Away from girlhood, area of the profile for the “Alisa Buys Dying” is determined never to getting their own mom, just who committed committing suicide and you will exactly who she recalls which have contempt; she “try usually warmly in love and you may sustained spectacularly, concise of one’s psycho wards
Into the “The latest Dragon and also the Phoenix,” the initial of one’s five reports that make up area one, i meet good lesbian couples, Zarifa and Musya. Today it live in Cyprus. And even though Musya knows that “just a person is a partner,” and you will “even today the definition of lesbian” tends to make their “freeze, eg a little girl trapped stealing”-and even though the marriage have alienated each other female from their Armenian and Azerbaijani friends-Musya and you can Zarifa was basically pleased to one another (because of guatemalan women dating or perhaps in spite of the entirely reverse personalities?).
Nevertheless now Zarifa try dying from cancer, a fact therefore improper to help you Musya you to definitely this lady has already been covertly consulting a set of old sorceresses “from the a complicated exchange of 1 soul for another.” She actually is thrown on the a state when she need certainly to deal with Zarifa’s estranged earlier brother, Said, who detests their own (to possess him, brand new women’s partnership is blasphemy), but whom Zarifa have summoned of Karabakh with information to carry a particular family heirloom: a rug become placed on the newest coffin during the their own funeral service. Meanwhile Zarifa also has summoned “our most intelligent pal,” Zhenya, in order to put so you’re able to her particular deathbed issues, among them “why it’s impossible to chair Armenians and you will Azerbaie dining table.” Wherein brand new flummoxed Zhenya has no a beneficial respond to.
He is in the first place on exact same area inside Karabakh, but their relationship don’t begin up until decades later, after they must know each other during the Moscow
Musya amazing things on rug’s hard construction, an excellent dragon and you may a good phoenix “secured inside the deadly and you will limitless combat.” “It is impossible to share with which with it ‘s the warrior, exactly who new sorcerer, who’s worst and you can who’s a great, because they’re likely permanently for the that immobile and you will indissoluble ring.” But it’s that it criminal images that later pierces their unique enough time-pent-right up sadness, their particular unrestrained outburst resulting in one minute out-of oneness and you can mutual tranquility certainly mourners, an embrace from opposition, the second when “who had been the spouse, who the wife, nobody cared.”
” (One to past statement is one of multiple one leftover myself off previously wholly forgetting you to, whether or not generally speaking enjoyably readable, the language is actually a translation. Among other rough locations where my personal attract snagged: “A woman, their own system flattened on sides along with resolute tits”; “the thing Lilya knew from the their own age she exercise”-Schiltz-“because of and this she is actually mocked once the ‘shilly-shally.’”)
Getting Alisa, “driving a car regarding shedding on the a person’s fuel try stronger than virtually any worries best so you can feminine: away from solitude, off childlessness, out-of impoverishment.” Meaning, relationship is actually aside. At sixty-four, immediately after a profitable career just like the an engineering draftsman and a decade of comfortable advancing years, Alisa attacks a knock inside her well-planned lives when good fainting spell leads to view out-of mortality. New fainting actually is nothing severe, nevertheless question nags: Who can maintain their particular in the event that unavoidable arrives? Previously practical, she check outs a physician and you may requires your provide their own sleep pills. For when the time comes, she explains: “I just are interested me personally a simple death.”
Your physician is a good widower, a type and cultured people who may have been already way of life a single lifetime. He does not provide Alisa this new pills, but when they fulfill once again-by accident, during the a concert-it start an event whose repairing bliss unexpected situations and you will pleasures all of them one another. Whether or not prepared to accept his proposition from matrimony, Alisa reminds him: absolutely nothing lasts forever; when the time comes, she’ll still want that simple death. Realizing it would-be useless to argue along with her, a family doctor believes to that most uncommon matrimony gift.