Aetherial Worlds

Judith with the Sword

Toward the end of the 1980s—when everything seemed possible, in bloom, and promising—I was interviewed by some newspaper. They asked about literature and history, and I said that, if I could, I’d publish a book portraying twentieth-century Russia in letters, with each missive corresponding to a single year.

This would have been nearly impossible because there were whole decades when letters lied; you couldn’t write down anything truthful. People even lied in their personal diaries, fearing searches and arrests, and so, of course, lying in one’s letters was natural. But perhaps with a massive effort it would still be possible to put together such a book, said I. There are literary archives and attics with trunks, aren’t there? And how simultaneously wonderful and disquieting it is to read other people’s letters. It’s like peering into a stranger’s window: you feel awkward, you feel curious, it’s better than the movies. Inside there is somebody else’s singular, sui generis life.

Shortly after this interview, a man (I still don’t know who he was) found me and presented me with a thick stack of letters: Please read. “Perhaps you’ll find them useful,” he said. I read them and returned them: alas, useful they were not. All of them were written by the same woman—I don’t remember her name, so let’s call her Maria Vasilievna—who lived in the ancient provincial Russian town of Ryazan. I couldn’t quite figure her out, nor did I catch to whom she was writing, and the mysterious messenger didn’t care to elaborate. Maria V. worked as a trolley car driver, but her life was full of spiritual and cultural inquiries. Grammatical errors abounded in her writing, but her interests were all-encompassing: from simple rhymes she read in the local newspaper, to reminiscences of the famous Russian philosopher A. Losev’s funeral, which she considered an important cultural milestone, and for which she had traveled to Moscow to stand, full of reverence, in the crowd.

One of her letters I did ask to keep. The story that it told somehow pierced my heart. Twenty-five years have passed, but I’ll tell it now.

Retell it.

In her town of Ryazan, in one of the dilapidated houses across from the bus depot, there lived an artist with his wife and kids. He spent years salting away money for a bedroom furniture set. His wife dreamt of having it all—a night table on either side of a double bed, a wardrobe with a full-length mirror inside, intricate carvings—and for all of it to look ever so expensive, ever so artistic. Finally he’d saved up enough to go to Moscow to explore the antique shops.

Back in those days, all of the Frunze Embankment was basically one big antique market. All kinds of lovely junk was being sold there for a pretty penny: flame mahogany, black stuff with gold, white stuff with gold, stuff on crooked claw-feet, and stuff with the wings of a griffin. They had beds, chests of drawers, armchairs, oval and octagonal tables, centipede tables, kidney-shaped tables, consoles, vases, chandeliers, leaf-shaped crystal garlands, statuettes, paintings, and clocks, and everything was just so, so lovely.

As he walked amid all this splendor—a thick stack of bills tucked into the inside pocket of his jacket, fastened with a safety pin so it wouldn’t get stolen in the metro—he was using his keen artist’s eye to pick out the best. Meanwhile, back home in Ryazan, his wife, as you can imagine, was anxious about that stack of bills, which had taken years to accumulate—anxious but at the same time daydreaming, imagining how magically their marriage bed would be transformed, how mysteriously the lacquer on the nightstand would shine in the moonlight, how their love would be renewed, how her girlfriends would die of envy.

In one of the shops, by the back wall, he saw a sculpture. White, marble, the height of a woman. Judith with the Sword.

And he was gone.

Undoubtedly he had heard of Pygmalion, who carved Galatea and fell in love with her; they used to teach it in school back then. A standard sampling of romantic myths was offered—harmless and thus available to the Soviet citizen: Orpheus and Eurydice for the young; the faithful Penelope awaiting her husband’s return for women of Balzac age; and Pygmalion: My Fair Lady—who doesn’t know that one?

But it is one thing to know, and quite another to fall in love with a marble statue till death do you part. And when I say till death, I truly mean it.

The artist asked: How much? “This much.” He haggled, but it was still too expensive—he didn’t have enough; he dispatched a telegram to his wife: Send more. In a tizzy, she ran around borrowing from friends and neighbors: must be mahogany, must have curlicues and bronze inlay!

He bought his beloved, paying for her an outrageous sum; he barely had enough for the movers and his ticket back home. Judith was wrapped up in rags, but the movers were Soviet, drunk, unqualified; while they were dragging her along the train platform and shoving her into the train car, the tip of her sword broke off.

He dragged her home by himself, to the second floor, I believe.

Imagine, you’re the wife, you’re expecting your husband with a magnificent master bedroom set, including the nightstands—sacral objects, as it were. Mentally you are already luxuriating, stretching out on the bed, young and libidinous once again. And then he tumbles in through the door—with another woman. So what if she’s made of marble? That’s even worse.

The wife—writes Maria V., if you still remember her—ran out on him in a hurry, with kids in tow. They haven’t seen her in Ryazan since. And we—continues Maria—finally managed to get an invitation to come visit him. Brought a cake, the kind with green cream roses. Surprisingly tasty! He put the kettle on. He’s a lovely man, very polite. He has interesting paintings. Lives alone. And her—writes Maria V. in holy awe—we saw her, too. She stands by the wall—white, her gaze averted, hair parted neatly and pulled back into a bun. The tip of her sword is missing. The apartment is nice and clean—goes on Maria V.—but under the wardrobe I saw a strange gray rug, which I bent down to examine closer: it was dust. He must have not dusted under there for eight years! Otherwise he’s perfectly normal.

So that was the letter. And all of it has been left behind the barrier of time, all of it must be gone by now: Maria Vasilievna, the artist, that world.

There is only love, unexpected and inexplicable, and it’s always the same story: embarrassing, pointless, down to the last penny. And silent.

Stay silent, but stay.