Evgenia Nekrasova
Translated from the Russian by Marianna Suleymanova
It’s Cold and Snowing Here
1. Spruce Tree
People lived near a forest in the Moscow Region—a man, a woman, and their two kid-daughters, aged five and ten. Why waste money on a spruce tree delivery? They grabbed an axe and headed for the forest. They went into the woods in snowsuits and puffer jackets. The daughters wore pink ones, the mother a red one, the father a black one. They pulled the Baby along in a sled. The Firstborn also asked for a ride, but she was told she was too grown and instructed to pull her sister instead.
The Baby spotted a small, grounded spruce tree at the forest’s edge. Well done, her parents praised her—no need for an axe. They loaded the tree onto the sled and pulled it home. Once there, they stuck it into a bucket of sand. They didn’t reinforce it otherwise, so the tree leaned slightly to the side. They decorated it with an electric wire, with plastic nipple-shaped lights, glass ornaments, spheres, and animal figurines, some with holes and sharp edges, their hollow viscera visible through the brokenness.
For balance, they draped the side opposite the lean with more ornaments. They wrapped thin plastic silvery stripes and goldish moss around the tree. Then, three of them, the parents and the Baby, were watching TV. The Firstborn was walking towards them past the spruce tree and saw a woman’s head in the branches near the treetop. The head closed its eyes, opened them up, and closed them again. The Firstborn walked up to her parents and with white lips, told them what she saw. “No way!” said the Baby. The mother advised the Firstborn to stop imagining things. The father didn’t divert his attention from the TV.
The parents treated the Firstborn with a “no” in advance. She wasn’t a good student, got sick often, cried a lot, was frequently confused, and lied to seem better than she was. She didn’t turn out right, the parents had already discussed it. The Baby moved through the world calmly and swiftly and always knew what to do. She could already count, read, and write in Russian. She even read and spoke a little English. She was turning out right, the parents agreed between themselves.
At night, the Firstborn got up to use the bathroom. Her bladder functioned poorly due to anxiety. In the hallway, she spotted some sandy footprints, one unbroken sphere ornament with a picture of a hut on it, one headless dog figurine with broken glass around it, and a red, round ornament made of three mirrored parts. Some goldish moss glittered by the closet; silver rain slithered toward the kitchen. Spruce needles poked at her bare feet. The Firstborn tried to maneuver around the shards of broken glass. A bucket of sand stood in her parents’ bedroom, spruceless. The fridge door knocked against something. The Firstborn went into the kitchen. A forest creature was eating crab salad right out of the tub with her barky branch-hands. Mayo-slathered cubes of painted pollock and egg white hung on the spruce branches. The forest creature affixed her yellow eyes on the Firstborn daughter, chewing all the while.
The Firstborn woke her baby sister up and invited her to go for a walk. The Baby didn’t want to go without the parents, but her older sister said she was acting childish and not independent. While the adults were asleep, the Spruce Tree-Forest Creature led the girls into the forest.
The search for the Baby and the Firstborn went on for a long while. Their pink puffer snowsuits were found under a tall spruce tree, but nobody ever saw the girls again.
2. Sculpture
To sculpt, you need to have snow.
The sculpting of pale and cold essential creatures
has begun.
All you do is create who you need
and breathe life into them with your steaming breath.
The Snow Maiden-daughter was born in the winter,
She brought joy to her parents and evaporated.
Another couple also couldn’t conceive
They sculpted a baby and started
rocking it.
He got fully absorbed into his diaper
once the radiators came on.
A young woman assembled herself
a snow husband
moved him into her house,
they had hot sex,
he fixed up the plastic windowpanes,
which were letting in gusts of cold air,
he mounted some shelves,
but eventually started to let his cold fists
get loose,
he ate a lot for some reason and demanded a ton of
attention,
and forbade his wife to talk to her friends.
The young woman grew more tired
than before marriage,
but it wasn’t eternal and should have
ended with spring’s arrival.
Yet the husband proved resilient,
the warmings, April and May couldn’t
conquer him.
Only in mid-June
did he turn into a cloud
A human from a warm republic was shocked by the cold, couldn’t manage the snow, hated the snow, which was his job, suffered from it. Out of a mass, salty with chemicals, he sculpted himself a friend in an identical cold orange vest. With the snow friend’s help, he was able to create dirt-white mountains along Moscow sidewalks a lot quicker. He was able to clear the sidewalks much faster. The new snowy one didn’t eat, didn’t freeze, didn’t ask to be paid. He didn’t speak Russian but understood the man’s native tongue. When it was frigid out, the man would leave his snow friend to work in his stead. Not too often, he didn’t want to take advantage. He gave the snowman the adjacent mattress in his Perovo apartment. Once, during a snow break, they were crossing a street, carrying their shovels. The snow friend stepped into a puddle with both feet and started to melt. The puddle quickly consumed him up to his knees. The man tried pulling him out, but he was breaking into pieces. The man picked up his snow friend’s shovel and walked away. He couldn’t watch. The puddle got cleaner and saltier.
A family of two, a Grandma and her granddaughter, got sick of pretending to be reading newspapers at the Belorusskaya metro station fast food restaurant. They were sitting at the table in their reading glasses. Not for show, but because they had poor familial vision. They could have gone to the library to read, but Grandma had a fear of government institutions—that their employees could call CPS on her. The two of them sculpted themselves a house in the park. With two rooms and a kitchen. They even hung white paintings on the wall. Grandma made down comforters out of snow. Sleeping under them was a bit strange, but they kept the women warm. In the kitchen, they used a portable stove. They stayed there for a month. Not till spring, like they planned. People came. Grandma got scared that they were from the CPS, but these were entertainers and park employees. It was their territory. They tore down the snow house and erected an art object made of warm fresh wood in its place. The Granddaughter quite liked it. The family headed south, to outer Moscow, where some families were building a high-rise out of snow plates.
The President and his friends decided to sculpt themselves Snowman Security Forces. The snowmen-strongmen didn’t require salaries, housing, summer camp, or resort vouchers. They were deployed to disperse protests and fight in official and secret wars. But they couldn’t operate in Southern countries, or in the summer. Scientists were working on a solution. The President and his friends had come to favor the snowmen-strongmen. They were cheap and effective. So, they started laying off the Human Security Forces’ members, cutting their social benefits and pay. Human strongmen hunted down the snowmen-strongmen one by one and drowned them in their bathhouses. Attempts were made to sue the human strongmen, but they threatened to riot. That’s how the Human Security Forces regained their monopoly on using excessive force. The snowmen-strongmen were sent on assignments with them only occasionally. The surplus snowmen-strongmen were sent to build roads.
3. IT’S COLD AND SNOWING HERE
Are you warm, young lady?
No, Grandpa.
It’s cold and snowing here,
I am allergic to winter
and I dread its arrival.
It infests me with an ice maggot
in the right side of my forehead
which squirms and torments me.
Sometimes I talk to it
like the corpse bride.
All I can do is lay
in my ice coffin till March,
writing off deadlines,
scrolling through the timeline with my left eye,
and crawl out for New Year’s,
Christmas and divinations,
mixing painkillers and prosecco.
The future throbs through my migraine
forecasting more ice and snow.
“Their eyes human-like, ice floe doused in blood,” (1)
“you’re born.” (2)
Are you warm, young lady?
Not really, Grandpa Frost.
Your granddaughter is a dead girl,
who helps you bring us presents
from the netherworld every winter.
My migraine is one of them,
a very severe one.
Being allergic to winter is very
unpatriotic,
that’s like being allergic to Russia:
to snowmen-strongmen,
to cold husbands,
to missing children,
and huts made of ice.
Where is my love for my Motherland
and where are my red, frostbitten cheeks?
Are you warm, Grandpa Frost?
Not really, either.
It’s cold and snowing here.
I am allergic to winter.
All that’s left is to wait for New Year’s,
Christmas and Svyatki,
they say on those dates one could
pull a miracle out of the sack
(a present from the netherworld),
for it, we hope against hope.
(1) Quote from a poem by Velimir Khlebnikov, “A Hundred and Ten Thousand Seals Weep”
(2) Quote from a song by the band AIGEL, “You’re Born” in the video for which the old President “renews” by diving into the ice and emerging young again