Between her domestic duties and her responsibilities as deputy head of all those kindergartens, Valentina won a beauty competition (and no wonder, with those black curls and blue eyes of hers) and edited a cookbook about healthy Ukrainian food—a loose collection of her favorite recipes which she pasted together herself and passed around to her friends, so that it wasn’t long before the whole of Odessa was cooking à la Valentina. It was rumored that a publishing house was interested in the book, but if the venture ever came to anything, the masterpiece must have got lost in the war.
Valentina bore Etina, Etya, Etinka, and everyone agreed that she was the most beautiful child on earth. Etina’s fine fuzz of hair shone around her forehead like a halo and her fate was sealed at an early age; this girl was to become what would later, in the world of cartoons, be known as a superhero. Natan and Valentina didn’t have such words, but they invested all their love, all their energy and, most important, all their money in this little brat who never slept and is said to have been able to speak at birth.
All children born between the first two Russian revolutions of the twentieth century were burdened with having to be in some way special, not just a piece of flesh in a diaper; they were to shake up the world, make it better. That was the idea in my family anyway and Alexander was no exception. Also known as Shura and Shurik, and sometimes as Sasha, he was born sometime during those fraught years of the previous century and would later marry Etina. Later still, after the Great Patriotic War, Etina and Shura would adjust their years of birth in their papers to make things look respectable—Shura adding a few years and Etina making herself slightly younger. I suspect it was really the other way around and that the highly promising Etina was born first, but the calendar was at sixes and sevens after the war, like everything else, so to hell with it—they wrote what they wanted. They could have changed anything in those papers; they could even have changed their surnames. But they didn’t.
Shura, Sasha, little Alexander the Great—whatever name he went by, he too was, of course, extremely good-looking. However inconsistent the facts of family history, and whatever the setting—Odessa, Chernivtsi, Grozny, Volgograd, Moscow, Germany, Germany, Germany—and Istanbul, where Kato lay on my lap down by the harbor and told me about Odessa—there was one constant: everyone in the family was very good-looking and very intelligent. That was the tradition, anyway. But Shura really was good-looking. There are several paintings and portraits of his proud, socialist-realizt face to prove it; they hang to this day in museums of Soviet history and on the wall in Valya’s bedroom—the Valya in Lower Saxony, Germany, that is, not Valentina, aka Catherine the Great, who lived in a hovel in Odessa at the beginning of the twentieth century; the Valya who was named after an astronaut, and perhaps also a little after the Valentina in Odessa, because however keenly the family believed in manned space travel and the technological progress of mankind in general, they believed more keenly still in old Jewish customs—that children, for instance, should be named after the dead so that their ancestors can protect them. As if.
The portraits in my mother’s bedroom in Lower Saxony show a man with a broad forehead and a large, purposeful nose, bushy eyebrows and very soft full lips which seem, in spite of Soviet realism, to smile a Mona Lisa smile. Shura’s eyes were purple. You couldn’t see that, either in the black-and-white photographs, or in Soviet realism where they were painted blue or gray or green, and sometimes brown, but purple they were. And yet despite his eyes, Shura would have trouble winning Etina’s heart when, at the age of seventeen—or thereabouts—the two of them found themselves at the faculty of medicine, on the list of exceptionally high achievers—doska pochyota.
This list hung in the corridor between the lecture theater and the secretary’s office and charted who had received what grades and achieved what great things for the good of the university, science and socialism. Etinka was number one, Shura number two. They had demonstrated exemplary commitment in holding voluntary lectures, had only the best grades in every possible subject and Etina’s accomplishments in party history were outstanding.
The day the ranking list went up, Shura made it his business to find out who was to blame for his inferior position; it was plain to him that he should be first on the honor roll. But when he saw Etinka’s proud face as she strolled past him down the corridor, textbooks pressed to her belly, without deigning to look at him—when he saw Etinka’s hips and the back of her neck, he decided to wage a campaign of a rather different nature.
At first she ignored him with such ease that he began to doubt his own existence, as he stood there in her path, cigarette in one hand, the other hand in his hair. He wasn’t used to brush-offs; with his purple eyes and soft voice, Shura had the girls queuing up for him. But either Etinka scented trouble, or else she had something or someone quite different on her mind. At any rate she didn’t mention Alexander Farbarjevich to anyone. It wasn’t that she was secretly crazy about him; she saw him only as the perpetual Number Two who didn’t have a hope in hell of ousting her from the throne—and things stayed that way almost until they graduated. Sometimes, in the anatomy lecture, she’d glance across the crowded rows of students, and once, in the second semester, their eyes met for an instant. But there wasn’t time for Shura to put any feeling or meaning into his gaze; his eyes had merely wandered, seeking distraction, and by the time he realized what had happened, Etinka had turned back to her notes, which I suspect were rather clearer and more intelligent than his.
Shura felt desperate, though that wasn’t something people said back then either; the word wouldn’t come into fashion until years later. In those days, people spoke of “soul ache,” dusha bolit, and “torments,” muki, but it’s maybe worth pointing out that Russians see everything rather more drastically because they express things more drastically. They don’t say: I like these apples; they say: I love these apples. They don’t say: I’m married; they say: I’m bewived or: I-stand-by-my-husband. They don’t say: mother-in-law; they say: my-own-blood. Russian speakers don’t just not like rain; they hate it, and by the same logic they speak of heart torture if they feel a slight twinge in their chests. That is precisely where Shura was heading. He couldn’t sleep, wouldn’t eat, and was smoking three times as much as usual. When his mother saw the rings under his eyes, she shook her head.
“What’s the matter with you? Are you sick?”
“No, it’s the exams. It’s all too much.”
“You’ll manage. You’re the best—aren’t you?”
For a long time Shura told himself that’s what he was. He was the best, and if he couldn’t sleep at night, it was because somebody else (a woman!) was preventing him from being number one—and the girl wasn’t even flirting with her professors or cribbing. Free from unsocialist flaws, big-eyed Etina with her pinned-up hair and her hips twice as broad as her shoulders seemed quite capable of existing without him. His thoughts were confused; they ran on injured pride and envy, and got caught up on Etina’s hips. In the end, he decided to give her a present.
The day the new ranking list appeared with the names of the crème de la crème of the medical faculty—and there were no surprises; farther down the list there was fluctuation, but the top four names remained constant—early on the big day, Shura positioned himself between the lecture theater and the secretary’s office, and stood leaning against the wall with a cardboard box tied with a red bow, waiting for Number One to come along and see her name on the list.
Etinka was wearing a matching skirt and jacket with brown shoes which, despite their medium-high heels, didn’t make a sound. Her face was soft and expressionless, as if she were crossing a deserted room, as if nothing existed except her—not the pungent smell of formalin, not Sasha, not even the damned list of students. She was carrying a stack of books pressed to her belly, and walked down the corridor as if on a finishing straight. Level with the honor roll, she stopped and turned first her head, then her entire body to face
the notice. Shura stood beside her, staring openly because she seemed unaware of his presence.
When she made to move on, he said: “Mazel tov.”
“I beg your pardon?” Etinka’s head spun around with a violence that, in spite of her pinned-up hair and her firm stride, he hadn’t expected.
“You’re number one again. Mazel tov.”
He held out the flat packet in his hand.
“I don’t understand.”
Etinka really didn’t understand. Not mazel tov—she understood that all right; her family spoke plenty of Yiddish and she could easily have talked Yiddish with Shura, not fluently, perhaps, but well enough. It was just that she wasn’t used to hearing the language outside the four walls of her home, let alone at university. And she didn’t understand why this lout who was clearly after her, forever making clumsy efforts to waylay her in the corridor, his mouth open as if he were going to say something, though he never did—a boy who went out with older girls and made them laugh and goodness knows what else (she’d decided very early on that she wasn’t that kind of girl)—she didn’t understand why this perpetual Number Two was holding out a packet with a red bow to her.
“This is for you. A token of my respect.”
Shura swallowed, careful not to let his chin drop to his chest. He raised his head; his purple eyes shone into Etina’s green ones.
“Thank you, but I can’t accept it,” said Etinka, or something like that, and whatever she said, it was a brush-off. Her arms clung tight to the books at her belly.
“No, you must.”
Shura held out the parcel and opened his eyes wide as if he were trying to hypnotize her. For a second he wished she wouldn’t ever look away again, but she did, quite effortlessly. She looked into his face, then at the gift, then at the floor, then at the clock on the wall, and then, with another glance at her name at the top of the list, she breathed out, and again she said something like: “No, thank you, it’s very nice of you, but I have to go now.” Something like that.
“Ikh bet dikh. Nimm.” Please, take it.
The Yiddish words made her look at him again; her eyes narrowed and flashed in annoyance. She was annoyed at herself because she realized that such a thing had never occurred to her—not that Comrade Farbarjevich was Jewish; the name spoke for itself. No, she was surprised that he dared speak Yiddish, speak it loud and clear, in a university corridor, to her. And her eyes lingered a little too long on his face, long enough to notice how purple, how very purple, his irises were—and she found herself biting the hook, reaching out an arm, taking the gift. She balanced it on the stack of books in front of her belly and looked expectantly into Shura’s face.
“A shayner dank. Du bist zeyer khaverish.” Thank you. You’re very generous.
Shura felt giddy. And sick. Sick and giddy from the scent of this woman, faintly sweet and cool as mint. Here she was, right in front of him; she couldn’t ignore him now. So this was what her face looked like when she wasn’t rushing past him. At last he was getting to see more than just her profile; here were her eyes; here was the smile in her eyes.
“Vos iz es?” she asked, cocking her head slightly. What is it?
“It’s—”
Later he’d tell this story as a khokhme, making it sound as if he’d planned everything meticulously, casting himself as a lady-killer who knew how to impress the women and throw them off their guard. He’d decided to have his bit of fun; he knew exactly what he was doing.
At the time, though, Shura had no idea why he said what he did. He said it in Russian; such a delicate word had no place in his Yiddish vocabulary.
“Trusiki.”
Underwear. Pants. Knickers. The word popped out of him. Wham, bang, out it came and hung there between the two best students of the medical faculty of Odessa, whose names and portraits would one day grace the walls of the very corridor where they were standing facing one another. But that was later; now they both held their breath.
* * *
—
In those days you couldn’t study medicine straight from school. Socialist citizens went to a workshop or factory first to learn a practical skill. Before Shura was admitted to the university, he’d learned carpentry, a skill he never regretted possessing. Later, in the fifties, when the war was long past and victory seemed there to stay and he was living in his dacha on the Volga, he passed his time carving woodland spirits and household gnomes while his wife Etina and their daughter Emma and her daughter (who would one day show up with twins and let them take turns swinging on the swing) tended the tomato patch, cucumbers and vines. His wooden figures were skillfully hewn; he gave them to his friends as presents, and carved a bread box with elaborate petals along the edges and the word khleb cut into the lid.
Between his carpenter’s apprenticeship and the beginning of his studies at the faculty of medicine, he got into acting. That was the idea, at least. He wanted to write plays and direct them and carpenter the set single-handedly. He went secretly to auditions at the acting school in Odessa. For weeks before, he rehearsed lines in his parents’ garden and when his mother asked him what he was gabbling away to himself, he didn’t say Shakespeare; he said: party history. He didn’t get cold feet until he found himself in the acting-school waiting room surrounded by a lot of young men in suits and ties and a lot of young women in dresses and lipstick. Looking down at himself he saw what he would later describe in his memoirs as: “nekazistyi paren’s Odesskoi Moldavanki”—a common little whippersnapper from Moldavanka (a district of Odessa known for its poverty and criminality and one day for Isaak Emmanuilovich Babel).
Shura had turned up at the auditions in a sheepskin waistcoat and a cloth cap. He stared at the other auditioners’ ties and knew that his rabbi father would never teach him to knot a tie like that. He stared at the woman opposite, who’d crossed her legs, revealing an inch of thigh beneath her skirt. The sweat on Shura’s palms seeped into the manuscript he was clutching. The woman’s lips moved noiselessly; she seemed to be practicing her lines. Her lipstick was as red as a Pioneer’s neckerchief. Shura wondered how he was going to make it out of the room without anyone noticing his erection. He could go neither backward nor forward, so he sat on his chair, shrunk into himself like a leech until his name was called. Then, aroused though he was, he stood with tears rolling down his face and declaimed a wild mix of Shakespeare and party history before the entire admissions committee. The next thing he knew, it was off the street and onto the stage with him; a glittering future beckoned. That, at least, is the legend.
Blissfully happy and drenched in sweat, Shura ran home to report on his forthcoming career as a star of the theater, but his father soon pulled the curtains on that plan: “I’ll have no balagula in this family,” he said. And that was that.
Shura wasn’t familiar with the word; his Yiddish was pretty rudimentary, only enough for the odd phrase here and there—and a bit of flirting. But he got the gist. When he looked the word up, things weren’t as bad as he’d feared: balagula, from ba’al-’agala, was a cart driver who traveled back and forth between villages with messages and deliveries, singing songs about his horses on the market square. A drunken vagabond with neither home nor family, good for nothing but singing and drinking. A clown, a street artist. That wasn’t what Shura wanted at all; he wanted Shakespeare. But his Yiddish wasn’t good enough to persuade his father, so he enrolled to study medicine.
* * *
—
Etina had also learned a trade. There’s much speculation as to what that trade might have been, but something worthwhile, that’s for sure, something that came in useful no matter what course life took—because that’s the way things were in those days: the state, as Etina and Shura explained to me, let humans be human. And when I asked whether it had ever made a difference that they were Jewish—when apprenticeships were allocated, for instance, or later, at university—had it annoyed
anyone that the list of outstanding students (or any other list in that state where they let humans be human) was headed by a couple of Yids?—they always said: Not before the war.
They said Stalin wasn’t anti-Semitic. The Russians and Ukrainians and Moldovans were, but not Stalin; he was from the Caucasus, and anti-Semitism wasn’t allowed out of people’s hearts and onto the streets until after the war, in ’53, when the Soviet Union began to clamor that the Jews had killed Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin—Jewish doctors like Etina Natanovna Vodovozova and Alexander Isaakovich Farbarjevich.
But all that was yet to come when Etina and Shura stood facing each other in the medical faculty of the University of Odessa—between them a parcel tied with a red bow, which, according to one of them, contained underwear.
* * *
—
We’re talking 1936 here; we’re talking about the Soviet Union where the housing situation and a belief in things higher than carnal desire reduced romance to going for walks. Going for walks and perhaps occasionally taking a girl’s hand. That was all Shura knew.
A gentle, softly spoken man, rather short, with broad shoulders, eyes the color of bruised raspberries and a forehead you could see yourself in, Shura was no womanizer, though you could be forgiven for thinking so, considering the number of women, young and not so young, who sought his company. He did a great deal of reading and writing, especially writing, because he thought it was the true socialist duty of everyone on Earth to be happy, and writing was what made him happiest. That was before he’d seen the back of Etya’s neck, but much later, when he felt he’d seen his fill of Etya, there would come a time when writing would once again become an anchor for him.
Beside Myself Page 13
