REVIEWS:
“I absolutely
loved this book. From the start, it captivated me. The history of
Russian Jewry is one that I hadn't known much about, and this
poignant accounting brought it to life. The juxtaposition between the
two time periods made it even more interesting and fun to read.
I
am anxiously awaiting the sequel.” (dfk)
“PLANT A TREE IN ISRAEL” Initiative of the JNF
To celebrate the publishing of her novel, “Looking for Sarah: A Story of Survival” in an E-book format, Margarita G Silver will donate 20% of all proceeds to the Jewish National Fund in support of its forestry and ecology activities.
OTHER TITLES BY THE SAME AUTHOR:
The Spy Who Killed My Dog: Your 8-Step Survival Guide to post-Soviet Russia
MORE ABOUT THE AUTHOR :
Books and Stories from Afar Blog
LOOKING FOR SARAH
by
M.G. Silver
Smashwords Edition
Copyright 2009 by M.G. Silver
Smashwords Edition, License Notes
This e-book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This e-book may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
CHAPTER I
Dvinsk, 1 August 1914
Tomorrow we leave. I am so excited I can hardly write. But I have to because I want to try to record every minute of this trip, the trip I’ve been dreaming about this entire last year. Mama and Esther are still packing even though we’ve certainly exceeded the amount of things we are supposed to take. I am sure Papa will be up the entire night convincing them to leave a few bundles behind. Basya is asleep. She is still small and she doesn’t understand what will happen tomorrow. Itzhik and Eliah have gone to the neighbors’ house to make sure that the cart will be here tomorrow to take us to the train station.
The house is empty and everything seems so lonely--the bare bookshelves, the stripped beds, our cleaned out desk, and even the bench outside. I’ve lived here for as long as I can remember and tomorrow I will say good-bye to this place forever. Itzhik and Eliah seem to know well why we are leaving but we, the girls, have not been told much. I remember about a year ago--four days after we celebrated my sixteenth birthday --I overheard a conversation between Mama, Papa and Itzhik. They thought we were all sleeping, but that night I had a hard time falling asleep. It was right after we heard of another pogrom in Ukraine. A neighbor’s brother and his wife were killed, their house destroyed, and their six children orphaned. How awful it must be to lose your parents! I still get nauseous thinking about it.
While I struggled to fall asleep, Papa and Mama were telling Itzhik about a letter that another neighbor had received from a relative in Argentina. I didn’t know where Argentina was at the time. I’m not sure they did either. But they talked about it as if they had already been there and had seen the wonders of this far away land, described ever so vividly in that letter. The description must have been very convincing for shortly after that conversation, Papa and Itzhik set off for St. Petersburg. Mama said they went away on business, but deep inside, I knew their trip was somehow connected to the letter. They returned a week later with a sense of hope I had not seen in their eyes for years. We must be going to this wonderland of Argentina, I thought, and I began a hunt for any information I could possibly find about it. What was it that so attracted my parents? As I searched tirelessly through the boring geographical facts--the only information available in my school--the late night conversation kept coming again and again.
“No one is afraid there,” my father’s words rang in my ears. “We can be free and not live in fear.”
Months have passed and nothing out of the ordinary was happening. I got tired of waiting and resigned myself to the fact that I’d let my imagination run wild and that Papa’s trip to St. Petersburg was indeed merely a business trip. Then, suddenly, Itzhik had to travel there again. This time, he returned--unable to stop smiling.
“Everything is ready,” he announced walking in the door.
We looked at each other. And although only Papa, Mama, and Eliah were privy to the information behind Itzhik’s statement, we--the girls--understood that something exciting and wonderful was about to happen. We must be going to Argentina after all, I thought to myself, watching the joy with which my mother set off to prepare our usual samovar of evening tea. Finally, my dreams were coming true. Dreams of a country that I’d never seen, never heard of until a year ago, read only a little about, yet a country that would set us free and help us to no longer be afraid.
This is how it all started, and tomorrow will mark the beginning of our new life. I’ll be sure to write down everything I see and experience. Papa says that if I want to be a writer, I have to practice writing all the time. Someday I want to be just as good as Shalom Aleichem.
#
August 1914
The train stopped again. Darkness hung around our car like thick fog on an early morning. No one was talking, but no one was sleeping either. I knew it because I could feel people breathing, panting almost, in nervousness. Who is this now that we stopped for in the middle of the night? What is happening out there, beyond the car’s walls and windows?
A barrage of horse hoofs ran in the distance. Are they approaching? We strained to hear. A tense minute passed, then another. And another. Finally, we were able to exhale. The noise stayed in the distance. Soon enough, the train was gaining speed again.
This was not the first time we stopped on my now prolonged journey. Train after train, station after station, one dark forest after another--all of those stops were slowly becoming the markers with which I counted the days and the miles. How close am I to Odessa? How many days do I have left? How many meals?
People in the car stirred. There was no sense of sleeping anymore; no one could quite calm themselves down enough to close their eyes again. The war does it to people. You become nervous when you don’t want to be. And you become hungry a lot more often. It’s as though your body knows you don’t have enough to eat, and it begins to want more and more. With each missed meal, your stomach grumbles just a little louder and seeing food becomes torture.
I lie here on my bunk and try not to open my eyes, because if I do, I’ll start seeing all the packages of bread, sausage, and eggs that my fellow travelers have brought with them. I can hear mothers untying those bundles, and I picture in my mind how they carefully divide the portions between the children, leaving just a tiny bit for themselves. That’s what my mother would have done…that’s probably what she is doing right now, somewhere very far away from here. I wonder what she is thinking about my portion.
It’s been two weeks since I last saw my family, snuggled together on four bunks of the train we were taking to Libau. They looked so peaceful, so lost in dreams, that I thought, why wake them? It’ll only take a minute. The train was parked solidly at a small town platform, its engine quiet amidst the sleepy station. No crowds to contend with, no officials to appease–when would it be easier than now? I jumped off without looking back…
I peek through my closed eyelids and see the woman across from me feed her child some bread. All these mothers I have met during my travels, all these women who shared their meager meals with me—they have never once asked why I was traveling alone. What would I tell them? What would I tell these simple Russian people--displaced by war, torn out of their homes, and sent to wander the land? Can I tell them we voluntarily gave up our house, our lives, our friends, and our family to travel halfway around the world to escape them? Can I tell them that I grew up afraid of people like them, of their children taunting me on every corner of our small town?
I feel someone’s hand on my shoulder and I open my eyes. “Would you like something to eat, Sarah?” the woman across from me asks, pointing to the bread and a bottle of milk she just opened. I nod, say, “Spasibo bolshoe,” and sit up. The bread with milk feels very good in my stomach. Mother Russia rushes by the window. The sun is coming up in yellows, oranges, and reds. I’ve never seen a daybreak so striking in my life.
My neighbor follows my glance. “It’s beautiful,” she says. She pushes another piece of bread my way. “You’ll find them. Don’t worry.” Somewhere in the car, a child wakes up crying.
#
Odessa, 20 August, 1914
Aunt Zelma looked older than I remembered. She came to the door wearing a black, stately dress of the finest fabric. She was always well dressed and cared for–at least, that’s what Mother used to say. A gold pendant adorned her neck, and a matching set of earrings dangled down from her ears.
For a few moments, Aunt Zelma just stared at me. Her eyes, an interesting shade of green, went from confusion to recognition, and then back to confusion again. Just as I was about to speak my name, she finally exclaimed:
“Esther! What are you doing here?”
“It’s Sarah, Aunt Zelma,” I said. “Esther’s younger sister.”
“Sarah?” She narrowed her eyes. “But, Sarah is only 10…” Aunt Zelma has never been much of a person to keep in touch or know anything about her extended family. We didn’t blame her. After all, Odessa is quite a ways from Dvinsk.
“I was ten seven years ago, Aunt Zelma. I grew up since then.”
She noticed my ripped clothes and my sleep-deprived and hungry frame.
“Why are you looking like this? Where is everyone? Why are you alone?” She stuck her head outside looking everywhere, trying to find my father, my mother, and my siblings.
I told her my story, as she bathed me in the large bathtub. She poured buckets and buckets of warm water over my head, desperate to wash off the dirt of my travels, and with it, my tears.
“My poor child,” she kept repeating. “My poor child.”
She knew nothing of the trip my family decided to undertake, and she had no idea where to look for them in Argentina.
“What will I do now?” I sobbed.
“You can stay with us, dear. For as long as you need to.”
“But I want to find them. I want to go with them.”
“Oh, you will, my darling. It’ll just take a bit of time. I’ll ask around and perhaps we can find some connection with Argentina. Don’t worry.” She tucked me in and I fell asleep immediately, breathing in the aroma of freshly washed linen on a real bed. I felt as though I were five again. That night, I dreamed of running into Mama’s arms.
When I finally woke up the next morning, I found Aunt Zelma taking tea in the dining room. Her husband, my Uncle Moses, was there too, his face half-hidden by a newspaper.
“Here she is!” Exclaimed my aunt, busily waving in the maid to set out another place for me.
“Come, come, my dear. Sit down. Moisha, this is Sarah. Remember her? Lev and Rivka's daughter?”
My throat tightened at the sound of my parents' names, but I was not going to cry. Not in front of Uncle Moses. A stern man, he had once said something that I remembered for the rest of my life. I must have been seven or eight then, and they were visiting us in Dvinsk. “School?” He'd asked my father, raising his eyebrows. “You are sending your girls to school? What do they need school for?” He looked in my direction while holding on to the handle of his spectacles. I was the only one in the house at the time. “Education,” Papa had answered. “Nonsense,” dismissed Uncle Moses, “the only thing that a proper Jewish girl needs is a husband. A husband who can take care of her.” And now, I stood in front of the man in his own house. I wondered what he'd make of a young girl traveling the country alone.
Uncle Moses slowly put down his newspaper. His spectacles sat on his nose leaning to the right, and I suddenly got an urge to straighten them out. Of course, I didn't dare. Dressed in a dark, tailored suit, a bow tie and a vest, with his beard neatly trimmed and his hat by his side, he appeared a man of great importance.
“Sarah,” he said, “what a surprise. Your aunt told me about your trip. How unfortunate. I do hope we can help you.”
“Thank you, Uncle Moses.” I said. The place setting my aunt had requested for me magically materialized on my right, and a smell of freshly baked bread filled the room.
“Do help yourself,” my uncle said, but I didn't need an invitation. In these two weeks of hungry travel, I'd developed a habit of eating whenever I saw food that was easily available. Before he even finished his sentence, I was busy spreading one piece of bread with butter and the other one with jam. I must have looked like an orphaned girl suddenly adopted by a family. And in some ways, I was.
My aunt and uncle graciously let me eat before they spoke again. Or, to be exact, before my uncle spoke again. While I ate, he sat there looking at me through his spectacles, and if I hadn’t been so occupied with food, I would have probably already turned red.
“So, Sarah,” he said, as I was swallowing my fourth piece of bread, “what are you planning to do while we look for your parents?”
“I'd like to study,” I cleared my throat. “Finish school.” I expected a raised eyebrow, but there was no reaction from my uncle. “And, I'd like to write,” I continued. “I want to be a writer.” That was when his eyebrows really did shoot up.
“A writer?” He asked. “That's not a profession for a young, respectable Jewish girl.”
I prepared to argue, to tell him that my father thought it a fine profession, but by the sight of his stony expression, I realized he didn't expect to be challenged.
“You can study,” he continued, “but you'll study with the tutor here at home.” He got up, took a gold watch out of his vest pocket and consulted it. “And, we'll also look for an appropriate suitor for you.”
My eyes opened wide. A suitor? I wanted to protest but it appeared that my uncle considered the conversation over. He picked up his hat and turned to his wife. “Don't forget the theater tonight,” he said to her. Then, he turned to me, “Welcome again, Sarah. Our home is your home,” and he left.
I couldn't move. I felt nauseous. All the great food I'd just eaten stirred up in my stomach.
“A suitor, Aunt Zelma?” I asked. “A marriage? But, I want to find my family.”
“And you will, my dear.” Aunt Zelma smiled. “But, we don't know how long that will take. Your uncle is just looking out for you.”
“I don't know if I want to get married now.”
“Who is talking about now? It takes time to find a suitor, particularly an appropriate one. Your uncle and I hold a certain standing here in Odessa, so we'll have to be selective.”
“What about writing? Can I write?”
Aunt Zelma looked around as though she were afraid of someone listening to us.
“Your uncle wouldn't approve of that,” she whispered, “but I don't see any harm in it. Just make sure you are quiet about it.” Then, she lifted up a bell to call a maid.
CHAPTER 2
Moscow, USSR, 1969
The pain is unreal. Marina is trying to scream; yet no sounds are coming out of her, loud or soft. She has been calling for a nurse for an hour now, but earlier that night, all the medical personnel had a celebration loudly commemorating the annual Doctor’s Day, the professional holiday of all physicians.
They must’ve downed enough alcohol to keep them sleeping through the week, Marina thinks, surprised she can manage sarcasm during all this pain. She looks around in despair. There is not even a neighbor to help her. She has a private room, thanks to her mother’s insider status in the medical world, and her father’s inherited skill of making blat--important connections.
Hospitalized at one of the best maternity wards in Moscow, roddom #20, a week in advance of her anticipated delivery date, as medical procedures of the time dictated, she is entrusted to the hands of a well-known doctor. Everything seems to be going according to plan, until her baby decides to be born in the middle of the night, when all the nurses have had too much to drink, and Marina’s doctor is nowhere to be seen.
I better get up, she thinks, realizing that calling for help will get her nowhere. Twitching from the pain of the contractions, she forces herself to stand up and move across the floor to the closed door. The hall is quiet and empty, as Marina struggles towards the nurses’ station. She is feeling weaker and weaker. Her legs, the legs of a trained Soviet gymnast, are on the brink of shutting down. Her stomach becomes heavier with each step, and her eyes struggle to see beyond the fury of white dots that have invaded her vision.
When the pain leaps beyond the contractions, Marina feels she can no longer walk. There are no chairs in the hall, so she stumbles into one of the rooms, collapses onto a near-by bed, and moans, “Help…” One of the patients must take notice of her, for soon, through the dizziness of pain, she hears a commotion around her, feels the nurses’ hands rushing her to the delivery table, and hears a baby cry. Later, she finds out her baby had already crowned by the time she burst into someone’s room; if the nurses hadn’t come to their senses fast enough, she would have delivered right there and then. She probably would have delivered a dead baby, for the umbilical cord was so tight around the baby’s neck that assistance was essential at the time of the birth. So much for the blat.
Yet, the nightmare is over. Marina looks over at her newborn screaming at the top of its lungs. It’s a girl, just as she thought it would be. Sonya will be her name, Marina knows. For, the family has already discussed names at length. Following the Jewish tradition of naming children after deceased relatives–a tradition they had long adhered to--they decided to name the baby after one of Marina’s grandparents. If it had been a boy, he would have been named Sergei, after Grandfather Solomon. And for a girl they’ve chosen Sonya, after Grandmother Sarah. Although they have modified the tradition, intending to use only the first letter of the chosen grandparent’s name, they still feel they are paying respect to their ancestors. After all, both of the original names are much too Jewish-sounding in this land of widespread anti-Semitism, and these days, most Soviet Jews follow the same rule.
Marina stays at the roddom for another seven days, during which, no one is allowed to visit. Such are the rules, designed to prevent any possible infection to newborns, and new mothers joke among themselves that all the cockroaches in the maternity ward must have been disinfected to be allowed to populate there. Families have no choice but to congregate on the street under the windows of the roddom, trying their best to catch a glimpse of the new arrivals. Joseph brings Marina flowers, which she pulls to her sixth-floor window by means of a rope hidden in her room, used by all prior occupants to pass things back and forth. Her father, Yakov, brings her fruit from the bazaar, and her mother, Rosa, sends up a hand-written note with advice to drink tea with milk to increase her milk production. But Marina has no problems with milk. She has so much of it, in fact, that she is nursing someone else’s baby–the son of the woman whose bed she collapsed upon that night. This woman has no milk, and Marina has plenty.
Breastfeeding other women’s babies is a common practice in Soviet maternity wards, for there are many women who have problems with milk. No one worries about passing an infection, since the nipples are thoroughly cleansed with alcohol before and after each feeding. That is one procedure Marina could do without, for her cracked nipples sting with each alcohol swab. But it’s for a good cause, she knows, and quietly, she suffers. Other mothers do too; after all, mothers are supposed to suffer for their children. Marina also suffers when the nurses take Sonya away after each feeding . A newborn must spend the entire stay in a nursery—apart from the feedings—and she suffers when they bring her back screaming from hunger. Feedings are strictly scheduled every four hours, and no matter how loudly the newborns scream, the nurses are insistent.
For two years after Sonya’s birth, Marina and Joseph share an apartment in Moscow with Marina’s parents, Rosa and Yakov. They hire a nanny who helps when both of them are studying and the grandparents are working. Marina is barely twenty-one when she gives birth, and she still has a few semesters left at Moscow Polytechnical Institute, while Joseph, two years her senior, is graduating this year from the Institute of Oil and Gas. He is the third in his family to attend this institute; his mother and his father both graduated from there, having started their studies during the Great Patriotic War in evacuation. Joseph doesn’t really enjoy engineering; he prefers to direct things instead. However, words like ‘management’ do not yet exist in the Soviet Union, and as a young graduate, he doesn’t hope for much more than a low-level post somewhere. In fact, he begins his career in one such position, traveling extensively throughout the Soviet Union and hardly seeing his wife and daughter. Two years down the road, when he learns of a position in Khiva, Uzbek S.S.R., he applies.
“It’ll be a good way to have less travel,” he tells Marina, “and to move up. There aren’t many people who are willing to go there.” Sonya is barely two years old when they move.
#
Marina has a hard time leaving Moscow, the only home she has ever known. She has never been far away from her parents–aside from the annual trips to summer pioneer camps, to which it was her pioneer duty to go–and the flat she and Joseph share with Yakov and Rosa is the same flat in which she was raised. In fact, it is the same flat where her father lived as a young man, after his family moved to Moscow. Marina is Rosa’s and Yakov’s only child, born shortly after the Great Patriotic War, when life was sparse and difficult. Almost everyone lived in communal apartments--large flats in old pre-revolutionary buildings that had been previously owned by the Russian bourgeoisie, and later, confiscated by the Bolsheviks to resolve Moscow’s housing crisis.
Yakov’s family had moved into this apartment in the 1930s from a small shtetl called Novozibkovo, and they started out living in it all by themselves. Few people expected this family of a handyman to move up in the world to such an extent as to be able to relocate to their very own apartment in the capital. However, Yakov’s mother, babka Sima, as Marina unflatteringly called her, for her cold and not-so-grandmotherly personality, was always a master when it came to making blat. Without almost no effort at all, she procured her family a well preserved flat located in the center of the city, right across the courtyard from the Ministry of Interior. High-level people populated the building, and every so often, during the height of Stalin’s repressions, young Yakov would wake up to find yet another playmate gone. No one would inquire after the fate of those who disappeared, but rumors of a black raven sighted the night before would spread like wild fire. Named after the bird that brings death, this sleek, black automobile was the NKVD’s vehicle of choice for transporting enemies of the people. By the beginning of 1939, Yakov’s family, along with only a few other blue-collar families, became the only tenants in the building who hadn’t had the pleasure of such a nightmarish visit.
At the start of the Great Patriotic War, when the Germans were victoriously moving towards Moscow, the Soviet Government evacuated some of the population to the east, along with the major industries in the city. While Yakov enlisted in the Soviet Air Force, his family was relocated to the city of Leninabad in Tadjik S.S.R. When they returned to Moscow five years later, they found their apartment had turned communal, and they were entitled to no more than a room. Fortunately, babka Sima, hardened and withered by the repeated experiences of evacuation, found a way to secure another room for them. Thus, they were able to have two separate sleeping areas: the room where Yakov and his future wife, Rosa, would live after their wedding, and the room Marina would inhabit after she was born.
Marina had many childhood memories connected to this apartment. It faced the now-famous pedestrian street of Arbat, and it had a courtyard where she played as a young girl, almost always alone. Babka Sima had no interest in helping to raise her only granddaughter, and Marina was left to her own devices more often than she cared to be.
Times were difficult. Everyone, including her parents, worked day and night to restore the country after the war. Children went to five-day kindergartens, coming home to see their parents only on weekends. Perhaps that is why Marina had such strong feelings for this apartment – she did not get to see it very often, and when she did, she loved it. She didn’t mind their tiny room separated by a curtain to give her parents privacy; the noisy neighbors who always argued about whose turn it was to open the front door this time; the kitchen that was the size of a closet, but had to fit the tables of three families and a small stove; or the bathroom that was always occupied. She didn’t mind because she was glad to be home with her parents and away from kindergarten, which in those times was run more like an army camp.
One by one, the neighbors moved away, provided with newer apartments on the outskirts of Moscow, and soon Marina and her parents found themselves alone. The flat they had been cramped in for so long seemed so big now that everyone had gone that they didn’t know what to do with the space. As Marina began her Institute studies, her parents decided to rent one of the rooms to a fellow student. At that time, Joseph had gotten in trouble for playing cards in his dorm, and fate had thrown them together.
“He is a nice Jewish boy,” Rosa commented to Yakov when they welcomed Joseph as a tenant.
A year later, they celebrated Joseph’s and Marina’s wedding; nine months later, Sonya was born.
Uzbekistan is not so bad, thinks Marina, as she moves around the room packing a suitcase. And Mama said that she would come to visit. Marina is very close to her mother and one day, she hopes to have just as close of a relationship with her own daughter. Sonya is still small and Marina doesn’t yet know if she wants to have any more children. She’s already had two abortions since Sonya’s birth, convinced at the time that having more children would be too difficult. Besides, she isn’t sure how Sonya would react to having a sibling–after all, she is so used to the undivided love and attention that all four adults surround her with. Having been an only child herself, Marina thinks that it may not be such a bad idea to have just one child.
Two hours later, the suitcase is packed, Sonya is ready, and Marina hears the honking of a horn. The taxi is here to take them to the train station. Everyone quickly sits down on hard chairs–the custom that has become sort of a good luck charm for a journey of any type–and after a few moments of silence, they all rise.
“Have a good trip,” says Yakov to Joseph, shaking his hand. “Watch over Sonya,” he continues, turning to his daughter and kissing her on the cheek.
Marina is crying. This is harder than she had imagined it would be–saying good-bye to her parents for the first time in her life.
“You’ll be all right,” promises Rosa to her daughter. They hug. “I am coming to visit in August, remember?”
Marina sighs, pulls herself together, and thinks that August is a whole five months away. That seems like an eternity, but then she catches a glimpse of Sonya, who, untouched and unaware of the big deal with good-byes, is playing on the floor by their feet.
“She’ll get me through it,” decides Marina and she feels stronger. A few more hugs and kisses, and they are off.
#
The trip to Khiva takes three nights and four days. They occupy two bunks of a four-bunk compartment, sharing the modest space with a woman who is traveling to Tashkent, and a man who will exit the train with them in Khiva. They make good acquaintances as they eat their dinners of boiled eggs and potatoes together. They buy fruits and nuts at intermediate stops for each other, and they talk well into the night about what awaits them in Khiva.
“You’ll like Khiva,” the man, Alisher, says. The landscape outside the window grows more barren as the time moves on, and they are now reaching what looks like a desert. “People are very friendly. The fruit, particularly the melons, is unlike any you’ve tried before; and the plov …,” he stops and licks his lips for emphasis, “the plov is the best in all of Uzbekistan.” Plov is the traditional Central Asian rice dish that Alisher obviously loves.
“Ai, ai, ai, Alisher-ake,” their female neighbor shakes her head. “Why say something like that? Our Tashkent plov isn’t any worse than yours. In fact, maybe better!”
“You must’ve never tried our plov,” Alisher responds. “You will come to my house for dinner one evening.” He turns to Joseph and Marina, “My wife prepares it better than anyone else I know. And you can ask her about kindergartens–she is a director of one.” He scribbles his phone number on the edge of an old newspaper and hands it to Joseph.
“Thank you, Alisher Abidovich. We would be honored,” Joseph responds, as Marina struggles to even consider the option of a kindergarten for her daughter. Sonya hasn’t started one yet in Moscow–she didn’t have to between having a nanny and two grandparents – but, Marina would have had to enroll her anyway at the age of two. They had left before they could and, although it’s now time to consider starting Sonya in one in Khiva, Marina still has her doubts.
Khiva is not Moscow. Marina is afraid of diseases and ailments that Sonya may pick up from the natives, who, Moscovites such as her do not consider very clean. Yet, kindergarten is unavoidable since Marina will have to work. Staying at home is a not an option, unless one wants to be considered a social parasite, and there will be no grandparents to help her with Sonya.
A week after their arrival, Sonya begins kindergarten. It is not the one where Alisher’s wife works, for they live at an opposite end of the city, but as far as Marina can tell, it does not differ too much from all the others. They don’t really have a choice, as they must send Sonya to a local kindergarten–the kindergarten that services their makhala, or neighborhood–and with a heavy heart, Marina walks her there every morning. At first, the contrast seems too much to bear; but soon, Marina gets used to seeing barefoot children in clothes that are barely holding together, next to her well-groomed daughter who wears shoes and socks. When the summer comes with its intense heat and sunshine, Sonya becomes the only one to wear a hat, and her very white skin begins to stand out even more.
However, by then, Sonya is well on her way to becoming leader of her class. She recites verses about Lenin and sings songs about the Revolution in fluent Uzbek. Marina works at the Economic Research Institute of Khiva, while counting the days until her mother’s visit.
Summers are hot in Khiva, but the dry heat here seems more tolerable than the humidity they left behind in Moscow. Their house is small yet cozy, and they have a beautiful courtyard covered with an arbor of grapes, under which they spend lazy evenings snacking on the melons and watermelons that only Central Asia can produce. When Rosa comes to visit in August, she takes naps outside on a wide wooden bed built to fit a low table for family dinners in the Uzbek society. Often they too sit cross-legged on this bed around that table. They eat plov prepared according to the recipe given to them by Alisher’s wife, and they comment on how this traditional Central Asian rice dish never comes out as good in Moscow as it does here in Khiva.
The two years in Khiva go by fast, and soon they are packing again--this time to move back to the capital. Joseph has received a promotion, thanks to his two-year exile, and his future work will not require him to travel as much as before. By now, both Marina and Joseph are used to living on their own, and by mutual agreement, the family decides to exchange their large apartment in Arbat for two smaller apartments on the outskirts of Moscow. Luckily, Arbat is now the place to be. They swap their three-room apartment for two, two-room apartments, a fifteen minute walk from one another. To Marina, this short distance seems a blessing after the separation she has had to endure with her parents, and they visit each other several days a week.
#
Sonya starts kindergarten in Moscow, which, though cleaner, seems much less humane to Marina than the one in Khiva. Sonya, now four, sometimes tells her mother how mean the teachers are and how often spankings and punishments are given out. One teacher in particular figures often in Sonya’s accounts–a thin red-head with freckles. She is the one who makes sure they all eat their morning porridge–a lumpy and inedible version of the popular cereal–and she is the one who insists on force-feeding those who do not cooperate. For years after, Sonya will hate oatmeal, often wondering if her relationship with it was a consequence of these kindergarten years.
The same teacher oversees the afternoon nap, which is not negotiable. There is no separate room for the nap, and the children are taught self-sufficiency by being in charge of setting up their own raskladushkas, the Soviet version of a camping bed. Once the beds are made, they must lie in them quietly without moving. They are supposed to sleep, but if they don’t want to, they do not have to, so long as they don’t make a sound or squirm excessively in their squeaky little beds. Any deviations are punished by an exile to the smelly bathroom–something that happened to Sonya once. Since then, she is careful not to make any noise at all, and she has trained herself to lie perfectly still during the daily two-hour nap.
Marina successfully transfers from the Research Institute of Khiva to its counterpart in Moscow, continuing her career as a Soviet economist. Her days are long and exhausting. She starts work at eight in the morning, after she drops Sonya off, and takes the metro and a bus to get to the office. During lunch, she usually runs out to a nearby grocery store to pick up some food for dinner. After work lets out at five o’clock, she rushes to get Sonya, groceries in hand. Together, they walk home,-- often in the dark, since it gets dark early during seventy percent of the school year.-- and Sonya tells her about her day. This is Marina’s favorite time. Although the bags are often heavy and Sonya’s stories are often sad, it’s still the only time Marina spends with her daughter one-on-one, without having other things to do.
Sonya doesn’t like her kindergarten or her teachers, but there is nothing Marina can do about it. Other parents tell her that complaining can do more harm than good, and switching Sonya to another kindergarten is impossible. Their building has access to just two–this one and another one that is even further out of the way for Marina. She’d never make it to work on time if they switched, and no one can guarantee this other kindergarten would be better than the present one. So, Marina simply makes sure that she is there to listen during their fifteen-minute walk home, and to help as best she can when Sonya is sad. It’s during those times that she usually recalls her own dreadful kindergarten experiences she wanted to share with her own mother, but could not.
At least Sonya can come home every night, Marina thinks, and she only has to go here for another three years. It’s not such a long time.
One day, she cannot pick Sonya up after school. The local Communist Party Committee will be inspecting her Institute, and everyone must stay beyond their usual time.
“Can you get Sonya on Wednesday?” Marina asks Joseph.
“I think I can.” He responds without taking his eyes of the television.
“Are you sure you’ll be able to manage with your busy schedule?”
“Of course I will,” he says, his attention still on the evening news. “Stop worrying. I’ll leave early to make sure I make it there on time.” The way he says it calms her down, for she knows that he is very responsible–absent-minded sometimes—but responsible. And so, when the inspection is over earlier than expected at six-thirty, she sets off for the grocery store to do some shopping, assured that Sonya is already at home, safe and sound.
However, when Marina gets home an hour later, she senses that something has happened. Joseph looks guilty and Sonya’s face is red and puffy.
“What’s the matter?” Marina asks, her heart sinking.
“I am so sorry, Marinochka, I forgot-” Joseph begins.
“Forgot what?”
“To pick Sonya up.”
“You forgot? But…but she is here.”
“The teacher brought her. Fifteen minutes ago.”
“Fifteen minutes ago?” Marina looks at the watch. It’s creeping past seven-thirty. “You mean, she was in the kindergarten until seven o’clock?” She turns to Sonya. “Are you alright sweetie? What happened?”
“I had to spend an hour alone with Tatiana Vassilievna.” The redhead. “She said that if the parents don’t come on time, teachers must wait for an hour. And after that, if the parents don’t come at all, teachers must walk us home,” she sniffles.
“So she walked you home?”
“Uh-huh.”
“So everything is all right?”
“She was very angry.” That seems to be the final straw, and Sonya begins to cry. “She kept yelling at me. I was scared.”
“Oh, my poor child,” Marina is now rocking Sonya in her arms and throwing angry glances at Joseph, who does not seem to know where to look. “It’s going to be all right. We’ll have to give her a podarok so that she does not get angry at you again.”
“Papa already did.”
“He did?”
“He gave her a box of chocolates.”
“The one we were saving for the doctor,” Joseph offers. He knows Marina will appreciate his fast thinking. The concept of giving a podarok is quite common; only, Marina has always been the one to do it in the past. It’s not considered bribery, but it’s similar as far as Joseph is concerned. It’s a custom that their society has developed to thank someone, while ensuring extra attention from that person in the future. Joseph has never felt comfortable with the concept, since he considers it a variation of bribery, but he had to act fast tonight when, while watching television, he realized that he’d forgotten all about Sonya. Before he could do anything, he heard the doorbell and was opening the door to a very unpleasant sight: an angry teacher and a terrified Sonya. He made a quick decision to employ all his charm to save himself from a scandal, and to assure more or less calm remaining years of kindergarten for his daughter.
“I am so sorry, Tatiana Vassilievna,” he apologized profusely, handing her his candy peace offering. “It’s all my fault. I was supposed to pick Sonya up today and I simply forgot. I am so, so sorry.” Softened by a very nice looking box of chocolates, the fuming teacher retreated from what appeared to be a planned diatribe, and was soon gone. Only then did Sonya begin to cry.
Marina is disappointed and relieved at the same time. Relieved that the teacher is probably enjoying the expensive box of chocolates right about now, and as a result, will not be mean to Sonya the next day. Nor the day after, she hopes. People usually remember acts like this one for quite some time, of that she is sure.
What she isn’t sure about is how to convey her disappointment to Joseph and whether it would do anything to change him. He’s been a good father, in general, and his relationship with Sonya is just the same as that of other fathers with their toddler daughters. Other fathers who are just as busy as he is at work, , who are the heads of families and the primary bread-earners, and who rely on their wives and parents to do most of the child-rearing. Joseph is no different than most men of his generation and his upbringing. And so, after thinking it through, Marina decides to let it go. She puts the incident to rest simply by throwing him another disappointed look.