Secondhand Time: The Last of the Soviets (41 page)

When I was in the orphanage…In the orphanage, they kept
osadnik
orphans until the age of fourteen, then they would send them off to work in the mines. By the time they were eighteen, they’d all have tuberculosis…just like Vladya…That was our destiny. Vladya told me that somewhere far away, we had a home. But it was very far away. Aunt Marylya was still out there, our mother’s sister…an illiterate peasant. She went around asking about us. Strangers wrote letters on her behalf. I still can’t understand it…How? How did she do it? A notice came to the orphanage to send me and my sister to such and such an address. To Belarus. The first time, we didn’t make it all the way back to Minsk, they took us off the train in Moscow. Everything happened for a second time: Vladya had a fever and ended up in the hospital; I was quarantined. After the quarantine, I was transferred to a temporary foster care center, which was in a basement that smelled like chlorine. Strangers…I’m always living among strangers…My whole life. But my aunt kept writing…and writing…Six months later, she found me again in the foster care center. Again, I heard the words “home” and “aunt.” They took me to the train…A dark train car, with only the corridor lit. Full of people’s shadows. There was a teacher escorting me. We got to Minsk and bought a ticket to Postavy…I knew the names of all those towns. Vladya had entreated me: “Remember them. Remember that our estate is called Sovchino.” From Postavy we walked to Gridki…my aunt’s village…We sat down by the bridge to rest. A neighbor biked by on his way home from the night shift. He asked who we were. We said that we’d come to see Aunt Marylya. “Yes,” he said, “you’re going the right way.” And then he must have told my aunt that he’d seen us…because she came running toward us…I saw her and said, “That lady looks like my mother.” And that was it.

I had a shaved head, I sat on the long bench at Uncle Stakha’s house, my mother’s brother. The door was open, and through the doorway, I watched the people keep coming and coming…stopping there just to stare at me, speechless…It was completely unreal! No one spoke. They just stood there staring and weeping. In total silence. The whole village came…and they covered my tears with their tears, everyone wept with me. All of them had known my father, some of them had even worked for him. Oftentimes afterward I would hear: “At the collective farm, all we get are tally marks, but Antek (my father) would always pay us.” Here it was, my legacy. They’d moved our house from our farmstead to the central collective farm, it’s still the village council building. I know everything about those people, in fact, I know more than I would like to. The same day the Red Army soldiers loaded our family into a cart and drove us off to the station, these same people…Azhbeta, Yuzefa, Matei…had gone to our house and taken everything they could carry. Dismantled the outbuildings. Down to the very last planks. Dug up the new garden. The apple saplings. My aunt ran over…All she managed to grab was a planter to remember us by…I don’t want to think about these things, I chase them out of my memory. I remember how the whole village nannied me, everyone carried me around in their arms. “Come see us, Manechka, we picked some mushrooms…” “Let me pour you some milk, sweetie…” The very next day after I arrived, my face broke out in hives. My eyes were burning. I couldn’t even open them. They would lead me by the hand to wash my face. Everything inside of me was sick. It all started dying off, burning off, so that I could look at the world with new eyes. It was my transition from that life to this one…Now, when I walked down the street, everyone would stop me: “Oh what a beautiful girl! Ah, what a girl!” Without those words, my eyes would have been like a dog’s who’d been dragged out of a hole in the ice. I can’t imagine how I would have looked at people…

My aunt and uncle lived in a storage shed. Their house had burned down in the war, so they’d built themselves a shed to live in, thinking that it would be temporary, but it ended up staying there for good. It had a thatched roof and a little window.
“Bulbochka”
growing in a corner (my aunt’s words)—not
“bulba”
but
“bulbochka”
^*6
—and a piglet squealing in another. No floorboards, just dirt covered in sweet flag and straw. Soon, Vladya was brought there, too. She lived for a little while longer and then she died. She was glad that she got to die at home. Her last words were, “What’s going to happen to Manechka?”

Everything I know about love I learned in my aunt’s storage shed…

“Oh my little birdie…” my aunt would coo. “My buzzy…my little bee…” I was always pawing her, bugging her. I couldn’t believe it…Somebody loved me! I was loved! You’re growing, and someone is appreciating your beauty—what a luxury! All of your little bones straighten out, your every muscle. I danced the Russian dance, the
yablochko,
and the sailor’s dance for her. I’d been taught those dances in exile…I sang her songs:

There’s a road off the Chuya highway.

Many drivers will go down that way…

I’ll die and they’ll bury me here,

My mother will weep bitter tears,

Though my wife may find another man,

For Mama, there’ll be no other son…

In the course of a day, you can run around until your feet turn black and blue. We didn’t have any shoes. You go to bed, and your aunt wraps your feet in the hem of her nightgown to warm them. She’d swaddle me. You can lie there somewhere near her stomach…It’s like being in the womb…And that’s why I don’t remember anything evil. I’ve forgotten it all…It’s hidden away in some distant place. In the morning, I would be woken up by my aunt’s voice: “I made potato pancakes. Have some.” “Auntie, I want to sleep more.” “Eat some and then you can go back to sleep.” She understood that food,
bliny,
were like medicine to me. Pancakes and love. My uncle Vitalik was a shepherd, he carried a whip over his shoulder and had a long birch-bark pipe. He went around in his military jacket and breeches. He’d bring us “feed” from the pasture—there’d be some cheese and a piece of
salo
—whatever the women gave him while the animals grazed. Holy poverty! It didn’t mean anything to them, they weren’t upset or insulted by it. All of this is so important to me…so precious. One of my friends complains, “I can’t afford a new car…” another, “I dreamt of it my whole life, but I never did manage to buy myself a mink coat…” When people say those kinds of things to me, it’s like they’re speaking from behind glass…The only thing I regret is not being able to wear short skirts anymore…[
We laugh.
]

My aunt had a unique voice…She warbled like Edith Piaf. People would ask her to sing at their weddings. And whenever anyone died. I would always come with her…Running alongside her. I remember…she would stand near the coffin, stand there for a long time…Then, at a certain point, she would somehow break off from everyone else and go up to the body. She’d approach slowly…after she realized that no one else could say the final words. Everyone wanted to, but they didn’t know how. And so she’d begin: “Why have you left us, Annechka…You left the bright day and dark night behind…Who is going to walk around your yard…and kiss your children? Who will greet the cow when she’s comes home in the evening?” Very quietly, she’d find the words…Everything was mundane and simple, and that’s what made it truly lofty. And sad. There was some sort of ultimate truth in those simple words. Something final. Her voice would tremble…and then everyone else would start weeping. They’d forget that the cow hadn’t been milked, that their husband was drunk at home. Their faces changed, they’d stop fidgeting, and light would shine through their eyes. Everyone wept. I was shy…And I felt sorry for my aunt. She’d come home feeling ill: “Oh, Manechka, my little head is pounding.” That was the kind of heart my aunt had…I’d run home from school and see her through the little window holding a needle the size of her finger, darning our rags and singing, “You can put out a fire with water / But nothing will extinguish love…” My whole life is lighted by these memories…

The remains of our estate…all that was left of our house were the stones. But I can feel their warmth, I’m drawn to them. I go there like you visit a grave. I could spend the night in our field. I walk carefully, watching my step. There are no people, but there is life. The hum of life, all sorts of living beings…I walk around afraid of destroying someone’s home. I can make a home for myself anywhere, like a bug. I have a cult of domesticity. I need there to be flowers, it needs to be beautiful…I remember in the orphanage, when they led me to the room where I was going to live with all the white beds…I scanned the room looking to see if there was a bed by the window. Would I have my own cabinet? I was searching for my home.

Now…How long have we been sitting here talking? Meanwhile, a storm has come and gone, my neighbor stopped by, the phone rang…Those things also affected me, I responded to them as well. But the only things that will go down on paper are my words…There won’t be anything else: no neighbor, no phone calls…Things I didn’t say but which flashed through my memory, making their presence felt. Tomorrow, I might tell this story completely differently. The words remain, but I’ll have moved on. I have learned to live with this. I know how. I keep going and going.

Who gave me all of this? All of it…Was it God or people? If God gave it to me, then He chose well. Suffering brought me up…It’s my art…my prayer. So many times, I’ve wanted to tell someone all of it. To speak my fill. But no one has ever wanted to know: “And then what…and then what?” I’ve always waited for someone, whether it be a good or bad person, to come and listen to my story—I don’t know who exactly I had in mind, but I was always waiting for someone. My whole life, I’ve been waiting for someone to find me and I would tell them everything…and they would keep asking, “And then what? And then what?” Now, people have started blaming socialism, Stalin, as though Stalin had God-like powers. Everyone has their own God—why didn’t they speak up? My aunt…Our village…I also remember Maria Petrovna Aristova, a respected teacher who’d visit our Vladya in the hospital in Moscow. We weren’t related to her or anything…She’s the one who brought Vladya back to our village, who carried her home…Vladya couldn’t walk anymore. Maria Petrovna would send me pencils and candy and write me letters. And in the temporary foster center, when they were washing and disinfecting me…I was sitting on a high bench…all covered in foam. I could have slipped and broken my bones on the cement floor. I started slipping…sliding down…and a woman I didn’t know…a nanny…caught me in her arms and embraced me: “My little chickadee.”

I saw God.

*1
The Leningrad Blockade lasted from September 8, 1941, to January 27, 1944. Nazi troops had the city surrounded, effectively cutting citizens off from supply lines and paths of escape. As a result, nearly a million of the city’s residents died, mainly of starvation, as they were forced to survive on minuscule rations and whatever else they were desperate enough to eat.

*2
Dark Alleys
is the title of Ivan Bunin’s 1943 collection of short stories.

*3
Wheras
samizdat
designates the clandestine or illegal production and circulation of literature within the Soviet Union,
tamizdat
specifically refers to Russian writings that were published abroad and smuggled back into the USSR.

*4
Nikolai Berdyaev (1874–1948) was a Russian philosopher who emigrated to France in 1920. Friedrich Hayek (1899–1992) was an Austrian liberal philosopher and essayist.

*5
The Eastern Borderlands refers to the territory covered by present-day Western Ukraine, Belarus, and Latvia, which were a part of Poland in the interwar years (1918–1939).

*6
“Bulba” is Belarusian (and Ukrainian) for potato. “Bulbochka” is the diminutive.

It was morning. I was on my knees, begging, “Oh Lord! I’m ready now! I want to die right now!” Even though it was morning…and the day was just beginning…