Secondhand Time: The Last of the Soviets (29 page)

Igor? In my mind’s eye, I still see him as Mayakovsky. Beautiful and lonely. [
She is silent.
] Have I explained anything to you? I wonder whether I managed to get anything across…

“The market became our university”

It’s been so many years, but I still wonder why. What made him decide to do it? We were friends, but the decision was totally his…his alone…What can you say to somebody standing on the ledge? What? When I was that age, I thought about suicide too. Why? I don’t know. I loved my mother and father…my brother…Everything was all right at home. But still, I was drawn to it. Somewhere out there, there’s something else. What? Something…just over there…Like a whole world that’s brighter, more meaningful than the one that you live in, like something more important is happening just over our horizon. Out there, you can even touch the mystery that you can’t get close to otherwise, that you can’t tune into with reason. And you want to so badly…Let me just try it…try getting up on your windowsill…jumping off the balcony…But you’re not trying to die, you want to rise up. You believe you’re about to take flight. It feels like you’re in a dream…in a trance…When you come to, you remember a light, a sound…and that it had felt good…that you felt so much better than you do down here…

Our group of friends…Leshka was part of it, too…He just recently died of an overdose. Vadim got sucked into the nineties. Got into the book business. It had started out as a joke, a pipe dream, but as soon as he had money coming in, a racket showed up, these boys with revolvers. He was always either buying them off or running from them—he’d sleep in the woods, up in the trees. In those years, they didn’t bother with beatings, more often, they’d just murder you. What ever happened to him? He disappeared without a trace…The police still haven’t found him. They must have buried him somewhere. Arkady hightailed it to America: “I’d rather live under a bridge in New York City.” Just Ilyusha and I were left…Ilyusha had fallen in love and gotten married. While poets and artists were still in style, his wife had tolerated his eccentricities. Then brokers and accountants became the fashion and she left him. He fell into a major depression. The moment he steps outside, he has a panic attack. He shakes from fear. Now he stays home. Like an overgrown child living with his parents. Ilyusha keeps writing his poetry—a cri de coeur…When we were kids, we used to all listen to the same tapes and read the same Soviet books. Ride the same bicycles…Everything was simpler in our old life: one pair of boots for all seasons, one coat, one pair of pants. We were raised like young warriors in ancient Sparta: If the Motherland called, we’d sit on a hedgehog for Her.

…It was some military holiday…They walked our preschool class to the monument to the heroic Young Pioneer Marat Kazei. “Look, children,” our teacher said. “This young hero blew himself up with a hand grenade and took a whole lot of fascists down with him. When you grow up, you have to be just like him.” You mean we have to blow ourselves up with grenades? I don’t actually remember this, but my mother told me the story…That night, I wept bitterly: I would have to die and lie somewhere all alone, without my mom and dad. The fact that I was crying already meant that I was no hero…I ended up getting sick.

…When I was in school, I dreamt of getting into the brigade that guarded the Eternal Flame in the center of town. They only accepted the very best students. They’d sew them military overcoats, hats with earflaps, and issue them army gloves. It wasn’t an annoying obligation, it was a great honor. Meanwhile, we listened to Western music, jockeyed for blue jeans; at that point, we already had them…A symbol of the twentieth century, right up there with the Kalashnikov. My first pair of jeans said “Montana” on the label—it was so cool! But at night, I would still dream of hurling myself at the enemy with a hand grenade…

…My grandma died, so my grandpa moved in with us. He was a career officer, a lieutenant colonel. He had a lot of medals and decorations, and I’d always be bugging him: “Grandpa, what did they give you this medal for?” “For defending Odessa.” “What was your special achievement?” “I defended Odessa.” That was all I could get out of him. I’d get frustrated. “Come on, Grandpa, tell me about something noble and lofty.” “You want to know something noble and lofty, go to the library. Take out a book and read it.” My grandpa was great, we got along really well, we had this great chemistry. He died in April, but he’d wanted to live until May. Until Victory Day.

…When I was sixteen, I was summoned to the conscription office. “Which of the services would you like to join?” I told the enlistment officer that when I graduated, I would volunteer to go fight in Afghanistan. “Idiot,” he said. But I prepared for a long time: I learned how to parachute, studied machine guns…We are the last Young Pioneers of the Land of Soviets. Always be prepared!

…A boy from our class was about to move to Israel…They called an all-school assembly to try to talk him out of it: If your parents want to leave, they can go. We have good orphanages, you can finish school there and remain in the USSR. He was considered a traitor. They kicked him out of the Komsomol. The next day, our whole class was going on a trip to harvest potatoes at a collective farm. He showed up, and they led him off the bus. At assembly, the principal warned everyone that whoever corresponded with him would have a hard time graduating. After he left, we all started writing him letters as a group…

…During perestroika…Those same teachers told us to forget everything they’d ever taught us and start reading the papers. We started studying newspapers in class. The graduation test for history was canceled, we didn’t have to memorize all those Party Congresses after all. For the last October demonstration, they still handed out posters and portraits of the leaders, but for us, it just felt like Carnival in Brazil.

…I remember people walking around empty stores with bags full of Soviet currency…

I went to university…At that point, Chubais was lobbying for privatization vouchers, promising that one voucher would buy you two Volgas when in reality, these days, it’s worth about two kopecks. What an exciting time! I handed out flyers in the subway…Everyone dreamt of a new life…Dreams…People dreamt that tons of salami would appear at the stores at Soviet prices and members of the Politburo would stand in line for it along with the rest of us. Salami is a benchmark of our existence. Our love for salami is existential…Twilight of the idols! The factories to the workers! The soil to the peasants! The rivers to the beavers! The dens to the bears! Mexican soap operas were the perfect replacement for Soviet parades and live broadcasts of the First Congress of People’s Deputies. I stayed in college for two years and then dropped out. I feel sorry for my parents because they were told flat out that they were pathetic
sovoks
whose lives had been wasted for less than a sniff of tobacco, that everything was their fault, beginning with Noah’s Ark, and that now, no one needed them anymore. Imagine working that hard, your whole life, only to end up with nothing. All of it took the ground out from underneath them, their world was shattered; they still haven’t recovered, they couldn’t assimilate into the drastically new reality. My younger brother would wash cars after class, sell chewing gum and other junk in the subway, and he made more money than our father—our father who was a scientist. A PhD! The Soviet elite! When they started selling salami at the privately owned stores, all of us ran over to ogle it. And that was when we saw the prices! This was how capitalism came into our lives…

I got a job as a freight handler. Real happiness! My friend and I would unload a truck of sugar and get paid in cash plus a sack of sugar each. What was a sack of sugar in the nineties? An entire subsistence! Money! Money! The beginning of capitalism…You could become a millionaire overnight or get a bullet to the head. When they talk about it today, they try to frighten you: There could have been a civil war, we were teetering on the edge of ruin! It didn’t feel like that to me. I remember when the streets emptied out and there was nobody left on the barricades. People stopped subscribing to or even reading the newspapers. The men hanging out in the courtyard berated Gorbachev and then Yeltsin for hiking up the vodka prices. They’d gone after their golden calf! Wild, inexplicable avarice took hold of everyone. The smell of money filled the air. Big money. And absolute freedom—no Party, no government. Everyone wanted to make some dough, and those who didn’t know how envied those who did. Some sold, others bought…Some “covered,” others “protected.” When I made my first “big bucks,” I took my friends out to a restaurant. We ordered Martini vermouth and Grand Piano vodka—the crème de la crème! I wanted to feel the weight of the glass in my hand, imagine that I was one of the beautiful people. We lit up our Marlboros. Everything was just like we’d read about in Remarque. For a long time, we modeled ourselves after those images. New stores, new restaurants…They were like stage sets from a different life…

…I sold fried hot dogs. Those brought in crazy money…

…I shipped vodka to Turkmenistan…I spent a whole week in a sealed freight car with my business partner. We had our axes ready, plus a crowbar. If they found out what we were bringing into the country they would have killed us! On the way back, we carted a shipment of terrycloth towels…

…I sold toys. One time, I sold off an entire lot wholesale for a truckload of carbonated beverages, traded that for a shipping container of sunflower seeds, and then, at a butter plant, traded it all in for butter, sold half of the butter, and traded the other half for frying pans and irons…

…Now I have a flower business. I learned how to “salt” roses: you put heat-treated salt at the bottom of a cardboard box—you need a layer at least a centimeter thick—and then you put half-blossomed flowers into it and pour some more salt on top of them. You put a lid on the box and put it all in a big plastic bag. Tie it up tight. Then, a month or a year later, you take them out, wash them off…Come by any day, any time. Here’s my card…

The market became our university…Maybe it’s going too far to call it a university, but an elementary school for life, definitely. People would visit it like they were going to a museum. Or to the library. Boys and girls stumbled around with crazed expressions, like zombies among the stalls…A couple stops in front of some Chinese epilators, and she explains the importance of epilation: “Don’t you want that? For me to be like…” I don’t remember the name of the actress…Say it was Marina Vlady or Catherine Deneuve. Millions of new little boxes and jars. People would bring them home as though they were sacred texts and, after using their contents, they wouldn’t throw them out, they’d display them in a place of honor on their bookshelves or put them in their china cabinets behind glass. People read the first glossy magazines as though they were the classics, with the reverent faith that behind the cover, directly under that packaging, you’d find the beautiful life. There were kilometer-long queues outside of the first McDonald’s, stories about it on the news. Educated, intelligent adults saved boxes and napkins from there and would proudly show them off to guests.

I have this good friend…His wife slaves away at two jobs, while he has too much pride to work: “I’m a poet. I am not about to go out and sell pots and pans. It’s gross.” Back in the day, he and I, like everyone else, would walk around chanting, “Democracy! Democracy!” We had no idea what all that would lead to. No one was itching to peddle pots and pans. And now, there’s no choice: You either feed your family or you hang on to your
sovok
ideals. It’s either/or, no other options…You can write poems, strum the guitar, and people will pat you on the shoulder: “Well, go on! Go on!” But your pockets are empty. The people who left? They sell pots and pans and deliver pizza, but in other countries…Assemble boxes at cardboard factories…That kind of thing is not considered shameful like it is here.

Did you understand what I’ve been trying to tell you? I’ve been talking about Igor…About our lost generation—a communist upbringing and a capitalist life. I hate guitars! You can have mine if you want.

*1
As Leo Tolstoy was called in a 1908 essay by Lenin.

*2
Progressive writers from the nineteenth century.

*3
Russian fairy tale locale.

*4
As previously noted, according to the Soviet education system, a fifth grader would have been eleven or twelve and a ninth grader fourteen or fifteen.

*5
A reference to Osip Mandelstam’s famous poem “After Long-fingered Paganini,” which was adapted into song by Vladimir Vysotsky.

*6
“Danko’s Burning Heart,” an 1895 short story by Maxim Gorky.

*7
Sergei Dovlatov (1941–1990) and Viktor Nekrasov (1911–1987) were Soviet dissident writers who were not officially published in the USSR. They both emigrated in the 1970s.

*8
Filip Kirkorov (1967–) is a Russian pop singer.

*9
Roman Abramovich (1966–) is a Russian oligarch whose fortune, in 2003, was estimated to be around $10.2 billion.