Everything Begins In Childhood

I also enjoyed that smell because the long-awaited moment was about to arrive: the preparation of the bakhsh lay ahead of me. It was I who was to mix all the ingredients in the bowl. That was my privilege, my responsibility – whatever you called it – and I was very proud of it. Mama didn’t trust Emma to do this important work: she was too little. And Emma, even though she envied me and fidgeted around, had to give in.

Kr-zhik, p-shik… pfik… chok… chok… The moist rice with pieces of meat snorted and crunched under my hands becoming more elastic and homogeneous, almost like Play-Doh. It stuck to my hands, to the edges of the bowl, and I continued to mix it, pushing my fingers through the mixture so the juice reached everywhere, and then I mixed it again. I tried so hard that my fingers hurt.

“Well, that’s enough… It’s ready… Pour it out…”

Mama held a small closely woven cloth sack up to the edge of the bowl, and I transferred the greenish moist mass, the raw bakhsh, into it. I did it very carefully, down to the last grain of rice and piece of meat. That’s when Mama’s watchful eyes wouldn’t allow any carelessness. When I was done, the bowl and my hands were as clean as if they hadn’t had anything to do with the bakhsh. Mama and I finished packing the bakhsh: I beat it down tightly in the sack, and Mama tied it up with thick twine. Then, the bakhsh was lowered into the cauldron with its merrily bubbling water. The fragrance of the cilantro and something very tasty became stronger with every passing minute.

“Mom. Will it be ready soon?”

Ah, Emma, Emma… She knew so well that it took a long time to cook bakhsh, but she was already drooling.

“In three or four hours,” Mama explained patiently. She understood everything and suggested, “Why don’t you have some apple?”

When Mama was at home, Emma’s and my mouths were always full. Mama’s system of child nutrition was simple: when she was not around, the children ate carelessly and were underfed – she thought that I looked “like a skeleton” because of that, and it means that children had to be fed, fed and fed on her days off.

* * *

Apples were stored in a wooden crate near the fridge on the veranda. They were top quality and juicy. Each apple was wrapped in paper. The apples were of a winter variety and usually lasted till spring. But this year, they didn’t feel right, and almost all of them were worm-eaten.

I picked out a few very good ones, but also took along a couple of those in which gluttonous invaders had toiled hard.

“Mama, these apples are rotten. We should throw them out.”

Mama looked at me reproachfully. “Rotten, you say? How can you possibly know that?” her glance expressed. Mama took an apple and a knife into her hands… The apple began to spin under the blade of the knife as if it were alive and could feel pain. And Mama, the tenderhearted compassionate surgeon, pursed her lips, doing her best to complete the surgery as quickly as possible… A piece was cut off on the right side… on the left side… at the bottom… a deep hole was made. Aha, I could see who was there.

The poor apple had been slashed considerably. And Mama said, casting a crafty look at me, “Well, was it necessary to throw out such a wonderful apple?”

A second worm-eaten apple was “operated on” the same way. We ate them with great relish. To be precise, Mama fed them to us. She would cut off a piece of apple so that it stayed where it was, like a candle chopped up by a skillful swordsman. Then she would pick it up with the tip of the knife and bring it to Emma’s and my lips. That’s how esteemed guests were treated in our parts.

“Do you want some more?” Mama picked up an apple that wasn’t worm-eaten. That was even more interesting than the “surgery.” She made a cut at the top of the apple, and it began to spin under her knife as fast as if a small engine had been hidden in her left palm. The strip of skin, almost translucent, grew longer and longer. It already touched the table: Mama stood as she did this. The last turn, and she picked up the skin with the knife and extended it to me. The skin had been cut in such a way that one could put it back onto the apple, and it would look as if the skin hadn’t been removed. Just try to do that.

I tried to peel apples, even potatoes, many times, but to not avail. The damned knife didn’t obey me; it slipped, tearing the skin, cutting it into pulp. It behaved any way it wanted. The skin didn’t turn into a strip but into thick, clumsy scraps. It wasn’t clear where there was more pulp, on the scraps or on the shapeless, emaciated object that was once a potato or beautiful apple.

* * *

Mama was smiling. She was, perhaps, pleased that I admired her work. Mama had talented hands. And that was, as I see it now, inextricably connected with certain of her emotional qualities. Not only could she do everything well, beautifully, without any concessions, but she had an inner need to do everything that way, the need not to let herself down, even in trifling things, to remember everything and organize her own little world perfectly. I think that also explained Mama’s other feature: her thriftiness, which went beyond the limits of ordinary efficiency. No, I would not call it stinginess. I would like to emphasize again: it was something quite different.

The pockets of Mama’s robe were always stuffed with different things, things that one of us had misplaced out of sloppiness or negligence or didn’t need. Those things might be torn-off buttons, hairpins, pencils, spools of thread, abandoned toys. Pins picked up from the floor were always stuck into one side of her collar, needles with black and white threads, just in case, into its other side. Sometimes, she was like a peddler who didn’t demand payment for purchases. I would stand at the phone searching with my eyes for a pen to write down a phone number. “Mom…” I would begin to say. Before I could continue, she would come up to me, rummaging in her pocket, and produce the pen that I had misplaced.

“Dinner time! Dinner time!”

As soon as Emma heard the clinking of plates, she rushed to the kitchen. While we ate apples, chatted, helped Mama clean in the kitchen and the bedroom, and played something in the meantime, the bakhsh finished cooking. We took our seats, rattling the chairs. Now, Mama didn’t need our help. She removed the sack from the cauldron with the ladle, placed it in a deep bowl and, holding the sack by its lower corners, shook the bakhsh out. The greenish pile looked like a volcano emitting heat: there was steam hovering above it. And the fragrance was amazing! Was it possible to describe?

In general, freshly made bakhsh, with tomatoes and cucumber or pickles on the side, is something incredible. That’s why I limit myself to the lyrical exclamation: It was a Very Delicious Day, which I still remember.

I remember it not just because of Boolk-boolk and bakhsh. It was a day not marred by anything: no sorrows, no strain of family squabbles, no fear of hearing the malicious voice. Emma and I spent that winter day like cubs with Mama Bear in our cozy lair. Warmth and emotional radiation, which haven’t been given a name and couldn’t be detected by any device, without which children are so unhappy and any person is lonely, emanated from Mama.

Chapter 48. Tadpoles

There was a clearing across from the barber shop, that very barber shop where we had once been turned into “forelocks.” It was a wonderful clearing for all kinds of games, but it also had special advantages. It was covered with puddles, dozens of puddles, large and small, during the time of spring rains. Tadpoles suddenly appeared in each of them under certain conditions. Believe it or not, right in that clearing there was a frog nursery, a farm of tiny frogs, to be precise, tadpoles who would turn into frogs far from the ariks where many frogs resided, though they didn’t always succeed in turning into frogs.

It had rained that night, and now all the puddles swarmed with tadpoles. Hundreds and hundreds of these funny creatures, these black bulging little ovals, a bit larger than fingernails, with big eyes on their front parts, and long little tails moving at enormous speed in all directions. Their glossy bodies glittered like fragments of black glass in the sun’s rays.

We didn’t know why frogs decided to spawn in this clearing, in these puddles. But we knew that not many of these tadpoles were destined to grow up and turn into normal frogs. And we were outraged about their frog mothers’ lack of concern. Spring rains didn’t last very long; they would soon be over. The merciless sun would dry the puddles. What would then be left for the poor tadpoles? It was a miracle that the water in the clearing was not soaked up by the ground, that some of the big puddles remained there from rain to rain.

Squatting by one of the largest puddles, I poked around in it with a twig. The puddle looked like a lake. Its dark bottom was muddy, and the grass that grew in it looked like algae. Brown dregs swirled around my twig in all directions.

“It’s clay,” Vitya Smirnov said. He squatted next to me, also poking around in the puddle. “If this were sand, it would already be soaked up, but clay holds water better.”

Clay or no clay, bare patches, hard and covered with winding cracks, would be here instead of the puddles in a couple of months.

“Well, guys, do we choose this one?” Zhenya asked. “Then let’s go.”

And we headed for the nearest arik.

This was not the first spring that we, after finding one of the puddles most densely populated by tadpoles, engaged in rescuing these poor orphans. It was a noble deed and, at the same time, not too difficult. All we had to do was make sure that the “nursery” didn’t dry out. We just had to keep an eye on the amount of water in the puddle, and, if there was too little of it left, we had to bring a few buckets from the nearest arik. Not that we were perfect guardians, but still, a certain number of tadpoles abandoned by their mothers managed to survive with our help. When that happened, we experienced almost parental pride as we watched the tiny frogs, first just one, then the whole group, hop through the grass to the arik. It was amazing how they knew in what direction to head.

“They must be looking for their mothers,” we giggled.

We never tired of watching the tadpoles, observing them frolic and grow. Perhaps, that’s why we began taking care of them. We often squatted near the puddles, talking. For example, we argued about how many tadpoles one frog could produce. I explained to ignorant Zhenya Andreyev – I got an A in biology – that it was a silly question. Frogs spawned like fish, which meant that they could produce any number of offspring. Zhenya was hurt and answered that he also knew about spawning and that a frog didn’t spawn kilograms of eggs, and many of them didn’t survive.

But our conversations weren’t very often of a scientific nature.

“It would be great to bring Ryzhaya (Redhead) here… She would eat them up.”

“Phooey,” Vitya Smirnov spat with disgust. “Redhead wouldn’t even look at this filth.”

Redhead was the name of Vitya’s cat. She was a purebred, or so the Smirnovs claimed, and they treated her like a chosen one. Her food was served on a porcelain saucer set on newspaper in the corner of the living room. And she never ate leftovers, only fresh meat that she chased down with milk. How could we possibly suppose that such a cat would eat tadpoles… Vitya couldn’t calm down for a long time, cursed the tadpoles and called them names, as if he didn’t take care of them along with us.

Every time Vitya talked about his Redhead, I experienced an unpleasant feeling. If the boys had known my Tashkent nickname, they would immediately have forgotten my real name. They would even have claimed that I was the cat’s relative. Fortunately, they didn’t suspect there had been a time when my nickname was Redhead.

The tadpoles’ parents entertained us as much as their children. There was an immense quantity of frogs in the neighborhood, most likely because of the ariks. They traveled all over the place and preferred to embark on their travels towards the end of the day. On the way home from school, we could see them hopping across the road or in the grass. They always gave concerts late at night. Deafening frog music filled the air above the settlement. It resounded now from one side, now another, then from all sides simultaneously.

We really enjoyed listening to those concerts on Dora’s bench near our entrance. Of course, we did it after Dora had gone home, after she grew tired from gossiping and orating. Dora often stayed outside until late. We would get angry and curse that indefatigable woman in whispers. Little did we know how deserted it would feel near our entrance three years later, after Dora left for Greece, her homeland. Something would disappear for good along with her, with the buzzing and squeaking of her coffee grinder… Making ourselves comfortable on the bench, whose boards had sagged a bit with Dora’s help, we would chuckle, “Our bench still bears the warmth of Dora’s butt. Ah, where is our Dora now?” But the adults would miss Dora much more. I often saw our neighbors pass our entrance and sigh as they looked at the bench.

But that would be later. For now…

We waited until Dora and her audience went home, and then we swarmed around the bench like sparrows. It was getting dark. The cool of the evening descended on the town along with the darkness. The croaking of frogs, first soft, then louder, more ringing, more rumbling, could be heard from all directions as it drowned out the chatter and monotone chirping of the cicadas.

We thought that they called roll before their concert, one by one. They talked about something. It would be great to know what they talked about.

Here a slow, leisurely, rich koo-a-a, koo-a-a-a was heard from our vegetable garden. And almost right away, it was heard from a different direction, like an answer. It was very similar, yet a bit different, even more guttural and gurgling.

“It’s coming from the arik,” Edem determined correctly. Croaking was actually heard from under the water. We knew, for we saw it many times. A frog would be sitting somewhere down there on the clay bottom, and its mighty croaking could be heard on our bench coming through the thick mass of water. Standing near the arik when it was still light outside, we could see little bubbles reaching the surface of the water from where a singer was sitting.

Obviously, boys the world over have always had a useful talent for mimicry: the meowing of Huck Finn at night comes to mind. My skill at this was unsurpassed. And if I managed to fool the rooster by cackling like a hen, why shouldn’t I try to fool the frogs? I tried patiently and persistently. I learned special tricks with the help of experts at school. You had to put your left hand, curled like a tube, to your mouth and utter the sounds, imitating croaking. Your right hand had to be pressed to the end of the “tube” and move rhythmically, which made the sound change and reverberate.

Perhaps, the most ancient musical instruments were exactly like that.

Somehow or other my “instruments” gradually began to play quite nicely, actually so well, the boys assured me, that it was me the frogs sometimes answered.

Kolya, Edem and Rustem also wanted to learn how to do it. At first, it sounded somewhat like loud farting, but then it began to work. I thought that the boys didn’t attain my level of skill, but still, we could now perform as “the frog choir conducted by Valery the Croakmeister.” The name was devised by Kolya.

Sometimes, we got so carried away that a sleepy angry voice would be heard from one of the verandas, “Damned croakers! Right under our windows! Why should they come hopping around here?”

And we, shaking with laughter, would run home.

* * *

Sometimes, we had a roll call with the frogs right near the arik. In summer, we hung around the arik all the time. I cannot adequately explain the place ariks occupied in our life, the charm they lent to Eastern towns. One had to see and feel it in person. I’ll just tell you a bit about the Chirchik ariks.

The network of ariks extended throughout the whole town. It was a very tangled network. Chirchik wasn’t designed and built in a straightforward way. Besides, it was located in the hills. On top of that, there was a vegetable garden near every house, just as in any town in Central Asia, and it was necessary to bring water as close as possible to each of them, or otherwise everything would dry up. In a word, ariks could be found everywhere in Chirchik for dozens of reasons, and one could also hear them. The splashing and quiet babbling of water accompanied you on any street or lane and in every garden. They were such habitual sounds that you ceased noticing them over time. But when you went to a town where there were no ariks, you felt uneasy: something was missing. What a strange town that was.

They were less than a meter wide. Their waters either flowed along the sides of the streets or wound around houses and playgrounds. As an arik approached a wide road, it was sucked with a rumble into a large metal culvert and splashed out of it on the other side of the highway. White foam roiled furiously at the end of the culvert as if the water were boiling. Spray flew out in all directions, rising toward the sky. It seemed that the water had turned into foam and would not flow back into the arik. But no, the foam turned back into water, just as objects that disappeared a moment ago reappear in the hands of a magician.

“The water of the ariks flows so lively,

Gleaming, and bubbling, and ringing at night…”

When I was a boy, this song was already old, and I heard it somewhere by chance. I was very glad I had heard it because the water of the ariks also seemed lively to me. I envisioned ariks as infinitely long snakes, mysterious winding anacondas, arising somewhere out there and slithering to some unknown destination.

In reality, the ariks flowed from the town canal or, to be precise, from the Chirchik, a mountain river that was fed by water from springs and glaciers. First, it was crystal clear, but it became murky in the canal. And it became even murkier in the ariks, even though their banks were made of cement. Water in ariks was not for drinking. It had been used for irrigation since ancient times. Besides, garbage pails were rinsed there, and different household items were washed there, as well as cars and motorcycles. But nobody would turn the ariks into a dump; nobody would throw garbage into them. Ariks were special.

One could say that life in Central Asia without ariks would be impossible. And children there would not be the same without the ariks. Without them, Central Asia would lose its special flavor, something very important.

And what didn’t we do at the ariks? When it was hot, we dipped our feet into them, sprayed water at each other from little bottles, sprinklers. We got water from the ariks when we made khlopushkas [crackers]. We built little dams with locks near them, and through the locks… It’s time to remember one of our favorite water games. It was called “racing little ships.”

First, there was the preparation phase, just as important and interesting as the water game itself. We turned into shipbuilders for a long time, sometimes for the whole summer. Our fleet would diminish disastrously on our turbulent “rivers,” and we had to replenish it over and over.

There was nothing better than pine bark for building ships. It was light, soft, not too brittle and quite thick. We valued this bark because there were few pines in Chirchik, and they grew only in the parks. One of us would strip off as much bark as possible in a park, and our whole team, after arguing and yelling as it was distributed among us, would get down to business.

An outsider would hardly understand what we were busy doing. Squatting or standing on our knees at the entrance to our building, we would rub pieces of bark – which would eventually turn into ships – against the asphalt. Asphalt was a perfect scraper, no worse than a file or sandpaper. It was even better: there were different surfaces in different spots, some rougher, some smoother, and you could choose the one you needed at the moment.

We started by trimming the outer layers of bark, which were uneven and covered with grey growth, by rubbing it on a rough area of the asphalt. We did this until its brown body, delicate, dense, porous and covered with streaks, revealed itself. The longer you rubbed, the stronger the aroma of pine resin it gave off. Then you switched to the next “tool,” the smoothest area of the asphalt. The ship was already taking on its basic features: it would be either a destroyer or a torpedo boat. What didn’t we have in our fleet? Then we moved on to the finishing touches where everything depended on the precision of movement, good memory, and imagination.

“Ea-a-sy! Be careful, don’t press hard. Don’t tear it away, don’t tear it away. All right, one more time. Don’t fuss.”

That was Kolya teaching his brother Sasha shipbuilding. They had a perfect piece of bark, long and quite thick. They had joined efforts to build a destroyer.

I also had a nice piece. It was a bit too wide for a ship, but it would be a pity to cut so much off the bark. I decided to build an airplane, a sort of a sharp-nosed fighter. The fact that my plane would take part in water competition didn’t bother me: it would float no worse than the other vessels. What an original idea! I had to be careful not to break its wings as I ground them smooth.

And I set to work with enthusiasm. The piece of bark, as soon as something resembling wings began to appear on its sides, was turning into a real airplane. It was quite a marvelous plane.

I experienced true creative ecstasy, which may only be experienced by children, and great craftsmen.

Many years later, I made a sad discovery: our ships had been far from the acme of perfection. Boys like us couldn’t possibly realize what true craftsmen were capable of.

At last, I saw and understood that ships of amazing beauty could be cut with the help of a knife or scalpel, or even a razor blade, from pine bark, and, in their final form, they could become works of art… I won’t even mention the ones made of wood.

I was a little sad: why hadn’t we had such skilled craftsmen among us? But, of course, we hadn’t known that we were doing it a primitive way, I thought. When I had been honing my future plane against the asphalt, my joy had been genuine. And that was the most important thing.

* * *

There were many places in Chirchik where we could race little ships. We could do it in any of the ariks, one of which was close to our building. We often did it there. But we liked the arik near October Movie Theater best of all. Running down the steep hillock, it picked up great speed.

I often remembered the arik that ran near Grandma Abigai and Grandpa Hanan’s house in Tashkent. Tashkent was a big city, and the ariks there were wider and deeper than in Chirchik. And the one in the Old Town reminded me of a turbulent river. It was no wonder: Sabir Rahimov Street, where Mama’s parents lived, ran down a steep hill. That’s where it was great to float ships. The current tossed them up, threw them at the concrete walls, wound them around, and sometimes they were swallowed by the hungry funnels. Those that reached the foot of the hillock looked as if they had suffered a shipwreck, but the unforgettable excitement was compensation for all that.

The arik near October Movie Theater also provided a lot of excitement.

“…Three, four… Go!”

Vitya’s voice could still be heard as our ships were rushing down the arik. It was not an arik any longer but a wide turbulent river. The ships leaped among the waves, collided with each other, capsized and, as we watched them, our hearts were first in our throats and then palpitating. What fear and agitation! The yelling was so loud that there was ringing in our ears. Each of us behaved as if he were on board his ship, as if he were its captain and the fate of the ship depended on his skill and timely given commands.