Secondhand Time: The Last of the Soviets (68 page)

When I was pregnant with my second child, I got a telegram from the village: “Come to the funeral. Mother.” A little while before that, a gypsy at the train station had told my fortune: “A long road awaits you. You’re going to bury your father and weep for a long time.” I didn’t believe her. My father was healthy, a calm presence. It was my mother who drank, she’d start first thing in the morning, while he’d go out and milk the cow, make some potatoes—he did everything himself. He loved her deeply, she’d put a spell on him, she knew how to do that kind of thing. Some kind of potion was involved. I went home…I was sitting next to the coffin weeping when the neighbor girl came up and whispered in my ear, “She killed him with the cast-iron pot and told me not to tell. She promised that she’d buy me chocolates…” I felt sick, nauseated from fear…from the horror…When there was no one else home—everyone had gone out—I undressed my father and searched his body for bruises. There weren’t any, but I did find a big wound on his head. I showed my mother, and she said that he’d been chopping wood when a stick flew up and hit him. I sat up all night weeping…While I was sitting there I got the feeling that he wanted to tell me something, but my mother wouldn’t leave, she stayed sober all night and never left me alone with him. In the morning, I saw a tear of blood appear from underneath his eyelashes. Out of one eye, then the other…The tears streamed down his face as though he were alive…It was terrifying! It was winter. At the graveyard, they’d had to break up the frozen ground with a crowbar. They’d warmed the soil by building a fire in the grave pit, burning birch logs and old tires. The men demanded a whole case of vodka for their efforts. As soon as they buried my father, my mother got plastered. She sat there all happy. While I wept…Even now, all of this makes my tears come down like hail…My own mother…she gave birth to me. She’s supposed to be the person I’m closest to…As soon as I left, she sold the house, burnt down the barn for insurance money and came out to live with me in the city. She found herself another husband immediately…She worked fast…He kicked out his son and daughter-in-law and put his apartment in her name. She lured men in, she knew how do that…She’d cast spells on them…[
She rocks her bandaged arm like it’s a baby.
] Meanwhile, my husband would chase me around the house with a hammer, he fractured my skull twice. A bottle of vodka, a pickle in each pocket, and he’s out the door. Where was he running off to? The children went hungry…All we had to eat were potatoes, and on holidays, potatoes with milk or a can of sprats. Try saying something to him about it when he gets home. All that will get you is a glass in the face and a chair flying at the wall…At night, he’d pounce on me like a beast…There’s never been anything good in my life, not even some small thing. I go to work all beat up, my eyes red from crying, but my job is to smile and bow to people. The head manager at the restaurant will call me into his office: “I don’t need any tears around here. My own wife has been paralyzed for a year already.” And then he’ll try to get in my pants…

My new stepfather didn’t even last two years…She called me up one day: “Come over and help me bury him. We’ll take him down to the crematorium.” I almost passed out from the shock. But then I came to—I had to go. My only thought was: “What if she killed him?” She killed him so she could have the apartment to herself and drink and party. Right? Now she’s scrambling to take him down to the crematorium. To burn the body. Before his kids get there…His eldest son is a major, he’ll fly in from Germany, but all that’ll be left is a handful of ashes…one hundred grams of fine powder in a little white vase. From all the shock, I stopped getting my period. For two years, I didn’t bleed. When it started up again, I begged the doctors, “Cut everything female out of me, give me surgery, I don’t want to be a woman anymore! I don’t want to be anyone’s lover! Or wife, or mother!” My own mother…She gave birth to me…I wanted to love her…When I was little, I’d ask her, “Kiss me, Mommy.” But she was always drunk…My father would leave for work, and the house would fill up with drunken men. One of them dragged me into bed with him…I was eleven…I told my mother, but all she did was yell at me. She drank and drank…All she ever did was drink and party, her whole life. Then, all of a sudden, it came time to die! She didn’t want to. Not for anything in the world. She was fifty-nine: One of her breasts was removed, then, six weeks later, the other. She was seeing this younger man, this guy fifteen years younger than her. “Take me to a wise woman!” she cried. “Save me!” But she kept getting worse and worse…Her boyfriend took care of her, emptied her bedpan, bathed her. She wasn’t even considering dying…“But if I do,” she told me, “I’m leaving everything to him. The apartment and the TV, too.” She wanted to hurt me and my sister…She was cruel…and she loved being alive. She clung to life greedily. Finally, we took her to the wise woman, we had to carry her out of the car. The woman prayed, laid out the cards. “Oh?” And she got right up. “Take her away! I’m not going to try to heal her…” My mother yelled at us, “Leave. I want to be alone with her…” But the woman told us, “Don’t move!” She wouldn’t let us go…She looked at the cards again. “I’m not going to try to heal her. She’s put more than one man in his grave. And as soon as she got sick, she went to the church and lit two candles…” My mother: “For the health of my children…” The woman: “No, it was for the peace of their souls. You prayed for your children’s death. You thought that if you gave them up to God, He would let you live.” After I heard those words, I made sure to never be alone with her. I lived in fear of her. I knew that I was weak and that she’d get the better of me…Whenever I went to see her, I’d bring my eldest daughter with me. My mother would get furious when my girl would ask me for something to eat: There she was dying, while somebody else was hungry, somebody else would get to keep living. She took scissors and cut up her brand-new bedcover and tablecloth so that no one could have them after she died. She smashed her plates. Everything she could, she destroyed. You couldn’t get her to the bathroom, she would go on the floor or in her bed on purpose so that I would have to clean it up…She was taking revenge on us for staying alive. For the fact that we were going to get to keep walking around, talking. She hated everyone! If a bird flew up to her window, she would have killed it, too. But it was spring…Her apartment was on the ground floor…The smell of lilacs everywhere…She kept gulping for air, she couldn’t get enough. “Bring me a branch from the courtyard,” she asked. I brought her one, and the second she touched it, it shrivelled, the leaves curled up. Then she said to me, “Let me hold your hand…” The healer had warned me that a person who’s done evil deeds has a long, tormented death. You have to either take apart the ceiling or pull out all the windowpanes—otherwise, their soul won’t leave, it can’t break free of the body. And no matter what, don’t give them your hand, or you’ll catch their disease. “What do you need my hand for?” She quieted down, lay low. The end was near, but she still wouldn’t tell us or show us where she put the clothes that she wanted to be buried in. Where she’d stashed away the money to pay for her funeral. I was afraid that she would smother me and my daughter with pillows in our sleep. Anything seemed possible…I’d close my eyes, but kept peeking: How would her soul leave her body? What was it like, this soul of hers? Would there be a light or a little cloud? People have said and written all sorts of things, but no one has ever really seen a soul. One morning, I ran out to the store and asked her neighbor to watch her. Her neighbor took her hand, and that’s when she finally died. At the last moment, she cried out something incomprehensible. She’d called someone’s name…Whose? The neighbor didn’t remember. No one she’d ever heard of. I washed her and dressed her myself. I had no feelings, it was as though she were an object. A pot. No feelings, my feelings were hidden somewhere. It’s all true…Some friends of hers came over, stole her phone…All of our relatives showed up, our middle sister came out from the village. My mother lay there…My sister started pulling her eyes open. “Why are you molesting our dead mother?” “Remember how she tormented us when we were little? She liked it when we cried. I hate her.”

The relatives all got together, and the bickering began…They started divvying up her stuff that very night, while she still lay there in her coffin. Someone was packing up her TV, someone else, her sewing machine…They took the gold earrings off her dead body. Ransacked the house for money—didn’t find any. I just sat there and wept. I even started feeling sorry for her. The next day, she was cremated…We decided that we’d take the urn to the village and bury it next to my father even though she hadn’t wanted that. In fact, she’d ordered us not to bury her next to my father. She was scared. What if there was an afterlife? She and my father are bound to meet somewhere…[
She stops.
] I don’t have many tears left in me…I’m surprised at how little I care about any of it anymore. Life and death. Good and bad people. I don’t give a damn…When destiny doesn’t take a shine to you, there’s nowhere to run. You won’t escape your fate. Yes…My older sister, the one I’d lived with, got married a second time and moved to Kazakhstan. I loved her…and I had this premonition. My heart told me that she should not marry this man. There was something I didn’t like about her second husband. “No, he’s a good guy,” she assured me. “I pity him.” When he was eighteen, he’d landed in prison for killing a guy in a drunken fight. They gave him five years, but he was out in three. He started coming around, bringing presents. Whenever his mother ran into my sister she’d start trying to talk her into it. Beg her. She’d say: “Men always need nannies. A good wife is a little like a mother to her husband. On their own, men become wolves, they’ll eat off the floor…” And my sister bought it! She’s the pitying kind, just like me. “I’ll make him into a good man.” I spent all night next to my mother’s coffin with the two of them. And he was so nice to my sister, so gentle, I was even a little jealous. Ten days later, I got a telegram: “Aunt Tamara, come. Mama died. Anya.” That was her daughter, the eleven-year-old, who had sent the telegram. We’d just carried out one coffin, and another one had already arrived…[
She cries.
] He’d gotten drunk and jealous. Stomped on her, stabbed her with a fork. Raped her dead body…He was drunk or high, I don’t know what…In the morning, he told his work that his wife had died, and they gave him the money to pay for the funeral. He handed it to Anya, then went down to the police station to turn himself in. Now the girl lives with me. She doesn’t want to go to school, there’s something wrong with her, she can’t remember anything. She’s afraid of everything…afraid of leaving the house. As for him…They gave him ten years. Watch him come back to live with her after they let him out. What a dad!

When I got divorced from my first husband, I thought that I would never let another man into my house ever again. No man will set foot in here! I was sick of crying, walking around covered in bruises. What good are the police? They’ll come once, but if you call again, they’ll tell you: “You’re just having family issues.” On the floor above us, in the same building where we live, a man ended up killing his wife—only then did they show up in their cars with the flashing lights, write up a report, lead him away in handcuffs. He’d been torturing her for ten years…[
She beats her fist on her chest.
] I don’t like men. I’m scared of them. I have no idea how I ended up married a second time. He’d returned from Afghanistan shell-shocked, twice wounded. A paratrooper. Still, to this day, he hasn’t removed his striped undershirt. He’d been living with his mother in the building across from ours. In the same courtyard. He’d come out and sit there playing the accordion, or just songs on a stereo…songs about the Afghan war, sad stuff. I had war on the brain…I was always so scared of those damn mushroom clouds…Atom bombs. I used to like it when young people—a bride and groom—would go straight from the marriage registration office to pay their respects at the Eternal Flame with a bouquet. I loved it! It’s so noble! One day, I sat down next to him on the bench: “What is war?” “War is when you really want to live.” I felt bad for him. He’d never known his father, his mother had been disabled since childhood. If he’d had a father, they would have never sent him to Afghanistan. His father would have protected him, paid them off like other people do. But he and his mother…I went over to their apartment, and all they had was a bed and some chairs, his medal from Afghanistan hanging on the wall. I took pity on him, I didn’t think of myself. We moved in together. He came with a towel and a spoon. Brought his medal. And the accordion.

I made it all up…this fantasy that he’s a hero…a defender. I’d crowned him myself and told the kids he was a Tsar. We’re living with a hero! He’d performed his soldier’s duty and really suffered for it. I’ll melt his heart with my love…save him…A regular Mother Teresa! I’m not a very religious person, all I ever say is “Lord, forgive us.” Love is a kind of wound…You start feeling sorry for the other person. If you love them, you pity them…that comes first…He’d “run” in his sleep: His legs wouldn’t move, but his muscles twitched like he was really running. Sometimes he’d run like that all night long. In the middle of the night, he’d scream
“Dushari! Dushari!”
Those were the 
dukhi—
the “spirits”—Afghan
mujahideen
. He’d cry out to the commander and his brothers-in-arms, “Pass them from the flank!” “Grenades ready!” “Make a smoke screen…” One time, he nearly killed me when I tried to wake him up: “Kolya! Kolya! Wake up!” The truth is, I even fell in love with him…I learned a lot of Afghan war words from him:
zindan, bochata, duval
…
Barbukhaika
…
“Khodahafez!”
^*1
—
“So long, Afghanistan!” For a year, we were happy together. We really were! He made a little money, he’d bring home canned meat, his favorite food. Since Afghanistan. They used to go up into the mountains and bring canned meat and vodka. He taught us how to perform first aid, which plants are edible, how to trap animals. He told us that turtle meat tasted sweet. “So did you really shoot people?” “You didn’t have a choice out there, it’s either you or them.” I forgave him everything because of how much he’d suffered…I tied this burden onto myself…