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9married twice. Those women had betrayed him, got tired of him…And you can’t blame them…Love is hard work. For me, it’s primarily work. We didn’t have a wedding, I never got a white dress. It all went off modestly. I had always dreamed of having a wedding and a white dress, of throwing a bouquet of white roses off a bridge. That’s what my dreams had been like.
10He didn’t like being questioned…He had this bravado…always trying to make light of everything…this prisoner’s habit of hiding everything serious behind jokes. The bar is higher for them. For instance, he never said the word “freedom”—it was always “the outside.” “Here I am on the outside.” At rare moments, he’d tell stories…But he’d tell them so vividly, so avidly…I could just feel the happiness he’d taken out of there: like when he’d gotten his hands on some tire scraps and tied them to his felt boots. When they were transferred, he was so happy to have them! Another time, they’d gotten half a sack of potatoes…And somewhere “on the outside,” while they were working…somebody had given him a big hunk of meat. That night, in the boiler room, they made soup: “And it was just so good! So wonderful!” When they released him, they gave him a reparation payment for his father. They told him, “We owe you for the house, the furniture…” It ended up being a lot of money. He bought a new suit, a new shirt, new shoes, a camera, and went out to the best restaurant in Moscow, the National, where he ordered the most expensive things on the menu, and cognac and coffee with their signature dessert. At the end, when he’d eaten his fill, he asked someone to take a picture of him at the happiest moment of his life. “Then, when I got back to my apartment,” he recalled, “I caught myself thinking that I didn’t feel any happiness. In that suit, with that camera…Why wasn’t there any happiness? At that moment, the tires and that soup in the boiler room came back to me—now that was real happiness.” And we’d try to examine it…like…what makes happiness? He wouldn’t have given up his years in the camp for anything in the world…he wouldn’t have changed a thing about his life…That was his secret treasure trove, his wealth. He was in the camps from when he was sixteen until he was almost thirty…Count that up…I asked him, “But what if they’d never arrested you?” He’d make jokes to avoid answering, “I would have been an idiot zooming around in a bright red sports car. The latest model.” Only at the end…the very end, when he was in hospital…For the first time, he discussed it with me in earnest. “It’s like when you go to the theater. From your seat in the audience, you see a beautiful fairy tale—a carefully decorated set, brilliant actors, mysterious light, but when you go backstage…As soon as you step into the wings, you see broken planks, rags, unfinished and abandoned canvases…empty vodka bottles, food scraps. There’s no fairy tale. It’s dark and filthy…It’s like I’d been taken backstage…Do you understand?”
11…They threw him in with the criminals. He was just a boy…No one will ever know what happened to him in there…
12…The indescribable beauty of the Great North! Silent snows…and the light on the snow, even at night…To them, you’re just a beast of burden. They trudge you out into nature and then bring you back at night. “Trial by beauty,” he called it. His favorite saying was, “His trees and flowers turned out much better than His people did.”
13…About love…How it happened to him for the first time…They were working in the forest. A column of women was being led past them on their way to work. The women saw the men and stopped dead in their tracks, refusing to go any further. The convoy commander yelled, “Forward! Keep moving!” But the women held their ground. “Forward, dammit!” “Citizen commander, let us go see the men, we can’t stand it anymore. Or we’ll scream!” “Are you nuts? You’ve lost your minds! You’re possessed!” They stood there: “We’re not going anywhere.” The orders: “You have half an hour. Disperse!!!” In the blink of an eye, the column shattered. But they all came back on time. On the dot. They came back happy. [She is silent.] Where does true happiness lie?
14…He wrote poems in there. Someone informed on him to the head of the camp, “He’s been writing.” The head of the camp called him in: “Write me a love letter in verse.” He remembered what that man had asked him to write but was too shy to tell me. The head of the camp had a lover somewhere out in the Urals.
15…His journey home, he rode on the top bunk. The train took two weeks across all of Russia. That whole time, he lay there on the top bunk, afraid of coming down. He would only smoke at night. He was scared that his travel companions would offer him something to eat and he’d break down in tears. Tell them everything. And they’d find out he’d come from the camps…Distant relatives of his father’s took him in. They had a young daughter. He hugged her, and she broke down in tears. There was something about him…He was an insanely lonely person…even with me. I realize that even with me, he was lonely…
16He proudly told everyone, “I have a family now.” Every day, he was enthralled by our regular family life; he was very proud of it. But the fear…no matter what, the fear…He didn’t know how to live without it. Sheer terror. He’d wake up in the middle of the night drenched in sweat, afraid that he wouldn’t finish his book (he was writing a book about his father), that he wouldn’t get a new translation to do (he was a technical translator from the German), that he wouldn’t be able to provide for his family. What if I suddenly left him…First, it was fear, then came the shame for being afraid. “Gleb, I love you. If you wanted me to become a ballerina, I would do it. I would go to the ends of the Earth for you.” He survived the camps, but in normal, civilian life a cop pulling him over was enough to give him a heart attack…a phone call from the building management…“How did you make it out of there alive?” “My parents loved me a lot when I was little.” We’re saved by the amount of love we get, it’s our safety net. Yes…only love can save us. Love is a vitamin that humans can’t live without—the blood curdles, the heart stops. I was a nurse, a nanny…an actress…I was everything for him.
17I consider us lucky…It was an important time—perestroika! It felt like a celebration. Like any moment now, we would take off flying. Freedom was in the air we breathed. “Gleb, your time has come! You can write about everything and publish it.” Most of all, it was their time…The era of the sixties dissidents…Their triumph. I saw him so happy: “I lived to see the total victory of anticommunism.” His most important dream had come true: Communism collapsed. Now they’ll take down the Bolshevik monuments and get Lenin’s sarcophagus off Red Square; the streets won’t be named after murderers and executioners anymore…It was a time of great hope! The sixties dissidents—people can say what they like about them, but I love them all. Were they naïve? Romantics? Yes!!! He read the papers all day long. In the morning, he’d run down to the Publisher’s Union kiosk by our house with a big shopping bag. He listened to the radio and watched TV nonstop. Everyone was a bit nuts at the time. Free-dom! The word itself was intoxicating. We’d all grown up on samizdat and tamizdat.*3 We were children of the word. Literature. You should have heard how we talked! Everyone used to speak so well! I would be cooking lunch or dinner, and he’d be next to me with a newspaper, reading to me, “Susan Sontag: Communism is Fascism with a Human Face,” “And this…listen…” That’s how we read Berdyaev, Hayek*4…How had we lived before those books and newspapers? If only we’d known…Everything would have been different…Jack London has a story about this: You can live in a straightjacket, you just have to suck it up and get used to it. You can even dream. That’s how we’d always lived. So how were we going to live now? I didn’t know, but I imagined that all of us were going to live well. There were no doubts in my mind…After he died, I found a note in his diary: “I’m rereading Chekhov…‘The Shoemaker and the Devil.’ A man sells his soul to the devil in exchange for happiness. What kind of happiness does the cobbler imagine for himself? Here’s what it looks like: Riding in an open carriage wearing a new jacket and calf boots, next to a fat, large-breasted woman, holding a ham in one hand and a big bottle of bread wine in the other. He doesn’t need anything else…” [She falls into thought.] Apparently, he had his doubts…but we’d been so desperate for something new. Something full of kindness and light and justice. We were so excited, running around to every protest and rally…Before that, I’d been afraid of crowds. Of the mob mentality. I had always felt alienated from the crowd, those parades marching through the streets. The banners. But now, I liked all of it…such familiar faces all around—I’ll never forget those faces! I miss that time, and I know a lot of other people do, too. Our first trip abroad. To Berlin. Hearing us speaking Russian, two young German women approached our group. “Are you Russian?” “Yes.” “Perestroika! Gorby!” And they hugged us. Now I wonder, where did those faces go? Where are those beautiful people I saw in the streets in the nineties? Did they really all leave?
18…When I found out he had cancer, I was up all night, in tears, and in the morning, I ran to the hospital to see him. He was sitting on the windowsill, all yellow and very happy. He was always happy whenever his life changed. First, it was the camps, then it was exile, then freedom, and now this…Death was just another change of circumstances…“Are you afraid I’m going to die?” “Yes.” “Well, first of all, I never promised you I wouldn’t. Second of all, it won’t be that soon.” “Are you sure?” As usual, I believed him. I immediately wiped away my tears and convinced myself that once again, it was time to help him. After that, I didn’t cry…Up until the very end, I didn’t cry…I would come to the ward in the morning and that’s when our regular life would begin. We used to live at home and now we lived in the hospital. We got to spend another six months together in the oncology ward…
19He didn’t read much. More often, he’d tell me stories…
20He knew who had informed on him. This boy…He’d been in a study group with him at the House of Young Pioneers. Either he did it of his own accord, or they forced him to, but he had written a letter criticizing Comrade Stalin and defending his father, an enemy of the people. At the interrogation, the investigator showed him that letter. His whole life, Gleb was afraid…afraid that the informant would find out that he knew…When someone told him that the guy’s kid was disabled, he got scared—what if that was retribution? For a while, we even lived in the same neighborhood and would run into each other all the time—on the street, at the store. We’d say hello. After Gleb died, I told one of our mutual friends…She couldn’t believe it. “N.? How could he? He always speaks so highly of Gleb and talks about how they were friends when they were kids.” I realized I shouldn’t have said anything. It’s as simple as that: knowing these things is dangerous. But he was aware…Other former camp inmates came by very infrequently, he didn’t seek them out. Whenever they came over, it made me feel like I didn’t belong, like they’d all come from some place where I didn’t exist. They knew more about him than I did. I saw that he had another life…which also made me realize that a woman can talk about her humiliating experiences, but a man can’t. It’s easier for a woman to discuss them because somewhere deep inside of herself, she’s prepared to endure violence—take the sex act itself…Every month, a woman begins her life anew. These cycles…nature helps her along. Many of the women who have done time in the camps are single. I have not met many couples where both the man and the woman did time. The secret of the camps doesn’t bring people together, it cuts them off from one another. His friends from there called me “child”…
21“Is it interesting listening to us?” Gleb would ask me after the guests left. “What kind of question is that?” I’d get offended. “Do you know what I’m afraid of? Back when this was interesting, we had gags in our mouths, but now that we can tell our whole story, it’s like it’s too late. Nobody wants to hear about it anymore. They don’t want to read about it. People bring manuscripts about the camps to publishers and they’re returned to them unread. ‘Again with the Stalin and Beria? It’s not a commercially viable project. The readers have had their fill.’ ”
22…Dying wasn’t new to him…He wasn’t afraid of this little death…Criminal brigade leaders used to take away prisoners’ bread and lose it at cards, and the prisoners would be forced to eat asphalt. Tarmac. A lot of people died that way—their stomachs would get glued shut. But he’d just stop eating and only drank.
23…One boy tried to escape…He made a run for it on purpose so that they would shoot him. In the snow…in the sun…excellent visibility. They shot him in the head, dragged him back to camp with a rope, then put him up in front of the barracks—take a good look at him! They had him up there for a long time…until the spring.
24…It was election day…There was a concert at the polling station. The camp choir performed. Political prisoners, Vlasovites, prostitutes, pickpockets, all of them singing about Stalin: “Stalin is our banner! Stalin is our joy!”
25…At a transfer station, he met a girl. She told him what an investigator had once said to her while trying to talk her into signing a confession, “You’ll end up in hell…But you’re beautiful, some higher-up is sure to like you. That can be your salvation.”
26…Spring was especially terrifying. Nature is full of changes, everything coming to life…It’s better never to ask anyone how much time they have left in their sentence. In spring, any sentence is an eternity. The birds are flying overhead, but no one lifts their eyes to admire them. In spring, prisoners don’t look at the sky…
27I looked back at him from the doorway, and he waved at me. When I returned a few hours later, he’d lost consciousness. He was begging someone, “Hold on. Hold on.” But eventually, he stopped and just lay there. Three more days. I got used to that, too. There he is, lying there, and here I am, living. They brought in a bed for me and put it next to his. So, on the third day…It had gotten difficult to give him intravenous injections. He was getting blood clots…I had to give the doctors permission to stop treatment, it wouldn’t hurt him, he wouldn’t feel anything. And then he and I were left alone. No more machines, no more doctors, no one came in to check on us anymore. I lay down next to him. It was cold. I got under the blanket with him and fell asleep. When I woke up, for a moment I thought we were asleep at our house and that the balcony door had opened for some reason…like he just hadn’t woken up yet…I was afraid of opening my eyes. When I did, I remembered exactly where we were. I started fussing over him…I got up, put my hand on his face: “Ahhh…” He heard me. The agony began…and I sat there. Holding his hand, I listened to his final heartbeat. Afterward, I sat with him like that for a long time…I called the nurse, and she helped me get his shirt on. It was light blue, his favorite color. I asked her, “Can I stay here?” “Sure, go ahead. You’re not afraid?” What was there to be afraid of? I knew him like a mother knows her child. By morning, he was beautiful…The fear had evaporated from his face, the tension dissipated, all the frenzy of life had dispersed. And I noticed his subtle and elegant features. The face of an Oriental prince. So that’s what he was like! That’s what he was really like! I never knew that about him.
28His one request: “Write that I was a happy man on my tombstone. That I was loved. The most terrible torment is not being loved.” [Silence.] Our lives are so short…just a flash! I remember how in her old age, my mother would look out at the garden in the evenings…Her eyes…
29[We spend a long time sitting in silence.]
30I can’t…I don’t know how to live without him…Men have started pursuing me again. Bringing me flowers.
31[The next day, she calls me unexpectedly.]
32I cried all night long…wailed from the pain…All this time, I’d been escaping, fleeing, running from it. I’d barely made it out alive…and then, yesterday, I had to go back there again. You brought me back to that place…I’d been walking around all bandaged up and when I started removing the bandages, it turned out that nothing had healed. I thought I would have new skin under there, but there’s nothing. No scar tissue. The pain hasn’t gone anywhere…Everything is right where I left it…I’m afraid of handing it off to someone. No one can possibly handle it. It’s too much for ordinary hands…
33 
34THE STORY OF A CHILDHOOD
35Maria Voiteshonok, writer, 57 years old
36I’m an osadnik. I was born to an exiled Polish osadnik officer (“osadnik” is Polish for “settler.” They received land in the Eastern Borderlands*5 after the Polish-Soviet war of 1921). Then, in 1939, in accordance with a secret protocol in the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, Western Belarus became part of the USSR, and thousands of osadnik colonists and their families were resettled to Siberia for being “dangerous political elements” (as specified in a note from Beria to Stalin). But this is Big History. I have my own little history…
37I don’t know when my birthday is…or even what year I was born…With me, everything is approximate. I never found any documents. I exist, but I don’t. I don’t remember anything, but I remember everything. I think my mother was pregnant with me when they were leaving. Why do I think that? Because train whistles always upset me…and the smell of railway sleepers…the way people cry at train stations. I can take a good brand-name train, but whenever a freight train goes by, I’m in tears. I can’t handle seeing cattle cars, hearing the cries of the animals…that was the kind of train that took us away; I know although I wasn’t born yet. Still, I was there. I don’t see faces in my dreams or narratives…My dreams are all sounds and smells…
38The Altai Krai. The town of Zmeinogorsk, on the banks of the Zmeyevka River…The exiles were unloaded outside of town. Next to the lake. We moved into the dirt. Into mud huts. I was born underground, and it’s where I grew up. The soil has always smelled like home to me. Water’s dripping from the ceiling—a clump of dirt falls down and bounces toward me. That’s a frog. But I was little, I didn’t know that you were supposed to be afraid of these things. I slept with two little goats on a warm spread of goat droppings…My first word was “b-a-a-a”…The first sound I made, instead of “ma”…or “mama.” My older sister Vladya recalled how surprised I was when I learned that goats don’t talk like we do. I was confused, I thought they were our equals. We shared a world, it seemed indivisible. I still don’t feel the difference between us, the distinction between man and animal. I always talk to them…they understand me…and the beetles and spiders do, too. They were all around me…Such colorful beetles, it was as though they’d been painted. My toys. In spring, we’d go out into the sunshine together, crawling through the grass in search of food. Warming ourselves. In winter, we’d go dormant like the trees, hibernating from hunger. I had my own school, humans weren’t my only teachers. I can hear the trees and the grass, too. For me, there’s nothing more interesting than animals, they’re truly fascinating. How can I cut myself off from that world, from those smells…? I simply can’t. Finally, the sun would come out! Summer! I’d go above ground…The beauty all around me was blinding, and no one had to cook anyone anything. On top of that, everything was singing, all the colors were out. I tasted every single little blade of grass, every leaf, each flower…every little root. One time, I ate so much henbane I nearly died. I remember entire tableaux…Bluebeard Mountain and the blue light spilling down it…That light…it was coming from the left, down the slope. Lighting the mountain from top to bottom…Those sights! I’m afraid that I don’t have the talent to convey it all. Resurrect it. Words are only a supplement to our emotional states. Our feelings. Bright red poppies, turk’s cap lilies, peonies…All of them spread out before me. Right under my feet. Or another image…I’m sitting next to a house. A sunspot is creeping down the wall…it’s so many different colors…Constantly changing. I sat there for a long, long time. If it weren’t for those colors, I would have probably died. I simply wouldn’t have survived. I don’t remember what we ate…If we had any kind of real food at all…
39In the evenings, I would see the blackened people marching. Black clothes, black faces. They were exiles coming home from the mines…All of them looked exactly like my father. I don’t know whether or not my father loved me. Did anyone love me?
40I have very few memories…There aren’t enough of them. I root around in the darkness trying to unearth anything I can. It doesn’t happen very often…It’s very rare that I will suddenly remember something that I didn’t remember before. My memories are bitter, but they always make me happy. I’m terribly happy whenever a new one floats up.
41I can’t remember anything about the winter…In winter, I would never leave our mud hut. Day was the same as night. Nothing but twilight. Not a single spot of color…Did we own anything other than bowls and spoons? No clothes…For clothes, we would wrap ourselves in rags. Not a single spot of color. Shoes…What did we have by way of shoes? Galoshes, I remember galoshes…I had galoshes, too, they were big and old, like Mama’s. They had probably been hers…I got my first coat in the orphanage, as well as my first pair of mittens. A little hat. I remember Vladya’s face barely growing whiter in the darkness…She would lie there and cough for days on end, she’d gotten sick in the mines, tuberculosis. I already knew that word. Mama wouldn’t cry…I don’t remember Mama ever crying. She didn’t talk very much, either, and eventually, she stopped talking altogether. When the coughing subsided, Vladya would call me over: “Repeat after me…This is Pushkin.” I would recite: “The frost and sun, a gorgeous day! You’re dreaming still, beautiful friend!” I tried to picture winter. How it had been for Pushkin.
42I’m a slave of the word…I have an absolute belief in words. I always expect to hear the words I’ve been waiting for, even from strangers, even more so from strangers. With strangers, you can harbor hopes. I feel like I want to say something…and then I decide to…I’m ready. When I start telling someone, afterwards, I can’t find anything in the place I’ve been describing. It’s drained, the memories have fled. It instantly transforms into a hole. Afterwards, I have to wait a long time for the memories to come back to me. That’s why I usually keep silent. I am refining everything within myself. The paths, the labyrinths, the burrows…
43The scraps…Where had those bits of fabric come from? They were many different colors, a lot of them magenta. Someone had brought them to me and I sewed little people out of them. I would cut off pieces of my hair to make them hairdos. They were my friends…I’d never seen a doll, I didn’t know a thing about them. By then, we lived in the town, but not in a house—we lived in a basement. With one little blacked-out window. We even had an address: 17 Stalin Street. Just like other people…like everyone else…We had an address now, too. I would play with a girl there…The girl lived in a real house, not a basement. She wore dresses and shoes while I was still in my mother’s galoshes…I brought my scraps over to show her, they looked even prettier on the street than they had in the basement. The girl asked me for them, she wanted to trade me something, but I wouldn’t do it for anything in the world! Her father came home. “Don’t play with that pauper girl,” he scolded her. I saw that they had cast me out. I had to make a quiet retreat, get out of there as soon as I could. Of course, these are the words of an adult, not children’s thoughts. But the feeling…I remember the feeling…It’s so painful, you don’t even feel hurt or sorry for yourself, it’s like you suddenly have a lot of freedom. But there’s no self-pity…When there’s still some self-pity left, it means that you haven’t gone so far that you’ve left humanity behind. But once you have, you don’t need people anymore, you’re self-sufficient. I went too far…It’s difficult to hurt my feelings. I hardly ever cry. I laugh at all the regular kinds of pain, women’s problems…For me, it’s all play-acting…in the play that is life. But whenever I hear a child crying…I can never walk past a poor person…I will never just walk past them. I remember that smell, the odor of tragedy…I pick up the wavelength, I’m still tuned in to those frequencies. That’s the smell of my childhood. My diapers.
44I remember walking with Vladya. We were carrying a down shawl…a beautiful object intended for some other world. She’d made it for a customer. Vladya knew how to knit, and that was the money we lived on. The woman paid us, and then she said, “Let me cut you a bouquet.” A bouquet—for us? We’re standing there, two beggar girls in some kind of respectable setting…Cold and hungry…And here she is giving us flowers! The only thing we ever thought about was bread, but this person saw that we were capable of thinking about other things as well. You’re locked up, walled in by your circumstances, and suddenly, someone cracks the window…Lets in some fresh air. It turns out that besides bread, besides food, people were capable of giving us flowers! It meant that we really were no different than anyone else. We…were like everyone else…This broke the rules: “Let me cut you a bouquet.” She wasn’t going to pick them or gather them, she was going to cut them for us from her garden. From that moment on…maybe that was the key for me, it opened the door…My world turned upside down. I remember that bouquet…It was a big bouquet of cosmos…I always plant them at my dacha now. [We’re actually at her dacha. There’s nothing but trees and flowers all around.] I recently went to Siberia, to Zmeinogorsk. I went back…I looked for our street…our house, our basement…but the house was gone, it had been demolished. I asked everyone: “Do you remember us?” One old man remembered that yes, there was a beautiful girl who had lived in a basement there, she was sick. People remember beauty more than they remember suffering. The reason that woman had given us the bouquet was also because Vladya was beautiful.
45I went to the cemetery…Near the gates, there was a guardhouse with boarded-up windows. I knocked for a long time. The guard came out, he was blind…What kind of omen was this? “Would you mind pointing out where they buried the exiles?” “Oh…over there…” and he waved his hand up and down. Some people led me out to the furthest corner…There was nothing but grass there…Nothing else left. That night I couldn’t sleep, I felt like I was suffocating. I was having a spasm…It felt like someone was choking me…I ran away from the hotel and went to the station. I walked through the empty town. The station house was closed. I sat down on the tracks and waited for morning. A guy and a girl were sitting on the banks of the railway. Kissing. It finally got light out. The train came. An empty tram car…We got in: me and four men in leather jackets with shaved heads. They looked like convicts. They started offering me bread and pickles. “Wanna play some cards?” I wasn’t afraid of them.
46Not long ago, I was on the trolleybus and suddenly remembered…Vladya used to sing this song: “I went searching for my darling’s grave / But her grave is hard to find…” Turns out that it also used to be Stalin’s favorite song…he’d cry whenever he heard it. I immediately stopped liking it. Friends would come to see Vladya, they’d invite her out to dances. I remember all of that…I was already six or seven. I saw how instead of a waistband, they’d sew wires into their underwear. So that no one could rip them off. There were only exiles out there…convicts…There were a lot of murders. I knew about love already. There was a good-looking guy who would come to see Vladya when she was sick. She’d be lying there in rags, coughing. But the way he would look at her…
47It’s all very painful, but it’s mine. I’m not running from my past…I can’t say that I’ve accepted everything, that I’m grateful for the pain. There needs to be another word for how it makes me feel. I won’t be able to find it right now. I know that when I’m in this state, I’m far away from everyone. Alone. I have to get a handle on the suffering, own it completely, find my way out of it, and also come back from it with something new. It’s such a victory, it’s the only meaningful thing to do. That way, you’re not left empty-handed…Otherwise, why descend into hell?
48Someone led me up to the window: “Watch, they’re taking your father away…” A woman I didn’t recognize was pulling something along on a sled. Someone or something…wrapped in a blanket and tied up with rope. Soon afterwards, my sister and I buried our mother. We were left all alone. Vladya could barely walk by then, her legs would give out. Her skin peeled off like paper. Someone brought her a bottle…I thought it was medicine, but it was actually some kind of acid. Poison. “Don’t be scared…” She called me over and handed me the bottle. She wanted us to poison ourselves together. I took it and threw it into the stove. The glass shattered…The stove was cold, there hadn’t been anything in there for a long time. Vladya burst into tears: “You’re just like our father.” Somebody found us…maybe her friends? Vladya was unconscious…They sent her to the hospital and me to the orphanage. My father…I want to remember him, but no matter how hard I try, I can’t see his face. His face isn’t anywhere in my memory. Later on, I saw what he looked like when he was young, my aunt showed me a photograph. It’s true…I do look like him…That’s our connection. My father married a beautiful peasant girl. From a poor family. He wanted to make a fancy lady out of her, but my mother always wore a kerchief pushed down low on her forehead. She was no lady. In Siberia, my father didn’t live with us for very long…He moved in with another woman. I had already been born…I was a punishment! A curse! No one had the strength to love me. My mother didn’t have it, either. It’s built into my cells: her despair, her pain…The lack of love…I can never get enough love, even when somebody loves me, I don’t believe it, I need constant proof. Signs. I need them every day. Every minute. I’m hard to love, I know…[She is silent for a long time.] I love my memories…I love my memories because everyone is alive in them. I have everyone: my mother, my father, Vladya…I always need to sit at a long table. With a white tablecloth. I live alone, but I have a big table in my kitchen. Maybe they’re all here with me…Sometimes I’ll be walking along, and suddenly I’ll imitate someone else’s gesture. It’s not mine…It’s Vladya’s, or Mama’s…I’ll think that our hands are touching…
49When I was in the orphanage…In the orphanage, they kept osadnik orphans until the age of fourteen, then they would send them off to work in the mines. By the time they were eighteen, they’d all have tuberculosis…just like Vladya…That was our destiny. Vladya told me that somewhere far away, we had a home. But it was very far away. Aunt Marylya was still out there, our mother’s sister…an illiterate peasant. She went around asking about us. Strangers wrote letters on her behalf. I still can’t understand it…How? How did she do it? A notice came to the orphanage to send me and my sister to such and such an address. To Belarus. The first time, we didn’t make it all the way back to Minsk, they took us off the train in Moscow. Everything happened for a second time: Vladya had a fever and ended up in the hospital; I was quarantined. After the quarantine, I was transferred to a temporary foster care center, which was in a basement that smelled like chlorine. Strangers…I’m always living among strangers…My whole life. But my aunt kept writing…and writing…Six months later, she found me again in the foster care center. Again, I heard the words “home” and “aunt.” They took me to the train…A dark train car, with only the corridor lit. Full of people’s shadows. There was a teacher escorting me. We got to Minsk and bought a ticket to Postavy…I knew the names of all those towns. Vladya had entreated me: “Remember them. Remember that our estate is called Sovchino.” From Postavy we walked to Gridki…my aunt’s village…We sat down by the bridge to rest. A neighbor biked by on his way home from the night shift. He asked who we were. We said that we’d come to see Aunt Marylya. “Yes,” he said, “you’re going the right way.” And then he must have told my aunt that he’d seen us…because she came running toward us…I saw her and said, “That lady looks like my mother.” And that was it.
50I had a shaved head, I sat on the long bench at Uncle Stakha’s house, my mother’s brother. The door was open, and through the doorway, I watched the people keep coming and coming…stopping there just to stare at me, speechless…It was completely unreal! No one spoke. They just stood there staring and weeping. In total silence. The whole village came…and they covered my tears with their tears, everyone wept with me. All of them had known my father, some of them had even worked for him. Oftentimes afterward I would hear: “At the collective farm, all we get are tally marks, but Antek (my father) would always pay us.” Here it was, my legacy. They’d moved our house from our farmstead to the central collective farm, it’s still the village council building. I know everything about those people, in fact, I know more than I would like to. The same day the Red Army soldiers loaded our family into a cart and drove us off to the station, these same people…Azhbeta, Yuzefa, Matei…had gone to our house and taken everything they could carry. Dismantled the outbuildings. Down to the very last planks. Dug up the new garden. The apple saplings. My aunt ran over…All she managed to grab was a planter to remember us by…I don’t want to think about these things, I chase them out of my memory. I remember how the whole village nannied me, everyone carried me around in their arms. “Come see us, Manechka, we picked some mushrooms…” “Let me pour you some milk, sweetie…” The very next day after I arrived, my face broke out in hives. My eyes were burning. I couldn’t even open them. They would lead me by the hand to wash my face. Everything inside of me was sick. It all started dying off, burning off, so that I could look at the world with new eyes. It was my transition from that life to this one…Now, when I walked down the street, everyone would stop me: “Oh what a beautiful girl! Ah, what a girl!” Without those words, my eyes would have been like a dog’s who’d been dragged out of a hole in the ice. I can’t imagine how I would have looked at people…
51My aunt and uncle lived in a storage shed. Their house had burned down in the war, so they’d built themselves a shed to live in, thinking that it would be temporary, but it ended up staying there for good. It had a thatched roof and a little window. “Bulbochka” growing in a corner (my aunt’s words)—not “bulba” but “bulbochka”*6—and a piglet squealing in another. No floorboards, just dirt covered in sweet flag and straw. Soon, Vladya was brought there, too. She lived for a little while longer and then she died. She was glad that she got to die at home. Her last words were, “What’s going to happen to Manechka?”
52Everything I know about love I learned in my aunt’s storage shed…
53“Oh my little birdie…” my aunt would coo. “My buzzy…my little bee…” I was always pawing her, bugging her. I couldn’t believe it…Somebody loved me! I was loved! You’re growing, and someone is appreciating your beauty—what a luxury! All of your little bones straighten out, your every muscle. I danced the Russian dance, the yablochko, and the sailor’s dance for her. I’d been taught those dances in exile…I sang her songs:
54 
55There’s a road off the Chuya highway.
56Many drivers will go down that way…
57I’ll die and they’ll bury me here,
58My mother will weep bitter tears,
59Though my wife may find another man,
60For Mama, there’ll be no other son…
61In the course of a day, you can run around until your feet turn black and blue. We didn’t have any shoes. You go to bed, and your aunt wraps your feet in the hem of her nightgown to warm them. She’d swaddle me. You can lie there somewhere near her stomach…It’s like being in the womb…And that’s why I don’t remember anything evil. I’ve forgotten it all…It’s hidden away in some distant place. In the morning, I would be woken up by my aunt’s voice: “I made potato pancakes. Have some.” “Auntie, I want to sleep more.” “Eat some and then you can go back to sleep.” She understood that food, bliny, were like medicine to me. Pancakes and love. My uncle Vitalik was a shepherd, he carried a whip over his shoulder and had a long birch-bark pipe. He went around in his military jacket and breeches. He’d bring us “feed” from the pasture—there’d be some cheese and a piece of salo—whatever the women gave him while the animals grazed. Holy poverty! It didn’t mean anything to them, they weren’t upset or insulted by it. All of this is so important to me…so precious. One of my friends complains, “I can’t afford a new car…” another, “I dreamt of it my whole life, but I never did manage to buy myself a mink coat…” When people say those kinds of things to me, it’s like they’re speaking from behind glass…The only thing I regret is not being able to wear short skirts anymore…[We laugh.]
62My aunt had a unique voice…She warbled like Edith Piaf. People would ask her to sing at their weddings. And whenever anyone died. I would always come with her…Running alongside her. I remember…she would stand near the coffin, stand there for a long time…Then, at a certain point, she would somehow break off from everyone else and go up to the body. She’d approach slowly…after she realized that no one else could say the final words. Everyone wanted to, but they didn’t know how. And so she’d begin: “Why have you left us, Annechka…You left the bright day and dark night behind…Who is going to walk around your yard…and kiss your children? Who will greet the cow when she’s comes home in the evening?” Very quietly, she’d find the words…Everything was mundane and simple, and that’s what made it truly lofty. And sad. There was some sort of ultimate truth in those simple words. Something final. Her voice would tremble…and then everyone else would start weeping. They’d forget that the cow hadn’t been milked, that their husband was drunk at home. Their faces changed, they’d stop fidgeting, and light would shine through their eyes. Everyone wept. I was shy…And I felt sorry for my aunt. She’d come home feeling ill: “Oh, Manechka, my little head is pounding.” That was the kind of heart my aunt had…I’d run home from school and see her through the little window holding a needle the size of her finger, darning our rags and singing, “You can put out a fire with water / But nothing will extinguish love…” My whole life is lighted by these memories…
63The remains of our estate…all that was left of our house were the stones. But I can feel their warmth, I’m drawn to them. I go there like you visit a grave. I could spend the night in our field. I walk carefully, watching my step. There are no people, but there is life. The hum of life, all sorts of living beings…I walk around afraid of destroying someone’s home. I can make a home for myself anywhere, like a bug. I have a cult of domesticity. I need there to be flowers, it needs to be beautiful…I remember in the orphanage, when they led me to the room where I was going to live with all the white beds…I scanned the room looking to see if there was a bed by the window. Would I have my own cabinet? I was searching for my home.
64Now…How long have we been sitting here talking? Meanwhile, a storm has come and gone, my neighbor stopped by, the phone rang…Those things also affected me, I responded to them as well. But the only things that will go down on paper are my words…There won’t be anything else: no neighbor, no phone calls…Things I didn’t say but which flashed through my memory, making their presence felt. Tomorrow, I might tell this story completely differently. The words remain, but I’ll have moved on. I have learned to live with this. I know how. I keep going and going.
65Who gave me all of this? All of it…Was it God or people? If God gave it to me, then He chose well. Suffering brought me up…It’s my art…my prayer. So many times, I’ve wanted to tell someone all of it. To speak my fill. But no one has ever wanted to know: “And then what…and then what?” I’ve always waited for someone, whether it be a good or bad person, to come and listen to my story—I don’t know who exactly I had in mind, but I was always waiting for someone. My whole life, I’ve been waiting for someone to find me and I would tell them everything…and they would keep asking, “And then what? And then what?” Now, people have started blaming socialism, Stalin, as though Stalin had God-like powers. Everyone has their own God—why didn’t they speak up? My aunt…Our village…I also remember Maria Petrovna Aristova, a respected teacher who’d visit our Vladya in the hospital in Moscow. We weren’t related to her or anything…She’s the one who brought Vladya back to our village, who carried her home…Vladya couldn’t walk anymore. Maria Petrovna would send me pencils and candy and write me letters. And in the temporary foster center, when they were washing and disinfecting me…I was sitting on a high bench…all covered in foam. I could have slipped and broken my bones on the cement floor. I started slipping…sliding down…and a woman I didn’t know…a nanny…caught me in her arms and embraced me: “My little chickadee.”
66I saw God.
67 
68*1  The Leningrad Blockade lasted from September 8, 1941, to January 27, 1944. Nazi troops had the city surrounded, effectively cutting citizens off from supply lines and paths of escape. As a result, nearly a million of the city’s residents died, mainly of starvation, as they were forced to survive on minuscule rations and whatever else they were desperate enough to eat.
69*2  Dark Alleys is the title of Ivan Bunin’s 1943 collection of short stories.
70*3  Wheras samizdat designates the clandestine or illegal production and circulation of literature within the Soviet Union, tamizdat specifically refers to Russian writings that were published abroad and smuggled back into the USSR.
71*4  Nikolai Berdyaev (1874–1948) was a Russian philosopher who emigrated to France in 1920. Friedrich Hayek (1899–1992) was an Austrian liberal philosopher and essayist.
72*5  The Eastern Borderlands refers to the territory covered by present-day Western Ukraine, Belarus, and Latvia, which were a part of Poland in the interwar years (1918–1939).
73*6  “Bulba” is Belarusian (and Ukrainian) for potato. “Bulbochka” is the diminutive.
74RAW Paste Data
75married twice. Those women had betrayed him, got tired of him…And you can’t blame them…Love is hard work. For me, it’s primarily work. We didn’t have a wedding, I never got a white dress. It all went off modestly. I had always dreamed of having a wedding and a white dress, of throwing a bouquet of white roses off a bridge. That’s what my dreams had been like.
76He didn’t like being questioned…He had this bravado…always trying to make light of everything…this prisoner’s habit of hiding everything serious behind jokes. The bar is higher for them. For instance, he never said the word “freedom”—it was always “the outside.” “Here I am on the outside.” At rare moments, he’d tell stories…But he’d tell them so vividly, so avidly…I could just feel the happiness he’d taken out of there: like when he’d gotten his hands on some tire scraps and tied them to his felt boots. When they were transferred, he was so happy to have them! Another time, they’d gotten half a sack of potatoes…And somewhere “on the outside,” while they were working…somebody had given him a big hunk of meat. That night, in the boiler room, they made soup: “And it was just so good! So wonderful!” When they released him, they gave him a reparation payment for his father. They told him, “We owe you for the house, the furniture…” It ended up being a lot of money. He bought a new suit, a new shirt, new shoes, a camera, and went out to the best restaurant in Moscow, the National, where he ordered the most expensive things on the menu, and cognac and coffee with their signature dessert. At the end, when he’d eaten his fill, he asked someone to take a picture of him at the happiest moment of his life. “Then, when I got back to my apartment,” he recalled, “I caught myself thinking that I didn’t feel any happiness. In that suit, with that camera…Why wasn’t there any happiness? At that moment, the tires and that soup in the boiler room came back to me—now that was real happiness.” And we’d try to examine it…like…what makes happiness? He wouldn’t have given up his years in the camp for anything in the world…he wouldn’t have changed a thing about his life…That was his secret treasure trove, his wealth. He was in the camps from when he was sixteen until he was almost thirty…Count that up…I asked him, “But what if they’d never arrested you?” He’d make jokes to avoid answering, “I would have been an idiot zooming around in a bright red sports car. The latest model.” Only at the end…the very end, when he was in hospital…For the first time, he discussed it with me in earnest. “It’s like when you go to the theater. From your seat in the audience, you see a beautiful fairy tale—a carefully decorated set, brilliant actors, mysterious light, but when you go backstage…As soon as you step into the wings, you see broken planks, rags, unfinished and abandoned canvases…empty vodka bottles, food scraps. There’s no fairy tale. It’s dark and filthy…It’s like I’d been taken backstage…Do you understand?”
77…They threw him in with the criminals. He was just a boy…No one will ever know what happened to him in there…
78…The indescribable beauty of the Great North! Silent snows…and the light on the snow, even at night…To them, you’re just a beast of burden. They trudge you out into nature and then bring you back at night. “Trial by beauty,” he called it. His favorite saying was, “His trees and flowers turned out much better than His people did.”
79…About love…How it happened to him for the first time…They were working in the forest. A column of women was being led past them on their way to work. The women saw the men and stopped dead in their tracks, refusing to go any further. The convoy commander yelled, “Forward! Keep moving!” But the women held their ground. “Forward, dammit!” “Citizen commander, let us go see the men, we can’t stand it anymore. Or we’ll scream!” “Are you nuts? You’ve lost your minds! You’re possessed!” They stood there: “We’re not going anywhere.” The orders: “You have half an hour. Disperse!!!” In the blink of an eye, the column shattered. But they all came back on time. On the dot. They came back happy. [She is silent.] Where does true happiness lie?
80…He wrote poems in there. Someone informed on him to the head of the camp, “He’s been writing.” The head of the camp called him in: “Write me a love letter in verse.” He remembered what that man had asked him to write but was too shy to tell me. The head of the camp had a lover somewhere out in the Urals.
81…His journey home, he rode on the top bunk. The train took two weeks across all of Russia. That whole time, he lay there on the top bunk, afraid of coming down. He would only smoke at night. He was scared that his travel companions would offer him something to eat and he’d break down in tears. Tell them everything. And they’d find out he’d come from the camps…Distant relatives of his father’s took him in. They had a young daughter. He hugged her, and she broke down in tears. There was something about him…He was an insanely lonely person…even with me. I realize that even with me, he was lonely…
82He proudly told everyone, “I have a family now.” Every day, he was enthralled by our regular family life; he was very proud of it. But the fear…no matter what, the fear…He didn’t know how to live without it. Sheer terror. He’d wake up in the middle of the night drenched in sweat, afraid that he wouldn’t finish his book (he was writing a book about his father), that he wouldn’t get a new translation to do (he was a technical translator from the German), that he wouldn’t be able to provide for his family. What if I suddenly left him…First, it was fear, then came the shame for being afraid. “Gleb, I love you. If you wanted me to become a ballerina, I would do it. I would go to the ends of the Earth for you.” He survived the camps, but in normal, civilian life a cop pulling him over was enough to give him a heart attack…a phone call from the building management…“How did you make it out of there alive?” “My parents loved me a lot when I was little.” We’re saved by the amount of love we get, it’s our safety net. Yes…only love can save us. Love is a vitamin that humans can’t live without—the blood curdles, the heart stops. I was a nurse, a nanny…an actress…I was everything for him.
83I consider us lucky…It was an important time—perestroika! It felt like a celebration. Like any moment now, we would take off flying. Freedom was in the air we breathed. “Gleb, your time has come! You can write about everything and publish it.” Most of all, it was their time…The era of the sixties dissidents…Their triumph. I saw him so happy: “I lived to see the total victory of anticommunism.” His most important dream had come true: Communism collapsed. Now they’ll take down the Bolshevik monuments and get Lenin’s sarcophagus off Red Square; the streets won’t be named after murderers and executioners anymore…It was a time of great hope! The sixties dissidents—people can say what they like about them, but I love them all. Were they naïve? Romantics? Yes!!! He read the papers all day long. In the morning, he’d run down to the Publisher’s Union kiosk by our house with a big shopping bag. He listened to the radio and watched TV nonstop. Everyone was a bit nuts at the time. Free-dom! The word itself was intoxicating. We’d all grown up on samizdat and tamizdat.*3 We were children of the word. Literature. You should have heard how we talked! Everyone used to speak so well! I would be cooking lunch or dinner, and he’d be next to me with a newspaper, reading to me, “Susan Sontag: Communism is Fascism with a Human Face,” “And this…listen…” That’s how we read Berdyaev, Hayek*4…How had we lived before those books and newspapers? If only we’d known…Everything would have been different…Jack London has a story about this: You can live in a straightjacket, you just have to suck it up and get used to it. You can even dream. That’s how we’d always lived. So how were we going to live now? I didn’t know, but I imagined that all of us were going to live well. There were no doubts in my mind…After he died, I found a note in his diary: “I’m rereading Chekhov…‘The Shoemaker and the Devil.’ A man sells his soul to the devil in exchange for happiness. What kind of happiness does the cobbler imagine for himself? Here’s what it looks like: Riding in an open carriage wearing a new jacket and calf boots, next to a fat, large-breasted woman, holding a ham in one hand and a big bottle of bread wine in the other. He doesn’t need anything else…” [She falls into thought.] Apparently, he had his doubts…but we’d been so desperate for something new. Something full of kindness and light and justice. We were so excited, running around to every protest and rally…Before that, I’d been afraid of crowds. Of the mob mentality. I had always felt alienated from the crowd, those parades marching through the streets. The banners. But now, I liked all of it…such familiar faces all around—I’ll never forget those faces! I miss that time, and I know a lot of other people do, too. Our first trip abroad. To Berlin. Hearing us speaking Russian, two young German women approached our group. “Are you Russian?” “Yes.” “Perestroika! Gorby!” And they hugged us. Now I wonder, where did those faces go? Where are those beautiful people I saw in the streets in the nineties? Did they really all leave?
84…When I found out he had cancer, I was up all night, in tears, and in the morning, I ran to the hospital to see him. He was sitting on the windowsill, all yellow and very happy. He was always happy whenever his life changed. First, it was the camps, then it was exile, then freedom, and now this…Death was just another change of circumstances…“Are you afraid I’m going to die?” “Yes.” “Well, first of all, I never promised you I wouldn’t. Second of all, it won’t be that soon.” “Are you sure?” As usual, I believed him. I immediately wiped away my tears and convinced myself that once again, it was time to help him. After that, I didn’t cry…Up until the very end, I didn’t cry…I would come to the ward in the morning and that’s when our regular life would begin. We used to live at home and now we lived in the hospital. We got to spend another six months together in the oncology ward…
85He didn’t read much. More often, he’d tell me stories…
86He knew who had informed on him. This boy…He’d been in a study group with him at the House of Young Pioneers. Either he did it of his own accord, or they forced him to, but he had written a letter criticizing Comrade Stalin and defending his father, an enemy of the people. At the interrogation, the investigator showed him that letter. His whole life, Gleb was afraid…afraid that the informant would find out that he knew…When someone told him that the guy’s kid was disabled, he got scared—what if that was retribution? For a while, we even lived in the same neighborhood and would run into each other all the time—on the street, at the store. We’d say hello. After Gleb died, I told one of our mutual friends…She couldn’t believe it. “N.? How could he? He always speaks so highly of Gleb and talks about how they were friends when they were kids.” I realized I shouldn’t have said anything. It’s as simple as that: knowing these things is dangerous. But he was aware…Other former camp inmates came by very infrequently, he didn’t seek them out. Whenever they came over, it made me feel like I didn’t belong, like they’d all come from some place where I didn’t exist. They knew more about him than I did. I saw that he had another life…which also made me realize that a woman can talk about her humiliating experiences, but a man can’t. It’s easier for a woman to discuss them because somewhere deep inside of herself, she’s prepared to endure violence—take the sex act itself…Every month, a woman begins her life anew. These cycles…nature helps her along. Many of the women who have done time in the camps are single. I have not met many couples where both the man and the woman did time. The secret of the camps doesn’t bring people together, it cuts them off from one another. His friends from there called me “child”…
87“Is it interesting listening to us?” Gleb would ask me after the guests left. “What kind of question is that?” I’d get offended. “Do you know what I’m afraid of? Back when this was interesting, we had gags in our mouths, but now that we can tell our whole story, it’s like it’s too late. Nobody wants to hear about it anymore. They don’t want to read about it. People bring manuscripts about the camps to publishers and they’re returned to them unread. ‘Again with the Stalin and Beria? It’s not a commercially viable project. The readers have had their fill.’ ”
88…Dying wasn’t new to him…He wasn’t afraid of this little death…Criminal brigade leaders used to take away prisoners’ bread and lose it at cards, and the prisoners would be forced to eat asphalt. Tarmac. A lot of people died that way—their stomachs would get glued shut. But he’d just stop eating and only drank.
89…One boy tried to escape…He made a run for it on purpose so that they would shoot him. In the snow…in the sun…excellent visibility. They shot him in the head, dragged him back to camp with a rope, then put him up in front of the barracks—take a good look at him! They had him up there for a long time…until the spring.
90…It was election day…There was a concert at the polling station. The camp choir performed. Political prisoners, Vlasovites, prostitutes, pickpockets, all of them singing about Stalin: “Stalin is our banner! Stalin is our joy!”
91…At a transfer station, he met a girl. She told him what an investigator had once said to her while trying to talk her into signing a confession, “You’ll end up in hell…But you’re beautiful, some higher-up is sure to like you. That can be your salvation.”
92…Spring was especially terrifying. Nature is full of changes, everything coming to life…It’s better never to ask anyone how much time they have left in their sentence. In spring, any sentence is an eternity. The birds are flying overhead, but no one lifts their eyes to admire them. In spring, prisoners don’t look at the sky…
93I looked back at him from the doorway, and he waved at me. When I returned a few hours later, he’d lost consciousness. He was begging someone, “Hold on. Hold on.” But eventually, he stopped and just lay there. Three more days. I got used to that, too. There he is, lying there, and here I am, living. They brought in a bed for me and put it next to his. So, on the third day…It had gotten difficult to give him intravenous injections. He was getting blood clots…I had to give the doctors permission to stop treatment, it wouldn’t hurt him, he wouldn’t feel anything. And then he and I were left alone. No more machines, no more doctors, no one came in to check on us anymore. I lay down next to him. It was cold. I got under the blanket with him and fell asleep. When I woke up, for a moment I thought we were asleep at our house and that the balcony door had opened for some reason…like he just hadn’t woken up yet…I was afraid of opening my eyes. When I did, I remembered exactly where we were. I started fussing over him…I got up, put my hand on his face: “Ahhh…” He heard me. The agony began…and I sat there. Holding his hand, I listened to his final heartbeat. Afterward, I sat with him like that for a long time…I called the nurse, and she helped me get his shirt on. It was light blue, his favorite color. I asked her, “Can I stay here?” “Sure, go ahead. You’re not afraid?” What was there to be afraid of? I knew him like a mother knows her child. By morning, he was beautiful…The fear had evaporated from his face, the tension dissipated, all the frenzy of life had dispersed. And I noticed his subtle and elegant features. The face of an Oriental prince. So that’s what he was like! That’s what he was really like! I never knew that about him.
94His one request: “Write that I was a happy man on my tombstone. That I was loved. The most terrible torment is not being loved.” [Silence.] Our lives are so short…just a flash! I remember how in her old age, my mother would look out at the garden in the evenings…Her eyes…
95[We spend a long time sitting in silence.]
96I can’t…I don’t know how to live without him…Men have started pursuing me again. Bringing me flowers.
97[The next day, she calls me unexpectedly.]
98I cried all night long…wailed from the pain…All this time, I’d been escaping, fleeing, running from it. I’d barely made it out alive…and then, yesterday, I had to go back there again. You brought me back to that place…I’d been walking around all bandaged up and when I started removing the bandages, it turned out that nothing had healed. I thought I would have new skin under there, but there’s nothing. No scar tissue. The pain hasn’t gone anywhere…Everything is right where I left it…I’m afraid of handing it off to someone. No one can possibly handle it. It’s too much for ordinary hands…
99 
100THE STORY OF A CHILDHOOD
101Maria Voiteshonok, writer, 57 years old
102I’m an osadnik. I was born to an exiled Polish osadnik officer (“osadnik” is Polish for “settler.” They received land in the Eastern Borderlands*5 after the Polish-Soviet war of 1921). Then, in 1939, in accordance with a secret protocol in the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, Western Belarus became part of the USSR, and thousands of osadnik colonists and their families were resettled to Siberia for being “dangerous political elements” (as specified in a note from Beria to Stalin). But this is Big History. I have my own little history…
103I don’t know when my birthday is…or even what year I was born…With me, everything is approximate. I never found any documents. I exist, but I don’t. I don’t remember anything, but I remember everything. I think my mother was pregnant with me when they were leaving. Why do I think that? Because train whistles always upset me…and the smell of railway sleepers…the way people cry at train stations. I can take a good brand-name train, but whenever a freight train goes by, I’m in tears. I can’t handle seeing cattle cars, hearing the cries of the animals…that was the kind of train that took us away; I know although I wasn’t born yet. Still, I was there. I don’t see faces in my dreams or narratives…My dreams are all sounds and smells…
104The Altai Krai. The town of Zmeinogorsk, on the banks of the Zmeyevka River…The exiles were unloaded outside of town. Next to the lake. We moved into the dirt. Into mud huts. I was born underground, and it’s where I grew up. The soil has always smelled like home to me. Water’s dripping from the ceiling—a clump of dirt falls down and bounces toward me. That’s a frog. But I was little, I didn’t know that you were supposed to be afraid of these things. I slept with two little goats on a warm spread of goat droppings…My first word was “b-a-a-a”…The first sound I made, instead of “ma”…or “mama.” My older sister Vladya recalled how surprised I was when I learned that goats don’t talk like we do. I was confused, I thought they were our equals. We shared a world, it seemed indivisible. I still don’t feel the difference between us, the distinction between man and animal. I always talk to them…they understand me…and the beetles and spiders do, too. They were all around me…Such colorful beetles, it was as though they’d been painted. My toys. In spring, we’d go out into the sunshine together, crawling through the grass in search of food. Warming ourselves. In winter, we’d go dormant like the trees, hibernating from hunger. I had my own school, humans weren’t my only teachers. I can hear the trees and the grass, too. For me, there’s nothing more interesting than animals, they’re truly fascinating. How can I cut myself off from that world, from those smells…? I simply can’t. Finally, the sun would come out! Summer! I’d go above ground…The beauty all around me was blinding, and no one had to cook anyone anything. On top of that, everything was singing, all the colors were out. I tasted every single little blade of grass, every leaf, each flower…every little root. One time, I ate so much henbane I nearly died. I remember entire tableaux…Bluebeard Mountain and the blue light spilling down it…That light…it was coming from the left, down the slope. Lighting the mountain from top to bottom…Those sights! I’m afraid that I don’t have the talent to convey it all. Resurrect it. Words are only a supplement to our emotional states. Our feelings. Bright red poppies, turk’s cap lilies, peonies…All of them spread out before me. Right under my feet. Or another image…I’m sitting next to a house. A sunspot is creeping down the wall…it’s so many different colors…Constantly changing. I sat there for a long, long time. If it weren’t for those colors, I would have probably died. I simply wouldn’t have survived. I don’t remember what we ate…If we had any kind of real food at all…
105In the evenings, I would see the blackened people marching. Black clothes, black faces. They were exiles coming home from the mines…All of them looked exactly like my father. I don’t know whether or not my father loved me. Did anyone love me?
106I have very few memories…There aren’t enough of them. I root around in the darkness trying to unearth anything I can. It doesn’t happen very often…It’s very rare that I will suddenly remember something that I didn’t remember before. My memories are bitter, but they always make me happy. I’m terribly happy whenever a new one floats up.
107I can’t remember anything about the winter…In winter, I would never leave our mud hut. Day was the same as night. Nothing but twilight. Not a single spot of color…Did we own anything other than bowls and spoons? No clothes…For clothes, we would wrap ourselves in rags. Not a single spot of color. Shoes…What did we have by way of shoes? Galoshes, I remember galoshes…I had galoshes, too, they were big and old, like Mama’s. They had probably been hers…I got my first coat in the orphanage, as well as my first pair of mittens. A little hat. I remember Vladya’s face barely growing whiter in the darkness…She would lie there and cough for days on end, she’d gotten sick in the mines, tuberculosis. I already knew that word. Mama wouldn’t cry…I don’t remember Mama ever crying. She didn’t talk very much, either, and eventually, she stopped talking altogether. When the coughing subsided, Vladya would call me over: “Repeat after me…This is Pushkin.” I would recite: “The frost and sun, a gorgeous day! You’re dreaming still, beautiful friend!” I tried to picture winter. How it had been for Pushkin.
108I’m a slave of the word…I have an absolute belief in words. I always expect to hear the words I’ve been waiting for, even from strangers, even more so from strangers. With strangers, you can harbor hopes. I feel like I want to say something…and then I decide to…I’m ready. When I start telling someone, afterwards, I can’t find anything in the place I’ve been describing. It’s drained, the memories have fled. It instantly transforms into a hole. Afterwards, I have to wait a long time for the memories to come back to me. That’s why I usually keep silent. I am refining everything within myself. The paths, the labyrinths, the burrows…
109The scraps…Where had those bits of fabric come from? They were many different colors, a lot of them magenta. Someone had brought them to me and I sewed little people out of them. I would cut off pieces of my hair to make them hairdos. They were my friends…I’d never seen a doll, I didn’t know a thing about them. By then, we lived in the town, but not in a house—we lived in a basement. With one little blacked-out window. We even had an address: 17 Stalin Street. Just like other people…like everyone else…We had an address now, too. I would play with a girl there…The girl lived in a real house, not a basement. She wore dresses and shoes while I was still in my mother’s galoshes…I brought my scraps over to show her, they looked even prettier on the street than they had in the basement. The girl asked me for them, she wanted to trade me something, but I wouldn’t do it for anything in the world! Her father came home. “Don’t play with that pauper girl,” he scolded her. I saw that they had cast me out. I had to make a quiet retreat, get out of there as soon as I could. Of course, these are the words of an adult, not children’s thoughts. But the feeling…I remember the feeling…It’s so painful, you don’t even feel hurt or sorry for yourself, it’s like you suddenly have a lot of freedom. But there’s no self-pity…When there’s still some self-pity left, it means that you haven’t gone so far that you’ve left humanity behind. But once you have, you don’t need people anymore, you’re self-sufficient. I went too far…It’s difficult to hurt my feelings. I hardly ever cry. I laugh at all the regular kinds of pain, women’s problems…For me, it’s all play-acting…in the play that is life. But whenever I hear a child crying…I can never walk past a poor person…I will never just walk past them. I remember that smell, the odor of tragedy…I pick up the wavelength, I’m still tuned in to those frequencies. That’s the smell of my childhood. My diapers.
110I remember walking with Vladya. We were carrying a down shawl…a beautiful object intended for some other world. She’d made it for a customer. Vladya knew how to knit, and that was the money we lived on. The woman paid us, and then she said, “Let me cut you a bouquet.” A bouquet—for us? We’re standing there, two beggar girls in some kind of respectable setting…Cold and hungry…And here she is giving us flowers! The only thing we ever thought about was bread, but this person saw that we were capable of thinking about other things as well. You’re locked up, walled in by your circumstances, and suddenly, someone cracks the window…Lets in some fresh air. It turns out that besides bread, besides food, people were capable of giving us flowers! It meant that we really were no different than anyone else. We…were like everyone else…This broke the rules: “Let me cut you a bouquet.” She wasn’t going to pick them or gather them, she was going to cut them for us from her garden. From that moment on…maybe that was the key for me, it opened the door…My world turned upside down. I remember that bouquet…It was a big bouquet of cosmos…I always plant them at my dacha now. [We’re actually at her dacha. There’s nothing but trees and flowers all around.] I recently went to Siberia, to Zmeinogorsk. I went back…I looked for our street…our house, our basement…but the house was gone, it had been demolished. I asked everyone: “Do you remember us?” One old man remembered that yes, there was a beautiful girl who had lived in a basement there, she was sick. People remember beauty more than they remember suffering. The reason that woman had given us the bouquet was also because Vladya was beautiful.
111I went to the cemetery…Near the gates, there was a guardhouse with boarded-up windows. I knocked for a long time. The guard came out, he was blind…What kind of omen was this? “Would you mind pointing out where they buried the exiles?” “Oh…over there…” and he waved his hand up and down. Some people led me out to the furthest corner…There was nothing but grass there…Nothing else left. That night I couldn’t sleep, I felt like I was suffocating. I was having a spasm…It felt like someone was choking me…I ran away from the hotel and went to the station. I walked through the empty town. The station house was closed. I sat down on the tracks and waited for morning. A guy and a girl were sitting on the banks of the railway. Kissing. It finally got light out. The train came. An empty tram car…We got in: me and four men in leather jackets with shaved heads. They looked like convicts. They started offering me bread and pickles. “Wanna play some cards?” I wasn’t afraid of them.
112Not long ago, I was on the trolleybus and suddenly remembered…Vladya used to sing this song: “I went searching for my darling’s grave / But her grave is hard to find…” Turns out that it also used to be Stalin’s favorite song…he’d cry whenever he heard it. I immediately stopped liking it. Friends would come to see Vladya, they’d invite her out to dances. I remember all of that…I was already six or seven. I saw how instead of a waistband, they’d sew wires into their underwear. So that no one could rip them off. There were only exiles out there…convicts…There were a lot of murders. I knew about love already. There was a good-looking guy who would come to see Vladya when she was sick. She’d be lying there in rags, coughing. But the way he would look at her…
113It’s all very painful, but it’s mine. I’m not running from my past…I can’t say that I’ve accepted everything, that I’m grateful for the pain. There needs to be another word for how it makes me feel. I won’t be able to find it right now. I know that when I’m in this state, I’m far away from everyone. Alone. I have to get a handle on the suffering, own it completely, find my way out of it, and also come back from it with something new. It’s such a victory, it’s the only meaningful thing to do. That way, you’re not left empty-handed…Otherwise, why descend into hell?
114Someone led me up to the window: “Watch, they’re taking your father away…” A woman I didn’t recognize was pulling something along on a sled. Someone or something…wrapped in a blanket and tied up with rope. Soon afterwards, my sister and I buried our mother. We were left all alone. Vladya could barely walk by then, her legs would give out. Her skin peeled off like paper. Someone brought her a bottle…I thought it was medicine, but it was actually some kind of acid. Poison. “Don’t be scared…” She called me over and handed me the bottle. She wanted us to poison ourselves together. I took it and threw it into the stove. The glass shattered…The stove was cold, there hadn’t been anything in there for a long time. Vladya burst into tears: “You’re just like our father.” Somebody found us…maybe her friends? Vladya was unconscious…They sent her to the hospital and me to the orphanage. My father…I want to remember him, but no matter how hard I try, I can’t see his face. His face isn’t anywhere in my memory. Later on, I saw what he looked like when he was young, my aunt showed me a photograph. It’s true…I do look like him…That’s our connection. My father married a beautiful peasant girl. From a poor family. He wanted to make a fancy lady out of her, but my mother always wore a kerchief pushed down low on her forehead. She was no lady. In Siberia, my father didn’t live with us for very long…He moved in with another woman. I had already been born…I was a punishment! A curse! No one had the strength to love me. My mother didn’t have it, either. It’s built into my cells: her despair, her pain…The lack of love…I can never get enough love, even when somebody loves me, I don’t believe it, I need constant proof. Signs. I need them every day. Every minute. I’m hard to love, I know…[She is silent for a long time.] I love my memories…I love my memories because everyone is alive in them. I have everyone: my mother, my father, Vladya…I always need to sit at a long table. With a white tablecloth. I live alone, but I have a big table in my kitchen. Maybe they’re all here with me…Sometimes I’ll be walking along, and suddenly I’ll imitate someone else’s gesture. It’s not mine…It’s Vladya’s, or Mama’s…I’ll think that our hands are touching…
115When I was in the orphanage…In the orphanage, they kept osadnik orphans until the age of fourteen, then they would send them off to work in the mines. By the time they were eighteen, they’d all have tuberculosis…just like Vladya…That was our destiny. Vladya told me that somewhere far away, we had a home. But it was very far away. Aunt Marylya was still out there, our mother’s sister…an illiterate peasant. She went around asking about us. Strangers wrote letters on her behalf. I still can’t understand it…How? How did she do it? A notice came to the orphanage to send me and my sister to such and such an address. To Belarus. The first time, we didn’t make it all the way back to Minsk, they took us off the train in Moscow. Everything happened for a second time: Vladya had a fever and ended up in the hospital; I was quarantined. After the quarantine, I was transferred to a temporary foster care center, which was in a basement that smelled like chlorine. Strangers…I’m always living among strangers…My whole life. But my aunt kept writing…and writing…Six months later, she found me again in the foster care center. Again, I heard the words “home” and “aunt.” They took me to the train…A dark train car, with only the corridor lit. Full of people’s shadows. There was a teacher escorting me. We got to Minsk and bought a ticket to Postavy…I knew the names of all those towns. Vladya had entreated me: “Remember them. Remember that our estate is called Sovchino.” From Postavy we walked to Gridki…my aunt’s village…We sat down by the bridge to rest. A neighbor biked by on his way home from the night shift. He asked who we were. We said that we’d come to see Aunt Marylya. “Yes,” he said, “you’re going the right way.” And then he must have told my aunt that he’d seen us…because she came running toward us…I saw her and said, “That lady looks like my mother.” And that was it.
116I had a shaved head, I sat on the long bench at Uncle Stakha’s house, my mother’s brother. The door was open, and through the doorway, I watched the people keep coming and coming…stopping there just to stare at me, speechless…It was completely unreal! No one spoke. They just stood there staring and weeping. In total silence. The whole village came…and they covered my tears with their tears, everyone wept with me. All of them had known my father, some of them had even worked for him. Oftentimes afterward I would hear: “At the collective farm, all we get are tally marks, but Antek (my father) would always pay us.” Here it was, my legacy. They’d moved our house from our farmstead to the central collective farm, it’s still the village council building. I know everything about those people, in fact, I know more than I would like to. The same day the Red Army soldiers loaded our family into a cart and drove us off to the station, these same people…Azhbeta, Yuzefa, Matei…had gone to our house and taken everything they could carry. Dismantled the outbuildings. Down to the very last planks. Dug up the new garden. The apple saplings. My aunt ran over…All she managed to grab was a planter to remember us by…I don’t want to think about these things, I chase them out of my memory. I remember how the whole village nannied me, everyone carried me around in their arms. “Come see us, Manechka, we picked some mushrooms…” “Let me pour you some milk, sweetie…” The very next day after I arrived, my face broke out in hives. My eyes were burning. I couldn’t even open them. They would lead me by the hand to wash my face. Everything inside of me was sick. It all started dying off, burning off, so that I could look at the world with new eyes. It was my transition from that life to this one…Now, when I walked down the street, everyone would stop me: “Oh what a beautiful girl! Ah, what a girl!” Without those words, my eyes would have been like a dog’s who’d been dragged out of a hole in the ice. I can’t imagine how I would have looked at people…
117My aunt and uncle lived in a storage shed. Their house had burned down in the war, so they’d built themselves a shed to live in, thinking that it would be temporary, but it ended up staying there for good. It had a thatched roof and a little window. “Bulbochka” growing in a corner (my aunt’s words)—not “bulba” but “bulbochka”*6—and a piglet squealing in another. No floorboards, just dirt covered in sweet flag and straw. Soon, Vladya was brought there, too. She lived for a little while longer and then she died. She was glad that she got to die at home. Her last words were, “What’s going to happen to Manechka?”
118Everything I know about love I learned in my aunt’s storage shed…
119“Oh my little birdie…” my aunt would coo. “My buzzy…my little bee…” I was always pawing her, bugging her. I couldn’t believe it…Somebody loved me! I was loved! You’re growing, and someone is appreciating your beauty—what a luxury! All of your little bones straighten out, your every muscle. I danced the Russian dance, the yablochko, and the sailor’s dance for her. I’d been taught those dances in exile…I sang her songs:
120 
121There’s a road off the Chuya highway.
122Many drivers will go down that way…
123I’ll die and they’ll bury me here,
124My mother will weep bitter tears,
125Though my wife may find another man,
126For Mama, there’ll be no other son…
127In the course of a day, you can run around until your feet turn black and blue. We didn’t have any shoes. You go to bed, and your aunt wraps your feet in the hem of her nightgown to warm them. She’d swaddle me. You can lie there somewhere near her stomach…It’s like being in the womb…And that’s why I don’t remember anything evil. I’ve forgotten it all…It’s hidden away in some distant place. In the morning, I would be woken up by my aunt’s voice: “I made potato pancakes. Have some.” “Auntie, I want to sleep more.” “Eat some and then you can go back to sleep.” She understood that food, bliny, were like medicine to me. Pancakes and love. My uncle Vitalik was a shepherd, he carried a whip over his shoulder and had a long birch-bark pipe. He went around in his military jacket and breeches. He’d bring us “feed” from the pasture—there’d be some cheese and a piece of salo—whatever the women gave him while the animals grazed. Holy poverty! It didn’t mean anything to them, they weren’t upset or insulted by it. All of this is so important to me…so precious. One of my friends complains, “I can’t afford a new car…” another, “I dreamt of it my whole life, but I never did manage to buy myself a mink coat…” When people say those kinds of things to me, it’s like they’re speaking from behind glass…The only thing I regret is not being able to wear short skirts anymore…[We laugh.]
128My aunt had a unique voice…She warbled like Edith Piaf. People would ask her to sing at their weddings. And whenever anyone died. I would always come with her…Running alongside her. I remember…she would stand near the coffin, stand there for a long time…Then, at a certain point, she would somehow break off from everyone else and go up to the body. She’d approach slowly…after she realized that no one else could say the final words. Everyone wanted to, but they didn’t know how. And so she’d begin: “Why have you left us, Annechka…You left the bright day and dark night behind…Who is going to walk around your yard…and kiss your children? Who will greet the cow when she’s comes home in the evening?” Very quietly, she’d find the words…Everything was mundane and simple, and that’s what made it truly lofty. And sad. There was some sort of ultimate truth in those simple words. Something final. Her voice would tremble…and then everyone else would start weeping. They’d forget that the cow hadn’t been milked, that their husband was drunk at home. Their faces changed, they’d stop fidgeting, and light would shine through their eyes. Everyone wept. I was shy…And I felt sorry for my aunt. She’d come home feeling ill: “Oh, Manechka, my little head is pounding.” That was the kind of heart my aunt had…I’d run home from school and see her through the little window holding a needle the size of her finger, darning our rags and singing, “You can put out a fire with water / But nothing will extinguish love…” My whole life is lighted by these memories…
129The remains of our estate…all that was left of our house were the stones. But I can feel their warmth, I’m drawn to them. I go there like you visit a grave. I could spend the night in our field. I walk carefully, watching my step. There are no people, but there is life. The hum of life, all sorts of living beings…I walk around afraid of destroying someone’s home. I can make a home for myself anywhere, like a bug. I have a cult of domesticity. I need there to be flowers, it needs to be beautiful…I remember in the orphanage, when they led me to the room where I was going to live with all the white beds…I scanned the room looking to see if there was a bed by the window. Would I have my own cabinet? I was searching for my home.
130Now…How long have we been sitting here talking? Meanwhile, a storm has come and gone, my neighbor stopped by, the phone rang…Those things also affected me, I responded to them as well. But the only things that will go down on paper are my words…There won’t be anything else: no neighbor, no phone calls…Things I didn’t say but which flashed through my memory, making their presence felt. Tomorrow, I might tell this story completely differently. The words remain, but I’ll have moved on. I have learned to live with this. I know how. I keep going and going.
131Who gave me all of this? All of it…Was it God or people? If God gave it to me, then He chose well. Suffering brought me up…It’s my art…my prayer. So many times, I’ve wanted to tell someone all of it. To speak my fill. But no one has ever wanted to know: “And then what…and then what?” I’ve always waited for someone, whether it be a good or bad person, to come and listen to my story—I don’t know who exactly I had in mind, but I was always waiting for someone. My whole life, I’ve been waiting for someone to find me and I would tell them everything…and they would keep asking, “And then what? And then what?” Now, people have started blaming socialism, Stalin, as though Stalin had God-like powers. Everyone has their own God—why didn’t they speak up? My aunt…Our village…I also remember Maria Petrovna Aristova, a respected teacher who’d visit our Vladya in the hospital in Moscow. We weren’t related to her or anything…She’s the one who brought Vladya back to our village, who carried her home…Vladya couldn’t walk anymore. Maria Petrovna would send me pencils and candy and write me letters. And in the temporary foster center, when they were washing and disinfecting me…I was sitting on a high bench…all covered in foam. I could have slipped and broken my bones on the cement floor. I started slipping…sliding down…and a woman I didn’t know…a nanny…caught me in her arms and embraced me: “My little chickadee.”
132I saw God.
133 
134*1  The Leningrad Blockade lasted from September 8, 1941, to January 27, 1944. Nazi troops had the city surrounded, effectively cutting citizens off from supply lines and paths of escape. As a result, nearly a million of the city’s residents died, mainly of starvation, as they were forced to survive on minuscule rations and whatever else they were desperate enough to eat.
135*2  Dark Alleys is the title of Ivan Bunin’s 1943 collection of short stories.
136*3  Wheras samizdat designates the clandestine or illegal production and circulation of literature within the Soviet Union, tamizdat specifically refers to Russian writings that were published abroad and smuggled back into the USSR.
137*4  Nikolai Berdyaev (1874–1948) was a Russian philosopher who emigrated to France in 1920. Friedrich Hayek (1899–1992) was an Austrian liberal philosopher and essayist.
138*5  The Eastern Borderlands refers to the territory covered by present-day Western Ukraine, Belarus, and Latvia, which were a part of Poland in the interwar years (1918–1939).
139*6  “Bulba” is Belarusian (and Ukrainian) for potato. “Bulbochka” is the diminutive.
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