The God Poseidon

Lyudmila Petrushevskaya

By chance in a place by the sea I stumbled upon my friend Nina, a middle-aged woman
with a teenage son. She guided me into her home and I saw something extraordinary. Take, for
example, the entrance, which was high and resonant, with a marble staircase, or the apartment
itself, covered with a luxurious gray carpet and predominated by the color of dark wood and
scarlet felt. It all looked magnificent, like a picture out of the fashion magazine Lart
decoracion, the art of decoration, especially the bathroom which was also layered in plush gray
felt, with light blue china sinks and mirrors that were simply a dream! I couldnt believe my
eyes, but Nina, who had all the same kept her look of weary-evasiveness, led me to another room
standing with its trio of doors open. It was fairly dark, but still elegant, with an unexpectedly
large amount of unmade beds. Have you gotten married? I asked Nina, but she walked out of
one of the doors with the look of an anxious maid, though she made no move to touch anything. I
remember that lavishly expensive room, like in an English hotel, with dresses hanging in the four
meter high closets. How had such riches and abundance descended upon Nina, whod never
even known a decent pair of linens, and only owned one ancient coat for winter and three
dresses, each worse than the next one? She had found a husband, but people didnt live
anywhere in these wilds, in these wastes upon the sea, they only waited for the summers, letting
and leasing their rooms. Yet here there were staircases, corridors, arches, and whats more, I
went out of the room via a different door and happened upon a neighboring white marble
entranceway, through which a group of schoolkids and their teacher had already passed.
Well, she had gotten married, however it turned out that what had happened was that
Nina had swapped her one room apartment in Moscow, where shed lived wretchedly with her
son, into these apartments, and whats more, shed taken it with all the furniture, even right down
to the linens and clothes! The owner hadnt touched a thing, just cleared out - only it turned out

she hadnt cleared out entirely, and that was the source of Ninas anxious appearance, as the two
extra beds in the bedroom were the beds of the owner and her son, a mute young fisherman with
fat cheeks. The owner still bustled about as usual, as though she still owned the place and we
were under her wing. She conducted herself almost exactly like she was still the woman of the
house, as though she was the fine, quiet mother, and Nina her respected daughter-in-law, for
whose sake she bent and broke, yet who still protected her position as the mother of the family
and the most important person in the home, not permitting her daughter-in-law to come close to
anything.
It became clear that the owner had made the swap with Nina, Nina had left to come here,
quit her job at the newspaper in the capital and prepared herself to write about the outer regions,
about the sea, which she had always adored and revered before all else, but shed just been
lingering around her new home which the old owners hadnt left yet. The formalities had all
been observed, Nina had the paperwork, she and her son were living in the house, but the elderly
owner and her son had lived in the building all winter, and from the sound of it they werent
getting ready to move. Nina was a lax, nonbusinesslike person, accustomed to letting everything
fall where it might, hence her exit from the newspaper for freelance work and hence all the
visible flotsam and jetsam of her entire life. She took everything as it was. She ate, drank, sat on
the beach, her son went to a very good school, they had no trouble with money, and the whole
doubled family fed from seafood caught by the young fisherman.
Who is he? I asked, and Nina, without a moments thought, answered that he was the
son of the god of the sea Poseidon, who could live and breathe under the water and had literally
brought everything on foot from the depths of various lands, not merely fish and several shells
and pearls, but everything for the home, for the family.
In the meantime the old wife of the god of the sea Poseidon, who had taken the entirety
of the wrecked Nina under her wing for some unknown reason, sat at the head of the table, under
the tall window, and fed us and fed us, and in my memory the bedroom suite and the four beds

and their sheets surfaced, dazzling-white like sea foam, and it seemed right to take everything in
its flow, not to struggle, to stretch out your arms and then to breath under the water, to let the god
Poseidon take you and it isnt so bad to live there, for, upon returning home to Moscow, I learned
that Nina hadnt moved anywhere at all, but just a year ago had drowned together with her young
son, victims of a well-known shipwreck on a ferry near the very shores on which I was walking,
completely unaware.