There Once Lived a Girl Who Seduced Her Sister's Husband, and He Hanged Himself (8 page)

Tamara’s Baby

H
e never came by invitation—he never received one. He simply announced himself (often with a lengthy insult) through the door, then pleaded his way inside. At the dinner table he yelled and pontificated, spat out his food and bared his only tooth, wishing both to stuff himself and to have his say. He spoke in non sequiturs, always in a terrible hurry, never explaining anything. He must have believed it was the prerogative of an erudite man like himself to speak any way he wanted; didn’t he spend all his unfilled and unpaid days in reading rooms, working on some obscure bibliography or biography? Just wait till it’s done, he predicted to his poor hosts and their guests; he’d throw in some dirty laundry, some famous names, and voilà—we’d have a bestseller on our hands. But first he needed to finish this magnum opus with the help, he said, of foreign grants and lecture fees that never materialized. In the meantime, he lectured gratis in the smoking rooms of public libraries, where he showed up empty-handed, with no tobacco or matches of his own. Hence, the awkward giggling and convoluted openings—“God has nothing to do with religion” or “All politicians want is to be reelected; may I bother you for a smoke?”

The people who knew him feared he might ask to stay the night; women of the house shared the expression, “I could sense he was on the verge of staying over.” Besides, he was old. (That didn’t stop him from announcing into someone’s intercom, “Let me in; it’s up!”) When he stayed, everything needed to be washed, aired, and dry-cleaned. Officially he was not homeless: after the divorce he was assigned an attic room with a ruined ceiling and exposed plumbing—imagine the smell. All he could do after the divorce was read, so he found refuge in public libraries, where he drank tap water and cadged leftovers from the cafeteria. Abandoned by his wife and children, he longed for hot food. On pension days his biggest splurge was a hot dog and sometimes one or even two hamburgers. Also on those days he’d call on his acquaintances, under the pretext of paying back a debt—thereby giving them reason to have him stay for dinner. The next day he’d be broke again and would go back to the same houses for another loan, or wait outside people’s offices, ambushing them with requests for money to buy medicine.

That’s how he lived for a long time, but things do change for someone like A.A., too. A fellow demagogue from the smoking room advised him about free health resort packages for the poor, and even helped him fill out an application at the office of social aid. That was over a year ago. Finally A.A. overheard someone bragging about going to a health resort for free. Ready to fight for his rights, he rushed to the social aid office and was informed that his request had been granted and that he had been expected at the resort two days ago. The woman at the counter blinked cleverly. He understood they were sending him in the off-season, in the worst weather, when no paying customer would go. He screamed and stomped his feet, but once outside he reconsidered. October wasn’t so bad. Pushkin liked October. And if you think about it, what is a health resort? Three meals a day, plus he could take extra bread to keep him full at night. At the thought of all that food, he began to salivate uncontrollably. He ran back to the library cafeteria to look for a leftover piece of bread.

First stop: his old flophouse, the scene of many battles. He spent the night there. In the morning he exchanged his smelly rags for some decent secondhand clothing. Then he raided local Dumpsters for a discarded suitcase and found one, in imitation leather. He already owned a hat—a knit beret. He tricked the attendant at the library cloakroom for a scarf. “I must have left it here and then forgot. . . . You see, I don’t have a woman to look after me, so things get lost. . . .” The woman picked out a green rag that someone must have left ages ago and held it out with disgust. “This one yours? Was about to throw it out.” A.A. accepted the rag gratefully and scurried around the corner to try it on. The green scarf went nicely with his new dark jacket and black beret. Then the shoes: his smoking room buddies suggested he look through the Dumpsters near big department stores, as a lot of people tossed their old shoes there after buying new ones. A.A. found a decent-looking pair, a little too big, but that was even better. In the evening he packed his notes and a pen (cadged from the post office) into the suitcase. There were eight days remaining at the health resort and two weeks before his pension.

At dawn A.A. left his vile room and boarded the train without a ticket. For the entire trip he stood next to the exit, shaking from fear and cold. Arriving at the resort, he found everything still closed. He dozed in the lobby, sitting up, like a gentleman, until the cafeteria opened for breakfast. Once it did, he stuffed himself with kasha and bread, swallowed three cups of sweet tea, and then stormed the little library. Straight as a rod, with his pen and writing paper in hand and his green scarf draped over one shoulder, he began by loudly demanding works by Spengler and Kierkegaard from the cute librarian. She shrugged her plump shoulders and sent him to the mystery section. A.A. yelled louder: The library needed more books, and he happened to know a certain warehouse where publishers dumped unsold copies. Just give him a truck and he’ll bring back hundreds of books! The librarian seemed indifferent to the news: she didn’t have a truck, and besides, people on vacation wanted light reading, like mysteries and detective stories.

At this point an elderly lady interfered. She overheard A.A. bragging and asked to take down the address of that mythical warehouse. As for the library, she agreed: they needed more serious books for the patrons like Professor (meaning him) and a PhD like herself. Well, almost—her thesis was finished, it was waiting in her desk, and she needed only to defend it. “Me too,” A.A. agreed eagerly. “Mine’s also on my desk”—even though he had no desk. The cute librarian was forgotten; the educated pair was loudly discussing matters of cultural importance. Leaving the library, A.A. held the door for the lady, sweeping her off her feet with such chivalry.

They walked into the park, inhaling the smell of damp leaves and wood smoke, and sat down on a bench under an ancient tree. “To walk the blessed path,” A.A. pontificated, “one must give up his possessions—only then can one reach the sacred door; but what happens if one doesn’t own anything? Will the door open for him?” She listened to his blabbering, taking it in gratefully. They almost missed lunch. Again he gobbled down his portion and all the bread on the table; he asked the server if he could move to Tamara Leonardovna’s table, but apparently there was no room. Ready for another walk, he waited impatiently for her to finish, but the lady excused herself—she needed rest. A.A. went to his room, too, and stretched out on the clean sheets, almost crying with
joy.

After dinner A.A. stuffed his pockets with bread, and together they walked over to the stream. Again she listened meekly; this time he expanded on Francis of Assisi, who had walked the blessed path and considered every insult God’s gift. Back in his room he made a mess of his squashed bread slices, to his roommate’s displeasure. A.A. headed off the impending confrontation by running out into the hall, where people were watching television. He flopped on a couch and proceeded to watch one program after the next, annoying everyone with vitriolic comments and wild laughter.

Unforgettable days rolled by. The happy couple took walks in plain view, ignoring giggles. A.A. successfully campaigned for a transfer to Tamara Leonardovna’s table—he simply moved there, and one of the enraged ladies switched tables in protest. What really bothered the others was Tamara’s age (which they found out from the director’s secretary). She was seventy-five—fourteen years older than he was! It was practically statutory rape, the resort ladies decided. Eventually public opinion ruled that this A.A. was simply looking for a perch, for someone—anyone—to take him in; for what kind of prince charming was he—without hair, teeth, or a roof over his head? Somehow they knew everything about him. A.A. couldn’t keep his voice down to save his life. But Tamara didn’t want to know. When, a week after they left the resort, one of the ladies called to check in on Tamara at home, A.A. picked up the phone. Like small children they were unable to part.

* * *

Now they are living together in Tamara’s little apartment, away from prying eyes. A.A. eats regularly, before and after visiting the library. Tamara keeps house, looks after him, complains often but receives no sympathy; the blessed path is thorny. A.A. now owns two writing pads, which Tamara has purchased for him. She wants to have his pension recalculated and to make sure he receives benefits like a free subway pass—he used to beg and fake injuries to be let
in.

Tamara’s whole family is up in arms about this cohabitation, especially her nephews, who are terrified that the old fools may marry. They cannot deny, though, that Tamara looks fresher, or that she is full of plans and new energy. For example, she has located that mythical book warehouse and now takes books to nursing homes and hospitals, where people cannot afford them.

At night they squawk to each other about their day. Tamara complains and recites her grievances, and A.A. doles out advice and admonitions like an austere paterfamilias. Then they go to their beds and read, exchanging notes; in the morning they resume their squawking and arguing. Who knows why this A.A. screams so much—he may be scared of losing her, of finding himself back in the flooded attic.

She refuses to marry him, although she did once kiss his hand when he was prostrate with illness. At night A.A. cries and howls with grief, but in the morning he plays boss again, and Tamara, barely awake, hurries with his eggs. He continues to show up uninvited at people’s houses, but now he holds himself more assertively and makes frequent allusions to his wife, “so-called Tamara,” and her undefended thesis on Charles Dickens.

Eggs is the luxury that graces their breakfast table the first three days after pension, but A.A. is shaved and dressed in everything clean, and Tamara walks around in practically new winter boots that A.A. fished out from a Dumpster. A.A. often criticizes her appearance: “So-called Tamara, go fix your hair!” Tamara crawls around her little apartment, always thinking about the next meal for this parasite. Where did he come from, helpless like all parasites and parasitic like all helpless people? And yet he criticizes and instructs, while she has no strength left to look after him. At the end of the day she drags herself to the food market to pick up from the floor squashed veggies and fruit for his dinner. She feels ashamed in the presence of some imaginary friends and nemeses, but she does have a justification: a certain old photo, the holiest of her secrets.

In the evening he comes home, gobbles down her vegetable stew in a second, and starts flailing his arms again, this time thrashing the very personage whose bibliography or biography he’s been putting together for ten years. The man was a fraud, it turns out, and Tamara says, “I told you so,” and they squawk some more and then watch television, exchanging acerbic comments.

That night he cannot stay asleep. He wakes up in tears. Tamara Leonardovna tucks him in and blows on his bald forehead, as she would have done for her baby if he had lived. And now for Tamara’s secret: she never believed the baby had died at birth! No, you see, here was her son, with an altered date of birth; he was back to sleep. There is a photo of
him
, the baby’s father, that she once thought she’d destroyed. It turned up mysteriously in the folder with her yellowing thesis. It’s the same face as A.A.’s, only younger.

She holds out the photo with a trembling hand, but he pushes it away: “What does that have to do with me? What’s wrong with you? Look at the date: I wasn’t even born yet.” He goes back to watching their tiny old television, and she puts away the photo, wanting to say to him, “My little
one.”

A Happy Ending

Young Berries

A
mother brought her girl to a sanatorium for sickly children and then left. I was that girl.

The sanatorium overlooked a large pond encircled by an autumnal park, with meadows and paths. The tall trees seemed ablaze with gold and copper; the scent of their falling leaves made the girl dizzy, after the city’s stench. Once upon a time, the sanatorium was a gentleman’s stately manor, with classical pillars, arched ceilings, and upper galleries. The girls’ dormitory, called a
dortoir
, was once a drawing room with a grand piano.

The revolution had repurposed the estate into a sanatorium and school for proletarian children with tuberculosis. By the time the girl reached fifth grade, of course, all Soviet citizens were proletarians. They lived in crowded, communal apartments, traveled in streetcars packed with commuters, waited in lines for seats in public cafeterias, and so on. (They waited also for bread, potatoes, shoes, and, on rare occasions, a luxury like a winter coat; in communal apartments, workers stood in line to use the bathroom.) A well-regulated line represented fairness. One had only to wait long enough for one’s portion, as, indeed, the girl had waited for her spot at the Forest School—that was the name of the sanatorium.

I cannot describe the girl’s appearance. Appearances cannot reveal inner life, and the girl, who was twelve at the time, carried on a continuous inner monologue, deciding every second—what to say, where to sit, how to answer—with the single purpose of behaving exactly like the other children, to avoid being kicked and shunned. But the girl wasn’t strong enough to control her every step, to be at all times a model of neatness and moderation. She wasn’t strong enough, so she would run through the rainy autumnal park in torn stockings, her mouth flapping open in an excited yelp, simply because, you see, they were playing hide-and-seek. Between classes she’d stampede the hallways, snot-nosed, hair undone, fighting and cawing, what a sight.

The sanatorium expected all students to keep track of their basic belongings. One week into the school term, no one, including the girl, could locate his or her own pens, pencils, erasers. But the girl lost her handkerchief, too, followed by her right mitten, her scarf, and one of her two stockings. (One lies there by the bed; the other, God knows where.) Plus, she was missing one of her rubber boots! Without her boots, she could neither walk through the park’s muddy puddles nor enter the dining hall. In an old boot from her teacher, she dragged herself like a pariah behind everyone in class.

Such was my condition at the very moment I needed to look no worse than the others. There was this boy, Tolik. We were the same age, but he was six inches shorter, and unspeakably beautiful: a chiseled nose surrounded by freckles, thick lashes over starry eyes, his mouth poised for a coy smirk. The girl was too tall for him, but this young god radiated his charm evenly and meaninglessly a hundred yards around like a little nuclear reactor. When he entered the dining hall, the space around his table lit up, and the girl felt a surge of merriment—Tolik’s here!—and Tolik’s eyes would grow larger, as though under a magnifying glass, as he surveyed his kingdom. Heads turned toward him like sunflowers to the sun. The girl felt stabbed in her heart. There was a swelling right above it, the size of a young berry.

In a commune, no one is entitled to private meals; that’s considered hoarding. Everything, even poor biscuits from home, must be shared. A commune also dislikes nonconforming behavior, such as arriving late or wearing mismatched boots. The girl, inevitably, became an outcast in her class. She began to straggle behind on purpose to avoid scornful looks. One October night, at the end of her second week, she fell so far behind the other girls that she found herself alone among the boys. Dark shadows fell across the path, cutting her off from the girls and their teacher up ahead. The boys, like a pack of wolves encircling its prey, surrounded
her.

The girl stood there on the edge of the park. The other girls, protected and safe, she could barely
see.

I screamed after them. I bellowed like a tuba, like a siren.

The boys nearest to me grinned stupidly. (Later, in my grown life, I could always recognize that dumb smirk, a companion to base, dirty deeds.) Their arms opened wide, ready to grab me. Their fingers danced, and their berries probably hardened. I stood still, screaming toward the girls. A few glanced back, but they all continued to walk away, even faster. I screamed louder.

What would they do to
me?

They’d have to tear me to pieces and bury my remains, but before that, they would do everything that could be done to a person who becomes their property.

For now, they just wanted me to shut
up.

When they were only five feet away, something made them pause. I hurled myself through their ring and ran wildly across the meadow, losing my oversize boot in the mud. At the door, I overtook the last of the girls. She heard me thumping and looked around: on her face I saw the same dirty, complicit smirk. I tumbled inside, red and swollen from crying. But nobody asked a single question as to what caused all that yelling in the park. Those girls knew instinctively. Maybe they’d shared a past in the caves where their female ancestors had been chased down and raped. (How quickly children can regress and accept such hard, primitive truths! Fire and women to be used in common; collective meals shared equally—where the strong get more, the weak get less or nothing at all; sleep together on a filthy floor; grab food from the pile; dress in identical rags.)

That night the girls seemed quiet in a strange, contented way, as if their hunger for primitive justice had been stoked and sated. They didn’t know I had escaped! They assumed I had come back alive but broken, soiled.

Excreted
was the word for such children. The girl herself had known excreted kids in her schoolyard. The excreted were outside the commune, up for grabs—anyone could abuse them in any way. The thing to do was to stalk them, then to slam them into a wall in plain view. The excreted wore the look of dumb cattle; two or three stalkers tailed them. Nothing less than constant adult supervision could protect them, but one can’t expect an adult presence on every path, or around each corner.

The next day began like any other. I fished my boot out of the mud. The boys greeted me as usual (slugging me on the neck, shoving me into a puddle) while the girls watched me like hawks. But no one hollered, no one pointed fingers—eventually it became clear that nothing truly awful had happened to me. I must have escaped. Life returned to normal.

One person at the sanatorium, Tolik, sensed that something had happened. Tolik, a prime chaser, possessed the sharpest hunter’s instincts in the pack. He began stalking me. In dark corners, his starry eyes searched my body while his cohort guarded the perimeter glumly—this chase wasn’t theirs. It wasn’t a courtship, exactly; it was something else, something the girls couldn’t find a name for. They shrugged their shoulders. I alone understood that Tolik was drawn to the whiff of shame that clung to
me.

The girl was left alone. She’d won her place in the sun, with her powerful lungs and her refusal to cave in. It turned out she was blessed with an exceptionally strong voice (she could bellow as low as a hippo and screech as high as a drunken cat), and this talent could kick in at a moment’s danger. In addition, she’d pushed herself academically, and this, too, mattered at Forest School, which wasn’t just any public summer camp where a child was measured by her ability to wake up on time. Good grades were considered an honest achievement here—you couldn’t get an A by punching noses—so if a teacher read your composition in front of the class, then that was hard to sneer
at.

I’d spent my childhood in lines at public cafeterias and in the kitchen of our communal apartment, where academic excellence didn’t matter to my survival. Now, pitted against this hostile tribe, I applied myself feverishly to writing a composition about autumn. My final draft piled azure skies upon turquoise dusk, bronze upon gold, and crystals upon corals, and the astonished teacher—a consumptive beauty in an orthopedic corset—passed my opus around to the other teachers and then read it aloud to the entire class—the same class that had nearly destroyed
me.

I followed up with some verse for a special edition, in honor of Constitution Day, of the school’s newspaper. It wasn’t real poetry, the kind that spills out of a dying person like blood and becomes the butt of ruthless jokes. No, my creation was beyond mockery; it could bring only respect. The Soviet people are the strongest in the world, I wrote, and they want peace for every nation—six lines in all. “Your own work?” the beautiful teacher asked as her corset squeaked.

A new pair of rubber boots arrived from home. At night, in the electric light of the girls’ latrine, I memorized spelling rules. My powerful new voice was now part of the school choir, and I was chosen to dance, too, in a swift Moldavian circle dance—the school was preparing the New Year’s program. After this, we would all go home.

That meant I would never again see my tormentor, my Tolik—your name like sweet, warm milk; your face shining over me like the sun; your eyes alive with indolence and lust.

In dark corners, Tolik showered me with obscenities. Six inches shorter but straight and unwavering as an arrow, he was a high-strung, consumptive boy keen on his target. Everyone at school grew used to the sight of the tall girl pushed against the wall, trapped between Tolik’s arms. Every night I dreamed of his face.

The girl pulled on her new boots and trudged through the snowy park to meet her mother—her time in paradise was up; she was going home. At the winter palace, among crystals and corals of frozen trees, Tolik was living the final hours of his reign.

At the New Year’s concert I performed solo in front of the choir, then swirled in a wild Moldavian dance. (For you alone, my Tolik.) Tolik performed, too (it turned out he possessed a beautifully clear soprano), singing of Soviet Motherland and her brave sons, the aviators, to the accompaniment of a grand piano. He was visibly nervous. The absence of his cynical smirk so struck his classmates that they clapped uncertainly, surprised at their king’s need for their approval.

After the concert there was a dinner, followed by a formal dance. In the early 1950s, children still were taught the orderly dances of the aristocratic finishing schools—polonaise, pas de quatre, pas d’Espagne—and so a slow minuet was announced, ladies ask gentlemen. Tolik, recovered from his stage fright, was exchanging smirks with his entourage. I walked over to him. Our icy fingers entwined. We curtsied and bowed woodenly across the floor. Tolik, discomfited to see me sniffling in public, didn’t crack jokes. Instead, after the dance, he respectfully walked me over to my nook behind a pillar. I retired to the
dortoir
and wept there until the girls returned. There were no more heady interrogations in dark corners. Tolik didn’t know what to do with me anymore.

I was picked up last, as always. We walked along the white highway, under dark skies, dragging my poor suitcase. The
dortoir
windows were throwing farewell lights on the snowy road.

I never saw Tolik again, but I heard his silvery voice over the phone. He called me at home, in Moscow.

My grandfather’s daughter from his second marriage occupied the next room in our communal apartment. She yelled for me to come to the phone. “For you,” she announced with her usual bug-eyed look. “Some
guy.”

“What guy? There’s no guy. . . . Hello?”

“It’s Tolik, remember?” the high voice sang
out.

“Oh, it’s you, Lena,” I greeted Tolik, with a significant glance at my aunt and my mother, who’d also come into the hall. “It’s Lena Mitiaieva from school,
Mom.”

The unmarried Uncle Misha, a radiologist at the KGB clinic, decided to join the party. He stood in his blue army long johns between the black draperies of his doorway. The apartment’s entire population now stood in the hall (minus the Kalinovskys, minus my grandfather’s second wife, minus the grandfather who was smoking shag tobacco in bed, minus the janitor, Aunt Katya). The conceit was that everyone was waiting to use the phone after
me.

“It’s me, Tolik,” continued the voice.

“No, Lena, I can’t tonight—they are going to the movies, Mom,” an aside to my mother.

“What movies? It’s late,” my mother answered quickly, while Uncle Misha and my aunt seemed to be waiting for more.

My love, my holiest secret, was calling me! And I had to speak to him in front of everyone!

“No, Lena, why?” I kept repeating vaguely, because Tolik was inviting me to join him right away at the Grand Illusion for a movie
.
Swooning, I kept mumbling nonsense for my listeners’ benefit. The listeners guessed the truth. They wanted to see me squirm.

Azure skies, turquoise dusk, minuet, my tears, his icy fingers all vanished, and remained in paradise. Here was another story—here I was a fifth-grader with a chronic cold and torn brown stockings. The world of crystals and corals, of miraculous deliveries, of undying love—that world couldn’t coexist with the communal apartment and my grandfather’s room in particular, full of books and bedbugs, where my mother and I (officially homeless) were allowed to sleep in a corner under his desk. My Tolik, my little prince, my dauphin, couldn’t possibly be standing in a dark stinking phone booth near the grimy Grand Illusion.

I didn’t believe Tolik, and rightly so, for I could hear coarse voices in the background and hoots of laughter. Again, the tightening circle of dirty smirks. But this time I was far away.

“Neighbors want the phone,” I concluded indifferently (choking back tears). “Bye, Lena.”

Tolik called again after that, inviting me to go skating or to see a movie. “No, Lena, why?” I mumbled. “What do you mean, ‘Why?’” giggled the shameless Tolik.

Tolik, that prime chaser, had figured out how to use my unhappy love for his dark purposes. But—the circle of animal faces had never crushed the girl; the terror remained among the tall trees of the park, in the enchanted kingdom of young berries.