The wife of Dimitri Dimitritch Gurov was a content woman: she moved steadily and with purpose, never questioning her judgment, whether she was advising one of her young children or justifying the cost of seats at an opera to her husband. She had been faithful to her husband, and it satisfied her to know this, even knowing that he had not remained faithful to her. Other men, too, had mistresses and carried on with other women; she had always known this, and in fact it was a relief to her the first time she detected another woman’s fragrance on her husband’s collar. “There, now, it has been done,” she thought, and was relieved of her curiosity from that time on.

Milochka, as the woman formally named Ludmila insisted on being called, was not an angry or bitter woman. She loved her children and she cared for them. She loved Dimitri, too, and was charmed to be seen with him during their evenings out as a couple. But she knew she was different from many women, not being jealous. No, not jealous—for her practical nature forbade such a thing. Why should she believe, after all, in fairy tale living when she had never been a princess or even very well tended to?

Milochka’s children, the boy and the two older girls, tended to her lovingly and regarded her as a princess, but she reminded them often that she was not, and reminded them, too, that they were neither a prince nor princesses, but did read aloud fairy tales and explained to the children the importance of literacy. She would also point out that life does not end like in the stories, often being unbalanced, and told the children that they would be happy as long as they accepted life as it presented itself to them, including accepting their father’s regular long-standing absences from their lives. He worked very much, she said, and he loved them, and that was a thing to be happy about.

“Papa doesn’t seem happy,” their younger daughter, Marianna, protested often.

“Ah, but you must accept that he is. He just doesn’t have as pretty a smile as you, my darling,” Milochka would tell Marianna, or some other sweetness. And Milochka believed this: her husband was as happy as his nature would allow, but she knew also that he had a bad habit that she had never been able to break him free of—that is, she regarded his nature as romantic and unrealistic. He used to respond that he simply had passion and wonder for life, to which she would reply by kissing him on the forehead as if he were a child and casting her eyes downward to her books.

Once, while shopping in the town center, Milochka encountered a woman whom she knew to be the mother of one of her son’s comrades. This woman, Zenya, greeted Milochka with a forced smile and a genial hello, but quickly degraded herself and the conversation into gossip about Milochka’s Dimitri. It seems Zenya was the unfortunate witness to one of Dimitri’s escapades with another woman, and she confessed that she did not plan to tell Milochka but could not withhold such vital information. Zenya was in tears, but Milochka maintained her composure, appearing more concerned for Zenya than for her own marriage. She assured Zenya that she must have mistaken another man for Dimitri, as so many men look alike in the winter furs customary to Muscovites, and explained that she does not distrust her husband and has no room in her life for jealousy. The latter part was true, as Zenya learned in her youth that jealousy is the most intense emotion and serves only to stir up a tempest of other feelings, such as passionate love versus the real, practical love of husband and wife. No, Milochka said, she was a married woman and had no time in her life for such loss of control over oneself as jealousy necessitates. Jealousy, that kind of heated excitement, was characteristic of vile little dogs and harlots, not married women.

The Shark Bit

The sleek, silver fish propels itself involuntarily through dark water. It is asleep, but still moving, always moving, eyes always open; the shark is moving to breathe. It is the shark’s curse to move restlessly, as it is man’s curse to fill and empty his two-lobed lungs incessantly, in and out of consciousness.

The solitary animal sleeps through the dense, dark sea, with uncovered eyes unable to see. A heavy thing slips across its back and gouges it, puncturing its thick skin just behind the dorsal fin, but this is minor damage only, proportionate in small scale to the damage a large marine beast makes from charging the hull of a ship. Minor damage, but jarring enough to wake the sleeping ship’s passengers.

The shark is shocked awake and tastes carrion in the cold water that it is streaming into itself. It is carrying the solid thing on its back, and it shivers it off and inverts itself to examine it. Gently, the shark pulls at the loose skin with its viciously serrated teeth and saws it open, then is knocked on its soft nose by something with a sharp edge. The sharp thing sinks without resistance, away from the bag. The streamlined fish, now angrily conscious, incises the thing inside. The shark is hungry, but this thing, while meaty, is not to its liking. There is something alien about it. It is thick, with heavy bones, and strangely bitter without a trace of the sweet brine of the sea. The shark lets the fibrous tissue linger between its sawlike teeth and carries it forward a few meters, allowing the water to carry the tidbit’s pungent sourness into it, then shakes it off its mouth and circles slowly around the lifeless thing as it rises away, unmoving with frayed edges. Curious to the shark, there is no flow of blood to darken and season the surrounding water. It is as if the annoyance had been dead even when it brushed the shark.

The shark is unable to see clearly; to the shark the dead creature is only an awkward and dull shape that drifts upward toward the undulating moonlight. The enormous fish moves along, as it must, forward, not seeking food, not even awake.