Secondhand Time: The Last of the Soviets (42 page)

Such a powerful desire…to die! So I went down to the sea. Sat down on the sand. Tried to talk myself into believing that there was no need to fear death. Death is freedom…the waves kept crashing and crashing against the shore. Then night came, and then it was morning again. The first time, I couldn’t decide. I wandered along the shore, listening to the sound of my voice: “God, I love you! Oh Lord…”
“Sara bara bzia bzoi…”
That’s Abkhazian. So many colors all around me, so many sounds, but there I was, ready to die.

I’m Russian. I was born in Abkhazia and lived there for a long time. In Sukhumi. Until I was twenty-two. Until 1992, when the war broke out. If the water catches fire, how do you put it out? That’s what Abkhazians say about war…Everyone took the bus together, went to the same schools, read the same books, lived in the same country, and all learned the same language, Russian. Then suddenly they were all killing each other: Neighbor killing neighbor, classmate killing classmate. Brother killing sister! And they were warring right there, right in front of their own homes…How long ago had it been? Only a year before that, two…We’d been living like brothers, everyone was in the Komsomol and a communist. In my papers for school, I’d write, “Brothers forever…” “Unbreakable union…” Killing someone! It’s not heroic, it’s more than a crime…It’s too awful! I saw it—it’s impossible to comprehend—I still can’t make sense of it. I’ll tell you about Abkhazia, I truly loved it there…[
She stops.
] And I still do, no matter what…I love it. In every Abkhazian home, there’s a dagger hanging on the wall. When a boy is born, relatives give him a dagger and some gold. Next to their daggers, they hang their drinking horns. Abkhazians drink wine out of horns like they’re glasses. You can’t put your horn down until you’ve drunk everything in it, down to the last drop. According to Abkhazian custom, the time you spend with guests around the table doesn’t count toward your lifespan because you’re drinking wine and enjoying yourself. So how does the time you spend murdering count? Shooting people…Well, how? I spend a lot of time thinking about death now.

[
She lowers her voice to a whisper.
] The second time…there was no stopping me. I locked myself in the bathroom…I practically scratched my fingernails off, down to bloody nubs. I kept scratching, digging my nails into the wall, into the clay, into the chalk, but at the last moment, I suddenly wanted to live again. And the cord snapped…In the end, I’m alive, I can pinch myself. The only thing is, I can’t stop thinking about it…about death.

When I was sixteen, my father died. Ever since, I’ve hated funerals…that music…I don’t understand, why do people put on such a show? I sat next to the coffin and even then, I knew that this wasn’t my father, that my father wasn’t there. It was just a cold body. A shell. The first nine days, I kept having the same dream…Someone was calling to me…calling me to come…but I didn’t understand: Where was I supposed to go? To whom? I started thinking about my relatives…I’d never even met a lot of them, never knew them, most of them had died before I was even born. But suddenly I saw my grandmother. My grandmother died a long, long time ago, we don’t even have any pictures of her left, but I recognized her in my dream. Everything is different where they are…They exist but they don’t exist, they’re not covered by anything like we are by our bodies. They have nothing to protect them. I saw my father. He was still cheerful, earthly, completely familiar. All of the other people were kind of…kind of…Like I had known them but forgotten. Death is a beginning…the beginning of something…We just don’t know what. I keep thinking about it. I want to break out of this captivity, I want to hide. And it wasn’t even that long ago when I would dance in the morning in front of the mirror, thinking “I’m young and beautiful! I’m going to have fun! I’m going to love!”

The first one…He was this really good-looking Russian guy…really very handsome! As the Abkhazians would say, “A man for his seeds.” He had a little dirt sprinkled on him, he was wearing sneakers and an army uniform. The next day, someone had taken his sneakers. He was lying there dead…and then, and then what? What happens underground? Under our feet, beneath our soles…down there or up in the sky…What happens up there in the sky? It was summer all around, and the waves were crashing. The cicadas were singing. My mother had sent me out to the store. And there he lay, killed. Trucks full of weapons rolled through the streets, people handing out machine guns like they were loaves of bread. I saw refugees, someone pointed them out to me and told me that these were refugees, which made me remember that long-forgotten word. I’d only ever read it in books. There were a lot of refugees: Some came in cars, others on tractors, some on foot. [
Silence.
] Can we talk about something else? Like about movies…I love movies, but I prefer ones from the West. Why? Because nothing in them resembles our lives, not in the least. Which means I can make up whatever I want…dream up an entire world, put on another face when I’m sick of my own. My body, even my hands…My body’s not enough for me, I’m too restricted by all this. I keep having the same body, always the same one, while inside, I’m constantly changing; I keep being different…I’m listening to my words and thinking that I can’t be saying these things because I don’t know these words and I’m dumb and only like buttered rolls…Because I haven’t loved yet. Haven’t had kids. And yet I’m saying these things…I don’t know why I’m saying all this. Where did it come from? The next one was a young Georgian…He was lying in the park. There was a spot with a little sandy area, and he was lying on the sand. He just lay there looking up…and no one moved him, he stayed there for a long time. When I saw him, I knew that I had to run…I had to get out of there. But where could I run to? I made a run for the church…There was nobody there. I got down on my knees and prayed for everyone. Back then, I didn’t know how to pray, I hadn’t learned how to talk to Him yet…[
She digs around in her purse.
] Where are my pills…I can’t! I’m not supposed to get upset…After all that, I got sick. They took me to the psychiatrist. I’d be walking down the street…and suddenly I’d want to scream…

Where would I like to live? Inside my childhood…Back then, it was just me and my mother in our little nest. Save us…Lord, save the trusting and blind! In school, I loved books about war. And movies about it. I imagined that it was a beautiful thing. That it made everything vivid…That life during a wartime was something brilliant. I was even sad that I was a girl and not a boy: If there was ever a war, they wouldn’t let me fight. I don’t read books about war anymore. Even the best ones…Books about war are all full of lies. War is filthy and terrifying. I’m not sure anymore, is it even possible to write about it? I’m not talking about trying to capture the whole truth, I mean writing anything about it at all? Talking about it…How can you ever be happy afterward? I don’t know, I’m lost. My mother would put her arms around me: “What are you reading, daughter?” “
They Fought for the Motherland,
by Sholokhov. It’s about war…” “Why do you read those books? They’re not about life, daughter. Life is something else…” Mama loved books about love…My mother! I don’t even know if she’s alive. [
Silence.
] At first, I thought that I couldn’t live there anymore…in Sukhumi…But it turns out that I can’t live anymore at all. And books about love won’t save me. Although love does exist, I know it does. I know…[
For the first time, she smiles.
]

It was the spring of 1992…Our neighbors Vakhtang and Gunala—he’s Georgian and she’s Abkhazian—sold their home and their furniture and got ready to leave. They came to say goodbye. “There’s going to be a war. Go to Russia if you have anyone there.” We didn’t believe them. The Georgians were always making fun of the Abkhazians, and the Abkhazians didn’t like the Georgians, either. Oh…the jokes! [
She laughs
.] “Can a Georgian go into space?” “No.” “Why not?” “Because all the Georgians would die of pride, and the Abkhazians would die of envy.” “Why are Georgians so short?” “It’s not that the Georgians are short, it’s that the Abkhazians’ mountains are too tall.” They laughed at each other, but they lived side by side. They tended their vineyards. Made wine…For Abkhazians, winemaking is like a religion. Every winemaker has his own secret. May went by, then June…the beach season began…the first berries…What war? My mother and I didn’t think about the war, we were busy pickling, making jam. Every Saturday, we went to the bazaar. The Abkhazian bazaar! Those smells, the sounds…It smells like wine barrels and cornbread, sheep’s cheese, and roasted chestnuts. The subtle scent of cherry plums and tobacco—pressed tobacco leaves. Cheeses hanging…
matsoni,
my favorite yogurt
…
Vendors beckon customers in Abkhazian, Georgian, and Russian—in every language, it’s “
Vai-vai,
sweetie. You don’t want it, don’t buy it, but come here and try it.” There hadn’t been bread anywhere in the city since June. That Saturday, my mother decided to stock up on flour…We were on the bus, a friend of ours sat down next to us with her son. At first, he was playing, but then he burst into tears and started crying so loudly, it was as though someone had frightened him. Suddenly, the woman turned to us: “Were those gunshots? Can you hear that? Are those gunshots?” What a crazy question! When we got to the bazaar, we saw a mob of people running toward us, all panicked. Chicken feathers flying, rabbits underfoot, ducks…No one ever remembers the animals…how they suffer…but I remember a wounded cat. A cockerel squawking in pain, he had a shard of something sticking out from under his wing…I really am crazy, huh? I think about death too much, it’s all I ever do these days…And suddenly, the screaming! That screaming…Not just one person screaming, but a whole mob of people, and all of them screaming. Armed men, in civilian clothes but holding machine guns, chasing down women, snatching their handbags, taking whatever they had: “Give me that…Take those off…” “Are those convicts?” my mother whispered to me. We got off the bus and saw Russian soldiers. “What’s going on?” my mother asked them. “Don’t you understand?” a lieutenant answered. “This is war.” My mother is a big coward, she fainted. I dragged her into the inner courtyard of the nearest building. Someone from one of the apartments brought down a pitcher of water. They were bombing somewhere nearby…The sound of explosions…“Women! Women! Do you need any flour?” This young guy appeared out of nowhere holding a sack of flour, wearing a blue smock like freight loaders wore, only he was all white, covered in flour. I burst out laughing, but my mother said, “Let’s get some. Maybe this really is a war.” So we bought some flour from him. Gave him our money. Afterward, it dawned on us that we’d just bought stolen goods. From a looter.

I lived among those people…I knew their habits, their language…I loved them. But where had these other ones come from? So fast! So inhumanly fast! Where had all of this been lying dormant? Where…who will answer these questions? I took off my gold cross and hid it in the flour, where I also hid the wallet with the money. Like an old woman…I knew exactly what to do. How? I carried the ten kilograms of flour all the way home, like five kilometers. I walked calmly…If someone had killed me right then, I wouldn’t have had time to get scared. But the people I saw…many of them were running from the direction of the beach…Tourists…Panicked and in tears. While I was calm…Probably I was in shock? It would have been better if I had been screaming…screaming like everyone else…That’s what I think now. We stopped to take a break by some railway tracks. There were these young men sitting on the rails: Some of them had black ribbons tied around their heads, others had white ones. All of them had guns. They even teased me, cracked jokes. Not far from them, smoke was rising up from the hood of a truck…The driver was behind the wheel, murdered. In a white shirt…When we caught sight of him, we took off running through a mandarin grove. I was all covered in flour…“Put that down! Leave it!” my mother begged me. “No, Mama, I can’t. War has broken out and there’s nothing to eat at home.” All of these images…A Zhiguli came toward us. We tried flagging it down. The car went past us so slowly, it was like it was part of a funeral procession. There was a guy and a girl in the front seat and a woman’s corpse in the back. Terrifying…but for some reason, not as terrifying as I had imagined it would be…[
She is silent.
] I want to think about this all the time. Think and think. Right by the sea, there was another Zhiguli
,
its windshield shattered…a puddle of blood and women’s shoes on the ground next to it…[
She is quiet.
] I’m sick, of course…sick…Why can’t I forget anything? [
A silence.
] I wanted to hurry! Hurry up and get home, get to some familiar place. Run somewhere…flee. And suddenly, this booming…war from above! Green military helicopters—and on the ground, tanks. They weren’t moving in a column—they came one by one, with soldiers holding machine guns sitting on top of them. Georgian flags unfurled in the wind. The column advanced chaotically: Some tanks moved quickly, while others were stopping at kiosks. The soldiers would hop down and break the locks off with their gun butts. They took champagne, candy, soda, cigarettes. Behind the tanks, there was an Ikarus bus full of chairs and mattresses. What were the chairs for?

At home, we rushed to the TV…They were broadcasting a symphony concert. Where’s the war? The war was not being televised…Before going to the market, I’d prepared cucumbers and tomatoes for pickling. I’d sterilized the jars. And when we got home, I started filling them. I needed something to do to keep myself busy. In the evening, we watched the Mexican soap opera
The Rich Cry, Too
. It’s about love.

Morning. We woke up extremely early from the rumbling. Military machines were moving down our street. People had come out to watch. One of the vehicles came to a halt in front of our house. The crew was Russian. I understood what they were: mercenaries. They called out to my mother: “Give us water, Mama.” My mother brought them water and some apples. They drank the water but wouldn’t touch the apples. They said, “Somebody poisoned one of our men with apples yesterday.” I ran into a girl I knew on the street: “How are you? Where’s your family?” She walked right past me as though she didn’t know me. I ran after her and grabbed her by the shoulders: “What’s wrong with you?” “Don’t you understand? It’s dangerous to speak to me because of my husband—my husband is a Georgian.” But I…I had never thought about whether her husband was an Abkhazian or a Georgian! What did I care? He was an excellent friend. I hugged her as hard as I could! That night, her brother had showed up at her house in order to kill her husband. “Then you can kill me, too,” she’d told him. Her brother and I had gone to the same school. We were friends. I wondered what I would do if I saw him. What would we say to one another?