Han Ong Reads Lyudmila Ulitskaya

The New Yorker: Fiction - The New Yorker

Han Ong reads and discusses Lyudmila Ulitskaya's 'The Fugitive,' a story about a dissident artist fleeing Soviet persecution. The episode explores themes of resistance, survival, and art under oppression, with Ong reflecting on Ulitskaya’s courage as a writer in Russia.

Key takeaways

• Art as quiet resistance under tyranny
• Survival often requires compromise
• The body as a site of memory and identity

Transcript preview

Hi, I'm Nicole Phelps, the Global Fashion News and Features Director and co-host of Vogue's podcast The Run Through. Each week on the show, our listeners get an all-access pass to the world of Vogue with the latest fashion news and the most exciting voices in the industry. On Tuesdays, join head of editorial content at Vogue, Chloe Malle and head of editorial content, and Chloe Mal. at British Vogue Chomonotti as they explore style and culture through the lens of fashion with guests like Martha Stewart, Kamala Harris, and Tracy Ellis Ross. The run-through with Vogue, new episodes every Tuesday and Thursday wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Deborah Treisman fiction editor at the New Yorker. Each month we invite a writer to choose a story from the magazine's archives to read and discuss. This month we're going to hear The Fugitive by Ludhila Ulitskaya, which was translated from the Russian by Balashayevich, and appeared in the New Yorker in May of 2014. A month and half had gone by and he still had no news from home. He did not seek out ways to get in touch with his wife. more comfortable not imagining how worried she was about him, her desires, anxieties, and fears. The story was chosen by Han Ong, who is the author of numerous plays and the novels Fixer Chow and the disinherited. Hi, Han. Hey Deborah. So I think you somewhat surprised yourself by choosing to read a story by Ludmila, Ulitskaia today. Why was that? Well, I was trawling through the fiction archives looking for a story to read for the podcast and I sort of set myself a parameter of going back 15 years through the fiction archives and then scrolling through to the present day and I'd happen upon this story which I remember really loving when I first read it and that was pretty quick into my search and so that was that the decision was made. I'd been so floored by the story when I first read it and I don't remember when I'd read it. when it was first published or much later. I chose it also in conjunction with the wonderful profile that M Gessen had published in the magazine of Ulitskaya. But here the chronology gets a little hazy for me. I don't know whether I'd first read the guessen profile and then found the story or had already read the story because this story was in fact published in the magazine before the Gessen profile. And then, you know, reading the Gessen profile after reading the story, sort of bolster my love for this particular writer and this particular short story. What is it that is at the heart of your love for her? Well, two things. I love her as a writer and I love her as a person of conscience in her native Russia. So I'm full of admiration. I'm always looking for how should an artist be in this day and age of incipient fascism and all of that. So I'm always looking for role models, if you will. or who to model myself after in terms of trying to be an artist living in a crueler and crueler society and how to overcome the usual artist feelings of inutility and impotence. So. Yeah, I mean, Lutz guy had started off as a geneticist and then lost that job due to an act of so-called sedition. Yes, the lab was shut down. I mean, I had started off as a geneticist and then lost that job due to an act of so-called sedition. Yes, the lab was shut down. I think it was because they'd entrusted a typist, an office typist with Samis. To put down on record and then the typist had turned them in. And so in the profile it says that Wulitskaya and her colleagues had got off relatively easy. They were detained for 24 hours, but and then they were released but they lost their job as a consequence of having been turned in. Right. She was translating, you know, unpubishable novel and didn't want to to type it all ourselves. Right. This particular story does focus around a dissident artist when you first read it. What was your immediate reaction to it? There are a couple of things that stood out to me. First of all, I think I am as a reader partial to the kind of scull duggery that is involved in trying to skirt the impositions of a cruel regime, you know, which can also be a kind of kind of scull dugary that is involved in trying to skirt the impositions of a cruel regime, you know, which can also be a kind of of parental despotism. So the spy's story elements in it are very thrilling for me. So that's one and then the other one which we can talk about at length later on is there is a description of a bunch of old women taking a bath that was just so otray and you know usually my admiration for a writer as I'm reading him or her. is that I'm usually just very quiet in my admiration. The pleasure, sensors are being sort of massaged when I'm happy in a story. But for this particular story and that particular stretch of the story with the old women taking a bath, I just felt like putting the pages down and standing up and applauding. I don't think I've ever encountered anything like this in my reading. Well, I think we actually now have to let listeners get to the bath scene, which comes fairly late in the story. So we'll talk some more after the reading and now here's Hanong reading the fugitive by Ludmila Ulitskaya translated from the Russian by Balashayevich. The fugitive. At nine o'clock one morning in June, Captain Popov rang the doorbell. No one answered for a long time but finally he heard the sound of scurrying. Who's there? Who is it? A plaintiff female voice. said, The door opened a crack, the chain left on. Siv Tev and Emily Anenko shifted their weight, itching to start, finish, and get out of there as fast as they could. They were incompetent boys. Popov pushed his ID through the crack in the door. He heard more scurrying, and then it finally opened. The witness, one of their own from the municipal housing office, stomped in first. Does Boris Ivanovich Moratov live here? Popov asked. Moratov flashed into the room immediately. A large bearded man of around 40 in a blue robe that might have been velvet. We don't make robes like that here, Popov thought we discussed. Where do they get this stuff? Your passport please, Popov said. Just then, Moratov's wife came out in a matching blue robe. please, Popov said, and held out the search warrant. He wouldn't let Moratov hold it, forcing him to study it from a distance. If I may, Moratov stretched out his hand. Popov snatched the document away. What's there to read? It's a search warrant. I can tell you that myself. I can tell that it's a warrant, but there's no stamp on it. Oh, hell. Popov grew angry. It doesn't really matter, does it? A warrant is a warrant. It'll you can come back when you get the stamp Boris Ivanovich retorted insolently. I would be a little more polite if I were you. It isn't good for us to get on each other's bad side if you will please let me do my work. Just a minute Moratov said retreating into a little room. Popov knew the layout of the apartment. It was always the same, he thought. The hall, the room behind the hall. Then the closet where they kept everything everything. he was looking for. Muratov returned with a thick yellowed piece of paper on official letterhead bearing the profile of the greatest of all men. It read, Letter of Commendation. Muratov thrusts the document right under the captain's nose, holding it so close that Popov couldn't read it. Muratov's wife, pale against her blue robe, looked at her husband imploringly. His mother-in-law, Maria Nikolaevna, poured tea as if nothing out of the ordinary were happening. Read it from where I hold it, please. Muratov said, from where I hold it. The captain read it. He understood. He walked away and took his boys with him. Muratov threw his salvation document aside. Maria Nikolaevna set a teacup and a sandwich on a plate in front of Boris Ivanovitch. Muratov loved his mother-in-law in whom he saw traces of his wife, Natasha, although the mother was more decisive. He also saw his mother-in-law in his wife, the beginnings of plumpness, the future folds along the sides of her mouth, and a soft second chin. Natasha picked the document up off the floor. What is this, Boris? Boris gestured toward the ceiling. They're listening. Well, Natasha, I got that certificate because in my mother, modeling plant, I fabricated the sarcophagus of the leader and teacher of all eras and peoples, Vladimir Iliich Lenin. Take a look at the signature. The powers that be are eternally in my debt. Maria Nikolaevna smiled. Natasha placed her white hands on her even wider neck. What now, she asked meekly. Would you pour me another cup of tea, Maria Nikolaevna? clinking his cup, Natasha sat down unable to come to her senses. Muratov embraced his wife. She picked up a pencil and some scrap paper and wrote, You're going to be arrested. I'm going to leave in half an hour, he wrote back. Then he ripped up the paper and set it on fire. He waited for the flames to graze his fingertips and then threw the remains in the ashtray. He picked up a fresh piece of a of paper and wrote, "'Train Station,' and showed it to Natasha and Maria Nikolaevna. "'Right now,' Muratov said. Alone,' Natasha asked. Muratov nodded. Then Muratov went into the closet and took out the folder that held what Captain Popov had come for. He removed a stack of illustrated pages and returned to the kitchen. Muratov took a baking sheet from the oven, placed to the oven. several pieces of paper on it and brought a match to them. Maria Nikolaevna grabbed the match out of his hand. How many times have I asked you Boris Ivanovitch to leave the household duties to me? Maria Nikolaevna squeezed into the corridor where she lifted up the edge of the worn linoleum. She pushed the drawings under the linoleum and then inserted the edge of the strip back under the threshold. He's lost his mind, he's lost his mind, he's lost his mind, his mind. lost his mind, Natasha said. Her mother pointed at the phone. Like Boris, she was convinced that they were listening. Loudly, she said, Boris, I'm going to make you meet pattys for lunch, all right? Twenty minutes later, Moratov left the house by the back door. He had shaved his beard, but left the mustache. He went through the courtyard which had been flooded by a storm the night before. Broken branches stuck up from an inorn Puddl, which Boris trudged through, carrying a large shopping bag that held a change of linens, a sweater, his favorite little pillow, and every bit of money that there was in the house. Siftev and Emelianenko, who had been left outside the front door, sat on the bench smoking, trying to decide whether to go and get some beer. Captain Popov came back with a necessary stamp at 101 15. The Russia opened the door immediately and said that Moratov had gone to work. Popov threw a fiery glance at his goons. But he doesn't work, what's his job? His mother-in-law intervened. He's an artist. He doesn't go to an office, but he works a lot you saw yourself. He constructed Lenin's sarcophagus. He's been fired since then, Popov said. Maria Nikolaevna rebuffed him. So he went out to look for work. Will he be back for lunch? The Captain asked. Of course he will. They'd bought the story about the meat patties. They hadn't dragged their feet bugging the apartment. He asked me to make him meet, we're expecting him back soon. The Captain got to work sorting through mountains of papers. The Samiz-Dat was the stuff that everyone had. Anyway, it wasn't Samizat Popov had come for. for drawings that were already lying on his desk in the form of photocopies from Stern, the West German magazine. One was a caricature with giant letters that spelled Glory to the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. The letters were made out of Bologna, and under the letters was a crowd of people and dogs trying to get up close to them. There was even a price tag hanging from the letters, two Rubles 20 Copecks. Another caricature showed the mausoleum also made out of bologna but with linen written in hot dogs. Agents had searched for the artist for a long time before uncovering his identity. The final touch was getting the originals or something that resembled them. Captain Popov stayed until the late evening. He confiscated three sacks of Samizat, but the drawings were never found. By then, Muratov was at the house of an old woman. who had been trying to sell green onions and parsley at the Kimri Port. All she'd come home with was a traveler who'd missed the last boat de novo Ocatovo. Muratov paid a ruble to spend the night in a small barn, sleeping on a bale of hay, covered with a sheet. At dawn, he washed up at the well and took the six a.m. ferry. The old woman turned out to be a saint. She never reported him. That evening he was in the distant and inaccessible village of Danilovei Gorky sitting in an old peasant house that belonged to his friend Nikolai Mikhailovich, who was also an artist. He explained his situation and asked if he could stay either there or in the bathhouse for a period of time posing as a cousin or something of the sort. him. That's how Boris Ivanovitch's life on the run began. Thenilove-Gorky wasn't so much a village as a tiny settlement of five houses. One was Nikolay Mikhailovitchis. Another was abandoned. Empty since the death of its owner two years earlier. The other three housed summer vacationers along with their year-round owners. Hardly anyone stayed on for September. had come from an aristocratic line and his father was a priest who had been executed in 1937. Thus, Nikolai was always prepared. He said that it would be safe to stay for the summer while there were plenty of strangers around, but afterward Boris would be dangerously visible. Nikolai Mikhailovich's house was packed with people, children, the elderly, two single female relatives, and some long-term house guests. one did a bit of work, though it wasn't compulsory. They were busy from morning till night, but they were also free. For Boris, country life was a novelty. He was a city man. His grandfather had been a surf who started working at Seton's print shop in 1883, and his father was a skilled proletarian artisan, a true Moskavite. Before his escape, Boris had never even laid eyes on a village. Suddenly, the beauty of the secluded little settlement opened up before him. Then Ilevi Gorky stood on the banks of a large river, among swamps and forests. His hosts, the descendants of an aristocratic family, were also to his liking. They had never known palaces or had a whiff of luxury, having spent half a century between poverty and destitution, exile and prison. Those who had served. survived were hardy. They had become so simple that they didn't even know any foreign languages. Nonetheless, there was still something special about them, even if Boris Ivanovitch couldn't quite put his finger on it. Nikolai's daughters stared Kasha on the stove, baked hearth cakes, worked in the garden, and washed the linens in the river. His grandsons caught fish, and his granddaughters and the two aunts forage for berries and mushrooms. All of them sketched, sang, and put on plays for the little ones. Soon after Boris's arrival, Nikolai Mikhailovich's loud and restless cousin Anastasia came to stay for three days. She immediately set her sights on Boris Ivanovich. He was attempting an easy mark. They lost no time, although their first night together would have lasted longer if the whole family hadn't spanned so much time singing at the table. Anastasia was a good singer with a kind of gypsy sheik in her voice. She had small girlish breasts and a long nose and was not as beautiful as his wife. But Boris remembered her for a long time afterward. She seemed to have purified him completely, picked him down to bone and tendon and then put him back together. Boris didn't remember ever having had that kind of a power and stamina, anastasia, a doctor, left by boat on the fourth day of their affair, since she had a 24-hour shift at the hospital where she was the head of her department. The whole family saw her off, and as they stood on the shore, she sang. Marushenka washed her white feet and waved to them with her handkerchief from the boat. She's so educated, but such a slut, Bors Ivanovitch thought, both impressed and confused. As though he'd read his friend's mind, Nikolai Mikhailovich told him, That's in Nastia's blood, her great-grandmother or great-great-grandmother fooled around with Pushkin. On Transfiguration Day, they all went to church in Kashino, first by ferry, then by bus. The trip was exhausting. Your life is so anti-Sylvioid, he remarked in admiration. No Boris, it's just a Soviet. Nikolai Mikhailovich said laughing. All summer, Boris watched the sun rise and the water lap the sandbank, which was covered in the empty muscle shells and decorative grasses that he had previously seen only on icons. He hadn't known that they really existed. Moved by everything he saw, he was happy. Everyone forage for mushrooms in the forest. He had already There weren't many in July, but by August they sprouted up after the sweet rain showers. The days were long, the evenings with their endless tea drinking were pleasant, and the nights passed in an instant. He fell asleep and woke up in the same moment as though nothing had happened. A month and half had gone by, and he still had no news from home. He did not seek out ways to get in touch with his wife. He was more comfortable not imagining. worried she was about him, her desires, anxieties, and fears. A relative of Nikolay Mikhailichis tossed a single postcard from Boris Ivanovitch into a Moscow mailbox. The card said, Everything