The Endless Steppe

by Esther Hautzig

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  When the announcement was made in school that there was to be a declamation contest the following August, the devil – or the ham in me – prodded me into entering it.

  Raisa Nikitovna gave out a list of works from which the students were to make their selections. As usual, there were the poems about the glories of the Soviet Union and the Stakhanov workers. Odes to Stalin, to the Russian soldiers, and a sonnet or two to the Soviet people. And way down at the bottom of the list, as if it were a frivolous afterthought not to be taken too seriously, was Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin.

  I loved Onegin. I loved it for taking me from my harsh exile back to a time and a place I never knew, to its lost world.

  In the past two years, Raisa Nikitovna had not become any friendlier; on the contrary, she seemed to have interred herself in a cake of ice. She among all my teachers still made me feel like an outsider and with her my Polish accent was always at its heaviest. I hated having to ask her for permission to enter the contest.

  ‘You wish to recite an ode to our great leader, Stalin?’ she asked, her face smooth as ice and her voice sharp with sarcasm.

  She had a point, of course.

  I confessed that – with her kind permission – I would like to attempt Tatyana’s dream from Eugene Onegin.

  A frown cracked the ice. Clearly, Raisa Nikitovna thought it inappropriate for a Polish deportee to have the honour of entering a Soviet declamation contest, no matter what she declaimed.

  ‘Are you aware that there are to be no prizes?’ she asked, reducing me to some greedy little monster. (Grandmother was more explicit: ‘Anti-Semite!’ she cried.)

  If I had any sense I would have given up then, but I came from a long line of stubborn idiots.

  So I began to study Tatyana’s dream as if I were preparing for a performance at the Bolshoi Theatre. Tatyana is a shy country girl who falls in love with a worldly man from St Petersburg society, Eugene Onegin. Her terrifying dream foreshadows the tragic future of her love.

  It was my objective that Tatyana and I become one, nothing less. So I memorized, recited, read, performed in front of anyone who cared – or did not care – to listen. I tried out every nuance of speech, worked on every word. No one escaped my histrionics – my friends, Mother’s friends, not even a hawk soaring over the deserted steppe.

  ‘ “An awesome dream Tatyana’s dreaming …” ’

  The hundredth, the two-hundredth time?

  Even my poor grandmother began to wilt when she came to visit us.

  ‘Beautiful, beautiful …’ she said. ‘But so frightening … the bear … and the wood … and those freaks … Esther, darling, such a marvellous actress you are, you’re frightening your poor old grandmother. Better stop, darling –’

  Would Sarah Bernhardt have stopped? I went on and on through that spring at Yosif Isayevich’s being Tatyana with her dream and her great sad love for Eugene Onegin.

  Late in the spring I was temporarily interrupted.

  Life at Yosif Isayevich’s had been pleasant, comparatively speaking. Letters from Father were reassuring and when it was planting time, when we were to be assigned a piece of barren soil to struggle with, Yosif Isayevich told us that we need not worry about potatoes, that more than likely we would be spending another winter with him. And if not, he would help us out.

  But Yosif Isayevich’s wife returned much sooner than expected and the hunt was on again. After the usual difficulties, we ended up back in the village with a young couple and a baby. Their mud hut had one room and a kitchen, which kind-hearted Yosif Isayevich arranged to have divided in half, giving Mother and me a tiny place to sleep. So tiny that there was only room enough for a narrow bed for one person, Mother. Squeezed between my wardrobe and the wall was a small blanket chest for me to sleep on. It was too short for me to stretch out full length; when I did so, I put my feet up on the wall in the beauty position. But since the chest backed the stove on the other side of the wall, it would be a lovely foot warmer in the winter.

  Once we were settled in our new hut, it was the young couple, Natasha and Nikolay, and the little baby, Katia, who became my best audience:

  ‘ “An awesome dream Tatyana’s dreaming …” ’ I recited.

  The baby thought I was absolutely splendid.

  Nervous and excited in equal parts, I spent the whole night before the declamation contest awake in my cramped bed. Feet higher than my head, belly caved in, I swung from the exalted moment when my ears would ring with the shouts of bravo, shouts that would eventually lead me to the stages of Moscow, Leningrad, Warsaw, and New York, down to the ghastly moment when I would stand up in the school auditorium the victim of total amnesia.

  That August was hot. Sometimes so hot that our cosy little corner in Natasha and Nikolay’s hut made me feel as if we were buried alive in a bed of steaming manure.

  As soon as morning came, I crept out for a breath of fresh air before the others awakened. The dew was lifting from the parched steppe, shrouding the huts of the village.

  I knew it was going to be another scorcher, but who cared about the heat? Who cared about anything but the contest?

  And what was I going to wear?

  Almost from the beginning, from the time I had signed up for the contest, this question had recurred as it must to every female who ever lived. And like every female who ever lived, I expected some fairy, the one assigned to these matters, to do her duty.

  I tiptoed into the hut and pulled my clothes out of the wardrobe and took them back outside.

  I set them on the ground and looked at them. The fairy had been otherwise occupied. All that lay there before me to choose between was my cotton dress, the one and only one I had left, now faded and threadbare, and a woollen skirt patched in many places, with the ubiquitous heavy red and blue sweater.

  I held the dress up against myself, as if I didn’t know. I pressed the dress close to my body and looked down. As if I didn’t know from wearing it day in and day out that it was much too short. I made my decision; all at once I knew what it would feel like to stand up in the auditorium in a dress that exposed my bony knees – half naked is what it would feel like.

  Oh, why hadn’t I been my own good fairy and grabbed a party dress or two that morning in Vilna? the pale blue organdy? I saw the closet in my room in Vilna with my party dresses hanging together, each one a souvenir of parties and plays and concerts, each one a souvenir of laughter and wonder. I saw the white wool dress and my lacquered shoes, and recalled that I had worn them to my first opera. Suddenly I heard the opening of the overture and I remembered that the first opera had been Eugene Onegin! Was this a good or a bad omen?

  ‘What are you doing out here? Why are you up so early?’ Mother came out of the hut, combing her hair.

  How could Mama have forgotten? I wanted to know. (Well, how could she have? Had she thought that she had been forever doomed to listen to Tatyana’s dream?)

  ‘Once more, Mama. Please listen to the poem just once more.’

  ‘My dear child, word for word Pushkin himself never knew this poem as well as you do. Now I must get dressed and go to work …’

  I must have looked so stricken that Mother said, ‘Just once more, Esther – while I wash and dress.’

  I trailed after her to our room.

  The room was too small and Mother sloshing water over her face was a poor audience. I stumbled over a word and it filled me with panic. What came next?

  ‘Oh, God! This is terrible, terrible, terrible!’ I cried.

  ‘The more terrible it is now, the better you will be later,’ Mother said calmly.

  This was a most unlikely thing for Mother, the pessimist and the perfectionist, to say. Overwrought though I was, it fascinated me. How could she say such a thing?

  ‘In the theatre it is a well-known fact,’ Mother said, ‘that the worse a dress rehearsal goes, the better the opening performance.’

  True, Mother had known some famous actors and actresse
s in Vilna. I was willing to be convinced of that well-known fact, but by no means did it take care of Raisa Nikitovna.

  ‘And what about her, for goodness’ sake?’ Mother asked.

  ‘If she is one of the judges, I’m finished. She hates me.’

  Mother stopped fixing her hair. Mother was not an effusive mother, nor a demonstrative one, but the idea of anyone, the devil himself, hating her child was too ridiculous for words.

  ‘Stop being so silly,’ she snapped.

  Silly or not, I thought, she doesn’t really know Raisa Nikitovna. None of us children had been able to find out who the judges were to be and this anonymous body had become our common bugbear. But I felt that Raisa Nikitovna was my personal enemy. I wasn’t going to argue with Mother, but I hoped and prayed that Raisa Nikitovna was miles and miles away from that contest, preferably on the other side of the Urals.

  One by one they left the hut, wishing me good luck – Mother, then Nikolay and Natasha, taking Katia with them to the day nursery at the factory where they worked. To them this would be just another day, hot and parched and difficult. Nothing special, nothing earth-shaking, nothing beautiful was likely to happen to them that day. But to me, it might; my whole life might be changed that day.

  I sat down on my bed. The tension and the excitement had made me dizzy, or perhaps the hunger. When the world stopped whirling, I looked at my nails. This morning I was supposed to spread a fresh layer of yellow clay on the ground in our room to make it clean. For once I wanted no tell-tale signs under my nails and on my knees to advertise that we had no floor, for once I would be a bad housekeeper.

  I washed my hands and feet, put on the skirt and sweater, and dug out the chipped mirror Anya had passed on to me. A white face with apprehensive eyes peered back at me. Not having seen myself in a mirror for a long time, I saw the face of a stranger. A fine Tatyana I’d make! To put a smile on that mournful face in the mirror, I stuck my tongue out and made devil’s horns behind my head. It worked; I smiled – wanly. I had let my hair grow again and I pulled at it, trying to get the knots out. I yanked some hairs from my head and used them to tie my braids.

  It was time to go.

  The road to school was longer and hotter than usual. The huts were already baking in the sun, seeming to dry up before one’s eyes. My sweater was drenched with perspiration and the dust that covered my freshly washed feet had spread up over my legs, had even flown up to my skirt. I went past the baracholka where already someone was haggling over what looked like a torn sheet. Down at the creek, I could see that a little boy waited patiently for a fish to present itself in the trickle that was all the drought had left of the waters.

  When I saw the blaze of white that was the school, I felt a rush of happiness that momentarily dissolved my fears. This was the morning I had been preparing for for months, in an hour Tatyana and I would be one.

  I was early, the first to arrive for the contest. I couldn’t decide whether to go in alone or wait for one of my friends. I went in alone. But not before brushing the dust off my skirt and pulling the sweater away from my overheated body as much as possible.

  The front door opened with a creak. The corridor was quiet and the floor was freshly scrubbed. In here it was cooler and I took a deep breath. I crept along the hall, as if the floor were made of glass, until I reached the largest classroom in the school, the one we used as an auditorium.

  The door was partly open and I could see the improvised platform and the rows of chairs. The room appeared to be empty and I went in.

  It was not empty. Standing at a table, arranging some papers, was Raisa Nikitovna. Her mousy hair had been drawn back tighter than I had ever seen it. Not by so much as a raised eyebrow did she give any sign of seeing me.

  ‘Pardon me, Raisa Nikitovna …’

  Two slivers of granite, grey and cold, were turned my way.

  ‘Yes, what is it?’

  Cold, cold.

  ‘Why … why, I’m here for the contest …’

  She shuffled the papers on the table. ‘I don’t recall seeing your name on any of these lists.’

  I thought I would die right then and there. I didn’t die, but I did begin to tremble.

  ‘But, Raisa Nikitovna, don’t you remember …? I’m the one who’s doing Tatyana’s dream? Please … don’t you remember …?’

  At last she found my name, obviously regretting that she had done so.

  ‘Let me look at you,’ she said.

  I stood straight as a needle, with my shoulders back, my head raised high, and my eyes just above Raisa Nikitovna’s head, avoiding her face.

  ‘You cannot appear on the stage this morning, this way. Not under any circumstances.’

  Dear God, why not? Now what have I done?

  ‘Look at yourself. Whatever made you think you could go up on that stage in front of your teachers, judges, visitors that way?’

  ‘What way, please?’

  ‘What way, please? Without your shoes. That’s what way.’

  So that was it. No shoes. I looked down and saw a pair of dirty feet. Where had they come from, these dirty, shoeless feet? Who owned them anyway?

  I found my voice. ‘I am so sorry, Raisa Nikitovna. I completely forgot to put my shoes on. I guess the excitement of the contest … I’ll run … run … right back to our house and put my shoes on. I’ll be back before the contest is all over. Will that be all right with you?’

  ‘See that you come back on time. We shall not wait for you.’

  And with those words she turned away to straighten a chair that was not in need of being straightened.

  I ran out of the school.

  My panic was total. I had no shoes. The school shoes with which I had dragged my feet out of our house in Vilna that morning had long since become too small even for a child’s feet in Siberia and had been sold for a hunk of bread. What was I to do? I thought of borrowing a pair from a friend, but who among them owned more than one pair? No one. If only we had not been so proud and had let Uncle Yozia … somewhere, somehow he would have found a pair …

  My only hope was that I would find something in our hut – something belonging to Mother or to Natasha, or even to Nikolay.

  I ran. As I ran, I held back tears of bewilderment along with panic. Why did one need shoes to speak? And why did Raisa Nikitovna hate me so much?

  When I reached the hut, I didn’t stop to catch my breath but immediately pulled out Mother’s clothes. To my great relief, I found a pair of old felt slippers she must have picked up at the baracholka. Clutching them to my chest, I thanked God for them. I would not be barefoot. I slipped my feet into them. They were enormous, so enormous that they fell off my feet with the first step. Frantically I searched for a piece of string and when I found it I ran from the hut, leaving everything topsy-turvy.

  With the slippers under my arm and the string clutched tightly in one fist, I raced back over the dusty road. My throat was dry as paper and the dust stung my eyes. But on I ran as if I were possessed. I almost collided with an old man who was walking peacefully along the road. He stared at me – a wild creature clutching slippers and swinging a clenched fist madly in the air. He shook his head from side to side when I called out, ‘Excuse me, diedushka.’ The poor Polish kid has gone berserk, he seemed to think.

  I could scarcely breathe by the time I got back to school. Each breath escaped with a huge rasping noise. My shoulders heaved and my knees trembled. My braids had loosened and hair was falling over my eyes. But I had returned. With the inside edge of my skirt I wiped the dust from my toes and ankles and slipped my feet into the slippers. I tied them with the string and opened the door into the corridor.

  The string just about kept the slippers on my feet, but as I ran towards the auditorium like a deranged duck, the corridor echoed with the clop, clop, clopping of the slippers.

  Trying to keep the door from squeaking, I slid into the auditorium. The door did squeak and all eyes turned towards me. Except those of a boy who was on
the stage reciting an ode to Stalin in a high, nasal voice.

  Raisa Nikitovna sat next to the table looking at me with eyes more like granite than ever.

  ‘Oh, so you’re back,’ she whispered, somehow making a whisper sound like a snarl. ‘Walk over …’ She started to point to the other side of the table, then she saw the slippers. ‘Is that what you call –?’ My heart stopped beating for one second. Raisa Nikitovna looked up from the slippers. She looked at my face. ‘You will follow Grisha. You are the last contestant.’ She pointed to a single empty chair and I waddled towards it.

  I had barely sat down when the boy Grisha finished the ode and Raisa Nikitovna called my name.

  Still struggling with my breath, I walked over to the stage and climbed the three steps leading to the platform. I nearly lost one slipper. Someone snickered.

  I reached the centre of the platform. I took one last deep breath:

  ‘ “An awesome dream Tatyana’s dreaming …” ’

  I could not lift my eyes from the floor; I was too tired.

  The words came, one after another, in their proper sequence. That was all. Pushkin’s poetry was gone. Nothing was left of its colour, its spirit.

  I kept on going. Near the end, I lifted my eyes from the floor. The audience was a big, grey blur. I was so tired. But in a way, a way I had not anticipated, Tatyana and I had become one; we were together in a nightmare.

  Floating towards me from the grey blur was the face of Raisa Nikitovna. A face I had never seen before. The cold, forbidding stare was gone and in its place there seemed to be a grudging respect. And strangest of all, some kindness too.

  At last I finished. What little applause there was was weak and short-lived.