“I was a jack-of-all-trades in the labor camp, too: sewing, tuning, weaving, soldering, sharpening, putting a thread on a bolt, anything. I even made a guitar and they played it for a long time there. I was a master at working steel and I even made money behind those barbed wire fences.”
They picked him up in January of 1937 as an enemy of collective farming. Yuku had tried to protect the Manizers’ and Loiks’ hay meadows, but the kolkhoz plowed them under but could never grow anything, since only native grasses thrived in the marshy soils. He, as was the custom, was blamed for the mistake. He returned home from the Rechlag near Taishet[24] in ‘55, back to his Tver woods from the taiga beyond Lake Baikal. His wife Ilsa was not there to meet him; she had died, either of grief or starvation. His only son Jacob had also died three years earlier, of peritonitis; they couldn’t get him to a hospital in time.
Yuku came to Kukovkino, which was desolate after the war (“there were only three houses standing”), built himself a log cabin (the old one had burned down) and went to work for the kolkhoz. He did not remarry, lived alone, made hay and dried it on raised platforms the same way Kharabali fishermen dry their nets.
“Estonians always dry hay raised off the ground—the wind blows through it and makes better hay.”
By himself he mowed as much as a brigade. In the last years of Soviet rule, the authorities recognized his work with diplomas. Yuku burned them in the stove.
“After Rechlag, we parted ways.”
He thought for a minute and added, “And even before that, we weren’t going in the same direction. My father bought this land from Brandt with his own money, pulled tree stumps with his own hands, plowed and planted it. When I was a boy, I pulled the last stumps from the ground. Money, it’s not so easy to come by. I don’t live on my pension alone, even now. I mow hay, dry it and sell it. The whole district comes to me, as if their own hands have dried up. Work, don’t be lazy, and you’ll have it. There is one day to rest in a week: Sunday. As a boy, I ran to the kirche on Sundays, to help the bell ringer. Ten miles one way, to Pochinok, where the Nurmekundian cemetery is, and ten back.”
He managed to hide the bell in the woods in 1932, when a Komsomol squad burned down the kirche. When he came back from the camp, he found it, cleaned it and kept it. He rang it for the first time in ‘91. Now he rang every day, not to signal the end of the service, like at church, but to welcome every new day.
“They laugh at me in Konakovo—when the wind is right, it carries the sound all the way to them. But I don’t care. I made a pact in the camp: if I survived I would ring. I had a dream about it.”
The bell was not large—two poods[25] —and simple; it was covered with a green patina, just like the ancient pots in the Panjakent museum. Inside, its entire surface was covered with Estonian writing, carved by Yuku with his knife. He read the inscribed family names to me, and often repeated the list, so I memorized everyone: Yansens, Hurts, Mills, Myags, Tokmans, Kyarts, Riysmans, Loiks, Treumans, Lunds, Tarvases, Pialsons, Kumms, Tinners, Manizers, Nellises, Melzers, Adamsons, Vagas, Austers, Poldmans, Haabmans, Sulgmans, Kivimaimans.
“I wrote everyone I knew. Let the bell ring the names.”
On the top, around the crown, two lines of letters—Russian and Estonian—circled the bell.
“These are the alphabets. I thought: I couldn’t tell it all, the bell will tell. In Haapsalu, where our pastor came from, they always wrote names on the bells, so it’s not my idea. I just added the alphabets, the Russian and the Estonian, just in case, you see?”
I nodded my head. He smiled at something.
“Yuku, what are you smiling at?”
“What do I have to be sad about? Now I have you—I can leave you this house, would you like to live here?”
“I don’t know. I really don’t know.”
“That’s okay. It’s not yours, so you don’t want it—that’s alright. A man has to live off the work he loves. I can’t leave here; this is my land, the Manizers’ land. I know it.”
“How is it yours? It is part of the kolkhoz.”
“Kolkhoz or not, it’s mine. The filthy thing is, pari-blyamba, that they took the land, tortured it, and then left. If people had their own land, who would abandon it? They would sell, maybe, but that’s different, it would still have an owner. That’s why they drink—because they have nothing to die for. Estonians came for the land, got it and lost it, and…”
“But they all left, almost all of you.”
“When you don’t have land, your language becomes your home, so they followed it. They were right to leave. Loik Nele left for Estonia in ‘91, with the last Nurmekundians. She begged me to come with her—but I didn’t. I was born here and I am needed here. Now my bell is the only one here who understands Estonian. Like now: I’m talking to you, but I’m thinking in my own language.”
“Yuku, you speak correctly and beautifully!”
“Eh… I’m not sure. Speaking in another language is like writing a love letter with a dictionary. I tried to write to Ilse from Rechlag, but gave up, it was a waste of time: they did not allow writing in Estonian. And you say I speak beautifully—you must want to deceive me?”
“Never, Yuku. I wouldn’t think of it.”
“Alright, I’ll believe you. It’s always better to believe than not to believe.”
We were soul-mates. I was happy with Leyda, but with Yuku I had something special, and I came to love him.
We, Russians from the Kosmodemyanskaya Street, nomad Tatars that had washed up in Panjakent on a random wave of Soviet history, always envied the Tajiks. People said, “They have land.” Tajikistan, like everywhere else, had collective farms, but every Tajik knew where his fathers’ lands were, spoke of them proudly and kept an eye on them as one cares for a cemetery plot. Directors of state-owned stores, barber shops, kiosks and bakeries always proudly called them “My establishment,” and regularly paid bribes to the higher authorities so it was impossible to transfer them any place else—such positions were bought and sold, and no court would dare take them away. I did not understand what it was that our people envied when I was little. Yuku opened my eyes; he remembered.
Here, in the forest-edged fields, stood his property: his barn and his stable, the hen house, the pigsty, hayloft, bathhouse and the cabin where he lived. It was quiet and peaceful here; I took care of Yuku and he took care of me. Sometimes, a blasphemous idea would occur to me: were he forty years younger, I would gladly marry a man like Yuku.
I did not think much about the future; I let my own family in Volochok and Kharabali slip from my mind and I rarely remembered them. But I promised myself: when the winter is over, I will make a decision. I cleared narrow paths around the house with a wooden shovel, looked around and knew—these drifts are not like my yard in the city, a lifetime would not be enough to clear them all.
That winter was particularly snowy; often blizzards lasted for days, the wind tore the wires and we spent weeks without electricity. We lit kerosene lamps. I learned to spin wool. The old man sheared the sheep and collected the fleece into big sacks. I washed the dirty, matted wool, picked it over, cutting out clumps, and dried it on a line above the stove. Then I combed it, first with a thin-toothed comb and then with a thicker one. When I could get a handful of clean, light hair, I pinned it with an antique cast-iron pin to the head of the old spinner. At night I sat spinning, pinching loose locks, teasing them out, stretching, spinning the thread. After some practice, my thread became even. Yuku even praised me. Actually, I never heard a cross word from him, not once. When something wasn’t working the way he wanted and he lost his temper, he only exhaled, “Oi, pari-blyamba!”
“You have a funny way of cussing, Yuku.”
“Russian Old Believers from Skomorokhovo taught me this: you shouldn’t defile your mouth with cursing or God might snip your tongue out.”
I rolled the woolen thread into balls and knit warm socks with it, for Yuku and for myself. He found some vintage ladies’ underwear
in his pantry—people had kept Ilsa’s trunk waiting for his return—and I sported lacy silk pantaloons and slips that were perhaps not the most common fashion of the day, but very elegant; Ilsa’s mother herself had placed the orders with the clothing store. The women’s blouses resembled hospital robes with their large openings and standing collars, embroidered with cross-stitch patterns. They were meant to be put on over one’s head; in Dushanbe, we called this cut “Somebody, help!” The blouses were warm and comfortable. I wore the calico and plaid skirts, too, and with great style—after I washed out the mothballs and aired them outside. In the house we wore ankle-cut valenki[26] or porshni, soft moccasins that Yuku crafted from a single piece of thick leather, held in place with a lace around the ankle.
“In the camp, I was the premier porshni-maker,” he said proudly handing me a pair of the comfortable footwear.
In the evenings we sat opposite each other, each working on his or her task. Yuku told stories. In this life, aside from regular work, there had also been impossible, back-breaking work, and, in the rare minutes of leisure, there had been songs and the happy, bouncy music of the brass band, and moonshine within reason, or sometimes without, but not so much as to knock you down, just enough to urge you on to new work.
“We had fun celebrating holidays, but we didn’t get bored working either. Work is always interesting, you can see for yourself.”
A group of big, mustachioed men in long dress coats stared out at me from an old picture on the wall: Nurmekundia’s brass band. Yuku’s father, Martin Manizer, sat in the front row holding a great big trumpet to his chest. Next to him was his best buddy, Paul Tokman, Ilsa’s father, with a French horn. He wore a better coat, and had a watch chain, studded with pendants, stuck into a special pocket. Tokman was a miller, of the same fortune that provided for the silk underwear which, as best I could tell, I was the first to wear—it had been reserved for a special occasion. The photograph was faded with time, like Yuku’s eyes. It was hard to imagine these finely-dressed, serious people working until dark in the fields or in the woods. I had only seen such courage and dignity in the eyes of the Pamir tribesmen who sometimes came to market in Panjakent. But those people are Asian highlanders; they have complicated relationships with Tajiks and Uzbeks, from whom they had always remained separate, and when I was little I thought that’s why they acted so noble. Yuku wasn’t lying, however: the settlers in the picture worked long and hard, but they still found time to run their callused fingers tenderly over an accordion’s keys, to speed up and down the notes of a piano or to cuddle a flute. This was my kind of life.
By the beginning of April, the snow had almost all melted, and I could drive the cart to Karmanovo. I didn’t want to spend any longer than necessary in that drunken village. The people who lived there were dirty, unkempt, their eyes swollen from constant drinking, and the cursed without end. I bought bread, collected Yuku’s pension and went back, three and a half miles through fields, then through a forest and across a field to Manizer’s home, as familiar as if I had grown up there.
On April 12, I returned home with the bread, drove up to the door, but Yuku did not come out to greet me. Sensing trouble, I ran into the house without unhitching the horse. He lay on his bed, face to the wall.
“Yuku!”
He turned to look at me—his face was grief-stricken, I had never seen him like this.
“What happened?”
“The bell!”
That morning Yuku had rung as usual, with no premonition of doom. After he finished, he went to the stable, and when he came out again, he saw that the space under the wooden beam was empty. The movement of the bell had gradually loosened the metal bracket that held it. The bell fell, and—even worse—hit the anvil that Yuku had dragged there about two weeks ago and forgot about. A crack split the bell along its entire length. The old man hung the bell back up, but it had lost its voice, sounded false and fell silent, didn’t carry on the wind.
“It’s my woe, Vera. Old fool—I’ve only got myself to blame.”
For the first time, I saw him cry. Tears ran down his cheeks, trickled into his beard; he was not ashamed, but somehow had shriveled, became smaller, as if he had lost his entire fortress.
I spent a long time comforting him, sat by his side, rocked him like a baby, stroked his great gray head, and the warmth of my hand finally soothed him. He got up, washed his face and went outside, to work.
At night, we talked for another half-hour, lying in our beds already. Yuku listed things that needed to be done the next day, then suddenly remembered that he hadn’t put the fresh batch of cottage-cheese into the cheese-cloth, got up and did it himself, didn’t let me do it.
In the morning he looked out of sorts, took a while getting ready, walking from one corner to another to postpone going outside, but finally went. I watched him through the kitchen window. The old man stood by his bell-tower for a long time, arms at his sides as if at a freshly dug grave, and then he took a step, his legs folded awkwardly under him and he fell face down into the wet April mud.
I rushed to him: the old man’s face was purple, his lips blue, he was no longer breathing. He died instantly of a stroke, as holy people die—without suffering or torment, probably without even noticing. I dragged him to the house, washed his body, dressed him in clean clothes, laid him out on boards propped by two stools, tied up his jaw with a towel.
By midday I was in Konakovo. Fortunately, the only telephone in the village was working that day. I called Zhukovo and then the kolkhoz. They sent a coffin. On the third day, we buried him in Pochinok, in the old cemetery. Many people came to say goodbye to old Yuku Manizer. Leyda came up to me, “Vera, are you thinking of coming home?”
“Yes, Aunt Leyda, let me just sell the cattle, close up the homestead, and then I’ll come.”
That’s what I did. Two cows—a calf and a heifer, a piglet, a horse, eight sheep. The kolkhoz helped me sell them all for what felt like unimaginable wealth. When I exchanged the rubles for dollars in Firov’s bank, as that’s how Moscow hunters had advised Leyda to keep her money, it came out to thirteen hundred and fifty dollars. More cash was squirreled away in Yuku’s hiding place, which he had shown me, saying, “You’ll have something to bury me with. If that’s not enough, I’ll make some more hay in summer, and you’ll have more. One can make a buck here and there, just keep moving. The Konakovo people are lazy, they’ll be all done for soon, and I’ll live to see the other side of a hundred, right?”
And he would have, if not for his bell.
I can just imagine the field-day “Nurmekundia’s Daily” had with my newfound wealth, but I did not care. The kolkhoz brick-layer Lenya Kustov made the grave marker: I asked him to set Nurmekundia’s bell in the concrete base that ran around the grave, leaving space for flowers in the middle. I hope it stands there for a long time, although I’m afraid that the locals will dig it out and sell the metal for scrap.
I returned to Karmanovo. Leyda, always tactful, did not speak a word of my hysterical flight. Like clockwork, she had fired the stoves in my house once a day this entire time, and watched over the potatoes stored in the basement. We picked up where we left off, living like a team, as if we had never parted; I told her about Yuku Manizer, and she listened, commenting laconically, “He was a hard-working man, a real farmer. You don’t see people like him around here anymore. My Peter had great respect for him.”
A week after the funeral, I hitched up Mustang and drove to the cemetery. I tidied up the grave, planted some small marsh flowers and snowdrops. The bell still stood; on its bronze surface, rain had drawn its first malachite paths.
. 13 .
The money i inherited from Yuku offered the hope of escape. His death put an end to my self-imposed hermitage. One had to be born here to submit to this kind of life naturally, without complaint, even joyfully, like Yuku and Leyda. I was in no danger of drinking myself to death like other locals, but neither did I want to work for nothing or to live off someone else.
Of course, I did not have much, not enough to buy a place to live in the city, but I kept thinking of my family that had remained in Kharabali: they had even less, and yet they made it. I realized suddenly that I missed hospitals and patients, the smell of chlorine, the night shifts. Yuku needed my care, but Leyda did not. It was clear that it was time to find my way out. The only question was where and how.
At the end of April, out of the blue, Valerka rolled in: they ran out of potatoes. I had my basement full of them, and I was happy that I could help the city-dwellers—I, who hadn’t earned a penny. I filled two sacks for them: one for my mother-in-law and Petrovich, for letting us stay with them, and the other for Valerka and Sveta, to hold them over until the harvest. In the basement, I showed him what I had saved for seed.
“For the holidays[27] I don’t care how you do it, but you come and plant them yourselves—I’m not going to play kolkhoz anymore.”
We sat down, talked it over. Valerka promised to look for a job for me at the hospital. He felt at home in Volochok and had earned a good reputation; almost everybody had him fixing their cars. The Head of the Central Hospital, Belyayev, was also among his clients.
“I’ll come back for you as soon as I figure it out,” my son said, then gave me a peck on the cheek and rode off.
Leyda and I had agreed not to tell him anything about my winter saga. He did not come to visit at New Year, so there was no reason for him to know of my life with Yuku Manizer. I was a bit irked by my son’s behavior then, but remembered the old man’s words, “Rely on yourself, help without expectation, don’t ask for help.” His whole lonesome life and labor camp experience were encapsulated in that formula. Yuku never took offense with other people.
Fish- a History of One Migration Page 19