Shatuny by Yuri Mamleyev

 


Would you believe, comrades, the gent above is searching for his saintly Christian father who had turned himself into a chicken?

Published by the underground press in the Soviet Union in 1966, Shatuny became a cult favorite and a prime influence for many younger writers such as Vladimir Sorokin and Victor Pelevin. Yuri Mamleyev's short novel revolutionized Russian literature, a work in the spirit of Gogol, Bulgakov, and Dostoevsky that shocks, terrifies and dazzles. From my own reading, absurdist Daniil Kharms can be added to the mix.

To share the scoop of this tale set in Spring, in the late sixties, here's a set of Shatuny characters along with story specifics for a reader's savor.

Fyodor Sonnov – Meet our main character: Fyodor will bring to mind Raskolnikov. On the first pages, Fyodor encounters a stranger in the forest and asks him if he has a cigarette. The stranger digs into his pocket to accommodate. “And at that moment, Fyodor, grunting convulsively, stuck a huge kitchen knife into the young man's stomach.” Fyodor begins to speak to the corpse, telling it all about his past murders, many as a lifeguard at a beach. “I did a good job drowning people.” Fyodor has his reasons for murder, reasons associated with death and his coming to terms with death, Russian-style. Surely, the character of Fyodor counts as a prime reason Yuri Mamleyev's fiction has been termed "metaphysical realism".

Klava, Sister of Fyodor – The cheeks of this fleshy lovely's ass are two huge, voluptuous mushrooms (a necessary detail since the author continually reminds us the spiritual, metaphysical side of life is forever encased in our fleshy, bony, bloody body). Klava has been living in a large house on the outskirts of Moscow. “The house was divided in two: in each half lived a family, simple folk. There were many additions built onto the place: sheds, dark crannies, and human burrows, as well as a huge cellar going deep into the earth.” Klava lives alone on one side and the Fomichyov family live on the other.

Pasha, husband of Lidinka Fomichyov – Pasha is a man of brutal, savage sexuality, so much so he thinks his heart is in his dick. And Pasha hates children. “The minute Pasha would lay eyes on a child, he would compare it to his own carnality, and feel a blind, instinctive rage over the incongruity. He wanted to fill the world with his lust, to fill all the space around him with it and so somehow squeeze children out of the world.” When his wife gets pregnant (and she's been pregnant several times), watch out! Pasha devises a special method to make sure he kills his kid before it pops out to take its first breath.

Anya Barsky – Klava takes on a twenty-five-year-old lass as a tenant. When their new tenant, Anya, basks under the sun in the courtyard, Fyodor watches her with binoculars. Anya possesses beauty, delicacy, and fine features. A snip of description: “the brows were thin, acutely sensitive like the wings of a sacred bird; the general contours were tender and intelligent, animatedly self-absorbed but with the mark of a certain intellectual unease.” Anya is a dreamy, mystical 1960s gal who, if she lived in the US, would make a beeline for hippies, Haight-Ashbury, and Woodstock. Deep into the novel, Anya on solipsism: “you'll never know what pleasure it is to consider yourself not simply the center of the world but the only thing in it . . .What joy, what self-assertion . . . No work of genus, no enlightenment of any kind can compare. Just think, just get used to that fact, come to terms with it: there is nothing but me!” Oh, dear Anya, you're such a honey.

Boggis, Bunce and Bean on Steroids – Anya takes Fyodor on a trip where they sit in a wooded glade and watch a ritual performed by a trio of buffoons (Anya's term). “To Fyodor's great surprise there appeared two puppies, some kittens, birds in a cage, and miscellaneous poultry. The man with the inexplicably degenerate face grabbed a pup and bit into its throat. The thin one, sitting down, made some kind of ritual motions and produced a needle, set to pricking out the kittens' eyes. The white-haired Mozart, flushing with effort, started dismembering a bird with tweezers.” All the brutality, “from the depths of the Russian folk” brings them closer to penetrating the mystery of death, or so they philosophize. And when the trio returns to the Krasnorukov-Fomichyov house with Anya and Fyodor, from this point forward, the story's narrator refers to these three men as “the sadists”.

Andrei – “Only love is the law of life. Love those close to you, and you will have nothing to be afraid of.” So speaks this sickly old man, a true Christian, Kalva invites into their home. Old Andrei goes on to tell Kalva that God and love are one and the same. But Kalva becomes upset with all the geezer's sweet saintly talk. When old Andrei returns to health, she makes her move. Klava paws old daddy goody-goody below the waist, inviting him to join her in a round of luscious sex. Andrei pulls away and locks himself in his room. But Klava gets him thinking. “The old man was struck by the fact that he was suddenly uninterested in whether there was a God, or love; that he was agitated by and really only concerned with his own fate: and that he had to know what awaited him.” After much philosophic reflection, Andrei the geezer concludes the most sensible thing to do in light of the unknown void after death is to turn himself into a chicken. He starts to flap his arms and cluck, cluck, cluck and thus becomes “Chicken-corpse”.

A Host of Other Players – Among their number, we have Uncle Kolya, the senior presence on the Fomichyov side in the Krasnorukov-Fomichyov house, a man who attempts to keep order (good luck, comrade!). Kolya's teenage son, Petya, spends his days scrapping the pimples on his face and body and eating them. Padov, a young philosopher with a strong mystical, solipsistic streak enjoys creating havoc. Mikhei saves his skin by showing Fyodor he has nothing between his legs.

Recall I mentioned Shatuny is a work that shocks, terrifies, and dazzles back there. Actually, this could be understatement since it is an over-the-top comic novel that makes Clockwork Orange and Ballard's Crash seem like a dance in the park. You gotta read it to get the full jolt.

Shatuny is included along with seven short stories in The Sky Above Hell translated by H.W. Tjalsma. This Yuri Mamleyev classic deserves to be republished for a wide readership.


Russian author Yuri Mamleyev, 1931-2015