The Big Green Tent

by Ludmila Ulitskaya

  Then the coffin was removed to Donskoi Crematorium. The secretary didn’t accompany it, prevented by the infirmities of age. The coffin was placed on a special pedestal, and at this height Antonina Naumovna’s gray face, with its sunken mouth and prominent nose, looked like it was made of cardboard. Music played until she had sunk through an opening in the floor, and the doors to the subterranean realm folded shut.

  Kostya held his arm around his mother and could feel through her coat how narrow her shoulders were, how small she was, and how infinitesimal the span of a human life was—even a life as long as his grandmother’s. And how sad was the funeral of a person whom no one loved, or pitied …

  They threw her away like an old felt boot on a garbage heap, Kostya thought bitterly. He acknowledged that he hadn’t loved his grandmother, either.

  After the coffin was consigned to the artificial underworld, Ari Lvovich pressed Olga’s and Kostya’s hands and said that if they wished to submit a request for material assistance, he would see to it that it landed on the right desk.

  After the cremation, it would be two weeks before they could pick up the urn.

  Why can’t she go into the ground right away? Kostya wondered. Who knows where she’ll be for the next two weeks? It’s like they’ll be taking her to a left-luggage room.

  * * *

  Olga invited everyone home to a wake for the deceased. Her daughter-in-law, Lena, had rushed off early to tend to the small children. Ari Lvovich considered it his duty to be in attendance until the late evening, and he opened the door of the bus, admitting the dreary women. Kostya got in last. He had wanted to sit with his mother, but she was already seated next to the newly arrived aunt. The aunt was younger than Antonina Naumovna, but she had similar features and a sharp nose. Ari Lvovich looked out the window. He had a lot to think about.

  Olga had set the table before leaving home. Her mother’s body had been taken directly to the morgue after she died, and Olga had had plenty of time to put the house in order, airing out all the rooms. Even after three days had passed, however, the smell of medicine still overpowered the smell of resin and floor polish.

  They all sat down at the long, oval table, which had been restored by Afanasy Mikhailovich, and Olga, placing her clean hands on the rough linen tablecloth, suddenly felt a pang of longing for her father. She remembered his fleshy nose, his slightly protruding upper lip, his boyish seriousness when he was busy with his woodworking at the dacha, and the smell of furniture polish and wood shavings that always clung to him. This was toward the end of his life, when he was already retired. Because of her own foolishness, that whole mess at the university … Her mother had been beside herself with fury, and had screamed in rage; her father, impassive, his eyes closed, had observed a strict silence. He had remained silent—and just as silently had gone into retirement.

  “Father, Father,” Olga whispered.

  Tamara, who was sitting next to her, heard. A perceptive soul, she understood the words in her own way. She whispered:

  “Yes, Olga. I also think that your parents have found each other there and are reunited.”

  Ari Lvovich, examining the valuable furnishings restored by Afanasy Mikhailovich with a trained eye, revised his estimation of the family’s status. Empire furniture was fashionable in prosperous households, and he hadn’t expected to see such rarities in the home of the deceased, a simple Party functionary. Very, very interesting. Holding back just to be sure that no one more significant would take the initiative, he stood up:

  “Let us drink, according to old custom, to dear Antonina Naumovna. Don’t clink glasses, don’t clink glasses!”

  Everyone drank. Kostya took a sip, then put down his glass. He didn’t like vodka. He would have preferred wine, but no one offered him any.

  Olga drank her glass and grew tipsy almost immediately. The warmth from the alcohol rose to her head, then dropped to her feet, and she seemed to go soft and limp. She sat, resting her haggard cheek on her palm. Her freckles grew more vivid, and her face grew rosy and more youthful. Her hair, which had fallen out completely after her long course of chemotherapy, was growing back again. It was new, fresh growth that even curled above her forehead a bit, and the color—the dark, lustrous amber of Easter eggs dyed with onion skins—was the same as it had been before the terrible treatment.

  Her friend Tamara, surprised by her new loveliness, rejoiced: Olga had risen up again, she had revived after her grave illness. And she also thought: Antonina Naumovna took Olga’s illness into herself. These were Tamara’s new thoughts, flowing seamlessly from her Orthodox mindset. Now she no longer viewed all the movements of life, the turns and twists of fate, as random or fortuitous, but as though they were filled with meaning, unequivocally purposeful and wise.

  Olga’s thoughts moved in another direction altogether: If she had left with Ilya, who would have been there to bury her mother? But now, after her parents had both died and Kostya had married, it was just the time to leave. How much longer would she have to wait until she and Ilya were together again?

  Valentina, Antonina Naumovna’s sister, sat timidly off to the side. Her appearance was not exactly provincial and backward—just somewhat homely and simple. She lived in Protvino, sixty miles from Moscow, a scientific research town. And she was not at all the cleaning lady or housekeeper she resembled, but a respected biologist with a Ph.D. Olga did not know this, however. She only recalled that her mother had not had a very high regard for her, and had spoken, not without mockery, about the sheep to which her sister had devoted her whole life. And this was true. Valentina had graduated from a veterinary college. But her older sister, a big Party boss, clearly viewed this with contempt.

  Valentina was seated next to Olga. She looked neither to the left nor to the right; her eyes remained fixed on her plate. Suddenly, she turned to her niece and said, “I’m going to leave soon, Olga. I’m spending the night here in town, with a girlfriend of mine. But I’ve brought something to give you. It’s our family…”

  This took Olga by surprise, but she stood up from the table and led her aunt into her mother’s study. Her mother had spent the better part of her life here, sleeping seldom and working long hours, writing about weavers, carders, and milkmaids, drafting reports and speeches, composing official orders and reprimands. She once wrote a novel for which she almost received the Stalin Prize. The ancient typewriter with its faux leather cover, which the writer lovingly called “the martyr,” stood in the middle of the table like a tiny coffin. It was an Underwood. Next to it stood an iron receptacle for writing utensils depicting a muscular laborer, a bust of Tolstoy, and a photograph of herself—the most flattering picture ever taken of her: a girl in a leather jacket, her lips firmly compressed.

  Antonina had not permitted any of her husband’s antique furniture in her study. Everything was from the Stalin era. The massive objects even bore small metal tags in their intimate folds, attesting to their origins at the state distribution center. The writer had also died on the leather government-issue divan.

  After her mother died, Olga promptly removed the mattress from the divan, and Kostya took it to the dump. She threw away the medicine bottles and paraphernalia. All that was left was the smell.

  Valentina Naumovna entered her sister’s room and was surprised at how uninhabited it looked, though she kept her surprise to herself. There were three official portraits on the wall: a large one of Lenin with a log, and two smaller ones, of Stalin and Dzerzhinsky. She sat on the edge of the leather divan and placed her briefcase neatly across her lap.

  Mama had the very same briefcase, Olga noted. Her aunt was shorter than her mother, but she had the same long nose and desiccated appearance. She was dressed in a similar fashion—a worn-out sweater over a gray blouse, and a skirt covered in cat hair.

  I should give her Mama’s clothes—her fur, her raincoat, Olga thought.

  “Olga, I really don’t know whether your mother would approve of this … most likely she wouldn’t. But I
’ve decided to give you the family photographs I’ve managed to save.”

  Well, that’s a solemn beginning … oh, and shoes, too. The fur-lined boots Mama brought back from Yugoslavia fifteen years ago—I can’t forget to give her those.

  Meanwhile, Valentina fiddled with the lock on the briefcase, and then extracted from an envelope a diminutive packet wrapped in newsprint.

  “This is, so to speak, our family archive—everything that has survived.” She carefully unfolded each layer of the newsprint, one after the other, until the photographs were visible. Then she stood up and laid out one cardboard-framed picture from a pre-Revolutionary photography studio and two faded amateur photos.

  “I’ve written on the back, very lightly in pencil, who they are, and when…” She gently smoothed over the photograph glued to the cardboard. The other photos had rolled up into a tube, and she pressed them flat. “If I don’t give them to you and Kostya now, there will be no successors to remember our forebears.”

  Forebears? Successors? What is she talking about? Mama told me that she had been orphaned when she was little. She didn’t know her relatives; the ones she could remember had all either perished or simply died off.

  “This was our father, Naum Ignatievich, with our mother. Your grandfather and grandmother, that is.” Her gnarled old woman’s finger tapped the edge of the photograph. In an armchair sat a priest with a mane of hair down to his shoulders and beard almost to his waist. He had black eyebrows that looked almost as though they had been pasted on. Behind his chair stood a pretty woman in a dark headscarf, tied simply, in the style of the common folk, and wearing a fine silk frock, decorated around the collar with what looked like beadwork. Next to the father were three boys, and with the mother, two little tykes. She held one toddler in her arms. The second was holding the hand of a dark-eyed young girl with a stern, matronly expression on her face.

  “Our mother, Tatiana Anisimovna—her maiden name was Kamyshina—was also from a clerical family. Her father was the inspector of the Nizhegorodsky Seminary. All of us, from the very beginning, were in the Church—grandfathers, great-grandfathers, uncles.”

  “Mama never told me…” Olga whispered, her voice faltering.

  “That’s why. They were all priests,” her aunt said, nodding, still pointing at the sepia cardboard picture. “My father, Naum Ignatievich, looked like his mother, Praskovya. She had dark eyes and black hair. She was of Greek origin, also from a line of priests. After Praskovya, the line was ruined and the Greek strain of black hair and eyes appeared.”

  “Mama told me nothing about this.”

  “Of course she didn’t. She couldn’t. She was afraid. I’ll tell you everything I know. When Antonina was little, she always helped around the house. She was a good girl. At first she was the only girl among five brothers. There were three older boys and two younger ones. She took care of the younger ones. Andrei and Panteleimon both took after our mother, with their light hair. And they both died in the same year, in exile. She was ten years older than me—I was born in 1915. I wasn’t born yet when this picture was taken. But I remember how your mother would feed me and dress me when I was little. She was very good, very kind,” her aunt repeated several times.

  Valentina smoothed over the formal portrait. The amateur photographs had rolled up into a tube again.

  “In 1920, our father, Naum Ignatievich, who was a priest at the church in Kosmodemyansk, was sent into exile.” She let her finger rest on the girl with the stern face, whose hand was placed on the shoulder of the small child. “I don’t really remember my parents. Most of what I know, Aunt Katya has told me. I saw my father for the last time in 1925, when he returned from exile. By that time Mama had already died. Aunt Katya took me to see him.”

  “Who is Aunt Katya?” Olga looked at her mother’s sister and realized suddenly that she was not at all dowdy and shabby. She was quiet and calm, and her diction was very correct, even impeccable.

  “Aunt Katya, Mama’s sister, Ekaterina Anisimovna Kamyshina, took me in as a small child, after our parents were sent into exile. Pyotr and Seraphim were already big lads; they renounced the old ways immediately, and weren’t exiled. Nikolai went with Father. By that time he had already finished seminary and was serving as deacon in a small settlement on the Volga. He’s wearing a cassock in the photograph; he was still studying. He was ordained, became a priest, then disappeared in the labor camps. I don’t know what year it was, I don’t know anything more about him. Katya had lost touch with him. The two younger boys, Andrei and Panteleimon, went into exile with our parents. Both of them died.”

  “And Mama?” Olga had already guessed what she was about to hear.

  “Antonina followed her brothers’ example. She left home at fifteen. Pyotr and Seraphim had already left for Astrakhan before her. They all renounced their father the priest when they were there. They put a notice in the newspaper saying that now Lenin was their father, and the Party was their mother.”

  The girl in the leather jacket looked out on them from her frame, confirming that this was true.

  “What became of Grandfather?”

  “Five years in exile in the Arkhangelsk region; after that he returned to Kosmodemyansk. In 1928 they sent him to prison, and then released him one more time. In 1934, he disappeared for good. Katya was never able to trace his whereabouts. Katya and I went to see your mother in 1937. We begged her on bended knee to intervene, to help find out where he was. But Antonina said that there was nothing to find out.”

  There was a polite knock at the door, which stood ajar, and Ari Lvovich poked his head in to say good-bye. In the living room, everyone was talking quietly at the table. With Zoya, the neighbor, Tamara discussed the mysterious illness that had abandoned Olga and had migrated to Antonina Naumovna. Zoya asked Kostya about Ilya. Despite being on very friendly terms with the neighbor, whenever the subject of her ex-husband was broached, Olga pretended that she hadn’t heard the question.

  Olga thanked the funeral director. He nodded deferentially. When he was already by the door, tipping his lush fur hat, he bowed with aristocratic aplomb and said in a dignified manner:

  “At your service, Olga Afanasievna. Always at your service.”

  Brainless idiot. As though his services are in such high demand, she thought. While she was walking down the hall, she was bracing herself to hear more of what she could already anticipate: exile, arrest, persecution, execution.

  But Aunt Valentina said nothing of the kind. She unrolled the two faded photographs: one showed an old man with an oversize jacket hanging off him. He was standing by a wicker fence with two earthenware pots affixed to its posts, and his face was such that it took Olga’s breath away. On the other one, he appeared again, this time in a black cassock. He was sitting at a table covered with a tablecloth. In the middle of the table was a small white mound of Easter curd cheese, and a plate with three dark eggs.

  “This was from Easter of 1934. Evidently he had served at Easter matins.”

  They sat and mused silently. Then Valentina wrapped everything up in the newsprint and put it back in the envelope.

  “Olga, I have no one else to leave these to. You and your Kostya are the only ones left from our family. I really don’t know you at all. Perhaps you don’t want these photographs at all. I’ve saved them my whole life. First Aunt Katya had them, then me.”

  “I’ll take them, of course, Aunt Valentina. Thank you. How terrible it all was, though!” Olga took the envelope from her knotted old hands and her aunt immediately began getting ready to leave.

  “Well, I must be going. I’ve stayed longer than I had planned already. I have to make it to Teply Stan.”

  “Aunt Valentina, what about your older brothers? How did they fare?”

  “Pyotr took to drink. Seraphim disappeared without a trace in the war. Pyotr, it seems, had a family, but his wife left him, taking the daughter with her. I don’t know whether Seraphim left anyone behind when he went to war or not.”


  “What a story. But come back to visit us. I’d like to give you some of Mama’s things…” And she faltered, because the expression on Aunt Valentina’s face was such that it was impossible to bring up the Yugoslavian boots. “I’ll call you, I’ll be in touch,” Olga murmured, trying to kiss her aunt’s cheek, and kissing her gray knitted cap instead, as she led her to the front door. “We’ll certainly see each other again, and you will tell me everything you can remember.”

  “Yes, yes, child, of course. Only don’t be angry with your mother. Those were terrifying times. Terrifying. Indeed, all of us were orphans. Now we all live so well…”

  Kostya stood behind his mother, unable to understand why she had suddenly lost her nerve and broken down in tears; the whole day she had shown such admirable self-control. Olga went back into her mother’s study. Again she laid out the photographs, which seemed to have floated up out of the abyss of oblivion.

  Her mother was no more—her mother, who had long ago turned into a brittle shell of a human being, into a pile of sterile habits and mechanical phrases. And in her place there was now a stranger with a beautiful, expressive face, who had survived betrayal by his adolescent offspring, the death of his wife and his little children, prison, and who knows what else. The dim photograph with the Easter feast opened her eyes. Olga, tears streaming down her face, sat in her mother’s study, undergoing a sea change the likes of which she had never known before. She felt like a shoot, slashed off with a knife, then grafted to the parent tree, which was her grandfather Naum, and all those myriad bearded men, with their long locks of hair, both village and townsmen, scholarly and not especially scholarly priests, their women and children, both good and not especially good. She couldn’t find words to explain the upheaval that was taking place inside her. And Ilya, who would have been able to find the precise words, who would have known how to put everything in its proper perspective, wasn’t there.