The Education of a Traitor: A Memoir of Growing Up in Cold War Russia (10 page)

By the end of the week, I walk up to Mom, who is bent over a one-burner portable propane stove with a ladle in her hand, and ask her for another cage. Mom stops stirring
borscht
and looks at me.

“What do you need another cage for?” she says. 

“I have to separate the rabbits,” I answer, proud of my insider's knowledge. 

“Separate for what?” 

It is appalling how little Mom knows about country living in general and the propagation of rabbits in particular. Does she even realize that, if not for Stalin, I would have been born on her grandparents’ farm? And, although I was not, I am still excited about recapturing my secret rural heritage. “For babies, of course!” 

“What babies?” 

“You have to separate the rabbits so they can have babies,” I tell Mom in a voice she herself reserves for talking with little Tanya. “Ask Evdokia Nikolaevna! She always does that.” 

The ladle slips from Mom’s hand and falls on the scratched wooden floor, splashing me with hot reddish liquid and pieces of chopped beets. Yet, instead of inquiring if I am okay or, at least, picking up the ladle and cleaning the floor, my mother stares at me as if I just told her that my rabbits have grown horns or I am going to America to visit Tom Sawyer. 

“I'll talk to your father,” she says after a minute of dead silence. 

The next day, Dad brings another cage and transfers one of the rabbits there. All I need now is patience. First thing in the morning, I run to my cages and look the rabbits over. I am not quite sure which one of them will have bunnies, so I carefully examine both. Yet, day after day, my rabbits look exactly the way they did when I first saw them—white and fuzzy, and cute— but they are no bigger.

A week later, I ask Mom to bring the rabbits back together. She does not mind. After several more days, we separate the animals once again, and my feverish observations continue—to no avail. Finally, after a series of separations and happy reunions, my rabbits become nervous, while I become deeply disappointed.

My parents will not buy me another couple, I realize that. I have to give up my idea. The last time I pull a trembling rodent from its cage, I clasp it to my face and, despite a nagging premonition that no earthly effort will bring about a change, I whisper into its silky ear, “Please, please, please, bring me little bunnies!” And then I kiss it on its wet, sniffing nose. 

This time, the change does come. It is not the one I hoped for, but it is definitely a change. In size, too. Not in the rabbits, though, but in my face. By next morning, it swells like the risen dough for Mom’s
pirozhki
, while my eyes turn into two hardly visible slits, as if, instead of coming from a long line of Diaspora Jews and Ukrainian
kulaks
, I come from the stock of Genghis Khan. I also feel feverish, and my body itches as if ants were crawling all over it. 

Several days later, after Mom brings me home from a local hospital where I have been treated for allergic shock, the rabbits and their cages are gone. I open my mouth to ask about them, but I look at Mom and bite my tongue. I have learned my lesson. Sometimes, the very thing you long for so much can hurt you. Besides, as Mom tells me—her hand stroking my hair—there is a little one in our household already. Not as cute as bunnies and definitely much more troublesome—it is my sister Tanya, who, according to Mom, needs my attention “even more than the rabbits.” 

Tanya proves the truth of Mom's statement the very next day. While playing in the kitchen, she finds a kernel of sweet corn and, for nothing better to do, pushes it deep inside her left nostril. The kernel, which suddenly finds itself in a warm and moist environment, apparently starts growing there—unlike the corn our whole country tried so hard to grow—and the next morning, Tanya wakes up screaming in pain.

Mom rushes her to the same hospital, and the same doctor treats her. When they return home, Mom’s green eyes are dark-olive and fulminating. Just before Tanya was released, the doctor asked Mom how many
more
children she has. This may have been a very innocent question, but Mom took it very hard, and I quickly find myself grounded for the offence of not watching Tanya “
v oba glaza
.” By the time I am finally forgiven, golden spikes of fall begin penetrating the summer greenery, the evenings cool off, and we move back to Moscow.

Years later, I ask my mother if she remembers the summer in the village where everybody had rabbits. 

“Sure,” she says. “They raised them for meat.” 

“They did?!” I say, making a belated connection between the 1960’s food shortages and the number of rodents in the village. What else did I miss?

“What about
my
rabbits?” I ask. “Why didn’t they have bunnies?”

“I had no time for rabbits,” Mom says. “Grocery shopping took hours, not to mention cooking on a one-burner stove. We bought you two females.”

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

I REMEMBER THEM

“For as long as we live, they too will live,

For they are now a part of us, as we remember them.”
  

Reform Judaism Prayer Book

“A great achievement of Soviet Science!” An announcer’s voice pours breathlessly from the radio, “The first in world history!” The voice reaches a state of ecstasy: “Soviet human spacecraft
Vostok
1 orbited the Earth in 108 minutes!” Victorious sounds of a military choir conclude this breaking news, affirming the gravity of the event. 

Wow! Just this morning, while I was still asleep, Yuri Gagarin, our first cosmonaut, flew into outer space! How great is that?!

“This is really amazing!” my father says, as if reading my mind. “We’re the first!
Eto vam ne zhuk nachikhal!
(This is nothing to sneeze at!).” 

“Oh, sure,” Mom says, putting away breakfast plates and bowls, no trace of triumph in her voice. “I personally wouldn’t mind if things were that amazing on the ground, too. With our salaries for one thing. Apartments for another.”

“Well, Fira, you must admit. This is a great achievement! Things like this don’t happen every day.” 

“Neither do the things I just mentioned,” Mom says. Then she looks at her watch. “Don’t forget that Tosja’s going out tonight, so you have to come home earlier.”

I stare at Mom. What is she talking about? What does our apartment have to do with anything? Of course Dad is right. It is great that we are first! Naturally, I am not surprised. Maria Ivanovna, our teacher, says that our country is first “in everything,” and we “must be proud” to be born here. I sure am. Yet it is not clear to me where exactly “outer space” is. In my nine years, I have never boarded a plane, although I have seen planes gliding through the silky blue sky, leaving behind slowly widening white tails. I have also seen war movies with droning bombers and screeching fighter planes—five-pointed stars painted on the wings of our planes and ugly Swastikas on Germany’s.

I guess outer space must be just above where all those planes fly—somewhere between them and the sun. Still, why is it so amazing? It’s just higher, that’s all, isn’t it?

“Dad, didn’t we already fly into outer space?” 

“You’re thinking about
Sputnik
,” Dad says. “That was four years ago, and there was no human there.”

“Really? What was it for then?” 

“Well, that was the first time anybody in the world launched a spacecraft into orbit.” 

“And what did it do?” 

“It flew around the earth and transmitted signals.” 

“That’s all?”

“Oh, that was very important,” Dad says, “But it’s hard to explain. When you’re older, you’ll understand.” 

Everything ends with “when you’re older.” I cannot wait to be older! First of all, I won’t have to go to school. I am not a bad student, but I have only one friend there, my next-door neighbor Igorék, whom I have known since I was five. Still, Igorék and I are enrolled in different classes, so we mostly meet after school anyway. Igorék is Jewish, like me, which is no secret to anybody in school, since it is written on the back of our class registers.

Every time Maria Ivanovna has to leave the classroom during a lesson, several kids spring from their desks, crowd around the teacher’s table, and quickly go through the register. At first, they check out their grades and then, inevitably, progress to the last page—the page that reveals our addresses, the names of our parents, and our ethnic origin—which in our country is called “nationality.”

In Moscow, the city located in the heart of the Russian Federation, almost everybody is Russian, so in my class of 25 and Igorék’s of 24 we are the only non-Russian children. And there is always somebody in the mischievous crowd who enjoys reading the “nationality” column aloud—as if they had not memorized it already—quickly chanting the names of Russian origin and relishing Igorék’s or mine. 

Another good thing about being older is that I won’t be required to babysit my sister Tanya, since she will be older, too. Babysitting Tanya is a drag. Every time she falls and cries, it is
my
fault. And Tanya falls a
lot
! Unlike me, she is never static, and I cannot remember a time when she walked like a normal kid. It seems that as soon as Tanya learned to stand upright, she just took off like a little tornado. She is so fast that despite being six years older, I sometimes have a hard time keeping up with her.

Unfortunately, Tanya never notices sharp corners and obstacles in her way, so it is only a matter of time before she plops down howling, with her knees bleeding. On top of that, my sister likes getting into my things, and I have to tolerate that because she’s younger and,
according to my parents, I “should be smarter.” It is as if my parents punish me for being born first, which wasn’t
my
choice! 

Most importantly, when I am older, I will be able to do something exciting, maybe even become a cosmonaut! When I was little, I wanted to be a doctor, like Mom, but I had to give that up because I’m afraid of blood. Then I wanted to tame wild animals.

That started the day Mom took me to the Moscow Circus. For two hours, we watched impossibly slim acrobats in sparkling tights glide above our heads at the top of the circus dome, a magician in a black cloak pull doves and rabbits out of his top hat, and two white-faced clowns in clumsy shoes make the audience die laughing with their jokes and tricks.

Yet the act that struck me the most was a group of trained Siberian tigers. The tigers ran out onto the brightly lit stage through a cage-like passage—their large bodies moving in a loping stride, their heavy heads shaking from side to side, their sharp teeth bare, and their thundering roar bouncing off the circus walls. Behind the tigers appeared a tamer—a tall, handsome man with a whip in hand. At his command, the tigers rolled over on the stage, stood up on their hind legs, and jumped through large multicolored hoops.

At the end, the tamer put his head into the biggest tiger’s mouth, and loud drumbeats sounded from the orchestra pit, while astounded “aahs” swept through the audience. My heart began racing in time with the drums, and I closed my eyes with my hands, so, if the tiger bit the tamer’s head off, I would not have to see it. But nothing bad happened. The drums gave way to rousing music and deafening applause, and when I took my hands away, the tigers were retreating from the stage, and the smiling tamer was blowing kisses to the audience.

The tamer was accompanied by a young woman assistant who was dressed in a beautiful suit decorated with spangles and rhinestones and also sparkling high boots. So I immediately decided I would become a tamer of wild animals, or, at least, a tamer’s assistant.

All of that seemed childish now—no comparison with being a cosmonaut. Just look at Yuri Gagarin. His broadly smiling, likable face appears on the pages of
Pravda
(“Truth,” the main Soviet newspaper) and other newspapers and magazines, and everybody talks about him: TV and radio announcers, teachers in school, and even kids in our
dvor
. What could be better than that?

Of course, my dream depends on whether a girl
can
be a cosmonaut … but why not? Nobody says that cosmonauts have to be men. In fact, they even sent a dog into space some time ago. I was little then, but I remember. Her name was Laika. She was a Siberian husky, and everybody admired her then almost as much as we admire Yuri Gagarin now. I remember seeing her picture. She was so cute—with pointed ears and dark curious eyes, and a kind of harness put over her furry body for the flight. 

“Dad, is Laika still flying?” 

“Who?” 

“Laika, the dog they sent into space, remember?” 

“Hmm …
That
Laika … I don’t know. Maybe.” 

“Does she still have enough food? She’s been up there for a long time.” 

Dad gives me a careful look, “I guess so.” 

“Do you think Gagarin brought her back?” 

“Well, I didn’t hear anything, but that’s possible,” Dad says and then quickly adds, “Don’t you have some homework to do?”

Later that week, after school, I report to Igorék about my decision to become a cosmonaut. We stand in front of our building. The snow drifts that covered the ground during the long winter are sagging from early springtime melting and refreezing, and their surfaces, blackened by air pollution, look like burnt cake icing.

Not far from us, neighborhood boys are engrossed in a war game: one group pretends to be Russian soldiers, the other German—we call them
Fritzes
. The enemies hide behind our building from where they make short offensive charges, shouting excitedly, “Hurray!!!” or “Hände hoh!” and firing “Rata-tat-tat-tat!” into the damp air. 

“Girls can’t be cosmonauts.” A boy’s voice sounds behind me. I turn and face Liosha Mironov, my classmate and one of the students who enjoys reading the nationality column in our class register. Unlike Igorék, who is quiet, small, dark-haired, and dark-eyed, Liosha is loud, tall, and tow-headed, and his almost white brows curve above eyes as light and transparent as if they were made of ice.

“How do
you
know?” I say. 

“I know. You have to be a pilot first, and pilots are always men.” 

I turn away from Liosha. This could be true. Every book I have read about the last war portrays women only as telegraphers, nurses, or doctors. In fact, my Mom, a doctor, says that if there is another war, she will be drafted to work in an army hospital. 

“I’ll be a pilot after school,” Liosha says and gives me a look of contempt. He does not add anything else, but I understand his meaning.
He
has a chance of becoming a cosmonaut while
I
do not. Then Liosha spits on the darkened snow near my feet and shouts to the boys playing the war game, “Hey, wait for me!” And he is gone. 

Too late though. He has already spoiled my mood, and I no longer feel like talking about my new calling. Besides, Igorék is not feeling well. He keeps coughing, and soon he says that he needs to go home and leaves me alone. 

I am often alone. When I come home from school, my parents are still at work and my sister and Tosja are usually out. That is fine with me, since I have the freedom to do whatever I want, which, most of the time, means reading everything I can get my hands on. The bookcase in our apartment is full. I have already read “Adventures of Tom Sawyer,” “Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea,” and I even started on “War and Peace,” but it proved to be so boring that I switched to “King Solomon’s Mines.” 

Today, though, I do not feel like reading. I keep thinking about Laika. Nobody says that she is back, so she must be still up there—a little furry ball of life, flying around the earth all by herself, looking through the window at the world beneath her. 

“Maria Ivanovna, how long will Laika fly?” I ask my teacher the next day. 

“Who? Laika?” Maria Ivanovna takes off her glasses, the way she always does when she is not happy with us, and looks at me intensely, her lips pressed together into a straight line. 

“She’ll fly as long as it’s needed,” she says after a pause, and her voice sounds as self-assured and important as the voices of radio announcers. Yet she turns her gaze away from me. 

“Needed for what?” I want to say, but I know better than to annoy Maria Ivanovna. 

At night, I lay in bed, wondering about Laika. It’s a pity that nobody asked Yuri Gagarin to bring her back to us. If I ever meet him, I’ll ask him. But where can I meet him? Well, there is a good chance that I’ll spot him one day standing in line for groceries, as all adults do. Or Mom and I may run into him at Minaevskij marketplace near us. No, that’s not likely. Mom says that the market is way too expensive, so we rarely go there. Then, maybe, he’ll come to visit our school?

That’s it! He will come to tell us all about his flight and what he saw from his spaceship. With this happy thought, I quickly fall asleep, and, in my dream, I see sad little Laika. Her black round eyes are wet, and she is looking sorrowfully at me, as if begging for help or asking me not to forget her, still orbiting in the cold nothingness of the cosmos.

Several weeks have gone by since I talked to Igorék about becoming a cosmonaut, and I have not seen him since. He has not been going to school, and he has not been coming over to play after school either. Last weekend, Mom sent me to visit the grandparents, and after I came back, I thought that I would see him for sure, but I did not.

Every day I ask Mom about Igorék, and every day she tells me that he is still sick. This is really annoying. How long can Igorék be sick? Even my sister Tanya, who is ill often, recovers faster than he does, and she is much younger!

By now, the snow has melted and the asphalt around our house is dry. After school, kids pour outside to skip rope, kick balls, or play
klassiki
(hop scotch). I mope around, waiting for somebody to ask me to join, and, when nobody does, I draw hop scotch squares with a piece of white chalk and hop by myself.

“Training to be a cosmonaut?” Liosha appears in front of me, his shirt half-buttoned and a soccer ball under his arm.