Secondhand Time: The Last of the Soviets (55 page)

It happened on a weekend…We were all home…I checked in on my grandma, she couldn’t walk very much anymore, so she spent most of her time lying down. She was sitting in her chair, looking out the window. I gave her some water. A little while later…I went back into her room, called out to her, and this time she didn’t respond. I took her hand, it was cold. Her eyes were open and staring out the window. I’d never seen death before, I got scared and screamed. My mother came running, burst into tears, and closed Grandma’s eyes. We had to call an ambulance…They came fairly quickly, but the doctor wanted my mother to pay for a death certificate and wouldn’t take Grandma down to the morgue. “What do you expect? It’s ‘the market economy’!” We didn’t have any money at home…My mother had just been laid off from her job, she’d been looking for work for two months already, but no matter where she went, there was already a long line of applicants. Mama had graduated with honors from a technology institute. But there was no question of her getting a job in her field. People with university diplomas were working behind counters, as dishwashers. They cleaned offices. Everything was different now…I didn’t recognize the people on the street anymore, it was as though everyone had changed into gray costumes. All the colors had faded. That’s how I remember that time…“This is all because of your Yeltsin, your Gaidar…” Grandma had cried when she was still alive. “What have they done to us? If things get any worse, we’ll be living in wartime conditions.” Mama wouldn’t say anything: To my great surprise, she had stopped arguing. We scoured our house, looking for anything we could possibly sell. But we had nothing…We’d been living off Grandma’s pension. All we had to eat were the cheapest noodles…Her whole life, Grandma had saved up five thousand rubles. The money was in the bank. It should have been enough, as she said, to provide for her up to the end, for “a rainy day,” and to cover her funeral expenses. But now, all that would buy you was a trolleybus ticket…a box of matches…Everyone’s money had simply evaporated. They ripped off the entire country…My grandma’s greatest fear was that we were going to bury her in a plastic bag or wrap her in newspapers. Coffins were prohibitively expensive, people were buried in all sorts of ways. Grandma’s friend Fenya, who had been a nurse at the front, had been wrapped in old newspapers…Her daughter did it herself…They put her medals directly into the grave. Her daughter was disabled, dug through garbage cans…It was all so unfair! My friend and I would go to privately owned stores to ogle the salami. All those shiny wrappers. At school, the girls whose parents could afford to buy them leggings teased the ones whose parents couldn’t. I was teased…[
She is silent.
] But Mama had promised Grandma she’d bury her in a coffin. She’d sworn that she would.

The doctor saw that we didn’t have any money, so they turned around and left. Leaving us to deal with Grandma on our own…

We lived with Grandma’s body for a week…Several times a day, my mother would rub her down with potassium permanganate and kept her covered in a wet sheet. She sealed all the windows and tucked wet blankets under all the doors. She did it all on her own, I was afraid of going in Grandma’s room. I would run past it to the kitchen and back as fast as I could. The smell…it was already there…Although, it’s awful to say this, but we were lucky: Grandma had lost a lot of weight during her illness, all that was left of her was skin and bones. We called all our relatives…We’re related to half of Moscow, but suddenly it was like we had no one. They would come over with three-liter jars of pickled zucchini, pickles, jam, but no one offered us any money. They’d sit with us, cry a little, then leave. None of them had cash. I think that’s what it was…Instead of money, at his factory, my mother’s cousin was paid in canned goods—so he brought us canned goods. Whatever he could…In those days, soap and toothpaste were considered good birthday presents. We had nice neighbors, really, they were good people. Miss Anya and her husband…They were packing, getting ready to move out to the country to live with their parents. They’d already sent their kids there, they simply didn’t have time for us. Miss Valya…What could she do to help us, when her husband and son both drank? My mother had so many friends, but none of them had anything but books at home. Half of them were already jobless…The phone went dead. Everyone transformed the moment communism fell. We all lived behind closed doors now…[
She is silent.
] My dream was that I’d go to sleep, wake up, and Grandma would be alive again.

On a time when gangsters walked the streets and didn’t even bother concealing their weapons

Who were these people? These strangers appeared out of nowhere—and they somehow knew everything. “We understand your trouble. We’re here to help.” They made a phone call, a doctor came over immediately and issued a death certificate, then a policeman arrived. They bought us an expensive coffin, there was a hearse and tons of flowers, every kind of flower imaginable. Everything was exactly as it should be. Grandma had asked to be buried at Khovanskoye Cemetery, and although it’s impossible to get in there without bribing someone—it’s an old, famous cemetery—they took care of that, too; they brought in a priest, he said some prayers. It was all so beautiful. My mother and I just stood there and wept. Someone called Miss Ira was in charge of everything, she was the leader of that crew. There were always these beefy guys with her, her bodyguards. One of them had fought in Afghanistan, and for some reason, this comforted Mama. She thought that if someone had fought in a war or done time in Stalin’s camps, they couldn’t possibly be a bad person. “How could he—he’s been through so much!” And in general, our people have each other’s backs—this was her conviction, based in part on Grandma’s stories of how people had saved one another during the war. Soviet people…[
She falls silent.
] But these people were different. Not quite Soviet anymore…I’m telling you how I see things now, not how they seemed to me back then…We’d been taken in by a criminal outfit, but for me, at that time, they were just these nice men and women who drank tea with us in our kitchen and brought us candy. Miss Ira would buy us groceries whenever she saw our refrigerator completely empty. She gave me a denim skirt—everyone worshiped denim back then! They did all that for about a month, we got used to them, and then they made my mother an offer: “Let’s sell your three-bedroom apartment and buy you a one-bedroom. That way, you’ll have money.” My mother agreed…She was working at a café, washing dishes, bussing tables, but we were still catastrophically short on cash. We had already begun discussing where we were going to move, what neighborhood. I didn’t want to change schools. We were looking for something nearby.

And that’s when the other gang appeared. The head of that gang was a man…Mr. Volodya…And he and Miss Ira started fighting over our apartment. Mr. Volodya shouted at my mother, “You don’t need a one-bedroom! I’ll buy you a house in the suburbs.” Miss Ira drove an old Volkswagen, while Mr. Volodya had a stunning Mercedes. He also had a real gun…It was the nineties…Gangsters walked the streets and didn’t even bother concealing their weapons. Everyone who could afford them installed metal doors…One night, in our building, a gang showed up at our neighbor’s house with a hand grenade…Our neighbor owned a kiosk—basically just painted boards and plywood—he sold everything: groceries, makeup, clothes, vodka. The gangsters demanded dollars. His wife didn’t want to hand over the money, so they put a hot iron on her belly. She was pregnant…No one called the police because everyone knew that the gangsters had loads of money, they could buy anyone off. For some reason, people had started respecting them. There was no one to turn to for help…Mr. Volodya wasn’t drinking tea with us—he was threatening my mother: “If you don’t give me the apartment, I’ll take your daughter and you’ll never see her again. You won’t know what happened to her.” Friends of ours hid me; there were days when I had to miss school. I cried day and night, I was so scared for Mama. Our neighbors saw them come by two times, looking for me. Cursing. Finally, my mother gave in…

The very next day, they moved us out. They showed up at night: “Hurry up! Come on! You’ll go stay somewhere else while we find you a new house.” They brought paint cans, wallpaper, they were all ready to renovate the place. “Let’s go! Hurry up!” My mother was so scared, all she took were her documents, her favorite Polish perfume
Maybe,
which someone had given to her for her birthday, and a few of her favorite books. I brought my textbooks and another dress. They shoved us in a car and took us to what you could call an empty space: a room with two big beds, a table, some chairs, and nothing else. They strictly prohibited us from going anywhere, opening the windows, or talking loudly. God forbid the neighbors hear! It was clear that this apartment had constantly rotating residents…It was so filthy! We spent several days just cleaning it, scrubbing everything down. And then I remember my mother and I standing in some official place, being shown some typed-up documents…everything seemed legal enough…They said, “Sign here.” My mother signed, but I broke down in tears. It hadn’t really hit me before, but now I realized that they were about to send us to live in the country. I got sad about my school, my friends who I would never see again. Mr. Volodya came up to me: “Hurry up and sign it, or we’ll take you to an orphanage and your mother will move anyway. You’ll end up all alone.” There were some other people there…I remember there were a few other people standing around us, including a policeman…Everyone was silent. Mr. Volodya had bought them all off. I was just a kid…What could I do…[
She is silent.
]

For a long time, I never talked about it…All of this is private—it’s bad, but it’s private. I never wanted anyone else to know…I remember when they took me to the shelter—this was much later, after my mother was already gone. They dropped me off and showed me to my room. “This is your bed. Here are your shelves in the closet…” I stood petrified…Toward evening, I came down with a fever…All of it reminded me so much of our old apartment…[
She is silent.
] It was New Year’s Eve. The tree was all covered in lights…everyone was making masks…There was going to be a dance. A dance? What’s dancing? I’d forgotten all about that…[
Silence.
] There were four other girls sharing the room with me: Two of them were sisters, very young, eight and ten years old, and then two older girls; one of them was also from Moscow, she had a bad case of syphilis, and the other one turned out to be a thief, she stole my shoes. That girl wanted to go back to living on the street…What was I talking about? Oh yes, about how even though we were always together, day and night, we never told each other anything about ourselves—we just didn’t want to. I kept silent for a long time…I only started talking after I met my Zhenya…But all of that came later…[
She is silent.
]

That was only the beginning for my mother and me…After we signed the papers, they took us all the way out to the Yaroslavl region. “It doesn’t matter that it’s far away, at least you’ll have a nice house.” They lied…It wasn’t a house, it was an old wooden peasant hut with one room and a big Russian stove, which neither my mother nor I had ever seen before in our lives. We had no idea how to use it. The hut was falling apart. Everywhere you looked, there were cracks in the wood. Mama was in shock. When she stepped into the hut, she got down on her knees in front of me and begged forgiveness for making me live like this. She beat her head against the wall…[
She cries.
] We had very little money, and it ran out fast. We worked in people’s gardens—some people would pay us with a basket of potatoes, others would give us ten eggs. I learned the beautiful word “barter”…My mother traded her beloved perfume,
Maybe,
for a nice hunk of butter when I got really sick…I begged her not to do it, we had so little to remind us of home. I remember…One day, a farm administrator, she was a kind woman, took pity on me and gave me a bucket full of milk. I was afraid and walked home with it through people’s gardens. On my way, I ran into a milkmaid and she laughed at me, “What are you sneaking around for? You could easily walk through the center of the village if you wanted. People steal all sorts of things around here—plus, you had permission to take it.” Everyone helped themselves to whatever wasn’t nailed down, and the head of the collective farm was the worst of all. He got things delivered to him by the carload. He came to see us…waged a whole campaign: “Come work at the farm! Otherwise, you’ll starve to death.” Should we or shouldn’t we? We were forced to by hunger. We had to get up at four in the morning for the first milking, when everyone else was still asleep. I milked the cows while my mother washed troughs. She was afraid of cows, but I liked them. Each cow had a name…Hazy, Wild Cherry…I took care of thirty cows and two heifers. We pushed around wagons of sawdust, we were up to our knees in manure. It went up higher than our boots. We’d hoist the milk canisters onto the cart…How many kilograms were they? [
She falls silent.
] They paid us in milk and meat whenever a cow accidentally suffocated or drowned in the muck. The milkmaids drank just as much as the men, and my mother started tippling along with the rest of them. Things between us weren’t like they used to be. I mean, we were still friends, but more and more often, I’d yell at her. She’d be hurt. Very rarely, when she was in a good mood, she would recite poems to me…Her beloved Tsvetaeva: “Touched with a red brush / The rowans flushed / Leaves on the ground / I was born…” In those moments, I would catch glimpses of the way my mother used to be. It was rare.

Winter arrived. The frost came down hard and fast. We wouldn’t have survived the winter in that hut. One of our neighbors took pity on us and drove us all the way back to Moscow for free…

On a time when “mankind” doesn’t have “a proud sound,” it sounds all sorts of ways

I’ve been babbling away, and I’ve forgotten that there are certain things I’m afraid of remembering…[
She falls silent.
] What do I think of people? When it comes down to it, people aren’t good or bad, they’re just people, that’s all. In school, we used Soviet textbooks. There weren’t any new ones yet, and they would teach us: “Mankind! That has a proud sound.” Actually, “mankind” doesn’t sound proud, it sounds all sorts of ways. Me, I’m also all sorts of ways, I’m a little bit of everything…But if I see a Tajik—they’re like slaves here now, second-class citizens—and I have the time, I’ll always stop and talk to them. I don’t have any money, but I can talk. Someone like that…They’re my kind of people, we’re in the same boat—I understand what it’s like to be a stranger to everyone and completely alone. I’ve also lived in stairwells and slept in basements…