Bittersweet Scheherezade by Susanna Zaraysky (read ebook pdf txt) 📕

heard from her jovial lover.
“Why?” Larisa asked with surprise.
Petya was quiet but then stammered, “Doctors only perform those operations on married women.”
Larisa felt a stinging sensation in her ears. She froze and looked blankly at the wall, unable to hear any sounds for a few minutes. Petya looked at the floor and then repeated Larisa’s name.
“Larisa, are you listening to me?”
Tacet.
“Larisa…Larisa?”
He squeezed gently on her arms until she looked at him with a blank stare. Petya panicked and paced around the room and then sat next to her again. Gradually, she became aware of the sound of the heater and looked at Petya.
“How can we support a child?” Petya pleaded in a stern voice. “We are going to be practicing full time and giving concerts at night, we won’t have time to take care of a baby.”
“Marik and Olga had a baby two years ago and they are still studying. It can be done.” Then, touching his hand, she added, “Do you want to be with me?”
Petya dropped his head and looked down at his shiny brown boots. He couldn’t tell her the truth. He was a talented musician with the Flight of the Bumblebee in his head, but in the end, he was the son of a privileged Soviet bureaucrat.
“I can’t,” he said looking up at her.
“What do you mean, you can’t?”
He looked at her and started crying. His tears turned his eyes the same bright green they were when they had first met.
“My dad would disown me.”
“What? Why?”
“Because I can’t be with a Jew.”
Larisa took the bouquet of flowers from his hands and walked to the window. Snow was falling outside, and the window was frozen in place. Larisa set the bouquet on the dusty windowsill. Moaning a tutta forza, she tugged on the window, jerking until the ice broke and it flew upwards. The glass almost broke as the frame slammed into the lintel. Ignoring the draft of freezing air racing into the room, she picked up the bouquet and hurled it out into the night. It twirled through the air and fell on a spiked post of the gate in front of the dormitory. Petya walked out closing the door behind him, but the draft flung the door open and banged it against the corridor wall.


leggiero

During the next few months, Larisa was optimistic that Petya would come back to her and apologize. She shared a one-bedroom apartment with her parents. They did not know of her pregnancy. Her morning sickness often sent her to vomit in the bathroom and her parents were worried that she was sick.
Vacillating between her nausea and her delight of carrying a new life inside her, Larisa’s sense of smell sharpened. Even from a distance, Larisa could sense the first blossoming tree of bird cherry emitting its redolent aroma. The days grew longer; the light through the clouds became brighter and illuminated typically overcast and gray Leningrad. Inspired by the new sunshine, Larisa took frequent walks in the Summer Garden where the fragrances from the flower beds made her feel like she was in a perfume factory. Happy being pregnant, she dreamed of what a talented musician their child could become. Her friends noticed that her face radiated a glow they’d never seen before.
Three months after International Women’s Day, when Larisa entered the student recital hall for a concert, she noticed Petya look away from her. Worse, she saw that Petya was holding hands with a blonde and blue-eyed Latvian violin student. During the concert, Larisa stared at Petya and his new girlfriend. She didn’t hear the music. When the audience clapped, Larisa sat motionless in her seat. She realized that there was no hope for them to be together. Being a Jewish single mother pianist would be impossible.
Summertime arrived. Without bulky clothes it was too hard to hide her pregnancy on her small frame. Knowing that Marina’s step mom was a nurse, Larisa asked Marina for help. The stepmother contacted a midwife who would perform an abortion after-hours at the clinic as long as Larisa brought her own robe, sheets, and a tub to discard the fetus and blood. The midwife told Larisa to go to a pharmacy on the outskirts of the city just after closing time. Larisa rode two trolley buses for an hour in a thunderstorm that occasionally rocked the vehicles from side to side. With the sound of the rain incalzando, she walked through the puddles in the pharmacy’s small alley in the faint dusk light. She knocked on the back door. A woman opened the door a crack and didn’t show her face.
“Are you Larisa?” the woman whispered.
“Yes.”
Larisa relinquished her remaining bags of almonds through the door. The pharmacist handed her a small brown paper package.
On the following day, Larisa and Marina went to another part of the city to meet the midwife. Larisa paid the midwife with the French chocolates that Petya had given her on International Women’s Day. To make sure that no one from the street could see the lights from the clinic windows, the midwife insisted on doing the operation in the storage room that faced a wall. Larisa, Marina, and the midwife tried to wheel a hospital bed from the other side of the hospital to the storage room, but it didn’t fit through the doors. They had to move the stacks of towels, sheets and cleaning supplies from the metallic table to some empty shelves. Marina covered the cold table with Larisa’s towels while the midwife prepared her equipment. Gagging from the smell of the bleach detergent, Larisa struggled to lie down on the table.
“Where’s the anaesthetic and your cup?” the midwife asked.
Larisa motioned to her bag. The midwife took out the brown paper package and Larisa’s metallic cup. While the midwife poured water from the sink into Larisa’s cup, Marina unwrapped the paper and handed Larisa her medicine.
“I’m nauseous from the bleach,” Larisa said.
The midwife handed Larisa the cup. Swallowing, Larisa closed her eyes and coughed.
The pharmacist had tricked Larisa by giving her a cheap local anesthetic used for minor surgery. Larisa was lucky nonetheless, because most women getting illegal abortions didn’t have any anesthesia.
A sharp staccato like pinch and burning sensation made Larisa hold her breath when the tong-like instrument clamped down on the walls of her cervix. In a reassuring tone, the midwife instructed Larisa to take deep breaths. Larisa felt a stick stabbing through her cervix. Her uterus erupted, sending currents of blood gushing out of her body. Larisa screamed. Marina, standing next to the midwife, saw Larisa’s purple face covered in streams of tears, and the blood dripping from Larisa’s vagina. Marina tried not to panic and thought quickly about how to save her friend. She wanted to call an ambulance to take Larisa to a real hospital, but she knew the emergency medics would be obligated to report about the illegal abortion and the location of the clinic. Marina rushed to the street to find a taxi. The midwife stayed with Larisa who was vomiting from the smells of the blood and bleach. Panting, Marina came back a few minutes later and told them that she had found a taxi. The midwife and Marina quickly wrapped Larisa in the hospital’s towels from the shelf. They carried her to the waiting car. The driver looked at Larisa’s frightened and discolored face and the bloody towels.
“What happened? You’re going to stain my car seats and get me into trouble with my boss! I can’t take you,” the driver shouted.
“Marina,” the midwife said, “put Larisa’s robe and jacket on the seat to absorb the dripping blood. I’ll be right back.” She ran back to the clinic.
Marina followed the midwife’s instructions and then wrapped her arms around Larisa to keep her from shivering from the wind. The midwife returned, covered in sweat from running, and handed the taxi driver the box of French chocolates.
“Please, please, take her to the hospital immediately. It’s an emergency. If you drive to the back of the hospital, the guards on duty won’t see your car and we’ll sneak her in through the back entrance. I know the hospital well. I assure you, nothing will happen to you,” the midwife implored.
The driver carefully examined the box of chocolates and then looked at Larisa weeping.
“All right. Let’s go,” he said and took a deep breath.
The taxi driver brought them to the back entrance through an alley way. The midwife and Marina carried Larisa to the emergency room and then the midwife vanished. Marina stayed while the medical staff stabilized Larisa and stopped the bleeding. Larisa’s eyes were bloodshot from the incessant crying. When the young male doctor on duty asked Larisa what had happened, she didn’t answer. He sat down by her side. In a grave voice, informed her that she would no longer be able to have children. The doctor left to check on other patients.
“Marina, my parents are out of town. Take my keys out of my bag. Go to my apartment. In my closet, you’ll find my last bottle of Petya’s French champagne underneath my music theory books,” Larisa murmured sotto voce.
The next day, Marina returned with the bottle hidden in a bag of clothes. When the nurses left and the doctor was alone with Larisa in the room, she thanked him and pulled the bottle from under her blanket. Shocked to see the French lettering and fancy label, the doctor read it in a hushed voice, remembering some French from his schooldays. He wrapped the bottle in a towel, put it in a bag with medical supplies, and left the room.

andante

After graduating from the Conservatory, Larisa became a concert pianist and performed in various music halls in the city. A mutual friend told her that Petya’s father lost his post at the Central Committee and was sent to Siberia to work on “economic endeavors.” Petya continued as a professional musician and went to Moscow to perform. Although she never spoke to him again, she cried often when remembering him.
A few years after the botched abortion, mutual friends introduced Larisa to Kostya at a concert. Kostya, with dark wavy hair and grey eyes, was a well mannered Jewish flute player with the Mariinsky Opera. On the nights when Kostya wasn’t playing in the orchestra, he took Larisa to the ballets, operas, and parties at the Mariinsky. Larisa was delighted to meet the famous ballet and opera stars. She wasn’t in love with Kostya, but he treated her well. He made an excellent impression on her family by helping Larisa fix her parents’s cabinets and hardwood floor. Feeling pressured by her parents who thought that there was something wrong with her for being single at the age of 26, Larisa agreed to get married to Kostya in May 1971. Under the sunlit night sky at the start of the White Nights season, Larisa and Kostya celebrated their wedding at a friend’s dacha (summerhouse) with a late night music party outside.
After a year of being married, Kostya wondered why Larisa wasn’t pregnant yet. She didn’t tell him about the abortion or Petya. Instead, she said that her gynecologist found her infertile. Kostya wanted to adopt, but Larisa didn’t want a child. She made up excuses, telling Kostya that they were too busy with their careers to have children. He desperately wanted to be a father, but didn’t want to divorce because he was in love with Larisa