Kitabı oku: «Everything Begins In Childhood», sayfa 9

“Thank God, they took only one coat… Petty parasites…”

Chapter 23. My Father Is Also a Teacher

“Yuabov, another reprimand, and I’ll record it in your report card.”

I should have expected it… What could I do? How could I sit still and not look back if Larisa Sarbash was sitting behind me? Larisa had such eyes that when she looked at me, I… Well, I didn’t know what came over me, but I wanted to look at her all the time. And I also wanted to tell her stories, because Larisa listened very attentively, her eyes wide … If only we shared the same desk. But Larisa sat behind me, and I sat at the second desk in the middle row, under the teacher’s very nose, so to speak. I wasn’t allowed to look back, but I absolutely needed to.

I suffered, and our teacher, Yekaterina Ivanovna, or Fat Woman, as we had nicknamed her in first grade the previous year, was pacing back and forth in front of the blackboard. The floor near the blackboard usually squeaked slightly. It should have been squeaking loudly under her heavy weight. But our teacher had a special gait. She didn’t waddle. It seemed that she floated or rolled. And the floor kept silent. With her hands behind her back, Larisa Ivanovna floated back and forth and talked, and talked, and talked… She was presenting new material to us – the water cycle in nature.

Yes, a teacher is certainly a special person. A teacher is not like us. She had been speaking about that cycle for half an hour without reading from a textbook but telling us about it from memory and, as she was doing so, she didn’t look at us, instead gazing at the ceiling or out the window. But one of us had only to stir, and she noticed it right away. How? It’s simply amazing. She couldn’t possibly have had another pair of eyes in the back of her head.

Yekaterina Ivanovna grew silent and sat down at her desk. She was looking down at some notes with her round, good-natured face, on which being angry was so unbecoming. Her face was framed with short, wavy red hair. Her natural hair was already grey, but she dyed it with henna. The students knew everything. The girls naturally discussed how teachers dressed and what their hairdos were. In everyone’s opinion, Yekaterina Ivanovna dressed simply yet tastefully.

“All right,” she said. And again, she spoke about the cycle. How much longer would she go on like that? My back was cramping because I was fighting the desire to look back. It seemed to me that I felt Larisa’s gaze on the back of my head. If only she would whisper something to me. But no, she would not. Larisa was shy, she was very modest. When I talked to her, she just listened, with her eyes wide open, without even blinking. She never acted wild, running through the corridor during recesses. She only jumped rope sometimes. I loved to watch her jump. She was so deft and slender. And she had fluffy light hair. And her freckles were simply delightful.

Remembering the freckles, I couldn’t take it any longer.

“Let’s go buy cookies during the big rece…” I whispered turning back to look at Larisa. Before I finished the sentence, I heard:

“Yuabov was the most attentive student today.”

I turned sharply, secretly hoping that my haste, as evidence of my obedience, could rescue me. But no, what was bound to happen followed right away.

“Well, Valery, tell us what you’ve learned today…”

Oh, that cycle… It had seemed so boring to me just a minute ago, but now I would have given anything to have the separate fragments of what I had heard in class today turn into something comprehensible in my head. But I lost any ability to think at precisely that moment.

I stood up and, shifting from foot to foot – that was what students who had not done their homework did and what I usually laughed at – said slowly:

“The water cycle in nature… It always happens… in nature…”

I grew silent because I absolutely didn’t know what else to say. On top of that, I was afraid that my face would betray that I was at a loss. So, I knitted my brows, squinted and cocked my head to the side. I tried to attach an intelligent look to my face, as if I were trying to remember something I knew. Just a moment, I was about to remember it. But no thought came to mind.

“Of course,” Yekaterina Ivanovna sighed, “Of course you have nothing to say. You fidgeted all the time instead of listening. You’ll give me your report card during recess. Let you parents read it… again.”

I heard “read it… again” quite often, to tell the truth, approximately once a week. Yes, before the week was over, apart from the usual notes and grades, the fatal lines appeared, “He is inattentive, gets distracted, talks in class, bothers other students.” And every time, I was terrified, anticipating a conversation with Father and another scolding, like those I had received so many times. Every time, I promised myself and my parents that it would never happen again. Actually, I didn’t know anyone who hadn’t had that experience.

Since I always got good grades, that helped me out and alleviated Father’s anger. Most of the time, I still managed to grasp the meaning of a lesson and to chat with Larisa. Besides, at home, I somehow didn’t get distracted, did all my homework diligently and made up for what I had missed in class.

“Shall I tell them that I’ve lost my report card and get a new one?” I thought on the way home. That life-saving idea had struck me many times, but I gave it up since I anticipated that I would need to do it again in a week.

At home, I immediately settled down to do my homework. I always did it. It was much better to finish it right away and have the evening free. Besides, I was determined to mend my ways.

Strange as it might seem, I enjoyed doing homework, especially because I had a wonderful desk. My parents had given it to me the year before, when I finished the first semester successfully.

The desk was not made of simple plywood but of real wood. It was shiny, lacquered and looked like a mirror. You could see your own reflection in it. I paid more attention to its cleanliness than to my own, wiping it with a soft rag every day so there wasn’t a speck of dust on it. All the shelves and drawers were lined with paper. Naturally, I kept Emma away from my desk for she might stain or scratch it. Let her earn her own desk, I thought. Well, I did allow her to sit at the desk under my supervision for a minute or so once a week.

I was still doing my homework when a loud knock was heard at my door … Father! Only he knocked like that. My heart skipped a beat every time I heard that knock. Even Emma’s face revealed fear.

Yes, both of us were afraid of Father. When he was home, we felt constant tension. It was impossible to guess in advance what Father’s mood would be, what it would be in a minute, what might enrage him. He could fly into a rage because of any trifling thing. And then, you could expect to be punished. How? It could be either rude cursing or a flick on the forehead or a slap on the back of the head, or a vigorous spanking … It could be anything, and it depended on his unpredictable and capricious mood.

I pondered sometimes – it usually happened after yet another row and punishment – why did we have such a father? Why weren’t other children punished so cruelly for any misdeed or without any good reason?

Father was a teacher. However, Valentina Pavlovna, the mother of my friends, Kolya and Sasha, was also a teacher, yet neither she nor her husband would ever hurt a fly.

I was sure of this because I visited them often. Sometimes while I was visiting, I would see Kolya sitting, peeved, his cheeks flushed as his father gave him a talking to but without yelling or angry cursing. Not to mention our mama, who often had to reprimand us but was never insulting or scary.

Perhaps Father thought that he was very caring and was bringing us up like a real teacher.

When I was a first grader, he helped me with my homework throughout the school year. I could easily manage without his help in the second grade, and I was a good student.

But he continued to follow my achievements closely and asked me how things were every day. Obviously, my good grades flattered his vanity. He could brag about them when he was among colleagues.

“So, how was school, Valery?” he asked, entering my room. “Tell me.”

“Everything’s fine,” I answered.

“That’s my boy. Let me see your report card.”

I turned cold. I had no place to hide. I gave him my report card. Father leafed through it and came to today’s page. His face grew gloomy, his eyebrows merged, his lips pursed, his nose hung lower over his mouth like an eagle’s beak. He slammed the report card shut and said sharply:

“Lie down!”

“What?” I asked, getting up from the desk slowly.

“I said, lie down on your bed.”

“Papa, forgive me. I’ll never do…”

“You’ve already promised many times… To the bed, quickly!” He said, taking off his belt.

I lay down, crying. Father had beaten me with his belt before, but he had never made me lie down.

The belt hissed. I felt a burning pain, screamed and placed my hands on my bottom. That didn’t help. The blows fell one after another. It probably hurt my hands more than my swollen flogged bottom. I wiggled, screamed, asked for forgiveness, and when I turned back, I saw his fierce implacable face etched with spite above me.

Suddenly, the beating stopped.

“Now you won’t wriggle anymore.”

Father walked out of the room but returned right away. I didn’t even have time to dry my tear-stained face.

He bent over me, grabbed me by the hands and tied them to the head of the bed. Then he tied my feet.

“Now you’ll lie without tossing.”

And again, the belt began to hiss, harder and faster. Father’s face became so scary that I was afraid to look back – his eyes were bloodshot, his hair stuck together, saliva on his lips. It seemed he was saying something about teaching me a lesson. But I couldn’t distinguish the words. All I could hear was his hoarse, angry voice. I was so tired that I couldn’t cry, I just sniffled and winced.

Suddenly, the beating stopped. I heard someone knocking on the front door. Father went to open, and in a moment, I heard his calm, almost merry voice.

“Oh, it’s you, Edem. Come on in. Your friend is in his room. Go have a look at him… Talk to him.”

Chapter 24. In the Old House

I opened my eyes and stretched. It was rather dark in the room. A slight reflection of sunlight on the wall streamed through the cracked door. The light was on in the kitchen. Whispering, light as rustling, could be heard from there. And then I suddenly remembered that it was vacation time, and I was not at home but in the old house in Tashkent.

Vacation! There were neither textbooks, nor reprimands, nor hours spent in the classroom under the stern gaze of a teacher, nor any other school problems. It was a great time to enjoy myself. As usual, I was spending vacation in Tashkent at Grandpa and Grandma’s, Papa’s parents, which meant that I spent time with Yura.

This was the first night I would spend in the old house. For some reason, I slept, not on a comfortable couch, but with Grandpa in his bed.

No matter what Grandpa did, he did it in a very special way, even when he went to bed, slowly and with good grace. He put on his pajamas and wrapped a scarf around his shaved head. Then he sat down on the edge of the bed and said his prayer or, perhaps, goodnight wishes to his soul. Finally, he scratched his belly lightly.

I saw him do it a hundred times, but still, the sound it produced surprised me every time – kirr-kirrrk, kir-r-rk-rik-rk. It seemed that the skin on his belly wasn’t soft, but rather like the skin of a drum, and that explained the faint grinding. A drum was empty inside, but you couldn’t say that about Grandpa’s belly. His belly was quite big, but you wouldn’t call it a paunch, though it was very hairy.

I tried to figure out his secret many times – how he managed to produce such ringing scratching. First, I tried scratching my own belly, with unsatisfactory results. I even tried it on Yura’s belly, but that didn’t work either. I scratched his belly severely. Naturally, we fought, but later I explained to him that I hadn’t done it for fun but rather to find the answer to an important question.

In the end, I thought I understood it. Before scratching, Grandpa Yoskhaim inhaled deeply so that the skin on his belly stretched like the skin of a drum. After that, he would begin to work it hard with his strong fingers, which were twisted out of shape. I certainly couldn’t have such a belly, even if I inhaled with all my might, nor such fingers. So how could I possibly produce that grinding sound?

Only after scratching to his heart’s content was he ready to fall asleep.

That’s how it was that night. After yawning with pleasure, Grandpa climbed into bed. “Good night, Valery,” I heard. Before I could answer, I heard his snoring. Grandpa Yoskhaim would fall asleep instantly – either he was too exhausted after a day of work or it was something about his body, but he fell asleep the moment he closed his eyes.

Grandpa usually slept on his back, with a blanket pulled over his head. But that night, perhaps in honor of my visit, he pulled the blanket only up to his chin… unfortunately.

Grandpa’s snoring, like the sound of his scratching, was something special. It was a rhythmic, powerful, mounting rumble, a rumble that made the blanket, the pillow, the mattress and the bed shake. The bed’s shaking wouldn’t be too bad, but it would feel like the whole room was filled with the vibrating rumble.

Staring into the darkness, I lay between Grandpa and the wall. “Good-night,” I thought mournfully. “What good night could it possibly be?”

Meanwhile, another sound was added to Grandpa’s mighty snoring. Another instrument joined the orchestra – Grandpa’s lips began to play their part. They trembled like leaves at strong gusts of wind, and flapped, and puffed – pykh-pykh… pfykh-pfykh… Leaning my elbow against the pillow, I tried to make out Grandpa’s face. I was curious to see how it looked. How could this sleeping man stir and smack his lips? But in the darkness, I could only manage to see the edge of the white duvet cover and the general contour of Grandpa’s face.

Grandpa’s beard always drew attention to this elder of the Yuabov family. His beard was quite proper, beautiful and fluffy. At the same time, it wasn’t heavy. I would even call it lively. The beard on his face appeared to perform the role of conductor, guiding his facial expressions like an orchestra. It moved merrily up and down when he talked. It expanded like widespread arms when he smiled. At meals, when he was chewing, his beard, swinging slightly, kept the rhythm and warned, “Don’t hurry… Andante… Moderato… Don’t break the rhythm… Legato… One-two-three, one-two-three.” When Grandpa was silent and pensive, his beard rested on his chest looking calm and dignified… It was time for intermission… But the conductor was always ready to work.

Grandpa liked it when I stroked his beard or scratched it lightly, even when I pulled it gently. And that occupation, which we both enjoyed, had become a kind of game, even a ritual.

I would touch Grandpa’s neck under his chin and begin to scratch his grey hair slowly and gently. The soft hair caressed my hand, the beard obeyed me by either stretching out or wrapping around my fingers. And Grandpa was blissfully happy. He would raise his head a bit and tilt it to the side, as if he were in a barber’s chair, positioning himself so that it would be comfortable for the master to serve him, and all his features – brows, eyes, lips – relaxed and expressed delight.

“Ah, you prankster,” he would repeat affectionately.

* * *

If only he knew what treacherous plans I often hatched while stroking his beard gently and tenderly. If only he could imagine what Yura and I whispered to each other, giggling behind his back.

When Grandpa Yoskhaim fell asleep, you could do anything to him. So why couldn’t we trim his beard for free during his blissful sleep? Chick-chick with a pair of scissors, and half the beard would be gone. We’d trim it and hide… Our bobo would wake up, stretch and begin to scratch his dear beard. He would plunge his fingers into it and feel that something was wrong, something was missing. Grandpa would rush to the mirror and see that it was not him reflected there but a younger man.

No, we didn’t expect Grandpa would like it. On the contrary, he would begin to curse us and run around wildly. We would have to hide well, for it might be scary. He could beat us up in a fit of temper. It was I who feared it; it was nothing to Yura. He would run alongside and shout, laughing, “You can’t catch me! You can’t catch me!” There would be a lot of yelling and a big uproar in the yard.

* * *

At last, I fell asleep, distracted from his snoring by those pleasant thoughts. And now, as I woke up at dawn, I remembered with pleasure that I was in the old house…

I loved this house and knew its every corner. It was quite large, and it was shaped like a letter L. My grandparents lived in the longer part of the L. Our family had occupied the lower part before we moved to Chirchik. Uncle Misha and his family lived in a separate house across the yard.

My grandparents had three rooms. The door of the small and windowless kitchen opened right into the yard. The light was on there now. Grandma Lisa was already up and busy at the stove. From the kitchen, you could enter the middle-sized living room and from there, the largest room, the bedroom where I was now. Apart from two beds, it had a wardrobe, a chest of drawers, and a big antique cupboard. It was beautiful, made of walnut wood with carved edges. Its upper part, topped with a carved casing and with thick decorated legs, rested on its wider lower part. There were Passover dishes in this upper tier. Household utensils were kept in the lower part. Grandma Lisa told me that she had gotten the cupboard from her parents who, likewise, had received it from their parents. I remembered that, as I opened the doors of the cupboard. They would creak like only very old furniture can, melodiously and slowly, now louder, now softer, the right door in one key, the left in a different key… I would open one of them and then the other. After “playing” the upper doors, I would switch to the lower ones. I could hear the whole symphony that way. It seemed that the cupboard was singing about its life story.

My grandparents’ beds were on each side of the cupboard, Grandma’s on the left almost at the door, Grandpa’s behind the cupboard in the far corner. I thought that Grandma had chosen a cozier place for her bed – the big, oval silver-painted gas furnace sat next to it. It heated two rooms, the bedroom and the living room. How warm and nice it was to sleep near the furnace on cold winter nights. But it was summer now, so the furnace wasn’t heated, and Grandpa’s bed was warm, soft and cozy without it.

Grandpa was already up, he always got up very early. He stood at the window across from the bed, his dark silhouette clearly outlined against the pre-dawn blue. Grandpa prayed, swaying back and forth. He prayed just as he had yesterday, and the day before yesterday, and the day before that… as he had prayed all his life for as long as he could remember. Back and forth, back and forth… His beard rose and fell and also trembled slightly because Grandpa moved his lips as he was reading a prayer. I heard that rustling whisper while I was waking up. His favorite dark green skull cap, which now looked black, hugged his bald head tightly. The tefillin, the small box attached to the middle of his forehead, reminded me of a light used by divers swimming underwater. It loomed on Grandpa’s forehead like a strange growth. I knew that there were commandments in that box, which was why every man who prayed had to wear it. There was an identical box tied to Grandpa’s left arm above the elbow.

I began to listen and could gradually distinguish words. I didn’t understand them, for Grandpa prayed in Hebrew, of course. He would hold the prayer book in his hands. With its swollen yellowed pages, it served Grandpa patiently and with dignity every day. He glanced at it out of habit for he remembered many prayers by heart. That didn’t mean that Grandpa Yoskhaim was an educated person and knew Hebrew. He could read, in other words he knew how to pronounce letters and words, but that was it. He was only aware of the meaning of the words and prayers thanks to the explanations offered by the rabbi at the synagogue.

“Grandpa, do you understand what you read?” I asked him more than once.

“Not quite,” he answered honestly.

“How can it be?” I wondered, thinking, then why read the prayers.

“It’s not necessary to understand but rather to feel,” Grandpa answered with conviction.

At the time, I didn’t really understand the profound meaning of his words. But even so, even though I didn’t understand, the impression of seeing Grandpa Yoskhaim praying was deep, powerful, and very important for my young soul.

I grew up in the Soviet Union. I was a Soviet child, which meant that I barely felt I was a Jew. I never gave it a thought.

Antisemitism was not often manifested openly, but it did exist. Most Jews resorted to assimilation, or rather adaptation; they wanted to be like those among whom they lived. However, that old story had spread over the centuries. And other things were added to it under Soviet rule. Any religion, not just Judaism, was practically banned in Soviet lands. It was considered ridiculous and shameful to be religious. It was considered evidence of ignorance. Moreover, it was an indicator of dissent, high handedness and animosity. It’s not surprising that we children not only didn’t study religious history in kindergarten or school but knew nothing about God either. There was no God for millions of Soviet people. Period. He was forgotten. Only old people of different ethnicities stubbornly attended their churches, synagogues, or mosques, of which there were very few. In Tashkent, there were only a few synagogues, so people would pray at home, observing their holidays and fasting.

It turned out that whenever I went to either Grandpa Yoskhaim’s or Grandpa Hanan’s home, I was absorbed in a different reality. Back home, I would forget it and became an ordinary Soviet child. I forgot about it, but obviously not completely.

It was only many years later, already in America, when I began to become a Jew all over again, when I began to feel my Jewishness, that I understood how the dark silhouette of my Grandpa against the background of the blue dawn was not just a scene from my early childhood. It was something much more significant; it was a link connecting me to my ancestors, to the people given to me by fate.

Grandpa was still praying when I entered the kitchen, where the clinking of dishes was heard: Grandma Lisa was cooking breakfast.