“Where are we?” asked the girl.
“I can’t tell you, but soon you’ll find out. There will be a smell.”
“Who am I?”
“You’ll find that out, too.”
“When?”
“When the last match is gone.”
The girl’s match had almost burned down.
“While it’s burning you can still wake up. I don’t know how. I couldn’t.”
“What’s your name?”
“Soon they will write my name with black paint on a small metal plaque that they will stick into a pile of dirt. When I read it, I’ll find out. A can of paint has been opened; the plaque is ready, too. Others don’t know yet-neither my husband, nor his new girl, nor the children. It’s so empty here! Soon I’ll fly away. I’ll see myself from above.”
“Please don’t go,” pleaded the girl. “Do you want some of my matches?”
The woman thought and said, “I suppose I could take one. I think my children may still love me. They’re going to cry. No one wants them-their father with his new wife doesn’t want them.”
The girl stuck her free hand into her pocket and pulled out not the matchbox but a scrap of paper.
“Listen to what it says! ‘Please don’t blame anyone. Mother, forgive me.’ A moment ago it was blank!”
“Aha, so that’s what you wrote on yours. Mine said, ‘Can’t go on like this. Children, I love you.’ Just now the words appeared.”
And the woman pulled out her note from the black coat’s pocket. She began to read it and suddenly exclaimed: “Look, the letters are disappearing! Somebody must be reading it. Someone has already found it… The ‘c,’ the ‘a’ are gone, the ‘n’ is disappearing, too!”
The girl asked her, “Do you know why we’re here?”
“I do, but I won’t tell you-you will find out yourself. You still have a few matches left.”
The girl took the matchbox and offered it to the woman: “Take them! Take them all! But please tell me.”
The woman divided the matches and asked, “Do you remember who the note was for?”
“No.”
“Then light another match-this one is out. With each match I remembered more.”
So the girl took out her remaining matches and lit all four of them.
Everything became illuminated: she could see herself standing on a chair; on the desk she could see the note that said “please don’t blame anyone”; outside the window lay the dark city, and her lover, her betrothed, wouldn’t pick up the phone after she’d told him about her pregnancy; instead his mother would answer, “Who is it and what do you want?”-knowing perfectly well who it was and what she wanted.
The last match was burning down, but the girl wanted to know who was sleeping in the next room, who was moaning and breathing heavily as she stood on that chair, tying her thin scarf to the pipe under the ceiling. Who was that person sleeping in the next room, and the other one, who was lying awake, staring into space, crying?
Who were they?
The match was almost out.
A little longer-and the girl knew everything.
And then, in that empty, dark apartment, she reached for her scrap of paper and lit it with the dying match.
And she saw that on the other side, in the other life, in the next room her ailing grandfather was asleep, and her mother was on a cot by his side because he was dangerously ill and constantly needed water.
And someone else, someone who loved her and whose presence she could sense was there too-but the note was burning so quickly-that someone was standing in front of her, offering her consolation, but she could neither see nor hear him, her heart was too full of pain. She loved only her betrothed, him and only him; she no longer loved her mother or her grandfather, or him, who was offering her consolation that night.
Then, at the very last moment, when the little flame was licking her fingers, she felt the desire to speak to him. But the poor little scrap of paper was burning out, as were the last fragments of her life in that room with a chair. And then the girl pulled off the black coat and touched its dry fabric with the last flame of her note.
Something snapped. She smelled burning flesh, and two voices outside shrieked in pain.
“Take off your coat now!” she cried to the woman, who was smiling peacefully, her mouth stretched wide open, the last match dying in her hand. And the girl, who was still here, in the dark corridor with the smoking overcoat, but also in her room perched on a chair, gazing into those loving eyes-she touched the woman’s coat with her burning sleeve, and immediately a new double howl was heard from the stairs. A revolting smoke came from the woman’s coat, and the woman threw off the coat and immediately vanished.
The room around her vanished, too.
That same moment the girl stood on a chair with a scarf tied around her neck and, choking with saliva, was looking at the note on the desk, fiery circles dancing before her eyes.
In the next room someone groaned, and she heard her mother asking sleepily, “Father, want some water?”
As quickly as she could, the girl untied the scarf and took a breath; with shaking fingers she loosened the knot on the pipe, jumped off the chair, crumpled the note, and flopped on her bed, pulling the covers over her.
Just in time.
Her mother, blinking from the light, peeked into the room. “Dear God, what a terrible dream I’ve just had: a pile of earth in the corner, and from it some roots were growing… and your hand,” she said tearfully. “And it was stretching toward me, as if asking for help… Why are you sleeping with your scarf on? Is your throat sore? Let me cover you up, my little one. I was crying in my dream…”
“Mom,” the girl replied in her usual voice, “you and your dreams. Can’t you leave me alone? It’s three in the morning, for your information!”
On the other side of the city a woman vomited up a handful of pills and washed her mouth thoroughly.
Then she went to the nursery where her fairly large children, ten and twelve years old, were sleeping, and rearranged their blankets.
Then she got down on her knees and prayed to be forgiven.
LUDMILLA PETRUSHEVSKAYA
LUDMILLA PETRUSHEVSKAYA was born in 1938 in Moscow, where she still lives. She is the author of more than fifteen collections of prose, including the short novel The Time: Night shortlisted for the Russian Booker Prize in 1992, and Svoi Krug, a modern classic about the 1980s Soviet intelligentsia. The progenitor of the women’s fiction movement in modern Russian letters, she is also a playwright whose work has been staged by leading theater companies all over the world. In 2002 she received Russia ’s most prestigious prize, The Triumph, for lifetime achievement.
KEITH GESSEN
KEITH GESSEN is the author of All the Sad Young Literary Men and an editor and founder of the literary magazine n+1. He has written about Russian literature for The New Yorker and The New York Review of Books. His translation of Voices from Chernobyl won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction in 2005.
ANNA SUMMERS
ANNA SUMMERS holds a doctorate in Slavic literature from Harvard. She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
