The Girl from the Metropol Hotel Read online

  What was she thinking of, standing for days on the exposed engine in her sundress? Most likely she was thinking of me. She probably tried to convince herself that I would be okay, that she was leaving me with her mother and sister, that I was in day care, and that we would manage somehow. She needed to get her diploma, first and foremost, and then bring me to live with her.

  I imagine how her heart must have pounded when the train started moving. She was going to Moscow, to study! She was twenty-seven years old.

  On arriving in Moscow, she settled in her father’s room in a communal apartment on Chekhov Street. The room was crowded with bookcases. She lived under the dinner table. Immediately she sent us a letter and a money transfer: she had managed to obtain child support from my father, her former husband. She wore her father’s old army coat over the sundress to classes. She had no other clothes.

  Back in Kuibyshev, her mother and sister accepted her disappearance without much joy. Her name was never mentioned again. On the other hand, so many people had vanished from their lives. At that time it was common—people disappeared without a trace, like the character in Daniil Kharms’s famous poem about a man who walked out of his house and was never seen again. Later, the poet himself vanished.

  I waited for my mother day and night. She returned four years later.

  She used to tell me again and again that it was for me, for my sake, that she left, that she couldn’t have supported us without a college degree. For the rest of her life my poor mother justified herself.

  Kuibyshev. Survival Strategies

  There we were, the three of us: my grandmother, my aunt, and me. Aunt Vava was fired from her job at the munitions plant after an all-night interrogation. She was a dangerous element: her relatives had been executed as enemies of the people. We lived on what my mother sent us: my child support, courtesy of my father, a young philosophy professor.

  Then real hunger set in.

  During the war, one could purchase food only with ration cards. We received rations for one child and two dependents. With ration cards we bought black bread. With each purchase, the store cut out coupons from our cards. Long before the end of the month, all our bread would be “cut out.”

  The bread line formed early, before dawn, among the pillowy snowdrifts. It ended in front of the heavy white metal door. The rule “Whoever’s last in line, I’ll get behind you” saved lives in the chaos of wartime. Clinging to the person ahead of us, we found ourselves in the realm of order and justice, with a nominal right to survive. People guarded their spots with their lives, ready to shed blood if someone tried to jump the line. In those days one couldn’t step away “for just a moment.”

  After hours of waiting, we were inside the little store, where it was warm. The smell of bread was dizzying; it made our jaws ache and stomachs churn. Hunger was consuming our insides, forcing us to stretch our necks and take mincing steps from side to side, to create an illusion of progress. The thick line swayed without moving.

  Finally, our turn came. The weight of the loaf was always less than the regulation stipulated, and the saleswoman dropped an extra piece that made the metal scale go down for a split second—and immediately the bread was taken off the scale. It was the simplest racket. Still, that extra piece was valued immensely and usually went to the child. I swallowed mine on the spot. The rest of the bread we divided “fairly” into three parts. I gobbled down mine the same night, breaking little pieces under the pillow. Then my aunt and grandmother would feed me their shares. Later, when I asked my aunt how we survived, she shrugged and smiled bewilderedly. “I don’t know . . .”

  I attended day care for a short while. There, the underage population lived its own life. We ate glue in secret because of the rumor that it was flavored with real cherries—we dipped our fingers in the jar during arts and crafts and licked them. We also believed that the witch Baba Yaga resided in the hallway, as the custodian wanted us to believe, especially after she mopped the floors. Then there was a ritual: when a military plane passed overhead, we were expected to look up solemnly and name a family member fighting on the front, as though it was him flying on that plane. It was a matter of pride, but I couldn’t name anyone. Humiliated, I demanded names from my aunt. She thought long and hard; all the men in our family had been shot or jailed, if you didn’t count my consumptive father. Still, she scraped up two names. From then on I proudly announced, “There’s my uncle Volodya (or Uncle Serezha) flying!” I didn’t know who they were. Later I learned that mysterious Volodya was my aunt’s ex-husband, and Serezha turned out to be my own great-uncle! He was only seventeen years older than me. (I met him sixty years later at the family banquet to celebrate the 140th anniversary of Dedya’s birth. Serezha was his youngest son, fathered with his third wife when Dedya was in his fifties. And he actually was a pilot during the war.)

  But I had to stop going to the day care: we couldn’t pay, and there was the problem of shoes. In the north, the lack of shoes for the poor was the biggest hardship. In the villages, peasants made shoes from tree bark, but we lived in the city. From April to October I ran barefoot—from last snow to first. No one mentioned TB anymore—I never even had a runny nose.

  Wartime kindergarten.

  How I Was Rescued

  There was a whole pack of us children, and we spent our days on the Volga River. I didn’t know how to swim, but that wasn’t necessary: our bank was shallow and descended gently. When spring came and the Volga flooded, though, my clumsiness and irresponsibility nearly cost me my life.

  In May, the Volga flooded to the size of an ocean. Our bank was completely underwater; the opposite shore was barely visible. Together with another little girl, I decided to explore that mysterious side, so we squirreled our way onto the ferry and crossed without tickets.

  We arrived and took a look around: their side seemed almost like ours, only it didn’t slope gradually and had a drop-off, like a step. I sat on the grass, on the edge of that step, and lowered my feet but couldn’t reach the water. So I jumped, and immediately submerged, going blind and deaf. Then I opened my eyes and continued to sink, noticing little bubbles, like in boiling water, and tall, swaying blades of grass, like feathers. I touched the bottom, pushed off lightly, and went back up. The surface was very close—I could see the daylight; I stretched out my neck to gulp some air but immediately sank to the bottom again, with terrifying ease.

  I could see myself from above as a curled little form descending facedown. If I’d known the word I’d have told myself that I resembled an embryo. Again I pushed off and rose to the surface, but this time I didn’t dare lift my head and continued to bob on the water, staring helplessly into the slightly muddy darkness. I understood by then that I shouldn’t try to lift my head. I was very light and floated easily but only if I didn’t try to breathe. I was craving air, my ears filled with the deafening noise of running water. And then out of the corner of my eye I glimpsed an object dangling right next to me, like a willow branch. I extended my arms, grabbed it, and popped out of the water like a cork.

  It turned out that a young woman had come to the riverbank to get water, leaned over to fill her buckets, saw something struggling underwater, thought it was a puppy, and wanted to hook it up with the shoulder yoke. Suddenly a child’s hand shot out and grabbed it. The woman actually stepped back in fear, but too late: her catch stuck to the yoke like glue.

  As for my friend, as soon as she saw that I wasn’t coming up, she fled, like all children do when scared.

  Shaking with cold, I tried to dry off in an abandoned kiosk in the company of my reappeared friend. Local brats were circling us, sniggering—look, a gal without clothes. My wet sundress clung to my skin. I was only seven or eight, but I knew it was suggestive of something improper and dirty. I tried to hide behind my friend. Playground laws are worse than sharia.

  Samara's first public park, Strukovsky Garden.

  It wasn’t just
my wetness. Like all severely malnourished children, I sported matchstick limbs and a swollen belly. Some brat pointed at me once in the street: “Look, a gal knocked up!” I believed him immediately. I didn’t know how that happened, how long it took, or how it ended, but I did know that it was a secret and a disgrace, and so I only prayed, God, dear God, save me, save me. I had overheard this bit once; I didn’t know any real prayers.

  This imaginary pregnancy was the nightmare of my childhood. Who’s hiding inside me? Is it a snake? A baby? Sometimes it growled, sometimes squeaked, sometimes bubbled. Oh, horror.

  My friend and I got on the ferry; it was growing dark. Before going home I walked around the park clucking my teeth, trying to get a little drier—at home they forbade us categorically to go in the water . . .

  The Durov Theatre

  We spent our summers in that park near the water. Called Strukovsky Garden, it was huge and overgrown, like a forest, and descended all the way to the Volga. There we looked for little round growths, like baby ferns, considered edible, and for anything else we could put in our bellies. Sometimes it was our only meal all day. Berries didn’t grow in that park.

  On Saturdays and Sundays music played in the park’s band shell.

  When the Durov Animal Theatre was visiting Kuibyshev, they set up a tent in Strukovsky; our job was to get inside without tickets. The trick was to crawl into the tent on hands and knees, together with the crowd—people stumbled on our backs but didn’t look down, wanting only to get in. It was important not to lose balance, or else you could be crushed. Once inside, I needed to sidle up to some couple and strike up a conversation, so the ushers would think we were one family and I was their shaggy daughter.

  That’s how I got to see Durov’s famous act with the elephant. In the arena, they had erected an enormous bed with a gigantic pillow. The elephant sat on the bed and wound up the huge alarm clock, and it rang! Then the elephant lay down on its side, to the music of a lullaby. With some prodding from Durov, the elephant slowly stood up, lifted the pillow, and revealed a bedbug the size of a kettle. The elephant dropped the bedbug on the floor and stomped on it with an enormous foot. The bedbug exploded, to thunderous applause. Durov reached up and placed a treat in the elephant’s mouth—it was like placing something on a top shelf.

  Vladimir Durov performing with an elephant in 1941.

  Then there were monkeys. One, dressed in a black suit, leafed furiously through a thick volume, moving its fingers chaotically and greedily—there were treats hidden in its pages. The monkey shoved them into its mouth, glancing nervously over its shoulder, blinking and scratching. Its frenzied chewing and scratching resembled the motions of a hungry, lice-ridden boy.

  Or girl.

  Searching for Food

  Like stray puppies, we rooted around everywhere, looking for something to eat. One time I climbed into the cabin of an idling truck, looked into the compartment over the mirror, and saw three rubles! I showed them to the rest of the gang: “In here, inside the cabin!”

  They all climbed in but found nothing. I felt triumphant. Naturally that money was taken from me, by the usual methods.

  “Show us what you got!”

  “I won’t!”

  “How about a kiss from my fist?”

  “Just leave me alone, you morons.”

  “Let’s go, guys. She got nothing, the whore’s daughter.”

  “Hell I don’t. Here, look!”

  I opened my hand; someone slapped it from below; the money fell out and disappeared.

  Late in the fall I returned to winter headquarters—that is, indoors, to my aunt and grandmother. One can’t run barefoot in the snow. We had no winter boots, no clothes of any kind. No food either.

  So I didn’t attend school. But in September I stood on our balcony and watched the children walk to school, swinging their satchels. Along Frunze Street, a girl walked every morning dressed in a bright blue coat with large white buttons. How well I remember it! (When my son Kirill turned two, I managed to buy him and his little cousin Serezha blue flannel coats with white buttons. At that time it was extremely difficult to get anything at the store, and these were very simple flannel garments, but I was so happy to find them!)

  Aunt Vava took home potato peels from the compost heap outside the Officers’ Club. Granny baked them on a Primus stove without oil. I can still recall the stench of burning peel.

  The Primus stove stood on the windowsill in our room. The neighbors had banished us from the shared kitchen.

  We also looked for food in our neighbors’ garbage. They were people of means. In Dedya’s former room now lived an army major who owned a gramophone with a single record. Pressing my ear against the boarded-up door between our rooms, I memorized Beethoven’s “Scottish Drinking Song” (Come fill, fill, my good fellow!) and an aria from the operetta Silva (Beautiful dancers of a lovely cabaret, you were created for pleasure alone). Our other neighbor was Rahil, the principal at the school for the railroad workers’ children. My grandmother gave her a beautiful nickname—Fury. Fury had two daughters, older than me, and an equally scary husband, also a railroad boss.

  The shared bathroom was heated with firewood, which we couldn’t afford. Next to the wood stood an ax. We weren’t allowed to use the bathroom, so we bathed with cold water in our room. One night we heard screams in the hallway. My poor old grandmother lay in a pool of blood outside the bathroom door. Fury’s husband, on finding my grandmother in the bathroom, struck her on the head with the ax to teach her a lesson. Vava summoned an ambulance; the medics wrapped Granny’s head in gauze—the only time anything white touched her skin in the fifteen years she lived in Kuibyshev. Naturally no one filed charges. The husband’s nickname was Cretin. The whole family was called simply “crooks.”

  The army major, Cretin, and Fury left thick potato peels in their garbage, along with herring bones and sometimes cabbage leaves. Never any bread crusts. But to obtain even these riches, we somehow had to avoid insults and humiliation, so we foraged while the neighbors slept. If we had a little kerosene for the Primus stove, Granny made soup.

  Dolls

  One night, the usual moment came when the house quieted down. Hunger had completely devoured our insides, and after waiting the requisite period of time, the adults sent me to retrieve the neighbors’ trash can. Remembering the ax, I tiptoed into the kitchen.

  On a stool by the trash can reclined two large dolls, stripped of their clothes. They must have been discarded by Fury’s daughters. Their noses were chipped, and they didn’t have any hair; their soiled limbs and torsos were stuffed with rags.

  I had a doll, but it was small, made of celluloid, and missing a leg. In addition, I owned a toy horse, which I had made from cardboard and painted with my only crayon, purple—I gave it an eye. The horse didn’t seem very real, so I tried to flesh it out by wrapping a rag around its middle.

  And here were two such incredible beauties!

  Now, I know what a doll means to a girl: It is her tame goddess. It inspires worshipful adoration, furious possessiveness, and also a certain ferocity—it is mine, I can do what I want with it. Dolls are clutched to the breast and force-fed—and then abandoned without a glance. One can paint a doll’s face, then scrub it off along with the factory paint. Shave its head. Perform surgeries on it. (One must take care to keep it away from boys—they will tear it apart.) Dolls are pitied and adored beyond words. Nothing surpasses a girl’s passion for her doll—only her love for Mama, Papa, and grandparents.

  I froze. I was staring at the discarded dolls, not believing my happiness. I knew we had no future together, that we’d have to part. I knelt before them, sat them up, and folded their poor soiled hands in their laps. Then I leaned my head against their soft torsos. They gradually filled my heart and my soul, as a child fills its mother’s whole body when they embrace. They were so beautiful, so tall, so obedient.

  I�
�m not sure how long this continued, maybe until dawn. Before leaving for work, Rahil stopped by the kitchen to check on her trash. Soon her girls sailed in, collected their dolls vengefully, and left.

  Victory Night

  And now the happiness, the Victory Night, for it was definitely night, not day, though no one slept.

  Every hour that the announcement was expected, people kept repeating the magic formula: “Unconditional surrender.” I was woken up by the noise outside, as though an enormous crowd were pushing through the street like a train. It was still dark, and we didn’t have a clock, but I think it was around four, because the sun came up at five.

  I ran outside as I was, in my sundress and barefoot, and spent the day running around the city.

  Soldiers were being bounced everywhere, even the lazybones from our Officers’ Club and, gently, the wounded from the military hospitals; on every corner gramophones, accordions, and balalaikas were playing; in Strukovsky Garden, a dance was organized; women were selling bunches of snowdrops at the gate.

  A new life was beginning, and with it the great hunger of the postwar years.