MANNEQUIN

ELENA SIBIRENKO-STAVROYANI

Stanitsa Modern Short Story

stanitsa-kiev

Translated by Enya Lennon

Cover and book artwork by Oksana Zdor

STANITSA-KIEV Ltd

160-a/87, Kharkovskoye shosse

Kiev, Ukraine 02091

e-mail: contact@stanitsa-kiev.com

www.stanitsa-kiev.com

ISBN 978-5-8218-0068-4 © Stanitsa-Kiev Ltd, 2025

I am a mannequin.

I was placed on the top floor of the fabrics department, wrapped in crêpe de Chine. I stood alone for several days until one of the shop assistants said, “He’s in the way here, you keep bumping into him, we need to get him out of here.” (I thought, Why ‘him’? I’m a ‘she’.) The fabric was rolled off me like thread off a spool and I was taken away and shoved into a corner. Here there were no shop assistants, no customers, no decorators. Here there were a lot of people like me.

“Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Vitaus,” the person standing beside me said quietly.

I was stumped. I didn’t know what my name was. I told him that.

“They forgot to give you a name. It happens. No matter, you’re the only one without, so we won’t get mixed up. We have two Ayas, we call them ‘Light Aya’ and ‘Dark Aya’.”

“Tell me about everyone.”

“There in the opposite corner is Tati, she’s the most beautiful girl in the store and North’s girlfriend. North is in charge here. He’s on the floor below, in the menswear department. She’s really annoyed she’s in the corner now, she’s always the centre of attention. I heard they were planning on dressing her in an evening gown. The dress isn’t ready yet so she’s here. And this is Auntie Pyusho. She’s the eldest and she tells us all off when we get too noisy. They’re going to change her into winter clothes along with Lali.”

“And you? What are they going to change you into?” I asked.

“Nothing,” he said.

“Why are you here?”

Vitaus was quiet for a few moments. “I’m faulty,” he said. “I was made a few centimetres shorter than the norm.”

“Who’s Norm?” I asked.

“You still don’t know the language very well, you were made recently. There are certain norms, well, standards. No more, no less, and we have to fit those. They miscalculated a little with me, they made me a little too small and now they only put me on display when they really need to. But mostly they keep me in storage.”

I understood.

“I’ll probably be kept in storage too. I’m also a few centimetres too short.”

“It’s different for you,” Vitaus said sadly. “For you it might even be a good thing, you’re a woman.”

I thought how good it was to be a woman, if even a flaw was considered lucky.

“And overall you turned out well. Just like a real person,” said Vitaus.

“What are you saying?” I asked surprised. “I am a real person.”

“No. No, you’re not a real person. You’re a mannequin.”

Now I didn’t understand.

“Okay,” I said. “Guess I’m a mannequin.”

“And I’m not at all like a real person,” Vitaus said very softly.

I felt so sorry for him that I almost cried. But I couldn’t cry. When I was made, they gave me a smile.

I stood in the corner for three days.

I learnt about all the shop mannequins from both the Ayas. Auntie Pyusho taught me manners without which, she said, you could not be a respectable mannequin. Vitaus helped most of all to get me settled. Tati didn’t bother with talking to me. When she was taken away, Vitaus said,

“The dress is ready. That means there’ll be a ball tonight.”

“A ball?”

“Sometimes we organise balls. North orders everyone about. He’s in charge.”

“Why?”

“He’s the tallest. He was made a few centimetres taller than the norm.”

“So he’s faulty too.”

“Don’t be silly, faulty how?”

“Faulty, only in the other direction.”

“You were born recently, you don’t really understand yet,” said Vitaus. “North is in charge. Anyone would be lucky to be his girlfriend. Right now, that’s Tati. Tati wants to show off her new dress at a ball. So North moved Christmas.”

“Is it possible to move Christmas?”

“North can do whatever he wants. We’ll celebrate Christmas when

Tati is ready to celebrate it.” Tati hadn’t been ready to celebrate for a long time.

Vitaus said that they dressed her in blue silk, but she wanted purple satin. She’d seen some, so that meant that everyone would have to wait.

Auntie Pyusho was angry. If everyone started being fussy, she said, we’d have to celebrate Christmas at Easter. When she was young, girls weren’t allowed to behave like that. “And North is a fine one too, wrapped around her little finger he is,” she added, quietly.

I don’t know how long I would have stood in the corner if things in the shop hadn’t become worse and worse. Someone decided to organise a paid exhibition; ‘Between the Sheets’ they were going to call it.

“It’s not a bad idea,” agreed the store manager. “We haven’t done anything like that before. It would definitely attract the attention of customers.”

“We just need to draw them in,” said the stock manager.

“Yes, just draw them in,” said the senior shop assistant.

“Posters are annoying,” said the junior shop assistant.

“Maybe an advertising spot?” said the head shop assistant.

“Maybe… products?” said the trainee shop assistant.

The manager looked at them and said, “We’ll have to have a look through the faulty mannequins, see if there’s anything we can pull out and put up there. It might draw people in.”

“Just not a man,” said the senior shop assistant. “That won’t draw anyone in, and it might even scare some customers away.”

“Of course, a woman,” said the manager. “It’d be good to have something nonstandard. Something flawed but unusual.”

The assistant manager came up to us and started looking at us and turning us this way and that to show the manager.

“Not that one… Not that one… That’s no good… Not that…” mumbled the manager.

“Wait, stop!” he said suddenly. “That one looks like what we need.”

The assistant manager picked me up. Everyone came over to me and started looking at me, rotating me on my axis and turning me upside down. I cried out for them to stop but they didn’t hear me. I struggled but they didn’t feel it. I started to cry.

“She has a good smile,” noted the manager. “Asymmetrical and unconventional.”

“They miscalculated with her, either at the start or the end,” said the head shop assistant. “Look, she’s a little shorter.”

“But then here she’s a little bigger,” observed the trainee shop assistant.

“We’ll put her on the first floor by the entrance to the exhibition,” said the manager. “She’ll have them reaching for their wallets.”

They left, discussing the exhibition loudly. Vitaus handed me a handkerchief.

“This is what real people are like!” Auntie Pyusho shouted angrily. “And they still fancy themselves better than us.”

“Don’t be upset,” the Ayas said in unison.

“You’re very lucky. To be chosen for an exhibition straight away,” said Light Aya.

“You could’ve been standing in the corner for half your life,” said Dark Aya.

“I don’t want to do it! I’m not going to go anywhere!” I shouted.

“You don’t have a choice,” Lali replied.

“Now do you see that you’re a mannequin?” asked Vitaus.

* * *

Everything turned out not to be so scary (or maybe I just got used to it all while they set up the display). The only bad thing was that my hands and feet were numb by the end of the day; they bent one of my arms and pushed it behind my back, the other one was raised, my head was thrown back, and they balanced me on my toes. It was cold too; the door was opening all the time and lots of customers turned up.

Bit by bit, I got used to it. So much so that Vitaus passed on a message from Auntie Pyusho — I was behaving simply outrageously. “I know they want you there and they’ve put you there, there’s nothing to be done about that. But you can stand quietly without drawing attention to yourself.”

I told Vitaus, “Tell her that she was the one who said not to shy away from any kind of work and to do the best I can.” And that’s what I did.

The manager tirelessly praised the person who had the idea of putting me on display, and the person who miscalculated a little when making me.

Auntie Pyusho’s indignation inspired me. I pulled up my socks and stretched my arm as high as I could. Another half an hour and the store would be closed. I could relax. I stared at the entrance door. Snowflakes were dancing happily on the other side of the glass.

Cold air blew in through the doors as they were flung open.

The man held the door open for his companion. She stood in the doorway, shook snow from her umbrella, and folded it. Shook it and folded it. Shook it. And folded it. I was freezing, inside and out.

Finally, they came inside.

I became as hot as if a bonfire had been lit next to me.

I wanted to leave my plinth immediately or at least get changed.

He listened to her absent-mindedly. They bought tickets and came to the exhibition. They left soon afterwards. On his way out, he turned and glanced around vacantly.

I could hardly wait until closing time.

The shop assistants chatted as they got ready to go home. I found out they wanted to fill the exhibition with new displays, dedicate the entire first floor to it, and place me by the entrance to the shop, near the doorway.

“She’ll play the role of hostess, greeting guests at the door.”

I didn’t feel qualified for this role.

When the store emptied out, I stepped down from my display plinth and went in search of Vitaus. I found him by the lift.

“Why are you so sad?” he asked. “North announced a ball today, Tati got her lilac dress. There’s no time to prepare for it, tomorrow would be better, but Tati is worried that the lace will start to wrinkle by then. Go quickly and help in the events hall. Actually, maybe you’d better not. Go and have a rest, you look exhausted. I’ll tell Auntie Pyusho that I couldn’t find you, and you go hide in the decorator’s workshop. No one would ever think to look for you there. And don’t go into the library, North has taken to reading the sports news in there. Or the hair salon, Tati’s in there getting dressed up to the nines. Everyone is rushed off their feet, no one can find the shade of lilac nail polish she wants… Okay, I’d better go, I still need to find both the Ayas. They’re probably getting themselves checked for radioactive isotopes. All the store employees can be examined for free you know, you can be too. Come on, I’ll take you to the workshop.”

I went into the senior decorator’s little room and sat at the table. I was very tired. I didn’t want a ball. I didn’t want to stand in the doorway on the first floor.

* * *

Vitaus called me when all the preparations were complete.

“Come quickly, it’s already started.”

Everyone came to the ball except the mannequins who stood in the main window.

“They take it in turns to step away,” Vitaus explained to me, “so that it isn’t noticeable.”

“We almost didn’t wait for you!” Auntie Pyusho turned on me. “Where did you get to? Why aren’t you dressed?”

“I have nothing to wear,” I replied.

“Women always have ‘nothing to wear’. Put on whatever you have, it doesn’t matter if you’ve already been seen in it.”

“But she really has nothing,” said Vitaus.

“Ah yes,” she remembered. “Well, never mind, go like that If you can stand like that in front of the entire