There Once Lived a Girl Who Seduced Her Sister's Husband, and He Hanged Himself by Ludmilla Petrushevskaya Page A
Authors: Ludmilla Petrushevskaya
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boots! Without her boots, she could neither walk through the park’s muddy puddles nor enter the dining hall. In an old boot from her teacher, she dragged herself like a pariah behind everyone in class.
Such was my condition at the very moment I needed to look no worse than the others. There was this boy, Tolik. We were the same age, but he was six inches shorter, and unspeakably beautiful: a chiseled nose surrounded by freckles, thick lashes over starry eyes, his mouth poised for a coy smirk. The girl was too tall for him, but this young god radiated his charm evenly and meaninglessly a hundred yards around like a little nuclear reactor. When he entered the dining hall, the space around his table lit up, and the girl felt a surge of merriment—Tolik’s here!—and Tolik’s eyes would grow larger, as though under a magnifying glass, as he surveyed his kingdom. Heads turned toward him like sunflowers to the sun. The girl felt stabbed in her heart. There was a swelling right above it, the size of a young berry.
In a commune, no one is entitled to private meals; that’s considered hoarding. Everything, even poor biscuits from home, must be shared. A commune also dislikes nonconforming behavior, such as arriving late or wearing mismatched boots. The girl, inevitably, became an outcast in her class. She began to straggle behind on purpose to avoid scornful looks. One October night, at the end of her second week, she fell so far behind the other girls that she found herself alone among the boys. Dark shadows fell across the path, cutting her off from the girls and their teacher up ahead. The boys, like a pack of wolves encircling its prey, surroundedher.
The girl stood there on the edge of the park. The other girls, protected and safe, she could barelysee.
I screamed after them. I bellowed like a tuba, like a siren.
The boys nearest to me grinned stupidly. (Later, in my grown life, I could always recognize that dumb smirk, a companion to base, dirty deeds.) Their arms opened wide, ready to grab me. Their fingers danced, and their berries probably hardened. I stood still, screaming toward the girls. A few glanced back, but they all continued to walk away, even faster. I screamed louder.
What would they do tome?
They’d have to tear me to pieces and bury my remains, but before that, they would do everything that could be done to a person who becomes their property.
For now, they just wanted me to shutup.
When they were only five feet away, something made them pause. I hurled myself through their ring and ran wildly across the meadow, losing my oversize boot in the mud. At the door, I overtook the last of the girls. She heard me thumping and looked around: on her face I saw the same dirty, complicit smirk. I tumbled inside, red and swollen from crying. But nobody asked a single question as to what caused all that yelling in the park. Those girls knew instinctively. Maybe they’d shared a past in the caves where their female ancestors had been chased down and raped. (How quickly children can regress and accept such hard, primitive truths! Fire and women to be used in common; collective meals shared equally—where the strong get more, the weak get less or nothing at all; sleep together on a filthy floor; grab food from the pile; dress in identical rags.)
That night the girls seemed quiet in a strange, contented way, as if their hunger for primitive justice had been stoked and sated. They didn’t know I had escaped! They assumed I had come back alive but broken, soiled.
Excreted
was the word for such children. The girl herself had known excreted kids in her schoolyard. The excreted were outside the commune, up for grabs—anyone could abuse them in any way. The thing to do was to stalk them, then to slam them into a wall in plain view. The excreted wore the look of dumb cattle; two or three stalkers tailed them. Nothing less than constant adult supervision could protect them, but one can’t expect an adult presence on
Such was my condition at the very moment I needed to look no worse than the others. There was this boy, Tolik. We were the same age, but he was six inches shorter, and unspeakably beautiful: a chiseled nose surrounded by freckles, thick lashes over starry eyes, his mouth poised for a coy smirk. The girl was too tall for him, but this young god radiated his charm evenly and meaninglessly a hundred yards around like a little nuclear reactor. When he entered the dining hall, the space around his table lit up, and the girl felt a surge of merriment—Tolik’s here!—and Tolik’s eyes would grow larger, as though under a magnifying glass, as he surveyed his kingdom. Heads turned toward him like sunflowers to the sun. The girl felt stabbed in her heart. There was a swelling right above it, the size of a young berry.
In a commune, no one is entitled to private meals; that’s considered hoarding. Everything, even poor biscuits from home, must be shared. A commune also dislikes nonconforming behavior, such as arriving late or wearing mismatched boots. The girl, inevitably, became an outcast in her class. She began to straggle behind on purpose to avoid scornful looks. One October night, at the end of her second week, she fell so far behind the other girls that she found herself alone among the boys. Dark shadows fell across the path, cutting her off from the girls and their teacher up ahead. The boys, like a pack of wolves encircling its prey, surroundedher.
The girl stood there on the edge of the park. The other girls, protected and safe, she could barelysee.
I screamed after them. I bellowed like a tuba, like a siren.
The boys nearest to me grinned stupidly. (Later, in my grown life, I could always recognize that dumb smirk, a companion to base, dirty deeds.) Their arms opened wide, ready to grab me. Their fingers danced, and their berries probably hardened. I stood still, screaming toward the girls. A few glanced back, but they all continued to walk away, even faster. I screamed louder.
What would they do tome?
They’d have to tear me to pieces and bury my remains, but before that, they would do everything that could be done to a person who becomes their property.
For now, they just wanted me to shutup.
When they were only five feet away, something made them pause. I hurled myself through their ring and ran wildly across the meadow, losing my oversize boot in the mud. At the door, I overtook the last of the girls. She heard me thumping and looked around: on her face I saw the same dirty, complicit smirk. I tumbled inside, red and swollen from crying. But nobody asked a single question as to what caused all that yelling in the park. Those girls knew instinctively. Maybe they’d shared a past in the caves where their female ancestors had been chased down and raped. (How quickly children can regress and accept such hard, primitive truths! Fire and women to be used in common; collective meals shared equally—where the strong get more, the weak get less or nothing at all; sleep together on a filthy floor; grab food from the pile; dress in identical rags.)
That night the girls seemed quiet in a strange, contented way, as if their hunger for primitive justice had been stoked and sated. They didn’t know I had escaped! They assumed I had come back alive but broken, soiled.
Excreted
was the word for such children. The girl herself had known excreted kids in her schoolyard. The excreted were outside the commune, up for grabs—anyone could abuse them in any way. The thing to do was to stalk them, then to slam them into a wall in plain view. The excreted wore the look of dumb cattle; two or three stalkers tailed them. Nothing less than constant adult supervision could protect them, but one can’t expect an adult presence on
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