Everything Begins In Childhood

* * *

Suddenly, someone began to talk and laugh. The magic was gone.

“There’s a lake not far from here. Shall we go for a swim?” Yarosh suggested.

“Soldier’s Lake?” Kolya Kulikov winced. “It’s just a puddle. No, I won’t go. It’s time to go home.”

None of us had been to the lake, with the exception of the two of them. Opinions were divided. My friends and neighbors, the four of them, went home. Yarosh, Parkhomenko and I went to the lake.

We decided to have a race: who could be the first to run up the hills and, without stopping, down the hills. Vitya Yarosh, a rather stout boy, his face covered with sweat, was nonetheless the first to reach the top of every hill. He sometimes fired at us as he made himself out to be an antiaircraft gunner because, naturally, we were enemy airplanes, a bomber and a fighter.

“Falcon! Falcon!” Sasha Parkhomenko, the bomber, called. “We’ve been detected! Cover me!” And, spreading his arms, he continued moving to the top of the hill from which Vitya was firing.

“Falcon is here! I’m beginning the attack!” I, the fighter, answered and, overtaking Parkhomenko, attacked Yarosh, the antiaircraft gunner. Sasha pounced on top of us, and the three of us rolled down the hill laughing.

This dashing pastime, of course, tired us out.

“How much longer before we get there?” I asked Vitya.

“It should be soon,” Vitya answered.

And again, we walked over the hills. We didn’t feel like romping any longer. Over two hours had passed since we had parted with Kolya and Edem, but the lake was not in our field of vision. We shielded our eyes with our hands in the hope of seeing the blue strip of water, but all we could see were hills. We were getting bored from such a long walk.

It was good that small incidents distracted us now and then. When an eagle with black wings spread wide soared over us, we teased Yarosh: it was not an eagle but an Egyptian vulture that spied some plump prey. Vitya might perish before reaching the lake. Suddenly, Sasha stomped his foot, bent and grabbed a small lizard. Grey, with big eyes, it wriggled and twitched and, after leaving its tail in his hand, disappeared into the grass.

“So, where’s your lake?” Sasha asked maliciously as we took a rest at the top of yet another hill. “Perhaps you’ve never been there.”

“Stop picking on me. I went there by car. I didn’t look at the road. I was reading a book.”

“Was it ‘The Three Musketeers’? You should have read it at home. Valery, let’s go back. Let him go there if he wants.”

We got up.

“Wait! I can see the road! Over there, on the right!” Vitya shouted.

Indeed, we soon walked out onto a road. But what road? Where did it go?

“To China,” Sasha said sarcastically.

It was easier walking on the road that wound between the hills, avoiding steep slopes, but we could hardly move our feet by this time. Each of us hoped that a car going to town would appear and give us a lift, but the road remained deserted; only the poles of electric power lines followed us with their sullen eyes.

We were so tired that I thought about getting rid of some of the spoils. But I felt awkward doing it in front of my friends, and they, perhaps, didn’t want to do it in front of me.

Then, suddenly, around a bend, the lake spread out before the eyes of the three travelers, as the author of one of our favorite adventure novels would have written.

Alas, not all discoveries turn out as joyful in life as in novels.

“It’s a swamp,” Sasha Parkhomenko muttered scornfully. And – I allow myself another phrase from a novel – the most profound disappointment was expressed on his tired face.

Yes, Kolya had been right. And we, for some reason, hoped that he had made it up, that he had been too lazy to walk there, and that the lake would actually turn out to be big and beautiful.

But it was rather small, just the size of two soccer fields, with bare shores. In a word, it was quite an ordinary reservoir, and even though its water glittered in the sun, we didn’t feel like going swimming. That’s how tired we were. We were also hungry and thirsty. It had been over six hours since we left home, and it had taken us almost four hours to walk to the lake.

“Are you satisfied?” Sasha asked Yarosh. Vitya only sighed in response, looking downcast and guilty.

“Look, there’s a man,” I said.

“A soldier,” Sasha specified.

A soldier dressed in a white T-shirt sat on a big car tire cleaning a dismantled submachinegun. He held a cigarette between his teeth.

I felt a bit better right away.

We went up to him, said hello, and asked for a drink of water.

“Drink. We have nothing else to offer, but we sure have plenty of water. What brought you here? It’s so far from town.”

“It’s a school excursion,” Sasha giggled, glancing at Yarosh. “The rest didn’t make it here.

The solider chuckled, “Well, well…”

I was scared that he might notice our bulging pockets, but he didn’t. The deep sound of a heavy engine was heard. A dark-green armored personnel carrier drove up to the ground near the lake. The hatch opened, and a soldier wearing a forage cap climbed out. He raised his eyebrows, “Oh, we have visitors.”

Without going into detail, we explained. The solider with the forage cap, who had a nice freckled face, nodded.

“I would give you a lift home, but I can’t. We’re staying here overnight. Have some rest and head back. They’ll be starting to look for you, right?”

* * *

The walk home seemed much more difficult, and it was so long… Unpleasant thoughts added to my fatigue – would I catch hell from Father? Back home, I learned, with a feeling of relief, that my parents had gone somewhere, and I hurried to bed. Oh, what bliss!

I propped my heavy feet against the wall. They ached, throbbed. I felt the blood pulsing through my veins, and I began falling through something, falling through…

And that’s how I fell asleep.

Chapter 50. The Teke Carpet and Other Treasures

“Ah, kids, what a carpet it was!” Mama closed her eyes slightly and raised her hands. “It covered the whole wall.”

She spread her arms, opened her eyes wide, and raised her eyebrows, showing the size of the carpet, as if amazed at its size.

“It was red and so beautiful, a real Teke carpet. It was soft and fluffy…” Mama closed her eyes slightly again, raising her fingers to her face. She rubbed her cheek as if running her fingers over the delicate strands of wool of that carpet. “It was so fluffy… and its pattern… it was intertwined. It seemed simple when you looked at it from a distance, but when you took a closer look, you could see that it was made of teeny tiny patterns that were like diamonds, or small cut stones… one inside another, one inside another… Get it?”

Mama’s hands flashed as she sketched the pattern in the air.

Mama was a wonderful storyteller. She was usually a person of few words, even reticent, reserved. But, suddenly, she would be transformed. It didn’t happen often, only when Mama wanted to tell Emma and me something.

Those were extremely fascinating stories with vivid details. Every feature of her face, each movement she made took part in Mama’s narration.

Emma and I listened spellbound, as if hypnotized. Perhaps there was a bit of the hypnotist in Mama. It seemed to Emma and me that we were actually seeing that red Teke carpet.

But before Mama began to tell us something, she had to be in the mood to tell a certain story. Most of the time, she felt that way when she remembered her childhood and her parents.

This time, the subject was not pleasant for me.

In my room, near the desk, there was a small carpet on the floor. One side of it reached the radiator, from the valve of which water dripped in winter. We had to put a jar under the valve and, naturally, empty it every two or three days.

That was what I sometimes forgot to do. The edge of the small carpet would get wet and, after a couple of years, it began to rot.

When Mama realized it and, sighing mournfully, took the carpet to the veranda to dry – it was late autumn, but the days were warm and sunny – I tagged along. It was clear that despite Mama’s kindness she would give me the scolding I deserved.

Emma, of course, came running to listen to Mama scold me.

But Mama hung the carpet on the window frame, took a seat at the table, propped her chin on her hand and sat, lost in her thoughts. The bright sun lit that small cheap carpet, and its colors shone. It had become more attractive. I was sorry about it and felt sort of embarrassed by what I had done.

“Ah,” Mama suddenly said, “what a wonderful Teke carpet we had. It was amazing. Our house was poor, just two beds in the corner and a table in the living room, but as long as the carpet was on the wall, the living room looked beautiful.”

That was the beginning of her story.

It was fall, and we were about to move from the veranda, where we liked to spend time, to the kitchen. It was also pleasant to have tea and chat there, but you couldn’t compare it to the veranda.

Today was, perhaps, the last warm day, windless and sunny. On days like this, there were, for some reason, particularly many dragonflies in Chirchik. Those carefree creatures visited our veranda constantly. What attracted them? It was clear why moths came – they were attracted to the light in the evenings. But what about the dragonflies? They flew inside easily but couldn’t fly out. Even though the window was open, they kept bumping into the glass. When there were a few of them at once, they would line up like a flight group, and took-took! could be heard as they banged their silly heads against the glass. It was hilarious to watch. Their transparent wings rustled. It was quite a sight. Catching them at such a time was as easy as picking a berry from a bush. One could catch them in a jar and let them go right away, but that was too simple. It was much more interesting to attach a thread to a long springy little body, to control that “little plane” for some time, and then let it go… Just as Yura and I had done with Maybugs.

I glanced at the dragonflies, but I wasn’t in the mood to watch them. Mama’s story was much more interesting.

She wasn’t here any longer; she was at her parents’ house… She was about nine. The whole family was at the dinner table in the living room. The children were on the wide couch that sat six to eight people. According to custom, a couch is for adults, parents and their guests, but they pampered the children in this family, giving them the coziest seats… And why was it so cozy on the couch? Because of that very wonderful Teke carpet on the wall behind it.

“You leaned against it,” Mama said, “and your back got buried in it, and it was so pleasant. It was as warm as a stove… That was in winter. And it was cool in summer. Perhaps, it only seemed so to us…”

Mama shrugged her shoulders and nodded, lost in her thoughts. But I was impatient to ask, “Teke carpet – what does it mean?”

“I’m not a great expert on carpets,” Mama confessed. “I only know that Teke carpets were especially valued in our parts. They were amazingly beautiful.”

* * *

I’m writing this book of memoirs for my children and grandchildren, who live in a different part of the world, in a different culture, so I have decided to tell them a little bit about those wonderful Asian carpets. There are certainly plenty of different carpets around them in America, in stores and at home. But do they know anything about genuine Eastern carpets? What those carpets meant for their ancestors?

I think that not only in Tashkent and Chirchik, but in the whole of Uzbekistan there wasn’t a family, even a very poor one, that didn’t have a carpet, even if it was old and threadbare. Some had it on the floor, others on the wall or a couch. It wasn’t, of course, only in Uzbekistan. The same went for all the Asian countries, the Caucasus and the South Caucasus. Inhabitants of those parts had been weaving carpets since ancient times. A carpet was a customary article in their daily lives, just as a table is for us. And it was just as important. In Asia, they knew nothing of tables for a long time; they ate sitting on a carpet. They didn’t sleep in beds but lay either a big piece of felt or a blanket on a carpet. These customs continued in many families in our time. Enter a teahouse in Uzbekistan and you wouldn’t see any tables.

We know that carpets were already in use in the Assyrian Empire and Babylonia. Those carpets, of course, haven’t survived to our times, but it shows that the tradition is rooted in antiquity. Carpet weaving has been a women’s craft since ancient times. And since the making of carpets took place at home for many centuries, it’s not surprising that its secrets were passed from mothers to daughters, so this female mastery ran in certain families. They were so skilled and talented that they could be considered exceptional artists. One only need look at famous Persian carpets in a museum, or at least in a reproduction. What splendor! What a wealth of designs and colors! Persian carpets, like other carpets, are made in different types of ornamental designs. There are “garden,” “hunting,” and “animal” patterns, and even patterns “with vases” among them. Judging by their names, it’s clear that one can find not only various patterns but depictions of flowers, people, and animals. Khorasan carpets are particularly attractive. Carpets are named after the places where they were made in Persia.

Teke carpets, about which Mama was talking, were made in Turkmenistan and also highly valued. In Turkmenistan, that carpet was named after the tribe that became famous for making them. The Teke were one of the large tribes that formed the Turkmen nation. Only historians remember that, and Teke carpets, also called Bukharan, are famous all over the world. There was a time when they were fashionable in England. The repeating diamond-shaped pattern of Turkmen carpets, which, in various combinations, has been replicated for centuries, is extremely beautiful. It is much more austere and geometrical than Persian carpets, but it’s exactly those features that attract many connoisseurs.

* * *

We didn’t know anything about carpets when we sat on the veranda that autumn day. Perhaps, we did understand something, or rather felt it, because we often saw truly beautiful carpets in different houses. For example, at Grandpa Yoskhaim and Grandma Lisa’s, they also had a wonderful Teke carpet on the wall in the living room.

I asked, “Where is that carpet? How come we’ve never seen it at Grandpa Hanan’s?”

“Ah,” Mama said sadly and waved her hand. “It was gone long ago… I told you that I was nine… Once a relative came over. His name was Mordecai. He was rich… The devil only knows why he visited us. He was having dinner and looking at the carpet, “Oh, how beautiful it is, how beautiful.” And he began to nag my father, “Sell it.” Grandpa said, “I can’t. Excuse me for saying no, but I can’t.” Ah, he was such a kind person… Mordecai came over again, with money, and once again asked Grandpa to sell it… and that time he persuaded Grandpa. “If you want it so badly…” Ah, he was sometimes too kind. Someone told them later that it had been Mordecai’s wife who coveted it: how could poor relatives have such a luxurious carpet. Oy, how we cried, how we wept when the carpet was carried out of the house… E, dunyo, dunyoee, bevafo!”

After saying that, Mama clutched her cheeks and began rocking back and forth.

Grandpa Hanan had liked that Tadjik saying, which basically meant “life without happiness.” Mama repeated it often, especially after he passed away. Now, overwhelmed with memories, she was filled with pity and love for her father.

“He was so kind that when someone asked him for something, he would give it away without thinking twice. And he never asked anyone for anything; he didn’t want to humble himself. When he returned ill from combat, he began looking for work. His uncle owned a vegetable booth with a partner. Uncle hired Papa to go to villages to buy dried fruits. Once he was bringing goods, and, as he approached the booth, he overheard his uncle’s partner talking, ‘We divided the bread into two parts before; now, we divide it into three parts.’ Papa entered the booth and said to his uncle, ‘Togoi, I’ve brought the goods.’ Then he turned around and left. He left for good and never went back. And he didn’t take the money Uncle owed him. That’s the kind of person he was,” Mama said proudly.

Mama always told the truth, only the truth. And yet, I noticed that her stories were somehow reminiscent of fairytales, perhaps because the heroes of her stories, our ancestors and relatives, always acted as fairytale characters should. They were courageous, hard-working and very kind. They overcame any obstacles, and they never betrayed anyone. They were infinitely devoted to their families and ready to tolerate any privation for their sake.

* * *

That was Grandpa’s trait, devotion to his family, which I saw and felt myself. Once when we talked about Grandpa, Mama revealed a secret to me. She took a handkerchief tied into a little bundle from under some things in the wardrobe. There was something heavy in it. She untied it, and something jangled and glittered in it. I remembered my favorite novels about pirates right away. Inside it were old gold coins with a two-headed eagle on them.

“That was Grandpa’s inheritance,” Mama said. “He left whatever he could for us… He had quite a few of those coins… not whole pots, of course,” she laughed. “We were always poor, but at times we were better off. When things grew particularly hard, Grandpa would sell a coin through reliable people on the black market. One wasn’t even allowed to possess them. If the authorities learned, he would have been put in prison. Thank God, they didn’t find out. You see,” Mama said, jangling the coins, “he was in need but preserved them for us.”

That’s when I remembered another story about an inheritance that I had heard either from Mama or one of the relatives.

My great-grandfather on my father’s side, Nataniel, Grandma Lisa’s father, had been a rich man, a factory owner, before the revolution. As I have already written, his wife, my great-grandmother, left him, taking the children, and he remained in his house in Chinaz. Somehow, it became known and was passed from relative to relative that, when they had begun to requisition valuables after the revolution, Nataniel had walled up a pitcher full of jewels in his house. According to the rumors, the value was incalculable: it allegedly contained gold and diamonds. No one knew for sure whether it was true or not, but they talked about it. There was no one to ask because Great-Grandfather had died.

I thought about Grandpa Hanan, who hadn’t spared anything for his family and had given away whatever he could, as Mama was putting the bundle of jangling coins into the wardrobe. That’s why Mama was so kind. And Nataniel was such a cheapskate. He had walled up his treasures, and no one could benefit from them. Grandma Lisa definitely took after him. She had quite a few pieces of jewelry, including two heavy gold bracelets, called daspona in Bukharian. I had never seen them myself, but Yura and I had once overheard our mothers’ in conversation about dasponas.

There is a custom, observed in Asian countries more strictly than in other places: a mother-in-law gives her daughter-in-law jewelry for the wedding, expensive jewelry, if possible. It happens often before a wedding when the parents of the bride and groom make the arrangements for their children’s marriage. That ceremony is called kandhuri, which means “eating sweets.” Serving sugar is actually a part of the ceremony. I don’t know in which century the ceremony arose. If a mother-in-law doesn’t give her daughter-in-law jewelry during the ceremony, she does it at an engagement party or soon after the wedding. But neither my mama nor Aunt Valya were given any traditional presents by Grandma Lisa at kandhuris, engagement parties or after the wedding. They were never given anything at all.

The stories about the pitcher walled up in one of the houses in Chinaz and about Grandma’s bracelets entertained Yura and me, though we understood that it was nothing but dreams, a game, and that we would never go to Chinaz to dig pits in storage rooms and basements. In a word, Yura and I would never become Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn.

The funniest thing was that the treasures of stingy Great-Grandpa really existed, and they did finally turn up. In the 70s, when old Nataniel’s house was pulled down to clear space for a new building, a bulldozer driver hit a wall, and… the broken pitcher with the valuables came into view. The bulldozer driver turned them in to the authorities and was given his share, but the relatives didn’t get anything.

* * *

Ever since that day, I have loved my little carpet that helped Mama remember the Teke carpet. And I remembered to empty the jar. The small carpet lay by my desk for many years, up until the time when we left for America.

Chapter 51. A Merry Night Under the Apricot Tree

It tickled my nose and I sneezed. I felt a tender stroking on my cheeks and neck from time to time. While I was half-asleep, it seemed to me that Grandpa Yoskhaim tickled me with his beard as he adjusted the blanket. It was so nice, so tender… And then I saw in my dream that I was in a warm bathtub filled with soapsuds, and those fluffy suds, their colored bubbles gliding across my face, burst and tickled it.

Someone who was engaged in waking me up grew tired of that entertainment. I jerked from a punch to my side and moaned. I sat up, and someone’s palm covered my mouth, “Sh-sh-sh… Don’t yell, Redhead.”

It was Yura, of course. He chuckled and told me that he couldn’t sleep but that I had fallen asleep an hour ago and slept and slept. That was laughable. How could anyone sleep on such a night?

I came to my senses gradually and looked around. Deep down, I agreed with Yura, and my rage faded.

It was vacation, summer, in my favorite old yard where Yura and I usually slept under the apricot tree on the trestle bed near the clay duval (fence). What could be better than spending the night that way?

The night was very still. Only the singing of cicadas could be heard. It wasn’t loud, as if they were afraid to disturb the stillness and only rustled softly in the darkness. The light from the dim bulb over the gate didn’t reach us, lost in the crowns of the trees, but stars shone brightly in the dark velvet sky. There were so many of them – millions, billions. They twinkled, as if having a conversation. Perhaps they were also talking to us, not just among themselves? Maybe it was their rustling we heard, not that of cicadas?

“Yura, can you hear?”

“What? You mean cicadas? What about it?”

“No… That’s the stars twinkling. Listen…” I took Yura’s hand, lifted it up and began to move it in time to the twinkling and rustling. “Listen.”

For a few short moments, Yura diligently tried to understand what I wanted of him, but then he laughed and pulled his hand away.

“You can’t be serious.”

Yura is a realist. The sounds that interest him in the night are quite different. I wasn’t quite truthful when I wrote that only the ringing of cicadas was heard in the stillness. I was so accustomed to all the other sounds that I almost didn’t hear them, for example, chpok-chpok.

The trestle bed stood under the apricot tree. I could see the sky studded with stars through the space between its branches and the roofs of the buildings. Even now, just as it seemed when I was little, it seems to me that these branches supported the firmament. The tree itself was not distinguishable in the dark, but I knew it so well that it seemed to me that I could make out the tree, with its protruding twisted strands of bark winding around its powerful trunk.

It was so mighty that it sometimes seemed to me that this tree had never been small. It hadn’t been growing. Once, it worked its way out of the ground and broke through the wall of the house. Twisted, thick branches covered with leaves stretched in all directions. Grandpa Yoskhaim walked onto the porch one morning and saw the tree. It stood there as if it had always been there.