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

by Svetlana Grobman

  Yet these lines bleed with anguish and compassion, and although there is nothing in my school curriculum about Alfred Dreyfus and Ann Frank, and I do not understand some of the poem’s allusions, I understand one thing. This poet, Yevgeni Yevtushenko, who, by his own admission, has no Jewish blood, mourns for Jewish victims, whether they were betrayed by their countrymen, killed during the pogroms, or executed by the Nazis. He mourns for people he never knew and was not related to, for those like Dorka, Rosa, and her little baby boy, and also for the fact that there is nothing at Babi Yar that marks the place of so many terrible deaths.

  I wish I could read the poem one more time, but Sima’s voice draws me out my trance, “Did you find my hair-pins?”

  I rush back to the kitchen.

  “Za smertju tebya posilat!” (Finally! As if I sent you to fetch death!) Sima greets me, irritated. She stops cutting vegetables, and with both hands pulls back loose strands of her hair and secures them with hair-pins.

  I quietly stare at her, unsure if I know her at all. Well, I know that she is a college student, that she likes movies, that she always seems to know about current fashion and supplements her dowdy store-bought clothes with her own knitting. Stuff like that. Yet I know nothing about important things. Like how did she learn about Evgeni Evtushenko and his poem? Why did she register as Jewish? Did she ever meet her father?

  Mother said that Jewish women who marry into a Russian family are all miserable, but is that always true? Evtushenko must be Russian or Ukrainian, but surely Mother was not talking about him—if he were to marry a Jewish woman, that is. There must be some good Russian men, and in fact, my Aunt Raya might have been happier with her first husband, who was Russian, than with my Jewish Uncle Abraham, and Sima with her biological father.

  “Sima, are you done?” I hear my aunt’s voice.

  Sima grabs the bowl of freshly made olivje salad and takes it into the room. The salad is passed around, voices get louder, and glasses are raised—wine for women and vodka for men: “Happy birthday!” My uncle leans toward his wife and kisses her on the lips, and she, flushed from the attention or the incident in the kitchen, gets up, makes a circular gesture with the glass in her hand—“Thank you, my dears!”—and drinks the contents of her glass.

  I shift my eyes from one familiar face to another—everyone seems happy, even Sima’s lips curl into a weak smile. Suddenly, deep hostility rises inside me like heartburn. How can they celebrate Aunt Raya’s birthday or anything else, for that matter? With all those people killed and buried in a hole, with Grandpa gone, and Aunt Raya forced to marry a man she does not love? Or … does she? I look at my aunt again. She gives me a carefree smile and turns to her husband who is busy telling jokes.

  Laughter and clanking of glasses intensify my gloom even more. I turn to Grandma. She’s gone through so much. She must be feeling like me! But the look on Grandma’s face is one of pleasure and contentment. She is still alive, and she presides at a table surrounded by her offspring. What else can an old woman desire?

  I give up. I must be the only person here who recognizes the shame of this gathering and who resents the cruelties and unfairness of life. I get up and go to the kitchen. Immediately, Tanya appears behind me, “Let’s play cards!”

  I turn to her, ready to say, “Leave me alone!” but, once again, Grandma appears in my line of vision. Her thin wavy hair is smoothed out and her eyes are gleaming. What did she say the day she told me about Babi Yar? “We are all survivors.” What did she mean? That our lives are forever shadowed by the terrible past? Or that we should go on living?

  Another explosion of laughter bursts into the kitchen and into my thoughts. The people in the other room are having a good time. They have left their painful memories behind, and now they are making the best of it. Is that what survivors do? It must be.

  I give my aunt and uncle another look. Uncle Abraham, too, lost his first wife, as well as his four children and his parents. Yet at this moment, he seems happy. In fact, they both do. Who knows? Mother might be right about people sticking to their own kind.

  I turn to my sister. “Okay. Where are the cards?”

  CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE

  UNTIL NEXT SUMMER

  “There is a kvass vendor on the corner,” Mother’s voice pulls me from the wondrous world of books into prosaic reality. “Take a bidón and go get us some kvass.”

  I look up from my book. My eyes are clouded with the image of a young Persian woman dressed in exotic flowing clothes, and my ears are still tuned to her melodic voice weaving an endless tapestry of stories, night after night, 1001 in all. The woman sits at the feet of a bearded man. Her arms stretch toward him in an unspoken plea, and her eyes follow his every movement, the way a sunflower follows the sun.

  The woman’s name is Scheherazade and the man’s Shahryar. He is a Persian king. He is handsome and powerful, but he hates women. He killed his unfaithful first wife, and he has been killing innocent women ever since. Every night, he marries a young virgin, and every morning he orders her execution.

  Scheherazade is his newest bride, and if she does not find a way to stop this vicious cycle, he will kill her, too, and who knows how many more young women like her. Alas, Scheherazade’s resources are limited: she has nobody to defend her, no one to buy her freedom, and no weapon. All she can do to avoid death is tell tales, because she stays alive only as long as the King listens.

  Scheherazade speaks of undaunted heroes and beautiful women, brave sailors and desert dwellers, thieves and traitors, and many other things. Her tales are long and intricate. They are nested inside each other like brightly-colored Russian matryoshki, with each tale adding surprising twists and turns and whimsical characters to the already fantastic scene.

  “Hurry, before the kvass is gone,” Mother says.

  Mother has an uncanny ability to interrupt me at the worst possible moment, as if she has a device implanted in her head for measuring my mood. When I am bored, this device is idle, and Mother leaves me alone. Yet when I am engrossed in a book or a game—bam!—the device springs to life and sends Mother a signal, “Sveta’s really exited now! Is there anything she could be doing instead?”

  As much as I like kvass (a non-alcoholic beverage made of rye bread, a perennial favorite in Russia), I do not care about it when Scheherazade’s life is at stake. Of course, telling this to my mother would be as useless as telling Shahryar that he ought to stop killing his innocent wives. So I curse kvass under my breath, put my book down, and drag myself to the kitchen. I reach inside our kitchen cabinet, yank out a jangling bidon (a small bucket), and rush outside. The sooner I satisfy Mother’s request, the sooner I will be able to dive back into the world of the Arabian Nights, with its amazing stories and its spellbinding sensations.

  These sensations took hold of me the first time I opened our well-worn tome of the Arabian Nights and saw a picture of the Persian king. It was a rather small picture, more like a sepia-colored sketch. I had seen much better pictures in catalogs of the famous Russian art museums—The Hermitage, Tretyakov State Gallery, and others—which Father kept in our bookcase and, when he was in a good mood, showed to me with meticulous explanations.

  Many of these pictures were in color, and some of them depicted naked men and women. Yet, not until the moment I glanced at the picture of the gloomy King sitting cross-legged on a large pillow did a painfully sweet ache pierce my heart and a tingling sensation shoot through my body, making me take a deep breath and squeeze my thighs.

  Something must be wrong with me, was my first thought. I should tell my mother, was next. But how could I? Mother and I had never discussed anything intimate, and her only acknowledgment of my changing body was limited to telling me how to take care of menstrual blood.

  “Here’s some cotton. Put it inside your pants and change it as needed,” she said, looking somewhat above my head. Then she lowered her gaze and added, “Wash your panties in cold water or the blood won’t come out.” After that nugget of
women’s wisdom, she never again expressed any desire to advance my knowledge of physical maturation.

  I open the squeaking door of our building and inhale the tangy aroma of kvass wafting from a kvass cistern that sits on the street corner, encircled by women and children—men having better things to do. I take my place at the end of the long line and entertain myself by watching clouds shaped like sheep while staring enviously at those who have already filled their bidons and, weighed down by the foaming amber-colored liquid, carry their treasure home.

  Meanwhile, the crowd around me goes through its usual evolution. At first, women quietly watch their feet and throw impa-tient glances toward the head of the line. Then they begin eyeing those next to them, and finally their habitual suspicion gives way to boredom, and they start chatting.

  “Nice weather we’re having. Babskoe leto (a season known as Indian Summer in America) is my favorite ...”

  “And what do ya think, next day he comes back as if nothing’s happened! ‘Where did you spend the night, pyaniza (drunkard)?’ I says …”

  “Can’t tell ya how much I like kvass. What’s warm weather without it? And okroshka, of course. I add turnips to mine …”

  Okroshka is a cold soup made of boiled eggs, potatoes, beets, and fresh cucumbers, all drowned in kvass and flavored with sour cream. I like it, too, and the conversation makes me hungry. Yet before I have the time to add hunger to my list of today’s grievances, I pick up a loud argument somewhere at the head of the line.

  “Didja see her there? Did anybody? Scram!”

  “Scram yourself! I’ve stood here. I just left for a little while. Let me back in!”

  “Don’t push me, you hooliganka, or you’ll be sorry!”

  “What did you say, blyad? I’ll show you hooliganka!”

  The calm September air suddenly reaches the temperature of a blast furnace, and heated threats and curses, one uglier than the next, transform the boring wait into a raging war. In a minute, bidons are raised for weapons, the orderly line is broken, and decades of misery and distrust erupt into a chaotic shouting match:

  “Don’ touch me, you zaraza!”

  “Who’s zaraza? You’re sterva yourself!”

  “Scratch her shameless eyes out!”

  “It’s because of thieves like her an honest person can’t buy anything!”

  One woman shoves another, who stumbles backwards— her arms flapping like wings—and collides with a woman bystander holding a large glass jar of kvass. The bystander, unprepared for an attack, loses her balance, and the jar slips from her grip and explodes on the asphalt with a loud “whoosh!”

  “Ahh!” the bystander exhales, momentarily paralyzed, and then erupts, “You bitch!”

  The kvass vendor, a large woman in a stained apron turns off the stream of kvass, and the cistern’s faucet, still covered with froth, takes on the appearance of a large runny nose. The vendor reaches under her apron and pulls out a whistle.

  The whistle is still ringing in our ears when another whistle answers. Help comes in the form of a young, broad-shouldered militsioner (policeman). He approaches the kvass scene, removing his uniform cap adorned with a hammer-and-sickle cockade and wiping sweat from his narrow forehead:

  “What’s the matter, grazhdanochki (female-citizens)?”

  “That hooliganka tried to jump the line! Arrest her!”

  “And she broke my jar, too!”

  “Who?”

  “That nachalka … tall, in a brown dress … with bulging eyes …” The women look around, searching for the source of commotion. “She was just here …”

  “Well,” the militsioner says, turning condescendingly from one face to another, “Where is she?”

  The women look at each other, perplexed. The help came too late. The instigator is gone, and the crowd has nothing left but anger and unsatisfied righteousness.

  The militsioner exchanges meaningful glances with the kvass vendor, who purses her lips, crosses her arms on her abundant bosom, and announces, “Kvass is gone. You go home now, grazh-danochki.”

  “Whad’ya mean ‘gone’? You said nothing before! Davai, rabotai—keep working!”

  The crowd flares up again, fury foaming at the women’s mouths like frothed kvass.

  “Yeah, right! Who’s going to believe ya?”

  “Don’t put noodles over our ears!”

  “What the hell! Where’s the law?”

  Yet under the militsioner’s iron stare, the temporary alliances quickly break down, and streams of unhappy “grazhdanochki” scatter reluctantly up and down the street, leaving behind a smelly spot on the sidewalk and the kvass vendor talking quietly to the representative of the law.

  As soon as I open our front door, Mother says, “You’re back? Good. I got everything ready for okroshka.”

  “I didn’t get any kvass. It’s all gone,” I say, shoving the bidon back into the kitchen cabinet.

  “Gone?! What am I going to do with the cut vegetables? I didn’t plan anything else for supper!”

  I do not want to hear Mother’s lamentations. I have wasted my time and gotten nothing for it. At the very least, I deserve peace and quiet. I turn around and head to our room.

  The Arabian Nights is still on my sleeper-chair. I plop down, pick up the book, and look at the picture of Scheherazade stretched before Shahryar. Only this time, instead of admiring the King, I notice Scheherazade’s clothes, silky and colorful, accentuating her curvy body.

  I have never had anything so nice. Of course, I do not have Scheherazade’s curves either. Mother does, but her clothes are dark and plain, and she wears them for years. As for my sister, Tanya, her stuff is passed down through many generations of our family. Well, Tanya doesn’t count—she’s only seven. I am almost fourteen, and next quarter I will join Komsomol (the All-Union Leninist Young Communist League), which will bring me one step closer to adulthood and the Communist Utopia long promised by our government.

  All students at the age of fourteen become members of Komsomol, unless they are church-goers (a “sin” in our atheistic society) or cruglie dvoeshniki (failing students). I am not aware of any religious black sheep in my class. As for grades, our dvo-eshniki, Vitka and Kolka have been given passing grades lately, so they will not spoil our class records and our school’s reputation. After all, Vitka and Kolka’s knowledge is their families’ business, but, according to our principal, our school’s reputation is impor-tant to all of us.

  In any case, we will soon exchange our Young Pioneers’ scarves for a komsomolski badge, a miniature red banner with a profile of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin in the middle and the letters BLKSM on the bottom. I am not excited about joining Komsomol, since I no longer believe everything I hear at school and read in our textbooks. The things I hear at home, spoken in an undertone behind closed doors or during our family gatherings, are very different. They are bitter, critical, pessimistic, and completely the opposite of everything that pours out of the state radio, television, newspapers, and speeches of our leaders.

  Sometimes I feel as if my family is not even part of our country, but an alien faction within it. Everything is “we” versus “them,” as if “we” are a tiny group of renegades who struggle to survive among “them,” a large, self-satisfied Russian matryosh-ka. That said, being a member of The All-Union Leninist Young Communist League is a must if I want to go to college. Besides that, I need to behave in school and make good grades.

  When my physics grades recently began to drop like a cannonball, my father immediately confronted me: “You don’t plan to work on an assembly line, do you?”

  “No, I don’t,” I said sincerely, since the only assembly line I had ever seen was the one in Charlie Chaplin’s silent movie Modern Times, where poor Charlie was forced to screw nuts onto parts of machinery at such a fast rate that he suffered a nervous breakdown. That, of course, happened in America, a “rotten capitalist country soon to be destroyed by the oppressed masses,” in the words of our history teacher. Still, I s
trongly suspected that assembly lines in our own country were not any better.

  In truth, my parents have nothing to worry about. My failing grades have nothing to do with physics, but everything to do with its teacher, Anatoli Petrovich. He is young and athletic, with bright hazel eyes, a wide smile that makes my heart race, and wavy blond hair, just like the late famous Russian poet Sergei Esenin. Anatoli Petrovich is also witty, and he uses a lot of big words, which makes him sound both learned and important.

  In short, my physics teacher is completely different from my male classmates, who never say anything worthwhile and whose pimply faces look like miniature mine fields. All of Anatoli Petrovich’s female students—and possibly all the single female teachers—are in love with him, and when he conducts experiments, the quiet of the physics lab is charged with our high-voltage unspoken desire.

  The only person who does not appreciate Anatoli Petrovich is our class clown Grisha, a narrow-shouldered, scrawny boy with crow-like dark eyes and large, mushroom-shaped ears. Most of my male classmates keep to themselves during physics class, but not Grisha. Instead of being quiet in the presence of a true deity, he constantly shouts stupid jokes and then looks around the class with the victorious expression of an opera tenor who has just hit high “C” and waits for applause. On top of that, Grisha often strikes me on the back with his briefcase, and when I turn around, he makes stupid faces or wiggles his ears—he is the only person I know who can do this—which I find neither funny nor amusing.

  Anatoli Petrovich, on the other hand, does not notice me at all. Had I been pretty, I would have given him meaningful glances or sighed deeply when he looked at me, the way some of my classmates do. But I am not pretty: I am too short, too skinny, too flat-chested, and, worst of all, my nose is too big.