Stargorod: A Novel in Many Voices

Lady Macbeth

That’s it. She’s had it. She’s started saving up pills.

She’s heard women say police never do autopsies on drunkards. And even if there were one, it’s no proof: maybe he swallowed the pills himself. People imbibe all kinds of junk these days. A handful – and he’s done.

She’s made up her mind and started saving up the pills the doctor prescribed for her when she got out of detox last time.

How’d that come about? Well, he’d been drinking and living his high life for a few months, half-a-year maybe. Not a penny of his wages made it home. That day he came in already loaded, naturally, and it was his payday, she knew his schedule. All right. Dang it, she just had to have this bright idea to get him even more addled and then trick whatever was left of the money out of him. Pull it out of his pocket if she had to. She poured him some, and, the idiot, had one herself – for her nerves. He got woozy all right, but she lost it a bit too. So when she asked, “Where’s the money?” he just started laughing, and then swung at her. She called the police. Well, by the time they got there the son of a bitch had his teeth brushed, and his head freshly washed under the shower, and as soon as they rang the doorbell, he grabbed a pot of pea-soup from the stove and flipped it onto his head. The police comes in and he’s standing there hollering, “Help me guys, she’s blinded me!”

Who? What? How? No one believed her.

“Did you drink?” they asked.

She said she did.

“The man brings you money, what else do you want, stupid?”

She looked: there was the money, on top of the fridge – he managed to lay it out for the cops. She screamed. Something possessed her – she shook and almost threw up – and he just went on with his show, groaning and moaning under the pot. She kept screaming, and screamed at the whole lot of them, as it turned out, enough to land her in the slammer for fifteen days.

Her mother took little Seryozha to stay with her, of course. When she got out, the walls were bare: he’d sold everything and drank through the money. There he was, waiting for her on the couch, grinning:

“Shall we start a new life or what?”

Her knees buckled under her... she fell onto her knees and wailed, and such love came over them both as they hadn’t had since the days when they were making their little Vasya.

Vasya was how it all started. He ran out into the street and got run over by a car. And he was gone, on a trip for work. Her neighbors, kindly souls, made sure he knew she had a party that day – ‘twas her girlfriend’s birthday. And that was it. He beat her – he beat her a lot, and cursed her, then started drinking.

And what about her? She was the mother, was she not grieved? She had to live with her guilt. She had to live with the memory of it – but wasn’t there supposed to be forgiveness in the world somewhere? She was ready to beg for it, do whatever it took when she came out of the detox.

He’s not a man any more – a wild beast from the forest has more heart. And little Seryozha is growing up and watching all this. In the evenings they sit together behind the locked door – she’s got two locks, a guy from work put them in for her – and there he is, banging on the door, yelling, “I’ll kill you!” He’s started stalking her too. And anything she ever does is a crime. And she’s ruined his life.

No, this has to stop. She’s made up her mind – she’s saving up the pills. He’s an alcoholic – she is scared. Men like that – how many people have they killed already? And children too. “Let’s sell the flat and live apart,” she said. Nope, no go. He doesn’t come to sleep with her, but wants to know her every step anyway. And how can she sleep if he’s at the door every damn night... She’s not 20 anymore.

After her detox, he toed the line for a week. He was like before. Then they went to the movies on Sunday and had a bit of champagne after. That was it. He hasn’t been dry since.

If she’d turn him in to the LTP – he’d kill her.²⁰ She’s afraid of him. She can’t forget what she did. She has to live with that. Girls said, screw it, find someone new, let the new guy beat him up. But, how to put it? It’s not about beating him up. The guy who put in the locks for her – he didn’t do it for free, but bumming from man to man like that... it’s not what she’s after. She’s got to stop it once and for all. Autopsy, or no autopsy – she’s got to do it.

Just yesterday, he barely made it – crawled up to her door and lay there breathing, stinking of burnt rubber – they must be getting high on formaldehyde glue. No, she’s got to do it!

In the middle of night she woke up; at first, she couldn’t tell what was happening. He was screaming, howling – she thought, it was the usual thing, but then he fell out into the hallway, she took one look at him and – Lord Almighty! She called the ambulance. They pumped his stomach, but it was no good – he’d drunk acetic acid concentrate. He had some in a vodka bottle under his bed. The doctors decided he’d drunk it by mistake, but she knew better – he’d been threatening to do it for a long time. So he made good on his threat – and she didn’t have to use the pills.

But at the funeral, when the priest said to say goodbye, the girls couldn’t pull her away from the coffin – she was screaming. Steam trains used to scream like that when she was little – it was frightful to hear them up close.

20. LTP stands for “Labor therapy preventative clinic,” a variety of Soviet penal institution which basically amounted to a forced-labor detox facility.