Jacob's Ladder

by Ludmila Ulitskaya

  “And the baby? Four! No, five! We forgot Sonyetka. She drags her into the water.”

  “Tengiz, this is frightening. Terrifying, even.”

  “And rightly so! It must be terrifying. This is not your everyday Ukrainian Viy! It’s Russian. It is terrifying!”

  “No, no. I can’t do this. I don’t want to!” Nora objected.

  “Did you want a light at the end of the tunnel? Well, there’s no light there. Everything is dark and dismal.”

  “And the boy? Fedya? The innocent boy, Fedya?” Nora said, grasping for some ray of hope.

  “Fine, the finale is yours. Go ahead and do it. I’ll watch and see what kind of heavenly kingdom you salvage out of this story,” Tengiz said, agitated. “Come on! Do you remember Shostakovich’s finale? You can’t outdo him.”

  “That has no bearing on what we do. We’re not staging an opera. Besides, I’m against the idea of using Shostakovich’s music. Also, if you take three minutes of music, there will be no end of trouble over copyright issues. It would be far better to commission some up-and-coming young composer.”

  They argued for a long time over the finale. Right up until the moment when they had to submit the play, they couldn’t agree on an ending. Their creative kinship had never been put to such a test before. Ultimately, they had to call upon the artistic director to make the final decision. And Nora’s idea for a finale, with butterflies, won out. Tengiz accepted it, after much resistance. From a two-story structure—at Nora’s insistence—the convicts emerge, into real water poured into flat zinc troughs. They wend their way down to the shore, all linked together by hairy black threads from the legs of the invisible spider, and, like black dirigibles, four cigar-shaped figures shrouded in black hang in the air from above.

  The people look up, craning their necks, to see an enormous, iridescent black metal spider with a gleaming cross in the middle of its belly and dangling bent legs, each with three claws on the end. Everyone freezes, attending to some faint, modulating sounds. One of the figures begins to crack. The sound grows louder. Out of the crack flits an enormous white butterfly … And another … A flute begins to play a tentative Eastern melody …

  They stayed in Budapest for three months. The technical side of the play proved to be difficult. Tengiz rehearsed with a translator, pretty Tanya, the Russian wife of a Hungarian journalist. They ate together in a café during the breaks. Nora was jealous but refused to show it. From morning till night, she was in the workshops, making miracles. The head of the set construction department came to hate her. Old, conceited, hailing from some aristocratic family or other, not used to being prevailed upon like an inexperienced novice—first she needed this, then she needed that … But after the opening night, he went up to Nora and kissed her hand. Success. A great success.

  Tengiz also went up to her afterward and told her to stop being an idiot: “You can’t fool fate.” And everything returned to the way it had been. In mid-December, they went back to Moscow. Nora didn’t make up the bed in Yurik’s room anymore.

  He decided to spend the New Year—the year 2000—with Nora. The Second Chechen War was in full swing. The siege of Grozny began on December 26. Nora had not been able to get through to Yurik on the phone for three months. Tom kept telling her Yurik wasn’t home. She got the impression that he didn’t live there anymore. Martha, whom she called about once a week, had heard no word from Yurik, either.

  Nora and Tengiz spent the New Year with a boisterous group of actors. The Vlasovs, who had never really recovered from their son Fedya’s death—they carried their sorrow inside of them—were there as well. Every time Natasha Vlasov saw Nora, she seized the opportunity to whisper in her ear: “Don’t let Yurik come back. I beg you, don’t bring Yurik back here.”

  In the beginning, everyone made merry. Then the merriment gave way to political prognostication. Yeltsin, sitting in front of the Christmas tree, announced he was retiring. They argued about whether that was bad or good. They argued about when the war in Chechnya might end, and whether a war in Georgia would begin. They argued about whether the twenty-first century had already begun, or whether they had to hold out for another year. The new millennium had begun, but no one expected any good to come of it.

  37

  Uzun-Syrt—Stalingrad Tractor Plant

  (1925–1933)

  The boy forgot everything. The sea’s elemental might, the ruins of the ancient Genoese fortress, the unprecedented taste of fruit and the shish kebab he would love for the rest of his life, the cypress trees, cheburek mutton pies, Tatars, Greeks, boats, horse carts—all of it paled in comparison with the vision of gliders floating above the long mountain of Uzun-Syrt in Koktebel. They didn’t take Genrikh to see the gliders, however. Instead, they went to visit someone named Max. They all sat in a big room around a fat, bearded old man wearing a white sheet, his head bound up with a rope. They had a long, incomprehensible conversation. Another old man, gaunt, with a large nose, spoke about psychoanalysis, and the first fellow, the fat one, remained silent, sometimes nodding his head and smiling. Genrikh grew faint with impatience, because he had noticed the wonderful flying machines when they were entering the village, and now he wanted only one thing—to run as fast as his legs would carry him to the mountain that released them into the atmosphere. He tugged on the hem of Marusya’s skirt, grabbed her by the hand, and, finally, crumpling over and wrinkling his face up like a little monkey, broke into silent sobs. Marusya stood up, excused herself, and, taking him by the hand, followed behind him.

  Genrikh, letting go of her hand, almost rolled down the stairs and rushed toward the mountain from which the flying machines seemed to be taking off. Marusya ran after him, shouting for him to stop, but he couldn’t hear her. He very soon tired, and slowed his pace. Marusya caught up to him and walked beside him, not saying a word. As a Froebel Miss, a specialist in childhood education, she felt herself to be a pedagogical failure. She had no choice but to follow after her son, however, without stopping. She understood that she shouldn’t say anything at the moment—she was too annoyed and upset. Genrikh had spoiled the visit she had so long dreamed about.

  Max Voloshin was one of those who a decade earlier—in another lifetime, which had passed away leaving barely a trace—had written with enthusiasm about Rabenek, about the studio of movement in which Marusya’s curtailed career as a “barefoot dancer” had begun. Marusya very much wanted to turn the conversation back to those times, to allude to her own involvement in that refined art form. Instead of having the conversation she knew she would happily recall for the rest of her life, she found herself scrambling up a mountain to God knew where, chasing after her unruly and troublesome—yes, troublesome!—child, to see gliders.

  It turned out to be quite far away. Marusya suggested that they return to the mountain the next day, early in the morning, but Genrikh did not intend to give up. He was consumed with excitement.

  Yes, Jacob was right, a thousand times over, when he said, watching the repulsive tantrums accompanied by screaming, kicking, and thrashing about on the floor, which Genrikh had indulged in regularly since about the age of four: “Marusya, this isn’t epilepsy, it’s something completely different. It is a conflict between will and reality. He has an intense desire to realize some childish nonsense that we are preventing. When he is faced with a real problem or task, this energy will be invested in overcoming actual problems. Sublimation is a magnificent thing.”

  In their family, this word was repeated often.

  It was very hot. The dusty, stony road was burning hot. She was so thirsty that even the back of her throat was dry. Marusya’s head felt light, as though she might fall into a faint at any moment. But she couldn’t allow herself that weakness, or luxury, and she steeled herself against it. Her son, limping a bit in stiff sandals that had rubbed his feet raw, walked on ahead, decisive and single-minded.

  No one was waiting for them on the mountaintop, but there were a few dozen people there. They were all stroking
and probing the glider, as a veterinarian does with a large animal. Genrikh melted into the crowd immediately. Though no one chased him away, they didn’t pay any attention to him, either. A few other boys were hovering around, too. Marusya stepped gingerly around the dry wormwood bushes in the shadow of the tarpaulin hangar. A sharp, bitter scent wafted upward: wormwood, sage, thyme … She sat down on dry, odorous earth.

  Everything swam before her eyes. She didn’t lose consciousness, but dropped out of reality for a time. Then she opened her eyes and saw, yawning below her, a serpentine valley, Tatar hamlets clinging to the slopes, grazing goats, cliffs of the Kara Dag Mountain, and a glider, soaring in the clear blue air. And she was happy.

  She approached a group of people who were watching the glider’s flight and met the eyes of one of them—someone wearing civilian dress, but with a military bearing and the stern expression of an officer, and a mustache in the Caucasian style. She addressed him in an animated, upbeat manner: “Comrade! Could you help us to get back to Koktebel from here? We are so very tired, having climbed all the way up the mountain.”

  The comrade turned around.

  “The flights are all finished for the day. Someone is coming to fetch us in half an hour. If you wait a bit, we can give you a lift.”

  Genrikh didn’t see her. He had wormed his way into a group of local boys and was chattering away with them, waving his arms around with enthusiasm. Half an hour later, snorting and spitting, a dusty truck rolled up. The boys immediately forgot about the glider and crowded around the truck. Marusya pulled her straggling son out of the noisy crowd.

  “Do you want to ride in the truck?”

  Oh, joy! The plainly dressed military man proffered Marusya his arm, and she jumped lightly into the back. Marusya smiled seductively: “Could you drop us off at Max’s?” The man’s face broke into a broad smile; he had immediately guessed that the woman was one of their own, a kindred spirit. He was one of their own, too: the grandson of Ivan Aivazovsky, the great Russian artist. But Marusya didn’t know this, and would never learn it. He got in next to the driver. About ten people packed into the back of the truck. Genrikh was about to make a scene, demanding to sit in the front seat, too. But here Marusya put her foot down, and calmly summoned up her dormant pedagogical skills. “We can always get out and walk. Is that what you want?” He most certainly did not.

  Five days later, Marusya and her son were back in Moscow. Jacob Ossetsky met his family at the station. His reddish, neatly shorn mustache on a clean-shaven face, fresh haircut, proper suit from a former way of life, the bouquet of purple asters in one hand and his briefcase in the other, distinguished him from the rest of the slovenly crowd of welcomers. He had missed his family terribly, but on the whole was satisfied with the time away from them. During a month and a half of loneliness, he had written a handbook on statistics for communications workers and two articles for economics journals, and had begun to write a story about his life in the army, which he struggled to finish.

  Marusya, wearing an elegant broad-brimmed hat and a linen dress with Ukrainian embroidery around the collar, appeared on the steps of the train. Wriggling out from under her hand, which had reached for a railing to steady her descent, a swarthy-looking Genrikh jumped down onto the platform first, swiveling his head with his newly long curls. When he saw his father, he made a rush for him, shouting: “Papa! We saw the gliders! Papa! I’m going to be a glider pilot when I grow up! Papa! Have you ever flown in a glider?”

  Not wanting to put a damper on his enthusiasm, his father said that it was more complicated than he thought. It required not only physical training, but the knowledge of many subjects: physics, geography, meteorology … even foreign languages, because the first glider pilots were foreigners—Chinese and Arabs in ancient times, and, in the modern world, Germans and Frenchmen. And there were many articles he would have to read. And a lot to learn.

  “For example, did you know that today, of all days, the pilot Gromov is trying to make the first flight from Peking to Tokyo? How many kilometers do you think he will fly?”

  “A thousand!” Genrikh shouted.

  “You’re off by half. Two thousand,” his father said. “I’ll bring you today’s paper, and we’ll read about it. You can read it yourself.”

  Marusya stood behind her son, who was dangling around his father. Jacob smiled, nodded at her, and even winked slightly. After he had gently loosened Genrikh’s grip, he embraced Marusya and whispered in her ear: “Silly girl, my sweet silly girl I love so much!”

  He grabbed the suitcase and the portable bedding, and they proceeded to the square, where Jacob had hired a horse cab. Genrikh whined that he wanted to go in a motorized taxi, but there were none to be seen. He pouted, stamping his foot on the ground and digging in his heels, but his father scooped him up, lifting him slightly off the ground, then dropped him down again, saying, “Next time!”

  During those years, the entire country was in the grip of an aviation craze. This was a reflection of government policy—overnight industrialization, and collectivization just around the corner—and swept the country like a storm. The best engineers and designers worked in powerful research labs and institutes, creating new models of airborne vehicles of all kinds. A paramilitary organization for the masses (the Society for Promotion of the Defense, Aviation, and Chemical Development of the USSR) was established, and later reorganized several times. Technology centers for children and youths opened all over the country, along with many model-airplane clubs. From nine years of age, like a little speck of dust, Genrikh was swept up in this current of mass enthusiasm. The boy succumbed to this wholesale mania for aviation, and, like a glider pilot, floated in its midst. This moment marked the fundamental renunciation of his search for an individual, personal path, which had been so important to his parents. For the first time, he felt the happiness of blending into the masses, of feeling at one with the surrounding world.

  His former favorite toys—building blocks and construction sets, the results of the joint project between Nadezhda Krupskaya and Marusya, which had not borne fruit—now only irritated Genrikh. But, of course, the whole world was flying through the air, cutting turns and spirals and sideways twists, and he was still playing with children’s toys. He dived headfirst into the mass hobby of model-airplane making, waiting for the time when he would be big enough to get behind the controls of a real flying machine. And, even better, the controls of a machine gun! To fly and to shoot—those were his two big dreams. The favorite dreams of an entire generation.

  Jacob made great efforts to push his son’s interests in a cultural direction. He lectured him on the first dreams of flying—from Icarus to Leonardo’s inventions. He gave him books by Jules Verne to read, because balloon flights and trips to the moon also spoke to Genrikh’s imagination. The boy began to get good grades in school, at least in the subjects that had something to do with his chosen profession. Jacob taught him German, and the boy didn’t seem to mind too much.

  Alas, his father couldn’t impart to his son what he so stubbornly resisted—Genrikh was completely indifferent to the world culture that Jacob so admired and valued. Still, Jacob taught his son how to work in libraries, how to use the card catalogue to find the information he needed, and to discriminate between what was useful to him and what was superfluous.

  By the age of fifteen, Genrikh had become fully defined as a person. He had outlived his interest in gliders and model airplanes, and had joined, and then quit, a parachuting club. Now he had his heart set not on a career as a pilot, but on the serious profession of engineering in the field of airplane construction. He was one of many thousands of such young enthusiasts.

  Meanwhile, Jacob had been making a successful career in the VSNKh, the Supreme Council for National Economy. The problem of finding an apartment was resolved from the very beginning—the marvelous room on Povarskaya was a remarkable acquisition during the housing crisis of those years. They had bought a bookcase, a desk, and, finally, a pi
ano—an old-fashioned upright with a wonderful sound—the last instrument in Jacob’s life that he truly owned. In a very few years, he made a name for himself in the world of economists, scientists, and scholars, gave lectures, wrote articles, and changed jobs several times, in search of himself. He published the book he had written, The Logic of Management, which contained many penetrating and inopportune ideas and thoughts.

  Marusya, who understood very little about sophisticated sciences, somehow sensed, with a woman’s intuition, the danger the book posed for their lives. Jacob was oblivious to this. He was in charge of the Department of Statistics at the VSNKh, developing what seemed to be unprecedented subjects and fields—industrial geography and culture. He wrote descriptions of all the enterprises in the regions, their histories, their economic characteristics. In fact, this particular branch of economic geography had been all but forgotten for two centuries, since the time of Lomonosov. Jacob, describing and annotating already defunct manufactures, compared them with new enterprises with future prospects, scientifically developed and adapted to the ways of life in a small region, taking account of the specificities of geography and the local population. To give Marusya her due, her intuitions and her sense of unease about Jacob’s interests did not mislead her; the entire country of the Soviets was walking in step, but he had strayed off somewhere into the sidelines.

  By the spring of 1928, the Shakhty case was under way. More than fifty people who worked in the mines in the Donbass region and the Head Mining Directorate of the VSNKh were accused of “wrecking” or sabotage, and then of espionage. The trial lasted for less than two months. Of those accused, thirty confessed to the crime, and five of these were executed. Jacob knew one of those executed, from Kharkov, and couldn’t believe he was guilty of such a crime.

  Another event occurred at the time, in their own family. Jacob’s father, who was working as a manager of the milling company that had once belonged to him, was arrested in Kiev. Although it had not yet been announced, this was the end of the NEP period.* Jacob considered this to be a precursor of economic catastrophe.