Lev was worried. Though it had been two years since that week of questioning, this was a new, a more careful, Lev. Nonetheless, when the talk of peace, of war, subsided, he nudged my mother, who finally instructed us to light the candles. Ben sang “Happy Birthday” to me in English, and then Manya, who didn’t speak a word of English, joined in, making up nonsense words as she went along. After I blew out the candles, Ben handed me two thick notebooks with black covers and red binding, one lined and one blank so I could write in one and draw in the other. That would keep me from doodling all over Poppa’s Pravda.
It was at that thirteenth-birthday party, after my mother had gone into Manya’s bedroom to lie down with a headache, after the table was cleared, the cloth put in the bathtub to soak, that Manya sat me down on the davenport and did what she did every time I visited, got her little bottle of lavender hand cream and massaged it into my hands, so that I got to take the scent home with me, so that at night, in bed, I could smell lavender on my hands, Manya. That was the day Manya told me the facts of life and I learned that I belonged to my father too. That I belonged to both of them. But when, a few weeks later, I “became a woman,” as the nurse at school phrased it, I didn’t want to. Couldn’t stand the feeling of the rags they’d given me. I felt more like a baby in a diaper than a woman. I didn’t want to be a woman; I just wanted to be who I was. I said nothing to my mother, though I told Manya as soon as I saw her. My mother never asked, as though there were some understanding between us.
I was kept very busy with school that spring. They’d put me in an advanced Mathematics class, algebra and, though I liked algebra, it was a struggle. No Joseph to help me, and Ben had barely scraped through himself. My parents worried that Ben wouldn’t do well in the university entrance exams. Ben didn’t care. He’d be just as happy taking vocational training, doing something practical.
Poppa came home one day after work looking pleased for a change, a newspaper-wrapped parcel under his arm. He’d been able to buy a bunch of bananas from a woman who was selling them on the street. We hardly ever saw them in the shops. But a far more precious trophy was the letter from Joseph that he’d collected with the mail. Mail was slow from Canada. The last time I’d gotten one of Joseph’s rare letters it was only a page and half, and he’d spent two paragraphs talking about some movie he and Daisy had gone to. This time he’d written at length. Joseph still had his bicycle and ladder, was still repairing light fixtures and radios, but now he’d rented a little storefront, was selling a few small appliances, mostly used, some new. Business was getting better, but he was worried that it was because there was going to be a war. Nonetheless, business was better. But the best news of all was that Daisy was expecting. Poppa was going to be a grandfather. Before we could celebrate, my mother came home. Poppa slipped the letter into its envelope, put it into his jacket pocket.
My mother came home, as always, full of news. The cherry trees down the street were in bloom, further proof that her city was the most beautiful city in the world. Had we ever seen cherry trees in bloom in Winnipeg? Of course not. And the plum trees too. It was like summer already. Irena, the new woman at work, was nice and cosy with the boss. She had a mouth on her: her husband this, her daughter that. Irena’s son had written a letter to Pravda demanding a larger room for his family. Meanwhile this same woman had been telling the whole shop that everybody in her family was such a big success. If he was such a success, why didn’t he have a better room? What kind of success was that? Then the woman told her that Thursday night she had a dream about Comrade Stalin. She dreamt Comrade Stalin had visited the store, that he had made a speech standing right beside her. Imagine the nerve! And had we heard Comrade Stalin’s speech on the radio broadcast at work this afternoon? They had it on at the store. It was a busy day, so she hadn’t been able to pay attention to all of it. But she did catch one phrase: uncommitted people are of no use to anyone. We should all think about that. It was remarkable how Comrade Stalin spoke: very slowly and clearly, very simply. Anyone, even a simpleton, could understand what he said. Even a child. Comrade Stalin loved children, and he spoke so that even a child could understand.
The news continued as she prepared dinner. But when she took Poppa’s jacket to give it a good brushing, going through the pockets she found Joseph’s letter. What’s this? she asked, knowing the answer. Poppa set down his paper. I had a pencil in my hand; I’d been making sketch after sketch of the cherry trees my mother so much admired, fretting over them, erasing, redrawing. At my mother’s words, I didn’t move; I could only look at Poppa. Say something. Poppa’s hands sat quiet on his knees. Joseph wrote. Not a word to her about Daisy; not a word about the baby. My mother had the letter in her hands; it seemed suspended, expectant. He said nothing else, did nothing. Then I heard it before I saw it, paper tearing.
And my father said nothing.
How is it possible that he said nothing? How was it possible for my mother to tear up a letter from her husband’s son? Joseph, my father’s son, who was just a boy when he came to us. And all he had needed was kindness – where was it in my mother? I remember looking over at her, the sharp profile, green eyes. My mother. Couldn’t she give Joseph anything, after all that time? And what was wrong with my father? He had let her turn Joseph away.Because it was easier to let his son go than to fight. His own son.
And what was wrong with me, that I sat there, saying nothing?
I close my eyes, let myself feel Raisa’s hands on my hair. She’s making me a French braid. Raisa’s the only one who can get my curls into a braid. It’s a special occasion: Raisa is taking me and Ben and Vladimir on a tour of Odessa’s famous catacombs. The Efrons are in town because Pavel’s giving a speech for professors of agronomy. He’s as skinny as ever, Pavel, but even I can see how handsome he looks in his suit and tie and starched white shirt. Although this is my first excursion to the catacombs, I’ve heard my mother’s stories about them – how her family worked the mines, knew every nook and cranny, owned maps of the labyrinth – since I was a baby in Winnipeg.
“Only English today, Annette. We must be strict. I need to practise.” Raisa likes reading books in English, poetry, stories. Her voice is low, almost like a man’s. I like her no-nonsense voice. Last time she visited, I amused myself by teaching her to say “no-nonsense” in her throaty, no-nonsense voice. “You, Annette, are a very lucky girl to be speaking English and Russian so perfectly.”
“To speak English and Russian . . .”
“Ah, yes. To speak English and Russian, to know so well grammar, to correct your aunt so conscientiously.”
“And I can speak Yiddish too. Poppa and I used to speak Yiddish together.”
“To know Yiddish also is very good. Don’t pay attention when people say it is not good.”
“Uncle Lev –”
“Uncle Lev is a very wise man. To Uncle Lev you must listen. Now allow me to concentrate on my very important work right now, which is making my niece presentable. Soon we must leave for our visit to the catacombs.”
Although I’m eager for time with Raisa, the catacombs make me uneasy. Even the word sounds ominous, like a city for dead people, of the dead. I shudder.
“What is it, Annette?” Raisa stops brushing for a moment.
“Nothing.” Underground. “Auntie Raisa, is the subway in Moscow finished yet?”
She nods. “They call it the Metro. The stations are like palaces. The tsar never had anything like it: chandeliers hanging from vaulted ceilings, marble floors. You come to Moscow some day to see it all finished.”
Poppa has told me about the underground palaces for the workers. But I don’t like the idea of going underground. Not to subways and not to the catacombs. I’ve heard too many fairy tales about the bad things that happen underground: witches and goblins who carry children away, never to return. I shudder again.
“Are you all right, my dear young lady?” “I’m fine, really.” “You are still having those bad dreams?” “The ones I couldn�
��t wake up from? They stopped ages ago.”
“Did I tell to you that Vladimir also would have that kind of nighthorse?”
“Nightmare.”
“Nightmare. I did research. It is a phenomenon called ‘night terrors.’ The child cannot wake. Very normal.”
“But Raisa . . .”
“There. You are now tidy and nice.”
“Thanks, Auntie Raisa.”
“All right. Your most beautiful hair is accomplished and now you must take your cousin Vladimir, as you promised, to the kiosk for a treat.”
Vladimir’s wearing his new sailor suit. He looks very serious in it. Vladimir and Raisa, they’re good at looking serious. You never know what’s going on inside Vladimir’s head. Auntie Raisa calls him an old soul. I take him by the hand. “Thanks for the birthday card, Vladimir. And you wrote it in English!” Vladimir’s note was written in cursive, in English. He hasn’t even started school yet, but somehow Raisa has got him learning a bit of English.
“Annette, is Ben coming?”
“I think he’s busy, Vladimir.” Ben is probably smoking cheap cigarettes at the back doorway downstairs and teasing all the girls in the neighbourhood who just happen to walk by.
This time there’s scarcely any wait at the kiosk, so we’re soon back with our Pravda for Poppa and the treat. “Race you up the stairs,” I tell him. And we come thundering up the stairs, Vladimir puffing behind me, trying to keep up. Yesterday he tried to make me run all the way up the Potemkin steps, but we were both breathless before we got a third of the way up.
“Momma,” Vladimir says, “Annette bought me pumpkin seeds!” He runs over to her, hugs her legs so hard she almost tumbles over. I hand Raisa the seeds, wrapped in a twist of newspaper, then pick Vladimir up under the arms and start spinning him round and round and he’s not serious any more. He’s laughing until he starts to hiccup.
“Enough, Annette, enough! You’ll choke the boy!” Raisa’s laughing too. “And be careful of the new suit.”
I set him down. “How about some of those pumpkin seeds?”
My mother comes to the door. “That’s enough, children. Annette. Enough. Ben, get ready. Raisa is ready to take you. And you, Annette. That’s enough foolishness.”
I can feel myself beginning to fill up with anger, feel myself moving towards a collision. Why does my mother always have to stand that way, in doorways, her arms crossed as though she were the immovable object? And me the irresistible force. Stalemate. I can feel the air between us crackle. “I’ll be ready in a minute,” I say.
“Go already.”
“I’m going.”
Ben’s standing in the hallway, watching, trying to keep the smirk off his face. Raisa’s looking away, so careful with my mother – not to interfere, not to get too close. Raisa’s smart.
Brimming, tragic, I stalk off to my room to get my sweater, walking in that funny stiff way I know I get when I’m angry. Where’s my blasted sweater? I throw my blankets onto the floor, scatter my pillows. Vladimir comes into the room.
“Did you find your sweater?”
I scoop up the pillows, pull the blankets back up. I’m afraid to open my mouth.
“Annette? Can I help you?”
“It’s fine, Vladimir. It’s here somewhere. We’ve got plenty of time.”
There was a little girl. . . . Straightening the blankets with meticulous fury I can see how idiotic I’m being over nothing, nothing, and I want to stop but I can’t. Not with her, not with my mother. It keeps boiling inside me. I’m so tired of being caught in these eternal tempers, the tyranny of my mother’s moods, my moods. Cartoon thunderclouds, bolts of lightning forming over her head and mine, between us. And the only thing to stop us is Poppa’s there-there. Even his there-there doesn’t work as well lately. And Poppa seems to get quieter every day, can’t seem to get mad even when he should get mad. For Joseph, Poppa had no there-there.
All through the trolley ride I keep myself busy talking to Vladimir, trying to shake myself out of my mood. And now we’re all walking down to the entrance, a breeze blowing the boys’ shirts, Raisa’s and my skirts. The air is fresh here, a bit cooler, but I can’t smell the salty ocean smell of ships, of fish, of Odessa. It smells ferny here, green.
While we wait at the entrance of the catacombs for our turn Raisa explains, in her deep doctorly voice, how the limestone quarried here was used to build Odessa, to make the creamy façades I’m so fond of. Kilometres of limestone tunnels fifteen metres below the surface, a rabbit warren, a labyrinth. My mother was telling the truth. I never believe her, but the stories are true.
The guide takes us in. He’s an older man, defeated looking, in a worn grey suit jacket, a navy turtleneck sweater under the jacket. It must be damp down there. He looks at me, smiles, his blue eyes crinkling. Then he turns and we follow him into the catacombs, going down the cool mouth of the tunnel. The daylight soon fades, but there are electric lamps along the walls. I take a deep breath. The air seems to cling to the inside of my throat, moist, almost sticky; cool but not fresh.
I’m still grumpy, still stiff. If I stay with Vladimir, it’ll be better. I won’t let myself take my mood out on him. He glances at me, twitches his nose. “Smells like a closet down here. Smells like dust.” I nod. Cool, wet dust. Or moths. The taste of moths on my tongue – not that I’ve tasted moths – but a grey taste, stale and damp. Raisa and the guide are talking quietly now, politics, Hitler, the usual fear. The floor’s smooth here, soft, almost polished, slippery with humidity. The cool down here is a different colour from the cool outside, grey, not green. I shiver. Ben sees me. “You done with your snit now, Annette? Busy being scared now? Scaredy-cat,” he whispers in English.
“Don’t talk English,” I glower back, in English. “Momma says.”
He switches into Russian: “Momma says, Momma says. Now you’re Momma’s little girl!”
I start to shake. I feel it, that twist of rage again; I can’t help it. My mother in the doorway, blocking my way. Now the guide is explaining about how the limestone was formed, all sorts of scientific details that Raisa seems fascinated by.
“Do you ever get lost down here?” Vladimir asks.
“You have to know your way around,” the man says. “If you know where you’re going you can always find your way back.”
“You have a background in science?” Raisa asks.
The man shrugs. “I used to teach in the university.”
“Here in Odessa?”
“Moscow.”
Raisa doesn’t ask any more questions. The tunnel narrows and we have to go single file. Soon Ben and Raisa and the guide are way up ahead of us. I start shivering again.
“Are you scared, Annette?” Vladimir asks.
“I don’t like being under the ground; it makes me feel boxed in.” The air is even thicker.
“Momma says I shouldn’t be scared, because if there’s something bad that wants to get me I can fight it or I can run away. That’s what animals do,” Vladimir says. “We fight or else we run away.”
“And you’re an animal?” I ask.
“Of course I am. That’s what people are.”
“And what if you can’t run fast enough to get away?”
“Well, then I have to fight. And even if I don’t win, I did something.” He pulls his hand out of mine. “I want Ben. I want to catch up with him.”
I can hear the patter of his shoes, but he’s turned a corner and I’m alone. Where’s Raisa? There. Up ahead, still talking away with the guide, his worn grey jacket blending in with the gloom. I can barely see Raisa either, just the back of her cotton blouse, a pale blue that’s almost white in this light. I lick my lips, swallow. My own blouse feels clammy against my back. The corridor narrows further. The top of my head brushes against the ceiling and I feel something fall onto my scalp. I run my hand through my hair: grit. Touch the ceiling; it crumbles when my fingers brush against the surface.
“Auntie Raisa,” I call. Raisa doesn
’t turn. Nobody’s paying any attention to me; nobody cares what I want. I feel the anger fold into the fear. And then the corridor gets wider, higher. It’s a room more than a corridor, with much more light and benches set into the walls. Vladimir’s sitting on Raisa’s lap, chatting away. My legs are wobbly. Good. I can sit, calm myself down. But Ben has spotted me, can see how pale I’ve gone.
“What’s wrong, Annette?” He starts to smile. I bite my lip, glare up at him. “You’re pale as Momma’s strudel dough.” He pushes his mouth against my ear, says again in English, “Scaredy-cat.”
I’m sick of everything: me, Ben, my mother. Before I can think I give him a solid shove that lands him on his rear. I hear his shout explode in the chamber, but before he can get up I’ve taken off, running helter-skelter down a narrow corridor. My good shoes are slipping on the slick, smooth floor. I slow down, stop, sink down to crouch in the corridor. Hug my knees, close my eyes.
That sound. Maybe it’s just my heart pounding away. No. It’s there. Swaying, full bellied, below the drip-drip of water. Nearby. A knell. It’s there, over again and over again, swaying in my head. Two beats, light and then heavy, and that gap in between. Stalemate. No way out. No way out of here; no way out of myself. I try to breathe it out, let it go. It comes up, into my throat. The knife sharpener. He’s not here. All right, then. Ghosts. Goblins. The Minotaur of the deep. Half human, half beast. That’s what makes it a monster.
The Knife Sharpener's Bell Page 10