Moscow Noir, page 24
They shout, laugh, cry, moan, and sigh … Sometimes I feel like throwing myself open, embracing them, and saying, Come in, it’s me, your unsafe haven, your future, reincarnation, rebirth. Don’t cry, everything worked out fine, look at me, I’m much happier than you. My life is wonderful: a loving husband, a home, a car, a household, a full cup. They didn’t beat me during their interrogations, my friends weren’t killed, radiation didn’t eat up my flesh, and I didn’t wait to be arrested. I don’t worry about money or survival, I don’t worry about where I’m going to sleep tomorrow or what I’m going to eat. I can’t remember the last time I was hungry.
But the incorporeal ghosts sway in the stratum of sleep and swirl in the murky corners of my huge apartment.
They’ve already lived their own lives; they’re not rushing, being sold off, drinking up the bitter water of earthly existence, or eating the bitter bread of posthumous exile anymore.
They’re always hungry.
They’re eating me from the inside out. My life is food for those I once was. They’re gnawing at my flesh—and every month blood flows out, attesting that the feast continues, the ghosts are not sated, they are still unhappy.
Every month, following the phases of the moon, plus or minus a day, I receive the same letter: You aren’t going to have a child.
Dozing off, we hold hands. My Kolya, Kolya-Nikolai. I want to sleep facing you, but every month that gets harder. You might even say we’re sleeping for three, right? Only two months to go—and our bunny will be born. I wonder whether it’ll be a boy or a girl. The old women in the countryside always guessed—based on your walk, the shape of your belly, and other signs.
Just think, it’s been five years and I still can’t get used to the idea that my Berezovka’s gone. True, old Georgich’s great nephew wrote last month saying they were planning to build a state farm in its place. I don’t even know … I guess that’s good. The cows will moo again and the chickens will run around, as if there’d been no war. You just look at it and it’s all so horrible what happened; how are people supposed to live there?
I told Kolya about it, and he said, So the fact that we’re living in a dead soldier’s apartment doesn’t bother you? That’s the way it should be. New people come to take the place of dead fighters.
Except that we didn’t have any fighters in Berezovka. Foolish Lushka hid two partisans—and that was it.
Nina looks at the street, lined with two-story wooden houses; an invalid on a bench is talking to two old women. The sound from a gramophone reaches her from a neighbor’s window.
This is Moscow, the capital of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, the first worker and peasant state in the world. Marina Roshcha.
Nina gazes at her round belly and tries to persuade the boy or girl to hold on a little longer and not kick but lie quietly. The doctor said she could talk to him already. Or her?
Nina’s waiting for her husband. She sits home for days on end, afraid to go out. Even in the daytime they could attack her on the street, take her money away, or just strip her. They could jam a knife into her, or a bullet. There are an awful lot of thieves.
Kolya says it all started after the war. Before, Moscow was different. But now that people have been taught to kill, they just can’t stop.
Nina doesn’t know how to kill. She only knows how to hide so she won’t die.
For two months she hid in the forests, surviving on berries and occasionally digging up potatoes in Berezovka’s charred gardens. At the sound of an engine she would fall to the ground, perfectly still.
Nina loved walking in the forest before. Her mama would laugh and call her my little forest girl.
Her mother burned up along with the rest of the village.
Nina survived because that morning she’d gone out for mushrooms when the punitive expedition showed up. She hid out in the woods and didn’t emerge until it was all over.
Until everyone was dead.
Kolya says he wouldn’t have lasted a day in the forest. I’m afraid of wolves, he says. She laughs; he’s probably not afraid of anything.
Nina is afraid for him.
Afraid they’ll slit Kolya’s throat to take away his gun.
Afraid Kolya will stop someone to check his documents—and the person will start shooting.
Afraid Kolya will go after a thieves’ den—and be killed in a shootout.
Afraid Kolya will walk into a building—and into an ambush.
Nina says, Take care of yourself, for god’s sake. If only you could wait until the child is born!
But Kolya replies, I took an oath. If I don’t stop them they’re going to keep on killing. Pretty recently they butchered a whole family in Marina Roshcha. Even a tiny baby. Got away with 25,000 rubles.
A huge amount. Kolya’s salary is just 550. How long do you have to work to make that kind of money?
How old was the baby? Nina asks.
Still in its cradle, absolutely tiny, Kolya answers. They killed him so he wouldn’t cry.
Why is he telling her this? Nina wants to hear one more time how after she gives birth Kolya is going to take time off. No, Kolya doesn’t want to talk about leaving work, he answers Nina. Wait for us to catch them all, and then we’ll start living well and happily!
Nina doesn’t believe it. She remembers how people used to say, We’ll drive Fritz out and then we’ll start living well and happily. Where is that happiness now? Now it’s like seeing her husband off to the front line every single day.
Actually, it’s her own fault. She knew who she was marrying. From the very first second. Only Kolya was so handsome in his new uniform, blue with red trim. His cap with its sky-blue band. His boots. The moment she saw him at the dance, she fell in love. Kolya later admitted he’d gone into the police force because of the uniform; they issued it for free and he liked wearing it.
There was a star on the cap, and in the center a soldier with a rifle at the ready. Nina liked that a lot too.
At the time Nina had only just arrived and she was afraid of Moscow. It was awful! Everyone cutting in and out, sideways, down the streets—and the locals pushing their way past, swaggering, spitting at their feet, not afraid of anything. You could spot them right away: soft eight-panel caps, boxcalf boots, and white mufflers.
Later Kolya told her those were the thieves. Crooks.
Why can they walk down the street like that with no one arresting them? Nina asked.
Well, you can’t arrest someone for an eight-panel cap, Kolya laughed. Don’t worry, they won’t be walking around for long. Too bad they’ve abolished the vyshka . But that’s all right, if need be we’ll take matters into our own hands—and he winked.
Vyshka was short for capital punishment. Execution. It was abolished a year ago. Kolya says there’s no one to chop timber in Siberia.
Nina thinks, We’re going to have a child—and how are we going to live? It’s good the war’s over. But still, are we really going to spend our whole life in the city? No forest, no real river. You can go to the big park, people dive and swim from the pier—but Nina feels shy. She swims like a country girl, after all, and in Moscow everyone must have some special style.
Nina sits home waiting for her husband. Sits and waits, worried, troubled, and afraid. She can’t make heads or tails of what she reads, and they don’t have a gramophone, or even a radio speaker; it’s an old building. I don’t know whether there were any televisions back then, but Nina and Kolya definitely didn’t have one.
I’m sitting home too, and I’m waiting for Nikita too. I’m worried for him—even though I have no cause for worry. Nikita’s business is peaceful and he drives carefully. I’m still worried, though.
I’d like to say, I don’t know if I could deal with being in Nina’s place, but I can’t. She and I are one and the same, which means at some point I was sitting there like that, waiting for my husband to come home from work, bored, looking out the window, stroking my pregnant belly, afraid to go outside.
It’s weird to feel other people’s lives inside you. Snatches of other people’s thoughts and irrelevant facts suddenly surface in my memory. Edible berries. The best place to gather mushrooms. How to climb a tree and get settled so you don’t fall out at night.
And sometimes a tune gets stuck in my head and keeps ringing in my mind hour after hour. Sometimes I can even make out the words.
My dad the bigwig fucks his tart
Oh bastard me, I fuck my aunt
All the time, everywhere,
From midnight until morn
From one night to the next
And back again till morn.
My dad the bigwig only fucks ’em rich
Oh bastard me, I fuck ’em bent and humped
All the time, everywhere
From midnight until morn
From one night to the next
And back again till morn.
I know this is what the little boys sang when Nina walked around the yard. Nina heard this song, and now I hear it in my head. All the time, everywhere, from midnight until morn—and I don’t know whether this song amused, frightened, or annoyed Nina. I get my melancholy from her. All the time, everywhere—that is, in this life and the ones before, around the clock, night and day, I sit in an armchair, on a seat, on a stool, and wait for my beloved to come home. And I’m afraid something’s going to happen to him.
When I’m Nina, I caress my big pregnant belly. When I’m Masha, I paint my toenails over and over again, though I have no plans to go out. It calms me.
Kolya comes home and tells me how they picked up the Kazentsov gang a few days before, on a train, and how there was shooting. The gang had hidden out in the children’s car but the conductor noticed them and called it in. It turned out they were hijacking cars. They’d ask a driver to take them out of town, where they’d kill him. Now they were the ones getting killed, at least two of them.
Kolya says there are too many guns in Moscow. Captured and brought back from the war, taken away from policemen, stolen from the Hammer and Sickle plant, where they’re selling old inventory to melt down.
To make sure a policeman can’t have his gun taken away, Kolya explained, the cop attached it to a special red cord. The cord goes up one side of his uniform, around his neck, and down the other side. The grip has a special loop where the cord is attached. Kolya explained and even showed me, but I still don’t understand. Better they just take the gun. That way, if some crook decides he wants your gun, he doesn’t have to kill you for it.
I’m really scared for Kolya. Since I got pregnant, I’m even more scared.
At first I was so glad we were going to have a child! I imagined him growing there, inside me. I went to the doctor once a month and the doctor told me when his little eyes appeared, and his little hands. I’m only sorry he’s going to be born in Moscow and not the country. What kind of a life is this? Why did I ever come here? I must have known I’d meet Kolya. There’s nothing else good here in Moscow.
I’m glad I didn’t enter the institute. I’d have had to study—but before you know it, a little baby is going to be born and Kolya will come to his senses. We’ll go away together, wherever we want.
I’ve been living in Moscow nearly a year and I still can’t figure out what draws people here. In line at the doctor’s I met a woman, also near her due date but older than me, her name was Marfa, also from the country, but she’s been in Moscow a long time, from back before the war. She’s a good woman and she reassures me, says giving birth isn’t so terrible. What’s terrible, she says, is living, and even more terrible—dying. Then I said, Well, I know, my whole village perished. And she stroked my head and said, Poor thing!—and for a second it felt like my mama was with me again. Though it’s a sin to say so, of course, because I’ll never have another mama. I’m a mama myself now. Only two months to go.
In line at the doctor’s the women were talking about something terrible. They said you could get rid of a child for money. If you didn’t want to give birth. In Berezovka they said that girls drank all kinds of potions to make it happen. I was little but I understood what they were saying. Well, a potion is understandable. But here apparently you could find a secret doctor and for fifteen hundred rubles he would take care of … well … it … everything.
Fifteen hundred! That’s so much money! It’s terrible to think who might have that! Here I am working out how to survive on 550 every month. For two—it’s hard. And now a child as well, and he has to be fed.
I wish he could be born as soon as possible, my little bunny. If it’s a boy, I hope he looks like Kolya. And if a girl, like my mama. I want her to have the same kind of eyebrows, and ears too.
I hope she’s like my mama. I don’t have anything left of her, not even a photograph. Everything burned up.
Mama would have been happy for me now. She must have been just as happy when she was dying. She knew I’d been saved.
Kolya laughs at me, but I know: there is a God somewhere. And my mama is with Him right now, on a cloud, watching me and seeing that I’m going to have my own little bunny, my own little boy, my own little girl—instead of her, instead of Papa, instead of Aunt Katya and Uncle Slava, instead of lame Mitrich and old lady Anfisa. Instead of our whole village.
Hurry up and get born, little bunny. I mean, get born when it’s time, but don’t make me wait too long. I’m a little afraid of giving birth. In Moscow you have to go to the hospital. There are strangers there and who knows what they might do. And people say there are doctor-wreckers around now too. And crooks probably.
Here she sits, day after day, little Nina from ’48, getting heavier and heavier—and so is my heart. Because all the time, everywhere, from midnight until morn—it’s the same old story, and I know what happens next.
Two weeks before the birth Nina puts jacket potatoes on the burner and suddenly remembers she’s out of salt.
She goes over to Aunt Vera’s, her neighbor.
She knocks and no one answers, so Nina pushes on the door and shouts, Aunt Vera! She walks in and she’s struck by a cast-iron pot. They were aiming for her head but she managed to jump to the side, and then she hears a whisper: Finish the bitch off! She shields her unborn baby with her arms and starts yelling, but not loudly enough. When the second attacker strikes her in the belly, she screams loudly enough for the whole building to hear, the whole courtyard, even the street—and the sound barrels over the neighboring roofs, over the quays of the Moscow River, over the attractions at the central park, over the pavement of Red Square, over the Mausoleum’s pyramid, over the Kremlin’s stars, over the empty pit where the demolished temple once stood, over the wooden buildings built after the war, over the thieves’ dens and lairs, over the police stations, over the prisons and penal colonies, over the subway entrances, over the movie theaters and cultural institutions—over all of postwar Moscow, over the unlucky victor city, over the kids without fathers, the women without husbands, the men without arms, legs, conscience, fear, family, memory, or love.
While Nina is still falling on the bloody ground, screaming and screaming …
One more blow and she would have been silenced forever. The attackers killed Aunt Vera and they could have killed Nina too. Smashed her head in, slit her throat, beat her with whatever came to hand—but they fled.
They would be caught two days later. Maybe they’d shoot someone during the arrest.
But Kolya was running down the street, holding the tiny body close, and the umbilical cord dangled like one more piece of red piping, and his whole handsome uniform was covered in blood. Kolya was running, cursing, weeping, and too late.
It was a boy.
Two years later they left Moscow. The state farm built where Berezovka had burned down gave them a house; a good muzhik always comes in handy in the countryside. And so they lived, until their death. Kolya trained to be a tractor driver; Nina worked as a milkmaid, poultry maid, and clerk at the general store—whatever opportunity arose. For a while she was even a kindergarten teacher. But not for long.
They didn’t have children of their own. Kolya died in 1985, Nina a year later.
Sometimes I see her very old. Her hands are folded in her lap, she’s sitting on a stool by the window, and the older teenagers, the girls and boys, are giggling on the bench. Music reaches her from an open car.
Nina has no one to wait for and nothing to fear. Her life is over.
Only in her head, like a worn-out record. All the time, everywhere, from midnight until morn, from one night to the next, and again till morn is like an obsession, an incantation, a promise that it will all happen again.
* * *
I doze off holding Jan’s hand, but it doesn’t matter. At night I dream of my lovers. The men I couldn’t have. The boy from our school, a year younger than me, his curly fair hair escaping his school cap: a car ran him down right in front of his house, in front of his parents and nanny. The Menshevik agitator, his glasses shattered, his cracking voice turning into a short screech when a bullet forced the petals of a crimson rose open on his jacket chest. The Red soldier in the dusty helmet silently bowing over the corpse of his comrade who was captured by the White Cossacks; a star was carved on his salt-strewn back—a five-pointed star gone from red to brown. A fifteen-year-old kid shouting through tears, Swine, swine!, his ginger hair soaked with sweat and stuck to his forehead, so you wished you could run your hand over it. A stout man, temples lightly touched with gray, looking back for the last time before boarding that barge—a spark in his dark pupil, like a gleam of light, but from the other shore.
I doze off holding Jan’s hand. It’s a strong hand covered with fine faded hair, his closely trimmed nails edged in black.
I kiss his fingers and imagine that this narrow dark stripe is caked blood, the congealed blood of the people he’s ordered to be executed. I kiss his hand and think that this is the hand of someone who separates life from death, who splits human existence in two, the hand of someone used to deciding for others, whether they are to live or die.
