First Miracle
Weddings take place at dachas
in early childhood.
The dacha was astonishing:
made of logs,
with carved shutters
and two porches,
and so big
that one night,
when we all sat in one half
drinking tea from the samovar —
also shiny and big —
gypsies wandered into the other half
and carried away all our table silver,
and we didn’t hear a thing.
And the garden was so big
it changed over to forest;
we gathered mushrooms without passing the gate.
We lived in the dacha from May to October: eternity.
I was five years old.
October was ending.
Light rain was falling.
It was gloomy in the garden.
I stood on the porch and gnawed an apple,
ripe amber, cold ache in my teeth.
The whole house was crammed with apples.
The house smelled through and through of Bunin,
of his book —
the big one with yellow pages —
where “Antonov Apples” appeared.
But at the end of this October,
on the edge of eternity,
I wasn’t yet able to give that smell a name.
He was thirty-five:
midway along the journey of his life,
he found himself in a gloomy garden,
that is, he entered through the distant gate
and followed the pathway to the house.
Two more men followed.
But I saw him alone.
He was big and fabulously handsome:
blue eyes, light brown beard, wheat-colored curls —
a prince.
I fell in love immediately — all of me,
along with the apple that I gnawed.
He came to dig a well.
I felt it wasn’t for long,
wasn’t forever and ever;
things couldn’t be otherwise,
these were the last October days —
eternity was ending.
But I didn’t want to accept that.
They dug all day,
and all night I
shoveled the dirt back.
A five-year-old Penelope,
I undid the work of three men.
Three bridegrooms.
No, there was only one real groom.
Those who came after were just copies.
I was afraid for no reason:
he didn’t go anywhere —
and remained in that October.
And I remained.
That’s how we are there:
the prince and Penelope, with an apple in her hand.
And grandfather and grandmother,
and the workmen with their shovels,
and the gypsies with the silverware —
everyone sits in the garden at the big table
shouting “Bitter!” for us to kiss — and drinking,
drinking wine —
straight from the well.
* * * * *
The Kind Stepmother
“I’ll kill her,” I said.
“With what?” smiled Father.
“With the neck of a bottle.”
Father didn’t expect such specificity:
“But she’s so kind!”
“That’s not the point!” I shrieked.
I didn’t eat anything at their wedding,
I fed my stepmother’s cat duck with apples
and if I’d only been able,
I’d have stuffed her with apple pie
and apple jam
and apples from the bowl
and gladioli, too,
so she’d burst.
I declared a hunger strike,
declared it to myself — told them I had a headache
and was going for a walk
so as not to see how they ate vareniki on the veranda,
how hot cherry juice flowed from the vareniki
and, mixing with cold sour cream,
became thick and pink.
I went the other way—
walking along the sandy path to the last house,
I turned into the woods
where my hut was.
I was like Lenin in Razliv,
because I didn’t hate my stepmother
but the state of things
in which living and dead both existed;
since Mama wasn’t here, I wanted there to be no me,
no stepmother, no stepmother’s son,
I wanted everyone
to be unhappy,
like Grandfather Lenin who, obviously, wanted
everyone to be happy,
for when all is said and done we wanted the same thing:
fairness.
… The pit of my stomach churned,
it started to rain.
I tried to build a fire, but wet branches wouldn’t burn:
all smoke and no fire.
I lugged a stack of newspapers from the hut and lit it:
paper flame.
After the rain, my stepmother’s son
emerged from behind a birch tree.
“Are you all right?”
He took two cold vareniki from his pocket.
I ate them. His pocket was stained. Completely ruined!
I picked a snail off a wet burdock:
“Stick out your horns, little snail, little snail,
And I’ll put some pie along your trail” —
I lied,
because from the time my stepmother went away,
there was no pie left at home.
And there wasn’t much left of me:
after the vareniki I held out,
but my stepmother didn’t.
“I don’t want the child to die because of me,”
she said to Father and started to pack her things.
“Lord, where has it gone?”
My stepmother couldn’t find the left shoe
of her favorite pair of shoes anywhere.
She had to hurry for the bus.
My stepmother put the lone shoe in her bag —
you wouldn’t throw it away,
who knew how things might turn out,
you could buy the same pair and suddenly lose the right one,
or else lose your left leg —
and sat down on the path for a moment in the ritual of leaving.
Then she settled herself on the luggage rack of the bicycle
held by her son,
waved to us,
and off they went.
And as I stood at the gate,
so I fell,
and the doctor said: dystrophy.
And they laid me by the window
under which Father came to visit,
and when I saw his wet face,
I thought: autumn,
but then looked around —
at the white walls, ceilings, and beds —
and it became clear to me that it was winter.
And when we arrived at the dacha,
it was summer,
but when I went to feed Zhuchka,
and found the shoe in her kennel,
I understood that this was a different summer:
I ran through the gate with the shoe in my hand.
A bike trail was clearly visible
on the sandy path …
The trail ended at the bus stop.
I sat down on the bus.
It was full of people.
They got on and off
with their buckets, baskets, troubles.
I asked all the women getting on the bus
to try on the shoe —
it fit no one.
Not because it was too little
but because it was too much a part of my stepmother,
that is, it had shaped itself in such a way
that it fit just one, single foot in all the world.
I burst into tears.
Nobody pitied me.
Because when you don’t have a stepmother
but those around you don’t have their lives,
no one feels sorry for you.
Looking at me, a child, the son
with whom I was going to the dacha, also burst into tears.
People got on and off,
the child cried and grew,
and when the bus stopped by the gate,
he picked up our bags,
and we went into the yard.
Zhuchka ran out to meet us with a joyful bark.
Father was digging up the earth around the apple tree.
My stepmother was on the veranda molding vareniki,
a thin little girl was helping her,
a girl who was the spitting image of my stepmother’s son,
tinkering with his bike on the porch.
The cat was washing herself on the porch.
I went up to my stepmother and held the shoe out to her.
She smiled, wiped her hands on her apron:
“Silly me, I was grieving about it …”
“How did you get here?” asked Father.
“On the bus … You know, all buses come here.”
“And all bicycles,” added my stepmother’s son.
And my son went up to the little girl and said:
“Would you like me to show you the hut?”
And she answered:
“I would.”
And they left. In their heaven.
And I remained in mine. And Mama —
I now knew — was in hers.
We didn’t all have each other.
And that was unfair.
But heaven isn’t built for fairness,
it’s built for the soul.
[note: Vareniki, like pierogi, are dumplings stuffed with either sweet or savory filling.]
* * * * *
May Snow
“I won’t be resurrected,” I snapped
in response to Nanny’s “Christ is risen,”
and Nanny Manya gasped quickly into the dish
with the painted Easter eggs,
and I, lifting my head from the pillow, shouted
“Yes, yes, yes! And please tell them that
when you light a candle there,
tell them I refuse to resurrect my body,”
and I pulled my nightshirt up to my chest,
where there were now two little stumps.
And Nanny Manya, backing away, forced out:
“This is wrong, daughter …”
And I answered that it was my own body,
and if cancer had eaten it,
then the worms could finish it off, period —
and I turned my face to the wall.
And Nanny Manya sighed silently,
but the front door slammed,
and Nanny Manya hurriedly left my room.
And I climbed out of bed, crawled to the door,
and started looking through the crack
as Mama, coming in from the yard,
having seen Nanny Manya, burst into tears,
it’s so nice you came to see us,
it’s too bad Natasha’s sleeping,
and they kissed each other three times,
and Mama hurried to set the table
and took out the home brew.
And Nanny Manya ate the way you’re supposed to eat:
an egg with salt, potatoes with cucumbers,
tea with Easter kulich —
but Mama ate willy-nilly:
first she’d eat cucumbers, then kulich:
she drank more than she ate.
“Easter’s late this year,” said Nanny Manya,
“The bird cherries are blooming, it’s May …”
“May,” Mama repeated mechanically.
“Do you remember the first time we took our
Natasha to a New Year’s party?
She was dressed all in white, all new…”
Mama drank,
“Father Frost put her on the stool by the tree
and asked in the microphone:
‘Granddaughter, do you know any
poems
about New Year’s Day?’
‘I do-oo…’
‘Say one to Father Frost.’
‘Welcome, Happy May,
we’ve waited so long for you …’”
“So we waited,”
Mama drank again.
“And he gave her a prize anyway.
Remember?
A little plastic New Year’s tree.
I’ve still got it …”
And Mama jumped up from the table,
ran to the sideboard,
and took the New Year’s tree out from behind the glass.
And suddenly she began to drag out dishes,
spoons, forks,
boxed dinnerware sets,
then she rushed to the wardrobe
and started taking out fur coats,
coats, raincoats, and jackets…
“I’ve saved everything, everything for her!”
Mama opened drawers and pulled out
fabric lengths of all colors,
packages of underwear,
unopened tights …
“Seventeen nightgowns alone!”
Mama shouted.
“And handkerchiefs!
And bed linens!”
Swaying, she climbed on a chair,
opened an upper cabinet, and from there
bras showered down
like snow:
white-white,
they fell and fell …
And Mama shouted:
“And diapers for her children!
And rompers! …”
But I didn’t see that.
I crawled away from the door, climbed into bed,
and turned my face to the wall,
and only heard Nanny Manya, sobbing,
say:
“When you sit by yourself, you think of everyone.
And you feel sad for everyone:
our Natasha,
and the boys who died near Moscow,
well, I was a nurse:
you’d be crawling across a field, and they were lying
without arms, without legs —
and the birds … Goodness, it’s cold! …”
And I thought that was how it should be,
and though I was sorry for Mama,
there had to be someone who wasn’t resurrected—
for all of those with breasts cut off
and arms and legs torn off —
because otherwise we’d go on like that eternally,
and that would be too much,
and I thought when things turn out that way for all time,
you’ve got to just clear out:
run away from eternity.
But Mama said:
“I’ll watch over her.
Day and night.”
“Especially at night,” agreed Nanny Manya,
“because Death arrives so softly
that even dogs don’t bark.”
“Let it come,” said Mama,
“Who needs dogs?..”
And she lit the lamp on the table
and began to sew me a summer dress
although it was cold,
but Mama knew that when the bird cherry blooms
it’s always cold,
but then summer always comes,
and she was sewing me a summer dress
because it seemed to her that if things just went on
the way they’d always done,
nothing bad could happen
and I’d always be there —
and the lamp shone,
and Mama
cut out the bodice,
having decided to make eternity with her own hands,
but I didn’t need eternity
because what was the point of eternity without breasts?
I needed to die — and not be resurrected:
and leave Grandma and Grandpa, like Kolobok in the tale —
but the lamp shone,
and Mama ironed the flounces,
and I waited —
because can a person
stay awake eternally,
even if she’s a mother?
And Mama fell asleep.
Then I crawled out from under the covers,
stepped over Mama, sleeping with her arms
around my dress in the doorway,
and, hugging the wall, went to the door.
And walking barefoot past the sideboard,
I pricked my foot on something —
and I picked up the plastic New Year’s tree from the floor.
It was so cold in the hallway
that I thought maybe I could
catch cold and get sick,
and from that thought I
grew happy,
having decided to die and not be resurrected,
and with only the New Year’s tree in my hand, I went out onto the porch.
… It was snowing.
And that was good.
Because if there’s a New Year’s tree, there’s got to be snow.
Welcome, Happy May!
The snow fell in thick, white flakes,
and the garden became a cherry orchard.
And I went down from the porch:
I placed myself there —
and waited for the snow to cover me over
and become my grave,
but it clung to me
and became my body,
and I — all in white, all new,
like a bride —
standing in the middle of the yard
where the bird cherry bloomed and snow fell and fell,
suddenly saw that over the field
with the armless and legless boys
that same snow was also falling,
that May snow.
* * * * *
Katherine E. Young on Inna Kabysh
In a 2004 review, literary critic and poet Kirill Ankudinov described Russia’s Inna Kabysh as first and foremost a metaphysical poet: “The core, the essence of her metaphysics is found in several simple words: children, pain, love, home, God. In precisely that order. And no other.” “Metaphysical” is an interesting choice to describe Kabysh, and it speaks to the difficult line she has walked during her career. In a culture that still considers “women’s writing” on family, home, and sexuality as somehow less worthy, Kabysh often explores those themes. A quarter-century before the feminist collective of poets published in Ф-Letter, Kabysh’s poems depicted women’s sexuality and reproductive realities, including abortion. Twenty years before Anna Starobinets called out the Russian medical establishment’s callous disregard for women’s physical and emotional well-being in Look at Him, Kabysh was addressing precisely those issues in her poetry. Counterbalancing her down-to-earth thematic interests is Kabysh’s literary erudition, which she often displays in poetic dialogue with such giants as Dante, Pushkin, Lermontov, Akhmatova, and Tsvetayeva — indeed, Dante’s presence is palpable in “First Miracle,” with its overt references to his Inferno.
These three poems appear in Kabysh’s 1996 collection Detsky mir (Children’s World). The Russian title refers to the Moscow store, which was the premier Soviet-era shopping destination for all things child-related. Children’s World is evoked not as a symbol of consumerism, but of reverence for the kind of happy Soviet childhood that was so elusive during the turbulent 20th century. In terms of style, Detsky mir is Kabysh’s most experimental collection. Known primarily as a formal poet, Kabysh here abandons rhyme and meter for free verse and word play, a particularly striking stylistic choice in 1996 when the book was first published (free verse has never dominated Russian poetry in the way it dominates American poetry). Almost all the poems are narrated by young girls, most of them living in households where husbands and fathers are dead or otherwise absent. Kabysh’s child narrators are not so much innocent as resilient; theirs is often a world of frozen landscapes and uncollected garbage. But they endure poverty, neglect, injustice, and the vagaries of life in the Soviet Union with cheerful ingenuity, making earrings by hanging twin cherries over their ears and pretending workmen are princes. Children, pain, love, home, God: few poets get even one of these right, and even fewer get all of them right. More often than not, Kabysh does just that.