Soviet Milk

by Nora Ikstena

  After the first two exhibition halls my head started to spin. I found a bench and sat down. Here was a world to sweep you off your feet. I didn’t attempt to understand Teacher Blūms’ descriptions. I just allowed his words and the paintings to flow through me like fine grains through a sieve, catching here and there, and sprouting in the fertile soil of my imagination.

  Time stood still. We wandered through the halls as if possessed. Soon we were close to exhausted. Then I saw a brilliant green moon set in a black painting. I sat on the floor before the painting and could not leave. The painting drew me into its darkness and its light, which were fighting each other in the small, square-framed space. I was there between the green moon and the darkness into which everything vanished – me, my mother, my grandmother and step-grandfather, the hamster in its cage, the tiny clay figure I had made. Everything spiralled as if in a whirlpool, then vanished into darkness.

  I came to my senses. Teacher Blūms was saying, ‘You fainted by the Kuindzhi.’ The frightened members of my group stood around me. The museum guards had brought a glass of water.

  At night we went to see how the bridges are raised over the Neva. The bridge jaws gaped open and rose majestically to meet the star-filled heavens. Below flowed the river that I was to say hello to from my mother.

  *

  My daughter came to see me four weeks after her spring holiday. She had grown thin. She spent her time in her room or in the kitchen gazing apathetically out of the window. Something had happened.

  We weren’t accustomed to questioning one another. In the evening muffled sobs issued from my daughter’s room. I stepped inside.

  ‘Mamma,’ she said through tears, ‘after the Leningrad trip they let Teacher Blūms go. Someone told the headmistress that I fainted by a painting and he was let go. But that’s not all.’

  ‘You fainted by a painting?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes, I was tired and I had my period. Besides, that painting was incredibly beautiful, just the darkness and a green moon. I looked at it for a long time. Then suddenly it was as if the darkness drew all of us into it – me, you, Grandmother and Step-Grandfather, and the little clay baby. It grew dark in front of my eyes and I fainted.’

  She cried so dreadfully, weighed down by a great guilt that should not have been hers to carry.

  ‘That’s no reason to dismiss a teacher.’

  ‘It was only an excuse, Mamma. It turns out they had been watching our teacher from the very first day our group met. It turns out that someone among us reported everything, absolutely everything, to the headmistress. She relayed everything on to the KGB.’

  I sat by my daughter’s bed, listening. A wave of suffocating hatred washed over me. It was as if the ghost of Winston was standing outside the window. The marks of his torture were visible – he was hardly recognizable. He had been forced to confess and to accept ‘their’ truth. This spectre that had burdened me for so long now also burdened my daughter.

  ‘But that’s not all, Mamma,’ she said, through tears. ‘A week after the trip, the head called me out of class and led me to a room beside her office. It was like that time when we had graffiti scrawled on the pavement. There, in that room, sat a dreadful man. Dreadful, Mamma, with a massive head, light hair and evil eyes.’

  I stroked my daughter’s head. Shudders passed through me as if rushing in from a distance – from the stand of young spruce trees which my father had tried to protect, from the cold suitcase in which my mother had hidden me, from the old professor who had reported our talk about God, from the Engels Street room in which I denied everything, from Serafima’s husband’s ugly face, from my Soviet cage, where I went on living without the courage to eat my child. I fought with all my strength against this battering. My hands must not tremble. I must comfort my crying child.

  ‘He asked me, “Did Teacher Blūms take you to a church?” straight out like that. I was so frightened by his evil expression that I just trembled and said nothing. Then he walked behind me, Mamma, he placed a hand on my shoulder and said in a chilling voice, “You won’t graduate from this school, and you’ll never be accepted at a university if you don’t answer.” And, Mamma, I said he took us! I said he took us, Mamma,’ my daughter sobbed. ‘I should have lied, said that he didn’t take us, but I told him the truth, that he took us.

  ‘The evil man went on tormenting me. “Did he read poetry and other texts to you that aren’t in the school curriculum?” I said he did read them, and I was crying. I should have lied and said he didn’t, but I told him the truth, that he did read them. Mamma, I should have denied everything and lied. And then he returned to his desk, pulled out a blank sheet of paper and a ballpoint pen and placed them both in front of me. And in just as cold and calm a voice he said, “And now you’ll write all this down. You’ll write that Teacher Blūms took you to a church and read poetry and other texts that aren’t in the school curriculum to you. And you’ll sign – your name, surname and class.”

  ‘I refused to write. The evil man got up from his desk once more, Mamma. He stood behind me once more, but this time he put both hands on my shoulders and squeezed them so hard it hurt.

  ‘“You do know, of course, how life has turned out for your mother” – that’s what he said, Mamma. “By tomorrow you’ll be expelled from school, and your good marks won’t help you.”

  ‘He turned me around to face him. His face grew red and he was yelling.

  ‘“Comrade Blūms’ sort poisons our young, poisons and leads them away from the Soviet path. If I had my say, he would be in prison. Unfortunately, these are no longer the times for that. But he will not set foot in this school again. Never again. Write!”’

  How my child wept then. I tried to comfort her.

  ‘And then, Mamma, the door opened and the headmistress came in. Her face was hard and mean. She sat down at the desk, crossed her thick fingers and started talking just like that evil man.

  ‘“Now you have the opportunity to ruin the rest of your life. The others have already written their pieces and signed.”

  ‘“All the eleven others?” I asked through tears.

  ‘“All eleven and without such melodrama,” she replied.

  ‘Mamma, that means the wunderkind had already written his confession! And then the head added, “If you didn’t have such good marks, I wouldn’t go so easy on you. Write and sign it.” And then, Mamma, I did write it.’

  My daughter was crying so dreadfully that my heart was breaking.

  ‘I wrote that Teacher Blūms took us to a church and read poetry and other texts that aren’t in the school curriculum. I wrote and I signed my name, surname and class.’

  I brewed some camomile tea with honey for my daughter. She drank it and fell asleep, having wept until her tears ran out. When I heard her breathing calmly, I closed her bedroom door.

  The darkness in my room enveloped me. I opened the window. Outside, spring was in the air. I lit a cigarette. The shudders slowly receded.

  The sky was unusually bright. I stepped into the garden. Such a star-filled sky! Directly above my head flowed the Milky Way, unreachable and infinite. I gazed at it all night until dawn. I gazed until the Milky Way vanished and a cockerel began to crow in a neighbour’s yard.

  *

  Without Teacher Blūms, school felt empty. I tried not to catch the wunderkind’s eye – although he behaved as if nothing special had happened. I avoided meeting the rest of the group, but when I ran into them accidentally in the school corridors, they also behaved as if nothing had happened. Everyone had spring on their minds. Just a little over a month and the summer holidays would begin. I had caused so much worry for my grandparents. After the interrogation, they worried about me so much that it became a burden. They had decided to rent a couple of rooms by the sea and spend the summer there. I decided to go to my mother’s.

  I managed my schoolwork as if on automatic pilot. I learned all that I was assigned. My form teacher was keeping an eye on me. In history and social stud
ies classes I was forced to work much harder than my classmates. I submitted, and spent all my time studying. I counted the days left until the end of the school year. I had a calendar in which I crossed off every day that passed.

  It was already the end of April when the country was shaken by the explosion of the Chernobyl power station. The school director tripled our military instruction classes. On the instructor’s orders we put on and took off gas masks until we were sick and tired of it.

  My form teacher told us about the doctors and volunteers from Latvia who now had to go and help in Chernobyl. As an example she mentioned her son, who was a doctor. Her duty as a mother was to convince her son that his place was in Chernobyl. She had succeeded in doing so. Now her son had gone to the nuclear disaster site to help the victims.

  I didn’t understand this teacher’s dedication. Encouraged by her, her son had put himself in harm’s way. But I didn’t have to understand anything. I had only to heed what constituted duty to our great motherland, and to have the courage characteristic of a responsible Soviet citizen.

  I gazed out of the window and the teacher’s words passed me by. On the other side of the street, the tall chestnut trees had burst into leaf. Soon the trees would be in blossom. I would leave the city, run through fields, swim, sit for hours on the riverbank, encourage my mother to go for walks, and we wouldn’t go to bed until late in the warm evenings. I would drag my mother out of her lair littered with books, ashtrays, apple cores and coffee mugs, and we’d pick the first chanterelles in the woods. I would read all that Teacher Blūms had recommended. I’d read all that was on my mother’s bookshelves. I would read to spite the man with the evil eyes, to spite the headmistress and my other eleven classmates who had denounced Teacher Blūms, to spite myself for denouncing him too because I was intimidated. I hated my fear. The summer seemed like a liberation from what felt like a young offenders’ institution. I only had two more years of it to endure.

  ‘I am proud of my son.’ The teacher’s words called me back to the class.

  Two weeks later, when the chestnut trees were almost in blossom, tragic news ran through our school. Our form teacher’s son, the doctor, had been killed in Chernobyl. She walked around dressed in black with a black ribbon tied in her hair. Everyone expressed their sympathy to her. She had to wait for a zinc coffin to bring her son back from his duty abroad, which she had encouraged him to fulfil.

  In her sorrow she became even harsher. Although it was almost the end of the year, she harangued us with new history to learn, adding more and more homework and tests.

  While we were doing the tests, she would disappear into her office. Her muffled sobs could be heard through the wall. We hunched over our notebooks so that we wouldn’t have to look at each other. Towards the end of the hour, having dried her eyes, she would come back into the classroom. She would bark, ‘I am proud of my son. He fulfilled his duty.’

  I saw how a cage had materialized around her, how she had shrunk and mutated into a hamster devouring its child. It was so real and horrifying an image that I felt sick. There was a numb silence in the classroom.

  The summer didn’t bring the liberation I had anticipated. The day before I was to leave, Jesse appeared at our front door in a state of near collapse. She stammered, ‘Your mother is alive. They transferred her to the big new hospital right here in the suburbs.’

  ‘Jesse, what happened?’

  We sat her in the kitchen and made her drink my grandmother’s tea. Soon she was able to tell us what had happened.

  After my last visit, my mother had withdrawn completely. She hadn’t even gone to the ambulatory centre for the paltry two days a week she was still meant to work. ‘I really don’t know,’ Jesse said, ‘but I think she was let go from her work.’ When it got dark, she had sat outside, gazing at the sky. Jesse had tried to talk to her without success. All she got was broken phrases, answers for the sake of answering.

  Jesse had tried to cheer her up: ‘Summer’s coming, and all three of us will be here together. Everything will be OK.’ My mother had turned to Jesse, looked at her in a funny way and said, ‘Yes Jesse, yes. Everything will be OK. We are all only human.’ And my mother had gazed upwards again, into the darkness.

  On the evening of that day, Jesse had come by after work to make dinner. The door to my mother’s room had been closed. Jesse had knocked, but my mother didn’t answer. Jesse had sensed that something was terribly amiss. She had knocked more persistently, but still nothing. The door was locked simply with a small latch. Jesse had managed to get it open.

  ‘My God,’ Jesse said. ‘She was lying there with her eyes open, her pupils dilated, her hands groping at the air around her. Scattered beside her lay two packets of pills – she had swallowed the contents of both.’

  My grandmother bent her head. ‘The road to hell,’ she repeated, ‘the road to hell.’

  Jesse continued. She was allowed to go along with my mother, who had nearly died in the ambulance on the way to the hospital. Her stomach had been pumped out. Now she was still in intensive care but her condition had stabilized. Jesse was not allowed to see her, but they would let in a daughter or her mother.

  Jesse talked for about twenty minutes. But to me it felt like twenty years of talking, and those years went by right here in our kitchen, where outside the dandelions were already blooming in the yard and soon the lilacs would join them. My grandparents would sit beneath those lilacs, happy once more to feel the first spring warmth. And toddlers might play in a sandpit at their feet, and the birds would take sand baths. But I had no time for that spring. I had to grow up fast, faster than the words flowing from Jesse’s mouth. And I had to be brave to hear out her story.

  ‘Jesse, stay the night with us. Take a bath, rest,’ I said.

  ‘Yes,’ my grandmother agreed weakly. ‘Jesse, stay with us.’

  ‘I will try to go and see her tonight. First I must phone the hospital.’

  ‘Sweet Pea, you won’t go alone, will you?’ my grandmother asked.

  ‘I will go, and I must go alone.’

  At the end of Lenin Street, the tram turned off towards a pine forest. It was half-empty. I sat at a window. Everything my grandmother had given me to take along lay in my lap: a toothbrush, toothpaste, slippers, a dressing gown, a hairbrush, soap, underwear, warm socks. Beyond the window, in the woods, bushes were sporting their first spring green – so bright they dazzled me. Near the hospital some old ladies were selling spring flowers.

  It was the busiest visiting hour. People were hurrying over the stone slabs of the hospital entrance hall, to bring their loved ones home-cooked food, flowers and life’s necessities.

  The doctor on duty in intensive care listened to me attentively. He set my passport next to my mother’s.

  ‘You’re very young,’ he said. ‘Are you sure you want to see her now?’

  ‘Yes,’ I answered.

  I followed the doctor down never-ending corridors. It felt as if we were descending deeper and deeper into the underworld. At last the sign ‘Intensive Care’ appeared in blue lights.

  ‘She’s not conscious. Poisoning one’s system with pills is life-threatening,’ the doctor said as he opened the door to the ward.

  My mother lay in bed naked to her waist. Adhesive patches stuck to her chest were connected to tubes which in turn led to various pieces of medical equipment. On a nearby monitor the line of her heartbeat zigzagged.

  I smoothed my mother’s hair. It was matted as always. I stroked her ear, her neck and chest. She was warm. Warm and quiet, she slept, transmitting her life signal to the metal box.

  After a while, the doctor came in.

  ‘I think we’ll pull her through,’ he said. ‘You too must help to call her back.’

  Three days later, my mother regained consciousness. She was transferred to the regular ward. My grandmother and I sat on either side of her, while my step-grandfather waited outside on a bench so that my mother would not get too emotional during this fi
rst encounter. She ate a couple of spoonfuls of our broth, closed her eyes, andsaid just these few words: ‘It’s a pity.’

  My grandmother had a long talk with the doctor. Their decision had been made. They were ready to transfer my mother to the psychiatric hospital, where she would have to stay for at least a month under medical supervision. She would have to be medicated.

  ‘We have no choice,’ he explained. ‘She tried to take her life. Consciously tried, despite being a mother and a doctor.’

  The summer passed me by. Both by the sea with my grandparents and in my mother’s house with Jesse, all we thought and talked about was her. I went to see her at the psychiatric hospital three times a week. I had to sign in. The hospital orderly would attach a doorknob to the door and let my mother out for a walk with me in the madhouse yard.

  We walked in circles or sat on the broken benches. Mother smoked greedily and constantly, as if I had brought her the elixir of life in cigarette packets.

  ‘Say hello to Jesse,’ she said. ‘And Mother and Stepfather.’ She repeated the same thing again and again. I could not muster the courage to ask the question that was tearing me in half.

  ‘How is the sea?’ she asked. ‘Do you also go over to our house? Jesse must be taking good care of it.’

  She asked and I answered with a brief yes or no, for sure, good, as always.

  ‘You don’t want to talk to me,’ she concluded, suddenly offended.

  ‘You don’t want to live,’ I threw back.

  ‘I don’t want to,’ Mother responded.

  ‘So what will happen now?’ I asked.

  ‘They’ll sign me out after a month, after determining what category of disability support I fall into. Then I’ll return home. I want to be at home. It’s dreadful here. Inside.’

  ‘And we, Mamma, will we have to live in constant fear for you? I’m afraid for you. I’m afraid, Mamma. I’ve been afraid since my early childhood.’

  ‘Forgive me, I’ll try. I’ll try! Forgive me,’ my mother repeated, in fits and starts, as she smoked.