Dancing Under the Red Star (9 page)

As time went by, a major improvement began in our relationships with them. The transformation was astonishing, inexplicable. The Russian children seemed to realize that we didn’t have any personal animosity toward them, and their attitudes changed for the better. We began to get along quite nicely, and I even became good friends with many of them. I noticed that the most hardened kids also seemed to be the most impoverished. Perhaps they needed the most healing, but some of them turned out to be my best friends. I believe that was God in action, bringing forth healing—a grand human reconciliation of some kind—long before I really knew him or what he was capable of doing in people’s lives.

Once I got to know some of them, I began to understand the Russian kids and grow very fondly most of them, and they of me. In the final analysis, the reality was that all of us, foreigners and Russians alike, were pretty much in the same boat. So we might as well get along. In the meantime, food became more plentiful for the Russians; their meat and bread were no longer rationed, and their entire outlook and demeanor changed almost miraculously with their improved diets. Clothing was becoming more readily available in their stores as well, and there appeared to be a generally more prosperous season just up the road.

While I was still in elementary school, I spent two consecutive summers at a children’s recreation camp, about twenty-five kilometers from our village. The camp was a mix of children from various ethic backgrounds and countries, but most of them were Russian. The first summer I was quite homesick, but by the time my parents came to visit and brought my pet kitten, Popcorn, to see me, I had settled down a bit. However, I hated the food.

The first morning for breakfast I found two large smoked herring on my plate, along with some bread and tea. I ate just the bread and drank the tea. Then for lunch we had mashed potatoes and fish, so I gladly traded my fish for more potatoes. Supper was the same: fish, cereal, bread, tea. By the third day I was so incredibly hungry that I had no choice but to try the herring. To my surprise, it was delicious. From then on, I had no more problems with the meals at camp. Herring became my favorite thing to eat. Every chance I could get, I finagled more and more fish from the head chef, who had taken a liking to me.

I made many friends at a month-long summer camp the year I turned fifteen. There I participated in all social activities and sporting events available. Probably because of athletics, I became a favorite of the camp officials. When I returned home, however, my mother was frantic—I brought with me a head full of lice! She drenched me with kerosene, which burned like the dickens but seemed to work well in killing the critters. It was a small price to pay for the attention and friendship I had received at camp.

My best friend in those years was not an American but the son of another expatriate family, the Dubceks from Czechoslovakia. Their son, Alexander, whom we all affectionately called Sanya, was a sensitive young man with a flamboyant, comical nature. He had an overly active imagination and a keen wit. Sometimes he was moody, but mostly he was fun to be around. He often told stories, embellished and animated, about the people we would become in the years ahead and the lives we would lead. Everyone in the village loved to listen to Sanya’s stories. He became the village storyteller and comedian.

One day he said to me, “Margaret, after you have won all of your medals, you will eventually decide to remain here in this country. You will marry a notorious Russian politician with thick, black eyebrows, and you will live with him and his eyebrows in the Kremlin. You will have many red-haired, freckle-faced babies who will also grow up to become politicians—some with thick, black eyebrows—and they will have many red-haired, freckle-faced babies. And you will then be a fat grandmother—with thick eyebrows—of so many red-haired, freckle-faced babies that you will scream!”

I laughed so hard my sides began to ache. The funniest part was that I wondered how accurate he might be. My youthful freckles had faded during my early teen years, but could they return on the faces of my children? Could my thick, wavy auburn hair be passed along to the next generation in a brighter shade of red? Or worse, as thick, black eyebrows?

I playfully slapped Sanya’s face, and he knew his story had accomplished his goal—gaining my undivided attention. Everyone in the village knew that Sanya had a crush on me, and our circle of friends teased the two of us relentlessly. I thought it was funny. I had no time for boyfriends, but there was no other boy in the village whom I liked as much as Sanya Dubcek. He would always be my friend.

In 1936, even at the age of fifteen, Sanya wore ambition proudly. He was convinced he was born to be a leader who would one day conquer the world and do something of social significance. “Someday you’ll be proud you knew me.” He would laugh and boldly proclaim, “You’ll tell your friends, ‘Hey, I used to know him; I used to know Sanya Dubcek!’”

During summer vacations, which lasted from the end of June to the first of September, my friends and I spent most days at the Oka River, which was a good twenty-minute walk from our village. The river’s beach was a beautifully brilliant white sand, and on hot days I loved to bury my feet inside the comforting warm sand. It gave me a feeling of peace and tranquillity. This was my secret place, my getaway. At one favorite spot, the river was about one kilometer wide, and I would continually swim back and forth until I was exhausted. A swimming area had been outlined with pontoons on the river, a large rectangle of water about fifty meters out from the beach. It was equipped with three-meter and ten-meter diving platforms, along with four starting posts for swimming races. The swimming area also had water polo equipment. I loved every moment of my time here, and this is where my serious indoctrination to swimming actually began.

Without exception, all of us took swimming and diving lessons from Nikolai, our young Russian instructor from Moscow. He was still in high school at the time but worked here as a lifeguard during the summers. Everyone looked up to him; not only was he tanned, well built, and handsome, but he also had a character and personality of gold. His smiling eyes lit up the whole place. Nikolai was extraordinary; you could tell he was a natural winner. It was like magic when he spoke, and all the girls’ hearts melted. When his blue eyes looked at me, my heart melted too. Sanya, the comedian, was my friend, but Nik, the handsome lifeguard, was my hero. I figured that if I ever did get married, someone like Nikolai would be a great choice! He was everyone’s favorite, and something in me began to hope that maybe, just maybe, I could one day be his.

On the Oka, with ample motivation and countless hours of practicing, I soon became an accomplished swimmer and diver. During these summer months, if I was not eating or sleeping, I could be found in the water or close to Nikolai. Life was good and as close to normal as I could have expected. I loved Nikolai, for what I then knew of love. And he probably thought that all I cared about was my swimming.

A retired pleasure steamship was towed up to our swimming area and anchored as a permanent swimming and boating clubhouse, which we treated as our own. It had an antique billiard table on board, where we played for hours on end. This ship was where we always wanted to be, by far the best place in Gorky for a young teenager like me to socialize! The swimming club also owned six sailboats: three class 20s, two 30s, and one very large one—a 45, which we called
The Pelican
, seating twelve people. We spent many wonderfully carefree days on the water, under the water, in sailboats, in rowboats, or in canoes…with Nikolai.

I became a champion swimmer for the American Village and for the entire Gorky region, traveling to different meets and tournaments in surrounding cities. Throughout the region and provinces, I became known as the one to beat, and I enjoyed the popularity immeasurably. In typical Soviet fashion, regardless of your nationality or ethnicity, you received an extra helping of social favor based on your God-given athletic prowess. That blunt reality of Russian life didn’t bother me in the least. I excelled in all athletics and was delighted to receive some small extra considerations, maybe not amounting to much more than a good dose of pride and ego enhancer.

Papa was very proud of me, especially when he’d come to see me compete. Ever since that traumatic day in Detroit when Papa had taught me how to swim, “You can do it, my sweet girl. Now swim! And always be the best!” were the words that played in my ears and in my mind before I swam. I just loved to compete.

We also learned folk dancing at classes in the village clubhouse, exclusively for the foreigners, and we also staged musical concerts. My mother sang a solo once, but she forgot part of the lyrics, making me want to crawl under my seat from embarrassment. Another time I was performing a Spanish dance with my partner, when our accompanist—who was thoroughly drunk—totally ruined our performance by erroneously repeating the first passage of our music. My partner and I gawked at each other in sheer terror until I sheepishly turned and ran off the stage in tears. My partner floundered alone on stage for a few moments more, then he also fled. My father, who was sitting in the audience, took these things rather seriously. He ran backstage and dragged the so-called pianist outside by the seat of his pants. That guy never again showed up to play piano in our club.

In school I was also an active member of the Gymnastics and Athletics Club. Here, too, I was said to be the one to beat in our competitions. I especially excelled in the 100-meter dash and in both high and broad jumping (now called long jumping). I’ve always thought that the great thing about competitive sports is it acts as the great equalizer, not favoring any nationality, race, religion, social, or economic status. You just compete in your event, and the best—whoever that might be—generally wins, with no politics involved. You simply let your performance do the talking. Why couldn’t everything in life be like the Olympic Games, I wondered.

The extreme winters in Gorky lasted for at least five months of every year. With all the snow and ice we could possibly handle, there were plenty of winter events and sporting activities. My favorites were skiing and ice skating, and I skated at the village outdoor rink for hours on end. The Oka River also froze almost two meters thick; you could drive a bus across it, but the ice was usually too choppy to skate on. We’d cross the river on foot and then climb to the top of the steep snow-covered hill on the other side, dragging our homemade toboggans crafted from sheets of veneer. Then, with the uninhibited excitement that only a child knows, we’d come flying down the mountain without a care in the world! Then we’d go back up and do it all over again! What a thrill on those days to come home completely exhausted, famished, chilled to the bone, faces flushed red as a beet, but elated through and through. Even now, if I close my eyes and relax, I can almost go back to the sights, the sounds, the smells, and the emotions of that time!

It’s true that our little circle of friends was heavily involved in sports, but we also went to the movies whenever we could, especially when they featured foreign (American) films. We had a very crude, quaint, but functional little theater in the village. During this time I developed a serious and increasing passion for drama. My whole family had it to some degree. Although Papa surely helped with the genes, my love for drama was probably inherited from Mama.

Dating was never a problem either, because we didn’t do it on an individual basis. Instead, we always did things within the group, although old-fashioned flirting certainly went on at every opportunity. I already belonged to Nikolai, at least in my heart. But we were truly just one big healthy group of kids trying hard to make the best of less-than-favorable circumstances.

Those snapshots of my early years in Gorky were pleasant fragments of life as we adapted to living in this place where we did not really belong. It all seemed surreal, because we were caught between two different worlds, consciously and not.

The idyllic aspects of Russia ended for me when Papa was arrested. The harsh and fearful aspects of life in Gorky loomed ahead.

Five

CONSEQUENCES

B
arely one month after Papa’s arrest, Mama and I were evicted from our home. The only space available to us was a single room that looked and felt more like a closet—a tiny living area only five feet by twelve feet. This room had been used as a small storage facility in the basement of a building where we lived when we first arrived in Gorky. It was right next door to the public toilet and washroom, which was used by all of the building’s residents.

This was our new home. We were barely able to squeeze in two mini-cots, a small bookcase-desk that my father had built for my room, and two stools. I could reach out and touch the opposite walls with my fingers. In these cramped, sardinelike conditions, we also had to tolerate the nauseating stench and noise from the facilities next door.

My mother eventually found a job as a janitor in a metal shop, sweeping up the metal shavings from the floor. She came home every day with her hands cut up and bleeding from the shavings, until she was able to make herself some sturdy canvas gloves for better protection. I hated watching her suffer, day after day after dreadful day, and I hated everything about my own life. But the worst part was not our squalid living arrangements, the horrible stench, our dreadful poverty, or even the uncertainty. These hardships would’ve been bearable if we’d only had Papa with us. His absence was a permanent pain of the worst kind.