Short Story

Sazonenkova lay under the covers, staring at the ceiling in a depressed torpor. Outside, sheets of humid air rose from the pavement in stifling waves. The sound of traffic was deafening at this hour, and in addition to all this, her bed was on fire. Look at me, she thought. Eighteen years old. Next year I will be nineteen. Then twenty. Using this same reasoning, she could figure out her age as much as five years in the future. So little time left, she thought, and so much to accomplish. For one thing, she wanted to learn to drive a car. Boguinskaia, her friend who used to play dreidel with her on Rushkov street, had studied driving at the Sorbonne. She could handle a car beautifully and had already driven many places by herself. Sazonenkova had made a few attempts to steer her father's Chevy but kept winding up on the sidewalk.

She had been a precocious child. An intellectual. At twelve, she had translated the poems of T.S. Elliot into Russian, after some vandals had broken into the library and translated them into French. And as if her high I.Q. did not isolate her enough, she suffered untold justices and persecutions because of her religion, mostly from her parents. True, the old man was a member of the Church and her mother too but they could never accept the fact that their daughter was Catholic. "How did it happen?" her father asked, bewildered. My face looks Semitic, she thought each morning as she flossed. She had been mistaken several times for Whoopie Goldberg, but on each occasion it was by a blind person. Then there was Lashonova, her other girlhood friend: A Phi Beta Kappa. A labor spy, ratting on the workers. Then aconvert to Marxism. A Communist agitator. Betrayed by the party, she went to Hollywood and became the offscreen voice of a famous cartoon mouse. Ironic.

Sazonenkova had toyed with Communism, too. To impress a boy at Rutgersky, she had moved to Moscow and joined the Red Army. When she called him for a second date, he refused saying he had to wash his hair.

Sazonenkova finished flossing and got into the shower. She lathered herself, while steaming water splashed down her back. She thought, "Here I am at some fixed point in time and space taking a shower.I, Yelena Sazonenkova. One of God's creatures." And then, stepping on the soap, she slid across the floor and rammed her head into the towel rack. It had been a bad week. The previous day, she had got a bad haircut and was still not over the anxiety it caused her. At first the hair stylist had snipped judiciously,but soon Sazonenkova realized she had gone too far. "Put some back!", she screamed. "it won't stick"the hairstylist replied.

Now she emerged from the hotel and walked up Stalin Avenue. Two men were mugging an elderly lady. Some city, she thought, chaos everyplace. She was on her way to see Ivanov about the alimony payments. She still loved Ivanov, even though while they were married he had systematically attempted to commit adultery with all the R's in the Kiev telephone directory. She forgave him.

For lovemaking, Sazonenkova needed someone quite opposite. Like Vasilyev, who made sex an art.The only trouble was he couldn't count to twenty without taking his shoes off. She once tried giving him abook on existentialism, but he ate it.

Sazonenkova rang the bell to Ivanov's apartment, and suddenly he was standing before her. Swelling to maculate giraffe, as usual, thought Sazonenkova. It was a private joke that neither of them understood."Hello Oleg", she said. "Oh, Elena", he said. "You needn't be so self-righteous.tactless thing to have said. She hated herself for it.

"How are the kids, Oleg?"

"We never had any kids, Elena."

"Oleg, where did we go wrong?"

"We never faced reality."

"It wasn't my fault, you said it was north."

"Reality IS north, Elena."

"No Oleg. Empty dreams are north, reality is west, false hopes are east, and I think Turkmenistan is south."

He still had the power to arouse her. She reached out for him, but he moved away and her hand came to rest in some sour cream. It was no use. Elena left and walked to Union Square. Suddenly hot, salty tears burst forth. The problem was they were coming out of her ears. I can't even cry properly, she thought, just before a bus ran her over. He was right.