Kitabı oku: «Everything Begins In Childhood», sayfa 32

Edik, who until now had been eating rather sluggishly, suddenly perked up, and his spoon became busy.

“I’m not full,” he mumbled with his mouth full.

“If you want more, take it from the pot.”

Edik went to the kitchen, and Sergey giggled and winked at me.

“Let’s go. Why should we wait for him? It could take forever.”

Sergey was not lazy like Edik. Even though he was two years younger, he could see through his brother. As often happens, the brothers quarreled all the time. Compared to theirs, my relationship with Yura seemed an example of peaceful coexistence. I enjoyed their fights very much as a spectator.

It would begin with a squabble. The brothers argued about everything. They gradually got fired up, insulting words were brought into play, then their hands began twitching by themselves. The brothers moved close to each other, their nostrils flaring, their eyes wide open and unblinking. One could run through and around the Musheyevs’ apartment, just as in ours. The brothers always used that particular feature of the apartment during their battles. And then it would be best not to get in their way. They could knock you down. I remember how Sergey darted out of the hallway holding a long metal shoehorn during one of those chases. He caught up with his brother on the veranda and… “Boom! Boom! Boom!”

I writhed with laughter because the “booms” Sergey drummed on his brother’s shoulder were so booming, and his brother would forget that he was older and would yell shamefully:

“Ouch! Val-lery! What are you waiting for?! Mama, he’s beating me up!”

Not a day passed without a fight, without new bruises.

* * *

After helping Sergey with his homework, I was about to go home when I stopped in the living room to say good-bye to Aunt Maria. Edik was still eating. He didn’t look at me, and Aunt Maria, who looked sad, nodded at me, “Good luck, Valery.”

Aunt Maria was very kind. She was a very patient mother. Was she perhaps much too patient?

Chapter 59. Father and Daughter

Emma broke her leg in class at school, in the P.E. class of Teacher Yuabov, our father, to be precise. Father had transferred Emma from PS 24, which we both had attended, to PS 19 to keep an eye on her all the time for Emma wasn’t succeeding in her studies.

The seventh grade had been jumping hurdles on that ill-fated day. Emma misgauged her jump, and her foot snagged the hurdle. It’s usually the hurdle that falls over, but that time, one of the students accidentally held it up, and my sister fell down.

“He was so mad! You should have seen it, Valery! He was yelling at Bikerova, and she was crying.”

Emma, disheveled and pale, lay in her bed, her left leg, in a cast, resting on some pillows. Only her toes, covered in white powder, could be seen. I nodded compassionately, and my leg began to ache and twitch slightly. I sympathized with Emma and could almost feel physically what she experienced. “A whole six weeks,” Emma uttered in desperation. “I’ll fall behind. I’ll never catch up with them.”

Well, she shouldn’t have despaired on that account. Of course, it was not pleasant to be lame for six weeks, but as to her studies, she had no reason to worry. Soviet schools had a well-organized plan to help students who lagged behind or fell ill. I had also had that experience. And now, almost every day, Emma’s classmates came to our place. They explained the new material to her and helped her with her homework, so she didn’t fall very far behind, after all.

I knew PS 19 as well as my own school. Father began working there when the school had just opened. In summer, during vacation, he often went there to prepare for classes, and he took me along. I remembered the empty gym, the neglected yard overgrown with weeds and prickly bushes. Now, any sports society would have been proud of that yard, which had cinder tracks, soccer goals, and basketball and volleyball courts. The gym was also equipped with every necessary kind of sports apparatus. And all that equipment had been obtained by Father.

Every school in the Soviet Union was a public school so they were supposed to be supplied equally with all the equipment necessary for studies. Well, supposedly… In practice, everything they needed had to be obtained through persistent ordering, by utilizing various personal connections and methods. In other words, if a school had an energetic principle, director of studies, maintenance supervisor and teachers, that school would have either a great physics lab and workshops, or, let’s say, a zoology room and quite decent furniture. If the school didn’t have such energetic people…

PS 19 was lucky: its few teachers were energetic, including P.E. teacher Yuabov. Father was a go-getter; nothing and nobody could stop him. Soon, one could invite spectators to the school’s sports fields.

Father was also a successful teacher, but he was particularly good as a coach. Two of his students became Olympic athletes. The school was famous for its basketball team.

Sometimes, I attended his training sessions. I would sit on one of the benches in the gym, which was big and light with a very high ceiling. About ten high school students began warming-up at the coach’s whistle. They ran around the gym with balls, passing them to each other, dribbling them around the floor and trying to shoot them into baskets. The dribbling sound was constant with muted echoes as the ball moved from one student to the next. The sound of its bouncing reverberated through the air, mingled with other sounds. Sneakers squeaked and tapped. The backboards, to which the basketball rims were attached, quivered and rumbled slightly. The windows rattled. And the loud, overbearing commander’s voice rang out over that symphony: the voice of the coach, my father.

After a few minutes of that, it would seem to me that I was in the thick of a battle, with cannons thundering, and a brave general, fighting alongside his soldiers, commanding them. And that voice, of which I was so afraid at home – and sometimes even hated – that disgusting, rude, quarrelsome voice sounded quite different here. I just wanted to keep hearing it. I rejoiced. I was filled with pride. Yes, yes, I was proud that he was my father. Was it just vanity or were there other feelings dormant in me? Was it a need for love?

Father managed to comment and direct almost every movement of the players. He shouted through hands shaped into a megaphone, not stopping for a second.

“Hot Dog, where are you going? Go to a different corner… Hairpin, pour it, pour it! Pot, drown it, quickly! Okay, okay! Saucepan, draw it! (In Father’s jargon “pour it” meant “throw the ball into the basket.” “Drown it” meant “attack, steal the ball.” “Draw it” meant “give that ball away, pass it.”)

The veins on Father’s neck became taut and blue, dense nodes of bulging veins. His face was almost motionless, very concentrated but not too tense. All the tension seemed to be focused in his eyes. However, sometimes, if someone committed a very serious blunder during a game, Father’s face would become flushed. And then Hot Dog, Pot or Saucepan, whoever was the guilty party, would get it.

The nicknames Father gave to the players were, for some reason, related to gastronomy and the kitchen.

The town authorities praised the school for its sports achievements. The basketball team distinguished itself not only in our town but also in the Republic. The more it was talked about, the higher Father’s prestige rose. The school principal, an elderly Korean, Nikolai Lukich, satisfied all Father’s requests and turned a blind eye to many of the deeds of the school “sports leader,” for which he would not have forgiven another teacher. It was not merely that Father’s demanding attitude toward his students bordered on rudeness, but he was capable of insulting anyone. Well, perhaps not anyone, but those who were inferior.

Recently, Father had, with great difficulty, obtained some rolls of wire mesh to fence off the sports fields in the schoolyard. A few rolls were stolen one night. The rumor was that they had been stolen by the janitor with the help of some high school students. Father reacted without delay.

“I kicked her in the butt,” he informed Mama with satisfaction that evening. “And I told her exactly what I thought of her.”

“But she’s an elderly woman,” Mama was horrified.

“That didn’t keep her from stealing.”

* * *

However, when Father trained his basketball players, he behaved in a restrained manner and rarely lost his temper. Most probably it was because he selected the members of the team very carefully. He had an amazing talent for recognizing whether a boy or girl had the makings of a good athlete. He harshly and ruthlessly filtered out those whom he considered lazy, clumsy or, in a word, without prospects. And then he persistently and patiently molded a united team out of his chosen players. He strived for proper teamwork and iron discipline. He made them understand that basketball was a team sport. And he had enough patience for it because he rarely lost his temper with them. And even his fits of temper worked here. When he punched someone who had broken his iron rules in the face, that student would either leave the team or remember the lesson for good.

Among the students he selected for the team were those whom other teachers were glad to get rid of. They behaved like hoodlums at school and on the street, drank alcohol, smoked weed. It was sometimes rumored about one of them that the thug was about to go to jail. The reputation of potential players didn’t bother Father. His conversation with such guys was short, simple and businesslike.

“If you stop being involved in all kinds of crap, I’ll make a good athlete out of you.”

* * *

He was good when he gave instructions during training. He was also good when he demonstrated moves. He would take the ball from one of the guys, dribble the ball three times, raise it over his head, squat a little, then straighten up gracefully, almost flying up, and toss the ball. The ball would glide through the hoop as if it were weightless, as if it weren’t a ball at all but rather a soap bubble. He did it one more time, and it worked again.

Training was what Father did best of all; it was his vocation. Even when he didn’t feel well, when his asthma overwhelmed him, if he could move around without having difficulty breathing, he would drag himself to school. He felt better during training sessions. He couldn’t talk loud enough, but he mostly gave instructions with his hands, like the conductor of an orchestra.

I still wonder how the players learned to understand those commands. He let neither the ball nor the players escape his field of vision, even for a second.

That’s how it was during basketball practice, but not in the classroom. Father didn’t stand on ceremony with his regular students. Classroom studies were not as interesting for him. Students in class gave him more grounds for irritation. And they developed hostility toward the rude, unfriendly teacher.

My Grandpa was usually called Yoskhaim, abridging his actual name which was too long – Yusup Khaim. Father used the first part of Grandpa’s name as his patronymic, Amnun Yusupovich. That’s how students addressed Father, but they referred to him differently among themselves.

The blood rushed to my face and my breathing became difficult when I heard Father’s nickname for the first time. I heard it from Emma. I was either hurt or ashamed, or a bit of both, but for whom? Myself? Father? Both of us?

Once I went to Father’s school and saw some graffiti written on the fence in the yard. It was written in big letters… I don’t want to write what it was exactly. One word was particularly insulting in that graffiti – Shushara. That was Father’s nickname.

In those days, we knew very well what Shushara was. Everybody knew the big, mean rat, a character from “The Adventures of Buratino” (Pinocchio) both from the book and from a recent very popular movie based on the book. I had to admit with sorrow that my Father’s students grasped quite precisely the similarity between him and that rat: both had a long nose and were quarrelsome and malicious.

* * *

Emma lay in bed with her outstretched leg in the cast talking nonstop. She loved to talk. In the heat of the conversation, she moved her leg awkwardly and moaned, biting her lip slightly.

“Does it hurt much?” I asked.

My sister nodded.

“Well, not all the time. It just aches most of the time. It’s important not to move it. It’s all right, but six weeks…”

My sister is a person in whom seemingly incompatible traits coexist. It’s impossible to predict which of them might manifest itself at any given moment.

Now, for example, I was struck by her patience. It seemed to be a time to be capricious, to cry and whine, and Emma could do that perfectly well. If someone dares to be unfair to her, in her opinion, Emma can bellow so loud that eardrums might burst. She could rebuff any boy who offended her or her girlfriend. And her rebuff would definitely be very loud. But here she had broken her leg – and no whining, no yelling.

Emma’s patience had struck me many times before.

During summer vacation, I usually visited Grandpa Yoskhaim in Tashkent, and Emma went to Grandma Abigai’s. To tell the truth, I didn’t envy my sister. When Aunt Rosa, Mama’s sister, had a daughter, no sooner did Emma arrive than she was “appointed” governess, nanny – call it what you will. That was not an easy task. It was especially difficult with Mira.

The world had never before seen such a reckless mischief-maker.

Sometimes, as we approached the house, we would hear her squeals, laughter, and even the crash of furniture. I remember how this five-year-old scamp once jumped from bed to bed in the bedroom, messing up and scattering all the sheets, blankets and pillows. That was Mira’s favorite entertainment. There was down flying around the room – one of the pillows had burst. That happened when Mama and I went to visit Emma. As we opened the door of the bedroom, we covered our ears right away for Mira’s squealing was unbearable.

But there was Emma, walking unhurriedly from bed to bed trying to catch the prankster by the hand and repeating with her tranquil smile, “All right, that’s enough, you’ve been jumping too long. You’ve played enough. It’s time to calm down.”

That was some “playing,” I thought, looking at my sister with sympathy and surprise. If I were Emma, I would pull this brat off the bed, shake her properly and give her a good spanking on her little behind. But Emma endured it, and not for an hour or so but from morning till night, day after day.

I thought it was patience. But was it perhaps kindness?

At that time, I didn’t have an understanding of such things, and Emma’s displays of kindness still amazed me. That’s why I remember them.

She had a friend, Vika Stepanova, who lived in our building. She was a clumsy girl, tall and thin. She walked unsteadily, almost as if she might fall down if someone blew on her. She wore glasses with thick lenses. I don’t know why she had no other friends either in our building or at school but Emma. That speaks for itself: the majority of children are conformists. They prefer to act like everybody else, but Emma was different.

Boys often mistreated clumsy unattractive Vika both at school and near our building. Emma was her main defender and comforter. The friends had different interests. Vika liked to read. Emma preferred playing with dolls to all other pastimes and entertainments. She had just two of them, and they were well-cared-for and well-dressed. In a word, we all knew that Emma treated them with maternal tenderness. They slept with her, and she groomed them more thoroughly than herself. Nobody was allowed to touch them. Vika was an exception, though Emma had many girlfriends.

Once Vika came running to Emma in tears. As they whispered to each other in a secluded corner of the living room, I eavesdropped: Server, a bully from our neighborhood, had snatched Vika’s eyeglasses and teased her for a long time before giving them back. Emma immediately devised a clever plan for revenge. Vika calmed down and was about to go home when Emma leaped to her feet, “Just a minute.” She ran past me to her room and returned to the living room with a doll in her hands, her most beautiful favorite doll. “You may keep her overnight.”

* * *

However, my sister wasn’t always so kind. Sometimes, she was an absolutely unbearable egotist. Suppose Mama and I are going to the bazaar. My sister expresses a desire to accompany us. “Will you help carry the bags?” I ask, for I’ve already learned from bitter experience what her promises mean.

Emma nods, which supposedly means “Of course I will.” But from the beginning to the end of our visit to the bazaar, Emma’s help consists of exclaiming now and then, “I want this, Mama! May I have this?” Neither raspberries, nor peaches, nor ice cream, nor another twenty tempting delicacies escape her greedy glance. She tosses her hair, which falls onto her shoulders and is no longer red but jet black, her pleading almond-shaped eyes stare at Mama, and she almost coos, “Mummy, please.”

And Mother’s heart gives in…

When, after buying everything we need, we set off for home, our small family detachment looks approximately like this. Mama and I walk to the bus stop, which is ten minutes away, bent over under the weight of the bags. After taking twenty or thirty steps, we stop to rest and set the bags on the sidewalk, but we continue holding them for it takes too long to pick them up again. So, we stand hunched over the bags, even though we very much want to rub our red, swollen palms. And our dear Emma, graceful as a young fallow deer, stands beside us waving her little paper bags of cherries, apricots and raspberries – everything she has managed to coax out of Mama.

No, excuse me, that’s not all. Emma holds a vanilla ice cream cone in her other hand. She licks it with her long, narrow tongue, chasing it down with a cherry or raspberry.

That’s her help. And when I can no longer stand the heat and the smacking of Emma’s lips, I ask, “Let me have a lick.” She answers unhappily, “I’ll leave some of it for you.” And she steps aside quickly.

“She’s just a girl,” Mama sighs as she calms me down.

I don’t argue, but I think about something else: the point is not that she’s a girl, the point is that she resembles her father sometimes. Fortunately, only sometimes. Besides, perhaps due to similarities in their personalities, the older Emma became the more often she expressed out loud her indignation about Father’s behavior and gave free rein to her feelings.

I remember the day when I rebelled against Father for the first time, with her help. Father, Emma and I were at home. I was doing my homework in my room when I heard shouting coming from the kitchen – first Father’s enraged voice, then Emma’s shrill shouts.

It turned out that as my sister was applying green liquid antiseptic to a scratch, she accidentally knocked it over onto the kitchen table. The table was new, and now it would have an indelible green spot. Father was ranting as if it were nothing less than a stain on his fate. In response, Emma was squealing for everybody to hear.

When I ran into the kitchen, she was standing in the corner by the sink, and Father was waving his fist and yelling, “Don’t shout!”

Now, he had forgotten about the stain and tried to quiet Emma, and the only way he knew how to do it was with the help of a slap.

Emma had grown up, and it had been a long time since Father had allowed himself to spank much less slap her. He loved Emma and treated her with particular kindness. He was proud that his daughter was a member of his special basketball group. But now he was in a state of blind rage.

“Don’t beat me!” Emma screeched even more loudly.

That’s when I stepped between them.

“Put your hand down,” I said. I said it calmly. Surprisingly, I felt calm at that moment, for the first time ever.

Father and I looked into each other’s eyes for a few moments. His eyes, absolutely mad, and his mouth widening more and more. “He’ll now yell and punch me,” I thought. But Father said in an almost normal voice, “Move away.”

I shook my head. Father was panting, but the rage in his eyes disappeared. Suddenly, he chuckled, lowered his hand… and left.

He was gone. Emma and I looked at each other without saying anything. She sniffled one last time and, bending over the sink, began washing her tear-stained face.