Secondhand Time: The Last of the Soviets (45 page)

All of us were very quiet kids. I don’t remember our conversations. I remember touching…My friend Valya Knorina would touch me, and I would know what she was thinking because all of us thought the same things. We all knew each other in intimate detail: who wet their bed, who screamed in their sleep, who couldn’t pronounce their
r
’s. I would always straighten out one of my teeth with a spoon. There were forty metal beds in one room…In the evening, they’d order us: “Palms together, hands under your cheeks, and everyone on your right side.” And we were supposed to do all that all together. Everyone! That was community—maybe it was savage, maybe we were like cockroaches, but that’s how I was brought up. That’s still the way I am today…[
She turns away from me to face the window so I can’t see her face in these moments.
] We’d lie there at night and then we’d all start to cry…All of us in chorus: “All of the good mamas have come already…” One girl said, “I hate my Mama! Why won’t she come for me?” I was also upset at my mother. And in the morning, we would all sing…[
She immediately bursts into song.
]

With gentle light, the morning paints

The ancient Kremlin walls.

The whole Soviet nation

Awakens with the dawn…

It’s a pretty song. To me, it’s still pretty.

May Day! Our favorite holiday in the world was May 1. On that day, they would give us new coats and dresses. All of the coats and all of the dresses were identical. You’d start breaking yours in, leaving your mark on it, just one little knot or crease to show that it’s yours…a part of you. We were told that our Motherland is our family and that it was thinking of us. Before the May 1 assembly, we would carry a big red banner out into the courtyard. To the beating of a drum. One time—it was a miracle! A general came to wish us a happy holiday. For us, all men were either soldiers or officers, but here he was, a real general. His pants had the special piping. We climbed up on the tall windowsill to catch a glimpse of him getting into his car and waving to us. “Do you know what having a father is like?” Valya Knorina asked me that evening. I didn’t. And neither did she. [
She is silent.
] We had Stepka…He’d wrap his arms around himself as though he was dancing with someone and twirl down the corridor. Dancing with himself. We thought it was funny, but he never paid any attention to any of us. And then one morning he suddenly died, he wasn’t sick, but he died. In an instant. We thought about him for a long time…They said that his father was a big-time army official, very high up—a general, too. After that, I started getting blisters in my armpits, the kind that burst. It was so painful, I’d weep from the pain. Igor Korolev kissed me in the storeroom. We were in fifth grade. I started getting better. I survived…again! [
Her voice breaks, she’s almost screaming.
] Does anyone care about any of this anymore? Show me—who? It hasn’t been useful or interesting to anyone for a long time. Our country doesn’t exist anymore, and it never will, but here we are…old and disgusting…with our terrifying memories and poisoned eyes. We’re right here! But what’s left of our past? Only the story that Stalin drenched this soil in blood, Khrushchev planted corn in it, and everybody laughed at Brezhnev. But what about our heroes? In the papers, they’ve started writing that Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya had schizophrenia as a result of childhood meningitis and had a known propensity for arson. That she was just mentally ill. Alexander Matrosov
^*1
was drunk: That’s why he threw himself in front of a German machine gun and not because he wanted to rescue his comrades. Pavka Korchagin is no longer a hero…They’re Soviet zombies! [
She calms down a little.
] But to this day, I still have dreams about the camp. I still get upset whenever I see German Shepherds, I’m afraid of anyone in military uniform…[
Through tears.
] I can’t go on like this…I turned on the gas, all four burners…shut the windows and pulled the blinds down. I don’t have anything left that would…that would make me afraid to die…[
She is silent.
] When you still have something holding you back…like the smell of a baby’s head…I don’t even have any trees under my windows…just roofs…[
Silence.
] I put a bouquet on the table, turned the radio on…In the final moments, as I was lying there…I was already lying on the floor…all of my thoughts were from the camp. Despite everything else that ever happened to me…I saw myself walking through the camp gates…They were metal gates, so they slammed shut behind me with a loud clank. I’m free, I’ve been released. I walked along talking to myself: No matter what, don’t look back! I was terrified that someone would catch up with me and make me go back. That for some reason, I’d have to go back there. I walked a little ways and saw a birch tree by the road…just a regular birch…I ran up to it and put my arms around it, pressed my whole body against it. There was a bush next to it, and I embraced the bush, too. There was so much joy my first year out…Everything made me happy! [
She is silent for a long time.
] My neighbor smelled gas…The police broke down the door…When I came to in the hospital, my first thought was, “Where am I? Am I back in the camp?” As though my whole other life hadn’t happened, like there’d been nothing at all between the camp and the hospital. First, I heard sounds, then I felt pain…Everything hurt: every single motion, swallowing air, lifting a finger, opening my eyes. The whole world was my body. And then the world spread out and grew taller, I saw the nurse standing over me in her white uniform, her white kerchief…It took me a long time to come back to life. A girl was dying in the bed next to mine, she died over the course of several days, lying there with all these tubes coming out of her. There was a tube in her mouth, so she couldn’t even scream. For some reason, they couldn’t save her. Looking at all those tubes, I pictured everything in detail: I’m lying there like that…I’m dead…but I don’t realize that I’ve died and no longer exist. Because I’ve already been to the other side…[
She stops.
] Are you sick of listening to me? No? You can tell me…I can shut up…

Mama…My mother came for me in the beginning of sixth grade. She’d ended up doing twelve years in the camps, we were together for three of them, and separated for nine. Now, we were being shipped off for resettlement, they had granted us permission to go together. It was morning…I was walking through the yard when I heard someone calling to me, “Anechka! Anyutochka!” No one ever called to me like that, no one ever called me by my name. I saw a woman with black hair and screamed, “Mama!!!” She embraced me with a bone-rattling cry, “Daddy!” She’d call me that—when I was little, I’d looked a lot like my father. Bliss! So many feelings, so much joy! For several days, I was beside myself; I’ve never been so overcome with happiness before or since. Such a rush of feelings…But soon…very soon, it turned out that my mother and I didn’t understand one another. We were like strangers. I was eager to join the Komsomol and combat all the invisible enemies plotting to destroy this very best life of ours. My mother would just look at me and weep…She said nothing. She was always afraid. In Karaganda, they issued us documents and dispatched us to the town of Belovo for resettlement. It’s far out, past Omsk. The farthest reaches of Siberia…It took us a month to get there. We kept riding and riding, waiting and changing trains. At every stop along the way, we were required to check in with the local NKVD authorities, and they’d always tell us to keep going, sending us farther and farther away from the capital. We weren’t allowed to settle in the border zone, we couldn’t live near any defense enterprises or major cities, the list of places we weren’t allowed to live went on and on. I still can’t stand to see the lights on in people’s windows in the evening. They’d kick us out of train stations at night, and we’d be forced to walk the streets. Through snowstorms, in the freezing cold. We’d see the lights on in the windows, there were people inside, living in warmth, heating up their tea. We had to knock on people’s doors…that was the scariest part…No one wanted to let us spend the night. “We smell like convicts…” my mother would say. [
She cries without even realizing it.
] In Belovo, we rented “an apartment,” except it was in a mud hut. Then we moved into our very own mud hut. I came down with tuberculosis, I was so weak I couldn’t stand; I had this terrible cough. It was September…All of the other children were getting ready to start school, and there I was, unable to walk. They admitted me to the hospital. I remember how someone was always dying. Sonechka died, Vanechka, Slavik…I wasn’t afraid of the dead, but I didn’t want to die myself. I embroidered beautifully, I drew, and everyone praised me, “What a talented girl. You ought to be in school.” And I wondered, “Then why should I die?” By some miracle, I survived…One day, I opened my eyes, and there was a bouquet of wild cherry blossoms on the cabinet. From whom? It made me realize that I was going to live…I’m going to live! I returned to our mud hut. While I’d been in the hospital, my mother had had another stroke. I hardly recognized her…She’d turned into an old woman. That same day, she was hospitalized. At home, I didn’t find a single crumb of food, not even a whiff of it. I was too shy to say anything to anyone…Finally, they found me on the floor, barely breathing. Someone brought me a mug of warm goat milk. That’s everything, everything…everything…Every story I can remember about myself is about how I kept dying and surviving…and then dying again. [
She turns away toward the window again.
] I regained some of my strength…The Red Cross bought me a ticket and put me on a train. They sent me to my hometown of Smolensk, to an orphanage. That was my homecoming. [
She cries.
] I don’t know why…Why am I crying? I know everything about my life already…I know it all too well.

In the orphanage—that’s where I turned sixteen…I started making some friends, boys started courting me…[
She smiles.
] Good-looking boys pursued me. Older ones. The thing about me was that whenever anyone liked me, I’d get scared. It was scary that someone was paying attention to me. That they’d noticed me. It was impossible to try to go out with me because I would always bring a friend along on dates. Even if someone asked me out to the movies, I’d refuse to go alone. I took two girlfriends with me on my first date with my future husband. He wouldn’t let me forget that for a long time…

The day Stalin died…the whole orphanage was marched into the courtyard carrying a red banner. For the entire duration of the funeral, we stood outside “at attention”; it went on for six or eight hours. Some kids fainted. I cried…I had already come to terms with living without my mother, but how could I go on without Stalin? How would I live…For some reason, I was afraid that war was going to break out. [
She cries.
] Mama…Four years later…I was already studying at the architecture college…My mother finally returned from internal exile. This time, she was back for good. She came with a wooden suitcase containing a zinc roasting pan (which I still have, I can’t bear to throw it away), two aluminum spoons, and a tangle of torn stockings. “You’re a bad housekeeper,” my mother admonished me. “You don’t know how to darn holes.” I knew how to darn, it’s just that the holes in her stockings were beyond darning. No handicraft could fix them! I had a stipend of eighteen rubles, and my mother had a pension of fourteen. We were in heaven: We could eat as much bread as we wanted and there would still be enough money left over for tea. I had one tracksuit and one calico dress I had sewn for myself. In autumn and winter, I went to college in the tracksuit. And to me, it seemed like…from my perspective, we had everything we could ever want. Whenever I went into a normal home, with a normal family, I would get tense—what was all that stuff for? So many spoons, forks, cups. The simplest things would confound me…the very basics. For instance, why would anyone need two pairs of shoes? I’m still indifferent to possessions, to domesticity. Yesterday, my daughter-in-law called: “I’m trying to find a brown gas stove.” They remodeled, and now she’s looking for everything brown for her kitchen—furniture, curtains, dishes—she wants it to look like a foreign magazine. She spends hours on the phone. Her apartment is full of advertisements and newspapers, she reads all the classified ads she can find. “I want that! And that…” Everyone used to have very basic furniture, people lived simply. And now? Everyone’s turned into stomachs…bellies…I want! I want! I want! [
She waves her hand dismissively.
] I don’t go to my son’s house very often. Everything at their place is new and expensive. It’s like an office. [
She is silent.
] We’re strangers…We’re family, but strangers…[
Silence.
] I want to remember what my mother was like when she was young. But I don’t remember her as a young woman…I only remember her sick. We never once hugged or kissed, never exchanged any affectionate words. I don’t remember that ever happening…Our mothers lost us twice: the first time, when we were taken from them as children; the second time, when they came back to us and we were already grown up. Their children had turned into strangers, they’d been swapped…Another mother had raised them: “Your Motherland is your mother…your mother…” “Little boy, where is your father?” “He’s still in prison.” “And your mother?” “In prison already.” We could only imagine our parents as being in prison. Somewhere far, far away…never nearby. There was a time where I wanted to run away from my mother and go back to the orphanage. How could I! How…She didn’t read newspapers and didn’t go to parades; she didn’t even listen to the radio. She didn’t like the songs that made my heart leap out of my chest…[
She sings quietly.
]