Everything Begins In Childhood

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

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

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

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

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

Chapter 6. “Earthquake, earthquake!”

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

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

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

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

Grandpa and Grandma were already there.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The day was breaking.

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

Our house survived.

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

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

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

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

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

The whole day was spent in bustle and worry.

The concerned teachers ran back and forth sharing news.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Chapter 7. Coal

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

“They’ve brought coal!” Mama exclaimed.

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

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

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

Thirty rubles was a worker’s weekly salary.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Retribution followed right away.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

* * *

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Chapter 8. A Very Good Day

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

“E-e-e-e-e-s-the-e-e-e-e-r!”

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

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

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

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

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

“Mama! Grandpa Hanan is here!”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“All right, that’s enough. Let’s go.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“How are the children doing?” Grandpa asked.

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

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

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

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

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

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

* * *

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

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

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

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

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

What a great day that was!

Chapter 9. Macaroni

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

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

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

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

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

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