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Deathless
Catherynne M. Valente
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Deathless spoiler thread 5 : Chapter 24 - END.
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The end of this book has really affected me. I'm not to sure what else to say about it yet---I think it has to sink in a bit. But it has affected me, left me rather pensive.
I'm somewhat confused by Yaichka, too.I recognize most of the characters in Yaichka: Tsar Nikolas & Tsarina Alexandra (whose daughters have the same names as Marya and her sisters! — but I wonder why our hero is Marya, the third daughter, and not Anya?); Lenin, and his sons Stalin and Trotsky; Rasputin — but who were Georgy Konstantinovich and Galina Ivanovna? GK Zhukov seems reasonable ("even the eggs boil when he says so, and not a moment sooner"), and he was married to a Galina, but not until the 60s, while the only Galina Ivanovna I've found was a composer, protegé of Shostokovich. Help, Nataliya!
Ushanka is a name worthy of Miéville. Literally "ears" (perfect for somebody who claims to be a Chekist)! But she could certainly look like this:
One wonders if the entire novel, outside of Leningrad, is actually an escape for Marya, but then what is the Tsar and his family doing in Yaichka (they don't enter into the story, otherwise)? Unless... I figure there has to be a reason for the fact that Marya is the youngest of her family, but the third daughter of the Tsar. Is it a misdirection? Are Marya and her sisters really the princesses? The three older daughters have all gone out of this world, leaving only the youngest—and everybody knows that Anastasia escaped the murder of her family!
She could be Anastasia indeed... I was thinking that maybe Marya is the youngest and the heroine, because it is, after all, always the youngest daughter in fairy tales who is the prettiest and the most sought after and the one whose hand the prince seeks in marriage.But, see why I felt a bit stumped towards the end of the novel?
I do feel that, even if the entire novel is not an escape for Marya, that at least this bit where she is in the village and everything is so wonderful, definitely is (if she isn't dead at this point already) .
Hm, like you say, Derek, where is Nataliya when you need her? Probably totally pooped out from having to work night shift until last night... (or rather, this morning).
Let's hope she'll have some time and energy to clock in tomorrow.
Yes, the youngest is the heroine, but the thing is that in the Tsar's family it's Anastasia who is the youngest. So is Marya really Anastasia?
Ok, first are my general thoughts, and more to come after I get some rest today.Valente does tend to throw in Russian names without much explanation. I can't remember whether it was ever explained that 'Yaichka' means 'little egg'? Given that that's where Koschei's death lies, to any Russian speaker it's immediately not a mystery where Marya ended up after begging Koschei to take her away as she was on the death's doorstep in wartime Leningrad. When did it become obvious to my English-speaking friends?
The idyllic world inside the egg where everyone - of all convictions and parties and walks of life - just gets along, just live in peace without causing a world of grief and bloodshed - there is something soul-tearing about the entire arrangement, isn't it? The peaceful rural coexistence where everyone is satisfied and everyone good-naturedly puts up with each other's quirks and peculiarities - was it, maybe, what people actually were longing for when they conceived of the thought of Communism, a content peaceful Utopia?
“But should Alkonost speak with the smallest kindness, the littlest mercy, the richness of his voice would sweep away any sorrow in any heart, and leave there instead only the perfect world that might have been, if only the world had not invented hearts in the first place.”
As for the identities, here's my interpretation:
- Tsar Nicholas II, his wife Alexandra Fedorovna (Sasha); their four daughters (bearing names similar to those of Marya and her sisters) a pond their sickly hemophiliac son Alexei.
- Grigoriy Yefimovich Rasputin a.k.a. Grisha, alleged by the folk rumors to have had an affair with the Tsaritsa Alexandra.
- However, Grigoriy Yevseevich is not Rasputin, despite sharing his first name with the magical healer-priest. This is Zinoviev, an old Bolshevik who lost his life to Stalin in the purges of the 1930s.
- Alexander Fyodorovich who visits the Ulyanov-Lenins together with Zinoviev is Kerensky, the leader of the government formed in the 1917 Russia after the abdication of Tsar Nicholas. Kerensky's government was overthrown a few months later in October 1917 by Lenin and the Bolsheviks.
- Vladimir Ilyich Lenin (a.k.a Vova) and his wife Nadezhda Konstantinovna (a.k.a. Nadya). Their children are, of course, Iosif Stalin and Lev Trotsky (and, of course, young Iosif is picking on young Lyova!) - the two who carried their spiritual father Lenin's ideology to the places Vladimir Ilyich probably could not have foreseen.
- Sergei Mironovich, whom young Stalin pretends to shoot in his game, is, of course, Kirov, whose assassination in the 1930s served as a formal excuse for Stalin Purges, and who death allowed Stalin to put his cronies in charge of Leningrad politics. It appears from later evidence that Kirov 's assassination may have been orchestrated by Stalin himself. Thus the look of almost remembrance that the two exchange in the peaceful world of Yaichka idyllia.
- Georgy Konstantinovich Zhukov, the famous Soviet marshal during World War II, keeping wolves away from Yaichka with the help of his four daughters - of course this legendary war hero would! His wife was indeed Galina, but with a different patronymic (not Ivanovna), but this figure absolutely cannot be anyone else but Zhukov.
All are the figures whose life and death contributed to the great changes that Russia went through in the first half of the 20th century, changes that cost millions of people their lives, that forced them to lose the battle to death as the wheels of history ground on. And yet here, in Yaichka, I the role of primitive Utopia-like communism there is only peace and quiet and firebirds, as though no horrible events have ever happened, as though the world can simply get on while people get along. A reprieve of sorts, but the place that can never last.
“Mashenka, his death was hidden in the depths of Yaichka, and you were the path to it, as life is always the path to death. Here, he could be yours, he could be whole, both Koschei and Ivan, devil and man, powerful and weak, dark and gold. You could be the girl you might have been, if you had never seen the birds. If you had never had your scarf stolen. And if he did not want to die, all he had to do was never touch you once, never get on you the child he cannot have in the real world, for he is the Tsar of Life, and death always looks like a child—the end and only purpose of an animal body. But of course it ended as it always ends. Life is like that."
Ah, well that explains a lot! (Though there are still small bits that baffle me a bit - I think this novel is more Russian than you realize, Nataliya!)Thanks for that huge post - I hope you enjoy your well-deserved rest while we digest all that...
Here, he could be yours, he could be whole, both Koschei and Ivan, devil and man, powerful and weak, dark and gold. Like an alter-ego; Ivan and Koschei, of each other.
Nataliya wrote: "Ok, first are my general thoughts, and more to come after I get some rest today.Valente does tend to throw in Russian names without much explanation. I can't remember whether it was ever explaine..."
I found out about the egg when Valente told us :)
I did realize that there were two Grigory's, which I thought unfair on Valente's part! It's always a problem with historical fiction—a couple of my favorites are Mantel's Wolf Hall series, where alsmost everybody is named Thomas, and Colleen McCullough's Rome novels from a time when Rome only had about three names to share, but you don't expect it to be necessary in a fantasy. But the problem is that parts of this are historical.
Thanks for all the explanations. If Zhukov was married to Galina prior to WWII you might want to fix wikipedia in your copious free time :)
Gwarsh, wait until you get to read any kind of memoir about George V, and you get drowned in all the Edwards, Berties, Georges and Williams...
Well, royalty always have had a lack of imagination when it comes to names, and it doesn't help that British royals commonly change their names when they take the throne (Edward VII was Bertie, iirc).
I just reread the last chapter again, and each time to me it seems more and more powerful, the part where Marya (now knowing she has been dead and is in the country of Death which so resembles the country of Life but is paler and colorless and full of those who go on living some resemblance of their former lives just like Kseniya and her daughter did in wartime Leningrad) meets Baba Yaga and gets another cold cruel lesson in life (nice framing technique there) but this time it is a desperately subversive lesson in hope, delivered in Yaga's no-nonsense manner, with the true meaning between the lines, as you'd expect from the former Chairman Yaga. In this brutal cold message there is the statement that of course the war is not over, that it is still being fought - even though now in the subversive underground manner - and that Life is still present, even in Death. The fight and resistance will go on, even if outwardly it seems like a complete defeat. Because life is like that.
I could not resist quoting the final passage that cemented this book as the powerful story of never ending survival in the face of death, the life against all odds (all emphasis is mine):
“I would never attend meetings in dank, moldering cellars. I would never importune the character of your colleague, who tells the tale as powerful ears want to hear it. I would never mince about and pantomime a life full of dressmaking and marriages and a successful butcher shop so as not to be caught committing the crime of remembering that anything existed before this new and righteous regime. It’s so much easier when we say, There was never an old world. Everything will now be new forever. I am hurt that you look at me and assume such criminal tendencies in a nice babushka with only your best interests at heart.” The thing like a bullet between their skins burned at the heart of Marya Morevna, drawing heat from her, giving nothing back. “And on my life I would never suggest to you that stories cannot be forgotten in the bone even when a brother or a wizard or a rifle says you must, you must forget, it never happened; there is only this world, as it is now, and there has never been another, can never be any other.”
“Babushka,” Marya said, and she meant it, here, at the end of everything. “I am so tired. I am so finished with it all. How can I live in this? I want to be held by everyone I have loved and told that it is all forgiven, all done, all made well.”
“Tscha! Death is not like that. The redistribution of worlds has made everything equal—magic and cantinas and Yelenas and basements and bread and silver, silver light. Equally dead, equally bound. You will live as you live anywhere. With difficulty, and grief. Yes, you are dead. And I and my family and everyone, always, forever. All dead, like stones. But what does it matter? You still have to go to work in the morning. You still have to live.” The crone lifted her hand from Marya’s breast. In it was no bullet, not hot nor heavy, but a red scarf, bunched and knotted together. She tucked it into the flap of Marya’s uniform, next to her skin. She pulled her pinched, wrinkled, sullen face back on carefully, her practiced, amiable gaze.
Marya Morevna let her breath go. She made her face blank and unreadable. She looked up at her babushka as though she were a stranger—interesting, perhaps: such a face—but no relation of hers. After all, Marya was so good at games.”
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And now to address some excellent points and questions in this discussion:
Traveller wrote: "I do feel that, even if the entire novel is not an escape for Marya, that at least this bit where she is in the village and everything is so wonderful, definitely is (if she isn't dead at this point already)."
I think Marya has been dead at this point, dead ever since she asked Koschei for a reprieve from the hunger-filled Leningrad; ever since the moment that she deserted Life and entered country of Death in the cold dark winter of 1942, as prophesied years ago by Zmei Gorynych in the country of Buyan. Appearing in front of dying Ivan like a ghost, and then being drafted into the never ending war until the realization that years have passed and now she is in the remains of the country she used to love, surrounded by people who are - and are not - like ghosts of those she used to love - all this happened after her 'gross desertion' prior to Yaichka chapters.
Derek (Guilty of thoughtcrime) wrote: "Unless... I figure there has to be a reason for the fact that Marya is the youngest of her family, but the third daughter of the Tsar. Is it a misdirection? Are Marya and her sisters really the princesses? The three older daughters have all gone out of this world, leaving only the youngest—and everybody knows that Anastasia escaped the murder of her family! "
I don't think Marya has any relationship to the Tsar family. She had to be named Marya just like the girls of fairy tales. I think Tsar and his kin were just a sort of an Easter egg in the story, some of the casualties of the war that has defined the time of Marya's short life. As for Anastasia escaping the fate of her family - as much as the numerous impostors and Disney franchise would love to see her alive, it appears that forensic/DNA evidence from the 1990s has proven that all the members of the immediate royal Romanov family perished on the cold winter day in 1918.
Derek (Guilty of thoughtcrime) wrote: "Ushanka is a name worthy of Miéville. Literally "ears" (perfect for somebody who claims to be a Chekist)! "
To nitpick a bit, ushanka (or shapka-ushanka) does not means exactly 'ears' but can be roughly and approximately translated as 'hat with ears'; association with ears indeed makes the name perfect as someone associated with secret police (and in Russian slang, 'naushnik' - literally, an earpiece, was used to identify a such a person). Only on my second read did it strike me that the clothing-related name suited this cloth-soldier perfectly.
I think your latest post highlights for me part of what had confused me, Nataliya. Since I don't believe in the Christian ideas of 'heaven and hell', but believe in either re-incarnation or oblivion after death, I felt a bit at odds with the idea that death is a sort of continuation of our normal life, or whatever it was that Valente was trying to say about that.There is another layer to this whole 'death' thing discernible to me in the narrative though. It seems to me as if Valente is saying that the way Russians had to live then, after the revolution, suppressing everything they once believed in, is a sort of living death; and that living under the Soviet regime is a kind of death.
She also seems to say to me, that in spite of the Soviet regime trying to suppress the old culture and religion, that it couldn't manage to "kill" the old ways of thought completely; that even though they could stop people from going to church and from worshiping and observing religious customs formally, they couldn't stop the way in which the old archetypes and symbols and creatures of folklore had been present in and part of the culture completely, and that these things continued to live on in people's minds.
I've been wondering if Valente isn't talking about two kinds of deaths: the death of the body, which is how we normally see death, but also a kind of death of the soul; and that a nation has a sort of national soul in the way that its symbols live in the minds of its people.
Nataliya wrote: "To nitpick a bit, ushanka … does not means exactly 'ears' …. Only on my second read did it strike me that the clothing-related name suited this cloth-soldier perfectly. "Hmm. Wikipedia was reliable, but I misread it. It did say "ushanka" literally meant "ear hat" and 'ushanka derives from ushi (у́ши), "ears" in Russian.' But even finding that, I didn't make that now-obvious connection to the cloth soldier!
"I don't think Marya has any relationship to the Tsar family."
I'd believe that if she and her sisters didn't have the same names as the Tsar's children. And, yes, I know about the DNA evidence against Anastasia, but that, of course, is what they want you to believe :-)
Way back, I promised to revisit this:
Nataliya wrote: "Well, she lets that one preteen boy go, as far as we know. As for the others - she did not get promoted to her rank by showing mercy, I think. But that's probably a discussion for a later thread."
I've finally let the library have the book back, thinking I was done, so I can't say with absolute certainty, but iirc Ushanka considers this part of a pattern of behavior.
We don't even know how she got to be an officer in the Red Army, let alone how she got promoted to staff level. During the siege of Leningrad she is not in the army at all, but there are a couple of references to her becoming not merely a sniper, but the best sniper in Leningrad during the siege. So I think it's pretty obvious that being a hero of Leningrad is what got her where she was.
Derek (Guilty of thoughtcrime) wrote: "I've finally let the library have the book back, thinking I was done, so I can't say with absolute certainty, but iirc Ushanka considers this part of a pattern of behavior..."That's how I had understood it as well.
Nataliya wrote: "The idyllic world inside the egg where everyone - of all convictions and parties and walks of life - just gets along, just live in peace without causing a world of grief and bloodshed - there is something soul-tearing about the entire arrangement, isn't it? ..."I think it's interesting that to find the idyllic world of griefless peace Marya and we readers had to enter into the world of death. Although I too did not understand Yaichka was the little egg of death until Valente told us.
Spot on in the character parallels, and I hadn't thought about the search for utopia as, you say: "A reprieve of sorts, but the place that can never last." That makes the ending, and really point of Deathless, a little more clear now - to me, that it takes living through our choices and the impossible things we see, and arriving at death before we are truly a whole person, and we can't just will our utopia to exist but must struggle to find it, much like Marya's journey to Buyan.
(But I have to admit, and maybe I went too fast, but I got more confused in these last chapters that just seemed to steamroll to a stop. Although I did highlight the "devil and man" passage simply because all along I thought Koschei and Ivan to be two halves of a whole.)
Anyway, amen to your comment: "I could not resist quoting the final passage that cemented this book as the powerful story of never ending survival in the face of death..."
Traveller wrote: "I think your latest post highlights for me part of what had confused me, Nataliya. Since I don't believe in the Christian ideas of 'heaven and hell', but believe in either re-incarnation or oblivi..."It was almost one message too many for my mind near the end I think, but as you point out: It seems to me as if Valente is saying that the way Russians had to live then, after the revolution, suppressing everything they once believed in, is a sort of living death; and that living under the Soviet regime is a kind of death.
I agree and, in conjunction with Nataliya's comment about the last passage cementing things ... I thought about the cold war, where things were hidden, and secret, and saying things against the collective thought or society could at worst get you killed and at least get you shunned. And here, I'm thinking of America too, and not just a little shamefully. Even I, who am now a confirmed hippie peacenik, played war with my childhood cousins and the "bad guys" were always Russians. Comrade was a not a word we used unless we intended to mock somebody. (Sorry Nataliya. Believe me, I'm not proud of it.) In this way, I think her novel transcends the literal and speaks to a lesson that to live in peace sometimes we hide things we don't want to hide - for Marya, it's recognition of and by her friends, and where I am right now it's hiding support for gay rights or islamic peoples. In the grand scale, we're all earthlings, human beings, equal to each other on all levels, capable of walking hand in hand in peace and love - but that's utopia, and in reality it's, sadly, fleeting. And so we are forced to hide our utopia in eggs, or in basement gatherings, and in online forums.
Allen wrote: "And so we are forced to hide our utopia in eggs, or in basement gatherings, and in online forums..."I love that observation, Allen. To your list of things that I try to stand up for, I'll add preserving the environment, which, I find gets a lot of lip service, but gets dissed as soon as people are asked to give anything up for it.
The first thing I want to say, is that I've been wondering where or what the village of Yaichka represents. I had been wondering if it is a place Marya had escaped to in her mind, because she couldn't bear reality anymore.
Btw! I thought Alkanosts were inherently female!
The most beautiful and poignant scene of the entire book was for me the scene between Marya and Ivan where she returns to him and he lies dying.
Also, if she had left Koschei, I guess that means she had left life, eh?
I will admit to being a trifle baffled about the last scenes of the book. I was hoping that some of you would help me interpret it.