Twice a day, Mom makes us drink fresh cow’s milk. She sends me to the shed where our proprietress milks her cow. While I wait, I watch the elderly woman forcefully pull the long teats of the melancholically ruminating animal. I inhale the tangled smells of hay, milk, bread, manure, and sweat and listen to the sounds of liquid squirting into the bucket. The milk I bring home is thick and warm, and, even outside the shed, it smells like a wet cloth. The fact that it has just come from somewhere inside a cow and not from a grocery store bothers me. Yet, as usual, there is nothing I can do about that but contemplate the unfairness of life and hope that the future will be better than the present.
It is a warm summer evening. Tanya and I are sitting on a pile of sand thrown in the middle of the lawn, about fifty yards away from the house. I am reading a book and Tanya is digging in the sand with a trowel. The setting sun illuminates the tree tops of a distant grove, and the low moos of the returning cows signals their owners to get ready for the nightly milking.
By now, I am used to these sounds, and I am no longer afraid of the slow-moving beasts. For one thing, they seem to be indifferent to everybody but their cowherd and owners. For another, they are too busy chewing to be bothered by anything but horseflies and mosquitoes.
I put down my book and watch the herd gradually disperse and move toward their respective homes. There are three cows heading in our direction—one in front and another with a calf behind. The latter two belong to our proprietress, but the animal in front of them is not familiar to me. I watch the strange cow approach. It is black with white spots, while ours are solid brown. It is also bigger than them, and it is moving faster, rapidly shaking its head from side to side.
Why is it coming here? It does not belong to our house, nor does it belong to our neighbors ... Wait, didn’t Mom talk about a village bull yesterday? That he got away from the herd and gored some village kid? Could this be that bull?
A pang of pain tingles in the pit of my stomach. I get up from the sand and pick up my book, all the while glaring at the animal running directly towards me, growing bigger and bigger by the minute. Unsure of what to do, I take several steps toward our house, first slowly, then faster and faster, until I get to our gate. There I take a deep breath and, relieved, look back. The cow—or is it the bull?—is still galloping toward the sand pile I have just left, where—to my horror!—I see my little sister diligently digging in the sand.
My legs go limp and the rest of my body goes hot and cold. Oh, no … I forgot about Tanya! For a short time, I stand still by the gate inhaling the oxygen-depleted air. There is absolutely no way I want to run back to get Tanya. But … there is absolutely no way I can leave her there alone either! Not because I care for her very much, but because my parents certainly do. In fact, if something bad happens to Tanya, they will kill me! This thought flashes through my mind as clearly as if I were reading it written on a page. Yet this crazy cow could kill me, too! What should I do?!
“It’s your fault!” My father’s voice sounds in my head like a kick, and I quickly look around but see no one. Then, trying to minimize the view of the approaching danger, I screw up my eyes and, with my heart pounding and my legs collapsing under me, I make one tiny step toward my sister, then another. Walking has never been so hard, and, to make any progress, I must push myself forward the way a swimmer pushes herself against a current. Still, despite my laborious movements, the distance between Tanya and me does not seem to diminish, and her small figure in a red dress appears as far away as ever. I will never reach her in time!
“Help!” I try to shout, “Help!” No sound comes out of my dry mouth—all my energy is spent on advancing myself.
Finally, after what seems to be eternity, Tanya is next to me. I grab her by the hand and pull her away from the sand pile toward the safety of our house. But instead of following me, she drops her trowel and screams at the top of her lungs as if I am the villain she needs to be protected from. She digs her heels into the warm sand and, with unexpected energy, struggles to extricate her hand from mine while I squeeze her tiny fingers with all the strength I have left and drag her through the lawn as her screams fill the air.
The cow is so close now that despite the loud wailing of my sister, I can hear its ominous breathing and the sounds of its stamping hoofs behind us. Yet—Oh, goodness!—I am not the only one who hears it now. Tanya’s cry has awoken the neighborhood. Doors and windows are opening everywhere, and I see our father rushing out of the house toward the gate. And the last thing I register before collapsing on the ground behind our gate is the crashing sound of horns hitting the fence.
I do not remember how we get into the house or what the adults say to me or to each other. And I am glad I don’t. I do not want to relive the recent terror—not now, not ever. Not even in the safety of my urban neighborhood, where cows and shepherds appear only in pictures, and milk—watery and cold—comes from grocery stores. Also, more importantly, I do not want to admit to anybody—even to myself—that I wasn’t really saving my little sister. I was saving myself from the wrath of my parents.
In September, our teacher Maria Ivanovna asks the class to write about our most memorable summer experience, and I write about the chickens and their fussy offspring. As for the incident with the cow, I bury that memory under a pile of other things I am not proud of. It only comes alive in my nightmares, mercifully melting away at daybreak. And when I wake up in the morning, I am not even sure if the whole thing really happened, or whether I just dreamt it while dozing on a pile of sand on a warm summer evening.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
BEETS
In the fall, my family moves again—this time to a four-story apartment house made of unpainted cement blocks, not far from our old apartment. Our new building is an exact replica of countless other faceless gray boxes that have sprouted all over Moscow during Khrushchev’s era. In fact, that is what we Muscovites call them—Khrushchevki.
Our new apartment has been granted to us by the furniture factory where Mom works at the medical clinic. Housing is still scarce, so some institutions try to improve their workers’ living conditions. The catch is that the workers are plentiful but construction is limited, so it takes years of waiting to “receive” a new place.
To be put on a waiting list, a person has to be in good standing with the authorities, and he also has to prove that his family has less than two square meters (about two square yards) per person in his current location. These requirements are less stringent for members of the Communist Party.
My parents have waited for their new apartment since I was born, and, if not for Tanya’s arrival, they would have been waiting still. Yet, here we are, in a place that, to me, is as grand as the castle where Cinderella met her prince and as desirable as the prince himself.
Of course, unlike the royal couple, we occupy only half of a two-room apartment on the fourth floor without an elevator. The other half belongs to our new neighbors with whom we share a kitchen and a bathroom. Still, everything here is new, with no signs of mold or smell of kerosene. In fact, we now have a gas stove, a toilet, running water, a heavy metal bathtub, and only two strangers to share this luxury!
Our new neighbors are a middle-aged couple: Klavdia Petrovna and her husband Naúm Vasilievich. Klavdia Petrovna is large, with flabby cheeks, cascading double chins, and a skinny gray braid coiled on top of her head. Naúm Vasilievich is also large, with a wisp of light baby-thin hair and the cheeks of a drinker, red enough to strike matches on their burning surface.
Klavdia Petrovna and Naúm Vasilievich do not have children. At first, I expected this to change any day, since, in my limited experience, women as big as Klavdia Petrovna were about to give birth. Yet four months later, Klavdia Petrovna’s size remains constant and, in fact, the number of people in our apartment diminishes. Tosja, our old nanny, finally leaves us for good.
Whether Klavdia Petrovna has anything to do with it, I cannot say. I did notice, though, that Tosja and Klavdia Petrovna bec
ame very friendly, and I once overheard Klavdia Petrovna telling Tosja that “it is a shame for a young Russian woman to wipe Jewish asses.” Whatever the reason, one day, Tosja packs her cardboard suitcase, tells my parents—in the old-fashioned Russian way—“Forgive me if I did something wrong,” and walks out, leaving Mom in a quandary over my sister’s childcare.
“I found a new nanny for Tanya,” Mom announces after dinner, while collecting dirty soup bowls and plates to take to the kitchen. “Her name is Zoya Ivanovna. She’ll come here in the morning and stay with Tanya until you come home from school.”
“Fine,” I say indifferently, pulling my textbooks and writing pads out of my briefcase and settling down to do my homework.
After Tosja’s departure, Tanya had gone through two babysitters. The first one agreed to look after Tanya together with three of her own grandchildren. Unfortunately, the woman was so overwhelmed with four children to mind that, on her first day, Tanya slipped out of the woman’s third-floor apartment and, being her usual over-energetic self, tumbled down a steep staircase. When Mom came to pick her up that night, Tanya’s knees, elbows, and forehead were bandaged sloppily, and her face was scratched and bruised.
The second babysitter, a reticent childless woman of uncertain age, was taken to the hospital at the end of Tanya’s second week with her. Not being there myself, I cannot say for certain that there was a connection between my sister’s unpredictable behavior and the poor woman’s stroke, but the thought definitely crossed my mind.
Zoya Ivanovna, then, is Mom’s third attempt to keep Tanya at home until her turn at a daycare center comes up. The wait was not supposed to be long—the daycare is run by Mom’s factory, and her boss, the head of the factory’s medical clinic with whom Mom is on good terms, promised to zamolvit za neio slovechko (put a word in for her). However, two years later the daycare still has no space for her.
The next morning, two sharp rings announce the arrival of Tanya’s new babysitter, and I rush to open the door for her. A gaunt woman in black walks in. She is tall and flat, with no hint of a bosom or other features of female anatomy. She is also the oldest woman I have ever seen. Her narrow lips reveal a toothless gaping mouth. Her thin white hair covers her scalp like cobwebs, and her deeply wrinkled face resembles a dried mushroom wasting in the woods. In other words, Zoya Ivanovna looks like a mummy I once saw in a museum; the main difference is that instead of peacefully lying in her sarcophagus and contemplating eternity, Zoya Ivanovna walks among the living with small and unsteady steps. Mom must have been desperate to hire this shadow of a woman. Surely, this babysitter will not last long.
I am wrong. Three months later, Zoya Ivanovna is still around. When I come home from school, she is the first person I see. Her shriveled dark figure stands out against the doorway, her coat is buttoned up, her headscarf hugs her ancient face tightly, and her pale eyes, hidden under beetling white brows, are filled with the eager anticipation of a soldier waiting to be relieved from her watch.
“Good day, Zoya Ivanovna,” I say, holding back the urge to click my heals and salute her, like one service man to another, for I know firsthand what her time with my sister must have been like.
“Well, I think I’ll go now,” Zoya Ivanovna replies—her shuffling feet already polishing the cold stones of the staircase behind our door.
I never blame her for the quick retreat. I wish I could go, too. In fact, I am amazed that Zoya Ivanovna has tolerated this long Tanya’s mercurial temperament and her rare knack for getting into trouble. It is difficult even for me, and I must be a hundred years younger than Zoya Ivanovna.
One morning Zoya Ivanovna does not come. Instead, Mom takes Tanya to her place. After school, I go to pick up Tanya from Zoya Ivanovna’s house—a decrepit structure near my school. I ring the bell of her apartment, and my sister opens the door to a dim, cave-like room.
A strange smell stops me in my tracks. I look around. Everything in the room is old and worn out, including its owner, who is sinking into the sofa, looking ominous with exhaustion—as Baba Yaga might look near death. For a minute I stare at Zoya Ivanovna’s wasted figure, trying to identify the source of the odor. Is it mold? Spoiled food? Or Zoya Ivanovna’s body? I am used to modest circumstances, but it suddenly hits me that this is true poverty. This is what it must look like, and this is what it must smell like.
But it cannot be! Not according to my teachers, my textbooks, or our radio and TV. Poverty is a sign of rotten capitalism, and it does not exist in our country! Our slogan is “From each according to his ability to each according to his needs.” As for old people, every school age kid knows that they deserve a “happy old age”!
I am staring at Zoya Ivanovna. Her face shows no signs of happiness. As for this smell, I do not know what “rotten” capitalism smells like, but it cannot stink any worse than Zoya Ivanovna’s apartment. And, despite everything I have heard and learned in school, despite all the slogans, I realize that poverty, unvarnished and ugly, does exist in our country. What else pulls Zoya Ivanovna off her broken-down sofa and makes her babysit my fidgety sister? The little money she gets from my parents makes her struggle for survival easier, if not bearable. For what can be bearable about living on a miserable pension after long years spent serving one’s people and country?
I help Tanya put on her coat and we head home. “You’d better listen to Zoya Ivanovna, Tanya,” I say to my sister who is paying as much attention to my words as she does to the clouds in the sky. And when we walk into our apartment—which suddenly seems as luxurious as the Russian tsars’ palace—I feel as lucky and privileged as I have ever felt.
Two weeks later, I get sick, and Mom takes Tanya to Zoya Ivanovna’s once more. When they come home at night, Mom’s cheeks are flushed and Tanya is trailing behind her, whining.
“Tanya, don’t bother me now and don’t bother your sister either,” Mom says very loudly, elaborately sucking air through her dilated nostrils. Ordinarily, this statement would make me very happy, but there is something in Mom’s voice that does not feel right. Besides, she does not look at me, does not put her medicine-smelling hand on my forehead in a gesture of concern, and does not ask me if I feel any better.
“Is something the matter?” I say, but Mom just glances at me—her face like a storm cloud about to erupt with lightning—and goes to the kitchen. Soon, I hear the loud staccato of a kitchen knife hitting the cutting board with the fury of a guillotine chopping.
Not until Dad comes home do I learn—overhear, really, for how can I not hear my parents whispering four yards away from my bed?—what has happened. Both Mom and Dad sit at the table—Dad eating his dinner and Mom, next to him, talking.
“I left early today,” Mom starts, first slowly, visibly looking for words, but then faster and faster. “And I thought that before I picked up Tanya from Zoya Ivanovna’s, I’d go get some cabbage for shchi (soup made of green cabbage). So I go to the vegetable store on the corner, get in line, and look around. And who do you think I see?” Mom takes a deep breath, as if she is about to dive into unfamiliar waters. “I see Tanya! She’s standing at the counter next to a woman buying beets and potatoes, just as if she were that woman’s daughter.”
Dad’s spoon freezes in mid-air, “What was Tanya doing there?”
“That’s what I want to tell you!” Mom bursts out, forgetting to whisper. Then she lowers her voice and continues. “Tanya’s standing there, but because she’s short, the saleswoman can’t see her on the other side of the counter. The woman customer is busy arguing with the saleswoman over spoiled potatoes and trying to take them off the scale, and everybody else, you know, is watching them.”
“Did you call Tanya?”
“Well, I opened my mouth to call her, but she suddenly stretched out her hand, grabbed a beetroot from a pile on the counter, and hid it under her coat!”
Dad’s spoon swoops into his bowl and splashes the vinyl tablecloth with bits and pieces of his dinner.
“I thought
I’d fall through the floor!” Mom whispers theatrically, leaning toward my father who looks as if he is about to follow her on her way through the scratched planks of our wooden floor to the core of the earth.
“And where was Zoya Ivanovna?” Dad says after a pause—his angular face distorted and his thick eyebrows knitted together.
“That’s the thing!” Mom exclaims, throwing up her hands and, once again, forgetting to speak softly. “She was right there! Standing in the corner and waiting for Tanya to give her the beetroot and who knows what else!”
Here Mom looks around and notices me, half-thrust out from under my blankets with my ears pricked up. “And you’re supposed to sleep off your cold and not eavesdrop on the things that have nothing to do with you!” She says. Then she turns back and continues talking in a hushed voice, while the expression on her face speaks loudly of her feelings.
Insulted, I pull back. It’s not my fault that Tanya steals beets from the store, is it? Why is Mom angry with me? My parents keep whispering for some time, but all I can decipher is “just like an experienced thief!” which Mom accompanies with a jerky movement that, apparently, imitates Tanya’s grabbing the beetroot. I turn toward the wall, and soon heavy dreams transport me into a kaleidoscope of feverish scenes in which Tanya and I are running from an angry crowd headed by a saleswoman in soiled over-sleeves and a dirty apron.
My sister spends the next couple of weeks at the grandparents, and when she comes back, Mom tells me that Tanya’s long-awaited turn at the daycare center has finally come up.
I never see Zoya Ivanovna again. She disappears from our lives the way wilted autumn leaves disappear into the void, swept by the cold winds of the winter. For a while, I keep asking Mom about her. What is she doing now? Why did she teach Tanya to steal? Was she a bad person or was she just hungry?
The Education of a Traitor: A Memoir of Growing Up in Cold War Russia Page 8