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The sky sagged cold and wan, coughing spatters of phlegmatic sunlight onto the grey and empty farms.
Brotha eugh
Life is sly and unscrupulous, a blackguard, wolfish, severe. In service to itself, it will commit any offense. So, too, is Death possessed of infinite strategies and a gaunt nature—but also mercy, also grace and tenderness.
A body needs a good memento mori to flush out the humors.”
She’s right
Surely you didn’t think deathless meant dickless.
YAGA!!
They’re always the youngest of three sons. They’re always the honest type, dumb as toenails but big in the trousers. And the Yelenas, they always fall in love and run off.
Yaga knows what’s up
But I think it is also in your nature.” Marya blinked. “I don’t think so. What have I collected?” Zemlehyed smiled in a lopsided way, as though he did not quite know how to use his face. “Us.”
“Remember this when you are queen,” he whispered hoarsely. “I moved the earth and the water for you.”
Stop I’m gonna cry
Marya recoiled. “I don’t want to sit on your lap. I’m not a child.” “The littlest fly on a lump of goat shit interests me more than what you want.”
For a devil, hypocrisy is a parlor game, like charades. Such fun, and when the evening is done we shall be holding our bellies to keep from dying of laughter.”
“I am Marya Morevna, daughter of twelve mothers, and I will not be denied,” she whispered to the girl in the mirror.
“You’re looking very fine tonight, Grandmother! Why, you’ve hardly any warts at all! Bathing in blood again, I’ll warrant. Virgins or capitalists this time?”
Por que no los dos?
The dead Tsar had caught her by the death and spun her around. Ivan, oh, just his voice, had caught her by the life.
Ivan did not circle her waist with his arm, was not possessive. He just rested his palm against the curve of her, hesitant. The nearness of him crushed her, like being held by the sun.
I know I shouldn’t like him….
Open my bones and scoop out my death. Bury it at the center of the earth. I deserve so much. You know what I deserve.”
Ivan stared at the butter, how it shone. “You said this was the devil’s country.” “So I did. Then I must be the devil. And she the devil’s bride. Aren’t you lucky, to have fallen in with such exciting people?”
Koschei needs to be around more
I’ll bet in all your years here he has never given you a fresh apple to eat. Everything he loves is preserved, salted … pickled. I suppose it’s alive, but it’s kept alive, forever, in a glass bell. And he is, too. A pickled husband, that’s what you have.”
Slowly, without taking his eyes from hers, the man in the black coat knelt before her. “I have come for the girl in the window,” he said, and his eyes filled with tears.
AAAAAAAAAAAAA
The sun complained of arthritis, cracking its bones against the bare linden branches.
will not let her speak because I love her, and when you love someone you do not make them tell war stories. A war story is a black space. On the one side is before and on the other side is after, and what is inside belongs only to the dead.
Miserable means miserable. What can you do? You live through it, or you die.
In both marriage and war you must cut up the things people say like a cake, and eat only what you can stomach, she said to me later.
Better that they should get lost, and we should not. I approved of this. The labyrinth is, after all, a devil’s trick. Devils know only good tricks.
Why should the wolf worry about the safety of the sheep? I said to my girl. If my hand were bigger I would whap you one. Grab Koschei by the horns and hang the rest of us! I cannot leave Ivan Nikolayevich. Or Kseniya or baby Sofiya. Or you. If you want to kill yourself, do not use us as your knife.
“I will remember these books for you,” said Ivan Nikolayevich, because he did love her, even if it was beef-love: stupid and tough and overcooked.
Not tender beef…
I don’t believe you, said my Marya. She is so stubborn her heart has an argument with her head every time it wants to beat. I know. I raised her, I did.
We are all dead. All equal. Broken and aimless and believing we are alive. This is Russia and it is 1952. What else would you call hell?”
