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Koschei the Deathless is to Russian folklore what giants or wicked witches are to European culture: the villain of countless stories which have been passed on through story and text for generations. Valente's take on the legend brings the action to modern times, spanning many of the great developments of Russian history in the twentieth century.
Deathless, however, is no dry, historical tome: it lights up like fire as the young Marya Morevna transforms from a clever peasant girl to Koschei's beautiful bride, to his eventual undoing. Along the way there are Stalinist house elves, magical quests, secrecy and bureaucracy, and games of lust and power. All told, Deathless is a collision of magical history and actual history, of revolution and mythology, of love and death, that will bring Russian myth to life in a stunning new incarnation.
352 pages, Paperback
First published March 29, 2011
"No one is now what they were before the war. There’s just no getting any of it back."For me, this was, above anything, the story of war and loss. The war between mythical country of Buyan and Viy, the Tsar of Death. The Great Patriotic War between Soviet Union and Germany. The Leningrad blockade . Leningrad was under siege by the Nazis from 1941 to 1943 - arguably the most lethal siege in history. Thousands of people froze and starved to death - several hundred per day in the winter of 1942. People ate sawdust bread, rats, pets, and each other. People died right on the streets. And yet the city - the Leningraders - never gave up.
"A war story is a black space. On the one side is before and on the other side is after, and what is inside belongs only to the dead."Chapter 23 of this book tore my heart to pieces. As you may guess, this is the part with the blockade. I will not say much more except for quotes and real blockade pictures. They speak for themselves.
"That night, she burned all the books in the attic for heat. She carried them down, one by one, because December ate up her strength. She lit them in the stove while they all huddled around and put out their hands. Last one in was the Pushkin, and she cried, but without tears, because you cannot have tears without bread."
"A ration card says, This much life we have allotted you. It says, This much death we can keep from your door. But no more. It says, In Leningrad there is only so much life to go around. It says, The only thing not rationed in Leningrad is death."
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The story Valente weaves is poignant and gut-wrenchingly beautiful. It is poetic and melodic like Russian folklore from which it draws inspiration. It is humorous (albeit darkly so) and bittersweet, intimate and hopeful, both simple and complex at the same time. It is strange and captivating. It is about loss and friendship and betrayal. There is no good or evil, black or white. In this, it's very human. And I love it.![]()
"A marriage is a private thing. It has its own wild laws, and secret histories, and savage acts, and what passes between married people is incomprehensible to outsiders. We look terrible to you, and severe, and you see our blood flying, but what we carry between us is hard-won, and we made it just as we wished it to be, just the color, just the shape."
“You must see,” chirped Chairman Venik finally, “that a communal house requires communal domoviye, and communal domoviye require a committee. We are happy to do our part! It is a new world, and we do not wish to be left behind.”Marya is denied the red Pioneer scarf - and carries it in her heart. Koschei comes to get her - and she follows him without thinking twice since in the Soviet Union "When they come for you, her mother had once warned, you have to go. It’s not about wanting or not wanting." Real life Party slogans permeate the mythical country of Buyan. Zmei Gorynych, the legendary three-headed dragon, deals with bureaucracy of the Purges. And
"The goblins of the city may hold committees to divide a single potato, but the strong and the cruel still sit on the hill, and drink vodka, and wear black furs, and slurp borscht by the pail, like blood. Children may wear through their socks marching in righteous parades, but Papa never misses his wine with supper. Therefore, it is better to be strong and cruel than to be fair. At least, one eats better that way. And morality is more dependent on the state of one’s stomach than of one’s nation."And, of course, this book is also about the power of stories which play out a certain way because that's how they are supposed to play out. Some things are inevitable - or are they? Can you change fate? Does it matter if you try?
For it to happen the way it always happens [...] The Church always splits. Ukraine always withers in a poison wind [...] You could tell your tale differently this time, I suppose. But you won’t [...] You will always fall in love, and it will always be like having your throat cut, just that fast. You will always run away with her. You will always lose her. You will always be a fool. You will always be dead, in a city of ice, snow falling into your ear. You have already done all of this and will do it again.--------------------------------------
And am I the Tsaritsa of Life, then? half her heart asked. The other half answered, Not even for a moment were you ever queen.
"Khoschei, Khoschei," she whispered. "What would I have been if I had never seen the birds? I am no one; I am nothing. I am a blank paper on which you and your magic wrote a girl. Just the kind of girl you wanted, all hungry and hurt and needing. A machine for loving you. Nothing in me was not made by you. I was six when the rook came - six! That's my whole life that you've bent in your hands."
“Death, keep off, I am your enemy, and you will not deny me.”
Marya Morevna understood that she belonged to her secret and it belonged to her. They had struck a bloody bargain between them. Keep me and obey me, the secret said to her, for I am your husband and I can destroy you.
“I was only a child – how I can find the girl I was before I knew what magic was? That world will not love me. It will kick me and slap me in the snow, and take scarf, and leave me ashamed and bleeding.”
When Marya saw something extraordinary again, she would be ready. She would be clever. She would not let it rule her or trick her. She would do the tricking, if tricking was called for.
“The rapt pupil will be forgiven for assuming the Tsar of Death to be wicked and the Tsar of Life to be virtuous. Let the truth be told: There is no virtue anywhere. Life is sly and unscrupulous, a blackguard, wolfish, severe. In service to itself, it will commit any offense. So, too, is Death possessed of infinite strategies and gaunt nature – but also mercy, also grace and tenderness. In his own country Death can be kind. But of an end to their argument, we shall have none, not ever, until the end of all.”
“Oh, I will be cruel to you, Marya Morevna. It will stop your breath, how cruel I can be. But you understand, don’t you? You are clever enough. I am a demanding creature. I am selfish and cruel and extremely unreasonable. But I am your servant. When you starve I will feed you; when you are sick I will tend you. I crawl at your feet; for before your love, your kisses, I am debased. For you alone I will be weak.”
“But marriage is war, and you do what you must to survive – because only one of you will.”
“How I adore you, Marya. How well I chose. Scold me; deny me. Tell me you want what you want and damn me forever. But don’t leave me.”
“I will put you there and turn the light in your eyes and come to stare at you for centuries, to pore over you, because you are mine, my treasure, my hoard, and I cannot keep you and I cannot let you go.”
“Marya,” she sighed. “No one is now what they were before the war. There’s just no getting any of it back.”
When you are this hungry, you cannot even remember who you used to be, she whispered. Who you might have been, if not for the hunger.
That night, she burned all the books in the attic for heat. She carried them down, one by one, because December ate up her strength. She lit them in the strove while they all huddled around and put out their hands. Last one in was the Pushkin, and she cried, but without tears, because you cannot have tears without bread.
“Koschei, Koschei,” she whispered. “What would I have been if I had never seen the birds? I am no one; I am nothing. I am a blank paper on which you and your magic wrote a girl. Just the kind of girl you wanted, all hungry and hurt and needing. A machine for loving you. Nothing in me was not made by you.”
There is a hole in me like a bullet.
“You will always fall in love, and it will always be like having your throat cut, just that fast.”
If a novelist wrote a true story about how things really happened, no one would believe him, and he might even be punished for spreading propaganda. But if he wrote a book full of lies about things that could never really happen, with only a few true things hidden in it, well, he would be hailed as a hero of the People, given a seat at a writers’ cafe, served wine and ukha, and not have to pay for any of it.
“Drink, Marousha,” he clucked gently, like a mother, and put a glass to her lips. “Your lungs want vodka.”
"I don't care, Marya Morevna. Kiss him. Take him to your bed, and the vila, too, for all it matters to me. Do you understand me, wife? There need never be any rules between us. Let us be greedy together; let us hoard. Let us hit each other with birch branches and lock each other in dungeons; let us drink each other's blood in the night and betray each other in the sun. Let us lie and lust and take hundreds of lovers; let us dance until snow melts beneath us. Let us steal and eat until we grow fat and roll in the pleasures of life, clutching each other for purchase. Only leave me my death — let me hold this one thing sacred and unmolested and secret — and I will serve you a meal myself, served on a platter of all the world's bounty. Only do not leave me, swear that you will never leave me, and no empress will stand higher. Forget the girls in the factory. Be selfish and cruel and think nothing of them. I am selfish. I am cruel. My mate cannot be less than I. I will have you in my hoard, Marya Morevna, my black mirror.”
“I ate all of my husbands. First I ate their love, then their will, then their despair, and then I made pies of their bodies - and those bodies were so dear to me!”
I will tell you how we made soup in those days: Hold a ration card over a pot of boiling water for thirty minutes, so that the shadow of the card falls on the broth. Then eat it up, and don't you dare spill a dropThis was relief because Valente and I agreed on the horror of the horror. This quote is from the section narrated by the house-imp (domovaya) of Marya's house, which was leaven to the whole book for me. Perhaps it was the nakedness of the narrative voice (like Marya's description of magic/fairytale as the 'nakedness' of the world ) that so anguished me (seriously, my nerves were flayed, I was distraught) because Zvonok's storytelling was like balm, although she, tough enough to live on ashes, was telling the harshest part. The domoviye in general were an aspect of the story I really liked, their enthusiastic, comically officious embrace of Soviet communism, their committee of households in the overcrowded house.
“The rapt pupil will be forgiven for assuming the Tsar of Death to be wicked and the Tsar of Life to be virtuous. Let the truth be told: There is no virtue anywhere. Life is sly and unscrupulous, a blackguard, wolfish, severe. In service to itself, it will commit any offense. So, too, is Death possessed of infinite strategies and a gaunt nature- but also mercy, also grace and tenderness. In his own country, Death can be kind.”
“Husbands lie, Masha. I should know; I've eaten my share. That's lesson 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.”
You humans, you know, whoever built you sewed irony into your sinews.
If she had looked out the window, she might have seen a great, hoary old black owl alight on the branch of the oak tree. She might have seen the owl lean perilously forward on his green-black branch and, without taking his gaze from her window, fall hard—thump, bash!—onto the streetside. She would have seen the bird bounce up, and when he righted himself, become a handsome young man in a handsome black coat, his dark hair curly and thick, flecked with silver, his mouth half-smiling, as if anticipating a terribly sweet thing.