by Emily Rubin
I thought she heard fine, she just didn’t seem to mind the crow’s ranting. Svetlana was very scrawny and infested with fleas when I found her. Seeing her reminded me that whenever my mother saw a kitten like that, she would say, “We ate even the skinny ones during the siege.”
The Siege of Leningrad was a big part of my childhood.
Chapter Nine: Camp Flora
My city was under siege, and I was sent away. The nine hundred days they cut her off from the world took its toll on my mother.
It was 1941, and Leningrad was having a very warm spring. I was little, only six years old. My parents dressed me in a heavy wool overcoat that was much too big and smelled of mothballs. I threw it off. My mother put it on me again, lifted me in her arms, and looked me straight in the eye. Her breath was warm and smelled of tobacco. She said nothing, but her nose touched mine. Her eyes got wide, and then she shut them tight. I could hear the wooden wheels of the flatbed peddler’s carts along the cobblestones downstairs. My father took me from my mother and touched his hand to my face. The high-pitched squeals of the children on the carts came up through our front windows. I wanted to be brave, so I shut my eyes tight to keep from crying. My father put me on his shoulder and walked me downstairs while I heard my mother stand up, knocking over a chair. I opened my eyes and watched as she ran for the toilet in the back hallway. She did not look back at me. As she turned for the door, her dress opened at the back seam. I saw her cotton panties and a teardrop of blood traveling down her thigh. As my father carried me down the stairs, I memorized the pattern of crowns and stars on the blue and white wallpaper in the hallways.
On the street the carts were filled with children, most very young. Many parents were walking alongside the carts. It was chaotic, but somewhere someone was playing a small flute or ocarina. I could not tell where it was coming from, but the sound was a comfort. It went with the rhythm of the carts as they started to move toward the rail station. Everyone looked up, as if the music was coming from the sky. My father placed me in the middle of the cart and pinned one of his poems to my wool coat. I remember the crows flying overhead. CAW! CAW! They sound the same everywhere.
“Breathe, Stalina, breathe,” he whispered to me. “You’re a strong girl; take care of these little ones. When you come home, I will have all my poems waiting for you. You will be my ambassador of words.” He hummed a tune in his deep voice as he held my face in his hands, then kissed my forehead before turning to go. I kept the note, and when I was older, I memorized the poem.
My daughter watches the waves by the sea.
Do they remind her without knowing
Of the womb from where she came?
So safe and sound.
Now we are surrounded,
Cut off like the wheat we were meant to grow.
Our bread will never rise or bake.
Will my daughter remember me? When will she return?
Will she have waves of pleasure again,
Or only tears of anger and pain?
Will she remember her place at the table,
And the patterns on the walls?
I leave a thumbprint of a hug around her soft shoulder.
When she returns, will there be anything, anything?
There will be my poems for her.
So many questions in one poem. I would return and commit to memory every one of his poems. The factory whistles sounded for the lunch hour, and the cart moved toward the rail station.
They took us to a camp up north in the region called Karelia, a beautiful area, not far from where my family had its dacha. The children were brought to the town of Kem. We were forty, all from Leningrad. I was one of the oldest. In our camp there were mostly the young ones. The counselors, a mix of students and workers, stayed up all night playing cards in the basement. The smell of vodka and cigarettes came up through the floorboards. The amber light from their lantern streamed through the cracks. I would pass my fingers through the light and make it flicker like an old movie. Moths flying near the lamp would cast giant shadows that looked like hawks circling above our bunks. The buzz from the shuffling cards made the sound effects for the flapping wings of the giant moth hawks I conjured. The slap of a card hitting the table brought me back to reality and to the counselors’ daily gossip.
“Lela’s parents have not been heard from for a week.”
“Don’t say anything until you are sure.”
“I found a tooth in my soup tonight.”
“The children have been working in the kitchen.”
“Hazardous work.”
“Dangerous eating.”
“Balya the cook is missing a front tooth.”
“She lost that months ago.”
“Maybe I should have saved it for her.”
“Gin!”
“Damn!”
“Shut up and deal!”
“Go fuck your mother.”
Sounds of scuffling.
“Settle down, Vanya.”
“That tooth…I feel ill.”
“Buck up. Be glad you’re here.”
“What, here, at Camp Klorp?” Klorp means bedbug.
“Stop it!”
“How about Camp Siege?”
“The young ones will write their parents, ‘Dear Uttyets and Mart, Having a lovely time, hope all is well, don’t eat Uncle Vanya if you can help it. Your sweet Misha from Camp Siege.’”
“Vanya, please.”
“OK, Camp Flora, just for you, Tanya. But where’s your sense of irony? Not very Russian of you.”
Tanya had long blond hair and spent her days chopping wood. She was strong and hugged each one of us every day. It was a comfort. Vanya tended a herd of goats near the camp. He smelled like those goats and had the biggest, roughest hands I have ever seen. I listened while they played cards, keeping very still so that when I fell asleep I would not fall off the bed or disturb my sleep mates during the night. We were always four or more in a bed. When someone near me would start to cry, which happened often, I would try so hard to hold it back. I tried so hard to be strong.
No one escaped the siege. Bela and Leo were brothers who always shared a bunk. Neither one ever said a word. They ate their meals under the long table and refused to sleep with anyone else. For the rest of us, the bed assignments would change almost every night, so if someone had bony elbows and knees or foul breath, you only had to tolerate them once or twice a week.
“Flexibility, adaptability, and strength—these are the things you will learn at Camp Flora,” Tanya told us almost every night before she gave out the bunk assignments.
“Leave Bela and Leo alone,” she would say if someone was making fun of them.
One time Rakia, an angry student right out of Herzen University, tried to force them to separate. She was always mad about having to abandon her studies. “It will be good for them,” she said in her bossy style.
When they were separated, Leo would not stop hitting his head against the floorboards and Bela obsessively ate the torn threads of a blanket.
“I told you, leave them alone,” Tanya said. “I will take care of them.”
“But they’re not being good Communists,” Rakia said, storming out.
“That’s not my concern, Rakia. They are children; let them be.”
Tanya disappeared one day. Who knows why? In those days it could have been anything. Luckily, Rakia did not take over.
It was two and a half years before I saw my parents again, and at first I did not recognize them or Leningrad. The city was a charred skeleton. My parents were not much better, their faces gaunt and bodies thin as branches. It was my father’s smile that brought me back. Even though he had lost a front tooth, I recognized his crooked smile and plump lips. My mother managed a feeble smile through her tears. Neither could pick me up. I was healthy and put my arms around my mother’s legs and tried to lift her. She flinched when I touched her. There was great distance between us.
“Stalina, it’s not you. My body hurts from be
ing so tired,” she said.
Hunger exposes the nerves. Mother bruised easily and was very sensitive to the slightest touch or any sound louder than a light switch. It wasn’t until I was older that she told me how they survived.
“We made bread by mixing face powder, sawdust, and tooth powder and fried it all in lipstick for flavor,” she explained with her eyes closed.
I was ten years old and asked, “What happened to the stars and crowns wallpaper in our hallways?”
“We stripped it all down and scraped off the glue to make gruel,” she continued. “I’d let a ball of it sit on my tongue for a long time.”
“How did you swallow it?”
“Imagination. I’d envision the most luscious piece of chocolate cake. I closed my eyes, and when I could smell the cake as if it had just been baked, I quickly swallowed.”
“Mmm, let’s have some chocolate cake,” I once suggested.
“Achh no, it makes me think of eating the wallpaper glue.”
My mother’s tastes ran to the plain and simple. Soda crackers, boiled chicken, and vodka.
Chapter Ten: Svetlana and the Crow
I had been at the Liberty for more than two years, and Svetlana for almost six months. Each of us was at home here now, perhaps strange to say. The motel was very quiet this afternoon. I got Svetlana and brought her into the office. Mr. Suri liked to play with her.
Caw! Caw!
That crow was very protective of Svetlana. I’d never seen anything like that. She did not fly away when I picked up the cat.
Caw! Caw!
“Svetlana, you are a feisty kitty. Come here. Mr. Suri is back. Let’s get back to the office.”
As I scooped her up, I saw the remnants of Mr. Suri’s drawings in the dirt under the pine trees. He had drawn a map of Windsor Avenue with arrows pointing in several directions and circles around squares that seem to be the other motels. I wondered what sort of plan he was thinking of. The wind had stopped as it often did at this time of day. The trees here reminded me of Lake Ladoga near my family’s dacha in Karelia. Pine trees surrounded the water. There was always a bed of fallen needles three or four inches thick that we would walk through to get back to the house. A soft scent of pine followed us as we stirred up the ground in our bare feet. Sticky bits of sap would stick to our toes and heels. I would do a little jig to show off my needle-covered feet, and my parents would clap out the fast rhythms of the barnya, a folk dance that builds to an uncontrollable frenzy.
Here at the motel we used a very strong pine disinfectant called King Pine to clean the rooms. It hung heavily in the air and burned the eyes, but ultimately did the job of masking the smells of spilled liquor in the carpets and cigarettes in the drapery. My dream was to scent every room to match its fantasy scene. After all, I was an expert in the arena of aromas. The smell of rain and wet roses for “Gazebo in a Rainstorm” and cotton candy for “Roller Coaster Fun Park.” At our lab in Russia, the manufacturing of scents became a cover for the vats of arsenic and anthrax we had in storage for covert operations. Make the poison smell sweet, even if it was an odorless killer like anthrax. I could be arrested for revealing such secrets. Most of the people working in the lab did not know we were making anything poisonous. I knew what was there because the technicians had to come to me for the chemical compositions and the delicate balances needed to stabilize each vat of poison and to create its camouflage bouquet. We mastered over one hundred scents. In addition to the sweet smells of lingonberries and such, we found ways to make the scents of freshly printed newsprint and an electrical storm. Of them all, my favorite was that of freshly baked bread.
“Svetlana, I bet you’d like a room scented with catnip or tuna, wouldn’t you, little kitten?”
Mr. Suri came into the office; he looked agitated. There was something about him I found very attractive. It had been a long time since I had felt anything for a man, but he intrigued me. I wanted to know more about him. I liked watching Mr. Suri walk. He had long legs, and his slacks danced around them as he moved. He was graceful, and I thought that he must be a good dancer. I like that in a man.
* * *
“Mr. Suri, how was your day?” I asked, coming in from outside with Svetlana in my arms.
“In order to be approved for a new septic system, it seems I have to join the Kiwanis Club.”
“I am familiar with these kinds of things. It was typical in Russia.”
“I’m not a joiner,” he said. “I just want a decent place for the you-know-what to go.”
“Mr. Suri, we have a situation.” I attempted to tell him about the comatose customer.
“We will have a very bad situation if I can’t properly deal with people’s—”
“Yes, well we have a man unconscious in room two.”
“Oh great, now the police will come. That’s all we need.”
“His lady friend didn’t want any help.”
“He’s alive, I hope?”
“I haven’t seen him, but all she wanted was ice.”
“I could use a drink myself.”
I liked how honest he was. “I have vodka,” I told him.
“They want me to contribute five hundred dollars to become a member of the local chapter, and then they’ll give me the permit to hire another member to dig the leach field that we need to make a proper septic system.”
“Leeches?” I asked.
“I wonder how many of the Kiwanis Club brothers are motel customers,” he asked. “I’ll see at the next meeting I go to.”
“That could be very good for business. Five hundred dollars is a small investment,” I added.
He played with his mustache. “What about this gentleman in room two?” he asked.
“I added another hour to their stay.”
“They have until four forty-five?” he asked.
“Correct. I’ll go knock on the door to see how they are doing.”
“I don’t think you should get involved, Stalina.”
“His lady friend sounded upset. I don’t mind helping out.”
“It’s on your own time,” he said sternly.
He put his hand on top of mine. His touch embarrassed and distracted me, and I dropped Svetlana. She scrambled under the desk and was trying to wiggle through a hole in the wall.
“I hope that cat will earn her keep and catch some mice,” he said, suddenly placing the hand that touched mine into his slacks pocket, and he jingled some loose coins. I stared at the pocket. The bottle of vodka was in the cabinet under the desk in between a broken fax machine and several rolls of toilet paper. I fumbled around for the cat and at the same time picked up the vodka.
“What’s that cat’s name again? Vodka?”
“No, Svet-lana,” I pronounced her name slowly, “like Stalin’s daughter, but Vodka’s a good name for a cat. Why leeches?”
“Stalina, didn’t you have plumbing in Russia?”
“Leningrad is a very civilized city. There is central plumbing. Sort of.”
“And what about in the country?”
“Leeches had nothing to do with it,” I said indignantly.
“Some other time I’ll explain about leach fields. What about room two? Or excuse me, the ‘Roller Coaster Fun Park.’ Those rooms might be causing more trouble than we need.”
I loved his efficiency, but he worried too much. Little Svetlana would be a good mouse catcher, and the rooms would make him money.
“The kitten needs to go back to the linen room, and then I’ll see what’s going on in roller coaster land.”
“Let her stay here—maybe she’ll catch something. Call me if you need anything.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“Stalina, please stop calling me sir.”
“Suri, I meant, Mr. Sur-i.”
Outside the wind had picked up again. I’d been monitoring the cracks in the concrete path along the front of the motel. They were getting bigger. The roots from the pine trees were growing under the driveway and breaking up th
e cement. Mr. Suri’s Delta ’88 was parked near the trees. He loved that car. It was his symbol of America. My symbol was the Liberty Motel and all it offered its guests. The freedom to love, to share an intimate time away from all your worries. Through my room designs, I had made a place for my customers to let their minds travel beyond their difficult circumstances. They could enjoy happiness, no oppression, for a short time, and it did not cost so much. There was great freedom in the value of my fantasy rooms. They might not be for everyone, but those who came kept returning. I took great pride in this, and it was here I found happiness I had never known. I thought the Liberty Motel was a place of beauty for the soul.
I walked with the vodka bottle in my hand over to the linen room, where Mara was asleep. I hoped she had brought the ice to the Roller Coaster Room couple. The pink door to the linen room stuck like all the other doors.
“Mara,” I said as the door whined.
The light was out.
“Mara!”
“Huh,” she responded, sounding dazed. “I was having such a bad dream.”
“Did you bring the ice to room two?”
“I knocked, but no one came to the door. There was something about a vacuum in my dream. I was outside vacuuming, and one of those crows that lives in the pine trees got sucked into the tube. The vacuum took over and was pulling up everything in sight, including the clouds and the stoplights on Windsor Avenue. I couldn’t let go, and the whole time the crow was screeching CAW! CAW! from inside the vacuum.”
“I think it reflects your conflicts about work.”
“Please, don’t analyze me. Isn’t your shift over?”
“Never mind,” I said, closing the door.
“Stalina, what are you going to do with that bottle of vodka?” she said as I closed the door.
“It is to help a difficult situation,” I replied.
The door to room two looked like all the others, painted pink with a hammered copper number nailed to the front. I could smell cigarette smoke, menthol mixed with our pine disinfectant. A nice smell, I thought.