Something Unbelievable: A Novel by Maria Kuznetsova

Author:Maria Kuznetsova [Kuznetsova, Maria]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780525511908
Google: BJ4jEAAAQBAJ
Amazon: 0525511903
Publisher: Random House
Published: 2021-04-12T23:00:00+00:00

PART III

Happy Wife

Larissa

Uncle Pasha arrived about a month after Licky’s death to embark on his journey to find food in a neighboring village with Papa. Two years had passed since I saw him, and he was, of course, greatly diminished. I’d always thought of him as a diminished version of my father, but now he was objectively smaller, like a boy playing dress-up in a man’s clothes, his broken nose even more severe because the rest of his face had sunken in so much. Papa clung to him for a long time when he and I greeted him at the station, and as they spun and hugged, for a brief moment, they were restored.

My uncle arrived to our apartment in a buoyant mood, and all of us were cheered in his presence. Even Polina deigned to leave the bed where she had been moping ever since Licky died to join us. My uncle could see the dire state my sister was in. “My darling princesses are more radiant than ever,” he tried, gesturing at us both, but my sister barely mustered a smile.

Polya hardly spoke to any of us except my grandmother since the Licky incident. While the rest of us fattened up on her cat’s meat, she spent most of her time curled up in bed, vomiting air, moaning, clutching her stomach, and pulling at her hair and sweating as if the spirit of her cat were still contained within her body and she was desperate to exorcise every last bit of the creature. Occasionally, she would step out on the balcony, as if she spotted her resurrected cat wandering out of the woods once more, eager for another trot around town with her. But since her cat would not come back from the dead, my sister did her best to avoid the living.

Uncle Pasha got her to eat her dinner, at least, and she seemed genuinely amused when he jumped up and down like a child, demonstrating a performance he and my father had put on when they were kids in the orphanage. But Mama was not amused by his antics, for once. She was quiet that evening, pulling out strands of her already-thinning hair. She was worried about their trip.

“We had the whole dance perfected,” Uncle Pasha said, jumping around and clicking his heels, oblivious to my mother’s fragile state. “We could have taken it on the road.”

“You should have,” Polya said, giggling as he danced like a nincompoop, shocking all of us with her laughter.

“The reward was seeing the joy on the children’s faces. There was no price on that,” Papa said, and then he laughed sadly. I understood it: he had a better time in the orphanage than he did here, because there, he was able to help the other children by cheering them up. Or at least to feel like he had done something for them. Now he hardly felt equipped to help his own family.

They continued to laugh for a long time

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