Snow in May: Stories (28 page)

She was suddenly disgusted with Deda Misha. For the last two years her mother had been both happier and more miserable. But what was she like before she met Oleg? Sonya could hardly remember.

“Too bad you’re leaving tomorrow, Deda. We could’ve visited Makin,” she said. He started at the mention of Makin. “I want to see that famous rubber cat. Maybe I’ll go to his museum with Mama later, then stop by his apartment and ask him if he remembers you.”

“The true tragedy is to have lived without a woman’s love, Sonya, to not be able to love a woman. I don’t regret sending Galochka away. Measure seven times, cut once, as they say.” Deda Misha stared at a space in front of him. “And he even denied it to the journalists, in the nineties. One of my old Magadan acquaintances had read in the newspaper and called me. I was shocked.”

“Denied what?”

“He said he was only interested in those circles for the sake of art … he wanted to know how they lived, how everyone lives, to write better songs. And the incident in Sverdlovsk was pure provocation. Again.”

“But if he wasn’t, how…”

“A setup, he claimed. Because people were jealous of him, and certain people wanted revenge, but he didn’t say who or for what. He had never been married but he had had an infant daughter, he said, and she died with her mother during the Leningrad blockade. For all the years I’d known him, he’d never mentioned any daughter. I don’t believe that he was honest in the interviews. Or maybe he finally changed.”

“Good night.” Sonya walked out into the living room without kissing him. She had an unpleasant feeling in her stomach, like she’d eaten spoiled food.

She got to her room and realized that she’d forgotten all about Max. She switched off the lights and looked out: even through the curtain of snow she could see that his windows were still black. It was almost one in the morning. Everything would be better as soon as Max’s windows lit up.

The old hysterical woman who had burst into Makin’s museum opening, was that Galochka? Her fate was painful to imagine. She could have married, had children, and even grandchildren by now. Or she could have died years ago. Of a broken heart.

Sonya had to know now whether she loved Max or not. The ultimate test of true love was to give your life for your beloved. She thought of her homeroom at the English Lyceum, her favorite teacher, Lyudmila Abramovna, the scratched blackboard, the ficus plant on the windowsill, the portraits of the great Russian writers looking down sternly at the three rows of desks with chewed gum stuck to their undersides. Except Pushkin. He looked inspired and a little sad. Maybe because he had foreseen that he would die for love.

It was absurd to imagine yourself dying in such ordinary circumstances, in your familiar-familiar hometown, yet it shouldn’t have to matter. Love was love. She imagined herself with a gunshot wound in her chest, bleeding into the sheets. She willed Max’s windows to light up.

Glossary

apparatchik
A functionary in a politico-bureaucratic organization; from the Russian word
apparat,
meaning a collective of people working in this type of organization.

dacha
A summerhouse outside a city, usually with a vegetable plot. Dachas could be large and fancy or a simple wooden shed, depending on the person’s status in the USSR and their financial situation afterward.

defitsit
Lack or scarcity of most goods available for sale in stores.

grazhdanka
Translated as “citizen” (female); a common officious form of address in the Soviet Union.

Great Patriotic War
The portion of World War II fought in eastern Europe between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany.

Gulag
Originally an acronym for Main Camp Administration; later used to indicate the countrywide web of labor camps from 1930 to 1955.

izba
A traditional Russian house, often made of logs.

khrushchyovka
A type of five-story cement-panel building with one- or two-room apartments with private bathrooms and kitchens, mass-produced during the years of Khrushchev’s leadership; they helped get millions of people out of cramped
kommunalkas.

kolkhoz
A collective farm owned by the State.

kolkhoznitsa
A female member of a kolkhoz.

kollektiv
A group of people, usually on friendly terms, working in the same company/organization, e.g., a teacher
kollektiv
.

Kolyma
A region in the far northeast of Russia named after the Kolyma River, notorious for Gulag labor camps; Magadan is often called the capital of Kolyma.

kommunalka
A communal apartment, where each family had a room and shared a kitchen and a bathroom. This was a solution to the housing shortage after people began to leave the countryside for the cities en masse in the early twentieth century. Older
kommunalkas
in the big cities were carved out of the big apartments and/or houses confiscated from the aristocracy and the rich during the revolutions of 1917;
kommunalkas
in other cities were designed as communal living spaces from the start.

Komsomol
Youth division of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.

Komsomolets
A member of Komsomol.

Maslenitsa
An Eastern Slavic holiday, with both Christian and pagan roots, celebrated the last week before Great Lent.
Bliny
(pancakes) are the traditional food of Maslenitsa.

medcarta
A notebook where a patient’s medical history is recorded.

New Russians
A term used for newly rich businessmen and entrepreneurs who had most likely gained access to wealth and property through criminal means in the economic and legal chaos of early post-Soviet Russia.

polyclinika
A clinic with doctors of various specialties under one roof.

Starkhanovites
Laborers (in the former Soviet Union) who worked fanatically to surpass production quotas set by the State.

Yezhovshchina
Named after Nikolai Yezhov, once the head of the Soviet secret police, the period of the most intense political repressions characterized by arbitrary imprisonment and executions (1937–1938).

Young Pioneers
Members of the Young Pioneer Organization of the Soviet Union, a mass youth organization for children ten to fifteen years old, with communist undertones.

Acknowledgments

It would take another long short story to name every person who has helped or inspired me in some way over nearly ten years it took to write and publish this book. I remember and am eternally grateful for advice, encouragement, support, and critical insight to all of you, especially:

My amazing and generous teachers: Jennifer Vanderbes, John Reed, Darin Strauss, David Lipsky, Jonathan Lethem, E. L. Doctorow, Lawrence Weschler, Jonathan Safran Foer, as well as Deborah Landau and everyone at the NYU MFA program.

My smart and tireless early readers: Mariah Robbins, Amy Bonnaffons, Sativa January, Boris Fishman, Brock Tellier, Conor Robin Madigan, Sam Beebe, Axel Wilhite, Nitin Das Rai, and everyone in the workshops and writing groups I’ve been a part of over the years.

My excellent agents, Simon Trewin and Dorian Karchmar, as well as Zoë Pagnamenta. My astute and patient editors: Sarah Bowlin, Olly Rowse, Clare Reihill, and everyone at Henry Holt in the United States and Fourth Estate in Britain. Also, thank you for early support to the editors who published my work in literary journals: Ollie Brock, John Freeman, Ellah Allfrey, Ted Hodgkinson, Ted Genoways, Michael Koch, and Natalie Young.

The biggest gratitude and
—a deep bow—goes to my family. For their support and belief in me. For hours of conversations about the beauty and horror that is Russia. To my father, for bringing me to a country where I am free to write and publish anything I want, for helping me research, and for remembering the most minute details about life in the Soviet Union. To my mother, for sharing her sharp observations about people, love, literature, and art. To my grandfather, my aunt, and my late grandmother, for sharing memories of their youth. To my sister, Maria, my brilliant partner in crime, for keeping me on my toes. And to my husband, Ben, for everything.

About the Author

K
SENIYA
M
ELNIK
was born in Magadan, in the northeast of Russia, and immigrated to Alaska at age fifteen. She earned an MFA from New York University, and her work has appeared in
The Brooklyn Rail
,
Epoch
,
Prospect
(U.K.),
Virginia Quarterly Review
and was selected for
Granta
’s
New Voices series. She lives in El Paso, Texas.

S
NOW IN
M
AY.
Copyright © 2014 by Kseniya Melnik. All rights reserved. For information, address Henry Holt and Co., 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y., 10010.

www.henryholt.com

Cover design by Emily Pracher

eBooks may be purchased for business or promotional use. For information on bulk purchases, please contact Macmillan Corporate and Premium Sales Department by writing to [email protected].

The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:

Melnik, Kseniya.

    [Stories. Selections]

    Snow in May: stories / Kseniya Melnik. — First Edition.

            pages    cm

    ISBN 978-1-62779-007-9 (hardcover)—ISBN 978-1-62779-008-6 (electronic copy) 1. Russian Far East—Fiction. I. Title.

    PS3613.E4495A6 2014

    813'.6—dc23

2013042039

“The Witch” first appeared in
Granta
’s New Voices series on
Granta.com
;

“Rumba” first appeared in
Epoch
magazine, 2012 series, Volume 61, Number 3;

“Love, Italian Style” first appeared as “In the queue” in
Prospect
magazine in 2011;

“Closed Fracture” first appeared in the
Virginia Quarterly Review
in fall 2011;

Lines from “But could you?” by Vladimir Mayakovsky, translated by Dorian Rottenberg;

Lines from
(“Kruchina”) written and composed by G. Vinogradov and A. Varlamov;

Lines from “When Youth Leaves,” music by V. Sorokin, lyrics by Alexey Fatianov.

First Edition: May 2014

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this collection either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.