The Foreign Woman

The plot of the novella takes place in the Russian district of New York, where representatives of the “third wave” of Russian emigration have settled. Among the characters is the owner of a photo studio, Evsey Rubinчик, who has been paying off debts for his enterprise for nine years; the owner of the “Dnepr” store, Zямя Pivovarov, who supplies local residents with Vologda butter and Riga sprats; the dissident Karavaev, who in America lacks “Marxism and the punitive organs”; and the real-estate trader Arkasha Lerner, possessing a “specific gift of material well-being.”

The main heroine is Marusya Tatarovich. As the daughter of nomenklatura parents, she had no visible reason to leave the USSR. However, at some point the young woman felt that “everything had already happened,” and one day she, along with her son, landed at Kennedy Airport. Marusya’s life in New York is a struggle to find work, settle in, and buy furniture for a small apartment. Almost everyone in the Russian community tried to court her, but her chosen partner became Rafael—a Latin American man, fifty years old, with no specific occupation. Their emotional relationship, stormy quarrels, and truces spark plenty of talk in the émigré circles.

A special ordeal for the couple is the arrival in America for a tour of Marusya’s former husband—the singer Razudalov.