Part One – There (Eastern Hemisphere)
CHAPTER SEVEN – MOM
Well, how should I narrate the story of my mother? It’s easy to write about dad. Firstly, I have never discussed this topic with anyone before. And secondly, dad, like a celestial body – showed up at my firmament and disappeared, flashed on me sky and rolled over the horizon, appeared around me and moved to another orbit, and when we found ourselves on the same star map again, there were already parsecs of insuperable Magellanic Clouds and Andromeda Nebulas between us.
It was the other way around with my Mom. She was always next to us, in constant worries and troubles and, as it seemed to me, most of my life she was under my care. Fool! What I understood in male guardianship! I only felt that it was the greatest injustice to be the most beautiful woman I’ve ever met, who lost her husband at the age of thirty-five and never again regained neither support nor stability in her life.
Mom was born in a modest-income Jewish family in the city of Baku. Grandfather was a hard worker: he worked as a carpenter, made furniture, and covered wooden suitcases with leather. Grandfather’s tools, which kept in our family after his death, amazed me with the thoroughness of their workmanship. I wonder whether their appearance, familiar to me since childhood, or tiny genes in my genome, turned me into a very handyman student during labor lessons along with couple of D graders, who were not promoted to the next school year.
In the grandfather’s light-filled apartment, there was a large plywood plane with two rows of wings (a biplane), painted brown to match the solid self-made furniture. The red stars on its wings were lost against the brown fuselage.
“Grandpa, don’t you want to repaint the plane to make the stars better visible,” I once asked my grandfather.
“Don’t you dare to discuss with the child either the color or the shape of the stars of this pilotless plane!” the ubiquitous grandmother, the keeper of the hearth, intervened.
Of course, she simply put it wrong in Russian, which never became her native. She just wanted to call the plane lonely, having no pilot. But hear, how modern her phrase sounds today, when the best pilotless planes in the world carry white six-pointed stars on a blue fuselage!
“This is on purpose, for disguise,” grandfather answered me and looked at me meaningfully through his round glasses.
And I agreed with him at once. I gladly climbed into the pilot’s seat and growled as an engine. I growled quietly also for disguise. This toy once belonged to my little Mom and it stayed with my grandparents, waiting for the “real pilot”. Subsequently, memories of this plane, along with not young look of my mother’s parents on her childhood photos, served me a source of my interesting delirium about the family.
When I fell ill in adolescence, picking up childhood infections from my little sister, I’ve got raving at a high temperature. Every time my Mom was scared. Once I said that my Mom had an elder sister, a pilot, whose parachute didn’t open. Oh, how I flied with a whistle sound towards the Earth in my hallucination!
Another time I asked, “Did Khrushchev have three daughters and a magic saber?”
I don’t know what saber did my Mom recalled, but my grandma had to calm her down. I can’t even put into words the most terrible hallucination. It consisted of sounds and feeling of cold, as if a cavalry clad in armor was rushing at me from afar across the ice. Pure horror!
I’m back to the story about my Mom. As a child, my mother was sent to a German kindergarten. In the post-revolutionary and pre-war years, Germany became closer to the Soviet Union than the former allies in the Entente, who supported the White movement. And Germany was the enemy of Russian patriots, and as you know, the enemy of our enemies is our Nazi friend. In short, the German language flourished.
Yiddish was spoken at my mother’s house, my grandmother intensively studied Russian (after all, the Poles were not among Russia’s friends after Pilsudski’s army kicked asses both Tukhachevsky and Stalin). And little Dina was sent to learn German. I already do not remember the names of the two elderly sisters, who looked after six or eight Jewish toddler girls. In any case, all these girls spoke excellent German even before school. My mother’s school years passed somehow inconspicuous for me. I don’t remember any notable stories. I only recall Mom’s remarks that friendship remained from kindergarten and continued at school. I can’t say, where it hid after that.
The institute brought new girlfriends and men-admires. Maybe they forced out the old ones? Or maybe moving to another city after marriage weakened ties with friends? Or, the most likely, history of my father’s all-Soviet Union search backfired an echo. Sometimes it’s hard to imagine how far the circles on the surface of my Mom’s life have spread from the stone that was thrown into its depths.
Initially, my mother entered the Institute of Foreign Languages, but her uncle, a professor of geology, protested, “Are you crazy? This is a direct road to the front!” And on the next day he transferred my mother’s documents to the Department of Petroleum geology.
That is how my mother became a geologist. However, the ability to speak in a child’s voice brought her fame in student circles. Then it was fashionable, in imitation of the actress Rina Zelyonaya. But it’s not about fashion, it’s about ability. Mom never trained to do it. One day she noticed that she could talk like that without any difficulty. I am surprised that my mother’s beauty and artistic (imitative) abilities have gone unnoticed in the world of cinema.
But there was no end of the fans. I think that with my grandmother’s strict nature, they had nothing to look for. A story has been preserved about a young man from the family of the Iranian Shah, who studied at the Petroleum Department in those years. Of course, my mother’s Jewish family could not imagine such a marriage. Once, in my childhood, I asked why my mother did not want to marry the “Shah”.
“Then I wouldn’t have you, silly,” Mom explained.
Although I didn’t understand anything about it, I was very proud that such a wonderful Mom chose me.
I have already told about my father’s six-year siege. I’m not sure that I would be as stubborn in his place, but my father’s perseverance causes my masculine respect…
I have already sketched how modestly we lived in an old apartment, and how fate determined for my Dad to become not a doctor, but a junior partner in a planned business machine; how we moved into a new apartment and got a piano, a car and a new baby.
I think that these eight or ten years were the only happy years in my Mom’s family life. But I want to emphasize not the word only, but the word happy!
The family was on the rise, and everyone was happy. I don’t remember a single quarrel or serious dispute between my parents. And most importantly, no matter how depressed my mother was by subsequent events, no matter how tormented she was by the investigation, poverty, loneliness and boorish proposals, she always found solace in the memories of those short years of family happiness.
And she loved dad, believing that he fell victim to female deceit. I couldn’t imagine it. Could my sister or girlfriend hurt my wife behind my back? Incredible! I didn’t believe in it. But my mother did. She believed that Wulf was good, but weak-willed. And everything could have been different if things had altered…
Even in her old age, my mother enjoyed discussing warped lives with her niece. Each one talked about her own life. I do not think that they listened carefully to each other or even agreed with the interlocutor’s views on personal grief. But they talked. An elderly and middle-aged woman shared the bygone days and rhetorical questions, “Well, did we live badly? How could he leave such wonderful children?”
Investigation and the “disappearance” of dad scared Mom very much. The situation itself, fear for her husband, the unknown, small children and lack of work were terrifying. But the arrest and the three-day detention in the Pre- Trial Detention Cell had a particularly strong effect on my mother. I heard her night crying, and how my grandmother consoled her. When I grew up, I even suspected that the investigators could also use an assault. Just ten years ago, under Lavrentiy Beria, the rape of an arrested woman was considered a method of influence, nothing more. Could this have been the case in those days? I don’t have an answer.
A stupid letter from the USA landlord about an anonymous complain on my Mom’s “illegal residence” with threats of a lawsuit caused her to have a severe psychiatric disorder in her old age, with hallucinations and delusions.
This fact shows that the mental trauma in her younger years was incredibly strong.
But, on the other hand, the hard life only strengthened family ties. My grandma sold her room in Baku and moved to us. I helped as best I could, and as soon as I get older, still at school, I began tutoring with low grade students. I earned ridiculous money, but it was a contribution to the family budget.
Mom first found a job as an ambulance dispatcher for seventy rubles a month. It was very little, and her mother helped us with her modest pension and subsidies from her apartment sold in Baku. I remember that the year was lean, there was no normal bread in the bakeries. At six in the morning I took a place in line. They allowed one loaf in hand, so my mother come to the store at eight AM in order to get together with me two loaves of raw sticky cornmeal bread before starting work.
In the railway organization of Transcaucasia, my mother worked for many years. Everyone there knew not just all coworkers, but each one’s entire family. My mother’s colleagues, engineers respected me after I calculated the friction forces at the turn of the railway track and the appropriate angle of inclination of the road to the horizon. Mom was very embarrassed when the head of her department said:
“What did they teach us at the institute, if just your schoolboy son had explained us this mechanics!”
He was certainly right about one thing: I was good at explaining mathematics and physics, making them simple and understandable even for geological engineers.
Then, when I began to earn with lessons, it became easier with money. In any case, there was no need to guess, where to get them for a summer vacation, not to mention food boxes or three-day camp dates.
At work, my mother was treated very well. Dina alone was raising and educating two children. She carried herself with dignity. Nobody knew her husband’s story. Mom was terribly embarrassed by the bitter truth. In the 1970s, when my dad returned to serve time in a maximum-security penal colony, this became known at work, and my mom was offered… an extra job. And not only. She was offered a trip abroad. Mom was very worried. Of course, she wanted to go, but she was sorry for the money.
I was already the man in the family then.
“Take the trip, mom!” I insisted. “This is not only a great pleasure, but also a great benefit. In Bulgaria, Romania and Hungary, you will buy good things for several years ahead. It will cost you much cheaper than here.”
“Oh, my dreamer,” my Mom refused, gently kissing me in my nose, “what money can I buy these wonderful things with, when they allow you to exchange only thirty rubles? Yea, you can still take a bottle of wine and a bottle of vodka with you and a block of cigarettes and sale them.”
“Go for the trip, I beg you! Listen, you won’t regret it. To hell with their clothes! At least you’ll just relax and see the world. Go for the trip in the comfortable favorite suede shoes of yours – walk, enjoy while you are still young!”
At the end, I’ve persuaded my mother. Escorting her to the train to Moscow, I asked,
“Did you take your pocket address book with you?”
My mother kept in it not only phone numbers and addresses, but a bunch of useful information in addition.
“Yes, sure,” she answered.
“Promise me that when you cross the border, you’ll carefully read three pages of it?”
“What pages?” mom had surprised.
“You’ll find out it later, on the spot, when you’ll get my regards.”
“Oh, Nick, again your mysteries and adventures?”
“And how to live without them? But, please, promise me!”
“Okay, I’m promising you.”
“What exactly are you promising?”
“Live me alone!”
“I won’t stop. It is important.”
“Okay, magician. I promise, having received greetings from you in Bulgaria, I will read three pages from my pocket address book.”
Further story I will retell you from the words of my mom.
When the train left Moscow and headed for the border, a tourist group from the Institute of Geology for the Caucasian Railways got seized with excitement. It turns out that all the people were carrying with them a bunch of contraband, starting with extra bottles of vodka and packs of cigarettes and ending with currency and jewelry. Many, not embarrassed by the coworkers, hid them in different places of the compartment, others consulted everybody around, whether they hid their treasures well.
Sveta from my mother’s department, red as if she had an apoplexy, admitted that she was afraid of a search and was ready to extradite herself, if only to get rid of the tension.
Lamara laughed feignedly, “They will never find a gold ring with a stone!”
Tamara from the Department of bridges and tunnels shoved gold coins into the nightlight.
Mom was amazed. She had no idea of the huge scale of this mass contraband. Everyone made fun of poor Dina, who only shrugged her shoulders – she had nothing to hide and nothing to worry about!
Border guards entered coaches at the border railroad station Chop. They methodically searched all the train cars’ compartments and emptied all the hiding places, including Tamara’s nightlight. Then they quickly inspected the suitcases, confiscating all excess bottles, cigarettes and the like.
Sveta could not stand the look of the border guard, burst into tears and herself gave him the soap box, where she kept the money in a piece of soap cut in halves.
Lamara was taken for a personal examination and brought in drooping and emptied.
Finally the coven ended and the train crossed the border.
“What a caring family you have,” Sveta told to my mother, “Nick apparently knew it would be a nervous procedure and sent you a postcard.”
She took out a popular soviet magazine the “Foreign Literature” , with a bookmark, which I begged Sveta to give to my mother to keep her spirits up after the search, when the train already had crossed the border of the USSR.
On the back of a glossy card with a bouquet of roses was written in my handwriting, “Have a nice holiday! New countries are like new pages – Sofa, Nick, Maya!”
Mom’s eyes widened. Perhaps it was a joke of her son, but … after all, she promised him to carefully look through three pages from her pocket address book. What pages? It is said – Sofa, Nick and Maya. That’s right, it’s an alphabet book. So S, N and M.
Now, when everyone begun to calm down after the “shmon” (search), my mother, on the contrary, started shaken.
“Something is with my stomach,” she said, and with a pocket address book in her purse, she went to read in the toilet.
Everything was right. On the indicated pages it was written: on S – “Pull back”, on N – “Insoles”, on M – “In shoes”.
“Which shoes?” mother was in a fever, but the answer was found instantly. “Of course, the very comfortable ones that Nick so insisted on wearing without taking them off.”
Without leaving the toilet, Mom folded back the insoles under the heels of her favorite shoes and found five hundred rubles in each hollow wide heel. She wept a little for joy “that she had such a caring family,” but said nothing to anyone.
Well, in return, Mom took good care of us on this trip!
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