Secondhand Time: The Last of the Soviets (48 page)

…In the hospital, there was a woman in the bed next to my mother…When I walked into the room, she was the first person I’d see. One time, I watched her trying to tell her daughter something, but she couldn’t form the words: m-ma…m-mu…Her husband came, and she tried to tell him, but that didn’t work either. She turned to me: m-ma…Then she reached for one of her crutches and—do you understand—she started hitting her IV drip with it. Beating the bed…She didn’t care what she was hitting, or breaking…She desperately wanted to speak…but who can you to talk to these days? Tell me: who? A person can’t live in a vacuum…

…My whole life, I adored my father. He’s fifteen years older than my mother, he fought in the war. But the war didn’t crush him like it did so many others, it didn’t shackle him to itself as the most significant event in his life. He still hunts and fishes. Dances. He’s been married twice, and both times to beautiful women. My childhood memories…We were headed to the movies, and my dad grabbed my arm: “Look at how beautiful your mother is!” He never harbored that savage war valor like other men do after seeing combat. “A shot. A hit. The meat spilled out of him like it was coming out of a meat grinder.” He remembers innocent things. Trifles. How on Victory Day, he and a friend went to a village to see some girls and ended up taking two Germans prisoner. The Germans had climbed into an outhouse and were hidden up to their necks in it. It seemed like a pity to shoot them! After all, the war was over. They’d had their fill of shooting. But it was impossible to get up close to them…My father got lucky: He could have been killed in the war, but he wasn’t. Before the war, they could have arrested him, but they didn’t. He had an older brother, Uncle Vanya. He hadn’t been as lucky…When Yezhov was head of the NKVD, in the thirties, they sent him to the Vorkuta mines. Ten years without the right of correspondence. His wife, tormented by her co-workers, jumped out of a fifth-story window. Their son grew up with his grandmother. But Uncle Vanya made it back alive…He came back with a withered hand, toothless, his liver enlarged. He went back to work at the same factory, at the same job, in the same office, same desk…[
He lights another cigarette.
] He sat across from the guy who’d informed on him. Everyone knew it…and Uncle Vanya knew it, too—that that was the guy who had informed on him…but nothing changed: They attended meetings and demonstrations together. Read
Pravda,
voiced support for the Party’s policies and the government. On holidays, they sat at the same table drinking vodka. And so on…that’s us! Our life! That’s what we’re like…Imagine a victim and an executioner from Auschwitz sitting side by side in the same office, getting their wages out of the same window down in accounting. With identical war decorations. And now, with the same pensions…[
He is silent.
] I am close to Uncle Vanya’s son. He doesn’t read Solzhenitsyn, there isn’t a single book about the camps at his house. The son had waited for his father, but the man who came back was somebody else…the husk of a man…Crushed and crumpled. He didn’t last long. “You don’t understand what it means to be afraid,” he’d tell his son. “You don’t understand…” With his own eyes, he’d seen an interrogator, this enormous guy, stick a prisoner’s head in the shit bucket and hold him down until he drowned in it. As for Uncle Vanya…they’d strip him naked and hang him from the ceiling, pour spirits of ammonia into his nose, his mouth—every orifice in his body. The investigator pissed in his ear, screaming: “Names!…Give me names!” So Uncle Vanya named names…and signed everything. And if he hadn’t given him names and signed the confessions, his head would have been the one in the shit bucket. Afterward, he ran into some of the people he’d named in the barracks…“Who informed on us?” they’d wonder. Who could have done that? Who…I’m no judge. And you’re no judge, either. Uncle Vanya would be carried back to his cell on a stretcher, drenched in blood and piss. Covered in his own shit. I don’t know when a person stops being human. Do you?

…It’s very sad about our elderly, of course…They collect bottles at the stadiums, sell cigarettes in the Metro at night. Pick through the garbage dumps. But our elderly are no innocents…That’s a terrifying thought! Seditious. I’m scared just thinking it. [
He is silent.
] But I will never be able to talk about this with my mother…I’ve tried…She goes into hysterics!

[
He wants to end the conversation, but for some reason he changes his mind.
]

…If I had read this story somewhere or heard it from someone, I wouldn’t have believed it. But all sorts of things happen in real life…things out of a bad detective novel. My encounter with Ivan D….Do you need his last name? For what? He’s dead. His children? The son doesn’t answer for the father—that’s an old proverb…Yes, and his children are old men themselves. The grandchildren and great-grandchildren? I don’t know about the grandchildren, but the great-grandchildren, they don’t even know who Lenin is…Grandfather Lenin is all but forgotten. He’s nothing but a statue now. [
A pause.
] Let me tell you about my encounter with him…I had just been promoted to lieutenant and was about to get married to his granddaughter. We’d already bought the wedding rings and her dress. Anna…that was her name. Pretty, right? [
He lights another cigarette.
] She was his granddaughter…He adored her. At home, everyone jokingly called her “The Doted Toad.” He’d made it up…it meant that she was adored. And she looked like him, too—even a lot, I’d say. I come from a normal Soviet family, our whole lives, we lived from kopeck to kopeck, while these people had crystal chandeliers, Chinese porcelain, rugs, new Zhigulis. Everything was first class! There was an old Volga, too, that the old man refused to sell. And so on…I was already living with them in that apartment. In the mornings, we’d drink tea in the dining room, out of cups in silver cup holders. It was a big family—sons-in-law, daughters-in-law…One of the sons-in-law was a professor. Whenever the old man got angry at him, he’d always say the same thing: “People like you…I would have them eating their own shit!” Yep, that was a nice touch…but I never put it together…I didn’t get it! Later on, I remembered. Afterward…Young Pioneers would come see him and write down his stories. They got his photographs for the museum. By the time I was around, he was already ailing, so he’d stay home. But before that, he’d speak at schools, tie red kerchiefs around the necks of the excellent students. He was an honored veteran. Every holiday, there’d be a big congratulatory card in the mailbox, every month, a special ration of groceries. One time, I went with him to pick up the ration…In some strange basement, we were handed a stick of
cervelat,
a jar of pickled Bulgarian cucumbers and tomatoes, imported canned fish, a jar of Hungarian ham, peas, canned cod liver…In those days, these were all scarce goods! Privileges! He took a liking to me right off the bat: “I like army men, and I hate suits.” He showed me all of his expensive hunting rifles: “I’ll leave these to you.” Every wall of their giant apartment was covered in deer antlers; taxidermied animals stood on the bookshelves. Hunting trophies. He was a passionate hunter; for ten years or so, he’d been the head of the city hunting and fishing society. What else? He told a lot of war stories…“In combat, shooting at a distant target is one thing. Anyone can do that…but taking someone out when they’re right there…Three meters away from you…” He was always saying stuff like that. You never got bored with him. I liked the old man.

I was on vacation and went to see them…The wedding was right around the corner. It was the middle of summer. We were all living together at their big dacha. It was one of the old dachas, not just the regulation four hundred square meters of land. I don’t remember exactly how big it was, but they had a piece of the woods, too. Old pines. Only top-ranking officials got dachas like that. For special services. Prominent academics and writers. And him…Whenever I’d wake up, the old man would already be out in the garden. “I have the soul of a peasant. I came to Moscow from Tver in bast shoes.” Most evenings, he’d sit alone on the terrace smoking. It was no secret: They’d discharged him from the hospital to die—he had terminal lung cancer. He didn’t quit smoking. He came back from the hospital with a Bible: “I’ve been a materialist my whole life, but now, in the face of death, I’ve come to God.” Some nuns who took care of the gravely ill had given him the Bible in the hospital. He read it with a magnifying glass. Before dinner, he’d read the papers, and after his post-dinner nap, war memoirs. He’d collected an entire library of memoirs: Zhukov, Rokossovsky.
^*12
He liked remembering his own life, too…How he’d seen Gorky and Mayakovsky in the flesh…the Chelyuskinites. He often said, “The people want to love Stalin and celebrate May 9.” I’d argue with him: It was perestroika, the spring of Russian democracy…I was just a kid! One day, it was just the two of us, everyone else had gone to the city. Two men in an empty dacha. A carafe of vodka. “I don’t give a damn about the doctors! I’ve lived my fill.” “So should I pour you one?” “Go ahead.” And so it began…I didn’t understand right away…It didn’t immediately occur to me that what we needed was a priest. The man was coming to terms with death…not immediately…At first, it was the regular conversation that people were having in those days: socialism, Stalin, Bukharin. Lenin’s political last testament, which Stalin had hidden from the Party…We talked about everything that was in the air and in the papers. We drank. We got good and drunk! Pretty soon, he had gotten worked up: “You little snot! All young and green…Listen up! The last thing we want is for our men to have freedom. They’ll piss it all away!! You understand?” Then swearing. A Russian can’t convince another Russian of anything without obscenities. I’m taking them out. “Get that through your skull…” I, of course…I was in shock. In shock! He was going all out: “These arm-waving liberals ought to be handcuffed and taken out to chop timber. Get some pickaxes into those hands. You need fear. Without fear, everything will fall apart in the blink of an eye.” [
A long pause.
] We picture monsters with horns and hooves. But there he was, by the looks of it, a regular person sitting there…just a normal person…blowing his nose, sick, drinking vodka…I think…that was the first time it occurred to me—that the victims stick around and testify while the executioners hold their silence. They disappear, they go down some invisible hole. They have no last names, no voices. They vanish without a trace, and we know nothing about them.

In the nineties, while the executioners were still alive…they got spooked…The name of the interrogator who’d tortured Academician Vavilov
^*13
flickered through the papers. I remember it, Alexander Khvat. They printed a couple more names. All of them started panicking that the archives would be unsealed, that they’d remove the “confidential” stamp. They got nervous. No one paid much attention to it, there aren’t any special statistics, but there were dozens of suicides. All over the country. They wrote it off as another consequence of the fall of the empire, blamed it on the general impoverishment…but I’d hear about the suicides of rather well-off, decorated old men. Without apparent cause. They all had one thing in common: All of them had served the regime. Some of them suddenly heard the voice of their consciences, some of them got scared that their families would find out. They lost their nerve. Were stricken with terror. They couldn’t comprehend what was going on, why a vacuum had suddenly formed around them…They were loyal hounds! Faithful service dogs! Of course, not all of them flinched…In
Pravda,
or maybe it was
Ogonyok,
I don’t remember, they published a letter from a former corrections officer. That one wasn’t afraid! He described all of the illnesses he’d accumulated from working in Siberia where he’d guarded “the enemies of the people” for fifteen years. He hadn’t spared his health…The work, he complained, had been strenuous: In the summer, the mosquitos would eat him alive, and the heat was unbearable; in the winter, it was the brutal cold. The “little jackets”—I remember, he wrote “little jackets”—distributed to the soldiers were thin, while the real bosses went around in sheepskin coats and felt boots. These days, he said, you see the enemies they didn’t manage to exterminate daring to show their faces…It’s sheer counterrevolution! The letter seethed with hatred…[
A pause.
] Former inmates responded immediately…They weren’t afraid anymore. They spoke up. They wrote about how inmates could be stripped naked, tied to trees, and overnight, the gnats would eat them down to their bones. In winter, when it was forty below zero, an inmate who didn’t complete his daily quota could be doused with water. Dozens of icy statues would be left standing outside like scarecrows until the spring…[
A pause.
] No one was ever put on trial! Not a single one of them! The executioners lived out their final days as respected pensioners…What can I say? Don’t ask anyone to repent. Don’t make things up about what our people are like, saying that Russians are so good at heart. No one is prepared to repent. It’s a great feat, repentance. Even when I go to church, I don’t have it in me to confess. It’s hard…and really, people only ever feel sorry for themselves. Not anyone else. Anyway…the old man was furiously pacing the terrace, screaming…The things he was telling me made my hair stand on end. By then, I already knew a lot. I’d read Shalamov…But here, there was a little bowl of candy on the table, a bouquet…It was this completely idyllic scene. And that contrast made the reality all the starker. I was both scared and curious. More curious than scared, to be perfectly honest. I wanted to…You always want to look down into the abyss. Why? That’s just the way we are.

“…When I was hired by the NKVD, I was terribly proud,” he said. “First time they paid me, I bought myself a nice suit…

“…What was the work like…What can you compare it to? It’s something like war. But for me, the war was like a vacation. You shoot a German, he screams in German. These people screamed in Russian…They’re practically your own people…It was easier to shoot Lithuanians and Poles. But the ones screaming in Russian, ‘Cretins! Idiots! Hurry up and finish!’ Shit…!!! We were always covered in blood, we’d have to wipe our hands on our hair. Sometimes, they gave us leather aprons. That’s what work was like. The job. You’re young…Perestroika! Perestroika! You believe the babblers…They can shout, ‘Freedom! Freedom!’ all they like. Run around the squares…The axe is right where it always was. The axe will survive the master…Don’t forget that! Shit…!!! I’m a soldier. When I was told to march, I marched. When I was told to shoot, I shot. If they give you the orders, you’ll go, too. You
will
go!!! I was killing enemies. Vermin! You get a document: Sentenced to ‘the highest measure of social protection.’ It’s a verdict from the state…The work—God forbid! If you don’t get him the first time, he’ll fall down squealing like a pig…vomiting blood…It’s especially unpleasant to shoot a laugher. They’ve either gone crazy, or they really hate you. There was wailing and cursing from all sides. You can’t eat beforehand…I couldn’t…I was always thirsty. Water! Water! Just like when you’re hungover…Shit…!!!! Toward the end of our shifts, they would bring us two buckets: a bucket of vodka and a bucket of cologne. They’d bring the vodka in after the shift was over, not before. Have you read that anywhere? It’s the truth…They write all sorts of things these days. Make a lot of stuff up…We’d wash ourselves with cologne from the waist up. Blood is pungent, it’s a special kind of smell…a little like the smell of semen…I had a German Shepherd, and it wouldn’t go near me after work. Shit…!!! What are you sitting there all silent for? You’re still green, you haven’t seen anything yet…Listen! It didn’t happen often, you know, but sometimes, we’d get an officer who liked to kill…People like that would soon be transferred out of the firing corps. We didn’t like people like that. There were a lot of country boys like me. Country boys are tougher than city folk. More resilient. More used to death: some had slaughtered boars, others calves, everyone had killed a chicken before. With death, it’s something you have to get used to…The first few days of work, you just watched. Troops were simply present at executions, or they would transport the condemned. There were cases of people going insane immediately. They couldn’t handle it. It’s a subtle art…Even with killing a rabbit, you have to be in the habit, not everyone can do it. Shit…!!! You put a person on their knees and then you have to shoot them practically point-blank, into the left side of the head, behind the left ear. By the end of my shift, my arm would be hanging down like a whip. The worst was my index finger. We had a plan to fulfill, like at any other place. Like at a factory. At first, we couldn’t meet our quotas. We physically couldn’t do it. So they called some doctors in. Had a consultation. It was decided that two days a week, the troops would get massages. They’d massage our right hands and index fingers. They absolutely had to massage our index fingers because they’re under the greatest strain during shooting. My only work-related injury is that I’m deaf in my right ear from shooting from the right side…