In the meantime, the publisher has given me permission to share an excerpt from the book called A Murky Fate and I'm delighted to do so! Enjoy it and be sure to get your own copy of the full book next week!
A Murky Fate
This
is what happened. An unmarried woman in her thirties implored her mother to
leave their one-room apartment for one night so she could bring home a lover.
This
so-called lover bounced between two households, his mother’s and his wife’s, and
he had an overripe daughter of fourteen to consider as well. About his work at
the laboratory he constantly fretted. He would brag to anyone who listened
about the imminent promotion that never materialized. The insatiable appetite
he displayed at office parties, where he stuffed himself, was the result of an
undiagnosed diabetes that enslaved him to thirst and hunger and lacquered him
with pasty skin, thick glasses, and dandruff. A fat, balding man-child of
forty-two with a dead-end job and ruined health—this was the treasure our
unmarried thirtysomething brought to her apartment for a night of love.
He
approached the upcoming tryst matter-of-factly, almost like a business meeting,
while she approached it from the black desperation of loneliness. She gave it
the appearance of love or at least infatuation: reproaches and tears, pleadings
to tell her that he loved her, to which he replied, “Yes, yes, I quite agree.”
But despite her illusions she knew there was no romance in how they moved from
the office to her apartment, picking up cake and wine at his request; how her
hands shook when she was unlocking the door, terrified that her mother might
have decided to stay.
The
woman put water on for tea, poured wine, and cut cake. Her lover, stuffed with
cake, flopped himself across the armchair. He checked the time, then unfastened
his watch and placed it on a chair. His underwear was white and clean. He sat
down on the edge of the sofa, wiped his feet with his socks, and lay down on
the fresh sheets. Afterward they chatted; he asked again what she thought of
his chances for a promotion. He got up to leave. At the door, he turned back
toward the cake and cut himself another large piece. He asked her to change a
three-ruble bill but, receiving no reply, pecked her on the forehead and
slammed the door behind him. She didn’t get up. Of course the affair was over
for him. He wasn’t coming back—in his childishness he hadn’t understood even
that much, skipping off happily, unaware of the catastrophe, taking his three
rubles and his overstuffed belly.
The
next day she didn’t go to the cafeteria but ate lunch at her desk. She thought
about the coming evening, when she’d have to face her mother and resume her old
life. Suddenly she blurted out to her officemate: “Well, have you found a man
yet?” The woman blushed miserably: “No, not yet.” Her husband had left her, and
she’d been living alone with her shame and humiliation, never inviting any of
her friends to her empty apartment. “How about you?” she asked. “Yes, I’m
seeing someone,” the woman replied. Tears of joy welled up in her eyes.
But she knew she was lost. From now
on, she understood, she’d be chained to the pay phone, ringing her beloved at
his mother’s, or his wife’s. To them she’d be known as that
woman—the last in a series of female voices who had called the same
numbers, looking for the same thing. She supposed he must have been loved by
many women, all of whom he must have asked about his chances for promotion,
then dumped. Her beloved was insensitive and crude—everything was clear in his
case. There was nothing but pain in store for her, yet she cried with happiness
and couldn’t stop.
Reprinted by arrangement with
Viking, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc., from There Once Lived a Girl Who Seduced Her
Sister’s Husband, and He Hanged Himself by Ludmilla Petrushevskaya,
selected and translated by Anna Summers. Copyright © 2013 by Ludmilla
Petrushevskaya. Translation and introduction copyright © 2013 by Anna Summers.
