Secondhand Time: The Last of the Soviets (69 page)

And now…His friends will drag him home at night and leave him on the doorstep. Without his shirt or watch, lying there naked from the waist up…The neighbors will call me: “Come and get him, Tamara! Or he’ll give up the ghost out there in the cold.” I’ll pull him into the house. He’ll be crying, sobbing, rolling around on the ground. He can’t hold down a job; he’s been a security guard, a bodyguard…He always either needs a drink or he’s hung over. He’s drunk everything away…You never know if there’s going to be anything to eat at home. He’ll either beat the shit out of me or plant himself in front of the TV. Our neighbors rent a room to this Armenian…Once, he said something that my husband didn’t like, and the poor guy ended up on the ground covered in blood with his teeth knocked out and a broken nose. Kolya just doesn’t like Eastern people. I’m afraid of going to the market with him because all the sellers there are Uzbek and Azerbaijani. Any little thing could set him off…He has this saying: “For every twisted asshole there’s a threaded screw.” They knock the price down for him, they want nothing to do with him. “An Afghanistan vet…a whack-job…a devil!” He beats the kids. My youngest son loves him, when he used to try to get close to him, he’d smother him with a pillow. Now, as soon as he comes through the door, my son runs to his bed and goes to sleep—closes his eyes so that he won’t beat him. Or he’ll hide all the pillows under the sofa. All I can do is weep…or…[
She points to her bandaged arm.
] On Paratroopers Day, his friends all get together…all of them in their striped shirts, just like him…They get completely trashed! Piss all over my bathroom. They’re all messed up in the head…Delusions of grandeur: We fought in a war! We’re tough! The first toast is always: “The world is shit, all people are whores, and the sun is just a fucking streetlight.” And on it goes until the morning: “To resting in peace,” “To health,” “To medals,” “Death to them all.” Things haven’t worked out for them…I couldn’t tell you if it’s because of the vodka or the war. They’re mean as wolves! They hate the Jews and all people from the Caucasus. The Jews, because they killed Christ and ruined Lenin’s plan. Home life is no fun for them anymore: Wake up, wash up, eat breakfast. It’s boring! At the drop of a hat—just call ’em up—they’d all march straight to Chechnya. To be heroes again! There’s this bitterness left over, they’re mad at everybody: the politicians, the generals, and everyone who wasn’t there with them. Especially the last category…more than the rest…Just like my husband, many of them don’t have any sort of career. Or they all have the same career: walking around with a handgun. They say they drink because everyone here betrayed them…Boo-hoo! They drank when they were out there, too, and they don’t try to hide it: “Without a hundred grams of vodka, the Russian soldier won’t make it to victory,” “If you leave one of our men in the middle of the desert, two hours later, he won’t have found any water, but he will be drunk.” They drank methyl alcohol, brake fluid…Drunk or high, they’d crash and burn…When they returned: One of them hanged himself, another one got shot in a street fight; one of them got beaten up so bad, he’s paralyzed now. Another one was so mentally damaged, they locked him up in the nuthouse…and these are just the ones I know about. Who knows what happened to the rest of them…The capitalists—you know, these new Russians—they hire them as thugs, pay them to shake their rivals down for debts. They’re trigger-happy, and they don’t feel pity for anyone. You think they’ll feel the least bit sorry for some twenty-year-old, crazy rich little punk, while all they have are medals, malaria, and hepatitis? No one ever felt sorry for them…They feel like shooting…Don’t write this down…It scares me…Conversations with them are short: They’ll put you up against the wall and shoot you in the head! They want to go to Chechnya because there’s freedom there, plus Russians are getting hurt…They dream of bringing back fur coats for their wives. Gold rings. My guy was dying to go there, too, but they don’t take drunks. There are plenty of healthy men willing to go. Every day, it’s the same thing, “Give me money.” “No.” “Heel, bitch!” And he’ll punch me in the face. Then he sits there crying. Throws himself on me: “Don’t leave me!” I felt sorry for him for a long time…[
She weeps.
]

Pity is an ugly thing…I won’t give in to it anymore…Don’t look for pity from me! Eat up your own vomit with your own goddamn spoon. Pick up your own mess! Forgive me, oh Lord, if you really do exist. Forgive me!

I come home from work in the evening…I hear his voice. He’s training my son. At this point, I know the routine by heart: “Stop! Remember: You throw the grenade at the window and somersault here. Get on the ground. And then another one behind the column…” For crying out loud! “Four seconds and you’re out on the stairwell, you kick down the door and shift the machine gun to your left-hand side. The first guy goes down…the second one runs past…the third one covers him…Stop! Stop!!!” Stop…[
She screams.
] It terrifies me! How am I supposed to save my son? I asked my friends for help, one of them told me: “You have to go to church. Pray.” Another one took me to a wise woman…where else can I go? There’s no one else to turn to. The woman was as old as Koschei the Deathless.
^*2
She told me to come back the next day with a bottle of vodka. She walked around the apartment with the bottle, whispered to it, swept her hands over it, and handed it back to me. “The vodka is enchanted now. Give him a glass of it for two days in a row, on the third day, he won’t want it anymore.” And it really did work—for a month, he didn’t drink. But then he started again: He’ll stumble in plastered in the middle of the night, banging the pots and pans, demanding I feed him…I found another healer. That one read my cards, poured molten lead into a cup of water. Taught me simple spells to say over salt, over a handful of sand. Nothing helped! You can’t cure war and vodka…[
She rocks her bandaged arm.
] I’m so sick of it all! I don’t feel sorry for anyone anymore. Not the kids, not myself…I’m not asking her to come, but my mother keeps showing up in my dreams. Young and happy. She’s always laughing. I chase her away…Other times, I’ll see my sister, and she’s always somber. Every time, she asks me the same question: “Do you really think you can just switch yourself off like a light-bulb?” [
She stops.
]

All of this is true…I’ve never seen a beautiful thing. And never will. Yesterday, he showed up at the hospital: “I sold the rug. The kids were hungry.” My favorite rug. The one nice thing we had in the house…the one thing we had left. I scrimped and saved for an entire year to buy it. Kopeck by kopeck. I’d wanted that rug so bad…It’s from Vietnam. And just like that, he drank it away. The girls from work ran over: “Oh, Tamara, hurry up and come home. He’s fed up with your youngest, he’s been beating him. And your eldest (my sister’s daughter), she’s twelve now…You know yourself what can happen…One night he’ll be drunk and…”

I lie awake at night. I can’t sleep. And then I’ll drop into an abyss, fly off somewhere. I never know what I’ll be like when I wake up. I have these terrifying thoughts…

[
She unexpectedly hugs me in parting.
]

Remember me…

—

A year later, she made another suicide attempt. This one was successful. I learned that her husband had soon found himself another woman. I called her. “I feel sorry for him,” she told me. “I don’t love him, but I pity him. The only trouble is, he started drinking again even though he promised he would quit.”

Can you guess what she told me next?

*1
A
zindan
is a kind of Middle Eastern and Central Asian prison.
Bochata
is a term Russian soldiers used for the young Afghan boys who would walk alongside them. A
duval
is a tall, thick clay fence. A
barbukhaika
is a large Afghan truck.
Khodahafez
is Persian for “God be with you,” said in parting.

*2
The archetypical villain in Slavic folklore.

AS TOLD BY HER MOTHER

Sooner or later, telling my stories will kill me…Why do I keep doing this? There’s nothing you can do to help me. You’ll write it down, publish it…Good people will read it, they’ll cry, but the bad ones, the important ones…they’ll never read it. Why would they?

I’ve told this story so many times already…

November 23, 2006…It was all over the news, the neighbors knew. It was the talk of the town…

But me and Nastya, my granddaughter, we’d been home all day. Our TV wasn’t working, it’d been broken a long time, it was very old. We were waiting for Olesya to come home to get a new one. We’d been cleaning the house. Doing laundry. For some reason, we were having a lot of fun that day, we kept laughing and laughing. My mother came home…Olesya’s grandma…She came in from the garden: “Oh girls, you seem to be having a little too much fun. Look out, the next thing you know, you’ll be crying.” My heart sank…How’s my Olesya? We’d just talked to her the night before, it’d been a holiday—Police Day. They’d presented her with a decoration: “For Excellent Service in the Ministry of Internal Affairs.” We congratulated her. “I love you all so much,” she said. “I can’t wait to see my native land again.” Half of my pension went toward those long-distance calls. I’d hear her voice, and then I could get through the next two or three days, until the next phone call…“Mama, don’t cry,” she’d comfort me. “I carry a weapon, but I never use it. It’s war on one side, and completely peaceful on the other. In the morning, I can hear the mullah singing, that’s how they pray here. The mountains are alive, they’re not dead—they’re covered in grass and trees up to their very peaks.” Another time: “Mama, the Chechen soil is saturated with oil. Dig around in any garden, you’ll find oil everywhere.”

Why did they send them down there? They’re weren’t defending the Motherland, they were fighting for oil derricks. These days, a drop of oil is worth a drop of blood…

One of my neighbors stopped by…an hour later, another…“What are they all dropping in for?” I wondered. They’d come by without any particular purpose. Just to sit for a moment, then leave. Meanwhile, they’d already played the story on TV several times…

We didn’t know anything until the following morning. My son called: “Mama, are you at home?” “Why? I was about to go to the store.” “Wait for me. I’ll come after you send Nastya to school.” “I was going to let her stay home. She has a cough.” “If she doesn’t have a fever, send her to school.” My heart dropped, my whole body started shaking. My blood ran cold. Nastya ran off to school, and I went out onto the balcony. I saw my son coming, and he wasn’t alone, my daughter-in-law was with him. I couldn’t stand waiting for them, two more minutes would have pushed me over the edge! I ran out onto the stairwell and screamed, “What happened to Olesya?” Apparently, the way I was screaming, bellowing…they started shouting “Mama!” They came out of the elevator and just stood there, not saying a word. “Is she in the hospital?” “No.” The whole world started spinning. Whirling. After that, I don’t remember much…Suddenly, there were a lot of people standing around me…All of our neighbors had opened their doors, people were lifting me up from the cement floor, trying to calm me down. I was crawling around on the ground grabbing onto their legs, kissing their boots. “Kind people, my friends…She couldn’t have abandoned Nastya…her sunshine…the light of her life…No…” I beat my head against the floor. At first, you don’t believe it, you grasp at straws. She’s not dead, she’ll just return disabled. Without any legs…blind…It’ll be all right, Nastya and I will lead her around by the hand. As long as she’s alive! I wanted to beg someone—get on my knees and beg for her life back…

There were suddenly so many people…The house filled up with strangers. They pumped me full of sedatives—I’d lie there, come to, and then they’d have to call the ambulance again. The war had come into my home…but other people had their own lives to lead. No one understands a stranger’s tragedy, God willing you might understand your own. Oh…Everyone thought I was unconscious, but I was lying there listening to them. It’s bitter for me, very bitter…

“…I have two sons. They’re still in school. I’m saving up to buy them out of military service…”

“…We are a patient people—that’s for sure. People are nothing but meat, cannon fodder, and war, it’s a job…”

“…Renovating the house cost us a fortune. We’re lucky we bought the Italian tiles before they changed the prices. We put in PVC windows. Armored doors…”

“…And our kids keep growing…Enjoy them while they’re still little…”

“…A war here, and a war there…shootings every day. Explosions. Riding the bus is frightening, you’re scared to get on the Metro…”

“…Our neighbor’s son was unemployed, he did nothing but drink, so he signed up as a contract soldier. A year later, he came back from Chechnya with a suitcase full of cash: bought a car, a fur coat for his wife, a gold ring. Took his whole family to Egypt…These days, without money, you’re nothing. But how are you supposed to make it?”