These stories have the rare combination of unique style and coherence. Osipov’s writing is unconventional and beautiful, and his stories make sense. He does not try to trick the reader or show off with stylistic acrobatics having no bearing on the narrative. The stories mostly take place not far outside Moscow, in the 20th and 21st centuries. The characters are of various ages, professions, and statuses. Osipov has a gift for making mundane details shine and reflect the feelings and motives of the people. In his first story, a man recalls his childhood in the provinces, walking through the countryside with his father and needing something to drink. They stopped at a rural house and the woman at the door had no water but gave them milk. They drank about a gallon. When the father offered to pay she asked him if he was out of his mind; a vivid depiction of her generosity and absence of any want of recognition. He recounts another episode when as a teenager his car caught fire and a man walking down the street extinguished the fire with his handkerchief and walked away saying nothing.
Metaphysical insight blends with small social slights and jealousy. A doctor had a part-time job traveling with sick patients from Russia to the United States. He’s flying with an older couple; the wife is hopelessly ill. At the airport waiting to return to Russia, he asks an airport employee whether he can smoke in the meditation room and instantly realizes that the question made him seem primitive and evil. Rather than spend money on a hotel for the night, he sleeps in the meditation room, stepping outside to smoke every few hours, dreaming of his father who’d been dead over a decade. In the dream his father felt sorry for him because he was lonely. Was this the way his father really felt? This cannot be known, though it may not occur to the reader to doubt this revelation. In another story, the literary director of a theater in a northern town nears the end of a lonely quiet life, and looks back with eyes somehow able to see it all at once, including the end, clearly and simply.
The stories depict the idiosyncrasies of Russia and the universal aspects of human nature. The father of a beautiful and successful young woman, Betty, tells her he has testicular cancer. He says the doctor recommended castration. He and Betty know that superior treatment is available in Europe, but he can’t go there because of his past with the KGB. So, he sends Betty to Germany to meet a sister she didn’t know she had, to facilitate his travel to that country. Betty assumes her sister will be happy to meet her. She buys tickets to the opera and imagines she’ll stay with her. However, after arriving at her sister’s place of work, a rural horse-equipment store, her delusions are harshly dispelled, and the sister Betty initially appraised as daft may be deceptively perceptive.
The stories have the unpredictability of real life. Characters’ thoughts seem to meander unchained while following ineffable logic that the reader may understand yet cannot explain. There is sadness, but maybe not despair, because there seems to be a knowledge on the edge of consciousness that whatever is lost in this life isn’t everything, even if what’s lost is life itself.
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