Deathless

by Catherynne M. Valente

The sky sagged cold and wan, coughing spatters of phlegmatic sunlight onto the grey and empty farms.

In a city by the sea which was once called St. Petersburg, then Petrograd, then Leningrad, then, much later, St. Petersburg again, there stood a long, thin house on a long, thin street. By a long, thin window, a child in a pale blue dress and pale green slippers waited for a bird to marry her.

first lines.

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.

i don't know enough about russian history to know what this references. catherine the great? alexander iii?

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 romanovs?

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.

lenin?

In that city by the sea which was now firmly called Petrograd and did not even remember, under pain of punishment, having been called St. Petersburg, in that long, thin house on that long, thin street, Marya Morevna sat by her window, knitting a little coat for Anna’s first son.

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.

<3

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

It didn’t matter. She was a person, but she was not one of the People.

Thus Marya Morevna first saw the domovoi, and the face of the world changed again.

Marya and the domovoi stared at each other for a long moment like two wild animals drinking from the same stream, both deciding whether or not to run and hide from the other. This is it, Marya thought, her heart leaping inside her. The world is naked again, the underside of the world, and I wasn’t crazy, I wasn’t. I shall be clever, and I shall not let him go. Finally, she spoke. “Where are you going to, Comrade?” “Where are you going to, Comrade?” he repeated snappishly. His enormous eyes crackled hearth-red, ember-gold.

HAHA

“I would have been happy to stay in Kiev,” huffed a shrunken old domovoi, his skin almost blue with age, “but blasted Svetlana Tikhonovna knew the old ritual. She went out into her pumpkin rows in her best black lace-up boots with the sweet little heels, laid out a big round of cheese, and hollered, ‘Grandfather Domovoi! Don’t stay in this place, but come with our family!’ The old bitch.”

LMAO

“You must see,” chirped Chairman Venik finally, “that a communal house requires communal domoviye, and communal domoviye require a committee. We are happy to do our part! It is a new world, and we do not wish to be left behind.”

oh lawd

“Well said, Comrade! We have abilities we have hoarded, selfishly, because we did not understand that we owed them to the People, that we had become decadent, lazy bourgeoisie, in love with wealth and houses and ignoring Great Duties, High Philosophy!” Chairman Venik thumped the table with his little red fist. “No longer! The domoviye belong to the Party!”

“Child,” said Comrade Zvonok in a patient tone, “we are not architects. We are imps. We are goblins. If we could not make a little room on the inside without budging the outside, we would not be worth our tails.

The Party is a wonderful, marvelous invention, and it has taught us wonderful, marvelous things—chiefly, that we can cause more trouble with less effort by filing complaints than by breaking teacups.”

LMFAO

“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.

“I already have a hairbrush, though,” protested Marya. Zvonok winked, first with one eye, then the other. She put one hand over her left eye and spat. “You need this one.”

wtf?

In a city by the sea that was certainly never called anything so bourgeois as St. Petersburg, there stood a long, thin house on a long, thin street.

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.”

The rapt pupil will be forgiven for assuming the Tsar of Death to be wicked and the Tsar of Life to be virtuous. Let the truth be told: There is no virtue anywhere. Life is sly and unscrupulous, a blackguard, wolfish, severe. In service to itself, it will commit any offense.

Zemlehyed looked more or less like what you would get if a particularly stunted and ugly oak tree had fallen passionately in love with a boulder and produced, at great cost to both, a single child.

LMAO

Naganya sniffed ostentatiously. She produced a grey handkerchief and wiped a trickle of black oil from her nose. “Still, I don’t approve. Histories are instruments of oppression. Writers of histories ought to be shot on sight.”

“Why the tsarevna lets you blunder after her is a mystery to me. You’re disgusting. But if you want to wreck her things, be my guest. At least the evisceration will be amusing. What do leshiyi look like on the inside? All mud and sticks?” “Paws off, gun-goblin! My insides; my property!” “Property is theft!” snapped Naganya, her cheek-pistons clicking. “Therefore, just by sitting there you’re stealing from the People, Zemya! Bandit! Ring the alarms!” Zemlehyed spat again.

LMFAO WTF

Naganya’s limpid eye filled with greasy black tears. “Oh, Masha, that’s not fair! How shall I further the Party’s interests in the hinterlands if you will not teach me about Marx and Papa Lenin?”

oh my fucking god

Suddenly, Marya’s hand flashed out and caught Naganya’s mouth and nose. With the other hand she grabbed the back of the vintovnik’s head. Naganya’s chest heaved, searching for breath, but Marya did not let go. She forced the imp to the ground, clamping her face in her fierce hand, leaping astride her, the better to pin her to the forest floor. Marya’s heart leapt and exulted in her. All unbidden she thought of a book of poems tossed into the snow, and a red scarf torn in half. She bore down harder. Slowly, black, oily tears pooled in Nasha’s eyes and trickled down over Marya Morevna’s knuckles as Nasha struggled, squirmed, and finally went still beneath her. Marya grinned, her braids brushing her friend’s walnut arms. Finally, she let Naganya up. The imp gasped and spluttered, chagrined and hoarse, wiping at her tears.

what the fuck?!

Once she had felt sick when she saw the wall of a chapel prickle up in a sudden wind, just like skin.

omg ew

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

Outside, a black car approached. Its long nose sloped and curved like a merciless beak; its fenders hunched up as round as eggs. Like clever eyes, the windows narrowed. It was both like and unlike Volchya-Yagoda, the car who had borne Marya to Buyan. This one seemed wholly larger, more careful, more luxurious, more serious. Below it, four yellow chicken legs loped gracefully on the road where wheels ought to have been, their black claws scrabbling at the hard snow.

BABA YAGA

“Kid, let’s skip this pantomime where you pretend you’re not rutting with my brother

omg

I have no patience for innocent girls, unless they have apples in their mouths and are on speaking terms with my soup pot.”

Occasionally, a Vasilisa will sneak in there, just to keep things spiced.

the bear and the nightingale has entered the chat.

Let your old baba take you on an … expedition. It’ll be good for you! Morally fortifying, like having a good stare at a graveyard. A body needs a good memento mori to flush out the humors.”

Marya was no fool. She could add two and two and two and come up with six—which is to say, add old grandmother and chicken legs and terrified waitstaff and come up with Baba Yaga.

Baba Yaga gave a bleating cry and leapt up into the air, her skinny legs scissoring beneath her. She landed hard on Marya’s shoulders, digging her heels into the girl’s armpits. “Mush, girl! Mush!” she yelped. “A wife must be a good mount, eh?”

WHAT THE FUCK

blood-brown boar-skin building.

say that five times fast.

“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. That’s lesson number one. Lesson number two: among the topics about which a husband is most likely to lie are money, drink, black eyes, political affiliation, and women who squatted on his lap before and after your sweet self.”

“Hounds and hearthstones, girl, haven’t you ever heard a story about Koschei? He’s only got the one. Act One, Scene One: pretty girl. Act One, Scene Two: pretty girl gone!”

Chyerti—that’s us, demons and devils, small and big

a car instead of a house,

Baba Yaga pressed the back of her withered hand to Marya’s cheek. “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.”