Read A Russian Story Online

Authors: Eugenia Kononenko

A Russian Story (16 page)

BOOK: A Russian Story
8.67Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

 

Dear Zhenia!

In the relations between us everything has always been as in the timeless Russian novel, except for Tatiana’s letter to Eugene. So I am correcting that omission. My flight is eastbound in the evening and you are already on your way westwards. We did not finish that conversation in the corridor at the governor’s offices, so here are a few lines for you, to catch up. I am grateful to you for not exploiting a little girl’s stupidity. I am grateful that you left your books behind in the General’s house. Next to them lies to this day the issue of the ‘Gardener’s News’, now turned yellow, that contained the rudimentary little article on Nietzsche, against which you wrote a comment in Russian: “What a stupid girl!” I cried so much over that! I don’t know what the fortune-teller Demyanivna told you. She told me you were the one who marked out my fate, and every day after school I came to your house and tried to read your books. I couldn’t manage them, but I kept on reading anyway, so that one day I would meet you, but not as a ‘stupid girl’. I put Nietzsche aside and began turning the pages of Milan Kundera’s ‘Immortality’. I was surprised to find there exactly what you had bombarded my parents with about the Russians’ ‘pre-coital love’. Almost word for word. So these were not your ideas. But it meant that if I read books I might become interesting to you later on.

But how was it possible to get through the dreadful black two-volume work containing a portrait of a man with a large moustache and burning eyes? I could tell from the way the pages were worn that you spent the most time reading ‘Ecce homo’. This two-volume set still lies on your desk. And to this day I read those texts in different editions, although, as you know, Nietzsche can never be read right through to the end.

And I am grateful too for those words you called out to me as you clambered aboard the train, when we both thought Volodya had perished. You shouted out that after a while Olya wouldn’t be able to get through the doorway. It isn’t quite like that, but she is now about twice the size she was. She is attractive, though, none the less, and Volodya loves her.

But what about the butterfly on her behind? Is it twice the size too? Has she who
would become a good mother to the children and a faithful wife to her husband
had it removed? Eugene looked up from the letter and noticed his son had finished his meal, and that he had enjoyed it.

“Have mine as well,” he said to Myroslav, returning to the letter.

You called out to me that I would be attractive and sensible and that we would meet up in the middle of the Atlantic. Perhaps you have forgotten what you told me then. But you were sincere in wanting to say something kind to the young girl who was rescuing you, and you said it with such passion that everything has come true, especially the Atlantic. You did not predict the future; you brought it about by the power of your words. Thank you from the bottom of my heart!

But where is the “end I am afraid to re-read”? It happens that a text is written for the sake of its last line, blazing on the horizon in fiery letters. But once the text of life is written, that line turns out to be superfluous…

30
th
April — 17
th
June 2012

 

 

 

D
EAR
R
EADER
,

Thank you for purchasing this book.

We at Glagoslav Publications are glad to welcome you, and hope that you find our books to be a source of knowledge and inspiration.

We want to show the beauty and depth of the Slavic region to everyone looking to expand their horizon and learn something new about different cultures, different people, and we believe that with this book we have managed to do just that.

Now that you’ve got to know us, we want to get to know you. We value communication with our readers and want to hear from you! We offer several options:

Join our Book Club on Goodreads, Library Thing and Shelfari, and receive special offers and information about our giveaways;

Share your opinion about our books on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Waterstones and other bookstores;

Join us on Facebook and Twitter for updates on our publications and news about our authors;

Visit our site
www.glagoslav.com
to check out our Catalogue and subscribe to our Newsletter.

Glagoslav Publications is getting ready to release a new collection and planning some interesting surprises — stay with us to find out!

 

Glagoslav Publications

Office 36, 88-90 Hatton Garden

EC1N 8PN London, UK

Tel: + 44 (0) 20 32 86 99 82

Email:
[email protected]

Glagoslav Publications Catalogue


The Time of Women
by Elena Chizhova


Sin
by Zakhar Prilepin


Hardly Ever Otherwise
by Maria Matios


The Lost Button
by Irene Rozdobudko


Khatyn
by Ales Adamovich


Christened with Crosses
by Eduard Kochergin


The Vital Needs of the Dead
by Igor Sakhnovsky


METRO 2033
(Dutch Edition) by Dmitry Glukhovsky


METRO 2034
(Dutch Edition) by Dmitry Glukhovsky


A Poet and Bin Laden
by Hamid Ismailov


Asystole
by Oleg Pavlov


Kobzar
by Taras Shevchenko


White Shanghai
by Elvira Baryakina


The Stone Bridge
by Alexander Terekhov


King Stakh’s Wild Hunt
by Uladzimir Karatkevich


Depeche Mode
by Serhii Zhadan


Saraband Sarah’s Band
by Larysa Denysenko


Herstories
, An Anthology of New Ukrainian Women Prose Writers


Watching The Russians
(Dutch Edition) by Maria Konyukova


The Hawks of Peace
by Dmitry Rogozin


The Grand Slam and Other Stories
(Dutch Edition) by Leonid Andreev


The Battle of the Sexes Russian Style
by Nadezhda Ptushkina


A Book Without Photographs
by Sergei Shargunov

 

 

More coming soon…

*
A Russian folk song

**
A line from
Testament,
a cult Ukrainian song set to words by Taras Shevchenko

*
Kateryna is the eponymous heroine of a poem by the Ukrainian national poet Taras Shevchenko, a village girl seduced, made pregnant and abandoned by a soldier of the Imperial Russian army, nicknamed
the Muscovite
. The poem
Kateryna
is a central theme of classical Ukrainian literature, interpreted as symbolising relations between Imperial Russia and colonial Ukraine.

*
Heroes of the short story
Viy
by the classic Russian writer Nikolai Gogol, who was born in Ukraine. The action of this mystic tale takes place in Ukraine. Many other works by Gogol are based on Ukrainian themes.

**
The name of the month of May in Ukrainian

*
Rus
is the historical name of the 9
th
-13
th
century Kyivan state, the cultural and political precursor of both modern Russia and Ukraine. For present-day Ukrainians,
Rus
is a poetic name for Ukraine.

*
Red Viburnum
is the title of a Ukrainian patriotic song frequently heard during street demonstrations in the era of Soviet
perestroika
and during the first years of Ukrainian independence.

**
The Kaidash Family
is a novella by Ivan Nechuy-Levytsky, whose works
Mykola Dzherya
and
The Kaidash Family
are studied in secondary schools in Ukraine and are familiar to anyone with this educational background.

*
i.e. the mother of Tatiana Larina, heroine of Pushkin’s
Eugene Onegin
, and the elderly pawnbroker and money-lender Alyona Ivanovna murdered by Raskolnikov in Dostoevsky’s
Crime and Punishment
for ideological motives. During debates on nationalism in Ukraine, Russophiles took inspiration from heroes of Russian literature.

*
Mykola Dzherya, the eponymous hero of a novella by the Ukrainian populist writer Ivan Nechuy-Levytsky (cf. footnote on page 25, above), is a positive figure in classical Ukrainian literature, a young villager very devoted to his wife.

*
Ochipok
. Traditional Ukrainian headwear of married women. It used to be considered proper for the hair of a married woman to be completely concealed.

BOOK: A Russian Story
8.67Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

Other books

Designs in Crime by Carolyn Keene
High Seduction by Vivian Arend
Hunger Town by Wendy Scarfe
A Shilling for Candles by Josephine Tey
Ledge Walkers by Rosalyn Wraight
He's Gone by Deb Caletti
The Moonspinners by Mary Stewart