Secondhand Time: The Last of the Soviets (38 page)

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We sit talking on a terrace. The leaves are rustling, then it starts raining.
]

You know how beach romances go, they don’t last long. They’re flings. Like life, but in miniature. They sparkle and fade, it’s pretty. Like what we don’t get to have in real life and what we really want. That’s why people love traveling so much…meeting people…so I’d braided my hair, I was wearing a blue polka dot dress that I’d bought the day before we left at a children’s store. The sea…I like to swim out pretty far, there’s nothing in the world I love more than swimming. In the morning, I’d do my exercises under a white acacia. One day, a man walked by, just a regular man, totally normal-looking, not young. He noticed me, and for some reason it made him very glad. He stood there watching me: “Would you like me to come over and read you some poems this evening?” “Maybe, I’m about to go on a long swim!” “I’ll wait for you.” So he waited for me for several hours. He read poorly, constantly fixing his glasses. But it was touching. I saw…I saw what he was feeling…Those movements, those glasses, that nervousness. I’ve completely forgotten what poems they were. And why should that be so important? It was raining then, too. It started raining. I remember that…I haven’t forgotten a thing. The feelings…Our feelings are like some sort of separate entities—suffering, love, tenderness. They have lives of their own, they don’t depend on us. For some unknown reason, you suddenly choose one person over another, even though the other one might be better. Or without even realizing it, you’re suddenly part of another person’s life. You don’t know it yet, but they’ve already found you…They’ve sent out their signal…“I’ve been waiting for you.” With those words, he met me the following morning. And for some reason, something in his voice made me believe him, even though I wasn’t at all ready for this. Quite the opposite. But everything around me had transformed…It wasn’t love yet, but it felt like I had suddenly been given a lot of something. Two people had gotten through to each other. The signals had been received. I swam far out into the sea. When I came back in, he was waiting for me. Again, he told me, “We’re going to be happy together.” And for some reason, I believed him again. In the evening, we drank champagne. “This is red sparkling wine, but it cost as much as regular champagne.” I thought that was funny. He made eggs. “I have a strange relationship with eggs. I buy ten in one go, fry two at a time, but for some reason, there’s always one left over.” He’d say sweet little things like that.

Everyone would look at us and ask, “Is that your grandpa? Your father?” I always wore a short dress…I was twenty-eight. Later on, he grew handsome. After we got together. I think I know the secret…It’s a door that can only be opened with love…only love…“I thought about you.” “What did you think about me?” “I wanted us to go somewhere together. Far, far away. And I didn’t need anything but to feel you next to me. That’s how tender my feelings are, I just want to look at you and walk beside you.” We spent many happy hours together, as happy as children. “Maybe we’ll go away to an island and lie there on the sand.” Happy people are always like children. They need to be protected, they’re delicate and funny. Vulnerable. That’s how he and I were, I don’t know how else it could have possibly been. That’s how it was with him—although with a different person, it might have been different. It’s whatever you make of it…“Unhappiness is the best teacher,” as my mother used to say. And you want happiness. I’d wake up in the middle of the night wondering, “What am I doing?” I felt crazy, and from that tension…I…I had…“The back of your head is always tense,” he told me. What am I doing? Where am I falling? It’s an abyss.

…The breadbox…As soon as he saw bread, he’d start methodically devouring it. In any quantity. There must never be left-over bread. It’s your ration. So he’d eat and eat it, finishing however much there was. I didn’t understand it at first…

…He told me about school…In history classes, they’d open their textbooks and draw prison bars over the portraits of Marshals Tukhachevsky and Blyukher. The principal had told them to. While singing and laughing. Like it was a game. After class, kids would beat him up and write “Son of an enemy of the people” on his back in chalk.

…One step out of line and they’d shoot you; if you made it to the forest, wild animals would tear you to shreds. At night, in the barracks, other prisoners could murder you. Just for the hell of it, just like that. Without a word…nothing…It was camp life, every man for himself. I had to understand that…

…After the Leningrad Blockade
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broke, a transit of Blockade survivors arrived in the camp. They were like skeletons…nothing but flesh and bone…Barely human. They were in for stashing away ration cards for fifty grams of bread (the daily allotment) that had been issued to their dead mother or dead child…People would get six years for that. For two days, the camp was terrifyingly silent. The guards…even they were silent…

…For a while, he worked in a boiler room…Someone was looking out for the kid. The stoker was a philology professor from Moscow, his job was pushing the logs in on a wheelbarrow. They’d argue about whether someone who quoted Pushkin could be capable of shooting unarmed people. Someone who listened to Bach…

But why him? Why him specifically? Russian women love finding these unfortunate men. My grandmother was in love with someone, but her parents were marrying her off to somebody else. She really didn’t like the guy, she didn’t want to be with him in the least! Lord! She’d decided that when the priest in the church would ask her whether she was marrying him of her own free will, she would say no. But the priest had gotten drunk beforehand, so instead of asking her like he was supposed to, he just said, “Be nice to him, he froze his feet off in the war.” After that, she had no choice but to marry him. That’s how my grandmother ended up spending the rest of her life with my grandfather, even though she never loved him. It’s a great caption, summing up our whole lives…“Be nice to him, he froze his feet off in the war.” Was my mother happy? Mama…My father came back from the war in ’45…destroyed, drained. Sick from his wounds. Victors! Only their wives really knew what it was like to live with a victor. My mother would cry day and night after my father returned. It took years for those victors of ours to get re-accustomed to civilian life. Get used to it. I remember my father’s stories, how at first, just the mention of “fire up the sauna” and “go fishing” would set him off. Our men are martyrs, all of them are traumatized, either from war or from prison. From life in the camps. War and prison are the two most important words in the Russian language. Truly Russian words! Russian women have never had normal men. They keep healing and healing them. Treating them like heroes and children at the same time. Saving them. To this very day. Women still take on that same role. The Soviet Union has fallen…and now we have the victims of the fall of the empire. Of the collapse. The gulag had made Gleb brave. It was like a badge of honor: I survived! I endured that! The things I saw! But I still write books and kiss women…He was proud. While the men today walk around with fear in their eyes. Nothing but fear…They’re downsizing the army, the factories are at a standstill…The markets are full of engineers and doctors peddling their wares. PhDs. There are so many of them—everywhere you look, you see people who’ve been thrown off the train. They sit on the curb waiting for something to happen. My friend’s husband was a pilot, a squadron commander. They put him in the reserves. As soon as she lost her job, she learned a new trade—she used to be an engineer, now she’s a hairdresser. Meanwhile, he’s at home drinking his pain away, drinking because he was a pilot, a battle veteran with Afghanistan under his belt, and now he has to make his kids kasha. That’s how it goes…He’s angry at everyone. Furious. He went down to the conscription office, begged them to send him anywhere at all to fight, on a special mission, but they turned him away. There are plenty of men just like him. We have thousands of out-of-work army men, people who only know the gun and the tank, unsuited for any other kind of life. Our women are forced to be stronger than our men. They travel the world with their giant checkered bags. From Poland to China. Buying and selling. Carrying the weight of their entire households, the children and old folks, too. Plus their husbands. Plus the entire nation. It’s hard to explain this to an outsider. Practically impossible. My daughter is married to an Italian…His name is Sergio, he’s a journalist. When they come stay with me, he and I have our kitchen dialogues. In Russian…We’ll talk until morning. Sergio thinks that Russians love to suffer, that that’s the trick of the Russian soul. For us, suffering is “a personal struggle,” “the path to salvation.” Italians aren’t like that, they don’t want to suffer, they love life, which they believe is given to them to enjoy, not suffer through. We don’t think like that. We rarely talk about joy…about how happiness is an entire world. An amazing world! With so many little nooks, windows, doors that you need lots of little keys for. We’re always drawn down dark, Buninesque alleys.
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Like…my daughter and Sergio will come home from the supermarket, and he’ll be carrying the grocery bags. In the evening, she can play piano while he makes dinner. For me, it was nothing like that: He’d try to take the bags from me, and I’d grab them away, “I’ll do it. You shouldn’t.” He’d come into the kitchen, and I’d tell him, “This isn’t your place. Off to your desk.” I always shone with reflected light.

A year passed, maybe more…It was time for him to come home with me. You know, to meet everyone. I warned him that my mother was nice, but my daughter wasn’t always…she wasn’t like other children. I couldn’t guarantee that she’d give him a warm welcome. Oh, my Anya…She’d put everything up to her ear: her toy, a rock, a spoon…Most children put everything in their mouth, but what she wanted to know was, “How does it sound?” I started teaching her music pretty early, but she was a weird kid, as soon as I’d put on a record she’d turn around and leave the room. She didn’t like other people’s music, she was only interested in what she heard inside her head. So there he was, Gleb, very shy, with a bad haircut, they’d cut it too short—not particularly attractive. And he’d brought over records. He started telling the story of how he’d gone here and there…how he’d gotten his hands on those records. But with Anya’s hearing…she doesn’t care about words, she listens to…intonations…Right away, she took the records from him: “What wondelful wecords.” Just like that…A little while later, she put me in a tough spot: “How can I not call him Papa?” It wasn’t that he’d been trying to get her to like him, he just liked spending time with her. They fell in love at first sight…I was even a little jealous, thinking they loved each other more than they loved me. I managed to convince myself that I played a different role…[
She is silent.
] He asked her, “Anya, do you stutter?” “I’m not good at it anymore, but I used to be great.” You won’t get bored around the two of them. You could write down everything she said. So: “How can I not call him Papa?” We were at the park. Gleb had stepped away to buy cigarettes, and when he came back, “So what are you girls talking about?” I winked at her—don’t you dare, it’s too stupid. But she goes, “You tell him then.” What was I supposed to do? What could I say? I confessed: She’s scared of accidentally calling you Papa. He replied, “It’s not a simple matter, but if you really want to, you can go ahead.” “But watch out,” my Anya grew serious, “I have another papa, but I don’t like him. And Mama doesn’t love him.” That’s how she and I have always been. We burn bridges. By the time we were walking home, he was already Papa. She ran down the street, shouting, “Papa! Papa!” The next day in preschool she announced to everyone, “My papa is teaching me how to read.” “And who’s your papa?” “His name is Gleb.” The next day, her friend had news for her: “Anya, you’re not telling the truth, that’s not a papa. He’s not your real papa.” “The other one is the one who wasn’t real, this one is.” It’s useless arguing with Anya, he was Papa now, and as for me? I wasn’t his wife yet…No…

I had a vacation from work…I went away again. He ran down the platform after the train and waved to me for a long, long time. But I’d barely boarded the train before I met someone. There were these two young engineers from Kharkov who were also headed to Sochi. Lord! I was so young! The sea. The sun. We swam, we kissed, we danced. Everything was easy and free because the world was simple—the cha-cha-cha, the
kazachok—
I was in my element. Somebody loved me…Someone carried me around in his arms…For two hours, he carried me up a mountain. Young muscles, youthful laughter. Sitting around the bonfire until dawn…I had a dream…The ceiling opened up above me. The sky was blue…I saw Gleb…He and I were walking somewhere. We walked along the seashore, but the pebbles weren’t the kind that are smooth, polished by the waves. We were stepping on sharp rocks, as sharp as nails. I was wearing shoes, but he was barefoot. “When you’re barefoot,” he explained, “you can hear better.” But I knew that really, he was in pain. The pain made him float up into the sky…He soared above me…I saw him flying away. For some reason, his hands were folded over his chest, like a dead person’s…[
She stops.
]

Good Lord! I’m crazy…I shouldn’t tell anyone about these things. More often than not, I feel like I’ve been very lucky…So happy! I went to see him in the cemetery…I remember, as I was walking around, it felt like he was somewhere nearby. And I was so overwhelmingly happy, I wanted to cry from the joy. Cry. They say the dead don’t come back to us. Don’t believe that.

My vacation came to an end, and I went home. The engineer escorted me all the way back to Moscow. I’d promised to tell Gleb everything…I went to see him…There was a diary on his desk all covered in scribbling, the wallpaper in his office, and even the newspapers were all scrawled in four little letters: I…G…I…O…Upper case, lower case, print, cursive—he wrote them everywhere. Ellipses…ellipses…I asked him, “What is this?” He decoded it for me: “I guess it’s over?” So we were breaking up, and I had to somehow explain it to Anya. We went to pick her up, but she wanted to finish her drawing. There wasn’t time, we put her in the car, and she sat there wailing. He was already used to how crazy she was, he saw it as a sign of her talent. This was a family scene: Anya’s crying, he’s comforting her, and I’m sitting between them…The way he looked, the way he was looking at me…and I…It was only a moment…an instant…I realized what a terribly lonely person he was. Terribly! And…I had to marry him…I had to…[
She breaks down.
] We’re so lucky we didn’t miss each other. That I didn’t pass him by. What amazing luck! He gave me a whole life! [
She bursts into tears.
] So I married him…He was scared, he was afraid because he’d already been married twice. Those women had betrayed him, got tired of him…And you can’t blame them…Love is hard work. For me, it’s primarily work. We didn’t have a wedding, I never got a white dress. It all went off modestly. I had always dreamed of having a wedding and a white dress, of throwing a bouquet of white roses off a bridge. That’s what my dreams had been like.