Thoughts on The Black Coat by Ludmilla Petrushevskaya

There is a light, somewhere

I couldn’t mention it within the posting of the story (which you can still read here and join in the discussion should you wish to join us), but this tale is about suicide, which is a very (understandably) triggering topic. But it is a subject that needs to be talked about more, so I make no apologies for picking such a tale. And, to me, this tale has a bit of hope within it, so it’s not all bleak.

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A journey through the story

We open the story fairy-tale style – There once lived a girl who found herself in an unknown place, on a cold winter night. The girl has a strange black coat on over her tracksuit and trainers. She doesn’t know where the hell she is or even her name, how she got here, nothing.

Immediately, I’m hit with the sparseness of the language. Petrushevskaya doesn’t muck about by tarting up any of the words or descriptions she uses. We’re also kept at length from the girl’s feelings.  

The night draws in, making ‘the girl’ move, trying to get away from the cold and figure out what is going on. A small truck appears. Here, we instinctively scream at the girl to run away from the truck (at least I did).

Here is where the chain of confusion starts which weaves some nice tension through the tale. The driver asks where she’s headed, and she has to lie her way through by asking them where they’re headed instead as she has no clue who she is or where she’s going. It makes us fear for the character all the more. How did she get to this dark place, and why? Is she dreaming?

This, for me, is where the creepiness starts to set in with this tale. It isn’t a story full of spooks, but rather a slow building, dream-like creepiness that lingers on the edges. This story isn’t right in the head.

The driver starts laughing his way through his answers for no reason. And the driver’s companion is a hooded figure and nothing but bones.

They drive away towards a train station and the grin stays on the driver’s face the whole time. But they drop her off at the train station without saying or doing much and we feel a kind of relief for the character.

This serves well to jolt us a little as readers. We’re set up to think that these creepy weirdos were going to capture or commit some evil. At least creep her out a bit, but they did what they said they’d do and went away again.

We go with her through the dark train station, through a dark tunnel, into the dark streets beyond. It's all very dark and derelict. She’s lost, confused, alone.

And then, the same truck pulls up with the same people offering her a lift. How is that possible? we ask. How can they be there after a train journey’s distance? There is one change she notices as she climbs into the cab – the other passenger, the hooded one, seemed to have gained some weight and now almost filled the seat.

The driver, who won’t stop smiling or laughing (although, he doesn’t make any noise when doing so) quizzes her about where she’s going and where she wants dropped off. As we read it, we get the feeling that they are in on whatever spell this place puts on people. He’s baiting her, knows her memory is wiped out.

“Bring us the money or we’ll eat you.”

She asks them to stop, and then the driver asks, “And who is going to pay?” This is a bit of a gulp moment and now we realise there’s going to be trouble of sorts. How is she to pay? Where is she to run to? How will she escape these two strange men as they threaten to eat her? This acts as a nice echo to the main subject of the story – suicide. Who pays when someone commits such an act? Who is left picking up the pieces?

They enter a random building, climb the dark stairs, try doors and enter a room. Here she notices a pile of rags in the corner and offers them as payment for the drive over. And then they start to eat them.

We’re into full on fever-dream mode at this point. Why are they eating rags? Why will one man not stop smiling and the other not show his face? What’s with the coat and the things in its pockets? What’s eating all the sound in this dark place?

She shakes the men, leaves them to eat their pile of rags, hides in another room, catching her breath, gathering her thoughts. Then she sees another pile of rags in a similar room, lays down, and the men surface from the rags. This is another what-the-hell moment as we realise she’s in some sort of cursed place. She’d gone to another floor, into another apartment, and now, the bad guys are still here (if they are really bad guys). This can’t be real, we think as we read it. This must be some dream, some nightmare. For me, this is where we start to ask if this unnamed girl is dead.

“I want to end this horrible nightmare.”

She escapes and then meets ‘the woman’, an older person in a similar state, with a similar coat, similarly confused.

This is where we find out what’s really happening, piece by slow piece. We feel that the woman wants to stay here, and we build some sympathy for our main character, the girl, as she tries to help the woman out by sharing her matches. They only have ten apiece.

The coat

And so, we get to the end of the tale, and their suicides are saved after the girl sets fire to all they have in the dark.

So, what does the coat represent? To me, it’s Depression itself. Or however suicidal thoughts gather.

The coat doesn’t keep her warm at all throughout the whole tale. But within the coat is everything she needs to get herself out of this situation, if only she can gather her thoughts and figure it all out. She has a key that opens anything, ten matches, and a scrap of paper (that eventually shows her suicide note written in the real world).

If only everything would settle down so she’d have time to think. If only everything would stop happening to her so she could figure it out. To me, this mirrors what happens to some poor souls who just don’t get the chance to figure it out, to save themselves. Life doesn’t give them the chance.

The way sound works

Or doesn’t… Sound doesn’t work the same here. The creepy driver grins, laughs, doesn’t make a sound. When they run in the other directions when the girl is hiding, it sounds as if they stop as the sound just dies away. The truck doesn’t make a sound, but glides noiselessly, even though the road is very bumpy.

What to make of this? Is it a reflection of the fact that people going through bad times can’t hear the things around them that might save them?

Whatever the intended (or unintended as the case is for many ‘themes’ and ‘symbols’) effect, it sets a creepy scene, showing us that this place isn’t right.

The light that burns

The woman at the end of the tale is slowly burning her matches one by one. But when the girl comes along, she takes all her own matches and sets them alight. It blazes in the dark. She finds more stuff to burn. The paper. Her coat.

To me, this acts as a symbol for the light that we need in the dark. We need something to blaze through the murk, to set us to passion, feeling, something, anything. (I fully understand it’s a lot more complicated than this!).

And so, that burn causes her to see herself in the real world, and she stops herself before she commits the ultimate act of suicide.

I think that’s what Petrushevskaya is trying to say with this tale – there is a light, somewhere.

What did you think of this one? Do you have any favourites you’d like us to read and discuss?