The Deeper the Water the Uglier the Fish by Katya Apekina (2018)
The Deeper the Water the Uglier the Fish by Katya Apekina (2018)
Part I: New York
Chapter 2: Letter from Amanda Singer to Detstvo Publishers
I am writing my dissertation on the work of the American writer Dennis Lomack. One of his books is a translation of Russian folk tales. There is one story in particular that fascinated me, but when I showed it to some colleagues in the Slavic Studies Department they did not think this particular variant sounded familiar. One of them suggested that I get in touch with you, as you are an expert in the field.
The story is about a raven-haired beauty living in a hut perched atop a set of chicken feet. She spends her days making tapestries out of flowers. Then, one day, a boy and a girl who got lost in the woods appear on her doorstep. These children cast a spell and turn the beautiful woman into a bald witch, a Baba Yaga. She has no choice but to put the children in a cage and make soup out of them. Unlike the Baba Yagas of other stories, this one returns to her true, beautiful self after she eats the children.
If you could point me to the original story that was being translated, I would be extremely grateful. I have attached the text and included a carton of Marlboro cigarettes.
Amanda
I mentioned how I had been trying to track down the original of his Russian folk tale translations with no success. It’s funny because as I was saying it out loud it finally occurred to me that there was no original source material. In retrospect, it seems pretty obvious. I asked Dennis Lomack about that and he shrugged and said that he might have taken some liberties. He asked me how I had gotten my hands on the book at all, seeing as it had come out with a tiny press with a tiny print run. I told him Prof. Fred Jones had been very generous with his personal archives.
I asked him if he had written the story when his ex-wife was pregnant with their first child. The date of the publication seemed to indicate this as a possibility. He took a sip of his drink and didn’t say anything.
“Was the story prophetic?” I asked him.
“In what sense?” He put his hand down on the table close enough to mine so I could feel the heat off of it, but not quite touching. “Did my wife become a witch? Did she eat our children?” His voice was low, hypnotic; patient, but not. He was straining to keep things light.
“Did having your children change her? Did she love you less afterward? Did you want her to get rid of them to help her return to who she used to be? And did you say the story was a translation to avoid taking responsibility for your feelings? For these implications?”
*
“Fred didn’t tell me your dissertation was on my ambivalence around having children,” he said after a while.
My dissertation was about anachronistic temporalities across Lomack’s novels and essays viewed through a Foucauldian lens. Or, that is what it was going to be about. I never finished it.
At that point in my life the thing that really interested me was exactly what I had been asking him about: How would having children change a person? Or more specifically, how would having children change me? I was two months pregnant and had not told Barry.
Chapter 3: Doreen
Marianne wasn’t handy and she had no common sense, but she was good at making up stories. She’d even convince herself that what she was telling you was true and eventually you’d start believing it too. The swamps would become fairy castles and witches’ lairs, that kind of shit. As I got older, though, her imagination started to bug me. I could never afford to be strange because I had people depending on me. Being weird is a luxury. I was embarrassed to be seen with her. She’d trail after me and my friends, floating, round-eyed, walking on her toes. It drove me crazy the way she would walk, her heels never hitting the ground. The girl could hardly make herself a sandwich.
Mae
Anybody who’s read Dad’s novels could feel the intensity of his obsession with my mother. Obsession like that never really goes away, not when it’s connected to one’s fundamental sense of self. He never said anything about Mom’s letters, but I’m sure he heard her whistle as loudly as Edie and I did, that piercing sound that made Edie come running and made me dig in my heels. How did her letters have this power over us? I don’t know. The desperation was in the negative space of everything she wrote.
Before that spring, I’d never read any of Dad’s books. It had never even occurred to me to track them down at a library or bookstore because until we came to live with him, he hadn’t existed for me. But in New York, I started reading his books ravenously. I devoured Cassandra’s Calling. I read his novels before bed. I wanted to have the rhythms of the sentences inside of me, so that I could dream about them. In my sleep though, all the characters were Mom. Sometimes Mom would turn into a strong wind and pull me somewhere, or sometimes she would jump on my back and try to wrestle me down to the ground. I barely ever saw her face. Sometimes-and these dreams were always the scariest-I myself would turn into Mom, and then I would be on someone else’s back, or turning into a wind.
Chapter 4: Edith (1997)
It’s a rite of passage for all Southern whites, you either open your eyes and deal with the fallout, which I should say is an ongoing process, or keep them shut, which is maybe more convenient, but also infinitely more difficult.
Part II
Chapter 5: Rivka
I told her that most people think being a good lover means relief, however temporary, from The Bottomless Hunger, but Dennis understood that it was quite the opposite, that we had to become the Hunger. She didn’t like this answer. It was too abstract. She wanted to know what his sexual preferences were. I told her she’d have to ask him. Did I crawl to him on my knees? She wanted to know. Did he piss on my face? Her persistence took me aback. I told her that I had nothing else to say. My assistant escorted her out, then locked the door and led me into the back room where he fucked me on the floor among the newly arrived canvases. He is a man who enjoys hearing me talk about my relations with other men.
Chapter 6: Amanda
The way he was looking at Marianne in the photo made my hands shake and I spilled coffee down the front of my dress.
My jealousy only increased, when on my train ride home, I discovered what must have been Marianne’s notes in the margins of the book. The handwriting was feminine-tight and neat:
the witch & i lay by the river.
i held her by her hair so she wouldn’t fly away.
i whispered:
“i have done everything you’ve asked. have i not done everything you’ve asked? why have you always,
why have you always hated me?
i have loved nothing & nobody but you.
the smallest grain of sand that you’ve given me,
i’ve carved into a castle.
the smallest feather,
i’ve turned into a flock of birds.
the smallest glance,
i’ve turned into a child.
i have given you all of these things.”
“but i did not want any of those things,” said the witch.
The text continued on the next page:
“what is it that you want?” i asked. “i’ll give you anything you want.”
the witch turned into a termite & crawled into my ear. she chewed tunnels through my brain & down my throat, through my guts & into my cock. she chewed through every organ & blood vessel. the last thing she ate was my heart.
“now we’re even,” she said in her tiny termite voice.
Her assertion that she had hollowed out Dennis infuriated me. I would have given anything to be “held down” by him. And her choice to write these “poems” from Dennis’s point of view was irritating-meek and presumptuous at the same time.
That evening, as I scrubbed the coffee stain from my dress in the motel sink, I considered abandoning my project. I’ve always been a jealous person, so prying into Dennis’s love life was unpleasant. However, I decided it was crucial to be fully informed and prepared because I knew that I would probably only have one more opportunity to be with him and I couldn’t blow it.
Letter from Dennis Lomack to Marianne Louise McLean [1985]
I loved you, Marianne. I still do. You’ve accused me of loving not you, but rather, of loving how you make me feel. What an absurd distinction. And not even accurate. You make me feel terrible most of the time! But I can’t imagine feeling anything without you. I can’t imagine being away from you. But I don’t have to imagine it, I suppose, because I’m leaving. You’re right, I don’t know how to be with you without wanting to take everything, without wanting to kill you and devour you and then bring you back to life, and then write about you and do it all again. Isn’t that love?
But so is this: You’re free of me. I promise you. Completely free. I will not call. I will not write. I won’t come near you. You say that is what it takes for you to be better, it’s done. I’m gone.
Chapter 7: Charlie
I became an adventurer after my mother died. When you’re forced to acknowledge mortality you stop wasting time. Modesty, restraint, self-respect-all that is garbage. It’s all ego. I don’t have time for it. Nobody does. Even little children who have more time than anyone else, even they know better. I knew all this, but over the previous few months I’d lost track of it. Being with that dying man clarified things for me: I might’ve just met Edie, but I loved her and I’d do what I could to help her.
Chapter 8: Charlie
The character of Cassandra was the basis of all my early sexual fantasies, but more than that, she had created the very framework for my sexual desire. Gregor and Cassandra had a romance for the ages, even in the later books, even when it was clear that things would end badly for everybody. Rather than being expansive, their love seemed to condense further and further inward-a circle, then a spiral, then a point, ratcheting the whole thing tighter and tighter, until the spring popped and Marianne went flying halfway across the universe.
What was it like to meet the woman who was the basis of all my sexual fantasies? I don’t know. I never met her. Cassandra had existed for such a short moment on the pages of Dennis’s books-burning fast and bright. The woman in my truck was the pile of ash left over.
Part I: New York
Chapter 2: Letter from Amanda Singer to Detstvo Publishers
I am writing my dissertation on the work of the American writer Dennis Lomack. One of his books is a translation of Russian folk tales. There is one story in particular that fascinated me, but when I showed it to some colleagues in the Slavic Studies Department they did not think this particular variant sounded familiar. One of them suggested that I get in touch with you, as you are an expert in the field.
The story is about a raven-haired beauty living in a hut perched atop a set of chicken feet. She spends her days making tapestries out of flowers. Then, one day, a boy and a girl who got lost in the woods appear on her doorstep. These children cast a spell and turn the beautiful woman into a bald witch, a Baba Yaga. She has no choice but to put the children in a cage and make soup out of them. Unlike the Baba Yagas of other stories, this one returns to her true, beautiful self after she eats the children.
If you could point me to the original story that was being translated, I would be extremely grateful. I have attached the text and included a carton of Marlboro cigarettes.
Amanda
I mentioned how I had been trying to track down the original of his Russian folk tale translations with no success. It’s funny because as I was saying it out loud it finally occurred to me that there was no original source material. In retrospect, it seems pretty obvious. I asked Dennis Lomack about that and he shrugged and said that he might have taken some liberties. He asked me how I had gotten my hands on the book at all, seeing as it had come out with a tiny press with a tiny print run. I told him Prof. Fred Jones had been very generous with his personal archives.
I asked him if he had written the story when his ex-wife was pregnant with their first child. The date of the publication seemed to indicate this as a possibility. He took a sip of his drink and didn’t say anything.
“Was the story prophetic?” I asked him.
“In what sense?” He put his hand down on the table close enough to mine so I could feel the heat off of it, but not quite touching. “Did my wife become a witch? Did she eat our children?” His voice was low, hypnotic; patient, but not. He was straining to keep things light.
“Did having your children change her? Did she love you less afterward? Did you want her to get rid of them to help her return to who she used to be? And did you say the story was a translation to avoid taking responsibility for your feelings? For these implications?”
*
“Fred didn’t tell me your dissertation was on my ambivalence around having children,” he said after a while.
My dissertation was about anachronistic temporalities across Lomack’s novels and essays viewed through a Foucauldian lens. Or, that is what it was going to be about. I never finished it.
At that point in my life the thing that really interested me was exactly what I had been asking him about: How would having children change a person? Or more specifically, how would having children change me? I was two months pregnant and had not told Barry.
Chapter 3: Doreen
Marianne wasn’t handy and she had no common sense, but she was good at making up stories. She’d even convince herself that what she was telling you was true and eventually you’d start believing it too. The swamps would become fairy castles and witches’ lairs, that kind of shit. As I got older, though, her imagination started to bug me. I could never afford to be strange because I had people depending on me. Being weird is a luxury. I was embarrassed to be seen with her. She’d trail after me and my friends, floating, round-eyed, walking on her toes. It drove me crazy the way she would walk, her heels never hitting the ground. The girl could hardly make herself a sandwich.
Mae
Anybody who’s read Dad’s novels could feel the intensity of his obsession with my mother. Obsession like that never really goes away, not when it’s connected to one’s fundamental sense of self. He never said anything about Mom’s letters, but I’m sure he heard her whistle as loudly as Edie and I did, that piercing sound that made Edie come running and made me dig in my heels. How did her letters have this power over us? I don’t know. The desperation was in the negative space of everything she wrote.
Before that spring, I’d never read any of Dad’s books. It had never even occurred to me to track them down at a library or bookstore because until we came to live with him, he hadn’t existed for me. But in New York, I started reading his books ravenously. I devoured Cassandra’s Calling. I read his novels before bed. I wanted to have the rhythms of the sentences inside of me, so that I could dream about them. In my sleep though, all the characters were Mom. Sometimes Mom would turn into a strong wind and pull me somewhere, or sometimes she would jump on my back and try to wrestle me down to the ground. I barely ever saw her face. Sometimes-and these dreams were always the scariest-I myself would turn into Mom, and then I would be on someone else’s back, or turning into a wind.
Chapter 4: Edith (1997)
It’s a rite of passage for all Southern whites, you either open your eyes and deal with the fallout, which I should say is an ongoing process, or keep them shut, which is maybe more convenient, but also infinitely more difficult.
Part II
Chapter 5: Rivka
I told her that most people think being a good lover means relief, however temporary, from The Bottomless Hunger, but Dennis understood that it was quite the opposite, that we had to become the Hunger. She didn’t like this answer. It was too abstract. She wanted to know what his sexual preferences were. I told her she’d have to ask him. Did I crawl to him on my knees? She wanted to know. Did he piss on my face? Her persistence took me aback. I told her that I had nothing else to say. My assistant escorted her out, then locked the door and led me into the back room where he fucked me on the floor among the newly arrived canvases. He is a man who enjoys hearing me talk about my relations with other men.
Chapter 6: Amanda
The way he was looking at Marianne in the photo made my hands shake and I spilled coffee down the front of my dress.
My jealousy only increased, when on my train ride home, I discovered what must have been Marianne’s notes in the margins of the book. The handwriting was feminine-tight and neat:
the witch & i lay by the river.
i held her by her hair so she wouldn’t fly away.
i whispered:
“i have done everything you’ve asked. have i not done everything you’ve asked? why have you always,
why have you always hated me?
i have loved nothing & nobody but you.
the smallest grain of sand that you’ve given me,
i’ve carved into a castle.
the smallest feather,
i’ve turned into a flock of birds.
the smallest glance,
i’ve turned into a child.
i have given you all of these things.”
“but i did not want any of those things,” said the witch.
The text continued on the next page:
“what is it that you want?” i asked. “i’ll give you anything you want.”
the witch turned into a termite & crawled into my ear. she chewed tunnels through my brain & down my throat, through my guts & into my cock. she chewed through every organ & blood vessel. the last thing she ate was my heart.
“now we’re even,” she said in her tiny termite voice.
Her assertion that she had hollowed out Dennis infuriated me. I would have given anything to be “held down” by him. And her choice to write these “poems” from Dennis’s point of view was irritating-meek and presumptuous at the same time.
That evening, as I scrubbed the coffee stain from my dress in the motel sink, I considered abandoning my project. I’ve always been a jealous person, so prying into Dennis’s love life was unpleasant. However, I decided it was crucial to be fully informed and prepared because I knew that I would probably only have one more opportunity to be with him and I couldn’t blow it.
Letter from Dennis Lomack to Marianne Louise McLean [1985]
I loved you, Marianne. I still do. You’ve accused me of loving not you, but rather, of loving how you make me feel. What an absurd distinction. And not even accurate. You make me feel terrible most of the time! But I can’t imagine feeling anything without you. I can’t imagine being away from you. But I don’t have to imagine it, I suppose, because I’m leaving. You’re right, I don’t know how to be with you without wanting to take everything, without wanting to kill you and devour you and then bring you back to life, and then write about you and do it all again. Isn’t that love?
But so is this: You’re free of me. I promise you. Completely free. I will not call. I will not write. I won’t come near you. You say that is what it takes for you to be better, it’s done. I’m gone.
Chapter 7: Charlie
I became an adventurer after my mother died. When you’re forced to acknowledge mortality you stop wasting time. Modesty, restraint, self-respect-all that is garbage. It’s all ego. I don’t have time for it. Nobody does. Even little children who have more time than anyone else, even they know better. I knew all this, but over the previous few months I’d lost track of it. Being with that dying man clarified things for me: I might’ve just met Edie, but I loved her and I’d do what I could to help her.
Chapter 8: Charlie
The character of Cassandra was the basis of all my early sexual fantasies, but more than that, she had created the very framework for my sexual desire. Gregor and Cassandra had a romance for the ages, even in the later books, even when it was clear that things would end badly for everybody. Rather than being expansive, their love seemed to condense further and further inward-a circle, then a spiral, then a point, ratcheting the whole thing tighter and tighter, until the spring popped and Marianne went flying halfway across the universe.
What was it like to meet the woman who was the basis of all my sexual fantasies? I don’t know. I never met her. Cassandra had existed for such a short moment on the pages of Dennis’s books-burning fast and bright. The woman in my truck was the pile of ash left over.