy bangs. This is Sasha practicingher violin. As you can see, there is a place for the arts in the increasingausterity of our lives, she wrote in herimaginary letter to Mr. Goldberg, whose address she didn't know. But after themoney was spent and the violin purchased, three consecutive violin instructorsdeclared Sasha profoundly tone deaf and musically uneducable.

"A bear stepped on her ear," Mrs. Goldbergcomplained to the neighbors, and Sasha thought about the weight of the bear andwhether in stepping on her ear the animal would also destroy her head, crackingit like a walnut.

"Sit up,Sasha," said Mrs. Goldberg, "and chew with your mouth closed."

Then came auditions for ballet and figure–skatingclasses, which even Mrs. Goldberg knew were a long shot for Sasha. On the wayhome from the last skating audition, where the instructor delicately describedher daughter as overweight and uncoordinated, Lubov Alexandrovna walked twosteps ahead of Sasha in a tense and loaded silence. Trudging through the snowbehind her mother, Sasha contemplated the street lamps. She tried to determinethe direction of the wind by the trajectories of snowflakes in the circles oflight, but the snow seemed to be flying every which way. Sasha was staringstraight up when her foot hit the curb and she landed flat on her face in asnowbank. This was more than Mrs. Goldberg could take.

"I told you to stop taking such wide steps. Youwant to see what you look like walking? Here!" Mrs. Goldberg swung her armswildly and took a giant step. "See? This is why you fall all the time! You tripover your own feet!"

Sasha got up and dusted herself off. Her right coatsleeve was packed with snow all the way up to her elbow, and the anticipationof it melting made her shiver.

"I have some advice for you!" shrieked Mrs.Goldberg. "Watch your step! You should see yourself in the mirror, the way youmove!"

Sasha woke up and stared at the water stain on the ceiling. For awhile, her eyes were empty. She allowed the horror of life to seep into themgradually, replacing the traces of forgotten dreams. It was the first day ofwinter recess. The Fruit Day.

Mrs. Goldberg had a new dietfor Sasha: each week, six days of regular food, one day of fruit only. Fruitmeant a shriveled Moroccan orange from the bottom of the fridge and a mother'spromise of more, since oranges were the only fruit found, if one was lucky, inmidwinter Siberia. Mrs. Goldberg was already at work or orange–huntingsomewhere, her bed neat as a furniture display.

Sasha got up and went to the kitchen. Feeling faintlyrevolutionary, she boiled water in a calcified communal teapot and pulled achair up to the cupboard. In the corner of the top shelf was her mother's canof Indian instant coffee. Sasha put four spoons of coffee granules and fourspoons of sugar in her cup and added water. The next stop was the fridge. Hermother had hidden all the food that belonged to the Goldbergs, but the othertenants still had theirs.

Sasha found half a bologna butt wrapped in brown paper, an egg, abrick of black bread, and half a can of sweetened condensed milk. She ate abologna omelet and washed it down with burning coffee. For dessert she had thebread with condensed milk. Some of the milk seeped through the pores in thebread and made a mess. "Fruit!" cursed Sasha, licking the drips off her fingers.When her hands were clean, she made another cup of coffee and returned to thefridge.

Sasha Goldberg was determined to enjoy her vacation. Winter recesswould be over in six days, and her fellow inmates would be waiting for her bythe gates of the Asbestos 2 Secondary School Number 13, ready to knock her bagout of her hands and send her flying backward down the iced–over staircase. Hello, Ugly! Wanna dienow or later? She would pluck her books and herindoor shoes out of the deep snow like birthday candles out of frosting andhurry to class.

Sasha excavated the Stepanovs' enamel pot from theback of the fridge and lifted the lid. Inside, bits of boiled chicken floatedin the greenish broth. Drinking the broth straight out of the pot, Sashabriefly imagined telling her mother what went on at Number 13. Of course, shewould never do that. That her daughter was an oaf sticking an icicle into herbleeding nostril before going to algebra didn't belong in Lubov Goldberg'sreality. Mrs. Goldberg would try, by sheer force of will, to dehumiliate Sashaon the spot. There would be questions—"Why are they doing it toyou?"—and suggestions—"Perhaps you need to be friendlier. I noticeyou don't have any girlfriends." A multitude of diets could emerge from thestack of old Burda magazines; the spiked rubber mat for flatfoot exercises might returnfrom the utility closet. Sasha knew that every measure would fail, and in theend, she would glimpse the true magnitude of her mother's contempt.

She poured another cup of coffee. Now she had no dessert,except for an old honey jar filled with cough drops. For as long as Sasha couldremember, those cough drops had been in the fridge. She tried the lid, but ithad crystallized onto the jar. Shaking from too much coffee, Sasha slammed thejar against the sink, washed the shards of glass down the drain, and sucked themass of congealed menthol until it turned into a translucent green disc.

After her third cup of coffee, Sasha ran out ofsugar. It was almost lunchtime. The neighbors who worked at the asbestos millwere about to come home to eat. Sasha dumped the dishes in the sink, took herorange out of the fridge, discarded a diamond–shaped Morocco sticker andreturned to bed. In bed, she disassembled the orange, tossed the peel behindthe headboard and, sucking on the sour sections, read Jules Verne until dark.

At six o'clock she heard her mother's footsteps inthe corridor and, seconds later, a shouting match in the kitchen. It wasn'treally a match, because the neighbors were the only ones shouting. Mrs.Goldberg never raised her voice; she wouldn't stoop to it. Sasha knew that hermother just stood there, pale and stoic, like St. Sebastian tied to a tree.

"Don't you ever feed that child?" yelled Mrs. Stepanova.

Mrs. Goldbergshut the door in Mrs. Stepanova's face and crossed her arms.

"Explain, Alexandra."

This was a purely symbolic offer. Sasha shrugged.

"Take off your pants," said Mrs. Goldberg.

Sasha got out of bed, hiked up her flannelnightgown, and pulled off her bloomers.

After beating Sasha with a dainty patent leatherbelt, Mrs. Goldberg dragged a chair over to Baba Zhenia's Romanian plywoodarmoire and took down a roll of Sasha's drawings and watercolors. Sasha lookedaway, preparing for the shredding. It was...