The New Yorker: "A Withered Branch" by Ludmilla Petrushevskaya

I guess I’ll give some allowances for this story, an appealing slice of a difficult life translated from the Russian, but if it were an American story I’d probably say that it doesn’t work. 

The narrator is a Russian writer in the old Soviet Union, a widow with a child in a state sanatorium with asthma. Travel is expensive, so she’s hitchhiking to Lithuania—she spends a risky night with two truckers—and finally arrives in Vilnius, where she is aided by an old woman who lets her stay with her. She delivers some stories, in Russian, to the local paper, and she later receives money for their publication, translated into Lithuanian. She listens to the old woman’s sad story—her family burned to death while she was at the market—but then she must leave because (and now we finally learn her destination) she must get to Thomas Mann’s former home on the Baltic shore and then she must hurry back to Moscow to pick up her son. Briefly at the end of the piece she compares her own life—at least she can hold her son in her arms—to that of the old woman (“a withered branch on a dead tree”).

The whole piece is contrived to have the narrator meet the old woman, who otherwise doesn’t serve the plot—because there is no plot. So, as I say, it doesn’t deliver what I like to see in a story, but I did find the interaction between the writer and the old woman to be charming. 

April 18, 2011: “A Withered Branch” by Ludmilla Petrushevskaya

The New Yorker: "Axis" by Alice Munro

Like many Alice Munro stories, this one covers a long period of time—fifty years. Her stories are somewhat unusual that way. The basic plot is straightforward: Fifty years ago, Grace and Avie were farm girls at the university. Grace dated Royce, a veteran. Avie dated Hugo. Grace remained a virgin while Avie and Hugo seemed to have a series of pregnancy scares until finally one of them was real and they planned to get married. In the meantime, Royce went to visit Grace and her family in the summer between school years and they plan to have sex while the overbearing mother is away for the day. But they get caught, Royce is no longer welcome, and he never has contact with Grace again. Fifty years go by and Royce runs into Avie on a train. She’s had a good life and a bunch of kids, although Hugo is now dead. Royce reveals that the day he took the bus up to see Grace he glimpsed Avie in her town and he’d been tempted to get off the bus to see her. He asks if Avie would have agreed to see him and she says yes without hesitation, despite the complications it would have created. So far it’s just a nice little story about these two elderly people bumping into each other on a train. But then . . .

Royce, who is a geologist, points out a formation they pass on the train: the Frontenac Axis. Unlike the neat slabs of limestone that are the surrounding countryside, the Axis “is nothing less than an eruption of the vast and crazy old Canadian Shield, all the ancient combustion cutting through the limestone, pouring over, messing up those giant steps.” And then he advises her to watch for it if she passes that way again.

Surely this is significant for Munro, especially given the title. I suspect that Royce himself represents the Axis—the disorderly in life—and that Avie’s own life has been like the neat slabs of limestone. If she passes this way again, Munro must be saying, Avie might want to go for a little of the ancient combustion instead.

Yes? Am I reading too much into it? Apologies to those without a subscription as this story is not available on line. 

January 31, 2011: “Axis” by Alice Munro