My father and the men exchanged a few words. Then an envelope exchanged hands. The men climbed into their shiny car and drove off with my sister in it. I felt confused and frightened. My brother slipped his hand into mine. His hand was rough with mud from cleaning my father’s boots. My father, my brother and I stood and watched the car as it drove on the empty dirt road in a cloud of dust. While my father was still outside I ran into the kitchen through the back door where my mother was peeling potatoes.
‘Where are they taking Anastasia, Mama?’ I cried.
My mother put the knife and the potato down on the table and gestured for me to come nearer. Her eyes were bright with unshed tears and her cheeks were white, waxy and transparent. Bewildered and anxious I went to her. Immediately, she grabbed me and hugged me so tightly her thin bones jagged into my flesh, and the breath was squeezed out of me. Her hands were freezing cold and the top of my shoulder where her chin was pressed in was becoming wet with her tears.
Abruptly, as if she had just remembered herself, she sniffed and put me away from her. ‘Go and play with your dolls,’ she said, wiping her eyes and cheeks on her sleeves.
‘But where have they taken Anastasia?’ I insisted. I could not understand where my sister had gone with the men.
‘Your sister has a new life now,’ she said, her voice hollow with despair, and picking up the knife and the half-peeled potato, resumed her task of making dinner.
‘But where has she gone?’ I persisted. I would never have dared insist with my father, but I knew I could with Mama.
My mother squeezed her eyes shut, the pupils twitching under their purple veined lids. ‘I don’t know,’ she sobbed suddenly.
‘What do you mean?’ I asked.
My mother took a deep breath, her nostrils flaring out. With her eyes tightly shut and gripping the knife and potato so hard that her knuckles showed white she said, ‘Anastasia has been sold. She will never be coming back. Best you go play with your dolls now.’
Her voice was unusually harsh, but that did not deter me. ‘Sold?’ I frowned. My child brain could not comprehend why my sister had to be sold. ‘Why did we sell her, Mama?’
The knife clattered to the ground, the potato fell with a dull thud and rolled under the table. My mother began to rock. Violently. Like a person who has lost her mind. Her body tipping so far back on the stool I was afraid she would topple backwards. Harsh racking sobs came from her. No one would have believed that a woman that small and shriveled up could have inside her such a river of pain and anguish. It flowed out of her relentlessly, quickly and with shocking intensity.
‘My daughter, my daughter,’ she wailed. ‘Oh, Lena, my Lena.’
I was so shocked to see the state my mother was in I didn’t know what to do. I was used to seeing her cry, and I had come to accept her suffering as the way things were, but I had never seen her in this way, with her eyes unfocused and ugly sounds tearing out of her gaping mouth.
Sofia came running into the kitchen. Pushing me out of the way she grabbed my mother’s hysterically swaying body and held it close to her body until the sobs were purged and she became as limp as a rag. Trembling, my mother separated from my sister.
She nodded a few times as if to indicate that she was all right and all was well again. Then she dropped to the floor and, on her hands and knees, found the knife and the potato as we stood, numb and watching. Wordlessly, she resumed peeling her potatoes. Her thin white face was tight with the effort of controlling her emotions.
My mother spent the whole day preparing elaborate dishes for our dinner that night. My sisters had set the table as if it was Christmas or Easter and we took our places silently. My sister’s chair had been taken away and pushed up against the wall. I saw my mother glance at the chair and cover her mouth with her hand.
My father grabbed some schnapps glasses from the shelf and, filling them with vodka, took a glass to Mama She gazed sadly at the glass and dashed the contents down her throat. My father’s eyes found hers and she swallowed hard to get the liquid down. I could hear the sound of her swallowing as clearly as I could hear my heartbeat.
Without Anastasia we began our feast. Except for my father, who ate heartily, everybody else hardly touched their food. We kept our eyes on our plates. Years of being with my father had taught us that both his ‘up’ and ‘down’ moods were equally dangerous and explosive times, when anything could happen.
‘By Saint Nichols, eat,’ my father roared.
We all ate. Even Mama.
My father laughed and called for more vodka. The second course was beet and beef bone soup. My father drank his soup in high spirits.
The main course was roast cock with root vegetables, and the potatoes that Mama had peeled that afternoon. I looked at my father. He seemed oblivious to our frightened faces, our furtive glances at him, and the horror on my mother’s sunken face.
His ears red, and grinning as if he had won something wonderful, he sang, ‘Ne uyesjai golubchick moi’ (Don’t go away, my little pigeon). He seemed an idiot then, but of course, that was only an illusion. My father was a bear killer. A thief of animal souls.
My father helped himself to fruit with shouts of extravagant joy. ‘Slava Bogu!’ (Glory be to God). The drunker and the louder he got, the more silent the table became.
Without warning he slammed his fist on the table. ‘Why the fuck is everybody behaving as if this is a funeral?’ he demanded. ‘For sixteen years I fed that girl. Isn’t it about time she contributed something towards the well-being of this family? We can’t have any permanent drains on our family coffers.’ My father squinted at us all. ‘Is there anybody sitting at this table who disagrees with me?’
Nobody spoke.
His hand crashed down on the table again—plates jumped, a glass overturned. One of my sisters whimpered with fear. His blazing eyes swung around aggressively and landed on me. I realized then that everyone else had kept their heads lowered except me. I held his eyes. For a second something flashed in them but I was too young to understand what that might be.
Then he leaned forward, his entire attention on me. At that moment there was no one else in the room except him and me. I stared into his eyes and realized that nothing lurked there. His eyes were dead and soulless.
‘Am I wrong, Lena?’ he asked softly, with such menace that the atmosphere in the room changed. My father had found his target.
But for some strange reason I was not afraid. He was wrong to sell my sister. He should not even have sold the bear cubs after he shot their mother. I opened my mouth to tell him that, but under the table Nikolai took my hand and clenched it so hard, I cried out instead.
‘Yes, yes, you are right,’ my mother intervened suddenly. Her voice was high and shaky.
My father turned away from me and looked at her. She looked small and hunched, an unworthy opponent to the bear killer, but the horrible tension was broken. A grin crossed his face suddenly and he wagged a finger jovially at her. ‘You do know that your daughter is an unbroken horse, don’t you?’
‘She is only young. She will learn,’ my mother responded quickly. Her voice was firmer than I had ever heard it.
‘She’d better. Unbroken horses are worthless to their owners.’
My mother did a rare thing. She maintained eye contact with him while his mood was uncertain. Maybe because she had been weak and let Anastasia be sold, that night she found it necessary to stand her ground and protect me from my father’s wrath.
*****
We were all tucked up in bed that night when I awakened to the sound of someone at the front door. I hopped over my sisters’ sleeping bodies and looked out of the window, and saw a sight I will never forget as long as I live. In the light of the moon my mother was naked and running away from the house. Her long dark hair was loose and streaming behind her. I could only stare at her ghostly white body in amazement. Then my father ran after her and caught her. Sobbing loudly she curled into a ball in his arms.
G
ently, with great tenderness, he picked her up and carried her back into the house. I never understood the scene I had witnessed. Even now the memory makes me feel guilty as if I had seen something I shouldn’t have. Something private that my mother would not have wanted me to see. I was always aware that she never wanted us to know that she loved my father to the exclusion of everything and everyone else. Even after everything he did. And even though she knew he planned to sell us all one by one.
After that strange feast, all talk of Anastasia was forbidden. The only person I could ever mention her name to was Nikolai and even then we spoke in whispers.
Chapter 3
A year passed. Our family grew more silent. As was the custom in Russia, when someone left, their things were kept carefully until their return. Anastasia’s chair sat against the wall like a silent reminder of our loss.
Two days after I turned eight I saw my mother folding her precious lace, the genuine point d’Alençon with the old and rare pattern. Once when she had lived in a grand house it had graced her bosom. Now it belonged to a vanished world. She placed it carefully onto a piece of tissue. Curiously, I went to her and ran my finger along the intricate pattern.
‘Be careful,’ my mother warned. ‘It is very fragile.’
‘Why are you packing your lace, Mama?’ I whispered. We had all learned to keep our voices low. Other than the sound of the piano when my father was away we had all been reared in pure silence. It was so still and quiet I could hear my father turning the pages of the book he was reading.
The candlelight that illuminated my mother’s face cast deep shadows under her cheekbones and brow. ‘I’m giving it to Sofia. She is going away tomorrow.’
I felt clammy-cold. ‘Has she been sold too?’
My mother looked at me. The seasons had wearied her. She seemed more fragile than the lace. For a moment my childish mind even entertained a fantasy that she was not a real person, only a ghost. The moment was infused with odor of candle wax. We stared at each other in the uncertain light. Her eyes were unblinking wells of pain. Something passed between us. A flickering. You cannot know it unless you have experienced it. I was only a child, but at that moment I was ancient. I understood her.
I wanted to take her into my arms and tell her I would protect her as if she were the child and I were her mother. I would save her. I would take her away from all her pain and suffering. I would kill my father while he slept. But you can’t put your arms around what is already gone. Because at that moment I heard her heart. She was not asking me to kill my father, she was begging me to forgive her. Finally she opened her mouth.
‘Yes, she too has been sold,’ she said flatly.
Her tone made me see red. With all the foolishness of youth I blamed her. How I regret it now. ‘Why?’ I demanded under my breath.
‘It is her fate. There is nothing you or I can do about it.’
‘Where is she going to?’ I asked in a frightened whisper.
‘I don’t know.’ Mother’s voice was listless.
Immediately I blurted out, ‘Will I be sold one day too?’
There was such a long pause; I thought she might not answer me. ‘Yes,’ she said suddenly.
I stared at her. ‘But, Mama, if we all go away who will protect you from Father?’
Her answer stunned me. ‘When you are all gone, I will leave this world.’ The words trembled like a candle flame in a draft. At that moment she reminded me of a precious china bowl. So fragile. It felt as if I was holding my mother in my hands—one careless move and she would shatter. And a flash of fully grown, burning hatred for my father overwhelmed me.
‘I hate Papa,’ I whispered vehemently.
For a moment it was as if I had not spoken or she had not heard me. There was no discernible reaction. And then her eyes flared and she grabbed my shoulders and shook me so hard my teeth rattled.
‘Never let anyone else in this house hear you say that about your father again!’ she whispered fiercely.
I was so shocked I could only nod.
‘Good,’ she said quietly, her fearful eyes darting toward the door.
‘I don’t ever want to leave you, Mama.’
Her face crumpled. ‘When your turn comes you will leave.’
My immediate concern and fear was for my brother. ‘Will I be parted from Nikolai?’
‘Yes.’
Her answer was like stone falling into my soul. I stared at her, horrified. ‘But…’
‘That’s enough now. Don’t tell Nikolai. Don’t tell anyone else. Be strong and brave, little bird. You were born under a lucky star. Somehow all will be well for you. I don’t know how it will be for your brothers and sisters, but for you the sun will shine brightly.’ She gathered me in her arms and kissed me on my forehead.
She tried to hide it, but I had always known that Nikolai and I were her favorites. She loved us the most. We were the golden ones, the ones that took after my father. We were the only ones with gray eyes, fair hair and long limbs.
‘I love you, Mama,’ I said softly.
Her eyes welled up with tears. ‘I don’t deserve your love,’ she said. ‘But I cling to it because the shreds of my sanity are hung on it. I look forward to the day I leave my cowardly deeds behind and pass away.’
That night I woke up in the middle of the night and leaving Nikolai’s warm body went to Sofia. She was awake. She opened her arms and I burrowed into them. Around us my sisters slept peacefully.
‘Sofia,’ I asked. ‘Are you afraid?’
‘No, I’m not. I’ll go and get help. I’ll come back one day and save all of you.’
‘Anastasia didn’t come back.’
‘But I’ll come back. Somehow I’ll find a way to come back.’
‘I’ll miss you.’
‘When you have your feast tomorrow, I want you to eat. I want you to eat a lot. For me, OK? Because I’m just going for a while. I’m definitely coming back.’
‘Should I tell Nikolai to eat a lot too?’
‘Yes, tell him to eat a lot too.’
‘I love you,’ I whispered, and felt a heavy weight in my heart.
‘I love you too,’ she said, and held my hand. Hers was trembling uncontrollably, but she managed to give mine a weak squeeze.
*****
But Sofia did not come back. Her chair joined Anastasia’s. Then Ivana’s chair joined theirs. Alexandra’s and Danilova’s chairs followed. I was eleven years old when my two sisters, Nikolai and I sat around my mother’s bed as she lay dying. Her bedroom was thick with the sick-sweet smell of deterioration. For the first time ever I heard my father ask my mother if he should call a doctor for her, but she shook her head gently and turned her face away from him. She wanted to go. She wanted to leave him. And exit the terrible world she was trapped in. He walked out of the room. I watched him walk out into the living room and simply stand there, immobile and dazed. He looked like the stags he shot.
Her descent was startlingly fast.
Who knows what disease ate her insides or for how long it had lived inside her? It looked as if she had been sucked out from inside. Her face became a solid yellow. She was only forty, but inside her body, all her organs were shutting down one by one, her liver, kidneys, the lungs, the heart. Her breathing slowed until every exhalation became a ghastly choking rattle that exited painfully from her mouth. When I held her reddened and gnarled hand, it was still warm, but she was already gone. I held that hand—the skin had never recovered from being boiled all those years ago—and twisted and re-twisted the cheap ring on her finger, until it became cold.
Father got drunk. He went out into the freezing night and falling on his knees swore at the sky. I stood at the window and saw the white trunks of the birches shining dimly through the dark. I went outside with a blanket. The air I inhaled was so cold it stabbed like a jagged piece of ice in my lungs. He looked up at me. The last time I had looked this deeply into his eyes was at the feast after Anastasia’s departure.
His ey
es were pained hollows in his face. So he was not totally dead inside. Strange, but perhaps he had loved her. I found no love or pity in my heart for him. Not one tiny bit. My heart was as cold as ice. I spread the blanket on his shoulders and left him there. I did that for my mother. It was what she would have done. While she was lying in her bedroom and her soul probably still not yet left, I didn’t want to grieve her. But that was the last thing I would do for him.
We buried my poor sad Mama’s body in a grave that my father and brother dug up at the side of the house. Nobody cried. We were all frozen. With grief and fear. Without my mother I realized that her children were in more danger than ever from my father.
Chapter 4
Two days after her funeral my father took my brother to sleep in his room. That night I awakened to a scream. I listened again and I thought I heard my brother crying. I sprang out of bed. My sister grumbled and, turning over, went back to sleep. I ran to my father’s door and knocked on it.
‘Go to sleep, Lena,’ my father shouted.
At that time I was surprised that my father knew it was me, but now, I know it was because he knew that only I would ever dare to disobey him. It would be no one else knocking on his door at that time of the night.
‘Is Nikolai all right?’ I asked.
For a few ominous seconds the silence stretched. ‘I’m fine, Lena. Go to sleep,’ Nikolai called out, but his voice was trembling and strained.
‘Are you sure?’ I insisted.
‘Yes. Go away,’ he called out, louder and more firmly.
I stood for a few more minutes outside the door fighting with the strong and unreasonable urge to turn the handle and enter my father’s bedroom. I even put my hand on the handle. But the silence inside the room frightened me. I knew I should not enter. I knew my brother did not want me to enter. I thought of my mother running naked in the snow. Somehow I knew this would be similar.
Disfigured Love Page 2