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Chapter 1: What story does Han Ong choose to read and discuss?
Hi, it's David Remnick, and I've got some news for you. We're headed to the Tribeca Festival for a special live taping of the New Yorker Radio Hour. We'll be doing a one-night-only show at the festival's 25th anniversary. So come out and join us on Wednesday, June 10th at 815. Tickets are available now at tribecafilm.com slash audio. That's tribecafilm.com slash audio.
This is the New Yorker Fiction Podcast from The New Yorker magazine. I'm Deborah Treisman, fiction editor at The New Yorker. Each month, we invite a writer to choose a story from the magazine's archives to read and discuss. This month, we're going to hear The Fugitive by Lyudmila Ulitskaya, which was translated from the Russian by Bela Ishaevich and appeared in The New Yorker in May of 2014.
A month and a half had gone by, and he still had no news from home. He did not seek out ways to get in touch with his wife. He was more comfortable not imagining how worried she was about him, her desires, anxieties, and fears.
The story was chosen by Han Ong, who is the author of numerous plays and the novels Fixer Chow and The Disinherited. Hi, Han.
Hey, Debra.
So I think you somewhat surprised yourself by choosing to read a story by Lyudmila Uletskaya today. Why was that?
Well, I was trawling through the fiction archives looking for a story to read for the podcast. And I sort of set myself a parameter of going back 15 years through the fiction archives and then scrolling through to the present day. And I'd happen upon this story, which I remember really loving when I first read it. And that was pretty quick into my search. And so that was that.
The decision was made. I've been so floored by the story when I first read it. And I don't remember when I'd read it, if I'd read it when it was first published or much later. I chose it also in conjunction with the wonderful profile that M. Gessen had published in the magazine of Ulitskaya. But here the chronology gets a little hazy for me.
I don't know whether I'd first read The Guessing Profile and then found the story or had already read the story because this story was in fact published in the magazine before The Guessing Profile. And then, you know, reading The Guessing Profile after reading the story sort of helped bolster my love for this particular writer and this particular short story.
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Chapter 2: Why did Han Ong choose 'The Fugitive' by Lyudmila Ulitskaya?
I can tell you that myself. I can tell that it's a warrant, but there's no stamp on it. Oh, hell. Popov grew angry. It doesn't really matter, does it? A warrant is a warrant. It'll get a stamp, I can assure you. You can come back when you get the stamp, Boris Ivanovich retorted insolently. I would be a little more polite if I were you. It isn't good for us to get on each other's bad side.
If you will please let me do my work. Just a minute, Muratov said, retreating into a little room. Popov knew the layout of the apartment. It was always the same, he thought. The hall, the room behind the hall, then the closet where they kept everything he was looking for. Muratov returned with a thick yellowed piece of paper on official letterhead bearing the profile of the greatest of all men.
It read, Letter of Commendation. Muratov thrust the document right under the captain's nose, holding it so close that Popov couldn't read it. Muratov's wife, pale against her blue robe, looked at her husband imploringly.
his mother-in-law maria nikolaevna poured tea as if nothing out of the ordinary were happening read it from where i hold it please muratov said from where i hold it the captain read it he understood he walked away and took his boys with him Muratov threw his salvation document aside. Maria Nikolaevna set a teacup and a sandwich on a plate in front of Boris Ivanovich.
Muratov loved his mother-in-law, in whom he saw traces of his wife Natasha, although the mother was more decisive. He also saw his mother-in-law in his wife. the beginnings of plumpness, the future folds along the sides of her mouth, and a soft second chin. Natasha picked the document up off the floor. What is this, Boris? Boris gestured toward the ceiling. They're listening.
Well, Natashenka, I got that certificate because in my modeling plant I fabricated the sarcophagus of the leader and teacher of all eras and peoples, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin. Take a look at the signature. The powers that be are eternally in my debt. Maria Nikolaevna smiled. Natasha placed her white hands on her even whiter neck. What now? she asked meekly.
Would you pour me another cup of tea, Maria Nikolaevna? he asked, clinking his cup. Natasha sat down, unable to come to her senses. Muratov embraced his wife. She picked up a pencil and some scrap paper and wrote, You're going to be arrested. I'm going to leave in half an hour, he wrote back. Then he ripped up the paper and set it on fire.
He waited for the flames to graze his fingertips and then threw the remains in the ashtray. He picked up a fresh piece of paper and wrote, Train Station, and showed it to Natasha and Maria Nikolaevna. Right now, Muratov said. Alone? Natasha asked. Muratov nodded. Then Muratov went into the closet and took out the folder that held what Captain Popov had come for.
He removed a stack of illustrated pages and returned to the kitchen. Muratov took a baking sheet from the oven, placed several pieces of paper on it and brought a match to them. Maria Nikolaevna grabbed the match out of his hand. How many times have I asked you, Boris Ivanovich, to leave the household duties to me?
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Chapter 3: What themes are explored in 'The Fugitive'?
The letters were made out of Bologna, and under the letters was a crowd of people and dogs trying to get up close to them. There was even a price tag hanging from the letters, two rubles twenty kopecks. Another caricature showed the mausoleum also made out of Bologna, but with Lenin written in hot dogs. Agents had searched for the artist for a long time before uncovering his identity.
The final touch was getting the originals or something that resembled them. Captain Popov stayed until the late evening. He confiscated three sacks of samizdat, but the drawings were never found. By then, Muratov was at the house of an old woman who had been trying to sell green onions and parsley at the Kimri port.
All she'd come home with was a traveler who'd missed the last boat, De Novo Okatovo. Muratov paid a ruble to spend the night in a small barn, sleeping on a bale of hay covered with a sheet. At dawn, he washed up at the well and took the 6 a.m. ferry. The old woman turned out to be a saint. She never reported him.
That evening, he was in the distant and inaccessible village of Danilovi Gorki, sitting in an old peasant house that belonged to his friend Nikolai Mikhailovich, who was also an artist. He explained his situation and asked if he could stay either there or in the bathhouse for a period of time, posing as a cousin or something of the sort.
Nikolai Mikhailovich shook his head and groaned, but didn't refuse him. That's how Boris Ivanovich's life on the run began. Danilovi Gorky wasn't so much a village as a tiny settlement of five houses. One was Nikolai Mikhailovich's, Another was abandoned, empty since the death of its owner two years earlier. The other three housed summer vacationers along with their year-round owners.
Hardly anyone stayed on for September. Nikolai Mikhailovich's mother had come from an aristocratic line and his father was a priest who had been executed in 1937.
thus nikolai was always prepared he said that it would be safe to stay for the summer while there were plenty of strangers around but afterward boris would be dangerously visible nikolai mikhailovitch's house was packed with people children the elderly two single female relatives and some long-term house guests Everyone did a bit of work, though it wasn't compulsory.
They were busy from morning till night, but they were also free. For Boris, country life was a novelty. He was a city man. His grandfather had been a serf who started working at Seton's print shop in 1883, and his father was a skilled proletarian artisan, a true Muscovite. Before his escape, Boris had never even laid eyes on a village.
Suddenly, the beauty of the secluded little settlement opened up before him. Danilovi Gorky stood on the banks of a large river, among swamps and forests. His hosts, the descendants of an aristocratic family, were also to his liking. They had never known palaces or had a whiff of luxury, having spent half a century between poverty and destitution, exile and prison.
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Chapter 4: How does the story reflect the experience of dissidents in Russia?
Not of the police. I'm scared of your stove, your house. These are the kinds of things you have to have known about since childhood. It seems like it's too late for me to learn them.' Nikolai Mikhailovich scratched his meager beard, fell silent for a moment, and then made a proposal. Baba Noora's vacationers have left, and she's gotten rather feeble in the past year. You should stay at her place.
I'll talk to her. You can help her through the winter. I'll come in December. God willing, you'll survive until then. Muratov assigned Nikolai Mikhailovich two tasks in Moscow. The first was to go to Muratov's house sometime, without calling ahead or providing any warning, and give his wife and his mother-in-law a letter from him, but not tell them where he was.
The second was to meet with Muratov's friend Ilya and say a single word, forward. Ilya would know what it meant. Before returning to the country in December, he should meet with Ilya again, take the money that Ilya would bring and give half of it to Muratov's family, the other half he should bring back to Muratov. He did not know how much money there would be.
Maybe there would be a lot, maybe not very much, maybe nothing at all. Muratov moved in with Nura, a stooped-over old lady with a crooked little face, gnarled fingers, and giant, hideous wrists that she held in front of her chest when she walked. It seemed as if she were always carrying a cup or a pot, her wrists never unbent, and she used her hands as though they were too large claws.
in exchange for letting muratov live with her she asked not for money but for vodka the old woman turned out to have a passion for drinking and was a merry hooligan she woke up early in the morning crawled out of her cot with a loud creak crossed herself in the holy place in the corner where there was a large blackened ikon and then tossed back her first thimbleful
at noon she had her second in the middle of the day she would eat kasha or potatoes later three thimblefuls would serve as a replacement for all other necessary fats proteins and carbohydrates Nora went through a bottle a week, a ration she had established years earlier.
In the morning she was barely there, but by evening she was full of life and even did some housework, all the while muttering gibberish under her breath. several years before the village had got radio and electricity nura ignored the electricity she never turned on the light going to bed when it got dark and getting up when the sun rose but she took a liking to the radio
When Muratov finally learned how to decipher the old woman's stream of babble, he discovered that it was a merciless running commentary on the radio programs she listened to in the morning. Listen, Lodger, that new Stalin they have today, they praise him so highly, he'll be even worse than the old one, she once said to Boris Ivanovich. Why is that?
The old one took everything, and now this one is picking at the leftovers. Oh, they liberated us from everything, those dearies. First they freed me from my land, then from my husband, my children, my cow, and my chickens. Now they'll liberate me from vodka, and I'll finally be completely free. Nora's husband had perished in 1930 during collectivization.
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Chapter 5: What is the significance of the character Boris Ivanovich's journey?
Even the goat was freezing in the yard. How could they kick him out? You couldn't hide him in the stove. He'd burn up. The house didn't have separate areas, and there were no walls, only a hiding place behind the stove. He wouldn't dare to look from behind there. Then they left. What would this stud want with our old bones? They put Boris Ivanovich behind the stove and strung up a curtain.
He sat there with a book, but he didn't read. The lamplight was hardly brighter than a candle. He could have moved it closer, but instead of reading, he listened to what the old women talked about in the bath. At first, they joked about how they'd grown so dry that the dirt didn't stick to them anymore. Then Zinaida said that they had even stopped stinking.
When they were young, they'd smelled like pussy, but now it was just dust and mold. Finally the washing began. They moaned and groaned, pouring water and knocking the tubs around. Suddenly one of them slipped, fell with a slap, and yawped. Boris Ivanovich leapt up, ready to help. He peered over the curtain. Zinaida and Marfa were pulling Nura off the floor, spilling over with childlike laughter.
Boris Ivanovitch froze. He'd grown accustomed to their craggy faces, their dark disfigured hands, their stomped-out feet, everything that showed through their ancient faded clothing. But now, dear Lord, he was seeing their naked bodies for the first time. He couldn't take his eyes off them. Their long, gray hair flowed over their bumpy spines.
Their wrists and feet looked even heavier and more horrible than usual, broken from working the land, gnarled like the roots of old trees. Their fingers were the same color as the earth they'd been digging up for decades. Their bodies were pale, so white that they were blue like skim milk.
Marfa still had her breasts with their dark animal-like nipples, while the other women's seemed to have melted away, leaving behind flaccid, translucent bags that drooped down to their bellies. Zinaida had long, beautiful legs, or what remained of them. All of their butts had been rubbed down to flat spots, with only folds of skin left to mark where the cheeks had once been full.
I'm telling you, Noora, I can't pick up heavy things anymore. Whenever I try, my uterus starts falling out, Marfa said provocatively with a hint of pride. Boris Ivanovich saw that there was a gray sack dangling between her legs like a tobacco pouch. He cringed but couldn't turn away from these three harpy graces.
marfa squatted and nimbly pushed the sack back into her hairless crinkled lump into the depths of what had once been a woman's body boris ivanovitch was not ignorant he'd graduated from art school and had the genes of a master engraver In his adolescence, he'd studied Doré's illustrations for the Divine Comedy, keenly interested in the female body.
These contorted creatures, stirring two meters before him, were the living remains of those bodies. It took an effort of imagination to see any vestiges of woman in their twisted bones and hanging flesh. old age has no gender boris ivanovitch thought growing terrified what about me will this happen to my body i don't want that i'd rather go out on my own terms than be nullified
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Chapter 6: How do the old women in the village symbolize resilience?
They were raised well, not like the women today. Verka, the shopkeeper, steals and parties. She's Zinaida's niece, which means she is supposed to come visit her and bring her presents, but she just doesn't want to. Zinaida's son has been in prison for the past two years, his wife is a drunk, the grandson drowned last summer, and now all she has left is that slow-witted girl.
Nikolai Mikhailovich gestured dismissively. But what do you need our country dramas for, Ivanovich? Kolya came in, his arms full of provisions from the cellar.
everything's fine dad nothing froze the potatoes are in good shape only i don't think we'll be able to get them to the station in such cold weather they'll freeze on the way i would take the cucumbers and mushrooms but i wouldn't touch the potatoes The three of them were having a good time being men among men, savoring the pies and other country treats.
To celebrate their reunion, they peeled the potatoes and ate them with oil, but they didn't open the canned goods, deciding to leave them for the old women's Christmas feast. Their nativity fast had just begun, but really the women fasted all year round with the occasional chicken as their sole reprieve. Around ten that night, there was a knock at the door.
Nikolai Mikhailovich flew to his feet, shoved Boris's plate and glass into his hands, and pushed him behind the stove where Nura was sleeping. The man at the door was a police officer, Nikolai Svistunov, a distant relative. People in those parts had stopped paying much attention to family ties because it was half Svistunov's and half Yerofeyev's for three villages around.
Half of the men were named Nikolai. Svistunov threw off his hat and unbuttoned his police coat. Without saying a word, Nikolai Mikhailovich got a clean glass and filled it more than halfway. I came up to see you because I noticed you're not heating your home. There's no light on in there, Svistunov said. You have to burn wood for three days to heat the house.
We just came up here to take a look at our property and pick up some pickles and mushrooms from our cellar. We're going to spend the night here at Nurus and then go back to the city. There was no road back from Danilovi Gorki, not even a ski run. The only path was the trail that Nikolai and Boris had cleared, which was how the cop had got to the house. Fresh snow had already covered their tracks.
"'It's more than an hour's walk back,' Zvistunov said. "'Wolves had been spotted in Troitsky that week, "'and he didn't want to run into any. "'So he didn't spend too much time at the old woman's house. "'He had gone there on his own initiative, "'checked everyone's documents, "'verified that they were all people he knew "'and that there were no strangers around.'
However, just for propriety's sake, he asked, Nikolai Mikhailovich, have you seen any strangers around here? Strangers, the artist asked. No, no strangers, only our own. And so Fistunov stomped back down the narrow forest trail, running into neither stranger nor wolf. Boris Ivanovich came out from behind the stove, where Numero was still sleeping.
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Chapter 7: What role does art play in Boris Ivanovich's life?
And then you step back and you look at each detail and see just how kind of miserable and bleak a lot of it is. And it obviously, you know, doesn't paint a beautiful picture of life in the Soviet Union. If you had to say, you know, what's going on here, would you call this realism? Would you call it satire? How would you classify this story?
I think among the reasons why the story is so wonderful is because though it does in fact detail a lot of what you talk about, the privations of Russian life of that era, the tone is so ebullient. And the ebullience doesn't come, to me at least, does not come at the cost of the grimness. I don't know if I'm making a wrong generalization in saying that this might be typically Russian.
It also is in some odd ways kind of Chinese in that both are large swaths of people who have undergone great suffering. And yet in both literatures, there is a tradition of if you don't laugh, you'll cry kind of tone of writing. And I always love that paradoxical sort of balancing act of comedy layered on top of, I wouldn't say outright tragedy, but sort of grimness and grayness.
Yeah. I think a lot of that comes also from just the narrative voice, you know. It's not a first-person story. It's third-person. And we never have an identified narrator because we jump around. We start in the KGB policeman's eyes. But there's a tone in the narration that is almost evidence of a character speaking. Do you know what I mean? Yeah.
There's someone there with a sense of humor who's using exclamation marks and pointing out things that are funny or interesting apart from what we see through Boris Ivanovich's eyes and so on.
Yeah, I would say that there are locutions there that put me in mind of a tale as opposed to a story. Although once the story does get going, it is in fact a proper story. But there are locutions there. For example, the way the story ends, you know, all the old women in Danilo Vigorki died long ago. Everything is fine.
You know, that is a kind of tale locution or construct and it comes at the tail end of the story. There are those kinds of phrasings all throughout the story and all throughout, in my experience, Ulitskaya's writings in the novel from which… This has been excerpted in The Big Green Tent. It's full of those kinds of storytellers' way of going in and out of the tale.
Do you think that that is Ulitskaya herself, or do you think that she has in mind a person telling this story?
My take on it is that it is Ulitskaya herself, that this is her style. She just launches into the story, and every so often she might be aware of herself telling the story, and maybe that is responsible for these locutions and phrasings.
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Chapter 8: How does the ending of 'The Fugitive' reflect Ulitskaya's perspective on life?
You know, they're both seemingly well-practiced in the art of, as I called it earlier, skullduggery. You know, I love stories of capable people. I just thrill to that, you know, as opposed to, you know, bumbling folk or people prone to mishaps. So this is sort of thrilling. You know, it's part of the buoyant, ebullient energy of the story that he is so capable.
He probably knew that they were coming for him. And so he had a contingency plan should this scenario crop up.
And then he gets there and Nikolai groans, but he doesn't say, no, you can't stay. I suppose because he goes back and forth between city and country, he's kind of prepared for both eventualities. Because even in the country house later when the policeman comes to the door, he's instantly cleared the glass and the plate and shoved Boris with them behind the stove. He knows exactly what to do.
Well, it says earlier in the story that he comes from a family where either the father or the grandfather was a priest who was killed in the 1930s. So he is well prepared. Yeah. So I think a lot of... Russians of a certain ilk have probably run rehearsals in their mind about what to do in case of X, in case of Y. Catastrophe is always looming around the corner.
Snitches and the hounds of a regime are always sniffing around. So it's par for the course for this set of characters.
Yeah. But then he gets to this place where it's not that it's untouched by Soviet authoritarianism, but it is, as Baba Nora says, it is free. They have their freedom. They've been liberated from so many things, including their families. But it describes her as free as a cloud. You know, they are free because there's nothing left to take from them.
And they're living a life which really isn't under surveillance. And having that daily sort of sense of paranoia not be there makes life completely different.
Except I would argue that it is because when Boris and Nikolai go to the grocery, is it the grocery? It says that Vera has known about Boris's presence in the village for some time. And the phraseology, I think, is that the country telegraph had been at work all along.
Right, but it hasn't reached the people who actually want to find Boris. Right. It's just they know it. They all know it because they're talking amongst themselves, but they're on his side.
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