Part One – There
(Eastern Hemisphere)
CHAPTER SEVENTY SIX – LATEST MOSCOW SKETCHES
Sometimes we returned to the resident’s headquarter – our SRISI, although over time the role and importance of the central management decreased. Perhaps this was due to the development of democracy in the country, when the general, the party and hundreds of slogans gradually lost power and strength. And the country itself was changing. There was a war between the former fraternal republics, and now union federations – Azerbaijan and Armenia. Two postgraduate students of SRISI, from border villages, good people and opponents of the war, made joint anti-war statements, but over time, when blood was shed on both sides, and even more so – the blood of friends and relatives, they began to literally throw themselves at each other with their fists. What could we do? We stopped them with force until SRISI eventually transferred them to different clinics, out of harm’s way.
We had a lecture about the surgical experience of the Afghan war in the SRISI. It was a lecture on the treatment of previously unprecedented destructive lesions of the body with the latest shells and bullets. For example, the bullet began to spin inside the body, literally tearing the internal organs apart. I’m not sure that such weapons and ammunition complied with international conventions, but they were tested with success, and experience in treating such terrible lesions was gained.
During my residency, tragic events occurred in my homeland, Tbilisi. Georgia was preparing to adopt a new republican constitution. The mass of the people spoke out in support of it, especially certain points that differed from the previous Soviet ones. Some conservative forces were preparing to resist this, and Special Forces were deployed to the capital. They began to disperse the night demonstration. All this happened near the Alexander Garden, where almost a hundred years ago tsarist troops shot protesting workers. Now they didn’t shoot, but beat with sapper shovels those who ran away. Alas, not only beat flat, but also chopped with the edges of shovels sharp as a saber. This, including stampedes and poisonous gases, resulted in the death of nineteen people (most of them were women).
This act of unjustified cruelty shocked the entire country. From that moment on, Georgia forever lost its mixed, but generally good feelings towards Russia. And Russia began anti-Georgian propaganda. It turned out that we, SRISI residents, were given a visiting tour to the State KGB museum these days. Its stands and exhibits showed the efforts of enemies to destroy the USSR from the moment of its formation to the present day. The newest stands showed piles of weapons that gangs of Georgian nationalists were ready to use in the fight against peaceful Special Forces.
I think that a volley of dozens of machine guns and bazookas would have simply scattered the small army, but the cold-blooded Special Forces dealt with the bandits without firing a single shot, but only using sapper blades. The exhibition gave the vile impression of poorly concocted propaganda, but in fairness I will say that it worked: our pro-Soviet doctors completely trusted it and scolded the inhumane Georgian nationalists.
Shortly before completing my residency, I managed to visit two cities. We went to a conference in Gorky. It was a closed city where Academician Sakharov lived in exile for a long time. It was interesting to visit the former Nizhny Novgorod, especially to see the walls of old Russian monasteries.
In the Soviet Union, it was customary to bring souvenirs from different places. You never knew what goods or products you might stumble upon in another city. And just in case, I asked my wife what kind of lipstick she needed.
“German, No. 7,” she said, suspecting nothing.
That’s what I asked at the department store in the city of Gorky. How can I describe the saleswoman’s look, full of hatred and contempt for me?
“Are you kidding me, right?!” she asked, and her lips pursed, as if she were preparing to spit at me.
But another trip was a visit Odessa, the city dear to my heart. SRISI participated in an all-union surgical conference. As always, I stopped at Igor’s. Grandmother was no longer alive. Igor and Nadya raised their daughter in their apartment. But the Odessa “telephone” (people’s word connections) worked just as well as always in Odessa. The phone rang and, in Natalie’s voice, greeted me in places of my not so long ago adventures.
“Come and visit me,” Natalie said, “Have you forgotten the addresses yet?”
I bought lilacs, and, as usual, showed up for dinner with a bottle of Georgian wine. I must say that Natalie had a hard time coping with our breakup; she was sad not only for me, but also for Georgia. She once came to our city and started an affair with one guy, Tamaz, who had one leg amputated. This guy was very kind and family-oriented; in any case, he took care of his younger brother with Down syndrome, whom he often took with him on business trips. By the time of my visit to Odessa, Natalie had already remarried, but was still friends with Tamaz.
And so, I show up to visit Natalie, yes, in that very apartment with the terribly creaky old sofa-bed, and I see an amazing scene. Hosts and guests dine at the table. Tamaz sits, having unbuckled his wooden leg in very natural way; next to him, on a separate chair, rests his prosthesis; next sits his brother-Down, drooling, and at the end of the table sits the owner, while above his head on the wall is a huge 1.5m x 1m portrait of my person. Down points his finger at the portrait, then at me and laughs.
“I recognized you right away too,” the head of the family tells me.
Surreal picture! I also want to drool myself…
“Will you stay the night?” Natalie asks, “I’ll arrange everything.”
“Will my stay arrange everybody? I think no. And in the morning – a report at the conference…”
We say goodbye warmly. When will we see each other again? Or will even meet at all?
Just before the end of my residency, we decided to investigate and treat Ana’s allergy and asthma at the Pediatrics Institute. The wife of my classmate Zhorik worked there. No one in America would study allergies and asthma at the hospital. But in the USSR they hospitalized Ana and did a bunch of tests without any results. The children were kept under strict conditions and their underpants were taken away for the slightest offense.
Once upon a time I found that children will underwent a complete gastroscopy. I asked a doctor,
“Have you checked if my daughter is allergic to the anesthetic?”
“No, why are you asking?”
“Ana has severe allergies – attacks of suffocation.”
“It’s good that you warned us, we won’t give her anesthetic.”
“What would it be like without it?”
“We’ll put the plug in her mouth and insert a gastroscope into her stomach.”
“I don’t allow this sadism,” I said.
And soon the child was discharged from the clinic. Lilya and I, happy, took Ana from the prison and took her to a cafe to eat. At the next table, visitors were chatting animatedly, switching from German to Russian.
“We are celebrating ten years of emigration. Over the years, our boy graduated from school, and we brought him here to see where he lived and what he lost forever. For the first time we see that he is truly grateful to us!”
Soon my residency has ended. The solemn ceremonies at SRISI, the banquet at the Beijing restaurant died down, all the documents were filled out, all the papers were signed, and it was possible to return home. The doctors around me were cautiously interested in whether I wanted to stay in Moscow, they even hinted that it was possible to try to successfully butter someone up.
However, this did not interest us at all: neither me, nor Lilya, nor even Ana. Life in pro-Soviet Russia, and even in its most advanced city, Moscow, was clearly not for us, lovers of Georgian friendliness. We have already missed a year without sending our child to a school near Moscow. “Ana will survive without swearing, mean children and unsmiling angry adults. Just think, we also didn’t go to school at six, but at seven. She won’t be late for anything!”
To say goodbye, we went to Crimea again, but to the warm southern seaside. I still rejoice at how young and beautiful we are in those pictures!
And then we loaded an entire train compartment with suitcases and boxes and went home. There was left one last attempt to establish life in this hemisphere before emigrating to the other. I apparently wanted to drink the cup to the bottom.
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