Oksana Zabuzhko - Fieldwork in Ukrainian Sex

Forthcoming titles by Oksana Zabuzhko:

Museum of Abandoned Secrets

Oh Sister, My Sister

Text copyright 1996 Zhoda

English translation copyright 2011 by Amazon Content Services LLC

Cover art Rostyslav Luzhetskyy

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

Fieldwork in Ukrainian Sex by Oksana Zabuzhko was first published in 1996 by Zhoda in Kyiv as Polovi doslidzhennia z ukranskoho seksu .

An excerpt from Fieldwork in Ukrainian Sex appeared in AGNI 53, Spring 2001.

Translated from the Ukrainian by Halyna Hryn.

First published in English in 2011 by AmazonCrossing.

Published by AmazonCrossing

P.O. Box 400818

Las Vegas, NV 89140

ISBN-13: 9781611090086

ISBN-10: 1611090083

Library of Congress Control Number: 2010918615

CONTENTS

N ot today, she says to herself. Not yet, not today. In the kitchena tiny, eat-in kitchen (refrigerator, hotplate, cupboard with carelessly tacked-on doors determined to open every time you turn your back like a loose jaw on a paralyzed face, and all this separated off by a medium-height stand made of wooden planks that looks like something you might normally find in a barthis counter allows you to serve meals directly from the narrow enclosure into the roomsure, why not!like morning coffee, for example, or a little roast chicken for lunch, just like the ones in the television commercials: golden crisp on the outside, juicy on the inside, legs playfully tucked in and presented on a bed of lettucethese chickens always look much happier than live ones, simply radiating a deep blush of pleasure at the prospect of being eatenyou can also serve juice, or perhaps gin and tonic in a tall thick glass, you can add ice, the cubes sound so funny when they rattle as you pour them into the glass, or you can do it without ice, and in fact the possibilities are endless, but you just need one thingfor there to be someone sitting on the other side of their fucking counter, in which, incidentally, a colony of ants seems to have made a home, because every once in a while youve got something crawling around on the Formica that really doesnt belong in a hygienic American home, nor in a non-American one, come to think of itsomeone to whom you could serve all this good stuff as you smile your cover-girl smile. Since, however, there is no one sitting there, nor is there about to be, youve gone ahead and decided to create an improvised winter garden on that counter comprising two innocent potted plantsthree weeks ago, when you first moved in here, they were: a luscious, deep-green clump topped with orange flowersthats one of themand a thick necklace of shiny, kind of plasticky red nubs on tall stems with elegantly tapered leavesthats the other. Now both plants have the appearance of having been watered with sulfuric acid for the last three weeksin place of the rich clump only a few yellow leaves with unevenly singed edges hang like dog ears, and the former tight red beads more and more with every day resemble dried rosehips that someone has decided to stick on burned-out spikes for some unknown reasonthe funniest thing is that you deliberately did not forget to water your winter garden, you nurtured it just like Voltaire had taught, you bet, you wanted for there to be another living entity in this apartment, the last of hell only knows how many, your temporary home, where the filth of all previous inhabitants has indelibly settled into every crack so that you didnt even try to wash it outhowever, the damned American weeds turned out to be too delicate to withstand your depression, which thickens, unstirred, inside these four walls day by day, so they went ahead and died on you, and you can water them or not water them as you wishand you still have hopes of keeping people in here!)so, as I was saying, in this kitchen youve got water dripping from the tap into the sink with a taunting dumb burble and there is no bloody way to drown out that soundyou cant even play a tape because your portable cassette player has gone on the blink. True, somewhere outside the window, which is as narrow as those cupboard doors that keep opening, and quite dark at this hour (you dont bother lowering the blinds, because across from you theres a dead wall anyway), on the other side of the screen an invisible grasshopper chirks like a distant telephone, as though its stuck right in the screen itselfjust the same way that that thought keeps chirking inside your head, or maybe thats in fact the only thing thats chirkingwhy not do it today, after all, why wait, what for ?

If you think about it logically, theres nothing at all to wait for. Nothing whatsoever.

Half a bottle of sedatives plus one razor blade, andplease forgive the unsuccessful debut. I tried my very best, with best of intentions, and since the result was a total disaster the honorable thing is to do is fold your cardsIm not much of a player even now, and its only going to get worse from here on in: no relief in sight, and my strengths not what it used to be: not a kid anymore.

And yetno, not today.

Wait a bit longer. See how this film ends. Unlike those that they broadcast here on public channels, where in the tensest moments as you watch, with involuntary chills of fear, as the hero races down an empty tunnel where from around the bend the most frightening of monsters is about to pounce on him, it suddenly hits youshit!everythings going to turn out just fineanother two-three minutes, a confrontation, a pile of swinging limbs, some rolling around on the floor, and the beast, with an outlandish cry, by some miracle transforms to dust, while the masculine and only slightly ruffled hero, enveloped in smoke from the conflagration and breathing heavily, draws the rescued Sharon Stone to his chest, or that other beauty, whats her name, the brunetteand your overwhelming surge of fear is suddenly revealed in all its ridiculousness: once again those Hollywood guys have succeeded, if only for a moment, in suckering youunlike those, the film that you still cant bring yourself to shut off does not necessarily have to have a happy ending. Still, turning it off is unforgivable bad taste. And foolishness. And childishness: Im not ready for the test, so I wont go to school. No, sweetie (sweetness, she ironically corrects herself: thats what that man, whos probably feeling shittier that she is right now, used to call her, but that doesnt matter anymore), youre not allowed to duck out, you deal with this properly, step by step, and then well find out what youre really made of. Got that ?

Write down those words, Ill tattoo them on me , a rough, surly voice pipes up from within, a very different woman, cynical, with in-your-face street-smart mannerisms picked up on the inside somewhere, quite capable of knocking you off your feet with curses should the need arise: if a person in general (every one!) is one big prison, then up to now this bitch inside her has lived tucked away in the remotest cell, coming out rarely, only when things got especially bitter and tough, and even so mainly for show: P-pisses me off shed hiss at moments of irritation, shaking her head and calming herself with an acrid smile; or else, digesting the aftertaste of the latest put-down (of which there was an overabundance lately) she would relate to her friends, her eyes wide with anger: Trying to make me a patsyI dont think so! right palm slapping hard against the crook of her left elbow as a clenched fist flew upin America the prison hag learned how to swear in English and was especially successful at rendering the word Shhiitt! a hiss off the arched back of a cat, and also the contempt-laced Oh come-on, give me a break! with which she once lashed that manall in all, it was with that man that this disheveled witch with strangely unhealthy glistening eyes and teeth and some invisible but suspected criminal past would periodically run out to center stage, boldly smashing the fragile vessels of unfulfilled dreams; that man would liberate her, call her forth from the remote jail cellas soon as she heard, during their first fight, that brutal, fist-swinging intonation of his: You tell mewhat the fuck did I come way out here for, I had enough of this same shit at homeup to here! the bitch eagerly rushed out to intercept him, she recognized a worthy partner, it was only here that they were truly partnersand then there was no stopping her as she spread her wings in previously untasted freedom: I started working on a head yesterday , he would try telling a fellow sculptor in her presence, and the bitch would tear out ahead, dropping buttons and pins in the insuppressible excitement of verbal excretion: Thats wonderful, dear, you do need a headit can only help! hed turn a hue so dark it seemed as though ink rather than blood flooded his face, whispering into her ear, Stop fucking me up! the witch, exhaling cigarette smoke, laughed heartily from deep inside as she felt at least slightly pleased about something for the first time in a while: Now, now, dear, wheres your sense of humor? I left it back in our old apartment , hed mutter (they left that apartment, thank God, and it would be best if the owners could seal it up for about half a year, until the smell of plague had dispersed) Well why dont you run back and get it , the witch grinned, Ill wait here . Ive turned in my key , hed mutter again, thinking that with that hed put the issue to rest, but he was mistaken: I was the one who turned in the key, you still have the duplicate , she shot back: the power and lightning speed of their fencing with clubs was not to be apprehended by an outsider; no, say what you may, but they made a good pair, that much cant be denied! And now, when the time has come for that bitchcursed and abused, scorched by misfortunes to the core, with a converted-to-acetone-but-still-extant spirit of survival ( where in Gods name does it come from?)to accede to the throne and assume full reign of the prison, taking responsibility for the further course of whatever life may still smolder in it, dispensing orders all over the place: that doordo not enter, and this trashget it the hell out of here right now, and that section way over thereair it out, were converting it into a museum, and whos this loser dragging her ass and slobbering up the place, get her out of my sight! ( Thats wonderful, dear, you do need a headit can only help! )that bitch (and bitch she is!) has abdicated, turned into a smear on some distant wall, neither hide nor hair, and in all the caverns of the now empty prison an entirely different voice sounds, shuttling back and forth with uneven step: pitter-patter-pitterthen silence, and throwing itself against the walls, the same place time and again, each time weaker, while a poor, unloved girl abandoned at a rail station wails, and wails, and wails, eager to take the hand of anyone who says to her, Im your daddy, except whos going to say that to a thirty-year-old broadthats the girl that you yourself hate inside you, youve tried to keep her under lock and key since you were an adolescent, in the dimmest, furthest basement chamber, without bread or water, not letting her move a muscleand still she somehow managed to survive and theres no shutting her up nownow, when it seems that theres no one left except for her, that there is no other you.