Deathless

by Catherynne M. Valente

Marya watched from the upper floor as birds gathered in the oak trees, sniping and snapping at the first and smallest drops of rain, which all winged creatures know are the sweetest, like tiny grapes bursting on the tongue.

And so Olga went gracefully to the estates of Lieutenant Gratch, and wrote prettily worded letters home to her sisters, in which her verbs built castles and her datives sprung up like well-tended roses.

It was spring, and the morning rain had left their long, thin street slick and sparkling, jeweled with wet pink petals.

the birds gathered in the great oak tree, sniping and snapping for the soaked and wrinkled cherry blossoms, which every winged creature knows are the most savory of all blossoms, like spice cakes melting on the tongue.

And so Tatiana went happily to the estates of Lieutenant Zuyok, and wrote sophisticated letters home to her sisters, in which her verbs danced in square patterns and her datives were laid out like tables set for feasting.

the birds gathered in the great oak tree, sniping and snapping for the last autumn nuts, stolen from squirrels and hidden in bark-cracks, which every winged creature knows are the most bitter of all nuts, like old sorrows sitting heavy on the tongue.

And so Anna went dutifully to the estates of Lieutenant Zhulan, and wrote properly worded letters home to her sisters, in which her verbs were distributed fairly among the nouns, and her datives asked for no more than they required.

And if they thought her aimless, if they thought her a bit mad, let them. It meant they left her alone. Marya was not aimless, anyway. She was thinking.

Marya pinned out her childhood like a butterfly. She considered it the way a mathematician considers an equation.

If the world is divided into seeing and not seeing, Marya thought, I shall always choose to see.

Magic does that. It wastes you away. Once it grips you by the ear, the real world gets quieter and quieter, until you can hardly hear it at all.

After that, Marya Morevna understood that she belonged to her secret and it belonged to her. They had struck a bloody bargain between them. Keep me and obey me, the secret said to her, for I am your husband and I can destroy you.

“Comrade Chainik,” Marya whispered. “I am too big! I shall never fit through!” “We must all tighten our belts!” hissed the domovoi, and yanked on the sash of her nightgown. Marya spun like a spool; she had the peculiar feeling of a huge hand pressing down on the crown of her skull, of her ribs being squeezed as though Chainik were lacing her into one of her mother’s old corsets. When he tucked her sash back into place, Marya faced the carved door once more. She had dwindled down until she was just barely small enough to fit inside the door, if she ducked. Marya fought to keep herself from laughing out loud—magic, Pushkin’s magic, real magic, and done to her!

This all feels very Alice in Wonderland-esque to me! Perhaps that's what this is. Alice in Wonderland if it were set during the Russian Revolution. I hope I see more parallels between the two!

I would not rob the komityet of the opportunity to hear delicious testimony, to make piquant judgments, to carry out policies sweeter than oatcakes!”

You have selfishly allocated excessive size to yourself, and forgotten to steal a bigger brain to go with it!”

The domoviye drew away from Venik slightly, as if waiting for him to turn to ash before their eyes. “You all saw,” quavered Banya, twisting her mustache, eager to make up her fault. “I didn’t tell! It was Venik!” “It’s been recorded in the minutes,” Zvonok said darkly.

Fear can make us turn against our companions. To rule with fear is to sacrifice loyalty.

“The world is a slow learner,”

Even though we showed our teeth and were very clear about his being wicked. That’s not your fault. He makes himself pretty, so that girls will like him. But if you must insist on being clever, then be clever. Be brave. Sleep with fists closed and shoot straight.”

Of course, rich men have been made obsolete by the Party, but if you learn a second thing from me tonight, let it be this: The goblins of the city may hold committees to divide a single potato, but the strong and the cruel still sit on the hill, and drink vodka, and wear black furs, and slurp borscht by the pail, like blood. Children may wear through their socks marching in righteous parades, but Papa never misses his wine with supper. Therefore, it is better to be strong and cruel than to be fair. At least, one eats better that way. And morality is more dependent on the state of one’s stomach than of one’s nation.”

Their rivalry soon encompassed whole towns, rivers (which rightly belonged to neither, but neutrality is no defense),

“Who’s this Tsar of Life? Never met the man.” “Who do you think, rock-brain? He’s not called Deathless for nothing.”

Wait I thought Koschei was the Tsar of Death. Whoops!

“War is not for winning, Masha,” sighed Koschei, reading the tracks of supply lines, of pincer strategies, over her shoulder. “It is for surviving.”

A body needs a good memento mori to flush out the humors.”

“Comrade Yaga—” Baba Yaga whirled on her, the tails of her fur coat whipping around. “Don’t you call me comrade, little girl. We aren’t equals and we aren’t friends. Chairman Yaga. That comrade nonsense is just a hook by which the low pull down the high. And then what do you get? Everyone rolling around in the same shit, like pigs.”

“Husbands lie, Masha. I should know; I’ve eaten my share.

“They don’t even know what writers are, here!” Baba Yaga softened, as much as she could soften. Her braided eyebrows creased together gently. “Doesn’t mean we don’t know what stories are. Doesn’t mean we don’t walk in them, every second.

“That’s how you get deathless, volchitsa. Walk the same tale over and over, until you wear a groove in the world, until even if you vanished, the tale would keep turning, keep playing, like a phonograph, and you’d have to get up again, even with a bullet through your eye, to play your part and say your lines.”

I’ve been married seventeen times, Marya Morevna. Do you have any idea how much I know about men? And women! Don’t look so shocked—after an eon or two of being a wife you’ll want one of your own, too.

There is no such thing as a good wife or a good husband. Only ones who bide their time.”

“If you think my brother is any different, girl, then there’s no help for you. He’ll burn you down like wax if you let him. You’ll think it’s love, while he dines on your heart. And maybe it will be. But he’s so hungry, he’ll eat you all in one sitting, and you’ll be in his belly, and what will you do then? Hear me say it, because I know. I ate all of my husbands. First I ate their love, then their will, then their despair, and then I made pies out of their bodies—and those bodies were so dear to me! But marriage is war, and you do what you must to survive—because only one of you will.”

When I paint my eyes to match my soup, it is not because I have nothing better to do than worry over trifles. It says, I belong here, and you will not deny me. When I streak my lips red as foxgloves, I say, Come here, male. I am your mate, and you will not deny me. When I pinch my cheeks and dust them with mother-of-pearl, I say, Death, keep off, I am your enemy, and you will not deny me. I say these things, and the world listens, Masha. Because my magic is as strong as an arm. I am never denied.”

Blue is for cruel bargains; green is for daring what you oughtn’t; violet is for brute force. I will say to you: Coral coaxes; pink insists; red compels. I will say to you: You are dear to me as attar of roses. Please do not get eaten.”

A bashful winter’s noontime showed only its modest ankle before slipping into darkness again.

And leaning against the rear wall of the magicians’ cafe, piled up with pale flowers and ribbons as though they were meant to be presents, rested Zemlehyed, mud trickling from a gash in his stony head, and Naganya, her iron jaw stove in, and Madame Lebedeva, a neat bullet hole blooming over her heart. She had painted her eyes red, of course, to match. Their dark stares tilted towards the dawn, but saw nothing.

NO

Gamayun,

“The Gamayun, like the Alkonost, is illustrated as a large bird figure with a woman’s head. Her iconic image represents happiness, prosperity and harmony. She is essentially a messenger for peace and sings beautiful melodies. She is considered to be prophetic in Russia as she is aware of everything that occurs within the world including man and animal, and she knows all amongst the gods and heroes. She lives on an island in the East near the Euphrates River or Eden. The Pythoness is not usually depicted with the Alkonost nor Siren, she is permanently alone knowing the secret fate of humans and the world. “Gamayun cooperated with pagan Russian gods, notably Kryshen, Kolyada and Dazhbog, and Veles. She is seen as a personification of Veles—a renowned deity of wisdom, who keeps secrets regarding the world and man’s creation. She is aware of the true nature of all the gods and humans, and sang in the Book of the Vedas. The being’s hymns are believed to be divine and to have magical properties, her voice is difficult to understand and decipher, but the few humans who can comprehend her words can have their future prophesied and opulence as a gift. In contrast to the Alkonost, the bird does not derive from ancient Greece but from Iranian mythology, ultimately gaining recognition in Russia.” (Information found on ancient-origins.net)

“Then why do things happen the way they happen? If I understand it I can change it. Is it your fault? Do you stop me from changing it?” The Gamayun had to tell the truth. Ivan knew that; he remembered it from every tale. And so he could not find any part of himself with the capability to disbelieve her. “They happen because Life consumes everything and Death never sleeps, and between them the world moves. Winter becomes spring. And every once in a while, they act out a strange, sad little pantomime, just to see if anyone has won yet. If the world still moves as it used to.” The Gamayun ruffled her ragged feathers and glanced up at Ivan under her eyelashes. “Like a passion play. Like a sacrifice. It is certainly not my fault.”

Marya supposed this was why no one asked after stolen fairy tale girls. What embarrassments they turn out to be. They grow tempers; they join the army; they need glasses. Who wants them?

“You are so hard, Marya Morevna. You could cut me. Why are you so hard?” “Because I joined the army and all my friends died.”

“Ivanushka,” she asked one night as the jingling street sounds played below the window. “Would you perform tasks for me, if I asked?” “What do you mean?” “Would you … get me a firebird’s feather, or fetch a ring from the bottom of the sea, or steal gold from a dragon?” Ivan pursed his lips. “Those sorts of things are so old-fashioned, Masha. They are part of your old life, and the old life of Russia, too. We have no need of them now. The Revolution swept all the dark corners of the world away. Yes, remnants still lurk in the hinterlands—Koschei, a Gamayun or two. But they are irrelevant. The old world left its dirty, broken toys lying about. But soon enough we’ll have everything tidy. Besides, there are no firebirds in Leningrad.”

Clash of old ideals with the new.

Marya Morevna carried her secret like a child. Her heart grew fat with it, for secrets are the favorite food of the heart.

The old order, it is good for the old. A farmer wants his son to be afraid of beautiful women, so that he will not leave home too soon, so he tells a story about how one drowned his brother’s cousin’s friend in a lake, not because he was a pig who deserved to be drowned, but because beautiful women are bad, and also witches. And it doesn’t matter that she didn’t ask to be beautiful, or to be born in a lake, or to live forever, or to not know how men breathe until they stop doing it. Well, I do not want to be beautiful, or a woman, or anything. I want to know how men breathe. I want my daughter to be in the Young Pioneers, and grow up to be something important, like a writer or an immunologist, to grow up not even knowing what a rusalka is, because then I will know her world does not in any way resemble one in which farmers tell their sons how bad beautiful women are.”

For storytelling, a domovaya is always better than a human because she will not try to make a miserable thing less miserable so that a boy sitting at his grandmother’s knee can nod and say, The war was very terrible, wasn’t it, Babushka? But it is all right because some people lived and went on to be good and have children. I spit on that boy because he thinks only of his own interest, which is that he should be born. Miserable means miserable. What can you do? You live through it, or you die. Living is best, but if you can’t live, well, life is like that, sometimes. So now I stop everything, and I say it is time for the dead to talk with the dead, and Zvonok has the floor, if there is a floor left to have.

Marya never cried. There was a switch in her, too, and it was also jammed.

what is the world but a boxing ring where fools and devils put up their fists?

Marya Morevna listened to him with only one of her ears. 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. Look who is so wise now, I said, and she answered, To have two husbands, I must be four times as clever.

Vladimir and Nadya have two sons under their roof, Josef and Leon. They dream boys’ dreams: of getting a slice of their father’s fortune, of girls, of growing big mustaches. Several jokes concerning the brothers buzz through Yaichka, for one never hugged the other without making his hands into fists.

Lenin, Stalin, and Trotsky

Now, just down the way lives Nikolai Aleksandrovich and his long-haired wife Aleksandra Fedorovna. Before their open door play their four beautiful daughters—Olga, Tatiana, Maria, and Anastasia—and their sickly young son, Aleksey, who sits in the shade of a poplar and reads while his sisters kick pine cones between them on the green.

The Romanovs.

Aleksandra, her apron embroidered with a moth’s delicacy, her arms muscled from arguing with sheep, once told Marya Morevna that her husband was visited by the same dream as his neighbor, of the white ants and the red, and had wept in his sleep for weeks. She kisses Nikolai’s knuckles, where dreams live, until he quiets, but then she herself cannot sleep, and watches the stars spell out the words of a long poem from the warmth of her bed.

Romanovs versus the red wave of communism. Going back to Alice, we can also see the Red and White Queens.

rumors of Aleksandra’s infidelity with a certain monk,

Rasputin

The trouble with prophecy is that it is alive. Like a small bear. It can get angry, frustrated, hungry. It can lick and bite and claw; it can be dear; it can be vicious. No one prophesies. You can only pursue prophecy.