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chrysalis-the-butterfly · 11 months ago

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Katya: A Poem

"Goncharov" is a 1973 Martin Scorsese film that Tumblr collectively invented in 2022. I'd heard of it, but didn't take too much interest in it. It was only recently that I found out that "Goncharov" had a sapphic ship, between Katya and Sofia. That was what piqued my interest.

In a flurry of activity, I wrote a poem.

I am indebted to all the Tumblr bloggers who came before me, whose creations were captured in this "Goncharov" master doc and this collection of quotes. I hope you enjoy the poem I strung together from your posts!

If you reblog this, make sure to add the tags #unreality and #unrealism so people who would find it triggering don't see it. Remember to Gonch responsibly!

Yekaterina Mikhailova.

That was my name.

It was a name that meant nothing,

because I was nothing.

My father’s daughter,

my brother’s sister.

For a time, we were rich.

Then our father received a visit from his co-workers

in the mafia.

He came between them

and his daughter.

He died with a smile on his face.

For the next three years, we were poor.

My brother and I,

living – no, merely surviving –

together on the streets,

made a resolution:

never again would we fall so low.

Never again would we be so weak.

So penniless.

So worthless.

We tracked down our uncle.

Thanks to him, we joined the mafia ourselves –

me first,

my brother later, more reluctantly.

He learnt not to question what I did,

no matter how much of a father

he wanted to be to me.

I only have one mother, one father, one brother, one uncle,

but I could trace a path

from Naples to my childhood home in Moscow

with the blood of all the men

who told me they loved me.

…

Later, I trained as a spy.

It was in that line of work that I found Lo Straniero.

The stranger.

He told me his real name was Leonid Goncharov.

I chose to believe him.

What is marriage,

but a way to escape the names of our fathers?

When I walked towards Goncharov

at the altar,

I thought that would be the moment

I would finally become someone

real enough

to have flesh and blood

to call mine.

Perhaps the name Yekaterina

wouldn’t sound so empty on my lips.

And with those same lips

I called his name,

and smiled at him in front of God,

and kissed him in the dark of our room.

And all I became was his wife.

A wedding is no different to a funeral,

is it not?

The old Yekaterina died to Goncharov that day;

he took my name from me,

my very history,

and I allowed him that.

My husband is a man who collects things he can use.

A pistol,

a pocket watch,

a woman’s love,

a wife.

My father would have needed me to marry,

so I did.

Goncharov would have needed me to love him,

so I did.

I truly did.

Oh, I was a good woman, wasn’t I?

A wife when he needed someone to bed,

a sister when he needed someone to argue with,

a mother when he needed to cry...

Is that all women were in his eyes?

Actors?

Pretty dolls to dress up and spin around

according to his needs?

No, I shouldn’t be so harsh.

It wasn’t his fault

he could only ever fall in love with men.

But the way he treated me?

That was his fault.

I needed a new place to exist.

I found you in the fruit stand.

…

Sofia Ambrosini.

That was your name.

With your serpent bracelet twinkling,

you stooped to pick up the fallen apple

that had escaped my basket

and rolled towards your leg –

the right one,

the one made of wood.

I recognised from your false leg

and your false snake

that you were in the same world as me –

the same world of murder

whose space we shared precariously.

But in that moment

we could be two women in a market

shopping for two men,

me my husband,

you your brother.

Because it’s so hard to make friends in a world of murder.

But here we were in public,

under the Sun,

and just for a while,

we could pretend we were women

who knew each other from …

somewhere.

Just making friends.

Just leading each other into temptation.

It was the apple’s fault.

It was the apple that made me bring up Adam and Eve.

There we so many strange apples at that market.

I imagined the wild way they looked

was how they looked in the Garden of Eden.

But then you said,

“I never understood why it had to be an apple.

Why an apple?”

I answered, “I don’t know.

Because it’s always been an apple, I suppose.

It’s easier to recreate in art.

All the painters and sculptors

and everyone else who makes those choices,

they all came together and decided

that an apple looks pretty simple –

nice, smooth, round,

easy enough to draw in a tree –

and now everyone sees nothing but apples

in the Tree of Knowledge

ever after.

So it’s always apples.”

I will never forget your response.

“The dullest possible produce.

The Forbidden Fruit is supposed to be

something unusual,

something special.

All the knowledge of the world

and of each other

and of the realisation

that these two fools are

running around the Garden

with their bottoms bare

in front of the Almighty.

An apple doesn’t seem right for that.

It’s dull.

It’s a thing for pastry and postcards.”

“What would you pick instead?” I asked.

“Pomegranates,” you said immediately. “No question.

It’s the fruit that the God of the Dead used

to trick the Goddess of Spring

into staying with him in the Underworld.

She tasted the seeds

and she was forced to stay down there

for half a year, every year,

forever.

A fruit so powerful

it can trap a goddess

seems like the kind of fruit

that can banish humanity from Paradise.”

We paused.

We made eye contact.

“Tastes better than apples, too,” you added.

And it looks like a jewel

when you split it open.”

I ate a pomegranate panna cotta

in the bistro later that day.

And when I licked my lips,

I immediately understood you.

I did like apples,

but pomegranates?

They were amazing.

I’d go to Hell for them.

I’d go to Hell for you.

…

“Oh, it’s six already?”

Goncharov said to me when I returned home.

“The clock’s broken,” I replied.

“It’s been six for hours.”

If only time would stop for us.

…

I was raised Orthodox,

but Goncharov and I had been attending a Catholic Mass

to better fit in with the locals.

I was unsettled by the topic of Father Gianni’s sermon:

the sins of the flesh,

the importance of resisting Earthly temptations,

and the necessity of self-control in this life,

thereby preparing for glories to come.

Were there any glories to come?

You, Sofia, got up to leave in the middle of the sermon,

heading for the stained-glass Virgin Mary,

and you whispered as you passed,

“Take your glories where you may.”

And like the fishermen who left their nets

to follow Jesus

and become fishers of men,

I got up

and followed you.

I did not know how my husband felt about me doing that.

I did not care.

I started partaking of apples and pomegranates

in equal measure.

…

Sofia, you told me you had never even touched a gun before.

But you were clearly too skilled

when those men cornered you

and you took them all down.

Admit it.

You just lied because

you wanted me to give you that “hands-on” shooting lesson,

didn’t you?

“Are we not all murderers in some way, Katya?”

you said to me when I challenged you.

“After all, a human being is a heart.

Break that, and how can it go on living?”

I had to ask,

“Don’t you have a broken heart, Sofia?”

“It still beats, Katya,” you said, quietly.

“It still beats.”

…

For me, it’s always been the darkness I liked;

the way the lights roll off the water between the alleyways

reminds me of the past.

…

You were adamant in your belief

that all memory is treachery.

But one of my favourite memories

was us together in my husband’s house,

after dinner at the casino,

me in my evening gown,

you dressed as a waiter.

You’d asked, “What’s your poison?”

I’d answered, “Whatever you’re having, darling.”

For the first time since moving to Naples,

I shook off the white furs

and showed you my dress –

the woman

under the animal.

“You look good in red,” you said to me.

Then you called me lisichka.

Little fox.

Which should have sounded wrong,

a Russian pet name in an Italian accent,

but that night it sounded right.

I returned the compliments.

“And you look good in green,

kukolka.”

Little doll.

I gave you one of my pearl necklaces.

“Every woman should be allowed

to feel like she is looked at

beautifully.”

My husband’s voice resounded in my head:

“Time isn’t like your pearls, Yekaterina.

You can’t buy more.

You think you can own time by wearing it,

but it just beats itself into your bones instead.”

Well, no-one can tell me what I can and can’t buy.

…

“If I were cursed, Sofia,

then I would never have found you.”

“You could still lose me.”

“Never.”

…

I started being Katya,

being myself,

not because I fell into my role as Goncharov’s wife,

but because I discovered my inability.

My unwillingness.

I knew he cared for me,

but not beyond the presentation we put on for his peers.

The peers who could end his life at any moment.

And it wouldn’t be so unbearable

if we were at least still friends,

but all of that went to Andrey –

the friendship, the love, the care –

at least as much as Goncharov was capable of

beyond his own inadequacies.

Andrey could not live loyally,

so let’s see how he does in death.

…

I didn’t want Goncharov’s name in your mouth.

I should have taken his money and left.

It’s not obvious why I didn’t.

All this time wandering the wreckage of his house –

I’m sorry, Sofia, it must have killed you.

“Unlike you,” you said to me,

“I do not lure to cannibalise.

I watch, and I starve.”

I rolled my eyes.

“Well, stop it!

What do you take me for?

Stop watching and devour me in full already,

won’t you?”

So you did.

I must have looked like a jewel

when you split me open.

…

“I’ll stay with you tonight, if you’ll have me.”

“I wouldn’t have anyone else.”

I lay in bed with you.

We wanted to do so much,

but ended up doing so little.

I ran my foot up and down your leg –

the right one,

the one made of wood.

I thought of what I knew

(what little I knew)

about your past –

how your Jewish family came to Naples,

how you lost them somewhere,

how the Poor Clares took you in and cared for you,

how you searched for your family amidst the Nazis,

how you lost that leg in the riots.

“The world wants you dead,” I said,

more to myself than you.

You turned to me.

“Do you want me dead?”

I forced myself to meet your eyes.

“No.”

You shrugged.

“Then the world doesn’t want me dead.”

We stayed in bed together for a while after that.

…

We were always wasting time we never had.

How could I love something which was never there?

Oh, darling, that’s just grief.

Time is like blood,

and I have wasted both.

We could not go on forever,

could not fight the story,

could not step outside the marriage

or the mafia

or else.

We were animals,

and animals, whether wild or tamed,

cannot fight the inevitable.

“Time stops for no-one, Katya.

Not even us.”

…

“What’s on your mind?”

“Wishful thinking.”

“Sofia, I’m not cut out for the life you’re offering me.

That different life.

I am chained to my history –

a short chain.

That’s why I cannot leave with you.”

That’s why you and I

and my husband

and his lover

and your brother

and our enemies

are all in this boathouse.

November’s the cruellest month of the year,

and Naples is full of fools.

…

“Of course we’re in love!” I scream at Goncharov.

“That’s why I tried to shoot you!”

He laughs and cries at the same time.

“If we really were in love,

you wouldn’t have missed.”

He’s right.

Our love was a grenade,

and now all that remains is shrapnel.

He loved me, but only for a minute.

I don’t know if he could handle any more.

Love cannot be bought;

otherwise, we would have had a happy marriage.

When we got married, I drew this line

between us and the world.

He’s crossed that line,

and I can’t go with him.

He and I are,

I think,

finally out of time.

He has destroyed and betrayed himself

for nothing.

That is his worst sin.

My inability to be loyal to my husband

is what saved me.

And what now kills him.

What could now kill you, if you let it.

…

You are pleading with me.

“We can have the Forbidden Fruit

and it can be whatever we want!

Let it be a pomegranate!

Let us glut ourselves on it!

And why do we have to follow everyone else’s rules

about what is and isn’t forbidden, anyway?

None of us in this boathouse

are living within the law in the first place.

There is blood on everyone’s hands.

Can’t you and I sin a little sweeter?

Can’t you admit that the sin you want most

isn’t a sin at all?

Can’t you spit out the lies you’ve swallowed

in the Hell you found yourself in?

We could grow our own garden somewhere!”

No, Sofia.

This is my garden,

my Tree of Knowledge,

better the Devil I know,

and you wish you were my Serpent,

but this is my Underworld to rule

as much as any queen can rule there,

unhappy

but resigned.

Go, Eve.

Grow your garden alone.

The Forbidden Fruit is there to be eaten,

to force us to go,

to let us step outside the walls meant to keep us in.

But you just can’t make everyone eat.

The pomegranate is within my reach,

but I have lost my appetite for seeds.

…

I do what Goncharov would do,

and you know what that means.

Death.

Goncharov has never meant anything else.

I will die like my father,

with a smile on my face.

I will die for you.

You were once a little girl, alone and scared,

but that girl is long dead.

The Sofia that lives now?

The world should fear her.

Damn them as they would damn us.

But don’t you ever raise a hand to me.

…

Sofia, don’t cry.

There’s no use trying to rewrite the story now.

Sofia, get out of this boathouse.

Take my boat.

It’s fine.

I won’t need it anymore.

Go, zolotse.

Leave Naples.

Leave Italy.

Leave the mafia behind.

But take your two candlesticks with you.

Light them on a Friday evening,

and watch the red of the sunset

wash over the white of the candles.

Sofia, take your day of rest.

No, a year of rest.

Make every day a Shabbat.

Remember to bless yourself.

Sofia, choose wisely what you do now,

because it might be the last time you get to choose.

“All memory is treachery.”

I wonder how you will remember me.

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