There Once Lived a Girl Who Seduced Her Sister's Husband, and He Hanged Himself (6 page)

My Little One

Give Her to Me

T
his Christmas story has a sad beginning and a happy ending. It begins in March with a certain Misha, a struggling composer from the provinces. He’d written a dozen children’s songs and two symphonies, Fifth and Tenth, so named as a joke. Misha survived by moonlighting at clubs with various bands. Onstage he wore a lace blouse and a fake bust, like Jack Lemmon in
Some Like It Hot
. That spring he was hired to write a score for a senior show at a drama school, an assigment for which he got paid by the hour, next to nothing. He wrote in his kitchen, at night, while his wife’s family, who unanimously despised Misha, slept nearby.

Now enters our second character, an extremely thin and unattractive senior at the drama school. Karpenko (her last name) was one of those unfortunate creatures forced to compensate for their appearance with a pleasant disposition and a carefree attitude. She was accepted to the school for her undeniable talent, but a successful actress needs other qualities—no one quite knows exactly what: feminine charm, perhaps, or steely ambition. Karpenko was as humble as a beggar. While her classmates rode off with their admirers in expensive cars, she inspired interest solely from her graying professors of voice and dance. Although she practiced at the barre every day, her froglike appearance condemned her to roles of servants and old ladies who neither sing nor dance.

Luckily Karpenko was assigned the part of a horse, with a little dancing, in the senior show
Getting Matches
, which was based on a Finnish novel. Her voice professor insisted that Karpenko perform one short song. As there were no songs in the play, Karpenko and Misha met in an empty auditorium to write one. Misha composed a catchy tune, and Karpenko assembled some lyrics. Misha, impressed, batted his eyes and shook his head in disbelief.

Karpenko, blind with happiness, flew to her dorm. No one had ever looked at her with such admiration. She’d grown up in the Far North, in a family of political exiles. Her ancestors owned country estates and danced in their own ballrooms, but now the family counted as many as four children, the mother worked as a nurse, and they all lived off their vegetable patch. The Karpenko women were known for their reticence and regal beauty, but the little froggy took after her father, a bush pilot who left his family when he retired. A little later Karpenko departed for the capital to become an actress, and her mother seemed to forget her. They didn’t meet for five years. To get from the capital to her village, one had to ride the train for seven days, then a bus for thirty-six hours, then another bus, which sometimes didn’t run, for seven more. Froggy’s letters went unanswered for three, four months.

Misha and Karpenko had a fruitful collaboration, and at the end of March the play was performed before the faculty and students. The maestro praised the part of the horse, especially her tap dance, and the voice professor bored everyone with a lecture on how to teach singing to students with insufficient talent. The audience loved the horse and yelled “Bravo!” Misha and Karpenko, both exhausted, took a long time packing their music and texts. By the time they finished, the subway was no longer running. They climbed up to the attic, and there, on an old mattress, Misha betrayed his wife for the first time, and Karpenko became a woman. That summer their play was performed at a student festival in Finland, where Karpenko was named the best supporting actress. Her certificate, written in Finnish, was displayed in the department.

The maestro selected a new professional company. Municipal authorities allowed them to use a warehouse on the city outskirts. The maestro’s old friend Mr. Osip Tartiuk became the company’s general manager. He proceeded to cast about for a new play, as Finnish-singing horses couldn’t be expected to attract much interest in that blue-collar neighborhood or among the theater’s municipal benefactors. Karpenko didn’t win the job. Tartiuk liked his women fat; on every heavy derriere he commented, “What a centaur!” At the banquets, after the third glass, he liked to confess he was interested in only a large butt.

The unemployed Karpenko tried this and that, and finally got hired to sell vegetables two days a week at a big outdoor food market. Her situation was dire—she was four months pregnant.

She rented a cot in the kitchen of an alcoholic couple who were themselves children and grandchildren of alcoholics. Pasha was the husband’s name. His enormous wife was called Elephant. Their two sons were in jail. In the summer the couple paraded in shorts and lavender panamas donated by some international aid organization, and hunted promising spots for cans and bottles like experienced mushroom pickers. In the winter Pasha and Elephant impersonated blind beggars. They stashed their equipment—dark glasses, two canes, and for some reason a dog’s leash—under Karpenko’s cot, behind her suitcase.

Luckily Elephant never cooked; she visited the kitchen where Karpenko lived only by mistake, when she wandered the apartment on the verge of delirium tremens. At night the couple relaxed in the company of select neighbors. Their room filled up with the local elite—prominent alcoholics and their girlfriends in various stages of decline. The excluded spent the night banging on their broken-down door. These soirees invariably ended in fights that were occasionally interrupted by sleepy patrolmen.

Every day, Karpenko scrubbed the toilet and the tub; she replaced the broken glass in the kitchen door with thick plywood. At night she stuffed her ears with soft wax, like Odysseus on his ship when he sailed past the sirens.

Once, she dropped by the new theater dorms and left some fruit for the girls. Just in case, she also left her new address. Misha soon came to see her. She had nothing for him to eat beyond some potatoes and carrots, which she was allowed to bring home from the market where she worked. Misha stayed the night, but he couldn’t sleep because of the drunken screaming and banging; in the morning he scrambled away as soon as the subway started up. Karpenko, who hadn’t mentioned her pregnancy, didn’t expect him back.

Three days later Misha reappeared with a keyboard: he had written a score to a musical. While he performed his score for Karpenko, the landlords and their visitors gathered outside the kitchen door and treated themselves to an impromptu dance party, obviously approving of Misha’s music. Karpenko, inspired, pulled out her most precious possession, an old typewriter, and wrote a play.

At that time theaters were interested only in plays translated from Italian. Misha and Karpenko invented an author, “Alidada Nektolai, as translated from the Italian by U. Karpui.” Their cast included a philandering lawyer and his skinny wife; the wife’s girlfriend, who slept with the lawyer and was married to the mayor; the mayor and his mafia friends, named Kafka, Lorca, and Petrarch; and so on. The heroine was a beautiful aspiring singer named Gallina Bianca. Misha observed that Karpenko would never get the lead, and so they created a character for her, a television executive named Julietta Mamasina who spoke entirely in Elephant’s morning monologues.

One day Elephant returned home covered in bruises and carrying a box of powdered milk that she’d discovered in an expensive supermarket’s Dumpster—the scene of many a fight over discarded goods. Pasha and Elephant sent a few packages to the market with Karpenko, but it seemed no one wanted to buy expired milk, and Elephant lost interest in the box. (Her guests did try to mix the powder with vodka, but the combination made them itchy.) The milk was left for the undernourished Karpenko, who added to her diet of raw carrots and beets, cottage cheese, and one boiled egg a serving of oatmeal cooked with milk.

The play was retyped, the songs recorded, and the arrangement copyrighted. Misha went to see the theater’s general manager, Mr. Osip Tartiuk, who received the play with indifference. Three days later, however, Tartiuk invited Misha to a staff meeting, where he sang and played his heart out. The play was accepted on the spot. Everyone was excited, until Misha announced that Alidada Nektolai demanded four thousand dollars for his play. Osip nearly lost his voice.

“We are young! We are poor!” he squeaked.

“Nektolai says that every company tells him they are young and poor. You want the play, pay up. Otherwise, there’s a long line.”

Osip cautiously inquired if there were other options.

“Another option would be to pay the translator directly, half that amount.”

“But I know her! She’s a regular centaur!” Here Osip gestured with his hands. “An ass like hers . . . she’ll give us a discount!”

“I seriously doubt it. Theaters like yours are a dime a dozen, and they all want
her.”

“We’ll offer her a thousand dollars! A whole thousand!”

“If she gets a thousand, then so do I, as the author of the score.”

“Who needs your score? We’ll put some soundtrack together!” Osip glared at Misha’s poor little keyboard.

“Translator Karpui insists her lyrics and my music stay together,” Misha piped up nervously. “It’s a musical—don’t you get it? Every theater in Moscow makes money on musicals except you in your dump!”

Osip looked deflated. He promised Misha an appropriate solution and pulled him into his office.

After a lengthy discussion Misha was promised $1,500 and, for Karpenko, a room in the theater dorm, a part in the play, and a permanent position with the company.

“What’s going on between you and this Karpenko, young man? Has your wife been informed?” Osip asked suspiciously.

“We are getting a divorce,” Misha blurted out, surprising himself.

“And do you actually know this Karpui?”

“Karpui is Karpenko—she wrote the play herself. We hold copyright to both the play and the music.”

“You can shut up now! This Karpenko and her play are worth maybe a hundred dollars on a good day. If you want, I’ll make her a janitor; we need one in the theater.”

“Great! We’ll sell the play to the best theater in Moscow for my price!”

“Two hundred?”

At this moment the maestro walked in, beaming, and announced he’d never seen such enthusiasm among the actors about a new play. “I can see it onstage! And you”—here the maestro called Misha several names—“are in my way with your music!”

Enraged, normally meek Misha lost his composure and demanded a thousand each—immediately and in dollars, not rubles.

“Immediately? I can’t,” Osip replied peevishly.

“The translator and I will come in on Monday.”

“On Monday I can’t, either. Mmm . . . make it Wednesday.”

“So on Wednesday you’ll meet my conditions, right?”

“Look, Misha!” Osip started yelling again. “I need a janitor! Renovations are almost over; who’s going to clean up this mess?”

A pause.

“By the way,” Osip announced to the confused maestro, “your former student Karpenko has just returned from Finland, where she’s been working in television.”

“From Finland? That’s where she was! Suddenly my student disappears. . . . So she’ll play Gallina Bianca; she’ll be perfect! In the first act she’s a skinny little thing; in the second she’ll have big boobs and high heels—”

“Actually, she wanted to play Julietta Mamasina,” interrupted Misha.

“Who cares what she wants!” screamed Osip. “Fine, let her play already,” he finished quietly.

At the dorm, Karpenko moved into a room belonging to two girls who had been forced to move into a double, which now became a triple. The aggravation intensified as new parts were assigned. Oh theater, the snake pit of snake pits! The question suddenly arose as to why Misha was living in the dorm without any registration, while the rest of them had to pay extra for gas and electricity. Also, did Misha’s wife know what was happening? Somebody should inform her. The wife and their ten-year-old son once came to see Misha, waiting for him until the last train. God knows how Osip found out, but he warned Misha, and he and Karpenko hid at the Domodedovo airport.

The new season opened with previews. Karpenko made sure her costume provided room for her growing belly. Fake bust, miniskirt, red wig, high boots on flat soles—comic in the extreme. The premiere was a great success. Julietta sang off-key and danced like an elephant, a model for future starlets. In the dorm everyone knew about Karpenko’s pregnancy and positioned themselves to take over her part.

A few weeks later Osip Tartiuk stopped by Karpenko’s room. Karpenko was lying on the bed. Misha, wearing headphones, was bent over his keyboard.

“So what are we going to do?” Osip inquired. “When are you due? We need time to replace
you!”

“December
31.”

“So what do we do? We have two weeks left.”

“Let Misha do it. He knows the part. You don’t have any actresses who can play
it.”

Tartiuk looked stunned.

“Misha!” Karpenko shook him by the shoulder. Misha took off his headphones. Karpenko ordered him to change into Julietta’s costume. Twisting his arms like a flamenco dancer, Misha squeezed into it. He looked beyond funny: a miniskirt, enormous breasts, a butt like two watermelons, and, under red curls, an unshaved sallow mug with a huge
schnobel
.

“A regular centaur. . . . Well, well. Have a safe delivery. Ciao!” Osip left. Karpenko lay in bed, swallowed by her belly. Misha saw nothing notable in her swollen body. He was used to large women—his previous wife was the biggest centaur in the pack. A week later he took over Karpenko’s role.

On December 31 the show ended at nine thirty. Misha called Karpenko’s phone, but no one answered. He tried the dorm; the line was hopelessly busy. He changed, threw flowers into a cab, and arrived at the dorm ahead of everyone else. The phone’s receiver was lying on the floor. Their door was open. The floor was wet. Everything in the room was turned upside down. What had happened here? Where could she have gone in such a condition? She had talked about doing some tests . . . He checked under the bed. There, by the wall, he found her purse. A passport, mobile phone, her medical history . . . Okay, let’s see: Nadezhda A. Karpenko, pregnant, due December 31. Pregnant? He dialed the medical emergency number. An hour later he found out that Nadezhda Karpenko hadn’t been admitted to any hospital, including any maternity wards. Misha collapsed on the floor. Suddenly he heard explosions in the street. New Year’s fireworks.