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Overview
The Big Green Tent epitomizes what we think of when we imagine the classic Russian novel.
With epic breadth and intimate detail, Ludmila Ulitskaya’s remarkable work tells the story of three school friends who meet in Moscow in the 1950s and go on to embody the heroism, folly, compromise, and hope of the Soviet dissident experience. These three boys—an orphaned poet; a gifted, fragile pianist; and a budding photographer with a talent for collecting secrets—struggle to reach adulthood in a society where their heroes have been censored and exiled.
Rich with love stories, intrigue, and a cast of dissenters and spies, The Big Green Tent offers a panoramic survey of life after Stalin and a dramatic investigation into the prospects for individual integrity in a society defined by the KGB. Each of the central characters seeks to transcend an oppressive regime through art, a love of Russian literature, and activism. And each of them ends up face-to-face with a secret police that is highly skilled at fomenting paranoia, division, and self-betrayal. A man and his wife each become collaborators, without the other knowing; an artist is chased into the woods, where he remains in hiding for four years; a researcher is forced to deem a patient insane, damning him to torture in a psychiatric ward.
Ludmila Ulitskaya’s novel belongs to the tradition of Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, and Pasternak: it is a work consumed with politics, love, and belief—and a revelation of life in dark times.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780374709716 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Farrar, Straus and Giroux |
| Publication date: | 11/10/2015 |
| Sold by: | Macmillan |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 576 |
| Sales rank: | 780,348 |
| File size: | 765 KB |
About the Author
Ludmila Ulitskaya is one of Russia’s most popular and renowned literary figures. A former scientist and the director of Moscow’s Hebrew Repertory Theater, she is the author of more than a dozen works of fiction, including The Big Green Tent, several tales for children, and multiple plays that have been staged by a number of theaters in Russia and Germany. She has won Russia’s Man Booker Prize and was on the judges’ list for the Man Booker International Prize.
Polly Gannon is the director of cultural studies at the New York-St. Petersburg Institute of Linguistics, Cognition and Culture. She holds a Ph.D. in Russian Literature from Cornell University and is the co-translator of Word for Word by Lilianna Lungina. She lives, teaches, and translates in St. Petersburg, Russia.
Read an Excerpt
The Big Green Tent
By Ludmila Ulitskaya, Polly Gannon
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Copyright © 2010 Ludmila UlitskayaAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-374-70971-6
CHAPTER 1
THOSE WONDROUS SCHOOL YEARS
It's fascinating to trace the trajectories of people destined to meet. Sometimes such encounters happen without any special help from fate, without elaborate convolutions of plot, following the natural course of events — say, people live in adjacent buildings, or go to the same school.
The three boys all went to the same school. Ilya and Sanya had known each other since the first grade. Mikha joined them later. In the hierarchy that takes shape willy-nilly in every herd, all three of them occupied the lowest rung — due to their complete disinclination to fight or be cruel. Ilya was long and lanky, his hands and feet stuck out from his short sleeves and trouser legs. Moreover, there wasn't a single nail or sharp piece of metal he hadn't snagged his clothes on. His mother, the doleful, single Maria Fedorovna, wore herself out attaching unsightly patches to his clothes with her graceless fingers. Sewing was not her forte. Ilya was always dressed more poorly than the other students, who were themselves poorly dressed. He liked to cut up and play the clown, making a spectacle of his poverty and thereby overcoming it.
Sanya had it even worse. His classmates were filled with envy and disgust at his zippered jacket, his girlish eyelashes, the irksome sweetness of his face, and the cloth napkin his homemade lunch came wrapped in every day. Added to that, he took piano lessons. Many of the kids had seen him walking down Chernyshevsky Street, the former and future Pokrovka, to the Igumnov Music School, one of his hands clutching his grandmother's hand, the other clutching a folder with sheet music. Sometimes they saw him even on days when he was sick with one of his frequent minor, but protracted, illnesses. His grandmother was all profile. She would place one slender leg in front of the other like a circus horse, her head swaying rhythmically in time. Sanya walked by her side, but slightly behind, as befits a groom.
Contrary to his regular school, at music school everyone sang the praises of Sanya. In his second year there, he played Grieg at his recital with a skill that few fifth-year students could muster. The small stature of the performer was also touching. At eight years old he was mistaken for a preschooler, and at twelve he looked like he was eight. For this reason, they dubbed him Gnome at his regular school. And the nickname was not an affectionate one; they made fun of him mercilessly. Sanya consciously avoided Ilya, not so much because of his teasing — which was not directed at Sanya, but which sometimes grazed him nonetheless — but because of their humiliating difference in size.
Mikha was the one who brought Sanya and Ilya together when he appeared in their midst in the fifth grade. His arrival was greeted with delight. A classic redhead, he was the ideal target for gibes.
His head was shaved bare, except for a crooked, reddish-gold tuft in front. He had translucent magenta-colored ears that stuck out from the sides of his head like sails; but they were in the wrong place, too close to his cheeks, somehow. He had milky white skin and freckles, and his eyes even had an orangey hue. As if all that weren't enough, he was bespectacled, and a Jew, to boot.
The first time Mikha got beaten up was on the first day of school. The beating, which took place in the bathroom during recess, was a mild one — just a formality, to give him something to think about. It wasn't even Murygin and Mutyukin who did it — they had better things to do — but their sidekicks and underlings. Mikha stoically took what was coming to him, then opened his book bag to take out a handkerchief and wipe away his snot. At that moment, a kitten squirmed out of the bag. The other boys grabbed the kitten and started tossing it back and forth. Just then, Ilya, the tallest boy in the class, walked in. He managed to intercept the kitten in midair, over the heads of the makeshift volleyball team, when the bell sounded, putting an end to the game.
When they returned to the classroom, Ilya thrust the kitten at Sanya, who had materialized right beside him, and who then stuffed the kitten into his book bag.
During the final break, those archenemies of the human race, Murygin and Mutyukin, whose names will serve as the basis for a future philological conceit and so deserve mention, looked around for the kitten, but soon forgot about it. That day, school was dismissed after only four classes, and the boys tore out of the school building, whooping and hollering. These three were left to their own devices in the empty classroom bedecked with brightly colored asters — first-day-of-school offerings for the teacher. Sanya extracted the half-smothered kitten from the satchel and handed it to Ilya. Ilya gave it to Mikha. Sanya smiled at Ilya, Ilya at Mikha, Mikha at Sanya.
"I wrote a poem. About him," Mikha said shyly. "Here it is."
He was the handsomest of cats,
And just about to meet his death,
When Ilya jumped into the fray.
And now the kitten's here today.
"Not bad. Though it's no Pushkin," Ilya said.
"'Now the kitten's here today' is too pompous," said Sanya. Mikha agreed humbly.
"How about 'And now the kitten's here to stay.' That sounds better."
Mikha then told them in great detail how in the morning, on his way to school, he had snatched the unfortunate creature out of the jaws of a canine predator. He couldn't take the kitten home, however, because he didn't know how his aunt would react. He had been living with her only since the previous Monday.
Sanya stroked the kitten's back and sighed. "I can't take him home with me. We've already got a cat. He wouldn't like it."
"Fine, I'll take him." Ilya casually scooped up the kitten.
"They won't mind, at home?" Sanya said.
Ilya grinned. "I'm in charge at home. My mom and I get along great. She listens to me."
He's so grown up, I'll never be like him. I could never say "My mom and I get along great." It's true — I'm just a mama's boy. Though Mama does listen to me. And Grandmother listens, too. Oh, does she ever! But in a different way, Sanya mused.
Sanya looked at Ilya's bony hands, covered all over in bluish-yellow bruises and scars. His fingers were so long they could reach two octaves. Mikha was trying to balance the kitten on his head, above the reddish gold tuft left there yesterday "for growing back" by the magnanimous barber at the Pokrovsky Gates. The kitten kept slithering off, and Mikha kept planting him on his head again.
Together, the three of them left the school building. They fed the kitten melted ice cream. Sanya had some money, just enough for four portions. As it turned out later, Sanya almost always had money. This was the first time Sanya had ever bought ice cream on the street and eaten it straight from the wrapper. When Grandmother bought ice cream, they took it home with them, placed the sagging mound in a special glass dish, and topped it with a dollop of cherry jam. That was the only way they ever ate it.
Ilya told them excitedly about the camera he was going to buy with the first money he earned. He also laid out his precise plan for making that money.
Out of the blue, Sanya blurted out his own secret — he had small, "unpianistic" hands, and that was a handicap for a performer like him.
Mikha, who had moved in with his third set of relatives in seven years, told these boys, nearly complete strangers, that he was running out of relatives, and that if his aunt refused to keep him he'd have to go back to the orphanage.
The new aunt, Genya, had a weak constitution and suffered from some undefined illness. "I'm sick from head to toe," she would say with mournful significance. She complained constantly of pains in her legs, in her back, her chest, and her kidneys. She also had a daughter who was disabled, which put a further strain on her health. Any kind of work was beyond her strength, so her relatives finally decided that her orphaned nephew should move in with her, and that they would all contribute money for his upkeep. Mikha was, after all, the son of their brother, who had perished in the war.
* * *
The boys wandered aimlessly, chattering nonstop, until they found themselves on the banks of the Yauza, where they fell silent. They were struck with the same feeling in unison — about how fine it all was: trust, friendship, togetherness. There was no thought of who might be the leader. Rather, they took a mutual interest in one another. They still knew nothing of Sasha and Nick or of the oath they took on the Sparrow Hills. Even the precocious Sanya hadn't discovered Herzen yet. And the run-down districts the boys had been wending their way through — Khitrovka, Gonchary, Kotelniki — had long been considered the dregs of the city, no setting for romantic oaths. But something important had transpired, and this sudden magnetic linkage between people can happen only in youth. The hook pierces the very heart, and the lines connecting us in childhood friendship can never be severed.
Some time later, after heated debate, this triumvirate of hearts, rejecting both "Trinity" and "Trio," decided to choose the august moniker "Trianon." They knew nothing about the breakup of the Austro-Hungarian Empire; they just liked the sound of it.
Twenty years later, Trianon would crop up in a conversation between Ilya and an official from the Department of State Security, a man of high but indeterminate rank, with the not altogether plausible name of Anatoly Alexandrovich Chibikov. Even the most zealous of the dissident-hunting KGB thugs of that era would have shied away from calling Trianon an anti-Soviet youth organization.
Ilya deserves most of the credit for preserving the group's memory for posterity. As soon as he laid his hands on his first camera, he began assembling a comprehensive photo archive that has remained intact to this day. True, the first file from their school years bears the mysterious label "The LORLs," rather than Trianon.
Thus, the original catalyst for a union that would, in time, be amply documented, was not the noble ideal of freedom, worthy of the ultimate sacrifice of one's own life, or, far more tedious, the dedication of one's life, year after year, to an ungrateful public, as Sasha and Nick had done just over a century before. Instead, it was a mangy little kitten, who was not destined to survive the upheaval of September 1, 1951. The poor little thing died two days later in Ilya's arms, and was secretly but solemnly buried under a bench in the yard of 22 Pokrovka Street (called Chernyshevsky Street in those days, after someone else who squandered his life on lofty ideals). The building had once borne the nickname "The Vanity Chest," but few of its current residents would have remembered this.
The kitten rested for eternity under the very park bench on which the young Pushkin had allegedly sat with his cousins, amusing them with his mellifluous little rhymes. Sanya's grandmother never tired of reminding him that the building they lived in had once been grand.
It was astonishing how everything at school changed in a matter of weeks. Mikha, of course, didn't feel the change as keenly — how could he, he was a newcomer. But Sanya and Ilya noticed it. In their class they still occupied the lowest rung in the hierarchy, but now they did not occupy it singly. They were there together. They became a recognized minority, set apart by some indefinite sign or mark that prevented them from blending into the status quo of this small world. The two leaders, Mutyukin and Murygin, kept a tight grip on all the others; but when they argued between themselves, the whole class split into two hostile factions, which the outcasts never tried to join — and they would not have been accepted anyway. At those times, gleeful, malicious, angry skirmishes erupted — with bloody noses and without — and the outcasts were left alone. When Mutyukin and Murygin made peace, their attention again turned to these odd, unsociable misfits. They were too easy to beat up. It was more fun to keep them in suspense and fear, and to keep reminding them who was boss here: not the Jewish four-eyes, the musician, and the class clown, but the "normal kids," like Mutyukin and Murygin.
Fifth grade was the first year when there were different teachers for different subjects (math, Russian, botany, history, German, and geography), instead of just one teacher for reading, writing, and arithmetic — the sweet-tempered Natalya Ivanovna, who had even taught Mutyukin and Murygin the alphabet, and who still called them, affectionately, Tolya and Slavochka.
All the teachers were crazy about their own subjects, and assigned a lot of homework, which the "normal kids" clearly couldn't keep up with. Ilya, who had not excelled in grade school, was given a boost by his new friends, and by the end of the second quarter, just before the New Year, it became obvious that the rejects, the four-eyed weaklings and misfits, were thriving, and that Mutyukin and Murygin were lagging behind. The conflict, which grown-up people would have called a social one, grew more intense and more tangible, at least to the oppressed "minority." It was then that Ilya introduced a term that would come in handy for many years to come — mutyuks and murygs. The term was basically synonymous with sovok ("a typical Soviet"), a term of later currency. The beauty of theirs lay in its apt self-evidence. It was there for the taking.
No one got under the skin of the mutyuks and murygs like Mikha, but with all of his orphanage experience, he easily weathered the schoolyard brawls. He never complained, but shook himself off, snatched up his hat, and took to his heels while the hoots and catcalls of his enemies rained down on him. Ilya played the clown with aplomb, and was often able to confuse his enemies with wisecracks or with sudden comic moves. Sanya proved to be the most sensitive and vulnerable among them. Still, it was his excessive sensitivity that served as his defense in the end.
Once, when Sanya was washing his hands in the school bathroom — a cross between a parliament and a den of thieves — Mutyukin was overcome with loathing for Sanya's unassuming pastime and suggested that he wash his mug, while he was at it. Sanya, partly from a desire to keep the peace, but also partly out of cowardice, did as he was told. Then Mutyukin grabbed a filthy rag for cleaning the floor and wiped it across Sanya's dripping face. By this time, they were surrounded by onlookers who were in the mood for some excitement. But they were disappointed. Sanya went pale, began to shake, then fainted, collapsing onto the tiled floor. The paltry enemy was, of course, vanquished, but the victory felt hollow. He lay on the floor in a contorted pose, his head lolling back. Murygin jabbed his side with the toe of his boot, just to make sure that he was really out cold. He called out to him with no malice whatsoever,
"Hey, Sanya, what're you doing down there?"
Mutyukin stared wild-eyed at the lifeless Sanya. Sanya didn't open his eyes, despite the insistent pokes and jabs. Just then, Mikha came in. He glanced at the mute scene, then rushed off to fetch the school nurse. A pinch of smelling salts revived Sanya, and the gym teacher carried him to the infirmary. The nurse measured his blood pressure.
"How are you feeling?" she asked.
He answered that he felt fine, though he couldn't quite recall what had happened to him. When he did remember the dirty rag rubbing against his face, he almost retched. He asked for some soap and washed his face thoroughly. The nurse wanted to call his parents. It took some effort for Sanya to persuade her not to. Mama was at work, anyway, and he wanted to guard his grandmother from the unpleasantness. Ilya was enlisted to accompany his shell-shocked friend home, and the nurse wrote a note for both of them, dismissing them from class.
From that day on, counterintuitive though it might seem, Sanya rose in stature. True, they did start calling him Epileptic Gnome, but they stopped tormenting him: What if he had another fainting fit?
On December 31 school let out for the winter break. Eleven days of bliss. Mikha always remembered these days, each of them a revelation, and each different from all the others. On New Year's he received a wonderful present. After secret negotiations with her son, who solemnly promised her that his direct descendants would never claim their rights to that particular family heirloom, and he himself didn't mind in the least, Aunt Genya gave Mikha a pair of ice skates.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from The Big Green Tent by Ludmila Ulitskaya, Polly Gannon. Copyright © 2010 Ludmila Ulitskaya. Excerpted by permission of Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Table of Contents
Contents
Title Page,Copyright Notice,
Epigraph,
Prologue,
Those Wondrous School Years,
The New Teacher,
Children of the Underworld,
The LORLs,
The Last Ball,
Friendship of the Peoples,
The Big Green Tent,
Love in Retirement,
Orphans All,
King Arthur's Wedding,
A Tad Too Tight,
The Upper Register,
Girlfriends,
The Dragnet,
The Angel with the Outsize Head,
The House with the Knight,
The Coffee Stain,
The Fugitive,
The Deluge,
Hamlet's Ghost,
A Good Ticket,
Poor Rabbit,
The Road with One End,
Deaf-mute Demons,
Milyutin Park,
First in Line,
The Decorated Underpants,
The Imago,
A Russian Story,
Ende Gut —,
Epilogue: The End of a Beautiful Era,
Acknowledgments,
Translator's Note,
About the Author,
Also by Ludmila Ulitskaya,
Copyright,