The Education of a Traitor: A Memoir of Growing Up in Cold War Russia

by Svetlana Grobman

  A sense of pity for the strange piano player fills my heart. I know firsthand what it feels like to play before a rowdy crowd that is waiting for the next, more exciting event. I hope that he, like me, will get his reward after the concert.

  Uncoordinated clapping cuts through my sympathetic soliloquy as a tall man in a tuxedo walks to the piano, bows to the audience, and takes a seat. He shakes his long dark hair and, for some time, holds his hands above the keyboard, as if not sure what he is there to do. I sigh—this is not a good start.

  Finally, with a subtle movement of his wrists, the man drops his hands. His fingers plunge onto the keys, and the piano responds with a melancholy melody—first loudly, then softly. Next comes a high, lonely note and a tremolo, as doleful as the call of migrating birds, and then a waterfall of sorrows washes over the quiet audience.

  Sounds fall down as inevitably as rain drops and as burning as tears, and as if an invisible hand were squeezing my throat, I am suddenly choking with grief and my hands are clasped together in a beseeching gesture. Yet simultaneously I feel something sweet spreading inside me—as if a flower is opening in my chest, a blossoming white rose, covered in dew.

  My body goes limp and I bend forward toward the brightly lit stage, toward the piano, and toward the dark-headed wizard whose hands glide effortlessly over the keyboard, caressing it, teasing it, making it produce impossible sounds and feelings.

  The last passage soars in the air, soft and fleeting, and the pianist raises his hands. Applause erupts like lava and I realize it’s over. My breathing is still laborious and, to my embarrassment, my eyes are wet. Also, although the music has stopped, the blossoming flower is still in my chest, and that makes me feel fulfilled and happy. I straighten up in my seat, furtively wipe away the tears, and look up to Olga Ivanovna.

  “What was it?”

  “Chopin,” she says, turning her face away from me. “Live.”

  By the time I get home, a short November day is gone. Mom and Dad are talking quietly in the kitchen.

  “Do you want to eat?” Mom says.

  “No, I’m not hungry,” I say and tip-toe into the room. Tanya is already asleep, so I do not turn on any lamps but open the window curtain and let in the flickering lights of the city. I unfold my sleeper-chair and, since it is so tight in the room, its head brushes against my piano with a soft bump. I stop my preparations and turn to the piano.

  I put my hands on the lid and feel its smooth surface. Then I lift the lid up and, with my hands parallel to each other, silently stroke the keys—first white, then black. My gaze falls on the white rose inlay, which fluoresces dimly in the moonlight. I raise my hands from the keyboard and cover it.

  The wooden flower appears hard and cool to touch, not at all like the rose I felt blooming in my chest during the concert. This rose is inanimate and static, and no dew disturbs its light petals. In fact, nothing can ever disturb them or cause them to wilt, as nothing can rustle them or make them smell. And yet, I now know that a piano can do wonders. It can play melodies that will echo in one’s head even after it is silent. It can pull a person off her seat and make her feel as if a flower is blooming inside her. It can choke her throat and force her to cry for no reason at all. And it can bewitch her with its magical sounds for the rest of her life.

  I look at the clock on top of the piano. Maybe if I don’t cheat by moving the clock forward, and I practice for an hour every day, I can play like that, too. I take my hands off the rose and hold them in midair, letting my fingers move through the darkness in time with Chopin’s music in my head. Then I slowly close my piano, knowing that I will never look at it the same way again.

  I study the piano for several more years—sometimes for an hour a day, sometimes not—and I learn to play better. For my last exam, I play Rachmaninov’s “Rhapsody on a Theme by Paganini,” and my mother, proud of my achievement, hangs my straight-A music diploma on the wall above my piano.

  My graduation night finds me by the piano, too. My gaze is turned to the rose on its front panel, my hands silently caress the keyboard, and my heart aches with the understanding that I will never play any better and the resignation that I will never become a piano wizard. Yet, it suddenly passes through my mind, when I have a family of my own, my daughter might.

  I smile and step away from my piano. After all, what does it matter who the wizard is? As long as there is one.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  THE LESS YOU KNOW, THE BETTER YOU SLEEP

  This summer finds my family in a village near the City of Novgorod. The village is a speck in the midst of deep woods, splashed with small clear lakes that reflect the cold-blue northern sky. Not far from the village there is an oil rig where my father works. Many villagers work there, too. They are looking for petroleum, Father tells me. When they find it, the dark liquid, which has been preserved in the depth of the earth for millions of years, will gush from the ground like a fountain, and happy workers will celebrate their victory by showering in its viscous substance.

  Once, Father takes me to see the rig. We board a truck and drive through a forest with trees so tall and dense that the morning sunlight cannot penetrate them. The rig stands in the heart of the woods with old pines crowding around it in a circle. It looks nothing like a future fountain, but rather like a giant watch-tower entangled in a web of cables. Inside that tower, a steel pipe moves rhythmically up and down, plunging ruthlessly into the earth with a loud “whoosh” that reminds me of a dentist’s drill plunging into the teeth of a defenseless patient. Several husky workers in dirty padded jackets bustle around, and the air smells of heavy labor and machine oil.

  Despite my father’s enthusiastic anticipation, I see nothing romantic about the rig. Its heavy odor pollutes the air of the forest. Its deafening noise frightens away the wildlife, and its mechanical rhythm seems as merciless and unstoppable as columns of marching soldiers.

  “What do we need petroleum for, Dad?” I say when we drive away from the violated ground.

  “For many things,” Father says. “For cars and trucks. For keeping us warm during the winter. Also, for fighting wars.”

  Yes, of course. Things often come down to wars—bloody and devastating yet inevitable and, in the case of our country, sacred, like the Russian Revolution and World War II. For what other power could have raised the poor and oppressed citizens of Russia to the never-before-seen heights of prosperity they enjoy now? What other country could (according to our history books) single-handedly repel the Fascist aggressors and bring peace and justice to suffering Europe?

  In fact, that is exactly how a well-known war-time song describes it: “A people’s war is going on—a sacred war.” Not to mention that if we had not won that war, I—a Jew—would not even have been born! And while it is true that today some of my countrymen call me a kike, this is a small price to pay for being alive.

  My father was not even fifteen when the war started. Yet with all capable adult males drafted into the army, he became an assistant train engineer and delivered ammunition to the front line—sometimes during bombing raids. He learned only too well about danger, hunger, wounds, and shell-shock, and he never spoke about wars casually before. But this day in the woods, he does. He speaks coolly and unemotionally, as if the word “war” were not charged with loss and suffering but is just a word like any other. After all, it has been seventeen years since the war ended, and nothing today excites fear of another disaster.

  The Cuban Missile Crisis is less than three months away, but my father does not know that. In fact, almost nobody in the country does—not then and not for many years after the crisis is resolved and filed by historians into the category of terrible things that could have been.

  Why are we so oblivious? The reason is simple. We know little about the outside world. Our radio, television, and newspapers—with names like “Izvestiya” (The News) and “Pravda” (The Truth)—do not exist to deliver the news, but rather to measure it out in small doses or to suppress it altogeth
er. Like a doctor deciding what—and how much—medicine to give to a patient, our government carefully measures and monitors what we should or should not know. The Cuban Missile Crisis, it decides, is not anything the Soviet citizens should be informed about. Which may be a good thing, since according to our proverbial expression: “The less you know, the better you sleep.”

  As usual in the summers, we huddle together in a rundown rural house, where Mom and Grandma take turns caring for Tanya and me. Dad spends his days—and occasional nights—at the rig, and when he comes home, he smells of lubrication and sweat. On the weekends, he takes me to pick mushrooms.

  We get up at sunrise, put on warm jackets and rubber boots, and leave the quiet house—Dad first and I, still half-asleep, behind him. Immediately, the early morning coolness gets under my jacket and wakes me up; I quicken my pace and catch up with my father.

  Mushroom hunting is serious business. We use mushrooms to supplement our diet, which is very limited here in the provinces. I have an additional interest in our success, too. I’ve been trying to persuade Mother to stop feeding us meat—chicken meat that is, since red meat is not available here.

  This is my new fixation, which started the day I saw our proprietress walk out of the house with an ax in her hand. She approached a flock of busily feeding chickens, grabbed one of them, and despite its hysterical clucking and thrashing, placed the bird on a block, and brought the ax down on its neck.

  The red-combed head fell on the ground, and blood began gushing from the chicken’s neck, splashing its white feathers and the woman’s hand. And what was left of the chicken, blood-stained all over, started running forward! I closed my eyes with my hands and screamed so loudly that Grandma leaped out of the house, grabbed me by the shoulders, and pulled me inside—all the while muttering under her breath about “these city children.”

  After that, I could not eat chicken for a long time. Even now, I examine every piece of it before I put it into my mouth, to make sure there is no blood on it. So, as I see it, we could replace chicken with mushrooms, which don’t bleed. Besides, I like hunting for them.

  The woods are a short walk away. We cross a dew-covered field behind the village and enter a dusky kingdom of pine trees covered with moss, fallen pine needles, and low-growing berries. Smells of mold, mushrooms, and wet leaves fill my lungs, and I deepen my breathing. Birds call the roll above our heads, and old trees groan in the morning wind. Best of all, not a soul follows us around—everything here is just for us, waiting to be found.

  I am good at mushroom hunting. My eyes explore the ground in search of a round shape the way a pearl-diver explores the bottom of the ocean. The smells of the woods excite me, and the sixth sense of an experienced mushroom hunter keeps me upright even when I miss a step, stumble over an obstacle, or slip in the mud.

  I know where they grow, too: bright-orange patches of lisichki (“little foxes”) cling to pine trees, tall umbrellas of podberyozoviki appear under birches, slimy saffron-colored maslyata (“buttery mushrooms”) are driven to pines and spruces, and the ultimate thrill for any Russian mushroom picker, belyi (“white mushrooms”), with their thickset, white stalk, and dark brownish-red caps, favor places where beeches and oaks mingle with pines.

  When I spot a fleshy mushroom cap, a low-voltage current seems to flow through my body and happiness fills my pounding heart, as if mushrooms are not inanimate fungi but priceless treasures. Of course, like every treasure hunter, I have my share of disappointments. Some mushrooms are old and crumbly, some are worm-eaten, and some, despite their appealing appearance, are poisonous, and I have to be careful not to bring them home.

  Soon, the morning is gone, and before I know it, my basket is full. By the time Dad and I turn home, we have been though the dimness of pines, airy coppices, patches of trembling birches and shivering aspens, and islands of grass speckled with colorful wild flowers. The sun is high, the morning dew has dried out, and the birds are taking an afternoon nap. The pungent smells of warm earth and dried grass replace astringent fragrances of the morning, and grasshoppers jump from under my feet, chirring bitterly about human invasion.

  I take off my jacket and tie it around my waist. My hair is covered with pine needles and cobwebs, my hands and arms are scratched by thick brush and stung by nettles, and the heavy basket drags my arm down. Dad carries a backpack.

  “Is your basket too heavy for you?” He asks, and I say, “No, I'm fine.” Which is not true—I am hot and tired, and the closer we get to the house, the heavier my basket feels. Yet I carry it myself through the open fields, thick woods, and over a wooden bridge behind our house. I carry it because I want everybody at home to gasp and say, “Look! Isn't she an amazing mushroom picker?” Or, better yet, “Isn't she amazing?” After all, I brought them all my treasures, everything I could find, and I wish I could find even more.

  Dad opens the gate and lets me in. Mom is in the yard, beating clothes against a washboard.

  “Look at you!” She exclaims as her hands fly high in the air splashing me with iridescent soap-bubbles. Then she says, “Now, eat quickly. We need to clean the mushrooms.”

  As usual, my moment of glory is short-lived, and I now have an afternoon of work ahead of me. The mushrooms need to be carefully examined, sorted, and cleaned of soil and pine needles. Some of them will go into tonight’s soup, some will be fried tomorrow, and the best will be marinated or dried.

  Weariness penetrates every cell of my body, but, as if reading my mind, Mom gives me a broad smile and says, cheerfully, “You’re such an amazing mushroom picker!” And I walk to the house with my head held high.

  At the end of October, when Moscow’s skies turn heavy and gray, and green cabbage, potatoes, and carrots in our grocery stores begin to mold, Mom opens a jar with marinated maslyata. I come home from school, open the door, and walk into a room filled with the tangy smells of spices and wet woods.

  The radio is on, babbling away about achievements of Soviet agriculture, a women's volleyball world championship, and, very briefly, about Americans navigating unlawfully somewhere on the high seas. The latter does not sound alarming, nor does it sound any different from what we are used to hearing about capitalist America or any other Western country.

  After the bit on America ends, a woman begins talking about a new science-fiction movie Chelovek-Amfibiya (The Amphibian Man). Nobody is listening. Dad is still at work, and Tanya and Mom are at the dinner table. Tanya lazily picks food from her plate and Mom bends over a large mushroom jar, trying to stab slippery caps with a fork.

  “This is a good one,” Mom says and pulls out her first catch.

  “It’s mine, it’s mine!” Tanya jumps to her feet.

  “No, it’s mine. I found it!” I exclaim.

  “There’s enough for everybody,” Mom says, placing the mushroom on Tanya’s plate.

  “That’s exactly why she could’ve waited,” I say bitterly and plop onto the chair next to Mom.

  Across the table, Tanya grabs the mushroom with her hand and stuffs it into her mouth—delighted to have beaten me to it. I turn away in disgust, but a gasping “Aaah!” sounds behind me and I swivel back—just in time to see Mom diving backwards and landing heavily on the floor. For a moment, I feel paralyzed. Mom looks ridiculous—her mouth is open, her eyes bug out, and she clenches her fork, the way a fisherman clenches a spear with a fish.

  Why is she on the floor? Suddenly, it hits me. Because I have pulled her chair from under her! I burst into peals of laughter and jump to my feet. Mom drops her fork with the mushroom and scrambles to her feet, too.

  “I didn’t mean to pull your chair,” I mouth through the convulsions of laughter, but Mom is not listening. Her nostrils are dilated like those of a race horse, her eyes are two balls of fire, and her hair is disheveled like a crazy woman’s.

  I move backwards toward the door, but Mom cuts me off and reaches for a venik (straw-made broom) in the corner of the room. With no way out, I spring around our dinner table
, doubling over with laughter, while behind me, Mom stomps her feet, brandishes the broom, and screams, “I’ll show you!” At the peak of this turmoil, Tanya, who thinks that we are playing a game, gets up in her chair and shouts—the way sports fans shout in the heat of a contest—“Catch her, Mom, catch her!”

  The radio is still on, and between Tanya’s excited shouts and Mom’s panting and stomping, I hear the theme-song from The Amphibian Man—“In my heart, there’s only the Sea-Devil, he’s the one for me-e-e!”—and I laugh even harder.

  The Caribbean crisis is at its peak, and the world hangs on the verge of a nuclear war. Somewhere on the other side of the globe, the American president is contemplating calling Khrushchev, and American children practice hiding under their school desks—“duck and cover” style—while their parents keep their cars filled with gas, in case the whole family has to go into hiding. Yet we, the Soviet people, know nothing about this and casually go about our business, which for my mother and me means running around our dinner table to the melancholy sounds of “The Sea Devil.”

  As they say, “The less you know, the better you sleep.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY ONE

  CANNED APPLES

  Our lesson in World History ends with a description of another horrible event from the past. This time it is the burning of the astronomer Giordano Bruno by the Inquisition. If you ask me, history is one of the most depressing subjects on earth: torture, wars, natural disasters, terrible rulers—not to mention deadly diseases like the plague, cholera, and consumption. Sometimes I wonder if anything good ever happened in the world before the Great Soviet Revolution. After the revolution, according to our teachers and textbooks, things have been getting steadily better—in our country that is—although, unfortunately, not in my class.