The nephrite belt
The nephrite belt ( Russian: Нефритовый пояс / Nefritowy pojas ) is a story by the Russian writer Anatoli Kim from 1971, which was published in 1981 by the Junge Garde publishing house . The translation into German by Irene Strobel was published in 1986 by Volk und Welt in Berlin.
A serious kidney disease is negotiated from a psychological - interpersonal perspective.
content
Anatoly Kim calls Valeria Fyodorovna Golitsyna “a blooming, loving and happy young woman”. Her husband, the journalist Oleg Klewzow, worked his way up to head of department at a small newspaper after graduating from university.
Terrible - Valeria, who used to work for the Union Agency for Copyright, is in the third year of her marriage in the most beautiful Moscow spring with nephritis in a large Moscow hospital. Not only does it die in it, but it is also born. When Valeria looks at the little Japanese girl Marina Aoyama - Mariko for short - she sees her kidney disease as a punishment for that abortion during her only pregnancy. The instigator of the crime was Oleg. Punishment - stupid superstition! - Valeria says to herself. But when her husband comes to visit, she watches him hostile and wants to discover a frightened, depressed, greedy man. In her hospital room, the patient feels like a locked animal. In the “cage” hospital you will meet all kinds of strangers; including a 46-year-old emaciated, graying patient with bad teeth. The stranger guesses right away Valeria's illness and describes himself as a chronic nephritis sufferer.
Valeria is visited by several colleagues in the hospital. Anatoli Kim writes: “Nobody is able to understand the suffering of others.” The work colleague Lyuba Kislova stares at the patient with outrageous curiosity. An opaque, pale green, slightly red speckled stone dangles from Ljuba's necklace - probably a nephrite from Japan.
Valeria's state of health appears hopeless to the reader. Other patients are not doing much better. When the sun sends “huge protuberances ” towards the earth, the 40-year-old, gray-haired patient Nyussja Petrovna cannot cope with the “several large” solar “gas outbreaks” and dies. Valeria, who has to watch the death and wants to help, falls silent. After the boss's visit, the patient Valeria Golitsyna is visited again by the professor, who wants to help her over the shock. The old man wants to convey to the sick his philosophy of humility and love for the simple in life. In fact, after a while, Valeria addresses a visitor again. This is her husband Igor. A little later, the 46-year-old chronic nephritis sufferer visits her a second time. He is reasonably cured, is allowed to leave the hospital and as a farewell gives Valeria something made of small stones that is matt in the light - a health belt. It should be a product of Eastern medicine . The strange man, a geologist, brought the belt with him from Tuvinia, wore it for ten years and got well from it. The belt consists of a sawed-up nephrite, i.e. of button-like, pierced, cut stones.
This time the reader hopes that Valeria, who is dissatisfied with herself and the world, could perhaps recover.
shape
The eleven chapters of the narrow novel tell alternately about Valeria and Oleg. Despite Oleg's visits to the sick, both of them are suddenly alone because of Valeria's illness. Oleg, who is not locked in the hospital cage mentioned above, seeks connection with women, but in the end always shrinks away from the current strange woman. Valeria, suspicious, calls Oleg at home late at night. When she can't reach him, she illegally leaves the room and recognizes Oleg on a path right next to the hospital. When she sees her husband standing alone for so long, Valeria cries. But she does not go to him and does not reveal herself.
reception
Debüser sees the text interwoven with elements of the fantastic as a description of the “miracle of a soul transformation” and cites as evidence the passage in which Valeria feels “the manifold chain of all human fates”.
German-language editions
- Anatoli Kim: The nephrite belt , pp. 5–114 in: The nephrite belt - nightingale echo - lotus . Three little novels. Translated from the Russian by Hartmut Herboth and Irene Strobel. With an afterword by Lola Debüser. Volk und Welt, Berlin 1986. 343 pages DNB 870114786 (used edition)
Web links
- Bibliographic entry in fantlab.ru (Russian)