A Door Behind a Door Read online

  Praise for Yelena Moskovich’s Virtuoso

  * Swansea University Dylan Thomas Prize, Longlist

  “A hint of Lynch, a touch of Ferrante, the cruel absurdity of Antonin Artaud, the fierce candour of Anaïs Nin, the stylish languor of a Lana del Rey song… Moskovich writes sentences that lilt and slink, her plots developing as a slow seduction and then clouding like a smoke-filled room.”

  —Shahidha Bari, The Guardian

  “A bold feminist novel: it contains a world of love and friendship between women in which men and boys are both indistinct and irrelevant… The Natashas was a fascinating debut, Virtuoso is even better… It is the Blue Velvet to her Eraserhead: a fully realized vision of a strange world.”

  —Katharine Coldiron, Times Literary Supplement

  “If Ferrante’s Neapolitan series was condensed into one book and that one book was turned into a person who spent a good deal of time at queer punk shows on X, but then they got clean and a job where they wore pumps and a pencil skirt and longed for all the selves they had to abandon to survive—and then that person became a book—this would be that book.”

  —Gala Mukomolova, NYLON

  “Virtuoso is a fine, fraught, strange novel… it will be fascinating to see what she writes next.”

  —Alex Preston, The Guardian

  “Virtuoso didn’t simply engage me on an intellectual level, but also on a deep and emotional one… goddamn impressive.”

  —Joseph Edwin Haeger, The Big Smoke

  “The prose poem-esque vignettes that make up the novel Virtuoso are propulsive and exact and Yelena Moskovich’s language oozes with sensory experience… Virtuoso is a queer and transnational novel that hypnotically dunks the reader into every scene.”

  —Nate McNamara, Lit Hub

  “Virtuoso is powerfully mysterious and deeply insightful, a page-turner precisely because you have no idea what to expect. In the era of #MeToo, Moskovich’s arrestingly close and complicated view of lesbian relationships and female friendship seems more urgent than ever before. But it’s perhaps the novel’s defiantly surrealist style that is its greatest triumph.”

  —Nadia Beard, Los Angeles Review of Books

  “This tightly woven feminist novel is a deep exploration of womanhood spanning decades, continents, and digital spaces… Virtuoso is a moving book that defies categorization.”

  —Wendy J. Fox, BuzzFeed

  “[Virtuoso’s] prose is lyrical.”

  —June Sawyers, Booklist

  “Virtuoso is a novel / is a performance / is a dance with movements and variations / is poetry / is film / is a palette splattered with colors / is a body out of breath. Virtuoso is truly a sensual euphoria, one that must be experienced firsthand.”

  —Cameron Finch, Michigan Quarterly Review

  “Haunted and haunting… Told through multiple unique, compelling voices, the book’s time and action are layered, with possibilities and paths forming rhythmic, syncopated interludes that emphasize that history is now.”

  —Letitia Montgomery-Rodgers, Foreword, starred

  “A Best Small Press Book from 2020”

  —Mallory Smart, Maudlin House

  “Moskovich breaks almost every rule of contemporary fiction.”

  —Kirkus

  “[Virtuoso] tells the stories of four queer European women in a filmic, fragmented style… An unexpected reunion ties together all the stories in an emotionally complex and gratifying ending.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “Moskovich dwells with indigenous belonging and a native fluency in the realms of the unseen, the worlds slotted between worlds, or behind them, a fluttering geography of veils calling for mirrors, or perhaps for the abolition of mirrors.”

  —John Biscello, Riot Material Magazine

  “Virtuoso jumps through time involving three pairs of sapphic women, ranging from childhood friends, marriage, and scandal. The paths of these women sync and blend together like waves, written in an almost abstract form. These are loves intertwined with melancholy and mystery.”

  —Andrew King, University Bookstore (Seattle)

  “With incredible characters and sharp narration, Virtuoso illustrates the many ways in which women don’t follow the stereotypes created for them.”

  —Jaylynn Korrell, Independent Book Review

  “Moskovich’s novel spills-over with the nuances of existence (and by extension, co-existence), grounding readers in her dizzying and dreamlike story of love, friendship, and reconnection.”

  —Kaitlyn Yates, The Arkansas International

  “Moskovich writes with the eye of a film director and the lyricism of a poet.”

  —Mallory Miller, Paperback Paris

  “The author’s inimitable style is both elegant and poetic. By story’s end, our characters’ lives amazingly, but not unbelievably, intertwine, skillfully arranged by Moskovich.”

  —Virginia Parobek, World Literature Today

  “Virtuoso is a striking probe into feminine love and friendships, an examination of the dichotomy between the individual and the bleeding of self into other which occurs in relationships.”

  —Beth Mowbray, Nerd Daily

  “Moskovich’s dreamlike prose and fragmentation make the introduction of the surreal feel natural in the world she has painted for us.”

  —Hayley Neiling, Heavy Feather Review

  “Virtuoso is novel in the most original sense… In Moskovich’s inspired hands, language becomes a fragile and shifting musculature, a substance both firm and ephemeral, simultaneously the stuff of our lives and the stuff of dreams.”

  —Alexandra Kleeman, author of You Too Can Have a Body Like Mine

  “Part Ferrante, part Despentes, Yelena Moskovich is a brutal but tender-hearted chronicler of women in love.”

  —Barbara Browning, author of The Gift, I’m Trying to Reach You, The Correspondence Artist

  Praise for Yelena Moskovich’s The Natashas

  “Strange and carnal; a riddle of language, the body, and the artistic impulse.”

  —Kirkus Reviews

  “Dreamy and impressionistic, Moskovich’s novel deftly illustrates the many ways women are commodified and objectified by society in both macro and micro ways.”

  —Kristine Huntley, Booklist

  “The text stacks its scenes like building blocks, creating a mosaic of surrealist serendipity in which everything you think you know dissolves, again and again… The Natashas presents a Murakami-esque pictogram of incomplete data that will mesmerize the reader long after the last page has been turned.”

  —Samantha Kirby, The Arkansas Review

  “The Natashas is beautiful, original and distinctive—a stunning new voice.”

  —Jenni Fagan, author of The Panopticon

  “From the surrealistic imagery written with inimitable flair, to the biting grit of the story’s exploration of sexual objectification and self, The Natashas is utterly captivating. Lyrical, brooding, and delightfully dreamlike, the novel is a strange and ruthless journey into the ailing heart of humanity — and a bizarre peek into the mind of a brilliant new novelist.”

  —Michael A. Ferro, Michigan Quarterly Review

  “Closest in tone and plot to a David Lynch film… confounding and beguiling in equal measure; prose that reads as heady yet ephemeral as smoke.”

  —Lucy Scholes, The Independent

  “Wonderfully original… if you are a fan of David Lynch or Haruki Murakami, this sort of joyful acceptance of the bizarre will come easily… Moskovich’s debut offers something different, and sometimes we all need that.”

  —Kirsty Logan, The Guardian

  “Brave, original… written in a Cubist jumble of voices, languages, and textures, The Natashas reads as if one were spinning a radio dial of the world… Moskovich’s prose radiates with heat as she describes the life animating the city from within, a breath that unites us in our humanity, even the most marginalized—those whose identities are subsumed into the categories of their catastrophes: hostages, refugees, slaves. In The Natashas, Moskovich locates that delicate point of equilibrium between aesthetics and outrage.”

  —Lauren Elkin, Financial Times

  “Conceptually challenging and aesthetically inventive…Moskovich’s narrative voice has the quality of floating slightly above its characters, evoking the disconnect, not only between mind and body, but between individuals, between action and intent, thought and speech..”

  —Eleanore Widger, Dundee University Review of the Arts

  “A haunting, unknowable novel, and no less beguiling for that.”

  —Elena Seymenliyska, The Telegraph

  “As mysterious as a David Lynch film, The Natashas paints a dark, post-modern picture of loss of identity, invisibility and disconnection.”

  —The Times Literary Supplement

  “A hallucinatory torrent of imagery and ideas that moves entirely according to its own rules… Moskovich explores the relationship between our identities and our physical selves in an experimental, fragmented narrative, obstinately refusing to reach an orthodox resolution but nevertheless casting a beguiling spell that beckons deeper into its strangeness.”

  —Alastair Mabbott, The Herald Scotland

  “A dark literary novel… an intense Lynchian atmosphere.”

 
—Diva

  “Explorations of sexual power, force and identity underpin this beautifully written dreamscape debut by Yelena Moskovitch… a novel that slips and slides through space and time, unmoored by linear convention.”

  —Eclectic

  “A sulphurous and enigmatic novel, fascinating and astounding… We await the sequel with impatience.”

  —François Busnel, La Grande Librairie (France 5)

  “The Natashas is a novel of tact and image, obsessively moving between dry and wet, powder and brilliant. Cosmetics return to its literal meaning: it organizes the world, the cosmos—here according to the masculine desire, both totalitarian and violent.”

  —Eric Loret, Le Monde

  “With the eccentricity that her characters assume and the freedom her fiction seizes, Yelena Moskovich, born in Ukraine, who lives in France and writes in English, lands on the literary scene like a Sputnik with extraordinary talent.”

  —Héléna Villovitch, ELLE France

  “The text is worthy for its carnal and atmospheric writing, which captivates like poetry in prose.”

  —David Caviglioli, L’Obs

  “We open this book like opening a bottle of perfume. It is intoxicating, then hypnotic, and finally completely destabilizing… We emerge from this story a bit shaken, as if after a bad dream. And yet curiously, we want to go back…”

  —Rémi Bonnet, Le Populaire du centre

  “A brilliant, whirling text, raw and full of imagery, written in a breath both realistic and magical—magnificient!”

  —Axelle Magazine

  “A sulphurous novel with a disturbing and dreamlike intrigue, a lynchian atmosphere.”

  —Sean J. Rose, Livres Hebdo

  a door behind a door

  a novel by

  Yelena Moskovich

  WHO WE ARE

  TwoDollarRadio.com

  Two Dollar Radio is a family-run outfit dedicated to reaffirming the cultural and artistic spirit of the publishing industry. We aim to do this by presenting bold works of literary merit, each book, individually and collectively, providing a sonic progression that we believe to be too loud to ignore.

  Proudly based in Columbus, Ohio

  COPYRIGHT © 2021 by Yelena Moskovich

  Print ISBN: 9781953387028 / EBOOK ISBN: 9781937512035

  Cover art: Yelena Moskovich, Facing myself, autoportrait, 2015; Author photo: Courtesy of the author.

  Library of Congress Control Number available upon request.

  All Rights Reserved. Do not copy this book—with the exception of quotes used in critical essays and reviews—without the prior written permission from the copyright holder and publisher. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means. We must also point out that this is a work of fiction. Any resemblances to names, places, incidents, or persons, living or dead, are entirely coincidental or are used fictitiously.

  Book Club & Reader Guide of questions and topics for discussion is available at twodollarradio.com

  Printed in Canada

  Some recommended locations for reading A Door Behind A Door:

  In a doorway. On your way out. Out of your body. In someone else’s body. In full honesty. While petting a dog. While losing faith. While finding your keys. As you are, where you are, how you are, finally. Or pretty much anywhere because books are portable and the perfect technology!

  Contents

  MY ANGEL

  NICKY NICKY NIKOLAI

  TANYA, ALONE IN HER CELL

  CRAZY MAMA

  SALLY

  BROTHERS

  THE BATHTUB

  TEUTONIA AVENUE

  I AM VASKA

  PRIVET

  “Be bad, but at least don’t be a liar.”

  Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

  “Yes, my angel,” she says, without looking at me.

  Guillermo Rosales, The Halfway House

  a door behind a door

  The Boathouse 1983

  MY ANGEL

  NICKY

  Nicky, Nicky, Nikolai.

  FLOOR SIX

  I was a fat baby. I was lying in my crib like an egg yolk. The old lady was upstairs on floor six. Her dining room, above our bedroom. She dropped to the floor and made our ceiling lamp sway, Oh no, Oh no.

  OH NO

  There was a punctured scream. It wheezed. It lacked its high notes. It fell out of her mouth like a dog’s tongue.

  THE BOY

  His footsteps were as soft as rain—and scared, and stupored—down the stairs.

  GOODBYE

  She was left to lie there. Three wounds. Her head flopped against her forearm, leaking.

  FLOOR FIVE

  Nikolai Neschastlivyi lived on floor five, like us. He was much older than me, but also far from adulthood. Mulling, teenaged. He must have had a groin filling with pubic hair. A mother with eyes that could mourn raspberries. No father. And the street dog that he was supposed to leave alone. Vaska. He snuck him in and gave him meat-bones and let him sleep under his bed every now and then.

  LISTEN

  Like us, they were nothing special.

  EVERYONE KNEW

  But the old lady, she was different. She was good.

  I’M SORRY

  I can’t say her name. I’m afraid it’d call her back from the dead. No one who left this world unjustly comes back with a clear head.

  LET’S JUST CALL HER THE OLD LADY, OKAY?

  Misery had already come to her. She wore the black veil for her one and only son who drowned in Odessa at age ten. Her husband had just passed a couple years before—an immune system anomaly. They say men leave. They say women mourn. She lived our proverbs.

  BUT YOU KNOW WHAT?

  She didn’t grow bitter. She didn’t become hard. She continued to look fondly at children. Because all children were innocent in her eyes. Even the child who accidently horse-played her son to death that August years ago. Even the one who would grow up to be the poor soul to stab her thrice. Nicky, Nicky.

  SOFTNESS

  How long must we carry it as affliction?

  SPEAK UP

  Nicky was fourteen when I was just over a year old. I watched him from my mother’s arms with my globular brown eyes. He was cuffed. He was smacked around by the militzioner, the cop. His mama ran down the stairs, crying.

  MAMA’S TEARS

  He’s just a boy, he’s just a boy! But boys don’t stab old women once, twice, thrice. That, my dorogaya mamasha, is intentional manslaughter, the cop said. But he didn’t mean it, she’s crying, of course he didn’t mean to, just ask him, she’s spreading her fingers wide into the officer’s face, it was an accident! The cop turns to the boy. He pushes him against the railing. He says, Speak up, malchik. Did you mean it?

  BAD BOY

  Nicky was a bad boy and he went to prison to become a bad man.

  YEARS PASSED

  I forgot all about Nikolai from floor five.

  AND THE OLD LADY WHO GOT STABBED?

  What was her life, lived with such precise values, against ours, unfolding into daylight like a corn being husked.

  AMERICA

  I grew like a cat being picked up by its skin. I stretched out my baby-chub into loose limbs and a curved stare. My intellect went vertically. Deep and high. On the lateral level, I suppose it didn’t always show. We were part of that Soviet diaspora of ’91. Our immigration papers got approved. We settled into Milwaukee, Wisconsin.