“Don’t you worry, Anna,” Liza said. She seemed to be looking sideways, her gaze avoiding the others’. “People are kind. They give us everything we need: food, shelter, place to keep our equipment. Sometimes money too.”
Only years later, when nobody sitting around that table in that remote, dimly lit room was alive, I found out what she meant.
After 12 years in the camps, denied residence and the right to work, the two of them once again found a way to hoodwink fate. For several years after the war they walked from village to village, magnifying passport-size photographs of the dead. The pattern was always the same: people met them with suspicion and saw them off with grateful farewells. In many villages after the war, the names of the dead outnumbered the living and the Levins never lacked for work. Levin learned that it was easier to look into the eyes of the dead on a piece of a photo paper, than into the eyes of their widows and mothers, as they opened the door to him.
He proved to be good at his new trade. The men on the tiny photographs he was given were stern, solemnly closed into themselves, with a generic, often vacant expression. But when he enlarged and retouched them, they became benevolent, soft, even mildly romantic. Under Levin’s skilful hands, these slightly out-of-focus faces would come to peace with their destiny. Mounted on the wall, or placed on a chiffonier next to a small cluster of artificial flowers, they finally achieved immortality. A certain safety was theirs at last.
The Levins were doing so well that they even managed to put away some money, the investment in the illusive dream of freedom.
My grandfather was as good as his word: he kept his son from travelling to Minsk. It must have been the old man’s sixth sense, his insider’s knowledge of the manhunter’s lore that saved my father’s life. But it didn’t save Levin’s. He was arrested again, charged this time with poisoning the wells in a city he’d never visited. He died in a labour camp the year before Stalin’s death.
What happened to his brother’s suitcase? I never saw it again. I vaguely remember my grandfather wearing colourful turtle necks and gaudy short-sleeved shirts that looked strange on this taciturn and sombre man.
After Levin’s arrest, Auntie Liza went into hiding. A moving target, she rode the freights, slept in the railway stations latrines, shipping containers, or abandoned sheds. The blind chance that had destroyed her son and husband at the end let Liza off the hook. When I saw her again in much milder, ‘vegetarian’ times she was toothless, all skin and bones, her hair gone completely white; more than ever she seemed to belong to the weightless feathered tribe, the only one that could go where it pleased in her homeland.
I visited her in her six square meter ‘corner’ in a communal apartment shared by eight other families. There was almost no furniture in her room. Aunt Liza sat at the window looking vacantly into the street. Since her husband’s death, she had time on her hands: she wasn’t scribbling names on scraps of paper any longer. God had forsaken this land — she now knew it.
In late May of 1964, Auntie Liza received a summons. As a victim of Stalin’s ‘purges’ she was now entitled to her own apartment, a small studio with a separate kitchenette and a bathroom. Coincidentally, she was supposed to view it on her 65th birthday. To our surprise, Aunt Liza refused to even look at the new place, never mind move in.
It is then that my brother Sergey and I came up with a plan. We bought a bouquet of flowers, a biscuit cake, a box of chocolate and even champagne intending to invite all Liza’s neighbours to her birthday party. But first, we wanted to talk her into getting into Sergey’s new car for a 30-minute drive to her new apartment. How exciting! The first housing projects in 20 years since the war! Fresh air, sunshine! Young mothers with prams moving into the building!
“The second floor would be perfect, just perfect for you!” I kept saying. “The first is unsafe because of breaks-in; the third, too high without an elevator, but the second? It was really the luck of the draw!”
“You’ll have your own bathroom, too!” my brother said, egging Aunt Liza on. “When was the last time you had your own tub with running water? Your own kitchen?” Aunt Liza raised her eyes to Sergey but said nothing. I started setting the table for the guests who would be there when we returned. Then I opened a box of chocolate and handed it over to Aunt Liza. “Have some,” I said, “before we go . . .”
She was hesitant and looked away. But finally her fingers took tentative aim at one accordion-pleated pink rosette and suddenly her face brightened up.
“Do you remember?” she said. “Right after the war, you were eight or nine then, and you promised when you grew up, you’d buy me a whole box of Bird’s Milk? Is that what it is, Bird’s Milk?”
“It is!” I laughed, hugging her.
“Come on, let’s go, Aunt Liza,” my brother said, impatiently. “We’ll take chocolates with us. You can eat all you want on the way there ...”
The new apartment smelled of paint and thinner. The newspapers were scattered on the floor bordered by piles of plaster in the corners. We propped Aunt Liza on a stool, the only chair left by the construction workers in the middle of an empty room.
In the kitchen the pipes under the sink were sloppily connected. Water dripped on the floor. While Sergey was looking for a bucket, I looked out of the kitchen window. Construction leftovers littered the landscape, competing with tree stumps and mud puddles dotting the bare earth. But one bush of white lilac survived, overlooked by the bulldozers. It stood alone, intact, tall and in full bloom. I wanted to let the scent of lilac into the flat and tugged at the window: “Aunt Liza! Look!” The window was painted shut. Sergey found a knife, poked here and there. Just when the window seemed to yield we heard a thud and a weak cry. In the living room Aunt Liza lay on the floor next to the stool. Her hands clutched her chest and she gasped in whistling gulps.
There was no telephone in the apartment. Sergey ran outside to look for the public phone. I sat on the floor next to Aunt Liza helplessly watching her jerk her head from side to side. Beads of sweat collected on her forehead. She was still alive when they carried her through the narrow door and twisted the stretcher awkwardly.
It was in the ambulance that God, whom Liza believed had abandoned her forever, finally returned to her side, gently took her by hand and led her into the golden glow of spring. She floated free on the fragrance of lilacs above her longed-for city, over the young girls in school uniform skirts and bare thighs playing hopscotch on the asphalt, over crowds still in winter coats queuing for food in great dark zigzag lines; over the street-cars cutting quick arpeggio on their celestial cords, smudging every turn with sheaves of fire. By the time the ambulance stopped in front of the Corinthian columns of the Sklifosovsky Hospital, Aunt Liza had already joined her husband and son. She joined them in that radiant, shimmering land that alone had given her a shelter and a permanent home, a land she would never again — never — need to escape.
THE SQUALOR OF
IRRESPONSIBILITY
1. LIP READING
INNA WAS A naïve young woman. She believed whatever people told her. When her husband whispered in her ear on their first conjugal night that the banging and gurgling coming from the radiator was only mice making u-turns in the pipes, her eyes grew wide.
“Really?”
He liked to feel the little parachute of her surprise drifting down past his stubble. “Hear that tip-tap-tip?” he had said as he nibbled on her ear. “That’s the mice knocking their tails against the inside the pipes. Every fall the plumbers put them in one end to see if they’ll come out the other. To check for blockages before turning on the hot water, you see.”
When King Hammurabi, the founder and director of a residential school for the deaf and hearing impaired where Inna worked — a tyrant, intriguer and provocateur — told her that he was firing her because of her naïveté, for how could she possibly have followed his instructions so literally as to present him with such a
transcript, she believed him without hesitation and burst into tears in front of his vastly entertained secretary.
“Here, mop up that deluge,” Hammurabi said, taking the starched handkerchief from his breast pocket and holding it out to Inna between two expertly manicured fingers. And then he broke into a wide grin. “I’ll spare you this time, young lady, but next time, watch out!”
Hammurabi, whose real name was Myrosyan, had founded his school for the deaf and hard of hearing after an event at Sheremetyevo International Airport. He had been a high-ranking career diplomat, possibly even a consul general or deputy ambassador, in some nice country, say England or France. But while boarding a plane to London or perhaps Paris one afternoon, he suddenly lost his hearing for no apparent reason. He returned from the airport and soon after founded his famous school. Of course, he had the right connections in high places to do that sort of thing. He was an Armenian and Armenians are handsome. They have soulful, almond eyes, aquiline noses, and dark, curly hair to die for. They carry themselves through the frost-bitten streets of Moscow with the proud bearing of an ancient, indomitable race. When a Myrosyan walks by, you notice. And now this pedigreed man was standing on the tarmac stone deaf, with the shards of his brilliant career scattered around him. If I can learn to read lips, they’ll let me stay, he decided in the limousine on his way back home.
It’s possible that, when they didn’t let him stay, Myrosyan’s skin burned. For the first time in his life he could see what it was like to be a pariah. And he didn’t care for the insight. There must have been a moment when his proud soul shuddered in confusion, fear, misery, and self-pity. And a moment, too, when he was moved with compassion for those who had been deaf from birth and living out their lives apart from others — innocents who had been unjustly banished by the hearing world. Or maybe there wasn’t any such a moment. Maybe none of that entered Myrosyan’s mind at all. Maybe he just clenched his fists in his pockets and murmured to himself: “I’ll show them! I’ll prove to these scoundrels that you can be both deaf and intelligent. Every time one of my kids is accepted at a good university, I’ll let them know about it.”
Yet whatever it was that motivated Myrosyan in the end, in little more than a year, he had created his superbly equipped residential school, with innovative teaching based on a single principle: sign language was prohibited, with lip reading enforced as the only path, however difficult, to a happy, productive future. And year after year, the kids under his tutelage did indeed get into the best universities, find good jobs, and marry beautiful people. Soon Myrosyan’s school was the pride of the country. Many a foreigner came to learn the secret of his success, fame chasing him like his shadow.
It was not for nothing that Myrosyan had been nicknamed Hammurabi after the ancient Babylonian king and lawgiver. The only difference between them was that the real king had a spade-shaped beard with curls like rows of tiny sheep running down his chest, while Myrosyan had only a moustache with erect waxed tips. Actually, there was yet another, more significant, difference. Unlike Hammurabi, who a legend says once ordered his youngest son burned alive for some minor offense, Myrosyan never so much as laid a finger on any of his charges. He actually loved his kids. He truly cared about them.
Other than that, both Hammurabis prized order, predictability, and punctuality. Myrosyan-Hammurabi personally made sure that the chef didn’t pilfer bags of food from the kitchen, that the milk really was milk and not 50-percent added water, and that the sour cream really was sour cream and not 50-percent flour. Picture our director in his custom Dior suit and heavy gold cuff links sampling each pot with a ladle. Imagine him too in the dormitory, his suspicious fingers investigating every ledge, every headboard for dust. Whoever allowed even the smallest mote to sunbathe on a windowsill was in for it.
Hammurabi presided over the school from his distinguished oak-panelled office and a fancy swivel desk chair brought from Switzerland on a special diplomatic flight — the only chair of its particular kind to be found anywhere in our land of abundance. On it he slowly rotated in the direction of any deficient staff member called before him, twisting first the left tip of his moustache, then the right one.
“Well, Miss or Mr. So-and-So, it would appear that work is your life’s greatest catastrophe. It would appear that you and honest labour do not share the same bed, if you’ll excuse the intimate metaphor. Today you’ve given me unambiguous evidence of your desire to be released from that terrible burden. I have no choice but to respect your wish. You are free as wind. As of today.”
At which point there were two options: panic or remain placidly calm. If you knew the ways of man and had managed to grasp the sinister involutions of Hammurabi’s mind, you swallowed your pride and remained silent. He would then swivel his armchair 97 degrees, just enough for you to catch a glimpse of his noble profile, and observe in his velvety baritone, which he, unlike many deaf people, never raised above normal volume.
“I didn’t invite you to Myrosyan’s school to twiddle your thumbs, did I?” (He always referred to himself in the third person.)
“Forgive me, Comrade Director,” you would squeak.
“I forgive you? For what? You didn’t wrong me. You wronged our children. You endangered the health and the well-being of the future generation. It’s they whose forgiveness you should be asking for, not mine.”
“I’m not a vicious person! I’ll prove it with renewed diligence. I’ll correct my mistakes. Only please, sir, give me another chance!”
Hold on right there! That’s far too wordy. You’re bending your neck much too low. Hammurabi will start to wonder if your contrition is sincere or if you are just playing with him.
He would shoot a piercing glance at you and then swivel his chair another 83 degrees. The audience was over. Contrary to what many believed, he couldn’t read your lips when his back was turned.
“My secretary will get the forms ready. You will receive your severance pay by five o’clock today. I want to be sure that the enjoyment of your freedom is not delayed for an hour.”
Did you need to be brain surgeon with cordon-bleu culinary skills to know that your goose was cooked? Did you need to be a certified public accountant to appreciate that the double salary Hammurabi bestowed upon his courtiers was to be found in no other school in Moscow?
Of course, getting the boot like that was a worst case scenario. So, if you were a person of dignity and will, what kept you from working for a different outcome? You would say you’re sorry, but you would stand proud and tall. There were worse disasters in life than a dusty windowsill. You would tell him that you fought in two wars, and will fight in a third if your country should call on you.
If Hammurabi then shook his head in dismay and said: “Look at the squalor all around you, the squalor of irresponsibility! Look at the cruel times we live in!”, it meant there was a chance! That he was throwing you a lifeline, slender and frayed though it might be. Grab hold of it! Pull yourself from the muddy water of your errors back onto to the dry shore of your pitiful life as fast as you can. It could be your last chance!
2. TEN PACES
Inna had known nothing about Myrosyan-Hammurabi when her phone rang. It was her friend Olga pleading for help the next morning at 8:30 sharp. Olga’s Hedgehog (as she called her three-year-old son) had a cold again, and if she missed work one more time, that could be the end for her. Inna pictured her friend slashing her throat with the blade of her hand at the other end of the line and said: “Sure. What do you want me to teach?”
“Pushkin. Before his duel and after it.”
As a recent graduate of a teacher training college, Inna had been scraping by with work, substituting here and there but finding nothing permanent. “Do whatever you like with Pushkin,” Olga had told her, “only make sure that the director, Myrosyan, doesn’t find out. If he does, it will be curtains for me.”
Olga hung up. But no sooner had Inna run to the kitchen
to rescue her burning potatoes than the phone rang again. “Listen, there’s one more thing. Don’t shout! The kids won’t hear you anyway. They only read lips. And make sure you don’t write on the blackboard and talk at the same time with your back to them. Okay?”
•
“During his brief life,” Inna declared, facing grade eight at exactly 8:30 the next morning, “Pushkin challenged men to duel 22 times. The 23rd time was fatal. I mean Pushkin was killed. At the age of 37. So who had dared to raise his hand against our great poet? It was d’Anthès, a blond French playboy. By the way, Pushkin had always been afraid of blond men, superstition on his part. But that’s beside the point. So d’Anthès came to St. Petersburg in search of a fortune. And wiggled his way into high society, where he met Pushkin’s wife at a ball and flirted with her shamelessly. Needless to say, his behaviour was an insult to Pushkin. He challenged that good-for-nothing French fop to a duel.”
Inna paused for a moment to catch her breath.
“Pushkin’s wife, Natalie, was very beautiful. ‘The first beauty of Russia married to the first poet of Russia,’ as people used to say. D’Anthès was an unprincipled rascal, upstart, and coward, and he got cold feet!”
Inna’s voice trailed off. She looked around the classroom. Twenty pairs of eyes were fixed on her face in total silence.
“So,” she said, after taking another deep breath, “to save his skin, this coward, I mean, d’Anthès, married Natalie’s sister. If d’Anthès was going to become a relative, he reasoned, Pushkin would have to call off the duel. But none of that stopped the wicked and corrupt d’Anthès from continuing his ways! His marriage to Natalie’s sister was just a trick! It made access to Natalie even easier. And D’Anthès kept wooing her and making fun of Pushkin. As you all know, Pushkin was a genius and the court hated him. Talented and brilliant people are often envied. So the court was gleefully watching the intrigue and circulating vicious rumours to pour oil on the fire. Pushkin received libellous . . . I mean really bad, mocking letters calling him a cuckold. Now Pushkin had to fight for his honour. He would have to challenge d’Anthès once again!”
Expulsion Page 8