Author/Uploaded by Asale Angel-Ajani
Contents Title Page Copyright Notice Dedication Epigraph Part I: Lessons in Russian Literature Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Part II: Monuments to a Scholarly Error Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Part III: БЕДНЫЕ ЛЮДИ, Or Who Can Be Happy and Free in America? Chapter 8 Chapter 9&#...
Contents Title Page Copyright Notice Dedication Epigraph Part I: Lessons in Russian Literature Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Part II: Monuments to a Scholarly Error Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Part III: БЕДНЫЕ ЛЮДИ, Or Who Can Be Happy and Free in America? Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11 Chapter 12 Part IV: Explanatory Dictionary of Night Chapter 13 Chapter 14 Chapter 15 Chapter 16 Acknowledgments A Note About the Author Newsletter Sign-up Copyright Guide Cover Title Page Dedication Start of content Acknowledgments Contents Copyright Pagebreaks of the print version Cover Page iii v vii 3 5 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 103 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159 160 161 162 163 164 165 167 169 170 171 172 173 174 175 176 177 178 179 180 181 182 183 184 185 186 187 188 189 190 191 192 193 194 195 196 197 198 199 200 201 202 203 204 205 206 207 208 209 210 211 212 213 214 215 216 217 218 219 220 221 222 223 224 225 226 227 228 229 230 231 232 233 234 235 236 237 238 239 240 241 242 243 244 245 246 247 248 249 250 251 252 253 254 255 256 257 258 259 260 261 263 264 265 266 267 268 269 270 271 272 273 274 275 276 277 278 279 280 281 282 283 284 285 286 287 288 289 290 291 292 293 294 295 296 297 298 299 300 301 302 303 304 305 306 307 308 iv Begin Reading Table of Contents A Note About the Author Copyright Page Thank you for buying this Farrar, Straus and Giroux ebook. To receive special offers, bonus content, and info on new releases and other great reads, sign up for our newsletters. Or visit us online at us.macmillan.com/newslettersignup For email updates on the author, click here. The author and publisher have provided this e-book to you for your personal use only. You may not make this e-book publicly available in any way. Copyright infringement is against the law. If you believe the copy of this e-book you are reading infringes on the author’s copyright, please notify the publisher at: us.macmillanusa.com/piracy. For JAH, EAH, and LAH, my lovely disruptors, and for Lira, who once knew a girl named Lara I would prefer the country you can leave to the country you cannot. —JOSEPH BRODSKY, Conversations This is as much as I ever told you and yet you are not here. PART I LESSONS IN RUSSIAN LITERATURE Mother was The Woman the whole world had imagined to death. —DEBORAH LEVY, Things I Don’t Want to Know 1 There is no release from life’s turmoil, so put your back into it. In a gulch somewhere between the San Jacinto and Santa Anas, my mother, Yevgenia, slows the car at the sign welcoming us to the dubiously named Oasis Mobile Estates. She cuts the engine behind the property manager’s battered truck and goes about the task of cleaning herself up. She pulls a rubber band out of her stiff, dyed-black hair. She scrunches it back to life. Tweezers in hand, she yanks the rearview mirror down to brutalize her already emaciated eyebrows. When she smell-checks her armpits, I know there is a man inside. “Don’t I get a vote?” I ask, watching Yevgenia resuscitate her breasts by scooping them up in her bra. Our drive from Nevada to California has been nonstop. For miles, nothing but hot dust, windswept trash, and nameless mountains closing in on our resentments. My mother ignores me. Instead, she looks through the bug-splattered windshield, her eyes turned to the heaven she doesn’t believe in. She blows hard through her mouth. Traces of old beer and tobacco stir in the narrow space between us. “People who cast votes decide nothing. People who count votes decide everything.” Pushing the car door open with her shoulder, she says, “Stalin. Look it up.” “Hey,” I call out as she heads to the manager’s trailer, her red tank top plastered to her back with sweat. “Use a condom.” There’s a brief pause in her step. Her body tenses. Then I hear it. The source of what I yearned for most in childhood, her husky laugh, etched by decades of chain-smoking. Waiting for her to score whatever it is she thinks she’ll get from a place like this, I crane my neck to survey the Oasis Mobile Estates. Nestled in shriveled patches of yellow desert grass wedged between boulders heavily scarred by acid rain, this “oasis” is a decrepit collection of rusted metal boxes lined up along small tributaries of roughly hewed roads. The only sign that I’m in the year 2000 is a flat-roofed Circle K squatting a half mile outside the trailer park. Fiery air blasts through the open