For Ludmilla Petrushevskaya, who spent much of her childhood in Stalin’s Soviet Union shuttling between orphanages, Young Pioneer camps, and tuberculosis sanatoria, storytelling began as a form of survival. “Every night before bed I’d tell the whole ward a scary story—the kind that makes people hold their breath,” she told me when I interviewed her for The Paris Review’s new Spring issue. Petrushevskaya, who was born in 1938 in Moscow, went on to become a prolific writer, a darling, she says, of the noosphere, a cloud that dictated stories to her “down to the final phrase.” Beginning with her collection Immortal Love, which came out in 1988 and immediately sold out its first run of thirty thousand copies, Petrushevskaya has published dozens of collections of prose, drama, and fairy tales. A mother of three and, subsequently, a grandmother, Petrushevskaya was also always making up stories for her children. From 1993 to 1994, she published a series called Wild Animal Tales in the daily magazine Stolitsa. They feature a cast of recurring characters, including Hussein the Sparrow, Lev Trotsky, Rachel the Amoeba, a.k.a. MuMu (who splits into Ra (Mu) and Chel (Mu)), Officer Lieutenant Volodya the Bear, Zhenya the Frog, Pipa the Foreign Frog, and many, many others. As usual, Petrushevskaya’s work resists easy categorization; while all these creatures are childlike and cute, the things they get up to are squarely adult. How much should a child know about the prevalence of infidelity among mosquitoes? How old should she be when she learns about cockroaches, bedbugs, and flies huffing inhalants? In any case, it is never too late to find out the truth about the creatures who live among us.

—Bela Shayevich

A Domestic Scene

When Stasik the Mosquito fell for Alla the Pig, she wouldn’t even look at him. She just lay there, totally nude on the beach, fanning herself with her ears—he was too scared to even try to fly up to her.

Stasik laughed bitterly at his bad luck and his weakness. Meanwhile Alla the Pig had just one thing to say to him: “I know your type!”

Stasik pleaded that he only ever had nectar, only his female relations drank blood, he never touched the stuff. Alla the Pig, whose physique was as vast as all our wide-open spaces, was having none of it. She refused to let Stasik land on her, not for just one little second. She had this terrifying habit of making her whole body quiver that caused the hovering Stasik to fall straight out of the air as though he’d been struck, but never struck dead, which was exactly what had him so hooked—he kept on falling and falling, but he could never hit bottom.

Finally Stasik’s wife, Tomka, showed up to collect him; enough was enough. She tried to show Alla who was boss, which instantly landed her on the receiving end of an ear thwack. With the infinite patience of so many husbands before him, Stasik dragged Tomka off the battlefield, and on his way out, in passing, he finally managed to make a brief landing, brushing Alla’s incredible body with just the tips of his toes and immediately shooting back up like he’d been stung.

It turned out that Alla’s nudity had only been an illusion and that, in reality, she was covered from head to toe in a coarse stubble. Clutching his slender Tomka, the myopic Stasik took his wife home for the thousandth time, convinced for the thousandth time that there was no place like home!

Drawing by Bela Shayevich.

Grandpa Eddie

The story of Edward the Leopard was a delicate, even ticklish, matter. Edward had once lived a life of leisure, racing through fields (at 160 kmh), savoring coffee and pastries, and nobody knew of his secret passion—aristocrats can be so secretive.

In the fields, Edward the Leopard had gotten a reputation among the mice for a game that he played with them using just one of his paws: tossing them up, catching them, and so on and so forth, all with only one paw.

It’s not that anything bad came of it for the mice. Edward took strict hygienic precautions, even washing his paw beforehand, but nevertheless, those mollusks from Greenpeace got word of his proclivities via a telephonogram from some mice, the parents of a certain Sophie, who’d gone to Edward’s for a quick tumble and never came home.

The mollusks sprang into action, swimming around with their banners, shooting their flares, and Edward couldn’t make heads or tails of the situation. It turned out that Sophie the Mouse, having gotten herself into Edward’s house, had chewed a hole in his dresser, hidden in one of his socks, and made a nest in which she gave birth to a litter—apparently her time had come.

The leopard was forced to adopt fifteen mice, including Sophie’s parents and grandparents going back three generations—and who could tell them apart?

However, Edward categorically refused to marry, insisting that neither the children nor the grandparents were his brethren. He even demanded blood tests (a fool’s errand), grumbling about genera, species, classes, and families, and in the end he got his way. Mstislav the Bedbug took everyone’s blood, although in the process he got so drunk on it that he answered “yes” to all subsequent questions, including those regarding the age and sex of the leopard.

The attorney Alla the Pig demanded Edward’s extradition and negotiated for alimony.

But Sophie’s kids grew up very quickly, they all intermarried, and the question of alimony became moot because the subsequent generations of mice continued living with Grandpa Eddie. Even now, whenever the mice go to the movies, they always make him babysit their kids, all of whom he scrupulously tosses up in the air with his one freshly washed paw.

Drawing by Bela Shayevich.

On the Road 

Mstislav the Bedbug and Maxim the Cockroach were on the train and decided to ward off the boredom of travel with a can of pesticide. But how were they going to split it?

Mstislav the Bedbug insisted it had to be divvied up by the millimeter. He proposed opening the can using a diamond—he had inherited it from his father, who had been executed.

Maxim the Cockroach thought it unwise to try cutting into the can itself, but how else were they to proceed?

Just then Domna Ivanovna the Fly took a seat in their compartment, but although she too was a lover of pesticide, she couldn’t remember how one was supposed to partake.

They decided to toss the can out the window, then disembark at the nearest station and see what shook out. But then the fly flew out the window with the can, which was just like her, and so by the time Maxim hitched a ride in a Mercedes that happened to be going that way, Domna Ivanovna had already stripped down to her underwear and was crawling around on all fours, her fifth and sixth legs having given out, but what can you say—a party’s a party!

As for Mstislav the Bedbug, he got so impatient that he jumped out of the Mercedes before the end of the line and walked behind it the whole way, slowly imbibing the fumes.

By the time he found the party, having huffed more fumes with each step he took, Maxim the Cockroach was dead to the world, leaning against the dented can with his whiskers curled into tight spirals.

Some random village folk had joined in too and were passed out next to Maxim. And Lenka the Ant, who’d happened to be wandering by with his flock of lice, as well as the soldier beetle Andreyich, lay there entwined with his wife, Verka.

The party had been a solid success, only now Maxim had nobody to talk to about his murdered family members, and so he began to sing “The Bed Was Made,” with lyrics by Yevtushenko.

Pedicure 

One day Nikolavna the Caterpillar decided to change her gender and so she went to the hospital.

They bandaged her up and discharged him as Kuzma the Butterfly. The butterfly managed to fly out the door, but day after day he kept having to feel at his mustache, which kept growing fuller, wistfully reminiscing, as he circled the air, about his past on the ground.

He was now forced to travel ceaselessly, dragging his luggage behind him; airports, passports, suitcases, a razor, a pipe, long johns, six slippers, and always the greasepaint: everything always had to be handsome now!

Kuzma started to get some attention, for example from that sparrow Hussein, who offered him passionate fraternal friendship.

But something was off. Hussein was a bit too ardent for his new friend, and the shy Kuzma stopped even coming to the phone when it rang. Really, despite the mustache and the pants, Kuzma still called himself Nikolavna and, in moments of loneliness, gave himself pedicures.

Drawing by Bela Shayevich.

A Doorm

Edward the Leopard’s mother Galya couldn’t get ahold of her son. She decided to go to the post office (traveling 170 kmh) and send him a letter containing the essential points:

(1) hello (2) how are you, you are impossible to get ahold of (3) what do you mean “fine” (4) this is not news to your mother (5) it is high time you came up with something new to say (6) you’re always busy (7) so that’s why ) and where (9) don’t go running around there, the fields are dangerous (10) yes, for you (11) if I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a thousand times: you’re a klutz (12) but have you heard, I read in the paper that Hussein the Sparrow practically got his whole tail ripped out in the fields (13) fine, not his tail (14) then what (15) you never tell me anything (16) quit trying to hide things from your mother, I always find out (17) Edward, I can’t hear you, call me right back (18) hello (19) everyone laughs at me because I’m always the last to know (20) I’m a laughingstock (21) the article was confusing (22) so what happened then with Hussein the Sparrow, I can’t get over it (23) imagine yourself in his mother’s shoes (24) yes, I care about it as a mother and as a wild animal (25) how come (26) what’s wrong with me knowing (27) I swear I won’t tell anyone (28) what do you have against Caleria the Cuckoo (29) she is the only one who ever visits me (30) nobody needs me, an old (and here, the ink runs on the word “hag” ) (31) hag and (ink running on “nothing but”) (32) an old hag, I can hardly get around anymore, I go 100 kmh, tops (33) we can all tell where this is headed (34) the fact that you care more about Hussein than your own mother (35) and since when are you friends with that sparrow (36) Eddie, you’re nothing but a doorm (ink running on “at”). (37) and here comes Hussein, he will tell me himself (38) gotta run, bye! (39) Call me! (40) Hussein! Looking good! (not you, goodbye)—YOUR MOTHER.

The End of the Party

Domna Ivanovna the Fly got a craving for something sweet and started bugging Leyla the Bee, who was on her way to the garden with six empty buckets.

But Leyla didn’t want to have Domna Ivanovna over and wouldn’t agree to visit her in the trash heap either.

“Big deal!” Domna Ivanovna said and flew off into the house, where they were making jam.

But they were ready for her in there and even began trying to swat her with a wet towel.

This warm welcome made Domna Ivanova lose her bearings: she dropped into an open jam jar (three liters) and started sinking right to the bottom.

The jar was taken straight out to Domna Ivanovna’s homeland, where the fly was buried with great decorum, under all three liters of jam.

Huge numbers of Domna Ivanovna’s children gathered and the wake started, but after a while Domna Ivanovna climbed out of the jam and yelled up at Leyla, who happened to be flying by with her buckets all full, “Come on over! My treat!”

Leyla the Bee simply shrugged and replied that she didn’t need any of their slop.

However, just three minutes later Leyla was back with her buckets empty and the entire adult population of her hive with their own empty buckets in tow.

Over the protests of Domna Ivanovna and her many thousands of children, the bees worked, enraptured, until the very end of the workday.

“And where is the justice in that?” Domna Ivanovna asked Theophan the Worm, who had crawled up for some fresh air at sunset. “I invited everyone over, even those morons of labor the bees, then Alla the Pig showed up uninvited, broke down our fence, and ate everything. I barely made it out alive.”

“That’s how it always is at the end of the party,” posited Theophan the Worm.

The Careerist

Mstislav the Bedbug got a job as a lab assistant, but while he was still in training they wouldn’t let him do blood tests, focusing on other kinds of exams.

He dreamed of a promotion, imagining the moment he would work with a syringe, meanwhile confined to dripping the fluid with which he’d been entrusted, into thin sheets of glass.

The job wasn’t hard, but Mstislav had no opportunities for displaying his talents. At night he got depressed imagining the next day and all the smells that came with it.

“I want to take professional development classes,” he kept on repeating.

But there were still those who envied him: It was easy work, appetizing, you got clean green scrubs, and were up to your ears in the precious material, surrounded by smells. “You are nothing but a careerist, Msislav,” Domna Ivanovna the fly would say.

The Part

Klava the Roach decided she wanted to be in a movie so she called up her acquaintance Adrian the Mollusk.

It was as simple as that—Adrian asked her to be in a horror film, The Industrial Manufacture of Sprats in Tomato Sauce.

It was a background part, but they filmed on location by the Baltic Sea, and all of Klava’s friends saw her in the movie afterward. In one shot she lay (playing the role of a headless sprat) in a tin can, and the can began to slip, gained momentum, and suddenly there was an explosion—everything went flying into the air, with blood everywhere!

Klava laughed and laughed at her friends’ reaction: “It was only tomato sauce!”

Nina’s Defense 

Hussein the Sparrow got very interested in Nina the Moth and started waiting for her after work, watching her from the bushes with his eyes aglow.

Nina lived modestly. She had no appetite for these kinds of twists of fate, especially considering Hussein’s reputation (first it was Domna Ivanovna the Fly, then Tomka the Mosquito, and then that awkward affair with Kuzma the Butterfly).

But there was something attractive about Hussein the Sparrow. He had nice eyes for one thing, and strong wings he would stretch forth from the bushes, and then there were his powerful, muscular, masculine legs.

To make a long story short, things started going the way they always do, until Tolik the Goat intervened.

He ate the whole bush that Hussein always hid in. (The goat had always had a hankering for that bush, but the Greenpeace mollusks had gotten in the way.)

So when everyone started whispering about Hussein the Sparrow (identifying features: mustache, yellow glasses), Tolik began devouring the bush with everyone’s approval and even caught one of Hussein’s claws in his mouth, mistaking it for a twig, which made Hussein drop his suitcase, which fell and broke open, revealing his suspenders, his address book, some hardboiled ant’s eggs, and other masculine sundries. For example a bag of dried horse dung.

Translated from the Russian by Bela Shayevich.

Bela Shayevich is a writer, a translator, and an artist. Her most recent translation is Elena Kostyuchenko’s I Love Russia. Read her interview with Ludmilla Petrushevskaya here.

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