Dancing on Thin Ice

by Arkady Polishchuk

The Lenin’s Banner was already the biggest regional newspaper in the country. Two days later I began my new work. After two weeks, I took a train to a nearby city to meet with the inventor of an antenna box that dramatically increased the range of signals that a television could receive. Now, the family of this plant worker happily, though with interruptions, watched programs from our Baltic republics and even Poland.

  My article was killed when a veteran of the editorial board clasped his hands and exclaimed, “What if tomorrow this homegrown genius invents a device to watch American or West-German TV? Someone here went mad. This should be thrown out of the strip!”

  “Vigilant newspaper wolf!” Yegor said, relating the story.

  “Thank goodness Stalin has been in his coffin for more than five years,” I said.

  “Otherwise, both of us,” he said, “and that inquisitive worker, would’ve been shot as an American and Monacan commando detachment.”

  I had already ranked the charming and straight-talking Yegor among my friends when I noticed a sudden change in him. After the fourth week was over, he said gloomily, “I’m sorry, old man, the editor-in-chief came to the conclusion that you haven’t passed the probationary period. Look for another job.”

  Having gotten acquainted with my buddy Tom Kolesnichenko in Pravda’s restaurant, the unsuspecting Yegor Yakovlev subsequently advised him to avoid contact with me; I was involved in some kind of a scandal with political overtones. That was why Tom urgently suggested to me that we convene the Supreme Military Council.

  And now my three university friends were sitting on our bed, my wife and I on our only two chairs, and Gena Snegiryov lying on the floor between our feet. Gena meticulously studied the small ceiling and looked like a battle-hardened commander, bent over a map. We had just rented this tiny room. My wife initiated the discussion of the crisis. “My husband finally realized that the influence of the Party extends to the entire territory of the Soviet Union.”

  “To hell with them,” said Fred Solyanov, now a stagehand and a bard. “In my theater we need a non-drinking stagehand.”

  “Alik,” Irina said, using my nickname. “I told you not to buy alcohol.”

  “Friends, I have a solution,” Nahl Zlobin said.

  Gena Snegiryov tugged at my pants. “Remember, I tried to persuade you to obtain a certificate from my psychiatrist?”

  Nahl and Tom looked at us with great curiosity, and I had to try to explain. “This is true,” I said. “It was the last year of university …”

  I had to introduce Gena to his audience more thoroughly. He quit school after the fifth grade; at the age of sixteen he traveled with our Moscow University biologists and spent years dissecting animals; at the age of twenty this child tried to convince me to write my diploma paper on Buddha. Even now, with stubble on his face, Gena only barely looked like an adult. He was almost four years younger than us.

  “Gena,” said Tom, “my six-year-old boy loved your book about beasts and nature. We didn’t know that you were such an antisocial element.”

  “Gena is better at socializing when at a bonfire.” I was still fascinated by his memories of Tuvan hunters in sheepskin shirts below the knees over homemade leather pants.

  “Yeah,” Gena said thoughtfully. “At that fire Mendume had been feeding me with mutton and without him, I’d never have written my stories.”

  These Asian tribesmen worshiped celestial deities, and the good and evil spirits of the Altai Mountains, rivers, forests, boulders, and animals. Also, without their assistance in showing my friend Gena the way to his drug habit, he may not have needed a psychiatrist.

  “Don’t they have Party Committees over there?” Tom inquired acidly.

  “Their Party bosses,” Gena said, laughing, “also believe in spirits and ghosts.”

  “Lucky you, Gena!” said Fred. “You didn’t waste five years of your life studying Marxist philosophy.”

  “I do have a solution,” Nahl said again. “The entire leadership of Kostroma may not even be aware of the existence of The Life of the Blind magazine.” He turned to Tom. “I’ve been its traveling correspondent for a year, and I’ll go into science after they take me into the Party ranks. I’ll recommend Alik as a worthy replacement. So our satirist will join the Party at The Life of the Blind after having stayed with the magazine for a year. After that, with the Party membership card in his pocket, he can run away wherever he damn well pleases.”

  “Right!” said Tom. “And then I’ll smuggle you, abandoned and forgotten by all, into my estimable socio-political magazine Asia and Africa Today.”

  “I’ve read only one book about Africa,” I said, “and it was in verses.”

  “You’ll have a whole year to study,” said Tom. “You don’t want to be at the forefront of official propaganda, so you’ll write about colonialism and white racism. Just never step again on the regal toes of senior Party officials.”

  “So convincing!” said Fred.

  “And after his victory over Western colonialism,” said Gena Snegiryov wistfully, “we’ll appoint Alik President of the USSR, the greatest loony bin in the world, and every day you’ll feed me lunch.”

  “And me—dinner with vodka,” said Fred promptly.

  I solemnly promised but warned, “On the condition you two join the Party.”

  “It will depend on the amount of vodka,” said the principled Fred.

  “Comrades, it’s too much!” Tom suddenly brightened up, and then changed his tone and in feigned seriousness said, “Don’t encroach on the sacred! We cannot allow a Jew to lead our great Motherland!”

  “Maybe we should baptize him first?” tentatively proposed Irina.

  “It won’t help,” Nahl said firmly.

  TWO

  The Life of the Blind

  DURING THESE TRYING TIMES of 1959, Tom introduced me to his cronies in The Soviet Militia. This police magazine was held in high esteem among freelancers for its high fees. There was a certain irony in the fact that I had to use a pseudonym. The editor asked, “Why Irinin? You have a nice Ukrainian last name.” I had to explain that my wife wanted me to honor her name.

  Shortly after this magazine published a report by its new freelancer, Nahl Zlobin took me to the All-Russian Society for the Blind. At the flimsy door with a sign reading “Head of the Department of Culture,” he said, “Pay no attention to how Natalie treats me. We’re just good friends. They believe that the blind are more sensual than the sighted, and thus they have stronger sexual desires, and are better lovers.”

  We heard a melodious laughter from within. “I agree. Nahl, come in, darling.”

  We laughed, went in, and I shook her soft, outstretched hand. Her dark pupils wandered strangely, as if trying to roll up somewhere behind her upper eyelids with thick lashes. Not letting go of my hand, Natalie squeezed it gently. “I thought I already knew everything about you, but now I see that someone shattered your nerves.”

  “Nahl did that,” I said. “Hard to hide anything from you, even behind closed doors.”

  “You rely too much on your eyes; we bank on other senses. That’s why you folks aren’t able to read by touch.”

  I wanted to sound business-like and asked her how the Society earns money.

  “We produce a great variety of things,” she said. “We make knitted gloves, cords, ropes, brushes—even for cleaning medals—as well as brooms for sweeping ship decks. Should I continue?”

  “I think I get the idea,” I said.

  It was clear that they had difficulties in finding work suitable for the blind.

  “It’ll be your job,” she continued, “to show our readers that we are productive members of society.”

  On the way to the editor-in-chief of The Life of the Blind, Natalie asked, “Alik, do you play chess?”

  “Yes. Are we going to play chess with him now?”

  “He’d love to.”

  The editor-in-chief Victor Andreevich came around his desk to greet us. “Get ready, Arkady, you’
ll be told scary stories. Who needs an armless or legless war veteran? Some are abandoned by their wives.”

  “There is always room for joy as long as we have a nose to sniff the flowers,” I said, somewhat pompously.

  “Nice talking, brother Arkady,” sneered Nahl.

  “I like it,” said Natalie. “I have flowers at home and take good care of them.”

  “Among the blind,” Victor Andreevich said, “there are many people who don’t have even a high school education. Therefore, we want you to be as simple as Chekhov.”

  I promised to write like Chekhov.

  Most of the year I spent on the road. The first trip was just two hours from Moscow by local train and bus. I traveled to Rusinovo to write about a unique experiment. Shortly after the war, while the European part of Russia was still in ruins, it was decided to build three exemplary cities for the blind where they would gather from all over the country. The equality of their residents would be determined by the common problems they faced. It sounded like a weird materialization of the Marxist idea, which was still smoldering in me: somewhere, away from the Party bosses, people were trying to fulfill mankind’s ancient dream of creating a society of justice, equal opportunity, equal rights, and mutual aid. At least, for the blind. And I was going to witness it.

  When a battered bus, rattling over potholes like a giant tambourine, stopped at the edge of the fiery autumn forest, the road dust settled and I saw a sign that read, “Caution: blind pedestrians.” It was nailed directly to a red-headed tree. We drove into Rusinovo.

  The city of the blind looked like the only street of a large village, though quite a long one. Getting off the bus, I glanced in both directions and did not see a soul. Across the street stood a gloomy four-story building. Over the wide black gate made out of sheet iron, hung a big sign that read: “The Training and Production Enterprise of the All-Russian Society for the Blind.” The venture, half staffed with the sighted, was churning out mounting panels for a manufacturing plant which just two years ago started producing Ruby-brand black-and-white TV sets. The Society was proud of the fact that it participated in the production of such a technological marvel. That Moscow plant had some heavily guarded shops, as it did work for the military and space-exploration industry. It was rumored that “our” boards were about to fly into space. Just a year earlier, in October 1957, the first Sputnik had been successfully launched into orbit around the Earth.

  Next to the factory stood an abandoned kindergarten and two unfinished five-story boxes with gaping window intended to become homes for the blind, but obviously the money had run out. This gray reality was in stark contrast to the bright roadside fall forest. A stray thought flashed through my mind—well, it’s good that they don’t see it.

  The administrators of the plant were waiting for me, but, at first, I went to the nearby highrises, knocked on a dilapidated door on the first floor, and soon heard shuffling footsteps behind it. A person stopped, listened to my signaling cough, and continued shuffling back and forth behind the door. I said aloud, “I’m a correspondent for The Life of the Blind; please, open.”

  In the end, curiosity won out over caution and the door creaked open a crack to the length of the stop chain. I caught the unpleasant odor. An old man, cursing, slammed the door in my face. “You, crook, here again!” he shouted. “I remember you! Get out of here if you don’t want to be shied away with this hammer on your head!” And he hit the fragile door with a heavy object.

  I said, “Okay, calm down. I’m not a swindler and will try to talk to your neighbors.”

  I was almost on the second floor, when he flung open the door and shouted, “If you’re so smart, you should’ve come with someone whom I knew!”

  “You’re right,” I yelled.

  “Come back when my wife returns from the factory!” he cried. “In an hour! She’s half-sighted!”

  “Thank you!” I yelled. “Maybe I will!”

  On the second floor, a toothless pale woman opened the door without even asking who I was. Gray strands of hair were sticking out from under her well-worn headscarf. The appearance of a correspondent startled her. “It’s so good of you to come! Please help us to get some medication,” she mumbled.

  The two blind sisters had lived in this studio since this house was built ten years ago. The head of the woman slightly quivered. “We’ve been living in this village since childhood,” she told me. “When the authorities decided to build a city of the blind with this plant, a lot of blind people already had lived and made a lot of things right here, in Rusinovo.”

  The sisters smiled, revealing the remains of yellowed teeth, and the one who had opened the door, continued mumbling.

  “We felt grand that from now on we would have our own city where no one could be hurt,” she said. “With this apartment, we no longer had to worry about firewood and water. In our basement there is a boiler, and we almost never have shortages of coal.”

  I began to understand her slurred speech.

  “We were so grateful to the Soviet authorities!” she averred. “Only once, coal was delivered late; there was a severe frost, and the water pipes burst. We had to trek through the snow for two weeks to our old well half a mile away, near the house where Masha and I grew up.”

  The other sister kept smiling.

  “Who’s older?” I asked, “You or Masha?”

  “I turned fifty last month. She’s two years younger, but she’s as sick as I am.”

  Masha kept smiling. “You see, I too lost half of my teeth,” she said. “Thanks to the plant director, he’s never denied us assistance. If there were no trucks, he’d always give us a horse-drawn cart to ride to Balabanovo’s railway hospital. All our bad teeth were pulled out over there.”

  The sisters laughed. They were enjoying my presence.

  “Under anesthesia?”

  “Under what?” Masha asked.

  “Did they freeze your gums?”

  “Why freeze? It was done in summers, too, any time of the year.”

  “You mean they just pulled it out with tongs, so your eyes nearly popped out from pain?”

  “No—no, if a tooth resisted, they pricked the gum, and after that the gum went numb.”

  “Good,” I said.

  The older sister said, “My teeth sometimes move—they move and fall out by themselves. It’s because we can’t afford to buy meat and vegetables. Even if we had a garden, we wouldn’t have the strength to cope with it. So in the winter we buy frozen potatoes and slimy cabbage.”

  Masha said, “We’ve gotten disability pensions and for months haven’t worked—I because of a stomach ulcer, my sister after a stroke. Sorry, she speaks so slowly; this is the result. Please write that we always were good workers.”

  Her sister said, “Often there is no money for medicines. Anyway, the drugs aren’t always available.”

  They laughed again, displaying gratitude and a fragile hope that I might be able to help them.

  I was getting frustrated. I did not want to see stripped wallpaper, cobwebs, untidy beds, worn clothes, and deformed faces any longer and left this stinking house. The multicolored forest somewhat comforted me, and I walked by a ruined church with no dome, to another five-story building. Man is such a beast, I thought spitefully; it gets used to everything, and that is why this wretched house looks a bit more inviting. Those sweet and virtuous people in Moscow would never allow me to write about this despair and hopelessness.

  On the first floor, an angry bearded man almost hurt me with a crutch. “Don’t humiliate me!” he shouted, “Go away!”

  From a safe distance, after joining forces with his wife, I persuaded him to let me in. On his only foot he had a patched felt boot, out of season. His little son closely watched my every move. I stroked his head. The kid did not mind but still was on guard, ready to defend his parents. At first, the man turned his face to the ceiling and listened to my conversation with his wife. After several minutes, he began giving approving nods.

>   “We came here from faraway places, like many others,” she said, “in the hope of settling in the dream city. We were very young and fell in love.” She touched his knee, and his face softened. Only their six-year-old son could see my sad smile.

  I asked, “How did you know that you liked each other?”

  “By voice,” he said, speaking up for the first time.

  I said, “Interesting, I also loved the voice of my future wife.”

  “Is it true?” she asked.

  “For a long time, the telephone was our only connection.”

  The man said, “We don’t have telephones here. You can’t call a doctor.”

  “Here our children were born,” she said.

  “Tim died,” her husband said.

  She patted his knee again. “Stepan is a true hero,” she said. “He didn’t complain much about his diabetes, about the deep wounds on both legs. They were aching and aching. And smelling. That’s why they cut off his right foot.”

  The boy climbed up on a chair, stood on tiptoe, and opened a narrow window.

  “Forgive me,” the wife went on slowly, “you might not like it, but since then I have kept praying about his left leg every day. And he was joking—he said, since here in the Soviet Union God had no means of subsistence, he lived abroad. Please don’t write about that.”

  I promised. Now they looked relaxed.

  Stepan patted her hand, still on his knee. “It wasn’t just her voice. Nastya also hit me.”

  The youngster giggled. “She hit me hard, with a piece of furniture,” his father said, grinning.

  Now came my turn to laugh loudly, and Stepan continued: “There had been small workshop here, and we made furniture before the factory was set up. She got scared, apologized, and hugged me. That was it.”

  Nastya said, “That’s how we got better acquainted.” She giggled, and her son burst out laughing like only the young can do.

  I said, “It’s good that you didn’t work with bricks.”

  We all laughed again. The boy could not stop.

  I said, “My wife also hugged me first.”

  Stepan continued, “We worked on the presses when she damaged her arm, cleaning the wires. Now I can’t work, but Nastya still goes there. Maybe I should try to make quilted blankets, like she did in her hometown.”