Part One – There (Eastern Hemisphere)
CHAPTER TWO – ARCHIVES
Before talking about the present and the recent past, I will perhaps try to recall fragments of the “elusive antiquity”, stories about the late 19th and early 20th centuries that have lingered in my memory. I think that otherwise time and distance will wash them off into oblivion…
FATHER’S FAMILY
1
My grandfather, my father’s father, David Yakovlevich came to the Caucasus in his youth and settled there forever. At that time his name was Dovid Abraham Yankel Shmuel. As I understand it, according to Jewish tradition, the first two names belonged to him, and the second two belonged to his father, my great-grandfather.
The only photograph remained of the latter, depicted him decorously sitting at a table with a Talmud in his hands. The Neiman family then lived in Belarus in Nezhnin. Great-grandfather taught in a Heder (cheder), and great-grandmother, his cousin Etta, raised six children, ran a household and kept a business – an oriental sweets shop. Unfortunately, she died early from a “carbuncle” in her armpit. To me, it seems to be a metastasis of breast cancer in the lymph nodes…
Great-grandfather married a second time and raised a bunch of children – his own, wife’s and mutual. But the older children from his first marriage began to disperse. The two elder sons studied journalism and medicine in Switzerland. Elder daughter Golda graduated as a midwife in Warsaw and worked in Istanbul with an Armenian doctor until a wave of genocide threw them out of Turkey into the neighboring Georgia. After that, Golda settled in Tiflis in delivery clinic and successfully worked there for many decades. This is confirmed by my birth, but more on that – later.
Arriving in the Caucasus, my young grandfather settled with his sister, in her small two-room apartment near the Central Market. He studied at a vocational school and worked as a tutor with students, and in 1916 he entered the Medical Institute of St. Petersburg.
The fates of all his brothers and sisters have developed quite decently. The eldest brother became the editor-in-chief of the Menshevik newspaper “To Victory!” and together with Trotsky was expelled from the country. This saved his life, unlike Trotsky’s. He married Nina, a girlfriend of his middle brother, Boris. Like Boris, she studied medicine, but in St. Petersburg. “How?” you’ll wonder, “A woman? A Jewess?”
Nina was an amazing person! In order to obtain a residence permit in St. Petersburg, she got herself a “yellow ticket” by registering with the police as a prostitute. And prostitutes, unlike Jewesses, were allowed to live in the capital.
Boris studied medicine at the University of Lausanne with the money of his wife, a wealthy philanthropist and lover of young scoundrels. But after graduating, Boris wave with his hand to both his wife and girlfriend Nina, and drove off to the Ural, where he married a third woman, with whom he lived the rest of his life, working as a doctor in a Pyatigorsk sanatorium and raising a small dog.
Nina, abandoned by Boris, was not left alone. She married the older brother, who secretly adored her, and emigrated with him. Initially – to Germany, then – to France and, finally, to the USA. Unfortunately, in his old age, the honored Menshevik Neiman “went crazy” and broke up with his wife, recalling her “yellow past”.
Their son, following in his father’s footsteps, became a journalist and worked at the “Voice of Europe” radio station, rising to the rank of its editor-in-chief. I myself read articles in main Soviet newspapers naming him a superspy and a pillar of capitalism.
Their daughter taught foreign languages, was happily married to a German chemist, which is why a lot of relatives on both sides turned away from them.
I did not know my uncle and aunt, but I met my aunt’s children. Her younger son recently retired from constructing space shuttles, and her elder daughter still teaches English at the university. His family is religious, despite the engineering and shuttles, the names of all four his children begin with the letter I (guess after whom). Her family moved abroad as her husband was Arab engineer, which is why a lot of relatives on both sides turned away from them. The marriage later broke up, but she did not want to leave the Muslim country without her children – she waited for them to come of age until they themselves, and not their father, decided where to live. Now children are with their mother in America – arrange Shia-Sunni disputes among themselves and joking up at their mother’s Arabic…
My grandfather’s eldest sister, Golda, as I mentioned, took care of newborns, as well as brothers and sisters from Belarus. She lived all her life with her little sister Berta, with no smell of men there, at least nothing of this sort is known to me. The third, youngest sister, Inna, married a local Armenian guy. They gave birth to two daughters, whose children live in Israel and the USA.
My grandfather David knew mathematics well. Apparently, this is a hereditary trait. The same can be said about dad and me. Grandfather said that he was a math tutor for the son of the Governor of the Caucasus, Prince Vorontsov. Once after the revolution my grandfather met his former student. A gentlemen accompanied two sisters of Mercy and asked my grandfather, as a decent person to a decent person, to get him tickets to Batum and help protect the disguised members of the imperial family from an unjust trial and death.
I was the only one from the whole family who believed in this history of salvation, but I could not understand: why would the Governor of the Caucasus and the prince invite my grandfather, a student of a vocational school, to be a tutor to his son? And just as I’m doing all my life, I asked my grandfather a direct question about this.
“There is nothing easier, Nick! Think yourself, you can calculate it. How much Vorontsov saved by paying me, a young teacher, not a ruble per lesson, but fifty kopecks, given that for the first six months we studied three times a week, and for the second half year, when the student got stronger in math, just twice a week?”
“He saved fifty percent!” I chopped off, pitying my grandfather.
With Vorontsov, this miser, everything was clear to me.
Grandmother Olya was a young lady with a strong character from a middle-class family. The Grandfather became her suitor, being a student at a medical institute in St. Petersburg. The revolution had just happened. Later Grandfather colorfully described the capture of the Winter Palace, in which he allegedly took part. The descriptions of the imaginary battle quite accurately coincided with the frames of the films of Eisenstein, Pudovkin, Romm. More or less reliable was a box of chocolate taken out of the palace’s storage cellars. Nevertheless, the grandmother was afraid for the fate of her fiancé and acted decisively. She wrote a letter urging David to leave the capital at once and marry her “now or never!” Apparently, the revolutionary situation was ripening not only in political circles, but also in the minds of individual citizens. My grandfather left debate, chocolate, Petrograd and returned forever to the Caucasus, where he had been lived out his life peacefully with his betrothed and three children: my uncle, my dad and my aunt. He never became a doctor…
After the WWII, my grandfather went to Belarus to look for a family. He found out that he had no relatives left there. The father died before the war, and the stepmother and younger children perished. Half-brother Samuel, who graduated University with a degree of journalism and worked in the editorial office of a newspaper in Warsaw, went underground and was shot in the city ghetto. Their house in Nezhnin remained boarded up. Grandfather was offered to take possession of it, but he refused: there were too many destitute families.
I can remember a lot about my father’s brother and sister. Dad’s older brother, Abel, was a kind but… peculiar man. There were rumors that he had been ill with meningitis and was not quite adequate, but I think that meningitis does not affect logic and is not inherited, and I see similar properties in his descendants. In my opinion, there is some peculiarity in the connections between neurons. Really – nothing special, but the source of many jokes and funny situations.
Abel could never earn “an extra penny” and, even working as an engineer at a construction site, he asked his father to buy him cheap rubber boots at the market. Grandfather was amazed, “Well, where do you find second one like him? Another would have sent a wagon of boots from the construction site to sell them on the market!”
Abel always wanted to give a gift to children, if he remembered their birthday, but since he had no money, he took drawing pencils from his work office and gave them to kids. All his statements were controversial and not obvious even to the young Nick. It was impossible to over argue him. He didn’t listen to adults either and strung his arguments one on top of the other, screaming in excitement and running around the room. He had three wives and three children from the first two.
Dad’s little sister Lea, was born with dad on the same day, disrupting the celebration of his birthday. That’s probably why they’ve been great friends all their lives. Lea has two daughters and seven grandchildren. I will probably mention them repeatedly in appropriate places, because talking about them on purpose is like writing a book within a book. And I’m not even sure about the first one.
2
The parents of my father’s mother, grandmother Olga, were secular people and moved to the Caucasus from the Baltic States. I saw a photo of a great-grandfather with a beard reminiscent of Karl Marx, and a photo of a very pretty and feminine great-grandmother. This is not surprising, as she, in modern terms, was a hat designer and knew a lot about fashion. She had a hat shop and a salon in the city, where her designer hats were displayed and sold. Grandmother ordered materials from France and Poland, and made hats from them, which were in great demand.
I have little information about my great-grandfather, his name was Abel, like his eldest grandson, my uncle, from which we can conclude that my grandmother named her first-born after the untimely deceased father.
The great-grandmother had two brothers. I was named after one of them. He had no children and died early. His wife, Asya, lived with my grandmother’s family and ran the household. Her image certainly appears in the memories of the grandfather’s house and its inhabitants. Remember? This is the same Asya, in whom I was looking for a scar on the palm, allegedly left over from the time of the Brusilov offensive.
Second brother was married and had a daughter, Innochka. Her children, lost their father, Innochka’s husband, in the Great Purge, grew up in need, became specialists. The daughter graduated from medical school and became a doctor of famous Olympic champions. Her husband and children are athletes; one of them is in filming.
My grandmother had an older sister. She lived in Baku and had two children, a son and a daughter. Her son, once courted my mother, but without success. He was quite handsome, and chose a beautiful wife who was a sculptor and even sculpted shoes for a huge statue of Lenin created by Jalal Karyagdy. But then she switched to hats, following the example of her mother-in-law’s mother. Unfortunately, behind the Iron Curtain goods from France and even Poland were out of the question. Therefore, she emigrated to the United States at the first opportunity. And my uncle decided to delay for a while with emigration and have some bachelor fun, but his heart let him down…
Their only daughter, my second cousin, Bella, graduated from the Gnessins’ Institute in the cello class and played in the Balanchine orchestra. No, not in America, but during Balanchine’s tour in the USSR. Now she lives in Chicago with her husband and two adult sons, earns money by doing manicures, and in her free time she sells beads of her own design on eBay.
It remains to tell about the grandmother’s niece. She was a biology teacher and raised a son, who showed great promise in the violin. In America, his mother soon died, and he abandoned the violin and became a taxi driver. It seems to be the result of a mental instability. He lives alone and does not maintain contact with relatives…
(To be continued…)
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