NINE

by Svetlana Alexiyevich

  So then… It was a whole new life. I liked the way I'd begun to look. It's just that… I was suddenly so much prettier… Anka fell right into place, I loved her very much, but somehow she wasn't absolutely connected with men in my mind. Someone had made her… Conceived her… But no! She'd come from the sky… She was always independent. When she began to talk, people would ask:

  «Anechka, don't you have a papa?»

  «No, I have a granny instead.»

  «Don't you have a dog?»

  «No, I have a hamster instead.»

  We were like that, she and I… All my life I was afraid of not being me. Even at the dentist's, I'd ask them not to give me any painkiller. My feelings were my feelings, good or bad: Don't disconnect me from myself. We liked each other, Anka and I. And then we met him… Gleb…

  If he hadn't been who he was, I would never have married again. I had everything: a child, work, freedom. Then he appeared… absurd, nearly blind, short of breath… To let a person with such a heavy burden — twelve years in Stalin's camps, he was just a boy, sixteen, when they took him — into our world… With the burden of that knowledge… of the difference… Our life together wasn't what I'd call freedom. What was it? Why? Am I saying that I only felt sorry for him? No. It was also love. That's exactly what it was. (More to herself than to me). He's been dead seven years… And I'm even sorry that he never knew me the way I am now. Now I understand him more, I'm finally old enough for him, but he isn't here. So then… Even what I'm telling you… I'm again afraid… I'm afraid that I won't be me… It's terrifying sometimes… Like in the sea… In the sea I used to love to swim way far out until one time I became frightened — I'm alone, the water's deep, and I don't know what's down there…

  (We drink some tea, talk about other things. Then, just as suddenly as they stopped, the memories start again.)

  Oh, those seaside romances… Short and sweet. A small model of life. You can begin them beautifully, and end them beautifully, the way you'd like to in real life but never manage to. That's why people like to go away. So then… I had two braids and a blue polka dot dress I'd bought at Children's World the day before I left. The sea… I swam way far out, more than anything on earth I love to swim. Every morning I did exercises under a white acacia… A man came walking along, just a man, very ordinary-looking, not young. He saw me and for some reason was glad. He stood there and stared.

  «Would you like me to read you some poetry tonight?»

  «Maybe, but now I'm going to swim way far out.»

  «I'll be waiting for you.»

  He was a bad reader of poetry; he kept adjusting his glasses. But he was touching… I understood… I understood what he was feeling… The gestures, the glasses, it was all nervousness. But I have absolutely no memory of what he read, or why it must have meant so much. Feelings are separate beings… Suffering, love, tenderness… They live unto themselves, we feel them, but don't see them. You suddenly become a part of someone else's life, without even realizing it. Everything happens both with you and without you… At the same time… «I've been waiting for you,» he said when he saw me next morning. He said it in such a way that I believed him, even though I wasn't at all ready. Just the opposite. But something was changing around me, I didn't know what or how. I felt calm because of what was about to happen to me, it wasn't yet love, but I just sensed… I had this feeling… That I'd suddenly been given a whole lot of something. One person had heard another. Had gotten through. I swam way far out… I swam back. He was waiting for me. Again he said: «We'll be fine together.» And for some reason I again believed him… So then… He met me by the sea every day… Once we were drinking champagne: «It's pink champagne, but at the regular-champagne price.» I liked that phrase. (Laughs). Another time he was frying some eggs: «It's a curious business about me and these eggs. I buy them by the dozen, fry them in pairs, and I always have one left over.» Sweet things like that…

  People would look at us and ask: «Is he your grandfather? Is he your father?» I was wearing a very short skirt… I was twenty-eight… It was only later he became handsome. With me. Why me? I was in despair at first. I must serve him. There's no other way. Or better not get involved. A Russian woman is ready to suffer: what else can she do? We're used to our men, ungainly, unfortunate, my grandmother married a man like that, and so did my mother. We don't expect anything else, and that gets passed down. We're all ferocious dreamers…

  «I was thinking of you.»

  «What were you thinking?»

  «That I'd like us to go for a walk somewhere. Way far away. Holding hands. I don't need anything except to feel you next to me. I feel such tenderness for you — I just want to look at you and walk beside you.»

  We spent many happy hours together; we acted like complete children. Good people are always children. Helpless. You have to protect them.

  «Maybe we could go away together to some island and lie on the sand.»

  That's my… How should it be? I don't know. With one person, it's one way. With another person, another way. But how should it be? Who can gauge? Where are the scales… That… All of Russian culture, everything we see and hear around us, is built on the fact that our best school is the school of misfortune, we grew up with it. So then… But we want good fortune… I would wake up in the night and think: What am I doing? So then… I couldn't stop worrying, and because of this tension I… «The back of your head is always tense,» he noticed. But how could I get it out of my mind… What am I doing? Where am I falling? There's an abyss…

  He scared me right off the bat… The breadbox… As soon as he saw it… He would begin methodically eating up all the bread. Any amount. Bread must not be left. It was your ration. He would eat and eat; however much there was, he would always finish it. It took me a while to understand why…

  They tortured him with a burning light… He was only a boy, for heaven's sake… Sixteen years old… They didn't let him sleep for days on end. Decades later he still couldn't bear bright light, even the bright summer sun. What I loved was the bright morning air, when the clouds were even higher, floating way high above you. But he could end up with a temperature… From the light…

  In school they beat him and wrote on his back in chalk: «Son of an enemy of the people». The school director made them do it… Our fears as children… They stick out in us… Come to the surface… They stay with you for good. Forever. I heard those fears in him…

  Where am I going? Russian women love to adopt unhappy souls. My grandmother loved one and her parents married her off to another. I can't tell you how much she disliked him, how much she didn't want to marry him. My God! She decided that at the wedding, when the priest turned to her and asked if she were going of her own free will, she would say, 'No'. But the priest was drunk and, instead of asking the question as he was supposed to, he said: «You be good to him, he froze his feet off in the war.» So then she had to marry him. That's how Granny wound up with our grandfather — whom she never loved — for life. What a perfect refrain for our entire life: «You be good to him, he froze his feet off in the war.» My mother's husband was in the next war, he returned destroyed, spent. To live with a person like that, with what he brought back with him, was a lot of work, and it fell on a woman's shoulders. No one! No one has written anything, I've never read anything about how hard it was to live with the victors. With the men who returned from the war. Gleb put it exactly in one of his journals: in camp he realized that every other person in Russia had been in prison — for an arrested father, for a few ears of wheat picked up on a collective farm field, for being late to work (ten minutes), for not informing, for an anecdote… Our men are martyrs, they've all suffered some trauma — either in the war or in camp. For many, the war ended with camp, whole echelons walked straight from the front to Siberia. Right after Victory Day. Echelons of victors. That's the way it is with us: we're always fighting someone. And the woman is always ministering… She thinks of the man as part hero and part child. She is his re
scuer. To this day… The Soviet empire fell… Now we have victims of the collapse… Look at how many people have wound up on the sidelines, have been thrown off history's hurtling steam engine — the army has been cut, factories have been shut down… Engineers and doctors are selling stockings at open-air markets… Bananas… I love Dostoevsky, but he is all about prison life. The subject of the war is eternal in Russia, we simply cannot let it go… So then… (Stops). Let's take a short rest… I'll put the kettle back on… And then we can continue… I have to go the whole way from beginning to end. With my little cup of experience…

  (Half an hour later our conversation resumes).

  A year went by or maybe a little more… He was supposed to come and meet my family. I warned him that while my mother was easy to get along with, my daughter wasn't exactly… she was sort of… I couldn't guarantee how she'd behave with him. Oh, my Anka. (Laughs out loud). She put everything to her ear: toys, stones, spoons… Most children put things in their mouth, she put them to her ear — to hear the sound they made. I began teaching her music fairly early, but what a strange child, as soon as I put a record on, she would turn round and walk out. She didn't like anyone else's music, music by some silly composer: she was only interested in what sounded inside her. So then, Gleb arrived, very embarrassed, he'd had his hair cut too short, he didn't look particularly well. And he had some records with him. He started telling us something, about how he'd been walking along and happened to buy these records. Now Anka has a good ear… she doesn't hear words, she hears the intonations… She immediately took the records: «What brutiful records.» That's how their love, too, began. Sometime later she disconcerted me: «How can I keep from calling him Papa?» He didn't try to please her, he was just interested. They loved each other. I was even jealous sometimes, it seemed to me they loved each other more than they loved me. Both of them. Both Gleb and Anka. I don't think that's the way it was really. I wasn't hurt, I had a different role… He would ask her: «Anka, do you still stutter?» «Not as well as I used to.» It was never dull with the two of them. So: «How can I keep from calling him Papa?» We were sitting in the park, Gleb had gone off to get cigarettes. When he came back: «What are you two girls talking about?» I winked at Anka — don't tell him, it was silly anyway. She said: «Then you tell.» Well what could I do? I told him she was afraid she might call him Papa by mistake. Gleb said: «It's not a simple matter, of course, but if you really want to, call me Papa.» «Only you watch out,» my little miracle said in earnest, «I have one other papa, but I don't like him, and Mama doesn't love him.» That's how it's always been with Anka and me. We burn bridges. On the way home Gleb was already Papa. Anka ran ahead and called: «Papa! Papa!» The next day in kindergarten she announced: «Papa's teaching me to read.» «Who's your Papa?» «His name is Gleb.» The day after that her best friend had this news from home: «Anka, you're lying, you don't have a papa. He's not your real papa.» «No, the other one wasn't my real papa, this one is my real papa.» There's no use arguing with Anka. Gleb became «Papa», but what about me? I still wasn't his wife…

  I had vacation. I went away again. Gleb ran down the platform, waving goodbye. But I began an affair almost immediately, on the train. There were two young engineers from Kharkov, also on their way to Sochi. My God! I was so young. The sea. The sun. We swam, we kissed, we danced. It was simple and easy for me, because the world was simple, cha-cha-cha and spin your partner, I was in my element. They loved me, worshipped me, carried me up a mountain on their arms… Young muscles, young laughter. An all-night bonfire… Then I had a dream. It went like this: the ceiling opened… And I saw the sky… Gleb… He and I were walking somewhere, along the shore, not over sea-polished pebbles, but over horribly sharp stones, thin and sharp as nails. I had shoes on, but he was barefoot. «Barefoot,» he explained, «you hear more.» «You don't hear more, it hurts more. Let's switch.» «What do you mean? Then I won't be able to fly away.» Then he rose up into the air, folded his arms like a dead person, and was carried away. Even now, if I see him in a dream, he's always flying. Only his arms for some reason are folded, like a dead person's, they don't look at all like wings…

  God, I must be crazy, I shouldn't be telling you all this… I mostly have the sense that I've been happy in this life. Even after Gleb died. I went to the cemetery, and I remember thinking… He's somewhere here… Suddenly I felt so happy I wanted to scream. God… (To herself. Unintelligibly). I must be crazy… With death you're left one on one. But he died many times over, he'd been rehearsing death since he was sixteen… «Tomorrow I'll be dust and you won't find me.» We're getting to the most important part… So then… In love I slowly began to live, very slowly… In slow sips…

  My vacation ended and I went home. One of the engineers saw me all the way back to Moscow. I promised to tell Gleb everything… I went to see him… A magazine was lying on the table, he'd drawn all over it, the wallpaper in his study was covered with scribbles, even the newspapers he was reading… Everywhere there were just three letters: s… i… o… Big, little, printed, script. Followed by three dots… I asked him: «What does that mean?» He translated: Seems it's over? Question marks, too, were everywhere… Like the clefs… In sheet music… Well, we decided to separate. Now we'd have to explain somehow to Anka. We went by to get her in the car, but before she could leave the house she always had to draw something! This time, though, she didn't have time. She sat in the car and sobbed. Gleb was used to her craziness; he considered it a talent. It was a real family scene: Anka crying, Gleb trying to explain something, and me in the middle… The way he kept looking at me… (Falls silent). I realized what a wildly lonely person he was. (Falls silent). Anka went on sobbing… A real family scene… Thank God, I didn't let him go… Thank God! We had to get married, but he was afraid. He'd already had two wives. Women betrayed him, were exhausted by him and you couldn't blame them… I didn't let him go… And I… He gave me a whole life…

  He didn't like people to ask him questions… He hardly ever opened up, and if he did, then it was with a sort of bravado, so as to make the story funny and hide the starkness. That was his way. For instance, he never said «free», it was always «free-ish». «And now I'm free-ish.» The mood didn't often take him… But when it did, he told such delicious stories… I could just feel the pleasure he'd come away with: how he'd gotten hold of some pieces of a rubber tire and tied them to his felt boots, he and other inmates were being herded from one prison to another and he was so happy he had those tires. Once they came by half a sack of potatoes and then, while they were working outside the compound, someone gave them a big piece of meat. That night in the boiler room, they made soup: «It was so good, you have no idea! So delicious!» When Gleb was freed, he received compensation for his father. They said: «We owe you for the house, the furniture…» His father was a famous man… They gave him a large sum… He bought himself a new suit, new shirt, new shoes. He bought a camera, went to the restaurant in the National Hotel and ordered the best things on the menu: expensive fish, caviar, cognac, and coffee with cake. At the end, when he'd eaten his fill, he asked someone to take a picture of him at this, the happiest moment of his life. «I went back to the apartment where I was living and it dawned on me that I didn't feel happy. In that suit, with that camera… Why didn't I feel happy? Then I remembered the tires, the soup in the boiler room — that was happiness.» We tried to understand… So then… Where does that happiness live? He wouldn't have given camp up for anything, wouldn't have traded it. From the age of sixteen until almost thirty, that was the only life he knew. When he tried to imagine his life without those years in camp, he became terrified. What would have happened then? Instead of camp? What wouldn't he have grasped? What wouldn't he have seen? Probably the very core that made him who he was. When I asked: «Who would you have been without camp?» he always said: «A fool driving around in a red racing car, the fanciest there was.» Former inmates are rarely friends, something inhibits them. What? They can see the camps in ea
ch other's eyes, they're inhibited by the humiliations they suffered. Especially the men. Former inmates rarely came to see us, Gleb didn't seek them out…

  They threw him in with common criminals… Just a boy… What happened to him there no one will ever know. A woman can talk about humiliations, a man can't. A woman finds it easier to talk about it because somewhere deep inside she's prepared for violence… That knowledge is in her… Even the sexual act… She begins life over again every month… Those cycles… Nature helps her…

  Two third-degree dystrophies… He lay there on the bed boards covered with boils, drenched in pus… He should have died, but for some reason he didn't. When the guy lying next to him did die, Gleb turned the body over so that it faced the wall. And slept with it like that for three days. «That one alive?» «A live.» That made two rations of bread. All sense of reality disappeared… All sense of his material being… And death no longer seemed strange. It didn't frighten him. It was winter. Out the window he could see corpses, neatly stacked… Mostly male…