by Bibish
As always, I started cleaning up the new place. The black refrigerator took me five days, and I was cleaning the bath for ten whole days. If you only knew! While I was cleaning that rust, all the skin came off my hands. I must have bought all the household chemicals in the town to clean off that filth. The things I did! And clearing up the chaos in the apartment and cleaning everything took me about twenty days.
We began living there. The owner of the flat came eight times in a single week, asking for money: either two hundred or a hundred fifty or a hundred or fifty. I said to him:
“We’ve just paid the rent you owed. I don’t print money, we work hard to get it!”
He went away. Then he came back again to beg.
Our trading was coming along slowly.
We were living with only a temporary registration. You could say we were trading illegally. At the market I asked the traders I knew and the customers who were regular if anyone had a grandfather or grandmother in the country who needed money. But they were all afraid when anyone mentioned registration. They avoided answering. But I pestered everyone: “Register us, register us!”
And then I asked a woman who had bought from me several times, sometimes a shirt, sometimes a pair of shoes:
“Excuse me, please, can I ask you something?”
“Yes, of course.”
“I don’t have any money to buy an apartment and register, I work illegally, with just a temporary registration. That registration will end soon. Couldn’t you register me where you live? I’ll sign all the documents to say I don’t have any claims on your apartment.”
See what I’d come to in my despair!
She answered:
“I understand everything. But I live in the region, not the town, I have to find out if our rural council will agree or not.”
Anyway, Valya (that was her name) promised to help us.
Two days later she came and said that she would register us. I almost went mad, I was so happy. I asked her to wait and dashed home from the market as fast as I could. I grabbed two hundred dollars and ran back, and meanwhile Ikram was trading for me. I ran up to our booth, where Valya was waiting, and gave her the money. She said:
“No, there’s no need, I’ll register you without it.”
“Take it, take it, you have children too, you can use it!”
She took the money and went away. And I never saw her again.
Then I went to Moscow again to buy goods at the Cherkizovo market. I bought a ticket. I’d prepared everything for the children at home. I took all the money, I didn’t even leave any for bread. I thought my husband would sell something at the market while I was away—there would be money, there would be bread.
We reached the Cherkizovo market. I got out of the bus like all the traders and went to buy goods. I spent all the money on goods, I was going back to the bus, and I stopped in front of a stall to ask: “How much are the blouses?” That was all. But the buggy with the things was standing behind me. While I was looking at those blouses, they stole my bag. I turned round and my bag was gone, vanished into thin air. I was upset, I ran this way and that through the crowd. But how could I find the bag now? It was gone, stolen!
I had an empty buggy, no money . . . I walked to the bus, completely exhausted. The driver asked:
“Where are your goods?”
“They stole my goods.”
“You have to be careful here, or you’ll be left with nothing.”
I was in torment in the bus: Why had I stopped by the blouses? I wouldn’t have bought any anyway, and because of those blouses they’d stolen all my goods, fifty-two hundred rubles’ worth. While we were going back, I didn’t eat anything on the way—I had no money. I thought: Never mind, I’ll eat at home.
I got home, I explained to my husband that they’d stolen my bag. He reassured me, but I could see he was very upset. Then he told me he hadn’t sold anything the whole day, there was no trading. And so we were left without bread. As if on purpose the children kept asking for bread until eleven o’clock in the evening. I cooked something for them, but they kept demanding bread, nothing else. When there was white bread and black bread lying in the bread bin, they didn’t eat it—but now there was no bread, it was bread they wanted.
We survived somehow until the morning. Early in the morning we got up to go to the market and trade. Suddenly there was a ring at the door. We opened it and saw the landlord had come to ask us to lend him money.
We tried to explain the situation to him—he didn’t believe us:
“Then borrow it from someone,” he said.
I answered:
“We haven’t had any bread for ourselves or the children since yesterday, and I’m not in the habit of asking anybody for money.”
He kept on:
“Give me at least five roubles.”
“If I had five roubles,” I said, “I’d have bought bread for the children already. You stop bothering us, you won’t get anything. When you come for the monthly rent on the first of the month, that’s when I’ll give you money. You managed to live without us before, carry on living like that. In the other place it was the relatives always saying ‘give, give’ and now it’s you!”
He went away, and we went off to the market. I prayed to God to let us sell at least something, because one son had stayed at home without anything to eat, and the other had gone to school, they would feed him for free there.
Then when I sold something I ran to the shop straightaway, bought some food, and hurried back to the apartment. I fed my son and went back to the market. At the market some people had heard I had no money left and my bag had been stolen in Moscow. One of the people I’d traveled with the day before had told them. The women came up to me and said:
“Do you have any money? If you need some, you just say, all right?”
“All day yesterday and until ten o’clock today the children were hungry and so were we, there was nothing to eat at home.”
“Ah, you fool, somebody must have hit you on the head with a brick, why did you leave the children hungry? You should have asked us for money for bread! How could you do that?”
“I never ask anyone for anything. Look, I’ve just sold some goods, and now I’ll buy bread. If you borrow money, you have to be able to pay it back. So I never ask anyone for money. Thank you for coming to support me!”
“Don’t despair, we’ve been through all that, they stole our bags and pinched our money. It’s all happened to us. Money’s not so important, you can earn it. Just as long as you have your health.”
After my friend left I noticed that another woman, also a trader—her booth was about three meters from ours—was standing there calling me names:
“Little bitch, swine, louse! Look at that, she’s brought the same goods as I have. What a louse!”
I didn’t say anything. But she went on:
“Stupid cow! Just watch, I’ll sell everything below cost, and she can go bankrupt. The illiterate swine, bitch, louse!”
I didn’t say anything. She went on calling me names for an hour. I didn’t know what to do. By the way, she had spoken with me before, but there were only a few phrases in her vocabulary: “plain ignorance, idiocy.” Everyone around her was stupid and illiterate, but she was a doctor, she’d graduated from a college and an academy. She always told everyone that she was very well educated, because she’d graduated from a medical academy, which wasn’t true. And now she was standing in her trading booth and calling me names nonstop.
If only you knew the state I was in: yesterday they’d stolen my bag, when I got back my children were hungry and there was no money at home, and first thing in the morning the landlord had appeared and asked to borrow money, and here at the market I was being called all sorts of names. I had no more strength left. I couldn’t stand it anymore. I went across to her and I said:
“Excuse me, Zoya Afanasievna, why are you calling me a bitch?”
“You’ve no right to go bringing in the same goods a
s me!”
“So are you saying this is your own private market?”
“Don’t bring in my goods!”
“And please don’t you call me a bitch!”
I couldn’t bear those insults anymore. It was like something inside me snapped. I burst into tears, fell on my knees. Put my arms round her boots, pressed my forehead against them, and begged her:
“Please don’t call me names!”
She pushed me away with her foot and walked off, swearing, to her second trading spot, and went on calling me names there. They helped me get up and told me:
“Calm down! You fool, why did you go down on your knees, she’s not worth it!”
I was still crying:
“But why does she call me names?”
“In cases like that what we say round here is: ‘Go . . . yourself.’”
“I don’t know the translation of that word.”
“You just tell her without any translation.”
I went back to my place. I could hear her standing at her second spot, still doing it:
“. . . stupid ignorant idiots.”
“Don’t call me names,” and I fell down on the snow. I don’t remember what happened after that. My legs wouldn’t move, I lost consciousness.
When I came round, I saw a few women beside me. Someone brought me medicines, someone poured me tea. One elderly woman went over to Zoya Afanasievna and said:
“Zoya, you’re a doctor, help her.”
Then she came across to me and checked my pulse:
“A fit of nerves, it will pass in a moment. Bibish, apparently they stole your bag yesterday, I didn’t know about that, I’m sorry,” and she turned away.
I didn’t have enough strength left to answer her. I lay there without saying anything, that was all. Then they saw me home, so that I wouldn’t fall again. There was nobody at home. I was sobbing so hard! Why have I been so humiliated, I thought, what for? I wanted to die.
The next day I got up early. It was Ikram’s birthday. Naturally, I wished him happy birthday. We had breakfast and went to the market. We went up to our trading booth, and when I saw it, I almost fainted. Someone had slashed it to pieces. There wasn’t a single part left whole. Everybody looked at us, at our reaction. We stood there without saying anything, I just cried, that was all. My husband said:
“Well, that’s a big present for my birthday!”
We spent from the morning until nine in the evening sticking the pieces together with sticky tape. All the people were amazed that we worked in silence and didn’t try to find out who was to blame. But we said: “God is the judge,” and that was all.
Zoya came up to us and said:
“Stupid, ignorant idiots, it wasn’t me!”
“We didn’t say anything to you.”
“It was probably drunken hooligans.”
“Perhaps.”
After that happened, Zoya probably realized that she could taunt me. I didn’t know how to answer her back, and my husband kept quiet too, he didn’t defend me. From that day she began attacking me.
Every morning we came to the market and laid out our things. Zoya came over to our booth with her hands on her hips and examined our goods. Since she was trading not far away, she used to come every half hour and get on our nerves. When her trade went badly, she blamed me. She said:
“We don’t need their hordes here!”
The women traders I knew at the market told me:
“If I was in your place, Bibish, I’d tear her to pieces!”
Another said:
“Why didn’t your husband defend you? If mine was here, he’d have beaten that Zoya to a pulp.”
And they said:
“She won’t leave you alone now, she’ll keep on pressing you. You shouldn’t have gone down on your knees in front of her.”
Zoya really did carry on with her insults. She muttered and swore and drove our customers away.
I remembered what my grandmother Niyazdjan had told me: If they beat you on one cheek, offer them the other. I hadn’t understood those words before. But now I realized what they meant. Of course, all this affected me. I became irritable, I accused my husband of not defending me.
One day Ikram came home a little bit drunk. At that moment I was cooking soup for supper. I laid the table, poured soup for the children and myself. But I didn’t take any notice of my husband. I said to the children:
“If you drink like him, you’ll be like the winos.”
The children ate their soup without saying anything.
I think I overdid it. Ikram stood up and moved close to me:
“All right, say that again, what you just said. What are you teaching the children? Want them to have no respect for me, do you?”
I told him what was tormenting me.
“Why didn’t you stand up for me? If you’d supported me, I wouldn’t have gone down on my knees!”
“I’m a man, I’m not going to get involved in women’s business. If I start sorting her out, I won’t be able to answer for myself. Do you want them to put me in jail?”
“No!”
“Then why do you whine every day?”
He gave a terrible shout, then he grabbed my plate of soup and poured it over my head. I kept quiet, I didn’t say anything else. He grabbed the back of a chair and hit me with it. The chair shattered into pieces. The children were frightened, and they started shouting too:
“Dad, don’t! Dad, don’t!”
But he threw their plates of soup against the wall.
The children’s hearts almost leapt out of their mouths. Because we’d never, ever seen him in such a state! He broke four plates and two chairs. It was a good thing the television wasn’t near, or he’d have broken that too.
I was bleeding from my mouth and my nose. The children ran to look for cotton wool and bandages. But he shouted:
“Sit down! That’s what she deserves, she shouldn’t have made a spectacle of herself at the market! Why did you go down on your knees, eh?” and he started beating me round the head with his fists.
Then he stopped and demanded his documents. And he carried on abusing me:
“What kind of person are you? You gave away two hundred dollars to a woman you didn’t know, you got distracted at the market in Moscow and they stole your bag, you can’t deal with that Zoya!”
I could see he was really sick of everything, that was why he hit me, he couldn’t bear it any longer.
He started looking for his documents, he wandered round the apartment and rifled through everything. I realized this was something serious, and I hid his documents quickly.
He was tired, exhausted. He lay down on the bed and fell asleep like that with his clothes and his shoes on.
In the morning I got up and looked, and there were bruises on my hands and face. There was a soup stain on the wall. I didn’t know where to put myself. Look, I thought, I’ve spoiled everything at home as well. I walked around like a robot, I did everything mechanically.
Several days went by like that. I started thinking about death again, about the best way to die. Should I open my veins? Then I thought: If I die like that, there’ll be no memory left of me, no one will even remember me! Before I die, I’ll bring people at least a little bit of joy, I’ll dance real eastern dances for them! After all, here it’s mostly specially trained girls who dance, but I’m from the East.
I wrote a letter to Moscow, to the television. I told them about myself. Surely, I thought, they’ll be interested in my story! What if they ask me to come, and then perhaps my whole life will change . . . After all, how do things happen in real life? A person’s success is determined by the fuss someone else stirs up around them. I wrote to the program Field of Miracles and to The Big Wash and to My Family. And, like a fool, I waited for an answer. One day I asked a girlfriend of mine:
“Do you know anybody, or do any of your friends know anybody who’s been on television even once?”
She laughed:
“It’s hopeless. My own mother-in-law wrote to them for ten years.”
“And what happened?”
“Nothing. In the end she died.”
All the same, the people in television are strange: If some terrorist commits an act of terror, they start showing it and talking about it . . . as if nothing else in the world existed! But here was someone who only wanted to make people happy for three minutes, to offer them her eastern art (and not a bomb!). But that’s not possible. How lucky those rotten terrorists are: they show them on television day and night, eating, pissing, studying, and finally committing an act of terror!
I was foolish to hope, to think that my art would help me. It was pointless expecting anything to happen. It made me lose heart. I stopped taking care of myself, or the children, or my husband, I didn’t clean the apartment. I lived like a homeless vagrant. I wore some kind of tattered old fluffy headscarves . . .
The children started crying and saying:
“Mom, don’t walk around like that. They’ll call us tramps. They won’t leave us alone as it is. We have enough problems without you.”
It was true, because the day before my younger son had come in from the yard all covered in spit, the children had just taken him and spat on him from his head to his feet!
My husband couldn’t stand any more, he said:
“You’ve lost all sense of shame. I understand everything—things are hard for us, with no home of our own . . . But at least wash yourself, comb your hair, dress decently!”
At first I wouldn’t listen to anyone. I thought God had made my life out of one long streak of bad luck. But then I gradually calmed down. I took myself in hand. And then I began to write a book about my life. Simply to unburden my soul. And so that some memory of me would be left for my children and grandchildren.
