Fish- a History of One Migration

by Peter Aleshkovsky

  I had saved up some money and bought my first American dollars, four one-hundreds that I hid in the wall behind a loose strip of wall paper. Perhaps if we had stayed our relationships with the locals would have changed for the better. Perhaps. But it was not to be.

  A year passed. We celebrated by gathering at Uncle Styopa and Aunt Katya’s little house; we made lagman,[4] real plov with lamb, and fresh sterlet shashlyk. There were many toasts; Gennady warmed up, drank a little—just keeping up with everyone else—and became quite drunk, noisy and cheerful. It had been a long time since I had seen him like that. At night, he asked me to come to him.

  I surrendered and came, but he had no strength. At first, his persistence awoke a tenderness in me. Then I felt sorry for him. Then pity was replaced with indifference. He got up from the bed, naked and crazed; he trembled, and a chill spread from his body across the room. His lips parted and uttered one word, “Fish!” It flew at me like the crack of a whip, and tears suddenly burst from my eyes. I had never cried before. The tears made Gennady irate. He hit me once, but so hard that he split my eyebrow and blood instantly covered my face. Cursing dirtily, he dressed, grabbed the TV set and threw it hard against the wall. Not quite understanding why I was doing it, I stood up suddenly and went at him, naked, covered in blood. I walked silently, with my head held high. Gennady brushed me aside like a feather; I flew into a corner and slammed painfully into the door frame. He stepped over me, took the money out of the hiding-place and left. Fortunately, neither Pavlik nor Volodya were home: had they tried to defend me then, lots of blood would have been spilled.

  I lay with my smashed face pressed into a pillow. As my blood coagulated, its pounding in my split eye-brow subsided, and I cooled too. The chill spread throughout my body, it was going numb and crusting over with a single scab. I lay like that for several hours, until Pavlik came home. He washed the blood off my face, treated the gash with iodine, and changed the pillowcase and the soiled bed sheet. He wanted to run and get a doctor, but I stopped him with my eyes. The shame had paralyzed me. He covered me with a warm blanket. Seeing that the light hurt my eyes, Pavlik drew the curtains on the window and turned off the night light.

  Even the tiny crack of light that sneaked under the curtains was enough. The thin ray of sun that drew a wavy white stripe on the windowsill gave me a migraine and I turned my face to the wall. Noise, just like light, tortured me. When the neighbors’ rooster crowed in his coop before dawn, I thought the pain would burst my head open. My forehead was awash in sweat; I went from chills to fever and back again; I suddenly started to choke, as if someone had pressed a solid cotton wool mattress against my face.

  Irrational fear took root somewhere deep at the bottom of my stomach and now slowly crawled upwards, like water filling a bathtub. My chest began to burn, then blotches covered my neck and face. My tongue would not turn; it did not want to let out the words that were buzzing in my mind. I took my muteness as a blessing: if I had lost my gag in that instant, I would have whimpered, whined and screamed for help.

  Sleep had fled me. I lay staring at a single point in space or letting my eyes, watery with sleeplessness, follow my son’s caring hand as it dabbed me with a cold towel. His touch and the cool fabric soothed me and fought the fever better than aspirin.

  Pavlik intuitively found the same method as I used with my patients: he kept stroking my hands, head and neck, whispering kind words to me. I used to comfort and lull him to sleep like this when he was little, and now he was paying me back, fighting his own fear with tenderness and love. His therapy worked; it gave me peace, it chased away the demons of shame and fear that had made a nest in my stomach. When he stepped away, having chastised and bound them with his words, they woke again and sucked thirstily on the last juices of my crippled soul.

  Fears that had lain forgotten rolled back, wave after wave. The damned old man rose again, I could feel his forceful, powerful hands gliding over my unresisting body. Muck clogged my every pore and crusted over my skin. I felt my body begin to wither, to shrink; I needed water and compulsively licked my lips, which had dried shut. If my son was there, he gave me water to drink from a mug, holding up my head. At night all I could do was pray for dawn to come sooner.

  I could not sleep; all the normal functions of my organism had been derailed. Mute, sealed shut, I battled my horror alone. If it had not been for my son’s care, I do not know when and how I would have found my way back to the surface.

  The word that Gennady threw at me burned worse than his blow. If I were like that, then why should I have this life, for what? I wanted to dissolve into the sheets, to evaporate without a trace, to the last drop of sweat, so that in the morning someone would just wring my remains into the toilet and toss what was left into the trash with the ruined bedding.

  I could hear everything that went on in the household: Pavlik and Vovka talked about Gennady’s behavior. He had not been home for a week. He was drinking. There was no one to smoke the fish; the family business had come to a halt, life was careening into disaster. Gennady caroused about the town with prostitutes for all the world to see, with no shame at all, while I, hearing about his escapades, stayed in bed and burned with shame, unwanted and slandered, like a faulty part that no one wants to fix. Kharabali is a small town; everyone knows everything, and I realized it would be beyond me to show myself in public.

  On the fourth day, something in me began to soften, the tension in my body disappeared, the numbness in my arms and legs loosened and I could move them again. I made my way to the bathroom unaided. Pavlik opened the curtains, and the light did not slice into my eyes; I could calmly look out the window. The street noises no longer tore at me like they did the first couple of days, but I still had choking fits. I had no strength whatsoever in my body, but my skin regained its sensitivity; a thousand tiny needles pricked at my fingers and toes, signaling that circulation had returned. In the evening of the fourth day I drank some chicken broth for the first time and ate two spoonfuls of broth-soaked white bread.

  My sickness retreated in waves. On the sixth day I felt I could speak again but did not, for fear I would jinx it. My split eyebrow ached and I welcomed the pain as a sign of life—a happy change from the spell of lifelessness.

  Vovka ambushed Gennady somewhere in town and gave him a serious beating. I heard him tell Pavlik about it, but felt no pride in my defender. Secretly, I worried the scab on my eyebrow to cause myself sweet pain. I was embarrassed to admit it to myself, but I wanted to see Gennady; I needed to look into his eyes. I was not afraid of him; this was a different, passionate need that could not be put into words. The thin scar on my right brow—my memory of Kharabali—remained for the rest of my life.

  After a week’s absence, Gennady crawled home; he swayed with exhaustion like a sexed-out tomcat. Whether because Vovka had taught him a lesson or because he understood something on his own, Gennady begged for forgiveness as soon as he stepped through the door, something he had never done before. He mumbled something about humility, about demons, cried hangover tears and reached out his arms to me. I had not eaten in seven days, but I got up from the bed, put on my robe, went to the stove and put a kettle on. He dragged after me into the kitchen; I turned to him and said calmly, looking him straight in the eye, “When my bruise disappears, we are going to Volochok. Sit down and eat.”

  I took some fried fish from the pan and ate a piece with great pleasure. The fool, he interpreted it as a sign of reconciliation and tried to kiss me, but I put the food on his plate and went to my room. I knew what had to be done: I had to deliver him into his mother’s care. I did not want to live under the same roof with him any longer.

  . 3 .

  Mark Grigoriyevich left yesterday. He makes sure to come to Moscow several times a year: he plays concerts at the Conservatory, teaches master classes, and mentors young musicians. Every minute of his two weeks in Moscow is scheduled, but he finds time every day to pop into his mother’s room, and talk to her about something o
r other. Grandma lies very calmly and often falls asleep, happy and peaceful. Their conversations are one-sided, but every time he feels that his mother, finally, heard and understood him. It must be easier for him that way. He leaves the room (I am never there when they “talk”) and smiles at me, “Vera, today, Mom and I reminisced about my childhood. I could see she enjoyed it, she was smiling until she got tired and fell asleep.”

  “Yes, Mark Grigoriyevich, she often falls asleep with me, too, when I read to her. It’s a good sign: it means that nothing is bothering her.”

  We are playing a game that is not entirely a game, when you think about it.

  He does not waste time on ceremonies with me, glances at his watch, throws up his hands and runs out: he is always very busy in Moscow.

  Grandma has two nieces, old pensioners themselves. They are entitled to part of the apartment in the will; Grandma Lisichanskaya never made a secret of it. At first, when she became ill, they visited, fussed over her, sighed ruefully, and stroked her head, but clumsily and with evident fear. Grandma reacted badly to their visits; at their touch she seemed to congeal, to become as wooden and unyielding as a post. When they really annoyed her, she would pretend she were dying: her blood pressure would fall, she would breathe heavily, or would suddenly clutch my hand in a death grip and not let go until the door closed behind the visitors. Once I overheard their lamentations, “What is the point of this all? Sofia was such a strong-willed person; it is terrible to see her lose her mind. It would be better if this did not last long.”

  Grandma was lying right there. They treated her as if she was ignorant, deaf, lost to the world, and were not shy when expressing their feelings. I complained to Mark Grigoriyevich, and the nieces’ visits stopped.

  During this visit, they broke his ban, showed up and tormented him behind closed doors for a good hour. I only heard it when he shouted loudly, “Don’t even hope for it, she will not go to a hospice, you will not change my mind!”

  They left soon after that, red and steaming.

  I was sitting up with Grandma. She was very worried, clasped my hand in her avian paw and would not let go. I stroked her hair for a long time, but she could not fall asleep. No, I would never call my Grandma senseless; I spent half of the night telling her about my life in Kharabali and I think it helped take her mind off things.

  Gennady, once he lost it, deteriorated. His binge with the prostitutes in Kharabali even made me happy in a perverse way, because it showed he was still capable of something. But when he came crawling back home, all my hopes came crushing down: it was not me whom he begged for forgiveness but God. I could no longer be responsible for him in this world.

  Gennady, once we took him back into the family, seemed to understand this. He talked more to all of us and called me Candy, but when I kept my distance he instantly lost his taste for it and had difficulty controlling his anger.

  In our last month in Kharabali, we worked a lot to earn money for our tickets. By letter, Valerka agreed to come from the Army straight to Volochok; there was nothing in Kharabali to keep him there, either. Packing was easy. We gathered for the last time as the big family, joyless and solemn. We listened to everyone’s wishes and admonitions, and reassured them that as soon as got there we would send word. Things that had been left unsaid and our mutual embarrassment made the meal tense; our parting resembled a wake.

  They helped us board the Astrakhan-Moscow train; we climbed into our soiled third class car which reeked of sweat, coal and cheap wine. I took the window seat and my eyes followed the passing steppe, the infrequent horse herds, the tiny stations and low-roofed huts cordoned off from the world with fences of straw and hay, the sentinels of the front line: crippled tractors, trailers, metal shafts aimed at the sky, kids and dogs who played tag as far as they could get from the frail homes. Occasionally we flew past a village splayed over the edge of a bluff. A pair of cemeteries—the Orthodox and the Muslim—always clung to the edges of these, separated by a brick fence; together but apart, just as people lived their lives here. Sometimes I would see a few graves in the steppe, next to the railroad line, strung along a long-forgotten road. The brass half-moons mounted on poles stuck into the graves indicated that these were the most recent nomads; their families alone knew why this deserted place had been chosen as the final place of rest. From the window I sometimes saw the great kurgans—dirt mounds, half plowed-under, where slept the ancestors of those who inserted lopsided poles with the rising Muslim moon into concrete-bordered flower beds.

  Before Saratov, we crossed a long bridge over the Volga, and then crawled along its shore, pock-marked with boat stations that looked like beehives. After Saratov, the view began to change, but then night fell.

  In the morning, a green sea of leaves washed both sides of the train. It was May, and the ground still had plenty of moisture in it; large puddles reflected the blue sky with the clouds inching across it.

  We spent a harried half-a-day in Moscow, riding the packed subway and watching our bags lest they get stolen. It took us two trips to move all our things from one railway station to another. We were as exhausted as supply-train horses when we finally loaded into the new train and collapsed into slumber. In Volochok, Aunt Raya met us at the station, a skinny, not-yet old woman, complete with a live-in mate, Oleg Petrovich, who was clearly under her thumb.

  We packed our things into a van and drove to their house. It was at the edge of town, built next to a slow-flowing, grass-clogged canal. The town was small, with neighborhoods extending in every direction. Our new family lived in one of these settlements. Far away, above a pile of roofs, shone the golden dome of the nunnery church. Now I think it was one of the mountains of gold that my mother-in-law always promised me in her letters to Dushanbe and Kharabali.

  . 4 .

  I saw almost immediately that we could not all live together, and, to tell the truth, I did not have a burning desire to do so. My mother-in-law was completely out of touch with her son, did not care for his piety, and they instantly had a huge fight about it, in which I, thankfully, had no part. Gennady left, slamming the door behind him. He came back late at night and announced that he had arranged to be a liturgy reader[5] in the local church. His mother, at first, did not think he was serious; Oleg Petrovich, as he had no say in much of anything, did not express his opinion.

  Raya and her old mate lived a slowly paced, retired life; they were within the city limits, but had a plot of land where she grew her own potatoes, and a greenhouse which produced cucumbers, tomatoes and sweet peppers. In the fall, she made jams and canned, storing her jars in a well-equipped basement with labels like “Harvest of such and such year, Curr.” or “Goosebr.” or “Compote.” The place she referred to as “dacha” in her letters, and where she had stored our possessions, turned out to be a simple cabin in the woods, about a hundred kilometers from Volochok; it was Oleg Petrovich’s inherited fiefdom.

  They went there two or three times every summer to pick wild raspberries, blueberries, currants and mushrooms to fill the basement jars, and to gather apples from three lush apple trees that were looked after by the neighbor, Aunt Leyda, one of the Estonian colonists who had settled in the area. Oleg Petrovich was also Estonian on his mother’s side, but for some reason he did not like to talk about it, was embarrassed by being Leyda’s distant relative, and tried to go as infrequently as possible to the village of Karmanovo, where their families’ original homes still stood.

  The job situation in Volochok was even worse than in Kharabali: fifteen round-the-clock shifts (one day on, one day off) manning a food stand were valued by the owner at 300-400 rubles, and there were always plenty of willing candidates. The two hospitals in Volochok were fully staffed, as were its walk-in clinic and its pharmacy. It was the same with the mental asylum in Burashevo, nearby sanatoriums, and group homes. Aunt Raya quickly took measure of my relationship with Gennady and within a week of our arrival declared, “I cannot possibly feed you all. Find jobs and a place to live, or go
live in Karmanovo. The house is fine, and the linen plant in Zhukovo always needs workers.”

  So it was that we went to Zhukovo and registered in the local rural council[6] without any trouble; there was no reason to give us the run-around, since everyone there knew Petrovich. The important stamp in the passport made us instantly “local” and we could start our lives from scratch. In the former central kolkhoz office I was told that, yes, indeed, they needed workers, especially at the linen factory, but the pay was nothing to brag about. I did not press the issue, knowing full well that no place that paid well and on time would ever have a vacancy. After the offices, we went to Karmanovo to pick up some of the things we would need. All our stuff was piled carelessly on the bed and the table, and the rats had had a good go at it. I spent a lot of time later laundering and mending our quilts, bedding and towels, and eventually restored them to decency.

  I got lucky. I met an old lady in the street and helped her carry her groceries home. The grandma lived alone; her family rarely visited her. We started talking, I frankly told her everything about myself. Grandma promised to help, and did: she got me a custodial job in a big apartment building at 500 rubles a month (the maintenance manager was a relative of hers). With the job, they gave us a basement apartment: two tiny rooms, a bathroom, hot water, gas—it was perfect. We built wooden cots and hammered together a wardrobe. I spent half a day scrubbing the old two-burner stove clean and giving it a fresh coat of white enamel, and my men cleaned and reset the burners. We even managed to tile the bath and the toilet stall and to change the faucets, eating up the last of my savings. There was only one thing that upset me terribly: Pavlik refused to go to school for what would have been his last year, and instead hired himself out as a laborer at the local sawmill. He had his father’s stubbornness in him; once he made up his mind, it was impossible to make him change his course.