Nocturnal voices
Nocturnal voices ( Russian Ночные голоса / Notschnije golosa ) is a story by the Russian writer Nikolai Schmeljow , which appeared in 1988 in issue 36 of the Moscow weekly magazine Ogonyok ("Little Fire") on pages 13-15. Two years later Wolfgang Kasack published the story with R. Piper in Munich in an anthology of Russian stories.
A Moscow couple may find each other again.
content
The drinker Maja turns to her lover Serjosha, a well-heeled university professor, in three conversations on the phone, always at night. The phone calls - more precisely, the monologues - are twelve years apart. Because in the first telephone monologue Serjosha is thirty-three years old, and in the last one he just has his forty-fifth birthday. She is seven years younger than him. While Maja botched her life through an abortion at the age of 26 (1st monologue), Serjosha at 45 years of age is the professor with his wife and “cute” daughter as a made man (3rd monologue).
The once attractive Maja, who increasingly surrendered to alcohol after the abortion and survived a suicide attempt, still loves her professor in the last monologue, but does not make any demands. The author surprises the reader with a novelistic bang. The “unheard-of incident”: The professor, who lives in secure circumstances, wants to visit the unstoppable drinker after her unstoppable professional decline. Serjosha's announcement comes so unexpectedly because - after Maja's reactions on the phone - he commented on her monologues so consistently disparagingly, not at all in a sympathetic way.
reception
Bodo Zelinsky discusses the story in the afterword of the edition used (p. 352 middle to p. 353 bottom).
German-language editions
- S. 316-332 in: Wolfgang Kasack (Ed.): Ogonjok. The best stories from the Russian Perestroika magazine ( content ). Translator: Lorenzo Amberg. R. Piper, Munich 1990, 358 pages. ISBN 978-3-492-03397-8
- Nikolai Schmeljow: “Nocturnal voices.” Translator: Marianne Wiebe. Pp. 170–186 in: Russian Stories of the Present. Edited by Bodo Zelinsky , Reclam, Stuttgart 1992, RUB 8829. ISBN 3-15-008829-1 (edition used)