A Backpack, a Bear, and Eight Crates of Vodka: A Memoir Read online

  The anti-Semites also had changed, and the witch hunts of old were gone. With each year, both Jews and anti-Semites regressed into more basic survival mind-sets. The everyday Russian was just as affected by the secret police as the zhidi, for in the land of no trials, no one was safe. Such was the case with my father’s boss who had spent ten years in the gulag. One afternoon, the supervisor, a Ukrainian without a drop of Jewish blood in him, was walking through the factory floor when he overhead a group of welders quietly snickering in the far corner. The supervisor paid them no mind until he was apprehended the next morning. It turned out one of the workers had told an anti-Soviet, Jewish anecdote, and since the incident took place in a factory, the supervisor was charged with fomenting Zionist propaganda with intent to undermine Soviet industry. The man pled that he was across the shop floor when the joke was made, he didn’t even hear the quip, especially considering he was clinically deaf in one ear. Applying typical Soviet logic, the Party took the deafness into account, and instead of the standard twenty years in the labor camps, the man got ten.

  “You nevertheless have one good ear to answer for, Comrade,” the KGB officer admonished the supervisor as he was hauled from the sentencing chamber.

  “Mayn zun, mayn zun,” Dad said as he dragged me over to the sink.

  “Why?” I asked when he thrust my fists under the faucet and told me to hold one fist on top of the other.

  Dad always knew everything. He’d traveled all over the USSR. He could put turbines together and he knew all about power plants, and history, and books. But now he wasn’t sure.

  I craned my head to spy the sack of matzah squatting on an old chair in the parlor. I despised that pallid, tasteless substance, that ashen thing already crumbling into powder, as I despised this fists-washing thing. They were stupid, sad secrets, things to be beaten over. An idea crept into my mind, and I started laughing and slamming my fists against each other. Water splashed on the floor and hissed against the rusty radiator. Anger flashed across Dad’s face, followed by disappointment. “Not yet,” he whispered, and I knew it was finished, and I felt the blessed relief that comes when you try to outsmart an adult and hope desperately that they’ll fall for it, and it works.

  “He’s immature,” Dad said to Mom, who appeared as thankful as I was that the sham was over. “He doesn’t understand.”

  * * *

  Dad was right. I had no idea what it meant to be a Jew. I was repulsed by it, and was about as interested in Judaism as I was in cannibalism. But he didn’t know either—scurrying down alleys and mimicking his father didn’t yield meaning, and without meaning, symbols are useless and an ancient token of freedom and redemption crumbles into a bland, tasteless cracker. The anti-Semites didn’t know—they hated because they had been programmed to hate, and they obeyed because they had to obey in order to survive. No one knew, no one understood, and, as the old saying goes, one will always fear what one doesn’t understand.

  A MARKED MIKHAIL WILL DESTROY RUSSIA

  Kharkov, Ukraine, USSR, Spring of 1988

  It’s an early weekday afternoon and the yard is quiet. Mom’s at the clinic, Dad’s fixing a turbine, Lina’s in school, and Grandma’s at the stove working on borsch, which I’m excited about, and potato pancakes, which I will find a reason to avoid eating. I’m supposed to be in school, but my last blood tests showed I was still low on iron and that was enough for Mom to score me another extended sick note. A couple of weeks ago I successfully wormed out of the Passover hand-washing, and now I won’t have to worry about the end of first grade for a while. I have a good streak going.

  Kolya rolls through the yard, lazily scanning benches packed with babushki greeting the spring, and lilac bushes where a few scrawny birds are trying to surprise the early crickets. The babushki position themselves three or four to a bench, where they discuss everything from Union politics to the far more interesting rumors of the apartment complex. Some of the more intrepid women have already exchanged their dark winter scarves for the brighter red and yellow spring varieties.*1 Mitya, the yard keeper, is slowly stirring piles of runny snow, pausing here and again to relight his pipe. I wave my arms but Kolya ignores me. He saw me when I scrambled down to meet him from the balcony, but Kolya is never in a rush.

  Everything about the kid is angular, from his lanky wrists sticking out of the sleeves of his older brother’s coat to the bent spokes jutting from the wheels of his bike. The wheels are slightly flattened, which makes the bike lurch a little, but Kolya pedals standing up and that doesn’t slow him down. The most peculiar part of the bike is the oversized seat, shaped like an upside-down helmet, which originally belonged to an old moped.

  “You buying or gawking?” Kolya slings himself off the bike, hand hovering near the seat’s lock.

  “I’m buying, Kolyukha,” I assure him.

  “You better be,” he says, but I know he’s grumbling out of habit, and the seat snaps open. Coiled inside, wrapped in on itself, is an old stocking, several old stockings in fact, layered over one another and reinforced with electrical tape. Kolya unties the knot at the end and the coins spill out into his hand. Eastern European coins are the easiest to get and are always in Kolya’s vanguard. There are Hungarian forints with plain wheat sheaves (wheat being the prevalent symbol used to demonstrate your country’s commitment to Communism), boring East German pfennigs, each denomination bearing the same hammer, compass, and wheat mark, solid dinars from Yugoslavia with wheat wreaths and flames, intricate Czechoslovak korunas and Bulgarian stotinki (wheat wreaths and lions on both), bani and lei with cogwheels and factories surrounded by halos of wheat from Romania, and more. Kolya’s long fingers pick through the wheatocracy with the surety of a seasoned dealer. He skips past the pfennigs—I already have those—and digs out a few stotinki, since I wanted to buy some the last time but didn’t have the money. The coiled stocking gives birth to several little socks containing more exotic coins from Cuba, Angola, Vietnam, North Korea, South Yemen: our fellow wheat enthusiasts from around the globe. I buy some Cuban pesos, think about the Vietnamese coins with five-pointed stars on the back, haggle with Kolya over a few beat-up rubles from early Soviet Russia, but my eyes can’t help being drawn to the far end of the stocking.

  “I want to see the others,” I say, carefully storing my purchases inside my jacket.

  “I showed you the others, remember?” Kolya replies, but I’m not letting him play dumb today. I don’t know how he managed to get out of school early—I’m sure he has an explanation, otherwise the babushki wouldn’t have allowed him into the yard—but there’s no other buyer around and I’m not letting the chance pass by.

  “The others. The birds. The ones you showed Deniska and Fedya. I saw the eagles, over their shoulders.”

  Kolya squints, trying to make up his mind, then slowly reaches deep into the mouth of the stocking until the layers of nylon swallow his forearm. He positions himself so his back is between us and the nearest bench of babushki and works out the knot on the sock in his hand, glancing down at me from time to time.

  I see them and I want them, the tsarist coins, illegal ones, dark, rusty kopeks and dull silver rubles. The two-headed eagles scream from the metal, wings spread out, talons clutching orbs and scepters, the ancient symbol of the House of Romanov proclaiming the might of a dead empire. Kopiyki, it says in the archaic spelling of the word, and something about it fascinates me, because no one spells “kopeks” like that anymore.

  “There he is,” Kolya whispers, “Nikolai the Bloody, the one they shot with all his family.” A calm, bearded man appears in profile on the higher denominations, hair combed to one side. “Ten rubles if you want two kopeks, but you better keep them hidden. I don’t need you bragging to anyone about it.”

  I was ready to wrangle a better price out of Kolya, but nothing irritates me more than being treated like a child—I’m already eight years old—and I angrily shove a pink ten-ruble Lenin note into his hand. I’ll show Kolyukha who can keep secrets.
I already have a secure location prepared for the coins, a little baggie I can hide behind my teddy bear that no one will see.

  “I get to pick which ones I get,” I say as nonchalantly as possible, but Kolya doesn’t budge. He’s intently staring at a spot on a balcony directly across from the far entrance to the yard. Nikolai and the eagles have vanished into the sock and the sock into the stocking. Suddenly I see them. Five men in dark coats with red armbands walk into the yard.

  Everything slows down. Kolya holds on to the ten rubles, but in exchange he’s sorting through common Hungarian forints, counting them out into my hand. “This one, it’s in great shape,” he says, and I want to remind him that I already have them, I know I’m not getting the two-headed eagles but I want some Angolan coins or Vietnamese ones, but my mouth isn’t working well and I just nod my head instead.

  The yard is quiet. Laundry creaks on taut ropes, drying pins protesting the strain from the wind, the yard keeper’s shovel clinks brisk and regular, but otherwise I can hear everything. The five men in red armbands stroll through the apartment block. They have the businesslike gait of wolves near caribou, purposeful but not hurried; there’s always someone weak, injured, unlucky, and the pack will have its dinner. Wherever the men are headed, there’s no need for improper haste. They’re not KGB; you don’t see those until they come for you in the middle of the night, and nobody hears about it until the next morning. They’re not even policemen, the KGB’s little brothers who handle official nuisances like filling out an arrest warrant long after the prisoner has vanished from the world. They’re druzhinniki, neighborhood watchmen assigned to patrol for drunks and loiterers, but on their arms is the plain red band, the crimson banner of the USSR, and with it comes all the malice and paranoia and fear that the color has ingrained into my head.

  Silence falls ahead of the druzhinniki. Kolya and I can hear them from all the way down the yard. They’re chatting about the upcoming Sokol Kiev–Dinamo Moskva match. This is Sokol’s year. Communism’s goal is total equality, of course, brotherhood of workers and unity of nations—save for the hockey rink. In the arena, Sokol Kiev is going to feast on the marrow of their sorry Muscovite comrades and usher in a new era of Ukrainian dominance.

  I don’t know why I am afraid of the men. I don’t remember learning to be afraid of them, the police, anyone in the government. No one taught me that Nikolai coins are dangerous or that certain words like “synagogue” are not to be uttered except in the apartment, but I know it, as surely as I know a hot stove will burn my hand and scissors are not to be played with. Whisk whisk, whisk whisk, the armbands rustle against the men’s coats as their arms swing on the walk. Keep walking, don’t stop, not here, don’t stop pounds through my head. Mitya the yard keeper has developed a keen interest in corralling every dirty snow patch onto the sidewalk around him, and he concentrates on the slush, his pipe forgotten. They’re just druzhinniki, assures the rational part of my brain, but my ears hear the whisk whisk of the armbands. Don’t stop here, keep walking, my head echoes back. Whisk whisk, don’t stop / whisk whisk, don’t stop, goes the cadence. Kolya stares at a balcony and I stare at the coins, but the babushki stare at the druzhinniki. No babushka—Russian or Jewish—ever looks away. Something happens to a woman once she gets old enough to be called a babushka. Lina told me something about their surviving the evacuation and the war and the things before the war that no one talks about, times when people disappeared on a regular basis and the black cars were an everyday thing. “They stare because they’re alive,” said Lina, but I’m not quite sure what she meant. Whisk whisk, whisk whisk through the yard, and stolid scarf-wrapped heads swivel on benches to keep the men in sight.

  Kolya presses the forints into my hand and tosses in some Polish groszy for good measure. We exchange meaningless words about not storing the coins near a radiator or anywhere else they can oxidize and develop a sickly blue-gray crust. Lina’s tales of the KGB detaining Dad at his work flash through my head. I know that they took Grandpa, too, in this very yard, in our own apartment, back when Mom was a little older than me and the cars came for him. This was after Stalin died, as I would learn much later, and they thought dentists were hoarding gold, so they imprisoned and tortured every dentist they could get their hands on for a supposed plot to drive up gold prices. Not here, keep walking, the primordial prayer of survival screams inside my skull, and I hear its silent echo resonate through Kolya, and Mitya, even the babushki, through the birds, bricks, snow piles, and laundry lines of the yard.

  Kolyukha carefully returns the jingling socks back to the stocking, cinches the end, and clicks the seat shut. The red armbands whisk by us and out the front of the yard, leaving behind tracks in the mush and predictions of Dinamo Moskva’s upcoming demise. Gone are the eagles, as well, and I’ll have to wait for another chance. I can still make out their faded wings on the brown copper when I close my eyes, but for some reason when I see the coins in my mind they’re gigantic, like big copper tea saucers. Kolya was generous, because the fat bulge of Eastern European wheatage in my jacket is worth more than ten rubles, and I wave goodbye to his lanky silhouette as it half rolls, half lurches out of the yard.

  * * *

  “A marked Mikhail will destroy Russia,” augured the old women sweeping the landing of my apartment complex. It was a few weeks after my unsuccessful attempt to get the tsarist kopiyki and I was running upstairs when I scurried past the two babushki in long coats and wool headscarves, their gnarled hands wrapped around old wooden broom handles. I paused outside my apartment, just out of sight. Mikhail Gorbachev, the new Soviet premier, had a conspicuous port-wine birthmark on his forehead. “That spot is an omen,” the hushed whispers carried up the landing, “and so is his name. He’s a marked Mikhail, and a marked Mikhail will destroy Russia.” That’s what the babushki foretold.

  The old women knew their history, or at least the parts they considered important. The Roman Empire was founded by a Romulus and collapsed under a Romulus. Its descendant, the Byzantine Empire, was founded by Constantine the Great and collapsed under Constantine XI. And the “Third Rome,” the Russian Empire of the Romanovs, which styled itself as the successor to the Byzantines, was founded by Tsar Mikhail I. These events didn’t just transpire by coincidence, and logic dictated that should Russia collapse, it would do so under a Mikhail. In 1988, change and reform convulsed the land. The Soviet Union was mired in what was rapidly transforming into a humiliating and bloody defeat: the invasion (or, as it was referred to by the state media, the “liberation”) of Afghanistan. And Mikhail Gorbachev, the man presiding over the chaos, was marked.

  The babushki’s warnings were echoed by scarf-wrapped counterparts in apartments and farms throughout the land. Russia was rife with superstition, which permeated across class and ethnicity. Everyone took precautions against the evil eye, especially during weddings, births, and pregnancies. Peasants continued to eschew the word “bear,” referring to the animal as simply “the boss.” Using the boss’s true name was unwise, lest the wind carry it and the beast come running to see who called for it.*2 Words in general were dangerous, and certain ones were not to be uttered for fear their innate power be unleashed, as I was to learn during one unforgettable evening. It started when someone placed hard, dried breadcrumbs under Lina’s bedsheets, which had resulted in her tossing in bed the entire previous night.*3 Upon discovering the crumbs, Lina called me an obnoxious, underdeveloped fool.

  “May you grow blisters on your tongue!” I fired back with an archaic curse normally reserved for witches and blasphemers (I read about it in a book).

  The impact was devastating. Lina ran for Grandma, who, after a protracted chase, cornered me by the china closet and demanded I take back the curse. I held out for a good five minutes, intoxicated by my newfound abilities, but then Mom arrived to reinforce Grandma and I could only stare at the dessert on the dinner table until I hollered, with utmost sincerity, that I no longer wished for any afflictions, lingual or otherwise,
to befall my sister.

  Pagan custom had survived, and the deities of old still clung to the soil, thinly veiled as Eastern Orthodox saints. The Slavic thunder god, Perun, continued to be revered in the countryside, only now he was worshipped as Elijah, the ominous prophet who rolled through the skies in his fiery chariot. In Russian Orthodoxy, as in other syncretic religions, old deities don’t die; they just get makeovers. Many people consulted baby, witch doctors, sort of like super-babushki who read fortunes and offered herbs, tinctures, and amulets, mysterious remedies for various diseases. These coexisted with modern pharmaceuticals: if a doctor didn’t help, people went to a baba, or vice versa. Lives were beyond our control, affected by the stars, by goodwill and malice, names and spells, saints and talismans. The question was not whether Gorbachev was marked; he was. The birthmark was an omen; it meant something, required interpretation. The old women’s warnings were issued in all seriousness and accepted as such.

  Uncertainty surrounded the premier. He had risen rapidly and undetected. He spoke of change, glasnost and perestroika (openness and restructuring). The rhetoric alone was alarming. It naturally vexed the ruling class, who had no need for reform—they had nowhere to go but down. But it was also distressing to the population at large. “Change” is a tricky word for Russians. Russians fear change, and for good reason. “Life has improved, comrades; life became more enjoyable,” quipped Joseph Stalin as he unleashed his Five-Year Plans, cheerfully massacring millions of his own people in the name of progress. Often, when restrictions were loosened, paranoia increased, because everyone realized that sooner or later some fool was going to poke his head out a little too far.