Fish- a History of One Migration

by Peter Aleshkovsky

  “Go to sleep, you stupid drunk!”

  He stood up, swaying from side to side—skinny, naked—put his hands behind his head and suddenly stuck out his fingers like horns, bent over, rested on his knees and crawled towards me. His drunken face came close to mine, mooed, snorted at me with rancid breath as his cheek slid against mine and he sank into a pillow, head first. Then he made a sound resembling a laugh, lifted his face from the pillow, moved his horned head back and forth miming a bull, and, still on his knees, crawled to the kitchen. I lay down quiet as a mouse; the blanket could not keep me warm. No sound came from the kitchen. Later, Gennady came back, cautiously slid into his spot next to the wall and instantly began snoring.

  In the morning, he patted me on the shoulder and did not say anything. Sat down to his tea. Picked up the knife to slice sausage for a sandwich, but stared at the blade dumbly and then put the knife aside.

  “Cut the sausage.”

  His hands were shaking violently.

  “You should have a beer; tea won’t do you much good.”

  “I said, cut the sausage!”

  I made him a couple of sandwiches. He ate silently and went to get dressed. When he was already at the door, he said casually over his shoulder:

  “We celebrated a record—two hundred and fifty bulls in one shift. Soon I’ll be a model of communist labor.”

  It was after that night that he started drinking regularly.

  . 8 .

  He would come home exhausted, eat without enjoying the food, down a glass of vodka in one gulp and collapse onto the bed or stare at the TV.

  Once he learned the ropes at the plant, Gennady began “transporting”: he would come home wearing an overcoat (in that heat!) concealing various cuts of meat wrapped around every inch of his body. His personal record was fifty pounds in one go! I was afraid that he would get caught, but he had his answer ready, “Everyone does it! I’ve had enough of catching thieves!”

  He bought a Ural motorcycle with a sidecar, and was very proud of it. When Valerka was born, Gennady picked us up at the maternity ward with flowers, seated us in the sidecar and drove around the dorm three times. He solemnly carried Valerka into our room. For two months he did not touch wine, bathed and swaddled the baby, but then his interest to the new toy cooled, and everything returned to the way it had been before our son was born.

  “It’s important to me that you not worry about anything,” he would declare meaningfully after his nightly drink. “You take care of the home, and I’ll earn enough for you.”

  The money didn’t bring me joy; he came home as if it were a boarding house, never went out with us, but led his own separate existence, even though at first he was the one who wanted to have children. I remembered that, he really did. The men in our yard respected him, and their company, their herd became the most important thing for him. The street cops he used to work with were paid little and often came to buy the stolen meat; in those days, a butcher was an important person. However, gradually they stopped coming. But he still had enough clients in our dorms, and later, when we moved, in our new apartment building. Gennady liked to boast about his earnings and always compared how much he brought home to what I made, but I knew that the pride was superficial; underneath, his suspiciousness grew painful, and he was convinced that people were staring at his stiff leg. It was impossible to persuade him otherwise.

  I got my diploma and started working in my old unit as a nurse. He ordered us around at home and I obeyed as was proper. Our neighbors lived the same way. He rarely had sex with me anymore, and when he did, he was rough, as if punishing me for everything life had denied him. At first this scared and offended me, and I constantly dwelt on his coolness. The girls at the hospitals liked to talk about sex, and I listened, taking note of ways to arouse his interest, his tenderness, if not his love. It was in vain.

  He did not act the bull any more, and I never reminded him of that night, but the sheets did have to be changed on a couple of other occasions. I even learned to do it mechanically, as I did at the hospital. Many women would take their husbands to task, but I never raised my voice at him. He took that for granted. Once, as I walked across the yard past the picnic table where the men were playing dominos and drinking, I heard Gennady say boastfully, “You gotta hold your bitch in your fist, man! As soon as you loosen your grip, she’ll get you under her heel!”

  The men agreed in unison. I walked along quietly; they did not notice me. At home I had the laundry waiting for me. I fed my son and put him to bed, and then took up the washing. Gennady was still not home. I do not know what came over me, but I washed and washed like a ferocious robot. I kept rubbing his heavy, dirty overalls over the washboard; soap foam and dirt splattered all over the floor. I could not stop; my fingers, softened by the hot water, gripped the thick canvas and would not let go. I fought the overalls, beat them, shredded them, tore at them and wrung them, twisted the legs and whipped the whole wad against the metal bathtub as if I could beat the living soul out of the dead fabric. Sweat, water and tears ran down my cheeks; the little space was hot as a steam room. In the end, I had no more strength; I threw the overalls into the tub with the dirty water and walked, swaying, to the kitchen where I leaned against the door jam. After the heat of the steam, I shook with chills, as if I had come in from the cold; my body had lost all feeling. The wrinkled, unnaturally white pads of my fingers were cold as ice. Somehow I made my way to bed, climbed under the blanket, curled into a ball and pressed my hands between my legs. Finally, I sensed the tiny needle-pricks in my fingers; they returned to life. I was so drained that I could not even turn to lie on my other side. Thank God, Valerka slept calmly through the night, and I did not have to get up to comfort him. My husband didn’t come home that night; as I learned later, they got drunk and fell asleep in the Polenovs’ garage—no one had to go to work the next day, and they drank until late, finally crawling home in the dark.

  He came home disheveled and menacing and began to pester me. He was trying to make amends, called me Candy; his hands, which smelled of herring, groped my body crudely and shamelessly. I did not respond—I was ashamed. He could not finish what he had started, cursed, rolled over and fell asleep. His right hand still grasped my breast possessively. I slipped out from under his grip, went to the bathroom, and washed myself with lye soap. In the morning, he left for work without eating breakfast or patting me on the shoulder, just left. At night, he reappeared and shoved a large red rose into my hands. I kept that rose, dried, for a long time in a bottle on top of the wardrobe, where it stood with its head slightly bent, like an apologetic schoolchild, gathering dust. The overalls that I roughed up soon tore, and I had to buy new ones.

  . 9 .

  Valerka was still a newborn when we moved into the two-room apartment in a new brick building with all the modern conveniences. Gennady patched up the poorly installed plumbing, built in a storage closet in the hallway; we bought furniture and a refrigerator. That was it. Over the next sixteen years we did not add anything except a basic TV. Gennady felt he had fulfilled his duties, of which he would never tire of reminding me, so now he was free to let loose. His drinking became serious. Naturally, he did not quit his job at the slaughterhouse.

  Aside from haphazard sex and the money he brought home, little connected us. I often heard women say, “It’s our own fault when men turn to drink.” I don’t believe that. They drink to fill their emptiness and out of their infantile laziness. Gennady’s life contracted to the domino table and “purely men’s talk.” At least I never joined in the “purely women’s talk” on the bench in front of the building. I do not like a world divided into “the men’s half” and “the women’s half.”

  I started using protection, because I was afraid of having another child with him, and he certainly didn’t express any desire for one. But I must have slipped, and Pavlik was born. This time, there were no celebratory rides around the building. Instead, there was the drunken husband screaming at someone in hospi
tal admissions. He had an argument with one of the nurses and railed on about this offense the whole way home, while I carried Pavlik in my arms.

  I nursed the baby, held him upright and waited for him to burp, then put him down in his cradle. Gennady sat beside me and waited, and as soon as Pavlik’s breathing deepened in sleep, he dragged me to bed. He did his thing and lit a cigarette.

  “I thought you missed me too.”

  His voice was so full of reproach, there was no point in explaining anything to him; he didn’t care about my condition at all. Then the doorbell rang; his pals had come to congratulate him. He dressed right away and said over his shoulder, “Candy, I won’t be long.”

  “Pick up Valerka from daycare.”

  “Uhu!”

  And he disappeared. At six, knowing that the daycare was about to close, I left Pavlik on his own and rushed to get my other son. Valerka and the teacher sat on the floor alone; the boy was building something. Gennady showed up after midnight, wordlessly collapsing on the bed.

  I could not help it: my fear that I was sinful and soiled returned and tormented me at night. Often, as I lay by his side, I looked at the moon. It was as small and cold as the night I had talked to Ninka, its disk the same as the polished coin that lured me in the hospital in Panjakent. I thought I could hear Ninka whisper, “I don’t feel anything anymore.” I did feel, though—Gennady’s touch was so repulsive that it made my throat clamp shut, and I was mute in the performance of my matrimonial duties, choking with disgust on the cold lump in my throat. He would whisper angrily, “What’s your problem, cat got your tongue?” Unhappy and lost, he would roll away like a loose log from a poorly built stack of firewood. The soft night breeze played with the lace curtains, moonlight streaming through, and I could almost see my husband’s body becoming wrapped in tree bark.

  The children saved me. Pavlik’s cry would break the silence and I would jump up to rock his cradle, or Valerka would start tossing violently in his sleep. He slept fitfully, rolled his sheet up into a rope, and liked to sleep crouched on his knees with his head stuck straight down into the mattress. I would lift him, still asleep, off the bed and remove his shorts. His weenie stuck up like a carrot, and I would grab the night pot and whisper “pss-pss.” Without ever opening his eyes, he would release a vigorous stream and then sleep calmly, with a fist under his head. It was touching to watch his face wrinkle up with the strain, as he tensed up to push out the extra liquid. Then I would go back and lie down with Gennady. By then, the insults would be fading, sinking from the surface. My hands held the warmth of my boys’ touch, and that warmth spread through my body, sanitizing my poisoned being. My throat would loosen up. I would have no desire to recall the stupid things he had said to me, and I would gradually fall asleep.

  I tried to talk to him many times, tried to find out the root of his alienation, but he would not respond, or, if I really irritated him, would curse at me vulgarly. I could sense there was something that oppressed him, but it was impossible to reach him through his defenses. Now he drank with the men in the yard; he did not even notice that he drank away his motorcycle, and he was not beyond tossing his earnings into my face. I have seen and heard all sorts of things in my life, and thank God he did not beat me or reach for a knife when he was mad. He was generally bad-tempered and got into fights impulsively. He often came home with bruises and scrapes, but obediently let me disinfect them and answered my questions with a single, “It was just a thing.”

  I, woman, was not supposed to nose around in the lives of the men.

  One day, out in the yard (they were playing, as usual) Styopka Polenov, our neighbor, a quietly alcoholic excavator operator from the roads department, came up to me.

  “Verka, give me cash for a bottle.”

  An aging bruise grew dark on his insolent face.

  “You have your own wife—ask her.”

  “You stupid bitch, I’d die here and you’d just step over my body.”

  His usual talk, but for some reason Gennady decided to defend my honor. He jumped up from the bench as if stung by a bee; in an instant he was above poor Styopka holding him by the collar of his shirt and twisting it in a choke grip. Polenov’s face went blue, veins bulged on his neck.

  “What did you say?”

  “Let him go right now!” I interfered.

  I had no desire to be later accosted by the hot-tempered Mrs. Polenova.

  “Yeah, right! Go home!” he barked, and hit Styopka in the teeth with his fist.

  Styopka flew about ten feet away, grasped his face and howled. Gennady jumped at him and set to his task for real, as they had taught him in the police: he hit him on the kidneys, then in the stomach, then in the kidneys again and again in stomach. Polenov, helpless and disoriented with pain, could barely stand up. Then Gennady felled him with a single terrible blow to the jaw. Polenov fell like a cut tree. The men at the table roared with laughter.

  “What are you still doing here? I said, go home!”

  His knuckles bloodied, his eyes glowing, Gennady must have felt like an honest-to-God hero.

  Without another word, I left.

  “That’s right, Gena, you gotta give him a lesson. If you lose, you’re buying, and don’t be rude to your neighbors,” one of the men said.

  An hour or so later, I looked out the window. They were still at the table and Styopka Polenov was back with them, only now his entire face was one large bruise. He must have bought his round of drinks and been accepted back into the gang. Gennady came home drunk, of course, and expounded at length about his ability not to let anyone bother me or our sons.

  I did try to take him to a doctor. It was in vain; he did not consider himself an alcoholic. Vodka, by the way, had a strong effect on his manliness, which, I must confess, worked just fine for me. One night in bed, when he could no longer contain his bitterness, he said to me:

  “Look at you—you’re like a fish! A cold fish!”

  I got up and went to the hospital. Of course, I ran back in the morning, to get him ready for work and to send the kids off to daycare. Gennady kept screaming at me as if he were being stabbed. Figuring that the best defense is to cause offense, he accused me of having a lover, even though he knew perfectly well where I had spent the night. He had called the hospital, but I asked the nurse to tell him I was too busy to answer. On his way out he slammed the door so hard that it shook plaster loose from the frame. After that night I slept in the kids’ room. All in all, we had eleven years of married life.

  That night, during my shift, I cared for a critical stroke patient, an old woman who had been difficult during the day, whined, blamed the doctors for everything, was ridiculously demanding and did not engender any sympathy in the staff. I made myself sit at her bed. I looked at her heavy, swollen face, filled with stagnant blood. Her dirty, fat body smelled. Suddenly, a shadow of something different flittered across her face. She smiled in her sleep, and then again there was only her strained face and the blue lips forcing stale air out of her chest. I pulled up a stool and put my hand on her forehead; gently, I began to massage her temples. I was silent, but I was not thinking about her—I thought about Gennady and absent-mindedly, mechanically shared my own feelings with hers as my fingers rubbed her fat-filled skin. And that is when I suddenly felt everything: the endless contempt others showed her, the shame she felt in her awkward, easily lost shape, the loneliness and the fear of death. My hand was now glued to her forehead, fingers like leeches, attached to her temples. My hand went numb, but I did not dare take it away; then my fingers sensed a weak pulse, and her forehead grew warmer and her face relaxed. I sat like that for three or four hours, deep into the night, when everyone else who was on duty had gone to sleep. Afterwards, in the nurses’ room, I ran hot water over my hand for a long time, exhausted, drained and ecstatic. Thank goodness, no one caught me in the middle of this strange procedure.

  The old woman slept through the night, and in the morning she looked comforted, and even a bit chastened;
she stopped bossing people around and quickly got better. She treated me especially well, calling me “daughter.” Once she grasped my hand in her frog-like paws and whispered,

  “Don’t despair. God gave you a kind heart, and you won’t see any kindness from those asses—I know.”

  Her skin was hot and shiny, and her eyes—helpless and beautiful. The daylight lamp above her bed flickered and flashed uncommonly bright; the flash caught my eye and I winced. In the darkness of my closed eyes a red-hot dot glowed. The blackness around it pulsed and billowed like smoke; the dot multiplied and finally burst into a myriad of dancing sparks. I felt dizzy. Confused, I drew back my hand, turned around, and left the room. We did not say anything to each other that night.

  The girls in the unit teased me, asking how I had managed to charm the old witch. I did not answer, they would not understand or believe me anyway. I took night shifts more often, so I could sit up with the worst cases: the patients liked me, the doctors and nurses avoided me, and only the unit head, as always, supported and encouraged me. Karimov loved me and I loved him back; nothing could change our lives.

  Gennady reacted quite simply to my move to the nursery: he went on a drinking binge so severe he did not see daylight. I still do not understand how he managed to keep his job. For the next seven years we lived as neighbors. He paid almost no attention to the kids; I did his laundry; I cooked for him. Sometimes he gave me money. Other times, I pulled it out of the pocket of his pants when he collapsed in a dead heap in the hallway. We were never hungry; he kept stealing meat. I was busy with the children and with my work. At the hospital, I could relax. My coworkers did not suspect what my home life was like, and I preferred to keep it that way. Everyone mostly gave up on making friends with me. No one called me “Candy” any more, only Gennady did when he wanted something, and his coy tone made my stomach turn.