chapter 9.

Lizaveta looks at aunt Marya.

She thinks, "Soon she will be dead and the death rattle will take place, and there will be shit on the floor, and it will be horrible, and that will be life, and this sucks. I must do something with her."

There is still some life left in aunt Marya. She is almost totally paralyzed, but she still can say shit out of the corner of her mouth. What she says is muffled and there is slobber dripping out of the corner of mouth. She can also move her big toe on her left foot.

Lizaveta takes her boots and sweater off, because she likes them, and wants to wear them later.

Lizaveta gets a skateboard.

She flops aunt Marya's body onto the skateboard and ties her limp body to it.

Aunt Marya says out of the corner of mouth, "Bitch, I'm not dead."

Lizaveta puts her big coat on, puts on a snowcap and puts the hood over her head. She also puts on mittons.

She pulls aunt Marya out of the house by a rope.

Aunt Marya says, "Bitch, I'm not dead."

Lizaveta pulls her out onto the frozen tundra.

It is 3pm, the sun is out. The land is full of inertia.

Except for a bored caribou. Lizaveta lassos the caribou.

Aunt Marya says, "Bitch, I'm not dead."

Lizaveta punches the caribou in the ass, the caribou runs towards the east, to Alaska.

The caribou is running, aunt Marya is on the skateboard, that little corner of her mouth that can still move is smiling.

Lizaveta stands there.

She watches her aunt ride away only because the television is broke and she has nothing better to do.

A siberian tiger jumps out and pounces on the caribou, bites its neck, then suffocates it.

Aunt Marya has no idea why she has stopped. The skateboard has flipped over and now she lays face down in the snow.

The Siberian tiger eats the caribou.

Then it notices the limp worthless body of aunt Marya.

It goes over and begins eating her.

Aunt Marya wiggles her big toe as a last act of defense.

Aunt Marya says, "Under Brezhnev I had a potato," and dies.

Lizaveta stands there and watches the whole event.

When it is over.

She walks back into the house.

The television is broke so she turns on the radio.

She drinks vodka and listens:

Jackie Onassis is reading from the newly uncovered memoirs of Tolstoy: "I am Tolstoy, I wrote "Anna Karenina". No one has ever finished "Anna Karenina." Not one human has even attempted to read "War and Peace". But I have sold many copies, many many copies. Oprah loves me. Simone De Beauvoir does not. In "The Second Sex" she showed my wife's letters showing that I was an asshole and treated women like shit. Then in "The Coming of Age" she showed more of my wife's letters showing that was a homosexual and mean to my aging wife. And that I'm an asshole. I do not like Simone De Beauvoir. I do not understand other Russian writers, Gogol, Dostoevsky, Chekhov all wrote existential and thoughtful masterpieces. And people that are not idiots love them. I wrote religious garbage, and Oprah loves me. That is the facts, religious garbage rules."

Then a commercial came on: It is read by a very angry man, he is screaming, "You must eat Pavolich Cabbage! If you do not, you will be sent to Gulag, or even executed! All other brands of cabbage are bullshit! You hate mother russia if you do not buy Pavolich Cabbage!"

Lizaveta goes outside.

A polar hamster comes up to her. Then a polar scorpion bites it and kills it.