"Journey to the Seventh Side of the World" by Lyudmila Ulitskaya, summary

The novel was written in 2000 and first published in Novy Mir magazine, later released as a book under the title "The Kukotsky Case." This book is a family saga that weaves together the history of Soviet medicine, genetics, and the everyday lives of several generations with reflections on the limits of human freedom and the mystery of childbirth. In 2001, the work won the Russian Booker Prize, and in 2005, director Yuri Grymov adapted it into a television series.

Professor Kukotsky’s gift and the birth of a family

Pavel Alekseevich Kukotsky comes from a long line of doctors, dating back to the time of Peter the Great. From a young age, he was fascinated by anatomy. During his medical practice, he developed a rare ability — "intravision." He sees diseased organs, tumors, and nascent life as a radiance through the body’s surface. This gift requires emotional and physical restraint.

In the fall of 1942, during an evacuation to a Siberian town, Kukotsky saved Elena Georgievna Flotova from advanced peritonitis. During a difficult operation, her uterus was removed. The professor fell in love with his rescued patient and took her, along with her two-year-old daughter Tanya and her devout servant, Vasilisa Gavrilovna, into his care. Soon, news arrived that Elena’s husband, Anton Flotov, had been killed at the front. Tormented by guilt over the loss of her husband, Elena nevertheless decided to marry Pavel, and the doctor arranged for the adoption of little Tanya.

In the fall of 1944, the family returned to Moscow. Kukotsky developed a large-scale project to reorganize the maternal and child health system. The central plank of the project was the demand to repeal the criminal ban on medical abortions, introduced in 1936. The doctor was confronted daily with the deaths of women from criminal interventions and clandestine operations. Ministry officials and the party leadership rejected his proposals. The doctor brought a jar containing a specimen — a sprouting bulb inside a perforated uterus — to the Central Committee, but the party boss was merely horrified by the horrific exhibit.

Country life at a dacha near Zvenigorod helps Tanya cope with her tuberculosis. She goes to school, where she meets a downtrodden classmate, Toma Polosukhina. In the spring, Toma’s mother, the janitor Lizaveta, dies of sepsis after a botched back-alley abortion. Shaken by the tragedy, Tanya brings the orphans into her home. Kukotsky takes custody of Toma.

A heated argument erupts in the house. Pavel Alexeyevich passionately argues to his wife the need to legalize abortion, while Elena, raised in a Tolstoyan commune, calls it legalized infanticide. In a rage, the professor hurls harsh words at his wife about her inability to have children. Vasilisa leaves the house but later returns. The marital intimacy between Pavel and Elena is shattered forever, although they continue to live under the same roof and care for each other. Kukotsky finds temporary solace in alcohol.

In 1953, after the fabricated "Doctors’ Plot" and Stalin’s death, government authorities finally permitted induced abortion. Kukotsky immersed himself in biorhythm research and helped women who had suffered from long-term infertility conceive.

Tanya grows up to be a beauty and befriends the sons of geneticist Ilya Goldberg, the twins Vitaly and Gennady. She enrolls in the evening classes of the biology department and works as a lab assistant at the institute under Professor Gansovsky, mastering brain histology. In the spring of 1960, a co-worker asks Tanya for instruments for inking the blood vessels of a human embryo. The question of whether the fetus is alive or dead shocks Tanya. She realizes science’s willingness to cross the line between animal vivisection and human annihilation. After an attempted sexual advances from Gansovsky, Tanya quits the lab and university forever, leaves home, and immerses herself in the bohemian street scene.

Transition space

The second part of the narrative unfolds in an surreal space where the soul of the gravely ill Elena appears under the name "New Girl." It’s a desert with shifting hills and an absence of familiar earthly landmarks. The souls of the dead and those on the threshold of death gather here.

The guide of souls is a Jew, accompanied by a Bald Man resembling Kukotsky, a Long-Haired Man with a saxophone case, an Old Woman in a hood, a Warrior, and a Mannequin. The Jew leads his companions to a lake of souls, tended by a girl named Katya, who died in a car accident. The monads of unborn and aborted babies mature in the glowing water.

The Bald Man assists in a fantastical birth of a giant woman, from whose womb, one after another, mature babies emerge without umbilical cords and fly away. The travelers approach a gigantic chasm, spanned by a rickety metal labyrinth. Overcoming his fear and the bridge’s structure, the Long Haired Man produces a pure sound from his instrument, while the New Girl and the Bald Man emerge onto a blooming, green shore. There, the souls of Elena and Pavel merge in harmony, where past grievances, physical injuries, and the boundaries of the earthly world disappear.

Years of loss and new searches

Earthly existence continues. Elena’s cerebrovascular disease is progressing, leading to gradual memory loss. She keeps notebooks, recording fleeting thoughts and household details, but gradually loses her sense of time.

Kukotsky’s childhood friend, geneticist Ilya Goldberg, is arrested on a trumped-up charge of embezzlement from a laboratory and sent to a labor camp. Tanya learns jewelry making from her friend Vika, nicknamed "Koza," making jewelry from wire and stones. After learning of Vitaly Goldberg’s beating by hooligans, Tanya courts him, entering into a close relationship first with Gennady and then with Vitaly.

Pavel Alekseevich receives a letter from the Inyurkollegiya: it turns out Elena’s first husband, Anton Flotov, survived captivity, emigrated to Argentina, died in Buenos Aires in 1963, and bequeathed part of his property to his ex-wife and daughter. Tanya refuses the inheritance from her unknown parent.

After discovering she was pregnant, Tanya entered into a sham marriage with Vitaly Goldberg, saving him from conscription. That summer, Tanya and Vika left for Odessa. At a sailors’ club, she met the young saxophonist Sergei Zvorykin. A love blossomed between them, based on a complete spiritual and musical affinity. Tanya toured the coast with a jazz trio, and in December, she gave birth to her daughter, Zhenya, in Leningrad.

Pavel Alekseevich arrives in Leningrad, checks on his granddaughter, and takes Tanya and the baby to Moscow. In the apartment on Novoslobodskaya, Tanya is in full swing: she’s starting renovations and decorating the New Year’s tree, where Sergey unexpectedly arrives with a saxophone. Later, the girl is baptized with the name Evgenia.

Tanya, Sergei, and little Zhenya returned to Leningrad. They lived in a workshop on the Petrogradskaya side, where Sergei mastered new saxophone techniques and Tanya crafted handmade jewelry. Soon, Tanya became pregnant again, dreaming of giving Sergei a son. In the summer of 1966, during a trip to Odessa, Tanya suddenly fell ill: jaundice, bone aches, and nosebleeds set in. She was taken to the hospital, where doctors were unable to diagnose her condition in a timely manner.

Sergei plays the saxophone for his beloved beneath the hospital room windows, bidding her farewell wordlessly. Pavel Alekseevich, arriving in Odessa, finds his daughter already dead on the autopsy table: the cause of death was advanced leptospirosis (Weil’s disease). The professor pushes for an investigation and quarantine of the maternity hospital, after which he takes the zinc coffin to Moscow and buries Tanya in the family grave at the German Cemetery.

Sergei returned to Leningrad in a state of profound shock. In the fall of 1966, on Peace Square, he was attacked by the mentally ill maniac Semyon Kurilko, who stabbed him in the chest with a shiv. Doctors performed a miracle, stitching up the punctured pericardium and bringing the musician back to life.

Change of generations

Years later, the old apartment on Novoslobodskaya Street has become a squalid dwelling. Pavel Alekseevich has passed away. Zhenya, now grown and pregnant with her first child, regularly visits her frail grandmother Elena. Toma, who has completed her education and married retired Lieutenant Colonel Mikhail Fyodorovich, has moved the senile old woman into a dark, seven-meter-long pantry off the kitchen.

Zhenya lovingly and patiently washes Elena Georgievna in a warm bath — this is the only place where the grandmother can speak coherently for a few minutes, fondly recalling the Siberian evacuation and her husband.

Soon, Zhenya is admitted to the maternity hospital and gives birth to a healthy boy. As her great-grandson is about to be born, Elena, dying on a Viennese chair in a closet, has a blissful dream: all her deceased relatives are gathered on the sunny balcony of an old Moscow house on Trekhprudny Lane. Standing among them is young Pavel Alexeyevich, holding the baby in his arms, radiating an unearthly light.

Vitaly Goldberg telephones the elderly Ilya Iosifovich in Boston to inform him of the birth of his great-grandson. The eighty-six-year-old geneticist, who reads the Torah and ponders the cosmic laws of existence, is determined to fly to Moscow to witness the continuation of life.