SONECHKA: A NOVELLA AND STORIES
(May/June
2006)
SONECHKA: A NOVELLA AND STORIES
Ludmila Ulitskaya. Translated from the Russian by Arch Tait. Published
in Canada by Random House of Canada, Ltd., Toronto, 2005.
If you are looking for a light read, a few hours of pleasure, and a happily ever after, then Ludmila Ulitskaya's Sonechka: A Novella and Stories is definitely not for you.
Ulitskaya's stories are realistic to the core. Life happens to her characters-they get old, get ugly, get fat, get sick, get divorced, get drunk, and frequently, they die. There's no sheen of romance or pandering to any cheap desire to soften the sharp, nasty edges of real life. Ulitskaya's stories shock the North American soul in the way a good foreign film cleanses the palate deadened by a hundred glossy Hollywood productions. This collection not only dissects and reveals the essential messiness of life and love, but also how life and love are perverted and corrupted under an oppressive and stultifying regime.
This is not to suggest, however, that Ulitskaya's stories are dull and depressing. Her style is smooth, sophisticated, and elegant. Descriptions sparkle with clarity, as in the depiction of a nursing babe in Sonechka "trying to catch the nipple like a little fish trying to latch on to a large piece of bait." Ulitskaya's dialogue is equally precise in capturing the voices of her marvelous characters. Hear the cruel inflexibility (and humour) inherent in The Queen of Spades' tyrannical matriarch Mour as she speaks to her granddaughter: "Remove your little bastard, my dear. One really does have to teach children a modicum of good manners."
Born in 1943, Ulitskaya is a leading Russian writer whose works have been translated into over twenty-five languages. Sonechka, the book's novella, won the Medici Prize for foreign fiction in France when it first appeared in 1992, and her novel The Kukotsky Case won the Russian Booker Prize in 2001. Ulitskaya also writes plays, and many of her works have been filmed for television and the movies. Interestingly, she worked as a geneticist for many years, only beginning her literary career in her forties when she joined the staff of the Moscow Jewish Theatre.
Translated from the Russian by Arch Tait, the book consists of Sonechka and six short stories previously published in 2002. Sonechka, a young Jewish woman growing up in the nineteen twenties and thirties, is the ultimate bookworm. She had "a rare talent, perhaps even a genius, for reading." Ulitskaya's description of Sonechka eerily mirrors my own relationship to books: "Her receptiveness to the printed word was so great that fictional characters seemed no less real than the sentient beings around her." How does this happen? Ulitskaya suggests a variety of possibilities, including the "the inability to distinguish between the real and the imaginary." But I believe the truth lies in her final option, that it was "a surrender to the realm of imagination so complete that everything outside its bounds lacked meaning and substance." This rich example illuminates Ulitskaya's uncanny insight into human feelings and motivations.
Sonechka's world is turned upside down at age twenty-seven when she meets and marries Robert Victorovich, a legendary Russian-Jewish painter twenty years her senior. Robert was "the luckiest of life's losers," having spent only five years in Stalin's prison camps. Sonechka having previously been resigned to spinsterhood, her marriage is a treasure, as is the birth of their only daughter, Tanya. Inevitably, Sonechka's energies are diverted from reading into domesticity and motherhood. But when her generous heart invites Tanya's beautiful and mysterious friend Jasia into the family fold, Sonechka's world is turned upside down again. Sonechka's choice may shock or appall you.
Gorgeously appalling is The Queen of Spades' Mour, mentioned
earlier. The title is taken from Pushkin's short story, and Mour is clearly
modeled on the Countess, the malevolent "Queen of Spades." (I'm
no Russian scholar-the story is available online.) Mour is a famous beauty
and actress; her equally famous lovers were "legion." Indeed,
"reams had been written by the best pens in praise of her pale ringlets
and the ineffable secrets of her soul." The story turns on the relationship
between Mour, now an ancient crone past all desire and want, and her long-suffering
daughter Anna, as much in thrall to her mother as the now-vanished lovers
of yesteryear. Their relationship illustrates how we can be manipulated
and ruled through a combination of love, fear, guilt, and sheer force
of will.
Certainly by the story's conclusion your hand, like Anna's, is itching
to slap this fabulous monster. Be warned; some readers may be offended
by Mour's extremely earthy language.
Zurich is my personal favourite. There is something fascinating about the characters in this twisted fairy tale. Struggling for survival in Soviet society has turned Lidia into a rather amoral creature. Her "life strategy" is to snag a foreign lover and she had "every intention of being devious, of deceiving, even of duping" if necessary. Everything falls into place when Lidia meets and captivates Martin, a Swiss businessman. Or so it seems, until life (with its annoying habit of ignoring all our careful planning) intervenes again, making a mockery of Lidia's schemes. Expect the unexpected in Ulitskaya's stories.
Angel is a deeply disturbing tale. Aging Nikolai Romanovich, "a lonely professor of philosophy," is a closeted homosexual. The story is set in the nineteen fifties, when homosexuality is a crime and gay men live in an "abyss of fear." In a chance encounter, Nikolai meets Slava, an alcoholic charwoman's twelve-year-old son, a boy with a "brow white as milk and with blonde brushes beneath his eyebrows." Infatuated with the boy a la Humbert Humbert in Lolita, Nikolai arranges a marriage of convenience with Slava's mother, in which Slava "will grow up in his house, turn into a boy, a young friend, a pupil, his beloved." They eventually become lovers, but after Nikolai's sudden death Slava descends into a lifestyle of rough sex, prison camps, and death. Is Nikolai a pedophile? A pathetic victim who becomes a victimizer? In any event, his angel Slava is the true victim in this story.
This collection of big, bold stories is not for the faint-hearted. Misfortune and death strike with uncomfortable regularity. Nevertheless, Ulitskaya respects the essential humanity of her characters. who never become caricatures in the sprawling canvas of her art.