SECOND INTERLUDE: THE QUEEN OF SPADES
Beware the Queen of Spades for she bears ill will.
ALEKSANDR PUSHKIN
Cousin Marina
Mama, bless her, went back to Leningrad, and Marina came to Luga.
The exhausted Mama never lifted her eyes to Tatiana, but cousin Marina, who usually did, this time lifted them to Saika. Tatiana hid behind the trees with Oleg, watching them laugh and parry. Marina was a dark, short-haired round girl with round eyes, round arms, round hips, round black birthmarks all over.
“Can you believe what’s happening in Abyssinia, Tania?”
Oh, Oleg. Can you believe what’s happening under your nose? My own flesh and blood Marina is choosing not to play with me!
“What the Japanese are doing in Nanking is unconscionable. Isn’t anyone going to stop them?”
How Saika is stealing Marina’s attention is unconscionable. Isn’t anyone going to stop her?
“Someone has to give Chamberlain an ultimatum. My country now or your country in a year.”
Someone has to give Marina an ultimatum. Choose to play with me now, or be sorry later.
Pasha sat on Tatiana, pressed down her arms, tickled her with his chin and sang, “Tania is jealous, Tania is jealous.”
And Tatiana throwing him off and pinning him to the ground, sang back, “Pasha is ridiculous, Pasha is ridiculous.”
But it was Marina who now sat in the trees and Marina who swam in the river, and went to the fields to eat clover. Like Marina even knew how to eat clover until Tatiana taught her. The cheek of it.
Saika and Marina whispered and giggled; they had girlish secrets, they were full of youthful delights. They lay on the grass with their feet up on the trunks of trees while the boys played football with Tania. Before Marina came, Saika had been at Tatiana’s window morning, noon, and night, asking to go somewhere, to do something. And worse, to divulge, to sit in the trees, to have midnight confessions. Tatiana revealed nothing, but that didn’t stop Saika, who tried to tell Tatiana secrets of a kind that Tatiana had less than no interest in keeping. So on the one hand Tatiana was grateful that someone finally came along to divert Saika’s attentions, but on the other hand—it was her Marinka! A mixed blessing, if ever there was one.
Since Saika was otherwise occupied, Oleg started talking to Tatiana again—a mixed blessing, if ever there was one.
“Oleg,” Tatiana said, goading him, “please tell me Sir Neville hasn’t appeased you, too, now that he has embraced Franco in Spain and said that the new Anglo-Italian agreement removes clouds of mistrust and paves the way for peace.”
“You are either ironic or so naïve,” said Oleg solemnly. “Almost as naïve as Chamberlain. The rest of the world is going to Fascism in a handbasket, while we stand and watch, but you just go ahead and laugh and tease and play your little games. Europe will be the battlefield and the battle in Europe will be for world order. The Fascist order or the Communist order. Hitler against Stalin.”
“And the Fascists will lose,” said Tatiana.
“Certainly doesn’t look like Fascism is losing now, does it, Tanechka?” said Oleg acidly.
At home her grandfather still played chess with her. Which didn’t make up for anything since Marina didn’t know how to play chess. To Tatiana Deda said, “In two moves it’s checkmate.” And Tatiana replied, emitting an exuberant giggle, “Maybe in two moves it’s checkmate, but right now it’s check.”
Three Ducks in a Row
Oh, so finally she was invited into their games. Tatiana, Marina and Saika went swimming in the river. The Luga water was afternoon-warm, soft on the body, easy on the limbs. They played splashing games where they could still touch bottom, but Saika jumped farther out, and Marina eagerly followed, splashing back, and Tatiana reluctantly followed, splashing no one. Saika jumped farther still. Tatiana called out, “Marina, don’t swim so deep into the current, stay near the shore,” and Marina called her a wet blanket. Three in a row the girls swam, Marina, then Saika, then Tatiana, letting the current pull them along—when suddenly Marina disappeared under the water.
She resurfaced, choking with water in her lungs. She tried to swim but couldn’t. She was trapped in a vortex—an eddy, where the water tripled and quadrupled to form a swirl too powerful for Marina, who flailed in a panic, only letting more water into her mouth. The choking panicked her and the water was deep; Marina was being spinned and dragged helplessly downstream. Tatiana swam all out, trying to get around Saika to catch up with her cousin, but she knew that in a moment Marina would disappear under again. She also knew that she was not strong enough to help her by herself. “Saika, quick!” she yelled. “Help me!”
Panting and not responding, Saika swam a little faster, in Tatiana’s way, keeping up with Marina.
“We can both do it!” Tatiana repeated, still trying to get around Saika. “Come on, just grab her arm and pull.”
Saika acted as if she didn’t hear. Marina went under, bobbed up, tried to scream, her arms splashing wildly.
Tatiana could barely hear Marina through her own panic, but she heard her name being sputtered. “Oh, Tania…please, oh, Tania, please……help me.”
Taking a deep breath, Tatiana shoved Saika out of the way and grabbed one of Marina’s arms, and before the girl had a chance to pull her down like an anchor, Tatiana yanked her cousin with all her strength, once and again and then…
You’d think there would be a word of thanks after that, but no.
The next day when Tatiana came to the clearing, Anton was whispering to Natasha who was whispering to Marina, who was whispering to Oleg who was whispering to Saika, who glanced at Tatiana and stopped whispering.
“What’s the matter with you?” she asked. No one replied.
Even Pasha was looking at her askance.
And no one would play football with her! Not even Pasha and Anton!
Tatiana threw up her hands and left. Later Pasha came and sat by her bed but Tatiana was buried in her book and ignored him. “So what happened in the river yesterday?” he finally asked.
“Marina was sucked into a vortex and I pulled her out.”
Pasha sat. “It’s not what we heard. We heard you pushed Saika out of the way.”
Tatiana laughed.
Pasha was silent. “Did you push Saika out of the way?”
“I did.”
“Why?”
“Because she wouldn’t help Marina, Pasha!”
“She said she was just about to.”
“It’s hard for me to tell what she might’ve done. All I know is what she wasn’t doing.”
“She said she was about to.”
“Convenient. However, no matter how Saika twists it, there’s only one truth about what happened.”
“Why would Saika need to twist it? Stop picking on her.”
“All right, fine,” said Tatiana. “All I know is that Saika did not raise a finger to help Marina.” Tatiana put her face back into her book.
“Well, you better talk to Marina,” said Pasha, “because she is seeing it very differently.”
“The ingrate,” Tatiana said without rancor.
The Palms and the Rowan Trees
Later, on the hammock where the children usually collected after dark, Tatiana wanting to rattle things up a bit, said, “So what are these stories you’re telling everyone about what happened in the river, Saika?”
“Oh, how silly, let’s not do this,” Saika said carelessly with a wave of her arm. “It’s water under the bridge.”
“Really, Tania,” Marina said. “It was hard to know what was going on in that river. I’m fine now, that’s the important thing.” She changed the subject. “Tonight, Saika invited me to her mother’s, who is going to read my fortune. Did you want to come? You don’t have to. But Pasha is coming. Even Dasha is coming.”
“Saika,” Tatiana said evenly, “your mother, then, will be available tonight?”
Pasha kicked her on one side, Dasha on the other.
“My mother was a kockek in the old country, Tania,” Saika said with pride. “Do you know what that is? It’s a soothsayer. It’s an ecstatic. She tells the future. And an ecstatic is someone who is prone to very strong emotion. That’s my mother. No shame in that.”
Before Tatiana could say a word, Dasha hissed, “You’re going to be prone to very strong emotion in a minute—intense pain. Keep quiet and come.” She dragged her by the hand.
When they walked in, Shavtala was chanting dirges. She had a mane of tangled black hair, was wearing a long dark kaftan and smoking unfiltered cigarettes in a room where all the windows were closed. “The cigarettes are my incense,” she said. Tatiana guessed it was supposed to be a joke.
Marina was first. Indifferently Shavtala took Marina’s hands, turned the palms over for a second or two, observed them (cursorily, thought Tatiana), told Marina that she would find satisfying proletarian educational pursuits and that she would be an asset to her country. “But cold weather is your enemy. Dress warm. Wear galoshes.”
“What?”
“I’m just telling you what I see. Also—you’re practical but lack imagination. Try to see old things in a new way. Work on that. Next.”
“How specific are these palms?” muttered Tatiana, pushing Dasha forward.
With great apathy, Shavtala turned Dasha’s palms over. “Interesting,” she said. “Very very interesting,” in a voice that said, “Boring. Very very boring.” To Dasha, after telling her about the satisfying proletarian work she would be useful for, Shavtala added, “Your heart line shows some ill health. Some unhealthy eyesight. Do you wear glasses?”
“What?”
“I might get a pair. Next.”
“Wait, what about love?” asked Dasha.
“I don’t know,” replied Shavtala. “Your cousin Marina is a worrier. Has many worry lines. You on the other hand don’t worry enough.”
“I didn’t say worry. I said love.”
“Yes, well. I’d worry a little more. And watch out for the ice. I see ice in your future.”
“Ice?”
“Ice, galoshes,” Tatiana whispered. “This woman has obviously been to Leningrad from October to April.”
“Shh!”
“But will there be love?” repeated Dasha to Shavtala. “It’s the only thing I want to know.”
Shavtala raised her lifeless black eyes to Dasha. “Yes,” she said. “There will be love.”
And to Pasha she said, “Rust is not your friend.”
“Well,” said Pasha philosophically, exchanging a dry glance with Tatiana, “whose friend is it really? And how come I don’t get any useful work?”
“Because,” said Shavtala, “you are not going to be a very good proletarian. Your heart is fickle. You next, Tania.”
“Me not next, no,” said Tatiana. “I don’t do it. I’m not interested. Ask anybody. I didn’t realize the time. Oh, my, it’s getting late.”
Standing up, Shavtala took a step forward and grabbed Tatiana’s hands, forcibly turning her palms over. Emitting a short unhappy sound, Tatiana tried to pull her hands away, but Shavtala was much bigger and stronger and didn’t let her, staring deep into Tatiana’s palms. “Whew, what a Saturn fate line, Tania.” She whistled. “I’ve never seen anything like it. Why, it cleaves both your palms in two!”
“Come on,” Tatiana muttered, pulling on her hands, trying to turn her palms inward. “Please stop. It’s not nice.”
Shavtala did not hear her or did not care. She stared into one palm, then the other. No indifference on Shavtala’s face now. She was flushed, she was panting. “Look. Heart, head, and life lines all connected, all flowing from the same source. Means grave trauma for you up ahead, girly.”
Whimpering, Tatiana squeezed Shavtala’s hands hard between her own. “Please stop!” she exclaimed, holding on to Shavtala and scowling at her. “Can’t you see I don’t like it?”
Suddenly Shavtala yanked away with a sharp cry. She dropped Tatiana’s hands, pushed them far from herself and stood looking at Tatiana with panicked eyes. Tatiana was still pale but now she was calm.
“What did you see, Mama?” said Saika.
Shavtala fell back in her armchair. “Nothing. But…Tania…” She stared at her intensely. “Did you just…see inside me?”
“No!” Tatiana backed away into her brother, nearly knocking him over.
Shavtala nodded. “You did. I know you did.”
“No.” Tatiana hid behind Pasha, who was dodging out of her way, pushing her forward, tickling her.
Tatiana did not look at Shavtala again. “Come on, we have to go.”
“What did you see, Tania?” Shavtala asked again.
Tatiana did not return the gaze, nor reply, nor lift her head.
Saika crouched by her mother’s side. “Mama, what is it?”
“Daughter,” Shavtala said dully, “don’t come near her. Stay away from her.”
“Pasha, are you a pod of salt? Let’s go!” Tatiana pulled at her gawking brother.
When they were outside on the village road, Tania said, “Now do you see why these things are stupid? What a fraud. And unhelpful. I mean, Pasha, what are you supposed to do with the warning about rust?”
“Or me with the glasses!” said Dasha. “I can see perfectly well.”
“Like I said. Be like me and not want to know.”
“Yes, but Tania, Madame Kantorova said there will be love!” Dasha glowed.
“Yes, and she told Marina to wear galoshes.”
When the Metanov children and Marina were on the porch of their own house, Pasha asked, “Tania, Saika’s mother was wrong about what she said about you, wasn’t she? You didn’t actually see—”
“Did she seem a reliable source of information to you, Pasha?” muttered Tatiana, not looking at her brother. “Of course she was wrong.”
Pasha and Dasha studied her curiously.
“Oh, the both of you!” She went to bed.
Applied Physics on the Hill
The next afternoon Saika proposed a bike race. Tatiana didn’t want to but didn’t want to be a spoil sport either. She wanted to race down with Pasha, but Saika said, you always race him. Race me instead.
The race worked like this: in pairs, the entire group navigated the steep narrow dirt hill leading from the town of Luga to the huts by the river where they lived. By itself it was child’s play; what made it worthy of Newton himself was the part played by the Soviet distribution trucks, which passed almost empty downhill into the chambers of the cucumber beds and the liters of freshly drawn milk, to return uphill full of labors of the Luga villagers. The children waited for just the right moment when the truck was nearly upon them at the top of the slope, and then frantically pedaled downhill, with the truck a few meters behind them, blaring the horn and trying in vain to slow down. The mass and velocity of the 10-ton truck careening 30 kilometers per hour down a 40° hill was pitted against the mass and velocity of the 10-kilo rusted bikes at 20 kilometers per hour.
The trick was to know two things: how close to let the truck come to make it interesting and when to pitch your bike to the grass before another law of physics came into play: the well-tested one that said that two objects could not occupy the same space at the same time. When they beat the truck to the bottom and didn’t get killed, now that was a race.
There was obviously a degree of experimental uncertainty, there were some independent variables they could not foresee, and a small chance for random error. To sum up: the race was educational and enlightening, with high stakes.
The group drew straws; Pasha and Marina were first. They had waited much too long for a truck to appear and when one finally did, they were so impatient and eager that they started down too soon. “Cowards!” Tatiana yelled into their backs. Tatiana and Saika remained stopped.
“Tania, now?”
But Tatiana never went too soon. She knew the speed of her bike. She knew what it could do. They waited, poised to take off, perched on their seats, glancing back at the approaching truck. Saika asked again, “Now?” and Tatiana said, “In just a—” and Saika said, “Now!” and Tatiana said calmly, “All right, now.”
The girls pushed off and pedaled downhill. The truck’s horn was honking madly behind them, their bikes rattled. Pasha and Marina, already at the bottom, were jumping and screaming, and Tatiana suddenly felt the truck accelerating instead of decelerating. This made her glance over her shoulder at Saika and say, “Quicker, come on!” At the very instant of Tatiana’s impromptu glance, Saika seemed to have lost control of her bike—because she swerved sharply into Tatiana’s front wheel. The next instant Tatiana was on the ground, her foot caught in the rim spokes. She was dragged downhill by the force of the fall. The truck driver slammed his brake, but that was like two owls trying to stop a byplane from plummeting down. The truck continued to skid toward her. Tatiana dimly heard Pasha now agonizingly screaming, and somehow she managed to stand up, leg still caught in the spokes of the wheel and hurl herself onto the grass. She freed herself from the bike as she leapt. The truck swerved—its back door coming unhinged and flying open—the bike got caught in its tires and was dragged under the chassis until the truck came to a slow, lumbering stop at the bottom.
The truck driver jumped out of the cabin and started running uphill to Tatiana screaming, “I’m going to kill you! I’m going to kill you!”
Tatiana was on the ground, covered with dust, heart pounding, the gash on her knee bleeding. Pasha was already at her side, Marina was behind the running truck driver, who got to Tatiana, crouched down and with an angry and concerned face said, “You’re crazy! You could’ve been killed, you know that?”
“I’m sorry I scared you,” Tatiana said, holding her bleeding knee. “Is your truck all right?”
Pasha took off his shirt and wrapped it around Tatiana’s leg. Saika stood silently near her bike, and when Pasha said, glaring at her, “What the hell happened?” Saika sheepishly replied, “I don’t know. I just lost control of my bike. Sorry, Tania.”
Tatiana struggled up with Pasha’s help. “It’s okay. Just an accident.”
“Yeah, Tania,” said Marina with a nervous giggle. “Just a crazy game. Lucky for us no one got really hurt.”
Tatiana didn’t say anything else and Pasha said nothing else, but when they had hobbled back home, he asked, “Were my eyes deceiving me, or did she ram your bike?”
“I’m sure your eyes were deceiving you,” replied Tatiana.
The Sack of Sugar
“Children!” exclaimed Babushka, dragging a heavy burlap bag onto the porch. “Look what I found lying in the grass by the side of the road. Sugar!” No one was more excited than Babushka. “It’s incredible! My children will have sweet pie—oh, what happened to you, Tania?”
While Dasha was bandaging Tatiana’s leg, Pasha told Babushka what happened. Marina added, “It was an accident, though.”
“As opposed to what?” snapped Pasha. Tatiana kicked him with her good leg.
Babushka was unconcerned. “Oh, so that was your mangled bike I saw where I found the sugar. I should’ve known, you urchin. Serves you right. Won’t do that again, will you? Still, look what we have! Nice consolation prize, no?”
“No.” Deda came in from the garden. “Woman, what are you thinking? The children can’t have it. It’s not ours.”
“So? It’s nobody’s. We don’t know whose it is.”
“That’s true.” He nodded. “We don’t know whose it is. But there is one thing we know for absolute certain…” Here he raised his voice. “It’s not ours!”
Babushka had quite a lot to say to that in response.
“What are you railing at me for, Anna?” Deda was inflexible. “Read the bag. Clearly it says: Property of the U.S.S.R. Collective Administration.”
“Like I said. Nobody’s,” Babushka repeated stubbornly.
“Deda,” Tatiana cajoled, her leg hurting, “because we didn’t steal it, maybe we could have just a cupful out of that large sack, and the rest we’ll give to the orphanage in Luga and to the Staretskys down the road? They haven’t had sugar since Tsarist times.”
Quietly Deda sat with the bag of sugar on the floor in front of him. Dasha said, “Deda, let’s just keep the stupid bag,” and Pasha wholeheartedly agreed, but Deda shook his head. “Tanechka, you know we can’t.”
“What—you won’t give even your own grandchildren a cupful?” Anna shouted. “I’m not listening to you. I’m giving it to them.”
“You are listening to me! We have to return the bag to the local Soviet in Luga, and when we do, they will weigh it, and what do you think they’ll say when they see that we’ve taken a kilo for ourselves?”
“That’s why we can’t return it to them,” exclaimed Babushka. “We keep it, we cook with it, we eat it, we throw the burlap out. The truck driver will never know it’s gone.”
“You don’t think they count their bags of sugar, Anna?”
“Oh, cut it out. You think you know everything. What are you worried about? Trust me, no one will know. Now, Tania, are you going to sit around all night or can you hobble over Blanca’s to get us our evening milk? Dinner’s in an hour.”
On the way to Blanca’s, Marina ran to Saika’s house to ask her if she wanted to come, too. Murmuring more apologies about Tatiana’s leg, Saika came.
Melek Taus
Gray, tiny, extremely wrinkled Blanca Davidovna looked warily at Saika when the children were at her door. “Come in,” she said unhappily. “Who’s coming for the tea leaves?”
“Not me,” said Tatiana.
“Tea leaves for me, Blanca Davidovna,” said Marina. “The other day Saika’s mother read my fortune. She told me I would go far. I’d like to know what my tea leaves say this year.”
The children settled around the small parlor in the hut, and Pasha told Blanca Davidovna what happened to Tatiana’s leg. “But I’m fine,” Tatiana quickly added, seeing Blanca’s critical scrutiny of Saika.
Marina must have seen it too, because she said, “Come on, it’s all water under the bridge now. Tania, why don’t you have Blanca Davidovna read your tea leaves this year? She hasn’t read yours in ages.”
“Our Tania here doesn’t like the ancient arts,” said Saika. “Tea leaves, palms, rowan trees. Why not, Tania? Palmistry is an art. The ancient Greeks, the Chinese, the Indians learned much about fate by the reading of palms. And my mother, by the way, is a very good kochek. Very accurate.”
“It’s not helpful,” said Tatiana. “Blanca Davidovna knows that better than anyone.” She nodded to the old woman. “Other things are helpful. Not that.”
Saika wanted to know what was helpful.
Tatiana demurred from answering. Blanca Davidovna took her by the hand, gently pulling on her. “Darling…come here.”
“No tea, no palms, Blanca Davidovna,” Tatiana said firmly. “You promised.”
“I know, dear child. I don’t go back on my promise. You are right, of course. I should know better than anyone—” she crossed herself. “That fatal curiosity is so pointless—and dangerous. The future is not to be fooled with, not to be trifled with. You can have warm milk from my cow. I don’t read milk. I just want you to sit on my lap, Tanechka.”
“I’m too heavy for you.”
“You’re a wisp, baby girl. Sit. Does your leg hurt?”
“It’s fine.” Tatiana sat on Blanca’s lap. “Don’t touch my hands,” she said. “I know you.”
But Blanca did. She took them—and kissed them. “I know you don’t want to know your future,” she whispered.
Saika perched on the floor, her legs crossed, palms out, watching them intently. “Oh, so, you do believe in the ancient arts, Tania! And there I was, misunderstanding you. So what are you afraid of? Blanca Davidovna, what is Tania afraid of?”
“She simply doesn’t want to know,” replied the old woman. “She hates all this talk about fate.”
“I don’t hate it,” Tatiana said, on Blanca’s lap. “It’s unnecessary. Just live your life. Because what else have you got, really?”
“But what is Tania afraid of?” said Saika. “Will you read my hands, my leaves, Blanca Davidovna? I’m not afraid of the future. I’m not afraid of anything.”
“You’re so brave, Saika!” Marina exclaimed.
Blanca was quiet. “You seem to me like the kind of girl,” she said to Saika, “who’s had her fortune read a few times.”
“You’re so right about that,” Saika said with a laugh.
Barely paying attention, Tatiana was purring as the old woman caressed her back. The kids in the village always played such rough games, Pasha especially; gentleness was not in his repertoire. Dasha touched her gently when she brushed her hair, but otherwise, Tatiana had to have a nightmare for Dasha to touch her gently, to whisper love to her.
“Did you say your mother was a kochek, girl?” said Blanca to Saika, her voice like gravel. Her wrinkled brow got more wrinkled. “Aren’t kocheks part of the Yezidi clergy?”
“Not necessarily,” said Saika, herself frowning. “You know about the Yezidi?”
Tatiana explained to Blanca that Saika’s family was Yezidi.
“Are they?” Blanca exclaimed, peering with great interest into Saika’s face.
Saika jumped up. “Were. Were. Can we just have the tea, or are we going to talk all night with dry throats?”
“What are the Yezidi?” The ever-curious Pasha.
“Recall Bluebeard’s nosy wife, Pasha,” whispered Tatiana.
“Shut up, Tania.”
Blanca Davidovna was pretending to be busy with serving tea and did not answer Pasha. But Pasha was not a let-it-go kind of boy. And since this afternoon’s bike race, he had lost his good cheer. Pasha lost his good cheer! Tatiana went to sit next to her brother cross-legged on the floor. Pasha sat, sat, and then said, “Saika, does the large painting of a blue peacock in your living room have anything to do with the Yezidi?”
“What?”
“The other night, while your mother was in ecstasy over the lack of my rusty proletarian future,” Pasha said, “I couldn’t help but notice the bright blue bird prominently displayed on your mantel. I’ve been meaning to ask you about it. Is that a Yezidi thing?”
“Just a bird, Pasha. Why such interest?”
“Just making conversation, Saika.”
“All right, I’ll tell you, if you tell me something about Tania.”
“Why is it always about me?” Tatiana exclaimed. “Pasha, tell her something about Marina instead.”
“I know everything about Marina,” said Saika. “Well? You want to play or not, Pasha?”
“Okay, you’re on,” said Pasha. “You first. Tell me about the peacock.”
Tatiana poked him, as if to say, stop making trouble.
“Pasha, do you know what the word Yezidi means?” asked Saika as Marina listened raptly, sitting close. “It means angels in Arabic. The Yezidi is a Kurdish religion of angels.” She smiled. “The peacock is the main angel. He is called the peacock angel.”
Tatiana’s breath was short in her chest. Blanca Davidovna opened her mouth to say, all right, enough now, but of course Tatiana’s brother, with less sense than God gave a goose, was unstoppable. “Does this peacock have a name?” asked Pasha.
“Melek Taus,” Saika replied.
“Blanca Davidovna,” Pasha asked, “does that name translate into our language?”
Tania very slowly moved her hand to rest on Pasha’s leg, and pinched him hard through his trousers. She thought he was trying to provoke Saika. He had that intense look about him. Hell-bent was the word.
Blanca didn’t answer. She was swirling the children’s empty tea cups, seeing how the leaves settled. She did this to three cups, and then put the cups down, her wary eyes on the young people. Her shrewd gaze finished and stayed on Tatiana.
“Lucifer,” Blanca finally replied in her raspy voice.
“Lucifer?” Pasha mouthed.
Shaking her head, Tatiana closed her eyes. Well, there you have it. Enough provocation for a whole darn summer.
“How does a village woman know so much about the ancient religions?” asked Saika, staring hard at Blanca.
“You live long enough, you pick up a few things,” replied Blanca. “And I’m a hundred and one.”
Pasha finally found his voice. “LU-CI-FER?” he repeated loudly.
Calmly Saika stared at Pasha and Blanca and Tatiana. “Yes. So?”
Three blank faces stared back at her. Where. To. Start. Pasha tried. “Lucifer, the peacock, is the main symbol of your church, Saika?”
“Yes. What’s your point? Lucifer is the angel of light,” Saika said. “Everybody knows that. Even his name means light.”
Pasha coughed as if he had the croup. Even Tatiana’s pinching didn’t deter him. “Ahem, excuse me, Saika,” Pasha said. “I’ve read a few things about Lucifer.”
“Pasha, don’t lie, you don’t know how to read,” Tatiana said.
He elbowed her. “And while you may call him what you like,” he went on to Saika, “the rest of the world distinctly thinks of Lucifer as something just a touch different than an angel of light.”
“The world misunderstands him, as it misunderstands much,” said Saika. “Enlightenment is possible.”
“Enlighten me,” said Pasha. “Wasn’t Lucifer an archangel who believed he was wiser than God, and then fell from grace?”
“I know where you’re going with this,” said Saika. “You want me to admit that while our small religious sect of a few lousy thousand hangs pictures of angels on our walls, the rest of the world thinks we worship the devil.”
“You know,” said Pasha, “I never looked at it like that. Ouch! Tania, leave me alone! But now that you brought it to my attention, Saika, let me say this—if we’re going to be correcting one another and all—worship not just the devil but Satan himself.”
Oh, what got into her brother tonight!
“It is simply not true,” said Saika. “There is no such thing as Satan. Our religion accepts evil as a natural part of creation—”
“It doesn’t embrace it?” Pasha asked tauntingly.
“No.” Saika was unflappable. “We give it the respect it deserves. We put it in its proper context. Take your little Garden of Eden story for example. All the serpent was saying to Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden was know both fully—good and evil—and then decide. So actually,” Saika continued pleasantly, “if what you believe is true, then the serpent was doing your religion a favor by giving it the knowledge to decide between right and wrong. In other words, the serpent gave you free will.”
Blanca Davidovna shook her head.
“Oh, Saika!” Marina cried. “You’re so smart. You know so much.”
“Thank you, Marina. I take great pride in it.”
Tatiana and Pasha exchanged a glance. “Marina,” said Pasha slowly, “did you ever hear the expression, the devil dances in an empty pocket?”
“No.”
“Pasha,” Tatiana said, speaking about Marina as if the girl weren’t in the room, “I think the expression is, the devil dances in an empty heart.” She turned to Saika. “You do know quite a bit—but I don’t agree with you about the serpent.”
“Of course not,” said Saika. “You love to argue, Tania. You have an opposite opinion on everything.”
Unflappable herself, Tatiana went on. “Well, in my humble opinion, by choosing to follow the serpent, Adam and Eve were already choosing—just unwisely. God commanded, they chose not to listen to Him. The serpent sibilated, and they chose to listen to him. The free will came before, not after.”
Saika laughed dismissively. “What’s this obsession with free will? The ancient Greeks and Romans believed in fate.”
“The pagan Greeks and Romans, you mean?”
Saika widened her eyes and laughed. “Oh, I just got it! That’s why you don’t like this talk about fate! That’s at the root of your troubles with it! You’re not afraid of it, you just don’t believe in it.”
“This isn’t about me,” Tatiana said evenly.
“The pagans believed in fate! That’s what you just said with such derision.”
“There was no derision,” said Pasha. “And Saika—leave Tania alone.” He was clearly unforgiving over the biking incident. “Tania, I know you know about Lucifer. If Saika won’t enlighten me, tell me what you’ve read in your little books about the peacock angel.”
“I don’t know much,” said Tatiana. “But in one book Blanca Davidovna lent me, Lucifer spends eternity in the center of the earth in the deepest circle of hell while three traitors are submerged in his three open mouths, Judas in the middle, head first.” Tatiana shrugged. “That’s all I know.”
“You’ve been poisoned by lies,” declared Saika. “Lucifer has been blatantly misrepresented by your overzealous singing baptizing village women and your overwrought medieval writers. Our religion is called angel-worship, because that’s what it is. Unlike you, we don’t even recognize that demons exist. Circles of hell! Bah!”
The children stared at Saika. Even Pasha was speechless. A withered Blanca Davidovna, her head involuntarily nodding, studied Tatiana.
“Wait,” Tatiana said, grasping to understand. “What do you mean, you don’t recognize demons? What about the devil? What about Satan?”
“No, no—and no.”
“You mean you think there are only angels?”
“That’s right.”
“Everybody is an angel?”
“Yes!”
Tatiana and Pasha glanced pleadingly at Blanca Davidovna for guidance. Blanca remained mute staring into the tea cups.
Tatiana quietly asked, “No right, no wrong then for the Yezidi, Saika? No light, no dark? No Newtonian laws?”
“Different principles, Tania. Why is it so hard to understand? Lucifer is an angel who is reconciled—and one—with everything in the universe. In Lucifer’s universe, everything is good and everything is in balance. Our religion believes that since he was forgiven for his perceived transgressions, those who worship him are forgiven for theirs.”
A question hung in the air that Tatiana didn’t hear an answer to—though she suspected it was a rhetorical question. She opened her mouth. “Forgiven by who?” asked Tatiana.
“By who? Those who worship Lucifer are forgiven for their transgressions by Lucifer,” Saika replied.
“Yes,” Tatiana said quietly, “but who is Lucifer forgiven by?”
She heard her thudding heartbeat in the gathering silence.
Saika jumped to her feet. “Your question, as you well know, has no answer,” she said. “Why don’t you stand under the rowan tree to ward off the evil spirits you’re so worried about?”
Blanca Davidovna spoke at last. “Why in the world would we need the rowan tree,” she asked, “when we have the cross?”
“Well, tell that to the Ukrainian Catholics, tell that to the Romanovs,” snapped Saika. “The cross didn’t save them, did it?”
“Then it didn’t save Peter. Or Paul. Or Luke. Or Matthew—”
“I don’t want to talk about this nonsense anymore. I’m going home. Coming, Marina?”
Marina jumped to her feet.
“Want your tea leaves read, Marina?” said Blanca Davidovna. “Because they’re ready.”
“Maybe later, Blanca Davidovna.”
Tatiana got up herself. “Pasha, don’t just sit there. Babushka will kill us, we’re so late. I still have to milk the cow. Come help.”
Saika called after him, “Wait, Pasha! I told you about the peacock, but you haven’t told me something about Tatiana!”
“I changed my mind,” said Pasha, striding away. “I have a fickle heart. Your own ecstatic mother said so.”
Back near their dacha, Pasha dragged Tatiana away from Marina and said, “Tania, I don’t care what Marina does, but you’re not allowed to play with Saika anymore.”
“What?”
“I’m serious. You’re not allowed to play with her. Not at her house, not in the hammock, not in the river, not on the bikes.”
“Well, I don’t have a bike now,” said Tatiana.
“Talk to Dasha, talk to Deda, but I think they will agree that you should not play with anyone who doesn’t believe there are demons.”
“I’ve been telling you about her, Pasha. From the very beginning. You didn’t want to listen.”
“I’m listening now.”
A Knock on the Door
Late that evening, well after dinner, there was a knock on the door. Murak Kantorov stood on their porch. The Metanovs didn’t know he was back from Kolpino. They weren’t sure what he wanted, but they invited him in and offered him some vodka. At first it seemed as if he wanted to be neighborly. He sat with them a while; the vodka flowed, the talk soon followed. Even Deda was politely fascinated by Murak’s travels, and Murak was only too happy to regale. “Two years ago when we were picking cotton near Alma-Ata…”
Tatiana listened carefully.
“And a few years ago when we were in the oilfields in Tashkent…”
“We stayed in Yerevan just a few months…”
“In Saki we lived the longest of any stretch, two years. Saika started to call it home and then we came here. No, thank you,” Murak said to the black caviar offered by Babushka. “In Baku on the Caspian Sea we ate so much sturgeon caviar, we never want to see caviar again. Sturgeon are bottom dwellers, you know.”
“Where haven’t you lived!” exclaimed Babushka.
“We’ve lived everywhere,” Murak said boastfully. “In the Kara-Kum desert like nomads in tents, and in the mountains of Turkmenistan. On collective farms, in collective fishing villages, in collective concerns all across the Soviet Union. Saika has lived in twenty different places in her fifteen years.”
Deda was quiet. “Where is the place you call home?” he asked.
“The place I am at the moment,” Murak replied, downing a large glass of pepper vodka without even a pickle to chase it down. “I’m home everywhere. Everywhere is my home.”
Pasha and Tatiana exchanged a glance. “Saika told me only about a few places,” she said. “Three maybe.”
“Yes, Stefan, too,” seconded Dasha.
“Oh, they don’t like to brag.” Murak had another long drink of vodka. “By the way, Saika told me that earlier today she saw Anna Lvovna dragging a heavy burlap bag.” He smiled politely. “What was that?”
Everyone fell silent. It was Dasha who came forward. “It was a bag of sugar, comrade Kantorov. What’s your interest in it?”
“My interest in it,” said Murak, and his tone was mild, “is that my daughter said it had a hammer and sickle on the canvas.”
“Haven’t answered the question though,” said Dasha. Tatiana was proud of her.
Deda stood up, his hand raised. “My granddaughter is forward for her age. She is learning to have more tact, but you know youth.” He came closer to Kantorov. “What do you want, Murak Vlasovich?”
“The bag belongs to the State and must be returned to the State.” Kantorov got up and headed toward the door. Turning around, he said, “I don’t have to tell you—you’re a smart man—that every seed of grain, every grain of sugar, every potato goes toward fulfilling our Five-Year Plan production quota. This is the last year of the second plan. It is therefore even more imperative that the quotas be met. Make sure it’s returned tomorrow.”
After he had gone, the Metanovs stared at each other in confounded apprehension. Babushka placed her arm on Deda. “You were right, Vasili.”
“When am I ever not right? And had you not taken what didn’t belong to you, we wouldn’t be in this predicament! How many times have I told you? Don’t touch what isn’t yours!”
“Oh, look at him, raising his voice!” yelled Babushka.
They stormed off to their room.
Tatiana’s head was shaking. Deda and Babushka were arguing? She went and knocked on Deda’s door. The sharp voices behind the door had no choice but to stop. She came in, gently pulled Deda to sit, climbed into his lap and pressed herself against him. “Shh,” she said.
“You see? Even your child is telling you to shh,” said Babushka loudly. “Heed her at least.”
“I told you not to touch a grain of that sugar! Did you heed me? I don’t think so. Didn’t you hear? It’s for the Five-Year Plan.”
They laughed, and then stopped shouting.
Still on Deda’s lap, Tatiana said, “Deda, what do you think Murak Kantorov does for a living, moving so often from collective to collective?”
Her grandfather thoughtfully stroked her hair, wrestling with himself, looking at Babushka, glancing down at her. Finally he spoke.
“Tanechka, Murak Kantorov is a weeder.”
“What’s a weeder, Deda?”
The First Five-Year Plan
During the First Five-Year Plan, the farms in the Ukraine fell short of yearly goals. The Politburo had set the goals based not on demand, or capital costs or labor costs—the fixed capital—or operating costs or any practical concerns. It set its goals in 1927, based only on one thing: what they thought the farms needed to produce for one hundred and fifty million people over the next five years. There were convex hull formulas, divide and conquer algorithms, statistical probabilities, logical assumptions. The plan was faultless, the triumph of tortuously long meetings of the Politburo’s most brilliant economic minds. All it required was execution.
But a few things happened that the Party had not foreseen despite its wisdom and its plan. For one, the people turned out to be hungrier than anticipated. They needed more wheat and more rye, more potatoes, more milk. So in 1928 the demand had spiked up. And in 1928 there was a terrible drought in the Ukraine. Supply went down. And in 1928 there was a typhus epidemic in the Ukraine. Labor went down. And millions of Ukrainians, who had owned big productive profitable farms, had been taken into “protective custody,” tried as “kulaks” and “enemies of the people” and shot, and their farms brought under government control. So means of production and supply went down, and the farms in the agrarian republic of Kazakhstan were unable to make up the shortage. The prices remained static—set in 1927.
And so it began.
To feed the hungry in the industrialized cities, the Soviet councils—men and women armed with rifles and under orders to shoot to kill— came and requisitioned the food in the farms, without compensation. In Central Asia, there had been little protest. But in the Ukraine—ninety percent of Soviet agriculture—the farmers protested. They were shot, exacerbating the paucity of labor.
And so it continued.
The new collectivized farms could not produce enough; the workers were in the fields from sunup to sundown, and their entire harvest went on trucks to the cities, while the farmers remained with their families in the Ukraine—one of the most fertile regions in the world—without income and without food. To everyone’s surprise, the farmers, their wives gone, their children dying, their parents long dead, started working less. They were shot for idleness. The orphaned children were promptly sent off to the Siberian collectives, and those who survived the transit trains worked there.
Despite these minor setbacks, the Ukraine continued with the Five-Year Plan, into 1929, 1930, and 1931. While 1930 and 1931 were better harvest years, they were no better for the farmers, who had fallen so far behind the five-year grain requirement that all the produce from the farms continued to be forcibly removed by the Party apparatchiks.
The farmers did the only thing they could. They started stealing.
For this they were shot, further narrowing the human capital.
Those still alive during the famine of 1933—the last, and worst, year of the first Plan—had finally had their fill, and in an act of futile protest, slaughtered their cattle before they could be taken away and ate the remains on the village streets. They burned down their own collectives and their carriages and their huts; and then they scorched the fields they refused to harvest.
All across the Ukraine they were hanged on the streets, shot in public, burned with their cattle; all silage, seed stock, farm stock and grain was confiscated. All rail lines and roads were closed by the Red Army and the OGPU. Labor—the fixed capital—became unfixed at a rate of ten thousand executions a week, with hunger and disease swelling the numbers of the dead to several million in the Ukraine alone between 1932 and 1933.
Comrade Stalin vowed to do better in the next Five-Year Plan.
Doing Better in the Next Five-Year Plan
For the second Five-Year Plan from 1933–1938, the Politburo set the production goals a little lower and the prices a little higher. Impatiently they waited out the drought in 1933 and the government-sponsored famine in 1933 and 1934, but in 1934, Stalin had had quite enough. When he received a letter from the Nobel prize-winning author Mikhail Sholokhov accusing him, the Great Leader and Teacher, of destroying the Ukrainian countryside and starving its people, his brisk reply was, “No, Comrade Sholokhov. They are starving me.”
Reconstruction and industrialization of the country was proceeding apace, but Stalin recognized that labor—the most expensive part of production—was going to be the hardest to come by in the next few years, for reasons, he felt, that were completely outside his control. Fortunately he had conceived a plan in the 1920s that he believed solved the fledgling state’s early problems. He expanded his solution in the 1930s.
An organized system of government work camps!
An organized system of government farms!
Against all reason, the Ukrainian farmers allowed themselves to be starved and hanged and shot! rather than give up their grain, their cattle, and their farms. The wealth of the country and therefore the future of the Soviet Union rested in the hands of the Ukrainian farmers.
Suddenly a firm believer in free will, Stalin changed policy. He gave the farmers in the Soviet Union a choice: Work on the collective farm or work in the Gulag.
This reorganization of social structure of a vast country required massive help at the lowest levels. The OGPU hired and paid regular folk to help them. Young men, women, and children who had the stomach, the disposition and the inclination for this kind of work, stood with rifles in the fields from dawn till night, making sure the farmers continued to choose to toil on the volunteer collectives and not steal.
These people were called weeders.
The Future
The next morning, when Deda and Babushka went to the Soviet to return the bag of sugar, Tatiana and Pasha came with them. They sat on the bench outside the open window of a two-room wooden council house, where they could hear what was happening. Inside, councilman Viktor Rodinko, said, “Comrade Metanov, we’ve been expecting you. Where is the sugar?”
The councilman and his two assistants weighed the bag—three times. And then Rodinko stood in front of Deda and Babushka and asked them why it took so long to return it. “Why didn’t you return it immediately, comrade?”
“It was late in the day. We were about to have dinner. The Soviet was closing.”
“Look at it from our point of view. It’s almost as if you weren’t planning on returning the bag until Comrade Kantorov came to see you.”
Deda and Babushka were quiet. Deda said, “I do not need Comrade Kantorov to tell me to return what isn’t mine,” in a voice so neutral Comrade Kantorov had no place in it. “Will there be anything else?”
“There will be,” said Rodinko. “Have a seat.”
And so it began.
“The bag of sugar, Comrade Metanov, belongs to our soldiers, our factory workers, our proletarian farmers. As you very well know, we are fighting for our existence. We don’t have enough to feed our soldiers, our factory workers, our proletarian farmers…”
“That’s why we returned it.”
“When you take as much as a spoonful for yourself, you are stealing from the people who are building our country.”
“I understand.”
“We have many enemies who would like to see us fail. The fascists in Europe, the capitalists in America, they’re all waiting for our collapse. We import the sugar from China, but there is not enough for a hundred and fifty million people, of which you and your family are just seven.”
And so it continued.
What about the workers who build the tanks? The doctors who treat the wounded? The farmers who reap the grain? The Red Army soldier, who will lay down his life to protect you…“Get in line, Comrade Metanov.”
“I’ve been in line since 1917, Comrade Rodinko. I’m well aware of my place,” said Deda. “My intentions were always to return the bag.”
The councilman nodded. “But one hundred and twenty-five grams lighter, no?”
Deda and Babushka said nothing.
“Comrade Metanov, as a nation we need to trust our people. But we are also realistic. There are some people who will think of their families first. I’m not saying you are such a man, what I’m saying is that such men exist. Even during the noble French Revolution, despite fighting for liberty, fraternity and equality, men resorted to all kinds of criminal behavior to provide for their families.”
The councilman fell quiet. Tatiana and Pasha, listening outside the window, waited. Rodinko wanted something from Deda. After many minutes of silence, Deda spoke. “That is criminal, you’re right,” he said with resignation. “Placing your family before the survival of the state.”
Rodinko smiled. “Absolutely. I am so glad we understand each other. For taking the sugar, you and your wife are to spend two weeks without pay at a kholhoz in Pelkino, helping with the summer harvest. Let that be part of your rehabilitation and re-education. And from now on, there will be no more bags of sugar falling at the feet of your family, no matter how accidental, no matter how providential. Am I making myself clear?”
“Very clear.”
“Have a good day, Comrade Metanov. You and your wife leave for Pelkino tomorrow morning at eight. Come here first for your papers.”
Deda’s Burning Questions
That night after dinner, Tania was gently swinging in the hammock with Deda, his arm around her. She knew Pasha was waiting for her, but she didn’t want to go just yet. Her heart was unusually heavy.
“What’s wrong, Tanechka?” Deda asked. “We got off easy. Just two weeks on a collective. Better than five years in Siberia. And I don’t mind doing my part to feed the people in the cities. After all, we are those people. The day may come when we need food, too.” He smiled at her.
But Tatiana wasn’t worried about Deda or Babushka, two weeks and they would be back; no, there was something more ominous that troubled her. She asked, “Deda, do you think Saika knows about her parents?”
“Probably not. Children blessedly know little about their parents. Why do you ask?”
Murak coming to their house because Saika told him about the bag of sugar. Wasn’t that reason enough? She didn’t want to tell her grandfather about Marina’s river “incident,” or the biking “incident.” Or Saika coming by with Stefan just when Dasha’s Mark was visiting. Or glimpsing the black malevolence inside Shavtala.
She chewed her lip.
“I’m going to tell you something about me, Tania,” Deda said. “Did you know I was asked to become a Party member? Yes, at the university. They offered to make me a full professor and to double my salary. They promised me that Pasha will be kept out of active combat when he reaches draft age. And some other benefits too.” He smiled. “Now see what I mean? Even you didn’t know that, did you?”
Tatiana was silent. Breathlessly she asked, “What kind of benefits?”
Deda laughed. “Vacation villas in Batumi on the Black Sea. Triple meat rations. Our very own five room apartment.”
“When did they offer you this?”
“Last year. I would also get a good pension, and that’s something I must think about since I’ll be retiring soon.”
Tatiana was still breathless. “Did you tell them no?”
Deda smiled. “Did you want me to tell them yes?”
That stumped her. “Do they ask you for things in return?”
“What do you think?”
She mulled. “Maybe they just ask you to wear a little hammer and sickle pin.”
“Yes, first. Then your son is expected to become a Party member. And your grandchildren are required to become Comsomols. And then they ask you why the son refused, and why the insubordinate, impossible youngest granddaughter refused, and why the people down the stairs have been meeting with foreigners in secret and I, as a diligent Party member, never said a word about it.”
“What people down the stairs?”
“Precisely. Everything comes at a price, Tatiana. Everything in your life. The question you have to ask yourself is, what price are you willing to pay?”
Tatiana felt a cold shiver. “I think it’s right to keep away if your heart tells you to keep away,” she said.
“Yes, you’re a great believer in that. Well, my heart told me to keep away.” Deda paused. “What is your heart telling you about the girl next door?”
“I think…” she drew out her words, “it’s telling me to keep away.”
Deda nodded. “Pasha certainly seems to think you should.”
“But really, Deda, I’m not sure of anything anymore. Everything seems so muddled this summer.” She heaved a sigh out of her shoulders.
Deda nodded again. “And what did I tell you to do to unmuddle? Whenever you’re unsure of yourself, whenever you’re in doubt, ask yourself three questions. What do you believe in? What do you hope for? But most important, ask yourself, what do you love?” His arm was around her. “And when you answer, Tania, you will know who you are. And more important—if you ask this question of the people around you, you will know who they are, too.” He paused. “Here, I’ll give you an example. I believe in my word. I don’t give it lightly, but when I give it, I keep it. I hope for my grandchildren. I hope you will grow up to have love. And I love your grandmother. That’s who I love most of all.” He smiled. “I think she’s listening to me just inside the porch.”
Tatiana, barely breathing, listened to her grandfather, looking up at him. “I love my family,” she said. “Since that’s all I know, that’s all I can answer.”
She didn’t want to lose this moment with her grandfather. He kissed her head and embracing her, whispered, “Tania, you’re making your grandfather want to cry. It’s the first time you’ve come and sat and wanted my advice. Please don’t tell me you’re growing up, my little baby.”