Secondhand Time: The Last of the Soviets (61 page)

There are pills for headaches, toothaches, but there are no pills for my pain. The psychologist put me on a schedule: in the morning, half a glass of St. John’s wort on an empty stomach, twenty drops of essence of hawthorn, thirty drops of peony…My whole day is like that. I down all those drops. I used to go to this Chinese guy…Nothing has helped…[
She is silent.
] Everyday tasks distract you, they keep you from going insane. Routine can be very therapeutic: laundry, ironing, sewing…

There’s an old linden tree in our courtyard…One day, I was walking—it had already been a few years—and I noticed that it was in bloom. The smell…Until that moment, nothing had been quite as vivid…Things weren’t how they used to be…The colors had grown muted, the sounds…[
She is silent.
]

In the hospital, I made friends with a woman who had been riding in the third car—Ksyusha had been in the second. She’d gone back to work, and it seemed like she’d gotten over it. Then something snapped, and she suddenly wanted to throw herself off her balcony. She tried jumping out of her window. Her parents put railings on all of the windows, they turned their apartment into a cage. She tried gas…Her husband left her…I don’t know where she is now. Someone told me they saw her at Avtozavodskaya Station, walking up and down the platform, screaming, “We’re going to pick up three handfuls of dirt with our right hand and throw them onto the coffin. Pick them up…and throw them.” She screamed like that until nurses came and took her away…

I thought it was Ksyusha who’d told me this at some point…About how there’d been a man standing so close to her, she’d wanted to say something to him. She never got the chance. He ended up shielding her, a lot of the shrapnel coming at her hit him instead. Did he make it out alive? I think about him all the time…I can practically see him…but Ksyusha doesn’t remember him…Where did that idea come from? I probably made him up. Someone had to have rescued her for me…

I know a remedy…Ksyusha needs to be happy. The only thing that can cure her is happiness. It has to be something special…We were at an Alla Pugacheva concert, our whole family are fans. I wanted to go up to her or pass her a note: “Dedicate a song to my daughter. Say that it’s for her alone.” So that she’ll feel like a queen…raise her up to the heavens…She’s seen hell, now she needs to see heaven so that her world may regain its balance. My delusions…my fantasies…[
She is silent.
] My love wasn’t enough to cure her. Who can I write to? Who should I turn to for help? You people made your fortunes on Chechen oil, Russian credits, now help me take her somewhere. She needs to sit under a palm tree, watch a turtle crawl past, she has to forget that inferno. Her eyes are always filled with hell. There’s no light, I never see any light in them.

I started going to church…Do I believe in God? I don’t know. But I do always want to talk to someone. One day, the priest was reading a sermon about how great suffering either brings you closer to God or pushes you further away, and if someone turns away from God, you shouldn’t judge them, because it comes from anger and pain. I felt like he was talking about me.

I observe people from the outside, I don’t feel like I’m one of them anymore…I look at them as though I am no longer a person myself…You’re a writer, you’ll understand what I mean: Words have very little in common with what goes on inside of you. Before, I was rarely in touch with what was happening inside me. Now, it’s like I live down in the mines…I get upset, I fall into thought…I’m always chewing something over in my head. “Mama, put your soul away!” No, my darling girls, I don’t want all my feelings and tears to simply evaporate. To disappear without a trace, without leaving a mark. This is what upsets me more than anything else. Everything that I’ve been through—I don’t just want to leave it to my children. I want to share it with other people, I want it to be somewhere so that anyone who wants to can pick it up and see it for themselves.

—

September 3. The Day of Remembrance for Victims of Terrorism. Moscow is in mourning. People with disabilities fill the streets along with young women in black kerchiefs. Memorial candles burn on Solyanka, on the square in front of the Dubrovka Theater, by entrances to the Park Kultury, Lubyanka, Avtozavodskaya, and Rizhskaya Metro stations…

I’m also a part of that crowd. I ask questions and listen to people’s conversations. How are we living with this?

Terrorist attacks took place in Moscow in 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2006, 2010, and 2011.

—

—I was on my way to work. As usual, the train was overcrowded. I didn’t hear the explosion, but for some reason, everything was suddenly orange and my body went numb. I tried to move my arm, but I couldn’t. I thought I was having a stroke, then I passed out…When I came to, people were stepping over me without any regard for me, as though I were dead. I got scared that I was going to be trampled and raised my arms into the air. Someone lifted me up. Flesh and blood—that was all I saw…

—My son is four. How am I supposed to explain to him that his father is dead? He doesn’t even know what death is. On the other hand, I don’t want him to think that his father abandoned us. For now, we just say that he’s gone on a business trip…

—I think about it all the time…In front of the hospital, long lines of people stood waiting to donate blood, carrying bags of oranges. They begged the exhausted nurses: “Take this fruit and give it to anyone who wants it. What else can I bring?”

—The girls from work would come see me, our boss would let them take his car. But I didn’t want to see anyone…

—We need a war, maybe then we’ll have real, upstanding people. My grandfather always said that he only ever met truly good people during the war. There’s not enough kindness these days.

—Two women, strangers, were crying in each other’s arms next to the escalator, their faces covered in blood. But I didn’t even realize it was blood, I thought that it was just their makeup running from their tears. In the evening, I rewatched this scene, this time on TV, and that’s when it finally hit me. When I was down there, it simply did not compute, I was staring at the blood in utter disbelief.

—At first, you think that you’ll be fine going down into the Metro, you step into the train full of courage, but then, after one or two stops, you have to jump out, you’re in a cold sweat. It’s especially terrifying when the train stalls in the tunnel. Every minute stretches out to an eternity, it feels like your heart is hanging on by a thread…

—Every person from the Caucasus is a potential terrorist…

—What do you think, that Russian soldiers never committed any war crimes in Chechnya? My brother did a tour of duty there…You should hear some of the things he’s told me about the glorious Russian army…They’d keep Chechen men down in pits, like they were animals, and demand that their relatives buy them out. They tortured people…pillaged their homes…These days, he’s drinking himself to death.

—He’s on the payroll of U.S. State Department? Provocateur! Who turned Chechnya into a ghetto for Russians? They fired Russians from their jobs, chased them out of their apartments, stole their cars. If you didn’t hand it over to them, they’d kill you. Russian girls were raped just for being Russian.

—I hate the Chechens! If it weren’t for us Russians, they’d still be up there in their mountains, living in caves. I also hate journalists who stand up for Chechens! Fucking liberals! [
Shoots a look of absolute hatred in my direction—I’m recording our conversation.
]

—Did we put Russian soldiers on trial for killing German soldiers during the Great Patriotic War? They also killed them in all sorts of ways. Partisans cut captured Polizei up into little pieces…You should hear the stories veterans tell…

—During the First Chechen War, back when Yeltsin was still in power, they would always show how things really were on TV. We saw the Chechen women crying. Russian mothers roaming the countryside in search of their sons who’d gone missing in action. No one laid a finger on them. The hatred we see today didn’t exist yet, not on either side.

—First it was just Chechnya burning, now it’s the whole North Caucasus. Mosques going up everywhere.

—Geopolitics has come home to us. Russia is falling apart…Pretty soon, all that’ll be left of the empire is Muscovy…

—I hate them!!!

—Who?

—Everyone!!!

—My son was alive for another seven hours, then they shoved him in a body bag and put him on a bus with the other corpses…He was brought to us in a government-issue coffin along with two wreaths. The coffin was made out of some kind of wood shavings, it felt like cardboard, we lifted it up and it fell apart under the weight. The wreaths were cheap and pathetic. We ended up having to buy everything ourselves. The government doesn’t give a damn about us mere mortals, and I spit on them in return. I want to get out of this fucked-up country. My husband and I applied to emigrate to Canada.

—Stalin used to kill people, and now the gangsters do. Is that freedom?

—I have black hair, black eyes…I’m Russian, Orthodox. The other day, my friend and I went down into the Metro, and the police stopped us and took me aside: “Remove your outerwear. Show us your documents.” They paid zero attention to my friend because she’s blonde. My mother said, “Dye your hair.” But I’m ashamed to.

—A Russian stands on three legs: “perhaps,” “perchance,” and “sometime maybe.” At first, everyone quaked with fear, but a month later, when I found a suspicious package under a bench in the Metro, I barely managed to convince the station attendant to call the police.

—At Domodedovo Airport, after the terrorist attacks, those fucking taxi drivers hiked up their prices. Sky high! People will try to make a buck off of anything. I’d like to pull them out of their cars and slam their faces into their hoods, those shitheads!

—Some people were lying in puddles of blood, while others were snapping pictures of them on their phones. Click, click. Couldn’t wait to put them up on their blogs. The office plankton need their entertainment.

—Today it’s them, tomorrow it’s going to be us. And no one says anything, everyone is okay with it.

—As much as we can, we’ll try to help the departed with our prayers. To beg the Lord for His mercy…

—

A group of schoolchildren begin a performance on an improvised stage. They’ve been bussed in. I get closer.

—

—I’m interested in Bin Laden…Al-Qaeda, their global project…

—I’m for individual terror. Pinpointed terrorism. For instance, against the police and the bureaucracy…

—Terrorism: Is it a good thing or a bad thing?

—It’s what passes for good these days.

—I’m sick of freakin’ standing here. When do we get to go home?

—Here’s a cool joke…A group of terrorists is sightseeing in Italy. They get to the Leaning Tower of Pisa. “Amateurs!”

—Terrorism is a business…

Human sacrifice, like in ancient times…

A mainstream phenomenon…

A warm-up for revolution…

Something personal…

*1
Sophia Perovskaya (1853–1881) was a Russian revolutionary and member of the Will of the People. She successfully orchestrated the assassination of Alexander II in 1881, for which she was executed by hanging. Nikolai Kibalchich (1853–1881) was also a member of the Will of the People and may have manufactured the bomb that killed the Tsar.

*2
“Bravery lessons” were held during the 1970s and 1980s (and reestablished in 2011) to instill patriotism in children from a young age.

*3
Ibn al-Khattab (1963–2002) was a Saudi-born Chechen independence fighter.

DEATH IS LIKE LOVE

When I was little, we had a tree in our courtyard…this old maple…I’d talk to it, it was my friend. After Grandpa died, I cried for a long time. Bawled all day long. I was five, and it had made me realize that I was going to die and everyone I knew was going to die, too. I was seized by terror: Everyone is going to die before me, and I will be left all alone. Savagely lonely. My mother felt sorry for me, but my father came up to me and barked: “Wipe those tears away. You’re a man. Men don’t cry.” But I didn’t even know what I was yet. I’d never liked being a boy, I didn’t like playing war. But no one ever asked me what I wanted…Everyone made the decisions for me. My mother had dreamed of having a girl, and my father, in typical fashion, had wanted her to get an abortion.

The first time I ever wanted to hang myself, I was seven…The incident with the Chinese bowl…My mother had made jam in this Chinese bowl we had and put it on a stool to cool; meanwhile, my brother and I had been chasing our cat all over the house. Muska managed to fly over the bowl like a shadow, but not us…My mother was still very young, my father was in military training. And there it was: a puddle of jam all over the floor. My mother cursed her fate as an officer’s wife forced to live out in the back of the beyond, on Sakhalin,
^*1
where there were ten meters of snow in the winter and in the summer, the burdock grew taller than she was. She grabbed my father’s belt and chased us out into the street: “But Mama, it’s raining and the ants in the barn bite.” “Shoo! Get out of here! Beat it!!!” My brother ran to our neighbor’s house, and I decided to hang myself. I clambered into the barn, found a rope in a basket. They’ll come looking for me in the morning and find me dangling from the rafters—happy now, fuckers? Right then, Muska squeezed through the door…meow, meow…Sweet Muska! You’ve come to take pity on me. I hugged her, squeezed her, and that’s how the two of us stayed until morning.