33 Moments of Happiness

Book 0: Vintage International

by Ingo Schulze

Genres: Short Stories

Synopsis

An intriguing, fabulously bizarre debut collection of short stories by prize-winning German writer Ingo Schulze, author of Simple Stories.

These thirty-three macabre, often comical short pieces revolve around moments of odd bliss–moments seized by characters who have found ways to conquer the bleakness of everyday life in the chaotic world of post-communist Russia.

Peopled by Mafia gunmen, desperate young prostitutes, bewildered foreign businessmen, and even a trio of hungry devils, the stories are by turns tragic and bleakly funny. From a sly retelling of the legend of St. Nicholas featuring a rich American named Nick, to a lavish gourmet feast in which the young female cook ends up as the main dish, these stories are above all playful and even surreal–and many of them are masterful tributes to Russian writers from Gogol to Nabokov.

Translated by John E. Woods.

Release date: December 18, 2007

Publisher: Vintage

Print pages: 320

Sample

1

You run across women like Maria only in magazines and commercials. Each evening in the lobby of the Hotel St. Petersburg, where I stayed early on, she would shift from one arrangement of white armchairs to another as if she were moving about in a furniture store. Sometimes she would disappear for five minutes, but she always came back, and she was always alone.

On my way to the hotel bar I spoke to her, and so we entered as a couple. Maria grew livelier and even more beautiful. She had in fact been waiting for me. The bartender ignored other guests to serve me, and within Maria's line of sight, I returned to our table full of success and without sloshing a drop from the glasses. Her fingers got absentmindedly tangled in the silver chain above her décolletage, and her long nails drew streaks across that incredible skin, which reemerged no less pure from under her red dress just above the knee. I lit her cigarette for her with her lighter so that she would not be distracted from what she was saying about Margarita and Lolita, about the difference between Zoshchenko's and Platonov's use of language, and my palms lay flat on the table while she recited Pushkin and Brodsky as if she were planning a menu according to the vintage of the wines. She had time for me, as if there were no soccer heroes or singers, no members of parliament or captains waiting for her, and I knew: Petersburg, that is her dark eyes. They would stand like stars for me above the city, no matter what else might yet await me.

"Tell me about yourself," Maria said, pressing her hand against my arm and cautiously kissing my fingers. I had appeared in order to rescue Maria. She did not know who her father was. "An Italian perhaps," she said, pushing her black hair up at me with the back of her hand.

Maria would look for an apartment for us, we could live together and awaken every morning in each other's arms. I would fulfill her greatest wish and buy her a car. Together we would drive through the city and to the sea, go dancing, shop for shoes, visit her mother and travel, first to Amsterdam to celebrate our wedding with her girlfriend and then on to Italy.

We sat together for two hours, the bartender gave us his blessing, and I would have loved to ask him for two golden rings. Why had Maria picked me of all people? She let her hand rest on my knee, then took my forefinger and let it trace up and down her collarbone, and I kissed the little hollows on the side of her neck, so that she lifted her shoulders and closed her eyes.

I felt embarrassed to offer her money, but she simply nodded the way people nod.

After five minutes had passed, Maria followed me up to my room; after twenty, she was out of the bed again.

"Miliziya," she explained despondently. She was beautiful down to the hollows of her knees, and in searching for her dress she moved about the room with no more concern than if her things were hanging in the wardrobe.

While I played with the taps, Maria sat on the toilet and promised to arrange for a taxi early the next morning. We would meet again and drive to Pavlovsk.

No sooner had she left me than someone banged on the door of my room. The woman who monitored my floor was holding Maria firmly by the wrist. I explained that everything was all right, that nothing was missing. Then the door banged shut.

Every morning and evening for two weeks, I sat in the white armchairs waiting for Maria. But she did not come. I asked the bartender about her, asked the taxi driver who had exchanged whispers with her, the floor monitor. Maybe someone had abducted her, maybe she was no longer even alive or an old lover had returned from Siberia. For a long time I drove from my apartment to the hotel every evening. None of the other women or girls could match Maria. No one knew anything about her.

Nine months later, we met again at the entrance to the Hotel Europe. Maria had moved up two stars and was hungry. We sat in the courtyard, drank coffee and ate bockwurst. Within an hour there was scarcely a seat left. Like students, we each paid our own bill, exchanged three good-bye kisses like Russians, and Maria resumed her work like a woman in love.

2

Seryosha, come home! Seryosha, do you hear me, come home!" Valentina Sergeyevna squinted. Another hour and she wouldn't be able to see her hand in front of her face. "Seryosha!" Valentina clapped her hands. Two hens ogled her in profile and then went back to pecking.

"It can't go on like this!" Valentina exploded, and sat down at the kitchen table. "For weeks I've heard not one word out of him, not a good morning, not a good night, he won't look at me, just drinks the water tap dry and goes to bed, the meat is falling right off that boy!"

"Better than eating the cellar bare every night," Pavel replied, spreading the butter thick on the bread and pushing it onto her plate with his thumb.

"Let's eat!''

Valentina reached for the teapot and filled both cups. The frizzy hair in her armpits pushed its way out from under the short sleeves of her apron.

"If he was your grandson, you'd do something," Valentina said.

They began to eat.

"Oh go on, every mouth is one too many."

"Fascist," Valentina whispered.

Pavel hauled back and struck her on the chin. A bite of pickle flew into Valentina's lap. Before she could even start crying, Pavel had stood up. He pushed her forehead back with his open palm and spat on her half-open mouth. He hesitated another moment. Valentina's face was cramping into a pucker . . . some butter was stuck to her upper lip. Then he left.

Pavel sat on the chopping block beside the shed for a long time. His cigarettes were still in the kitchen, his slippers still under the table. The clouds were turning blue in the evening sun. Pavel had to think this through.

"In an hour it'll be as dark as Lenin's asshole," he said to his big toes.

The distant noise from the Petersburg-Novgorod highway was part of the quiet by now. Only if someone honked was the road there again. Without slipping off the chopping block, Pavel scraped up some pebbles in his left hand and sat back up. Two hens were pecking between the fence pickets, their rumps raised high.

"Fire!" Pavel shouted, and threw the first pebble.

"Whooee!" It banged against the fence, whose pastel blue pickets he had tipped with white.

"Two marks lower, three to the right, fire!" The pebble whistled between pickets and disappeared soundlessly into the field beyond.

"Fire!'' Pavel ordered.

"Too low, fire! Sustained fire!" He wasn't even aiming now.

"Whooee, whooee, whooee, whooee, ooreeeeee." The hens ran clucking, flapping along the fence, but finding no openings, they plumped themselves up as if in a storm--and in the next instant drew up small and tight, pivoted in the corner and waddled back.

"Shut up!" Two more shots, and Pavel's left hand was empty. The hens scattered.

"Little shits! Enemy destroyed!"

Pavel was hungry and felt like killing something. But even five hens didn't lay enough, and winter was coming on. In Valentina Sergeyevna's vegetable garden he pulled up a kohlrabi, broke off the leaves, rinsed the rest in the rain barrel and split it open with the spade. He gnawed at the two halves by turns.

"Yuck!" Pavel spat and sat back down on the block. He chewed each bite till all the juice was extracted, then stuck out his tongue with the woody remains and wiped the back of his hand across his lips.

"A fat ass, a juicy ass, a white ass," he said, arousing himself and pressing his thighs together. Without any haste, he raised his right forearm above his left and squashed a gnat. "What are you wriggling around for!" Pavel scolded. He was gradually feeling better. He rubbed between his legs. The kohlrabi was sticky. He pressed the backs of his hands against his groin and spread his legs wide.

"Commando retreat!" He rubbed again, waited and pushed his knees apart with his hands--his organ was pressed against the taut fabric of his pants. Pavel was pleased with himself. He put his legs back together, hurled what was left of the kohlrabi at the fence, managing to hit the old chicken feeder, and placed both hands on his erection. Pavel grunted as if dozing off. Another bright streak appeared in the clouds above the woods. A buzzard circled in the gray sky. "Bang, bang, bang, bang!" Pavel took aim and kept a firm grip on his barrel. With each "bang" his hips twitched. "Keep it loaded, Pasha, keep it loaded. And stay dry, Pasha, bang, bang, bang, bang!"

Pavel was amazed to find himself standing beside the chopping block. He sat back down again now, but without letting up. "Rat-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-tat."

Here came Seryosha out of the woods. He was running. Pavel saw the pointy knees rise and fall below the tall grass like a tedding machine. In the six weeks since his arrival, Seryosha had indeed become very skinny. He had taken off his shirt and was holding it in his hand like a sack. Even from a distance Pavel could see the boy's ribs. Only Seryosha's head had grown larger.

"Moving target," Pavel muttered, squinting an eye and crossing his right leg over his left. That way he could still feel himself warm and firm against his thigh.

"Uncle Pasha!" Seryosha crowed, waving at him with his free skinny arm and then brushing the hair from his brow. He pushed open the lattice door to the chicken yard as he ran.

"Uncle Pasha!" Seryosha gasped, running up to the man who had moved in with his grandmother two years before. Pavel stood up, his torso bent forward, and shoved Seryosha away. They had never hugged.

"Uncle Pasha, I've got it, look here!"

And directly before Pavel's bony feet Seryosha spread out his shirt, in which lay a handful of coarse powder, dark, mixed with some larger lumps. Seryosha coughed.

"I'll explain it all to you, Uncle Pasha, everything, the whole truth!" Seryosha gushed, never once taking his eyes off his treasure.

Pavel looked down at the boy's cowlick, at his skinny neck, his shoulders, his sweaty back and the bit of butt-crack above his belt.

"Sit down, Uncle Pasha, please sit down, and I'll explain it all to you, the whole truth, ten minutes, Uncle Pasha, five, please!"

Pavel nodded, blinking the way he always did when he didn't understand something, and sat back down.

"Try it, Uncle Pasha, it tastes so good, it tastes wonderful!" Seryosha held a little crumb directly up to Pavel's lips. He took it between his fingers, shoved it into his mouth and chewed.

"Crunchy," he said.

"It is, isn't it!" Seryosha looked up, happy. "And sweet, sweet as sugar."

Pavel chewed for a long time and swallowed hard.

"I'll tell you the whole truth, Uncle Pasha, you first of all. Everything." Seryosha sat down beside his shirt. Two tiny creases appeared at his belly.

"Have some more, Uncle Pasha, please, help yourself."

Pavel picked out two little clumps with his left hand and nibbled at them.

"Like sunflower seeds," he muttered, and wiped his wet lips.

"It's so nice here with you both, Uncle Pasha, but when I think about leaving, when I think about Petersburg, I have to run to the can. It just wipes me out, Uncle Pasha, you know what I mean?"

Pavel stared at the crumbs between them. This morning, holding fast to the washbasin, Valentina had presented her rear to him. She had almost missed the bus for Novgorod.

"There I sit and I can't move I'm so worried and scared," Seryosha continued, "and then my poop turns hard and after a while it's cold and like something that doesn't belong to me but that still has to do with me, Uncle Pasha, it's horrible!" Seryosha studied Pavel's face. "I didn't want that anymore, Uncle Pasha," Seryosha began again. "I didn't want to have to poop anymore! Everybody knows that feeling, don't they, everybody, but nobody ever says anything about it, no one wants to say it because it's so horrible, right? But why, I asked myself, am I, why is everybody so scared of it? It comes out of my own body, it's a piece of me, and so it can't be any worse than I am!"

Pavel nodded.

"I've known that for a long time," Seryosha said, beaming, "but today I tried an old pile, it was my own, and it tastes good, Uncle Pasha, doesn't it? It tastes sweet! Do you know what that means, that it tastes sweet? It means I don't have to be scared anymore, no one has to be scared anymore, isn't that wonderful, Uncle Pasha?"

"I know about that," Pavel said, and stood up. "Come on!" he washed his hands in the rain barrel and rubbed them dry on his pants.

Seryosha carefully folded up his shirt. He tried to hug Pavel again. Then they both went into the house.

Valentina Sergeyevna was already in bed. Pavel stood at the door to the room, waiting for his eyes to grow accustomed to the darkness.

"Something wrong?" Valentina Sergeyevna asked.

"I've spoken with the boy, he's all right." Pavel loosened his belt and let his pants drop. "We'll all have breakfast together in the morning." He stepped out of his underpants and walked over to the bed. With one jerk he flung the blanket back. Crouching there on the sheet, Valentina Sergeyevna raised her white rear into the air.

"Come, my Hitler, come," she whispered, and buried her face in the pillow.

3

How often we had gazed up at the round-arched windows, their red velvet curtains wrapping the rooms like a precious gift. How often we had tried to imagine the triumphant view from the second-floor balcony across to the Anichkov Bridge, or, depending on the turn of one's head, down or up Nevsky Prospekt or to the quay under the poplars below. Our eyes might have followed the flatboats as far as the Sheremetyev Palace or, in the opposite direction, to the Fontanka curve. Stepping from these rooms to stand at the balcony's wrought-iron railing was like reviewing a parade and would inevitably evoke ovations from the throng lingering at our feet, waiting for the lights to change. There was no denying it: Whoever might appear on this spot in the city, high above the heads of the people, would possess a charisma that otherwise only birth endows. And it was from here that the sign adorned with the name of our newspaper was to shine.