“You should work yourself to death, while I study? Don’t even try to talk me out of it.”
I talked at him incessantly anyway, but to no effect. He was often in low spirits, and began reading his father’s books again. Our life headed for another nosedive no sooner than it seemed to have straightened out. Gennady was always at church, taking his meals there, and soon he began to spend the nights there as well, every other night; they had him doing penance as the night watchman. When I asked him about a wage, he answered honestly: he was not working for money.
“Then go to your mother’s.”
He went, but came back a week later, spent a night on one of the cots, disappeared again, then returned. I stopped talking to him; I placed all my hopes on Valerka, who would be returning soon, in two or three months.
We wandered around our basement like three shadows. Pavlik left early, returned late, was very tired, ate his supper silently and went to bed. He began to resemble his father a lot. The sawmill employed refugee Uzbeks and local ex-cons—he didn’t associate with them, and made no friends at all outside work.
The storm clouds were gathering above our heads, but I did not sense anything. Aside from the custodial duties, I also roasted sunflower seeds at night and sold them in paper cups at the bus station during the day. Money, filthy money—it made me blind and I lost my son.
Sometimes it seemed to me like Pavlik was coming home drunk. I would smell him, but would not catch a whiff of alcohol. I asked him about it, but he just waved me off.
“Leave it, Mom, you know I don’t drink.”
When he became suspiciously lethargic, I chalked it up to his depression and begged him to go back to school, even if it meant just taking a correspondence course. He promised he would, but that was the end of that, and gradually I left him alone; Pavlik had become an adult without me noticing.
Valerka was a different story. He returned from the Army in proper style: with golden veteran’s aiguillettes on his dress uniform and sporting brand-new box-calf boots he had bartered somewhere. He wore his service cap with its clipped beak cocked dashingly over one ear, was carrying a thick scrapbook and had corporal’s stripes on his shoulder straps. He also brought us ten thousand rubles and when I asked him about it, answered lightly, “I earned it, Ma, no worries! In the Army, if you’re smart, you can do well.”
He instantly found a job as a mechanic at a car repair shop on the Moscow-Leningrad highway, as though they had been saving a spot especially for him. For a thousand rubles, he bought a Zaporozhets, messed with it for a week or two, and began giving evening rides to girls and friends he had acquired as easily as if he had lived here his whole life. Occasionally he came home a bit tipsy, but I mostly saw him in the mornings. Valerka was having his fun easily, happily, the way Pavlik never could. Two or three times the big brother took the younger with him—“to air out,” as he put it—until they both came back scraped up. Pavlik had a good-sized shiner under one eye.
“We taught the locals a lesson for calling us ‘Tajiks’.”
The nickname “Tajik” stuck to Valerka, but after the fight it became a sign of respect and he didn’t resist it. Pavlik did not go to “air out” with his brother any more, and Valerka left him alone.
“No, Mom, he is not made for this sort of thing. Maybe the Army would set him straight; guys make fun of him.”
It was not hard for me to surmise exactly how Pavlik disappointed his brother. His shyness must have put a damper on his brother’s good times. Unfortunately, the boys were never particularly close.
Valerka met Sveta at a New Year’s party and began to bring her home. They lived separately for the time being, but were completely inseparable. Both stopped by our place to get a bite to eat, or she would wait for him to change out of his uniform after work. I liked it that she was reserved around me; I am suspicious of people who immediately act like your buddy. Sveta’s mother was a hopeless alcoholic, and the girl never mentioned her; she never knew her father either. Valerka was the light of her soul; it was obvious she loved him.
They did not date long. In March, they came and told me that they rented a room from the old lady who got me my job and would live on their own. I was happy for them. Our life in the basement reflected our environment: little light, low ceilings and musty air. Sparrows were chirping with the vigor of the new spring, but their joy could not enter our home: the windows were painted shut.
Pavlik had a disagreement with the other workers at the sawmill. Apparently they argued about divvying up their profits. He was very tense for a couple of days, said he would leave the job, but then things settled down and peace was restored. It seemed as if he had been taken back into the fold. He mentioned a few men by name, stayed out late a couple of nights, and once came home a bit drunk.
The days were growing longer, the sun shone warmer, and I had to work less with the snow shovel and more with a heavy crow bar with a hatchet welded to its tip. I used it to break up and clean off the ice, then sprinkled the walkways with sand mixed with salt. I kept up the yard; all the dirt and debris that had accumulated under the snow had risen to the surface. My men, too busy with their own lives, did not help me out.
On the evening of April fourth, cold and exhausted, I was returning from the bus station; I had sold thirty-two cups—sixty-four rubles worth of sunflower seeds—and bought a pound of sausage and a bottle of milk on my way home. Pavlik had loved milk ever since he was a kid; I thought of buying some cookies, too, but for some reason decided to be cheap instead. I still had to check the refuse chutes in the building, but I was so cold that I decided to clean them in the morning. Gennady was not home; Pavlik was sleeping. I fried the sausages, made some macaroni, and put the meal on the table.
“Pavlik, dinner is ready.”
He did not answer. I went to him and saw it instantly: the colorless face, the waxy heaviness of the hand pressed into the pillow. He was already cold. An empty disposable syringe lay on the blanket.
I rushed into the street as I was, bare-headed. I ran across the dark city; I gasped for air, I choked, but I kept running. People stepped aside, made way for me. I reached the church and banged on the door; a dog exploded barking in the back yard. Finally, a passerby saw me and showed me a small side door. I dashed there. The iron bolts on the inside of the door clanged loudly enough to raise the dead. The door opened; there stood Gennady in a black cassock. I fell into his arms.
Then there was police, paramedics, the morgue. Gennady fetched Valerka. I hid in the depths of our basement, in its darkest corner, and could not utter a word, and, stranger still, also could not cry. Gennady and Valerka took care of everything.
We buried Pavlik three days later, on a frigid and rainy day at noon. Gennady insisted on a church liturgy. The old priest swung the censer at an empty, cold church and sang out the words in a cracked falsetto. His fluid, solemn chants rose and disappeared under the sooty dome. The incense had an oily, sickly-sweet smell. Finally, the priest pulled a sheet over Pavlik’s face, sprinkled sand over it in the sign of the cross, and Gennady and Valerka picked up their hammers to nail the coffin shut. Next we drove through a pine forest somewhere, past a canal, to the edge of the city. The cemetery was large and new, almost treeless—there were only the fences, the crosses, and the plastic wreaths, rain-bleached and snow-shredded. A strong wind blew; my mother-in-law threw a warm shawl over my shoulders. She was crying loudly for the grandson she had barely met, and I could no more part my lips than if they had been sealed shut with contact cement. They used towels to lower the coffin into the shallow hole. Barely conscious of what I was doing, I squeezed a lump of wet clay and tossed it in; it fell like a rock and stuck to the red fabric. Someone gave me a bottle of water; I used it to thoroughly wash my hand. The wind chilled my wet fingers and, mechanically, I wrapped them in the hem of the shawl. Gennady was fully in command; if not for his self-discipline, we would not have been able to give Pavlik such a funeral. He made arrangements with the cemetery office,
he paid the grave diggers, he gave orders in a crisp, commanding voice, and for some reason I knew that he would not get drunk that day. He, Valerka and Petrovich each drank a shot of vodka and left the rest of the bottle to the cemetery workers. With his eyes fixed on the fresh mound, Valerka said, “I’ll teach those sons of bitches at the sawmill a lesson. In the army we had a way to deal with druggies.”
“Swear to me here and now, in front of everyone, that you will do nothing of the sort.”
I did not raise my voice.
“Don’t worry, Mom, I know what I am talking about.”
“Swear—or I’ll die.”
Suddenly he understood. The anger bled from his face and he hugged me.
“Alright, if that’s what you want, I swear. But I’d fry them alive, fuckers.”
That’s when I started to cry.
My mother-in-law and Sveta had the meal ready at home, but as soon as I dragged myself back into the basement, I dropped onto a cot and fell asleep. I woke up in the middle of the night; Gennady was sleeping next to me, on his cot. I stared at the ceiling until dawn, like a dumb beast. I knew that this had been my boy’s way of escaping the pain. I did not doubt for a second that Pavlik had known exactly what he was doing. I remembered only too well my own pain and the pulsating pressure that pressed on me from all sides, and the inner voice that whispered, “Go to the bathroom, take the razor, free yourself, release the pain.” The drugs robbed him of his will so that he succumbed to the temptation, and I—the fool!—missed it. Night was all around me. My mind churned with the words “forgiveness,” “understanding,” “consolation.” I lay in my basement and I was alive.
In the morning we got up. I made breakfast. Gennady only drank tea and then suddenly said, looking me in the eye, “Our life, Vera, did not work out. I am not worried about Valerka—he will be fine. He will take care of you too. I cannot do this any longer; I am going to a monastery, I got the Father’s blessing before Pavlik’s death. If you can—forgive me. In the old days, if this happened to the faithful, the husband and wife entered monasteries on the same day, but now it’s not like that. File for divorce.”
He left for his church with his familiar rocking gait, slightly dragging his unbending leg, and I bore him no ill in my soul. I washed the dishes, took my broom, dustpan and bucket from the closet and went to clean the yard.
. 5 .
So on top of everything, I also had to file for divorce. It went through quickly: a month after I filed, I was summoned to court, and a large woman at the desk there asked me, “Where is your spouse?”
“In a monastery.”
“What do you mean, in a monastery? In what kind of a monastery?”
Her face came to life; she must have never seen a case like ours before.
“My husband has entered a monastery and is preparing to take his vows.”
“And you agree with his decision?”
“Yes, I do,” I said and added in my mind, “Amen of Holy Spirit!”
The stamps in the passports cost me another four hundred rubles, two hundred from each divorcing party. I gave Gennady’s passport to Valerka, and he took it to his father. He just took it and did not comment on the event. I felt a bit irked; my Pavlik would have found the right words to say to me.
Valerka and Sveta refused to move into the basement with me, so I lived alone for three weeks. I tried to be home as little as possible; my yard and the trash chutes all but gleamed. I got up at five and began by sweeping the yard and cleaning the playground. At night, young people gathered there and left behind bottles, cigarette butts, paper cups, spit. Then I went to the garbage chutes, cleaned them out and sorted the trash. During the day, if there was enough to fill my backpack and a wheel-bag, I recycled glass bottles.[7] In the afternoon, I worked on the flowerbeds, dug and planted, whitewashed the trees.[8] I occupied myself any way I could. The residents of our big apartment building treated me with respect and said hello; I always greeted them back, but did not engage in conversation. I generally did not feel like talking—not to anyone.
And then another thing hit me. The Director of the maintenance service called me in and said sternly, “Vera, you are a great worker, but my relatives are coming from Latvia, so I’m going to have to fire you. You have to vacate the apartment—you have a week.”
She gave me a bonus, a thousand rubles. The relatives later paid me another two thousand for the repairs and the furniture.
Valerka and Sveta took me in and curtained off a corner in their room.
“That’s alright, Mom, we’ll find you some work. Don’t worry,” Valerka promised.
But there was no work to be had. I spent the month of May roasting and selling sunflower seeds. I did it at night, banging the frying pans in the kitchen and keeping the young couple up and waiting in front of the TV for me to go to bed. Sveta, under various pretexts, peeked into the kitchen every few minutes to see how I was doing and if I were about finished with my enterprise. To make matters worse, I could not fall asleep right away and lay in the dark, quiet as a mouse, listening to them. For some reason I was unable to take any comfort in their happiness. I would start to toss on my bed, then I would suddenly have an urge to pee and get up, shuffling my slippers across the floor to the creaky door. A tense silence would gather behind the curtain until Sveta’s whisper would break it, “Will she settle down already? No life here, we can’t even fuck in peace.”
Their happy giggles trailed me to the bathroom. I was not upset; I knew I had to move on, yet I continued to hesitate. Finally, the occasion presented itself. Sveta and I had a fight: I found fault with her fish cutlets and wanted to show her how to make them better. It ended with her yelling at me and then running off into a corner and crying until the evening. I went to the store and bought a bottle of Isabella.[9] When Valerka came home from work, I placed it ceremoniously on the table.
“Go get Sveta, son. We had a fight and now we’ll be making peace. I have something important to tell you.”
Svetka instantly came out of her corner, puffy-eyed and wary. Suddenly, she sidled up to me shyly, hugged me, and whispered, “Mom, forgive me.”
“No, you have to forgive me. I shall be moving to Karmanovo; my mother-in-law said they need workers there at the linen factory.”
They didn’t try very hard to talk to me out of it. We ate together. We drank a bit of Isabella and had sausage salad and my unfortunate fish cutlets. Sveta, the fox, praised them.
The next day Valerka and Petrovich loaded the car; all my earthly possessions easily fit into the trunk. I took some groceries to hold me over until I could plant a garden. My larger items—pots and pans, old clothes, winter coats and books—were still stored in Karmanovo. Raya swore that she had not taken a single thread from our container.
I dove into murky waters with my eyes closed and floated to the bottom in search of a safe lair.
I moved to Karmanovo on the 25th of May. Valerka and Petrovich borrowed a tractor and ploughed the vegetable garden and the potato strip, twelve furrows. I stuck some onions and garlic into the ground, sprinkled carrot seeds, dill and parsley, added turnips and zucchini. The idea of starting a greenhouse with cucumbers and tomatoes did not appeal to me at all; I decided I could do it next year if it turned out that I liked poking around in the dirt.
. 6 .
That evening, Aunt Leyda invited us over—her house was close to mine. There were really no other homes in Karmanovo; it was not, in fact, a village but a small homestead. A few other tiny settlements nestled in the woods, in the remotest parts of Firovo district, far from the main road between Firovo and Volochok. It was all that remained of the Estonian Nurmekundia.
After work, the men drank a little vodka, and we, the three women—myself, Aunt Leyda, and her daughter Nelya, who had come to visit for the weekend—had tea with cream cheese biscuits. Nelya had graduated from Kalinin University and was the Director of Studies in a school in the village of Yesenovichi, fifteen miles away. She filled me in on the
local history.
Tsar Alexander I,[10] when he came back from Paris after defeating Napoleon, decided to set the peasants free. And so he did, but only in the Baltic provinces; the rest of Russia had to wait quite a bit longer. Each peasant received a small plot of land that he could pass on to his eldest son. As the result, by the 1880s, Liflandia and Estlandia, as Nelya called the provinces, swarmed with impoverished landless peasants—the middle and younger children who could not inherit their father’s rights. A mass exodus began.
Whole families pulled up roots, herded up their cattle and loaded their possessions onto ox-carts. They sought the protection of the great Russian Tsar. Only a ridiculed few booked passage in the hulls of steamships and sailed for America, Canada, or Australia. It was not until much later that it became clear that they were, in fact, the lucky ones. At the time, sailing to the other side of the world seemed like pure folly: the Russian Empire was strong and full of priceless virgin lands to which the poor flocked in hopes of starting their own farms. They settled in groups, close together, which, of course, helped them to survive.
Estonians went to the warm lands on the Black Sea shore, or to the places in Siberia and in the Altai mountains where, it was said, the mere scent of the blooming herbs cured any ailment. Some of them made their way to Pitsunda,[11] a small Abkhazian settlement bordering the ancient Colchis.[12] They pitched their tents and studied the land. It smelled of Artemisia and rotting citrus. There for the taking were plentiful persimmons, tangerines and figs; their sweet juice attracted swarms of flies and one had to chase them away with aromatic mimosa branches. At night the merciless mosquitoes attacked—the areas inland were rife with stagnant pools of rusty water. With mosquitoes came malaria, previously unknown to this Northern people. The settlers perished by the hundreds; mosquitoes banished the Estonians from their Abkhazian paradise. Those who still had money set out for Tver province. There, Brandt’s Lumber, an offshoot enterprise of the Ryabushinsky millionaires’ empire, gave volunteers tracts of unbroken land and an interest-free loan. That was where they finally settled—in a familiar Northern landscape, at the tip of the Valdai river basin, in woods rich with mushrooms, wild game and malaria-free mosquitoes, on rich, loamy soils yet to be claimed from the forest. They put down roots amidst the three Russian villages—Kuzlovo, Skomorokhovo and Konakovo—that dotted the road from the forest frontier to the provincial market.
Fish- a History of One Migration Page 15