The wild haggis is a fictional creature comically said to be native to the Scottish Highlands. The offspring of the haggis are referred to as wee yins. In a survey of 1000 Americans, one third of those surveyed believed the haggis to be a real animal. Twenty-three percent thought they could catch it.
There are at least two descriptions of the wild haggis. It has been described as a three-legged, aquatic bird with vestigial wings. Also a four legged creature, with legs on the left side shorter than those on the right and a purple-gray coat. It has adapted this way so that it can run very quickly along the hills of Scotland, but can only turn counterclockwise. Turning clockwise will result in the haggis losing its balance, and taking a nasty tumble down the hill. The largest known haggis, caught in 1893, weighed 25 tons.
The haggis is an herbivore. Haggis are able to swim exceptionally well, and can reach speed of up to thirty-five knots. Haggis swim in groups, in a formation like ducks, with the mother swimming ahead of its wee yins.
Several days prior to giving birth, the haggis makes a droning sound, to call other haggis to itself, and to drive off other animals. This has given rise to the belief that haggis are tone deaf. It is likely that a haggis will give birth to two or more wee yins. From birth their eyes are open and they are able to run in circles, and produce bagpipe-like shrieks, just like their parents. These shrieks are usually enough to scare away any predators, and will call other haggis to them.
The female haggis suckles her young. The male wee yins suckle on the left, while the female wee yins suckle on the right. In the unlikely event that all the wee yins are of the same sex, the mother will have them alternate sides daily. The unfortunate consequence of this is that they will become confused about what sex they are. Wee yins are fiercely independent, and will leave their parents in only a matter of weeks. In two to three years they will be mature enough to breed.
The haggis hunting season is one week long, ending on 25 January, the birthday of Robert Burns. To hunt haggis in Scotland, one must be a kilted Highlander with a Haggis Hunting License, secured at Hogmanay.
Certain notes played on the bagpipe sound like the mating call of the male haggis. These notes can be used to attract a haggis. An open bottle of scotch can also be used as a lure, as haggis are attracted to the smell and will even drink the scotch. Since haggis can run in only one direction (clockwise or counterclockwise), one need only run in the opposite direction to catch one.
The telling of wild Haggis stories is not entirely confined to Scotland - for example, reports tell of a small Haggis population introduced to Nevada.
In 1861, a heap of live haggis were imported into Virginia City, Nevada by a two young Scotsmen. The two Scotsmen traded the haggis to some “camp ladies”, who attempted to keep the heap in a chicken pen. The evening they were put into the pen, the haggis dug under the fence and were out of it. The haggis sought refuge in a nearby abandoned mine. There they grew in number, and as more mines became abandoned, they would expand into them as well. The haggis were rediscovered in 1958 and are now protected by the State of Nevada.
There is also a story of how haggis stowed away on the ship Hector to Nova Scotia in 1773. As the ship neared land, the haggis made their way underwater to a safe location away from the humans on board. They ran into a forest a mile away from where the Hector let off. To this day they live in the south-eastern corner of Pictou County, Nova Scotia.
Sources:
What is a Haggis?
Majestic Haggis Proves Elusive
Midnight Dash
Undiscovered Scotland: Wild Haggis
The Breeding Habits of the Haggis
Hamish Here!
The Wild Haggis of Nevada
Thursday, March 6, 2008
The Windigo
The villagers realized a windigo was coming when they saw a kettle swinging back and forth over the fire. No one was brave enough or strong enough to challenge this ice creature. They had sent for a wise old grandmother who lived at the edge of the village. Her little grandchild, hearing the old woman say she was without power to do anything, asked what was wrong. While the people moaned that they would all die, the little girl asked for two sticks of peeled sumac as long as her arms. She took these home with her while the frightened villagers huddled together.
That night it turned bitterly cold. The child told her grandmother to melt a kettle of tallow over the fire. As the people watched, trees began to crack open and the river froze solid. All this was caused by the windigo, as tall as a white pine tree, coming over the hill.
With a sumac stick gripped in each hand, the little girl ran out to meet him. She had two dogs which ran ahead of her and killed the windigo's dog. But still the windigo came on. The little girl got bigger and bigger until when they met she was as big as the windigo himself. With one sumac stick, she knocked him down and with the other she crushed his skull-the sticks had turned to copper. After she killed the windigo, the little girl swallowed the hot tallow and gradually grew smaller until she was herself again.
Everyone rushed over to the windigo and began to chop him up. He was made of ice, but in the center they found the body of a man with his skull crushed in. The people were very thankful and gave the little girl everything she wanted.
Source
That night it turned bitterly cold. The child told her grandmother to melt a kettle of tallow over the fire. As the people watched, trees began to crack open and the river froze solid. All this was caused by the windigo, as tall as a white pine tree, coming over the hill.
With a sumac stick gripped in each hand, the little girl ran out to meet him. She had two dogs which ran ahead of her and killed the windigo's dog. But still the windigo came on. The little girl got bigger and bigger until when they met she was as big as the windigo himself. With one sumac stick, she knocked him down and with the other she crushed his skull-the sticks had turned to copper. After she killed the windigo, the little girl swallowed the hot tallow and gradually grew smaller until she was herself again.
Everyone rushed over to the windigo and began to chop him up. He was made of ice, but in the center they found the body of a man with his skull crushed in. The people were very thankful and gave the little girl everything she wanted.
Source
Monday, January 28, 2008
Umer Marvi
Marvi was the daughter of a poor goatherd who lived in the small village of Malir. Marvi was a rustic girl reared amid poverty, but nothing could sully her striking beauty. Marvi and her family led a simple life. Marvi loved the people around her, and she especially loved the desert.
Phog, an orphan boy, lived with Marvi's family. As children, Marvi and Phog played together. Attracted by Marvi's beauty, he wanted to marry her, but Marvi had always treated him like a brother. She told him not to expect anything beyond that. Rebuffed, Phog sulked and withdrew. Marvi found her ideal in Khet, a cousin who lived in a neighboring village. He was handsome and brave, and he was deeply in love with Marvi.
In those days Sindh was ruled by Umer Sumru, whose capital was Umerkot. Umer Sumru was very popular. He was known for his justice. He had only one weakness--he loved beautiful women. His palace was full of beautiful damsels from all parts of Sindh. Phog left Malir and went to Umerkot to seek his fortune. He managed to secure employment under Umer Sumru. He soon won Umer's confidence and was put to work managing matters relating to women. One day he told Umer about the most beautiful woman in Sindh. Curious, the Umer asked, "Who is she?" Phog replied, "Her name is Marvi."
Umer decided to go to Malir to see Marvi for himself. He and Phog disguised themselves and set off for Malir. They found Marvi at the village well. Surrounded by other girls, she was vividly beautiful. Umer was impressed, but as Marvi was already betrothed to Khet, he could not approach her parents for her hand. So he and Phog hatched a plan to kidnap Marvi.
When Umer had Marvi in his clutches, he declared his love and offered to make Marvi his queen. Marvi haughtily refused. Umer decided to give her some time to think the matter over. She was lodged in the palace, and instructions were issued that she should be looked after. But Marvi remained in a state of mourning. Umer was impressed with Marvi's steadfast character. He told her that while he loved her, he did not wish to force his love upon her. He said that if her feelings did not change after a little while, she would be free to leave. He felt confident that in due course, Marvi would come round to loving him.
When Khet learned that Marvi had been kidnapped, he was disconsolate. He asked his parents to lodge a complaint with the king, but they were afraid. So Khet disguised himself as a dervish (saint) and went to Umerkot. There he stayed at a shrine outside the city. His reputation as a miracle worker spread quickly. One day Umer called Khet to the palace and asked him to say a prayer that would win him his beloved. Khet told Umer, "The woman you love is in the palace. Within a year you will wed her, and you will be happy." Umer was impressed. He took Khet to the women's quarters, where Khet pointed out Marvi and said, "This lady will be your Queen." Marvi soon realized that the dervish was none other than Khet.
After this visit, Marvi's attitude changed. This made Umer very happy. He attributed this change to the blessings of the saint. One day, Marvi expressed a desire to go and see the dervish at the shrine. Umer gave her permission and sent a maidservant along with her. At the shrine, the dervish received them respectfully. He offered them a drink. After taking a sip of her drink, the maidservant fell senseless. A camel was waiting outside the shrine. Khet and Marvi mounted the camel and fled Umerkot. Not until late at night did Umer hear the maidservant's tale of how Marvi had run away with the dervish. He sent his forces to scour the countryside, but they could find no trace of Khet or Marvi. According to legend, the couple settled in Kutch and lived a happy life as husband and wife.
Source
Phog, an orphan boy, lived with Marvi's family. As children, Marvi and Phog played together. Attracted by Marvi's beauty, he wanted to marry her, but Marvi had always treated him like a brother. She told him not to expect anything beyond that. Rebuffed, Phog sulked and withdrew. Marvi found her ideal in Khet, a cousin who lived in a neighboring village. He was handsome and brave, and he was deeply in love with Marvi.
In those days Sindh was ruled by Umer Sumru, whose capital was Umerkot. Umer Sumru was very popular. He was known for his justice. He had only one weakness--he loved beautiful women. His palace was full of beautiful damsels from all parts of Sindh. Phog left Malir and went to Umerkot to seek his fortune. He managed to secure employment under Umer Sumru. He soon won Umer's confidence and was put to work managing matters relating to women. One day he told Umer about the most beautiful woman in Sindh. Curious, the Umer asked, "Who is she?" Phog replied, "Her name is Marvi."
Umer decided to go to Malir to see Marvi for himself. He and Phog disguised themselves and set off for Malir. They found Marvi at the village well. Surrounded by other girls, she was vividly beautiful. Umer was impressed, but as Marvi was already betrothed to Khet, he could not approach her parents for her hand. So he and Phog hatched a plan to kidnap Marvi.
When Umer had Marvi in his clutches, he declared his love and offered to make Marvi his queen. Marvi haughtily refused. Umer decided to give her some time to think the matter over. She was lodged in the palace, and instructions were issued that she should be looked after. But Marvi remained in a state of mourning. Umer was impressed with Marvi's steadfast character. He told her that while he loved her, he did not wish to force his love upon her. He said that if her feelings did not change after a little while, she would be free to leave. He felt confident that in due course, Marvi would come round to loving him.
When Khet learned that Marvi had been kidnapped, he was disconsolate. He asked his parents to lodge a complaint with the king, but they were afraid. So Khet disguised himself as a dervish (saint) and went to Umerkot. There he stayed at a shrine outside the city. His reputation as a miracle worker spread quickly. One day Umer called Khet to the palace and asked him to say a prayer that would win him his beloved. Khet told Umer, "The woman you love is in the palace. Within a year you will wed her, and you will be happy." Umer was impressed. He took Khet to the women's quarters, where Khet pointed out Marvi and said, "This lady will be your Queen." Marvi soon realized that the dervish was none other than Khet.
After this visit, Marvi's attitude changed. This made Umer very happy. He attributed this change to the blessings of the saint. One day, Marvi expressed a desire to go and see the dervish at the shrine. Umer gave her permission and sent a maidservant along with her. At the shrine, the dervish received them respectfully. He offered them a drink. After taking a sip of her drink, the maidservant fell senseless. A camel was waiting outside the shrine. Khet and Marvi mounted the camel and fled Umerkot. Not until late at night did Umer hear the maidservant's tale of how Marvi had run away with the dervish. He sent his forces to scour the countryside, but they could find no trace of Khet or Marvi. According to legend, the couple settled in Kutch and lived a happy life as husband and wife.
Source
Mexican Rat Dog
A woman from La Mesa, California, went to Tijuana, Mexico, to do some shopping. As any visitor to this border town knows, the streets near the shopping areas are populated with stray dogs. The woman took pity on one little stray and offered it a few bites of her lunch, after which it followed her around for the rest of the afternoon.
When it came time to return home, the woman had become so attached to her little friend that she couldn't bear to leave him behind. Knowing that it was illegal to bring a dog across the international border, she hid him among some packages on the seat of her car and managed to pass through the border checkpoint without incident. After arriving home, she gave the dog a bath, brushed his fur, then retired for the night with her newfound pet curled up at the foot of her bed.
When she awoke the next morning, the woman noticed that there was an oozing mucus around the dog's eyes and a slight foaming at the mouth. Afraid that the dog might be sick, she rushed him to a nearby veterinarian and returned home to await word on her pet's condition.
The call soon came. "I have just one question," said the vet. "Where did you get this dog?"
The woman didn't want to get into trouble, so she told the vet that she had found the dog running loose in the street near her home in La Mesa.
But the vet didn't buy it. "You did not find this dog in La Mesa. Where did you get the dog?"
The woman nervously admitted having brought the dog across the border from Tijuana. "But tell me, doctor," she said. "What is wrong with my dog?"
His reply was brief and to the point. "First of all, it's not a dog; it's a Mexican sewer rat. And second, it's dying."
Source
When it came time to return home, the woman had become so attached to her little friend that she couldn't bear to leave him behind. Knowing that it was illegal to bring a dog across the international border, she hid him among some packages on the seat of her car and managed to pass through the border checkpoint without incident. After arriving home, she gave the dog a bath, brushed his fur, then retired for the night with her newfound pet curled up at the foot of her bed.
When she awoke the next morning, the woman noticed that there was an oozing mucus around the dog's eyes and a slight foaming at the mouth. Afraid that the dog might be sick, she rushed him to a nearby veterinarian and returned home to await word on her pet's condition.
The call soon came. "I have just one question," said the vet. "Where did you get this dog?"
The woman didn't want to get into trouble, so she told the vet that she had found the dog running loose in the street near her home in La Mesa.
But the vet didn't buy it. "You did not find this dog in La Mesa. Where did you get the dog?"
The woman nervously admitted having brought the dog across the border from Tijuana. "But tell me, doctor," she said. "What is wrong with my dog?"
His reply was brief and to the point. "First of all, it's not a dog; it's a Mexican sewer rat. And second, it's dying."
Source
Saturday, January 26, 2008
The Tale of the Eagle
A youth was hunting in the mountains. An eagle flying above him alighted on top of a crag. The eagle was especially large and had a snake in its beak. After a while, the eagle flew away from the crag where it had its nest. The youth then climbed to the top of the crag where he saw, in the nest, an eaglet playing with the dead snake. But the snake wasn't really dead! Suddenly it stirred, revealed its fangs and was ready to pierce the eaglet with its deadly venom. The youth quickly took out his bow and arrow and killed the snake. Then he took the eaglet and started for his home. Suddenly the youth heard above him the loud whir of the great eagle's wings.
"Why do you kidnap my child?" cried the eagle.
"The child is mine because I saved it from the snake which you didn't kill," answered the youth.
"Give me back my child, and I will give you as a reward the sharpness of my eyes and the powerful strength of my wings. You will become invincible, and you will be called by my name!"
Thus the youth handed over the eaglet. After the eaglet grew, it would always fly above the head of the youth, now a grown man, who with his bow and arrows killed many wild beasts of the forest, and with his sword slew many enemies of the land. During all of these feats, the eagle faithfully watched over and guided him.
Amazed by the valiant hunter's deeds, the people of the land elected him king and called him Shqipëtar, which is to say Son of the Eagle (shqipe or shqiponjë is Albanian for eagle) and his kingdom became known as "Shqipëria" or Land of the Eagles.
Source
"Why do you kidnap my child?" cried the eagle.
"The child is mine because I saved it from the snake which you didn't kill," answered the youth.
"Give me back my child, and I will give you as a reward the sharpness of my eyes and the powerful strength of my wings. You will become invincible, and you will be called by my name!"
Thus the youth handed over the eaglet. After the eaglet grew, it would always fly above the head of the youth, now a grown man, who with his bow and arrows killed many wild beasts of the forest, and with his sword slew many enemies of the land. During all of these feats, the eagle faithfully watched over and guided him.
Amazed by the valiant hunter's deeds, the people of the land elected him king and called him Shqipëtar, which is to say Son of the Eagle (shqipe or shqiponjë is Albanian for eagle) and his kingdom became known as "Shqipëria" or Land of the Eagles.
Source
Friday, January 25, 2008
On the Creation of Tulpas
However interested we may feel in the other strange accomplishments with which Tibetan adepts of the secret lore are credited, the creation of thought forms seems by far the most puzzling.
...
Phantoms, as Tibetans describe them, and those that I have myself seen do not resemble the apparitions, which are said to occur during spiritualist séances.
As I have said, some apparitions are created on purpose either by a lengthy process resembling that described in the former chapter on the visualization of Ydam or, in the case of proficient adepts, instantaneously or almost instantaneously. In other cases, apparently the author of the phenomenon generates it unconsciously, and is not even in the least aware of the apparition being seen by others.
However, the practice is considered as fraught with danger for every one who has not reached a high mental and spiritual degree of enlightenment and is not fully aware of the nature of the psychic forces at work in the process.
Once the tulpa is endowed with enough vitality to be capable of playing the part of a real being, it tends to free itself from its maker's control. This, say Tibetan occultists, happens nearly mechanically, just as the child, when his body is completed and able to live apart, leaves its mother's womb. Sometimes the phantom becomes a rebellious son and one hears of uncanny struggles that have taken place between magicians and their creatures, the former being severely hurt or even killed by the latter.
Tibetan magicians also relate cases in which the tulpa is sent to fulfill a mission, but does not come back and pursues its peregrinations as a half-conscious, dangerously mischievous puppet. The same thing, it is said, may happen when the maker of the tulpa dies before having dissolved it. Yet as a rule the phantom either disappears suddenly at the death of the magician or gradually vanishes like a body that perishes for want of food. On the other hand, some tulpas are expressly intended to survive their creator and are specially formed for that purpose.
...
Must we credit these strange accounts of rebellious "materializations", phantoms which have become real beings, or must we reject them all as mere fantastic tales and wild products of imagination?
Perhaps the latter course is the wisest. I affirm nothing. I only relate what I have heard from people whom, in other circumstances, I had found trustworthy, but they may have deluded themselves in all sincerity.
Nevertheless, allowing for a great deal of exaggeration and sensational addition, I could hardly deny the possibility of visualizing and animating a tulpa. Besides having had few opportunities of seeing thought-forms, my habitual incredulity led me to make experiments for myself, and my efforts were attended with some success. In order to avoid being influenced by the forms of the lamaist deities, which I saw daily around me in paintings and images, I chose for my experiment a most insignificant character: a Monk, short and fat, of an innocent and jolly type.
I shut myself in tsams and proceeded to perform the prescribed concentration of thought and other rites. After a few months the phantom Monk was formed. His form grew gradually fixed and lifelike looking. He became a kind of guest, living in my apartment. I then broke my seclusion and started for a tour, with my servants and tents.
The Monk included himself in the party. Though I lived in the open, riding on horseback for miles each day, the illusion persisted. I saw the fat tulpa; now and then it was not necessary for me to think of him to make him appear. The phantom performed various actions of the kind that are natural to travelers and that I had not commanded. For instance, he walked, stopped, looked around him. The illusion was mostly visual, but sometimes I felt as if a robe was lightly rubbing against me, and once a hand seemed to touch my shoulder.
The features which I had imagined, when building my phantom, gradually underwent a change. The fat, chubby-cheeked fellow grew leaner, his face assumed a vaguely mocking, sly, malignant look. He became more troublesome and bold. In brief, he escaped my control. Once, a herdsman who brought me a present of butter saw the tulpa in my tent and took it for a living lama.
I ought to have let the phenomenon follow its course, but the presence of that unwanted companion began to prove trying to my nerves; it turned into a "day-nightmare". Moreover, I was beginning to plan my journey to Lhasa and needed a quiet brain devoid of other preoccupations, so I decided to dissolve the phantom. I succeeded, but only after six months of hard struggle. My mind-creature was tenacious of life.
There is nothing strange in the fact that I may have created my own hallucination. The interesting point is that in these cases of materialization, others see the thought-forms that have been created.
Alexandra David-Neel
Magic and Mystery in Tibet.
University Books Inc., 1965
Source
...
Phantoms, as Tibetans describe them, and those that I have myself seen do not resemble the apparitions, which are said to occur during spiritualist séances.
As I have said, some apparitions are created on purpose either by a lengthy process resembling that described in the former chapter on the visualization of Ydam or, in the case of proficient adepts, instantaneously or almost instantaneously. In other cases, apparently the author of the phenomenon generates it unconsciously, and is not even in the least aware of the apparition being seen by others.
However, the practice is considered as fraught with danger for every one who has not reached a high mental and spiritual degree of enlightenment and is not fully aware of the nature of the psychic forces at work in the process.
Once the tulpa is endowed with enough vitality to be capable of playing the part of a real being, it tends to free itself from its maker's control. This, say Tibetan occultists, happens nearly mechanically, just as the child, when his body is completed and able to live apart, leaves its mother's womb. Sometimes the phantom becomes a rebellious son and one hears of uncanny struggles that have taken place between magicians and their creatures, the former being severely hurt or even killed by the latter.
Tibetan magicians also relate cases in which the tulpa is sent to fulfill a mission, but does not come back and pursues its peregrinations as a half-conscious, dangerously mischievous puppet. The same thing, it is said, may happen when the maker of the tulpa dies before having dissolved it. Yet as a rule the phantom either disappears suddenly at the death of the magician or gradually vanishes like a body that perishes for want of food. On the other hand, some tulpas are expressly intended to survive their creator and are specially formed for that purpose.
...
Must we credit these strange accounts of rebellious "materializations", phantoms which have become real beings, or must we reject them all as mere fantastic tales and wild products of imagination?
Perhaps the latter course is the wisest. I affirm nothing. I only relate what I have heard from people whom, in other circumstances, I had found trustworthy, but they may have deluded themselves in all sincerity.
Nevertheless, allowing for a great deal of exaggeration and sensational addition, I could hardly deny the possibility of visualizing and animating a tulpa. Besides having had few opportunities of seeing thought-forms, my habitual incredulity led me to make experiments for myself, and my efforts were attended with some success. In order to avoid being influenced by the forms of the lamaist deities, which I saw daily around me in paintings and images, I chose for my experiment a most insignificant character: a Monk, short and fat, of an innocent and jolly type.
I shut myself in tsams and proceeded to perform the prescribed concentration of thought and other rites. After a few months the phantom Monk was formed. His form grew gradually fixed and lifelike looking. He became a kind of guest, living in my apartment. I then broke my seclusion and started for a tour, with my servants and tents.
The Monk included himself in the party. Though I lived in the open, riding on horseback for miles each day, the illusion persisted. I saw the fat tulpa; now and then it was not necessary for me to think of him to make him appear. The phantom performed various actions of the kind that are natural to travelers and that I had not commanded. For instance, he walked, stopped, looked around him. The illusion was mostly visual, but sometimes I felt as if a robe was lightly rubbing against me, and once a hand seemed to touch my shoulder.
The features which I had imagined, when building my phantom, gradually underwent a change. The fat, chubby-cheeked fellow grew leaner, his face assumed a vaguely mocking, sly, malignant look. He became more troublesome and bold. In brief, he escaped my control. Once, a herdsman who brought me a present of butter saw the tulpa in my tent and took it for a living lama.
I ought to have let the phenomenon follow its course, but the presence of that unwanted companion began to prove trying to my nerves; it turned into a "day-nightmare". Moreover, I was beginning to plan my journey to Lhasa and needed a quiet brain devoid of other preoccupations, so I decided to dissolve the phantom. I succeeded, but only after six months of hard struggle. My mind-creature was tenacious of life.
There is nothing strange in the fact that I may have created my own hallucination. The interesting point is that in these cases of materialization, others see the thought-forms that have been created.
Alexandra David-Neel
Magic and Mystery in Tibet.
University Books Inc., 1965
Source
The Domovoi, by Irina Reyn
I married Igor for all the right reasons, so the last thing I expected was that our union would summon the rage of a domovoi. I had no idea that American houses could have their own domovois. His visitations seemed shockingly out of place, like finding chicken Kiev on the menu of an American bistro.
In Russia, each home has its own spirit that oversees the house, makes its balance possible. Some say he is a relative of the devil, others that he is the reincarnation of watchful ancestors. Generally benevolent and sometimes even affectionate (one domovoi was said to have lovingly brushed the long, brown hair of his mistress every single night), he can become violent if the household is not run in humble compliance with his wishes. It is widely held that a soft, furry touch from the domovoi in the middle of the night is a good omen, but a cold, prickly touch is a harbinger of much pain. He has also been known to kill.
When I met Igor at a Brighton Beach singles bar, I was running out of options. Many American women may not understand my urgency to get married, but as Mama so often pointed out, “You are 32 now. It is time to start living a respectable life.” He stood at the bar with a friend, one foot in a brown loafer tapping along to the disco music. Taking small sips of his whiskey, he kept looking at me with raised eyebrow and a tight, hopeful smile. By the time he walked over to me, I was already sipping my third bourbon and soda with a girlfriend—but it was clear he was affecting an aura of confidence.
“Nu,” his look seemed to say, “Why not?” We spoke for a few minutes, his friend clearly married and bored but encouraging. He bought me and Maggie another round of drinks.
“You like vodka?” he asked.
“Who doesn’t?” I said. The shot glass of vodka looked ridiculously tiny in his inflated fingers. His pinkie seemed to be saluting the ceiling.
“My name is Igor,” he sighed. “I came over because there is something about you.”
“I used to hear that a lot,” I said. The bar was stifling and crowded. I edged my way over to an empty space on one of the couches and Igor followed. We yelled to each other over the music. I don’t remember what I said, but Igor responded by nodding gravely, purposefully. He punched my number into his phone and smiled.
That night, I had to tiptoe back into the apartment because it was after midnight.
“I met somebody,” I told Mama, who woke up as soon as I gently closed the door. I tried not to look into her creased, droopy eyes because her haplessness broke my heart. Her lipstick had smudged on the pillow and her slippers with the tear in the right heel were wedged into the elbow of the couch.
“Do you hear that noise inside my head,” she said, fixing her flyaway hair, and then, “I’m so happy. I hope this will be the man who will finally love you and take care of you.” I brushed my teeth, changed into my white, oversized nightgown and sank into the military cot that was my bed. My father was snoring on the other side of the room. After a while, I heard other noises too.
For my date with Igor, I wore what I usually wear on first dates—tight, striped black pants and what Americans call a “wraparound” shirt. The shirt often needs some readjusting and I enjoy the flustered expression on the man’s face as he tries to avert his eyes by fishing the lemon out of his water. As I headed off for my date, Mama ran after me to spritz “Red Square” perfume on my hair. “For good luck,” she winked. “Don’t forget to walk out the door with your right foot.”
Igor seemed to have all the manners my mother would expect a Russian man to have. He took me to an elegant Italian restaurant on the Upper East Side. He eagerly poured my glass of wine before his own, handed me a linen napkin after we sank into the velour chairs and sprang to pay the bill as soon as it was brought to him. He spoke about art, vaguely but confidently, about “people” he was working with to move it in and out of Russia. “There are so many Russian artists who are really good,” he said, his eyes blinking rapidly. “But they don’t get noticed in Russia at all. Nobody cares about art over there.”
Something propelled me to say, “I care about art,” in a rather velvety, timorous way. He paused, obviously charmed, and continued, “Of course, because you are cultured.” He leaned toward me, his stomach straining against the waistband of his khaki pants. He looked so vulnerable that I immediately visualized myself sternly shaking my head at him in our beige-wallpapered house in Flushing insisting, “No, Igor, it’s time to get rid of those or lose some weight, dear.”
I did not want to ask him which artists he liked, because I was afraid he would say “Monet” and that would herald the end of the date. I didn’t want to confront his tipichnost’ because men who answer Monet also have a lot of boring ideas about many things. Instead, over linguine crowded with clams, we spoke about what we wanted in life. He said “love” before I could stop him.
On our next date, we went to a Tom Cruise movie and Igor awkwardly put his arms around me in the theater. My heart was beating because I remembered that I would have to kiss him, even sleep with him if I were going to marry him.
“You are so attractive,” he whispered just as Tom shot the man who was chasing him over rooftops with a machine gun. And then, “I can give you everything you need.” I closed my eyes and remembered the tongue twister that, in my childhood, had successfully allowed me to swallow my mother’s mamaliga, a pasty, salty pudding she force-fed me every other Tuesday—“Yekhal Greku Cherez Reku, Videl Greku v Reke Rak,” something about a Greek who saw a crab in the lake, repeated quickly, breathlessly. When I was five or six or seven or eight, when my mother had deep reserves of patience, she could make me eat simply by sitting beside me for hours. When the sun finally succumbed and we heard my father’s footsteps outside the door, I would be licking the last mealy spoonful.
The other night, Mama told me, “You think you can escape your fate? You are alone and this Igor is your last chance.” As usual, there was no response I could give.
“You’ll never get away with this you know,” said Tom Cruise or whoever he is playing onscreen, to a bald ruler of a backwards country. Why do Russian girls always believe that their mother’s words have a shuddering prescience? Perhaps because they do.
I met Igor’s parents for the first time at the Russian nightclub, Fabergé, in Brighton Beach. They looked me over slowly, his mother lingering on my damp forehead and dry, curly hair, his father on my breasts in my favorite silver lamé dress. They seemed pleased yet cautious, as though they feared Igor would never get married and if he did, she would be a woman to be wary of. “I’m not so bad,” I wanted to tell them, as the steaming zakuski were shepherded to the table. “ There are worse out there who would get to him if I didn’t.”
The 40-ish singer onstage was all teeth. “You kiss me vonce, I kiss you tvice,” she crooned through slit eyes. I gave the first shashlik to Igor’s mother, as is proper. She accepted it and loaded some buttery potatoes onto her plate.
“Nu, Lenachka, I hear you came over a bit later than we did. 1993, is that so?” she said. I watched her cut the meat and stuff it in her mouth with the same pleasure Igor expressed when devouring his food. She resembled a coolly polite but voracious rhinoceros.
Mama reminded me that as a good Russian-American wife, I have to tolerate my future mother-in-law’s ample presence. Mama was married at 24, which was already “up there” in Russia. In one of our few black-and-white pictures from Tambov, she sits on a narrow divan looking out the window while I play with blocks at her feet. She looks lush and indescribably beautiful.
Lately, after dinner, Mama has taken to drinking. “Do you think I wanted to?” she would spurt, precariously holding onto the sagging sleeve of our plastic, checkered tablecloth. “Don’t you think I too would have been happy going to bars and reading Dostoevsky or whatever, all romantic-like under these—what are they called—Tiffany lamps?”
Papa would get up in disgust and move over to the couch, opening up his newspaper. “There’s no other life. It all adds up to the same thing in the end,” he would mutter.
Igor asked me to dance and I caught sight of us in one of the wall mirrors. Circling around awkwardly, we looked like gruesome marionettes until I began to lead. Then our movements took on some tempo, though we still bumped into the swaying old couple next to us who gave us dirty looks. Igor shook a little in my arms. When we returned, flushed, to the table, dessert was already spread out and Igor’s mother looked displeased.
“How well you dance,” she said, shaking her head and picking up a slice of watermelon. Pink juice started to dribble down her chin and she slurped it back into her mouth.
I nodded and loaded a pile of fruit carcasses onto Igor’s plate. “Yes, it wasn’t so easy to get here in 1993.” Igor’s mother looked confused. I didn’t realize that I was answering her biographical questions now, at the end of the night. To me, they were only just beginning to be asked.
“I will take her home,” Igor said after dessert and put on the coat I am least ashamed of. It is dark gray, but shimmers when held up to a certain light. It was the first indulgence in the new country, purchased at Burlington Coat Factory on sale as an “investment” —I told myself I would get married in this coat.
When I was a teenager, Mama would take me aside during smoke-filled parties and brush away my hair lovingly.
“This is my pride and joy, the only one left to me,” she would tell people, a glass of vodka in hand, while somebody strummed on a guitar in the kitchen. “Do you know what this beauty will do for us when she is married to a rich American?”
“Umeret’, tozhe nado umet’” the man would hack, trying to do a good Okudzhava imitation. I would watch my mother sidle up to the musician and sway theatrically to his voice. Before I was 25, her eyes said to me, “You are my redemption,” and afterwards, “You are my curse.”
Igor proposed on our fifth date after an uninspiring meal at a Brazilian churrascaria around the corner from his place. A piece of meat was still stuck to his lower lip and I was too ashamed to tell him about it, hoping he would get the hint when I vigorously rubbed my own mouth with a napkin. His mouth was parted all night as though in preparation for an interminable sequence of meals.
“Would you like a drink?” he asked afterwards and I nodded. Scotch and soda that made my heart ache a little with longing and pity. He sat down next to me on the bed and gingerly placed his hand on my left breast, as though it were the fragile head of a newborn baby. His duvet cover was dark blue and was imprinted with what resembled yellow isosceles triangles. I swiveled until my hair covered his hand—there was some shame in that movement, maybe.
That night, I felt like a slurped kvas, but it was over quickly. Igor was gentle, almost nonexistent. He called me “my heart” and “my little bird” and “my wifey.” I sensed another presence there in the room with us, but I turned back to Igor and whispered, “Yes,” and let him rub my shoulders as though he was pinching a pie crust.
The wedding was celebrated in a glitzy Long Island synagogue six months later. Igor and I stood next to each other like two erect pickles, arms at our sides, eyes focused on the ancient rabbi’s mouth in scholarly concentration. Afterwards, Mama cried, the carnation on her silk blouse bobbing up and down, and she kissed Igor, who patted her on the shoulder sheepishly. We had sixty guests all together, most of them on Igor’s side.
His mother weaved between tables in her garish red suit from Loehmann’s, greeting relatives I never had a chance to meet. “It’s Versace,” I heard her say a few times. “Only 350 dollars.” I was sweating in my angular dress, certain I was being dissected, my insides splayed out beneath a microscope.
My friend Maggie was there. A former classmate from dental school, she was a shy, Korean ex-model. Her wedding gift was a pale yellow teddy that I wear for myself sometimes. After slipping into its supple contours, I put on lipstick and lie down next to my pillow, caressing a corner, taking it in my mouth, feeling the soft down press against my body. Late one night, I could have sworn I felt eyes on me; they were full of approval, but also of hate.
I was happy to discover that even after marriage Igor continued to open the door for me. His thick fingers rested on the back of my neck as I walked ahead of him. If he was still or ever moving art in and out of Russia, I stopped asking and he stopped mentioning it. But I never saw him appraise a painting and when I dragged him to the Met, he only cocked his head to one side and, as though speaking directly to Ingres, said, “Not bad. Very nice.” Eating my borscht happily, his face red from its steam, he began to make allusions to children, in his customarily indirect way. If my stomach hurt, his face mimicked the concern of an E.R. resident. “Is it… something more, you think?”
I could not imagine having kids, though, no matter how hard I tried. I told Igor that I had to put my energy into the practice—some dumpy, Russian patients thrust upon me by Igor’s relatives and word-of-mouth. Despite hating the powdery smell of the office and the mechanical aftertaste of anything eaten in it, I stayed later and later, taking walk-ins, hysterical patients panicking about minor toothaches and missing fillings. Sometimes, I would read The Idiot into the night and call a cab home.
“But you are so attractive, cultured. I knew as soon as I saw you that you would make a great mother,” Igor slipped in during dinner, between bites of pielmeni. Often, I thought about murdering my patients that sat so passively in the weathered leather chair. I could slit their throats and they would lie there like resigned cows, calmly looking up my nostrils. If I told them to undergo any major surgery, they would only sigh and agree, as though they always knew that some kind of price would have to be paid by Russian Jews who made it out.
A year after our wedding, the domovoi finally appeared just like I knew he would. By then, I was finding it difficult to hide my aversion to Igor’s pink, naked body, though I tried very hard, if only for my mother’s sake. I began to invite my parents to our apartment more often, because I could visualize their interactions at home and hoped to save them, if only for a single evening.
Igor dreaded spending time with my parents, since inevitably by the end of the night, Mama would cry over her tea. “I’m so happy, Lenachka, you are a wife at last.” Or “Our family finally deserves a little happiness” or “We’re a long way from Tambov, yes?” She would gulp her tea Russian-style, through the density of our sugar cubes. My father would eventually navigate her gaunt frame towards the doorway.
After they left one afternoon, Igor and I decided to go for a walk, as we do on most nights, to digest our meal. “Your mother is an embarrassment to us all,” he said suddenly, and I turned to him in disgust. He knew nothing, coming here as a child; reliant on his parents’ toil, coddled by American luxury, baked to perfection on its ambitions.
“How dare you,” I said and he knew something was changed between us. The street was brightly lit, but I wished we were in the suburbs, sheltered by darkness, our house the only beacon to strive for. Instead, our surroundings didn’t look so different from Tambov, with all those irrelevant stores and the awkwardly cloned apartment complexes. I watched Igor let air in and out of his cheeks, resembling a bird that I once glimpsed on a beach in Riga. It was eating a worm. We walked back towards our stout building in silence.
“Strange, Lena,” he said, when we walked through the door. The light in our living room was on. “I could have sworn we turned the lights off,” he said and shrugged, unfolding the Wall Street Journal. I stayed quiet, partially to show him I was still mad at him and was not about to let him forget I was in the right— but I knew it was no mistake. We left when it was still daytime and I always try to save money by turning on the light only when it is absolutely necessary. Our apartment induced nausea when it was bathed in this unnatural glow of the yellow light. I smiled a little while hanging up our coats. It was nice to be privy to a secret.
“Bring me some tea, will you Lenachka?” Igor mumbled, his voice listlessly bouncing against the shield of the newspaper.
“Of course.”
I boiled water.
A few weeks later, we went out to dinner at Uncle Vanya with some of Igor’s business “colleagues”—pseudo-mafiosi, all thick and oily. They spoke perfect Russian, but conjugated certain English words as though they were Russian, like exportat or businessmeny or dollary.
They stared at my breasts, when Igor was snapping his fingers for the waiter, and the large nosed, convex one wrapped one of my curls around his finger, as though he knew more about me than he really did. “You’re a real beauty,” he kept saying, grinning at me and then at Igor. “You got yourself a real beauty, Igor.”
They used a lot of slang that I didn’t understand, trying to convince Igor to come with them to Russia.
“C'mon, Igor. It’s a bit changed since you were there,” the taller one with the slicked back hair said.
“Nah,” Igor said. “I will never go back there.”
The restaurant was filling up, and the men kept passing money to the owner. I wanted to smile at Igor, squeeze his knee or give him my version of a plaintive expression, but the body by my side was stiff with pride.
“Do you really like those guys?” I asked Igor, his keys scraping at the lock of our door.
“They’re old friends,” Igor said. We walked in and I threw my shoes inside the closet carelessly. “You really should be more polite to them.”
“Do they import art too?” I asked, unbuttoning my blazer. I heard no response, only a slow shuffling of the slippers. Suddenly, the apartment had an asymmetrical feel, as though its balance had shifted while we were gone. I glanced at our bookshelf—the books had been randomly rearranged, some spines upside down, some missing their jackets altogether. A few of the books were wedged out grotesquely as though in lewd invitation. “Igor!” I screamed. He waddled over and his eyes got fat. “My God,” he said. I didn’t touch the bookshelf, that would be dangerous.
I explained to Igor that we had a domovoi and he was angry.
“A what?” Igor said, again and again, shaking his head like a disoriented tourist. “What?” He said, “You are being ridiculous,” and “You are just like your mother,” and tried to stick his tongue in my ear. I swatted him away.
“We should ‘take it easy’ for a while,” I said, as always trying out some American expressions, “sleep in separate bedrooms so we don’t disturb him, before he does something desperate, irreversible.” Once the domovoi becomes angry, there are no limits to his wrath. I told Igor the famous story of the displeased domovoi who he dragged one woman down the stairs by her thin, graying braid. “He must not get upset, do you understand,” I said, my voice an urgent whisper.
After pleading with me in that watery way of his, Igor finally agreed to sleep in the other bedroom, the one he had reserved for “our child.” Reluctantly, I agreed to sex once a week, but asked my girlfriend from dental school to tell me about the Pill, something I could never get my hands on in Russia. It was a secret between the domovoi and myself, and nothing too unusual happened for a long time except a pair of theater tickets that disappeared the night Igor forgot our anniversary and a broken vase that my mother-in-law gave me for my birthday from a gaudy boutique on Madison Avenue. Another time, I cut my underarms with a razor and found myself fascinated by the beautiful trickle of red creeping down the edge of our cool, ceramic sink. All little acts that could be ignored.
Still, I didn’t want to take any chances—the domovoi can always take the firstborn and trade it for a changeling. The baby would look normal for a few months, but perhaps one night, when I stumbled over to its crib in the middle of the night, I would discover a gurgle erupting from a foaming, cavernous mouth. My grandmother told me such stories when I was a little girl, when she would return weary from a long day of cleaning dachas for rich Muscovites on vacation. She told me that a domovoi used to visit Mama before I was born, which is why I never knew my brother Sasha, whose name my parents whispered when the weather just started to turn cold.
“She deserved it, too, your mother,” my grandmother said, spitting the cracked shells of sunflower seeds into her hands. “And she knew it.” After the domovoi’s first visitation, all you can do is wait for his verdict, she told me—the inevitable moment when he forces you to face the unbending consequences of your choices.
“We have to move,” Igor declared one morning, having woken up to the sounds of pots clanging in the kitchen. “I can’t take it anymore.” He said it was clear to him that the domovoi would eventually unravel the intricate creation of our marriage. Or something like that.
I tried to remain calm. “I was just starting to get used to him.”
“No,” he said. “This isn’t right.”
That afternoon, Igor called the landlord and broke our lease. He also started to leave me dark chocolate truffles by my bedside, and when they remained there for several days—hard, solitary and stupidly bulbous-- he ate them himself.
“What can I do to make it better?” he asked one night. And then, “Will moving really help?”
“I don’t know,” I said, truthfully. “Sometimes the domovoi likes to move with the residents. There is no guarantee.”
When I didn’t work late, we sat in front of the television watching our favorite shows—mostly family sitcoms or action dramas. Sometimes our parents called and Igor would take the phone into the kitchen. During commercials, I noticed that the right side of the couch had developed a permanent crater. If I cried at all, it was painful and immediate, and by the time Igor returned from his phone call, I was dried-eyed, munching on Paul Newman pretzels.
The night before the move, we packed all our possessions into bulging, duct-taped boxes. Igor looked dispirited and I made him some tea before going to bed. In the bedroom, I put on the yellow teddy and pretended my pillow was the domovoi. Not the old man with the floor-sweeping, gray beard—the way we Russians have always imagined him—but like a sitcom husband melded with Tom Cruise. He was dependable and confidently gruff, lean and mystical, and insouciantly wealthy. I fell asleep tasting him in my mouth, savoring the essence of freedom. Sometime in the middle of the night, I felt a cold hand tap me on the back and I jumped up in bed.
“What?” I screamed. It was Igor in his baby-blue pajamas. He peeled back the covers and slid in next to me. I waited, unmoving on the edge of the bed, for the domovoi to pronounce his final decree, but all I could hear was the sound of Igor’s snores—methodical and triumphant.
Source
In Russia, each home has its own spirit that oversees the house, makes its balance possible. Some say he is a relative of the devil, others that he is the reincarnation of watchful ancestors. Generally benevolent and sometimes even affectionate (one domovoi was said to have lovingly brushed the long, brown hair of his mistress every single night), he can become violent if the household is not run in humble compliance with his wishes. It is widely held that a soft, furry touch from the domovoi in the middle of the night is a good omen, but a cold, prickly touch is a harbinger of much pain. He has also been known to kill.
When I met Igor at a Brighton Beach singles bar, I was running out of options. Many American women may not understand my urgency to get married, but as Mama so often pointed out, “You are 32 now. It is time to start living a respectable life.” He stood at the bar with a friend, one foot in a brown loafer tapping along to the disco music. Taking small sips of his whiskey, he kept looking at me with raised eyebrow and a tight, hopeful smile. By the time he walked over to me, I was already sipping my third bourbon and soda with a girlfriend—but it was clear he was affecting an aura of confidence.
“Nu,” his look seemed to say, “Why not?” We spoke for a few minutes, his friend clearly married and bored but encouraging. He bought me and Maggie another round of drinks.
“You like vodka?” he asked.
“Who doesn’t?” I said. The shot glass of vodka looked ridiculously tiny in his inflated fingers. His pinkie seemed to be saluting the ceiling.
“My name is Igor,” he sighed. “I came over because there is something about you.”
“I used to hear that a lot,” I said. The bar was stifling and crowded. I edged my way over to an empty space on one of the couches and Igor followed. We yelled to each other over the music. I don’t remember what I said, but Igor responded by nodding gravely, purposefully. He punched my number into his phone and smiled.
That night, I had to tiptoe back into the apartment because it was after midnight.
“I met somebody,” I told Mama, who woke up as soon as I gently closed the door. I tried not to look into her creased, droopy eyes because her haplessness broke my heart. Her lipstick had smudged on the pillow and her slippers with the tear in the right heel were wedged into the elbow of the couch.
“Do you hear that noise inside my head,” she said, fixing her flyaway hair, and then, “I’m so happy. I hope this will be the man who will finally love you and take care of you.” I brushed my teeth, changed into my white, oversized nightgown and sank into the military cot that was my bed. My father was snoring on the other side of the room. After a while, I heard other noises too.
For my date with Igor, I wore what I usually wear on first dates—tight, striped black pants and what Americans call a “wraparound” shirt. The shirt often needs some readjusting and I enjoy the flustered expression on the man’s face as he tries to avert his eyes by fishing the lemon out of his water. As I headed off for my date, Mama ran after me to spritz “Red Square” perfume on my hair. “For good luck,” she winked. “Don’t forget to walk out the door with your right foot.”
Igor seemed to have all the manners my mother would expect a Russian man to have. He took me to an elegant Italian restaurant on the Upper East Side. He eagerly poured my glass of wine before his own, handed me a linen napkin after we sank into the velour chairs and sprang to pay the bill as soon as it was brought to him. He spoke about art, vaguely but confidently, about “people” he was working with to move it in and out of Russia. “There are so many Russian artists who are really good,” he said, his eyes blinking rapidly. “But they don’t get noticed in Russia at all. Nobody cares about art over there.”
Something propelled me to say, “I care about art,” in a rather velvety, timorous way. He paused, obviously charmed, and continued, “Of course, because you are cultured.” He leaned toward me, his stomach straining against the waistband of his khaki pants. He looked so vulnerable that I immediately visualized myself sternly shaking my head at him in our beige-wallpapered house in Flushing insisting, “No, Igor, it’s time to get rid of those or lose some weight, dear.”
I did not want to ask him which artists he liked, because I was afraid he would say “Monet” and that would herald the end of the date. I didn’t want to confront his tipichnost’ because men who answer Monet also have a lot of boring ideas about many things. Instead, over linguine crowded with clams, we spoke about what we wanted in life. He said “love” before I could stop him.
On our next date, we went to a Tom Cruise movie and Igor awkwardly put his arms around me in the theater. My heart was beating because I remembered that I would have to kiss him, even sleep with him if I were going to marry him.
“You are so attractive,” he whispered just as Tom shot the man who was chasing him over rooftops with a machine gun. And then, “I can give you everything you need.” I closed my eyes and remembered the tongue twister that, in my childhood, had successfully allowed me to swallow my mother’s mamaliga, a pasty, salty pudding she force-fed me every other Tuesday—“Yekhal Greku Cherez Reku, Videl Greku v Reke Rak,” something about a Greek who saw a crab in the lake, repeated quickly, breathlessly. When I was five or six or seven or eight, when my mother had deep reserves of patience, she could make me eat simply by sitting beside me for hours. When the sun finally succumbed and we heard my father’s footsteps outside the door, I would be licking the last mealy spoonful.
The other night, Mama told me, “You think you can escape your fate? You are alone and this Igor is your last chance.” As usual, there was no response I could give.
“You’ll never get away with this you know,” said Tom Cruise or whoever he is playing onscreen, to a bald ruler of a backwards country. Why do Russian girls always believe that their mother’s words have a shuddering prescience? Perhaps because they do.
I met Igor’s parents for the first time at the Russian nightclub, Fabergé, in Brighton Beach. They looked me over slowly, his mother lingering on my damp forehead and dry, curly hair, his father on my breasts in my favorite silver lamé dress. They seemed pleased yet cautious, as though they feared Igor would never get married and if he did, she would be a woman to be wary of. “I’m not so bad,” I wanted to tell them, as the steaming zakuski were shepherded to the table. “ There are worse out there who would get to him if I didn’t.”
The 40-ish singer onstage was all teeth. “You kiss me vonce, I kiss you tvice,” she crooned through slit eyes. I gave the first shashlik to Igor’s mother, as is proper. She accepted it and loaded some buttery potatoes onto her plate.
“Nu, Lenachka, I hear you came over a bit later than we did. 1993, is that so?” she said. I watched her cut the meat and stuff it in her mouth with the same pleasure Igor expressed when devouring his food. She resembled a coolly polite but voracious rhinoceros.
Mama reminded me that as a good Russian-American wife, I have to tolerate my future mother-in-law’s ample presence. Mama was married at 24, which was already “up there” in Russia. In one of our few black-and-white pictures from Tambov, she sits on a narrow divan looking out the window while I play with blocks at her feet. She looks lush and indescribably beautiful.
Lately, after dinner, Mama has taken to drinking. “Do you think I wanted to?” she would spurt, precariously holding onto the sagging sleeve of our plastic, checkered tablecloth. “Don’t you think I too would have been happy going to bars and reading Dostoevsky or whatever, all romantic-like under these—what are they called—Tiffany lamps?”
Papa would get up in disgust and move over to the couch, opening up his newspaper. “There’s no other life. It all adds up to the same thing in the end,” he would mutter.
Igor asked me to dance and I caught sight of us in one of the wall mirrors. Circling around awkwardly, we looked like gruesome marionettes until I began to lead. Then our movements took on some tempo, though we still bumped into the swaying old couple next to us who gave us dirty looks. Igor shook a little in my arms. When we returned, flushed, to the table, dessert was already spread out and Igor’s mother looked displeased.
“How well you dance,” she said, shaking her head and picking up a slice of watermelon. Pink juice started to dribble down her chin and she slurped it back into her mouth.
I nodded and loaded a pile of fruit carcasses onto Igor’s plate. “Yes, it wasn’t so easy to get here in 1993.” Igor’s mother looked confused. I didn’t realize that I was answering her biographical questions now, at the end of the night. To me, they were only just beginning to be asked.
“I will take her home,” Igor said after dessert and put on the coat I am least ashamed of. It is dark gray, but shimmers when held up to a certain light. It was the first indulgence in the new country, purchased at Burlington Coat Factory on sale as an “investment” —I told myself I would get married in this coat.
When I was a teenager, Mama would take me aside during smoke-filled parties and brush away my hair lovingly.
“This is my pride and joy, the only one left to me,” she would tell people, a glass of vodka in hand, while somebody strummed on a guitar in the kitchen. “Do you know what this beauty will do for us when she is married to a rich American?”
“Umeret’, tozhe nado umet’” the man would hack, trying to do a good Okudzhava imitation. I would watch my mother sidle up to the musician and sway theatrically to his voice. Before I was 25, her eyes said to me, “You are my redemption,” and afterwards, “You are my curse.”
Igor proposed on our fifth date after an uninspiring meal at a Brazilian churrascaria around the corner from his place. A piece of meat was still stuck to his lower lip and I was too ashamed to tell him about it, hoping he would get the hint when I vigorously rubbed my own mouth with a napkin. His mouth was parted all night as though in preparation for an interminable sequence of meals.
“Would you like a drink?” he asked afterwards and I nodded. Scotch and soda that made my heart ache a little with longing and pity. He sat down next to me on the bed and gingerly placed his hand on my left breast, as though it were the fragile head of a newborn baby. His duvet cover was dark blue and was imprinted with what resembled yellow isosceles triangles. I swiveled until my hair covered his hand—there was some shame in that movement, maybe.
That night, I felt like a slurped kvas, but it was over quickly. Igor was gentle, almost nonexistent. He called me “my heart” and “my little bird” and “my wifey.” I sensed another presence there in the room with us, but I turned back to Igor and whispered, “Yes,” and let him rub my shoulders as though he was pinching a pie crust.
The wedding was celebrated in a glitzy Long Island synagogue six months later. Igor and I stood next to each other like two erect pickles, arms at our sides, eyes focused on the ancient rabbi’s mouth in scholarly concentration. Afterwards, Mama cried, the carnation on her silk blouse bobbing up and down, and she kissed Igor, who patted her on the shoulder sheepishly. We had sixty guests all together, most of them on Igor’s side.
His mother weaved between tables in her garish red suit from Loehmann’s, greeting relatives I never had a chance to meet. “It’s Versace,” I heard her say a few times. “Only 350 dollars.” I was sweating in my angular dress, certain I was being dissected, my insides splayed out beneath a microscope.
My friend Maggie was there. A former classmate from dental school, she was a shy, Korean ex-model. Her wedding gift was a pale yellow teddy that I wear for myself sometimes. After slipping into its supple contours, I put on lipstick and lie down next to my pillow, caressing a corner, taking it in my mouth, feeling the soft down press against my body. Late one night, I could have sworn I felt eyes on me; they were full of approval, but also of hate.
I was happy to discover that even after marriage Igor continued to open the door for me. His thick fingers rested on the back of my neck as I walked ahead of him. If he was still or ever moving art in and out of Russia, I stopped asking and he stopped mentioning it. But I never saw him appraise a painting and when I dragged him to the Met, he only cocked his head to one side and, as though speaking directly to Ingres, said, “Not bad. Very nice.” Eating my borscht happily, his face red from its steam, he began to make allusions to children, in his customarily indirect way. If my stomach hurt, his face mimicked the concern of an E.R. resident. “Is it… something more, you think?”
I could not imagine having kids, though, no matter how hard I tried. I told Igor that I had to put my energy into the practice—some dumpy, Russian patients thrust upon me by Igor’s relatives and word-of-mouth. Despite hating the powdery smell of the office and the mechanical aftertaste of anything eaten in it, I stayed later and later, taking walk-ins, hysterical patients panicking about minor toothaches and missing fillings. Sometimes, I would read The Idiot into the night and call a cab home.
“But you are so attractive, cultured. I knew as soon as I saw you that you would make a great mother,” Igor slipped in during dinner, between bites of pielmeni. Often, I thought about murdering my patients that sat so passively in the weathered leather chair. I could slit their throats and they would lie there like resigned cows, calmly looking up my nostrils. If I told them to undergo any major surgery, they would only sigh and agree, as though they always knew that some kind of price would have to be paid by Russian Jews who made it out.
A year after our wedding, the domovoi finally appeared just like I knew he would. By then, I was finding it difficult to hide my aversion to Igor’s pink, naked body, though I tried very hard, if only for my mother’s sake. I began to invite my parents to our apartment more often, because I could visualize their interactions at home and hoped to save them, if only for a single evening.
Igor dreaded spending time with my parents, since inevitably by the end of the night, Mama would cry over her tea. “I’m so happy, Lenachka, you are a wife at last.” Or “Our family finally deserves a little happiness” or “We’re a long way from Tambov, yes?” She would gulp her tea Russian-style, through the density of our sugar cubes. My father would eventually navigate her gaunt frame towards the doorway.
After they left one afternoon, Igor and I decided to go for a walk, as we do on most nights, to digest our meal. “Your mother is an embarrassment to us all,” he said suddenly, and I turned to him in disgust. He knew nothing, coming here as a child; reliant on his parents’ toil, coddled by American luxury, baked to perfection on its ambitions.
“How dare you,” I said and he knew something was changed between us. The street was brightly lit, but I wished we were in the suburbs, sheltered by darkness, our house the only beacon to strive for. Instead, our surroundings didn’t look so different from Tambov, with all those irrelevant stores and the awkwardly cloned apartment complexes. I watched Igor let air in and out of his cheeks, resembling a bird that I once glimpsed on a beach in Riga. It was eating a worm. We walked back towards our stout building in silence.
“Strange, Lena,” he said, when we walked through the door. The light in our living room was on. “I could have sworn we turned the lights off,” he said and shrugged, unfolding the Wall Street Journal. I stayed quiet, partially to show him I was still mad at him and was not about to let him forget I was in the right— but I knew it was no mistake. We left when it was still daytime and I always try to save money by turning on the light only when it is absolutely necessary. Our apartment induced nausea when it was bathed in this unnatural glow of the yellow light. I smiled a little while hanging up our coats. It was nice to be privy to a secret.
“Bring me some tea, will you Lenachka?” Igor mumbled, his voice listlessly bouncing against the shield of the newspaper.
“Of course.”
I boiled water.
A few weeks later, we went out to dinner at Uncle Vanya with some of Igor’s business “colleagues”—pseudo-mafiosi, all thick and oily. They spoke perfect Russian, but conjugated certain English words as though they were Russian, like exportat or businessmeny or dollary.
They stared at my breasts, when Igor was snapping his fingers for the waiter, and the large nosed, convex one wrapped one of my curls around his finger, as though he knew more about me than he really did. “You’re a real beauty,” he kept saying, grinning at me and then at Igor. “You got yourself a real beauty, Igor.”
They used a lot of slang that I didn’t understand, trying to convince Igor to come with them to Russia.
“C'mon, Igor. It’s a bit changed since you were there,” the taller one with the slicked back hair said.
“Nah,” Igor said. “I will never go back there.”
The restaurant was filling up, and the men kept passing money to the owner. I wanted to smile at Igor, squeeze his knee or give him my version of a plaintive expression, but the body by my side was stiff with pride.
“Do you really like those guys?” I asked Igor, his keys scraping at the lock of our door.
“They’re old friends,” Igor said. We walked in and I threw my shoes inside the closet carelessly. “You really should be more polite to them.”
“Do they import art too?” I asked, unbuttoning my blazer. I heard no response, only a slow shuffling of the slippers. Suddenly, the apartment had an asymmetrical feel, as though its balance had shifted while we were gone. I glanced at our bookshelf—the books had been randomly rearranged, some spines upside down, some missing their jackets altogether. A few of the books were wedged out grotesquely as though in lewd invitation. “Igor!” I screamed. He waddled over and his eyes got fat. “My God,” he said. I didn’t touch the bookshelf, that would be dangerous.
I explained to Igor that we had a domovoi and he was angry.
“A what?” Igor said, again and again, shaking his head like a disoriented tourist. “What?” He said, “You are being ridiculous,” and “You are just like your mother,” and tried to stick his tongue in my ear. I swatted him away.
“We should ‘take it easy’ for a while,” I said, as always trying out some American expressions, “sleep in separate bedrooms so we don’t disturb him, before he does something desperate, irreversible.” Once the domovoi becomes angry, there are no limits to his wrath. I told Igor the famous story of the displeased domovoi who he dragged one woman down the stairs by her thin, graying braid. “He must not get upset, do you understand,” I said, my voice an urgent whisper.
After pleading with me in that watery way of his, Igor finally agreed to sleep in the other bedroom, the one he had reserved for “our child.” Reluctantly, I agreed to sex once a week, but asked my girlfriend from dental school to tell me about the Pill, something I could never get my hands on in Russia. It was a secret between the domovoi and myself, and nothing too unusual happened for a long time except a pair of theater tickets that disappeared the night Igor forgot our anniversary and a broken vase that my mother-in-law gave me for my birthday from a gaudy boutique on Madison Avenue. Another time, I cut my underarms with a razor and found myself fascinated by the beautiful trickle of red creeping down the edge of our cool, ceramic sink. All little acts that could be ignored.
Still, I didn’t want to take any chances—the domovoi can always take the firstborn and trade it for a changeling. The baby would look normal for a few months, but perhaps one night, when I stumbled over to its crib in the middle of the night, I would discover a gurgle erupting from a foaming, cavernous mouth. My grandmother told me such stories when I was a little girl, when she would return weary from a long day of cleaning dachas for rich Muscovites on vacation. She told me that a domovoi used to visit Mama before I was born, which is why I never knew my brother Sasha, whose name my parents whispered when the weather just started to turn cold.
“She deserved it, too, your mother,” my grandmother said, spitting the cracked shells of sunflower seeds into her hands. “And she knew it.” After the domovoi’s first visitation, all you can do is wait for his verdict, she told me—the inevitable moment when he forces you to face the unbending consequences of your choices.
“We have to move,” Igor declared one morning, having woken up to the sounds of pots clanging in the kitchen. “I can’t take it anymore.” He said it was clear to him that the domovoi would eventually unravel the intricate creation of our marriage. Or something like that.
I tried to remain calm. “I was just starting to get used to him.”
“No,” he said. “This isn’t right.”
That afternoon, Igor called the landlord and broke our lease. He also started to leave me dark chocolate truffles by my bedside, and when they remained there for several days—hard, solitary and stupidly bulbous-- he ate them himself.
“What can I do to make it better?” he asked one night. And then, “Will moving really help?”
“I don’t know,” I said, truthfully. “Sometimes the domovoi likes to move with the residents. There is no guarantee.”
When I didn’t work late, we sat in front of the television watching our favorite shows—mostly family sitcoms or action dramas. Sometimes our parents called and Igor would take the phone into the kitchen. During commercials, I noticed that the right side of the couch had developed a permanent crater. If I cried at all, it was painful and immediate, and by the time Igor returned from his phone call, I was dried-eyed, munching on Paul Newman pretzels.
The night before the move, we packed all our possessions into bulging, duct-taped boxes. Igor looked dispirited and I made him some tea before going to bed. In the bedroom, I put on the yellow teddy and pretended my pillow was the domovoi. Not the old man with the floor-sweeping, gray beard—the way we Russians have always imagined him—but like a sitcom husband melded with Tom Cruise. He was dependable and confidently gruff, lean and mystical, and insouciantly wealthy. I fell asleep tasting him in my mouth, savoring the essence of freedom. Sometime in the middle of the night, I felt a cold hand tap me on the back and I jumped up in bed.
“What?” I screamed. It was Igor in his baby-blue pajamas. He peeled back the covers and slid in next to me. I waited, unmoving on the edge of the bed, for the domovoi to pronounce his final decree, but all I could hear was the sound of Igor’s snores—methodical and triumphant.
Source
The Two Domovye
Upon moving into a new home, a peasant called for a domovoi to move in with him. Unbeknownst to him, his wife had invited the old domovoi when she brought the coals from the old fire. Because of this, two domovye came to live with them. Every night the two would argue and scuffle and there was moaning everywhere. The peasant and his wife could get no rest.
One night, the woman went into the hallway and shouted, "Let ours beat the intruder" while beating the walls with a broom. Her domovoi chased out the other and there was once again peace in the home. A little while later in the forest, the peasant was followed by a cat that circled him making loud noise. He knew it to be the domovoi that he had mistakenly invited.
Source
One night, the woman went into the hallway and shouted, "Let ours beat the intruder" while beating the walls with a broom. Her domovoi chased out the other and there was once again peace in the home. A little while later in the forest, the peasant was followed by a cat that circled him making loud noise. He knew it to be the domovoi that he had mistakenly invited.
Source
The Man with the Coconuts
One day a man who had been to gather his coconuts loaded his horse heavily with the fruit. On the way home he met a boy whom he asked how long it would take to reach the house.
"If you go slowly," said the boy, looking at the load on the horse, "you will arrive very soon; but if you go fast, it will take you all day."
The man could not believe this strange speech, so he hurried his horse. But the coconuts fell off and he had to stop to pick them up. Then he hurried his horse all the more to make up for lost time, but the coconuts fell off again. Many time he did this, and it was night when he reached home.
Introduction
Recently, I've been drawn to stories of folklore. I find creatures of myth fascinating, from the mythical minotaur, to the relatively unknown wild haggis. I'm trying to collect as many stories as possible, but a story is no good unless it is shared. That's why I've set up this blog, to share the stories as I collect them. There's no limit to what kind of story may be posted. Jokes, tall tales, folktales, or myths are all fair game.
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