by Ilana Cohen
In his sport activities, he grew to become Krasnoyarsk’s most distinguished player. At the age of fifteen, he became a right defenseman skating on the large stadium’s rink. Thanks to his privileged status, he was absent from many classes in school, with the full support of the principal and was the pride of the city’s educational system. The efforts he had invested in sport every single day and his accomplishments in the field had awarded him with the distinguished title of ‘Worthy Citizen’. The recognition had also shielded him from his difficult and demanding mother.
“On two thirty, you need to take your sister from kindergarten, and once you’re home, make sure that she’ll eat! If you see that something is missing in the house, don’t be lazy and go to the grocery store to buy it! Eggs, milk, bread. When father and I come back from work in the evening, I want to see everything neat and tidy at home. And don’t forget, don’t you dare neglect your homework, Alexei!”
With time, he had won significant achievements and promoted his team to be one of the top three in the country. It was only then that Vera had finally agreed to let go, for the sake of his coach and the entire nation.
** ** ** **
In hockey games, he used to kill himself on the ice in the city’s largest stadium. The sports achievements of the city’s youth were an important calling card for the local politicians when they needed to face the Soviet authorities in Moscow.
He had spent so much time in doing sport for shirokiya zemla, the vast homeland, Russia, and for himself, that he had no time remaining for studying.
He wasn’t able to attend most of the classes, of course, and the teachers considered him as an external student, one that had to be released from classes on the principal’s instructions. One of the class’s top students had been appointed as a kind of supplemental teacher, and arrived each evening to Alex’s house, explaining and complementing everything that Alex had missed in school. But who could muster the strength to sit over homework during the late evening hours, after a day of wild skating on the ice and an extended stay in the sauna, showers and various relaxations in the gymnasium’s dressing rooms? The moment he found himself sitting in the quiet of the night, he placed his head on the table, and surrounded by heaps of notebooks and textbooks, he would fall asleep.
But in spite of everything, he was considered to be a good student compared to his other classmates. He studied with the offspring of all sorts of shady characters that had ended up in Siberia, not nearly as accomplished as he was. His classmates didn’t appreciate the fact that he was absent from school, and especially the fact that he was absent from tests. He knew very little of the studied curriculum, but his friends, the purebred Russians, waited patiently until he would solve the exercises and his test would end up in their hands.
“Hurry up, what are you playing with there?” they whispered impatiently.
“What’s going on with you, time is flying and we won’t have enough time to copy,” they said with concern.
“I didn’t attend classes, I don’t even know anything,” Alex said defensively, trying to lower their expectations.
“It doesn’t matter that you didn’t study, just write whatever’s in your head, that’s enough for us,” demanded his classmates. ‘Hmm, I really am good in math,’ Alex thought to himself, ‘perhaps I’ll grow up to be a scientist one day.’
The cheating had taken place under the unwatchful gaze of the teacher. Through deceit, Alex had also saved the teacher – the children of his class didn’t fail their tests, at least not all of them.
Alex enjoyed a distinguished stature among his felon friends. While his mother was protected by their fathers, he knew how to protect himself and fight for his own place in the society. With bare hands, he had beaten the grade’s hoodlums in knife fights and struggled with them during recess between classes or on the way back home from school. More than once, he had been forced to prove himself and acted like a real hero while resisting the street gangs and their knife-wielding leaders. The scars would always remain on his body, a memory from those conflicts.
He had been badly wounded once when someone crazy cut the main artery in his groin. His blood splattered and flowed until he lost consciousness. He woke up in the hospital where they were able to save his life. During that time, it wasn’t customary to give blood transfusions to the wounded. A few days after the event, he suffered from a terrible weakness and insanely severe headaches.
He didn’t even go the school graduation party and didn’t pay any money, but still received a high school diploma and a class photo in which he stood out as the most beautiful boy in his grade – a blue-eyed youth with large devilish curls adorning his shapely face.
About that time, the young Alex had learned how to lie in order to be happy, to freely enjoy all of life’s pleasures.
He was fourteen when he got off the street car at the center of town in a station called “Rodina[4]” to get to a movie theater called “Rodina” as well and buy the best ice cream in town in the movie theater’s buffet.
It wasn’t an easy task to buy the best ice cream in town. In order to get to the buffet with the ice cream in the movie theater, he also needed to buy a ticket. He quickly jumped off the street car and stood in a line that was fairly small, compared to Siberia’s vast size, to get to the ticket booth.
The midday audience consisted mainly of people who had worked the night shift and wanted to spend the rest of their day watching a movie before their next shift would begin.
Alex made the worst possible deal in that place, but still profited from it. He paid sixty kopeks for a movie ticket, and the vanilla ice cream that tasted like heaven cost him forty kopecks. In short, an ice cream cone he bought himself on the way to practice after school cost him one ruble.
The movie ticket, he threw away in the trash can next to the ticket booth on his way out.
“What are you doing, child, isn’t it a shame to throw away the ticket like that?” the ice cream auntie, dressed in a white robe behind the buffet counter, was amazed by his behavior.
“Bring a girlfriend or a boyfriend with you and go inside with them to watch the movie,” she sensibly advised him.
“What girlfriend and what movie? I haven’t got the time, I’m hurrying to the stadium,” he would always answer her.
He needed to eat the ambrosial ice cream quickly according to the instructions of his coach who had forbidden them to eat at least two hours before practice.
“Two ice cream cones today, please,” he extended his order one day.
“Great, you finally brought a girlfriend to see the movie?” the auntie in the white robe behind the buffet counter sounded pleased with him.
“Today I’m taking my sister home from kindergarten and I want to give her some ice cream,” he updated her about his generosity toward his sister.
“So run to her quickly, before all the ice cream in her cone would melt.”
With two ice cream cones, one in each hand, he ran like a torch bearer across three miles, until he reached his sister Ruthie’s kindergarten. He reached the finishing line with a single cone dripping all over his hand. The second one had already disappeared into his stomach during the course of his run.
“Ice cream, ice cream, I want ice cream!” Ruthie jumped on him with great joy.
“Eat it slowly, just lick it with your tongue, so you won’t get a sore throat, and don’t tell mother I’ve bought you ice cream, because if you do, I’ll bring you nothing next time. Do you hear me?” he sternly warned his little sister. His mother mustn’t know he had money in his pocket, he couldn’t reveal to her where he had taken it from. He knew well that his mother would never allow him to work as a porter in the “Norilsk Warehouses” at the port.
He was only fourteen, he didn’t even have an identification card.
During the afternoons, he needed to babysit Ruthie for two hours until his mother would return home from work. So as not to waste his precious time, he invited a friend to join them for a s
occer game. His friend would bring the ball and Alex improvised their own soccer field. He found an electricity pole in an open area that served as one goalpost, and Ruthie herself was placed as the second goal post.
“Stand still and don’t move! Eat your chocolate snack, but I’m warning you again, eat it slowly so you won’t get a stomach ache!” He dreaded his mother would overreact if anything would happen to the little one’s health. Alex had to reward Ruth with an additional candy so she would stand firm as the second goal post and won’t ruin their game.
He arranged for himself a kind of integrated babysitting that allowed him to play soccer with a friend and watch over his sister at the same time.
“I need to talk with the kindergarten teacher, it’s not right that she’s sending the children home all smeared with chocolate,” his mother grumbled when he brought Ruthie home and ran straight to his training in the large stadium.
It all began during a recess between two classes, when a kid from a senior grade turned to Alex with an offer he was unable to refuse.
“Would you like to make some good money?”
“How much is good money?” he asked.
“Twenty five rubles in a single day,” the older child immediately answered.
“Why not, I agree, tell me what I need to do,” Alex jumped straight into an adventure.
He wondered how fourteen-year old children were able to earn twenty five rubles a day, when his mother’s monthly salary as the manager of an artillery factory totaled five hundred rubles? And prices in the city matched the salaries people were earning.
“As a porter at the port,” he received a simple answer.
In the city of Krasnoyarsk, there was a merchandise port named “Norilsk Baza.[5]”
The large trans-Siberian train rushed from west to east next to the city on the right side bank of the Yenisei River. A singe railroad extension branched out from the tracks and cut straight into the city to the merchandise port. From there, boats bearing cargo sailed north with the current of the river all the way to the icy Northern Sea. The merchandise was mobilized in ships to the city of Norilsk, the capital of the northern mines and the icy plains. From there, the merchandise was distributed to the rest of the far-flung settlements of the work camps and the gold and diamond mines.
The authorities in Moscow took care to provide high quality merchandise to their friends in the north, the ones who sought gold in the frozen earth and on the shores of streams whose water trickled into the earth and drew useful metals out of it, mostly composed of copper and nickel, but also containing traces of precious metals like gold and platinum.
Early in the morning, Alex ran to the port to join a group of day laborers who gathered next to the port gate.
“How old are you, boy?” The foreman lingered next to Alex while counting laborers for his work team for that day.
“Do you already have an identification card?” he asked suspiciously after Alex had not replied to his question. Employing laborers younger than sixteen years of age was strictly forbidden and the boy didn’t even have an identification card yet.
Alex shook his head no, not uttering a single sound.
“Don’t tell anyone and get in with me, you look fit enough to work, a little bodybuilder. You’re a child that does a lot of sport, aren’t you?’
Alex moved his head again in reply, this time nodding in agreement.
Because of his young age, Alex was assigned to carry extra-delicate merchandise that the porters transferred from the train car to the belly of the ship. He was employed as a porter of alcohol cases. They had assumed the child still doesn’t drink alcohol and therefore, all the bottles will be moved by him intact.
The foremen had formed a group of ten men. Five were placed in the train car and five next to the ship deck. The laborers placed a conveyor belt between them and the guys in the car loaded it with cartons filled with six bottles of fine wine, imported from the countries of the west, such as Hungarian Riesling, Romanian Romanesti and Bulgarian Zlote Piaski.
The remaining five loaded their shoulders with cases that arrived on the conveyor belt, keeping a safe distance between them so they would be able to collect them in time and quickly load them on their shoulder. While walking into the belly of the ship with a case on his shoulder and close to his ear, Alex would hear the clinking sounds of bottles knocking against each other, clink-clank, clank-clink, rattle-rattle… the sounds testified to the fact the bottles had remained whole and would safely go on their way down the river.
“Give me five, kid. Strong five, don’t be afraid!” at the end of the work day, the foreman offered Alex his hand and seemed very pleased with him.
Alex didn’t hesitate, slapped the extended hand and was rewarded with twenty five rubles in his hand.
For many years later, every time Alex would need some cash money or simply to blow off some steam, he would return to the “Norilsk Baza” port to work as a porter.
His young life flowed as smoothly as ice-skating, the daily training and the Sunday games in a stadium full of enthusiastic spectators. The rejection letter he received when he had tried to get admitted to the university was to be expected. Who even studied back then? But Vera, in her wrath, took a large saw and destroyed his skating shoes and his Swedish hockey stick that were his whole world.
He felt as though she had chopped all of him into little useless pieces.
“You are not going to play any more hockey! Not now, not ever! Do you hear me?!” she screamed at him insanely. “You are going to study a useful profession in the university, not like your gentile friends! We’re Jewish, so we must have a real profession! Do you hear me?!”
He heard her. He was a strong young man and yet, he still surrendered to his mother, as always.
“Why are you listening to your mother? Just toss her as far as you can, you owe her nothing, you are your own master now. You can’t leave us like that, you’re an important player in our team,” said his co-players and his coach. But despite all their protests, Alex had parted from hockey forever. He maintained his physical fitness religiously, and would start the day early in the morning, even if it was freezing or raining. He would jump out of his warm bed and wash his face, brush his teeth and go out for a jog. He ran an hour or two until his lungs and head were purified and he felt ready to begin his day.
Chapter 8
A World of Ice from the Bird’s Eye View
Even though he had not been admitted to the university and did not continue his sports career, Alex managed to acquire an occupation that matched his skills. Thanks to his pilot father’s connections, he was admitted to a quick course at the flight academy and employed as a copilot in a government company.
In the two years in which his pilot career had lasted, Alex had flown to the remote areas of frigid Siberia to distribute bread to the Inuit people. The planes were manned by crews of three to four pilots in an Antonov An-2 biplane with a single propeller engine. They flew at a low altitude above the glaciers until they noticed a collection of igloos on the frozen ground. They threw a sack of Russian dried bread, assistance from the authorities, so the Inuit people would have something to eat. These were lumps of bread that had undergone a recycling and drying process in the ovens of city bakeries. The bread surplus that had remained in the factories’ dining rooms and those that had remained on store shelves were sent back to the bakeries to undergo an additional drying process. In this preserved manner, they were remade and were good to eat for a long time. Alex and his friends flew 1,600 miles north, all the way to the city of Tura, capital of Evenkia, country of the Evenk people situated on the northeast of the Yenisei River. Tura was a colony with a single street next to which the Bolshevik government had built two-story houses and warehouses to store merchandise unique to the area. Mines were dug deep into the frozen earth, containing deposits of precious natural resources, such as diamonds, gold and rare metals. There were farms for the cultivation of northern animals and the processing of their
furs, deer, gray and white northern foxes and seals. An airport was built in Tura, with an organized terminal and a hotel, in which Alex and his friends would stay between flights. Large cargo aircraft regularly landed tons of essential food products, mining equipment and laborer teams. Every few months, the mine laborers, engineers, archeologists, cooks and other staff members were replaced. Those were official gold seekers sponsored by the Russian government. At the hotel restaurant, they were entitled to receive three meals a day. Alex used only two of them, breakfast and lunch. He didn’t like to be in the only restaurant in “the city” during the evening hours. Men from all over the area would crowd the place every evening to celebrate with vodka bottles the end of a cold and arduous Siberian miners’ work day. Alex was too young, only seventeen, and of exilic Jewish blood. He didn’t want to get mixed up with the elderly drunkards and the Inuit girls that accompanied them.
The airport terminal stood on top of the hill, and beneath it laid the settlement, as if it was extended on the open palm of a hand. The main road descended from the airport terminal all the way to the great river called Nizhnyaya Tunguska and crossed Tura in the middle. Pathways diverged from both sides of the road leading to the residential houses. Toward nightfall, Alex would go for a two and a half mile walk down the road to the other end of the large settlement, the capital of the Evenks. The Evenks are an Inuit race that resides in that area of Siberia. He used to have his own private dinner in a pastoral environment next to the river. At the end of the pathway stood the only grocery store in town. Throughout the day, farmers would bring fresh milk and fish they had netted that very same day. He would sit on a rock next to the grocery store with a two-liter jar of warm milk straight from the udders of a cow, milk that had been brought there a short while earlier, and a fresh loaf of bread baked in the store. In the fresh air, he dined at his leisure, tearing slices from the still steaming loaf of bread and sipping the milk. Inuit children would gather round him and curiously watched the strange guest who had invaded their territory and took so much delight in their simple food.