Secondhand Time: The Last of the Soviets (15 page)

*17
Barracks were another Soviet solution to communal housing, especially on the outskirts of major cities and in factory towns. They were constructed as temporary buildings, but many people ended up settling in them permanently.

*18
Soviet children typically began first grade at the age of seven. The Soviet school system went up to the tenth grade. Fifth graders would be eleven or twelve years old.

*19
The August putsch took place while Gorbachev was in Foros, in Crimea.

AS TOLD BY HIS NEIGHBOR,

MARINA TIKHONOVNA ISAICHIK

Strangers, what do you want, coming here? People keep coming and coming. Well, death never comes for no reason, there’s always a reason. Death will find a reason.

He burned alive on his vegetable patch, among his cucumbers…Poured acetone over his head and lit a match. I was sitting here watching TV when suddenly I heard screaming. An old person’s voice…a familiar voice, like Sashka’s…and then another, younger voice. A student had been walking past, there’s a technical college nearby, and there he was, a man on fire. What can you say! He ran over, started trying to put him out. Got burned himself. By the time I got outside, Sashka was on the ground, moaning…his head all yellow…You’re not from around here, what do you care? What do you need a stranger’s grief for?

Everyone wants a good look at death. Ooh! Well…In our village, where I lived with my parents before I was married, there was an old man who liked to come and watch people die. The women would shame him and chase him away: “Shoo, devil!” but he’d just sit there. He ended up living a long time. Maybe he really was a devil! How can you watch? Where do you look…in what direction? After death, there is nothing. You die and that’s it—they bury you. But when you’re alive, even if you’re unhappy, you can walk around in the breeze or stroll through the garden. When the spirit leaves, there’s no person left, just the dirt. The spirit is the spirit and everything else is just dirt. Dirt and nothing else. Some die in the cradle, others live until their hair goes gray. Happy people don’t want to die…and those who are loved don’t want to die, either. They beg to stay longer. But where are these happy people? On the radio, they’d said that after the war was over, we would all be happy, and Khrushchev, I remember, promised…He said that communism would soon be upon us. Gorbachev swore it, too, and he spoke so beautifully…it had sounded so good. Now Yeltsin’s making the same promises. He even threatened to lie down on the train tracks…I waited and waited for the good life to come. When I was little, I waited for it…and then when I got a little older…Now I’m old. To make a long story short, everyone lied and things only ever got worse. Wait and see, wait and suffer. Wait and see…My husband died. He went out, collapsed, and that was that—his heart stopped. You couldn’t measure it or weigh it, all the trouble we’ve seen. But here I am, still alive. Living. My children all scattered: My son is in Novosibirsk, and my daughter stayed in Riga with her family, which, nowadays, means that she lives abroad. In a foreign country. They don’t even speak Russian there anymore.

I have an icon in the corner and a little dog so that there’s someone to talk to. One stick of kindling won’t start a fire, but I do my best. Oh…It’s good of God to have given man cats and dogs…and trees and birds…He gave man everything so that he would be happy and life wouldn’t seem too long. So life wouldn’t wear him down. The one thing I haven’t gotten sick of is watching the wheat turn yellow. I’ve gone hungry so many times that the thing I love best is ripening grain, seeing the sheaves sway in the wind. For me, it’s as beautiful as the paintings in a museum are for you…Even now, I don’t hanker after white bread—there’s nothing better than salted black bread with sweet tea. Wait and see…and then wait some more…The only remedy we know for every kind of pain is patience. Next thing you know, your whole life’s gone by. That’s how it was for Sashka…Our Sashka…He waited and waited and then he couldn’t take it any longer. He got tired. The body lies in the earth, but the soul has to answer for everything. [
She wipes her tears.
] That’s how it is! We cry down here…and when we die, we cry then, too…

People have started believing in God again because there is no other hope. In school, they used to teach us that Lenin was God and Karl Marx was God. The churches were used to store grain and stockpile beets. That’s how it was until the war came. War broke out…Stalin reopened the churches so prayers would be said for the victory of Russian arms. He addressed the people: “Brothers and sisters…My friends…” And what had we been before that? Enemies of the people…Kulaks and kulak sympathizers…In our village, all of the best families were subjected to dekulakization; if they had two cows and two horses, that was already enough to make them kulaks. They’d ship them off to Siberia and abandon them in the barren taiga forest…Women smothered their children to spare them the suffering. Oh, so much woe…so many tears…more tears than there is water on this Earth. Then Stalin goes addressing his “brothers and sisters”…We believed him. Forgave him. And defeated Hitler! He showed up with his tanks…gleaming and iron-plated…and we defeated him anyway! But what am I today? Who are we now? We’re the electorate…I watch TV, I never miss the news…We’re the electorate now. Our job is to go and vote for the right candidate then call it a day. I was sick one time and didn’t make it to the polling station, so they drove over here themselves. With a red box. That’s the one day they actually remember us…Yep…

We die how we lived…I even go to church and wear a little cross, but there has never been any joy in my life, and there isn’t any now. I never got any happiness. And now even praying won’t help. I just hope that I get to die soon…I hope the heavenly kingdom hurries up and comes, I’m sick of waiting. Just like Sashka…He’s in the graveyard now, resting. [
She crosses herself.
] They buried him with music, with tears. Everyone wept. Many tears are shed on that day, people feel sorry for you. But what’s the point of repenting? Who can hear us after death? All that’s left of him are two rooms in a barracks house, a vegetable patch, some red certificates, and a medal: “Victor of Socialist Emulation.” I have a medal just like that in my cabinet. I was a Stakhanovite
^*1
and a deputy. There wasn’t always enough to eat, but there were plenty of red certificates. They’d hand you one and take your picture. Three families live together in this barracks. We moved in when we were young, we thought it would only be for a year or two, but we ended up spending our entire lives here. And we’ll die in this barracks, too. For twenty, for thirty years…people were on the waiting list for an apartment, putting up with this…Then, one day, Gaidar comes and laughs in our faces: So go ahead and buy one! With what money? Our money evaporated…one reform, then another…We were robbed! What a country they flushed down the toilet! Every family had had two little rooms, a small shed, and a vegetable patch. We were exactly the same. Look at all the money we made! We’re rich! We spent our whole lives believing that one day, we would all live well. It was a lie! A great big lie! And our lives…better not to remember what they were like…We endured, worked and suffered. Now we’re not even living anymore, we’re just waiting out our final days.

Sashka and I were from the same village…Here, near Brest. We used to spend evenings together on our bench reminiscing. What else is there to talk about? He was a good man. He didn’t drink, he wasn’t a drunk…No-o-o…Even though he lived alone. What’s an old bachelor to do? He’d drink a little—take a nap…drink a little more…I walk around the courtyard. Pace. I walk and think: Earthly life isn’t the end. Death gives the soul some open space…Where is he? In his final moments, he thought of his neighbors, he didn’t forget us. The barracks is old, they built it right after the war, the wood’s dried out. It would have caught fire like paper, gone up in flames in an instant! In the blink of an eye! It would have burned down to the ground, to a pile of ashes…He wrote a note to his children: “Raise your children right. Farewell,” and left it in a visible place. And then he went out into the garden…onto his vegetable patch.

Oh! Oh! So…what can you do…The ambulance came, they laid him out on a stretcher, but he hopped off, he wanted to walk. “What have you done, Sashka?” I followed him to the ambulance. “I’m sick and tired of living. Call my son, tell him to come to the hospital.” He could still talk…His jacket was burnt, his shoulder was all white and clean. He left five thousand rubles…That used to be good money! He took it out of his savings account and left it next to his note. His life savings. Before perestroika, that kind of money could buy you a car, a Volga. The most expensive model! But today? It was only enough for a new pair of boots and a funeral wreath. That’s our life! He lay there on the stretcher turning black…turning black right before my eyes…The doctors also took that kid who’d found him, who’d grabbed my wet sheets off the clothesline (I’d washed them that day) and thrown them on top of him. A stranger…just a student…He was passing by and suddenly saw a man in flames. Sitting in his vegetable patch, hunched over and on fire. Smoldering. Silent! That’s how he described him later, “Silent and burning.” Burning alive…In the morning, his son knocked on my door: “Papa is dead.” Lying in his coffin…his head covered in burns and his hands…Black, all black…His hands had been golden! He used to be able to do anything. He was a carpenter, a mason. Everyone around here has something to remember him by—a table, a bookcase, shelves…Sometimes he would stand there in the courtyard and plane wood into the night. I can see him now, standing there and planing. He loved wood. He could recognize the type of wood by its smell, from a single shaving. Every kind of tree, he told me, has its own smell, and the strongest-smelling wood is pine. “Pine smells like good tea, and maple has a happy smell.” He worked until his dying day. The proverb is true: While the chain’s in your hands, the bread’s in your teeth. There is no surviving on today’s pensions. I work as a nanny, raising other people’s children. They give me a kopeck, I buy sugar and cheap bologna. What can you afford on our pensions? You get yourself some bread and milk, and then there isn’t enough left over for slippers. It’s just not enough. Old people used to sit on the benches in their courtyards, carefree. Prattling. Not anymore…Some collect empty bottles around town, others stand in front of the church, begging…Some sell sunflower seeds or cigarettes at the bus stop. Ration cards for vodka. A person got trampled here in the liquor aisle. Trampled to death. Vodka is worth more than—what’s it called?—that American dollar. You can buy anything with vodka. You can use it to pay the plumber and the electrician, too. Otherwise, they won’t even come. So…Well…Life went by…The only thing money can’t buy is time. Weep before God or not, you can’t buy it. That’s just the way it is.

Sashka made the decision to stop living. He didn’t want to go on. Returned his ticket back to God himself…Oh! Lord! The police keep coming and coming. Asking questions…[
She pauses to listen.
] There it goes, the train whistle…That’s the Moscow train—Brest-Moscow. I don’t even need a watch. I get up with the whistle of the Warsaw train—six in the morning. Then it’s the Minsk train, and then the first train to Moscow…They sound different in the morning and at night. Sometimes I’ll listen to them all night long. When you get older, sleep evades you…Who do I have to talk to now? I sit on the bench alone…I would console him: “Sashka, find yourself a good woman. Get married.” “Lizka will come back. I’ll wait for her.” I hadn’t seen her in seven years, not since she left him. She got involved with some sort of officer. She was young, much younger than him. He was crazy about her. She beat her head against the coffin: “I’m the one who ruined Sashka’s life.” Oh! Well…Love isn’t a hair, you can’t just pull it out. And no ritual can make it stick. Why cry over it? Who’s going to hear you underground…[
Silence.
] Oh, Lord! You can do whatever you want before you’re forty, you can even sin. But after forty, you have to repent. Then God will forgive you.

[
She laughs.
] You’re still writing? Go on, keep writing. I’ll tell you more stories…I’ve had more than my share of grief…[
She raises her head.
] Look there…The swallows have come! It’s going to get warm soon. The truth is, a journalist has already come here and talked to me…asked me all about the war…I would give everything I have to prevent a war. There’s nothing more terrifying than war! We were under fire from German guns, our houses cracking apart in flames. Our gardens burning. Oh Lord! Sashka and I would talk about the war every day…His father went missing in action, his brother died fighting with the partisans. They herded the prisoners into Brest—throngs of people! Drove them down the roads like they were horses, then kept them in fenced-in lots where they’d drop dead and lie there like garbage. All summer long, Sashka would go there with his mother to look for his father…He’d start telling me…and wouldn’t be able to stop. They looked for him among the living and the dead. No one was afraid of death anymore, it was an everyday occurrence. Before the war, we’d sing, “From the taiga to the British sea, / There’s nothing more mighty than the Red Army…” We sang it proudly! Spring came, the ice melted…it all broke apart…and the whole river behind our village was choked with corpses. Naked, blackened, only their belts shining. Belts with little red stars. There’s no sea without water and no war without blood. God gives men life, but during a war, anyone can take it away…[
She weeps.
] I pace and pace the courtyard. Marking time. Sometimes, I feel like Sashka is standing there behind me. I’ll hear his voice. Then I turn around and there’s no one there. What can you do…Well…What have you done, Sashka? What a painful path you chose! Maybe there’s one good thing: You burned on Earth, so it won’t be like that in heaven. You’ve done your suffering. There must be somewhere where they keep all our tears…How will he be greeted there? Down here, the invalids crawl, the paralyzed lie there, the deaf get by. It’s not up to us to decide…We’re not the ones in charge…[
She crosses herself.
]