The Knife Sharpener's Bell (38 page)

And besides, I don't have any right to judge him. So many good people, good and not so good people, acted the same, did what, in their desperation, they had to.

I have everything. When my daughter was four, we received further fruit of the thaw: a report recording the review of Vladimir's and Solly's verdicts. The report establishes that “certain violations of the law” had taken place during the preliminary investigation, that “measures of coercion” had been applied against these two boys (the nighttime interrogations, the deprivation of parcels, of food), that their declarations had been “taken down prejudicially,” records of their interrogations fabricated in their absence, and that, furthermore, the revolver that had been taken from Solly, the reason they were sentenced to death, was “unusable.” The report noted without comment that “in view of their deaths,” Solly and Vladimir had not been questioned during the review. It made no apology for these deaths, expressed no regret. It concluded that in the light of the investigation, Vladimir and Solly were posthumously sentenced to ten years in a labour camp. They were four years dead.

I have everything. Even the certificates in which Vladimir's and Solly's sentences were rescinded and they were declared “fully rehabilitated.” In 1991. Thirty-nine years after their deaths. The new Russian state was cleaning its hands, the wheels of this particular justice grinding slowly but thoroughly.
There. They've said their piece, these yellowing bits of paper, these documents with their dates, their facts and fibs and stories. I knew they were dangerous. Once the past opens its doors, it starts inhabiting you again. But I suppose that's what I wanted, to be inhabited, to inhabit myself more fully. Though nothing is solved. I creak back down onto my knees, gather up the papers, begin to sort them gently back into their folders.

I stood accused. I stand accused still, of having let the story that I had to tell slip for all these years. Who am I now? Where did my story get me? What it got me is this life, a life that is tapering down now, however much I deny it. I think of the truck on that country road that passed me so carefully. Perhaps now it's less than two solemn feet between me and what would end me; perhaps it's more.

I know I sound angry. I am. I am eaten by an anger that kept me silent. Till now.

I was pardoned too. In 1991. But when those papers came, I realized that I didn't want the record wiped clean. I didn't want the story of what Vladimir had chosen to do corrected.

Not in the light of those faces on the television. Not in this world, this new century. Not from my new home in Toronto. That's where they mailed the certificate. My new old home, the home I'll be leaving soon, for another home. We've been here more than twenty-five years, my daughter and I. We got out. I at last got to come back to Canada, to come home. To see Joseph, his family. Home. He's old now, my Joseph, but he's still here, still mine.

I have to eat. I'm going to sit down and eat, put good food in my mouth. And be glad for it. I'm going to turn on more light with the touch of a switch. Maybe put the television back on, watch my young people's faces, listen to their
voices and all their certainty and all their hopes. What would Vladimir have to say to those young faces and their protests, their chants? Could we ever have translated for them the unfathomable world we come from? What would Poppa have thought, O brave new world? Capitalism didn't die, Poppa. Every surface gets covered with words intended to make us feel how empty we are so that we'll want something. And my mother, my mother would have been sure about everything as she always was, would have packed everything tight into her suitcase of certainty.

My father gave me an orange, once. I watched my mother make a cake. What they could give me, what they could never give me, resides in me still. There it is; the world. There it is; home.

Special thanks to my son, Sasha Tregebov, whose idea this was.

Immense gratitude to Warren Cariou, midwife extraordinaire, splendid editor, friend, and writer. Without his help from beginning to end this wouldn't be much of a book.

Other hands and good eyes also helped: my sincere thanks to Charis Wahl and Lynn Coady. Thanks also to critically encouraging readers Mary Chapman, Nancy Richler, Guillermo Verdecchia and Peter Higdon. How fortunate I was to have Carole Corbeil read this and encourage me very early on.

Thanks to Nik and the whole crew at Coteau for their time, care and generosity with this project.

I am most grateful to Alla Tumanov for the insight her writing has given me not only into the worldview of the young people involved in the Slutsky Rebellion, but into the generosity of spirit that would allow the survivors to emerge from their ordeal with a greater humanity. Alla Tumanov's memoir,
Where We Buried the Sun: One Woman's Gulag Story
, translated by Gust Olson (NeWest Press, 1999) was invaluable to my research. The wording of the interrogation documentation in my novel is drawn from the documents included in Tumanov's book. The names of the officials who signed the documentation are actual. These are the persons responsible
during the historical events in which Vladlen Furman was arrested, sentenced and executed.

I hope that my new cousins, Alexander and Danielle Furman, find this story worthy of their family. I am grateful to newlyweds Andreas Schroeder and Sharon Brown for their hospitality and wisdom. My thanks to Prof. Julie Hessler of the Department of History at the University of Oregon for kindly looking over an earlier draft for historical veracity. Thanks also to the amazing Josh Stenberg for consultation on Russian terms and names.

The following memoirs of the 1930s, 40s and 50s in the Soviet Union provided me with details of everyday civilian life: Seema Rynin Allan's
Comrades and Citizens
; Don Dallas'
Dateline Moscow
; Lydia Kirk's
Postmarked Moscow
; John Lawrence's
Life in Russia
; Deana Levin's
Children in Soviet Russia
; Penelope Sassoon's
Penelope in Moscow
; William A. Wood's
Our Ally The People of Russia
. The excerpt from the Mayakovsky poem “Why Did We Fight” is from the book
The Bedbug and Selected Poetry
(Cleveland, 1960).

Many thanks to the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council and the Toronto Arts Council for their generous support during the long period in which this book was written.

Rhea Tregebov is an award-winning poet, author of a half-dozen collections of verse, and also the author of five picture books for young children. Her poetry has won both the
Malahat Review
Long Poem Award and the
Prairie Schooner
Readers' Choice Award as well as honourable mention for the National Magazine Awards. She also acted as editor and co-translator of
Arguing with the Storm: Stories by Yiddish Women Writers
.

Born in Saskatoon, Rhea Tregebov grew up in Winnipeg, and has English degrees from the University of Manitoba and Boston University. She lived in Toronto for many years but now makes her home in Vancouver, where she is an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at the University of British Columbia.