The Russian Century

by George Pahomov

  Electricity was expensive for her, so she managed with a kerosene lamp (and she was not the only one in Petrograd). This Anna Vasil’evna also agreed to sew a wedding dress for my fiancée. Gold for the wedding rings was gath-

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  ered: grandmother Brovtsyn’s old ring, taken form her hand a year ago at her funeral; old dental crowns, and fragments of yet another grandmother’s ring. We were afraid to go to a jeweler’s shop, but there, fortunately, they did not ask for last names and they did not steal the gold. We received beautiful rings. My wife still wears her ring to this day, but I exchanged mine for one-and-a-half kilos of meat from a woman who lived in the forests beyond Lakhta during the siege [of Leningrad].

  Finally, my mother bought a sweet wine for entertaining after the wedding, white bread (at that time we ate only gray or black bread) and a little bit of ham at the Torgsin. There, over the course of several years, we had an account. It was money remitted by a New York insurance agency in gold rubles for my father’s policy, which the Soviet government, fortunately for us, won through a lawsuit in the interests of Russian pre-revolutionary investors and, largely, in its own interests. We were given half (in fact, I think even less). From this half, which was divided again in half, we received some three hundred gold rubles on account at Torgsin and three hundred in Soviet money.

  The account of three hundred gold rubles at Torgsin was at that time enormous capital. Until the end of its existence in 1936, Torgsin sold groceries and materials according to the prices of 1914. Our family lived for four years on little extras of groceries from Torgsin. Otherwise, we would have been starving.

  Toward the evening of June 1, everyone gathered together in the two-room apartment at Lakhta, in the home of Nastas’ia Vasil’evna Gardner: my mother, uncle, sister, who at that time was still a schoolgirl, Elizaveta Ivanovna Shliakova and Aleksei Andreevich Kruglov. Kruglov was a tenant of our Petrograd apartment, a wonderful person in many respects, senior lecturer at the department of organic chemistry of Petrograd University, a brilliantly talented man of the people. We knew him for years, but he never told us where he was from by birth. He probably had good reasons. Most likely he was of well-to-do peasants; the so-called “dekulakized” ones. I remember the enthusiasm with which he mocked Stalin, assuring us that after the title “Sun of All the Land and Workers of the World,” the Caucasus mountain-man would proclaim himself emperor of the Russian proletariat and all adjoining lands. Kruglov always recounted the latest political jokes, as did Elizaveta Ivanovna.

  The time came to go through the forest from Nastas’ia Vasil’evna Gardner’s home to the church. We separated into two parties. One went to the seashore, then along the gulf and there turned through the forest in the direction of the church. The other went to the church straight from the Gardner home through the forest. It was a quiet, bright, northern evening. Motionless, thin clouds stood over the gulf. Water splashed barely audibly on the sandy

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  shore. At nine in the evening we, my mother, my fiancée and I, and my sister, carefully opened the church doors and entered. The priest was already waiting for us. Kruglov, Elizaveta Ivanovna and my uncle arrived after a few minutes. The priest turned the key in the lock.

  On the outside, the church had been covered by boards, painted in a dark green color, and was hardly noticeable among the greenery. The church did not have regular services, but religious rites were conducted there. The priest asked us to show our certificate from the registry office (department of registry of civic status). We did not have it. Then the priest asked us to register immediately after the ceremony. I promised, but I never fulfilled my promise.

  The priest married us as in days of old: my uncle held a crown over my head, and Aleksei Andreevich Kruglov held one over my fiancée’s head. Several candles burned; the evening light of the northern sun still made its way through the stained glass of the church windows. The wedding ceremony is on the whole not long, and here, under the circumstances, the priest hurried. He put the rings on our fingers, congratulated us. And we quietly set out through the woods to the Lakhta home of Nastas’ia Vasil’evna Gardner. Now it was possible for everyone to walk together, no one would ask where we were coming from, and even if someone did ask, then after all, everyone had the right to head towards their own home, even under the new regime. At the dacha a wedding feast had been prepared for seven people. On the table was sweet wine from Torgsin, ham, white bread, and pastries.

  Several days later I left on an expedition to Iakutsk, for the Ministry of Water Transport, and my wife—to a frontier region of the Ukraine.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Tat’iana Fesenko, Internal Dissenter

  Tat’iana Fesenko (1915–1995) was born in Kiev before the Revolution into a family of that city’s intelligentsia. Her father was an engineer and a professor of chemistry who had been educated in Germany before World War I. She was a young girl when the Soviet Union was established and matured with a twin sensibility. She was a student at Kiev University completing an advanced degree in Russian literature when World War II began. During the war she was a refugee and subsequently came to the United States. Taken from her memoir Povest’ krivykh let [The Tale of Jagged Years]. New York, 1981.

  Luckily, I belong to the category of “working intelligentsia” and can get into an institution of higher education in the third round. I prepare earnestly for entry in the next year, hoping to obtain permission from the People’s Commissariat of Education to take the competitive examinations at age seventeen instead of eighteen. Simultaneously, taking advantage of Kolia’s absence, occasioned by practical training near Odessa, I hurriedly try to look prettier for my beloved’s arrival. But where should I begin? Of course, the weakest spot is my nose. It is by no means classical in form, and worst of all, covered with freckles. In my dreams I already visualize it as being of white marble, totally irresistible, but the reality is substantially worse. Because of an ignorant and overzealous application of hydrogen peroxide, my nose swelled up, became red, and the skin hung in shreds. And the freckles didn’t even think of disappearing. They sat like firmly hammered copper nails. As it became clear many years later, Kolia [diminutive of Nikolai] did not even notice them.

  How quickly the heart beats on this happy early autumn day when the gate will bang and our old dog will bark furiously. Then, he’ll quiet down, and gently squealing, run up to the guest, humbly look at me with his blackthorn

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  eyes and begin banging the floor in staccato fashion with his tail: “Your waiting is over.”

  Father will question him in detail and at length about his training. And I, catching an eager and gentle glance, will run to the kitchen—has the teapot boiled yet?—and, closing my eyes for a minute, press my hands to my chest in an attempt to hold back the exultation racing to the surface.

  Mother does not let us go anywhere alone—go with others, she says—and we honestly fulfill the condition: four of us go to the yellowing Kiev parks. My bosom friend Tamara is always with us, the only one initiated into the secret of our love and its silent worshipper. But four is still two plus two. Tamara, laughing and chattering, inevitably drags her companion further away, and we wander over poorly lit paths, becoming intoxicated with the tart smell of wilting grass, of our own closeness. We approach the parapet which separates the pathway from the steep slopes of the old park. For a long, long time we stand silently looking at the lights of Podol and my hand is warmly covered by a youthful, strong hand.

  The leaves have fallen, the roads have become slippery and dirty by day, but silvery from hoarfrost in the mornings. We can only meet at our house, but how am I to bear not seeing each other until the free day—Kolia is at the institute during the day and I have classes in the evening. Leaving the lectures, I impatiently look for his broad-shouldered figure. The road from school to the tramli
ne is so disgracefully, unfairly short that our legs, on their own, carry us to the next stop. Later, trying to avoid mother’s inquisitive gaze, I mumble that the tram derailed once more and I missed three cars. Luckily, the trams were always having problems—actually derailing on the steep hills of Kiev or suffering a power outage. Obviously, mother doesn’t believe me—it is not just from the light autumn frost that my cheeks burn, it is not just from tiredness that I lower my guilty and shining eyes.

  But winter is coming and with it the unavoidable resolution draws near. With the routine “stream” of students Kolia will graduate from the institute. I know that he must work three years on the construction of the Turksib [railway line], that he is “contracted,” just as all the others in his graduating class. He cannot avoid this—instead of a diploma he would get a card indicating political unreliability.

  “I will not leave you for three years, that’s impossible, do you remember Chatskii’s words? You must become my wife now,” he repeats over and over every time we meet. And I, confused and worried, cannot fall asleep for a long time and think, think . . . It’s easy to say, “be my wife” when his kinfolk smilingly ask about “the bride.” But father, more frequently than usual, questions me about my studies. Patting my hair with a contained kindness, he says, looking inquisitively into my face:

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  “I am sure, dear girl, that you will not fail us—you know that your mother and I are willing to do anything, just so you can get an education.”

  Oh, God, I know this, and herein lies the difficulty of my decision. But I do not hesitate solely because of them. So many times in my mind I have run up the broad steps of the red, colonnaded building [Kiev University], so many times I repeated the lovely word “student.” If I go to the Turksib, I will have none of this and all the years of my parents’ sacrifices will turn out to be unjustified deprivation.

  “I will wait for you, I give you my word. I will occupy myself only with lectures and books, believe me, three years will pass by quickly, we are still very young. You will visit on vacation. I will write you of everything in my life. I will think of you only, I love you.”

  “You are still a child, you don’t know how to love. I’m leaving in a week, after all, I am suffering, I must know—‘yes’ or ‘no.’You will go to university later, I promise; answer me, answer me,”—and he earnestly looks me in the face.

  “No . . . I mean, yes . . . But only not now,” I murmur. He lets go of my hands, his face is tired, suddenly mature.

  “You are frozen, poor thing,” he realizes. “Look, we are all covered with snow, it’s hard even to open the gate.”

  “Will you come tomorrow?” I whisper, almost crying.

  “Yes, yes,” he nods. “Sleep peacefully, my dear.”

  But I do not sleep for a long time and outside the window snowflakes fall slowly to the earth, covering the narrow path to my first, short-lived happiness.

  Kolia did not come the next day, nor any other day. Maybe everything would have turned out differently if average Soviet citizens had telephones in their apartments. But there was no telephone and only the tear-stained pillow heard my sobs. Mother came, and asking nothing, stroked my hand for a long time, saying softly and wisely:

  “My dear girl, the everlasting beauty of first love is often in the fact that it does not end in marriage.”

  After a year and a half, I received a letter bearing a postmark from Alma-Ata. One of Kolia’s fellow graduates, who had often been in our home, wrote me. The end of the letter read:

  “Do you still remember Kolia S.? During commencement and departure from Kiev something strange was happening to him—he was not himself. We arrived here—and it became worse: the fellow totally fell apart. Later, we suddenly found out that he married a fellow student. It was a bad and mean marriage, but then a son was born and now they both rejoice. Recently at a Komsomol meeting, a fellow classmate was being berated. It turns out that he

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  was a priest’s son. Nikolai listened and listened, then got up, put his Komsomol card on the table for the chairman and left. Of course, there was a huge outcry, and he was expelled from the Komsomol. So far, nothing else was tagged on—and he does his job very well.”

  Three years later still, Kolia and I walked down a familiar path in our favorite park. Ahead of us ran a little boy who could have been my son. There was lightness and sorrow, but no pain. At that time, a pair of gray eyes had already became more dear to me than the blue.

  My last name is typed in the upper right hand column of the long list of those accepted to the university. Strictly speaking, only the building itself is called the university, but the educational institution goes by the name of INO [Institute of People’s Education]. It is said that we too will be an independent institute—the Ukrainian Institute of Linguistics—and that we will even have a separate building.

  For the present, we have gathered in a large physics auditorium and we scrutinize each other with interest.

  I do not feel myself alone among my newly fledged colleagues. Besides me sits a slight, fair-haired girl in a red knit hat with a button on top. We had already become friends during the entrance examinations. During the next four years, Lena and I are always to be together, separated only in gym class when we are obligated to take the end spots according to height on the right and left flank of the women’s row.

  Our students are very different both in terms of height and appearance. The son of a short-haired and graying woman in glasses who looks like an owl, is already in year two of the technical college—and the lad is just slightly older than Lena and me. Animatedly he tells us:

  When they came to the plant to recruit us for students, the foreman said: “Go to study, Shurka, you’re a clever one anyway. I’m not sure I can exactly tell you what linguistics is, but I think you’ll be a female doctor, it doesn’t matter—it’s useful.” Well, I came, but now I’m doubtful—these bourgeois speak foreign languages well, but will I make it?

  Entering the conversation, a middle-aged village teacher in a tall Astrakhan hat says: “Don’t be so doubtful, boy. My nephew told me of an incident when he was entering the institute last year. A fellow was submitting papers at the same time as he, and the secretary asked him: ‘Your initials, comrade?’ He became confused, started to rummage through his pockets, and then said: ‘Here is a reference from the factory committee, here’s a recommendation from the Komsomol, but I have no initials . . .’ Well what do you think, he is now number one in the studies.”

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  But, evidently, irrespective of the effort made to attract the working masses to our institute, it was destined to remain one hopelessly comprised of intelligentsia. Languages are not in vogue now. The industrialization of the nation is taking place and youth storms the doors of the technical institutes. This is where the newly promoted party and labor administrators hope to wind up as well. By means of its allotment, the Komsomol sent us its children, but they drowned in the general mass of the “working intelligentsia.”

  Ivan Mikhailovich Siiak, a Galician [from western Ukraine] and old Social Democrat, was appointed director of our institute. During the winter of 1919, he was a prominent participant in a revolt against the Romanian rulers in Bessarabia. Later he commanded some sort of “steel detachment” of Galician railroad workers, and then joined the Bolsheviks. He is handsome, smart, has the habits of an experienced demagogue, and the energy of a schemer. He was able to convince the People’s Ministry of Education and the students of the almost world-wide significance of the institute and, rather quickly, in an overcrowded Kiev, was able to get a building, in the center of the city, no less. Prior to the revolution, this had been a respectable bank, but was now occupied by a scientific research institute of water resources. Rather unwillingly, the latter ceded us two halls, and calmly continued to occupy the rest
of the building despite the fiery tirades of Ivan Mikhailovich and stern notes from the city soviet [council].

  Plywood partitions were quickly put up in the halls which converted them into a semblance of classrooms. But since materials were scarce and the partitions just slightly above human height, students in one place could easily hear neighboring lectures. Thus we very plausibly joked that even the teaching of German in our institute was permeated with dialectical materialism, which was passionately taught by the very same Ivan Mikhailovich Siiak.

  Actually, he and his auditors quite rapidly became convinced that the unity of opposites is not always one of nature’s basic laws, and that it is impossible to bear both linguists and hydrologists under one roof.

  Having lost patience with fruitless negotiations with a venerable and grumbling academic, Ivan Mikhailovich decided to go on the attack. True, his “army,” consisting principally of timid teachers, was fundamentally different from his brave “steel detachment.” But Siiak was uncontrollably drawn to the romanticism of the civil war. Once after lectures, with face aglow, he led us into “the attack.” The desks of the hydrologists were opened, and their tables, files, and books, were taken to the furthest room on the top floor with utmost care. Then, Ivan Mikhailovich made a speech from the stairs and ordered us not to dissolve but to spend the night “on liberated territory.” The hydrolo-gists tried complaining, wrote letters somewhere regarding arbitrariness, but