I’m thinking about her. And that soon she may cease to be. I drive this thought away, but it occurs to me again and again. This is not new in life. This happens to all, sometimes unexpectedly. But here everything is expectable and predictable. The doctor told me straightly: “Her organism is utterly worn out. Not a bit is healthy”.
Yes, this is obvious without analysis. For the last New Year’s Eve party we’d gathered at my sister’s. There were only near and dear ones. As the party ended, my wife and I walked my parents to their house.
Lingering to the rails and aided by me, Mom struggled down the flights of stairs. “Didn’t I use to fly over them,” she said climbing down on another landing. Then we walked, very slowly and for long time, to my parent’s apartment. My Father, at eighty three, hobbled along on his own. My Mother, dragging her feet, shuffled between me and my wife. As I walked, I spoke cheerful truisms, thinking: “It’s all too obvious. This is a beginning of the end. One must know how to accept the facts of life”.
The facts of life? Everything within me resists them!
Mom, you are the first person who got imprinted on my mind.
You gave birth to twins. The delivery was difficult. I appeared first, a flimsy little thing. The midwives overlooked something and he died…
I was so small and ugly that on bringing me back from the maternity home they didn’t show me to anybody, though there had come many wishing to see a new man born. However, Dad turned them all out unceremoniously. Nothing to brag about.
By all laws of medicine I was to join my brother shortly. But they bailed me out. I got up to feet and moved on…
Here we are, walking along the street. Young and beautiful, in a light dress, you are leading me by the hand. Nobody believes I’m your son. They take me for your little brother. I’m awfully freakish child. I want a pie with meat and holler like hell if I don’t get it. You ask hopefully each hawker we pass: “Are your pies with meat?”
- With jam,- is their answer.
I bawl still louder. You dragging me, crying blue murder, along the street.
… I was often ill. It seemed there wasn’t a single illness that had spared me. You spread a fresh sheet and called in a doctor. I dreaded doctors like death. They seemed to be arch-villains who had come to torture me. They were even dressed differently from normal people, wearing white overalls like butchers in the market. At the sight of a syringe I hid under the bed. Extracting me out of there was no easy mission. Once, as my Father crept under the bed to get me out I kicked him in the eye with my naked heel.
My father? To say that he is a man of a nasty temper would be a glaring understatement. He used to make wild scenes of jealousy. Was permanently irritable, disgruntled and discontent with everything and everybody. Violent brawls never ceased in our home.. The neighbors called the police. I was shivering with fear…
You have lived with him for over half a century. For this alone you deserve a monument in your lifetime.
The four of us (my sister was born after a time) were cooped up in a tiny room of a communal apartment. We didn’t even have a dinner table. You enlisted to work on the construction site for an apartment of our own. It paid miserably but promised a lodging for us. You were coming from work exhausted. One day they brought you home in a car. A stack of bricks had fallen on the construction site. You dodged, but several pieces landed on your foot...
I was placed at the kindergarten, since there was nobody to look after me. I didn’t like it there very much. There one had to do everything in compliance with regulations. Regulated eating, sleeping, and even sitting down on the pot. The boys wrested my toys away from me. But the most unbearable was being teased a stutterer. I ran away from there to the home. At home I declared that if they took me again to the kindergarten, I’d run away, but not to the home, but to the town where nobody would find me. They stopped taking me to the kindergarten.
And you took me to the speech therapist, an old gentleman with a goatee. He was teaching me to speak in tunes, aiding the pronunciation of certain sounds by my fingers. Could that old man imagine that some day his pupil would speak Japanese?
You trusted in me. Believed I was the cleverest boy in the world. And even though I had just rid myself of the speech impediment, you wished to send me to a school with a French language focus. But the classes had been already fully staffed. So I went to a standard school.
At school I studied easily, and gladdened you by my achievements. One day I was awarded with a vase for scholarly performance and exemplary conduct. You proudly showed it to people next door. And then put it down on set of draws in the most conspicuous place.
I can’t remember you just lying down or sitting idly. You are always on the move, in motion, with sacks and bags with chicken legs and fish tails protruding from them. The family must be taken care of. Fed and laundered. And provided with all sorts of things.
You used to bring some berries and fruit for me from the market. I tuned up the nose if the apples were green or not of the costliest sort. It took me decades to I realize that you didn’t eat even those. You were giving everything away to me and my sister. You thought about yourself after all else.
I remember how you took me once on a rather adventurous enterprise of “sorting it out”.
Shortly before this my Father had been sent on a tour of duty to a collective farm, where they had been assembling a pipeline. His colleagues had been drinking round the clock, selling the pipes left and right for a booze. When the team had fully assembled over supper, my Father, an ardent champion of law and order, demanded that this malpractice be stopped.
His colleagues rose up in indignation.
- Who do you think you are?
- Who do you think you are? – the colleagues rose up. - You wanna what? Are you a law-loving type? – asked the team leader Filcheroff (this is a true name). - Yes, I am! – answered my Father.
One word led to another. Fists thumped down on the table. My father is no weakling. At work he carries seventy kilo radiators all by himself. But coming out victorious in a melee is not a strong, but an insolent one. Filcheroff struck first, kicking out into the groin. And then hitting the fallen man.
My Father came back home with a face bruised violet. In vain did he try to explain it by falling on a pile of bricks. Mom unearthed everything out of him.
- Let’s go, - she said to me. – You’ll be on the lookout.
We arrived at the railway station. Mom headed for the booking office. A group of men had been sitting near it, awaiting a suburban train.
- Who of you is Pilcheroff? – inquired Mom.
- It’s me, - a lanky redhead disengaged himself from the group. – What is it you want?
- You will learn now, - said Mom, producing an umbrella from her bag. It was an old-fashioned unfolding thing, a sort of a metallic pipe covered up with a black cloth.
- What are you doing on the Shining Path farm?
- Is it any business of yours?
- Yes, it is! – with all her might Mom struck him with the umbrella on the shoulder.
- Motherfucker! – screamed Pilhceroff, squatted down with pain.
- I will show you the mother as well as my husband! – Mom struck a second blow on the other shoulder.
Pilcheroff jumped up and dashed away. Mom pursued him, hitting the man on the back, on the head, on whatever she could reach.
- I’ll put you in jail, you cheat. You’ll know better than to steal and manhandle…
Passers-by watched appreciatively and with a keen interest what looked to them like a wife teaching a lesson to her souse spouse…
You were an example of being true to your word. Also, you advised me to be lenient to other people’s tastes and freaks. Not by words, by deeds, did you instruct me to be compassionate and sympathizing. When I told you about one lowly student in our institute, pale and poorly clad, and, obviously, hungry, you gave me some money.
- Give this to that fellow. Let him have at least one decent meal.
I don’t think your principles had made my life any easier. Rather on the contrary. But I am grateful to you for this just the same.
When I returned home from my first protracted tour of duty overseas, we went “to open our purse” in Moscow. Naïve, back then we had only a vague idea about the system of the Byeryozka hard currency stores.
So, we find ourselves in one such store. It exudes the smell of leather, costly things and foreign luxury. Your eyes light up. You reckon in your mind the prospective purchases for your son and daughter. However, a young man in a classic suit approaches us. With a practiced eye he had placed you as a common woman from the depths of the country.
- Excuse me, what are you doing here? – he asks you.
- This is a hard currency store.
- And that what we like, - you say. – At normal stores one won’t find anything like it.
- Goods at this store are sold only for hard currency which you haven’t and can’t have,- the man explains. You look at him reproachfully, the way a teacher looks at a rather dull pupil.
- My good man. This here (you proudly point to me) is my son. He has just returned from abroad.
The young man turns to me.
I am dressed exclusively in foreign-made clothes. I can speak English without accent. And I can even say something in pure Arabic.
- Have you got currency, - he queries.
- I request you then to leave the premises. This store is for foreigners.
We come out into the street. You are indignant.
- Why, sonny? Aren’t we up to snuff?
- Take it easy, Mom! We’ll find a simpler shop.
I remember you coming to visit me at the military unit. My serviceman’s tunic impressed you profoundly. You even shed a tear – your little boy is now a government man. You stroke golden SA letters on my black shoulder-straps.
- And what do the stripes stand for?
- Risen to big brass, eh?
I notice thin gray tufts in your hair. You start turning gray.
You had brought me cakes, sweets and other dainties (I had eaten myself so sick that the following morning my groans in the toilet booth were heard in the barracks.
I inadvertently mention that I often need a watch. You take off your ladies’ watch from the wrist and held it out to me. For the rest of my service, it ticks in a breast pocket close to my heart. We part. I say that I shall leave soon for Belarus, and we won’t see each other for at least a year. - All right, son. Do your stint and come home, - you say and kiss me goodbye. I see again tears in your eyes. So sentimental you are…
After the army you decided to marry me off. You taught me to dance, proffering a chair for a dancing partner. You put on the record “The Amur Waves”. Taking the chair, I circled about the room while you were critically assessing my fancy cavorts. I didn’t learn how to dance, but remembered your essential rule – a man must not wag his bottom either in dance or in life. And then I got married (without attending any dancing events). My marriage didn’t work from the first, which distressed you a great deal. “Get divorced, - you told me. – You two won’t get along.” But I procrastinated… Till it all collapsed by itself on gloomy day in fall.
My younger sister got married. You gave up the job to nurse your granddaughter. More doctors and nights without sleep.
Years, nay decades, have passed unnoticed.
I call you practically every day. I can determine, by your voice, how you feel today.
You say you bent down in the morning, felt giddy and fell. It took you some time to rise. You say you won’t rise at all some day. And then, as if thinking better of it, you assure me that all is well by you. I know that your health is getting worse and worse. But coming over to live with and to support you in that apartment is unthinkable so long as my Father stays there alive. The two of us can’t be in the same room. Because I am the wrong type. All are wrong. What? You disagree? You, sons of a bitch! And who did you vote for? Not for communists? You stupid swine!
How many years of your life did he take off?
Three days ago an ambulance took you to the hospital. You were unconscious and in a pre-infarct condition.
The following day, I came to you at the hospital. You are lying down with closed eyes. Hearing a knock on the door, you raise your eyelids. Huge eyes on a pale and swollen face.
- Is it you, son?
- It’s me, of course. How are you?
I sit down next to you and fall to talking… I wish to distract your mind from sorrowful thoughts.
- Bend down, - I hear you say almost inaudibly.
I lean over you. You embrace me. I feel your wet cheeks.
I know why you are crying. Because you realize that life is gone. And now comes the time that NOBODY, no matter how great, could prevent. I make a strenuous effort not to break into tears.
I recall a conversation with “dear Annie”, my schoolteacher residing in Moscow. She was a slender hazel-eyes beauty with long wavy hair. Now, bent like a carpenter’s ruler, she hobbles to the kitchen from where she brings fried eggs. She pours me a glass of vodka and just a little for herself.
- Don’t you cry when I die, - says dear Annie. – Don’t be upset. I have lived a fine life and I am pleased with everything. My death is a normal thing. Life would be a nightmare if people stopped dying...
A nurse looks into the ward.
- Out for dinner, please.
I go to the mess room and bring a tray with soup and buckwheat porridge containing bits of stewed liver. Not a bad food for a free hospital.
I help you sit up on the bed. You are eating.
Or rather, stuffing listlessly into your mouth the pieces of bread soaked in the soup. I watch gray hairs covering the skinny neck.
On a neighboring bed a woman is wheezing. Her eyes are closed. A tube is inserted in her open mouth without teeth. The woman’s hands turned black. Everything is clear here.
Suddenly, Father enters the ward.
- Go home! I’ll cope myself.
It’s useless to argue with him.
At home I sit down over my PC. Business as usual.
I can’t focus on the assignment. I’m thinking about her. And that she may soon cease to be. I’m driving this thought away, but it comes back again and again. I know that Mom loves me more than anybody else in the world.
I shudder each time the telephone rings. For each time it can be shattering news. No, I can’t follow the advice of dear Annie. I wake up in the middle of the night and can’t fall asleep again. I recall images of the past and thoughts overpower me…
Don’t die, Mom! I need you!
