Читать книгу: «Everything Begins In Childhood»

Old Courtyard

For my dear Mama

* * *

From the Author

I consider it my important duty and pleasant responsibility to express my tremendous gratitude to my dear friend and helper, Raisa Isaacovna Mirer, without whom this book would never have been created.

She not only encouraged me to write but also contributed her soul and enormous experience as a literary editor to our joint work.

* * *

In Place of a Foreword

The Bukharan Jews have deep literary traditions. However, at the end of the 1930s, they were forcibly interrupted. Creative literary work, along with the activities of all other artists in this multi-faceted ethnic culture, was strictly prohibited in the Soviet Union.

The revival of our cultural traditions began fifty years later when a large part of the Bukharan Jews moved to Israel, the United States, and other countries of the free world. Books by Bukharan Jews, both scholarly and fictional, have been published one after another. Memoirs hold an important place in this unprecedented outpouring.

The book the reader is holding belongs to this genre, yet it holds a special place outside that stream. There are several reasons why.

First, the majority of memoirists are people of advanced age. Their way of thinking was formed in their former life, pre-emigration. The author of “Everything Begins in Childhood” is rather young, around 40. He left Uzbekistan when he was 18. His worldview and mentality were, to a great extent, formed under the influence of the new culture. In other words, he had an opportunity to acquire his viewpoint from a distance. I think this circumstance will help readers understand many of the things depicted in this book. “I write… for my children and grandchildren who live in a different part of the world, in a different culture…” the author writes.

Secondly, and no less important, this book is notable for its beautiful writing style, which, from the very first pages, carries the reader away. The childhood impressions are vivid and three-dimensional. The characters in the story – parents, immediate and distant relatives, teachers, friends – are amazingly expressive. The author depicts them truthfully, with love, humor, pain, and sometimes with bitterness. Not every memoirist would dare do that.

At the same time, the book urges us to think about life. It allows us to imagine that terrible time when the ruling Communist ideology perverted the fates of millions of people in Uzbekistan and other parts of the Soviet Union.

I believe this book will serve as valuable material for historians and ethnographers who study the life of the Bukharan Jews in the 1950s-1970s.

In closing, I urge the author to continue his creative work and to use his talents to depict his life in America in the same way.

It goes without saying that this book should be published not only in Russian but in English as well.

David Ochildeyev

Ph.D. in History, Honored Scholar of Uzbekistan

Chapter 1. 6 Korotky Lane (Short Lane)

"Vale-e-ya-a!" I heard as I went out into the courtyard. I could see my two-year-old cousin Yura's little round face in a window across the yard. Although he was standing on his tiptoes on the windowsill, his head hardly reached the fortochka (a small hinged windowpane in the upper corner of the window). He couldn’t yet pronounce the letter “r” so he when he said my name “Valera,” it came out rather comically as “Valeya.”

"Vale-e-ya-a, my mama is beating me up!" he shouted mournfully.

It was an early April morning, and it was Sunday. Everyone in our courtyard was still asleep, as was the whole of Tashkent, so I was afraid that Yura’s yelling would wake our relatives and neighbors. At that moment, Yura’s mother Valya came up to the window. When she reached out her hand, it was not to spank Yura. Holding him by his little behind, she asked with a smile, "Why are you yelling? Everyone’s asleep.” My cousin didn’t need protection, of course. He was just making mischief, as always. But I wasn't outside to play with him. Mother and I were going to the hospital to visit my father.

"Yura, wait for me, all right? I’ll be back and we’ll play our war game." A smile spread across his little round face. He just loved to play our war game. Our three-year age difference didn’t keep us from being friends, from playing together, quarreling, and even fighting.

The kitchen door squeaked. Grandpa Yoskhaim walked out onto the porch with a knapsack on his back. Grandpa was a shoemaker. His hands told the story of his hard work – the skin so rough it looked like fish scales, the callused palms, the blackened fingertips covered with scars, and the twisted nails. But those disfigured hands were very strong. Sometimes, when an acquaintance had incurred his displeasure, Grandpa – and he was sixty-seven – could drive him to tears with his iron handshake. A person would approach him with a smile to say hello but leave doubled over.

Grandpa was tall, with broad shoulders. His thick eyebrows, – now gray, but once jet-black – his high forehead and dark eyes were evidence of some Iranian Jewish heritage. And he spoke with a slight, yet distinctive, accent.

I would say that Grandpa Yoskhaim’s life could be summed up in just two words – Torah and work. He prayed at home in the morning, worked from sunrise to sunset six days a week, and spent Saturdays at the synagogue. Like his father and his father’s father, he had only one concern –feeding his family. As to raising the children, he left that completely to his wife.

"A kelin, chi to et?! (How are you doing, daughter-in law?)," he greeted Aunt Valya in Tadjik, as always.

"I’m fine. Thank you. How about you?"

But Grandpa was already smiling and nodding to Yura. "Nagzi, Yura? (How are you, Yura)?" he asked slowly.

Grandpa enjoyed joking with small children. He pronounced the word “nagzi” with a long guttural “g” and drawn out “i.” As he was saying it, his face would become quite funny – his brown eyes opened very wide, his gray eyebrows went up, and his thick gray beard stuck up so much that I always felt an urge to tug at it. Yura broke into laughter and reached his hand through the fortochka, wiggling his fingers.

"Just look at the little one! He doesn’t love me. He loves my beard!" Grandpa was joking around, and I was annoyed that it wasn’t me he was playing with. It also crossed my mind that Grandpa had not brought us ice cream for a long time, oh yes, a very long time, since last summer.

"Grandpa! Grandpa!" I said, jumping up and down with excitement. "It’s warm already! Bring us ice cream! … Will you? … But not fruit ice. I want vanilla!"

"I’ll bring you ice cream when it gets warmer," answered Grandpa on his way out. "Hai, kelin, ravtam ma (I’m off, daughter-in-law)."

I ran to the gate, going around Grandpa. The air was filled with the aroma of blossoming trees. Our whole courtyard was in bloom – apricots, grapevines, Spanish sour cherries, sweet cherries, apples, and lilac. Water was dripping from the outdoor faucet, hitting the ground with a cheerful clinking, as pigeons cooed in the pigeon house. Even the eyes of Jack, our German shepherd, seemed more cheerful than usual. Yes, spring had arrived – everything was ringing, singing, and fragrant in our courtyard.

Clinking the keys, Grandpa unlocked the old wooden gate. Stepping over the lower crossbar, he waved at me and began his walk down our alley, his feet shuffling in his high boots. Clay courtyard fences formed our alley, narrow and long, and Grandpa’s slightly hunched figure could be seen between the clay fences for a long time… "Buy us ice cream!" I shouted. Grandpa did not look back. After a moment, he disappeared around a corner cluttered with garbage pails.

I shut the gate and approached the lilac bush. Its branches were covered with lush pinkish shoots, fragrant and tender. The lilac grew in the garden by the gate. The garden spread up to our neighbor’s fence. The outhouse was hiding by the fence among apple trees and winter vines. The shower we used in summer was next to it. The pigeon house was perched on a high pole in the middle of the garden, surrounded by white and red rose bushes.

The lilac was our courtyard’s calendar. Its first blossoms coincided with the arrival of the early spring. And when the branches of the lilac bush grew heavy with lush flowers, it meant that spring was in full swing. Now the bush was at the height of its splendor. I stood there for a long time, bathed in the aroma and the warm rays of the sun that broke through the blossoming branches to caress my face. When I squinted, I could see them gleaming in all the colors of the rainbow.

I heard our front door slam. It was Mama coming out with 3-year-old Emma, my little sister. Emma always ran with a bounce. Looking at her, no one would guess that she had recently spent a month in the hospital with yet another bout of pneumonia. She had rosy cheeks, chestnut hair, and a cheerful ringing voice… My little sister caught everyone’s eye.

Aunt Valya was again looking out through the fortochka. "Hey, Ester, how are you doing?"

"I’m all right, thanks," Mother answered.

Aunt Valya shook her head. "You’re very pale… Are you going to the hospital?"

Looking sad, Mother nodded. "Yes, to visit Amnun."

Grandma Lisa appeared at her front door. She was short and red-haired, and holding a black night pot in her hands. Out on the porch, she rinsed the pot, splashed out the water, and disappeared behind the front door.

"All right, Valya, it’s time for us to go," Mother said.

The plump Emma ran ahead of Mother toward the gate, but as she reached the cherry tree and the faucet, she stopped dead in her tracks. She was close to Jack’s territory – his doghouse was at the gate, and our watchdog did not instill trust in Emma. Jack was a Kazakh German shepherd. It is impossible to imagine a better watchdog. Jack looked imposing with his broad chest, dark snout, black mustache and curled-up tail. His senses of hearing and smell were amazing. Even when a stranger was a few dozen yards away from the gate, Jack sounded his combat alarm. His barking was frightening. Of course, Jack was not barking now – we were his people. He got up, stretched lazily and ambled up to my sister, but he couldn’t reach her – the chain wasn't long enough. Jack yawned, pretending he didn’t care, stuck out his long red tongue, above which his sharp white teeth gleamed, wagged his tail, and stared at Emma. He seemed to smirk, as if to say, “You can’t escape me, little one."

"Coward! Coward!" I shouted, laughing.

Ever cautious, Emma waited for Mother, grabbed her right hand to stay as far as possible from Jack and not even see him (thinking that if she didn’t see Jack he wouldn't see her). And in this way, under Mother’s reliable protection, she reached the lilac bush. Once she was there, Jack was no longer a danger, so the fleet-footed Emma darted forward again. But I was the first one to reach the gate. Standing in our alley, I once again admired with pleasure the chassis of the old car left there by one of our relatives. When the time comes for Yura and me to be allowed to play in the alley, it will be great fun to play in the chassis.

* * *

Mother held our hands as we walked to a streetcar stop by the Turkmen market. We had a long and difficult walk ahead of us, particularly for little Emma. We walked down our short alley to Korotky Lane. Before we turned onto the lane, I looked back. A large number drawn in white chalk could be seen on our dark-red wooden gate. I already knew – the number was called “six.”

Chapter 2. Hospital

Father didn’t notice our arrival. He was half-sitting on the bed with his back propped up on a pile of pillows, his palms resting on the mattress. His head hung helplessly, moving from one shoulder to another. His pale, thin face seemed very tired. His half-lowered eyelids protruded above bony cheeks. Each time he inhaled, his chest expanded with such difficulty and for so long that it was as if he was trying to inhale all the air in the room. When he exhaled, it became hollow as the air was expelled with a loud whistle.

Quite recently, only two years ago – I still remember that time – Father was a strong healthy man. Tall, well-built, wiry, a good sportsman, he taught P.E. at school and was a basketball coach. Sometimes, he took me along with him to his classes. It was clear that his students were somewhat afraid of him. Not only did they not dare to misbehave, but they were very quiet. There was no unnecessary talking. He was a stern teacher, even rude and harsh. If a student disobeyed, he might go over and hit him. He was also like that at home.

I was two or three years old when I first felt afraid of Father. I remember one episode in particular.

It was evening. Mama was putting me to bed. Father entered the room and began yelling at Mama right away, blaming her for something. She remained silent, as usual. He came up to her, waving his hands and cursing. I understood that he was hurting Mama and that he might be about to hit her. I had probably seen things like that many times before, but only then did I understand that Mama was in trouble. I was frightened, very frightened. I began to cry. Mama ran up to me and began to quiet me. Only then did Father stop yelling. He continued to grumble, but without yelling or threats.

I often heard about Father’s difficult personality from our relatives, first of all from Grandpa and Grandma, Father’s parents. Their son’s every word, each little thing, irritated them. The offenses were piling up, their relations were getting worse, and open resentment was brewing. Grandma Lisa knew how to demonstrate tenderness to her son (maybe maternal feelings did visit her now and then, but most of the time she put on a show). But Grandpa Yoskhaim was a sincere man. He always said to a person’s face what he thought about them, and he made no pretenses when it came to his son.

The main insult was an old one. When Father attended the Kazakh Institute of Physical Culture in Alma Ata, his parents supported him throughout his studies. They had a big family, with many children. Their son, certainly, promised more than once that he would help his parents when he began working, but they never saw that help. Their son married, then divorced, then married again – that time to my mama. Everything he earned was spent to support his own family. And now, every time they quarreled, and it happened often, Grandpa remembered that old promise and Father’s ingratitude. “We helped you a lot, didn’t we? Have you forgotten about it? We sent you money every month. So where is your help?” Quarrels, sometimes absurd and groundless, cropped up all the time. It happened only because of my father’s explosive, mean, quarrelsome nature, combined with his mother’s treacherous nature.

It was evening. Father was sitting under the apricot tree. Grandma Lisa came out into the courtyard. She took a seat on the porch, not far from her son, rubbing her lower back.

“Did you eat?”

Father, reluctantly, “Y-yes…”

“What did you have?”

“What business is it of yours?”

“Can’t you just answer?”

Father, angrily, “Listen, just leave me alone!”

That was what Grandma Lisa could not tolerate.

She sprang to her feet, forgetting her lower back, waved her hands, slapped her thighs… and an argument began.

Grandpa used to say over and over to his son, “Nothing but arguments! No one can say a word to you. You’re just like your mother. Who can put up with you?”

And that was true – it was difficult to put up with Father. Only Mama managed to do that, but at what price…

She was a loving woman. She got upset, she suffered, but she invariably forgave the man she loved, the father of her children. On top of that, she was an Asian wife. In other words, just like every wife in any country in this part of the world, she had to endure all of her husband’s whims without complaining, all of his caprices, quibbles, derision, even beatings. Love may have ended, may have been exhausted, but patience, endless patience, remained inviolable.

The Bukharan Jews unfortunately adopted that custom, along with other centuries-old customs of their new countrymen. I don’t mean that it was like that in all Jewish and Uzbek families. Of course, it wasn’t. Take Grandma Lisa – no one dared to hurt her. Grandpa Yoskhaim was somewhat afraid of his wife. And a wonderful harmonious and loving Jewish family lived in the house next door. I often heard their merry voices, their laughter and jokes. It seemed that not only their voices, but the atmosphere of friendliness and peace reached me. Did I envy them? I don’t know, I don’t know. Certainly, I did compare our families from time to time.

There were six beds in the ward, located along the walls in two rows, three on each side. Father was in the one to the left of the door.

Mama sat down on the edge of his bed and put her hand on his forehead. Father opened his eyes slowly.

“During the night… there was… another… attack. They… gave… injection. They… gave… me… oxy…gen…,” he said very quietly, stopping to catch his breath.

I stood at the wooden bedside table at the head of the bed, looking in bewilderment at the dark red dots, many of them, that covered his arms from his elbows almost to his palms.

“I’ve brought you some broth. It’s still hot. Have some,” Mama said, taking out a glass jar wrapped in a cloth. She poured the broth into a bowl and began to feed Father, lifting the spoon carefully to his lips. The aroma of the broth, a very tasty aroma, spread throughout the room.

Frightened, Emma was examining the ward. She couldn’t understand – it was clear from the look on her face – why her papa was here, far from home, in this unfamiliar room with many beds. She was eyeing her father warily – she’d grown unaccustomed to him.

For some time, the intervals between asthma attacks had been growing shorter.

An accidental cold was the reason for that misfortune. Father used to go swimming in a mountain river with his friends. Once, in spring, after bathing under an ice-cold waterfall, he hadn’t dried himself properly before biking back home with his friend. He got bronchitis, which turned into a bronchial asthma, and the healthy person, the athlete, became an invalid. Asthma attacks are a very agonizing thing. During the day, Father would sit on a small chair in the courtyard with his hands resting on his knees. During the night, he would suffocate in his bed just as he was doing now in the hospital ward.

“My little girl…Let me touch your pretty curl,” Father said tenderly, trying to smile. He loved Emma very much. He used to beckon to her as he was sitting on his little chair. He pulled gently at her chestnut curls, hugged and tickled her, repeating a line from a rhyme he had once heard, “My little girl… let me touch your pretty curl.”

Emma smiled, embarrassed, clinging tightly to Mama’s knees and pressing her head against them.

It had grown livelier in the ward. Other patients were awake, some of them making their beds, others shaving. The rustling of newspapers could be heard.

“Doctor’s rounds have begun,” one of the patients announced.

Two women in white gowns entered. I recognized one of them right away. She was a registered nurse who attended to the patients in the ward. We often saw her when we visited Father. The second woman wore a stethoscope around her neck. I had already met her too. They both walked from bed to bed, stopping longer at some of them. Then they approached Father’s bed. Emma’s face shrank as if she were about to cry. White gowns reminded her of injections.

“Oh, we have most of the family here today,” the doctor said, sitting down by Father’s bed. She began examining him. Unfamiliar words could be heard, names of medications. There were many of them. Mama sighed quietly, standing at the foot of the bed and holding the scared Emma by the shoulder.

Chapter 3. Old Town

From the hospital we went to visit Grandpa and Grandma, Mama’s parents. We reached Koltsevaya (Circle) by trolley. It was near Starogorodsky (Old Town) bazaar. From there, we had to walk.

I liked Old Town with its narrow unpaved lanes, low clay adobes, ariks (watering canals) in which water could be heard constantly gurgling. I liked the women’s colorful silk ethnic dresses, the chaykhana (tea house) at the corner of Sabir Rakhimov Street, not far from Grandma’s house. Unlike other tea houses, it wasn’t noisy. Usually, there were only a few regulars sitting on the veranda sipping tea. We knocked hard on the gate since Grandma Abigai’s hearing wasn’t great. Besides, the courtyard was big. Grandma opened the gate. As always, she wore a long dress, slippers and a scarf wrapped around her head.

“Ah, Ester, byee (come on in)!” she exclaimed merrily upon seeing us. “Valera, oh, Valera!” And she covered me with kisses.

Grandma, like all elderly Bukharan Jews, spoke a dialect of Tadjik, sprinkled with words in Hebrew, which had become the native tongue of Central Asian Jews and was considered by some scholars to be a separate language: Bukhari.

Emma and I stayed in the courtyard to play. Just two apple trees and some poplars were growing in its clay soil. It was scarcely lit by the sun. A section of the outer wall constantly collapsed and needed to be rebuilt every year.

The gate slammed loudly, and Grandpa Hanan appeared in the courtyard. He was carrying his big sharpening machine on his shoulder. He was tall but skinny, and that load wasn’t easy for him to carry. On seeing us, he smiled and put the machine down.

“Your mama ai!”

Every time we visited, that joke was his greeting. Ai means “not good.”

“No, no!” I shouted hugging him and kissing his greyish beard. “Let’s sharpen your knives! Let’s get them sharpened!”

Curly-haired Emma stood aside sucking her thumb and enjoying the familiar game. Grandpa picked her up and kissed her, “Duhtori Bobo! Duhtori Bobo!” (Grandpa’s little girl), and he carried her to the house. I stayed behind to examine the machine. It was taller than I was. Two wheels, one on top of another, were connected by a belt. When you pressed the lower pedal, they began to rotate. There were several grindstones attached to the upper crossbar.

Grandpa returned with knives and a jar of water. The wheels began turning merrily. A knife was jumping from grindstone to grindstone. Showers of sparks shot out from under the blade. Now and then, Grandpa cooled the blade in the water, then checked its sharpness on his nail. Grandpa Hanan rocked back and forth, back and forth, pressing the pedal. The pedal tapped gently – tap-tap-tap, tap-tap-tap. The grindstone produced its piercing tune – v-zh-zh-zh! v-zh-zh-zh! Emma and I joined in the concert, imitating the sound of drums, “Toom-ba-le-ka-toom! Toom-ba-le-ka-toom!” All that noise didn’t irritate Grandpa in the least. His tired face brightened up and he began singing something quietly.

Grandpa liked to sing when he was among friends, when no strangers were around. He sometimes sang something very sad. Perhaps he remembered the war in which he fought from the beginning almost to the end and lost many friends. When he returned home, he was sick. First, he had a bad case of bronchitis, then asthma. But he needed to feed his family. He who defended his homeland was given a medal and a small pension. He tried to earn extra money in different ways. He got himself mixed up in some shady business and ended up in jail. His son Avner and the son’s wife Sofia did their best to intercede on his behalf and succeeded in getting his sentence reduced. Grandpa spent two years in jail. When he was released, he had tuberculosis. He continued to do his best to earn a living and walked around town with the heavy sharpening machine.

Mama came out to the courtyard.

“Kids, we’ll be eating soon. We just need to buy bread.”

Bread, to be precise, lepyoshka (flat bread) was bought from an elderly Uzbek woman who lived nearby, across the street from the tea house. She baked them in the tandir (clay oven buried in the ground) under the awning. Small, plump, fragrant, with a crunchy crust, they were popular all over the neighborhood.

“Bir sum (fifty kopecks),” the Uzbek woman took fifty kopecks and gave Mama five flat breads that were still exhaling the heat of the oven.

Oh, how we wanted to eat them right away or to have at least a little tiny piece, but Mama shook her head.

“At home, at home, with dinner.”

At home, at the table, Grandpa sang the prayer. “Amen” we echoed, as always. Pilaf was served on a big platter. Dark rice with chunks of meat appeared almost to breathe, exuding steam. Heads of garlic stood out in all their splendor on top of the hill of rice. The adults traditionally ate without spoons. They pressed a small portion of rice with their fingers into the platter and then raised it to their mouths. Grandma served raisins and thinly sliced carrots for dessert.

Unhurried dinner conversation was underway.

“How’s your health, Papa?” Mama asked.

Grandpa only nodded in response. He didn’t like such questions.

“How’s Amnun doing?” Grandma asked.

“I lost my health in combat, and he – on a motorcycle…,” Grandpa meant the incident with which it all began. “Ah, young people, young people.”

“Sugar, and I want butter! Sugar, and I want butter!” was heard from the hallway.

Those words were accompanied by ringing laughter and the snapping of fingers… My aunts, Rosa and Rena, who never missed a chance to tease me, had arrived. I always sang those words, “Sugar, and I want butter!” when I was hungry. After kissing us, Rosa and Rena sat down at the table.

“Have you been to the bazaar?”

“Yes. Everything is more expensive again,” Rosa informed us. “Khurmati doozt (officials are thieves)! They don’t care about people.”

“How are things at the factory, Rosa?” asked Mama.

“They’ve raised the production quota once again. It was high enough to keep up with.”

“I know, I know. Meetings all the time. ‘Sew better, sew more.’ But our rate of pay is the same. It looks like they plan to raise the income tax beginning in May.”

“It’s the same with us – meetings to discuss output and alcoholism. I’m sick and tired of it. I have no more patience.”

“You’d better put up with it because there’s nowhere else to go. It’s the same everywhere,” Mama sighed.

Mama had three sisters and her brother Avner. They were good friends as they were growing up. When Grandpa was sent to the front, Mama was three and Avner was six. Grandma Abigai replaced her husband at his booth, working as a cobbler. Avner, as the eldest child, kept house – he frequented stores and the bazaar in search of food, took care of his sisters and even helped his mother in the booth, where he shined clients’ footwear. Mama told me that once he got hold of two rolls. On the way home, he was thirsty and stopped at a drinking fountain. He put the rolls down, had some water, and then saw that the rolls were gone.

“Valera, Valera!” Grandma Abigai sing-sang my name tenderly. “Oh, djoni bibesh. Ina gri (my dear, take this),” and she gave me a fat juicy piece of meat.

There was no limit to Grandma’s kindness. She always had a gift for her grandchildren in her modest house – be it a homemade toy or some sweets. And she always gave us her smiles.

It seemed to people who knew her that she was a very happy person. But I sometimes saw her and Mama crying together in the back of the house. They were very close, and when they got together, they talked without noticing the time.

“Burma,” Grandma winced as she tried a sour plum.

We often laughed when Grandma happened to put something sour in her mouth. She winced in a very funny way, her thick eyebrows came together over the bridge of her nose, her nostrils widened, but her eyes, on the contrary, became narrow slits, and her lips contorted as if she was about to cry. Even the scarf on her head seemed to wince.

Meanwhile, Rosa teased and tickled me.

“May I eat your eyes? How about your eyelashes?”

Seated next to me, she patted my cheeks and kissed my eyelids. My aunts liked my big eyes and long lashes. It seemed to me that they sometimes played with me as if I were a doll, and I got angry and embarrassed.

“Will you ever talk to us? I know what we’ll do to you. We’ll dye your lashes with usma.”

At that point I naturally couldn’t take it any longer. I broke free of Rosa’s arms and ran away.

* * *

Dying eyebrows was one of the favorite occupations of the women in our house.

They rubbed fresh usma sprouts between their palms and squeezed the juice out onto the bottom of a tea bowl turned upside down. Then they applied it to their eyebrows using cotton wool wrapped around a matchstick. Admiring their thick green eyebrows in a hand-held mirror, they repeated over and over, “How does it look?”

When the sisters had a free minute, they would turn on the radio to listen to Uzbek music. It was tender, slow, sad, and it was the only music they truly enjoyed, that touched their souls. The sisters would snap their fingers and rock in time with the music. They would also sing along to the songs they knew.

And Grandma liked to play cards, especially with her children and grandchildren, so she suggested her favorite entertainment. Her eyesight was poor, so she held the cards close to her eyes, squinting at each of them. She clicked her tongue, smiled, rocked from side to side and mumbled, “Ibi basardroya. I na bin. (Damn it. Just look at this.)” She cast cunning glances at us, as if to say, “Oh my, I think I’m in trouble.”

But if someone tried to take advantage of her poor eyesight, it didn’t work. Grandma kept close track, with her watchful eye, of which cards other players put on the table, and if she noticed cheating, she returned the cards to the violators. Grandma was always vigilant.

* * *

Our time at Grandpa Hanan and Grandma Abigai’s house flew by. We didn’t notice that it had grown dark. It was time to go home.

We said good-bye. The aunts walked with us as far as the tea house, and from there we walked to the streetcar stop.

“The Turkmen Bazaar,” the conductor announced. We got off, and the streetcar sped away, sparks flying as it left.

It was pitch dark as the sparse streetlights flickered dimly. There was that special stillness that one felt only at night. It was intensified by the rustling of leaves, the peaceful buzz of cicadas, and the sounds made by the tires of rare passing cars.

The Turkmen Bazaar was on the other side of the streetcar track. The huge market, which stretched for hundreds of meters, was silent now. It would come back to life at sunrise.

We walked slowly. Mama was carrying the lightly snoring Emma. It took us twenty minutes to get to Korotky Lane. The bulb above the gate lit the lane dimly. Jack barked gruffly and then felt silent as he sensed us.

Everyone was asleep in the house.

Mama unlocked the door. We could smell the sharp scent of dampness coming from inside. There was a loud click as she turned the light switch. The bright light suddenly illuminated the small room that served as a foyer, kitchen and place to entertain infrequent guests.

“Close the door, Valery.”

Standing on the threshold, I reached for the door handle. Then I looked at Yura’s windows. They were dark… The war game, I remembered. Yura must have waited for me for a long time.

Mama put Emma to bed and lit the stove.

I told her I was hungry. We had had dinner long ago. Mama opened the fridge. A lonely lightbulb revealed its empty shelves.

“It’s late, son. Let’s go to bed,” she said as she turned away.

“It’s all right, Mama. I’m full. It’s late. It’s late,” I repeated, holding back my tears.

Chapter 4. A Little Mouse from a Little Hole

Day was breaking. The first roosters had already crowed. Cows were mooing in the yard next door. Jack was dangling his chain.

“Kids, get up! You’ll be late for kindergarten!”

Mama turned on the light. The bedroom window faced the yard, so the sun didn’t visit us often.

After eating our sweet tea and bread, we walked into the yard. It was the hour when Grandpa Yoskhaim performed his customary morning grooming. With his drawers on and a jar of water in his hands, wearing galoshes but no socks, he shuffled to the wooden outhouse. After leaving the outhouse, Grandpa squatted near the vines and, patting his bottom, did his final thorough washing. Grandpa was very tidy. Following the Eastern tradition, he used only water, and he had an aversion to paper, for he considered it a harmful innovation. Everybody made fun of him saying that the biggest grapes grew where Grandpa washed his bottom. Then, Grandpa began to wash himself. Bending under the water faucet, he soaped his shaven head, neck and hairy chest, and poured cold water all over himself, snorting.

Even though the sight was all too familiar, Emma and I were ecstatic about it every time we saw it.

After saying good-bye to Grandpa, we set out for kindergarten. It wasn’t far – it took just twenty minutes to walk to Little Fireflies kindergarten.

Our group’s room was large and light. Before all the kids arrived, we were allowed to play. Together with my friend, curly-headed Grisha, we tried to catch a spot of reflected light that hopped back and forth on the wall. We failed to catch it. Grisha got angry. He grabbed a wooden mug from the shelf and, banging it against the wall, chased the agile messenger of the sun.

“It’s time for morning exercises!”

Our teacher Maria Petrovna, clad in a neat white overall, tall and gray-haired, was strict, and we were somewhat afraid of her. We took off our outer garments and did our exercises diligently. After the calisthenics, we had breakfast in the spacious cafeteria where each group had its own table, and each of us – an assigned seat.

Grisha and I quietly put crusts of bread into our pockets for we needed to feed our friend. “Little Mouse from a Little Hole,” as we called it, lived near the garbage bin next to the restroom. But we couldn’t visit it yet. Classes began right after breakfast.

We were sitting at small desks. Maria Petrovna began with the usual. “We live in a big harmonious country. What is it called?”

She waved her hands like a conductor, and we shouted, “The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics!”

“And who was this country’s founder?” and, just in case, Maria Petrovna pointed to the portrait of a curly-haired boy, and we shouted as loudly as we could, “Vladimir Ilyich Lenin!”

Grisha was particularly diligent. He loved to shout, and he used every opportunity to do so.

“How many brotherly republics are there in our country?”

“Fifteen!”

“In which of them do we live?”

“In the Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic!”

Our harmonious and clear answers would have surprised only a very uninformed person. We repeated the whole thing over and over again very often, day after day.

Then we could play. When the weather was warm, we were taken to the pavilion. Grisha and I exchanged glances – at last! Doing our best not to be noticed by the adults, we ran to the garbage bin. We were agitated. Would Little Mouse from a Little Hole, our little gray friend, show up when we called?

After placing the bread crusts by the wall, we waited patiently for its arrival. And we were rewarded – first a black nose, then eyes bright as cinders appeared in the hole. Another moment, and our mouse ran along the wall…

“What are you doing here all by yourselves?” the voice of the kindergarten janitor sounded like a bolt from the blue.

We ran away as fast as we could. None of the adults knew about our secret friend.

“Has the janitor seen it?” Grisha whispered, his voice trembling, when we returned to the pavilion. “Oh look, she’s coming this way… She’ll tell everybody about us.”

Paralyzed by fear, we watched the arrival of the janitor.

“Maria Petrovna,” she called to our teacher. “They’ve delivered beef to the kitchen.”

“Is it fresh?”

“They say it’s all right. But they don’t have much of it. You’d better hurry.”

“Thank you. I’ll go see them.”

The janitor moved away. It had blown over this time.

Fair-haired Kostya came running to the pavilion holding up his index finger.

“Look what I have. I’m going to trick it now. Ladybug, fly to the sky. Your children are there waiting for the candy you’ll bring them,” Kostya sang.

And the trusting ladybug spread its wings and flew away to look for its children.

After lunch we all lay down on our cots. “Quiet hour” lasted a whole two hours. What a boring time it was. The only entertainment we had was listening to what the adults were talking about. People who worked at the kindergarten usually visited Maria Petrovna while we were supposed to be napping. They would sit in the corner talking quietly. Today, the cook, Zhanna Kirillovna, stopped by.

“How are you doing, Maria?”

“The same old story…”

“Perhaps you should forgive him. After all, you have your daughter.”

“I just can’t take it any longer. I don’t remember when I last saw him sober. There’s not one kopeck at home, and he’s drunk away the television set.”

“Drive his buddies away. Perhaps he won’t drink alone.”

“He drinks with his buddies at work. Can I possibly establish order there? Now there’s peace and quiet at home. No one runs wild, no one curses.”

Maria Petrovna began to cry quietly.

“I know what you have to put up with. It’s the same with mine… Sometimes he gets so plastered. So, what’s to be done, Maria? Men don’t drink because they want to. Life’s hard.”

“Who’s talking there?” the teacher asked threateningly on hearing someone’s whisper. “This is the quiet hour. You must all take a nap.”

“I understand that life is hard,” she resumed their conversation, “but what are their brains for? Our daughter is growing up. Who should she learn from? They should be ashamed of crippling so many innocent souls. Is life easy for women, Zhanna? No, but we don’t turn into alcoholics. No, I don’t want him back. I’ve had enough of him. We’ll manage without him somehow.”

“All right, Maria. God be with you. I’ll go get some beef. Don’t forget to stop by.”

“Alcoholics, alcohol-lics…lics…Cursecursecurse… Don’t want him back,” echoed in my drowsy brain for a long time. Then I fell asleep.

Chapter 5. Happy Birthday, Little Redhead!

That day, as I returned home from kindergarten, I saw Father in the yard. He was sitting on a chair under our mighty apricot tree, his hands resting on his knees. He looked as worn out as he had in the hospital. He was still breathing with difficulty.

Misha, Yura’s father, squatted next to him rummaging through a nice-looking blue thing. Wow, it was a car! It had wheels! And it was blinking – first its lights lit the apricot tree and the wall behind it, then they went out.

“I need to adjust the contacts,” Uncle Misha mumbled.

Then he saw me, sprang to his feet and shouted his usual greeting, “Look who’s here! How do you do, little redhead!”

Misha always greeted me with enthusiasm, never forgetting to remind me of my former hair color. According to his stories, when I was “little, redheaded and potbellied,” I would walk around the yard with my empty chamber pot in my hands, banging it against the walls. Misha would say, “Look, our rayis is coming,” hinting at my likeness to a local collective farm boss since, as a rule, they were potbellied.

“Happy birthday, little redhead! This is for you.”

Mesmerized, I stared at the blue pedal car in which he had just been rummaging. It had a black steering wheel, seat and wheels, and a blue body. It sparkled and shined all over in its novelty and freshness. And this miracle was mine! And today was actually my birthday – April 7^th.

“What do you say?” Mama prompted.

I mumbled “thank you,” unable to tear my eyes from the car. I hardly had any toys, and definitely nothing like this.

Misha picked me up by the armpits and lowered me into the car.

“Vale-e-e-ya! What kind?” he sang imitating Yura and, at the same time, continuing our old game. That was how Misha always asked me about the skeleton of an old car that had long been sitting outside our gate. “What kind is it?” he always asked. And I always answered, “A passedger car.”

But this time my fascination with the present didn’t leave any room for our game.

“Well, little redhead, go!” Misha commanded.

But how could I go if my feet just dangled in the air and didn’t reach the pedals? I was desperate.

“I see,” Uncle Misha obviously hadn’t expected that to happen. “Well, that’s all right. You’ll grow soon enough. Meanwhile, let me give you a ride. Turn the wheel!”

The wheel squeaked, the pedals rattled, the steering wheel shook – I was taking a celebratory ride around the yard. The animals and birds were panic-stricken. The hens cackled in fright. The pigeons took flight. Jack stood motionless, staring at us in bewilderment. Uncle Misha zoomed around with all his might. The cherry trees, the water pipe, the kennel flashed by fast. That was some ride!

As I was having a great time, I heard a shrill shout, “Vale-e-ya!!!”

This time it wasn’t a plea for help. I knew my little cousin well. Everything new that appeared in the yard had to belong to him.

“Don’t give it away,” I commanded myself, ready for a quarrel.

“Yu-ya, come congratulate Valera,” Misha tried to prevent a conflict. “It’s his birthday today.”

Yura ran up to us. He didn’t want to listen to anything. He wanted the car, the car alone. He had to satisfy his wish and he didn’t give a hoot how he did it.

He could have yelled, stomped his feet, bitten or started a fight, ignoring the size of his opponent.

Only one person was capable of dampening his anger, though only for a short time.

Disobedience inevitably led to punishment – that was the rule established in the yard by my father. And he was the one who enforced it.

Yura was the one to whom my father would often give a flick on the forehead. He called that popping “champagne” for the sound it made, similar to that of popping the cork of a champagne bottle. He sometimes spanked him lightly on his bottom, which would send Yura flying across the yard. And when Father opted for ear-pulling, it was definitely far from pleasant.

All the children who visited Grandpa’s yard knew how strict “Uncle Amnun” was. His glance alone was sufficient to stop boys from dashing around the yard and make them tiptoe.

Naturally, they sometimes got carried away and started quarrels or fights. Father was always ready to ease the situation. He would beckon to the culprit, without a word, just motioning with his index finger, and dish out a dose of “medicine” to the guilty party.

While doing it, Father expected full cooperation from the punished one. At the sounds of “champagne,” they would count ten “flicks.” If a poor devil counted without enthusiasm, the whole thing was repeated. The memory of a punishment, long and bumpy, sat on one’s forehead.

When Yura saw that it was impossible to kick me out of the car, he grabbed hold of my hair but was immediately lifted into the air, where he remained hanging. It was my father who had lifted him by the scuff of his neck and pulled at his ear.

“And who did I beckon to?” he said quietly, drawing a breath with difficulty. “This is not yours. It wasn’t given to you. Go home immediately!”

My cousin walked away with a piercing cry.

The evening was spoiled for everyone. The parents started going home without saying a word. My car was left by the apricot tree.

“You don’t touch it either,” Father ordered as he went inside.

* * *

Relatives and acquaintances who didn’t usually visit us inevitably showed up for my birthday. Many of them, who didn’t find it necessary to greet Mama when they saw her, greeted her on that day as if nothing wrong had happened. Then they would come up to me, hug me tenderly and congratulate me, “Look at him, he’s so grown up,” they would say.

And I stood looking at them with wide open eyes. I just stood there, stared at them and tried not to answer. I waited for them to leave and never visit us again.

Grandma Lisa also arrived to congratulate me.

“A, bvi. Chi to et?” Mama greeted her politely as was customary.

“The spondulosis has struck me again,” she answered, kneading her lower back with her fist.

Grandma always uttered this complaint through clenched teeth, hissing and winking, as if someone had inflicted a terrible pain on her and wouldn’t give her any relief. In other words, she was demonstrating how much she suffered.

Mama invited everybody to the table. After sitting down, Grandma immediately began to make herself the mistress of the repast, a repast that was somewhat strange because she acted as if Mama and us kids were not at the table. It was just her and her son Amnun, who was in her good graces that day.

“Amnun, what will you eat? Amnun, do you want some more? Amnun, what will you drink?” was heard at the table. Papa nodded sullenly. He was ill at ease.

The person who was always kind to Mama and us kids was Grandma Lisa’s brother Abram. He visited us often. He also came that day. I was glad to see him. Once Uncle Abram gave Yura and me a blue scooter. It was homemade, welded from rails. It was very heavy but safe. The point was not just his presents. I think children are finely attuned to other people’s attitudes toward them. They even sense their essence. And Uncle Abram wasn’t just kind and nice, he was the person all the relatives were proud of.

Stories about his “adventures” in combat were legendary. Perhaps they were made larger by added details as they were told and retold, but the main points were definitely true.

After he had been taken prisoner by the Germans near Lvov, he managed to pass himself off as an Uzbek, escaped a few times, was hidden by tenderhearted Ukrainian peasant women and then taken prisoner again. That’s how he knocked around for three years. When Soviet troops began their offensive, he was beaten almost to death after another escape but was liberated by one of the army units. Abram survived, recovered, returned to combat, reached Prague, was awarded many medals and orders, and returned home.

I don’t remember him wearing them to show off. Only once, while sitting on his lap, I managed to hold those round circles that were delightfully jingly and heavy.

After the horrible trials and tribulations of the war, Uncle Abram didn’t grow bitter. He didn’t break down but rather remained charming and bubbling with life, an amazingly kind man. The number of people he helped out – some with money, others with work – was great.

He could do that because he was very respected in town, even though he was just a taxi driver.

I heard from Mama that Uncle Abram always supported his sister Sonia, whose husband had been killed in combat. Sonia was a widow with three children, and they lived in poverty.

Every time someone spoke about Abram, Mama shrugged her shoulders, “I don’t understand who she takes after,” and she would look askance at Grandma Lisa’s house. Grandma Lisa was truly the complete opposite of her brother.

It began to grow dark. Jack whimpered softly in the yard – someone must be coming home. It was Grandpa returning from work.

“Here I am. Who is the birthday boy?” he said cheerfully setting his shoulder bag down.

He’d had a long day of work behind him, but Grandpa didn’t look tired. He had always been like that – encouraging, energetic. He didn’t like to use mass transit. Walking was his natural way of getting around. And he was quite fast, too. Not many people managed to keep up with him. “Hey, you!” he would reproach a walking companion who fell behind. And, clenching his fist, he would explain, “An empty sack cannot stand upright. You should eat well!”

After rummaging around in his shoulder bag, Grandpa took out a package.

“Va-le-e-e-ya!” he cheered, aping Yura. “Here’s some vanilla ice cream for you… Where are you, you prankster? And for you, I have sherbet…

The ice cream was dished out and we, smacking our lips, began to devour it. I was sitting across from Yura. We ate, looking at each other. And, without a word, we understood that we were friends again.

It was April 7^th, my birthday. It didn’t turn out too badly – I received a car, we had ice cream, but most importantly, Yura and I made up.

After all, we couldn’t live without each other.

Chapter 6. “Earthquake, earthquake!”

I woke up because my bed lunged under me. It lunged sharply as if it wanted to run away. Then it lunged again, not as sharply as before, and again, and again…

That was when I felt that everything around me was shaking and rocking.

Sleepy Emma was squealing in the dark. The floors were creaking, the dishes in the cupboard were clinking. The wall clock, long broken, began to tick-tock loudly, as the musical hammers suddenly started marking the time. The neighbors’ cows were mooing slowly and anxiously, hens were clucking. Jack alternated between howling and whining.

“Get up! It’s an earthquake!” Our parents threw blankets over me and my sister and took us running to the yard.

Grandpa and Grandma were already there.

“Zamin, Zamin!” Grandma Lisa shouted. She wore her nightgown and a scarf wrapped around her head. She was rubbing her lower back with her fist.

Grandpa, in his galoshes and drawers, which had slipped down to reveal his hairy stomach, threw up his hands in surprise. It seemed he was about to ask, “Where has it come from?” Grandpa had experienced many earthquakes throughout his life for they had happened in Tashkent before, but they had never been this bad.

Perhaps there were other relatives in the yard, but I don’t remember. I don’t even remember seeing Yura. I was too absorbed with what was going on around me.

In that pre-dawn hour, we, like primeval people, were alone against that natural phenomenon in our yard, on that small patch of land surrounded by the fence.

The earth continued to shake. Each vibration was echoed by a dull hum, similar to a remote clap of thunder.

It seemed that the outlines of the adobes in the yard leaned forward and jumped up like dancers on the dance floor, changing shape. The metal roof made strange sounds as if it had snapped and come apart at the seams.

Clinging to Mama, I bundled myself up in the blanket, covering my head so as not to see and hear it all. But the tremors seemed even scarier under the blanket, and it was stuffy in there.

I moved the blanket a bit and peered at the sky through a slit.

The vast expanses of sky ocean above my head were studded with blinking stars.

Dark against that background, the apricot tree with the outline of its spreading branches extended to the sky. It seemed to me that its top was planted firmly in the darkness of the firmament and held it up, swaying with each tremor. Maybe it was even telling the stars, “Don’t be afraid, I won’t let you fall down.”

An hour had passed since the earthquake began. The shaking grew weaker but could still be felt. The animals and birds were still anxious, and the shouting and crying of children could be heard from neighboring yards.

The day was breaking.

We could already see how our yards looked – the slanted chicken coop with its disheveled inhabitants, fragments of dishes on the table, pieces of the slate roof. Taught by bitter experience handed down from generation to generation, residents in our parts built their houses and even fences using saman. It was made of clay, cow dung and straw mixed with water. Adobes made of saman were much more pliant and less susceptible to destruction than bricks. But even houses made of saman could not withstand such a powerful earthquake.

Our house survived.

We didn’t yet know how lucky we were. Later, the broadcast on the radio announced that the earthquake in Tashkent the night of April 26, 1966, was magnitude 8. Thousands of houses were destroyed, tens of thousands of families were left homeless. The official announcement said eight people were killed, but that was clearly a lie. People spoke of hundreds who had perished.

We all went inside, but no one went to bed. Our parents wandered around the room, trying to tidy up. Mother checked first whether the gas stove was all right. Later they discussed whether Emma and I should be taken to the kindergarten.

“Do you think the kindergarten could possibly be open today?” Father doubted. “Let’s try. If it’s closed, I’ll bring the kids back home.”

But the kindergarten was open. It looked like a disturbed beehive. The teachers were setting up tents in the yard because the order had been given not to enter the building yet for fear of new tremors.

And not without reason – Tashkent suffered another earthquake during the night of May tenth.

The whole day was spent in bustle and worry.

The concerned teachers ran back and forth sharing news.

A few military men visited. They explained something to the teachers and scrutinized the premises through field glasses.

A radio was heard crackling in the yard. Announcers were broadcasting about the day’s events, alternating between Uzbek and Russian. However, they didn’t report anything new. People learned the news from each other.

“As I was passing the square, I saw a crack in the ground… just like an abyss, must have been a few dozen meters.”

“Have you heard about the Young Pioneers Club and the Puppet Theatre?”

“All of Kashkara is ruined. What’s happening there is awful.”

“They keep taking more and more people to hospitals. Will they have enough beds?”

“They continue to dig people out… Are they all alive?”

“I don’t know. You could still hear shouts and moans coming from ruined buildings this morning.”

The adults didn’t have much time for us that day.

We played in the sandbox, listening to their anxious voices.

I tried to imagine what the huge crack in the main square of the city looked liked, in that very square where parades were held on national holidays. How, I thought, would people walk there, how could cars pass? And was it possible to cover that abyss with something, to fix the square? But the square was eventually fixed, and not only the square…

Though the consequences of the earthquake were concealed from the public, they turned out to be so enormous and terrible that it was impossible to hide the

Besides, seismologists all over the world had determined the precise scope of the disaster. People in every country of the world knew about it.

That was why Brezhnev and Kosygin gladdened the people of Uzbekistan’s capital with their arrival the day after it happened.

This time, the city received considerable aid from the government.

Chapter 7. Coal

As Mama and I were coming back home from the kindergarten, I suddenly saw a big black pile, almost as high as our neighbor’s house, at our gate.

“They’ve brought coal!” Mama exclaimed.

Trying not to get soiled, she took Emma and me down the narrow passage to the gate. Coal dust stuck to the soles of our shoes.

The yard was empty. Only Father was sitting near his favorite apricot tree.

“They brought a ton and a half,” he reported. “They wanted thirty rubles to transfer it to the storage room.”

Thirty rubles was a worker’s weekly salary.

“It’s all right, Papesh. We’ll manage ourselves,” Mama said.

Mama was eleven years younger than Father. She always addressed him very respectfully. “Papesh” was a respectful form of “Papa.”

Naturally Mama was concerned. It wasn’t easy to transfer such a huge pile of coal single-handedly.

But, as always, she did her best not to let anyone notice. She was a master of hidden feelings. No matter what blows life inflicted on her, no matter how hard and painful they were – and it happened often – she tolerated everything with dignity, without a word of complaint. And only when her patience was completely exhausted, did she cry quietly in a corner.

We bought coal once a year. It was kept in the storage room near the apricot tree.

Mama brought a few pails and a shovel, and we set to work. Mama carried two pails filled to the brim with coal, panting and walking heavily. I followed her carrying the two or three pieces that I could lift.

Coal dust stuck to everything – the sides of the pails, the walls of the house, our clothes, our skin. It penetrated our nostrils and got under our eyelids. The black trail made by our footprints traced our path from the coal pile in the lane to the storage room.

The pile diminished very slowly. The sun was setting. The long shadows of the trees grew paler, merging with the gathering dusk. The pigeon coop grew quiet. Cats began running around the attics, their green eyes sparkling here and there.

No one came to help us. A few days earlier, Father had quarreled with his mother yet again.

The quarrel was, as always, baseless and stormy. All the inhabitants of our yard took part in it, dividing into two camps.

When it happened, Grandma, as an experienced “military leader,” inspired her supporters, mostly her own children. As soon as they showed up, she gathered them together around the table, setting forth the reason for one more quarrel and distorting the facts without any pangs of conscience.

Grandma understood perfectly well that her stories added fuel to the fire and made the atmosphere of our community, which was far from friendly, explosive. But that was exactly what she delighted in.

Grandma Lisa was a virtuoso of squabbling. After stirring up trouble, she would step aside to watch innocently as the uproar developed. After enjoying it, she would take on the role of peacemaker and act as if she had nothing to do with it. In other words, she also somehow attempted to ennoble herself.

For precisely that purpose, she brought dinner for Papa to our place only two days after she had quarreled with him.

Mama understood perfectly well what fuss Father would raise on seeing the plate. That was why she put it at Grandma Lisa’s window.

Retribution followed right away.

“Mama!” Father’s younger brother Robert yelled. “This swine has brought the dinner back!”

“Where is this bitch?!” Father’s sister Tamara yelled as soon as she entered the yard. She had already been informed about Mama’s “crime.” “Where is she? I’ll…” And obscene cursing followed.

Aunt Tamara loved to use foul language. She kicked up a row with someone almost every day.

“Hey, you ignoramus!” Uncle Misha called to Mama with disdain.

He was a schoolteacher. He taught physics, while Mama was a common factory seamstress.

They all quarreled with Father, but it was impossible to understand why all the hatred was vented at my mama. She had no place to hide from them.

Even during the hardest times, she didn’t egg my father on. She didn’t influence him against his mother, brothers or sister. She kept silent when she found herself between the devil and the deep blue sea. She was quiet and patient.

That’s how she had been raised. She was calm and reserved by nature, even withdrawn. She was not in the habit of and didn’t care to interfere in the private lives of those around her, to denounce anyone, to gossip. She didn’t find it interesting. Besides, she had no free time.

Her husband’s illness didn’t allow her to have a normal life. She had to take care of him, to look after him, to feed him. In other words, she had to work from early in the morning till late at night. There was never enough money and she had no help.

* * *

It was past midnight. The moon, clear and bright, was high in the sky. All the houses shimmered silvery in its light. Every unevenness, every small detail in the yard was clearly revealed.

It was a splendid night, and it was very, very quiet.

Only Mama broke the silence. The shovel continued its scraping. Chunks of coal rattled as they fell into the pails.

One last batch, and we finished our work. Sweat, thick and fast, was streaming down Mama’s face. Her face, hands, legs, dress, apron – all were coated in a solid, heavy, coarse black armor.

We had to wash ourselves at home. A visit to the bathhouse would come the next day.

Mama began to heat water. She had to do it as fast as possible because tomorrow – actually, it was already tomorrow – early in the morning she would have to go to work, and I to kindergarten.

I think I fell asleep sitting on a chair. I don’t know how my poor mama managed to undress and wash me.

Chapter 8. A Very Good Day

It must have been a holiday, I don’t remember which, but that morning we were all at home – Mama, Emma, and I. All but Father; he was at the hospital again. I was about to play when a singsong call was heard from the yard.

“E-e-e-e-e-s-the-e-e-e-e-r!”

Mama’s name was heard from the yard. It sounded like a song, like a serenade. It sounded so melodious and clear, as if an opera singer were performing an aria consisting of just that one name. I knew that singer very well. His voice could not be confused with anyone else’s. Even though it was a man’s voice, it was amazingly similar to my mama’s.

But of course, it was Grandpa Hanan! He didn’t like to knock on the door. He preferred to announce his arrival by walking between our door and that of Grandma Lisa and singing something.

In his black coat and bright skullcap, with a small bundle in his hands and his face with its greying beard turned up, he was waving the bundle and telling the whole neighborhood about his arrival and his love for his daughter.

“E-e-e-e-e-s-ss-th-e-e-e-r! E-e-e-e-e-s-th-e-e-e-e-e-r! Look who’s here, E-e-e-s-the-e-r!”

When my Grandpa Hanan was singing all by himself or among friends, he didn’t notice anything or anyone around him. He might walk back and forth for a long time.

“Mama! Grandpa Hanan is here!”

Mama was already running to the door. She smiled at me over her shoulder. Oh, what a smile it was! Mama gave us such a smile only in rare moments of happiness. She would put one hand on top of the other and bow her head slightly. The corners of her closed lips would rise, and the line of her mouth would curve. That changed her face in a miraculous way – it looked brighter and younger. Her hazel eyes grew bigger, brighter. A secret light lit them beautifully and reigned above her smile. The sharp arcs of her thick eyebrows, that almost touched over the bridge of her nose, surged like waves, and above them, two little birthmarks went up like little rowboats.

Our mama was a beauty. I think she was the kind of beauty that the great poets of the East extolled. Tall, slender, with a gentle face and thick black hair so long that when it hung loose, it streamed down her back to her thighs like a waterfall. She was definitely the embodiment of Eastern beauty.

I liked to watch Mama comb her hair. Seated at a small round mirror, Mama would slowly comb her hair, one strand after another. It streamed and shone even in the light of the dim bulb that lit Mama’s bedroom. She would stick the comb into her thick hair at the top of her head and drag it slowly down a strand to its very end. She did it over and over again, until the strand became elastic, until every hair separated easily from the next. Only after that did she begin on the next strand.

A small wisp of hair would remain on the comb after she finished with a strand. Mama didn’t throw these away. She neatly wound them up into a ball, a kind of bun, which grew bigger by the year.

At last her hair was combed, and it was time to arrange it. First, Mama placed the bun at the nape of her neck and began to roll the strands around it in amazingly graceful movements. That was how a big springy bun appeared at the back of her head before my very eyes. It was the hairdo that I considered the apex of perfection.

Mama threw the door open, and I rushed toward Grandpa and jumped up into his arms. He lifted me and, pressing me against him, began to turn slowly.

Oh, what fun it was. Everything floated past me – the cherry tree, the apricot tree, the vegetable garden, Jack’s kennel, and Jack himself with his long tongue sticking out. It seemed to me that his tongue was floating after me like a long pink ribbon. How could it possibly fit into his mouth? The walls, the windows, the tulle curtain in Grandma’s bedroom floated past me.

The curtain shifted just a bit. Grandma was at home. The window was her observation slit through which she could see the whole yard. Grandma Lisa was watching us secretly now.

When Grandpa Hanan visited us, she didn’t open her door and didn’t come outside. Grandpa didn’t expect her to for they had nothing to talk about.

We were still turning and turning, and Grandpa was singing. I sang along. How wonderful I felt! Besides, I was the only one he was twirling, for Emma was asleep.

As I flew, I thought – how did the skull cap stay on his head? It must have been glued to it. It never fell off. Grandpa even scratched his head in a special way, without taking it off. He lifted the back of it with one hand, like one valve of a shell. His other hand went under the cap and a rustling sound could be heard. Much as I tried, I never managed to look under the valve of that shell. What if something valuable, unusual, something Grandpa carefully protected and hid from everyone’s eyes was kept in that hiding place?

“All right, that’s enough. Let’s go.”

Grandpa put me down, picked up his bundle, and we went inside.

Mama greeted her father in a restrained manner. It was the custom in Asia. You could hug and kiss your mother, but you had to treat your father with respect and restraint. True feelings could be displayed only when misfortune struck. Mama, for example, took care of Grandpa twenty-four hours a day when he had bad fits of asthma.

Grandpa sat down at the small table in the corner and opened his bundle carefully. It held a small pot of hot food wrapped in a cloth. Oh, how delicious was the smell coming from the pot. We hadn’t had anything to eat today. It was true that the day before I had managed to eat illegally, so to speak.

Yesterday, Grandma Lisa cooked meat dumplings. Their aroma filled the yard. Mama and I were the first people the aroma reached. We were sitting at the table near the cherry tree where Grandma had brought the dumplings. But it didn’t mean that we were invited to have dinner. Father was at the hospital. Daughter-in-law and her children could not expect to be treated to dinner when he was away. If we wanted to sniff how the dumplings smelled, we were welcome to do that.

“Robert, come eat!” Grandma shouted. Robert didn’t answer. Grandma called him another time, then she ran to the house for her son.

I stood near Mama who was sitting at the other end of the table. The fragrant steam tickled my nostrils. I was staring at Mama. Suddenly, she stood up. She took me by the hand and led me to the platter of dumplings. She grabbed a hot dumpling and stuffed it into my mouth. Oh, how tasty it was! It was very hot, but I didn’t care, so tasty was it. Oop… and she popped another one into my mouth… and another…

That’s how I had dinner yesterday. But naturally, today my stomach didn’t remember that. Seated in Grandpa’s lap – after all I was a little kid, and it was all right to spoil little kids – I gobbled the tastiest food with delight. Grandma Abigai was a first-rate cook. My mama had learned from the best. Except now she didn’t often get the chance to use her skill.

“How are the children doing?” Grandpa asked.

This short question deserves special comment. Firstly, Grandpa couldn’t stand it when someone asked how he was doing. That was why he didn’t like to ask such questions. Secondly, he had known for a long time that his daughter Ester’s life was far from good. She would answer such a question, if asked, as she had been taught as a child, “Thank you, Papa. Everything is fine.” So why ask? And what could Grandpa do apart from what he and Grandma Abigai had already been doing for us? The question “How are the children doing?” was the most painless.

I learned the truth about my parents many years later. My Mama’s parents, Grandpa in particular, were against the marriage. Perhaps, they knew something about the groom.

“Do you also sew at home?” Grandpa asked.

“Sometimes, when they allow us to take work home.”

A Zinger professional factory sewing machine was standing across from the dinner table. After Grandpa’s sharpening machine, it was the best rattling machine in the world. As she sewed, Mama pressed its pedal to the floor – what a great sound it made, endless, ringing, clear-cut, like a burst of machine gun fire. It was better than at the movies! I used to hide behind the doorpost and, standing on one knee, I was ready for battle, and I would open fire.

“Rat-a-tat-tat… Rat-a-tat-tat…” I was firing at my enemies without missing. I was destroying unit after unit. Come nearer! I’m not afraid of you. It was a pity I couldn’t have too many of those battles for Mama didn’t often sit at the sewing machine at home.

* * *

Grandpa left. Emma woke up. Mama fed her and turned on the radio. Uzbek music was playing. My curly-haired little sister, well fed and satisfied, whirled in a dance. I followed her. Mama began to sing and snap her fingers. We moved our heads and shoulders, tapped our feet. It was a whole orchestra playing for us.

Emma was whirling so fast that she tumbled to the floor, and the dancing stopped. And I, taking advantage of the moment – Mama was in a good mood and she was with us – sat down on her foot to have a ride.

Up and down, up and down… Mama sat with her legs crossed moving her foot. She herself was also moving to the same rhythm. I sat on her foot like a rider on a jaunty horse. Wow, how fast my horse was galloping. Everything was flashing by and my head was spinning. I had to try not to fall from the saddle.

At the peak of my bliss, Emma began to squeal – she also wanted to take a ride, and immediately. Just try and prevent her.

“Oop-la! Oop-la!” Mama repeated as the curly one went into gales of laughter. I could also hear Mama’s quiet laughter. The three of us had such a good time.

What a great day that was!

Chapter 9. Macaroni

“Ester, did Eshaim bring you two rubles?” Grandma Lisa asked loudly for everyone to hear.

Hands on her hips, she stood on her porch with the kitchen door wide open.

It was Sunday morning. Grandpa had just knocked at our door and given Mama two rubles before leaving for work. After casting a sidelong glance at their windows, he mumbled, “Don’t forget to write it down.” He had been ordered to do that. In other words, Mama should remember that the money had been lent.

“So, did he bring it?” Grandma asked again, informing the inhabitants of our yard about the situation in the family. “Go to the bazaar and buy a chicken leg and rice for Amnun. Cook broth for him. Also buy a flatbread and a big tomato, this big,” and she spread the fingers of her right hand for fear that Mama might buy a not-big-enough tomato.

When Father was sick one had to go to the bazaar quite often. On Sundays, Mama took us along.

The way to the bazaar was familiar, down to the very last detail. Korotky Lane was connected to Shedovaya Street by a short lane of about two hundred meters that was wider in some places and narrower in others. It was no more than two or three meters wide at its narrowest point. The walls of the houses that formed that narrow passage were propped up by massive brick buttresses. Thick at the base, those supports held the houses up during earthquakes.

An old man and an old woman, as they say in fairy tales, “Once there lived an old man and an old woman…,” lived in one of the houses. When the weather was good, the old woman usually sat on a little wooden chair at the gate selling sunflower seeds. Just toasted, they were piled in a small bowl and smelled very appetizing.

The old man and the old woman didn’t have children. Sometimes, they invited local kids to visit and treated them to sunflower seeds. Their one-bedroom apartment was very poor – a table, a couple of chairs, a bed and a wardrobe, though they had a television.

I liked Shedovaya Street very much. It was wide and paved and had ariks on both sides. Stately oaks grew along the ariks. Somewhere up there, high above our heads, their branches came together forming a thick leafy arch.

It was particularly nice there when it rained or during a thunderstorm. Bolts of thunder could be heard, lightning flashed, rain drummed on the roofs and treetops, but all that was outside. I was in a different world where leaves didn’t rustle, the wind didn’t blow, and not a single drop of rain fell. I was protected by the giant oaks.

Shadov Street and our neighborhood were densely populated by Bukharan Jews. Our relatives also lived there – my grandpa’s younger brother, his nephews and their many children. We didn’t see them often, but on days of festivities or grief most of the extended family got together.

I had known since childhood that I, Mama, Papa, and our whole family, were Bukharan Jews. But I didn’t have the slightest idea what it meant. Only when I became an adult did I ask myself, “Who am I, after all? Why are people who have never lived in Bukhara are called Bukharan Jews?” The explanation turned out to be quite complicated. It took me very far from Bukhara, from Uzbekistan to ancient times.

* * *

In 586 B.C. an event took place that became one of the most important in the history of the Jewish people. That event was the Babylonian captivity.

The troops of the ruler of Babylon, Nebuchadnezzar, destroyed Jerusalem, and most of the population of Judea was driven away, to Babylon. Half a century later, Babylonia was conquered by the Persians. Jewish prisoners were allowed to return to their homeland. However, it is known that the majority of them stayed in Babylon. Throughout the centuries a distinctive ethnic commonality appeared. They didn’t assimilate with the Persians. On top of that, when the Romans finally defeated Judea, Babylonia became the world center of Jewish culture and science. The historical consciousness of the Jews was founded and developed there. Judaism became firmly established. Its spiritual culture expanded. It’s enough to remember that the Babylonian Talmud was developed there.

But our ancestors were not destined to make their new homeland there. Beginning in the fifth and sixth centuries A.C., events took place in Persia that brought many cruel persecutions against the Jews. A considerable number of Persian Jews gradually migrated to different countries, including the cities of Central Asia, Tash and Shash, as Tashkent was called in the ancient times, as well as Samarkand and Bukhara.

Bukhara was the center of a big powerful khanate in the Middle Ages. Commerce, crafts, arts, and sciences all thrived there, and it was where the largest Jewish community in Central Asia gradually came into being. I read somewhere that the first mention of it was in the thirteenth century.

That was possible because Bukhara was the resplendent capital of the largest Uzbek khanate. Much later, at the end of the eighteenth century, the name of that Jewish community, “Bukharan Jews,” came to refer to all the Jews of Central Asia, including Uzbek Jews.

Even if we begin counting from the eighteenth century, the Jews settled among the Uzbeks quite long ago. How could they not get along with each other? The Bukharan Jews adopted many Uzbek traditions. Their looks and behavior were similar to those of the Uzbeks. In our time, they could be educated in local schools and institutes. They took an active part in all spheres of the life of the Republic. But still… Bukhari, based on Farsi, which is related to Tadjik, remained their native tongue, while Uzbek belongs to the Turkic family of languages. The Jews spoke Bukhari at home and did their best to pass it on to their children. And they continued to practice their religion, Judaism. They observed ancient customs as much as they could. They settled close to each other, if possible, creating Jewish mahalli (communities). In a word, the Bukharan Jews did not turn into Uzbeks, they did not blend with them but created another distinctive ethnic community, another branch of the tree of nations.

The Yuabovs, my father’s parents, were among the Jews who had stayed in Persia and had not left during even the hardest of times. There had been quite a few people like them. Only at the end of the nineteenth century did my great-grandfather migrate by camel to Central Asia and settle in Tashkent.

* * *

But let’s return to Tashkent from our travels to the past… Mama and we reached Pedagogicheskaya Street, went down it and found ourselves in the very center of the city, crowded and bustling. Many streetcar and trolley lines crossed there. Taxis scurried around. The Central Department Store which towered over the center was surrounded by kiosks, canteens, and various repair shops. The Turkmen Bazaar was a stone’s throw from the center. It was not the biggest bazaar in town, but it was considered one of the best. It was strikingly clean. The air in its passageways, sprinkled with sand, was cool. Outdoor shops stretched, row after row, for about three hundred meters. Only collective farm members were allowed to open businesses there. Butchers, gardeners, craftsmen, and others had their stalls behind them.

The bazaar began operations very early and immediately turned into something of a beehive. The bazaar buzzed monotonously like a swarm of bees, and high thin voices soared above it. Those were tireless salespeople haranguing shoppers.

“Hey, opa, look at my strawberries. They’re so tender they’ll melt in your mouth! Try them!” a gardener tried to attract buyers.

“Come over here, folks! Everything’s from my own garden, as sweet as honey!” another gardener praised his fare.

Most sellers were elderly Uzbek men. They wore very similar attire –skullcap, chapan (long, quilted coat) and soft leather boots.

To say that it was customary to bargain at Asian bazaars is an understatement. It was a special ritual, a sort of skill, a game that spiced up the monotonous life. A price given by a seller was not just challenged. One needed to present an argument about why a price should be reduced. At the same time, the dignity of the seller and the produce was never debased.

Mama had a great command of that skill, and her Uzbek was perfect. She spoke it so well and grammatically correctly that people who conversed with her had no doubt that she was Uzbek. And generally, Mama who was tall and slender, with jet-black hair, was considered Uzbek at first sight. It often helped her get better prices. And it did help us that day.

* * *

We returned home after shopping. Mama had just started cooking when Emma began to whine and act capricious. She was sluggish on the way home, her cheeks red, her eyes crossed. It was clear without a thermometer that she had a fever.

Emma was often ill, now with the flu, now – pneumonia.

Seeing that Emma wasn’t well, Mama ran to bring the doctor, who lived nearby and visited us often.

“It’s the flu, a viral flu,” she said. “She must have got it at the kindergarten.”

She gave Emma an injection and warned Mama that she needed a shot every day. Seeing the doctor to the door, Mama gave her a bag of macaroni.

“Please, take it. I don’t have any money. It’s so embarrassing. We bother you so often.”

It was customary to pay visiting doctors or give them presents. But we had neither money nor nice things.

“Oh, c’mon, Ester,” the doctor was embarrassed. “You mustn’t.”

Pressing the bag of crunchy macaroni to her chest, Mama said, “I don’t have money to pay for injections. Please, send Emma to the hospital.”

An ambulance arrived in the evening. Emma understood that she would again be parted from her mama and began to cry, “Mama! Mommy! Don’t send me there alone! Please! Come with me!”

It was terribly noisy in the yard. Emma was crying and shouting. Jack was barking and straining at his leash. Confused, Valya and Misha were looking out of their window.

Mama, of course, couldn’t stand it any longer. She grabbed me by the hand, ran to the ambulance and persuaded the medics to allow her to accompany her daughter. We rode away.

I didn’t see the final scene, but I can reconstruct it for I had witnessed many of them.

It grew still. The yard went back to normal – a quiet, happy yard in which nothing was happening. Grandma Lisa walked slowly onto the porch.

“Misha! Valya! Why was the dog barking? Was someone here?”

Chapter 10. We shouldn’t live like this any longer

Tashkent was changing rapidly. Even I noticed it. Teams of construction workers from all the Republics in the Union came in after the earthquake. The city was overgrown with scaffolding. Cranes rose everywhere. It seemed to me that their booms looked like the barrels of huge cannons. Etched high against the sky, they spun from side to side as if looking for their target somewhere far away on the horizon. Each crane had an operator who would direct it to the proper place when prompted by a worker standing on the ground. A large curved hook would pick up a huge slab of reinforced concrete, and the crane would raise it to the very top of a building, rocking it like a swaddled baby. Their cables looked like very thin threads from afar, and it seemed that the loads they carried stayed in the air, held up by some magical force. I could have watched that amazing spectacle for hours.

The whole city was obsessed with the ongoing construction work. The radio broadcast the achievements of construction workers almost every day. And that was the truth – their help was very noticeable. The Soviet government knew how to demonstrate its might, which it unfortunately chose not to demonstrate when it was needed to take care of its people. It demonstrated its might only when it was possible to brag, to show off to the whole world.

No matter what achievements were made in construction or how fast they were carried out, it could not solve the housing problem, which had been really critical even before the earthquake. It was just as critical as in any big city in the Soviet Union. And now, after the disaster, it seemed that all people could think and talk about was housing.

People who were left without a roof over their heads formed “live lines” at every agency. There was a crowd of people at one of the buildings near Turkmen Bazaar, which housed the commission that evaluated apartments to determine how safe they were, and people, concerned and worried, would wait there to learn how their fate would be decided. Those whose apartments had been damaged were offered the option of leaving Tashkent. They were offered apartments in other, less populated cities in the Republic, or even beyond its boundaries.

Summer arrived, and it was hot and dry, as usual, though it seemed abnormally sultry. Our yard would become a desert by ten in the morning. Quiet birds hid in the crowns of the trees. Jack, trying to escape the heat in the shade of his kennel, lay with his tongue out, breathing heavily. Even flies didn’t fly above the extremely hot, soft asphalt.

Father couldn’t stand the heat. For people with asthma it’s usually easier to breathe when the weather is dry, but he would gasp for breath. He was so weak he couldn’t walk. He was taken to the hospital again.

And since, before that, Father had managed to quarrel with Grandma Lisa, the old story began again – Mama was once again the target at which all arrows were shot…

“Hey, you, ignoramus!” my “intelligent” Uncle Misha called to her. “Rent an apartment somewhere else. I’m willing to pay your rent.”

Mama would only shrug her shoulders in response. She was ready to move anywhere, even to the ends of the earth. But where? And how?

Father was feeling better at the hospital. Once, when the doctor was making her rounds, she saw Mama and said with satisfaction, “Well, he’s feeling better and better. You can take him home.”

She expected Mama’s usual reply, “Oh, I’m so glad. Thank you, doctor.” But this time Mama proclaimed decisively, her voice unusually sharp, “I have nowhere to take him.”

“What do you mean?” the surprised doctor asked.

“Our apartment was damaged. We’re staying in a tent in his parents’ yard.”

It was my turn to be surprised. What tent were we staying in? Fortunately, I didn’t ask Mama about it.

“Why don’t you stay with his parents?” the doctor asked.

And Mama answered – this time in her normal voice – and it was the truth, “Who has need of him, ill as he is? They’ve turned him away.”

I looked at Father. He bent his head low and didn’t interfere in the conversation. And what could he say? He knew that Mama was right. It was necessary to move away, at all costs.

“All right,” the doctor said after a pause. “Summon an official from the Evaluation Commission and bring us a certificate. Then we’ll decide what to do about it.”

We went from the hospital to Turkmen Bazaar, and Mama applied for an inspection of our apartment.

Then we went home, and I was thinking that I would see the tent Mama had spoken about, but it wasn’t in the yard.

I stayed outside to play near the summer shower. The big yellow tank was filled through a hose attached to the spigot. Besides the shower head, it had a faucet below. It couldn’t be turned off properly and there was always a small puddle below it, which I found very useful. Pigeons drank water from it. It was also good for playing.

I was having a great time at the puddle when I heard muted blows. Boom-m… Boom-m… Boom-m. They were becoming louder and more frequent. They were coming from behind our door. Frightened, I rushed to the house and threw open the door. The blows, now very loud, were coming from the bedroom. I looked inside.

Mama, my mama, was standing on the bed, wielding an axe, which she held in both hands, rocking back and forth and smashing the wall with it.

To be precise, that wasn’t my mama; it was someone else. My mama was always kind, tender and quiet. The one who was banging the axe against the wall was mean, scary and dangerous. She repeated some sort of incantation in a voice that wasn’t like Mama’s at all as she continued smashing the wall, “It’s impossible… It’s impossible… It’s impossible…”

Plaster was flying in all directions. White dust covered the floor, the beds, the windows. Dishes rattled in the cupboard. The broken wall clock began ticking again, as if it remembered that scary night in April. I stood by the doorpost, my body trembling with every blow of the axe.

Mama sat down on the bed, panting. Her breathing returned to normal as her distorted face smoothed out and became my mama’s face again. She looked at me, almost calmly, and said, “Well, Son, now we have a damaged apartment. We’ll stay in a tent in the yard.”

She chuckled and looked around.

Cracks gaped in every corner of the bedroom and on the damaged walls.

Shouting could be heard in the courtyard. Grandma Lisa burst into the bedroom. Her bedroom was next to ours behind the wall. The axe blows must surely have been felt there. But when she ran into our bedroom, she couldn’t believe her eyes.

“Ibi, ne muram! Chi kari?! (God, prolong my life! What have you done?!)” she shouted.

Mama picked up the axe and walked right past Grandma.

“At least now I’ll be rid of you.”

Chapter 11. We have moved!!!

Something Mama had been dreaming about for a long time happened on one of the first days of December,1966. It was a miracle, performed by her will and her hands – we left the old house. We also left Tashkent. We moved to Chirchik.

That town was only 30 kilometers away from Tashkent. Father had chosen it himself. Firstly, it was not far away, and if something had happened to him, his relatives – at least that’s what he thought – would help Mama. Secondly, Chirchik was a town of new construction projects, so it wouldn’t be difficult to find work. And, sure enough, Father soon began teaching P.E. at Secondary School 19, and Mama was hired as a seamstress at Guncha knitting factory.

We took up residence in the settlement of Yubilayny – that was the name of a micro-district of Chirchik. We had our own apartment! It was new, in a new building. We had three rooms and a veranda enclosed in glass. We were allotted a garden plot in front of our windows near the entrance to the building, as were all the other ground floor tenants. There was a rose bush, a cherry tree, and a poplar in our small garden.

However, I wasn’t very interested in the garden. I was filled and overwhelmed with new impressions. There was a Greek family in the same building with us. A Ukrainian family, the Kulikovs, was above us. There were Crimean Tatars, the Zinedinovs, on the third floor, and above them, the Ilyasovs… In a word, our part of the building, just like all the other parts was a bit international. That was something new for me.

Naturally, the neighbors all made each other’s acquaintance quickly, and soon there were gatherings at the entrance every evening. The exchange of news, and gossip, of course, began. Dora, an elderly Greek woman who lived on our floor, was the principal gossipmonger. In the evening, when the weather was warm, she emerged from the building, without fail.

Dora, a corpulent woman, used to plop her heavy body onto the bench and begin grinding coffee or black pepper in a small hand-held coffee grinder. She delighted in chatting, over the whir of her grinder, with anybody who showed up. She definitely had the gift of a street orator. Not a single resident of our building passed her by without stopping to listen and being drawn into a conversation. It would become noisy. Curious faces would appear in windows and on verandas. The meeting would become not only well-attended but also multi-storied.

My mama was the only one who avoided those gatherings. She had never cared for discussing other people’s affairs, and the conversations under the windows always took on a personal nature, thanks to Dora. I soon learned that my father’s personality was discussed on a regular basis. I heard it myself many times while hiding behind the open window of our veranda. Alas, no kind word about him ever reached my ears.

Soon, I had new friends in Chirchik. They were the Kulikov brothers, seven-year-old Kolya and six-year-old Sasha from the apartment one flight up. The Zinedinov brothers, Rustem who was a first grader, and six-year-old Edem, the same age as Sasha and me, lived above the Kulikovs. Five kids from the same entrance – what could be better? We immediately found common interests and figured out what games we enjoyed the most. One of them was certainly “the war game.” But apart from that old game, familiar to children all over the world – and unfortunately, not only children – I learned a new, no less absorbing game called Cracker.

In the spring, as soon as water appeared, clay would begin to accumulate at the bottom of the ariks. We would make something like a flatbread out of it, putting a shallow dent in the center of it. That was a “cracker.” Then, you just needed to lift it with the dented side down and throw it on the asphalt with all your might. Pakh-kh! It sounded like a gunshot. And if the five of us threw two crackers each, at the same time… a burst of machine-gun fire was nothing compared to that. The ground where we played was between two buildings under construction, with a distance of about forty meters between them. It formed a kind of echo chamber, and the noise resounded like thunderclaps.

Our “shooting” could hardly have pleased the adults, but that didn’t bother us. On the contrary, if any of the neighbors dared to reproach us for such pranks, a particularly loud and long cannonade would be heard under their windows.

We gradually began to familiarize ourselves with the new town. It took a quite a while.

Unlike Tashkent, Chirchik was a very new town. It had appeared in 1935 with the consolidation of a few workers settlements created for the construction of the Chirchik Hydropower Station and the chemical plant, but construction was not limited to the plant, the first chemical plant in Uzbekistan. They also built a plant to process metals with high melting points and a plant that manufactured electric transformers. Footwear and sewing factories appeared. By the time we arrived, Chirchik was a big industrial center with about 25 industrial enterprises. There was also the din of tanks, the muted thuds of shots fired, reverberating through the wide valley speckled with hills on the outskirts of town when field exercises at the tank school, the largest in Uzbekistan, would take place.

That was the extraordinary town we had moved to. Our building, just like the whole of Chirchik, was multiethnic because even people from other republics moved there when they heard there was a new town with big construction projects underway, where workers with various skills and professions were in demand.

The town was dominated by the chemical plant, which was located not far from the entrance to town on the Tashkent side, surrounded by a high brick wall topped with barbed wire. Poisonous yellow smoke spewed out of its chimneys, day and night. On windless days, a column of smoke rose permanently into the sky like a thick twisted rope, or rather like a monstrous brush that painted the entire firmament with its poisonous yellow hue. That yellow hue accumulated to form paunchy, festering clouds.

When a north wind would begin to blow, and that happened quite often – for the valley studded with hills didn’t protect the town from cold winds – an unpleasant pungent odor spread throughout Chirchik. It would cause a tickling sensation in the throat and make your eyes water. The grass and leaves would turn yellow after a rain. And trees and small gardens in the vicinity of the plant were an absolutely unnatural shade.

All the citizens knew that the plant’s exhaust was poisonous and that there were no filters on the chimneys for protection. I never heard about any attempts by citizens to do anything to stop the plant from poisoning them. Workers at the plant were happy to receive free milk at work. Any protest was out of the question. The all-powerful plant had strategic significance. If necessary, it could be easily switched over within a day to produce military raw materials.

* * *

But for the smoke, Chirchik was a rather cozy and attractive town. It was divided into two parts by the Chirchik River, or “the canal,” as it was called there. Its banks had been coated with cement inside the city limits to prevent erosion. The Chirchik was a turbulent mountain river generously replenished by snow that melted on the spurs of the Tian Shan mountains. As soon as high water arrived in the spring, brooks, torrents, and waterfalls gushed down, flooding and carrying along everything in their path. After turning into a river, the stream rushed about like an anxious mother who had lost her children and was prepared to search every nook and cranny and overcome every obstacle. That was why they had to cement the banks of the river within the city limits.

Leaves rustled on trees, the roses were fragrant, and water babbled merrily in the ariks that ran beside paths and sidewalks. I would notice all of that later, when I grew up. At that time, we were little kids and traveled only as far as our kindergarten or school.

Emma’s and my kindergarten, which was named Buratino (Pinocchio), was not much different from the one in Tashkent. We had the same kinds of classes and were taken outside to play in similar pavilions. Of course, there were no get-togethers with our favorite mouse anymore. But a golden eagle, a proud bird, lived in a big cage in the yard. It peered at us with disdain, turned away from us haughtily when we tried to talk to it, and paid little attention to our attempts to feed it bread. Those attempts were unsuccessful because the holes in the wire cage were too small.

Mama worked two shifts at the factory. The first one started at eight in the morning. In order not to be late for work, Mama would take Emma and me to the kindergarten very early, around six o’clock. It was winter so we arrived when it was still dark, and we paced around in the snow for an hour or an hour and a half in front of the locked building. There was a lot of snow that winter. It sparkled beautifully, streaked with silver when the moon was out. And the moon was also very beautiful and very, very big. It seemed so close that we could touch it with our hands.

We weren’t scared because we were together, but we often ended up with wet feet, and our teachers had to change our clothes.

Chapter 12. Guncha

For as long as I can remember, I knew my mama was a seamstress. “Quota,” “output,” and “plan” were among the first words I remember. Mama would mutter them angrily. I heard familiar words in Chirchik because Mama also worked at the Guncha sewing factory there. However, Mama spoke about her work with less irritation than before. Something had changed. Of course, I didn’t understand what. I was too little to understand production processes and relations. I grew to understand that much later. As a child, all I had were impressions. One memory that stuck in my mind was once when Mama took Emma and me to the factory where she worked.

Our kindergarten was closed for a quarantine that day. Mama had been at home that morning, and as she was getting ready to leave for her night shift, she said, “You can’t stay home alone. You’ll be better off sleeping overnight at the factory.”

We took a long ride on a bus. It puffed heavily and let out a roar as it went up hills. There were many of them. The twisting road ran now up, now down, and new four-story apartment buildings crowded together, some on top of hills, others at their feet. Some of the buildings still had scaffolding. The fourth micro-district – that was what this part of town was called – was under construction and growing. That was where Mama’s factory was located.

Cool air embraced us as we entered the wide lobby. A large chandelier sparkled on the ceiling. There were many bright posters on the walls. Among them, there was a board crowned with red letters that had photographs on it. Suddenly, I noticed Mama on one of them. I stopped and grabbed her by the sleeve, “Mom, what is it?”

“It’s the board of honor.” She laughed, but her face had a contented look.

We approached a door with a glass plaque. Mama adjusted Emma’s dress and knocked on the door. “We’ll be seeing the manager. Say hello to him,” she whispered.

The manager wasn’t scary at all. He called us bogatirs (Russian epic heroes), but when Mama asked his permission for us to stay in the workshop overnight, he waved his hands, “Oh no, Ester, we can’t do that,” but, when he saw that Mama was upset, he grunted and ordered, “Put them on a pile of rags in the corner, away from the machines. Got it? And they shouldn’t run around.”

We walked up the steps leading to the workshop. Something upstairs was rumbling and chirping and rolling loudly. It seemed that something swift and huge might dash out onto the staircase toward us. It was the sewing workshop that was making all that noise. It was crammed with sewing machines, 20-30 of them in each row. It took my breath away – there were so many of them there. The foot pedal Zinger sewing machines seemed so splendid to me. The shift began, and Mama sat down at one of those wonderful machines.

Guncha was a knitting factory, and they mostly made knitted jackets there. So, what was actually being sewn? Making the jackets included many operations, from cutting them out to sewing on buttons: many short, clearly delineated, strictly limited operations that didn’t require any imagination but demanded precision and concentration and didn’t allow for any minor deviations.

The team in which Mama worked attached collars. That operation was divided into a few stages. Mama performed the first stage – she had to attach the middle of the lower part of the collar to the back of a jacket’s collar line, right in the middle. Everything else was based on that first positioning. If Mama made a mistake, the whole jacket would be ruined, and it would be classified as defective merchandise.

Someone brought a cart piled with jackets to the end of the row. Mama snatched a jacket and a collar. Oone, and a jacket flew into the machine. Twoo, Mama turned it so fast with her hands that I didn’t even notice its color. And I didn’t notice how the collar ended up in the right spot. Thrree, it was done, and the jacket flew on to the next seamstress… Mama’s machine was chipping and chirping. She sat with her head down, rocking slightly. Her feet moved without stopping, her hands made fast, precise movements. She was absorbed in her work. It seemed she didn’t notice either the rumbling of the workshop, the rattling of carts passing by, or her children who sat in the corner on a pile of multi-colored scraps watching her… Well, I was the only one who was watching Mama. The pile of bright, soft scraps was a real treasure that any girl would have envied. It was hard to imagine that such treasure was considered trash at the factory. Emma rummaged through the scraps, mumbling something, snatching and twisting them, tying them together, trying them on. She made a scarf, a shawl, or something that looked like a harlequin’s outfit. In a word, she was very busy.

But I could not tear my eyes away from the assembly line. I watched how fast the jackets moved along it, but my eyes always returned to Mama’s machine, to her hands. And what I soon noticed was that Mama was working faster than the others. She would pass a jacket to the next seamstress, who had not yet finished with the previous one. Someone called from another part of the workshop, “Ester, take a break! Slow down!” But Mama seemed not to hear; she didn’t raise her head.

Mama was a wonderful seamstress, a virtuoso. She couldn’t possibly do bad work.

But that was not the only reason. At Guncha, unlike at the factory in Tashkent, they paid according to one’s output. Mama’s earnings depended on her hands, on her craftsmanship. Mama’s restless hands kept Emma and me fed.

Only here in Chirchik, Mama felt that her work was valued. Before long, she was awarded the Order of Labor of the Third Degree. Only five people in town had received that award. Mama was certainly proud of it. Perhaps, she was even very proud. Mama’s work was exhausting, her speed, efficiency, and concentration required an enormous output of energy and produced nervous tension. Good heavens, but did she ever think of herself?

When apprentices showed up at the factory, they were taken to Mama. Who could possibly teach them better? Who could demonstrate to them more patiently, many times over, how to do the work? They sometimes brought defective items to her, and she repaired them with the skill a surgeon would use operating on a seemingly hopeless patient.

Probably, a true master in any field is one who possesses emotional generosity, as well as skill.

…The time passed, hour after hour. The workshop rumbled ceaselessly. Emma had fallen asleep long before, buried in her pile of treasure. I was falling asleep too, but I gave a start and woke up because silence fell over the workshop. A break began. I don’t know if there was a cafeteria at the factory, but many seamstresses had a snack at their machines. They plugged in their hand-held water boilers. The sound of paper rustling could be heard as they unwrapped their sandwiches. Now and then, women ran up to Emma and me to treat us to candies or cookies. They had kind, tired faces, scarves tied around their heads, wearing aprons covered with bits of thread. Then, Shura Cheremisina, our neighbor, came up to us.

“Good! You’ve brought your kids,” she told Mama. “Let them see what we do here.”

“We work like mules,” Mama’s answer was short. She sat down near us. There was a piece of thread hanging from her lower lip. Almost every seamstress had a piece of thread on her lip. It helped them concentrate while sewing. Every part of them participated in the work process – hands, feet, eyes, even lips.

Chapter 13. “Our Neighbor Is a Greek Woman…”

“Kids, get up! It’s time, it’s time!”

I opened my eyes and squinted right away. After our rather dark Tashkent bedroom, I was not accustomed to the bright light that streamed into my eyes. Here, the two big windows faced the vegetable garden in the back of our building and an expanse of open space with towering hills beyond. The sun set behind them in the evening, and in the afternoon, it visited our bedroom, flooding it generously with its rays. Mama had had bars installed on the windows so that we wouldn’t climb through them while we were busy playing.

I stayed in bed for another minute or two, admiring the bedroom. It had delicate blue walls onto which little gold striped diamonds had been rolled. When I looked at the wall for a long time, I would get the feeling I was in outer space, surrounded by stars. One could also admire the floors, which were freshly painted and almost even.

The radio was on. In the morning, Father put the radio on the windowsill in the living room so that Emma and I could do our morning exercises. We did them for fifteen minutes to the sounds of music. We enjoyed doing them and even had time to be naughty and make faces.

“Emma, can you do this?” I asked, winking each of my eyes one after the other. I was cunning. I knew perfectly well what would happen next. She couldn’t wink each eye individually, even though she had tried many times.

“No, not like that! Look!”

I pretended I was trying to help Emma. She was trying to learn how to do it but would end up exhausted from trying. Sometimes, she would run to Mama to complain.

We finished our exercises, so I washed myself quickly with cold water, got dressed and sat down at the table.

“Just a minute,” Mama said as she was slicing lettuce. “I’m about to serve breakfast. Papesh, I need to go to the bazaar today.”

“Go,” Father answered.

“How about some cash? We’ve already spent my salary.”

“I don’t have any,” Father snapped.

It was his usual answer. It had happened many times. Mama would grow quiet and run to neighbors or acquaintances to borrow money until a payday, naturally, hers.

* * *

When I remember my father, when I try to imagine what kind of person he was, I envision someone with two personalities. And I wonder – which of them was actually him?

Father, like his brother Misha, was a teacher. One knows that a teacher is a model to imitate, to be held up as an example. That was exactly how the brothers were at work. They enjoyed respect. They did their best to earn it. They attained authority. They needed that for their careers. But at home they were absolutely different, as if they shed their masks. They claimed to be the sole authority and demanded respect. They were despots.

At work, the brothers were building their careers, and they yielded to the rules that facilitated that. At home, such rules were considered superfluous. Wife and children had to obey them, to tolerate everything, to forgive.

Father liked to pose as a well-off man. He didn’t like being thrifty. Why take a bus if you could take a taxi? It was so nice to toss money around, to spend it for his little pleasures, not for boring household needs. It’s true that he sometimes bought clothes, a book, or a toy for Emma and me. When he was in a particularly good mood, he would give Mama some money for shopping at the bazaar, but most of the time he answered as he did that day, “I don’t have any.” But this time Mama didn’t keep silent. I heard her quiet, tense voice:

“So, where does the money disappear to?”

Father raised his brows angrily. He wasn’t used to such questions, but an even less familiar question followed.

“If you don’t give me money for shopping, why do you eat the food I provide?” Mama asked in the same voice.

Father didn’t answer. He jumped up from the table, ran to the stove and knocked the pan with the cutlets in it onto the floor.

The front door banged – Father left. Mama cried, covering her face. I sat in a stupor, but my heart was pounding as if someone were hitting my chest with a hammer.

We went to the kindergarten without having eaten anything. What happened next is difficult for me to describe, for I learned about it from Mama much later. But perhaps what she told me became so strongly intertwined with my childhood impressions, with my intense feeling of pain for Mama, that sometimes it seemed to me that I didn’t spend that day at the kindergarten but instead went with Mama to the factory. There she walked, so thin, pale and unhappy, whispering, “Why me? Why me?” She had hoped that after leaving Korotky Lane and getting rid of Grandma Lisa’s spite, she would live a normal family life. But no, that didn’t happen. Grandma Lisa dogged her, like a shadow. She was nearby even now, in her son.

Here was Mama at the sewing machine. Rocking in time to its rhythm, her head lowered, she whispered something as if she were talking to her breadwinner. The machine understood her and answered sympathetically. “R-r-r!” its motor was terrified. “What for? What for?” the pedal squeaked indignantly. “Prick-prick-prick! Prick-prick-prick!” its needle hurried to the rescue. “I’ll prick him, I won’t allow him to hurt you.” Even the jacket, obedient and soft, gliding under the needle like a skater on ice, tried to ease Mama’s suffering. But her tears continued to fall onto the soft fabric.

“What’s wrong, Ester?” Katya, the seamstress who sat behind Mama, came up to her and hugged her by the shoulders. “What’s happened? Is something wrong at home?”

Mama nodded. Her story was short and muddled. On hearing it, Katya exclaimed, “Let’s go see Sonya, as soon as possible, during the break!”

Sonya, the head of the factory’s Trade Union Committee, was a sharp woman, the kind of woman whom the saying “Be on your guard when she’s around” suited well. She was compassionate. She acted decisively, using all the energy built up inside her, when she could sometimes help workers without antagonizing the management. And Mama’s misfortune afforded her just such an opportunity.

“You’re so silly, Ester. Why have you concealed it for such a long time? We’ll show him… If he doesn’t want to behave, we’ll exchange your apartment for two… It’s impermissible for a teacher to behave like that. I would understand if he were an alcoholic… All right! We’ll go to your place after work!”

Sonya had made a decision. Everything was clear to her. And Mama stood in front of her with her tear-stained face, thinking, was she really ready to flee again? What would she have done if her co-worker and friend hadn’t taken her to Sonya?

Certainly, it’s very important to know that one is not alone. Perhaps, that was the most important thing. But still… Now I think that it was a different Ester in Sonya’s office that day, not the one who humbly tolerated her husband’s cursing and beating and the insults of his relatives. Something had been building up in her and it broke through on the day she took an axe and smashed the walls of the hated house. Her first victory, moving to Chirchik, gave her strength. Was it possible that the respect she enjoyed at the factory and the fact that she was earning more had boosted her self-confidence? It must have been so…

Mama looked at Sonya.

“Yes. Let’s go after work!”

Then we were at home. We, because Mama picked us up from kindergarten on the way home. We were in our room because children should not be around when adults have serious conversations. But our door was cracked. I could see and hear everything. Mama and an unfamiliar woman were in the living room. And where was Father? He was in the bedroom, dressing hurriedly. I was quite worried, for I did understand something, after all. What would Father do? I saw him go to the front door, for some reason, with an axe in his hands, and head for the vegetable garden. He began chopping branches, as if to say, “See? I have work to do here.” But Sonya wasn’t the kind of person one could play such games with. She came out onto the veranda and began her attack.

“Comrade Yuabov, you have visitors in your house, and you’ve walked away. That’s not polite. Come on! We need to talk!”

The adults sat around the table. I could see Father’s face. I had never seen him look like that. His face was pale. That I had seen often. His lips were clenched and distorted. That I had also seen – his lips were always like that when he was angry and quarreled with Grandma or Mama. His big nose, curved like an eagle’s, was close to his lips. I had seen that too. But his eyes… yes, it was precisely his eyes that changed his face, made it unfamiliar. Father stared at the visitor, and his glance betrayed his confusion and fear.

Sonya had already introduced herself. She was calm and focused. This situation was not unusual for her. She had taken part in such encounters many times. She was the one to give orders and make decisions: she and she alone. But for Father… Everything was upside down for him. Perhaps, this meeting at the table reminded him of the schoolteachers’ meetings he had attended so many times, but not in this capacity. There, he was an eagle attacking lackadaisical students. Here, Sonya was the eagle. She looked at Father, her glance icy, and asked sternly, “How can you explain what has happened?”

Father was silent, beating the table with his fingers.

“If you don’t want to live together, no one is forcing you,” Sonya continued ruthlessly. “The apartment can be split. You’ll be given a room.”

Silence.

“You’re a teacher, aren’t you?”

Father nodded as he continued beating the table with his fingers, the same grimace on his face and his legs crossed.

“So, this teacher thinks that he can humiliate, beat and harass a defenseless woman. And the school principal probably thinks he has an angel working for him… I’ll visit your principal. I’ll talk to him…”

“One…” Father began to say. He must have decided to answer. “One of our neighbors is a Greek woman…”

Sonya just looked at him in bewilderment, then she turned to Mama. What did this have to do with the neighbor? Sonya didn’t know Father’s trick. When he was cornered, he would blurt out some nonsense to confuse the person who was talking to him, pretending to be a simpleton, to shift the conversation in a different direction.

But it was impossible to confuse Sonya. Without waiting for him to continue his story about the Greek neighbor, she reminded him calmly, “I’m asking you for an answer. Do you want a divorce, or are you willing to live normally?”

“Everything’s normal with us here,” Father mumbled.

“Beating your wife, throwing food on the floor? What’s normal about that?”

Father mumbled something unintelligible again. But the visitor inflicted blow after blow, calmly and persistently breaking the P.S. 19 teacher into even smaller pieces.

Father sat there, drumming the table with his fingers. No, he wasn’t sitting at the table, he had been knocked down, defeated. Sonya was an experienced fighter. She knew that people like my father, self-confident, merciless with the weak, had to be taken by surprise and pinned down.

After casting a last stern, contemptuous glance at Father, Sonya stood up.

“All right, this conversation is over. It’s up to you to decide what will happen next.”

In the morning, my parents talked to each other. Father was calm, polite and nice. We all felt good. Mama even smiled. All was well… for a few days.

Chapter 14. The First School Bell

Finally, it was Sunday night. It lasted too long and didn’t want to make way for the long-awaited tomorrow. It would be the next day, September 1^st, when the most important event would happen – I would go to school. Something utterly unimaginable was happening in my head, so nervous was I.

Any events that interrupt the usual course of life provoke nervousness in me, almost as if I were sick. My heart was beating as if it wanted to burst out of my chest. My cheeks were on fire. My fingers would always move by themselves, but I had never been so nervous as this time.

One thing that helped me cope with it, to some extent, was carefully organizing my school gear, all those new things I needed for class that I had received over the summer.

I decided that I should check one more time whether everything was all right. I wouldn’t have any time to do it in the morning. I picked up my new shirt and began to examine it. It was a nice pale-blue cotton shirt. Mama and I had spent so much time looking for a shirt. We had also spent time buying everything else – textbooks, notebooks, a briefcase. In Chirchik, just as in every other town, stores were very seldom supplied with goods. Everything sold out fast. Customers waited for the next delivery, lying in wait for weeks for the things they needed. Lines looked like huge earthworms, and people would run up to them like restless ants with questions: “What was delivered today? What are they selling?”

It’s difficult to imagine anything drearier than store shelves in between deliveries. We stopped at the bookstore and saw that it mostly carried newspapers and brochures with boring covers. As for the newspapers, they were all like members of one big family: Pravda (Truth), Komsomol Pravda, Pravda Vostoka (Truth of the East). We visited the bookstore over and over again, until finally we were rewarded – we were able to buy an ABC book. It was new and smelled pleasantly of paper, paint and glue.

After much effort, we also obtained a briefcase. I scrutinized and admired it endlessly. It smelled like a real leather briefcase. It was unimaginably shiny, and I loved the way it squeaked. It had three compartments – for textbooks, notebooks, and rulers, and a pen case. No words could express how wonderful its lock was. It clicked like a gun trigger. Hey, you out there, beware!

All the objects I had in the briefcase were splendid, particularly the white porcelain inkpot with its blue trim on the top, known as nevilevaika (non-spilling), because ink wouldn’t spill out of its cone-shaped opening, even if you turned it upside down.

Extra pen nibs in a special section of the pen case gleamed like little mirrors. I would soon have a chance to learn that their behavior could be treacherous. You would dip your pen into the inkpot and begin to write without wiping it on the edge of the opening, and… plop! You’d have an inkblot, an ugly navy-blue spider on a clean sheet of paper. There was no way to erase it with an eraser. You would only make a hole. But those treacherous pen nibs squeaked so wonderfully.

After placing all my treasures in the briefcase, I finally went to bed, but my impatience and anxiety kept me from falling asleep for a long time.

* * *

Mama and I approached the school early on the morning of that sunny and cloudless day.

Construction of P.S. 24 had been completed by the time we arrived in Chirchik. It was located next to Pinocchio Kindergarten, which I had attended before. There was a short fence and a pedestrian path between them, the path that I was now symbolically crossing. By the way, I was crossing it prematurely. One was supposed to be seven to start school, and I was six. But my father had carried out an offensive operation to secure my enrollment in school ahead of time, and he had been successful.

The four-story school building glittered in its whiteness. The posters and banners seemed especially bright against the white walls. The large portrait of Lenin, with his arm outstretched, calling upon arriving students to study diligently, had been placed above the door where it was impossible to miss. The square in front of the school was filled with adults and children carrying bunches of flowers in their hands. I was glad to see familiar faces, my kindergarten friends – tall skinny Zhenya Gaag, stout Sergey Zhiltsov, and the Doronin twins, Alla and Oksana. My nervousness eased a bit when a muted but frightening voice echoed through the air: “Dear parents… you and your children… today…” I didn’t realize at first that the words were being spoken by a tall man in a dark suit standing at a microphone. He was the school principal, Vladimir Petrovich Obyedkov. He spoke for a long time. I calmed down and became distracted. Then I saw that the tall man held a pair of scissors, with which he cut a pink ribbon stretched across the entrance to the lobby. An orchestra struck up a tune. The copper of the trumpets gleamed. We were all invited to enter the school. The corridor on the ground floor, along which we were ushered to our classroom, was so long that it seemed endless. At every door I thought, my heart skipping a beat, “This one must be ours.” But the door of our classroom was the very last one.

We were seated. My seat was at the first desk in the middle row, right across from the teacher’s desk. I had to turn my head very fast not to lose sight of Mama and not to turn away from the teacher for too long. Besides, I had someone to look at sitting at my desk. I shared the desk with Larisa Sarbash, my secret kindergarten love. She was tall and thin with light hair and wonderful freckles sprinkled over her little nose. Shy Larisa didn’t look at me. She sat staring at the blackboard so intently one would have thought it was a movie screen. But I cast glances at her now and then and admired her braids with big white bows that were so fluffy I wanted to grab and squeeze them.

Our teacher, Yekaterina Ivanovna, not very tall and somewhat plump, with short chestnut hair, had a tender singsongy voice and a kind gaze. She said she would be our teacher for three years and that in first grade we would begin studying arithmetic, reading and writing, and we would need to bring to school… At this point, she turned to the blackboard, and for the first time in my life I heard the magic sounds that would later become so familiar: Took-took-sh-sh-sh, took took-sh-sh-sh-sh… And white, straight, beautiful lines began to appear, one after another, with incomprehensible swiftness on the blackboard. I already knew printed letters, but these characters were quite mysterious.

How unexpectedly, how loudly the bell rang in the corridor. It was rhythmic and distinct. It was very special. It wasn’t just a bell but the melodious trill of an unfamiliar bird. The bird seemed to be with us in the classroom, hiding among the desks, and when our first school day was over, it sang out loudly, with joy, as if saying, “Toodle-loo! Congratulations! You’ve become school students! And now you may run home! Toodle-loo!”

Chapter 15. The Dugout

We noticed puffs of black smoke on the way home from school. They were pouring out from where building number fourteen, next to ours, was under construction. Kolya Kulikov and I exchanged glances. Everything was clear without words – they were smoking tar for the roof. We’ll have something to play with today.

Classes at school were over at two in the afternoon. At that time, the school looked like a crowded bazaar right before closing time, or the schoolyard before classes and during the main recess. Boys and girls who walked home from school the same way would get together at the school fence near the road. The events of the day, any interesting incidents, were passionately discussed. Teachers were still of great interest to us first graders.

“My teacher is very strict, awfully strict,” Vitya Smirnov complained.

“Do you mean Maria Grigoryevna?” Vitya Shalgin was surprised. “She’s not strict at all. I know her better; we’re neighbors. You should have mine. No one can even budge in class.”

“And my teacher, Yekaterina Ivanovna, is kind,” I bragged.

“Do you mean the Fat Lady?” Zhenya Zhiltsov, who lived in the military housing, asked.

It had only been a few weeks since school started but we already knew or had thought up nicknames for our teachers. The stout physics teacher was Molecule, the slightly bald drawing teacher was the Immortal Kashey (a folk character who has the secret to eternal life), the slow, plump auto class teacher was Zaporozhets (a car model). Yekaterina Ivanovna had two nicknames, Fat Lady and Kolobok (a fairytale character who is a little roll), because when she walked around the classroom, she waddled like Kolobok rolling down a forest path. Was it the need to embellish our humdrum school existence that aroused our imagination? That way, we spent part of the school day in some sort of fairytale, the characters of which we often made up ourselves.

We walked home chattering and laughing. Of course, we didn’t walk down the asphalt road like everybody else. “Like everybody else” was not for us. We walked across the dusty field, across the abandoned vegetable garden, diagonally, to shorten the distance between school and home.

We didn’t think about why we did it. We were drawn to playing, and the most important thing in our games was overcoming. Each of us felt that everything was in his power. There were no obstacles. And it was absolutely not important that we were the only ones who knew about it.

Here came Vitya Smirnov, a future test pilot. Clear skies, fast plane and altitude were on his mind… and Sasha was a future builder. “I’ll erect a building all the way up to the clouds,” he used to say. We were not so sure, “There are no cranes that tall.” Sasha only chuckled, “I won’t need cranes. What are helicopters for?”

And I dreamed of becoming an archeologist, and a paleontologist at the same time, and digging out the skeleton of the biggest dinosaur somewhere in Africa.

My colleagues and I will dig in the sands of the Sahara for many months, excavating that monster, bone by bone. I will grow dark skinned like a Papuan. I will put the dinosaur together and bring it to Chirchik. I’ll ride in a huge truck through the main streets of our town to the sound of fanfares. My dinosaur will be on the bed of the truck, and I will stand next to it. The city council will declare that the dinosaur will remain in town for good. It will naturally be installed on the playground near my building. Oh, how boys from neighboring buildings will envy me!

The boys, one after another, said good-bye as they reached their buildings. Kolya and I arrived at ours.

“Come out by five,” he reminded me. I nodded.

* * *

It seemed that they had decided to construct Building #14 especially for us. We could see something amazingly interesting there at any moment. Here came a dump truck loaded with slabs of reinforced concrete. And right after that, a crane rolled up to it along the rail. It picked up a slab with its mighty claw, lifted it to the floor under construction and tossed it onto that floor effortlessly. Up there, they were waiting for it; they were ready. With our faces raised, we watched how a slab, as if all by itself, without any assistance from the people whose movements seemed so easy, ended up in its place.

Vitya Smirnov watched the operator manipulating the boom of the crane with envy.

“Ah,” he sighed, “if I were him, I would lift the whole dump truck.”

“Are you serious? A crane couldn’t hold such a load. It would topple over.”

An argument ensued. Each of us defended his opinion because we all dreamed of becoming an operator and testing the power of that machine. Of course, we wanted to do it immediately, but if worse came to worst, we planned to enter the special technical school we knew of where they taught that profession, after we finished eighth grade. Meanwhile, each of us pretended to be the master of the crane, capable of moving all those wonderful levers, pushing buttons, switching lights on and off. Just move the lever and the hook would turn. Press the pedal, and the giant would smoothly glide down the rails. Push a button and a load would be lifted. And you just sat in that tower enjoying your omnipotence. You were up there all alone, with just the blue sky and the birds around you. Down below, people wearing helmets scurried back and forth like ants in search of food. Here, they surrounded that crawling caterpillar, the dump truck. They swarmed around it, waiting. Who were they waiting for? Of course, they were waiting for you. You sailed up to them in your enormous crane and attacked that caterpillar…

“It will turn over!” “No, it won’t!” That was us with our hearts in our throats from the fear and ecstasy of watching the team that worked all the way up there, a construction worker who made himself comfortable on the edge of the wall to smoke his cigarette. What could he see from there? Wasn’t he scared?

It was hard to say what was more interesting – observing the frenetic life of the construction site during the day or sneaking to the site after five in the afternoon, when the workday was over.

It only seemed to the builders that the construction site was resting without them. In fact, it was living a secret life from five in the afternoon till late at night. Boys came running like cockroaches from all over the neighborhood. It was dark. Without watchmen and guard dogs, we were the masters with absolute power there.

The construction site was covered with pebbles. We used them as hand grenades. We used tar as camouflage paint, piles of sand became shelters and the cabin of the crane an observation deck. It goes without saying that real “war games” took place right there. Though we sometimes thought up other games or simply wandered around, taking pleasure in our secret ownership of that wonderful place.

Later in the evening when it was pitch dark, high school students often went there. We could hear their voices and see the flickering lights of their cigarettes.

That night, our group crowded around the big blocks of tar. The sun had softened them during the day, and we hurried to tear off large pieces for chewing. We didn’t have any special recipe for doing this. We would just chew pieces of tar, and soon they’d became really soft and elastic in our mouths. It’s true that some experts and gourmets would add paraffin, and that chewing gum was undoubtedly softer and tasted pleasanter. We were all working diligently, chewing our tar. The blocks of tar looked like huge prehistoric hedgehogs.

Then we heard voices. Two tall guys were approaching us.

“Hey, Sipa, is that you hanging out with toddlers? That’s something!” one of them yelled.

Sipa – Sergey Cheremisin, a fifth-grade student from our building – was embarrassed. He had really been enjoying chewing tar in our company. Now he was ashamed of us. But Oleg, one of the guys, displayed magnanimity. “Come with us,” he said waving a bottle he held in his hand. Who would turn down such an invitation? Besides, Sergey vouched for us, “They won’t sell us out.” And he trudged along with the big guys.

A rather deep pit had been dug at the edge of the construction site, a perfect dugout for five or six people.

“Go get some plywood,” Oleg ordered. And we, racing one another, rushed around in search of large, clean pieces of plywood.

“That’s good,” our new leader said approvingly. “Now cover the pit… That’s my boys! Now into the dugout… Wait, wait… We’re one too many.” Oleg glanced around at us and nodded to me. “You’ll stand guard for now. We’ll replace you later.”

Before I had time to utter a word, Oleg had given me a wooden object.

“This is your machine gun. Keep a sharp eye out!”

And they dove into the dugout.

So, I began to walk back and forth, protecting the dugout from a surprise attack with great seriousness.

Time passed. The crimson ball of the sun slid behind the faraway hills and almost disappeared. The outlines of the trees were becoming blurred in the twilight… It grew colder. I could hear laughter coming from the dugout. They were having a good time eating something tasty. It was warm in there.

At last, I made up my mind. Bending over the hole, I shouted, “Hey, it’s been too long! It’s time to replace me!”

“You’re on guard duty!” I heard Oleg’s voice. And then he said, softer, to his friends, who must have been sitting next to him, “What else is a Jew good for? Only to be a guard.”

And I could hear laughter coming from down there. It was sickeningly repugnant, disgusting laughter. It was so far and at the same time so near. It rang in my ears, growing louder, louder and louder. It vibrated my eardrums till it hurt. And I continued to hear in that laughter “Jew… Jew… Jew…”

I was just six, but I knew what it meant. I had heard the word “Jew” when adults talked. I heard about hostility toward Jews in our “harmonious and united” country. But those were conversations about something abstract, about something that was out there, outside my life and had nothing to do with me, couldn’t cause me harm or pain.

Up until today, until this very moment, in this dugout.

My heart began pounding violently. I felt a sharp pain in my chest. I threw down my machine gun and rushed away.

And the laughter raced after me…

Chapter 16. Dog Eaters

I was on the way home from school, skipping and singing. I was singing loudly so that passersby could hear. Let them guess what happy event had made me sing! Today, I received my first grade, and it was an A, for good behavior. It wasn’t difficult to be an A student, I thought. Behave yourself, and that’s it.

My joy wasn’t disinterested. Father had promised that I could go to Kislovodsk in the summer if I finished the first school year as at least a B student. Of course, I dreamed about that trip. And now, the first step had been taken. I had already made some sort of progress in my mind, and Kislovodsk seemed a reality. Really, it was just two… three… eight months before summer, and then I would be there! I could already see the mountains in front of me, the camp hidden among them, the lake, the boats and other wonderful things.

Transported to Kislovodsk, I didn’t notice that I had reached my building, where I saw a bunch of boys at the entrance. Squatting, they surrounded Leda, our yard dog. Her clever eyes always shined like two sunny orbs during the day and two twinkling stars at night. Her raised tail would wag back and forth. Leda was very friendly. She enjoyed our company, and we enjoyed hers. We were generous with caresses. We would pat her little snout and kiss her cold black nose, but we really had to keep an eye on what was going on around us for we didn’t want our parents to see this. We were told all the time that it wasn’t hygienic to kiss and pat a yard dog, or even to play with her. It was useless to argue with adults. It was better to pretend that we sometimes forgot those rules. Besides, our parents were illogical, since many of them liked Leda very much and fed her and all that.

Our relations with Leda had become even closer recently – she’d had pups, and not for the first time. Leda had pups almost every year. It was always a big event for us. She would spend her time in the basement where she kept the pups. Leda seldom left her pups, so some of the boys would visit the dog family. They went there to admire the pups or, when they remembered that it was necessary, to feed Leda. However, those were the older boys, and only a few of them, because it was spooky in the basement. Today, Leda came to the entrance herself, and not because she missed us. Her empty nipples were hanging from her skinny stomach. She needed to fortify herself to feed the pups. Leda was often hungry nowadays. Unlike other dogs, she didn’t wander around the garbage bins in search of food. Leda was squeamish about garbage. She was our yard dog, a member of our society, so to speak, and she knew that. She understood that she got her allowance from building #15.

Each building had its own yard dog, but ours was the best. We were proud of Leda, who was always groomed, without burrs, her coat shiny. She walked in a special way, not like other mongrels, who moved sideways at a hurried trot, looking around cautiously, their thin tails between their legs. Leda was a refined lady, she never hurried, she walked straight and had a bold air about her. Sometimes she allowed herself to waddle, wagging her bottom. If male dogs could whistle, they would undoubtedly have whistled upon seeing that flirtatious beauty, “Wow, what a looker!”

Yes, Leda was attractive. Perhaps that’s why she had pups every year.

We were watching with pleasure as Leda swallowed pieces of sausage when we suddenly heard a piercing cry, “Dog eaters!”

Vitya Smirnov, disheveled and flushed, came running to our entrance with that shout – he lived in the neighboring building – and ran away, probably to inform his own people. Indeed, not a moment had elapsed when a small truck appeared around the corner. It was a disgusting truck. We hated and feared it along with those who drove it. They were “dog eaters,” a team that went around catching stray dogs: that was what our Leda was considered.

Apartment buildings had no right to keep such dogs. Residents couldn’t even protest against these treacherous raids. That was the problem. We boys were the only defenders of the animals.

We knew the hustlers in the truck very well. They called on our parts quite often. We waged a “guerrilla war” against them year after year.

The guy with the indifferent blank expression on his round physiognomy was behind the wheel. He was short and moved around clumsily on his bowlegs, as if he were about to stumble on the smooth surface and take a tumble. His buddy, his face covered with stubble and a crumpled cigarette between his lips, always wore high boots for some reason.

Many a time we watched with disdain the way the dog eaters acted. After siting yet another victim, they would pop out of the truck and try to throw a kind of lasso made of thick, twisted wire over a dog’s head. The noose smelled of death. It looked especially terrible when it was around a dog’s neck.

The residents of our building could hardly be gladdened by that sight, except the secret sadists among them. Dog eaters were cursed at. Attempts were made to shame them.

“What do you teach kids? To kill animals?” someone asked mournfully from a veranda.

“I’m sure you use soap,” the unshaven one usually answered.

“And what will you say if one of them bites your child?” the dimwitted one asked.

They said the dogs were used to make soap. The boys thought it was nonsense. Couldn’t they possibly come up with a different way to make it? So many things had been invented, and soap must have been made of chemicals. And if it was true that dogs were used to make soap, it would be disgusting even to touch it. You would wash your hands and think, “These suds could be our Leda.”

Besides, we kids had a serious suspicion. To be precise, we were sure that the dog eaters were catching animals in order to feast on their meat. That’s why we called them dog eaters.

“Why not? It’s very simple,” we discussed the cause of dog eating. “There’s often no meat at the bazaar. That’s why they try to catch poor dogs. They skin them and chop the meat into pieces. They eat it themselves and take some of it to the bazaar. Just try to tell dog meat from mutton.”

Aroused by such ideas, our hatred of the dog eaters grew boundlessly. Unlike the adults, all of us, especially those who were older, did not limit ourselves to verbal altercations with our enemies. We devised different methods of defense and keen plans for revenge. While the dog hunters were trying to catch their prey, we boys would either puncture the tires of their truck or stick matches into the ignition. Once, we even managed to open the truck and set almost a dozen dogs free. And later, hiding in the hallways, we writhed with laughter as we watched the dog eaters’ growing rage.

Of course, as they were arriving, our first task was defense. We had to make our plans in advance, and they had to be carefully thought out. Today’s tactic was clear – hide in the basement, that very basement where Leda fed her pups.

We retreated, like the Spartans, forming a triangle, holding our briefcases out like shields, with Leda in the middle. We safely reached the third entrance, where there was a staircase leading to the basement. Going down there with Leda was not as scary as going by ourselves, but still… many of us, including me, were afraid of the basement. Its dark expanse stretched under the building for its entire length and was lit only by sunlight streaming through small windows in the back wall. Besides, the ceiling was low, and we had to bend over to walk.

The darkness and desolation made the basement a perfect refuge for all kinds of riffraff who would stay there overnight, or sometimes even live there. An alcoholic who was drinking like a fish stayed there until he sobered up; a homeless hobo lived there for a month or so until he was chased out. It would be all right if it were just that, but the high school students talked vaguely about evil spirits and ghosts.

“Once I stood there…” Sipa was telling us, “smoking. Suddenly, I looked around and saw ‘it’ staring at me with its glowing eyes. And it was mumbling as if it had been wounded… I don’t know how I managed to escape.”

“That was a homeless drunk,” his friends laughed at him. “He was asking you to help him cure his hangover, but you didn’t understand him you were so scared. You can’t be serious!”

They laughed all right, but it gave us the creeps.

* * *

Leda ran in front of us as we walked in single file, looking around, even though it was absolutely dark. We hadn’t equipped ourselves with flashlights – that was a big mistake, since it was difficult to walk in the basement without stumbling, even with flashlights. You could come across anything there – pieces of pipe, chunks of cement, bottles, various types of garbage, not to mention dried up human excrement. But we walked and walked and walked. Leda’s shining eyes showed us the way that she knew very well.

The pups, all seven of them, lay on the rags by one of the windows. We could get a better look at them there. They were tiny, and they poked each other with their wet little noses, yelping softly. How aminated they became when they smelled their mother. Pushing each other impatiently, they crawled to her belly. It wasn’t far to crawl. As soon as Leda reached them, she would sniff them without fail and lie down on her side.

We grew quiet. All we could hear was the smacking of their lips.

Suddenly, a match was struck a few steps away, by the wall. Someone uttered a cry. We didn’t even have time to get scared, as the flame illuminated Oleg’s face.

“Who are you guys hiding from?” he asked.

“From the dog eaters!” and we began to tell him about our recent “battle,” interrupting each other.

Leda was a participant in the conversation. She whirled at Oleg’s feet, yelping quietly and wagging her tail. Leda liked Oleg. He had been ready to fight to defend her many times. Dogs can discern people’s good qualities better than some humans.

“We should have burned their shed long ago,” Oleg mumbled, after listening to our story about the dog eaters.

The idea received enthusiastic support, but he never got a chance to burn down the stand.

Saying good-bye to Leda and the pups, we never imagined that we were seeing our dog for the last time, but that was what happened. Leda disappeared the next day. No one knew what had happened or how it happened. And the dog eaters never showed up again.

We ran through all the yards in the neighborhood. We asked everyone, children and adults, but no one had caught sight of her. We managed to give two of her pups to nice people, but the other five had to be drowned. Of course, the adults did it, not us.

We didn’t adopt another stray dog. It just didn’t work out. We also didn’t want to be unfaithful to Leda, for we hoped she would come back one day.

Chapter 17. A Gulp of Life

The caterpillar tracks of tanks rattled, booming shots rumbled, the barrels of cannons gave off smoke. It was just another exercise underway on the training ground of the tank school. We watched the “battle” with agitation, ecstasy and envy from the roof of our building.

We were really lucky to live in this building. We were so lucky that all the boys in town envied us. A huge plot of vacant land began behind our building and stretched for a few kilometers up into the hills. The tank school was located at the edge of that plot. The training ground where the tank exercises were carried out wasn’t far from the school. Well? Is it clear now why we were lucky? We could watch that wonderful spectacle – which was sweeter for us than any movie about war – from the roof of our building, as if from the stands of a stadium. Were we capable of simply watching? Actually, we were not on the roof but on a hill from which, as representatives of General Headquarters, we directed the battle.

“Where… Where the heck are you going? Get in position to intercept them! C’mon!” Vitya Smirnov yelled, peering into the distance through field glasses formed by his curved fingers.

We heard muted submachinegun shots… then single pistol shots…

“That was a Kalashnikov… Now it’s tracer bullets…” it was Kolya Kulikov explaining what was going on as he sat with his eyes closed. He was a real expert. Kolya rocked to the rhythm of the shooting, hugging his knees and straining his hearing till he had a sharp pain in his ears. It was as if he were sitting somewhere in a concert hall, enjoying classical music… “Three… four… five…” he counted. “They’ll be done shortly.”

A sixth revolver shot rang out, and a short period of silence fell, both on the training ground and on the roof, but the events continued unfolding in our imagination. Here was an officer lying in a trench. He was wounded, and he was outnumbered. He had no more bullets in his pistol. They were surrounding him… and…

“That’s the end,” Kolya exhaled. He wasn’t rocking any longer. There was suffering in his eyes. “That’s the end. He’s been killed.”

But still we were listening, waiting… what if…

There it was! Bang-bang-bang – single shots were heard.

“No, he hasn’t been killed,” Vitya declared triumphantly. “He was changing the cartridge clip. Kolya, you always panic.”

Yes, of course, we were representatives of General Headquarters on the hill. But we’d rather have been down there, on the battlefield, dashing forward in pursuit of the enemy, or seated at the levers of military vehicles. Forward, always forward!

Sweet dreams…

Many boys in our town dreamed of becoming military men. They were a special caste in Chirchik, held high in our esteem. They were full of merit, both inner and outer. They knew how to show off their bearing. An officer would walk, clad in his impeccably ironed tunic with stars sparkling on the epaulets, his shoulders thrown back, his chest well-developed, his feet moving springily and rhythmically as if he were marching in formation. He certainly knew that children’s shiny eyes, and perhaps girls’ eyes too, followed him closely. But his strict gaze was fixed on the distance. He absolutely did not notice anyone. Of course, he noticed those of senior rank, and he saluted them precisely and handsomely.

It would be nice to befriend a military man’s son. Such a boy’s life was far more interesting that ours. Now and then, his father would take him along to a military school where he could get close enough to tanks to touch them, or he might even get to hold a submachinegun in his hands.

The exercise came to an end. The tanks, one by one, turned their turrets toward the hills and headed back to their encampments. We were also about to disperse.

The roof of our building was flat with a slight incline. It had no railing around its perimeter. Only a few brave boys dared to approach the very edge. They knew how to adjust a television cable or knock down icicles that were a danger to pedestrians. My knees would begin to tremble at the very thought of going near the edge of the roof.

We were about to leave the roof when the Oparin brothers came through the door leading to the stairs – Vova, who was my age, and Gennady, who was older. Their father was a military man, and Gennady had already decided he would enter military school after he graduated.

“What are you doing here?” he asked angrily, in surprise. “Get out of here!”

“The leaves have already dried!” Zhenya Andreyev shouted and was the first to dart to the door.

The roof was an observation post for us, but it served as a kind of production area for older boys. Hand-made cigarettes rolled from cherry tree leaves would be hung from the antennas to dry. Hemp, secretly grown behind the garage, was often dried on a secluded corner of the roof. Was it possible that Gennady thought that we, the younger boys, didn’t know about it? And why did they, the older boys, skip watching the exercises, those fascinating spectacles? We discussed this for a long time before we split up to go home.

Father was sitting on the bed, breathing hoarsely. He had once again suffered a severe asthma attack. He was so weak that he couldn’t leave “the concrete coffin” – as he called our apartment – to sit on the bench near the entrance. He called to me in a barely audible voice.

“Do you remember where the hospital is? Go there and get some oxygen…” and he gave me the oxygen pillow with its breathing tube. “I called them… The doctor is expecting you.”

One could get to the hospital by bus, but I decided it would be faster to walk. As I was walking, I remembered with annoyance that the entrance to the hospital grounds was at the far end of the fence. That meant that it would take me at least half an hour to get there. At last, I arrived. I found the doctor on duty and held the pillow out to him. The doctor looked at me over his glasses, with an expression of great surprise.

“Who are you with?” he asked. “Where did you get this pillow?”

“My papa gave it to me for you to fill …”

“What papa?”

“From Yubilayny settlement,” I answered, scared now.

Father had told me, “The doctor is expecting you,” but this one didn’t expect me at all. What if he was the wrong doctor and wouldn’t fill the pillow?

“It must have been your father who called an hour ago,” the doctor figured out at last. “Yes, he said ‘My son will come over.’ But I thought his son was an adult… How old are you, kid?”

“Six,” I answered, with no inkling that we were practically reenacting the dialogue from a famous poem by Nekrasov.

The doctor was silent. Then he cleared his throat.

“Your mama must be at work now, right? And your papa… You see I don’t have a car at the moment… Nurse!” he suddenly shouted, “Fill it quickly, but not quite all the way.”

Oxygen began hissing into the tube. The doctor squatted and gave me the pillow.

“Here it is… You don’t smoke, right?” he stroked my hair. “Carry it carefully. Remember – it’s a gulp of life for your papa.”

I grabbed the pillow and rushed home as fast as I could.

Chapter 18. With a Forelock

Our class was discussing the terrible news. Renat Khabiyev had injured his hand. Three fingers had been blown off. The two remaining ones had been disfigured.

Yesterday, after classes, Renat and a few high school students had made their way to the training ground. There was no need to explain that they had gone there to collect cartridge cases. Renat was lucky – he had found an unexploded military cartridge. It was a very valuable find because you could remove the capsule from a cartridge, and a capsule was… Well, you know what I mean. When he returned to the yard, he got down to business. Of course, he couldn’t do it at home.

“He was separating the capsule from the cartridge,” Zhenya Zhiltsov was telling his agitated listeners, “when it exploded… right in his hand!”

Tall Zhenya always hung out near the fifth graders, and he always knew all the news.

The boys were silent. Obviously, almost every one of them tried to imagine what horrible pain Renat had felt. Expressions of suffering appeared on many faces. Timur Timirshayev stared at his palm and pressed three fingers to it, wincing.

“At least it’s his left hand,” Sergey Bulgakov broke the silence.

He belonged to the same group as Zhiltsov. They were not known for outstanding academic achievement. They were useful when it came to either beating someone up or “giving a warning.” As for Renat, he wasn’t a mischief-maker, and he had gotten into that group accidentally. Renat belonged to a poor Uzbek family with many children. They didn’t live in one of the new buildings but rather in a clay house in the settlement. He sat quietly at the last desk in class. He wasn’t among those who always raised their hands, eager to demonstrate their superior knowledge at the blackboard.

Yekaterina Ivanovna entered the classroom. We rushed to our seats.

After laying her briefcase on her desk, she paced the room for a long time. She was silent and didn’t look at us. She didn’t have the usual smile on her round, good-natured face. She had such a sad expression that all of us grew even more ill at ease.

“Well, first graders of Class B,” she said as she stopped walking. “Have you at last excelled? Who was with Renat at the training ground yesterday?”

Naturally, the class was silent. Even if someone had been at the training ground, was he foolish enough to inform her about it? And if anyone knew with whom Renat had gone to the training ground, they would never betray their friends. That was for sure.

Yekaterina Ivanovna directed her stern looks at Zhiltsov, Bulgakov and Gaag. They were silent like everyone else.

“How can they allow such naughty children to join the ranks of Young Octobrists?” Yekaterina Ivanovna reproached us.

It was true that we had been wearing the pins for two weeks, the little stars of the Octobrists, and we were very proud of it. But was it against the Octobrists’ rules to play war games and stock cartridges for combat operations? Of course, Renat’s misfortune scared everybody, but at the same time, he was considered a war hero, injured in combat.

No, Yekaterina Ivanovna’s reproaches didn’t arouse our remorse. The class was silent…

After scolding us a bit more, Yekaterina Ivanovna at last told us something worthwhile.

“Tomorrow after classes, we’ll go to the hospital to visit Renat. Who can come?”

So many hands were raised that they formed a dense forest. The class began to buzz, completely forgetting its recent inability to speak.

As always, a few of us walked home together. Khobeyev’s name was on everyone’s lips, and, yes, we felt sorry for him. But we cast glances in the direction of the training ground without a sense of fear. The training ground became even more desirable.

Here we were near building #14, in other words, near the former construction site. Oh, how we missed that construction site! We felt as if something had been taken from us, a thing that had been the principal delight of our lives. How many adventures we had had there! As for the new building… Well, what about it? It looked like a big freshly painted poster – meticulously cleaned glass sparkled in white window frames, the freshly painted dark red entrance door shined. The stairways smelled nicely of whitewash. Joyful new tenants stomped up the steps carrying their baggage.

If there was anything that attracted us to the new building, it was the chance to make new friends. Also, a new barbershop had opened at the end of the building.

And we stopped in there today. Kolya remembered that the director of studies had reprimanded him, “Your hair is too long. You look sloppy.” Edem and I decided to keep him company.

The spacious, well-lit barber shop, which occupied one of the corners of the building, was furnished modestly: just two barber chairs and three seats for waiting customers. The fan, with its rubber blades, was buzzing, and soft music could be heard on the radio. Both barber chairs were occupied by customers. We sat down on the seats and became spectators to this most interesting show. The actors, that is the barbers, wore white gowns, like doctors. The older one, who undoubtedly played the leading role, manipulated first clippers, then scissors, skillfully. His hands flashed up and down, to the left and to the right. He spun around the barber chair like a figure skater in a rink. His fat belly didn’t allow him to get close enough to the barber chair, so he stretched out his arms in a comical way as he worked. Maybe that was why it seemed that he cut hair by touch, without looking at his customer’s head. “What if he cuts off the customer’s ear?” I thought. He could cut it off and not even notice. Then he could cut off the other ear. Then he could let the customer go, and the customer would stand up without noticing anything. After all, everything would still be symmetrical. He wouldn’t even realize that he was deaf. I thought that was what would happen if one’s ears were cut off. And he would just nod, “Thank you, it’s a very nice haircut. Nothing is sticking out.” And he would leave.

The second actor was young and not as agile. He must have been a novice. He wasn’t in a hurry and, after clicking his scissors a few times, he’d take a few steps back to examine his customer’s head.

The master was the first to finish his work. His chair was vacant. He looked at us and motioned to us invitingly, pointing to his barber chair. We looked at each other. It was scary for some reason. We grabbed hold of our chairs. We felt as if we had not been invited to sit in a barber chair but rather to climb onto an operating table. And the doctor, or rather the barber, froze while he waited for us to respond to his invitation, “Well, who’ll be the first to make up his mind?”

The first one was me, even though I didn’t want to at all. I was sitting in the middle between Kolya and Edem, and they, unexpectedly and treacherously, pushed me off the chair. I thought they were my friends. I had no choice but to go and sit in the barber chair. And while the barber was wrapping a white sheet around my shoulders, I imagined in dismay how the blood would run down it. A scared yet quite likeable little boy with a tidy hairdo, not at all shaggy, looked out at me from the mirror. His eyes were pleading: “Please, don’t do it! It’s a mistake. You have the wrong boy.”

“Which hairstyle do you prefer, young man?” the barber asked with condescending politeness. “I think you’ll go for the one with a forelock.”

I nodded without saying a word. The choice was limited to With a Forelock, Skin Fade and Youth. I wasn’t old enough for the youth style. I didn’t like the skin fade because I would look like a prematurely bald child with a fur cap on my head. With a forelock was the only option left.

The scissors began to snip, the clippers began to buzz, and I became tenser and tenser, cringing as I felt the barber’s fat belly rubbing against my arms. I wanted him to finish quickly. It was too much. I could see the famous forelock on my forehead. It looked like we were done. The barber glanced at the mirror and turned my head from side to side. Now he would set me free, but no, he grabbed the clippers again and began to expose the back of my head. V-v-zh-zh, v-vzh-zh, the clippers rumbled like a car going uphill. It seemed to me that I was about to go deaf, yet the Professor of Barber Affairs continued torturing me. He pushed the clippers hard into the back of my head as if trying to drill into it. Perhaps he had already done so, and now he was scraping it the way you scrape asphalt with a shovel.

I was covered in sweat. My cheeks and ears were on fire. I could see my friends behind me in the mirror. They were shaking with soundless laughter, grabbing the cushions of their chairs with their hands.

Suddenly, everything was quiet. I took a deep breath. I was relieved. That was it. And right away, I lurched forward, as I got a shock, an unbearable burning sensation – the master generously wiped the bare scratched-up back of my head with eau-de-cologne.

I stood up, dumbfounded, and shook my head. I saw a billiard ball rocking first to the right and then to the left in the mirror. The forelock and a small wisp of hair that looked like a little island in the ocean were glued to the top of my head. But my ears were intact, all the more noticeable since they were still on fire.

“Do you like it?” the potbellied master asked with a kind smile. I nodded. If I’d said I didn’t, he might have dragged me back into the chair. I wanted it to stop so I could sit in peace and enjoy the show. It was my friends’ turn now.

After some slight jostling, and without any exchange of words, – Kolya nudged Edem, Edem nudged Kolya – it was Kolya who landed in the master’s chair. Edem rushed to the chair of the novice, which had just become available.

“Skin fade, please,” Kolya requested. He wasn’t amused any longer. He remembered my suffering.

“A skin fade wouldn’t be right for you,” the master answered. “You had a forelock before.”

Kolya was at a loss and, as always in such cases, he twisted his lips to the side and began to mumble something incomprehensible.

“What? A forelock?” Mr. Potbelly responded eagerly. “That’s good!” The scissors immediately began to click. Kolya didn’t even have time to shout “Ow!”

Now it was my turn to have fun. Now I was the one bursting with laughter as the destructive clipper grabbed hold of the back of Kolya’s head. It munched on his light hair like a hungry dog opening a wide path for itself. Aha! Now it was scraping like a shovel. I gazed with malicious pleasure at the back of Kolya’s head and at the mirror in which his tomato-red face was reflected. Now and then, I would cast a glance at Edem, for whom matters were no better – a forelock was already looming on his forehead.

Then three boys were walking home. As they walked, they scratched the shaven backs of their heads. They walked without talking, thinking about the same thing – how tomorrow in the yard and at school, boys would delight in thinking up nicknames for them, repeating the word “forelock” all the time and giving them flicks to their foreheads, which were known as “initiation.” Who knew what else awaited them?

One thing they knew for sure – they would never again go to the new barbershop.

Chapter 19. The Residents of Our Building Gossip, Laugh and Cry

The bench near our entrance was the setting for a kind of court that was continuously in session, where any gossip might turn into a long-running hearing.

But today, as I approached the entrance, I noticed something unusual – there were more than the customary number of adults there. None of them were sitting on the bench. Instead, they were all standing and whispering, and they all looked sad. Sasha Kulikov came out of the building.

“What’s wrong with you?” he said, seeing that I was observing the gathering with surprise. “Haven’t you heard… that Ilyas drowned?”

“Ilyas… today… no, not today. I didn’t see him at school today… I didn’t see him in the yard either.”

Ilyas lived on the fourth floor of our wing of the building. He was a fifth grader. We kids respected him very much, and not just because he was older. All the boys respected Ilyas. Hardly anyone could compete with him when he played soccer in the yard. He was skilled, fast, and frisky. He never bragged about his achievements. He never bragged about anything, and he was very fair, for which he was especially admired. He would halt arguments, even fights, and, on top of that, he would reconcile the boys so that they didn’t ruin a friendship just to nurse a grudge.

Ilyas… How did it happen?

Sasha had heard that Ilyas and his friend Petya supposedly went for a walk by the canal. Ilyas slipped and fell on the concrete edge. He must have been knocked out, slid from the edge into the water and never resurfaced.

We moved closer to listen to what the adults were saying.

The accident had happened the day before, Sunday, in the afternoon. Ilyas’s parents grew anxious when their son didn’t return home by late evening. And his friend – what a pathetic coward he was – was scared and didn’t tell anyone what had happened. Only when Ilyas’s parents called him and began to ask him questions did he break down and tell them the truth. He said he had hoped that Ilyas was playing a joke on him, that he had gotten out of the canal downstream and run home, but he was afraid to find out. Sasha and I were indignant – what a coward he was! What a scoundrel! Ilyas would never have done anything like that!

We discussed the tragic event for some time.

There was always something happening that would attract the attention of everyone in the large apartment building. Our entrance, like the whole building, the whole micro-district, like any other community, called a mahalla in Uzbek, lived from one event to another. The number of people drawn into the whirlwind of an event depended on one thing – the scale of what had happened. Heavy drinking and the escapades of drunkards were basically local events. There were so many drunkards, and their behavior, with rare exceptions, was so predictable and boring that they barely aroused any interest. At least one drunk would inevitably catch one’s eye every day – on a bus, at a movie theater, on a bench near a building entrance, under a bench, or in a dry arik that seemed a particularly cozy place to catch up on one’s sleep.

“Vasilyich drank himself into a fog again,” a woman informed her neighbors. “He thrashed poor Veronica again.”

“She’s such a foolish thing. She should have called the police long ago. He hasn’t been to the sobering-up station for a long time.”

In fact, there was nothing more they could add to that conversation for it had all been discussed more than once.

Scandals and fights – much more exciting events – attracted the attention of the entire building. They happened quite often and invariably evoked interest. The news would spread immediately and be the topic of heated discussion near every entrance.

“Ester! Shura!” Fat Dora waved her hand urging my mama and her factory friend to join her. “Have you heard about it? You mean you haven’t heard?” and she would inform them, accompanied by the whirring of her coffee grinder. “Vova Oparin broke Vasilyev’s window. It was such an awful fight!… No, between the fathers! They bloodied each other’s faces!”

It was worth watching Dora when she reported an incident. Her pupils, magnified by the thick lenses of her eyeglasses, would widen to supernatural size. Her eyes seemed about to pop out of their sockets and run to the scene of the fight. She would forget to blink; it almost seemed as if she would forget to breathe. Her big body seemed to inflate like an oxygen pillow. She didn’t want to waste precious time inhaling and exhaling but instead used it to speak non-stop.

Someone’s death was a much more significant event that brought together the residents of neighboring buildings and the whole mahalla.

Funerals took place quite often in the Yubileiny settlement. They always ended up with a procession on the street that was sometimes silent, other times resounding with the wails of women mourning the loss of the deceased. No matter how sad it was in itself, for us boys, a funeral was an important diversion – a lot to see and hear. And, in general, where else, apart from parades, could you see such a gathering of people?

It was strange that the death of Bogeyman, a person who had perhaps less claim to respect than anyone else in the mahalla, was the cause of the deepest sorrow, mixed with remorse, that my friends and I experienced.

Bogeyman – his nickname was uttered much more often than his name, Anatoly – had been a man of about forty-five who lived in one of the buildings nearby. He was a degenerate drunk whom we hardly ever saw sober. It was true that, unlike other drunks, Bogeyman didn’t run wild and didn’t curse. He used to zigzag unsteadily down our street, and when he had no more energy to walk, he would lie down on one of the benches near our entrance and take a peaceful nap. With his cheek on his hands and his knees bent, he would snore softly as if in a comfortable bed.

Perhaps, no one would have bothered him, but… he gave off an appalling stench.

“Hey, Bogeyman, get out of here!” enraged tenants, tired of his odor, would shout from their verandas. “Hey, Bogeyman, get lost!”

“A cannon ball wouldn’t wake him up!” someone echoed from another veranda.

“He’s quarreled with his wife again!” Dora would add. She always had the latest news.

“Anyone would drink living with such a bitch; even a dog wouldn’t want to live with her,” was another neighbor’s brief yet accurate opinion about Bogeyman’s wife Marya, as loud as the whole bazaar. “Leave the poor thing to his nap, we can put up with it.”

The “hero of the occasion” would smile in his dreams and sniffle peacefully as he lay on the bench. Perhaps, among his sleepy drunken thoughts was the following one: “I have wonderful understanding neighbors who pity me, an unfortunate man.”

Alas, Uncle Anatoly – that’s how we sometimes called him – would forget that “understanding” neighbors had children who were not at all wonderful or understanding. On the contrary, they were capable of carrying out cruel and unpredictable pranks.

That was what happened once when Bogeyman was unfortunate enough to fall asleep on the bench near the entrance of the building where the Oparins lived. Around that time, the Oparin brothers walked out of their building as a group of kids, including Rustem and me, were passing by. Naturally, we all surrounded the bench on which Bogeyman was snoring softly. After all, he was something to look at, if we could ignore the stench.

“He couldn’t find a better place to stink?” Gennady asked angrily. He never missed a chance to demonstrate his valor and other qualities of a future officer. “Just you wait, you’ll be hopping around soon. Guys, let’s make a ‘bicycle’ for him. Who has paper? Run! Get some paper!” he commanded, pulling some matches out of his pocket.

His younger brother was gentler and more compassionate, either because of his age or his disposition. He tried to prevent the inevitable.

“Hey, get up! Please, get up!” he pleaded in his thin voice, shaking the unfortunate drunk and pulling at his sleeve.

“Get out of here, what are you? The Red Cross?” Gennady pushed his little brother away. “You shouldn’t feel sorry for this piece of rotten carrion…” and he quickly got down to business, with all the experience he had.

After checking whether anyone could see him through the windows or from the street, Gennady took Bogeyman’s shoes off. Naturally, he wasn’t wearing socks. His dirty, swollen toes were exposed. One of the boys tore the newspaper into long strips and twisted them into braids. Gennady inserted the braids between Boogeyman’s stained toes. Now, the soles of his feet looked like two tattered brooms made of twigs. A match was struck, and the brooms turned into candles with little purplish crowns of flame, pale in the daylight.

I watched what happened next from the entrance hall of our building where we were hiding. I had retired there before anyone else, for I hadn’t the heart to stay through to the end. Poor Bogeyman woke up from the pain and rolled off the bench with a moan… Now he’ll run, we thought, watching him in horror and excitement, through the crack. He would run and, since he was half awake, he wouldn’t understand what had happened to him and why his toes were on fire. His feet would look like the violently spinning wheels of a bicycle with burning spokes, since he would be running in a state of panic. That was why the boys called this operation “bicycle.”

Yes, we had practiced the operation, and we are very ashamed to admit it, on unfortunate cats. But Bogeyman was more quick-witted than the cats. He bent over and pulled the burning “bicycle spokes” from between his toes, shook his burned fingers and, after looking around, stared at the entrance. His fiery red cheeks and crimson nose, along with his wide red eyes, were such a scary sight that we couldn’t stand it any longer.

“Take off!” tall Gennady was the first to yell, and we dashed out of the entrance with the speed of a bullet. We heard “Take off!” after we had already done so, for fear is a great motivator. It can turn a lame person into a sprinter.

I was running toward the garbage bins. I wasn’t running, I was flying. I could hear his tramping and heavy breathing behind me… He could catch up with me… So what if I hadn’t taken part in the evil prank but had only watched and giggled? He didn’t know that.

“I’ll never do it again… I won’t…” I repeated to myself, since I felt just as guilty as Gennady Oparin.

That was how I made it to the garbage bins. I looked over my shoulder and didn’t see anyone. What I heard must have been my own stomping and heavy breathing.

My heart was pounding so hard that it echoed in my ears. My cheeks were on fire. My face, hair and back were drenched in sweat. Before I had time to catch my breath, I heard heavy running again. Now it was Rustem running to the garbage bins with Bogeyman chasing him. He ran, stomping his feet heavily. He ran fast with no zigzagging, as if he weren’t drunk. Everything now was exactly as when I had imagined I was running from him.

I darted behind the garbage bins. I could see Rustem dashing to the left near the arik. Bogeyman turned too. Then Rustem, without stopping, jumped over the arik, but Uncle Anatoly, running at top speed, plopped into the water.

I groaned. The arik was narrow… Heavy Bogeyman must have hurt himself… but he didn’t. Here he was, wet all over, climbing out of the arik.

To continue chasing Rustem was out of the question. We felt it was inappropriate to laugh. We felt as if we had been doused with water too.

What a strange feeling remorse is. With adults it sometimes works in time to prevent some not quite honest action. A kind of momentary analysis takes place when all pros and cons are pondered. It’s quite different with children, as far as I know. Conscience and remorse begin to torment them after something happens.

That was what happened to us.

The soaking wet Bogeyman stood by the arik looking around. Then he trudged along home.

We also went home without saying a word to each other. We all, even Gennady Oparin, were ill at ease.

* * *

That very Bogeyman, or rather Uncle Anatoly, passed away suddenly. It happened approximately a year after we played that cruel prank on him. We would certainly come across Bogeyman from time to time after that, but we tried to avoid him. Then I heard that he had passed away… How – I didn’t know. The circumstances of his death were the subject of heated discussion among residents of our building and the neighboring ones.

Uncle Anatoly was Russian, and Russians, as everyone knows, have the most pompous funerals: music, flowers, and all that, not like the Tatars or the Jews, for example, who wrap a body in a cloth and carry it quietly to the cemetery… For us boys, and probably for the adults too, it was much more interesting to participate in a Russian burial ceremony.

We were looking forward to Uncle Anatoly’s funeral with excitement mixed with no small measure of fear. A person who has passed away is alive in your memory, provided you knew the person. At the same time, a frozen face in a coffin and a terrible, nagging sensation somewhere between your chest and stomach remind you – that’s not him lying there, he’s gone… How is it possible to comprehend that terrible enigma?

The funeral wasn’t held in the morning, but rather in the afternoon, after the end of the school day. It was a sunny autumn day. Our whole group, talking very animatedly, set out for the building where Uncle Anatoly had lived. It wasn’t far, just a fifteen-minute walk. We passed the corner of our building where we had harassed Bogeyman. Here was the arik, the garbage bins… We shouldn’t have done it. There had never been a more harmless alcoholic than he… We looked at each other and grew silent, but not for long because the subject of the conversation was very interesting: what had caused Uncle Anatoly’s death?

“Some people say he poisoned himself with vinegar,” Zhenya Andreyev, my classmate and friend, presented one possibility.

“Deliberately…”

“Stop lying, you’ve gone too far!” Oleg was outraged. “Not deliberately, he simply didn’t have any cash to buy vodka.”

“Oh no,” Vitya Smirnov interrupted. “Bogeyman poisoned himself deliberately, in other words, in-ten-tio-nal-ly… because of his wife. You can be sure of that. It was all because of her. Just imagine drinking that filth…” At this point, Vitya stopped speaking and winced as he imagined himself drinking vinegar. “As you drink it, it burns into you, a living creature, but you continue drinking and telling yourself, ‘I’ll prove to her who I am! I will!’”

We grew silent vividly imagining the horrible scene of Bogeyman’s death. We envisioned him in a new heroic light.

Drawn into this heated discussion, we didn’t notice that we had arrived at our destination. Uncle Anatoly’s building was indistinguishable from ours. An open space spread behind it. Hills could be seen in the distance. Local boys had one advantage – there was a shooting gallery nearby. It was not a portable one in a van but a real military shooting gallery, a very big one, the size of half a soccer field, sunk five meters into the ground. Even we could hear the sounds of shots when members of tank crews practiced shooting their handguns, and the boys from that building sometimes managed to see shooting with their own eyes.

A big crowd, bright with women’s head scarfs, had already gathered at the entrance by the time we arrived. They were expected to bring out the coffin at any moment.

Someone was heard weeping near the entrance. A plump woman clad in a dark dress, her hair hanging down and her tear-stained face swollen, sat on the bench. She rocked from side to side and exclaimed now and then, “You’ve abandoned me, my dear, and I’m all alone.”

Obviously, she was that very Marya, Uncle Anatoly’s wife. We boys had no sympathy for her. We decided that she looked like Baba Yaga (the Wicked Witch). If she had lost some weight, she would have looked exactly like Baba Yaga, disheveled and disgusting; all she needed was a broom to fly on.

Women were fussing around Marya, holding her by the shoulders, trying to console her, but her weeping and cries continued, “Oh-oh-oh, how shall I live alone?”

Zhenya Andreyev shrugged his shoulders.

“Oh yes, now she won’t have anyone to yell at.”

“She’s ruined such a man,” we nodded, utterly ennobling Bogeyman in our imagination, though Rustem suddenly remembered Uncle Anatoly’s insignificant shortcoming and whispered frighteningly to us, “Hey, guys, how will they bury him? He… stinks so terribly.”

We looked at each other, imagining that when they carried out the coffin, the familiar smell, the one we all knew, would fill the air.

“Well, they normally bathe the body,” Zhenya remembered. “Perhaps, it’ll turn out all right.”

Meanwhile, a great many people had gathered at the entrance. Boys, particularly those who, like us, had come without their parents, scurried through the crowd. No one paid attention to them for everybody was occupied in their grippingly interesting conversations. The words “vinegar,” “poisoned,” “while drunk” were frequently heard. Spiritual nourishment, to be further savored and digested, was being cooked up in the crowd. The residents of our mahalla would have a good reason to live tomorrow, the day after tomorrow, even a week later. People would ponder this subject on benches, in pavilions, while playing dominos, at bus stops. Uncle Anatoly’s death would be discussed and embroidered with details and fabrications, turning into a legend, almost a myth.

* * *

A wide panorama opened beneath the branches of the oak tree my friends and I had prudently managed to climb. We could observe the sea of swaying heads, bright head scarfs, caps, bald heads, skull caps, boys’ forelocks, girls’ braids. The muffled buzzing of voices now and then drowned out Marya’s lamentations by the entrance.

“They’re bringing him out!” Gennady Oparin shouted.

The crowd froze. The coffin cover was carried out of the building, and, almost immediately after, an open coffin with Uncle Anatoly’s body in it floated out on the shoulders of four men. The coffin was placed on stools.

The shouting became louder. Now, it was not just Marya lamenting. For some reason, all the women joined her cries. Marya rushed to the coffin to hug her husband. She was followed by one woman, then another, and a third. They were all weeping right into the dead man’s ears. We exchanged glances. Did they all love Uncle Anatoly so much? And where had they been before, when he had been drunk and lying on benches?

At last, the women stepped away from the coffin. Someone pulled the wailing Marya away. The men lifted the coffin onto their shoulders and carried it from the entrance. The crowd swayed, lined up and followed. Now came the procession. It moved slowly down the middle of the street. As it pulled even with our tree, we bent down and, motionless on the branches, stared at the coffin, not taking our eyes from it. Here it was, right below us… Who would now call him Bogeyman? He looked so smart in his white shirt and black suit. His light hair, no longer disheveled and stuck together, but neatly combed to the side, gleamed in the sunlight. His well-shaven face was frozen into a meek smile… as if he had done everything himself – bathed, shaved, combed his hair, changed his clothes and then looked at himself in the mirror and, satisfied with his new appearance, lay down quietly and died.

After the coffin passed, we tumbled down from the tree and rushed forward, overtaking the crowd. We knew that the funeral would be accompanied by music on the main street, Yubileynaya. Here were the musicians! They were waiting, and as soon as the front of the procession drew even with them, funeral marching music rang out.

That was the moment we were especially looking forward to.

Both sides of the street were crowded with people. People were looking out of windows, doors and balconies. It was as if someone very important, a government official, was being buried. It was amazing how fast people came running to the sounds of the band, like soldiers to the sound of a bugle. They looked at the band, the coffin, the crying relatives, at the whole procession and, consequently, at me, for I, in order to draw attention to myself, walked like a close relative, with my head bent low, as if stricken with grief, but my eyes darted to the left and right in order not to miss anything.

That was how I walked, slowly, taking small steps, along with the whole crowd. It felt like a huge caterpillar crawling along, and the coffin with the dead body was its head. It was a colorful head, decorated with flowers. Wreaths on the sides of the coffin were the multicolored eyes of the caterpillar. The crowd, swaying slightly to the sounds of the music, was its body.

Ba-boom, ba-ba-ba-boom! The drummer beat the rhythm. The drum was so big that he carried it attached to very wide straps, wider than those on a school backpack. And he carried it not with its top up, like a normal drum, but with its top and bottom facing sideways, so he had two surfaces for drumming. Watching the drummer from afar, one saw a man with a huge belly, and his belly must have been so stuffed that it was difficult for him to walk. So, he was pounding on his belly with drumsticks to beat it down.

It wasn’t just the drummer but all the musicians, playing from the heart, assuming that the louder they played the better. Here, for example, was a man with a pair of cymbals. They crashed so loudly that one would jump every time he struck them together. No way a blacksmith with his hammer and anvil would be heard here.

Then there was the violinist. He wriggled as he dragged his bow over the strings for all he was worth. Sweat was rolling thick and fast down his face, the sound of his violin piercing and mournful. Women who walked close to him wailed to match the violin’s tone.

In a word, we boys were ecstatic about the band. It was the accordionist who didn’t win our approval. He didn’t show enough diligence. He didn’t seem to realize that he was playing at a funeral… Heavy, serious, mustachioed, he was squeezing the bellows of his accordion effortlessly, as if they were opening and closing all by themselves. His face remained absolutely impassive and motionless, so we decided that he was a bad musician. One had to play with feeling and sadness at a funeral.

Suddenly, the procession stopped. Was it really over? Yes, it was. A small truck could be seen at the intersection, its sides lowered, its bed covered with carpets.

It was this truck onto which the coffin bearing Uncle Anatoly’s body was placed. The band stopped playing, the crowd split into groups and began to disperse. The truck and a few cars carrying relatives and friends drove off to the cemetery.

We, in turn, set out for home. It was a long walk, but the impressions we had would be enough for a long walk.

Ilyas’s funeral was quite different, and we didn’t feel the same about it as about Uncle Anatoly’s. Perhaps, it was due to the fact that the feelings we had for Ilyas were more full-fledged and humane. Whether it was that or something else, every time a conversation about the upcoming funeral started, we felt sad. We were sorry for Ilyas. And still we were going to attend his funeral, overwhelmed by that very unquenchable childish curiosity we couldn’t conceal. Ilyas didn’t just die, he drowned. Poor Ilyas was found a week after he had fallen into the arik. His body floated to the surface further downstream, by the fence of the reservoir near the hydroelectric station. We went to his place right away to bid him farewell, not on the day of the funeral but a day before.

To allay our fears, we showed up at his place in a large group – Kolya, Sasha, their sister Lena, Edem, Rustem, Vova Oparin and I. One of the adults took us to the bedroom. Our friend lay on the mattress, covered by a spread up to his waist. His head rested on a snow-white pillow, against which his face stood out distinctly. We squatted near the mattress in silence, trying to keep our eyes off the swollen blue-and-white bubble on which his slanted eyes were not visible, where his nose had slid down to his mouth, which had become tiny. A thin lock of hair could be seen on the upper part of the bubble. That was all that remained of Ilyas’s thick jet-black hair.

I was drawn to look at Ilyas, but as I did, I wanted to avert my eyes, and when I averted my eyes, I could picture Ilyas’s former face very clearly.

* * *

I remembered well a day when that face seemed especially nice, handsome and kind to me. On that day, two years before Ilyas’s death, the preparations for a ceremony were almost complete in the school cafeteria, which also served as an assembly and concert hall. We first graders were to join the Octobrists, and the third graders, the Young Pioneers. All the tables and chairs were piled on top of one another in a corner, which made the cafeteria look bigger. It seemed as if its walls had expanded. Sunlight poured through the windows and was reflected in the floor, polished to perfection.

The class on duty, 3A, was responsible for the ceremony. The third graders, wearing red armbands, ran around the hall, their faces concerned, carrying ladders, sticking posters on the wall, inflating balloons, helping set up microphones on the stage.

And they were all mumbling something. We could hear… “I give my solemn oath…to fulfill all the rules and customs…” Today they, the third graders, would have red ties tied around their necks.

But first, it was our turn.

All of us future Octobrists had been brought to the hall and directed to form three circles, one inside the other. The third graders stood inside the circles. The principal was saying something on the stage, but I was so nervous that I couldn’t understand what it was until I heard, “Future Young Pioneers, pass your batons to your young comrades!” And then, the third graders ran to us. I was so excited that it seemed to me they were not running but floating slowly and smoothly on a cloud. Someone floated to Zhenya Andreyev, who stood to my left. Someone approached Galya Bektashova, who was on my right. They were saying something, their hands flashing. Everything was happening in a fog; my heart was pounding, fear mixed with my excitement. Why hadn’t anyone run up to me? Maybe they had forgotten about me.

At that moment, a figure floated in my direction. Ilyas Ilyasov stopped in front of me. He undid his Octobrist star slowly, pinned it to my blue shirt and patted me on the shoulder.

“Congratulations, Valery! Now it’s yours. You’ve become an Octobrist.”

A smile lit his face as he turned around and began to walk away. It seemed as if he were floating, just the way he had approached me.

* * *

I saw his olive-skinned face with its broad smile and white teeth as I sat in Ilyas’s bedroom. And I didn’t want to think about what had happened to that face; I couldn’t.

Other people arrived to say farewell to our friend, and we left the bedroom. We sat on the bench near the entrance; we just sat there silently, swinging our feet. We didn’t feel like talking.

“The funeral will be tomorrow,” Rustem informed us. We knew that the funeral would be the next day.

What if this funeral were with music, like Uncle Anatoly’s.

“Uncle Anatoly,” I said pensively. We hadn’t used his nickname Bogeyman since he died.

“Is there justice in this world?” Vova Oparin echoed. “There’s no justice.”

We wordlessly agreed with him.

Even though there were many people at the entrance on the day of the funeral, it was very quiet. People talked in whispers, no one lamented. Ilyas’s mother didn’t wail and cry. Her face remains etched in my memory. It was absolutely motionless, as if it weren’t alive. Her eyes were sunken with black circles around them. People supported her on both sides, but she could still hardly walk. A stretcher was brought out. Our poor friend, wrapped in a dark cloth, lay on it. And all that was in silence, without music, crying or lamenting. It seemed strange that, with so many people around, it was so quiet.

Just as at Uncle Anatoly’s funeral, the procession moved toward the main street, though there was no coffin, just a stretcher, and a strange silence hung in the air. It was still silent when it reached the place where a van awaited. There were no musicians with instruments waiting for Ilyas.

It was a nice autumn day, still, quiet and clear. There were no dust devils swirling through the streets as so often happened at this time of year. It seemed that even the weather knew that it needed to play its role in sending Ilyas off on his last journey, in accordance with Tatar customs.

Chapter 20. We Don’t Give a … Spit

A gob of spit sailed down smoothly from above, moving in an arc until it plopped onto the asphalt below my window. It was accompanied by a sound I knew all too well. A second one followed, then a third, and so on, without stopping.

The frequency of the spitting allowed me to determine exactly how many members there were in the spitting party up above.

I, along with my friends, was so often engaged in that fascinating occupation that I had studied all its stages in detail, the speed at which the gobs fell and the sounds they made.

Now, my friends, the Edem brothers and Rustem, were engaged in spitting on the third floor, and I sat at my window on the ground floor and watched them play, without annoyance or envy.

“Aaaa-khem” was heard from above.

I knew very well what would follow.

That aa-khem sound, for instance, had just come from Rustem. I knew that he stood, holding the window frame with both hands like a gymnast holding onto a bar. He leaned back, threw back his head and snorted like a horse. Why did he do that? To get more saliva in his mouth… He now bent down to the very edge of the window and spat with all his might.

We boys had a different name for a gob of spit, we called it a kharchok. Consequently, the game, which was a competition to see who could spit the farthest without leaning out of the window was called kharching. It wasn’t a pleasant-sounding name, but… that was what we liked to call it.

So, why wasn’t I taking part in that wonderful competition today but rather sitting on my veranda as a detached observer?

I hadn’t been invited. It had been two days since the boys stopped playing with me and talking to me: they were ignoring me completely. Even though we hadn’t quarreled, I could guess what the matter was, and, though suffering from loneliness, I couldn’t force myself to ask for a truce.

We hadn’t quarreled, but our fathers had.

Ball playing near our entrance had been the cause of the quarrel. A big group of boys including Edik, Rustem and Kolya had been playing. In general, ball playing near the entrance was forbidden, but the boys broke that rule every now and then. Most often they would break the rule near our veranda. Perhaps that was what made the game especially delightful.

My father was the most explosive and intolerant adult in our building. That meant that the players enjoyed every opportunity to drive him crazy and listen to his yelling.

Perhaps that was the reason why most of the time a ball tossed into the air wouldn’t hit the asphalt, the door of the building or Dora’s veranda but rather our window.

That was the reason I would watch the game from the veranda with a feeling of dread and not join them outside.

Our window had already been broken several times. I didn’t enjoy seeing Father fly into a rage, so I tried to stay away from the players.

When the ball smashed into our window, I had just enough time to jump aside so the broken glass wouldn’t fall on me.

Before the clinking and clanking could die out, I heard the stomping of feet – the frightened boys rushed away in all directions. It was safer to listen to Yuabov’s raging from a distance. I looked around. There was the black rubber ball I knew so well among the fragments of glass on the floor of the veranda. This time, the ball looked somewhat smug. It would be fun to draw eyes and a nose on it with chalk, and a mouth would appear all by itself, smiling broadly, as if to say, “There are no obstacles I cannot overcome.”

I held the ball in my hands, then laid it in the corner. There was no one to return it to since the boys were hiding. And, as I later understood, I didn’t want to do them such a favor – after all, they had broken our window.

All right, it can stay here for now, I decided. Let them come over to get it themselves. As a victim, I sort of sided with my father. I took malicious pleasure in the thought of the inevitable punishment the boys would be subjected to and didn’t think about the possible consequences of my choice.

In the evening, there was a knock at our door. Vasily Nikolayevich, Kolya and Sasha’s father, entered. In our part of the building he was considered an important person – Vasily worked in retail, and he would help some people obtain foodstuffs that were in short supply, like meat, for example.

That didn’t apply to our family. Hardly anyone ever wanted to help my father.

Vasily remained in the hallway, exchanged a few words with Mama and asked her whether Amnun was home. Father walked into the hallway, and they exchanged greetings.

“Please give me the children’s ball,” the neighbor requested.

“Yes, I have it,” Father said slowly. “But first let’s have new windowpane installed.”

At this point, Kolya’s father looked at me as I stood quietly at the door to my room.

“My kids stay in their room when the adults talk,” he informed me.

I had no choice, so I went into my room and closed the door. It goes without saying that I pressed my ear against it.

At first, the voices sounded quite calm.

“It’s our ball, it’s Kolya’s… My kids didn’t break your window. They say Server from the next entrance did it,” Vasily said in his deep voice.

“I don’t care whether it was Server or not … They were playing together, right? So, they are all responsible. I’ll return the ball after the glass is replaced,” Father answered in a monotone.

“Listen, Amnun…” Vasily said with irritation. “I’ve already explained that Kolya had nothing to do with it.”

Explaining anything to Father was a lost cause. He was stubborn and never made concessions for the sake of maintaining good relations with people, even when it was an issue regarding children. He just didn’t know the meaning of concession, magnanimity, or negotiations.

Father was an athlete and a coach, and he most likely viewed any conflict as a contest where he was facing an opponent. And an opponent had to be defeated. No compromises!

“I’m not going to give it back. Get it?”

“Don’t you understand…”

The voices were getting louder. Shouts and stomping of feet were heard. I craned my neck and stuck my head out into the hallway. The fathers were grappling at the door. Mama ran out of the kitchen shouting, “Papesh, stop it! Vasily Nikolayevich, how can you?” And, naturally, she got it too. Infuriated, Father pushed her so hard she almost hit the wall. That was probably what brought Vasily to his senses. He mumbled, “What a nut! Ester, I’m sorry…” and he left, slamming the door behind him.

After that, Kolya and Sasha, whose ball it was, stopped hanging around with me; Edem and Rustem too.

Seated close to the open windows of the veranda, listening enviously to the kharks, without realizing it I began thinking about our relationship.

It wasn’t the first time the boys had quarreled with me. Sometimes they stopped hanging out with me even without quarreling. Quarrels and fights among boys are a normal thing. They might fight or quarrel, and an hour later they’ve forgotten all about it.

But this time it was different; it was something else.

And then I realized – it was because of him just about every time we quarreled, because of my father. Of course… why I hadn’t I realized it before? As soon as he would quarrel with one of the neighbors, one who had kids, my friends would begin to shun me. And he quarreled so often! Perhaps the boys heard their parents discuss it at home, talk about my father… I couldn’t imagine what they might say about him. I always understood that Father’s character was known to everybody in our building, that people were afraid of him and tried to avoid him. I knew better than anyone else how he treated Mama and us kids, and I had also seen many times how he treated other people.

I would call Father’s character unpredictable. He could help a person and he could be generous, but then he would stop talking to that person for some unknown reason, without explaining anything. And he always had to have his own way, never listening to reason, demonstrating utter stubbornness.

Yes, they didn’t like my father in our building. But what did that have to do with me?

Standing on the veranda and listening to the spitting, I bitterly pondered all of that.

I knew that we would make up soon, that the boys would come up to me and begin to talk to me, ask me to play with them. But that didn’t make what I felt now any less bitter. We would make up, but then would they refuse to hang out with me again later? When would it happen? And how many times would I have to put up with insults? Didn’t the boys understand that I myself suffered much more because of my father than any of them did?

Aa-khem, aa-khem could still be heard from the third floor, as if my friends who were standing up there were saying, “And we don’t give a … spit.”

Chapter 21. Sunday Delights

“Mi-i-il-k! Sweet and sour mi-il-k!” A melodious voice was heard ringing outside the veranda window. It was the milkwoman Faruza, an old acquaintance. It was not even eight in the morning, but she showed up like clockwork on Sundays. Emma and I dashed after Mama, racing each other to open the door. Here she was on our doorstep, with her amiable face and dark weather-bitten cheeks. She effortlessly set down her very heavy milk cans – it must have been really hard to carry then all over our neighborhood on foot – and greeted Mama, “Yakhshi mi siz, opajon?” I loved to watch Faruza pour milk neatly into the one-liter jar provided by Mama. She did it so adroitly that a steady stream spurted into the jar, and not a single drop was spilled. The milk can seemed so light in her hands, but I knew that I would not only be unable to lift that rock but wouldn’t even manage to move it. Faruza-opa reminded me of the Bagdad oil sellers whom I had read about in a book about the Medieval Middle East. They poured oil into vessels so skillfully that a ring placed on the narrow neck of a clay jar would remain clean…

After pouring the milk, Faruza smiled tenderly at Emma and me. She loved children; she herself had many.

“Do you like my milk?”

We nodded hurriedly. We liked the milk and we liked Faruza. Her jet-black hair was plaited into many braids that hung down her dark-green velvet jacket, her bright wide silk pants were tied at the ankles, revealing slippers she wore without socks. As to her milk, Mama thought that Faruza’s cow gave the most wonderful milk. We agreed with her. Mama would boil the milk, put a pot in the fridge, and in the morning, it would be covered with a thick ivory-colored skin – cream. Nothing in the world was tastier. And how beautiful the skin was, how rhythmically it swayed on the surface of the milk. It was a pity to touch it, but acute desire surpassed pity. The cream skin was mercilessly broken and put into bowls. Ah, how fast it disappeared into our mouths along with pieces of bread.

“Shall I pour more milk? Do you want more?” the temptress asked, filling a jar. She could read perfectly well what was written on our faces. Faruza was tactful and understood everything – after all, Mama was not made of iron.

Then, the milkwoman was gone, and her milk can could be heard rattling on the next floor. “Sweet, sour mi-il-k!” echoed through the stairwell.

The door had just been closed when another knock was heard. This time it was the plumber, Uncle Tolik. Mama had asked him to fill the crack between the edge of the bathtub and the wall. Emma and I, naturally, forgot about that traitorous crack while taking a bath, and we usually stepped out of the bathtub, not onto the floor but into a big warm puddle, in the middle of which the colorful wet mat, looking like a little island in a bog, made squishing sounds.

Potbellied Uncle Tolik bent over the bathtub, groaning. Even though he was not yet forty, he was rather clumsy because of his corpulence, and he often couldn’t reach the right spot because the bathrooms were not exactly spacious. Light-haired Uncle Tolik had a very kind, round face. If Mama had asked him to get under the bathtub and fix the pipe, I thought, looking at him, he would have done it, but he would certainly have got stuck there… Uncle Tolik’s legs would stick out from beneath the bathtub, and he, lifting the bathtub on his fat belly, would unscrew the drainpipe as the puddle near the tub grew bigger and deeper. The ship of the bathtub would float, rocking on its waters. Uncle Tolik would no longer be Uncle Tolik but a whale on whose back, or whose belly, it made no difference, that ship would be sailing. Emma and I would be on that ship, asking, as we squealed with delight, “Uncle Tolik, let’s go to Africa! Please, to Africa to visit Doctor Doolittle and the hippopotamuses!”

This time it was much more mundane. Uncle Tolik fixed the crack and the broken faucet. Mama paid him.

“Soon it will be cold,” she sighed, counting out some rubles. “Will we have hot water?”

“I don’t know, Ester dear. They’re planning another repair in the boiler room.”

“In the winter?” Mama was terrified. “But does that mean we won’t have heat for two months again?”

“Does the management care? They’ll have heat.”

After expressing his opinion about the management, the plumber left. Mama called us to have breakfast.

Our kitchen was small, but a table for two fit into it. Emma and I sat down at the table, and Mama served breakfast – sweet cheese curds with raisins. Mama cooked very well, but for Emma and me, none of her culinary miracles compared to the sweet vanilla cheese curds from the dairy store. Those cheese curds were the most desirable and delightful delicacy. The smell of sweet cheese curds mixed with vanilla was wonderful. Its whiteness speckled with dark raisins was beautiful. And the taste was superb.

Mama cut the cheese curds and put them into bowls. Emma grabbed her bowl and examined its contents, comparing it with mine – what if Mama had divided it unevenly and I got a bigger part? Her inspection was successful. We ate slowly, savoring each piece, trying to prolong the pleasure.

Meanwhile, Mama appeared behind Emma holding a comb. The kitchen was certainly not a beauty salon, but it was so difficult to comb Emma’s curls that she needed to seize the proper moment to do it, like now, when Emma was enjoying her cheese curds and was willing to put up with any torture, even that one. Her very thick chestnut hair became so tangled during the night that it would have been easier to cut off some of the little knots than try to comb them. But Mama handled the comb skillfully, patiently combing out one strand after another.

“More!” Emma demanded, licking her bowl.

“Please, give me more,” Mama corrected her. “Don’t forget that you’re a big girl. You’re five.”

Emma repeated her request, and she got a second helping. There wasn’t enough cheese curd for me to have more, though I received a tender glance from Mama. It was more than a glance. That expression on Mama’s face could assuage all my sorrows and quiet my whims. The corners of her lips rose in a tender smile, her thick brows merged into a smooth wave… “She’s just a little girl, son. We must forgive her.” That was what her glance and her face conveyed, as if unifying us in our concern for Emma.

It was all right. I would be able to settle scores with my little sister later. Meanwhile, she was enjoying her second helping, and Mama ran her comb through Emma’s now obedient curls, taking fluffy little balls of hair off the comb and setting them on the windowsill. Was it possible, I thought, that Mama would style Emma’s hair in a hair bun one day? Oh no, that wouldn’t be at all becoming on Emma. Mama was a different story… And I squinted, trying to imagine how unattractive my little curly-haired sister would look with a bun at the back of her head.

They both finished their work. I awoke from my reflections and suddenly noticed that my sister was smacking her lips as she stared at me. Why was she staring? Did I look like sweet cheese curd? Oh, well, let’s do it.

It wasn’t the first time that we played the game – who could out-wink whom? Emma always lost, but she often seemed to forget that. I usually didn’t perform my principal trick right away. At the beginning, everything seemed quite innocent – first I squinted, then, quite the opposite, I stared wide-eyed so that my eyeballs almost popped out of their sockets. I followed that by glancing all the way to the left, then to the right, then up and down and finally rolling my eyes. And could she do that? Yes, Emma could, and she obediently repeated everything after me. I was about to reach my goal. I began to flutter my lashes very fast. Emma did too, but it wasn’t easy for her. And then I resorted to my foolproof move – I began to wink one eye at a time. That was what Emma couldn’t do at all. She squinted, winced, moved her nose, even her upper lip, all in vain. Oh, what despair was reflected in her face! That was what I had been waiting for. I even knew how it would end. Emma jumped out of her chair, stomping her feet and squealing. And it was quite a squeal! She didn’t just squeal at the top of her lungs. Her squealing was so loud, piercing and continuous that it must have been heard all over the building.

All little kids go to great lengths to get what they want. But my sister had extraordinary abilities. She outdid all the girls in our building with her squealing skills and her loud voice. I thought about it as I savored my victory. Of course, I felt a bit sorry for my little sister. It wasn’t difficult to quiet her down. All I would have to do was pity her, hug her, and kiss her on the cheek. She was such a sneaky thing. Did that mean it was I who had to apologize? No way…

So, I sat there as if nothing had happened. Why was she doing it? Had she gone out of her mind? Had she had too many cheese curds?

I just sat there shrugging my shoulders and looking innocently at Mama, with the smile of a tolerant grown-up on my lips, “She’s just a little girl. We must forgive her.”

Chapter 22. Once in the Evening

It was the day before that evening, which I thoroughly enjoyed. And the evening was simply wonderful.

At first, I sat drawing on the veranda. After placing a sheet of paper on the windowsill, I began to draw snowflakes. I was using a thick red pencil with a soft waxy core. It was a wonderful imported pencil. The snowflakes turned out so beautiful.

“What are you doing there?”

It was Dima calling to me from outside.

Our verandas shared a common wall so Dima, who lived in entrance number six, was my closest neighbor. That was why we were almost friends, even though Dima was three years older than I. Besides, he had reason to act important – his father was an officer.

“Look,” I said proudly, showing Dima my artwork. I had to bend over and lean out of the window frame. “Look how beautiful it is. Do you know why the color is so bright? It’s because I moistened the pencil with saliva.”

My achievements in the field of fine arts didn’t impress Dima. Quite the contrary, he grimaced as if he had seen something disgusting.

“Aren’t there better things to do? The weather’s so nice. Let’s go play officers.”

The weather was really splendid. It was autumn. My first summer vacation had recently ended. The unbearably hot summer days were also over. The sun no longer scorched from its zenith. Its light was mild and gently embraced everything. It was certainly a day to be outdoors.

I sighed. Mama was working the second shift, Papa was due back home at eight, and it was close to five now. That meant I would have to stay locked in the apartment for three more hours. Emma and I were forbidden to go outside when out parents weren’t home.

“I don’t have the keys,” I informed Dima sadly. “And Mama locked the lower lock.”

“What floor do you live on? Have you forgotten?”

Of course, I hadn’t forgotten. I had climbed out the veranda window many times; it wasn’t difficult. Something else was bothering me – how was I to deal with Emma? She was also at home. Of course, nothing would happen to her. She could stay home by herself. She was a big girl. But the little tattletale would tell our parents about it.

I stood on the veranda pondering the situation. Kids’ voices and laughter could be heard from the street. They were getting ready for the game.

“Well? C’mon!” Dima urged me.

So I made up my mind. After casting a furtive glance at the door of the room, I put my leg over the window frame. Dima stood by, raising his arms. At that moment, Emma darted out onto the veranda.

“I’ll tell Mama everything! I’ll tell her!” she yelled, hopping around. Her short dress inflated like a little parachute, her curls bounced, her eyes sparkled. It’s amazing – why do girls enjoy tattling so much?

Hanging onto the window frame outside the window, I shook my fist at my sister and jumped down. Let her yell for a while; she would soon get tired.

I fumbled around in the bushes near the vegetable garden and extracted a good, well-polished stick, straight and with no hidden splinters, exactly what was needed for playing officers.

Not far from the entrance, on a site beyond the sidewalk, everything was ready for the game. Seven parallel lines, approximately two meters from each other, had been drawn precisely and clearly. The first one was marked “Soldier,” and each subsequent line was marked with the next military rank, ending with General. The goal of the game was to reach the highest rank. There was a tin can placed on bricks in front of the General line. If you knocked it off with your stick and returned uninjured from the battlefield, you attained the next rank. Boys are real masters at devising complicated military games. Battered knees, bruises and other injuries don’t scare anyone. They only bring fame.

Ten boys from our building and the neighboring one lined up on the Soldier line. We had to select a guard whose job was to protect the tin can. He was an important figure, a dangerous opponent to those fighting for higher rank. And he was selected the same way, by knocking the can off. The one who knocked it off immediately avoided the hard and unpopular role of guard.

“I’ll knock it off with my first throw!” My pal Vitya Smirnov took aim. Holding his stick, he drew his arm back… and threw. No, he was not up to it. The stick flopped onto the ground two meters short of the tin can. Poor Vitya was very annoyed. The farther a stick was from the target, the greater chance one had of becoming the guard, and no one wanted to be the guard.

“Look out!” Oparin roared. He failed to knock the can over, but his stick fell closer to the target. Vitya’s shot was the least successful out of the ten, so he had to take his post at the tin can.

And then the battle broke out.

We all lined up at the starting point on the Soldier line. Stick after stick was thrown, but the can remained on the bricks, as if bewitched. That time, I was lucky. Beside myself with delight, I watched as the can flew about seven meters from the bricks, but I had no time to enjoy it. All the boys darted forward with wild cries, overtaking me. “Hurray, hurray!” Now, each of us had to retrieve his stick before the guard could return the can to its place. Anyone who failed to do so would be in trouble, because as soon as the can was in place, the “close combat” would begin. Vitya Smirnov was leaping around the can and, like a pack of wolves, we surrounded him. His task in this combat was to graze at least one of us with his stick. Retrieving one’s stick was quite a feat! If Vitya managed to graze someone with his stick and then knock the can off, he would be the winner. The one who was grazed would become the guard. Our objective was to dodge, avoid being grazed, and knock down the can, leaving Vitya at his post as guard.

The close combat was a picturesque and noisy show. It might seem to passersby who were unfamiliar with the game that we were having a real brawl and that they should let our parents know about it or even inform the police. As we got carried away, we screamed like madmen and brandished our sticks so hard that we brushed them against each other, screamed in pain, swore at each other, crossed our sticks and raised columns of dust.

“Hey, Kolya, be bold!” Oparin yelled at Kolya Kulikov.

“What a goat you are, Sturgeon! Protect me when I attack!” Sipa instructed his partner Server, nicknamed Sturgeon.

“Where are you aiming your stick, you macaque! It should be between the legs!” Server, in turn, reproached Edem, the third member of their unit.

Listening from a distance, one might think that different types of animals who had mastered human speech were shouting to one another – sturgeons, goats, macaques. Who said there was no zoo in Chirchik? Of course, there was, and the most diverse in the whole of Asia.

We all grew tired. We were covered with sweat, bruises, dust. Vitya Smirnov proved to be a mighty fighter, a staunch guard of the tin can. Beaten, bent up and full of holes, the condensed milk can seemed unattainable under the protection of his widely spread legs. But suddenly, an ecstatic roar was heard – it was Oparin who managed to knock down the can. Another ecstatic roar – Edem kicked it once more. And finally, to top it off, I sent the can flying out of the battlefield.

We played Officers until it began to grow dark, and parents could be heard calling their kids home. At that point, I suddenly remembered Emma. It was time to go home, the same way of course.

Vitya Smirnov, who hadn’t yet forgotten that we had been adversaries during the game, nonetheless agreed to help me climb onto the veranda. I climbed onto his back. Vitya groaned. After I got hold of the window frame, I whispered, “Thank you, Vitya. So long.”

Emma, though she was glad I was back, began to tease me again about how she would tell on me. It would be best to put her to bed before Father showed up. After having dinner and washing, we went to bed. I began to doze off right away. Our battle sticks flashed before my eyes as my sister’s squeaky voice was heard:

“Vale-e-ry-y!”

Uh-oh, there she went. My moment for revenge had arrived. I wasn’t even sleepy any longer. Now I’d teach this tattletale a lesson.

Emma was afraid to fall asleep alone, and she often asked for permission to climb into my bed. Usually, I let her. But today…

“Valery, may I stay with you?”

“There are so many stray cats in the building. It’s awful… They say they’ve began to climb into apartments…” I mused.

She was sniffling, it was pitiful long sniffling. What can be scarier than green eyes sparkling in the dark? I waited for a couple of minutes.

“Va-a-le-e-ry!”

“Will you tell on me?”

“No-o-o!” my sister’s trembling voice sounded.

“What if you do? Why should I want a sister who’s a tattletale? We’ll trade you for a brother. It’ll be more fun with him. Boys don’t tattle.”

“I won’t do it again. Please, don’t trade…” And Emma sniffled, as only very little kids can.

“All right, come here.”

The quick rhythmic pounding of bare feet was heard, and in a second Emma’s warm little body was clinging to mine. She inhaled deeply, sniffled one more time… and we fell asleep.

* * *

I woke up either for no particular reason or because of some sound. Was that Mama? No, Mama wasn’t in the room. She had already taken Emma to her room, which meant she had come to my bedroom after returning from work. I heard rustling and footsteps in the hallway. It wasn’t our parents’ usual footsteps, accompanied by the clicking of their slippers. No, those were different, unfamiliar sounds. Maybe it was a cat – I tried to calm myself. I remembered that Emma was afraid of cats and how funny that seemed to me. But now I didn’t experience any pleasure at the thought of the whole apartment being full of cats, and I would see their green eyes shining in the dark… The noise subsided, then I heard it again. Then it seemed to me that I heard someone whispering. Footsteps followed. The floor squeaked close to my door… A small beam of light flashed by for a second… I squinted…Then I opened my eyes, and it was dark again… And rustling, rustling… I was covered in cold sweat. I opened my mouth to yell, “Burglars! Burglars!” but not a sound emerged from my throat. It took my breath away. I was struck dumb.

It grew quiet again. I remained in bed. With no energy to move, I listened intently in the darkness. Perhaps that long strain was too much for a kid my age, but I suddenly fell asleep. I don’t remember when or how.

In the morning, loud voices woke me up. Father and Mama were talking anxiously about something. A wind was blowing through the apartment. I understood that the front door was open. Something had happened… I somehow knew what had happened. Before that thought rushed through my mind, I rolled out of bed.

Father was squatting in the hallway, picking up something from the floor. Next to him was Emma’s purse, stuffed with her treasures, silver ribbons.

“It’s strange that I didn’t hear anything,” he mumbled.

“They know when to strike. They choose the time when people are very fast asleep.” Uncle Yura, Dora’s husband stood at the front door. It turned out that it had been he who had sounded the alarm early in the morning when, on his way to work, he had seen that our front door was unlocked, and there was no one in the hallway. “They know their trade,” he said as if giving credit to the burglars’ efficiency and, at the same time, sympathizing with our misfortune.

“How come I didn’t hear anything?” Father mumbled again.

“I heard… I heard them,” I said, first very quietly, then loudly, suddenly remembering what had happened during the night.

Father raised his head.

“Did you hear? Then why didn’t you call us? Why didn’t you shout?”

I was about to answer that I hadn’t shouted because my voice had disappeared, and sounds wouldn’t come out of my mouth. But it was very difficult to explain, and somehow, I didn’t want to.

“Well, what do you want him to explain?” Mama came up to me and hugged me. As always, she understood everything. “He was sound asleep. He thought he heard something in his sleep… Thank God he…”

She didn’t finish what she meant to say, kissed me, and then went over to the coat rack.

“Thank God, they took only one coat… Petty parasites…”

Chapter 23. My Father Is Also a Teacher

“Yuabov, another reprimand, and I’ll record it in your report card.”

I should have expected it… What could I do? How could I sit still and not look back if Larisa Sarbash was sitting behind me? Larisa had such eyes that when she looked at me, I… Well, I didn’t know what came over me, but I wanted to look at her all the time. And I also wanted to tell her stories, because Larisa listened very attentively, her eyes wide … If only we shared the same desk. But Larisa sat behind me, and I sat at the second desk in the middle row, under the teacher’s very nose, so to speak. I wasn’t allowed to look back, but I absolutely needed to.

I suffered, and our teacher, Yekaterina Ivanovna, or Fat Woman, as we had nicknamed her in first grade the previous year, was pacing back and forth in front of the blackboard. The floor near the blackboard usually squeaked slightly. It should have been squeaking loudly under her heavy weight. But our teacher had a special gait. She didn’t waddle. It seemed that she floated or rolled. And the floor kept silent. With her hands behind her back, Larisa Ivanovna floated back and forth and talked, and talked, and talked… She was presenting new material to us – the water cycle in nature.

Yes, a teacher is certainly a special person. A teacher is not like us. She had been speaking about that cycle for half an hour without reading from a textbook but telling us about it from memory and, as she was doing so, she didn’t look at us, instead gazing at the ceiling or out the window. But one of us had only to stir, and she noticed it right away. How? It’s simply amazing. She couldn’t possibly have had another pair of eyes in the back of her head.

Yekaterina Ivanovna grew silent and sat down at her desk. She was looking down at some notes with her round, good-natured face, on which being angry was so unbecoming. Her face was framed with short, wavy red hair. Her natural hair was already grey, but she dyed it with henna. The students knew everything. The girls naturally discussed how teachers dressed and what their hairdos were. In everyone’s opinion, Yekaterina Ivanovna dressed simply yet tastefully.

“All right,” she said. And again, she spoke about the cycle. How much longer would she go on like that? My back was cramping because I was fighting the desire to look back. It seemed to me that I felt Larisa’s gaze on the back of my head. If only she would whisper something to me. But no, she would not. Larisa was shy, she was very modest. When I talked to her, she just listened, with her eyes wide open, without even blinking. She never acted wild, running through the corridor during recesses. She only jumped rope sometimes. I loved to watch her jump. She was so deft and slender. And she had fluffy light hair. And her freckles were simply delightful.

Remembering the freckles, I couldn’t take it any longer.

“Let’s go buy cookies during the big rece…” I whispered turning back to look at Larisa. Before I finished the sentence, I heard:

“Yuabov was the most attentive student today.”

I turned sharply, secretly hoping that my haste, as evidence of my obedience, could rescue me. But no, what was bound to happen followed right away.

“Well, Valery, tell us what you’ve learned today…”

Oh, that cycle… It had seemed so boring to me just a minute ago, but now I would have given anything to have the separate fragments of what I had heard in class today turn into something comprehensible in my head. But I lost any ability to think at precisely that moment.

I stood up and, shifting from foot to foot – that was what students who had not done their homework did and what I usually laughed at – said slowly:

“The water cycle in nature… It always happens… in nature…”

I grew silent because I absolutely didn’t know what else to say. On top of that, I was afraid that my face would betray that I was at a loss. So, I knitted my brows, squinted and cocked my head to the side. I tried to attach an intelligent look to my face, as if I were trying to remember something I knew. Just a moment, I was about to remember it. But no thought came to mind.

“Of course,” Yekaterina Ivanovna sighed, “Of course you have nothing to say. You fidgeted all the time instead of listening. You’ll give me your report card during recess. Let you parents read it… again.”

I heard “read it… again” quite often, to tell the truth, approximately once a week. Yes, before the week was over, apart from the usual notes and grades, the fatal lines appeared, “He is inattentive, gets distracted, talks in class, bothers other students.” And every time, I was terrified, anticipating a conversation with Father and another scolding, like those I had received so many times. Every time, I promised myself and my parents that it would never happen again. Actually, I didn’t know anyone who hadn’t had that experience.

Since I always got good grades, that helped me out and alleviated Father’s anger. Most of the time, I still managed to grasp the meaning of a lesson and to chat with Larisa. Besides, at home, I somehow didn’t get distracted, did all my homework diligently and made up for what I had missed in class.

“Shall I tell them that I’ve lost my report card and get a new one?” I thought on the way home. That life-saving idea had struck me many times, but I gave it up since I anticipated that I would need to do it again in a week.

At home, I immediately settled down to do my homework. I always did it. It was much better to finish it right away and have the evening free. Besides, I was determined to mend my ways.

Strange as it might seem, I enjoyed doing homework, especially because I had a wonderful desk. My parents had given it to me the year before, when I finished the first semester successfully.

The desk was not made of simple plywood but of real wood. It was shiny, lacquered and looked like a mirror. You could see your own reflection in it. I paid more attention to its cleanliness than to my own, wiping it with a soft rag every day so there wasn’t a speck of dust on it. All the shelves and drawers were lined with paper. Naturally, I kept Emma away from my desk for she might stain or scratch it. Let her earn her own desk, I thought. Well, I did allow her to sit at the desk under my supervision for a minute or so once a week.

I was still doing my homework when a loud knock was heard at my door … Father! Only he knocked like that. My heart skipped a beat every time I heard that knock. Even Emma’s face revealed fear.

Yes, both of us were afraid of Father. When he was home, we felt constant tension. It was impossible to guess in advance what Father’s mood would be, what it would be in a minute, what might enrage him. He could fly into a rage because of any trifling thing. And then, you could expect to be punished. How? It could be either rude cursing or a flick on the forehead or a slap on the back of the head, or a vigorous spanking … It could be anything, and it depended on his unpredictable and capricious mood.

I pondered sometimes – it usually happened after yet another row and punishment – why did we have such a father? Why weren’t other children punished so cruelly for any misdeed or without any good reason?

Father was a teacher. However, Valentina Pavlovna, the mother of my friends, Kolya and Sasha, was also a teacher, yet neither she nor her husband would ever hurt a fly.

I was sure of this because I visited them often. Sometimes while I was visiting, I would see Kolya sitting, peeved, his cheeks flushed as his father gave him a talking to but without yelling or angry cursing. Not to mention our mama, who often had to reprimand us but was never insulting or scary.

Perhaps Father thought that he was very caring and was bringing us up like a real teacher.

When I was a first grader, he helped me with my homework throughout the school year. I could easily manage without his help in the second grade, and I was a good student.

But he continued to follow my achievements closely and asked me how things were every day. Obviously, my good grades flattered his vanity. He could brag about them when he was among colleagues.

“So, how was school, Valery?” he asked, entering my room. “Tell me.”

“Everything’s fine,” I answered.

“That’s my boy. Let me see your report card.”

I turned cold. I had no place to hide. I gave him my report card. Father leafed through it and came to today’s page. His face grew gloomy, his eyebrows merged, his lips pursed, his nose hung lower over his mouth like an eagle’s beak. He slammed the report card shut and said sharply:

“Lie down!”

“What?” I asked, getting up from the desk slowly.

“I said, lie down on your bed.”

“Papa, forgive me. I’ll never do…”

“You’ve already promised many times… To the bed, quickly!” He said, taking off his belt.

I lay down, crying. Father had beaten me with his belt before, but he had never made me lie down.

The belt hissed. I felt a burning pain, screamed and placed my hands on my bottom. That didn’t help. The blows fell one after another. It probably hurt my hands more than my swollen flogged bottom. I wiggled, screamed, asked for forgiveness, and when I turned back, I saw his fierce implacable face etched with spite above me.

Suddenly, the beating stopped.

“Now you won’t wriggle anymore.”

Father walked out of the room but returned right away. I didn’t even have time to dry my tear-stained face.

He bent over me, grabbed me by the hands and tied them to the head of the bed. Then he tied my feet.

“Now you’ll lie without tossing.”

And again, the belt began to hiss, harder and faster. Father’s face became so scary that I was afraid to look back – his eyes were bloodshot, his hair stuck together, saliva on his lips. It seemed he was saying something about teaching me a lesson. But I couldn’t distinguish the words. All I could hear was his hoarse, angry voice. I was so tired that I couldn’t cry, I just sniffled and winced.

Suddenly, the beating stopped. I heard someone knocking on the front door. Father went to open, and in a moment, I heard his calm, almost merry voice.

“Oh, it’s you, Edem. Come on in. Your friend is in his room. Go have a look at him… Talk to him.”

Chapter 24. In the Old House

I opened my eyes and stretched. It was rather dark in the room. A slight reflection of sunlight on the wall streamed through the cracked door. The light was on in the kitchen. Whispering, light as rustling, could be heard from there. And then I suddenly remembered that it was vacation time, and I was not at home but in the old house in Tashkent.

Vacation! There were neither textbooks, nor reprimands, nor hours spent in the classroom under the stern gaze of a teacher, nor any other school problems. It was a great time to enjoy myself. As usual, I was spending vacation in Tashkent at Grandpa and Grandma’s, Papa’s parents, which meant that I spent time with Yura.

This was the first night I would spend in the old house. For some reason, I slept, not on a comfortable couch, but with Grandpa in his bed.

No matter what Grandpa did, he did it in a very special way, even when he went to bed, slowly and with good grace. He put on his pajamas and wrapped a scarf around his shaved head. Then he sat down on the edge of the bed and said his prayer or, perhaps, goodnight wishes to his soul. Finally, he scratched his belly lightly.

I saw him do it a hundred times, but still, the sound it produced surprised me every time – kirr-kirrrk, kir-r-rk-rik-rk. It seemed that the skin on his belly wasn’t soft, but rather like the skin of a drum, and that explained the faint grinding. A drum was empty inside, but you couldn’t say that about Grandpa’s belly. His belly was quite big, but you wouldn’t call it a paunch, though it was very hairy.

I tried to figure out his secret many times – how he managed to produce such ringing scratching. First, I tried scratching my own belly, with unsatisfactory results. I even tried it on Yura’s belly, but that didn’t work either. I scratched his belly severely. Naturally, we fought, but later I explained to him that I hadn’t done it for fun but rather to find the answer to an important question.

In the end, I thought I understood it. Before scratching, Grandpa Yoskhaim inhaled deeply so that the skin on his belly stretched like the skin of a drum. After that, he would begin to work it hard with his strong fingers, which were twisted out of shape. I certainly couldn’t have such a belly, even if I inhaled with all my might, nor such fingers. So how could I possibly produce that grinding sound?

Only after scratching to his heart’s content was he ready to fall asleep.

That’s how it was that night. After yawning with pleasure, Grandpa climbed into bed. “Good night, Valery,” I heard. Before I could answer, I heard his snoring. Grandpa Yoskhaim would fall asleep instantly – either he was too exhausted after a day of work or it was something about his body, but he fell asleep the moment he closed his eyes.

Grandpa usually slept on his back, with a blanket pulled over his head. But that night, perhaps in honor of my visit, he pulled the blanket only up to his chin… unfortunately.

Grandpa’s snoring, like the sound of his scratching, was something special. It was a rhythmic, powerful, mounting rumble, a rumble that made the blanket, the pillow, the mattress and the bed shake. The bed’s shaking wouldn’t be too bad, but it would feel like the whole room was filled with the vibrating rumble.

Staring into the darkness, I lay between Grandpa and the wall. “Good-night,” I thought mournfully. “What good night could it possibly be?”

Meanwhile, another sound was added to Grandpa’s mighty snoring. Another instrument joined the orchestra – Grandpa’s lips began to play their part. They trembled like leaves at strong gusts of wind, and flapped, and puffed – pykh-pykh… pfykh-pfykh… Leaning my elbow against the pillow, I tried to make out Grandpa’s face. I was curious to see how it looked. How could this sleeping man stir and smack his lips? But in the darkness, I could only manage to see the edge of the white duvet cover and the general contour of Grandpa’s face.

Grandpa’s beard always drew attention to this elder of the Yuabov family. His beard was quite proper, beautiful and fluffy. At the same time, it wasn’t heavy. I would even call it lively. The beard on his face appeared to perform the role of conductor, guiding his facial expressions like an orchestra. It moved merrily up and down when he talked. It expanded like widespread arms when he smiled. At meals, when he was chewing, his beard, swinging slightly, kept the rhythm and warned, “Don’t hurry… Andante… Moderato… Don’t break the rhythm… Legato… One-two-three, one-two-three.” When Grandpa was silent and pensive, his beard rested on his chest looking calm and dignified… It was time for intermission… But the conductor was always ready to work.

Grandpa liked it when I stroked his beard or scratched it lightly, even when I pulled it gently. And that occupation, which we both enjoyed, had become a kind of game, even a ritual.

I would touch Grandpa’s neck under his chin and begin to scratch his grey hair slowly and gently. The soft hair caressed my hand, the beard obeyed me by either stretching out or wrapping around my fingers. And Grandpa was blissfully happy. He would raise his head a bit and tilt it to the side, as if he were in a barber’s chair, positioning himself so that it would be comfortable for the master to serve him, and all his features – brows, eyes, lips – relaxed and expressed delight.

“Ah, you prankster,” he would repeat affectionately.

* * *

If only he knew what treacherous plans I often hatched while stroking his beard gently and tenderly. If only he could imagine what Yura and I whispered to each other, giggling behind his back.

When Grandpa Yoskhaim fell asleep, you could do anything to him. So why couldn’t we trim his beard for free during his blissful sleep? Chick-chick with a pair of scissors, and half the beard would be gone. We’d trim it and hide… Our bobo would wake up, stretch and begin to scratch his dear beard. He would plunge his fingers into it and feel that something was wrong, something was missing. Grandpa would rush to the mirror and see that it was not him reflected there but a younger man.

No, we didn’t expect Grandpa would like it. On the contrary, he would begin to curse us and run around wildly. We would have to hide well, for it might be scary. He could beat us up in a fit of temper. It was I who feared it; it was nothing to Yura. He would run alongside and shout, laughing, “You can’t catch me! You can’t catch me!” There would be a lot of yelling and a big uproar in the yard.

* * *

At last, I fell asleep, distracted from his snoring by those pleasant thoughts. And now, as I woke up at dawn, I remembered with pleasure that I was in the old house…

I loved this house and knew its every corner. It was quite large, and it was shaped like a letter L. My grandparents lived in the longer part of the L. Our family had occupied the lower part before we moved to Chirchik. Uncle Misha and his family lived in a separate house across the yard.

My grandparents had three rooms. The door of the small and windowless kitchen opened right into the yard. The light was on there now. Grandma Lisa was already up and busy at the stove. From the kitchen, you could enter the middle-sized living room and from there, the largest room, the bedroom where I was now. Apart from two beds, it had a wardrobe, a chest of drawers, and a big antique cupboard. It was beautiful, made of walnut wood with carved edges. Its upper part, topped with a carved casing and with thick decorated legs, rested on its wider lower part. There were Passover dishes in this upper tier. Household utensils were kept in the lower part. Grandma Lisa told me that she had gotten the cupboard from her parents who, likewise, had received it from their parents. I remembered that, as I opened the doors of the cupboard. They would creak like only very old furniture can, melodiously and slowly, now louder, now softer, the right door in one key, the left in a different key… I would open one of them and then the other. After “playing” the upper doors, I would switch to the lower ones. I could hear the whole symphony that way. It seemed that the cupboard was singing about its life story.

My grandparents’ beds were on each side of the cupboard, Grandma’s on the left almost at the door, Grandpa’s behind the cupboard in the far corner. I thought that Grandma had chosen a cozier place for her bed – the big, oval silver-painted gas furnace sat next to it. It heated two rooms, the bedroom and the living room. How warm and nice it was to sleep near the furnace on cold winter nights. But it was summer now, so the furnace wasn’t heated, and Grandpa’s bed was warm, soft and cozy without it.

Grandpa was already up, he always got up very early. He stood at the window across from the bed, his dark silhouette clearly outlined against the pre-dawn blue. Grandpa prayed, swaying back and forth. He prayed just as he had yesterday, and the day before yesterday, and the day before that… as he had prayed all his life for as long as he could remember. Back and forth, back and forth… His beard rose and fell and also trembled slightly because Grandpa moved his lips as he was reading a prayer. I heard that rustling whisper while I was waking up. His favorite dark green skull cap, which now looked black, hugged his bald head tightly. The tefillin, the small box attached to the middle of his forehead, reminded me of a light used by divers swimming underwater. It loomed on Grandpa’s forehead like a strange growth. I knew that there were commandments in that box, which was why every man who prayed had to wear it. There was an identical box tied to Grandpa’s left arm above the elbow.

I began to listen and could gradually distinguish words. I didn’t understand them, for Grandpa prayed in Hebrew, of course. He would hold the prayer book in his hands. With its swollen yellowed pages, it served Grandpa patiently and with dignity every day. He glanced at it out of habit for he remembered many prayers by heart. That didn’t mean that Grandpa Yoskhaim was an educated person and knew Hebrew. He could read, in other words he knew how to pronounce letters and words, but that was it. He was only aware of the meaning of the words and prayers thanks to the explanations offered by the rabbi at the synagogue.

“Grandpa, do you understand what you read?” I asked him more than once.

“Not quite,” he answered honestly.

“How can it be?” I wondered, thinking, then why read the prayers.

“It’s not necessary to understand but rather to feel,” Grandpa answered with conviction.

At the time, I didn’t really understand the profound meaning of his words. But even so, even though I didn’t understand, the impression of seeing Grandpa Yoskhaim praying was deep, powerful, and very important for my young soul.

I grew up in the Soviet Union. I was a Soviet child, which meant that I barely felt I was a Jew. I never gave it a thought.

Antisemitism was not often manifested openly, but it did exist. Most Jews resorted to assimilation, or rather adaptation; they wanted to be like those among whom they lived. However, that old story had spread over the centuries. And other things were added to it under Soviet rule. Any religion, not just Judaism, was practically banned in Soviet lands. It was considered ridiculous and shameful to be religious. It was considered evidence of ignorance. Moreover, it was an indicator of dissent, high handedness and animosity. It’s not surprising that we children not only didn’t study religious history in kindergarten or school but knew nothing about God either. There was no God for millions of Soviet people. Period. He was forgotten. Only old people of different ethnicities stubbornly attended their churches, synagogues, or mosques, of which there were very few. In Tashkent, there were only a few synagogues, so people would pray at home, observing their holidays and fasting.

It turned out that whenever I went to either Grandpa Yoskhaim’s or Grandpa Hanan’s home, I was absorbed in a different reality. Back home, I would forget it and became an ordinary Soviet child. I forgot about it, but obviously not completely.

It was only many years later, already in America, when I began to become a Jew all over again, when I began to feel my Jewishness, that I understood how the dark silhouette of my Grandpa against the background of the blue dawn was not just a scene from my early childhood. It was something much more significant; it was a link connecting me to my ancestors, to the people given to me by fate.

Grandpa was still praying when I entered the kitchen, where the clinking of dishes was heard: Grandma Lisa was cooking breakfast.

Chapter 25. “Just Look at Her!”

Grandma Lisa’s father, Nataniel Kozi was considered a prominent businessman in the Uzbek town of Chinaz early in the twentieth century. That’s how one would refer to him in contemporary language. He was a rich man, a bigwig, a factory owner, in the language spoken in old Russia. Nataniel owned a cotton mill. His son Rahmin Simhayev was in the business of sewing women’s apparel.

“He was very stingy,” Grandma Lisa once told me about her father, when she and I stood at the chest of drawers looking at the big photograph. “Oy, oy, so stingy! My mama left him… She took us along, four children, and moved to Tashkent… That was very long ago, in 1914. I was a little girl.”

“She left him…” I imagined a heart-rending scene: my great-grandma Emma abandoning her native home with two small children in her arms, and another two tagging along… Apart from Grandma Lisa she had another two daughters, Sonya and Rena, and a son, Abram. And still she found it necessary to part with her husband… She wasn’t afraid. A divorce was something unthinkable for Asian women; it was considered a shame, a crime.

Great-Grandma Emma… I only saw her in pictures. She had died the year I was born, ten years before. But I heard about her often. Everyone who had known her remembered her warmly and respectfully. She was blessed with a kind and sympathetic soul. She helped many people. Almost all her children took after her, all but one daughter…

And that very daughter, my Grandma Lisa, would go up to the chest of drawers where the big photograph of her father stood in all its splendor, and it was there that she said her short prayer every morning. On top of that, she quietly expressed her thanks to him… For what, one may ask, did she thank the person from whom her mother had escaped with four children, including her? It’s hard to comprehend.

As I entered the kitchen that morning, I could already predict in great detail what would follow.

“Good morning,” I greeted her.

“Morning, morning,” Grandma answered as she continued to bustle about. “Wash up quickly.”

Grandma wore her usual pale, patterned housedress and white-trimmed slippers. Her left hand was behind her back as if she were ready to rub the sore spot at the moment she would choose to complain about her “spindileeze.” She held a shiny, well-polished pot in her right hand.

One of Grandma Lisa’s unquestionable merits was her marvelous cleanliness. She kept the house in perfect order and demanded the same from everybody else. The cleaning woman Grandma employed was exhausted from her instructions and quibbles.

“You either clean or you don’t!” Grandma exclaimed, pointing her finger at another corner which was not quite licked clean. “There’s so much dirt there!”

I would turn out to be that “not quite licked clean corner” every morning. The sink was in the kitchen. The procedure of washing took place under the observant eyes of Grandma, and it would begin with the morning class in hand washing.

“No, that’s wrong! That’s absolutely wrong! Rub here,” Grandma would pat the outside of her wrist. “Now wash it off… And now soap them up again. Rub! Rub harder!”

I washed my hands like most children. Just think of Tom Sawyer. I would just wash my hands with water or use a little soap and rinse it off right away. But I couldn’t get away with that when Grandma was around. I had to fulfill all her requirements. And still a grimace would distort Grandma’s face.

“Oy, oy, oy, the water is so dirty! Soap them up once more.”

At last I would be granted permission to dry my hands. Then Grandma would start groaning again:

“Look how dirty the towel is! From just one use!”

I don’t know what to call the character trait that wouldn’t allow Grandma to permit any trifling thing to happen around her without receiving her attention and supervisory directions. Perhaps she was exerting her leadership, for which she had never found an outlet. One way or another, everything that entered her field of vision had to be corrected, adjusted and improved.

Grandma sometimes managed to give her instructions calmly, but she would normally get nervous right away. It took nothing for her to fly into a rage and start shouting. This was also one of her character traits.

Grandma looked quite funny when she got upset. She would shake her head in such a way that her silk headscarf would stand on end and slip off her red hair. Her eyes would widen and her eyebrows rise abruptly. With her legs spread wide and her right hand raised, Grandma would accompany her words with expressive movements of her index finger, like an experienced orator in front of a big crowd.

It was interesting to watch Grandma, but certainly not when I became the object of her attention.

After fulfilling all the requirements, I could at last step away from the sink. The torture was over… until dinner.

Then Grandma Lisa was again bustling about the stove.

Grandpa’s favorite drink, choyi kaimoki, was prepared in a pot on the stove. It was an old Asian drink.

Milk was poured into strong boiling tea. That mixture was slightly salted and left to boil for some time. The amount of milk, the time it took to prepare it, both before bringing it to a boil and after, were very important, for the taste of the choyi kaimoki depended on it. Besides, one had to stir it now and then. Grandma Lisa would dip a bowl into the pot, fill it and pour it back into the pot. The unique aroma filled the kitchen.

“Vale-RY, get the teapot quickly!”

Unlike Grandma Abigai, who pronounced my name softly and melodiously,

“Va-le-ry,” always smiling tenderly, Grandma Lisa called me, and everyone else, seriously, sternly, stressing the last syllable of my name, “Vale-RY”, almost shouting “RY”.

“Get kosis, please.”

Grandma would point toward the lower shelf where big bowls were kept so that, God forbid, I didn’t pick up the wrong bowls.

Dishes were organized in a strict order. Milk dishes, as directed by Jewish law, should not be mixed with dinner dishes. They were never washed together. And if Grandma, after retiring to her bedroom to take a nap after dinner, heard the clinking of dishes, she would wake up immediately and give instructions loudly or dash to the kitchen to make sure that everything was done right.

The choyi kaimoki was ready. Grandpa and I sat down at the table. Grandma served breakfast. She would usually have hers alone later.

We were having breakfast at the living room window, which faced a neighbor’s garden. It was strange that I couldn’t figure out whose garden it was, though I tried many times as I walked around the adjoining lanes.

That garden was a mystery to me. It was very small, no wider than our living room, but longer. It was surrounded by the walls of neighboring houses, so it wasn’t clear to whom it belonged. Perhaps it was no one’s, but a red rose bush grew in that garden; it was the only one there, and someone tended to it.

"There were no other windows in the living room, and my favorite yard was not visible from there.

Grandpa Yoskhaim had bought the plot on which his house now stood for one thousand rubles in 1933. It was a garden without any buildings, planted with sweet cherry trees. Grandpa attended to the construction of the house himself. He sometimes told me about it, though rather sparingly. And I listened with great interest, even agitation. I could vividly imagine Grandpa, barefoot, his pants rolled up, trampling the clay mixture with his feet to make a kind of adobe mixture.

The clay was viscous heavy, and wet, and one had to trample it for hours. Here, the walls appeared. Then Grandpa, together with his friend, lifted and placed a crossbeam to support the roof.

Gosh, how very difficult it was to do! Their faces became bloodshot, and the veins on their necks and arms bulged.

I was very proud of Grandpa, and I thought: what a strong, patient, skillful person he must have been to build his house himself".

* * *

“Well, what are you dreaming about? It’ll get cold. Watch how I do it,” Grandpa commanded.

Steam was rising from the bowls into which Grandma had poured the choyi kaimoki. A thin trembling layer was forming on top of the milk. Grandpa scooped up a spoonful of butter and put it in his bowl. Then he crumbled a piece of small white flatbread, put it in the bowl and mixed everything. Now, the surface of the milk was covered with a layer of butter in which pieces of the flatbread floated like little rosy islands. After checking that there was enough of everything, Grandpa dipped his spoon into the bowl and scooped it up.

“Khoop,” Grandpa produced that sound in a special way. It seemed as if he tried to inhale as much air as possible, along with the food, to cool it down. His face looked very serious as he did it. It grew longer, his eyes narrowed, his brows came together. He stretched his neck as he bent his head over the bowl. It seemed his snow-white beard was about to dip into the bowl, but it froze a millimeter away from the buttery steaming surface as if it knew exactly where it needed to stop.

Grandpa Yoskhaim would always eat the same breakfast: choyi kaimoki with one piece of flatbread, butter and strong green tea. He ate his breakfast, just as he did everything Grandma cooked for dinner, with an excellent appetite. It wasn’t accidental that my mama, trying to feed me, would always say, “You peck like a hen. That’s why you’re just skin and bones. Look at Grandpa Yoskhaim: he eats well. That’s why he’s so healthy.”

That was true. Grandpa was very seldom ill. And if he was, he never stayed in bed.

It was rumored that there was a bullet in Grandpa’s back that had got stuck there in the long-ago days of the revolution and street riots in the Old Town. The doctors couldn’t make up their minds about removing it, so he lived with it till the end of his days. It never caused him any particular trouble.

He was amazingly industrious and durable, so Mama must have been right.

After Grandpa Yoskhaim finished his breakfast, he pushed the empty bowl away but stayed at the table. He fidgeted on the squeaky chair to make himself more comfortable and to sit more firmly.

Poking my spoon about in the bowl, I looked at him with sympathy. I knew very well what the next scene would be. It was invariable. But I watched it every time with the same keen interest, like a fan watching a fight between two wrestlers.

“Lisa,” Grandpa called loudly. “How much money should I leave?”

As he asked the question, Grandpa would stretch out his right leg, put his hand into his pocket and produce a tightly packed brown leather wallet.

Grandma Lisa, however, wouldn’t appear. Pots were clanking and water was running behind the closed kitchen door. This part of the scene was called “I can’t hear you, my dear. I’m very busy. Call me one more time.”

Grandpa would raise his eyebrows and sigh. He knew better than anyone that Grandma had perfect hearing. She could hear any rustle, even through the wall of a neighboring room. Yura and I, for example, never talked about our affairs if Grandma Lisa was nearby. She could hear everything, even if we whispered, and she could learn all our secrets.

Grandpa would call her again, louder this time.

At last, the kitchen door would swing open and Grandma would appear in the doorway.

Oh, she was a great actress. She never tired of playing her part and finding different nuances each day. It was impossible to replicate the extent of fatigue expressed in her face.

Rubbing her lower back with her hand, she made her way slowly to the couch, sat down and, after adjusting her headscarf, said loudly, “Inam shood.” With this saying, which literally meant “and that’s finished,” Grandma, evidently reminded her dear husband that she had been toiling since early in the morning to feed him, and now she was terribly tired, and she thanked God that she was still alive after all that work.

Grandpa Yoskhaim wouldn’t look at Grandma. He’d examine his wallet closely. It was sufficient to hear her tone as she uttered “Inam shood” for him to know how much money she would demand for expenses, so he wouldn’t wait for her to specify the amount before launching his defense.

“I gave you money yesterday.”

“Nothing’s left,” Grandma interrupted him immediately. “Today I need to buy…” and she would begin to enumerate foodstuffs, ticking them off on her fingers, “…rice, bread… Sugar’s almost gone… We need fish. Little flour left…”

“Flour?” Grandpa interrupted her, raising his thick brows. “You bought flour the day before yesterday.”

“You can’t be serious. It’s been three weeks. You ate pirozhki, didn’t you?

At that point Grandpa’s patience would be exhausted. It should be mentioned that it was very difficult to upset Grandpa, but Grandma invariably managed it. I couldn’t guess which grocery item would feed Grandpa’s indignation, but I knew perfectly well how he would manifest it, and I was looking forward to that final scene.

“Just look at her!” tormented Grandpa would exclaim, almost leaping out of his chair.

I don’t know when or why Grandpa began to use that rather inoffensive expression to express his highest degree of surprise and indignation at his interlocutor’s impudence. Obviously, the point was not the words themselves but the meaning and coloration he attached to them.

Grandpa’s indignation never produced any menacing consequences. To my disappointment, that was how their daily duel usually ended or, to be precise, the verbal part. What followed was what Grandma had been fighting for – the mild-mannered issuance of cash.

After expressing his indignation once again, this time in a whisper, “Just look at her,” Grandpa at last opened his wallet and counted out a bunch of cash. He did it shaking his head slightly, as if surprised at Grandma’s fighting abilities and his defeat. Perhaps, he still hoped to win one day.

Distressed, Grandpa returned the wallet to his pocket and shuffled out. He was, for some reason, more upset than usual.

He always left some cash for me on the chest of drawers to buy ice cream. I didn’t remind him about it today, out of compassion. After all, we were both men…

Chapter 26. The Maybug

Grandpa threw his knapsack over his shoulder, crossed the yard, shuffling his feet, and disappeared beyond the gate, off to work.

I made myself comfortable by the apricot tree to enjoy the morning coolness and solitude. Yura, my cousin and friend, hadn’t shown up yet. He might still be asleep for it was too quiet behind the windows of his house.

It was wonderful to sit like that in my old yard, doing nothing. After the long school year, after the rush and tension, the constant worries about homework, grades and other unpleasant things, it was so nice to relax, to feel that all those worries were in the past, not to think about anything, not a single thing, just to sit there allowing laziness to grip me, to envelop and lull me… And I didn’t want to ponder anything, nor could I. All thoughts seemed to have dissolved and vanished, and I felt a blissful void in my head. But I also felt a drowsiness. I absorbed everything that was going on around me in the yard with the utmost delight. It was non-stop life unfolding before me with exceptional clarity, in all its details.

Why were the hens cackling so loudly? Aha! There was Grandma Lisa entering the henhouse to feed them. The henhouse was not far from me, along the same wall as the trestle bed. I could see everything that happened there from where I was sitting. White hens, five of them, walked about restlessly, jumped up near Grandma, pushing each other away and quarreling. The rooster, unlike the hens, was a dark-feathered fellow, deep brown streaked with gold, who stood apart from them for some time. The rooster, whose legs looked like thick twisted twigs, with calloused toes and powerful claws, watched the quarrelsome hens with disdain. After observing the domestic quarrel, that sultan began to peck the grains scattered near him, shaking his red beard and moving closer to his silly wives.

The rooster considered his conjugal duties so important that he didn’t hesitate to perform them in the public eye. Now, his only concern was making the proper choice. With him, like any true sultan, it depended either on his mood or which of his wives seemed particularly attractive to him, or on more practical considerations: which one was closer to him and had no time to escape. Who knew? But I was sure that he made choices rather than relying on luck.

A spurt, a jump… What an insolent creature! I looked around quickly to be sure that none of the adults could see what I was watching. The yard was empty. Well… what’s going on there? I was curious, and I found it funny at the same time. The hens, startled by his attack, scattered in all directions, but as soon as the rooster overtook one of them, they calmed down and continued pecking their grain. The rooster… I couldn’t even imagine what the rooster experienced though I wanted very much to know. He looked extremely businesslike. His lucky chosen one seemed absolutely unmoved and, the moment the rooster jumped off her back, rejoined her pecking “girlfriends” without wasting a second.

Such family scenes would create confusion in the well-oiled feeding operation. When Grandma saw it, she would get angry. Waving her hands and exclaiming “Get out! Get out!” she would try to call the insolent creature to order. Sometimes, she realized that it was useless to fight the rooster’s amorous urges. She mumbled something quietly and waved her hands, admitting her helplessness, as if to say, “what can I possibly do about it.”

But the most interesting thing about roosters wasn’t their conjugal directness. Sometimes, there were two roosters in Grandma’s henhouse, and then Yura and I had a new entertainment: cockfights.

Even the very beginning of a fight was a wonderful spectacle. Standing opposite each other, the roosters seemed to exchange curses and become fired up as they took their fighting stances. They would act all high and mighty, their feathers on end. They held their necks perfectly erect, first pressing their heads to their chests, then stretching them out, beaks always facing the opponent. Then they would lift and bend one claw… Their weapons were primed for the fight.

And how they would fight! They flew up, their wings flapping, tearing at each other with their claws! How mercilessly they used their beaks, picking at the most vulnerable spots! How they crashed their chests together, now falling down, now flying apart!

The shrieks of the fighters and the flapping of their wings would echo through the yard. Feathers would fly in all directions… It was quite a spectacle! Yura and I would express our delight by yelling louder than the roosters and waving our hands as they did their wings.

“C’mon, c’mon! Be brave!”

“Let him have it… one more time… again!”

In short, we behaved like inveterate fans at a stadium. It was a pity Grandma Lisa was strongly against cockfights. She thought that they not only affected the roosters’ health, since they could injure each other, but also that of the hens who might get so scared they would stop laying eggs. So, as soon as Grandma heard a suspicious noise, she would run out to the yard and order Yura and me to put a stop to the fight. We had no choice but to thrust a long stick through the chicken wire and separate the fighters.

The roosters enjoyed our respect due to those fights; after all, they were athletes. And in general, a rooster was quite a noticeable figure in the yard. It was a rooster who informed us of the arrival of a new day, and it was after a ringing cock-a-doodle-doo that everyone woke up.

Each inhabitant of the yard welcomed the morning in its own way. Jack, for instance, would start his canine morning exercises right away, which in fact were an appalling demonstration of laziness. He first yawned for quite a while, sticking out his long red tongue. Then he stretched blissfully, becoming a long stick ending in an outstretched tail. Then he sat up and began to scratch his ear. He did it so fast that his paw and ear, if you were watching from a distance, merged together and looked like the rotating propeller of an airplane. As he did this, Jack’s chain would beat quickly and rhythmically against the asphalt, producing the sound of a machine gun blazing away.

It was my opinion that Jack shouldn’t scratch himself so simple-heartedly in front of people and the other inhabitants of the yard. When he did so, he looked like an absolute simpleton, a fact he himself admitted openly.

“I’m a simpleton,” Jack declared, brushing his ear with a paw. “I’m quite a simpleton,” he admitted, as he began scratching his ear faster. “I’m the biggest simpleton,” he proclaimed when the propeller started to turn. “You can’t find a bigger simpleton than me.” Jack, obviously, didn’t care about anyone’s opinion; he just wanted to feel good.

* * *

Meanwhile, it had become noisy in the yard. Little flocks of sparrows were flitting about the bushes and trees, making an incredible hubbub. Sparrows were always agitated and in a hurry. The tender cooing of turtledoves could be heard. I was always surprised that turtledoves were the ancestors of beautiful, snow-white domestic pigeons. They are so unattractive with their dull brown feathers, but it’s true that these wild ancestors sing beautifully, a tender, slow, mysterious cooing. When a turtledove would perch among the branches and begin its long quiet gur-gur-gurrr, it would burrow right into your soul.

Gnats and flies were the most unpleasant inhabitants of the yard, the big green flies in particular. The moment you entered the yard, they sensed you and rushed toward you. As you made yourself comfortable in the shade, they would whiz by your ear, vzh-zh-zh. All you had to do was brush them away. If you stood gaping, a fly might land on your nose or forehead, or in your hair. I even envied the sparrows and other birds who could snatch flies skillfully in midair. Gnats also had to be chased away, but they didn’t usually touch anyone. They would circle in the air, as if dancing a waltz in a ray of sunlight that was forcing its way through the crown of an apricot or cherry tree.

* * *

My idle bliss was interrupted by Yura’s cry:

“Look, it got stuck there!”

I had lapsed so deeply into daydreaming that I hadn’t noticed Yura enter the yard. He stood on his stoop near the cherry tree, his nose almost touching its trunk, scrutinizing something. Yura was always detecting or examining something. His eyes knew no rest. They were always in search of something interesting, and not only things that engaged children’s attention. No, my cousin’s aspirations were much broader. He craved adventures that were sometimes not safe for him, or those around him.

“Hurry! Are you asleep, Redhead?”

No, of course, I wasn’t asleep. I was simply – at least externally – Yura’s complete opposite. Nothing was ever “burning” for me. I didn’t like to hurry. But it was impossible to linger now. Yura was jumping up and down near the cherry tree. He wore shorts and a white T-shirt, the light color of which emphasized the militant expression on his tanned face. “What has he detected there? What will we need to destroy?” I tried to guess as I was running up to him.

A huge Maybug stood motionless on the trunk of the cherry tree, exactly where Yura’s head was. Those insects, whose backs were covered with a shiny green shield that revealed black wings when they opened it, like the two parts of a door, often visited our yard, particularly at the end of spring. They would speed in over the top of our fence, buzzing like bombers, flying around the yard along unpredictable curves as if they wanted to inspect it closely, and then disappear in the thick foliage.

It was one of those Maybugs that was sitting in front of us on the cherry tree trunk. It was neither asleep nor taking a rest. It didn’t even pretend to be dead, which is what beetles usually did when they sensed danger. The poor thing had got stuck in the clear yellowish sap that was seeping from the tree trunk. It must have either bumped into the trunk or sat on it without noticing the danger. It was a very careless Maybug. If only it had known what lay ahead for it.

The Maybug gave a start, its green shield opened, its wings began to flap: the prisoner made an attempt to escape. In vain! The natural glue was very strong.

“Hurry!” Yura yelled, his eyes sparkling. “Hurry! Bring twine. No, wait, I’ll get it myself. Watch the Maybug!”

He ran away, and I covered the Maybug with my palm, just in case. Yura was right. Maybugs gave us a lot of fun.

My cousin came running back with a spool of black thread and a small knife. Holding it by the back, we tied the thread tightly around one of its hind legs. God forbid the thread should come untied, so we tied a double knot. That wasn’t easy to do. The Maybug sensed that something bad was going on, that it was being tinkered with, and not exactly for a noble purpose, so it resisted, pulling on its hairy legs as much as the sap allowed.

“All right… Now scoop it out,” Yura gave me the knife. At that moment, I realized that I would never be a surgeon. As I tried to dig its front legs out, it ended up getting its antenna-like whiskers stuck in the sap. The Maybug was so tired that it couldn’t resist any longer.

“It’ll suffocate!” Yura suddenly panicked. He snatched the knife from my hand and performed the surgery himself. The Maybug was liberated, losing only one leg.

“Hurry!” Yura shouted as he ran to the apricot tree. The space there was more open, more appropriate to form the runaway of our airport, so to speak. The Maybug was to become an airplane, and airplanes, as everyone knows, take off from airports.

We set the Maybug carefully on the asphalt that covered the ground. At first, it stood still, and we couldn’t do anything about it for it would not move an inch until it was sure it was safe.

Yura and I stood nearby, completely still. I was holding the spool, after winding off enough thread so that the Maybug wouldn’t feel the tension as it flew or crawled. At last, it began to crawl somewhat slowly and hesitantly. Perhaps, it felt that one leg was missing.

We were terribly impatient.

“C’mon, bug! Stop that nonsense!” I repeated, shaking the thread slightly to remind the Maybug that, after all, it had to work. At last, it understood what it was expected to do, opened its shield, spread its wings and took off… slowly, with great effort, but it took off.

“Wind off! Wind off!” Yura yelled, concerned and agitated.

Our airplane gained speed, trying to fly as far as possible, but we couldn’t let it fly to the part of the yard where the thread would become tangled in branches. That meant that unwinding too much thread from the spool would be dangerous. We needed to guide the Maybug like a kite. The thread was long enough, but it was strained, and now the Maybug was flying in circles, a bit higher with each one. Mesmerized, we stared at it. We were blissfully happy as, looking up, we turned around in the center of the yard, the spool in our hands. Perhaps, guiding the flight of the Maybug wasn’t such a great feat, but we felt like mighty, all-powerful rulers.

The end came unexpectedly. The poor Maybug, tired of fighting the strained thread that burdened it, came tumbling down. That was it… We thought that our airplane had crashed as we ran up to it, but the Maybug was alive. It simply needed a break.

Certainly, we could have kept it for future flights, but we were magnanimous and felt sorry for the invalid. That was enough. It had worked and fulfilled its duty. We would let it fly away… if it could.

“Shall we let it go? Let’s toss it up into the apricot tree.” Yura cut off the thread at the Maybug’s leg, jumped and tossed it up into the thick branches. After making an arc, the Maybug came tumbling down. We cried “ah,” but just before it reached the ground, it suddenly spread its wings and flew upward, buzzing. Another moment and the Maybug had disappeared in the sunlight that was breaking through the rich greenery of the tree.

Yura and I stood there looking up. We weren’t sorry that we had set the Maybug free; we were a bit sad for a different reason. We didn’t say anything to each other, but it was clear that we both felt the same. Our feet stood on the asphalt of the yard, but our souls soared up high over the roof of the house, over the cherry trees laden with ripe cherries, glowing among the leaves, the sweet cherry tree near the trestle-bed, with its juicy yellow cherries, over the pigeon house with its hungry baby pigeons, their mouths wide open, over the apricot tree, over the whole yard, over the entire neighborhood.

Ah, how great it would be to fly like our Maybug, with no thread attached, and without the adults even noticing. Height in itself is beautiful, but we could also have so many nice adventures up there.

“Well, let’s go,” Yura sighed. “Let’s go. I’ll show you something.”

What a pity we couldn’t fly, but the two of us did enjoy ourselves in the yard.

Chapter 27. The Best Place in the City of Tashkent

“Valery, get up, bachim.”

Oh, my. I had been dozing so nicely. It was still very early, but I had been waking up, then dozing off again since dawn.

I was sleeping on the convertible couch in the living room. When it was unfolded, the couch almost reached the TV set that was across from it. That’s why the room was crammed. Only a narrow passage was left. Grandpa, who got up at the crack of dawn, would make his trip from the bedroom to the kitchen along that passage. He would bump against the couch during each of his trips, and every collision was accompanied by a short yet loud exclamation, “Ekh!” Judging by the intonation, it meant, “He’s lying right in the middle of the path! People here are late for work, by the way…”

However, despite that insignificant inconvenience, I preferred sleeping alone in the living room rather than in the company of my snoring Grandpa.

“Get up, bachim! Pour water on my head,” Grandpa woke me up, shaking me by the shoulder.

The aroma of choyi kaimoki wafted out of the kitchen. Grandma, who was busy at the stove, gave me a kettle of warm water.

Grandpa undressed down to his waist, baring his torso, which always amazed me. His chest, shoulders, stomach, arms and even his back were covered in very thick, dark hair. Grandpa’s head, with its beard, was bare, shiny and hairless – a striking contrast to his torso.

Grandpa wasn’t bald. He had only a small bald spot, about ten centimeters across, on the top of his head. You would only notice it if you looked very closely. I think he managed to avoid going bald by shaving his head all the time. Grandpa deprived his hair of enjoying the light of day but at the same time rescued it from falling out.

As soon as Grandpa bent over the sink, the kitchen became lighter. At least, that was how it appeared to me. The shining, almost polished surface of Grandpa’s head reflected any light clearly. The shape of his head was either a good reflector of light or the barber shaved it too thoroughly, or perhaps it shined thanks to his daily washing. Every day! Just think! There wasn’t a speck of dust on it!

I actually had suspected that his special soap did the trick. Grandpa ordered special soap with varnish added to it. That was why his head was shiny. But I used that soap too. So where was the result? No matter how much I soaped my hands, they never became shiny. No, it wasn’t the soap but some special quality of his head.

In any event, I was proud of Grandpa’s head. Sometimes, when I was asked whose grandson I was, if when I answered they couldn’t figure out who Yoskhaim Yuabov was, I had to resist the temptation to say “The one with the shiny head.” They would definitely have remembered that. Tap-tap-tap – it was Grandpa patting the back of his head, as if to say, “Pour it here.”

Even his patting sound was unique, just like his belly scratching. I can’t say that Grandpa’s head was shallow. No, it was lucid and wise; he was brainy. But that joyful lively sound reminded me of the clear resounding thump of a ripe watermelon being tapped.

Grandpa was soaping his head thoroughly, the large bar of soap sliding over it like a skater around a skating rink. It would now and then slip out of his hands and fall into the sink with a clang, as if protesting, “All right, that’s enough!” I agreed. I was tired of standing next to Grandpa and listening to his commands, “Pour… more… right here… now wait.”

Grandma Lisa, who was busy at the stove, was glad deep down that her responsibility had been temporarily handed over to her grandson – that was me – but she watched closely to see if I served Grandpa diligently. To let me know that I was being monitored and to let Grandpa know of her unceasing care, Grandma would guide me now and then, “ValeRRy, you’re pouring past his head. You won’t have enough water… Don’t hurry, he’s still soaping.”

Finally, I poured water over Grandpa’s head for the last time. Then he would get busy on his ears. His index fingers entered the ears like moles digging borrows. I sometimes feared that those two diggers might meet in the middle of his head. What would happen then? But, fortunately, Grandpa would busy himself with one ear at a time.

After reaching a certain point, Grandpa’s finger would begin to shake in his ear like a vibrator. The finger, the ear and Grandpa’s beard would all shake very fast, just like Jack during his morning scratching. It was hilarious.

After washing and breakfast were over, I was free! I had the whole day ahead of me!

* * *

It was July. By noon, the terrible heat forced all the residents of the yard to hide in corners and cracks where the sultry sun couldn’t reach them, where the meager remains of morning coolness still lingered. No wonder, it got up to 104° F in the shade. The dry climate gave some relief – heat was easier to tolerate when the air was dry.

The heat gave Yura and me some advantages: who among the adults would want to keep an eye on children in that heat? Overcome with heat, they would all take a rest. While our Grandma and Valya, Yura’s mother, were hiding in the back of their houses, my cousin and I discussed our options.

“Let’s go to Anhor Swimming Pool. We can take a swim,” Yura was enticing me.

“We should let the adults know.”

“Oh, no, they’ll never allow us to go there alone.”

Yura was quite right, and I knew it just as well as he. But I was ten, and he wasn’t yet eight. It was nothing for him, but I got cold feet. If my deeds were reported to Father, the punishment could be terrible: immediate return to Chirchik, for the rest of my vacation.

But even so, my avid desire to go for a swim won out over my good sense. I made up my mind.

“Let’s go!”

“All right. You go first,” Yura ordered, “and I’ll distract Jack.”

We ran to the gate, casting glances at the windows and doors. Grandma’s tulle curtain didn’t stir, thank God. It was a good thing Grandma didn’t have an extra pair of eyes, and the ones she had were shut. Grandma must have been sniffling in her bed. Everything was also calm at Yura’s. Jack remained the only danger.

Jack acted as a guard. Besides, he was a devoted friend of Yura and me, and he couldn’t keep silent as he saw us leaving. It was clear that Jack would raise a fuss, shake his chain and bark. How could we explain to him that he was interfering in other people’s business, that he would be better off staying in his kennel lapping water?

Our countdown began when Yura approached Jack. I had fractions of a second to sneak over to the gate. Yura patted Jack as the dog wagged his tail, flattened his ears and licked Yura’s hand. But at that moment, our old wooden gate squeaked treacherously, and Jack squinted.

“Jack, my friend,” Yura said in a phony tender voice. “C’mon, Redhead, hurry up! Jack, good boy, don’t bark.”

Ah, that damned gate! I failed to hold it, and the gate slammed loudly, but I managed to sneak through. What about Yura? I squatted and looked through the crack. Yura was still petting Jack, as he kept up his heartfelt conversation.

“You’re a good dog, my shaggy dog. Forgive me for throwing stones at you. Do you want me to give you sausage?”

Jack took those words very well. Wagging his tail, he began sniffing Yura’s pockets. Unfortunately, they were empty. But Yura raised his fist and began waving it around to signify “You’re looking in the wrong place.” Jack stretched his neck, ready to jump and snatch the treat.

“Who do you want to tell on us to? Grandma? She only gives you bare bones. If you don’t bark, I’ll give you sausage when I come back,” Yura finished his pompous lying and rushed to the gate. On his way there, he waved his hand as if throwing something to Jack. That simpleton believed him and began looking for it near his kennel. Yura rushed outside. Before we could run a few steps down the lane, we heard Jack’s loud barking. He had come to his senses and realized he’d been cheated.

We exchanged glances: what was going on in the yard? Ah, it didn’t matter. The sooner we got far away from here the better.

* * *

Here we were on Herman Lopatin Street. The wide, shady street with water babbling merrily in ariks on both sides had recently been rebuilt and renamed, in 1969. It was named Shelkovichnaya (Mulberry) before, and everyone knew why. Now, it bore the name of some revolutionary who hardly anyone had ever heard of. But everyone quickly got used to its new name. At the corner of the street, where our Korotky Lane ran into it, a new four-story building made of pre-fabs with balconies stood out. It was no common building. The locals called it tsekovsky (Centcom). Only officials of the Central Committee of the Party could reside there and, perhaps, a few who were members of the government. There was a grocery store on the right side of the building for the convenience of those honored people.

So, Herman Lopatin Street, formerly Shelkovichnaya Street, was greatly admired by our “bosses.” A bit further along, on the left-hand side was the dacha of the President of the Republic himself, Comrade Rashidov. The locals knew when the “big boss” was in his residence. When a line of long black ZILs came rustling by, it would mean that Rashidov had arrived, either by himself or to entertain guests.

But we, after going around the Centcom building, walked in a different direction. First, we crossed a shady grove of fruit trees. You could see a cylindrical stone tower in the grove. They said it was part of a partially destroyed nineteenth-century military fort. Then the path, winding among adobes and gardens, led us to the clay fence I knew so well: Firefly Kindergarten.

“Remember when Emma and I used to go there?” I asked Yura. Then I suddenly realized that he couldn’t possibly remember that. I had been a little kid, and he was still in diapers.

However, my cousin knew how to get to the swimming pool, and he also knew the neighborhood quite well.

After we passed by the kindergarten, we reached a more open space, the embankment of the Anhor.

The Anhor was the short wide canal that flowed through our part of Tashkent. It was one of the smaller canals flowing out of the big city canal, the Bozsu. The Anhor, in turn, split downstream into two smaller canals that flowed beyond Tashkent.

All of these many arteries of the city existed thanks to mountain rivers flowing from the spurs of the Tian Shan. That’s why their water was ice cold, even in summer. It’s difficult to imagine how the city would have survived without them. For almost half the year the city is in the grip of summer heat that burns the soil, the vegetation, and the leaves on the trees. It’s water, and water alone, that rescues the city. Thanks to the water, Tashkent is very green and beautiful. It’s dotted with parks, small and large. Almost all the streets are treelined. The planting of trees and sowing of lawns accompany the construction of practically every building. The city’s residents, no matter what part of the city they live in, cultivate any small plot of land they have at their disposal.

* * *

Yura and I were walking along the shady green embankment of the Anhor. Mighty oaks, tall poplars, cherry, apple and apricot trees, weeping willows with their branches hanging almost in the Anhor’s waters – all that green beauty that alternated with the golden flashes of the sun’s rays was reflected on the smooth surface of the canal.

The Anhor’s embankment had been reconstructed recently, after the earthquake. That was when the trees, playgrounds, tennis courts, cafes, and the swimming pool, where we were heading now, had appeared.

The rectangular cement blocks grew so hot during the day that we could feel the heat through the soles of our sandals.

“Let’s walk barefoot. Let’s see who can stand it the longest.” Yura took off his sandals.

He always came up with different ideas. It was easy for him since he spent days running barefoot around Grandpa’s yard, but I had the soft feet of a city boy who wasn’t used to walking around without shoes. Yet I couldn’t admit I was a weakling.

I felt an unbearable burning sensation as soon as my soles touched the red-hot cement blocks. Yura’s soles must have felt hot too, but we walked side by side without saying a word, winking and looking at each other. Each of us thought, “If you can tolerate it, I can too.” However, without realizing it, we began walking faster and faster. Then I began to hop, trying not to touch the blocks with my feet any longer than necessary. I saw a look of suffering on Yura’s face. His eyes were about to pop out of their sockets, and his mouth was wide open… But I didn’t think it was funny. I knew that I must not look any better.

We took off… and dashed forward like two sprinters. Our feet were on fire, and the hot wind also felt fiery.

“A-a-ah!!!” I yelled non-stop as I ran with all my might, leaving Yura behind.

“Re-e-dhead, you’re such a louse!” I could hear Yura’s piercing cry.

When Yura loses, he needs to let out his feelings.

At last we had made it. There was Gagarin Park and the swimming pool in front of us. Hurry, hurry down the steps! And running at top speed, we jumped into the water. Its blissful coolness enveloped my body. My soul also felt blissful. What a miracle water could be! With my eyes half-closed, in this state of bliss, I heard Yura snort slightly beside me. He was also in a state of bliss.

After we rested, we began swimming, splashing and having a good time, not missing out on any of the pleasures that could be enjoyed in a swimming pool. We raced one another through the water; we dived, trying either to grab each other by the legs or to saddle our opponent, staying above the water while not allowing him to come to the surface.

I had just grabbed Yura’s leg when I heard his blood-curdling wail, “Ouch!” and felt that he was being pulled out of the water. I came to the surface, but, since the sun was shining right in my eyes, I could only see a dark silhouette holding Yura tightly by the ear. The next minute my ear was also grabbed so hard that I followed the hand holding it and leaped out of the pool.

Yura and I stood at its edge. Water was streaming down our bodies. Our wet shorts hugged our legs. And Valya, Yura’s mother, kept hold of our ears and shook them energetically, repeating the same question:

“Have you been taught to ask permission? Have you been taught? Have you been taught?”

Chapter 28. Kupik

“Valery, let’s go take out the garbage!”

That’s how my grandpa was. I was sitting on the trestle bed near the duval (fence). I wasn’t bothering anyone. So why was he bothering me? I was on vacation. Perhaps, all grandmothers and grandfathers think that vacations exist for their benefit, at least the ones who have houses with fruit and vegetable gardens. Though I wasn’t angry at Grandpa, I understood him. Grandpa had never had school vacations or rest. His whole life had always been work, with the exception of Saturdays and during the night’s sleep, naturally. That was all he needed. After all, how long could one be idle? I wasn’t even playing. I was just sitting there.

I understood Grandpa and loved him. I had noticed long before that he could win people over, and not just us, his favorite grandsons, but many other people, even those who didn’t know him very well. And he did it without any special effort, under any circumstances.

Let’s say he met someone on the street or in a store or at a bus stop, and the person didn’t even look at him, didn’t recognize him. He would still go up to that person and smile, his face beaming – his beard, naturally, participating – and strike up a conversation:

“Shumo nagzed? Whose grandchild are you?”

Just like that, without any prelude. And when the person answered, Grandpa would almost always figure out who his great-grandfather and great-grandmother were. Besides, it sometimes turned out that they were Grandpa’s relatives several times removed. Grandpa knew almost all of the Jews in Tashkent. He had an amazing memory.

I’m very sorry now that I heard so little from Grandpa Yoskhaim about his family, his childhood, his life in general. I only know that his grandpa who, as a thirteen-year-old lad, crossed the border from Iran to Turkmenistan on camelback to become the first of the Yuabov family on this side of the border.

I also know that Grandpa Yoskhaim had three brothers and a sister, that one of the brothers had died, and two other brothers lived not far from us. One of them was a mathematician, and he taught at the university. But Grandpa, for some reason, didn’t get an education and chose the modest occupation of a cobbler.

Why did the destinies of the children in his family develop so differently? I can’t even begin to guess. To be precise, I thought, though I wasn’t at all sure, that Grandpa, unlike his brother the mathematician, had been very religious since childhood. Had he been so absorbed in religion that it prevented him from developing any interest in science?

The garbage pails, eight of them, were placed right by the gate. Those rusted, battered, sometimes holey, garbage receptacles were covered with boards to keep small animals out. But garbage, after a few days in the Tashkent heat, emitted such an aroma that…

In a word, struggling along with two pails behind Grandpa, I was sorry I didn’t have a third hand to hold my nose.

After making our way down the alley to the corner of Korotky Lane, we set the pails down. Grandpa, after reminding me that all the pails had to be in full view of the garbage collector, said good-bye and left for work. And I ran back to get the rest of them. I ran, brushing away the green flies for whom garbage day was a holiday and a blessing. They hung over the pails put out at the corner of each house like clouds.

At last, I was back on the trestle bed. Leisure was especially sweet after that unpleasant work.

Ko-ko-koo-k-ooo could be heard from the henhouse. Hens could talk like that the whole day. It would be interesting to know what they talked about. Old women on benches in front of the entrances to buildings also talked non-stop. They gossiped, argued and discussed news. Perhaps hens did that too? It was a pity I couldn’t understand their language. It seemed to me that it was a language. Only inattentive people would think of it as monotonous cackling. If you listen closely, you can hear differing intonations, changes of speed, even different moods. Once, as I was listening to them, I heard the following conversation:

Ko-o-o-ko-ko-o. Look at it! (That was referring to a sparrow that sat on a branch near the henhouse, chirping and primping). Ko-o-k! He’s not bad! Ko-o-k-o-o-o. What a handsome guy! Koo-ko-k-o-o. It’s a pity he’s so small. Ko-ko-k-o-o-o-, ko-ko-ko-k-o-o-o-o! Who cares, he’s still cheerful and agile!

And what an uproar would break out in the henhouse when a cat appeared on its roof. Its every movement was discussed. There were disputes on the issue of whether it would get into the henhouse or not.

I had long been interested in the language of hens. Could I learn their language? Could I enter into a conversation with them? If they understood at least some of what I said, or rather cackled, it would mean that I was on the right track. Making myself comfortable on the trestle bed closer to the henhouse, I began:

“Ko-o-o-o-o-ko-ko…”

No one paid any attention to me. None of the hens looked in my direction. Was my voice hoarse? I cleared my throat and tried again, “K-o-o-ko-o-o-o-ko-ko-k-o-o-o!”

One of the hens cocked an eye toward me. So again, I spoke the hens’ language as tenderly as I could. And – word of honor – they answered me from the henhouse.

Genuine hen sounds began to flow from my throat. And soon, I and almost all the hens were exchanging remarks and calling to each other. I was beside myself with pride and delight. I had been recognized as one of them!

Only the rooster remained silent. He wasn’t talkative. He didn’t cackle and gossip together with the hens. His cock-a-doodle-do was associated with a certain part of the day. And it was done not just for the sake of talking, but for self-expression, to make his presence felt.

Though I wouldn’t say that the rooster disregarded me completely. He walked back and forth in the cage, casting glances in my direction. Then he stopped and began to scrutinize me with his round unblinking eyes, tilting his head now and then.

I was even a little scared: could he possibly be visualizing me as a white hen instead of a boy? Was it possible that he thought this new white hen was calling him?

As if to answer my thought, the rooster spread his wings, flapped and then crowed. I jumped onto the trestle bed, formed a megaphone with my hands and crowed in return. “No,” I meant to say, “I’m not a hen, I’m a rooster.”

I don’t know how my relationship with the rooster would have developed if it had not been cut short in a most unceremonious manner.

“ValeRY! How many times do I have to call you? What’s going on?”

It was Grandma shouting. Her face expressed puzzlement. Even though I was close to her porch, I had heard neither the squeaking of the door nor her calling me. That door was known as Grandma’s door, not only because it was the entrance to her house, but because the door seemed to be Grandma’s relative. That old wooden door, in the upper part of which there was a small window with a tulle curtain, just like the one in the bedroom, had a squeak that was exactly like Grandma’s voice during family quarrels. Maybe any old door with rusted hinges would squeak the same way. Maybe… I don’t know.

I was convinced that the squeak of Grandma’s door almost turned into her voice, and the other way around. At some moments, Grandma’s voice sounded to me like the continuous squeak of the old door.

“Have you turned into a hen?” Grandma asked me scornfully in Tadjik, for she had quite understood the essence of my exercises. Without waiting for my reply, she ordered, “Let’s go, we’re going to make preserves.”

My question was: for whom were vacations created?

There was a bucket filled to the brim with cherries on the kitchen table. Grandma gave me a syringe-like device for removing pits.

“Do you remember how to do it?”

I nodded. A whole year had passed since we had done it, but removing pits was a simple thing. You placed a cherry onto the thin lower rim of the device, then pushed down a rod that pierced the cherry and the pit popped out. At the beginning, it was even interesting to do, but after squeezing out three or four dozen pits it became boring. Tik-tik, a muted sound accompanied the piercing of cherries. That sound made the feeling of boredom even worse. The pits fell into a bucket, and I tossed the cherries into a big bowl. My hands, as if stained with blood, looked like the hands of a butcher.

How slowly the pile of cherries in the bucket decreased. That problem could be solved to some extent if I sent cherries to my mouth, since Grandma was not in the kitchen. But they were so sour that my face twisted unwittingly. Some pleasure it was! They were much sweeter when eaten straight from the tree.

“Are you out of your mind? What are you doing here?”

I hadn’t seen how Yura appeared. The door was wide open. He assessed the situation right from the doorway. By that time, Yura had already had enough conflicts with Grandma. Unlike me, he knew how to fight off her assignments and requests for help. He did it openly and rudely, without any formalities or excuses:

“Do I have to?”

At that, he lowered his head like a young bull ready to charge, glowered at her, and pursed his lips: in a word, he looked like someone not to be meddled with.

It was his father Misha who could make Yura help Grandma, and only under compulsion. And here he had caught me, working like a slave. Anything, in his opinion, was more useful and reasonable then making preserves. I myself was already half dead from this ridiculous occupation. The trouble was that I didn’t have either Yura’s directness or his determination to stop doing it and run away.

“Be quiet! She’ll hear us,” I answered, looking around. “You’d better help me. It will go faster.”

Yura didn’t say anything, rotated the finger pressed to his temple, and withdrew.

Tik-tik, the cherries resumed their cheerless, monotonous splashing.

Grandma appeared and, seeing that the basin was almost full, praised me for my work:

“Joni bivesh!”

Her face softened. She even smiled a bit, and the hand placed on her lower back stopped rubbing the sore spot, as if explaining to me, “When you help me, my ailment recedes.”

The first part of the work was finished. I planted the basin on the gas stove. Grandma covered the bloody cherries with sugar. The pile, white as a mountain top, began to turn pink and then red, starting at the bottom. The cherries had to sit for a few hours to let the sugar get well saturated with their juice and form a syrup.

“That’s fine,” Grandma Lisa said cheerfully. “Now we have time to clean.”

What? Cleaning on top of that? And I thought I was finished and free. Yura would have said, “I’m not your cleaning woman.” But Grandma knew perfectly well that I wouldn’t dare to say anything like that. No cleaning woman was summoned to the house during my vacations. I think Grandma was absolutely convinced that she was doing it for my benefit – that I would become neater and acquire important life skills.

Perhaps it was true, to some extent.

As I grabbed a broom made of twigs, I thought with indignation that this sweeping wasn’t necessary – the wooden floor, finished with brown oil paint, looked clean without a speck of dust. Everybody walked around the house without their shoes on; footwear was left at the front door. Grandma Lisa had the eyesight of a hawk. She would point to a far corner with her finger, “Who dropped that?” It seemed there was nothing there. But if you leaned down, you would see a small button. And now, as I began to sweep the bedroom floor with the wet broom, waving it from wall to wall, I saw that there was a lot of dust there. Grandma, from her seat on the bed, was an observer and supervisor, giving me instructions:

“You raise too much dust! Don’t do it fast! Do it slowly.”

Grandma was an experienced supervisor. She understood perfectly well that before the beginning of a job she needed to say, “Now we’ll wash… we’ll cook… we’ll clean,” and then it was sufficient just to be around and provide instructions, though Grandma herself was industrious. She had had four children, and endless chores in the yard and house. She always had many chores.

Finished with sweeping the floor, I took up the mop. The floors in Grandma’s rooms were scrubbed like the deck of a ship. If you rubbed them with a handkerchief after mopping, the handkerchief had to be clean. To tell the truth, when I rinsed the mop, the water in the pail turned dark.

“You see?” Grandma said. “The water is black, right? Change it. Ah, how dusty it is here!”

Tashkent was a dusty city, just like Chirchik. The heat, arid climate, winds – dust was blown around the streets and yards, came in through windows, filled every corner and crack.

“Don’t twist the mop! Don’t smear dust around!” Grandma’s attention didn’t slacken for a second.

That was it. The floors were mopped, and they shone; the house smelled fresh. I received more praise. May I go? Oh, no. I had to help Grandma make the preserves – I had to shake the basin now and then, among other things.

I have to admit that it’s rather interesting to watch preserves being made. The cherries, immersed in the red syrup, come to life as the syrup simmers. On the surface, near the center, a pinkish-white foam appears and bubbles. And the cherries begin to rotate slowly, as if dancing a waltz. They jump and tremble slightly from time to time. A thick aroma of cherry preserves rises from the basin and spreads through the kitchen.

Grandma would remove the foam, which was called kupik in our parts, with a spoon. That’s when it was time to shake the basin so the foam would go to the center.

At last it was done. As a reward, Grandma gave me a treat, a slice of bread generously covered with warm kupik.

“At last!” Yura, tired of waiting, greeted me in the yard. “What are you having?”

A grimace of disgust appeared on Yura’s face.

“Phooey! Kupik! It’s filthy from the cherries. You worked the whole day, and all Grandma’s treated you to is kupik!” Yura laughed.

I believed him then, and the pleasure of the tasty bread with the foam was spoiled.

I don’t think I have ever again eaten the foam from preserve making.

I still don’t know who cheated my poor cousin, and me, or why. Whoever did it might have wanted to keep him from eating too many sweets.

Chapter 29. The New Nickname

An event was imminent in the Yuabov family: Robert, the youngest of Grandma’s sons, Yura’s and my uncle, was going to marry.

Robert lived in the part of the old house where my parents and I had lived before moving to Chirchik. At the time of the aforementioned event, Robert was a young man of about twenty-five, so he had decided to start a family. I was not aware if the older members of the family considered Robert ready and mature enough for family life, but I know for sure that Yura, who was one-third the age of his uncle, was sure he wasn’t, for he didn’t feel any respect for him. He addressed Robert as tou rather than vou, which was not permissible when addressing an older relative. He skillfully attached varying shades of familiarity and gibe to his tou. Sometimes, it seemed to me that Yura considered Robert a creature created especially for his entertainment, so it was clear why relations between uncle and nephew were so tense and complex. And it was definitely Yura who developed those relations, guided them, turning them into a game for himself and a torment for Uncle Robert.

We could say that a period of truce had arrived, in other words, a time when Yura stopped tormenting Robert for a short while. He even became benevolent and called his uncle “Chief.” Considering that up until that time the contemptuous nickname “Forelock” had always been on Yura’s lips, it was easy to understand that addressing his uncle as Chief sounded like a declaration of peace, maybe even a capitulation. What was Forelock? A common nickname for an unattractive lad with a ridiculous haircut. Robert, who wasn’t exactly tall and handsome, would become enraged about that nickname. But what could he do with Yura? However, when Uncle’s rage reached a dangerous limit, which was clear by the look in his eyes, Yura took a break and Forelock became Chief. Obviously, “chief” means leader or boss. In other words, Yura recognized his uncle’s seniority and showed him respect.

I thought that, in fact, my cunning cousin took particular delight in giving his victim a chance to relax, only to subject him unexpectedly to some new ordeal. Even a calf destined for slaughter is treated better. Unfortunately for him, Robert was simple-hearted and forgot about his nephew’s treachery. He perked up during those short happy moments of calm that were granted to him. The grimace of anger and tension disappeared from his face. It even brightened, his big eyes under their thick eyebrows looked kinder, his short moustache smoothed out.

Uncle Robert, who was, in general, very conscientious about his appearance, took special care of his little moustache. I watched that wonderful spectacle many times, and I always enjoyed it enormously.

Before beginning to trim his moustache, Robert would open his mouth in a special way, turning it into a long, narrow letter “O.” Then he would freeze as he unblinkingly scrutinized the moustache. He reminded me of an eagle soaring high in the sky, surveying a wooded landscape, trying to spot its prey.

Clip-clip, the scissors would begin to click, which meant that he had found his prey. It was a single little hair, which, like a lamb that had strayed from the flock, was grazing apart from its relatives. Clip-clip, another one… clip-clip. The scissors clicked unhurriedly, with pauses, as the little black moustache over Robert’s upper lip would become perfectly straight.

That impeccable straightness was especially visible during those happy moments when Yura wasn’t driving Robert crazy. His moustache, along with his nose, a Jewish nose that was quite long and broad at the end, formed an upside-down letter “T” on Robert’s face.

Just such a truce coincided with the preparations for Uncle’s wedding, which had distracted Yura.

Those who have never seen a family celebration in Central Asia don’t completely understand Central Asia. They’re held at home, without fail, and, if possible, in the yard. A yard is just as good as a spacious hall. Hundreds of guests can be accommodated there. Not only relatives and friends are invited. All acquaintances on both sides are also invited – and acquaintances of acquaintances, and so on. In a word, the guiding principle is not to forget to invite anyone. And, God forbid, you should disgrace yourself. Everything had to be perfect. They feast in grand style, sometimes several nights in a row. This custom, a very old one, had been adopted by the Bucharan Jews over their hundreds of years of living in Asia.

Robert’s wedding was a big event for the family. They planned to feast for two days, one day at the groom’s place and another at the bride’s. That meant dozens, possibly hundreds, of guests. Now, they had to decide how to accommodate so many guests. Yura and I were hanging around, listening to their conversations with interest.

Our spacious yard was very comfortable for entertaining guests. One could set up two long tables and seat guests on both sides of them in the big area between the apricot tree and Grandpa and Uncle Misha’s houses.

“I think about a hundred people can fit around the tables here,” Robert said, scrutinizing the ground and moving his fingers as if marking it out.

“Certainly, we can also put tables in the lane, up to the gate. That will accommodate another hundred people. We should begin arranging the tables and benches tomorrow.”

Robert looked around the yard like a military leader reviewing the battlefield before a battle. Then, he suddenly hailed Yura and me.

“It’s time to get down to business,” he said sternly. “Look how dusty the yard is. Sweep it thoroughly before we put the tables here. And don’t forget to sprinkle some water on the ground.”

Yura’s eyes shone. I understood he was not going to shirk this chore. How could he? He was to have a hose in his hands, in his own hands. I would have to be content with the modest role of assistant.

The rubber hose, neatly coiled in rings, lay in the vegetable garden near Yura’s house.

After dragging it to the faucet, Yura quickly and skillfully attached the end of the hose to the faucet, which gave a squeak. He turned the faucet on, and a spurt of water flew hissing out of the hose. Yura put his face to it and gulped down some water.

“Redhead, uncoil it little by little,” he commanded. “We’ll start at the gate.”

Fine, uncoil it I would. In general, it was useless to argue with Yura, especially under such circumstances.

It wasn’t easy to handle such a heavy hose, but the pleasure I derived from it was great. One could get the water to run in the most intricate ways – by putting a finger in the middle of a jet or pressing it to the end of the hose. As I uncoiled the cold hose, which felt like the body of a snake, my whole being anticipated the water tricks Yura had already begun to perform.

Here, water spurted like a thick twisted strand, there, like a fan, then like many thin little braids. It was splendid! A taut hose in one’s hands is not just a piece of rubber. It feels like a live snake. Putting a hand on it, a bit away from the end, you can feel the life beating inside it. And, oh, how it wriggles! It’s hard to hold it back – it seems determined to set itself free. Let it go, and it begins to hop about.

Meanwhile, the asphalt began to look like a zebra. Neither the fence, nor the door of the storage room, nor the roof had been ignored.

“Pull it!” Yura shouted from time to time. “Pull it more!”

I was uncoiling the cold, heavy, bouncing rings of the snake. My hands and shoulders already ached.

V-zh-zh-zhik! The stream lashed the clay fence, and a dark arc appeared on it. Trra-a-amb-mb-mb! sounded on the slate roof of the storage room. Took, took, took! It drummed on Jack’s kennel.

Jack had been standing by the fence, ready for battle, since the water began seething in the hose. Our yard dog considered the water jet his bitter enemy, and he began to fight with it the moment he was able to reach it. Now, that moment had arrived.

R-r-r-rrr! Jack bared his fangs after crouching to the ground, spreading his paws and raising his snout.

“Do you want to bite it? You’re welcome to,” Yura directed the stream at Jack’s snout, and Jack immediately took a bite of the stream of water. His fangs clicked. Yura and I began to laugh.

Poor Jack, who didn’t understand the humor of the situation, continued to bite the stream of water that beat against his snout. His eyes were bloodshot, he was furious. The poor thing was sneezing – water was getting in his nose – but the staunch dog didn’t stop the fight and obviously didn’t consider himself defeated. We were laughing so loudly that Robert at last noticed us.

“Why are you torturing the dog?” He yelled from the table where he and Tamara continued holding their meeting. Yura shrugged his shoulders, as if to say, “We’re not torturing anyone” and directed the stream at the trunk of an apple tree. The space under it was filling with water, and Jack, who felt he had won, barked loudly and, spreading his paws, started shaking the water off. He did it so incredibly fast that his body looked like a spindle, spinning like mad, sending water flying in all directions like a solid silvery cloud. Yura and I found ourselves under that shower. Jack, after shaking off the remainder of the water, lay down, his long red tongue out, looking at us smugly.

Yura’s soul craved revenge for the unexpected shower, for the dog’s smirk and, naturally, for Uncle’s order to leave the dog alone. He directed the water at the windows, at the laundry hung to dry in the yard, at the henhouse where scared hens began to cackle.

“What are you doing?” Robert asked irritably.

We moved toward him. Yura smiled radiantly and, as if by accident, hit the ground at Uncle’s feet with a spurt.

Robert jumped up.

“You’re going to get it!”

“Yura, stop it! Leave the hose alone!” That was Tamara, trying to stop the conflict from developing further.

When quarrels would begin, Tamara looked like Grandma Lisa – her eyebrows raised, her eyes open wide, her voice high and sharp like her mother’s. And she waved her hands in the same imperious way.

But Yura was out of his senses.

“Ee-ee-yi!” Yura answered his aunt’s admonitions in that strange way. The indescribable squeal, ranging from low to high notes, could easily serve as a war cry in the jungle. You may remember its description in Kipling’s book, Mowgli, in the part where the animal nation takes up arms against the inhabitants of the village. It wasn’t clear how Yura could reproduce that squeal, for he certainly hadn’t read Kipling’s book.

So, Yura was out of his senses. When Yura was out of his senses, this friendly, pleasant child could instantly turn into a dangerous creature, capable of any prank. “Something is going to happen,” I thought, both curious and scared, looking at my cousin, whose face was lit with a smile that didn’t augur well for either Robert or Tamara. Still smiling as he watered the yard not far from the table where his uncle and aunt were sitting, he suddenly turned the jet into a fan and doused Robert with water.

“Oh, Forelock, I’m sorry!”

His apology was pointedly derisive – Chief had been demoted to Forelock.

Robert leaped to his feet.

“Misha! Valya!” He yelled. “Take him away!” And he took a step toward Yura. At that very moment, he was doused with water from head to toe.

“I’ll kill you!” Robert roared. It was scary to look at him. His face was distorted: his long nose veered to the side; his teeth were bared; his noble little moustache wasn’t lying in a neat line but rather sticking out; and his thin hair was stuck together, disheveled, plastered to his forehead. He rushed toward Yura, but Yura continued dousing him with water as he retreated with the hose in his hands and a smile on his face. Robert suddenly dashed to the duval, grabbed a piece of rubber hose from near the trestle bed and, brandishing it like a battle club, chased after Yura. The latter at last dropped the hose and ran away. The wet and disheveled uncle looked like an Indian warrior who had just swum across a river.

“I’ll kill you!” He kept yelling.

And Yura laughed loudly. What was going on in the yard resembled a Roman spectacle. Excited spectators squealed, chirped, cackled and barked from the buildings, porches, attics, the henhouse and the kennel.

“He’s out of his mind!” Tamara yelled, throwing up her hands.

Grandma Lisa, who ran out of the house, attracted by the commotion, waved her hands and shouted something. Their voices were drowned in the general hubbub, merging with the barking, chirping and cackling.

The participants in that show continued their ridiculous battle in the middle of the yard, ignoring the audience.

Perhaps, throughout our lifetime, the principal events that stick out in our minds are those that strike us with their unnaturalness and abnormality but at the same time are full of vivid details that spark our imagination. They include sounds, smells, scenes – instantaneous, like snapshots, feelings we experience – fear, pity, a realization of the ridiculousness of a scene that can hit us at the most tragic moments… And all that, blended together, remains in memory as a powerful and unforgettable impression.

That was how two seemingly incompatible scenes became intertwined, engraved in my memory. The first was the old yard at sunset: the intricate shadows of the trees, the wonderful aroma of flowers, the fresh smell of leaves after watering, the blissful tranquility, stillness and cool of the evening. And the other was the same yard, seized by madness: squealing, noise, shouts, faces contorted in fury, figures dashing around the yard.

One of them was my cousin Yura. He zigzagged among the trunks, disappearing under bushes and tables. Robert was destined not to catch up with him. He ran with all his might. Sometimes he seemed about to catch Yura, and then, waving the hose, Robert cried out a strange word, an expletive, perhaps formed of two words, “Su… Su-ka… Sukatina!” (Bi… Bi-tch… Bitch-itina) and tried to hit Yura.

But no, he couldn’t catch up with him, and the laughing Yura was already at the gate. Before disappearing behind the gate, he waved to his uncle with his fingers, which he held in front of his nose, his thumb pressed to its tip.

Panting, the enraged Robert yelled after him one last time:

“Bitchitina!”

The way he looked, it was good that he didn’t run out into the lane in pursuit of Yura. The poor fellow didn’t yet know that the strange swearword he had invented, “bitchitina," would become another of his nicknames.

Chapter 30. Kosher Chickens

The day that followed Yura’s unruly behavior was far from happy for him. The stricken groom, along with all the witnesses to the scandal, complained to Misha, Yura’s father, and Yura was given a good beating. Uncle Misha had a very heavy hand.

On top of that, the slighted party and his witnesses emphasized that it was Misha’s duty to bring up his son properly and that Yura must apologize to his uncle.

It was Aunt Tamara who was particularly indignant about her nephew’s behavior and demanded strict methods of upbringing. The whole family knew Tamara, a moralist who had neither the time nor desire to take care of her own children. They were raised by the street.

But this was not a question of Tamara’s children. In a word, Misha gave Yura an ultimatum – under pressure from the Yuabov family – and Yura had to make a public apology.

The ceremony was arranged with great solemnity. All the members of the family gathered in the yard: Grandma Lisa on the porch, Misha and Valya at their door, Robert, pointedly gloomy, on the trestle bed, and I on a chair not far from him.

Very attentive and with necks outstretched, we all watched “the protagonist of this drama,” who, shuffling his feet, crossed the yard toward Robert. Would he play another trick? I’m sure that was what each of us was thinking.

But Yura didn’t play any tricks this time. He knew how to control himself when necessary. On top of that, the apology ceremony fit well into the usual cat-and-mouse game he played with Uncle. He didn’t mind letting his uncle feel like a winner for a short period.

Pretending to be somewhat embarrassed, but leering at the same time, Yura came up to his uncle and mumbled something not quite comprehensible. “If you don’t bother me, I won’t bother you,” I thought I heard.

“Louder, so that everyone can hear!” Misha demanded.

“Chief, forgive me, all right?” my cousin said loudly.

Robert’s gloomy face brightened up. He smiled like a warrior who had managed to gain the upper hand in tough hand-to-hand combat. Winning an apology from Yura was an unprecedented feat.

As soon as that moralizing ceremony was over, the adults resumed preparations for the wedding.

A few relatives arrived to help with the cooking. A kaivonu, a cook who specializes in serving family celebrations involving many guests, stopped by. Somebody had already gone to the market to carry out the difficult task of buying and delivering the great quantities of groceries.

However, Grandma Lisa, to maintain her reputation as a good hostess, had decided to add her own poultry to the store-bought provisions. It should be mentioned that on that day Grandma Lisa was kinder and merrier than usual. Preparations for the wedding, the general bustle, the presence of outsiders – all that livened her up. She felt she was the head of a big family, and that definitely enhanced her feeling of her own importance. Standing near the henhouse, Grandma called to Yura and me cheerfully:

“Valery, Yura, bring the baby carriage. It’s near the pantry. Hurry up! Hurry up!”

The old baby carriage, its big wheels large enough to accommodate twins, used to be Yura’s. Now, it served as a cart. We rolled it to the henhouse and were given another assignment.

“Let’s catch five hens. No, four hens and a rooster. Take them to the synagogue to get their throats cut. Yura, do you remember how to get to the synagogue?”

Sure, Yura remembered. A trip to the synagogue with chickens sounded like a pleasant entertainment to him. Unlike me, he was glad to take on the task of catching the chickens. I felt disgusted. I was sorry for the snow-white cacklers, my interlocutors. Yura entered the henhouse alone. Some excited, cackling chickens were caught, one after another, and we helped Grandma tie up their legs and put them in the carriage.

It took forty minutes to walk to the synagogue. From Korotky Lane we reached Severnaya Street and, from there, Shpilkov Street. It was wide and shady, like Shedovaya Street.

There were a few stores there, as well as the Museum of Applied Arts, famous throughout the republic, where amazingly beautiful jewelry, embossed design products, embroidery, carpets and other works by old and new Uzbek craftsmen were exhibited. An Intourist bus was parked in front of the museum. Foreign tourists were brought here all the time; a visit to the museum forming a part of many a tourist’s itinerary. That’s why there were always kids around the museum entrance, shamelessly trying to coax chewing gum and souvenirs out of foreign visitors. “Please, gum! You have gum?” These English words were familiar to school and kindergarten children.

However, the police often drove the kids away, for it was assumed that foreigners would take pictures of boys with outstretched hands and then publish them in the West: “Soviet boys beg!”

The baby carriage was swaying smoothly. The big wheels creaked slightly. The chickens, almost lulled to sleep, mumbled something mournful: Pok, pok, Po-o-ok. Noon, with its heat, had arrived. Even though the hood of the carriage was up, protecting our prisoners from the sun’s rays, the chickens were hot and ill at ease. They lay with their beaks open, revealing their small, straight, bright-red tongues.

Passersby probably thought that we were two caring siblings pushing a baby carriage containing our brother or sister. It actually looked like that if you didn’t listen closely to the sounds coming from the carriage. They were babies all right, just not swaddled. And, by the way, it would be necessary to clean the carriage thoroughly later.

We walked, chuckling and chatting, and Yura had just begun to tell me about the wonderful knives for sale at the hardware store nearby when everything went head over heels.

The rooster began emitting strange shrill sounds, flapped his wings and shot up, hit the roof of the carriage, then fell on top of the hens, shot up again and flew out of the carriage. He came tumbling down onto the asphalt and began hopping around on his bound-up legs, flapping his wings violently, and then fell into a dry arik. Right after that, the white hens began flying out of the carriage, cackling frightfully, flapping their wings and losing feathers.

The noise was terrible. The carriage was shaking and rocking in all directions. It seemed to be ruled by a mystical force. Feathers floated around like snowflakes. We didn’t even have time to get scared. We simply froze. I came to my senses when the last hen, which flew higher than the others, rushed past my face and – pakh-pakh – swatted me twice in the face with its wings.

Curious passersby began to gather around us, some of them laughing, others giving advice.

At that point, Yura and I came to our senses.

“Catch them! First the rooster!” Yura yelled.

We began to steal up to the fugitive from two sides down in the dry clay arik, trying not to scare him away. But the rooster didn’t have escape on his mind. On the contrary, he was eager for a fight. With tattered wings and tied-up legs, he still looked like an enraged eagle. Hopping up, he scratched the earth with his claws, which were sharp as knives. His eyes sparkled, the beak on his head with its outstretched neck was ready to inflict blows.

I stopped. The rooster and I were looking at each other intently when I saw Yura closing in on him from the other side of the arik, his arms outstretched.

At that moment, the rooster lunged at me. Wild sounds reminiscent of a crow cawing issued from his mighty beak. He was coming at me at very high speed, hopping springily. He seemed like the devil incarnate to me, like a monstrous, fantastic one-eyed bird, ready to kill me.

I was a very fast runner, and now, the wind hissed in my ears, my body felt weightless but, at the same time, acquired unusual sensitivity. It seemed to me that the rooster’s beak was about to pierce my lean bottom… or my spine… and break through it. I would fall down, and the enraged bird would press me to the ground with its mighty claws and begin tearing me apart.

Yes, that escape attempt was a moment of truth sent to me deliberately by fate. I turned from butcher to prey for a short time, the same sort of prey the rooster had been in our hands.

I stopped upon hearing Yura’s voice. The rooster was no longer chasing me. Yura had grabbed it by a leg, though it dangled in the air, all the while trying to break away, flapping its wings and wailing.

“Redhead, over here!” my cousin yelled. “Hurry! Let’s tie it to the carriage!”

As soon as the rooster was in Yura’s hands, I recovered my courage. I dashed to the carriage and found a shoelace on the bottom. We tied the poor rooster, whom I hated bitterly at that moment, to the frame. Dealing with the hens wasn’t a problem, for they were thrashing around not far from the carriage, to everyone’s amusement. The unfortunate inhabitants of the henhouse were so tired from their unsuccessful escape attempt that they didn’t cause any more trouble for the rest of the way. But we continued to grumble for a long time, cursing our captives and threatening the vicious rooster with his upcoming inevitable execution.

The synagogue was located in a small two-story, U-shaped private house.

The yard, formed by the house and its outbuildings, was paved with bricks and stone slabs. There was a long green awning attached to the roofs on three sides of the yard. There were tables and chairs under it.

The light that came through the awning tinted the walls of the house and the yard a pleasant turquoise color, soothing to the eyes. It was very cozy there. Perhaps it seemed to people who prayed in the shade of the awning that they were actually under the protection and auspices of the One to whom they appealed with hope. There were a few synagogues in Tashkent, but that was not enough, and worshipers usually suffered from crowded conditions. Grandpa attended that very synagogue to which we had come, and he often grumbled that there was no room to stand and no seats to sit on. But on that weekday the synagogue was empty.

An elderly man with a beard and bright skull cap, which Bukharan Jews wore instead of kippahs, appeared upon hearing the squeak of the door. He was the synagogue’s shochet. After asking us what we had come for, he nodded and came out to the yard.

It is well known that the Torah doesn’t allow Jews to eat all meat and fish products, but even the permitted ones must be prepared in a special way, and only an expert, a shochet, can butcher animals and poultry. He must butcher them in a particular way so that all the blood drains from them, because the use of blood is forbidden by the Torah.

If we consider the numerous holidays, family celebrations, birthdays, bar mitzvahs and weddings, it’s not difficult to imagine how much work a shochet has.

“Which one shall we begin with?” the shochet asked, looking into the carriage.

Neither Yura nor I answered him. Our grudge with the rooster and our thirst for revenge had left us. We stood silently in front of the carriage. We didn’t look at the chickens. We looked at a strange structure in the yard, close to the exit. It was quite tall and made of wood. There were cone-shaped chutes sticking out of it. On one of them was a straight razor with clotted blood and chicken fluff on its blade. I couldn’t turn my eyes away from that razor once I had caught sight of it.

The chickens were silent and didn’t even stir in the carriage.

The shochet didn’t ask us any more questions. He took one of the hens by the wings, pulled them back and slashed its throat with the razor. Blood spurted out in a scarlet jet. The hen started, as if an electric current had run through it, its legs shook convulsively, and it fluttered, trying to break away. Its eyes and beak were wide open, and the yard resounded with its hoarse screeching.

That terrible screech pierced Yura and me like an electric shock, but the shochet’s hand didn’t shake. Holding the hen firmly, as if gripping it in a vise, he lowered its head down into the chute, and in a few moments all life had left its body, along with its blood.

The carriage was soon empty. Five pairs of legs, their claws spread apart, stuck out of the five chutes. The shochet then placed the chickens into the carriage. We paid him and left.

Kirk-kirk – the wheels squeaked slightly, as before. The carriage rocked gently. Its bottom was covered with a fluffy white mat of chicken bodies, speckled with blood here and there.

The chickens looked as if they were asleep. We walked without talking, as if we were afraid to wake them.

The hot air still hung over the city.

Chapter 31. The Battle Near the Old Fortress

There are, most likely, no boys in the world for whom the notion “a useless thing” exists. Boys have their own ideas, scale of values, and needs. A bent nail thrown out by someone can be either an excellent piece for a slingshot or a fishhook. An empty shampoo bottle can be turned into a spray bottle – you just need to make a hole in the lid. Cherry pits can serve as excellent bullets for a sawed-off shotgun handmade out of all sorts of “useless things.” That was what we were busy with that morning.

I had just parted with Grandpa, who had gone to work, when Yura, still sleepy and disheveled, yet businesslike and anxious, darted out into the yard.

That evening, we were supposed to take part in a battle, a big battle near the Old Fortress behind the CentCom building. And our arms, those very sawed-off shotguns, were not ready. We had no time to lose.

We started with some cherry pits, which I had had the foresight to save from the preserve making: bullets always came in handy. I had kept them in a paper bag, so they were somewhat damp with bits of pulp stuck to some of them. We spread the cherry pits on the table near the trestle bed so they could dry out in the sun. Bullets had to be very dry.

Now, we could get busy on our weapons.

A wooden barrel, approximately twenty centimeters long formed the base of a shotgun. A clothespin could be attached to the front end of the wooden barrel. An elastic band from lingerie or, even better, a rubber band like they used in stores for packing, could be nailed to each side of the rear end. A pit, or rather bullet, was placed in the rubber band just as in a slingshot. But that was its only similarity to a slingshot.

A shotgun was more complex to use. The rubber band with the pit had to be pulled back cautiously and clutched in the clothespin. Then, you took aim, pressed the clothespin, and … b-b-bang! In a word, our shotgun could shoot almost like a real gun. One only needed to make it properly, so that the rubber band held firm and the clothespin didn’t move.

It was easy to find pieces of wood for the barrels in the pile of scraps near the summer shower. Then, we needed nails, and not just any nails, but a certain size. We knew perfectly well where to find them. We just needed to figure out how to get to them.

Nails, large and small, and special shoemaker’s nails were kept in Grandpa’s storage room in the yard, not far from the lavatory. We weren’t allowed to enter it. Yura, of course, had done so without permission more than once, more than twice. Since I was a visitor, I had entered the storage room with Grandpa in the past. We needed to sneak into the storage room quickly and remain unnoticed, but we couldn’t figure out how, for the storage room door was terribly squeaky.

“Last time I opened it, Jack was barking,” Yura remembered. “Let’s tease Jack.”

We jumped around Jack, making faces, but he lay calmly, glancing at us lazily from time to time. Perhaps he was thinking, “Who knows what you want?… Now don’t bark… Now bark suddenly…”

Yura picked up some small pebbles and began throwing them at Jack. One of the pebbles hit the kennel. Jack couldn’t take it any longer, jumped up and burst into loud deep barking. I wasted no time and darted into the storage room, leaving the door ajar.

The rays of light that penetrated the storage room through the crack lit the dark little shed with its low ceiling and earthen floor. The old cabinet was on the wall across from the door. It seemed to be looking sullenly at us, not expecting anything good from these uninvited visitors. It was a very old, unvarnished cabinet without a single scratch. Perhaps the darkness that always surrounded it protected it well.

Yura held back the door so that it wouldn’t squeak, and I flung open the door of the cabinet. What couldn’t you find in there! Everything you would need for starting a shoe factory right in our yard.

Rolled strips of leather that looked like scrolls of ancient parchment were on the upper shelves. They gave off a pleasant smell. The lower shelves were filled with paper bags full of heels, soles, taps, laces, and other small items used in shoe repair.

“Hurry up, you’re so slow! Look on the lower shelf!” My cousin pushed me.

But when I got to the bag of nails, I couldn’t find the ones we needed right away. Nails, like hedgehog’s quills, pricked all my fingers, and I moaned and yelped slightly while Yura hopped up and down impatiently at the door.

At last, the nails were in my pocket, but I didn’t feel like leaving this very interesting little shed. It was filled with boxes of old household utensils – kettles, basins, a beautiful copper pitcher with a long, thin, swan-like neck and a decorative lid. There were many other wonderful things there. “Oh, look,” we whispered, rummaging through boxes. Yura had propped the door open with a brick and joined me in this absorbing pastime. We felt like treasure hunters about to find a box of gold coins, a Damascus steel saber or at least an old pistol. Our finds were much more modest, of course, but a roll of insulation wire wasn’t a bad find. We could use it when we make slingshots.

We managed to make our sawed-off shotguns quite quickly. Now we needed to test them, and to practice.

The yard offered many targets. We could shoot at leaves or an old bucket near the duval, but we preferred a live, moving target, like Jack, for instance. At that moment, he was sniffing at something near his kennel.

That sniffing, it should be mentioned, wasn’t a random occupation or the result of finding something whose smell attracted Jack. No, it was a part of the special canine ritual Jack performed after he woke up. Since Jack took quite a few naps throughout the day, we witnessed the ritual often.

After waking up, he would sit with his rear paws wide apart and lick his groin and stomach clean. Jack was cleanly, and he did it without haste, conscientiously. Then, he would begin to stretch with great force until he turned into a kind of arrow. His fur, pressed to his body, became smooth and shiny. Even the tip of his shaggy tail became smooth. And what true delight his snout expressed! Jack’s ears were pressed to his head, he would squint blissfully, and he had a broad smile – there’s no other way to express what would happen to his snout.

No matter how many times I watched Jack stretching, it always seemed to me that he could stretch endlessly. If I tied his hind paws to something and stepped away from him with a tasty morsel in my hands, sausage, for example, Jack would begin to move his front paws as he advanced forward. One meter, two, three… he would move closer to me, and his body would stretch and stretch, becoming a thin tape about to break… Then I, of course, wouldn’t be able to resist any longer and would give him the sausage.

So far, I had performed such experiments only in my mind. And Jack, after stretching safely to his heart’s content, proceeded to sniffing. I think he was performing a test, and a thorough one at that, to see if everything was all right throughout the territory that belonged to him, Jack. Had anything unexpected happened there while he had been asleep? Had a treacherous, camouflaged enemy invaded his area? Had it been mined, to put it in military terms.

As far as I know, this is an ancient custom of dogs, inherited from their wild ancestors, just like the invariable rule of marking the border of their property by irrigating it… Taking into account Jack’s fellow yard dwellers, that rule was not superfluous. It took no effort on Yura’s part to sneak up on the poor dog while he was asleep and attach an empty tin can to his tail or play some other mean trick. It wasn’t Jack’s fault that Yura didn’t understand about his “marking” and didn’t obey “the laws of the jungle.”

Usually, when Jack inspected his property, he didn’t discover anything alarming. He may now and then have come across harmless border violators, ants or beetles. They were harmless all right, but they had to be punished. Jack did that with great pleasure. Bringing about the demise of a poor ant was a joyful, absorbing game for Jack. With his front legs bent and his chest near the ground, he would stand motionless, wagging his raised tail, then jump up and begin to frolic. That was something! It was a real dance. Even as Jack danced around his prey, he didn’t look blood thirsty. On the contrary, his snout would express sheer childlike joy. Jack would lean over an intruder and begin to sniff it, snorting and yelping slightly. His moist black nose twitched in all directions, his nostrils would expand and contract. Then he would put his nose down close to the insect, his eyes cocked… Woooop! His red tongue flashed at incredibly high speed, and the ant was gone. Sometimes, Jack, as a change of pace, would press some poor little thing into the ground.

* * *

As we searched for a target, Jack froze near his kennel, his tail erect, sniffing a beetle or ant. His beautiful fluffy tail was a perfect target. Yura was the first to shoot; I followed. The dog continued enjoying himself. We had missed! The second shot was successful. Jack jumped up, made himself comfortable and began chewing on his tail. Perhaps he thought he had been bitten by a flea.

We decided that Jack had had enough, and we switched to more complex moving targets: flies and gnats. It was great to shoot at gnats as they swarmed, a dense cloud in the air. When we shot at such a cloud, we could see how the “bullet” cut across it. The cherry pits hit the leaves on the trees and the walls of the outbuildings. The hissing of bullets and their clicking, so pleasant to a boy’s ear, filled the yard for several hours. We practiced to our hearts’ content.

It was time to go to the tower. We requested permission to go – we didn’t want to take off without it this time – and left the yard.

* * *

The heat was subsiding. The intensity of the sultry, desert-like air was lessening. It was growing milder, cooling off gradually. It was the asphalt that still emitted waves of hot air, releasing the daytime heat. Metal roofs, made red hot during the day, were now shrinking and “firing occasional shots” as if complaining about the trials they endured. Birds began to wake up after their day’s rest in secluded corners – sparrows were chirping, doves cooing.

Korotky Lane, where we lived, was a third of a kilometer long, matching its name: “short.” It was shaped like a “T,” and three streets bounded the lane. Shelkovichnaya (Mulberry) and Severnaya (Northern) Streets could be seen to the left and right of our gate, and Herman Lopatin Street, formerly Shedovaya Street, was at the end, at the bottom of the T. That’s where we headed, stopping on the way to pick up our friend Kamil.

Kamil, who was my age but tall beyond his years, was a calm, modest, quiet boy. He never bragged, though he had reason to.

His yard looked like ours but a bit smaller and impeccably clean. It was a typical Uzbek yard, cozy and inviting.

On the path leading from the gate to the house and into the garden there was a big trestle bed covered with padded blankets. Every time I visited Kamil, his grandpa and grandma would welcome me like an esteemed guest. The old man would take me to the trestle bed, tapping his walking stick, sit me down and begin to ask about my parents and the way we lived in the new town. And Grandma would come to the trestle bed bringing bowls filled with fragrant tea. I felt awkward and embarrassed.

I would try to sneak away and play with Kamil, but Grandpa and Grandma followed the old customs strictly. Besides, they must have missed the company. And I always had my tea along with many stories that were so interesting that I no longer wanted to leave. I sometimes spent hours on the trestle bed with the old folks and Kamil, listening, now about the basmachs (members of an anti-Soviet movement) during the civil war, now about earthquakes, then about Timur, the awesome conqueror.

That beautiful, hospitable yard was also amazingly quiet. No one yelled or argued here. Grandpa and Grandma talked to each other respectfully and affectionately. I was sometimes surprised – how could they have lived together for so many years and not grown tired of each other? And I remembered my grandpa and grandma… I thought that was the reason Kamil had grown up to be so calm and sympathetic.

By the way, his uncle was also like that. That short potbellied man was very popular among the local boys. Uncle Sayid had a rifle. Well, it was an air rifle loaded with little pellets. Uncle Sayid allowed his nephew’s friends to use that rifle, when he was around, naturally. And he acted as a shooting instructor.

“Press it… harder, close to your shoulder,” he would say, standing next to me. The heavy rifle in my weak hands would sag and I couldn’t aim properly. The patient teacher levelled the rifle as he continued to instruct me.

“Good. Well done. Close your left eye. Do you see the target? Freeze.”

“Freeze,” I thought, desperately fighting the force that kept pulling the rifle down. “I can’t freeze, I can’t…”

“Don’t breathe, and press the hammer smoothly,” I heard him command.

I squinted and pressed the hammer. A shot was heard… Missed!

“It’s all right,” Uncle Sayid said calmly. “We’ll try one more time.” The barrel was opened, the shotgun loaded. The lesson continued…

* * *

This time we didn’t have tea with his hospitable grandparents. Kamil was ready and armed, so we set out for the Fortress.

When we reached the CentCom building, we remembered the rumor that all the old houses on our streets would be torn down, and multi-story buildings made of prefab units, similar to the CentCom building, which was considered the acme of modern urban development, would be erected instead. Perhaps the city authorities liked the idea, but we couldn’t even imagine such a thing. Who would voluntarily exchange their own adobe house, perhaps without all the modern conveniences but with fruit and vegetable gardens, small barns with various kinds of livestock, chickens, sheep, goats, and yard dogs, for the comfort of tiny apartments devoid of all the joys of unrestricted living?

Even at our place in Chirchik, it was better. At least, we had verandas and vegetable gardens.

“Well, if they tear down the private houses, we won’t have a choice. They’ll make us move,” prudent Kamil said.

We reached the grove where the Fortress, or rather its ruins, was located. Only the cylindrical brick tower with its narrow embrasures, or openings, had survived and was in rather good shape. It wasn’t too tall, just three stories high, but it still towered over the treetops. A bit farther away, the tall beautiful gate remained. It was made of bricks, crowned on both sides with turrets and an ornate pediment over its center arch.

Kamil’s uncle had told us about the Fortress. It was built in the second half of the nineteenth century between the former Shedovaya Street and the Anhor embankment. It was a real defensive fortress with thick walls, the embrasures, the corner bastion and tall ramparts around it. It protected the whole city. In former times, a cannon shot was fired every day at noon.

There were many buildings inside the Fortress – barracks, officers’ quarters, a powder magazine, and an infirmary.

Uncle Sayid told us, and he had heard it from old people, that at the beginning of our century, there had already been unrest in the Fortress. Soldiers of the Tashkent garrison, quartered in the Fortress, rioted and staged a real uprising during the 1905 revolution. There was also fighting here during the civil war. I don’t know whether the Fortress was ruined at that time or later. It was a pity. But Tashkent residents continued to call the romantic ruins “the Fortress,” just as it had been called in the past. And, of course, it attracted all the boys in the neighborhood – what could possibly be a better place for battles? There was still a grove near the Fortress; it wasn’t big, but it was dense. Perhaps there had been a big park here at one time, but it had gradually been chopped down, particularly when the CentCom building was under construction. Still, many old trees with thick trunks and wide crowns survived. Oaks, poplars, maple trees, chinaras (Eastern plane trees), and acacias stood, along with winter apple, cherry, apricot and mulberry trees.

That was where we were headed.

* * *

On this occasion, there were about ten boys at the Fortress, everyone we knew from the neighboring streets. Each one arrived with a weapon; some of them had slingshots besides their sawed-off shotguns. This battle was not going to be a laughing matter.

“You’ve got quite a shotgun… It’s first-class!” Sasha said to Kamil. He and his brother Slava lived across the street from us. “Even the barrel is polished.” Kamil gave Sasha his shotgun, and Sasha took aim with the air of an expert.

“My uncle helped me make it,” our friend answered timidly, flushing from the praise. “We polished it to remove any splinters.”

Kamil had reason to be proud; the shotgun was splendid. And it had a rubber band from the store, not one taken from underpants.

“Well, shall we begin?” Kamil said. “Is everyone here?”

Kamil, even though he wasn’t a braggart or a show-off, was usually our leader. It just seemed natural to choose him.

“Don’t shoot at anyone’s head,” Kamil warned us.

“Or at their balls,” someone cried out.

Laughter rang out.

“And slingshots don’t count.”

After everybody had expressed their opinions, we divided into two groups. The terms of the battle were simple – one group had to withdraw beyond the edge of the grove to give their opponents time to hide, and then they would begin their offensive by sneaking up on the hidden group.

The goal was to destroy as many enemy soldiers as possible. Everything counted – bumps, bruises and, during the battle itself, any “ahs,” “ouches” or other evidence of direct hits.

The winner would be determined after the battle, when the casualties were counted. Of course, that’s when arguments would arise, and it wasn’t always possible to determine the truth.

Now, we needed to decide which group would stay near the tower and which would go on the offensive. We did it by coin toss, which was our substitute for the medieval warriors’ custom of having a duel between two bogatirs (Russian epic heroes) to determine which army would begin the offensive.

Our bogatirs, Kamil and Ahmad, who was as tall as Kamil, with dark hair and a weather-bitten face, stepped forward for the coin toss.

A coin shone in Kamil’s hand.

“Which do you choose?” he asked Ahmad. “Heads or tails?”

“Heads,” Ahmad answered.

It was assumed that the winning side would stay at the tower. It was easier and more advantageous to defend than to sneak up on the enemy.

Another of Kamil’s abilities was tossing a coin as skillfully as a juggler in the circus. He could toss a five-kopek coin so that, after flying high in the air, it would land on a table on its edge and spin for a long time, like a top, in one spot.

The coin flew straight and high. Kamil caught it, slamming it onto the back of his hand.

“Tails,” our leader stated calmly, showing Ahmad and the rest of us the coin on his hand. “All right, after you leave the grove, count to one hundred and… Forward!”

“Hide! Camouflage!” Sergey, a boy from the CentCom building, said. “We’ll win for sure.”

Sergey would always get angry about all sorts of trivial things.

We deliberated on how to hide while Ahmad was taking his army away.

“It would be great to climb up there,” Sasha said looking at the tower. “Why did they have to board up the door?”

“Why… why… Of course, they store arms there,” Slava, Sasha’s elder brother said. “Otherwise, they would have turned it into a museum long ago, wouldn’t they? It’s a relic from the past. Why board it up?”

We were naïve, and we couldn’t imagine how many ancient churches, monasteries, mosques, and other wonderful relics of the past had perished all over the country, how many of them had been neglected, destroyed, boarded up, turned into warehouses for gasoline or storage for potatoes…

We stared at the tower thinking about the wonderful arms that might be hidden there.

“A Mauser cartridge holds twenty-five bullets,” I sighed. “You can shoot and shoot, and you’ll still have lots of them left.”

“A Mauser is heavy. A Luger is a different story. I saw one at the museum. That’s quite something. It’s light, and they say it’s not loud…” Slava began his story. But Kamil interrupted him, “Enough about Mausers, guys. Load your shotguns. Take your places. Hurry up, hurry up!”

It was really time to get ready. We could hear from the distance, “Ninety-five…” as we were splitting, camouflaging and hiding behind the wall of the tower.

I squatted with one knee pressed against the ground behind an oak. Not far from me, Kamil and Yura puttered about in the crown of a tree, settling in the branches. It grew very quiet. My finger was tensed, holding the clothespin. A cherry pit couldn’t wait to fly out.

I scrutinized the thick green foliage, trunks and branches till my eyes hurt. It seemed that someone was to my right… Branches stirred. A figure dashed to the next tree but failed to hide.

“Ouch, ouch! My head!” The runner yelled. “You’re not allowed to shoot at the head!”

But it wasn’t just his head, he was also holding his knee. It meant he was out of the game.

Yura’s laughter was heard from the tree. A pit hit the bark of my oak, and another. I had come under fire. I bent down and ran to the nearest thick tree trunk, reloading my shotgun on the run.

As I made myself comfortable, something hit me on the head and fell to my feet… It was a green apricot. I looked up and saw Yura’s laughing face among the branches of the apricot tree. He was a person who could have fun under any circumstances. I shook my fist at him.

“Look behind you,” Kamil’s restrained whisper was heard. Just in the nick of time. I looked over my shoulder. Ahmad was aiming as he ran toward me. He had managed to come up from behind us.

Everything that happened after that occurred at incredible speed. Something happened to my eyesight. It seemed to me that it wasn’t Ahmad but rather our beloved Uncle Robert, running with a piece of hose in his hands. Ahmad’s face was distorted with the same absurd fury that had distorted our uncle’s face as he chased Yura. The only thing that was missing was Robert’s moustache.

Three shots rang out in quick succession. A pit whistled by my ear, hit the trunk and ricocheted into the back of my head.

Yura’s and my shots turned out to be more successful – the enemy leader was wounded twice. I saw him bend down, hold his stomach and curse. Well, two cherry pits weren’t just a flick on the nose.

I didn’t manage to enjoy my achievement for very long. I felt a sting on my hand, groaned and dropped the shotgun, so unexpected was it. The battle was over for me.

“Valery, how are you?” Yura yelled, his voice anxious.

I had no time to answer. Someone started shooting at the apricot tree, perhaps not even seeing Yura but shooting at the spot from which his voice emanated. He fell out of the tree like a ripe fruit and began hopping on one leg in a strange pose – he held his stomach with one hand and his bottom with another. One would have thought that an enemy’s bullet went right through him.

Actually, as we later learned, a pit had cut into Yura’s tender bottom with such force that Yura pulled his trigger accidentally. His own bullet hit a branch with such force that it ricocheted treacherously into his belly.

After jumping up and down, Yura maliciously cursed his absolutely innocent shotgun, which was lying under the tree, and hurled it against the brick wall of the tower with all his might.

Fortunately, Yura’s and my “deaths” didn’t do the enemy any good. While they were shooting at us, Kamil, Slava and Sasha defeated them completely.

The survivors triumphed. The defeated gradually returned to their senses.

“So, Sergey, who defeated whom?” Slava asked proudly.

“Next time…” a gloomy Sergey promised.

I don’t remember why, but the next time never arrived.

That was a pity. The tower, at least, must have missed our childish combats, echoes of previous real battles…

Chapter 32. A Wedding Is a Serious Affair

If you examine the way people prepare for an event, it’s usually possible to determine their attitude toward that event and the significance they attach to it, particularly if it’s a traditional kind of event. Families of Bucharan Jews do their utmost not to be worse than others in such cases, though this is probably not only true of Bucharan Jews. It may be the attitude toward such customs all over the world.

The preparations for Robert’s wedding, which had been going on for many days, assumed frightening proportions by the end.

The house, along with the yard, looked like an anthill. There was cleaning, washing, chopping, frying, steaming, nailing things down, fixing, painting from morning till night, day after day, but, as Grandma Lisa put it, “there is no end of work to be done.” She, however, supervised the whole thing with enthusiasm. Her voice could be heard all the time, valuable instructions flying to right and left. She gave assignments to the professional cook, to all the women who had arrived to help, as well as to the members of her own family.

“There’s not enough salt… Add some water, it’ll boil down… How come you haven’t cut it yet? Hurry up, hurry up, it’s time to add it… Take it to the yard… Get it from the fridge… No, another one!” Those and similar commands sounded without a break, giving Grandma’s “team” no chance to relax.

She was so busy that she forgot all about her “spondulosis,” up until a certain moment. By evening, after she served supper to Grandpa upon his return from work, Grandma found it necessary to end the day with her special ceremony.

The kitchen door was thrown open with a bang. Grandma appeared in the doorway, her face a picture of suffering. She walked slowly, swaying, shuffling her slippers, her arms spread as if she were afraid of falling down.

“Valery, bachim…” Grandma’s voice was heard. It was a barely audible voice, filled with unusual tenderness, the voice of a very tired person ready to inform her relatives that she was about to part from them for good. “Valery, bachim, after Grandpa eats, take the dishes to the sink. I can’t do it. I’m so tired.”

Grandma crossed the room slowly, swaying more than before, losing the last of her energy, and reaching the television just as The Latest News broadcast began.

Grandpa Yoskhaim was having supper at the table across from the TV. I usually sat on the couch next to him for the reason I will explain. He took Grandma’s “ceremonial march” as an annoying interference – she blocked the screen.

“Pass, Lisa, pass faster,” he said impatiently, paying no attention to Grandma’s hints of tragedy.

The thing was that The Latest News, foreign news in particular, was the only program Grandpa watched and considered worthwhile.

“They show all kinds of crap,” he would often comment indignantly when he stopped for a minute or two by the TV and saw me watching a movie or something else. “Why are you watching that? You should switch to the news.” As soon as the news began, Grandpa forgot about supper. He froze, spoon in hand, halfway to his mouth, stopped chewing and held his ear with his other hand. Alas, it didn’t always help, for Grandpa’s hearing wasn’t good. That’s why one of his grandsons, either Yura or I, had to sit next to him at that important moment to narrate the news.

I was the narrator on duty during my vacations.

“Well? What? What’s he saying?” Grandpa asked all the time.

He pushed me, keeping me from hearing the news properly, and, after my muddled narration, he often argued with me, was indignant and offered his own interpretation. Grandpa assumed that he knew everything that was going on in the world better than “those fools.” He became particularly agitated when something about Israel was broadcast. That’s what he was waiting for as he watched The Latest News. As soon as “Israel” was heard from the television, and more often “Israeli militarists,” Grandpa wouldn’t rely on me. He would jump out of his chair, approach the television and listen, almost pressing his ear against the screen.

The tone used in the Soviet Union to broadcast events in Israel, how those events were distorted was common knowledge. Grandpa certainly understood that very well, but his desire to hear at least something about our ancient homeland won out over his common sense. But then he would unburden himself, cursing ‘those damn anti-Semites” with all his might.

Meanwhile, Grandma Lisa who had already reached the bedroom, was making herself comfortable, sitting on the bed and changing for the night, all the while demanding sympathy, pity and recognition of her accomplishments. Since she didn’t have an audience and, perhaps taking into account that Grandpa and I weren’t far away, she talked to herself:

“Oy, how tired I am. Should someone my age work like this? Of course not. Oy, oy, oy, it got to me again.” That was her “spondulosis” remembered most unkindly. “Oy, it stings, it stings, what a curse!”

I knew very well what would follow. As soon as The Latest News and my work as narrator were over, Grandma’s very mournful call could be heard.

“Valery, bachim, let’s have a little massage.”

And I became a masseur.

Even though Grandma Lisa often used her “spondulosis” for certain purposes she considered diplomatic, as a weapon in “civil strife,” she actually had a considerably bent spine that made her back look like a small hillock. There was a board under the Grandma’s thin mattress, for the doctor had ordered her to sleep on a firm surface. In a word, Grandma really did suffer.

Up-down, up-down, to the left, to the right, to the left, to the right… My hand, coated with lotion, slid along Grandma’s curved back like a sled, as she moaned and groaned, albeit blissfully.

“A bit higher… more… harder! That’s it… good! That’s my boy! God grant you good health. When you’re not here, no one gives me a massage…”

Only when I worked as a masseur, did I receive so much praise and gratitude from Grandma. I continued to rub, my hand gradually becoming numb, and Grandma’s back turning red. To my surprise, it seemed to me that her back became more even, that the hillock almost disappeared.

* * *

The last day before the wedding was particularly tense. Yura and I had to run small errands every now and then, and we tried to enjoy this vigorous activity as much as possible.

Mama and Valya scraped fish on the old wooden table with the carved legs near the trestle bed in the garden. Mama had arrived the day before from Chirchik after obtaining permission to miss work for two days.

There were two wicker baskets filled with big, fat silvery carp near the table. Now and then the women bent down, grabbed a heavy fish, dropped it with a thud onto the table, and large scales flew like spray in all directions.

Yura and I hung about near them waiting for the spoils.

The fish had been scraped. Now, they opened their bellies. O-one, and innards were pulled out. That was the moment we had been waiting for. Our mamas took the fish bladders out of the bundles of innards and threw them to us. A fish bladder is an oblong, pearly-yellowish container consisting of two parts and filled with air. It allows fish to stay afloat better. But we were attracted to a different quality: it was a perfect cracker. Put a bladder on asphalt, lift your leg and … pakh! Oh no, no words can express what that sounds like. One must simply hear it. It is so harsh, so booming that your ears get blocked for a second.

Bookh! Bookh! was heard from the table.

Now Mama, now Valya, and sometimes both of them together hit their knives with hammers, cutting through the sturdy fish spines, slicing the fish into chunks.

It was hard work. Their hands were stained with blood; fish scales were stuck to their hands, clothes, even faces. They were hot, and the flies that were attracted by the smell of the fish swarmed around and pestered them. But even that didn’t upset either Mama or Valya. They were very glad to be together, for they saw each other very rarely since we had moved to Chirchik.

Mama and Valya were friends. Their similar personalities, fates, even sorrows, along with being neighbors for many years, had bound them together. Valya was the only friend with whom Mama could share her trials and tribulations. She, on her part, heard out quite a few of Valya’s secrets. After marrying Father’s brother, Uncle Misha, Valya was, naturally, drawn into the whirlwind of the family squabbles. She was the only one in the whole family who didn’t take part in the hounding of Mama. Uncle Misha didn’t shun any “means of education” in trying to get his wife to join the clan. Sometimes, the pressure became so strong that the friends had to meet secretly, but their friendship endured.

Now, the two kelinkas – that’s what they called daughters-in-law in these parts – were getting ready to meet a third one. What would she be like, this young daughter-in-law? Would she become their friend? Or would she prefer to join the majority? That’s what bothered our mamas, what they pondered while their hands were busy preparing the fish for cooking.

Our mamas discussed everything, not even feeling awkward about having Yura and me around. It made no difference, for we knew all their secrets. We saw how other relatives treated them, and we witnessed their hopeless and timid attempts to change this small hostile family commune for the better. And, of course, we sided with our mamas with all our hearts. Yura’s open rebelliousness, his quarrels with Grandma Lisa and Forelock were nothing but a desire to express it. I was timider and, perhaps, gentler. My protest began to reveal itself later.

“Where are those lazybones? Valery, Yura, run to the neighbor’s for benches and tables! Ilya and Yasha are already there.”

Yasha and Ilya were our cousins, Aunt Tamara’s sons. Some furniture was borrowed from our neighbors, the Fazildins, an Uzbek family. Their son, Allaudin, was our friend.

The entrance to their house was unusual – after opening the door, you entered a dark room with an earthen floor located under the house. Its other door led to the yard. After entering the yard, you could get to the house. Yura and I were very amused by this ingenious arrangement.

“Hey, Akhun, be careful, don’t run into the doorpost!” We heard Ilya’s voice as soon as we stepped from the sunny street into the darkness of the room.

Akhun was the nickname of our younger cousin, Yasha. The nickname didn’t have any special meaning; it was just reminiscent of the name of a statesman of our time, Akhunbabayev. Yasha was a rather unruly boy. Every time the brothers appeared in Grandpa’s yard, their loud squabbles and the clinking of broken glass could be heard. Yasha was indifferent to the nickname Akhun, but he couldn’t stand his other nickname, “Baldy.” Yasha’s head was quite often shaved for some reason. Maybe that’s why he got angry. Ilya tried his patience several times a day.

As we entered, the brothers were bringing in a big wooden table with crossed legs from the yard. It wasn’t too heavy, but it was too wide to fit through the doorway. The table got stuck, and Yura and I arrived just in time to help. Ilya began giving us instructions immediately:

“Sideways…now to the left… more, more… Stop! Can’t you see?”

Tables and benches traveled from one yard to another and back quite often. So, we boys, who were always entrusted with this work, had long ago become experts in pulling furniture through narrow doorways. Many words, whose meanings were very particular to the task, were used in the process – “diagonally,” “into a skid,” “lower,” “more to the side,” and the like. But it still wasn’t easy not to break these old but very necessary tables and benches and not to scratch doorposts. We were wet and tired after we had gotten that damned table outside.

“How many more?” I asked, waving flies away from my sweat-covered forehead. “Many. They want to clutter the whole yard with them,” Ilya mumbled. “I’ve seen mineral water delivered, but not too many bottles. We need to stash it, otherwise we won’t even get a taste.”

Tashkent mineral water, like many other things, was delivered to stores irregularly, and we boys liked it very much. Of course, we had to stash it so that at least at the wedding we could have as much of it as we desired.

We talked a bit about various tasty dishes, which we knew were already being prepared. Ilya’s thoughts somehow switched from this “tasty” subject to the bride.

“Have you seen her? When she walks, she moves her ass so it makes a figure eight,” Ilya raised his hands and demonstrated what he meant.

“Oh yes, her buns are the best!” Yasha confirmed.

And we giggled. The brothers were older than Yura and me. Ilya was already fifteen. It wasn’t surprising that they weren’t indifferent to the spiciest details of Robert’s bride’s figure. It didn’t stir any emotions in Yura and me, but we couldn’t admit it.

“Alright, let’s go.” The elder brother interrupted this interesting conversation as he got down off the table. “Let’s go, or Robert will start yelling again.”

By evening, the yard was ready to receive guests.

Chapter 33. The Long-Awaited Day

“A few words about our newlyweds …”

Standing in front of the microphone so that everyone could see him, Uncle Misha summarized for the gathering the principal milestones in the lives of the newlyweds, Robert and Mariya. He spoke distinctly, emphasizing every word, no less skillfully than the leader of the music group who had spoken a moment before. His voice resounded over the tables placed all around the yard, up to Jack’s kennel. For tonight, Jack had been locked in the storage room.

The light of many bulbs stretched above the tables illuminated the feasting guests. There were many of them, over one hundred people. It was so light in the yard that even the lush thick green crowns of the apricot and cherry trees glistened against the dark, velvety sky. The guests looked particularly well-dressed in that bright light. The tables set for the occasion with bottles, platters of appetizers and piles of vegetables were resplendent with abundance. They were about to start serving the hot dishes… Glass and porcelain sparkled, women’s dresses of many colors gleamed, laughter and voices droned on, sometimes even covering Uncle’s monologue. By that time, the guests had split into groups, small warm groups, each of which was having a good time in its own way. At the beginning of the event, everybody, as usual, paid special attention to the newlyweds, casting glances at them, sending them smiles and proposing toasts. But, after observing this decorum, the guests got busy with their glasses, plates, and conversations. They kind of forgot about the newlyweds, who sat in full view under the safe protection of their mothers. The guests would look at them from time to time when Uncle Misha’s voice became especially expressive or when he gestured toward Robert or Mariya with a sweep of his hand, as if calling upon the guests not to forget their duty.

Perhaps we boys were the most attentive listeners. If only Uncle Misha knew how we commented on almost every one of his phrases.

Our group, Yura, me, Ilya and Yasha, had made ourselves comfortable at the table near the apricot tree. We could see and hear everything from there. We could mock everyone and everything, our heads close together, to our hearts’ content. That was exactly what we were doing.

“After finishing eight grades, Robert entered technical school,” Uncle Misha informed the audience solemnly.

“Eight?” Ilya whispered, choking with laughter. “Yeah, a whole eight grades and playing hooky… or was it hockey?”

Satisfied with his quip, Ilya laughed loudly. Yasha poked him in the side, “Be quiet. There are people around… Let’s see what he says about Mariya. She must have just played hooky. He’d better tell us how she was ‘plucked’ today.”

Now we were all shaking with laughter.

Quite recently, as the guests were arriving, we peeked at the koshchinon right here, near the trestle bed. The word chino means “to pull out” in Tadjik. The koshchinon ceremony consists of plucking all excess hair from a bride’s face. It’s a very old Eastern tradition, but I’ve failed to discover its origin. As far as I know, it’s customary to do it before a wedding, setting apart a special evening when women of the bride’s and groom’s families get together. But with us, the ceremony took place in our yard shortly before the wedding celebration.

If the hair had been plucked with the usual cosmetic tweezers during koshchinon, there would have been nothing interesting about it. But the operation was done the old-fashioned way, with the help of an ordinary thread. They say that in the very old days, they used the thinnest leather lace to do it. A person who performed the procedure, called a koshchin, held a thread tied into a loop with both hands, between the spread thumb, middle and index fingers. Moving them fast, now bringing together the sides of the loop, now moving them apart, and running the thread over the face of the bride-sufferer, the koshchin skillfully pulled out all excess hair around the eyebrows, above the lips and on the cheeks, in a word, wherever it was necessary.

That was the ceremony we had witnessed under the apricot tree not so long ago.

Grandma’s friend Mira performed the role of koshchin. The principal person who was “plucked” was Mariya, but a few other women waited their turn, unwilling to waste such a rare opportunity.

Mariya was seated on a chair. Her head, wrapped in a scarf and tossed back, was held by one of the women. Aunt Mira sat down opposite her and spread her fingers. We could see the dark thread between her fingers perfectly well. The thread moved, its strands got close together, then drew apart, merged together like the jaws of a beast of prey, moving like a roller around Mariya’s face, which was getting redder and redder. Poor Mariya squinted, grimaced, even moaned, and Aunt Mira, repeating “You can take it, my dear” and rocking rhythmically, continued her work. It even seemed to us that we saw little wisps of hair between the parts of the thread.

“Ouch! She’ll pull out her nose!” I said to laughing Yura.

Mariya had a nice straight little nose located neatly on her small oblong face. She belonged to the category of girls who were attractive without make-up. With a short haircut, slender, neither stout nor skinny, with everything in moderation, she looked splendid in her white wedding dress. There was only one thing that evoked our malicious remarks, her gait. Mariya’s little bottom wiggled, forming figure eights when she walked, as Ilya had put it.

Meanwhile, Uncle Misha, after endowing the newlyweds with an incredible number of the best qualities, expressing hope for their future achievements, and wishing them happiness and wellbeing, finished his speech. He was replaced by a vocal-instrumental group that was quite popular in Tashkent – a doira, two guitars, a clarinet, and a singer. The group opened with an Uzbek song, one of the old favorites. The tanned singer with long dark hair performed it very well. She sang, taking dance steps and waving her raised arms. Her long silk dress dotted with roses danced as she moved her shoulders. Sparkling gold hoop earrings danced in her dark hair. That was when we forgot about teasing and gossiping and couldn’t tear our eyes away from the dark-complexioned singer. Our jaws dropped, and we sang along with her “Guli sangam, guli sangam…”

“The first dance is for the newlyweds! Please!” one of the guitarists announced, strumming his guitar. The guests applauded. Robert took Mariya’s hand and led her to the area in front of the tables. He usually stooped a bit, but today he stood up amazingly straight. With his hair neatly combed, he looked elegant in his new black suit. Mariya, in her snow-white gown, was cut out for the role of bride. In a word, they were quite a couple.

The newlyweds moved around the “dance floor,” smiling at each other tenderly. They danced well, feeling the rhythm and changes in tempo, their movements natural and supple. They didn’t stand close to each other but rather a bit apart. That’s how newlyweds should behave during the first dance in Central Asia. Those are unwritten rules, but they are strictly observed. Guests are not just spectators; they are very stern examiners. If a rule is not observed, an exam failed, so to speak, the gossip will travel all over Tashkent the next day.

The newlyweds exchanged tender glances and a few words. It was clear they were in love. Looking at them, I suddenly remembered the conversation I had accidentally overheard three months before the wedding.

I was playing in the yard, and Robert and his two older brothers were talking at the table near the cherry tree. I noticed them only when I heard Father’s loud angry voice:

“What do you need her for? Aren’t there enough other girls out there?”

Father was sitting with his back to me and I couldn’t see his face, but by the tone of his voice and the way he waved his hands it was clear that he was enraged. Misha patted him on the shoulder, trying to calm him down and, at the same time, saying something to Robert, trying to convince him of something. I couldn’t hear everything he was saying, only separate words “she… such… family” reached me.

I clearly understood that they were talking about Mariya and that the older brothers didn’t approve of her.

Robert listened to his brothers without saying anything, his head lowered. From time to time, he repeated, without looking at them and trying to seem calm, “That’s my choice. It’s none of your business.”

And now, after he had upheld his choice, Robert the Victor was dancing with his chosen one. There was joy etched on their serene faces. It would be ridiculous to expect that thoughts about what fate had in store for them would cross their minds at such a moment…

“Dear guests, join the newlyweds!” the leader of the music group announced. The guests came quickly to the dance floor. Charmed by the Asian music, they simply couldn’t stand still any longer. Things like that didn’t happen in our parts. There was no family celebration without traditional Asian dances.

The big area near the tables was filled with dancers. They moved over the ground in time to the music, moving their shoulders, their hands close to their faces, tapping their feet. From a distance, it looked like a multi-colored swaying carpet or a huge flower bed. The bright ethnic dresses made the women look like flowers, fairy-tale flowers that had come to life, dancing.

One’s hands were the most important part of this dance. They were like magic birds whose “flight” could be watched endlessly. Now their wrists turned gently from side to side, now they began to bend so rhythmically and gracefully that it sent a shiver of delight down my spine. It seemed that their hands were singing, that the music was emanating from them. Faster, faster, fingers were snapping… Suddenly, they came to a standstill, as if listening to the melodious tune… and then they resumed their bewitching dance…

In my opinion, to my taste, there is nothing more beautiful than an Asian dance. In Asian countries, including those of Central Asia, the culture of dancing, dancing skill, is not entertainment. It’s an emotional requirement, almost a necessity. The hand movements of almost any dancer, much less a professional dancer, are full of an expressiveness and grace that you rarely find in the best dancers from other countries of the world.

Young people, certainly, don’t mind dancing Western style, even when Asian music is played. And now, a few couples danced that way outside the circle.

“Who is Rosa dancing with?” Ilya asked with interest.

We all knew Rosa very well, but we weren’t familiar with her partner. He must have been invited by the bride’s family. We exchanged glances. It meant that Rosa had met this guy at the wedding, and he hadn’t hesitated to ask her to dance. On top of that, the couple chatted happily as they danced. Our customs hadn’t yet lost their patriarchal nature in those days. And such behavior seemed quite daring, even to us children.

“Just look at them,” Ilya muttered. “As if they’ve known each other for ages… Well, well, we’ll see what happens tomorrow.”

We giggled. We could guess what would happen tomorrow.

Tomorrow, the telephone would ring in Rosa’s house. One of the acquaintances who had been at the wedding would tell Rosa’s mother with an air of significance, “The kids looked so great together, really very nice!” Soon, another voice would sing on the receiver, “His family is so decent, a hardworking family… We used to work together.”

In a word, there would be many interested individuals ready to begin immediate matchmaking in absentia, who were absolutely sure that a dance at the wedding was sufficient reason to do so.

* * *

Meanwhile, one of the dancers in the circle attracted everyone’s attention – he danced so jauntily and beautifully.

Here, he began to whirl in place like a leaf falling off a tree. His head was turned up, his arms pressed to his sides, with only his hands sticking out, which made him look like a penguin.

That’s how he went around the floor twice, and then he squatted half-way, beating the rhythm with his feet brought together, his arms outstretched in front of him, looking like a wrestler preparing for a fight.

Then he made another circle, snapping his fingers and rocking from side to side. His eyes half closed, he looked blissful, his lips moving a bit, singing along quietly – he was in the thrall of the music. If he had sorrows or grief, family problems – and who didn’t have them – he forgot about everything as he enjoyed that moment.

Yes, he was a wonderful dancer. That’s why everyone was watching him with such pleasure. The song was about to end, but the musicians understood that it would be a sin to interrupt such a dancer. It’s not good to interrupt a person who feels so happy.

So, the musicians began playing the song all over again.

Boop-p, boop-p. boop-p… The Uzbek doira, or drum, started its beat. The other musicians stopped playing. It was time for the drum solo, or rather a kind of competition between the dancer and the drummer.

The drummer set his instrument upright on the ground, held it between his legs and began to beat the rhythm, fast and with great force on the tightly drawn leather, with small rings attached to the inner part of the round surface of the drum. It seemed that the tightly drawn leather of the drum might snap under his tireless fingers, which were moving faster, making the sound even louder.

It was incredible! The drummer, flushed, his forehead covered with beads of sweat, bent over the drum.

Who would be the victor?

The dancer was tireless. He was spinning around the ground faster and faster, keeping up with the tempo of the drum, enchanting the viewers with new dance movements.

The drummer tossed back his sweat-covered head. His mouth was half-open. Another cascade of sounds… yet another … That’s it! He was exhausted… He nodded, and the other musicians joined in.

The dancer had won!

* * *

They began serving the main course. Women were heading for the tables, one after another. They carried lagani, large, round, brightly painted platters piled with steaming pilaf.

The pilaf was arranged in tall heaps, and above them, curls of fragrant steam were rising, as if from a volcano. It was clear, and our noses smelled it, that today we would be having a real Uzbek pilaf, cooked with great skill. We began to salivate, just looking at it.

The long, dark rice mixed with amber, thinly sliced carrots and shiny black raisins looked like a mosaic. Fat, juicy pieces of lamb exuded heat.

Pilaf is a traditional dish in the countries of Central Asia, and in the East in general. It can be cooked in many different ways – with chicken, dried fruits, and even peas. But the most important thing is the skill of the cook.

Judging by the speed with which plates were emptied, the skill of today’s cooks was on a very high level, and the guests appreciated it.

I was devouring the pilaf when I suddenly heard a mournful yelp. It was Jack. I remembered that he was locked in the storage room. I began fishing out pieces of lamb from my plate. Jack would definitely have all the bones left after the wedding repast, but… I felt ashamed to be feasting without my friend. Besides, the pieces I had were tastier than bones.

More dishes arrived following the pilaf. This time, the women were bringing out chicken with fried potatoes.

The clatter of dishes, the clinking of glasses, laughter and the exclamations of the guests merged with the discordant but pleasant humming, interrupted by shouts of “Bitter!” (to make it sweeter, and the newlyweds are supposed to kiss), toasts and speeches.

The speakers were divided into two groups. The group representing the bride praised their “commodity” at the top of their lungs. The representatives of the groom praised his qualities with the same ardor. Both groups went out of their way, as if the wedding hadn’t yet happened and the question of the possible marriage was being decided right then and there.

* * *

Dancing resumed.

I took advantage of that convenient moment, picked up the plate with the treats for Jack and made my way to the storage room. The door was latched, but its lower corner had come off the doorframe.

I squatted and saw something that reminded me of a big, shiny, black beetle close to the ground. That thing changed its shape, it had two holes that alternately narrowed and expanded. Snorting was heard. How come I didn’t understand right away that it was Jack’s nose?

I opened the door and, stepping into the storage room, closed it behind me. Jack whirled around me like crazy, pounced on me, put his paws on my chest, whirled again, telling me with his yelping how happy he was that I was visiting him. If Jack could have talked, he couldn’t have expressed it better.

Took-took-took! Jack’s tail drummed the door of the cabinet. Boom-boom-m! As Jack whirled, cans and boxes were scattered around.

At last, he calmed down a little, and I squatted and put the plate with food on the floor.

Before that, I had held it above my head and was surprised that Jack didn’t pay any attention to the tempting smells. But now, I could hear munching and crunching sounds. “Jack, my dear,” I whispered, stroking the dog.

I completely forgot that while Jack was eating, it was dangerous to approach him, and stroking him was out of the question. When approached, he would bare his teeth, snarling fiercely, ready to jump at you and bite you. It was different today…

Jack crunched some more and then grew silent. Two green eyes stared at me in the darkness. They were aglow and getting closer to my face. His moist nose touched my cheek, and something that was harder than the nose came up against it… Good heavens, it was a chicken bone.

Music was booming outside. They were having a good time, they were dancing. The long-awaited wedding was proceeding in full swing. But I didn’t feel like going back out there.

Something more important and joyful was happening in the dark shed. Friendship, great friendship had been born there. Not that we hadn’t been friends before – of course we were – but neither I nor Jack had ever given it a thought. We hadn’t known how to communicate it to each other, but we could today.

The most wonderful thing about it was that Jack was the first to do it.

Would I possibly be able to shoot a pit at him, to douse him with water, or hurt my friend in some other way again?

Chapter 34. Hammom

“Hey, Redhead, where are you?”

It’s amazing how the same words can sound when pronounced by different voices, with different intonations. My cousin Yura also shouts “Hey, Redhead!” Yet no matter how loud he does it, it always sounds brotherly and friendly.

But this voice was demanding and rude, and I would call it unique. It was no wonder, the voice belonged to Uncle Robert… Uncle Robert, also know as Chief and Forelock, at this moment presented himself to me in yet another character which I immediately denoted with an exact, clear-cut word – “exploiter.”

I had heard that word at school many times. In the past, it had always been an abstraction for me. But now it acquired specific meaning and was filled with real content.

Uncle Robert had begun to build a hammom, or winter bathroom, and I was his only helper. My favorite cousin Yura was on vacation with his parents at the famous lake Issyk-Kul in Kirgizia. I was the only manpower Robert had available, and that was exactly what was happening now, to my great displeasure.

So, we were building a hammom. It was supposed to make the house more comfortable, compared to neighboring houses, which didn’t have winter baths.

In summer, like all our neighbors, we used the shower in the yard. Water was poured into the big yellow tank through a hose. It got so hot during the day that we had a shower with hot water. In winter, one had to go to the public bathhouse that Grandpa and Grandma had visited for many years.

An outing to the bathhouse was a real event for Grandpa Yoskhaim and would be planned in advance. On a bath day, Grandma put the appropriate clean underwear into Grandpa’s shoulder bag. Grandpa remembered to remind her that he would be home late because he also planned a visit to his barber. He had his own barber, for he didn’t entrust his head to just anyone who knew how to hold scissors.

Late at night, Grandpa would return home transformed. He smelled of cleanliness, the barber shop and something pleasant. His cheeks, scorched by the heat of the bathhouse, would glow. His fluffy snow-white beard framed his face. His shaved head looked as if it had been polished. It emitted radiance and seemed almost transparent, with Grandpa’s mind shining through it.

It was clear that ablution of Grandpa’s head at home couldn’t produce such wonderful results. Besides, Grandpa Yoskhaim would be in a good mood for a long time after a visit to the bathhouse.

But still, the decision to build the hammom was made. Robert insisted on having it his way.

Robert was the only member of the family who undertook improvements in the house and yard. His mind was always brimming with plans, which he was impatient to implement.

Now he had the idea to pave the whole yard, now to replace the roof, which was full of holes, or to build a little bathhouse, as he was trying to do now. All of his projects required financing. That’s where the serious difficulties arose.

Robert was willing to plan a project out from beginning to end. He was ready to put his work into it, but alas, as a practical matter, he couldn’t invest any money. He had begun working only recently. The only person who could give him money was Grandpa Yoskhaim. I’ve already described the agony Grandpa suffered when his purse was encroached upon.

When Grandma Lisa demanded money for shopping at the bazaar, he could understand that for he liked to eat well. They would argue, and he would exclaim “Just look at her!” but he would give her money. However, he sincerely considered these assorted improvements to the house and yard to be total nonsense. It seemed to me that Grandpa would have been quite comfortable in a cave, provided he had an armful of straw, a pair of drawers and an alarm clock. That’s why every time Robert had a new idea, the first stage would be a long battle, to be precise, an attempt to lay siege to the fortress known as “Grandpa Yoskhaim.”

That’s how it usually started. The family would gather practically en masse for dinner. Apart from the grandparents and Robert, there might be other brothers and sisters, and sometimes we children, at the table. At some point, Robert would begin talking to everybody loudly and animatedly so that Grandpa could hear, “I stopped at a friend’s place the other day and happened to see…”

“Happened to see” was the main point of his story. Robert thought that, firstly, he wouldn’t be suspected of coming up with the idea himself, and secondly, he wanted to plant the idea in Grandpa’s mind that others had that wonderful innovation, and we didn’t.

Or course, Grandpa easily discerned his intention. It wasn’t that difficult, since Robert never came up with new methods of laying “siege to the fortress.” Maybe he hoped that Grandpa had a bad memory. Alas, he was mistaken. After hearing “happened to see,” Grandpa could figure out right away that his beloved son was plotting something again, and he usually began his “I can’t hear” defense. He would bend lower over his plate, pretending that he was completely engrossed in his food, that he couldn’t hear and didn’t want to hear anything, though his beard would start to twitch sharply with indignation, too sharply for a person who was enjoying his dinner in peace.

After losing the first round, Robert would switch to a direct attack.

“Papa, have you heard? Isn’t it great? We should do it too, right?”

After that, Grandpa, like it or not, had to answer. And he always deflected it blow by a blow in the same way, “Az pool gap zan!” It meant roughly “just start the conversation talking about money.” But it could also be translated as “Don’t waste time. Say exactly how much it will cost.”

That’s when things would become very difficult for poor Robert. He knew what would follow and tried to delay the unpleasant moment. No matter how much he described in glowing terms the advantages that could be enjoyed by all the members of the family after, for example, the yard was paved or a bathhouse built, Grandpa would repeat over again, “Az pool gap zan!”

In the end, Robert would give in. “It will cost…” and he gave an obviously understated figure. “So, do you see how inexpensive it is?”

However, Grandpa would hear nothing more. He would eat without haste, groaning slightly. Then he would lean back and, stroking his full belly, at last tell his son that he didn’t think there was any need for another innovation.

I would like to repeat that Grandpa wasn’t pretending. For a man who sat in his wooden cobbler’s booth even on the coldest of days, the idea of building a winter bathhouse seemed utterly ridiculous. Why spend so much money? What was wrong with the public bathhouse?

After decisively expressing his opinion, Grandpa would take the prayer book in his hands and begin to thank the Almighty for giving food to him and his family yet another time.

This was the way he demonstrated unequivocally that the meal was over, and the conversation as well.

But Robert still had one more method. It was tried and true – make his mother his ally. She was an experienced and mighty fighter. Grandpa couldn’t resist her attacks.

“Yoskhaim, Robert’s right. Don’t be stubborn. Give your son the money,” Grandma would declare decisively.

Of course, Grandpa wouldn’t give in right away, but he understood that, sooner or later, Grandma Lisa would manage to convince him or, to be precise, force him, and he would answer glumly, “I’ll think about it.”

That’s how Robert invariably got things done his way.

* * *

V-zh-zh-i-i-ck, v-zh-zh-i-i-ck – the wheels of the handcart squeaked slowly. I was delivering bricks with it. They were stacked near the storage room close to Yura’s house. I didn’t know who had brought them there or when, but one thing was clear – those bricks had already served people, and they had served them for a long time. I would say that those bricks, which were bigger and thicker than most, were dingy. They were covered with gray splotches of dried-out mortar; their natural color had grown pale, and some edges and corners were broken off.

I hauled the bricks to our former abode, to the place where the small storage room once was, where we had stored coal. Now Robert lived there, and the storage room was gone, to be replaced by the winter bathhouse.

We had been working since early in the morning; it was past noon now. Intense heat was blazing. And, as always, the inhabitants of the yard had hidden wherever they could. Only I dragged myself along, pushing the heavy, squeaky handcart. Drops of sweat clouded my vision. It seemed to me that they began to boil on my forehead and cheeks, and my blood was boiling along with them.

“Yura must be swimming in the Issyk-Kul… in cool water… not too shabby… and I’m swimming in my own sweat here.” That was my reasoning on the unfairness of this world, rubbing salt into the wounds of my soul. Meanwhile, the treacherous handcart ran into a pebble, tilted, and the bricks, arranged in four layers, fell onto the asphalt with a crash. The sound of their crashing drowned out my scream – a few bricks had fallen on my foot. I began to hop and whirl, wincing in pain. Now there were tears, and sweat, clouding my view.

“Well? What’s wrong with you? There is simply no task you can’t mess up. You’re such a klutz! I’ve told you a hundred times not to pile too many of them on the cart.”

Robert stood in the middle of the yard, a trowel in his hand. He had a bandana around his head, and his T-shirt and pants were spattered with mortar. The exploiter’s words gradually returned me to reality.

I reloaded the damned handcart and plodded along to the construction site. Yes, it was a real construction, small but very active. Robert was the heart of the construction project: he was its architect, engineer, construction superintendent, mason, and … I had to give the exploiter credit – he was well versed in construction. He did everything himself – from the planning and drawings to the plumbing and electrical work.

I also had more than a few responsibilities. I was the loader, handcart operator and brick carrier all in one. In a word, I was the unskilled laborer. It would have been all right if my work had been rewarded, not with money, of course, but at least with some sweets, praise, or a kind word… But no! Even Grandma Lisa praised me when I did something for her, but I couldn’t expect that from the exploiter. On the contrary, he reproached me a hundred times a day – this was wrong and that was wrong.

The construction abutted Robert’s part of the house, so he only had to erect three walls. The apricot tree leaned against one of the walls. The little bathhouse was turning out to be rather tight, but there was still enough room for a boiler to heat water and a shower, with space left over for a tiny dressing room.

Today, we would finish the brickwork halfway up the walls’ height. Robert, after precisely measuring the dimensions of the doorways and windows, laid bricks around them. A trough full of mortar stood at his feet. Bricks were piled up with precision near the duval.

Took-took-took – the handle of the trowel knocked on the newly laid bricks. T-sh-sh-sh – the trowel slid along the wall brushing off any cement that had squeezed out. Splash, splash – the Chief mixed the mortar, picked up the right amount on his trowel and threw it at the wall.

“What are you staring at? It sets fast. Bring more bricks.”

There weren’t many bricks left. Robert laid them faster than I managed to deliver them. Before he finished laying one brick, he already had another one in his hand. Robert would look at it, bending his head and squinting as if aiming the barrel of a rifle at a target, and his long nose moving from side to side looked like a trigger. But he should be given credit for laying bricks excellently. That was confirmed by the plumb line hanging down the wall.

“Bring them faster!”

And I was bringing them, and bringing them, and bringing them. My whole body ached; my legs grew weak; my head felt hazy. Even the handcart squeaked more loudly and piercingly than usual. If it hadn’t been made of strong metal, it wouldn’t have held that load.

I leaned the handcart against the wall of the storage room and stacked another load of bricks on it. I was about to leave when the steps leading to the cellar caught my eye. My feet, all by themselves, took me to the cellar door. “What am I doing?” I thought. “What about the exploiter?” It was either I or someone inside me who immediately answered, “He can wait.” That was all I had time to think about. Then I found myself in the cellar… after the ramshackle wooden door that barely clung to its hinges opened easily, and my burning face was fanned with coolness. The switch clicked, a dim bulb lit the cellar with its low ceiling, earthen floor and walls.

I sat down on the old wooden chair. Kr-ry-k – it greeted me amiably… It must have recognized me.

On such a hot summer day, there was no better place in the yard than this dark earthen cellar. Bliss was all I felt as the coolness of the cellar enveloped me. Bliss absorbed me, relaxing me gradually, plunging me into sweet drowsiness. I felt no remorse or worries about the exploiter waiting impatiently for me somewhere up there.

Let him wait. He felt cool in the shade of the apricot tree. The sun didn’t scorch him. He just stood there laying bricks. How about hauling some bricks across the yard?!

That’s what I was thinking, feeling lazy and sleepy as my sunburned body released its heat into the cellar. Sprawled out on the old chair, feeling drops of sweat drying on my forehead, I suddenly remembered the way the metal roofs of the houses and outbuildings would crack as they cooled off in the evening. Ah, how well I understood their language now.

The cellar where I was in this state of bliss was mostly used for storing potatoes and wine. Potatoes were buried in a hole in the corner. They felt cool in there; one couldn’t find a better storage place, and the potatoes continued to feel alive and tried to prove it as best they could. Closer to spring, thick white roots began to grow out of the potatoes. I liked to study them when I was sent to the cellar for potatoes. Some roots were sticking out, some were dangling, others looked like the legs of a spider pretending to be dead when you picked it up. Put a potato back into the hole, cover it with earth, and its legs would begin to grow and grow…

But the clay jugs of wine, fragrant grape wine made in our yard, were much more interesting for us boys.

The wine that was in the cellar now was five years old, maybe more. No one had bothered to make any in the last few years. But I remembered how it had been made in the old days, how clusters of grapes were put into an apparatus resembling a huge meat grinder, how grape juice would flow into jugs, and how we kids had eagerly drunk that juice, spilling it on our shirts, and how its spicy smell had spread throughout the yard.

After sitting for some time in the jugs, the juice turned into wine. The longer the wine was aged, the stronger and tastier it became, but its quality, of course, depended primarily on the grape variety.

As long as I could remember, Grandpa had grown good varieties of grapes, both red and green. The grape clusters were large, and the grapes, generously filled with juice by the sun, were heavy. Oh, how tasty they were… Pick a grape, bite into it, and your mouth was filled with sweet fragrant juice.

We boys loved the green grape variety called “lady’s fingers” most of all. They grew near the gate. The oblong grapes really looked like little fingers. Pushkin put it wonderfully in one of his poems, “Oblong and tender, like young maiden’s fingers…” The seeds prevented me from enjoying these grapes to the full. So much time was wasted separating the seeds from pulp with my tongue and then spitting them out. One could eat a kilogram of grapes during the season when they were ripe. Yura ate whole grapes; seeds didn’t bother him.

As for the wine, Yura and I were allowed to taste it on big holidays, at Passover, for example. Sometimes, wine was one of the ingredients in holiday dishes, like nishala, cabbage and rice with spices and wine. You could put nishala between two matzos, and it made a sweet juicy sandwich. You ate that crunchy sandwich and thought, “Ah, it’s so good but there’s so little wine in it.” Why were the adults so afraid to give us wine?

We would correct their inexcusable mistake when we managed to get into the cellar.

“I tasted this wine recently. It’s really delicious,” Yura would confess. We would squat near a small clay jug pouring wine out of it into a bowl.

We spoke in whispers since Yura’s veranda was right above the cellar. They might hear us… We were also afraid to turn on the light, so we struck match after match. We felt as cozy as primeval people around their fire. The small but bright flame danced on our faces. Intricate shadows appeared on the walls of the cellar, moved, then disappeared…

The jug had to be turned almost horizontally. Wine trickled out. The bowl filled slowly.

“Damn, there’s so little of it! Just sediments… Taste it.” Yura gave me the bowl.

A match was lit, and, by its light I saw lots of black specks floating in the wine. I sipped some wine and winced. “It’s kind of sour…”

Yura finished the wine. “Great wine,” he said with the air of an expert.

“You must have drunk almost the whole jug. Do you often drink wine here?” I asked, not without envy.

Yura giggled. “Oh, no… not often… occasionally.”

The match was flickering out… We liked to watch as the flame devoured the stick. First, flame shot up, then the match began to bend, its charred little tip bending lower and lower… Then the tip and its blackened, worn down stick, which was red inside, began to flicker. The heat from the flame would grow paler and disappear, like a spirit abandoning a dying body with only a thin wisp of smoke to mourn it for a second.

However, a flame never disappeared so fast in our hands. As soon as the tip of a match was about to burn out, we would moisten our fingers with saliva, grab the tip, turn the match upside down, and the flame would flare up again. We allowed the whole stick to burn down, almost to the end. At the very last moment, we brought another match to it. P-f-ft! We had little fireworks, and then the whole thing was repeated all over again. That was an exciting game we played with just a box of matches. Could it be that it was more than a game? Perhaps, without being aware of it, we were remembering those far off times when fire was a tribe’s most precious possession. We remembered how our ancestors had preserved smoldering live embers, how they had been happy about fire, how they had worshipped it, what divine power they had envisioned in it. Was that the reason we felt we were the real custodians of fire?

* * *

Oh, I had lapsed into daydreaming. Yura was not here. I was alone in the cellar.

I shook my head, and all the scenes that had just been before me became blurred and disappeared like the smoke from a burned-out match… Yes, Yura wasn’t here. If he had been here, he would have thought of something, instead of languishing in this construction all day long.

I took a deep breath, headed for the steps and went up to where the sun was beating down mercilessly, where the menacing shouts of the exploiter had long been heard.

I was sure to catch hell!

The wheels began to squeak as my sandals shuffled and the bricks in the handcart rattled.

The long working day was drawing to a close. My vacation was also coming to a close. There was just one week left before school began.

Chapter 35. The Cousins

“Hey, Akhun! Wake up, Akhun! Tell me what time it is!”

My cousin Yasha, also known as Akhun, yawned and stretched on his cot.

“Six thirty-five,” he answered sleepily, “maybe six forty.”

Yasha had an ability that amazed me – he could tell time without looking at a clock. I was sure that Yasha was a cheater, that he knew some trick. No matter how many times I tried to catch him, how many tests I conducted – Yasha might be wrong, but only by a few minutes – I failed to catch him cheating.

Now, I tested Yasha every day for I was spending the rest of my vacation at Aunt Tamara’s and sleeping in the living room, the same room as Yasha. The conditions for my experiment were very favorable – I slept on the couch, from which I could see the wall clock, with Yasha across from me on a cot, with his back to the clock.

Today, I was the first to wake up, and I woke Yasha up with my question. But again, I didn’t catch him. Maybe he had seen a clock with a big face in his dream? Maybe he determined time by the light outside? Light came into the living room through the two big windows of the adjacent kitchen on the terrace. Besides, sun rays hit the wall mirror, were reflected and lit the room differently at different times of day. “No,” I thought, with a sigh, “he could outfox me on this assumption as well.”

I didn’t know then that some people actually have a secret gift of feeling time precisely, and I became enraged for I didn’t know how to figure out Yasha’s secret.

“How much longer are you going to lounge around?”

That was Raya, Yasha’s sister. She planted her hand firmly against the doorjamb. Even her little upturned nose expressed indignation, not to mention her voice. “It’s seven already.”

Vacation wasn’t over. Did Raya really have a right to demand that we get up early in the morning? After all, Ilya, the elder brother, was snoring in his room, and no one tried to wake him up. Unfortunately, Raya had a right to wake up her younger brother. That spring, he had failed his math exam, so he had to take another exam at the end of vacation to advance from fifth to sixth grade. Raya had taken it upon herself to coach her brother, under one strict condition – they had to do it every morning, even on Sundays.

Raya was sixteen. She attended a piano class at the school of music and planned to become a music teacher. She was a serious, industrious girl. She studied well and was the first to help with things at home.

That’s why Raya decided to be Yasha’s tutor. And after I came to stay with them, she took me on at the same time. I had advanced to the fourth grade without any serious problems, but Raya thought that I shouldn’t loaf while Yasha studied. That’s why, after kicking us out of bed – which was possible with Yasha only through an invitation to breakfast – Raya, while we were eating our favorite three-minute eggs, arranged notebooks and math textbooks on the other end of the table, Yasha’s for the fifth grade and mine for the fourth.

“What kind of vacation is this?” Yasha grumbled, with his mouth full. “This is a prison camp. All the guys laugh at me because of you.”

“They’ll laugh even more when you have to repeat the year at school,” his sister answered sternly.

In later years, I came to understand that Raya really had pedagogical abilities and great patience. First, she explained clearly the material from the textbooks to each of us. Then we solved problems. Yasha always forgot the order of operations right away, and everything had to be repeated all over again.

But everything comes to an end in this world. Our lesson was also coming to an end. The day ahead of us promised to be full of the most fascinating activities. It couldn’t be anything else here on Kafanov Street in Yasha’s company.

The Shaakovs, Aunt Tamara’s family, lived half an hour walk away from Grandpa’s house on one of the lanes running from Kafanov Street. There were a few of these lanes, and they all had the same name as the street, but with added numbers. The Shaakovs lived on Kafanov Lane 5.

By the way, that street was once named Gospitalnaya (Hospital) for it ran to the military hospital. Gospitalnaya Street played an important role in the history of Tashkent. During the uprising that occurred in the time of the Revolution, barricades were built there. From the barricades, participants in the uprising went to storm the military fortress, the one whose ruins stand on the banks of the Anhor.

The street was renamed in honor of the famous Uzbek revolutionary Kafanov during the early years of Soviet power. This street, one of the central streets of the city, was gradually becoming modern. Attractive buildings were erected there after the earthquake – the Pharmacological Institute, the Central Department Store, and many others.

But the lane where the Shaakovs lived preserved its old-fashioned look. It was a very cozy place, with tall trees, their tops reaching toward the sky, and an arik that babbled in the shade of the trees. It was a short lane with just fifteen houses. The Shaakovs rented one of them, a one-story house with four rooms. Naturally, it had a yard attached to it.

I visited that house and yard quite often. Yasha was my friend, but out of all the members of that family, I liked Uncle Mikhail, his father, the most. Even the way he looked was appealing. He was strong with wide shoulders, and his handshake was like Grandpa Yoskhaim’s. He had a kind, calm, smiling face. He liked to joke and laugh. Mikhail’s dark hair turned gray prematurely, but it was becoming with his round, dark-complexioned face.

I didn’t know why Uncle Mikhail went away now and then. He sometimes didn’t live at home. It seemed to me – maybe because I liked him so much – that Aunt Tamara’s personality was the reason. The summer I remember was when Mikhail was away, and I was sorry about it. The house without him was somewhat empty. I remembered how he and I would have tea together, particularly that one time not so long ago.

I had come over to play with Yasha, but there was no one at home but Mikhail. He was having tea in the kitchen. As soon as I opened the door, he waved his hand, inviting me to join him. I sat down. Mikhail poured tea into a bowl for me, and motioned his hand toward a bag of rusks, the kind that were sold at Tashkent bakeries by weight. He didn’t have to motion twice. I loved those crispy, brown, well-toasted rusks. I could eat them nonstop. So, we sat across from each other, enjoying our tea with rusks. Perhaps we were also enjoying being together in peace and quiet, not in the noisy company of Yasha and Ilya, and loudmouthed Aunt Tamara. We were silent, and the sounds that filled the kitchen didn’t interfere with the stillness. Here, the paper bag rustled – Uncle Mikhail took out a rusk. Tap-tap-tap – he banged the rusk on the table to remove crumbs. Uncle Mikhail was very neat, he would never put a rusk in his mouth without removing the crumbs. On top of that, the salesgirls at the bakery, who knew him, would never put broken rusks into his bag. Tap-tap-tap… That was me tapping my rusk on the table like Uncle Mikhail. Khrr-oop! Uncle took a bite of a rusk. I didn’t lag far behind him. Oop-ss – bending over the bowl, Uncle Mikhail gulped down some of the tea. I did the same. We looked at each other with pleasure. Rusks tapped, the crispy rusks’ khr-r-oop, and oop-ss alternated. Merged together, they sounded like music. A short pause followed as Uncle Mikhail dipped a rusk into his tea. I, of course, did the same because that was what is called eating with relish – dipping a rusk into tea, then sucking sweetish syrup out of it.

When I sat down at the table, the bag was full of rusks. Now, I thrust my hand into the bag and took out the last one.

Uncle Mikhail nodded, “Kosh” which meant, “Good, that’s my boy.” “Are you full?”

I nodded, and we both smiled, very pleased with each other. Yes, it was a pity that Uncle Mikhail was away. If he had been at home, Yasha and I would have hung out near Uncle Mikhail’s old Pobeda (Victory) car after we were done with Raya’s lesson. It was usually parked in the yard. Yasha and Ilya were allowed to wash it, and they really enjoyed it. That was the beginning of the brothers’ initiation into their father’s profession. He was a chauffeur, liked his occupation and had a perfect understanding of technical equipment.

So many different incidents, quarrels, and sometimes fights took place between the brothers because of the car washing. I remember the time when Yura and I were on the way to the Shaakovs’, and after we turned into their lane, we saw the Pobeda at the arik. It was sparkling in the sun, all covered with water. We also saw the washers. Drawing water from the arik with a bucket, Ilya would douse the car, and Yasha, who stood on the other side of it, wiped the doors with a terry cloth towel. As we approached them, Ilya splashed water over the roof of the car, and the water hit Yasha, who then yelled obscenities at his brother. Twelve-year-old Yasha knew the four-letter words he had learned from his brother to perfection.

But the elder brother was indignant. “Wha-a-at? How dare you? In front of other people… Just you wait, Baldy, I’ll get you!”

He grabbed another wet cloth from the hood of the car, twisted it into a braid and rushed toward Yasha. A high-speed chase around the car ensued, during which the brothers exchanged swear words the whole time. Yura and I looked at each other, knowing perfectly well how this incident would end. The younger brother was quite agile, but the older one still managed to catch him. After kicking Yasha in the butt and hitting him on the back of his head, Ilya proceeded to the primary punishment – the arm twisting.

“Does it hurt? Say ‘Kind man, forgive this shithead!’” he repeated.

Bending over lower and lower from pain, almost on his knees, Yasha tolerated it for a long time. He groaned, tried to wriggle away, but then, when he couldn’t take it any longer, he yelled and squealed, and tears appeared in his eyes. It was agony to watch, but it was absolutely useless to interfere. Could we, ten-year-old boys, handle the huge Ilya?

Naturally, Yasha gave up. First, he mumbled something, but Ilya demanded, “Louder, Baldy! Repeat after me: ‘kind man’…” And poor Yasha repeated the humiliating apology loudly word for word.

Of course, we were sorry for Yasha, but he, when he could, tried to spite his brother. They both misbehaved now and then, but the result was that Ilya always played the part of the executioner, and Yasha the part of the executed. But he didn’t yield. It even seemed to me that both torturer and tortured enjoyed it.

I sometimes wondered whether Yasha and Ilya loved each other. Was their friendship true? I didn’t have a brother, and I regretted it. I often imagined that I had a brother who was almost my age and we were always together. We would tell each other everything, share secrets, play pranks, and when one of us happened to fight with someone, of course we would always stand up for each other.

Even though I was very attached to my cousin Yura, he couldn’t replace the brother I yearned for. Firstly, since my family had moved to Chirchik, we saw each other only in summer. Secondly, our relations weren’t that serene. Sometimes, we behaved no better than Yasha and Ilya. We fought and swore at each other, though we managed to do it without hurting each other, execution style. Sometimes, I suffered because of Yura’s pranks.

Once in summer, we walked down Shedovaya Street on the way home. We were walking slowly. Suddenly, two guys ran up to us. Before I realized what was happening, Yura dashed away. One of the guys grabbed me by the shoulder, as the other, older one asked: “What is he to you?”

“My little brother,” I answered. At that moment I heard Yura’s piercing cry, “Redhead, run away!”

But it was too late. I felt a blow to my belly that was so hard that my vision blurred, and I gasped for breath.

“That’s for your brother,” I heard as I squatted, almost falling over.

The guys left right after that since Yura was too far away for them to catch. He ran up to me and began to raise me, mumbling, “I told you to run away.”

He told me? He didn’t tell me, he yelled after he had run away leaving me alone. How could I guess what would happen when the guys I didn’t know ran up to me? It turned out that they were brothers, the younger of which Yura had either offended or tricked. The younger one naturally complained to his older brother, and… But what did that have to do with me?

In a word, sometimes it seemed to me that Yura acted in a not-quite-brotherly way.

When we told Ilya about it, he dealt with the guy who had hit me.

* * *

However, today I was in Yasha’s company. Our lesson was over, and the morning air was cool, which meant that we shouldn’t expect intense heat throughout the day. That was great because we planned to spend the whole day outside. We always had lots of interesting things to do, and some of them had already been planned.

Yasha was the first to go out to the yard. When I showed up, he was carefully tying the end of a long piece of twine around a big potato, repeating, “It’ll go off all right.”

Well-armed, we ran to Kafanov Street. We didn’t know a thing about the revolutionary combat glory of that street. However, we were about to make our own contribution to it. We chose a secluded place behind a big tree at the edge of the sidewalk. After waiting till there were neither pedestrians nor cars in sight, Yasha handed me the end of the cord, ran to the middle of the street, put the potato on a spot where traces of tires cold be seen and came back. Almost immediately after that, the noise of a vehicle was heard, and a truck appeared. Yasha had placed the potato very well. A loud shmya-k-k could be heard.

“The test was successful,” Yasha said, giggling. He pulled the cord with the remains of the crushed potato to the sidewalk, took a piece of metal with the end folded over out of his pocket and replaced the shell, so to speak.

The next project was to hunt a bigger beast than a truck – a trolley bus. Yasha ran to the roadway and placed the metal “shell” under the trolley wires.

I considered Yasha a great expert on the subject of trolley buses. He recognized their arrival at a stop by the slightest stirring of the wires. I had noticed it two years before when we were standing at a trolley stop. No trolley was yet in sight when Yasha said, “It’s coming.” I was surprised. He raised his hand and pointed at the wires. I didn’t see right away that they were stirring. And indeed, a trolley arrived shortly.

At that time of day, there wasn’t much traffic on Kafanov Street. Vehicles passed by at long intervals, and it was possible to guess by the sound of their tires what vehicle was coming. Cars emitted a light sound – vsh-shik, and the car was gone. A big clumsy trolley bus was a different story. When it was still far away, a crescendo of sound similar to wailing could already be heard. As it drew nearer, a sound made by the electrical contacts could be heard from the driver’s cabin, and sometimes sparks flew from the wires.

A big, heavy trolley bus that looked like a beast, ready to carry along everything in its path, was coming our way. Here it was, almost upon us. The front wheel missed the metal “shell.” Yasha managed to pull the twine quickly to move the “shell,” and… Crack… the shell flew off the rear wheel, hit the bottom of the trolley, ricocheted against the asphalt, and crashed into the side of the trolley. Yasha immediately pulled the cord back.

We were both ecstatic. Even Yasha hadn’t expected such success. But our ecstasy was immediately replaced by fear – the brakes went on, and the trolley slowed down and stopped. Fortunately, we were behind the bushes. The door opened, the driver got out of the trolley, walked around it, and shrugged his shoulders…

It worked out. He was gone. But we decided not to continue that dangerous kind of hunt today. Another type of hunt, no less fascinating, awaited us.

* * *

One of the advantages of Yasha’s lane was the street water spigot. The small metal column to which the spigot was attached rested on a cement stand. Water from the spigot dripped onto the stand, overflowing it. Not far from it, there was a perfect puddle in a depression at the edge of the sidewalk. The shade of the adjoining trees kept it from drying out. Besides, it was constantly being filled with water. So that puddle and the spigot were the principal delight of that lane. There, we turned into water gunners and hunted insects.

What insects? Can you imagine a big Asian city, a southern city, with its fruit gardens, bazaars where they sell fruits, meat, fish from outdoor counters, where there is no trace of refrigerators, with its garbage pails at the gates, its toilets lacking proper conveniences? Imagine all that and you’ll understand why the life of any boy in Asia takes place from early spring to late autumn amid crawling and flying insects, mostly flies of different types and sizes: houseflies, meat flies, tiny fruit flies. There were plenty of wasps, which didn’t shrink from any food. We could also play with Maybugs, rhinoceros beetles, long green mantises, grasshoppers, goggle-eyed dragonflies –all of which could be caught and tortured.

Certainly, many insects annoyed us, but we got used to them as an inevitable evil, like flies, for instance. But I and many boys I knew harbored special hatred toward wasps. It was clear why – their bites were very painful; I knew from experience. Once, Grandma Lisa was cooking dinner, and she asked me to bring potatoes from the cellar. On my way back, I noticed an almost rotten squashed apricot on the path and kicked it with my foot, but there was a wasp on the apricot. The wasp replied in kind. I heard vzh-zhik, something flashed before my eyes, and I felt a sharp burning sting on the top of my head. The pain was so sharp that I wailed, dropped the potatoes and rushed to Grandma, yelling, “A wasp stung me!” Grandma grabbed me by the arm, took me to the fridge and applied a cut tomato to the top of my head.

“Hold it, rub it in,” she said calmly. Obviously, this was not the first time she had had to deal with a wasp sting. “Where are the potatoes? Go bring them.”

My hatred of wasps was boundless after that. Just the sight of a little yellow body with black stripes called forth a shudder of disgust. I craved revenge. And the best place for revenge was the puddle at the water spigot at Kafanov Lane 5. Insects and birds flew to the puddle, as to a watering hole, starting early in the morning. Stray dogs and alley cats came running to drink the fresh water. Water spiders ran across the water, and small circles formed on the surface from their tiny feet. In a word, it was a wonderful puddle.

It was interesting that visitors to this watering hole didn’t use it all at once. It seemed that they observed a certain order. Wasps came flying in during the morning hours.

After flying in circles above the water, a wasp would find a little stone or twig, alight on it and begin to drink. Its mouth couldn’t be seen but it moved its antennae above the water and its little bottom trembled with pleasure.

“Drown, you scoundrel!” I pressed the water gun and a strong spurt knocked the wasp into the center of the puddle. At first, it moved its wings and thrashed around helplessly. After watching its agony with pleasure, I would shoot another spurt from my water gun, and the movement subsided.

“Served it right!” Yasha said. He also hated wasps, but he hated bumblebees even more. It was bumblebees he wanted to settle scores with. Yasha had a swollen eye for a long time after a bumblebee sting.

After we emptied our water guns, we ran to the spigot and filled them again. Today, we water gunners – that’s what we called ourselves – had a wonderful day. It was hard to count how many wasps we had destroyed, along with some other creatures.

Our water guns were empty one-liter shampoo bottles. We made holes in their lids, wider ones than on the sprinklers we used in our usual games when we fought with each other, so a spurt from the water gun was much stronger. Yasha and I became quite proficient at the use of this weapon. We were no worse than the heroes of the sea stories by Jack London who, I assume, could do nothing but shoot accurately. We also shot without missing.

* * *

“Greetings to the fighting men! Another children’s game?” Kirill, Yasha’s neighbor, who was the same age as Yasha, said, grinning. “I’ve been at the construction site. Guess what they’ve delivered there. Huge rolls of fiberglass. It’s so soft, jumping on them is like jumping on a trampoline. Up, and you feel like you’re flying… It’s really great.”

And after holding up his thumb to illustrate his words, Kirill walked away, limping slightly.

We exchanged glances.

“Shall we go there?” I said.

“Let’s go. But why’s he limping?” suspicious Yasha asked.

“He must have jumped too much.”

We ran to the construction site. We couldn’t possibly miss seeing those amazing rolls. It was Sunday, and there were no workers or security there.

“Wow! Look at them… And there’re so many of them!” Yasha exclaimed, as we approached the site.

Indeed, pinkish-brown rolls of a material called fiberglass – we didn’t give a thought to why it was called that – were stacked by the wall and used for insulation. They looked soft and plump. Wasting no time, we climbed on top of them. Kirill hadn’t lied. The fiberglass was so springy that we were tossed up as if on trampoline every time we jumped. Yasha was having a great time. He jumped onto the stack from the window above it. Sometimes he managed to jump smoothly and stay on his feet, sometimes he was tossed so high that he landed on all fours with his hands buried in the fiberglass. That’s why he was probably the first to feel the trouble. Yasha began to scratch his hand after he jumped down off the stack, then he bent down to his legs. My legs also began to itch strangely, and my whole body was burning.

“Yasha, what’s wrong with us?”

“What? What?” Yasha answered, whining as he took off his sandals, “Kirill is such a swine. He lured us to the fiberglass deliberately. Remember he was limping? I’ll pay this skunk back,” and Yasha began brushing the invisible splinters of glass off his feet and legs.

I was gripped by panic. We had been jumping on wool with bits of real glass. “What if it’s penetrated our bodies?” I thought. The stinging sensation, especially on our legs, intensified. “We need to wash ourselves!” I yelled, and we rushed home.

* * *

Everything, of course, ended well. I don’t remember how Yasha paid Kirill back.

As for his math, Yasha didn’t pass the test again, and he had to repeat the fifth grade. So his sister’s prediction about laughter came true.

Chapter 36. We’ll Go Visit Grandpa Tomorrow

“Three, four, five…” I counted as I tossed the langa into the air with my foot. It flew up, then down, turning in the air, doing a somersault, and I had my foot ready for it.

You don’t know what a langa is? That’s strange. You should know that every boy had that wonderful thing when I was a child. A langa is a small piece of fur with a piece of lead attached to it. You toss it up with your foot and, before it can land, you toss it again. The game seems simple, but it requires adroitness and skill. It consists of thirteen rounds and, in each of them, the langa should be tossed up in a different way, the movements growing more complicated with each successive round, and it must fly up and land in a certain way, different from the previous one.

Every boy obtained a piece of fur for his langa any way he could. Some of them traded their friends something for it. Others bought a piece of old mutton skin at the bazaar. Yet others found well-worn fur-lined boots or a torn fur collar or hat around the house. It was even simpler to get a piece of lead since scraps of wires and pieces of metal lay around factory yards, garbage dumps and even on the streets of Chirchik, just as in any Soviet city. One only needed to shape the lead the proper way. That was the most interesting part.

A big group would get together to melt the lead. They would make a small fire and hold a can filled with small pieces of lead over it using tongs. The flame heated the can, and the lead gradually came to life. It began to tremble at the bottom of the can. First, it trembled only slightly, then faster and faster… And suddenly, a thin dull layer appeared under the lead. It would spread, turning into a puddle. Bending over the can, we watched pieces of lead melt like ice cubes. It was an extremely engrossing sight. You just wanted to watch and watch.

When the last piece melted, only a silvery puddle remained in the can. A shallow pit would have been prepared near the fire, a mold for a sinker. We poured the lead carefully and evenly into it. After just a few minutes it solidified. The sinker was ready. All we had to do then was make two small holes in it with a nail and attach it to a piece of fur. That’s how we made langas.

* * *

“…six, seven, eight…” I continued to count. As I got to nine, the damned lead ricocheted against my shoe at a sharp angle, hit the side of the navy-blue mailbox and fell to the cement floor of the landing.

I was out of the game until the next round.

It was drizzling outside. It was autumn, which was as beautiful in Chirchik as, perhaps, everywhere else. The crowns of the trees became bright, lush scarlet-yellow-brown bouquets. They shone against the blue sky and gave off light even on rainy days. The water in the ariks didn’t flow bubbling and twisting at the turns but streamed slowly, stopping at small temporary dams made for watering. Hot days were rare, and we all enjoyed the coolness. Children’s voices could be heard in yards from morning till night. On rainy days like today, we could have a good time playing or chattering on the staircase landings. We could play langa, for example.

Our usual group – Kolya and Sasha, Edem, Rustem, Vova Oparin and I were playing today. After I missed, it was Edem’s turn. Today, we were all using his langa.

When Edem played, it always seemed to me that he and his langa looked alike. It was made of black fur and had long, almost straight strands, just like Edem’s hair. He didn’t like short haircuts, and his hair was straight. His langa flew up and landed especially easily, elegantly and quickly. That’s how Edem moved. He couldn’t sit still; he was always in motion. The other boys’ langas were also like them.

Vova Oparin led the game. Vova was a very good player; he knew it and liked to show off a bit. Before he began, he smoothed the long shiny fur, then tossed the langa up with his hand.

“It’s a bit too light,” he informed us. “Not enough lead.”

That was debatable. Certainly, more lead made a langa heavier and stabler in the air. That required strong feet, but even they would get tired. A light langa was less manageable, but it was easier to aim it in a desired direction. However, no one argued with Oparin. He had already begun to toss the langa.

When Vova’s turn came, everyone knew he would be doing it for a long time. You couldn’t take your eyes off of him as he tossed it up. Toop-toop – he sent the langa up. As it flew up, it looked like a fluffy little animal that obeyed the player as if he were a tamer – it knew what height it should reach, at what angle it should fly. After reaching the ceiling, the langa descended directly onto his foot, bounced off it like an athlete on a trampoline, flew up again and, after turning upside down, rushed back down again.

Pok-pok! Vova’s feet beat the rhythm on the floor as he got ready for the next kick while the langa was up in the air.

Oparin always played with amazing ease. Many of us strained our bodies during the game with both hands up in the air to keep our balance. Oparin played in a relaxed manner, his bearing erect. Even when he tossed the langa up, he didn’t lean forward. When he played, he held his left hand behind his back, and his right hand, bent at the elbow, was pressed to his side. He tossed the langa up fast and precisely, and he never missed.

It sometimes seemed to me that Vova could play with his eyes closed, that his body knew and felt everything by itself. And it sometimes seemed that it was his eyes that guided the langa, sending it special signals, radiating something. Vova’s eyes were so glued to the flying langa, so concentrated that if he had bumped into a wall, he would have gone through it without even noticing.

After finishing the stage called sis, tossing the langa up with one foot held off the floor all the time, Vova moved on to the stage called loori. Loori was a very complex stage. First, one had to place one foot behind the other and toss the langa up ten times with the foot of a bent leg, but it was even more complex than that. One had to jump while bending both legs, so that one leg was positioned higher than the other, and then toss the langa up with the leg that was positioned lower another ten times. That was pure acrobatics. To do that, even Vova had to draw his arms forward to keep his balance.

Oparin had already been handling the langa for ten minutes without missing. He was tired. His face, sunburned during the summer, was crimson and covered with perspiration. After finishing the last stage, he dried his face on his sleeve. Yes, he won, and it was clear that none of us could catch up with him. We didn’t feel like continuing the game.

“Let’s go see ‘Fantomas’” Edem suggested. “I’ve seen it twice. It’s a great movie.”

We all approved of his idea and ran home to get money.

* * *

Mama was slicing carrots for pilaf in the kitchen. I liked to watch how she did it. She would place carrots on a tahtach, a board with short legs, something like a little table. She placed a plate between its legs and the sliced carrots would fall into it. Mama pressed half a carrot to the tahtach with a finger of her left hand as the blade of a knife flashed in her right hand and thin sticks of carrot flew out. The speed with which she did it always captivated me, though it was somewhat scary, for it seemed that her finger could get under the blade. No matter how many times I watched her slicing vegetables, I couldn’t get used to it; my heart missed a beat every time. This spectacle attracted me so much that I wanted to take part in it – for example, to snap my fingers to the rhythm of the knife’s beating against the cutting board. But the rhythm was so rapid that my fingers couldn’t keep up with Mama’s speed.

Mama turned around as she heard me enter the kitchen. Her eyes were tearstained.

“Grandpa Hanan is not well. He’s at the hospital,” Mama sniffled, but she immediately dried her eyes.

Emma sat at the kitchen table eating a carrot with a crunch and staring at Mama with her round eyes. It was clear from the expression in her eyes that if Mama sniffled another time, Emma would make a scene.

“Are you going to see him, Mom? Will you go soon?”

I caught Mama’s agitation. Grandpa often didn’t feel well, and we were used to it. But if Mama was so upset and crying, it meant that he felt much worse. I didn’t want to go to the movie any longer. I wanted to see Grandpa. Today was a day off. It meant that Mama would go to see him and perhaps take me along.

“Shall we go see him, Mom?” I asked another time.

“Father won’t let me,” she whispered.

Perhaps such an answer might have seemed strange to another child but not to me, not to me. I knew too well what cruel actions my Father was capable of. It was useless to ask why he had done it and how he could possibly not to allow his wife to visit her ailing father.

I sighed and asked, “May I go to the movies?”

Mama nodded.

“Go. Here’s the money… Listen,” she suddenly asked. “Will you take Emma with you? Just hold her hand. Just be sure to hold her hand the whole time.”

* * *

The October Movie Theater was a three-minute walk from our place. The three-story brick building was located on a hill and, for that reason, reminded me of a fortress. The movie theater’s back wall faced our building. That was where the exit for spectators and the basement to which a short staircase led were located. The basement attracted us boys, no less than the auditorium with its movies.

It was a workshop, or an atelier, as its master, Uncle Petya, preferred to call it. In our opinion, Uncle Petya was the best artist in the world. He painted posters to advertise upcoming movies. We considered those posters wonderful works of art. However, it seems to me, even now, that they were expressive, colorful and detailed.

Uncle Petya was a kind, sincere person. We once stopped by his atelier by accident, and soon became habitués. As soon as we showed up, a welcoming exclamation would be heard, “Ah, guys, it’s you! Come in, come on in!” And we didn’t make him beg us. We spent long hours in Uncle Petya’s atelier, especially when it was raining. There, in the basement, days never seemed rainy and drab. It was always light and festive in that small room crammed with posters, canvases on frames and cans of paint. Our favorite characters looked down at us from the posters. Uncle Petya, brushes in his hands, worked wonders on the canvases, and another adventurer, noble knight or warrior would appear on them. We met Captain Nemo, Robinson Crusoe, a kind policeman in evil and merciless New York City, and a great number of other characters before the movies were released.

Sometimes, we became Uncle Petya’s collaborators, well, perhaps not collaborators but consultants. For instance, let’s say he was painting a poster for the movie “The Last of the Mohicans.” We stretched our necks the better to see the sunburnt figures of the Indians that appeared on the canvas. They were Chingachgook and his son Uncas.

Suddenly, someone’s voice broke the silence. “You have it wrong, Uncle Petya. They paint their faces dark red before a battle. You have them pale.” Or “Un-n-cle Petya! What about the tomahawk? There should be leather strips on the handle. Don’t you remember?”

Uncle Petya, puffing his pipe, would nod with a serious air and repeat, “That’s my boy, that’s my boy. Thank you.” And he made the necessary corrections. Perhaps it wasn’t that important, but we were very proud of our contribution to his art.

A line would appear at the box office, sometimes a very long one, as soon as a new poster went up at the main entrance. We were absolutely sure that it was Uncle Petya’s skill that brought people to the movie theater. After making ourselves comfortable on a bench in the little park in front of the movie theater, we would watch people examine a poster closely, trying to guess what impression it made on them and arguing about it. We enjoyed our superiority over other people. Just imagine, we already knew what the next poster would be! We knew, and these people didn’t.

* * *

It was almost dinner time as we returned from the movie theater, very satisfied with yet another “Fantomas.” Every episode of the series seemed wonderful. They shot, sank to the ocean depths and raced in balloons in those episodes.

As Emma and I were entering our building, Uncle Kolya, our neighbor, called to me. “Valery, listen…” he bent over the railing and spoke louder, “There was a lot of noise at your place… Your parents were quarreling again… I knocked on your door, but they didn’t let me in… If anything’s wrong, call me, or just run to our place right away. Got it?”

I nodded and, still holding Emma by the hand, entered the building. “They quarreled.” I knew perfectly well what that meant. Father gave Mama another beating. It was about ten steps from the entrance to our door, but it seemed to me that ages passed before I inserted the key into the keyhole. The key didn’t want to go in. On top of that, Emma was weighing my right hand down.

The clang of the lock and the clatter of the door seemed awfully loud in the quiet apartment. I looked around – where was Mama? But first I saw Father. He stood before the mirror in the bathroom, and it seemed to me that he was drying himself. I saw right away that the towel was covered with blood. And then, when he lowered his arm, I saw blood streaming from an open wound on his collarbone.

“What scum!” Father mumbled, pressing the towel to the wound.

“Mama!” Emma’s happy voice sounded in the kitchen. “Mama, we watched ‘Fantomas’!”

I rushed to the kitchen. Mama was sitting on a chair near the table, hugging Emma, who clung to her, with one hand, and the kafkir, the large flat spatula with another. A bright red spot had spread on it.

Mama’s face looked terrible. I didn’t want to look at it, but I couldn’t help it. Her left cheek was swollen, there was a dark crimson spot around her swollen eye, dried out blood on her lips, her hair disheveled. I rushed to her and hugged her, burying my face in her shoulder. She was mumbling, “It’s all right, son, it’s all right… Now he knows that I can do it too… Just let him try again… It’s all right, son. We’ll go visit Grandpa tomorrow.”

Chapter 37. Little Musicians and GooPoo

It may sound strange, but, when I was a child, I perceived the school as a living creature. I mean the school building itself. For example, I imagined very clearly what happened to it on the first day of the school year. I imagined that the school was at last awakened, like Sleeping Beauty, by hundreds of princes and princesses with ringing voices, after a very long hibernation, after many months of sullen, sultry, dusty stillness.

That stillness was broken suddenly. The bell was the first to end it. It continued ringing as the long corridors filled with the clomping of feet, as the thin walls began to shake with laughter and shouting, as the staircases hummed like a prairie under the hooves of bison running to a watering hole. It seemed that the glass in the windows glistening in the sunlight couldn’t wait to be shattered by a ball so that its tinkling would join in the general merriment.

That was inside the school building. And what about the outside? No, it wasn’t accidental, it certainly wasn’t, that the height of autumn coincided with the end of summer vacation. Autumn itself congratulated us on the first day of school, spreading its multi-colored carpet in front of the school building and turning the leaves fiery, clearly reminding us of the many pleasures awaiting us outside the school.

And we never forgot about them. No matter how the school enjoyed our lively return, no matter how eager our teachers were to stuff our heads with the subtleties of knowledge, the school yard was much more attractive.

Vzh-zh-zh! Vzh-zh-zh! Vzh-zh-zh was heard above the school’s round flowerbed.

A long recess. There were dozens of children around the flowerbed in the schoolyard. It was as quiet there as in a classroom in which the strictest teacher made sure no one talked. In fact, there was a kind of hunt underway near the flowerbed, and it required complete quiet.

“Little musicians” were being hunted. That’s what we called the small bumblebees. They were the same size as wasps, but hairy, and “dressed” in smart vests. There were very many of them. They circled above the yellow honeysuckle flowers, unhurriedly choosing a landing place to settle down on a pistil and get to the business of collecting nectar. There were many other insects, including big heavy bumblebees and wasps, feasting on the flowerbed. But we hunted only the little musicians. They were merry, energetic, swift and noisy. It honestly seemed to me that we and they were close relatives. It was sufficient to listen to their ringing buzz to feel that kinship. The little musicians’ melody was as clear and piercing as a child’s voice. They changed frequencies effortlessly, and that created the variety of sounds. In a word, the little musicians were our favorites. And we, naturally, had no doubt that they flew to the schoolyard especially for our pleasure.

“It’s about to alight,” I whispered.

I held a paper trap in my hands. It was a sheet of notebook paper cleverly folded to mimic the wide-open beak of a hungry baby bird that would shut tight the second its mother put a beetle in it.

Making and scrutinizing this paper trap was just one of the many technical innovations with which we boys began each school year. Practically all of us could share a story about something new we had learned over the summer when we returned to school from vacation. This new knowledge included new types of paper airplanes, boomerangs, crackers, soldiers’ caps and those very traps, one of which I was holding in my hands now. We improved some things and developed others. Parents could only throw up their hands – how could it be that a thick composition notebook recently bought was used up? They calmed down after hearing that many drafts had to be written and many clean copies made. They calmed down and were even satisfied with their sons’ diligence.

Their sons were quite diligent but in a different field of endeavor, so to speak. But was that so bad?

“It’s about to alight,” I whispered, attempting to breathe quietly.

Zhenya Andreyev, a friend from my class, and I froze near the flowerbed. A little musician, the one closest to us, glided above a yellow flower, either scrutinizing it, simply enjoying flying, or fulfilling a special bumblebee ritual. Zhenya and I didn’t just watch it, we felt as if we were gliding along with the little musician. We didn’t see or hear anything but this small creature whose buzzing sounds were close to our ears, and whose wings flapped so fast that only dull blurry spots could be seen on the sides of its little yellow vest.

Vzh-zh-zh-z… The flower quivered slightly, then began to sway… It had landed. The little musician closed its wings, extended its tiny tongue and directed it to the spot where the tastiest, sweet nectar awaited it. I opened the trap, my shoulders tensed, my muscles… Bang! It was done. It was caught. Oh, what a happy moment that was!

Yes, that’s what we were about – the ardor of the hunt was so exhilarating that every catch seemed like the first one, every bit of good luck called forth exultation.

The white “walls” of the trap vibrated in my hands. The little musician now beat against them, now buzzed. It buzzed excitedly, very loudly and clearly.

“Wow! Listen to it!” Zhenya laughed.

We brought our ears close to the trap to enjoy the concert. Now, we could brag about our luck and let other boys listen to how our little musician was singing and listen to the way their captives were doing it.

Some hunters, those who were more adroit, managed to catch two, even three bumblebees in one trap. They had a whole orchestra playing inside it. Everybody came running to listen to such a concert.

“Spit on your hand and rub it. You could also put plantain on it,” we advised Vitya Shalgin.

In the heat of the hunt, he hadn’t noticed that a little musician had stung him. Now, he had a red blister on his neck. It hurt a lot and it itched terribly. Everyone in class would watch the hunter’s agony, and the teacher… We would be having history class, and our teacher…

The bell rang loudly. Was it time to go already? Recess had passed so fast. We set our prisoners free. The lively creatures immediately resumed their flight over the flowerbed as if nothing had happened and continued their occupation in a businesslike manner. They were luckier than we.

* * *

There were thirty students in class 5B, seventeen girls and thirteen boys. We had nothing against this ratio for we had already begun to appreciate female company. And we considered our girls very likeable. Notes were exchanged, paper airplanes flew back and forth, not to mention exchanges of glances, giggling and other displays of attention in class. It happened in almost all classes except history.

Deathly silence reigned in history class. All attention, everyone’s gaze was directed at the history teacher, and at him alone, in history class. If anyone tried to break the silence or became distracted, an F for behavior was inevitable. One could also be called to the blackboard, where something quite unpleasant could happen.

History was taught by Georgy Vasilyevich, but in our class, just as in every other class, he was called “GooPoo.” That was a very exact nickname because there was something slimy about him. Add another consonant, and it will be clear what we all meant. But even without the added consonant, the name was quite expressive.

We were not lucky with teachers. There were hardly any about whom we could say, “That’s quite a teacher!”

One of the exceptions was Yulia Pavlovna who taught geography. That pleasant, calm woman seemed not to make any special efforts to captivate us. She simply loved her ancient science and took pleasure in sharing with us what she knew. And one more thing – she treated children nicely. We who had just been fighting during recess didn’t notice how we turned into knights or crossed an ocean on merchant ships, prepared for a fight with pirates or floated in weightlessness in a spaceship in her class. Of course, we remembered all that, and when Yulia Pavlovna asked questions, all hands went up. From all directions one could hear, “May I answer?”

We all admitted that Yulia Pavlovna was quite a teacher. And such recognition is not something that came easily from kids. We scoffed at our teachers most of the time, seeking out their funny features and foibles. One of them would look at his shoes all the time, removing every speck of dust from them, while another delighted in picking her nose.

Georgy Vasilyevich surprised everybody. It wasn’t any single habit. His whole person was… In a word, his nickname GooPoo was not accidental.

In class, GooPoo behaved either like a tamer of beasts in the circus or a warden at a camp for juvenile delinquents. He walked up and down the aisles all the time. His pacing had certain rules, which he observed precisely. First, GooPoo would stop in the middle of a row, standing up straight, as if at attention. Then, after swallowing saliva, he would produce a very loud sound with his lips and tongue. Tsk-tsk was the approximate sound. Then he would take a few steps, beating his leg slightly with the pointer. That polished wooden pointer was always in his hand; he never parted with it. One got the feeling that GooPoo didn’t see children’s faces in front of him but rather a herd of wild horses. Phyut-phyut – his pointer, or rather whip, whistled softly from time to time, accompanying almost every word the teacher pronounced.

“I’m not” phyut - phyut “your Flura Merziyevna… or Izolda Zakharovna.” phyut - phyut “I won’t allow…” phyut - phyut “…nonsense in my class.”

For some reason, GooPoo thought that nonsense took place in the classes of our head teacher Flura, and physics teacher Izolda.

“I won’t allow it!” GooPoo repeated, lashing his leg once again with the pointer, going up on his toes, then down, and clicking his heels. That gymnastic exercise obviously raised our teacher above our class and other teachers. Perhaps, a rooster views himself as soaring above the whole world when he spreads his wings and stretches out his neck before crowing his cock-a-doodle-doo. After that, GooPoo would scan the class with his piercing eyes and proclaim, “There will be complete attention in my class!”

And then he would turn sharply and smartly, like a frontline officer, to his next victim standing at the blackboard. Zhenya Gaag was his victim today. Thin, pale, and light-haired, he shrunk so much under GooPoo’s gaze that it seemed he was trying to become invisible. The number of freckles on his face was increasing right before our very eyes… Zhenya had never demonstrated brilliance in class. It was hardly possible he would do so this time.

“Well, what can you tell us about the distinctive features of the primeval communal system? Summarize the material.”

It was that very system and its contribution to future social systems that GooPoo was teaching us, in his usual dry, boring manner, that day. The boredom could lull anyone to sleep. Since GooPoo would tsk-tsk, tap his leg lightly with the pointer and walk up and down the aisles while he delivered his lectures, it was impossible to doze. But it was also impossible to listen to attentively and remember it. Many boys in my class, including me, really liked history. When we did our homework, we read the textbook “The History of the Ancient World” willingly, and we didn’t find it boring. It was a good textbook, with many photographs and drawings, with interesting stories about expeditions and excavations, about the skeleton of a dinosaur found somewhere in the Sahara, about a cave, the abode of primeval people, discovered in the mountains of Europe. But there were no dinosaurs nor caves nor people wearing animal hides, no smell of smoke from a fire started with a wooden stick nor roaring of a mammoth whom hunters had driven into a deep hole in our history classes. There was no life in those classes.

Poor Zhenya! GooPoo continued swishing the pointer, repeating his command, “Summarize, summarize.” But Zhenya was shrinking even more and uttering incomprehensible sounds. He was like one of those primeval people about whom he was supposed to speak. However, such similarity could hardly be considered the teacher’s accomplishment.

“Congratulations on your D grade. Take your seat.”

After finishing off his victim, GooPoo turned to the class with yet another round of exercises. His pointer whistled as it hit his leg, then was raised, the point forward as if it were ready to fly off and pierce another martyr. The class sat motionless. Who would be next?

Dr-r-r-r! the bell rang out.

Hurray! What great luck!

Chapter 38. The Cold Morning

“Now tell me, Uncle, how’d it chance that

Our Moscow could be burnt to ashes…”

* * *

It was quiet in the house. Everyone was still asleep. Grandpa Hanan fell fast asleep peacefully by morning. I had heard his hacking, seething cough throughout the night while I was half asleep. Now, repeating the lines of Lermontov’s poem, I listened to it unwittingly. The last time I was here, Grandpa hadn’t coughed so hard or so much.

“…Our Moscow could be burnt to ashes

And captured by the French?…”

I had come to visit my grandparents for the short winter vacation because Grandpa wanted to see me very much.

The famous poem “Borodino,” in the lines of which the raging battle resounded, was not difficult to memorize.

It was about eight in the morning. The bright crescent moon was high in the pre-dawn blueish sky above the yard seen through the window. The intense blue color grew paler and paler and the silhouettes of the houses in the yard grew clearer. I could see all that because I sat with my book at the window, framed by a thin lace-like design of hoarfrost. The window was cleared of ice in the evening, and the frost didn’t have enough time to spin a web of hoarfrost over it again. Other windows were fully covered by it. They froze because it was cold in the house in the winter, sometimes very cold. I woke up this morning because I was very cold, even though I slept under a padded blanket. I shivered as I got dressed and was chilled to the bone even after I dressed. The stove had to be lit right away.

When I visited Grandma Abigai and Grandpa Hanan in the winter, I was the one responsible for that. It had happened all by itself. Since I was a kid, I had hung around Grandma or my aunts when they lit the stove, pestering them with my nagging, “May I do it?” until they finally got so tired of me that once I heard, “Well, give it a try.” I was proud and happy. Fiddling with fire was my favorite thing. Since that time, I ardently made sure that no one violated my right while I was visiting. In the morning, I was the first to jump out of bed, shaking from the cold.

That stove… every time I looked at it, I would remember the big, floor-to-ceiling stove at Grandpa Yoskhaim’s house, which was hot day and night in winter, and it was always warm in the rooms. The stove here was tiny, like a chubby child, even though it was called a “bourgeois.” Probably, to those who named it that during the civil war, even such a small stove seemed a luxury. It was made of metal, round and just a meter high. It rested on short legs. There was a small bulging door on one of its sides, and a long flue – on the other, its lower part was parallel to the floor, and then it shot up at a right angle and went outside through the fortochka (a small window cut into the upper part of the larger window). There was a removable cover on top of the stove. It was very convenient to put fuel into the stove through it and then replace the cover. A kettle could be set onto it to boil water for tea, and then one could just watch through the little door to see how it was doing and add small pieces of firewood. Grandma sometimes even cooked on the stove, but usually it was heated with coal.

That morning, a pail of coal brought from the storage room the evening before had been placed near the stove. Wooden chips and old newspapers were also there. I put newspapers and chips into the stove, with coal on top of them.

Shaking from cold – faster, faster! – I struck a match. The bright flame blazed up. It attacked the newspaper and began to gobble it up, then switched to the chips. Hold on, flame, we need time for the coal to become red-hot! But the coal was not in a hurry. Fiery flames enveloped it from all sides; they hugged and licked it, but the black pieces of coal looked cold.

At last, white or slightly blue-gray dots began to appear on its surface. They spread and widened, becoming shimmering spots. The flame around them grew smaller; it was dying down, but the coal wasn’t blazing with heat. I felt it getting warmer and warmer; the “bourgeois” emitted a steady heat.

That little stove had its merits, its thin metal walls got hot very quickly. They also got cold quickly, as soon as the coals burned down completely. But now, I was taking pleasure in it. First, my palms, held above the stove, warmed up. Then waves of hot air began to envelop me, getting under my clothes. My elbows, shoulders, knees and the sensitive spot on my back between my shoulder blades were the first to feel it.

What a delight it was!

When I grew too hot near the stove, I put a kettle of water on it – Grandma prepared it in the evening – and made myself comfortable at the window with Lermontov’s poem in my hands.

“…The Frenchmen learned a fair amount that

They didn’t know of Russian combat,

For we fought tooth and nail!

The earth, just like our chests, was quaking;

The horses howled, their manes were shaking;

A thousand shouts and shots were making

One never ending wail …”

At that moment, banging was heard behind my back, as if continuing the scene of the battle. It was not as loud, of course, but I started. That sound came from dishes in the kitchen. I had been so busy with the stove and Lermontov that I hadn’t noticed when Grandma came out of the bedroom.

The kettle responded to the banging of the pots. It began singing its song, and the water on the “bourgeois” instantly came to a boil. I grabbed the teapot and ran to the kitchen to rinse it.

In the kitchen, my face was greeted with cold air, and a wisp of steam appeared before my nose. The warmth from the “bourgeois” didn’t reach the kitchen, nor was it warmed by the gas stove. Cylinders placed in the metal booth outside conducted gas to the stove. They were delivered to the city irregularly, and there was often not enough gas, so one needed to conserve it. But even such a stove was a luxury in this house. Not so long ago, a very small kerosene stove would have been making noise in the kitchen.

Every time I visited my grandparents, I compared their poor, almost rural, abode with our Chirchik apartment with all modern conveniences – hot water, a bathroom, and gas that no one thought about conserving. Here, the house was small; it had a living room and one bedroom, where the daughters slept. Now that Grandpa Hanan was very ill, Grandma slept with them. There were two summer rooms in a separate house in the yard, but it was too expensive to heat them in winter.

“Valery, Valery,” Grandma smiled at me and nodded her head. “Get the tea dishes.”

Grandma came to the kitchen fully outfitted in a sheepskin vest, felt boots and a headscarf.

Grandma always wore a headscarf, replacing it with a lighter one at night. Grandma, by the way, adhered strictly to all Jewish customs, not just the ones regarding clothing.

But she applied those strict rules only to herself; she didn’t extend them to the whole family. She wasn’t angry if someone mixed the dishes or accidentally turned on the light or gas on Saturday. Grandma Lisa would screech furiously in similar instances. Grandma Abigai almost never raised her voice, well, sometimes at the children, but never at Grandpa Hanan.

Many children watch grown-ups’ relations closely. They compare them, denounce them or approve of them. I had serious reasons to do that. I lived under constant strain while awaiting the rows kicked up now and then by Father at our home. I heard squabbles between Grandma Lisa and my father or between her and Grandpa almost every day at Grandpa Yoskhaim’s house. In a word, I had seen enough family squabbles. I certainly felt that they weren’t good. Grandma Abigai, Grandpa Hanan and their children served as corroboration of this feeling. Theirs was the place where I never heard squabbles or rude and endless mutual nagging. Certainly, Hanan and Abigai had their differences, and she had occasions to be dissatisfied with her husband and children, but differences were cleared up in a normal way, not without stress but without malice and insults. In their house, one could feel that they loved each other, that they shared all the difficulties, and they had many…

When I grew up and learned more about them, I thought with bitter bewilderment – why had such a nice family had so many misfortunes? It wasn’t fair.

Let’s take Grandpa. He was a good, kind, fair person, and a loving husband and father, but fate inflicted blow after blow on him.

* * *

Grandpa grew up in an Orthodox Jewish family that dreamed about the homeland of their ancestors. In 1933, his mother, Bulor, escaped from the Soviet Union with her fourteen-year-old daughter. I don’t know why her son couldn’t have escaped with them, but I knew that he had tried to do it twice before getting married in 1934 and been caught both times. Thank God, the laws in the USSR were not yet that fierce, and his punishment was limited to imprisonment. My Great-Grandmother Bulor, after long ordeals in Afghanistan and Iran, made it to Israel in 1962, and she sent an invitation to her son. But Grandma Abigai didn’t want to go there, so they stayed in Tashkent. He returned home after the war with asthma. Then he contracted tuberculosis. He needed to feed his big family. But how? Hanan had a pension, or whatever it was called, as a discharged war veteran, but it was too little to live on. And he, like many men in those years, got involved in a not-very-honest trade. What they did was subject to criminal charges. Someone from Grandpa’s group would steal leather at a factory; then it would be resold. They had points of sale where they had “their own people.”

Seven people were involved in those operations. One of them was caught, and he reported them all. The whole group was arrested and prosecuted, and all but Grampa cracked during the trial. Grampa behaved with dignity, even though he knew he would be given a longer sentence.

Now, thinking about Grandpa Hanan’s life, I understand that such operations and dealings were not for him. He wasn’t greedy or cunning. He wasn’t adroit in a mundane way. He was definitely a decent person who felt indebted to the people he considered his comrades. That’s why he didn’t testify against them. Could this person who loved music more than anything in the world become a deft swindler? I could more easily imagine Grandpa dancing and singing in our yard, “E-este-er, I’m here!” than carrying rolls of stolen leather to a dealer.

Hanan spent two years in prison. Then Avner got him released. But Hanan’s tuberculosis had gotten much worse in the stuffy prison cell. It was very difficult for him to work after his release. My childhood memories of Grandpa the Grinder were just a vivid picture impressed on a child’s memory. It was too hard for Hanan to make the rounds of the city with a very heavy grinding machine on his back, so he soon gave up that work. I don’t know how he earned a living. I only remember that he was always up and going, trying to “do deals” until the end of his days. Only he didn’t have any luck in this harsh world. He had neither education nor a real profession. He couldn’t even manage to build a more spacious, warmer house.

That winter morning, as I sat at the window mumbling the lines of Lermontov’s poem and listening to Grandpa’s breathing, I already knew that he had tuberculosis and that it was in its final stage. Neither I nor the adults understood that the terrible disease was dangerous for those around him. Even if they had understood, they couldn’t have done much. He had his separate dishes, but it was impossible to quarantine him.

Haggard, with hollow cheeks and sharp shoulders, he lay in his bed in the living room – he could no longer get up. He had a hacking cough, was wheezing, moaning, and coughing up phlegm into a small jar in which clots of blood floated in greenish-yellow phlegm.

As I entered the living room from the kitchen, Rosa, Mama’s sister, was picking up the jar from the floor.

She had just emerged from the bedroom, bright as the flower she had been named after, a bright scarf around her head, wearing a colorful baize bathrobe and multicolored slippers. Seeing me with the teapot near the stove blazing with heat, Rosa smiled and said melodiously, snapping her fingers, “Tha-at’s my bo-oy, tha-at’s my bo-oy.”

A kind word and a joyful smile – that was our Rosa. She walked, dancing slightly as if to the rhythm of one of her favorite Uzbek tunes.

It seemed to me that Rosa was uncapable of getting angry. When she wanted to reprimand me or Emma, she knitted her brows and waved her hands, but almost immediately, her lips formed a nice grimace, as if she were not going to reprimand us but, on the contrary, to apologize. Her gold tooth – it was considered a must in Central Asia for every person to have some gold in their mouth – glistened like a ray of sunlight, and we understood that we had been forgiven.

Rosa didn’t know how to get angry. We felt and were well aware of how much she loved us. When she talked to Emma, the expression on her face changed; it looked kinder, and she knew how to find special words. “Emma, are you up or are you down?” she would ask when she worried that Emma was tired or upset. That was the agreed-upon signal – “Are you in a bad way? Tell me, and I’ll help you… I’m here for you.”

Yes, my aunt was kind and merry, a smile quite often spread across her face. It was clear that she took every opportunity to enjoy herself with all her being, as if all life did was pamper her and put her in a happy frame of mind.

But that was not the case.

Rosa had had epilepsy since she was a child. I never saw her during seizures, but I heard about them. In those days, epileptic seizures were considered something terrible, appalling, shameful – unconsciousness, cramps, foam on the lips – at least among the Bucharan Jews. So, I thought that if they concealed it, it meant that they had to. But I was not in the least afraid of Rosa. I pitied her, and I loved her.

My relatives didn’t have any understanding of medicine. They thought that Rosa had grown ill because she had experienced a violent fright. When she was a little girl, she got lost on the way home from a store, and she wandered around in the dark for a long time. She wasn’t found until it was very late.

Her fright, naturally, had nothing to do with it. Epilepsy sometimes begins with a serious injury to the head but is more often congenital. They haven’t yet learned to cure it, but seizures can be prevented with good medication.

I don’t know where and how Rosa underwent treatment, what medications she took, or how often she had seizures. It was never discussed in this family. But they did grieve about it very much.

I saw how Grandma Abigai stole glances at Rosa, how she cried and talked to my mama in whispers when they had an opportunity to get together. Grandma thought that Rosa hadn’t gotten married because of her disease, and she was about thirty. It meant that she would not have children. That was a great misfortune in a Jewish family.

But it wasn’t just Rosa who upset her old parents.

They had five children – four daughters and a son. It was hard to imagine how Grandma raised them all by herself during the war years.

The children grew up, but there were still many worries. Out of their five children, only the two older ones, Marusya and Avner, lived more or less all right. They had their own families, and they didn’t live in poverty. I don’t mention my mama among those who lived all right for I knew how hard her life was.

Avner inherited his emotional qualities from his father, though he was more resolute and businesslike. He managed to get an education. I will write in more detail about my favorite uncle later. Aunt Marusya got married and, a few years later, along with her husband Kolya and two children, moved to Bukhara, her husband’s hometown. They had two more children there, so she was busy up to her eyeballs, and I saw my aunt only when she visited her relatives.

I loved those visits. Even though Marusya lived far away, she was a person very close to my heart. Every time she visited, and it happened twice a year, it seemed to me that we had seen each other just a few days before. Aunt Marusya was kind and merry, just like her sisters. She had a habit, or rather emotional need, to greet Emma and me with a song. It started when we were very little, and it continued that way. As she sang, Marusya danced, accompanying herself with her fingers. She didn’t clap her hands as others usually did. She pressed her left fist into the palm of her right hand and tapped on the spots between the joints with the tips of her fingers. I was surprised at how loud it sounded. I tried many times to do it but could never make a sound.

And the smile she greeted us with, and not just us, radiated such kindness that one could only call it boundless, but Rosa’s face also lit up with a smile when she saw us. She also danced and sang. And now, as I write about it, I don’t see much difference between them. Actually, the way they looked, their manners and movements were full of distinctive qualities.

Aunt Marusya seemed to me to be the embodiment of tenderness. Every time she stood beside me, with her feet slightly apart, as if she wanted to be steadier, with her round face and jet-black hair, tall and solidly built, I felt calm, warm and protected, almost like when I was near Mama.

Rena was the youngest in the family. During those winter days when I visited my grandparents, she still lived with them, and she caused them much distress.

When they talked about Rena in the family, they said she was somewhat strange. Rena was carefree beyond belief, as a child. When she grew up, she still behaved like a child. She couldn’t be relied on for anything. When she went to a store for a minute, she could disappear for the whole day. Where was she? What did she do? Nothing. She just loitered around stores and the bazaar.

Rena didn’t go to college. She didn’t have any profession. Every time she began working somewhere, she very soon gave it up. When she earned some money, she spent it to buy something trivial, as if she didn’t understand the difficulties the family was experiencing.

Obviously, she didn’t understand. Even Emma and I noticed it, and we made fun of the way Rena answered Grandma when the latter asked her for help.

“Rena,” Grandma would begin, “why don’t you wash some dishes.”

Before Rena could open her mouth, Emma and I would yell together in her place.

“Holle! Byad!” which meant “It can wait! It’s not urgent!”

Despite all her peculiarities, which kept Grandma angry and grieving, Rena inherited the family kindness. She and I were fond of each other.

I remember a scene from my early childhood, maybe even my infancy. I lay in a wicker basket lined with blankets. I was laughing loudly and stroking my bare legs with my hands. And Rena, squatting by the basket, was tickling me, pinching my cheeks lightly, and crying out joyfully, “Oy! Oy!”

I was very amused and happy.

* * *

Years would pass, and Rosa and Rena would get married. They would experience joys and troubles. They would have their own children. Rosa would also adopt children. Grandma Abigai needn’t have worried. But that would be later.

During the days I am writing about, both sisters lived at home. Rosa was the only person my grandparents could rely on. When she returned home from the factory, no matter how tired she was, she would begin doing chores right away – cooking, cleaning, attending to her father.

And now, after washing that terrible jar, which I was even afraid to look at, she fussed around Grandpa Hanan, speaking to him softly. She adjusted his bed and called to me, “Pour some hot tea for us.”

I had already poured tea into Grandpa’s bowl and carried it, trying not to spill. For those who have asthma, tea is better than any medication. Of course, I knew that because my father had asthma.

Rosa bent over Grandpa – he sat on the bed pressing his palms against the bowl – and raised it carefully to his lips. Grandpa looked at me, smiling tenderly. His smile was very meek, hardly noticeable. He patted his bed with a hand, inviting me to sit down. His eyes came alive; they even began to shine as before. And they were telling me, “I’m so glad to see you. I love you. Joni bobo.”

I loved Grandpa Yoskhaim no less than Grandpa Hanan. I’d grown up in his house, but still, my feeling for Grandpa Hanan was different: it was special. I never called him Grandfather, only Grandpa. I would never pull him by the beard. I would never play any tricks on him like the ones Yura and I devised in the old yard.

One could say that I felt more respect for him. But for some reason I don’t want to use that word – it seems somewhat cold.

Did I, perhaps, feel more pity, more pain for him?

Chapter 39. Parting with Grandpa Hanan

It sometimes seems to me that memory is like a sack of old things stuffed into a storage room or the corner of a closet. When you want to find something, you begin to rummage in the sack, pulling out one thing after another. And as you do it, you remember everything related to these things, and you feel pain somewhere in your chest. And you remember everything that was dear to you. The longer you look at an old thing, the longer you hold it in your hands – be it a dress, worn shoes or a small broken box – the more you remember people’s faces, colors, sounds, even smells. And those are not just snatches of reminiscences that drift before you but whole scenes from the past that had seemed forgotten and hidden at the bottom of the sack. All you need to do is take it out of the closet and rummage around in it.

* * *

It’s cold in the house this morning. I put on Mama’s warm cardigan, throw her favorite red scarf on top of it, and put on the skull cap, a present from Muhitdin, the doctor from Namangan who fought so long to save Mama’s life. Dressed like that, I sit down at my desk to work in the blue pre-dawn expanse of a cold October morning, and I hear Mama’s voice, “Get up, son, get up…”

Why today? Mama’s scarf… early in the morning, just as in the old days when Mama’s tender voice would wake me up… or at an even earlier pre-dawn hour, just like today…

* * *

“Get up, Valery. Get up!”

Mama was shaking me by the shoulder. I opened my eyes and squinted from the bright electric light… Had I overslept? No, day was just breaking.

Mama didn’t go to the kitchen to fix breakfast as usual but sat down on the edge of my bed. That was strange… She was pale, her hair disheveled. That was also strange. She usually did her hair after getting up, and then she woke us up. She propped her disheveled head on her hand, her elbow resting on her knee, and said quietly, “Grandpa died…”

Perhaps, in a child’s mind there isn’t, nor can there be, the feeling of the loss of a relative that adults experience. Nor is there the feeling of despair that something in your life is over for good and will never come back, an almost physical feeling of loss, of horror in the face of something that is beyond repair, in the face of nonexistence.

My feeling of loss was quite different.

Grandpa Hanan was gone. It meant that I would never hear the joke with which he always greeted Emma and me, “Your mama is ai.” And he liked to say it even after we grew older. I wouldn’t see the way he stuck his hand under his skull cap to scratch his head. And suddenly, I visualized that, and many other scenes, as if on a screen.

“Get dressed, quickly,” Mama’s voice was now heard from the kitchen. I hadn’t noticed that she was no longer sitting next to me. “Get dressed, wash yourself. We’re going to Tashkent.”

Grandpa had died today. It meant that his body had to be committed to earth today. That was the Jewish custom, and those customs were observed very strictly by our branch of Jewry in these parts.

Our whole family, the four of us, set out on our journey.

Our bus station had just received new Icarus buses made in Europe, which were big and comfortable. Those Icarus buses seemed to us a miracle of technology and embodiment of beauty compared to the old, run-down, domestically made buses, which resembled slow crawling beetles, which were stuffy, crowded and shaky. The Icarus buses ran smoothly and fast.

This time, it seemed to me that our bus was going terribly slow. The forty-five-minute ride from Chirchik to Tashkent seemed to last hours. Even the trees along the road, which usually flashed by quickly outside the windows, slowed their run.

At last we were there. We walked across Old Town along the familiar Sabir Rahimov Street. In the schoolyard on our right there were many children, a long recess must have begun. The laughter and squealing were so loud that they rang in my ears. Girls were skipping rope near the metal fence. They were carefree, unlike us, as they skipped and counted, “Bir, ikke, uch…” Girls, with sun-burnt faces, wearing skull caps, their myriad thin black braids bouncing down their shoulders and backs… This was an ethnic school. Classes there were taught in Uzbek. And I remembered that Mama had also attended an Uzbek school. She had worn a skull cap and made many braids. Her father was still young: Grandpa Hanan…

“Ester!” a familiar voice called to Mama. A car that was going in our direction put on its brakes near the sidewalk, and Uncle Avner, Mama’s brother, looked out of the window. “Ester, we are taking Papa to Samarkand. Will you go with us?” “Already?” Mama whispered, gave her travel bag to Father and ran to the car.

* * *

It was quiet in Grandma Abigai’s yard, even though there were many people. Grandma, wearing a black dress and a headscarf, got up from a low stool when she saw us. She hugged my father, gave Emma and me a pat on the head and asked quietly, “And where’s Ester?… I see… She’s gone with him… Yes, he’s gone, he’s no longer with us…” Grandma nodded her head and looked at us, as if answering our question, “Where’s Grandpa?”

Grandma Abigai’s eyes were red, her eyelids swollen. I thought that perhaps there were no more tears left in her eyes. But Grandma sat down on the stool again and began to cry, burying her face in a handkerchief and slapping her knee lightly. Her three daughters, Marusya, Rosa and Rena sat next to her. The collars of their dresses were slightly torn as a sign of grief. That was an old custom.

Emma and I made ourselves comfortable on one of the long benches near the gate. Our cousins, Robert and Boris, were already there. Boris was my age. He was Uncle Avner’s son, a serious boy who was praised in the family. He had been studying violin for several years.

As I sat down, I looked around. There was an old bed across from us at the door to the house. It was covered with a dark cherry-colored, patterned carpet, attached to the wall and hanging down onto the bed, on top of the korpocha, a padded mattress. Grandpa liked that carpet very much, and now his photograph was attached to it.

The old bed was Emma’s and my favorite place in the yard. We particularly liked to jump on it. Its metal net was just as good as a trampoline; it bent under our weight, then sprang back again. We would jump up and down, up and down, squealing with delight. The bed would answer us in its squeaky voice, kir-rr-kirrrk. It seemed to enjoy stretching its old bones.

Grandpa used to come out of the house at the height of our merriment, holding a bowl of fragrant tea. We would stop jumping. “Ah, you pranksters,” Grandpa would say and sit down on the bed. Flushed with excitement, we clung to Grandpa and stroked his short beard. Grandpa’s face, always somewhat pensive and tired, softened, became smoother and younger when he smiled. Then he would begin our game, which was always the same.

“Your mama is ai!” Grandpa repeated, pinching us lightly on our necks, bellies, chests. He did it tenderly, without hurting us, but we were very ticklish. We squealed and wriggled but didn’t try to break away. On the contrary, we hugged him even tighter.

It seemed to me that Grandpa loved us, but not the way Grandparents usually love. He enjoyed our company as an equal, and whenever we were together, he turned into a child.

There were our two warm bodies next to his, big, worn out, tired… Was it possible that it didn’t just give him joy? Perhaps, it gave him strength.

As he played with us, Grandpa would often begin to cough. His cough was hoarse; it lasted a long time. He bent almost to the ground, trying to clear his throat, but he didn’t always manage to do so. If he did, it didn’t help for long. Hugging him tightly, I felt, almost always, a wheezing and bubbling in his chest.

* * *

…I continued looking at the old bed, on which other people were now sitting. Neither Grandpa nor I were there. Never again would he sit next to us there. It was his portrait on the carpet instead of him, as if replacing him on that sad day when we were seeing him off. I wanted to look at his portrait, but it was also scary.

Meanwhile, the remembrance ritual continued the way such rituals were done in every Jewish family. They were not much different on the surface from Asian rituals. Lamentations, sniffling, sad exclamations were heard now and then.

“Why have you abandoned us?” the hunched over old woman exclaimed melodiously. She looked up and rocked, lifting her hands to the sky. She was Buryo, Grandma Abigai’s sister, who had arrived from Samarkand to take part in the ritual, not only because custom required it. Buryo really loved and respected Grandpa, who had helped her and her family generously many times.

Several other women joined in Buryo’s lamentations, including my aunts.

“Father, Father, you’ve abandoned us orphans! Why?” That’s how they lamented, rocking backward and forward, raising their hands to the sky, patting their knees and stomping their feet slightly.

When I was a child, I, naturally, didn’t know much about funeral rituals. It was later that I, unfortunately, became acquainted with them. On that day, we children just watched everything that was going on with curiosity, no more than that. I, for one, mourned Grandpa very much, but I would never have agreed to shout about it in front of everybody, and not a single child would have. Perhaps, tolerance for many customs and understanding the need for them comes with age.

When I saw how sad Grandma’s eyes were when she looked at the old tree in the middle of the yard, my heart tightened. That tree had stopped blossoming and dried up not so long ago. It had grown on the spot laid with light bricks, and it had become almost as light. Slightly bent, with outstretched boughs, it made me think of a figure frozen in the middle of a rapid-flowing stream in a desperate effort to keep its balance. Grandma had been upset when the tree dried up, and she often repeated, “It’s a bad omen.” But her eyes were drawn to the tree now and then. Maybe she remembered about the bad premonition, or maybe she was thinking about her resemblance to the lonely, dried-out tree trunk.

* * *

Two hours passed, and Boris and I grew bored with the ritual. Besides, when the mourners’ shouting got very loud, we were amused, but we couldn’t laugh, nor even smile, on such a sad day. They would notice it right away and say that we were heartless grandsons. Boris and I exchanged glances and got off the bench noiselessly.

We sneaked quietly, step by step, to the far end of the yard, to one of the storage rooms. There was the tandir, a clay stove which no one used any longer. There were a lot of old things scattered around that no one needed any more.

I liked that stove. It seemed to me to be a living creature. Every time I opened the door of the storage room, the tandir, when the daylight hit it, smiled at me merrily with its big round mouth, as if it was welcoming me.

Climb inside it, and you could get to the roof through its stovepipe. Even though the stovepipe wasn’t narrow, I felt somewhat ill at ease, uncomfortable, suffocating inside it. I would be covered with sweat, but I would overcome my fear, and, after getting to the roof, I was sure I would never be afraid to do it again… Alas, I was afraid every time I did it.

* * *

“C’mon, c’mon!” That was Boris pushing me. He was climbing into the tandir behind me. I had already reached the stovepipe. Just a bit more, and I would be able to grab the bar, shaped like a cross, on the roof above the stovepipe… And there I froze.

That damned enclosure, the boards that surrounded the opening on the roof were all black inside from soot, and I had on a white shirt. How could I forget?

“What’s wrong?” Boris urged me. “C’mon!” Oh, well, I’d take my chances! I would try not to touch it.

I reached for the bar, and, suddenly, a sharp sting pierced my bottom. What was it? A bumblebee? I dashed upwards. Another sting! I yelled, dashed up again, forcing my way among the boards with my shoulders and elbows. As I hung there like a monkey, another sting – it dawned on me that it wasn’t a bumblebee. It was Boris! Boris, that damned traitor!

To confirm my guess, Boris’s loud laughter sounded, booming and sinister, from the tandir. The stomping of his feet was then heard – my cousin had played a cruel joke on me and had decided not to climb onto the roof.

So, there I sat on the slate roof in sorrowful meditation – what should I do? The shoulders of my shirt, the sleeves, the whole of it was covered in black streaks and spots. I wouldn’t be able to go back to the yard looking like that. Everyone would notice and ask, “What’s wrong with you? Where did you get covered in filth?” And if my father saw it…

But I had to climb down. I couldn’t sit there until everyone was gone. Besides, the boys could be heard yelling, puttering around in the clay, looking at something outside the gate near the arik. And Boris was already there, I could hear his voice.

My anger was dying down. I climbed out of the tandir, washed my hands in the neighboring storage room, shook my shirt energetically, which was useless, and sneaked sideways along the walls through the yard. On my way out, I managed to notice that more people had arrived, Grandpa Yoskhaim and Grandma Lisa among them. Here I was at the gate. I threw it open and dashed to the boys, calling to Boris. A piercing screech and the grinding of brakes were heard as an old Volga car stopped abruptly after lurching sharply, close to me. A pale, frightened man jumped out of it. “I almost ran you over,” he mumbled in Uzbek. And the fear on his face was immediately replaced with rage. “Are you crazy? Why don’t you watch where you’re going?!” he yelled loudly.

One could understand the man’s anger – another second, and I would have been lying under his car, badly injured and possibly killed. What would have become of him? But at that moment, I was incapable of thinking about it. I just couldn’t function or understand what had happened. My legs were shaky; I felt nauseous.

The man yelled, waved his hands, and there was already a crowd around us, mostly people from the yard. Someone was patting me on the head. It was Grandma Abigai.

“You must be frightened. It’s all right, it’s all right. Ah, that’s the last thing we need today. Aka Yoskhaim, take him to your place, please,” she asked Grandpa, who was nearby. “He’s so scared. I hope he won’t get sick. Let him pee, and wet his lips with urine,” Grandma remembered the old remedy to prevent a scare.

Obviously, that day was so sad that, no matter how hard I tried to make it easier for myself, it ended up in trouble.

Chapter 40. “Just Let Him Try It!”

“What do you go to school for?” Both parents and teachers ask this ridiculous question quite often, and always with a bitter intonation, or with indignation. You make noise in class – “What do you go to school for?” When you receive a D, come home with a reprimand on your report card, or with a black eye or torn pants – the same question…

Of course, we know perfectly well what kind of answer was expected from us. How could we possibly not know! And that’s particularly disgusting, because you had to lie.

To be honest, what boy, while at school, is capable of remembering all the time that he is there “to obtain knowledge,” as adults like to put it. To remember it all the time, one would have to be not a boy but some fictional character, some kind of a robot, or a model student. Such boys are not well liked by their classmates; they’re held in general contempt.

Only girls are forgiven for their diligence. Girls are a special case, though naturally, even they pretend. They find it more interesting to whisper to each other or exchange winks and messages with boys than to listen to a teacher and write down boring rules in notebooks.

Why am I remembering this? I’m remembering it because, for any student, the most wonderful time at school is the time when no one urges them to obtain knowledge, like, for example this time. The bell rang, five minutes passed, then ten, but our teacher still hadn’t shown up. In other words, our class’s head teacher, Flura Merziyevna, hadn’t yet appeared.

I would take full advantage of that golden opportunity, precisely because I had something very interesting to do.

Bending over a sheet of paper, I was deciphering a strange sentence that would have no meaning for an outsider: Kigoziini opab. This sentence made sense to me. Deciphered with the help of a secret code, it meant, “Valery, we have a hedgehog. When are you coming?”

Yura and I had been corresponding since the summer. We decided to encode our letters. You never knew who might read them in his home or mine. Our secrets were safe that way. Besides, when you added something to your parents’ letters or put a note into their envelope, you had to write long boring sentences, something like this, “Dear …, how is your health? How is the weather? Everything is all right with us. Wishing you the same.”

Coded letters liberate you from such nonsense. Parents are too lazy to ask what it all means. They just sneer condescendingly, “Are you playing some game again?”

I tore a clean page out of my notebook and was just thinking about how to answer Yura when all ideas were knocked out of my mind by a strong flick to the back of my head. “Ouch!” I exclaimed, extracting a hard wad of chewed, wet blotting paper from my hair. I had been so engrossed in deciphering the note that I hadn’t noticed the beginning of a shootout. And it was in full swing.

It was possible to have a shootout without leaving one’s desk. That was the best thing about it. We could play it when a teacher was away, like today, or even when a teacher we weren’t afraid of was in the classroom.

Crackling, crunching and rustling were heard – notebook pages were turned into peashooters. That was the weapon, though the most avid fighters even had metal tubes. The smacking of wet lips was heard – each fighter was busy making a dozen or so “bullets” by chewing blotting or some other kind of paper.

The rules of the battle had been worked out long ago. The class was divided into two groups – the right row by the window exchanged shots with the left row along the wall near the door. The middle row could exchange shots with whomever they wished.

The battle tactics… well, there were no agreed-upon tactics.

Most of the shooters sat in the back of the classroom. The backs of the heads of those who sat up front were perfect targets. Poor things – they not only couldn’t shoot back, they couldn’t even shout “ouch,” as I had just done. But it hurt when a wad of blotting paper hit you on the back of the head. And our shooters were skillful. After inhaling deeply and pressing their lips around a tube, they spit a bullet through it with all their might. Phooey! And the air, like an exploding capsule, pushed the bullet rapidly out of the paper tube.

When there was no teacher in the classroom, the battle proceeded openly, like today. The noise was deafening, though it was somewhat strange. All that could be heard was phooey! phooey! If an outsider had walked down the hall, he would have stopped in astonishment, “What are they all doing in there? Are they spitting at each other from head to toe?”

A white hail covered the classroom, but the zeal of battle began to subside. Besides, some of us were burdened by worry – why was our Flura Merziyevna so late?

We could guess why.

An incident had taken place before this class, during the long recess, about which everybody knew. And some of us, including me, had been present when it happened.

But we didn’t want to think about anything unpleasant. As soon as I began to chew a new piece of blotting paper, Gaag, who stood at the door, shouted, “She’s here!”

The class grew silent.

After opening the door, Flura Merziyevna stopped. She had a pleasant face, round, kind and somewhat sad, and she didn’t smile. Sometimes, her face looked sadder, and we knew why – Flura Merziyevna’s husband, also a teacher, who taught drawing at our school, drank a lot.

Sometimes, when Bondarev would pass by in the hall during a recess, the stench of alcohol in the air was so strong that it seemed the wind had blown it in. Bondarev’s former nickname was “Little Hedgehog” because he shaved his head, but when his addiction to alcohol became known, his nickname was changed slightly to “Little Drunk Hedgehog.” Bondarev’s two sons, Alexei and Vladimir, were in our class and surely knew about the nickname, though no one said it when they were around.

The expression on Flura Merziyevna’s face was so sad, as if Little Drunk Hedgehog had gotten drunk today worse than ever before. She looked at us, sighed, and said quietly, “Those of you who were behind the school during the long recess, stand up.”

No one moved. My back strained, and my legs twitched slightly, but the “law of the pack” that kept others on their seats, held me in place. We had to procrastinate as long as we could.

The long recess. How well it had begun when Zhenya Andreyev and I ran out into the school yard.

It was late autumn. There were neither flowers nor little musicians in the yard. The wind blew along the paths, arranging the rustling yellow-red leaves into piles. Then it swirled and swirled them, as if in an endless dance, carrying them from one end of the yard to the other.

Yes, the weather had turned bad, but we didn’t complain. High school students even preferred inclement weather, of course, with the exception of torrential rain. When the weather was bad, they could hang around behind the school without being bothered – not a single teacher would venture into that part of the school during recess.

Comparing a long recess with a time-out between the two halves of a hard and tense game, one could imagine the teachers putting their heads together, discussing the next tactics they would use to counter the intrigues of their disobedient, lackadaisical students.

Teachers were the last thing those very lackadaisical students cared about now. It was their time to relax. That’s why they had to hide in a secluded corner behind the school.

Bychok means “cigarette butt.” One could often pick them up in places where men would get together, say, at a beer stand. Sometimes, kids would steal them, or even whole cigarettes, from their fathers. Quite a few bychoks could be found behind the school, where high school students in the upper grades smoked their own cigarettes during recess.

Today, the smokers had great luck. A day before, there had been a volleyball game between our team and one from a neighboring school in our school’s sports hall. After the game was over, the players had smoked to their hearts’ content outside. That was clear from the number of cigarette butts. On top of that, the choice was better than at any cigarette kiosk. Not only were there Prima, Belomorcanal, and the local Golubeye Cupola (Blue Cupolas) cigarette butts without filters, but even foreign made BT butts on the ground. It was clear that there were some well-off guys among the players.

I avoided the gatherings behind the school because I didn’t smoke, and I didn’t feel I belonged there. Zhenya was a different story; he did whatever he wanted. On our way to the pavilion, we had to pass the bychkovists, and suddenly Zhenya stopped.

“Wait. We should ask Petya whether he’ll bring a ball tomorrow.”

Petya Bogatov, our classmate, an excellent soccer player and the owner of a real soccer ball, was also a smoker. Apart from him, three of our other classmates – Bulgakov, Zhiltsov and Timershayev – were there, hanging out with the seniors.

While Zhenya and Petya talked about the ball we needed for the next day’s game, some boys picked up bychoks and were getting ready to enjoy them.

I stood near Sergey Bulgakov and watched him wrap a piece of thin wire covered in blue insulation tape around a cigarette butt accurately and skillfully. It was a necessary precaution; otherwise his fingers would smell of tobacco. Everybody did it.

Then Bulgakov struck a match, but he didn’t begin to smoke. First, he held the flame against the filter. Heaven knows who had smoked that cigarette. And only after that did Sergey half-close his eyes and pull at the cigarette butt. The way he stylishly held his cigarette butt on the wire handle was a sight to see.

Everyone was already smoking, some of them leaning against the wall, others either squatting or walking back and forth, joining small groups involved in lively conversations.

Our classmate, Vitya Shalgin, approached one of the groups. Timur Timershayev immediately took a step in his direction. He threw out the unfinished cigarette butt, moved closer to Vitya and said:

“Haven’t I told you to stay away from Irena?”

His voice was so hoarse and low that it seemed to me the smoke was pouring out of his mouth from rage, not because he had smoked.

Vitya mumbled something in response. I couldn’t hear it even though I was standing nearby. But Timur, obviously, didn’t care about his reply. He drew his arm back and punched Vitya in the face. It was a very hard blow, for blood gushed from his shattered mouth. Vitya cried out, staggered and crouched.

Timur was generally a quiet guy. I don’t remember him ever losing his temper. He never attacked anyone, even though he was very strong. But, all of a sudden, he did.

It grew noisy. A few boys dashed to Timur, who was still standing over Vitya, his stance threatening, to pull him away. Timur tried to break away, yelling:

“Get out of here! Just let him try to walk her home again!”

After pushing the boys back, Vasily Lumis, also our classmate, went over to Timur. I hadn’t noticed him appear, but it was good that he had.

Vasily Lumis was Greek, so perhaps he had inherited strength, decisiveness and fairness from his ancient ancestors, from some Hercules. Vasily took Timur by the head in his ample hand, folded his other into a fist, shook it in front of Timur’s face and said:

“You either be quiet or I’ll knock off your schnozz.”

“Schnozz,” or nose, was the favorite word of our school Hercules.

Timershayev calmed down right away. He knew, as did everyone else, that Vasily never repeated anything twice.

Now, everybody surrounded Shalgin. He was still sitting, very pale, blood dripping from his injured mouth.

“His whole lip is split. The wound’s very deep,” the boys were saying. “Are his teeth intact? We should take him to the teachers’ room, quick!”

Taking Vitya to the teachers’ room would mean confessing that we had been behind the school and witnessed the brawl, in other words, being subjected to interrogation. Helping him would mean revealing oneself, and others. “Can you get there by yourself?”

Shalgin nodded and, holding his head up, trudged along to the teachers’ room. At that moment, the bell rang, and we ran to our class.

* * *

That was what had happened before class. That was why Flura Merziyevna was late and entered the classroom with such a sad face. It was clear from her first words that Vitya Shalgin had “fessed up.”

Everyone who had been behind the school hoped in vain for a miracle. After not obtaining any confessions from us, Flura Merziyevna sighed again and began calling names. Timershayev was first. He stood up, clattering the seat of his desk. He looked gloomy, and it seemed he was about to repeat, “Just let him try it again!”

Irena Umerova, the culprit in this scandal, primped like a queen. She sat, tossing her white bows about, obviously happy and proud that the boys had fought over her. The rest of the girls stole envious glances at Irena. Just imagine – she was the first girl in our otherwise friendly class to have been the cause of a fight. Ah, girls, girls…

We plodded along in single file to the teachers’ room on the second floor. “Handling room-meddling room,” that’s what we called those unpleasant premises, because we were summoned there for only one reason – to be nagged at, set straight and the like. We had many graphic expressions for the subject, and we were about to experience them all.

The white gowns of ambulance attendants could be seen in the far corner of the teachers’ room. Vitya’s bandaged head was visible among them. He was to be taken to the hospital for stitches. Now, hardly anyone felt sorry for Vitya – he had betrayed us.

Inna Nazarovna Bass, the academic director, was at her desk near the window. She was the one we couldn’t stand. It was she who summoned us to the teachers’ room to set us straight more often than anyone else. And she would set us straight so hard that we thought she should have been a jailer rather than the academic director. Even her appearance evoked our loathing. Her small black curls protruded over her forehead like a bed of cauliflower turned black. She used her long, manicured nails to pick at her teeth, and she would scratch her calves, sticking her hands into the top of her smart black boots. Inna Nazarovna thought she was irresistible, and she dressed as stylishly as her means and understanding of what chic was permitted.

Now, she sat with her legs crossed, her small round predatory eyes scrutinizing those standing at the door.

“Well… Bulgakov is here, naturally… You practically live in the teachers’ room. Are you trying to get expelled from school soon? Perhaps it’s time to do it, along with Zhiltsov, for company. And you, Timershayev, have you decided to go straight from school to the courtroom? To a jail for juvenile delinquents? Imagine how happy your parents will be! Do they teach you to behave that way at home? I’ll have to ask your parents. But first, you’ll tell us how you have reached the point where you could do something like this. Do you understand that you nearly killed Shalgin?

Inna Nazarovna moved forward, fixing her eyes on Timershayev. Timur was silent. He didn’t look at Inna Nazarovna so her piercing gaze didn’t affect him.

He had that same expression on his glum face: “Just let him try it again!”

“Timershayev, are you deaf?”

Timershayev was silent.

“All right. We’ll find out why it happened. And we’ll find out what gatherings take place behind the school. Got it? And if any of you are seen there again… Andreyev, Yuabov, this applies to you too. Since when have you joined those who disgrace our school? And, in general, this class is clearly getting worse.”

Then, Inna Nazarovna at last turned away from Timur, stood up and, putting her hands behind her back, walked around the room. She stopped in front of Flura Merziyevna, stared at her and said slowly:

“This class is clearly getting worse, Flura Merziyevna.”

We were allowed to leave after being given one last stern warning. Flura Merziyevna stayed in the teachers’ room. It was clear that now it was her turn to be straightened out. I’ll bet she would rather have left along with us.

Chapter 41. How the Bottle Was Buried

“Does everybody agree?” Chingachgook asked.

His face, illuminated by the fire, was serious and undisturbed, just like the face of a real Indian under any circumstances.

His thick hair, light and amazingly straight, covered his high forehead down to his eyelashes, just like a real Indian’s. However, as we all knew, Great Snake had only one strand of hair crowned with a feather on his shaved head.

Rustem Angherov, Flura Merziyevna’s younger brother, couldn’t walk around bald. It was all right, for even with his hairstyle, he was the best Chingachgook among us.

“Does everybody agree?” he asked.

“Ugh!” came the booming response, and five clenched fists were raised above our heads.

Chingachgook cast his eyes over us and nodded.

“The council of elders has approved the decision.”

That very important event took place in the vegetable gardens near the back wall of Building #16 in the evening. The Sagamores, the elders of the Delaware and Mohican tribes, united against the Iroquois tribes, who feuded with them.

However, it had certainly not happened in the vegetable beds near our building, nor in the town of Chirchik, but in a thick forest on the banks of the Hudson River. It happened by a big hot fire, with a whole log burning in it, and not near a burning piece of plexiglass. And they passed the peace pipe around from hand to hand, as expected, not a twig torn off the hedge.

How fortunate we are that nature endows us with powerful imaginations in childhood, which allow us to enter virtual reality, as the expression goes nowadays. To put it a simpler way, it allows us to go where we want and become whoever we want the moment our imagination is fueled.

Of course, we understood that we were playing Indians.

If only my imagination were half as powerful now.

I knew it was just a piece of plexiglass buried in the ground that was burning in front of me, but I admired the way it melted slowly, the hundreds of tiny bubbles sizzling on its surface, disappearing, reappearing, disappearing again, consumed by the flame. But somehow, I also saw a dry oak log with black charred bark instead of plexiglass and the tongues of flame above the hole in which the fire had been built. It was quiet in the forest, only dry leaves rustling in the wind. And we strained our ears to hear twigs that might crack as enemies crept through the trees. And you could hear, yet at the same time not hear the voice of Dora, who was nagging someone at her place. I didn’t know how all that happened. Very few adults had the ability to transform themselves, with the exception of actors.

* * *

Could I possibly have imagined at that time that in about thirty years I would find myself in the actual places we boys had “visited” while playing, that I would stand on a wooded shore of Lake Ontario, one of the five Great Lakes, not alone but with my children, Daniel and Victoria, American by birth? And I was glad that that faraway evening and the plexiglass fire remained in my memory…

* * *

The fire burned out. It was time for us to go home. So, simply and naturally – only children could do that – we became Rustem, Vitya, Zhenya, Igor, and Valery instead of Indians. However, our thoughts were still with the heroes of our favorite book.

“I’m sorry for Uncas,” Vitya Smirnov sighed. “Go, children of the Lenape. Manitto’s wrath has not been exhausted…” I said slowly and sadly. Quite recently, urged by Vitya, I had read “The Last of the Mohicans,” and now we talked about the book, played its heroes, and discussed everything depicted in it, often with indignation because many things didn’t sit well with us.

No real historical events were important for us, especially in faraway America, not the war between the English and the French nor relations between the palefaces and the redskins.

What was important to us was the fight between good and evil. We felt that good had to triumph, by all means. It had to. But why did Fort William Henry fall in battle? Why did the Hurons slaughter the defenseless women, who had left the fort, in front of everyone?

We didn’t forgive the author either for “unnecessary” battles or pointless sacrifices, especially the death of our favorite hero, Bounding Elk, or the beautiful Cora, Colonel Munro’s daughter. They perished, but despicable, treacherous, cruel Magua destroyed everybody and survived almost through the last pages of the book. Why did James Fenimore Cooper permit such misfortunes? No, the book should have ended a different way. We blamed Cooper for everything as we encountered the cruelties of history for the first time. We didn’t yet know much about history, or life in general.

Before breaking up, we agreed to a forthcoming battle against the Iroquois – when, how and what we needed to prepare. It would be a glorious battle! There were many battles in “The Last of the Mohicans.” We chose one at a time. Of course, we had to simplify everything, to modify, omit some details of the plot, and even do without some of the characters. There was nothing we could do about that.

We dedicated the time before a battle to preparing our arms. Each of us had his own arsenal. In the past, we had been pilots, members of tank crews or artillerymen, and all our arms looked accordingly. Now, we had to change them. After all, we were Indians.

When Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn were preparing Jim’s escape, romantic Tom demanded that everything be done as in his favorite book about the escape of a prisoner. They even had to dig the tunnel under the wall with a knife instead of a shovel. As the more practical Huck had foreseen, nothing came of it.

Like Huck, we weren’t so literal. We understood that we couldn’t even dream of “real” Indian weapons. We had to adapt whatever we had on hand, slingshots, for example. Before, we had made a cannon with pebbles for cannonballs. Now, we decided it would be a tomahawk. We wouldn’t use pebbles any longer, one might knock an eye out with them. We would use a bent piece of wire, which we called a “dowel.” It was safe and could sting badly – “ouch, ouch, ouch.” We could also use our rifles. We called them zhevelushniks. The base was a piece of wood to which a metal tube was attached. A pointed window latch with a piece of thick rubber was attached to it and fastened to a rifle butt. If we put the cartridge from a starter’s pistol, zhevelo, into a tube and pulled that powerful trigger, it would produce a marvelous din.

Zhevelushniks had served as submachineguns and other modern arms. Now, they became long-barreled flint rifles. The metal tubes we used in class to shoot chewed-up blotting paper or paraffin could be used for that purpose. There were also bows, and those were almost like real Indians’ weapons.

So, a battle lay ahead.

The hated Hurons, also known as the Iroquois, had abducted Alice and Cora, the daughters of the English Colonel Munro, the commander of Fort William Henry. That heinous abduction was committed under the leadership of Magua, Sly Fox. We all hated him bitterly. It was he who would kill Uncas.

It was no easy task to find a boy who would agree to portray him in a battle, but we found one.

Zhenya Zhiltsov agreed to do it. We considered his deed very magnanimous, though we suspected that Zhenya simply wanted to be a leader.

Zhenya and his four friends, the group of Iroquois, armed to the teeth, were making their way through the forest and would run into our courageous group, the Mohicans and Hawkeye, our pale-skinned friend.

A whole series of battles, chases and sieges would begin at that moment. That was how it began in the book. Could we possibly depict all that?

We would have only one battle. Where could we possibly get the captives, Alice and Cora, over whom the whole thing had started? Could we allow girls to join our game? Absolutely not!

So, we decided that the captives would be only “as if.”

We, the Mohicans, were supposed to win, according to the book. But who knew how the battle would turn out, our battle today?

* * *

After stealing secretively, one by one, into the vegetable gardens, our detachment arranged an ambush among the dense undergrowth of the hedge.

Our vegetable gardens, even though we called them so, were also fruit orchards. Bounded on one side by the wall of the building and on the other side by the fence of the kindergarten at a distance of about twenty meters, they were perfect for playing without being disturbed. We could sneak in there and set up ambushes.

To our delight, some tenants had long given up on vegetable and fruit cultivation, so their patches were overgrown with weeds and shrubs.

But we also appreciated the hard-working gardeners. It was great to hide among the tall grape vines on the Ogapians’ patch or in their neighbors’ orchard among the apple and cherry trees. They were excellent. These various gardens effectively reproduced the impassable woods on the banks of the great Hudson.

We ensconced ourselves in the shrubs. The sun warmed the backs of our heads with rather great intensity. That was good because the sun would dazzle our enemies if they, as we assumed, were to appear from the left corner of the building.

From behind me, I heard the frightened chirp of a sparrow, sounding as if it were in the middle of a fight… That was Chingachgook-Rustem Angherov signaling from the tree near the transformer booth. Rustem could imitate birds so well it was impossible to tell the difference. “They’re approaching,” Vitya, who lay low nearby, whispered. “That was the signal.”

As we had agreed, I signaled with a hand mirror. It caught a sun ray and sent it back. The shrub behind the hedge moved slightly – Uncas-Savchuk had seen my signal.

And almost immediately, a flock of pigeons, their wings rustling, flew up from the pigeon house perched on the tall pole above the Oparin’s vegetable beds. Certainly, something had frightened them, just as the rustling of leaves or cracking of a branch would frighten off a deer in the woods. The Iroquois were not cautious, not cautious at all. And here they were…

Bending low, they slowly made their way along the wall of the building. A fringed brown corduroy sleeve flashed by; that was Magua-Zhenya. Feathers swayed above the shrub… They were near. We could hear the rustling of their sandals and their irregular breathing… But we were waiting for a signal, a command.

“Ouch!” one of the Iroquois shouted and dropped his bow. Well done, Chingachgook! Well done, Rustem! He had hit the enemy in the arm with his slingshot, which meant, of course, that he had thrown his tomahawk with precision… And then, we shot out of our hiding places, and the battle got rolling.

I took the metal pipe out of my pocket, my flint rifle, which inspired horror in the enemy, and looked around calmly.

I wasn’t just anyone, I was Hawkeye, and I had to behave with dignity. Aha, that’s Magua! I shot, and a blob of paraffin hit him on the forehead, which meant that I hadn’t disgraced the famous name of my hero.

According to the rules, Magua had to leave the battlefield after being killed, but who remembered rules in the heat of the battle. If we followed the book, I wasn’t supposed to kill Magua. We all got excited, and Zhenya was furious. He raised his ancient flint rifle, that very zhevelushnik, aimed it at me and was about to pull the trigger… At that moment, a thick spurt of water hit Zhenya in the face. That was Uncas-Savchuk, who had arrived in time to help me with his plastic water sprinkler; in other words, he had thrown his hunting knife accurately at Magua. Magua, doused with water, lunged, and the rifle went off in his hands making a deafening sound, but he missed. Yes, he missed!

Our enemies were definitely weaker than we. We, not without argument, took them out of action, one after another. Victory seemed very near. All we had to do was set the captives free and scalp the dead. But suddenly…

“Get out of here, you hooligans! What the devil has brought you here?” a disgusted woman yelled through a fourth-floor window. “Just you try to shoot again! Get out of here! I’m going to get Nikitich!”

We didn’t want to get mixed up with her husband Nikitich, who was always drunk. What kind of game could it be if someone yelled at you through the window? Anyone was welcome to yell at us when we were kicking a ball; it might even be more fun that way. But this game of Indians was not for the eyes of strangers. It wasn’t just a game; it was more than that…

Some limping, others ouching, we trudged out of the vegetable gardens. As we walked, we continued to argue and swear, blaming each other for breaking the rules of battle, but even worse, for deviating from the plot of our favorite book.

* * *

I was lucky to have friends who, like me, were bibliophiles. Perhaps that very passion strengthened our friendship most of all. Vitya Smirnov had so many interesting books on his shelves. And Igor Savchuk was simply addicted to books. The moment we had free time from school, we rushed either to a bookstore or to the local library on Yubileynaya Street. My building was on Igor’s route, so we usually went there together.

“Igor, Valery, it’s so early, and you’re already here!” The librarian Anna Sergeyevna welcomed us with a surprised exclamation.

We actually showed up at the crack of dawn most of the time. Anna Sergeyevna must have become used to it. Her surprise was probably a pretense, to some extent. She was usually glad about our early arrival and our zeal for reading.

What urged us to go to the library early in the morning over the weekend? We feared that the book we had noticed on the shelf the last time might have been borrowed by someone else, that there were another Savchuk and Yuabov who had the same taste.

“Let me turn on the light and take off my coat,” Anna Sergeyevna continued, grumbling, still pretending to be annoyed. She was young, not tall, with short hair. Now, she looked like a roll because she was pregnant, and she felt a little self-conscious around boys. As she was taking off her coat, she thought up an urgent task for us, “There are shovels in the corner. Why don’t you clear off the snow at the entrance? Snow piled up during the night, and it will be a good exercise for you.”

As we were scattering the snow diligently, Igor muttered:

“It was there yesterday, on the upper shelf on the right.”

At last, by pulling strings, so to speak, we were in the desired room, like the most avid of readers. That was the reading room. It had the best books, but they could only be read there. We were no strangers here, and Anna Sergeyevna trusted us. We could go to the shelves and take whatever we wanted home.

“Here it is!” Igor said, taking “Quest for Fire” off the shelf.

Going to the library was not the only way to get interesting books. Another way was to include more boys in the exchange. Let’s say Igor took “The Mysterious Island” from someone, held it for a week and gave it to me to read. And I gave him someone else’s “The Diamond Thieves.” We did it casually because we had confidence in each other; we knew that the books wouldn’t get lost or damaged.

The members of our group had a special attitude toward books. We always made dust jackets out of paper and gave them “first aid,” if necessary. And we were always indignant when a book was returned tattered, with a detached spine, turned up pages, or some ridiculous inscription, such as, “To my Little Sweetheart from the Little Tom Cat. Send me a note. I’m waiting impatiently.”

“Who is this Little Tom Cat? I’ll tear his head off,” the always neat Igor grumbled.

In a word, in order to read books, we needed to obtain them. Buying books and putting together a decent home library was an almost unattainable dream.

To buy didn’t mean to go to a bookstore, pay for books and… no, there were rarely any books on bookstore shelves that children and teenagers liked. Very few were published, and they were distributed in a very crafty way. First, one needed to recycle paper and rags for a long time. It took a long time because recycled stuff would be exchanged for books by weight. If not enough stuff was recycled, books weren’t made available. Besides, you didn’t get what you wanted but what was in stock at the time. You had no choices.

* * *

In the evening, after it had grown dark, we gathered around the fire again. We talked about the battle, argued, then calmed down.

Plexiglass was certainly not an oak log, but its flame was as beautiful as any flame. We sat without talking, bent over the fire, our heads almost touching. Tongues of flame intertwined intricately. They swayed, their form changed, now they bent down to the earth, now shot up toward the sky. And we stared at them, unable to tear our eyes away.

“You know what?” Vitya Smirnov suddenly said. “Let’s get together here after we graduate from college. How about it, guys?”

“In ten years…” Igor Savchuk shook his head in doubt. “But what if we have all gone in different directions by that time?”

“Ah, you, Uncas,” Vitya chuckled resentfully. “Go off in different directions, get married.”

“Stop, stop!” Rustem stood up and waved his hand imperiously. “Stop, gentlemen! Mr. Smith, Mr. Pencroff… Gentlemen, do you remember the bottle?”

“A note!” I jumped up. “We’ll put a note in it.”

“And we’ll throw it in the canal,” Zhenya Andreyev said sarcastically. “And it will float down the Chirchik River to the sea.”

“We’ll bury it here,” I said slowly. “And in exactly ten years…”

Within a few minutes a bottle and some paper were brought. We had already found an old shovel and began writing a message to ourselves.

“We pals from the neighboring buildings,” Rustem was writing precisely on a sheet of paper as he listed our names, “decided to put this note in a bottle and bury it, and we promise that in exactly ten years…”

The lemonade bottle with our note in it was closed tightly, neatly wrapped in rags and placed in a plastic bag. Our bottle lay in a deep hole dug in a safe place, well covered with soil, stomped with our feet, leaves piled on top of it.

We stood under the clear sky, studded with stars, and felt amazingly good because we had realized the utter importance of our friendship, and we didn’t want to lose it.

Chapter 42. The Order

Of all the jewelry Mama had, I somehow remember her earrings, the ones Grandma Abigai had given her. They were very beautiful antique earrings. Grandma used to wear them and then gave them to her daughter: three big pearls, each the size of a pea, with a little gold pin stuck through each of them, forming a triangle. It was surrounded by a setting of dull gold. “Old gold,” as it was called, had the subdued luster of precious metal. When Mama put the earrings on, she became even more beautiful. She had a proud bearing, a hairstyle with a big bun on the back of her head, thick Eastern eyebrows that looked like two crescents, and a beautiful curve to her tender lips. It seemed that the earrings swinging in Mama’s ears illuminated her face with a mysterious light that emphasized her beauty. But our life took such a turn that before we emigrated the earrings had to be sold, for we needed money. Now, I have neither Mama nor her earrings in my life, but I can still visualize her the way she looked in those distant years. I remember how the earrings shone swaying from her ears, particularly on that unusual day…

* * *

“Valery, get up! Valery!”

I opened my eyes.

What a miracle that was! It was my father waking me up instead of Mama. Besides, the broad smile on his face was also a rare thing. And he was shaking something that looked like a medal in front of my face.

“Do you see this? Mama’s been awarded an order!”

“Wow!” I stretched out my hand. “Show it to me.”

“Later, later. Get up quickly. Let’s go buy flowers while she’s asleep. Dress quickly.”

And Father ran out of the room.

I dressed immediately. Of course, I did – Mama had been awarded an order… Father’s happy face emphasized the extraordinary nature of what had happened. He wasn’t happy often, and I had never seen him rejoice on Mama’s account.

It was six in the morning. Mama was fast asleep. She allowed herself an extra hour of sleep after the night shift only on Sundays. Papa closed the door behind us quietly, trying not to make noise.

Chirchik seemed deserted that early autumn Sunday morning. The cool air was fresh and didn’t smell of gas fumes. The sun’s rays already shone slightly on the treetops.

But as soon as we entered the bus, the feeling of morning stillness and absence of people evaporated. There were no people on the streets because they were all riding buses, and the majority of them were on their way to where we were heading – the bazaar. They almost all had some kind of bag in their hands; some even had pails. Their faces wore concentrated expressions as if they were pondering the quantities of merchandise they planned to buy at the bazaar.

Ah, those Eastern bazaars! A sight that presents Asia in miniature with all its most typical features, customs, ways of life – in a word, all its flavors. Eastern bazaars have succumbed to the impact of time much less that all the other forms and signs of city life. The goods they sell have remained the same for centuries. Interactions between buyers and sellers, their jokes, gestures, traditional exchange of remarks – all that has to be seen and heard.

I have already written about the Tashkent bazaar. The Chirchik bazaar was smaller but, perhaps, because I was older, I have more impressions of it, more fuel for my imagination.

Surrounded by a high wall with a big gate made of metal rods forming a beautiful pattern, it looks like a medieval fortress. There are always crowds at the gate and the walls. Who are they? A caravan has just arrived. It has traveled across the desert for a long time. Tired travelers unload their bundles and sacks from camels – I prefer not to notice that some of the goods are piled up in parked vans. Now, after fortifying themselves with food and taking a rest in the shade of the city walls, the caravan travelers go through their goods, talk to the locals, discuss prices… And a city guard wearing an armband and holding a batch of tickets in his hands charges payment for entering the town with goods, to be precise, for the right to sell at the bazaar.

When you walk through the gate, you step from a relatively calm and leisurely environment into an environment that brings to mind a cauldron of boiling soup.

People scurry and swarm, forming crowds. The rumble of many voices hangs in the air above the crowd. It’s a huge choir with many participants – some of them stand behind cement counters urging buyers to look at their goods and praising them in ringing melodious voices. Others crowd around the counters and bargain, straining their vocal cords.

Now, in the fall, the counters are piled with the riches of everything that grew in the local fertile soil during Asian summer. Apples sparkled and shone as if they were still lit by the sun. Juice almost burst from pears. Transparent bunches of grapes were either dark, fragrant with a thin whitish coating or sparkling like gems… Scarlet cherries, bluish plums… and peaches! And mountains of watermelons! And oblong melons enveloped in a cloud of delicate aroma! Vegetables were just as picturesque.

“Sweet carrots! Djuda shirin!” sang an old man with a beard and an orange skull cap on his head that looked as if it had been made from his carrots. He looked like my Grandpa Yoskhaim very much. Just like other sellers, this old Uzbek praised his goods in Russian since almost everyone spoke Russian in Chirchik. This Russian was sometimes distorted, and it was always distorted by sellers at the bazaar – the endings of words were changed, genders and cases confused. It had become a sort of a pidgin.

We stopped. “Here it is, try it, my dear,” the old man extended a peeled carrot to Father. “It’s like sugar. You can find it only in my garden.” Such a treat didn’t create any obligation. On the contrary, a buyer was expected to honor a seller by performing this ritual before opening his wallet.

Father took a bite of the carrot with the air of an experienced taster, nodding his head. “Yahshi?” the old man asked. A seller who shared a counter with him was already offering Father one of his carrots, “Try my carrot. My soil is better.” “Hey, amak! Let him finish chewing!” the old man who looked like Grandpa Yoskhaim waved his hands.

Please, don’t think that it was the beginning of a squabble that could end up as a quarrel. No, such haggling over buyers was an old and generally accepted tradition.

Father paid no heed to the competitor’s call, and he bought some carrots from the old man. Naturally, he bargained a bit; otherwise it wouldn’t have been a proper purchase.

Almost all the sellers were Uzbek kolkhoz (collective farm) members. What they sold had been grown with their own hands in their private gardens. And what did they grow on the kolkhoz’s fields? What did kolkhozes sell at the bazaar?

There was a kolkhoz booth not far from the entrance. The stench of rotten potatoes coming from the booth was so strong that no one wanted to enter it. The shelves in the booth were always half-empty. “That’s how the government takes care of the people,” folks would say, for they had forgotten that kolkhozes were not government enterprises, but collective farms, in other words, the collective property of the people. However, it was easy to forget that…

The meat counters came next. Piles of meat lay on the counters and hung on hooks. Nobody paid attention to the swarms of flies. They flew away every time a butcher picked up another piece of meat.

At last we passed the grocery counters and approached the flowers. That was a special corner of the bazaar. There was neither a crush of people nor noise nor sellers haranguing buyers there. Obviously, the owners of these goods had a different attitude about their trade and a different feeling of self-respect. We walked among gladioli, lilies, daisies and roses for a long time before Father stopped in front of one of the sellers. A nice-looking Russian girl who spoke clearly and melodiously, to whom I listened with pleasure after the bazaar’s garish vernacular, helped Father pick out roses. “She’s received an order? How nice,” she said going through the long stems with their tight buds. “This one is very nice… and this one too…”

* * *

As we were leaving the bazaar, we walked along the outer rows, which weren’t crowded. A group of babais – that was how we jokingly called elderly Uzbeks and Kazakhs – had made themselves comfortable in the shade of an apple tree near the fence. They sat cross-legged on a mat and talked unhurriedly and calmly as if there had not been a noisy city bazaar around them but rather meadows surrounded by mountains. Yes, they were shepherds, which was clear from their appearance – they all had moustaches and beards, with shaggy hats on their heads, dressed in long chapans, which covered their boots. There was a teapot on the mat in front of them, and each of them held in his hands a bowl with steam rising from it. Some of them sipped tea, other enjoyed nasvayem, chewing tobacco that one placed under the tongue. And, of course, there were horse-hide containers nearby filled with kumis.

“Oh, it’s kumis… Let’s have some,” Father suggested.

I kept quiet. Kumis was sour mare’s milk. What’s good about it? But Father had already asked the sellers:

“Two bowls, amak,” and he squatted near the shepherds.

I had to take a bowl in my hands.

“It’s delightful,” Father said after taking a sip. “It’s tasty, and it’s also medicinal. Pour more, amak.”

“Yes,” one of the elderly men said. “Of course, it’s a curative drink. It gives so much energy… Many people simply don’t know about it.”

I was surprised – looking at the babai dressed in ethnic attire, I would never have thought that his Russia would be so good. And Father joined in the conversation on this subject, which interested him.

“Yes, yes, I’ve been drinking kumis for only three weeks, and my blood test results are much better… I haven’t brought a jar. Please, give me a liter in yours. I’ll take it with me.”

* * *

We were back home by eight. The clinking of dishes could be heard from the kitchen, and the aroma of something very tasty hung in the air.

“Well, congratulate her,” Father gave me the bouquet.

At that moment, Mama came out of the kitchen. As usual, she was wearing her housedress and apron.

“Oy! Is this for me?” Mama clapped her hands, took the bouquet and began examining the roses, repeating “And I couldn’t figure out where you had gone so early in the morning.”

It seemed to me she was very happy about the roses. It was an unusual treat for her. Father didn’t pamper her.

“Papesh, papesh!” Mama opened her arms and hugged Father. They kissed.

If I ever noticed any display of affection and respect in the relations between Mama and Papa, they emanated from her. He either didn’t know how to show it or didn’t want to. It was more likely both. So why was he so happy and tender on that day? Did he understand and feel something? Was he beginning to be proud of his wife?

Yes, he was proud, but not for her. His wife, the wife of Amnun Yuabov, had become the holder of the order. Everybody would read about it in the newspapers today. Practically the whole town would talk about Ester, and all the teachers at his school would certainly know about it. He would hear so many congratulations. His prestige would rise; he would partake of his wife’s fame.