by Talia Carner
Swaying her hips, Lyalya walked out, blowing them a kiss.
Svetlana gave her daughter a gentle nudge. “Go to the kitchen and put the pots on to boil. Then come right back.” She began straightening the room while cocking her ear for the feared shuffling sounds of Zoya, the old woman who shared a room with a married daughter’s family.
A commotion erupted a few seconds before Natasha burst in, her face convulsed with sobs. “Zoya slapped me and shoved me out of the kitchen.”
“Baba Yaga, the witch.” Svetlana rushed down the long corridor and burst into the kitchen. “I’ve warned you not to touch my child!” she yelled at Zoya.
“Your brat’s always in my way,” Zoya said over her shoulder. Her cooking utensils were scattered over every centimeter of surface. Potato peels flew about from under her quick flicks. “And now you’re in my way.”
“Everyone is in everyone’s way,” Svetlana shouted. “You won’t get me to move out by hitting my daughter, you hear?” She clenched her fists and waved them in the woman’s face.
Zoya shrugged, but her smiling, toothless, wrinkled mouth revealed that she was resolute in her effort to claim Svetlana’s room. Since Zoya’s daughter had had a baby, their one room was simply too small for three generations.
All Svetlana could do was go back to her room and wait for Zoya to leave the kitchen.
“I’m hungry,” Natasha whined.
In her wash basin, Svetlana rinsed the two slices of salami and cheese she had managed to save from the cafeteria. The rest of the wasted leftover food—pieces of chicken, something none of the workers had been able to purchase in months—had to be thrown away after the hoodlums had urinated on them.
While Natasha was occupied with the unexpected delicacies, Svetlana stepped to the communal phone in the corridor to call the injured workers’ families, and then her friend Katerina to thank her for lending her the leather coat so that she could look elegant when meeting the Americans. She was relieved that the coat hadn’t been ruined in the attack.
Katerina gushed with questions. How did each of the Americans style her hair? Who wore the most elegant clothes? What did they say about the leather coat? Who had the most expensive shoes? Who was the most feminine?
“You should see their teeth,” Svetlana said.
“Their teeth?”
Svetlana giggled in spite of the pain in her jaw. Teeth were something people had, then, in time, lost. If they had money, they ordered a gold front tooth, so everyone would know they could afford it. “Like in the magazines, Katerina. They’re not made of plastic as we thought. They are real, and so white.”
“All their teeth?”
“At least their front ones. Brooke has the best teeth. Tops and bottoms. She’s also the bravest one.” Even if Svetlana could speak about the attack—which she certainly couldn’t over the phone—she would never admit how she had been too scared to go back into the factory. But Brooke had. And Jenny had hugged Svetlana, and the two of them had wept together, crossing themselves. “I’ve made a friend. Jenny Alfredo. She’s full of fire. And her clothes—so many colors—you’d love them.”
Katerina giggled. “What color shoes did she wear?”
“Striped shoes decorated with cherries.” Svetlana smiled into the phone. “She gave away pins that say, ‘Attitude Is Everything.’ I got you one, too.”
Zoya emerged from the kitchen, carrying her plates and pots. “In the Soviet days the government took care of its elderly citizens,” she muttered.
The narrow hall barely left space for the Baba Yaga to pass by Svetlana without scalding her with her pots. Svetlana flattened herself against the wall, sending her nemesis a warning look. “I must go,” she told Katerina and hung up. As soon as Zoya closed the door to her room, Svetlana rushed to the kitchen. As she had dreaded, the old woman had left her potato and carrot peels strewn about and not bothered to wipe up the spills of oil and dishwater on the floor.
“Clean up after yourself, witch,” Svetlana muttered, wishing she were bolder and could raise her voice. The newspapers reported people who, desperate for extra rooms, murdered their neighbors. Zoya, on a warpath for her own survival, was capable of anything. After school each day, Natasha was home alone for hours; none of her friends had enough space in their single, crowded room for a visiting playmate. Their mothers, too, worked late or spent hours on food lines.
Her hands shaking with frustration, Svetlana lit two out of the four burners on the stove; a third burner that hadn’t worked for years had been fixed by one of the neighbors, who now claimed it as exclusively his. She filled her pots with water that trickled from the rusted faucet, and placed them on to boil. While she scoured the chipped enamel sink, Natasha came in and wrapped her arms around Svetlana’s hips. Through misty eyes, Svetlana smiled down at her. Natasha’s emerald eyes, so like her own, seemed huge in her thin face, and her skin looked sallow, almost translucent. The freckles across the bridge of her nose had darkened since the school kitchen had closed months ago; the meals on which Svetlana had always relied to feed her daughter were no longer being served.
“One day we’ll have our own kitchen,” Svetlana said. “And plenty of food.”
“When I grow up, I want to be just like Lyalya.”
“No, you don’t.”
“Oh, yes, I do.”
“You’ll study law. Russia needs lawyers now. It’s a good profession.”
“When I grow up, I’ll do what I want to do.” Natasha stamped her foot. “You’ve said that’s why we have demokratia.”
Svetlana laughed and kissed her child’s head. Her beautiful daughter possessed the spirit that had been beaten out of Svetlana herself.
Natasha whined, “Why is it taking so long? I’m hungry.”
“Winter’s coming.” Svetlana tapped the dials on the stove as if to pump more gas. The flames were weaker than before. “Public Resources must have lowered the gas supply because people are using their kitchen stoves for warmth.”
The potatoes in the larger pot would take more than an hour, but when the water boiled in the smaller pot, she could double-use it to save time. First, she would put in the two eggs. When they were done, she would reuse the same hot water for the macaroni. Then she’d save that carbohydrate-soaked water. Tomorrow, she’d fashion a meal from it by adding flour. With the apples she had picked in the park last weekend, she could make pancakes.
Also tomorrow she’d carry her tin container. After dining with the Americans, she could collect leftovers, even if it would be humiliating to reveal her poverty. Pride became irrelevant in the face of her child’s hunger.
“Watch the pots while I straighten up our room,” she told Natasha. “And scream if Zoya shows up.”
The chamber pot under the bed was full, and the napkin covering it failed to hold back the pungent smell. For fear of Zoya, Natasha used the chamber pot during the hours her mother was away. Svetlana carried it to the communal toilet, but when she tried to empty it, she found the bowl clogged with excrement. Nostrils burning, she picked up the bucket ready for such eventualities, filled it with water from the small sink, and poured it into the toilet bowl. Using a plunger, she repeated the process, alternately holding her breath and breathing through her mouth. Who had not only caused this problem, but then added to its sorry state? More than once, Svetlana had suggested to the other tenants that together they could buy detergents and disinfect the place. But the bickering had rendered futile all attempts at scheduling cleaning duties.
“Mama!” She opened the stall door to her daughter’s shriek. Natasha fell into her arms, bawling. “Zoya—” Through her hiccups, the girl was unable to speak. Svetlana sprinted back to the kitchen. Behind her, the click of Zoya’s door was followed by the clank of a heavy bolt.
Her pots on the stove were finally boiling, the bubbles sputtering. The three small potatoes danced. No. There were four, and one was not a potato. Something small and dark bounced up and floated to the surface. Svetlana scooped it up, and a yelp of
disgust erupted from her throat. A dead mouse. She flung it on the floor. Was anything beyond the Baba Yaga? It dawned on Svetlana why she had almost broken a tooth last week on a piece of wood in her soup.
She ran to Zoya’s door and banged. “You move out. Go see if you can find two rooms anywhere,” she shrieked. Her scream turned into a sob of frustration. Nausea twisted her stomach at the thought that she’d have to wash the precious potatoes.
She couldn’t stop crying even as Natasha hugged her. She cried also for Lyalya, for the price the intelligent young woman was willing to pay to get out of this dump, for the role model Lyalya presented to the impressionable Natasha.
Svetlana’s sadness did not lift after she had rinsed the mouse hair off the potatoes and boiled them again, or later as she sat in her room across the tiny table from Natasha, watching her eat the salvaged meal she couldn’t afford to throw away, and still later when she checked her daughter’s homework. She rewarded Natasha with Brooke’s crayons and vicariously shared her child’s awe of the candy, but the sadness wrapped her with tight fists.
Finally, she gave Natasha a sponge bath, pulled down the small mattress she kept leaning against the wall during the day, spread the sheet and blanket over it, and tucked Natasha in. Sitting at the corner of the cot and feeling the soft, dry cheek against her own, Svetlana sang Natasha’s favorite German lullaby.
Guten Abend, gut’ Nacht,
Mit Röslein bedacht,
Mit Näglein besteckt,
Schlupf unter die Deck.
The song over, Svetlana said to the sleeping girl. “I’m going to the bathroom. Be right back.”
She locked her door behind her and knocked on Lyalya’s mother’s door. A few minutes later, she yelped in pain as her neighbor-doctor reset her jaw. “It’s not broken. You’re lucky,” the woman said, and placed an ice cube inside Svetlana’s mouth. “Salt rinse will help, too.”
Back in her room, Svetlana locked her door for the night, turned off the lights, and crawled under the covers. The old man who lived with his wife and her sister in the room to Svetlana’s left prepared for bed with his triple ritual of a cough, a fart, and the trumpet-like blowing of his nose. She stared at the old-fashioned ceiling, four meters high. Shadows from the single tall, arched window cast odd shapes across it. Blue light from a passing car stuttered on the broken moldings on the opposite wall, momentarily projecting illumination on the sleeping Natasha.
Her tongue massaging the inside of her jaw, Svetlana placed her arms under her head and listened to the music produced by the violinist on her other side. Soon, neighbors’ angry shouts would cut it short, but this music was the one bit of noise Svetlana never minded. She sighed and closed her eyes, allowing her body to sink into the softness of the featherbed, her only luxurious possession, her wedding gift from her mother. How different her life would have been had she, after graduation fourteen years ago, been allowed to become a translator. But because she had been gang raped, the tribunal of the Communist school judged her to be of loose morals, and she was disqualified from working for the foreign ministry. Instead, she was sent to the factory to be reeducated in proletariat values. It had been only last year, when the cooperative was privatized, that her education finally gave her an advantage. But language school had never taught her the secrets of commerce—and certainly not of capitalism.
Perhaps some sewing machines could be repaired and more fabric bought. Whatever she could learn this week from Dr. Rozanova, and especially from the Americans, might give Natasha a brighter future. Surely there must be better dreams for a young Russian than becoming a call girl like Lyalya.
Chapter Nine
DR. ROZANOVA HADN’T been to Hotel Moscow since back in the 1970s when she had come to speak at a Young Socialist Women’s conference. She had been delighted that morning at the airport when Amanda invited her to visit at the hotel, but timed herself to arrive after dinner in order not to seem greedy for an expensive hotel meal. It was now nine o’clock, and she felt her way up the stairs of Hotel Moscow and banged on the glass door.
A guard unlocked it. “Your internal passport,” he said gruffly. His colleague stood a few feet away, staring at a wall with vacant eyes.
Whatever changes the country trudged through, rudeness was the one thing Olga could count on as a constant. “Soviet days are over; I don’t need to identify myself to get into a hotel lobby.” She shifted her weight. At the end of the long day, her legs ached. “I’m here to see the Americans.”
“Nichevo. Whatever.” The guard didn’t move.
He expected a bribe, she knew. Like all employed Russians, guards kept their low-paying jobs for the off-the-books perks. “This is thievery of the first degree,” Olga said, her tone belligerent. When he didn’t respond, she unclasped the safety pin that attached her wallet to the lining of her purse. “No apple is free of worms,” she mumbled. Cringing, she peeled off some rubles.
“Dollars,” he demanded.
“How will I get dollars?” Her suit jacket felt too tight, even though she had bought it only twenty months earlier in celebration of the fall of the Soviet empire. “And you’re to accompany me down to the dining hall. For all I know, the guards at the inside gate will stop me again.”
Entering the dining hall located in the basement, she scanned the high-set ceiling and the tall windows that started six feet above ground. Their brocade curtains were tied with silk ropes. Even the expensive oak paneling had kept its polish in spite of the plummeting membership of Socialist organizations since perestroika. The policy of economic and governmental reform instituted by Mikhail Gorbachev in the mid-1980s had eliminated organizations’ budgets for extravagant banquets.
The Americans had indeed finished dinner. The dirty dishes were being removed from the bleached, embroidered tablecloth, and strong fragrant coffee with white sugar—a special treat—was being served. After profuse words of welcome and hugs, Olga sat down and lit a Dukat.
A man with straight brown hair and rimless glasses sat at the end of the table. When making introductions, Amanda had mentioned that he had been sent by the American Embassy. Like an anthropologist studying a foreign tribe, Olga examined the first American man she had ever glimpsed in real life. With his set, square jaw not yet softened by loose skin, and with the self-possessiveness of a movie star, he looked as handsome and healthy as the men in the few Western magazines that had sneaked past censorship. Those men were so unlike Russian men, who aged at forty and died from alcoholism by age fifty-seven. Luckily, not her Viktor.
Olga listened in increasing horror as the women told the American man about the attack at the Gorbachevskaya Street Factory. Shocked and pained, Olga broke into their conversation. “I’m so sorry. I am embarrassed that twice today you’ve seen the hideous side of Russia.”
“Neither one was your fault,” Amanda said.
“But we’re all accountable. The rampant crime has become our collective shame. It is disgraceful to expose to the world what our new freedom has unleashed: a feeding frenzy of corruption and violence.” She sucked on her cigarette and blew a puff of smoke. “We were a society of good morals and high values. The moment we were let loose, we turned into vultures—or even worse, cannibals.”
A lovely American woman ambled into the dining room, apparently late for dinner. She scanned the table for an empty seat and took the one next to Olga. The young woman’s casual outfit, so unfeminine, surprised Olga. Pants were out of the question even for peasants, and only young women in Russia wore jeans, mostly prostitutes who could afford their high price. The woman’s brown hair, highlighted with golden streaks, was pulled back in a ponytail without even the benefit of an ornate clip. No respectable Russian woman, especially a representative of her industry or country, would appear in public not wearing her finest clothes and showing off her jewelry. How else would everyone know that she could afford it? Olga watched the woman smile hellos to her friends around the table, exposing a beautiful set of teeth. All the Americans h
ad healthy, white, straight teeth, so unlike the Russians. Yet no one had a front tooth adorned with gold as she did.
Olga noted that the American man fixed his gaze on this new arrival. However, the manner in which he looked at the young woman was open and friendly, unlike the lewd way in which Russian men examined females, their eyes raking women’s bodies, their lecherous thoughts written on their smirking faces.
“I’m Brooke Fielding.” The girl extended a hand to Olga.
Olga shook the extended hand, then held it longer. “How old are you?”
Brooke’s eyebrows rose, and she burst out laughing. “Russians are so direct.”
“You’re too young to be a businesswoman.”
“I am thirty-eight.” Brooke didn’t ask for Olga’s age in return. “We met at the airport this morning. You may not remember because my face was hidden by a camera. I took photographs.”
Olga couldn’t help compare Brooke’s youthful thirty-eight against her own aged forty-eight. America was so generous with her women, while Russia was parsimoniousness with hers.
A waiter brought a pot of strong fragrant coffee. Brooke signaled to him that she needed a cup. He ignored her. Mustering her most commanding tone, Olga spoke to him in Russian, but he snubbed her too.
After two more failed attempts to get attention, Brooke got up and walked to the door leading to the kitchen. Three waiters congregated outside it, smoking. When Brooke returned with a clean cup, Olga watched the men eyeing the slim, lithe figure.
Olga poured her coffee. “Sorry for not getting you the cup myself, but they are unionized.” When she saw the American’s confused expression she added, “They’re prohibited from giving it to someone who is not a paying guest.”
“I know all about unions,” Brooke replied, but Olga doubted she really did. One had to live in Russia to experience its unions’ impact on every minute human interaction. The job description of each occupation was so detailed that no employee could be faulted for sticking to cumbersome procedures, while in fact it guaranteed lack of courtesy. The regulation meant to control theft of hotel property now prevented her from getting a cup.