| main | ongoing | archive | private |
- his eyes narrow with a wicked cleverness.
- Her sisters had been rescued from the city as beautiful girls are often rescued from unpleasant things, but they did not know what their husbands really were. They were missing vital information. Marya saw right away that this made a tilted kind of marriage, and she wanted no part of that. I will never be without information, she determined. I will do better than my sisters. If a bird or any other beast comes out of that uncanny republic where husbands are grown, I will see him with his skin off before I agree to fall in love. For this was how Marya Morevna surmised that love was shaped: an agreement, a treaty between two nations that one could either sign or not as they pleased.
- If the world is divided into seeing and not seeing, Marya thought, I shall always choose to see.
- That is a beautiful hawk, and I will let him put his claws into my heart.
- “I wonder what sort of bird Comrade Lenin was before he bounced up to become Lenin? I wonder if Comrade Krupskaya saw him fall out of his tree. If she said, That is a beautiful hawk, and I will let him put his claws into my heart. I think he must have been something like a hawk. Something that hunts and gobbles things up.”
- Keep me and obey me, the secret said to her, for I am your husband and I can destroy you.
- onyx, agate, and hematite,
- “Comrade Likho, the Great War began because Archduke Ferdinand was shot, and the West would have crushed a noble Slavic people to dust underfoot if we had not intervened.”
- devotchka
- The domoviye have been marrying up and out and over each other just about as long as girls and boys. Prick your finger with a needle and let the blood fall over your threshold—it will hurt less, and you will dream of daughters. Men, they feel nothing like what we must endure. You have to make room in yourself for him, and that is the same in a house as in a body. See that you keep some rooms for yourself, locked up tight. And if you don’t want to get big in the belly … Well,” Zvonok wrinkled up her wide nose, “I don’t suppose that’ll be the same trouble for you as it is for the rest of us. The deathless can’t play our little genealogical games. Just remember that the only question in a house is who is to rule. The rest is only dancing around that, trying not to look it in the eye.”
- volchitsa
- “As you swallow the cow’s tongue, think for a moment about how strange and holy that is, to devour the tongue of another. To steal from it all its power to speak, to low at the moon, to call to its calf. To be worthy of such food you must guard your own words carefully, speaking only the wise and clever ones, lest your tongue end up likewise, on the plate of a rich man.
- “It is far too sweet. Comrade Stalin fears bitterness and has the tastes of a spoiled princess. I savor bitterness—it is born of experience. It is the privilege of one who has truly lived.
- Banki
- volchitsa, medvezhka, koshechka. Wolfling, she-bear, wild little kitten.
- So where is the country of the Tsar of Death? Where is the nation of the Tsar of Life? They are not so easy to find, yet each day you step upon both one hundred times or more.
- Of late, she had felt that coldness in herself, and though she feared it, she loved it too, for it made her strong.
- Viy
- “War is not for winning, Masha,” sighed Koschei, reading the tracks of supply lines, of pincer strategies, over her shoulder. “It is for surviving.”
- Punishment doesn’t mean you aren’t loved. On the contrary. You can really only punish someone you love.”
- Volchya-Yagoda.’ “‘He named you wolf-food?’
- “I’m insensate with rapture, I tell you.
- vodyanoy
- devotchka
- Never like to do half a day’s work when I can do none, myself.
- babushka
- “Husbands lie, Masha. I should know; I’ve eaten my share. That’s lesson number one. Lesson number two: among the topics about which a husband is most likely to lie are money, drink, black eyes, political affiliation, and women who squatted on his lap before and after your sweet self.”
- A wife must terrify, she must have a stronger arm than a boyar, and she must know how to rule. That’s all that matters, in the end. Who is to rule. And if you can’t, tscha! You’ve no business with a ring.”
- That he had a herd of girlfriends before you? Surely you didn’t think deathless meant dickless. Those are nice girls! Hoarding virginity is a criminal act, like hoarding food.
- Surely you didn’t think deathless meant dickless.
- They’re always the honest type, dumb as toenails but big in the trousers.
- And besides, people being miserable is natural.
- “Isn’t that cheating?” “Tfu! She expects you to cheat! Masha, whom I love: These tasks do not test your strength or your wiliness; they test your ability to cheat, which is the truest measure of a devil. They are designed to be impossible if you play fair. What should you do instead? Walk into no-man’s-land unprotected and be lost forever?” “Is that what the others did? Did you tell the Yelenas these things?” “Yes! And they refused to listen because they were innocent maidens without a lie in their hearts or a smear on their souls. Don’t be innocent, Marya. Innocent means stupid.
- She wore a thick white fur coat, the kind a man gives to his mistress
- What have the living to fear from the dead?”
- Only everything
- Listen, soon-to-be-soup. In marriage, the highest virtue is humility. If you’re humble, they’ll never see you coming!”
- “Whenever I get married, I always wear a caul ripped off of twin calves. Makes me young, makes me beautiful like a dollop of butter, makes me blush and tug my braids and pray in churches and bow down, humble as manure. The boys can’t resist it! They come panting with their cocks on a silk leash, their balls painted gold for my pleasure. I give them a night on my knees, just like they like, sweet and obedient and dumb as a thumbnail, confused by their mysterious bodies, oh my, so much stronger than mine! Then they wake up and—ha! There is Baba Yaga in their beds, extra warts, teeth like spikes, and the soup pot already red on the hearth. It’s a good trick. You should see their faces!” “I’m not like that.” “We’ll see. There is no such thing as a good wife or a good husband. Only ones who bide their time.”
- Naturally, then, humans fall into three categories: the criminal, the not-yet-criminal, and the not-yet-caught.”
- She’ll never want you smearing her tits with mud and shooting wet leaves into her.
- “The littlest fly on a lump of goat shit interests me more than what you want.”
- “If you think my brother is any different, girl, then there’s no help for you. He’ll burn you down like wax if you let him. You’ll think it’s love, while he dines on your heart. And maybe it will be. But he’s so hungry, he’ll eat you all in one sitting, and you’ll be in his belly, and what will you do then? Hear me say it, because I know. I ate all of my husbands. First I ate their love, then their will, then their despair, and then I made pies out of their bodies—and those bodies were so dear to me! But marriage is war, and you do what you must to survive—because only one of you will.”
- “Masha, listen to me. Cosmetics are an extension of the will. Why do you think all men paint themselves when they go to fight? When I paint my eyes to match my soup, it is not because I have nothing better to do than worry over trifles. It says, I belong here, and you will not deny me. When I streak my lips red as foxgloves, I say, Come here, male. I am your mate, and you will not deny me. When I pinch my cheeks and dust them with mother-of-pearl, I say, Death, keep off, I am your enemy, and you will not deny me. I say these things, and the world listens, Masha. Because my magic is as strong as an arm. I am never denied.”
- But I will say to you: Blue is for cruel bargains; green is for daring what you oughtn’t; violet is for brute force. I will say to you: Coral coaxes; pink insists; red compels.
- The memory of his knife scraping over fried bread and leaving a trail of glistening salted cream still thrilled him.
- Games demons play.
- A farmer wants his son to be afraid of beautiful women, so that he will not leave home too soon, so he tells a story about how one drowned his brother’s cousin’s friend in a lake, not because he was a pig who deserved to be drowned, but because beautiful women are bad, and also witches. And it doesn’t matter that she didn’t ask to be beautiful, or to be born in a lake, or to live forever, or to not know how men breathe until they stop doing it. Well, I do not want to be beautiful, or a woman, or anything. I want to know how men breathe.
- Like knows like.
- In both marriage and war you must cut up the things people say like a cake, and eat only what you can stomach,
- Look who is so wise now, I said, and she answered, To have two husbands, I must be four times as clever.
- And he sets on her like the sun, and all her teeth show when she smiles.
nov 23 2014 ∞
nov 23 2014 +
nov 23 2014 +