Earlier this year, Russian news agencies reported that the author Ludmilla Petrushevskaya had been accused, by the Public Council of the Russian Orthodox Church of Krasnoyarsk, of promoting drug use among minors—a potentially criminal offense. The council came to its conclusion after reading “The Trip,” a story of Petrushevskaya’s from the nineteen-nineties about a teen-ager who tries hallucinogenic drugs for the first time, which was recently reprinted in a young-adult anthology. On her Facebook page, Petrushevskaya commented that the seemingly obvious distinction between “touching upon” a subject and “promoting” it seemed to have been lost on the council. She could, she speculated, just as easily have been prosecuted for promoting underage prostitution, illegal abortion, gay love, pedophilia, extreme parental abuse, or incest—all of which have been the subjects of her fiction. “But what can I do?” she wrote, quoting Leo Tolstoy. “I can’t be silent.”

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Tolstoy, who was excommunicated by the Russian Orthodox Church, in 1901, remained until his death an object of national reverence; young philosophers and the more enlightened among foreign dignitaries used to flock to his estate in the hopes of hearing a few inspiring words. Petrushevskaya, who doesn’t participate directly in politics but whose life and art couldn’t be more political, also attracts a stream of admirers, albeit of a different kind, wherever she goes. Petrushevskaya’s family was declared “enemies of the people” by Stalin; she grew up sleeping under a dinner table in her grandfather’s bedsit. Her prose, poetry, and plays feature as their subjects bedraggled single mothers, impoverished old people, orphans, cross-dressers, and alcoholics. The publication of her work was banned until the late nineteen-eighties, but even before then, the real-life subjects of her fiction found ways to read her work and to show their gratitude. Petrushevskaya, now a household name, continues to live modestly, in Moscow, on what she makes from publishing and, for most of the last decade, from touring; since around 2000, she has performed as a professional cabaret singer.

We met seven years ago, in Boston, in a packed little gallery in Harvard Square, where Petrushevskaya—flamboyantly dressed in a wide-brimmed hat, floor-length evening skirt, and extravagant jewelry—read from a collection of her stories that had recently come out in English. We stayed in touch, writing to each other and, when I visited Moscow, seeing each other from time to time. Last year, she celebrated her seventy-seventh birthday, on the stage of a new Moscow theatre, with a surrealist rendition of her classic 1977 play, “Andante,” and with her distinctive cabaret, in which she sings classic French and Weimar lounge songs, freely translated by her into Russian. Two days later, she was standing in a cramped foyer at the State Literary Museum, presenting a new exhibition of her absurdist drawings to a crowd of eager fans: mostly educated-looking ladies of a certain age. She spoke briefly about the show, gave a tour of the installation—the little drawings were arranged in the shape of a constructivist tower—then paused, opened her oversized purse, and produced a large clear storage bag and a thick pile of colored paper.

“I can’t sleep,” she said. “At night, I write these little poems for children, and illustrate them. These are ‘limited editions.’ Only your child will own this particular poem with this particular drawing. Pay what you can, but ideally this much”—she named a modest amount—“and put the money in this bag.” She was selling the autographed and illustrated poems, together with her slightly more expensive self-portraits, to raise money for an orphanage outside of Pskov, to the north of Moscow, where children with developmental and physical problems are cared for and taught the principles of independent living. Upon graduation, they are settled in apartments nearby where they can support themselves. Petrushevskaya told a story of her first encounter with two of the children, whom she first noticed crawling in the yard of the orphanage. She talked for some time in her mesmerizing way, referring to individual children by name, recapping their stories, what they had learned, how they were living now. Absurdist drawings forgotten, the ladies threw themselves on the poems and self-portraits, buying several of each, while Petrushevskaya signed them with notes to the women’s children. “Are there any left with a hippo?” a grandmother frantically inquired. In twenty minutes, everything was sold, and the plastic bag was plump with cash. During the brisk trade, Petrushevskaya had also managed to sell her absurdist show to the museum for fifteen thousand rubles—about two hundred and fifty dollars. That money also went into the bag. With the crowd still standing before her, she counted the proceeds. It was something, everyone agreed, but, given the cost of living, even in the provinces, how much could it buy? The bag was then solemnly transferred to Petrushevskaya’s driver, Volodya.

Tea and pretzels were brought in. Petrushevskaya perched on one of the two chairs in the corner of a little podium, and, one by one, women sat down on the chair next to her like pilgrims. Petrushevskaya has written so many stories about women in mental and emotional turmoil that their real-life counterparts cannot help but appear and demand that she hear them out. Some of the women she recognized. They spoke with emotion while she listened intently, and then she would say a few words. This went on for hours. She didn’t get any tea. Eventually, she got up to leave and signalled to me to wait outside. At the door, however, she was stopped by a large blonde in a scarlet blazer, who had a slightly deranged appearance and who towered over her, whispering urgently. Finally, Petrushevskaya managed to push her way into the street. “Do you have room in your car?” the blonde demanded. “No, I do not,” Petrushevskaya answered tersely, and climbed in. She looked pale.

We drove over to a pastry shop near Petrushevskaya’s apartment building. They knew her there; I purchased her usual snack —a quiche and warm milk. Petrushevskaya is a vegetarian and abstains from alcohol. She nibbled on her quiche, still looking stricken. I wasn’t sure if I should leave or stay. We were planning to talk about the plays of hers that I’d been translating, but she could barely form sentences. The stumbling conversation turned to clothes, then to her stage costumes, and she perked up a little. Then I remembered that I had a birthday gift for her: an Art Deco gold bracelet with a complex clasp, which we tried to work out together. While I was fetching second helpings of quiche, Petrushevskaya conquered the clasp and smiled faintly. “What a beauty!” Somewhat revived, she focussed her enormous eyes on me, as if seeing me for the first time. Under her gaze, my sense of decorum melted away; I suddenly understood why the women pilgrims had flocked to her. Almost without meaning to, I found myself telling her my own tale of marital crisis. Petrushevskaya transformed: storytelling is her trade, and here was a woman with a story that she had encountered in every possible version and put to paper dozens of times. Plays and small talk were forgotten. An exhausted old woman was replaced by a goddess of wisdom.

“Anechka,” she began, with feeling. “When my daughter Natasha was eighteen, I was unpacking my husband’s suitcase—he had just come back from a business trip—and found . . .” Petrushevskaya described how, immediately after her discovery of the incriminating object, which was followed by hair-raising revelations about her husband’s life style, she moved out of her house, never explaining anything to anyone, and didn’t come back. She and her husband, who died a decade later, never spoke again. “Remember, everything you say to your husband, you say to your children,” she went on. “Silence is the only answer.” She told me more: stories from her own life, from the lives of people she knows. My crippling fear of the future subsided slightly.

Outside, it grew dark. Petrushevskaya was now fully invigorated. She suggested that we go to her place, a one-bedroom apartment in downtown Moscow, and make some oatmeal. The clutter there was staggering. Volodya made a halfhearted attempt at cleaning but quickly gave up. Music, bits of fabric, scarves, books, hats, manuscripts, costume jewelry, bric-a-brac were piled everywhere. I recognized the scenery in one of the illustrations on the wall from her piece that I had recently translated, “The Story of a Painter.” Another was an original still from a famous animated film, “A Fable of Fables,” based on her script. She offered me a silver snuff box from India as a memento and a piece of costume jewelry for my daughter. We stepped onto her balcony. Gazing over nighttime Moscow, she pointed out different buildings. “Right there used to be Ernst Neizvestny’s studio, before he emigrated,” she said, pointing at the one-story annex right below us, where the artist and philosopher had lived. I told her that, throughout my first year in the U.S., I had worked in a gallery, in SoHo, directly across from Neizvestny’s New York studio. “We’ve been staring at the same sculptures,” she said. I didn’t want to say goodbye, but she was tired and Volodya was waiting. I hugged her. She felt small and frail, like a little bird. “Please, don’t ever die,” I said, speaking for the pilgrims, for my late mother, who had worshipped her, for all the heartbroken and grief-stricken women of the world. “We need you.”