Part One – There
(Eastern Hemisphere)
CHAPTER SIXTY FIVE – THE LIFE BEHIND THE WALL… (MAYA IS REMEMBERING)
Lina was fat, beautiful, and cheerful. She loved bright clothes, cosmetics, large jewelry and always looked impressive. She also loved sharp, although not always decent words, which my mother did not allow in our family. Mom loved to read classics and the magazine “Foreign Literature”. She always felt embarrassed when Lina seasoned her speech with dubious expressions. Looking at her reproachfully, my mother nodded at me, a student, saying, “In front of the child!”
Lina rolled her eyes to the ceiling and noted,
“So what? She’s already an adult, let her know all these tits and pussies!”
I remember when I graduated from school, she came to us and right off the bat attacked me with the question,
“Do you want to get married?! There is a groom – Apollo Belvedere. Handsome!” she clarified, apparently so that I wouldn’t think that these were his passport data. “He’s thirty, he’s smart, he works, and he has his own apartment!”
Mom immediately launched a counterattack,
“Are you crazy? What are you saying? She needs to study!”
Ignoring my silence and my mother’s protest, Lina continued,
“That’s right, she needs to study, but who says don’t study? Just imagine, Maya, in the morning he goes to work, and you go to college, and in the evening you return home and have dinner together… Is that bad?”
I imagined. The painted picture looked quite good.
“Okay,” I said.
“Here you see! Your daughter is smart!” Lina shouted at my mother, “She understands what is right and what is wrong. I’ll call him tomorrow!”
I waited impatiently and with slight anxiety to see how my fate would be decided, but a couple of days later, a disappointed Lina reported that the “groom” refused to meet and was even offended by such a “bride”, had said,
“Why on earth are you offering me a child from a kindergarten?”
After this unsuccessful attempt, matchmaking was over in my personal life. But Lina sowed goodness wherever and whenever she could.
“Listen, Dina,” she told my mother years later, during another visit, “I was thinking, you’ve had enough of being alone, do you want to get married?”
Mom was embarrassed, but I, on the contrary, perked up and answered,
“Yes, she wants it!”
“No, I’m serious, Dina. There is a suitable groom. He is sixty-seven, a widower, handsome, and has decided to get married. True, he’s bald, but that doesn’t matter, he’s very lively and gallant, maybe he also has a “barrel organ working,” she giggled, “He had already been introduced to a couple of women, but he didn’t like them.”
Under our common pressure, my mother had to give in, and she allowed the “groom” to be given her phone number. And the phone soon rang. The groom’s name was Aron Mikhailovich. He turned out to be a short, but fit and slim man. His big blue eyes on his handsome, courageous face looked at my mom with delight. He courted after her beautifully – he never showed up at our house without a bouquet of roses and champagne.
Now my roles with my mother have switched. Coming from the institute, I cleaned up, made it cozy, baked khachapuri (cheese pastry) or some “culinary masterpiece” for tea and usually went to see my friend, or, in the absence of shelter, sat in the kitchen with a book and read, without interfering with their conversation.
Lina was triumphant! Through her informants, she collected information that mom makes Aron feel dizzy, one might say, “she blowing his roof off.”
And I was once again convinced that the world is a small place: my mother’s cavalier turned out to be the father of my friend, Garry. And not just my friend’s, but my former platonic crush.
Garry was involved in enduring car racing, but in addition, he chased girls and was known as a famous seducer. This forced me to be on guard and keep a barrier of slight arrogance between us. But since we didn’t know an expression “chemistry between people” then, I had no idea why I felt electric shocks in his presence.
“What, did he send you an impulse again?” My girlfriends were dying of laughter.
Garry liked me, but he didn’t allow anything excessive towards me. A couple of times, when he stopped by with his car, he took me for a ride around the city and chat, but mostly we met in the company of friends, about three years ago. Now, all this seemed like a distant past.
And now Garry has seduced another girl, and it seems that this time he couldn’t get out of it. Her combative mother came to their home, caused a scandal and declared that now Garry must marry her daughter, and it couldn’t be otherwise! And they began to prepare for the wedding.
Aron Mikhailovich took it hard. He was angry with Garry for his indiscriminateness, for the fact that he now had to communicate with the noisy and unceremonious Mother Goose, as he called his son’s future mother-in-law, listen to her instructions on how to furnish the apartment, what room the young people should live in, answer questions about whether he would give them the rug from his bedroom and silverware. He told my mother that during one of these visits his nerves could not stand it, and he expressed everything he thought to the guests, and after they left, to his son. The marriage did not take place.
And my mother simply became younger from the attention of her fan. Forgetting about her arthritis, she took long walks with Aron in the botanical garden, and then a gallant suitor always took a taxi to bring her back home. And then the day came when Aron Mikhailovich said,
“You know, dear Dina, that’s enough! We are no longer children, we have no time to waste. Today we are coming to my place, and you are staying. I have a four-room apartment, there is enough of space!”
I was jubilant. Lina prayed for the success of the enterprise,
“Lord, give him strength!”
Mom hesitated. On Friday, she and Aron left together. Lina was shaking with curiosity. On Sunday my mother returned.
“Well, does the barrel organ work?” Lina asked Mom the first thing.
Mom waved her hand in response and said that Garry and his sister gave their father an ultimatum – if he marries Dina, they will refuse out of him!
“Do not you understand?” Garry shouted to him, “I loved Maya, and I didn’t marry her only because she was from that family!”
His sister added fuel to the fire,
“Do you want to lose your home too? Dina grabbed the apartment from her husband and did not let him home. And this is under his circumstances?!”
(Keeping in mind that dad, after eight years in hiding and then eight more years in camps, settled with a wealthy friend who had buried her husband).
In short, the smiling happiness fell to pieces before our eyes… Mom was worried. Lina, as usual, tried to support and encourage her,
“Cedreiter lokh in kopf” (Yiddish – “A cuckoo fool”)! Well, don’t be upset, Dina. Why do you need a squeaky barrel organ? The box is beautiful, but it’s a coffin!”
I tried to influence the situation. I wrote a naive letter to my dad in America, asking him to be fair and refute the circumstances he had invented. I called Garry to say, “If you are concerned about the issue of an apartment, propose parents to live with us.”
But he just hung up all the times. In desperation, I asked Leo, his close friend, to come in to advice to me.
Leo rushed over that same evening. Seeing my upset face, he asked what happened, and I, not knowing where to start, said that we would talk about Garry. You should have seen Leo at that moment! Almost crying, he asked,
“Lord, is it really you too…?!”
“No, we’re talking about my mom.”
At this point Leo went completely crazy, but after my story his mood has noticeably improved; he lit a cigarette with relief and promised to talk to Garry. All efforts led to nothing…
Mom again returned to her arthritis, reading her favorite classics and the magazine “Foreign Literature”. Aron Mikhailovich soon married a rich widow, whom his children approved, and two years later he died of a brain tumor…
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