“Shhh! Zug gornisht, Raphail, say nothing! The kind (child) is listening!”
“Okay, okay, my gelibte (sweetheart). I’ll be quiet like a mouse. Isn’t it funny, though?” And, infuriating my grandmother, he repeats the joke again, bursting into laughter long before the punch line.
In comparison to Grandma, who expects something bad to happen at any moment, my grandfather is an optimist and fun to be around. Despite his family’s modest circumstances, he brings home smiles and laughter. He puts me on his lap and asks me how my day has been, and, sometimes, as I am tucked into bed, sounds of his guitar follow me into my dreams.
Grandfather always comes home hungry. As soon as Grandma hears his key turning in the keyhole, she starts serving dinner. Grandpa’s dinner is usually the same: a small piece of roasted meat with a hearty portion of potatoes drowned in gravy and a shot of his favorite pepper-flavored vodka “Pertsovka,” accompanied by a pickle—a must-have addition to vodka for every self-respecting Muscovite male.
I am envious that Grandma never tries to push soup on him, although she always asks if he wants some. This is a nightly ritual between them.
“Raphail, do you want some soup?” Grandma’s hands are rooted on her hips.
“Nope, my sweetheart. Liquid should come only from a bottle!” Grandpa responds energetically and, as if letting me know that turning soup down is a privilege of adult life, flashes a broad, crescent-moon smile accompanied by a wink.
When Grandpa smiles, deep wrinkles dance around his pale green eyes, and sparkles of hidden laughter jump out of his pupils. He has a nice baritone voice, too. When he is in a good mood—which corresponds with trips to the bath-house, paychecks, visits of relatives, or holidays—all accompanied by consumption of fair amount of “Pertsovka”—he plays his guitar and sings. Both of my grandparents came from the Ukraine, so many of Grandpa’s favorite songs are Ukrainian. They are often sad and melancholy, which may account for the sorrow in his voice and the tears in his eyes:
“Don’t be afraid of the cold night, my sweetheart. I’ll warm your little feet in my fur hat and I’ll carry you in my arms …”
I sit next to Grandpa—my hand resting on his knee, my eyes fixed on his lips—and diligently sing along in a thin little voice, thoughtlessly repeating the words that mean nothing to me, yet I am still overtaken by the song’s heart-rending sounds and the despair in the singer’s voice. After a while, Grandpa stops singing and just plays the guitar with his eyes closed, and I watch his thick fingers, with the flat yellowish fingernails of an old smoker, run up and down the fretboard, as if trying to find a solution to the injustices of life.
There are times when the sadness of his song overcomes Grandpa, and he puts his guitar aside, reaches for a bottle of Pertsovka, and continues drinking—silently and gloomily.
“Genug (enough already, Yiddish), Raphail!” Grandma appears in front of him, attempting to take the bottle away.
At this point, Mom puts her medicine-smelling hands on my shoulders, “Let me take you to bed,” and pulls me away, while behind us Grandpa thunders curses toward “this damn woman who never understood me!” And if I look back, “Mama, why is Grandpa upset?,” I see my grandmother—a disapproving expression written on her face—slowly and quietly retreat from the table, like a general who has lost a battle but still believes in the sanctity of her mission.
These storms never last long, nor does Grandpa ever strike his wife. In fact, the next morning is likely to start with another familiar “song”:
“Fanusechka (diminutive from Fannie), my gelibte, forgive me, an old fool. I don’t know what came over me. Please, don’t turn away. Just look at me, would ya?”
Grandma, seemingly disgusted, appears deaf to the steady stream of her husband’s regrets. Everybody else exchanges glances. We all know that soon she will forgive him, and he will be nice and attentive to her—the way he normally is—until the next explosion.
Despite occasional flashes of Grandfather’s alcohol-induced temper, my grandparents get along very well—that is, as well as anybody I know. His part in their union is making a living—as modest as it is—her part is everything else. She is a homemaker—a common designation for women of her generation, especially before the war. It is less common in the 1950s, for the war left millions of women widowed and many returning soldiers invalids or hopeless alcoholics, forcing women to take over men’s places.
Grandma is very lucky. She has not lost anyone from her immediate family. Her husband, stationed on the Finnish border in 1939, survived two wars with Finland—the short Winter War and the longer Continuation War—and, in 1946, came back to his family with his limbs intact, suffering only from a post-traumatic stress disorder. Their older daughter, my aunt, who turned 18 in 1942, was also drafted into the army and sent to the front as a telegrapher. Yet she, too, survived and even married a sergeant from her battalion. In 1945, she returned home pregnant with my cousin Sima, her war-time husband killed.
My aunt in uniform, 1944
Grandma, with her younger children—my mother then 15 and her brother 12—evacuated to Siberia, as many panic-stricken Muscovites did during the war. They lived in a barracks with twenty other families and almost no heat during the frigid Siberian winters.
All of them worked fourteen hours a day: Mother on the assembly line at a factory manufacturing parts for tanks and cannons, her younger brother as an electrician, and Grandma as a seamstress repairing damaged military uniforms. Their pay—a meager paek (ration) of bread, lard, and rotten potatoes—was small enough to starve them to death slowly. So Grandma sold their last possessions for food at a local market, and my mother and her brother roamed the local fields looking for rotting vegetables and cow pies for heating fuel.
Mother (before she married) with her brother and their parents, 1948
Still, they lived, although my uncle came very close to dying, once from pneumonia and another time from an electric shock he suffered while fixing a high-voltage power line. When the war was over, they returned to Moscow, where my pregnant aunt and, later, my grandfather joined them.
Except for heavy lifting, Grandpa does not do much at home, which is typical for the average Muscovite male. Less typical is that Grandma—and not her husband—makes the major decisions in the family: what to buy, how to help the children, or what to fix. She does not seem to like my father very much and rarely talks to him. When she does, it sounds like a monologue that is addressed to nobody in particular.
“Some people don’t worry about getting a job that provides for their families. They need a college education!” (My father has been taking night classes off and on). “They are too busy studying and don’t have enough time when their families need them.” A pause. “Of course, what do I know? I’ve never been to college. I’m not that smart. All I’ve done all my life is take care of everybody around me.”
Dad cringes in his corner and the textbook in his hand begins shaking, as if a mild earthquake is hitting him. His face takes on the martyr-like expression of somebody who’s about to lament: “One day you’ll be sorry!” but Mom flashes him a “don’t-you-say-anything!” glance, and he remains silent.
There is not much Father can say anyway. He does not make enough money to buy an apartment for his family, and he has no svyazi (connections) to get one from the government. When I wake up during the night, I sometimes hear Mom whispering to her husband not to pay attention to Grandma’s complaints.
CHAPTER THREE
GREAT EXPECTATIONS
Like any young child, I do not evaluate my world. I take it the way it is and adjust my needs accordingly. The good thing is, I do not need much. I have clothes for the cold Moscow winters, a dozen children’s books, a blue-eyed doll, Masha, and a second-hand toy dog, Shavka.
Also, I do not care about food. I am a “terrible eater,” and the only food I like is sweets. Grandma claims that I have a “sweet tooth.” That, I know, is not true. If I really had a sweet tooth, I would have a s
weet taste in my mouth all the time. As it is, I enjoy sweets only when Mom or Grandma gives me an open-faced sugar sandwich. That is a feast, and to prolong it, I chew the sandwich very, very slowly, savoring every snow-white crystal of sugar as it melts in my mouth.
The only thing better than a sugar sandwich is chocolate. Alas, chocolate is very expensive, and I can have it only on big holidays or the birthdays of my older cousins Sima and Roma, children of Mom's sister Raya. Aunt Raya is now married to a Polish Jew who was cast ashore on the Moscow River by the receding waves of the Great Patriotic War.
Abraham has no family left back in Poland. His parents, siblings, his first wife and their four children—all were lost to the callous hatred of the Nazis and the Polish anti-Semites. Abraham is fifteen years older than my aunt and shorter than her by at least four inches. That said, he is still good-looking, with bright dark eyes, bushy eyebrows, slightly sharp features, and a head of Einstein-like white hair.
Abraham is not an easy man—stern, short-tempered, and demanding. This could be the result of his painful past, although it is entirely possible that he was like that all along. Yet, with the post-war shortage of men, my aunt could not afford to be choosy—Abraham is a decent man, and he adopted Aunt Raya’s daughter from her short-lived war-time marriage. He is also a good tailor and a good provider—better than my father at any rate—which allows his wife to stay at home in their own doll-sized house, one street away from us.
The best thing about Abraham, in my view, is that his grateful customers sometimes bring him a box of chocolates—a great addition to our families’ gatherings, especially for me and my cousin Roma. Roma is the only child Uncle Abraham and Aunt Raya have together. He is three years older than me and already in second grade. His sister Sima is in fifth grade and, to me, she looks like a consummate grown-up. She no longer wears bows in her blond hair, her skirts fall down to cover her bony knees, and when I ask her a question, her usual answer is: “You won’t understand. Why don’t you go play with your toys?”
Roma does not pay much attention to me either. He is at his happiest when galloping around the neighborhood with a band of other boys, tornado style—raising dust, shouting, breaking things, and scaring scraggy street cats.
Still, I like visiting their house, especially for my cousins’ birthdays. Birthdays in our country are almost as festive as Christmas is in the West. The only holiday that is higher in our hierarchy is New Year’s. But unlike New Year’s, families celebrate birthdays several times a year, which means more fun and happiness to go around. Children are happy because they get sweets and other presents, and adults because they can “utopit gore v vine,” drown their sorrows in wine, or, more likely, in vodka.
I rarely get sweets for my birthday. My usual presents are a couple of oranges, a cluster of bananas, or other foods that are hard to come by in Moscow in the 1950s—all of them from that tedious category of things my parents call “good for you.” My cousins, on the other hand, get real presents and chocolate. I never envy them, though. Their toys will be, one day, passed down to me. As for the chocolate, I can share it with them, too. In fact, I am hoping to have some tonight, at the celebration of Roma’s eighth birthday.
When my parents, my grandparents, and I enter Aunt Ray's house, food is already on the table. Sauerkraut shows off its cranberry-freckled face in a deep glass bowl. In a dish next to it, two large herrings swim in sunflower oil. A mound of pickles nestles near bottles of vodka, and a splash of grated boiled beets, liberally dressed with mayonnaise, appears in the middle of the table like a spot of blood left by feasting vampires.
I peer into the kitchen—do they have any chocolate?—but Mom orders me to take my place at the table. The dinner is long and abundantly peppered with toasts for Roma's health, success and good luck, his parents’ health, success and good luck, the guests' health, success and good luck, and, most importantly, peace in the whole world.
The main course is finished, the dirty plates are taken away, and I hope dessert will follow soon. Too early. The adults keep talking, but now their conversation takes a bitter turn.
“Does anybody even know how many people Stalin sgubil (wasted) before and during the war? Millions for sure! And after the war? Millions again!” my father thunders. “Okay, Khrush-chev denounced Stalin’s cult of personality. Still, tell me, where are the people who carried out his commands all those years, who shot innocent people or squealed on their neighbors?” Father looks around at his silent audience, and his fist hits the table: “They’re still among us!”
I stare at the adults, alarmed. What’s the matter? Actually, nothing special. It is a typical conversation many families have behind closed doors. Political freedom does not exist in our country, and it will not exist for many more years—if ever. The only places where people can express their unhappiness and let off steam are in their homes, and family gatherings are good outlets for that, since everybody knows that talking politics outside the family circle could be dangerous.
Tonight, though, Mom tries to stop her husband. “Enough, Natán,” she says quietly, pulling his sleeve. “It’s a birthday party.”
“Don’t ‘enough’ me!” Father cuts her off.
Uncle Abraham raises his voice, too. “Fira’s right. Chto proshloe voroshit.” (Don’t dig up the past).
Father, exalted by the spirits and the sound of his own voice, turns away from Mom and faces his brother-in-law.
“Why not? Did they put you into a prison camp or didn’t they?” he says, referring to the time when my uncle, then a Polish soldier, fled from the Nazis, only to be captured by the Soviet Army on the border and sent to Siberia.
Uncle Abraham’s face darkens, “That’s my business. We’re here to celebrate, not to read the burial service.” He shakes his head, stretches his narrow lips into a smile, and winks, “Entertainment time!”
My cousin Sima slowly gets up from the table and walks to the piano with the expression of a martyr about to be thrown to the lions. She opens her instrument and attempts to play Mozart's Turkish March. The adults—the lions—reward her with intoxicating clapping.
Then hot tea makes its steaming appearance, and—finally!—my aunt reaches inside the cupboard behind the table. When she turns around, the smile on her face is as broad as her hips, and a box of chocolate is in her hands. The box is tied up with a bow like a red rose. Aunt Raya unties the rose and, with the flair of an experienced magician, pulls off the lid. Rows of candy, wrapped in thin white paper, are revealed to our eyes. Aunt Raya turns to her son and gently hands the treasure to him, “Sweet wishes!”
With everybody’s eyes fixed upon him, Roma, who has been unusually quiet during dinner, carefully pulls one white ball out of the box and holds it in his hand.
“Open it!” His mother says, beaming.
Roma does not move but stares at the piece of candy as if it is a grenade rather than the epitome of sweetness.
“What are you waiting for?” Aunt Raya says. “Go ahead, open it! It's not going to bite you.”
She puts the box down and, still smiling, grabs the white ball from Roma's palm. The wrapping paper collapses under my aunt’s fingers like a dry flower, and the smile on her face dies.
“This is strange,” she says, bringing the wrapper closer to her face and unfolding it. I crane my neck as much as I can, but see no chocolate.
“It's ... empty!” My aunt cries, dropping the rumpled piece of paper to the floor. Then she grabs another white ball—with the same result. Feverishly, she squishes one paper ball after another, mumbling to herself, “Empty, empty, empty ...”
As the last piece quietly falls, Uncle Abraham rises from his chair. His face is red, his eyes are like bonfires, and his white hair stands on end, which makes him look a head taller.
“Can you explain this?” He growls to his son, whose face has taken on the color of the wrapping paper that now covers the floor like snowflakes.
Instead of answering, Roma starts shrinking before o
ur eyes. When he reaches the size of Hans Christian Anderson’s Thumbelina (he never becomes as cute as her), I turn to my mother and whisper, “Where are the chocolates?”
“Good question,” my uncle says loudly. “Where are the chocolates?”
“I don't understand,” Aunt Raya says, perplexed, gazing from one face to another and finally stopping at her husband’s. “Who gave you this box?”
“What don't you understand?” My uncle barks. “I think it's rather clear!”
I pull my mother's sleeve and whisper again, “Is this a magic trick?”
“This is a trick, all right,” Uncle Abraham announces to his quiet audience, and an ominous expression flashes across his face. “Let's ask the magician how he did it. Tell us, you, louse!”
At this, Aunt Raya emits a weak “Ah!” and slumps into her chair. My mom emits a loud “Ah!” and jumps to her feet. Uncle Abraham cries, “I'll show you!” He pushes his chair away and, with the speed of a cobra striking its prey, grabs his son by the collar with both hands and begins vigorously shaking him, as if hoping that the vanished candy would fall from Roma like ripe apples from a tree. “How dare you eat the chocolates?!!”
The room explodes. Everybody is pushing chairs and shouting. “What’s the world coming to?” “Abraham, that’s enough! It's his birthday!” “If I did something like this when I was young, my parents would’ve killed me!” And, over all that chaos, I hear Roma's wounded-rabbit-like scream, “I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I’ll never do it again!”
Roma, 1959
“How did Roma eat the chocolate?” I ask my mother on our way home, still hoping that some of the long-awaited candy could be recovered. “Wasn’t the box tied with a ribbon?”
The Education of a Traitor: A Memoir of Growing Up in Cold War Russia Page 2
