In the shelter of a stall where meat was being sold, Marya Nikolayevna opened her coat and I took her measurements. I used a piece of string that I got by combining two of her bundles; with painstaking care, I measured her arm, her bosom, her waist, her back, and the length, making knots in the string for each measurement. To play safe, and to retain the order in my mind, I measured her twice. I felt very professional.
I took the filthy rag of a skirt from her and thanked God for the gift. Clutching my treasure to me, I raced home indifferent to the wind and the approaching storm: I was racing towards a litre of bitter Siberian milk.
Much to my annoyance, Mother wrinkled her nose fastidiously at the sight of the filthy rag, and had harsh words for high and mighty ladies who expected a child to make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear plucked from a rubbish bin. Even Grandmother looked dubious and wondered if Marya Nikolayevna weren’t playing a practical joke on me.
I held back my tears and went to work. Nervously using the precious cake of soap from Uncle Yozia, I washed the filthy, torn skirt. To my delight, little by little a clear, beautiful red emerged from the mud. I waved the skirt triumphantly under the noses of my detractors.
But my triumph was short-lived. What surely became the most tedious and nerve-racking task of my life began. Inch by inch – or rather stitch by stitch – I ripped the skirt and tied together hundreds of tiny bits of yarn. Nothing in God’s name but an empty stomach could have induced me to carry on this nightmare. Mostly I worked at nights as I had done when I knitted the sweater for the little girl. As I sat in the semi-darkness ripping the wool, I clung to a vision of lovely white flour, potatoes in the peak of their perfection, and milk as rich and golden as any that ever flowed from a prize cow. Sometimes when I thought I could not rip one more row or tie one more knot, I extended the vision to include a bonus from my extremely grateful patron – a quite small piece of juicy beef or perhaps two eggs.
At last it was over, the ripping and the tying. As I gazed at the balls of bright red yarn, scratchy with knots, that I had created so laboriously, I could scarcely bear to unwind one to cast the first stitch.
Once again I was knitting, knitting without a minute to spare for reading, for pleasure, or for playing – throwing snowballs with Svetlana and the other children or chasing each other in the moonlight. This time I even knitted while I studied, with a schoolbook propped up against the small kerosene lamp, and when the kerosene ran out, I knitted in the dark. Sometimes I didn’t mind the knitting. Sometimes I even enjoyed it, particularly the sight of rows of knit and rows of purl growing into a pattern, taking on the shape of a sweater. Often I kept myself from falling asleep by celebrating the end of a row of knitting with a chant: ‘One more potato, one more sip of milk. One more cup of flour, one more sip of milk.’
When I was finished with the knitting I had to make the sweater look as if it had been made from brand-new wool. This meant that each and every one of those hundreds of knots had to be made to disappear by pushing them back and weaving their ends into the body of the sweater. I was terrified that one knot might cost me the milk, flour, and potatoes.
To the best of my knowledge – and Grandmother’s and Mother’s – not one single knot had been left to displease Marya Nikolayevna. The nightmare was over; after weeks of work, the sweater was finished and even Mother, who was sparing with compliments, had to admit that I had made something nice out of rubbish. Grandmother, more indulgent, said it was nothing less than a miracle. And I was rather immodestly inclined to agree with her.
Grandmother made a special trip to the baracholka to tell Marya Nikolayevna that her sweater was ready. And when would it be convenient for her to receive it? Grandmother asked – in her grandest manner, she assured us in telling us the story later, not for one minute letting on that our stomachs were aching for the payment due. But Marya Nikolayevna did not want me to come to her house, she would come to ours. Mother thought it was because I would see how rich she was and how meanly she had paid me; Grandmother thought the opposite – that she was ashamed of her house, that I would discover that all her wealth was on her back, that she was putting on airs. I chose to be more generous: Marya Nikolayevna was a very thoughtful lady, who did not wish the maker of a marvellous miracle to freeze to death making a delivery.
I waited for Marya Nikolayevna in a state of perpetual motion. I ran back and forth from the window to the bed. I had spread a white sheet on the bed to show off the redness and the beautiful design of the sweater.
Alone in the hut, I prayed aloud for Marya Nikolayevna to like this sweater.
At last, she arrived. I opened the door, and although I had almost lost the habit, I curtsied. The curtsy produced a regal nod as Marya Nikolayevna swept into the hut with all the grandeur of a Leningrad lady used to finer establishments. She tossed her seal coat on to the only chair in the room. In this hut, her earrings sparkled brighter than ever; her sapogy – exactly the boots I craved – were brand-new and white as the snow outside. I looked down at our mud floor with its centrepiece of logs, fearful that one stray unpacked speck of dirt would fly on to those gorgeous boots. Marya Nikolayevna was looking too – at the mud floor, the logs, the beds, and the makeshift stove; she was looking as if she had never seen the inside of a Siberian hut before and as if she very much did not like what she saw, as if it filled her with revulsion, pity, and scorn.
Anna Karenina? Yes, here were the full, round shoulders, the dark hair with the ringlets framing her face, the fair, luminous skin. But missing in Marya Nikolayevna’s face were Anna’s kind grey eyes, the softness which I now longed for. Instead, the slightly slanted eyes that were inspecting the hut were black polished to a steely brilliance – hard eyes.
I began to storm inside. I hated pity and too early in life I had learned that pity and scorn had an attraction for each other. After all, this hut was spotlessly clean and the gauze curtains were a pretty yellow. Why hadn’t she noticed that?
But my growing anger was short-lived. I had something much more important to observe than Marya Nikolayevna’s resemblance to or difference from Anna Karenina.
What I saw before me was beyond belief, created only in a nightmare.
‘Well, my child, so my sweater is finished at long last.’
The voice was the voice in the echo chamber of nightmare.
Fat!
Marya Nikolayevna had got fat! Pounds and pounds heavier.
‘Yes, ma’am.’ I spoke in a choked whisper.
It couldn’t be; not after the weeks of work. I must be seeing things.
I picked up the sweater without looking at it, the child in me, no doubt, counting on magic for the sweater to grow fat and big like Marya Nikolayevna.
‘Shall I help you with it?’ I asked, still unable to speak above a whisper.
‘Yes, of course.’
Marya Nikolayevna raised one arm and put it into a sleeve. Tight, very tight, but in. Then the other white and pretty hand was drawn through the second sleeve. I smoothed out the back, pulling it a little way this way and more than a little the other way. Somehow I managed to walk around to the front.
‘Esinka!’ The voice was now all too present, dangerously emerged from the unreality of nightmare. ‘Esinka! This sweater does not fit at all. It will not close. It is much, much too tight!’
My feet buckled under me. I saw spots as brilliantly red as the sweater.
‘Marya Nikolayevna, it can’t be small! It can’t be! I measured you and I measured the sweater … it has to be right, it just has to be …’
I was fighting my hysteria with all my strength; Marya Nikolayevna must not see me cry; she must never know how much the milk and flour and potatoes meant to us. I swallowed hard and took a few deep breaths.
‘My dear child,’ Marya Nikolayevna went on in her slow, smooth way, ‘haven’t you forgotten something?’
What was she talking about? What could I possibly have forgotten? The sweater had everything a sweater ought to have – a
back, a front, everything.
‘Forgotten?’
‘Forgotten. Think!’
Marya Nikolayevna was smiling. She was playing a game, one she was enjoying immensely. My throat tightened unbearably. In another second I would cry. I shook my head.
‘The cow, my dove, the cow.’
‘The cow,’ I repeated foolishly.
‘My dear child, the cow I bought that day turned out to be a very good cow. Her milk has made me nice and fat. If only you had remembered! But do not look so sad, I am not angry with you. You will simply redo the sweater.’
I could not speak. I took the sweater off, peeling it from Marya Nikolayevna’s plump shoulders and fat arms as if I were ripping bandages off my own raw skin. I laid it back on the white sheet, straightening it out and smoothing it as I did so.
‘Now, if you will excuse me, my dove, I must go,’ she said. ‘And when shall I come back for the sweater?’
Feeling as if I were sentencing myself to life imprisonment, I muttered, ‘… perhaps … I think … perhaps in two months …’
When the door closed after her, I sat down on the bed beside the sweater. I picked it up and put it on my lap. I allowed myself to weep. I wept for the wasted weeks and I wept for the potatoes and the flour and the milk we were not to get. When I thought of the milk, I thought of the good cow. Suddenly I hated that good cow as I had never hated anything in my life. And while I was at it, I decided to be angry at the earth that would not feed us. And at myself for crying like a baby.
‘Stop crying,’ I said aloud. ‘And start ripping.’
But I couldn’t. It was too soon to destroy my miracle.
By the time Mother came home, I had stopped crying but when I saw her I began all over again. She listened to me tell my story between sobs and sniffles.
‘Oh, you poor thing …’ she began and then before my astonished eyes, I saw that she was restraining her own hysteria – hysterical laughter, that is.
I was outraged.
‘But, darling …’ the tears were rolling down her cheeks ‘… the irony of it. You were so happy about that cow. And look what it did to you …’
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
That winter, cold settled in the bones as if it would be stored there indefinitely like ice in an icehouse.
The hut was perpetually cold. I ripped the red sweater with ice-cold fingers and a cold heart, and when it was too cold to stay out of bed, I knitted in bed, wearing socks (old socks of Father’s had replaced my outgrown ones), my sweater, and often a shawl over my head. I tried wearing gloves but that didn’t work.
In the early morning when it was still dark, the moment of leaving the cold hut for the walk to school was always a moment of trauma. The walk would take well over an hour and it wasn’t a walk at all; it was a constant battle with a ferociously buffeting and icy wind. The battle might have been lost if I had not gone in convoy. The convoy consisted of about six children who picked one another up on the way and used one another as windbreaks. Holding on to our books with one arm, we grabbed one another around the waist with the free arm and hid behind one another’s backs. For once, no one wanted to be the leader and we took turns being first in line. On the way we would meet other little bands of children linked together. Everyone who could went to school this way in the Siberian winter; no one was ever excluded; everyone was needed. In this instance, if there was a most popular person, it would be the biggest and the fattest.
There was one place where I forgot the cold, indeed forgot Siberia. That was in the library. There, in that muddy village, was a great institution. Not physically to be sure, but in every other way imaginable. It was a small log cabin, immaculately attended to with loving care; it was well lighted with oil lamps and it was warm. But best of all, it contained a small but amazing collection from the world’s best literature, truly amazing considering the time, the place, and its size. From floor to ceiling it was lined with books – books, books, books. It was there that I was to become acquainted with the works of Dumas, Pasternak’s translations of Shakespeare, the novels of Mark Twain, Jack London, and of course the Russians. It was in that log cabin that I escaped from Siberia – either reading there or taking the books home. It was between that library and two extraordinary teachers that I developed a lifelong passion for the great Russian novelists and poets. It was there that I learned to line up patiently for my turn to sit at a table and read, to wait – sometimes months – for a book. It was there that I learned that reading was not only a great delight, but a privilege.
Cold or no cold, fearing that I might still be running a race with the cow, I finally finished the red sweater. And promptly got myself another customer. This time it was a lady who had come from Moscow with her daughter – and some wool. Lovely, fluffy, soft, unused wool. The lady ordered two sweaters and agreed to pay me with a wardrobe.
‘A what?’ Mother wanted to know.
‘A wardrobe, Mama. It’s just beautiful.’
‘And just what we need, I suppose?’
I seemed to need it. I loved it. It was made of plywood and it had been stained brown; it had a cupboard on top and two drawers below. We had some difficulty fitting it into the hut: its front rested on the logs covering the hole so that it stood somewhat tilted. And there wasn’t too much that we owned to put in it; in fact, it was rather pathetically empty. But I thought it was beautiful and that I had been well paid.
One night the hut got too cold for Mother. In the country of permafrost, sub-zero temperatures, and snow as deep as a hut is high, a glass of water turned to ice should have been of no consequence, but it was. Every night Mother set a glass of water down beside her bed; the night that she awakened with a thirst to find that the water had turned to ice was the last straw. She was certain we would all freeze to death in that hut and she decided to enlist Uncle Yozia’s help in finding a new home.
Uncle Yozia and Aunt Zaya had become more and more important, not just to me but to Mother too. Indeed, there were ways in which she needed them even more than I did. I had school and homework and school friends to remind me that I was still a member of the human race, but not so Mother. If it had not been for a few Polish families and most particularly Uncle Yozia and Aunt Zaya, I think it more than likely that Mother would have cracked up. Good talk was her beauty treatment; the life would come back to her, bringing with it her old beauty. She and Uncle Yozia and Aunt Zaya talked about everything in the warmth and cosiness of their living room. Cosy, that is, by Siberian standards, where a decent fire, one rug, and possibly one or two overstuffed chairs gave one the illusion of opulence. They talked about Turgenev, a great favourite of Mother’s, and Sholem Aleichem. They talked about music. They compared notes about the things they had seen and done. But they did not talk about politics or about any aspect of Soviet life that derived from its social system. They talked as if they were in a café in Vilna or Paris or London, as if the next day were not certain to bring some confrontation with sickness or starvation or death, or all three. And usually there was some rationed tea and some precious tidbit, such as a piece of smoked red fish, to add to the pleasure.
Thanks to Uncle Yozia’s concern, we were offered the possibility of a few months’ respite from cold and hunger; in other words, a sojourn in heaven. One of the directors of the tractor factory, Yosif Isayevich, would give us food (in addition to our own rations) and lodging in exchange for caring for him and his house while his wife and children were away. His house was warm and clean and there would even be eggs to eat. But –
The ‘but’ was a staggering one and stuck in Uncle Yozia’s throat: there would be no room for Grandmother. Mother and I were adamant: it was out of the question for us to be separated.
Grandmother was equally adamant: it was stupid for three people to freeze to death, particularly when two of them could invite the third one to warm her bones at their fire and share food. ‘Besides, we can use a little holiday from each other.’ That was true; they were human and the long, close
confinement under dreadful conditions had been a strain on both Grandmother and Mother. It could not have been otherwise, but to me in Siberia togetherness was everything, and I felt not only guilty, but betrayed.
The Kaftals had found a hut for themselves, quite as miserable as ours, and Grandmother was to sleep there. Taking Grandmother and her little bundles to the Kaftals’ made me feel sick.
‘We shouldn’t have let her,’ I said to Mother.
‘Stop it!’ Mother said sharply. ‘I don’t need you to make me feel any worse than I do.’
Yosif Isayevich’s house was next to the tractor factory. When we moved, my precious wardrobe came along too; and very useful it was, since it served to divide our sleeping quarters from Yosif Isayevich’s in his two-room (bedroom and kitchen) house.
Yosif Isayevich was a genial man who shared his food generously, kept his wooden house warm, and treated Mother with great respect. So much so, that when he was drunk, which was often, his chief concern was to keep it a secret from Mother. ‘Please –’ he said to me once when he came home drunk in the afternoon, ‘I beg of you, do not let your mother know. Such a fine lady …’ Not letting Mother know must have given him a much-bruised shin; it meant that he would come home late, when he thought we would be asleep. And we would lie there, listening to him bump about in the dark, and hope that he wouldn’t break a leg. It was a ludicrous game.
Whatever we did for him, we did because we wanted to, not because he demanded it. We cooked and we cleaned and I learned how to iron a man’s shirt. I ironed on a blanket-covered board, which was placed across the backs of two chairs, and I used an iron filled with hot coals, blowing on them to keep them burning.
Yosif Isayevich’s house was wired for electricity, but as we stared up into an empty socket we were constantly reminded of the scarcity of bulbs. However, there was a loudspeaker in the kitchen and the government-sponsored broadcasts brought us news from the outside world and music – opera, folk songs, and dance music. Sitting in Yosif Isayevich’s warm kitchen, listening to music, Mother and I would be filled with wonder at our good fortune. Grandmother did come to eat with us and that winter all three of us got a little fatter.
The Endless Steppe Page 14
