A Present Past

February 13, 2023
Memories of the Soviet era emerge through relics, landmarks, and fantastical occurrences in this satisfying collection from Lebedev (The Year of the Comet). In “The Obelisk,” a kindly strongman is tasked with maintaining the ostentatious grave site of a family friend, only to realize the man’s professional success was the result of his profound corruption. The villagers of the “The Barn” have forgotten about what happened to their Jewish neighbors—until a mute child begins to probe the secrets sitting in plain view. In the standout “St. Anthony’s Fire,” an antiques dealer comes across a case once used for collecting visitors’ calling cards, prompting him to have a vision of the NKVD exploiting it to hunt down people with ties to the prerevolutionary world. Inexplicable natural phenomena feature in “The Night is Bright Tonight” and “The Singer on the Bridge,” in which the spirits of people murdered by repressive governments enact revenge. Lebedev adds vibrant lyrical descriptions to the strange interplay of past and present, as when the narrator of “The Barn” imagines time collapsing “like the play of light and shadow in the fading foliage.” There’s a real payoff to these rich and ambiguous stories.

Starred review from June 2, 2023

Like his masterly novels (e.g., Oblivion), Lebedev's short fiction shows how the weight of Russia's past is carried into the present, ever shaping it. But while his writing is as vibrant and steely as ever, here it's got a fantastical edge that recalls Gogol's use of fairy tale or surrealist touch. A boy whose intense stare can make a broken cuckoo clock spring to life unsettles villagers by opening the padlock to a mysteriously sealed barn, which stands empty but for a creeping sense of German occupation during World War II. A cardholder suggests its own past as the possession of a nobleman hunted down by the NKVD, finally bringing its current owner a burning vision of the nobleman's end. A man revisiting his childhood dacha discovers an old neighbor hunkered in an underground room and envisions his memories, the fate lines on the man's palm transferred to his own when they clasp hands. In a bravura story about the power of language, centered on the short i in the Russian alphabet, a man compelled to work for the KGB owing to his gift of mimicry realizes that his grandmother, too, was forced to work for the state. VERDICT Not just for fans of Russian literature, though casual readers may be challenged; the discerning will find much brilliance here.--Barbara Hoffert

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