FOUND: STORY “CHAGALL”S WIFE” BY ABIGAIL ULMAN FROM NEW ENGLAND REVIEW V28 N4

New England Review 28.4

At the heart of Abigail Ulman’s story “Chagall’s Wife” from the most recent issue of New England Review is a typical yet powerful kind of story, where the movement of the main character is from the world of innocence to one of experience, from the world of ignorance to the one of knowledge, where the character is then (rightly or wrongly) implicit in all that knowledge’s history and responsiblity. Literature is riddled with examples of stories like this: Great Expectations, Daisy Miller, all the plays by Henrik Ibsen. Is that what all great stories are essentially about? Characters becoming aware of their role in the guilty knowledge of those around them? Certainly all great mysteries are about this.

“Chagall’s Wife” is a sort of a mystery, but a sexual one. The story begins with Sasha telling us: “I had never before bumped into a teacher on the weekend. But there he was…” The italics are mine, but the emphasis is Ulman’s. The rest of the story examines Sasha’s slow and awkward decision to stop being a student and become…well, perhaps this bit from the end of the first paragraph gives a clue: “Through the glass I saw him slide something off his fork with his mouth. I felt his eyes land on me the second I took mine off him. I drew in a breath and sauntered in.” (Is it getting a bit hot?)

Though the story is brief, Ulman’s prose lingers over moments when Sasha is caught between curiosity and desire–and also over the strange predatory awareness of Sasha’s teacher, Mr. Ackerman. It is an intimate portrait of Sasha’s coming of age into a world all but too ready to devour her.