The Education of a Traitor: A Memoir of Growing Up in Cold War Russia (7 page)

“Good. She’s alone, ya know. She needs me.” And at that, the conversation ends. 

One Sunday, Tosja stays at home.

“Are you going anywhere, Tosja?” Mom says. 

“Nah,” Tosja says in a morose monotone. 

“Are you sick?” Mom says. 

“Nah.” 

“Well, we’ll have guests over. You’re welcome to join us, but you might be bored.” 

Tosja says nothing. When the guests arrive, she goes to her closet-room and closes the door. 

“Is something the matter with your nanny?” My Aunt Raya whispers to Mom. 

“I’m afraid so,” Mom whispers back and gives her sister a meaningful glance. 

“Ah,” Aunt Raya says. “I knew it would end like that.” 

“I did, too.” Mom says, and they switch to Yiddish.

More time goes by, and one day I suddenly notice that Tosja is getting fat. Kind of like Mom before she had Tanya. 

At night, I report my observation to my parents.  “She’s not fat,” Mom says, glancing at Dad. “She’s going to have a baby.”

A baby!? With the exception of Sundays, which are Tosja’s days off, Tosja and I spend lots of time together. If Tosja is to have a baby, I will likely have one, too!

I have nothing against babies—besides my bothersome sister, that is—but being fat is a different matter. In fact, being fat is the worst thing that can happen to a kid in our neighborhood. There is a fat boy in the house across the street, and nobody
ever
plays with him. Even worse, they all tease him until he runs home, spreading tears all over his round face with his fists.

I dash to the mirror and inspect my reflection—a scarecrow-skinny girl stares back at me. 

“Will I have a baby?” I say in a thin voice.

Dad looks at Mom and says, “Eventually, I guess.” 

And Mom says, “What nonsense! This has nothing to do with you. Children can’t have babies.”

CHAPTER TEN

THE COLOR OF WATER

One month before school starts, we are going to the Black Sea. “We” means Mom, Tanya and me; Dad is staying in Moscow. I am not sure whether going to the sea is bad news, like Tanya's arrival, or good news, like going to visit the grandparents. 

“Mom, is the water in the Black Sea black?” 

“Not at all. It’s as blue as the summer sky.” 

“Why do they call it ‘black’ then?” 

“I'm not sure.” 

“Is the Black Sea bigger than Sokolniki’s pond?” 

“It's much, much bigger, and it has real nice sandy beaches and mountains around it.” 

I have never seen sandy beaches. I have only seen sand on playgrounds and around the pond at Sokolniki. As for the mountains, they appear in pictures in my fairytale books, the ones about heroes who go “far away and over the mountains” in search of a treasure or a princess they want to marry. Do regular people go there, too? 

On the day of departure, Mom, with Tanya in her arms, and I board a train at bustling Kazanskaja station. Behind us, Dad carries a large, heavy suitcase. He brings it to our sleeping car compartment, kisses us good-bye, and leaves. Mom lowers the compartment’s window, and as the train jerks, groans, and picks up speed, we wave good-bye to my father who stands on the platform waving back at us and quickly growing smaller. When I can no longer see him, I turn and look around.

The small compartment is furnished with four narrow bunk beds—two on the right for us and two on the left for our new neighbors—a small built-in table by the window, and a sliding door. The door keeps slamming: a black-mustached conductor peers in with a pile of linen, a young woman searches for her companion, a vendor offers
sosiski
(Russian hotdogs), and our new neighbors, an elderly couple, walk in and out. 

Mom asks me to hold Tanya and begins organizing our possessions. Then she positions herself on the lower bunk-bed, turns sideways, and, trying to be inconspicuous, uncovers her breast to feed Tanya. The neighbors exchange glances and politely leave. After Tanya is fed, Mom assembles our dinner: bread, pickles, and pieces of boiled chicken.

A loud knock on the door announces the arrival of hot tea, and the conductor walks in with two large amber-color glasses, which tinkle in heavy metal glass-holders. He puts the glasses down on the table, counts out two lumps of sugar per glass, and leaves. I hear his hoarse “Tea anybody? Tea?” fading down the corridor. 

After Mom and I finish our dinner, we go to the corridor and our neighbors return to the compartment to eat their dinner. The corridor is busy. People walk up and down, talking, laughing, looking for the conductor, or heading to the bathroom. Mom unfolds a narrow built-in seat beneath a window, sits down, and begins rocking Tanya to sleep. I stick to the window next to her and watch the scenery fly by: streams, birches, power lines, and unkempt villages with dark figures of people and animals.

At night, Mom and Tanya settle together on the bottom bunk, and I climb to the top. The train rocks rhythmically underneath me, and, for a while, I listen to the night sounds of the compartment: Tanya’s weak moaning, the elderly neighbor’s snoring, and Mom’s breathing. Soon, in time to the choo-k-choo-k—choo-k—choo-k—choo-k of our train, I fall into fitful sleep, interrupted only by the whooshing of passing trains. 

In the morning, we have a breakfast of bread, boiled eggs, and cheese, which we wash down with more hot tea. Mom and the neighbors talk about our destinations. We, Mom says, are going to Adler (a little town by the Black Sea), where she will look for a place to rent. Our neighbors, on the other hand, are going to a sanatorium in Sochi (a much bigger town in the same area), where they will receive medical treatment.

“You’re a doctor, right? Let me ask you a question.” And they break into a long and tedious monologue about their ailing health.  

I take my observation post by the window. Overnight, the landscape has changed. Pines, birches, and cedars have disappeared, and now our train rumbles through green fields and orchards. At the train stops, tanned, loud-voiced women in headscarves bring apples, cherries, and grapes to the idling train and sell them in paper cones made out of torn newspapers.

Mom orders me to take care of Tanya and joins other passengers hurrying outside to stretch their legs and buy some goodies. I try to protest: “What if you miss the train? What will we do then?” Nothing bad happens, though. Mom comes back with a paper cone full of cherries so sweet that I forgive her for the fright she has given me and savor the cherries, one by one. 

Late in the afternoon, the train takes a wide turn and an immense glimmering turquoise surface opens up before our eyes like a mirage. Yet unlike a mirage that can deceive human vision but not our sense of smell, this surface emanates a mineral fragrance I have never inhaled before.  Exclamations of “Look, look! That’s the Black Sea!” sweep through the train, and everybody rushes to the windows to look at the wonder. 

Two hours later, our panting train comes to a halt and passengers begin unloading. A small crowd of women in dark clothes and headscarves hurries toward the newcomers:

“Do you need a place to stay?”

Deals are made quickly, and the platform empties in no time. We follow an old woman with a stooped back and crow-like features.  

“Did you bring your passport, my dear?” She says to my mother—her black eyes looking out sharply from under her headscarf. 

“Yes,” Mom nods. She knows better than to leave Moscow without her passport. 

For the next ten days or so we stay in a dark six-by-nine-foot room with a small window whose deep sill serves as a dinner table. Days pass, each indistinguishable from the next, like the envelopes Mom uses to mail letters to Dad. After breakfast, we walk to the beach, which looks like a huge quilt patched with numerous blankets in a variety shapes and colors. The blankets stake a one-day claim to a small piece of southern luxury. The earlier the vacationers bring their blankets, the better the places they get—closer to the water, with finer sand, and, if one is really lucky, in the shade of one of the tall wooden umbrellas that stick in the ground like enormous mushrooms. The only spaces left for late sleepers are the rocks at the edge of the beach.               

There is just enough space between the blankets to walk among sunburned bodies—some tiny and resilient, others saggy and misshapen—to the water’s edge, where playful waves call vacationers to the depths of the sea. We maneuver toward our blanket—which Mom takes to the beach early in the morning while Tanya and I are still asleep. Here we spend most of our day. Like everybody else, we breathe the intoxicating sea air, sunbathe, bury each other under the hot sand, and wade in the water. I have not learned how to swim yet, and Tanya is just a baby. Mom sometimes goes for a short swim, still keeping an eye on us even as her body sinks into the clear water.

Me, Tanya, and Mom in the Black Sea

When Mom and I are hungry, we snack on
vobla
(dry and salty Caspian Roach fish, a perennial favorite of our countrymen), and at noon, Mom opens a can of Spam and makes us sandwiches. For supper, we go to a nearby diner.

Mom goes first to take a place in line, and I stay on the beach with Tanya. An hour or so later, when Mom’s turn seems close, she comes back and gets us. The food in the diner is always the same—
solyanka
(a soup made with pickles and tomato paste),
kotlety
(hamburgers), and
compot
(a sweet drink made of dry fruit). I mostly drink the sweet
compot
, Mom eats her dinner and the rest of mine, and little Tanya squeals in Mom’s arms. 

At night, before going to sleep, we join a crowd of vacationers strolling along the town’s promenade, which is bordered by the shore on one side and blooming acacia and chestnut trees on the other. Here, the sultry smell of the sea mixes with the light aroma of the acacias and the heavy perfume of the vacationers, who enjoy a warm southern evening and watch distant ships lingering in the harbor.

Everybody is dressed in their summer best: men in light shirts and pants and women in light summer
saraphan
that reveal their bronze skin peeling from too much harsh sun. A small orchestra sends whirling waltzes into the darkening air, and their sounds reverberate from the calm surface of the sea and the still-warm asphalt of the promenade. Also, the bewitching baritone of a popular singer Leonid Utesov, who himself was born and raised beside the Black Sea, pours seductive, nostalgic melodies of lost love out of the loudspeakers.   

Time seems to stretch, easy and warm, and I no longer think about Moscow or going to school, or even about my grandparents and my favorite park Sokolniki. Yet one day everything changes.

That afternoon, as Mom slowly submerges her body in the sea, squatting, splashing turquoise water, and exclaiming something between “Aaaaah” and “Uuuuuh,” I bring Tanya to the water’s edge. I sit her on my lap, and point to Mom, so Tanya can join in Mom’s excitement with her favorite “goo-goo.” When my little sister does not respond, I jokingly slap her on the back. Suddenly, Tanya’s little body becomes rigid, and she begins jerking—once, twice, three times. She shakes harder and harder, as though she had been wound up inside by an invisible hand and cannot stop until she is completely unwound. Her head falls back, her face goes blue, and her eyes close, just like the eyes of a dying bird I once saw. 

“Mom,” I scream at the top of my lungs, making a desperate attempt to hold shaking Tanya in my arms but inadvertently dropping her onto the sand, where she writhes and twists as if in a frantic dance. 

“Doctor, doctor! This baby needs a doctor!” I hear people nearby shout, and I see Mom—her wet hair glued to her scalp and her eyes wide with terror—jump out of the sea and run toward us, spraying those in her way with water and sand. She kneels in front of my sister and tries to feel her pulse. Then she clasps her to her chest, but Tanya continues to struggle in her arms, almost slipping away from Mom’s embrace. 

“Mom, stop her, stop her!” I cry, as if I am the only one who knows that this mad dance needs to be interrupted. 

The rest of that day is gone from my memory. All I remember is walking over numerous railroad tracks. Why or where, I do not know. One day later, we take a train back to Moscow.

“It's all your fault!” Father spits at my mother in a hoarse whisper. His eyes are red, as if he had not slept for many nights, and his usually shiny hair is dull and disheveled. 

“How could I have known? I wanted the best for both of them …”  

Mom speaks in a low voice, rocking Tanya to sleep. “Sea air is supposed to be good for children.” 

“I told you she's too young to take her there!”  

Father's voice reaches a strained falsetto that sounds like a stifled cry. Mom’s shoulders quiver, and when she looks at me, I see tears streaming down her cheeks. She carefully lowers Tanya into her zinc bath-tub bed, covers her with a blanket, and motions me to leave the room. Dad walks behind us.

When we reach the kitchen, he opens his mouth as if to say something else, but instead, he grows pale, clutches at his heart and, gasping for air and moaning something about Mom’s “stupid” stubbornness, sinks to the floor. Terrified, I look to Mom—What’s wrong with Dad?—but she is already kneeling in front of my father, feeling his pulse, the way she knelt on the hot sand of the Black Sea before my little sister not long ago. Then she lifts her wet face to me—“Get a cup of water. Hurry!”—and rushes back to our room.

When she comes back, I see two tiny blue pills on her open palm. She brings them to my fathers’ half-open mouth and pushes the pills inside it. “I’m sorry, I'm sorry, I’m sorry,” Mom repeats in a tired monotone—the way nuns and monks chant their endless prayers—until her husband's breathing becomes normal and the color returns to his face, which still wears an expression of someone unfairly betrayed by the world.

Time goes by. Doctors come and go. Tosja comes back—thin as ever. Yet my home is never the same—more like a front-line hospital, with its smells, cries, and sounds of a raging war nearby, than the warm and comfortable place it used to be. In this new home, I am alone with my fears: What’s wrong with Tanya? What’s wrong with my parents? Will things ever be the way they once were?

There is nobody to ask. Tosja will not talk about it. As for my parents, they keep fighting. In fact, their fights will never stop. They will go through their lives—and ours—arguing and complaining about each other. The reasons will be numerous—parenting and money, relatives and jealousy, and other ordinary miseries of life. Still, no matter what the reason, most of their disagreements will end up the same way: Dad sinks to the floor, Mom kneels in front of him, and I—and later Tanya—run for water.