My Russian Family

by Lilia Sariecheva

  Anna’s grandson Yuri, about 1958.

  Yuri was gracious and enjoying all the attention. He was maybe 25 years old and my parents asked him why he was not married. He said, “I have a serious lung disease.”

  “How did you get that?”

  “During World War II when I was a little boy I caught tuberculosis. Now I am in remission but my lungs are very bad, very weak, so that is why I will not get married.”

  “You could live with us. We can provide a sanitarium and a good life.”

  I was eight years old. I liked Yuri and had to get my opinion in, “Do you think that you are going to die?” My parents gave me an astonished look of disapproval and Yuri simply smiled at me.

  He stayed for a month or so. He was surprised on how wealthy we lived, but we were not wealthy, it is just that he had lived poorly. In the end, he preferred to live with his granny instead of us. The tuberculosis did not seem real to me. Mother received a letter two years later from Anna informing her that her grandson Yuri had died of TB, and I cried.

  Mother was afraid to answer her kindly letter and it was many years before I finally came to understand the reason why. In fact, if Yuri had not visited us I would never have heard this story. Mother was surprised that I could remember Yuri.

  “Mother, he was a nice boy.”

  “Yes, he was and I did not want to tell you the story about his grandmother Anna because it is too painful. I just learned of it and there is no reason for you to know about it!”

  I gave my mother one of my looks and she sighed and continued, “My mother Lena had a male cousin and even though he was wealthy with power and influence, he married Anna, a local girl, for love. She was a real beauty. Their marriage was good until after the Revolution when the Soviet Secret Police picked up Anna’s husband and he was gone forever, probably just because he was rich—and now even his name is unknown. The Communists let Anna keep their house, perhaps because she was from a poor family.”

  Mother paused as memories flooded back, then dried her eyes and went on, “When everything bad happened to our family in 1930, Mom was pregnant and had three young girls. At one point the two oldest girls, Vera and I were living with other families and working for our keep. My mother Lena and Shurra went to Aunt Anna to ask for help, but Anna would not help in any way. Anna had a house and could have provided refuge. She could have given them food, love, and comfort. She could have at least taken in four-year-old Shurra and provided the youngest girl a decent place to live. There was a nasty argument but Anna refused to help at all. Lena left her with the admonition that her family would no longer recognize her as a relative. Shurra, as young as she was, remembered all this and never forgave Anna.

  It was quiet as I tried to soak in this information and mother was lost in thought. Finally she broke the silence. “It is difficult to understand Anna’s motive. Maybe she was just afraid that the Communists would take her house if they knew that she had helped her formerly wealthy relatives. I just do not know! What I do know is that I only learned of this story after your Dad located my sisters and I made the trip to Latvia. While chatting with Shurra, I informed her that I found Anna. Shurra became angry and said that the family had ostracized Anna. When I asked her why, Shurra told me the story. Shurra said that a family must suffer together and share their fate with each other. Shurra could not forgive Anna and it left me with no choice. I had to stay with the bloodline and forgo any friendship with Anna so I could maintain my relationship with Shurra.”

  Shurra had no problem with Anna’s grandson Yuri, but Anna no longer existed to her. After Yuri died, poor old Anna lived alone for some years before she too died alone and unhappy. Was it a punishment? Many mistakes occur in haste and fear and people then live with the consequences forever. Make your bed and sleep in it.

  That summer of 1958 was very beautiful for mother. She had found many of her lost relatives and even the sour notes could not stifle her happiness. She had found her aunt and Dad had found her sister and brother.

  PART THREE

  The Present Generation

  It Is What It Is

  Literal translation:

  Good brotherhood is the best wealth.

  Meaning:

  Friends are more important than money.

  Little Lilia

  Literal translation:

  Russians take a long time to get a horse ready, but then they drive it hard and fast!

  Meaning:

  Russians have great patience but when they eventually make a decision, it is final and the action is quick!

  42. Grandma’s Kisses

  MOST PEOPLE LEARN BY THEIR OWN MISTAKES. CLEVER people can learn by other people’s mistakes. Everyone thinks that they are clever, including me, especially when I was a small girl. Was I really clever or was it all in my mind? Let’s see.

  Lilia’s first picture, 1951

  My first picture was taken in 1951. Mother took us to a photographer’s studio in Ussuriysk. I was eight months old and Slahva was nine years old. We were both strong, healthy, normal kids.

  Slahva was wearing a hat to disguise his lack of hair. The local school ruled that boys must have their head shaved. I had a new light blue dress, a dark blue hat, and dark red shoes, my first pair. I had just started walking ten days earlier. This is the only copy of that picture remaining that still shows my “deformed” hand, as mother cropped all the copies she could find, after she became aware of the pain caused by the image of my left hand.

  I was about 16 months old when my family made the long train trip from the Far East to Moscow. The government had ordered my father back to Moscow and transferred him from Red Army Intelligence to a very tough organization that would later be known as the KGB.

  Surprisingly, I can recall fragments of some events on that 1952 trip. One of the two conductors of our train car (we called it a wagon) was a middle-aged woman with a round smiling face. She noticed that my mother was troubled by the fact that I still sucked a binky (pacifier). It was an old fashioned one, just a slender tube of brown rubber with a wide plastic shield and a large plastic ring to hold on to it. The woman said to me, “Oh-oh-oh! Such a nice big girl and she still has a binky in her mouth. It is so appalling! Throw it away. Everybody knows that you are not a baby anymore.”

  I do not know why, but I obediently put my binky in the trash container by the compartment door, took my mom’s hand, and went to bed. But in the middle of the night I woke up and started to whimper for it. As we had no spare, my mom took me over to the trash container where I had deposited my binky several hours earlier. Of course, the conductor had emptied and cleaned the container by then. Mother kindly explained, “Well, it was your choice!” It was hard for me to return to the utter darkness of the sleeping bunks without my comforting binky. However, I realized that I had made the decision to throw it away and would have to live with it. There was nothing to do but accept it and move on.

  I recall how uncomfortable I felt when someone rolled me into a large thick blanket and then covered me with another one made of fur. It was difficult to move inside that “envelope.” After a lengthy ride in a sled driven by my grandfather on the last leg of that notable trip, they took me to a warm room and placed me on top of something, which was probably a table.

  I saw the kind face of an old woman. She smiled and said, “Let me see her hand first. Let me see it. Oh! Thank God! It is okay. Her hand is all right.” It was my granny and she could not stop kissing my hand.

  My surprised parents asked, “What is the matter? What is going on?” My grandpa responded, “Don’t ask. Let her be happy. We’ll talk about this later.”

  Housing in Ryazan was scarce at that time and even the free housing which was to be provided by my father’s new employer was not available. So my parents had no choice but to move into a house that did not allow children or pets, and I had to move in with my grandparents and Aunt Manya for two delightful years.

  My aunt, who was single, took good care of me and I
truly believed she was my mommy too. Both my mother and Aunt Manya were named Maria Ivanovna Sariecheva and, as they both mothered me, I thought I had a city mom and a country mom.

  I was the favorite grandchild of my grandparents, who had 14 to choose from for this great honor. The most important thing to me was that I was the most loved grandchild of the patriarch, my grandfather Ivan Coupriyanovich Sariechev, who ruled the family. He was a very large, quiet, and strict man. Everyone had a deep respect for him but his daughters, son-in-laws, and grandchildren occasionally feared him. I was born fearless. Even when I first saw him, I was not afraid of my grandfather’s gray beard and mustache, which at that time in Russia was rare and a scary thing to most young children. I climbed up onto his lap and started to stroke his beard and kiss his nose. Grandpa Ivan was surprised at that but let me do it even though he had never allowed such behavior from the other grandchildren. His precious beard, which he trimmed heavily in the summer, was important to him and he had forbidden the other children to touch it. Because of his stern attitude, no child was bold enough to kiss him. Grandfather let me sit on his lap during dinner time. Later on, he even refused to have a snack if I was not available.

  Most of my memories of my grandfather involve horses. He had been placed in charge of all the horses from the ten villages that constituted the local collective farm. This was a large herd because most peasant families had owned several horses when they were all confiscated and placed under the control of the collective farm management. I can remember one fine spring day when I was three and a half that my girlfriend Tata and I decided to catch the train and go to Ryazan to see my parents. We had walked about half of a kilometer (.3 mile) of the seven-kilometer trip to the train station when we were missed and grandfather mounted a horse to come looking for us. He found us resting comfortably in the tall green pasture grass and, after a pleasant conversation with him, we shared a gentle horse ride back home.

  After that trip, the villagers would smile at Tata and me and call us “frog-travelers.” My granny told us that the term came from a popular children’s story. Years later while reading a child’s storybook, I came across it. It was a tale of a traveling frog that was carried aloft by biting onto the center of a stick that was held at each end by the beaks of two flying birds. I have loved frogs and toads ever since.

  The villagers continued to tease us with smiles on their faces. It seemed that everybody was happy, including me, because I did not know how to be unhappy. My grandpa was happy because he found a second strong, deep love (no matter that I was a baby). Grandma was happy because her beloved husband started to smile more often and even laugh. My aunt was happy because in taking care of me she did not feel childless any more.

  Lilia and her brother, 1953

  One day the following spring, I was feeling motherly so I collected all the clothes from my dolls and headed to the pond to wash everything, without asking permission from Granny. One special place had wooden planks set into the bank and over the water like a small jetty so people could comfortably work there. I was concentrating upon my work when I saw a woman across the pond pointing and yelling something, and then she started running around the pond toward me. I went up the high pond bank to meet her. She grabbed my hand and we hurried off on the road to the river. The woman was still yelling when I saw my granny Varvara ahead of us running toward the river. She finally turned around and, when she saw us, my 65-year-old granny collapsed in a heap. Before we reached her she had gotten back up and made the sign of the cross.

  What caused all the excitement was that the woman across the pond saw me by myself. She stopped working and just watched me to be sure nothing happened to me, as these village women frequently did. I was below the pond bank and when Granny came looking for me, I could neither see nor hear her. The woman across the pond pointed toward me so Granny could find me but Granny thought she was pointing toward the river road and she took off at a fast run to get to me before I could reach the river. The woman asked Granny, “Why were you running so fast down this road?”

  Granny responded, “You know why. My Lillichka is a frog-traveler.”

  One cold day in the early fall my country mom gave me new mittens that she had knitted. She kissed each of my little fingers and then gently placed the mittens on my hands. My granny kissed my forehead and said, “Goodbye, my dear. I’ll miss you and I look forward to next summer when you will return.”

  43. New Adventures

  Finally, in the fall of 1953 my parents took me to live with them full time. I missed my country mom Manya and my grandparents so much that I wanted to learn reading and writing as fast as possible so that we could write to each other. My brother Slahva was in fourth grade at that time. I always sat near him when he was doing his homework so that I could learn. One day, strange symbols of numerous letters appeared in my mind as he repeated the alphabet for me and suddenly it all became clear. My older brother had taught me the alphabet and it glued into my memory forever. However, I knew that it was not enough because I desperately wanted to be able to write.

  My mother understood and she put me into a kindergarten class. Preschool had been available for Russian children since the early 1920s. The KGB offered it for the children of their officers from ages three through six.

  I was very happy, thinking that now I could learn to read and write. However, after my mom left me alone with the other kids and the teachers I changed my mind. I had never been around so many children and adults before. I was so upset by their screaming, making noise, and running around, that I wanted to leave. I asked a teacher to take me home but she refused so I decided to try a seldom used strategy. I started to cry. I must have cried for hours and hours and nobody paid any attention to me. After lunch, my schoolmates laid down for a rest and I was standing by a window in the next room, still crying. A teacher approached me and kindly asked if I could cry a bit softer so the children could sleep. I replied, “Yes, I can.” She shut the door and I quietly continued crying. When my mama came to take me home I was still crying. She patiently explained to me, “It is too late to cry now. You have to realize that you have to do your work like everybody else. Anyway, you agreed to join the kindergarten class and you have to keep going. Soon you’ll be four and you will be ashamed of your unexplainable tears.” I did not understand all that my mom said but I got the point of her lesson, to be strong and keep moving forward on my chosen path.

  An elegant old mansion, confiscated from a family of aristocrats subsequent to the revolution of 1917, had been adapted for the kindergarten school. The building was located in the middle of a park with beautiful arbors and inviting pavilions. It was especially pleasant for kids on rainy days to be outside under a roof and to have some fresh air.

  For me it was much better to stay inside even on a beautiful sunny day because there was a grand piano in the large well-lighted dance hall. The big black piano was shiny like a mirror and I could see my reflection in it.

  A pianist played the piano four times each week when we had dancing and singing classes. I could not take my eyes off of her hands. Her fingers would fly along the keyboard like an excited butterfly.

  Pretending to play the piano became my favorite game at home. I would sit on a chair and, skating my fingers on the top of a little bamboo stool, I imagined that I was a pianist. My fingers would caress my imaginary keyboard and I would sing “la-la-la” for hours.

  My mom decided to buy a piano for me but these years it was not so easy in the USSR. She had to go to Moscow, since pianos were not available elsewhere. She left for the capital and my brother had to take me to and from kindergarten for several days.

  Slahva had time to go home after school and then he would come and pick me up. After three or four days, while Slahva and I were walking home, he said, “You cannot guess what our mommy brought from Moscow!”

  I answered, “Yes, I can. It is a piano for me.” My brother did not respond and I felt that something was wrong. Slahva and I arrived home, too
k off our shoes by the front door, and pulled on our house slippers. I did not even slow down to remove my coat but ran to the living room. There was no piano but there was a strange small case sitting on the floor. “What is that? It cannot be a piano,” I said. My brother opened the case and took out a beautiful bayan (a musical instrument similar to an accordion). He had a love and a natural talent for the instrument. Slahva was delighted and I felt so happy for him that I almost forgot about my own disappointment.

  The demand for pianos at that time far exceeded the supply but three long years later I finally got my own precious piano. It arrived in excellent condition and I immediately started to play, creating cacophony which put me in a very good mood and my parents in a very bad mood.

  My mom informed me that I would be taking a trip to the music school where I was to undergo an evaluation of my inherent musical ability. Slahva told me that he carried his bayan on his back when he went to see his teacher. Mother confirmed that with a grin. Slahva then said, “You will have to load the piano on your back and carry it when you go to your teacher. Are you ready for that?”

  Mother stayed silent as we snickered at each other. I finally responded, “I will ask for your help since you are my big brother.”

  I donned my best dress, captured my curly blond hair into a large bow, and accompanied my mother to the music school, feeling very proud of myself. At this age I strongly believed that I was good enough to accomplish anything that I set my mind on.

  An hour later I was having doubts about myself because the school commissioner had determined that I had no ear for music at all. Of course, he would not allow me to enroll. On hearing this news, my father remarked, “A bear stepped on her ear.”