The Summer Garden (62 page)

Tania very slowly moved her hand to rest on Pasha’s leg, and pinched him hard through his trousers. She thought he was trying to provoke Saika. He had that intense look about him. Hell-bent was the word.

Blanca didn’t answer. She was swirling the children’s empty tea cups, seeing how the leaves settled. She did this to three cups, and then put the cups down, her wary eyes on the young people. Her shrewd gaze finished and stayed on Tatiana.

“Lucifer,” Blanca finally replied in her raspy voice.

“Lucifer?” Pasha mouthed.

Shaking her head, Tatiana closed her eyes. Well, there you have it. Enough provocation for a whole darn summer.

“How does a village woman know so much about the ancient religions?” asked Saika, staring hard at Blanca.

“You live long enough, you pick up a few things,” replied Blanca. “And I’m a hundred and one.”

Pasha finally found his voice. “LU-CI-FER?” he repeated loudly.

Calmly Saika stared at Pasha and Blanca and Tatiana. “Yes. So?”

Three blank faces stared back at her. Where. To. Start. Pasha tried. “Lucifer, the peacock, is the main symbol of your church, Saika?”

“Yes. What’s your point? Lucifer is the angel of light,” Saika said. “Everybody knows that. Even his name means light.”

Pasha coughed as if he had the croup. Even Tatiana’s pinching didn’t deter him. “Ahem, excuse me, Saika,” Pasha said. “I’ve read a few things about Lucifer.”

“Pasha, don’t lie, you don’t know how to read,” Tatiana said.

He elbowed her. “And while you may call him what you like,” he went on to Saika, “the rest of the world distinctly thinks of Lucifer as something just a
touch
different than an angel of light.”

“The world misunderstands him, as it misunderstands much,” said Saika. “Enlightenment is possible.”

“Enlighten
me
,” said Pasha. “Wasn’t Lucifer an archangel who believed he was wiser than God, and then fell from grace?”

“I know where you’re going with this,” said Saika. “You want me to admit that while our small religious sect of a few lousy thousand hangs pictures of angels on our walls, the rest of the world thinks we worship the devil.”

“You know,” said Pasha, “I never looked at it like that. Ouch! Tania, leave me alone! But now that you brought it to my attention, Saika, let me say this—if we’re going to be correcting one another and all—worship not just the devil but Satan himself.”

Oh, what got into her brother tonight!

“It is simply not true,” said Saika. “There is no such thing as Satan. Our religion accepts evil as a natural part of creation—”

“It doesn’t embrace it?” Pasha asked tauntingly.

“No.” Saika was unflappable. “We give it the respect it deserves. We put it in its proper context. Take your little Garden of Eden story for example. All the serpent was saying to Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden was know both fully—good and evil—and then decide. So actually,” Saika continued pleasantly, “if what
you
believe is true, then the serpent was doing your religion a favor by giving it the knowledge to decide between right and wrong. In other words, the serpent gave you free will.”

Blanca Davidovna shook her head.

“Oh, Saika!” Marina cried. “You’re so smart. You know so much.”

“Thank you, Marina. I take great pride in it.”

Tatiana and Pasha exchanged a glance. “Marina,” said Pasha slowly, “did you ever hear the expression,
the devil dances in an empty pocket
?”

“No.”

“Pasha,” Tatiana said, speaking about Marina as if the girl weren’t in the room, “I think the expression is,
the devil dances in an empty heart.
” She turned to Saika. “You do know quite a bit—but I don’t agree with you about the serpent.”

“Of course not,” said Saika. “You love to argue, Tania. You have an opposite opinion on everything.”

Unflappable herself, Tatiana went on. “Well, in my humble opinion, by choosing to follow the serpent, Adam and Eve were already choosing—just unwisely. God commanded, they
chose
not to listen to Him. The serpent sibilated, and they chose to listen to him. The free will came before, not after.”

Saika laughed dismissively. “What’s this obsession with free will? The ancient Greeks and Romans believed in fate.”

“The pagan Greeks and Romans, you mean?”

Saika widened her eyes and laughed. “Oh, I just got it! That’s why you don’t like this talk about fate! That’s at the root of your troubles with it! You’re not afraid of it, you just don’t believe in it.”

“This isn’t about me,” Tatiana said evenly.

“The
pagans
believed in fate! That’s what you just said with such derision.”

“There was no derision,” said Pasha. “And Saika—leave Tania alone.” He was clearly unforgiving over the biking incident. “Tania, I know you know about Lucifer. If Saika won’t enlighten me, tell me what you’ve read in your little books about the peacock angel.”

“I don’t know much,” said Tatiana. “But in one book Blanca Davidovna lent me, Lucifer spends eternity in the center of the earth in the deepest circle of hell while three traitors are submerged in his three open mouths, Judas in the middle, head first.” Tatiana shrugged. “That’s all I know.”

“You’ve been poisoned by lies,” declared Saika. “Lucifer has been blatantly misrepresented by your overzealous singing baptizing village women and your overwrought medieval writers. Our religion is called angel-worship, because that’s what it is. Unlike you, we don’t even recognize that demons exist. Circles of hell! Bah!”

The children stared at Saika. Even Pasha was speechless. A withered Blanca Davidovna, her head involuntarily nodding, studied Tatiana.

“Wait,” Tatiana said, grasping to understand. “What do you mean, you don’t recognize demons? What about the devil? What about Satan?”

“No, no—and no.”

“You mean you think there are only angels?”

“That’s right.”

“
Everybody
is an angel?”

“Yes!”

Tatiana and Pasha glanced pleadingly at Blanca Davidovna for guidance. Blanca remained mute staring into the tea cups.

Tatiana quietly asked, “No right, no wrong then for the Yezidi, Saika? No light, no dark? No Newtonian laws?”

“Different principles, Tania. Why is it so hard to understand? Lucifer is an angel who is reconciled—and one—with everything in the universe. In Lucifer’s universe, everything is good and everything is in balance. Our religion believes that since he was forgiven for his perceived transgressions, those who worship him are forgiven for theirs.”

A question hung in the air that Tatiana didn’t hear an answer to—though she suspected it was a rhetorical question. She opened her mouth. “Forgiven by who?” asked Tatiana.

“By who? Those who worship Lucifer are forgiven for their transgressions by Lucifer,” Saika replied.

“Yes,” Tatiana said quietly, “but who is Lucifer forgiven by?”

She heard her thudding heartbeat in the gathering silence.

Saika jumped to her feet. “Your question, as you well know, has no answer,” she said. “Why don’t you stand under the rowan tree to ward off the evil spirits you’re so worried about?”

Blanca Davidovna spoke at last. “Why in the world would we need the rowan tree,” she asked, “when we have the cross?”

“Well, tell that to the Ukrainian Catholics, tell that to the Romanovs,” snapped Saika. “The cross didn’t save them, did it?”

“Then it didn’t save Peter. Or Paul. Or Luke. Or Matthew—”

“I don’t want to talk about this nonsense anymore. I’m going home. Coming, Marina?”

Marina jumped to her feet.

“Want your tea leaves read, Marina?” said Blanca Davidovna. “Because they’re ready.”

“Maybe later, Blanca Davidovna.”

Tatiana got up herself. “Pasha, don’t just sit there. Babushka will kill us, we’re so late. I still have to milk the cow. Come help.”

Saika called after him, “Wait, Pasha! I told you about the peacock, but you haven’t told me something about Tatiana!”

“I changed my mind,” said Pasha, striding away. “I have a fickle heart. Your own ecstatic mother said so.”

Back near their dacha, Pasha dragged Tatiana away from Marina and said, “Tania, I don’t care what Marina does, but you’re not allowed to play with Saika anymore.”

“What?”

“I’m serious. You’re not allowed to play with her. Not at her house, not in the hammock, not in the river, not on the bikes.”

“Well, I don’t have a bike now,” said Tatiana.

“Talk to Dasha, talk to Deda, but I think they will agree that you should not play with anyone who doesn’t believe there are demons.”

“I’ve been telling you about her, Pasha. From the very beginning. You didn’t want to listen.”

“I’m listening now.”

A Knock on the Door

Late that evening, well after dinner,
there was a knock on the door. Murak Kantorov stood on their porch. The Metanovs didn’t know he was back from Kolpino. They weren’t sure what he wanted, but they invited him in and offered him some vodka. At first it seemed as if he wanted to be neighborly. He sat with them a while; the vodka flowed, the talk soon followed. Even Deda was politely fascinated by Murak’s travels, and Murak was only too happy to regale. “Two years ago when we were picking cotton near Alma-Ata…”

Tatiana listened carefully.

“And a few years ago when we were in the oilfields in Tashkent…”

“We stayed in Yerevan just a few months…”

“In Saki we lived the longest of any stretch, two years. Saika started to call it home and then we came here. No, thank you,” Murak said to the black caviar offered by Babushka. “In Baku on the Caspian Sea we ate so much sturgeon caviar, we never want to see caviar again. Sturgeon are bottom dwellers, you know.”

“Where haven’t you lived!” exclaimed Babushka.

“We’ve lived everywhere,” Murak said boastfully. “In the Kara-Kum desert like nomads in tents, and in the mountains of Turkmenistan. On collective farms, in collective fishing villages, in collective concerns all across the Soviet Union. Saika has lived in twenty different places in her fifteen years.”

Deda was quiet. “Where is the place you call home?” he asked.

“The place I am at the moment,” Murak replied, downing a large glass of pepper vodka without even a pickle to chase it down. “I’m home everywhere. Everywhere is my home.”

Pasha and Tatiana exchanged a glance. “Saika told me only about a few places,” she said. “Three maybe.”

“Yes, Stefan, too,” seconded Dasha.

“Oh, they don’t like to brag.” Murak had another long drink of vodka. “By the way, Saika told me that earlier today she saw Anna Lvovna dragging a heavy burlap bag.” He smiled politely. “What was that?”

Everyone fell silent. It was Dasha who came forward. “It was a bag of sugar, comrade Kantorov. What’s your interest in it?”

“My interest in it,” said Murak, and his tone was mild, “is that my daughter said it had a hammer and sickle on the canvas.”

“Haven’t answered the question though,” said Dasha. Tatiana was proud of her.

Deda stood up, his hand raised. “My granddaughter is forward for her age. She is learning to have more tact, but you know youth.” He came closer to Kantorov. “What do you want, Murak Vlasovich?”

“The bag belongs to the State and must be returned to the State.” Kantorov got up and headed toward the door. Turning around, he said, “I don’t have to tell you—you’re a smart man—that every seed of grain, every grain of sugar, every potato goes toward fulfilling our Five-Year Plan production quota. This is the last year of the second plan. It is therefore even more imperative that the quotas be met. Make sure it’s returned tomorrow.”

After he had gone, the Metanovs stared at each other in confounded apprehension. Babushka placed her arm on Deda. “You were right, Vasili.”

“When am I ever
not
right? And had you not taken what didn’t belong to you, we wouldn’t be in this predicament! How many times have I told you? Don’t touch what isn’t yours!”

“Oh, look at him, raising his voice!” yelled Babushka.

They stormed off to their room.

Tatiana’s head was shaking. Deda and Babushka were
arguing
? She went and knocked on Deda’s door. The sharp voices behind the door had no choice but to stop. She came in, gently pulled Deda to sit, climbed into his lap and pressed herself against him. “Shh,” she said.

“You see? Even your child is telling you to shh,” said Babushka loudly. “Heed her at least.”

“I told you not to touch a grain of that sugar! Did you heed me? I don’t think so. Didn’t you hear? It’s for the Five-Year Plan.”

They laughed, and then stopped shouting.

Still on Deda’s lap, Tatiana said, “Deda, what do you think Murak Kantorov does for a living, moving so often from collective to collective?”

Her grandfather thoughtfully stroked her hair, wrestling with himself, looking at Babushka, glancing down at her. Finally he spoke.

“Tanechka, Murak Kantorov is a weeder.”

“What’s a weeder, Deda?”

The First Five-Year Plan

During the First Five-Year Plan
, the farms in the Ukraine fell short of yearly goals. The Politburo had set the goals based not on demand, or capital costs or labor costs—the fixed capital—or operating costs or any practical concerns. It set its goals in 1927, based only on one thing: what they thought the farms needed to produce for one hundred and fifty million people over the next five years. There were convex hull formulas, divide and conquer algorithms, statistical probabilities, logical assumptions. The plan was faultless, the triumph of tortuously long meetings of the Politburo’s most brilliant economic minds. All it required was execution.

But a few things happened that the Party had not foreseen despite its wisdom and its plan. For one, the people turned out to be hungrier than anticipated. They needed more wheat and more rye, more potatoes, more milk. So in 1928 the demand had spiked up. And in 1928 there was a terrible drought in the Ukraine. Supply went down.
And
in 1928 there was a typhus epidemic in the Ukraine. Labor went down.
And
millions of Ukrainians, who had owned big productive profitable farms, had been taken into “protective custody,” tried as “kulaks” and “enemies of the people” and shot, and their farms brought under government control. So means of production
and
supply went down, and the farms in the agrarian republic of Kazakhstan were unable to make up the shortage. The prices remained static—set in 1927.