Gelasimov embraces the “show, don\u2019t tell” dictum effectively throughout this short novel from the unique start. The first person narrator, later identified as Constantine or Kostya, has just returned to his home and is trying to fit a lot of bottles of vodka into his refrigerator, and on the window sill, on the floor, in the bathroom and clothes hamper. He\u2019s planning a bender after having done some sort of work, work he\u2019d completed to buy vodka. There\u2019s a knock at the door from his neighbor, a single mother:<\/p>\n
\n\u201cI\u2019m sorry to bother you again,\u201d she said. \u201cMy Nikita\u2019s acting up. Please help me out this once. I can\u2019t cope with him myself.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
\n\u201cNo problem,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
\nI threw on my jacket and went out. I even left my door open.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
\n\u201cWell then, who here doesn\u2019t want to go to bed?\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
\nThe little guy shuddered and stared at me as if I were a ghost. He actually dropped his blocks.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
\n\u201cWho here isn\u2019t listening to his mama?\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
\nHe was looking at me, speechless. Only his eyes got big as saucers.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
\n\u201cCome on, get your things,\u201d I said. \u201cSince you don\u2019t want to listen to your mama you\u2019re going to be living with me. You get to take one toy.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
\nHe was absolutely speechless, and his mouth was very wide open.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
\n[. . .]<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
\nHe shifted his eyes to Olga and whispered:<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
\n\u201cI\u2019ll go to bed. Mama, I\u2019ll go to bed all by myself right away.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
\n[. . .]<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
\nThen she said, \u201cYou\u2019ll have to forgive me for bothering you all the time. It\u2019s just that he . . . you\u2019re the only person he\u2019s afraid of. He stopped listening to me completely.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
\nI grunted.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
\n\u201cMakes sense. I would\u2019ve been even more afraid if I were him.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
\n[. . .]<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
\nAt home I walked over to the mirror and stood in front of it a long time. I looked at what had become of me.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
\nIf only Seryoga hadn\u2019t been wrong back then and hadn\u2019t left me to burn up last in the APC<\/span>. But he thought I was done for. That\u2019s why he pulled the others out first. The ones who still were showing signs of life. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
\nWhich means I\u2019m only good for frightening little boys right now.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
This whole opening series of events sets up all that is to come: difficult childhoods, especially of Kostya, focused on his philandering and volatile father and an uncaring world; the set piece of boy Koysta hoisting himself up onto the operating table while suffering from acute appendicitis, and within the hectoring presence of the surgeon illustrates well what sort of world he grew up in. We hear about his service in the Soviet Army fighting the Chechens, and the loyalty the surviving soldiers share with one another, as well as the conflicts between them, past and present. We keep returning to this past, especially the attack that left Kostya\u2019s face so disfigured by burns, in an unfolding series of flashbacks.<\/p>\n
Three further dynamics play out. First, the young student Kostya was bored in school which lead to his “doodling,” and discovery by the failed-artist head master of Kostya as a naturally gifted artist. This alcoholic headmaster brings Kostya to his home to skip school and draw, although Kostya has only ability, no sense of refinement or sense of beauty. This is another failed father figure in his life. Second, two of his army comrades interrupt the start of his three month bender to enlist his help in finding a third, missing friend. This quest ultimately is inconsequential as a quest, but does set up Kostya\u2019s break from isolation and pattern of work to drink. Third, Kostya reconnects with his father, his new wife, and younger children. Dad hasn\u2019t changed, but the rapport Kostya develops with the wife, and more importantly the two half-siblings, returns Kostya to his drawing. <\/p>\n
By the end of the novel his somewhat estranged-from-one-another friends have reached a truce. Kostya has stood up to his father. Kostya has begun drawing\u2014creating\u2014people from his past as restored in an alternative reality: a dead soldier now with wife and children, another who lost his leg now with two working legs. Kostya ends the novel with a drawing of a face\u2014his own, undamaged true self\u2014showing it to Olga and Nikita, and Nikita\u2019s spoken insight that Kostya only looks like a monster.<\/p>\n
In some ways, explained this way, Thirst<\/em> might come off as almost formulaic. Maybe archetypal is the better label of the arc that shows the rebirth of an injured man into real adulthood as well as moving toward reintegration through art, with all of this inner reality mirrored by the recognitions of people surrounding him.<\/p>\n
Gelasimov does this with pared down language, effective weaving of past and present, grounding in the particulars of unique place and time, with consistency of voice and narrative pacing. He has taken what might be clunky and predictable in other\u2019s hands and made a work of art. He doesn\u2019t waste a word, an image, a story, but weaves them into a related whole. This is a novel to reread, to see how well everything fits together, to marvel at how images and incidents reflect and inform each other. Gelasimov doesn\u2019t use lyrical, “poetic” language, but he has written a work with the concision of poetry.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Gelasimov embraces the “show, don\u2019t tell” dictum effectively throughout this short novel from the unique start. The first person narrator, later identified as Constantine or Kostya, has just returned to his home and is trying to fit a lot of bottles of vodka into his refrigerator, and on the window sill, on the floor, in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":292,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[67486],"tags":[43376,44366,14146,4636,44376],"class_list":["post-288456","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","tag-amazon-crossing","tag-andrei-gelasimov","tag-marian-schwartz","tag-russian-literature","tag-thirst"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/288456","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/292"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=288456"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/288456\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":342086,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/288456\/revisions\/342086"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=288456"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=288456"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=288456"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}