Siberian Education (34 page)

The addresses of these women don't appear in any directory, and in any case it's no use simply knowing who they are – you must be sent by someone, by an Authority. They will never open the door to you if they haven't been forewarned of your arrival, or if they don't recognize the signature on your arm.

Before moving to Transnistria, Aunt Anfisa had lived in a small town in central Russia, and occasionally put criminals up in her flat. They would go to her house as soon as they got out of prison, partly just to spend some time with a woman who was capable of loving as a criminal was used to being loved, and partly to inquire about the whereabouts of their friends, find out what was going on in the criminal world and ask for help in their new life.

One evening Aunt Anfisa was visited by a fugitive whom the police had been hunting for some time. He and the rest of his gang had carried out several bank robberies, but one day something had gone wrong and the police had succeeded in catching them at it. A violent chase had ensued, and the criminals, as they fled and endeavoured to throw the cops off the scent, had shared out the loot and split up. Each had gone his own way, but, as far as Anfisa knew, only two of them had managed to get away; the other six had been killed in clashes with the police. The group had killed more than twenty officers and security guards, so as far as the police were concerned it had been a matter of pride not to let any of the robbers escape, and to give them all an exemplary punishment, so as to deter other people from doing the same.

This fugitive turned up at Anfisa's house with a baby girl, who was only a few months old. He explained to her that his original plan, to escape via the Caucasus, Turkey and Greece, had never even got off the ground: the police had burst into his flat, and one officer had killed his wife, the child's mother; but he had made his escape, and now had come to Anfisa's house, sent by a friend.

He left Anfisa his little girl – along with a bag full of money, a few diamonds, and three ingots of gold – and asked her to take care of the child. She agreed, and not only because of the money: Anfisa couldn't have children herself, and like any woman who longs for children, had found the prospect irresistible.

The man told her that if she wanted a quiet life she would have to disappear. He advised her to go to Transnistria – to the town of Bender, a land of criminals, where he had the right connections and where no one could find her and harm her.

That same night Anfisa, with a bag full of money and food and with the little girl in her arms, had left for Transnistria. Later she heard the child's father had been killed in a shoot-out with the police while trying to reach the Caucasus.

Anfisa didn't know what the little girl was called: in all the confusion the man had forgotten to tell her his daughter's name. So she had decided to give her the name of the patron saint of parents, Saint Ksenya: or ‘Ksyusha', as we called her affectionately.

Right from the start Anfisa had understood that Ksyusha was different from other children, but that never stopped her being proud of her: they had a wonderful relationship, those two – they were a true family.

Ksyusha was always going off on her own, all over the place, and wherever she went she found open doors and people who loved her.

Sometimes her autism was more obvious than usual: all of a sudden she would freeze and stand motionless for a long while, gazing into the distance, as if concentrating on something a long way off. Nothing, it seemed, could wake her or bring her back to her senses. Then she would suddenly come out of that state and resume whatever she had been doing before.

There was an old doctor who lived in our area, who had a theory of his own about Ksyusha and her moments of absence.

He was an excellent doctor, and a man who loved literature and life. He lent me a lot of books, especially ones by American authors who were banned in the Soviet Union, and also some uncensored translations of European classics, such as Dante.

Under Stalin's regime he had been put in a gulag for hiding in his apartment a family of Jews who, like many Jews in those years, had been declared enemies of the people. Since he had collaborated with ‘enemies of the people' he had been given a harsh sentence, and like many political prisoners during that period, had been sent to a gulag together with ordinary convicts, who hated political prisoners. Already on the train journey to the camp he had made himself useful to the outlaw community by setting the broken bones of an important criminal who had been savagely beaten by the soldiers on guard. In the camp he had been officially declared a
lepíla
, or doctor of the criminals.

After several years in the gulag he had developed such a close relationship with the criminal community, despite not being a criminal himself, that when he was released he no longer felt he belonged to the civilized world. So he decided to go on living in the criminal community, and therefore had come to Transnistria, to our district, where he had a friend.

This doctor was a very interesting individual because he was a complicated character of many layers: a physician, an intellectual who had preserved the taste and refinement of a person with a university education, but also a man with a past as a convict, a friend of criminals, whose language he spoke fluently and whom he resembled in almost every respect.

On the question of Ksyusha he used to say it was very important not to disturb her when she was motionless, but that one thing in particular was essential: when she returned to her senses, everything around her must be just as it had been at the moment of separation.

So we boys knew we mustn't touch her when she went into that state. We knew this, and we tried as hard as we could to protect our Ksyusha from any possible shock, but as often happens among youngsters, sometimes we overdid things in our attempt to follow the doctor's advice.

Once, for example, we were out in a boat. There were three of us plus Ksyusha and we were going upstream along the river when suddenly the motor conked out. We put the oars into the water, but after a few minutes I noticed that Ksyusha had changed: she was sitting with her back erect and her head quite still, like a statue, and staring at the unknown . . . So we, poor fools, started frantically rowing against the current, because we were scared that if on Ksyusha's reawakening the scenery around her was different, her health would be seriously affected.

We rowed like mad for almost an hour; we took turns but were still exhausted. People watched us from the bank, trying to make out what these idiots were doing on a boat in the middle of the river, where the current was strongest, and why they kept rowing against the current in order to stay in the same position.

When Ksyusha woke up we all gave a sigh of relief and we went straight home, though she kept asking us to go on a little further . . .

We thought the world of our Ksyusha; she was our little sister.

When I was released from prison after my second juvenile conviction, I went wild for a week. Then I spent a whole day in the sauna: I fell asleep under the hot steam, perfumed with pine essence, which pinned me to the boiling hot wooden bed. Afterwards I went fishing with my friends.

We took four boats and some large nets, and travelled a long way: we went upriver as far as the hills, where the mountains began. There the river was much wider – sometimes you couldn't see the opposite bank – and the current was less strong. A whole plain scattered with small pools among wild woods and fields, and a scent of flowers and grass carried on the wind; when you breathed it you felt you were in heaven.

We fished at night and relaxed by day; we would build a fire and make fish soup or fish baked in the earth, our favourite dishes. We talked a lot: I told the others what I had seen in jail, the everyday stories of prison, the people I had met and the interesting things I had heard from others. My friends filled me in on what had happened in our area while I'd been in prison: who had left, who had been put inside, who had died, who had fallen ill or disappeared, the troubles in our part of town and the conflicts with people from another area, the quarrels that had broken out during my absence. Someone talked about his previous conviction, someone else about what he'd heard from his relatives who had returned from jail. That's how we spent the days.

About ten days later we returned home.

I tied my boat to the jetty. It was a beautiful day – warm, even though a bit windy. I left everything in the boat – the bag containing my soap, toothbrush and toothpaste. I even left my sandals there: I wanted to walk with nothing to encumber me. I felt good, as you feel when you're aware of being really free.

I set my eight-gored hat askew on the right side of my head and put my hands in my pockets, my right hand touching my flick-knife. I picked a sprig from an aromatic herb on the river bank and clenched it between my teeth.

And so, barefoot in the company of my friends, at a relaxed pace I set off for home.

Already in the first street of our district we realized that something was wrong: people were coming out of the houses, the women with little children in their arms were walking behind the men, and an immense line of people had formed. Following the crowd and increasing our pace we caught up with the end of the queue and immediately asked what had happened. Aunt Marfa, a middle-aged woman, the wife of a friend of my father's, replied with a very scared, almost terrified expression on her face:

‘My sons, what a dreadful thing has befallen us, what a dreadful thing . . . The Lord is punishing us all . . .'

‘What's happened, Aunt Marfa? Has somebody died?' asked Mel.

She looked at him with a grief-stricken expression on her face and said something I'll never forget:

‘I swear to you by Jesus Christ that even when my son died in prison I didn't feel so bad . . .'

Then she started crying and muttering something, but it was incomprehensible; we only caught a few words, ‘residue of an abortion' – a very bad insult for us, because as well as offending the person who is called that it offends the name of the mother, who according to Siberian tradition is sacred.

When one woman, a mother, insults the name of another mother, it means that the person at whom that insult is aimed has done something really horrible.

What was going on? We were bewildered.

On top of that, a few seconds later all the women in the procession started screaming, crying and uttering curses together with Aunt Marfa. The men, as Siberian law prescribes, let them scream but kept calm themselves: only the angry expressions on their faces, and the narrow slits of their eyes, near-closed with rage, indicated their state of mind.

Uncle Anatoly came over to Aunt Marfa. He was an old criminal who as a young man had lost his left eye in a fight and was consequently nicknamed ‘Cyclops'. He was tall and sturdy and never wore a bandage over that hole where his eye had once been: he preferred to show everyone that terrible black void.

Cyclops had the job of looking after Aunt Marfa and taking care of her family, while her husband, who was his best friend, was in jail. That's the custom among Siberian criminals: when a man has to serve a long prison sentence, he asks a friend, a person he trusts, to help his family to make ends meet, check that his wife doesn't cheat on him with another man (something almost impossible in our community) and watch over his children's upbringing.

Embracing Aunt Marfa, Cyclops tried to calm her down, but she kept on screaming louder and louder, and the other women did the same. So the little children started crying too, and then the slightly older ones joined in.

It was hellish: I felt like crying myself, though I still didn't know the reason for all this despair.

Cyclops looked at us, and realized from our faces that nobody had told us yet. He murmured in a sad and angry voice:

‘Ksyusha's been raped . . . Boys, this is a world of bastards!'

‘Be quiet, Anatoly, don't make Our Lord even angrier!' said Grandfather Filat, a very old criminal whom everyone called ‘Winter', though I never understood why.

It was said that when he was a boy Filat had robbed Lenin himself. He and his gang had stopped a car carrying Lenin and some senior members of the party on the outskirts of St Petersburg. Lenin, the story went, had refused to hand over his car and money to the robbers, so Winter had hit him on the head, and the shock had given Lenin his famous tic of involuntarily turning his head to the left. I was always very sceptical about this story – goodness knows how much truth there was in it – but it was amusing to see grown people telling these tales in the belief that they were true.

Anyway, Winter was an old Authority, and whenever he expressed his opinion everyone took notice. It was his job to rebuke Cyclops, because he had spoken too angrily, blurting out blasphemies which a well-bred Siberian criminal should never utter.

‘Who are you, my boy, to call this world “a world of bastards”? It was created by Our Lord, and there are plenty of just men in it too. Surely you wouldn't want to insult all of them? Mind your words, because once they have flown they never come back.'