The Education of a Traitor: A Memoir of Growing Up in Cold War Russia (19 page)

The next day in school, as soon as I plop down onto my student bench and look in front of me, I notice an empty space on the wall behind the teacher’s table where Khrushchev’s portrait used to hang. I turn to my neighbor on the right, Polina Grusheva, a busybody and well-known class gossip, and see that her gaze is also fixed on the empty space on the wall. I expect her to say something about the sudden change, but she lowers her eyes and says nothing. In fact, none of the students or teachers comments on the glaring spot, and neither do I, as if we experience a mysterious case of mass blindness and
do not notice the exposed patch of peeling plaster that is a shade or two lighter than the rest of the wall.

Several weeks later, during a school break, my parents send me to stay with my grandparents. As soon as Grandpa and I find ourselves alone, I say: “That man you were talking about with my father and Uncle Abraham, Ekhil Ulitsky, does he still live around here?”

“Did you girls eavesdrop on us?” Grandfather raises his eyebrows. “I guess we have to be careful around you!” He smiles, but a shadow falls over his brow. “No, he doesn’t. Somebody informed on him, too, so he got deported to Birobidzhan” (a remote area on the border with China where Stalin planned to exile all Soviet Jews).

“Who did?”

“Other informers, I guess.”

“Why did they deport
him
to Birobidzhan?  Dad says that they only sent Jews there.”

“That’s right. But he
was
a Jew.”

I stare at my grandfather. A Jew informer?!

“Rats are everywhere,
bubala
,” he says, answering my unspoken question. “Saving their skin at the expense of others. He didn’t save his skin, though. People said that he got sick there and needed medicine. Well, Stalin sent many Jewish doctors to Birobidzhan, but not the medicine.”

“Did he die?”

“Yes, he did, that dog,” Grandpa says, and the hostility in his voice takes me aback. Should I stop asking? But when will I get another chance?

“Grandpa, Mother said that when Stalin died, people cried as though he were their true father. Why?”

“With all that propaganda, they believed that he was. The newspapers, the radio, all of them called him the Father of the Nation, Coryphaeus of Science, and whatnot,” Grandfather says, his voice oozing with sarcasm. “He was our Generalissimus, too (the highest Soviet military rank awarded only to Stalin). He won the war!” Here Grandfather pauses.

“Stupid people. He couldn’t care less whether they lived or died, but they charged the Germans shouting ‘For Motherland, for Stalin!’
Tjfu
!” He spits with disgust.

“Did you cry, Grandpa?”

“Me?! Surely not! He tried to starve us in the Ukraine, you know. And then that camp in Siberia… Three years out of my life!”

“You were in a prison camp? When?!” What else do I not know about my grandfather?

“Shortly after the war,” he says. “I worked on the railroad weighing freight cars. Somebody stole equipment from one car, and my boss blamed me.”

“Why you?”

“I was the only Jew in his team, and he was a real anti-Semite. Besides, he may have stolen the stuff himself and needed an easy scapegoat,” Grandfather says.

“Did you tell them that you didn’t steal anything?”

“Yes, I did. But who’d believe a Jew in those days?”

“Was it terrible in the camp, Grandpa?” I say, picturing my grandfather in the striped clothes of a German concentration camp inmate, and a chill runs up my spine.

“Let’s not talk about that now,
bubala
. It was a long time ago and … Hell, I made it! Had only one arm broken and several teeth.” 

I peek at Grandfather’s silver-plated front teeth, dimly glimmering between his narrow lips.

“No, I was happy when that devil Stalin died,” he says, catching my glance. Then a sly smile lightens his face, “Well,
net gorya bez dobra
.” (Even bad luck can bring something good, Russian proverb.) One good thing came out of that camp. I met your Uncle Abraham there and brought him to Moscow.”

This is how my aunt met her husband! I had no idea!

“Why was
he
there?” I ask.

“Well, he’s from Poland, you know,” Grandfather says. “When the Germans occupied the country, some Poles retreated to our territory. They thought they’d be welcomed here, but far from it. Stalin didn’t trust even his own people, let alone foreigners. Who cared that the Germans had killed everybody in Abraham’s family? As far as our authorities were concerned, he couldn’t be trusted. So they sent him to Siberia.”

“You never told me this before, Grandpa,” I say. “Why?”

“You were too young. Still are,” Grandfather smiles and his face ripples with wrinkles. “But, I think I’d better tell you these things now, before it’s too late. Right?”

“Right,” I say, uncertain of his meaning.

“Listen
bubala
,” Grandfather says, putting his heavy hands on my shoulders and pulling me closer. “Our life’s been hard. Wars, pogroms, not much education. Your life must be better. You just need to study and make good grades.” Then he winks at me, “Who knows, you may be a famous musician one day!”

“I don’t think so,” I sigh.

“A doctor, like your mother?”

“I’m afraid of blood, Grandpa.”

“Well, then … then you should go to America and make a success of yourself!”

To America? Nobody I know has gone even to socialist Bulgaria, and it is less than 2,000 kilometers away. America is on the other side of the world! Going there is like flying to the moon. Besides, America is a rotten capitalist country, while
our
country is the best country in the world.

I try to shrug off my grandfathers’ hands. “Only traitors leave their Motherland!”

“Who told you that?” he says, not letting me go.

“Everybody! My teachers, for one.”

He pulls me so close that I can see the tiny red veins in his eyes.

“Don’t believe them,
bubala
. They don’t know anything.”

I twitch harder. What does he mean? Of course they know! They are teachers!

“How do
you
know?” I say. “You didn’t go to America!”

“No, I didn’t … didn’t have the guts,” Grandfather says. “I should have, though …” Abruptly, he takes his hands off my shoulders, and I stumble backwards, almost falling. He does not seem to notice but turns away from me and, as if pleading with somebody, whispers, “Let them go ...” 

Who are you talking to? I want to ask, staring at his stooped back. But my grandfather keeps whispering and bowing toward the empty wall, and I do not dare to interrupt him.

At home, I say to my mother, “You don’t think that America is better than our country, do you?”

“Why are you asking?”

“Grandfather said that he wants me to go there. Can you imagine? Like I’m a traitor or something!”

Mother gives me a long look—her gaze impenetrable, like a pond covered with duckweed.

“Your grandfather is a wise man.”

“He’s not educated. He said that himself!” I say, feeling bad for criticizing my grandfather, yet still upset with his words.

“Education is one thing. Wisdom is another. Some people have education, but not wisdom,” Mother sighs. “Believe me, that’s not good either.”

What is
she
talking about? And what does it have to do with my question?

“Mom,” I say, attempting to direct the conversation my way, “you wouldn’t go to America, would you?” But Mother busies herself with never-ending domestic chores, and my question hangs in the air unanswered.

In the end, Grandfather’s prediction that not much would change after Khrushchev’s hasty retirement proves to be true. As before, our country heads toward a “wonderful” communist future at the expense of our not-so-wonderful present. As before, the state media sing the praises
of our never-successful five-year economic plans, and as before, our “wise” Communist Party presides over all aspects of our lives.

The only discernible change takes place in school. One day, when I enter my classroom and look at the spot where Khrushchev’s portrait used to hang, I see a portrait of a man with coal-black bushy eyebrows, flabby features, and a triumphantly important expression. This is Khrushchev’s replacement, Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev, our new leader.

Neither the teachers nor the students comment on Brezhnev’s arrival in our classroom. We are used to seeing images of government leaders everywhere, and it is only natural to us that our new head of government has claimed his rightful place next to the portrait of Lenin, so both of them can follow our educational progress from the wall. Also, as Stalin himself liked to say, “
Les rubyat, shchepki letyat”
(chips fly when you cut down trees, Russian proverb) or, in other words, we must dispose of those who divert us away from our extraordinary goals.

A true change—for me anyway—occurs next summer. It has nothing to do with our government but with my grandfather’s death. I am in a summer camp when he dies, and my relatives bury him without me. When I come back to Moscow, he is gone, and all I have left of him are faded black-and-white pictures in the family photo album: my grandfather surrounded by people I never met. Grandma and he are side by side, looking into the camera with strained and alienated eyes, and another photo of Grandfather alone, with a sad smile, as if saying, “We are all disposable.”

Grandfather

Yet unlike Khrushchev and other Soviet leaders whose portraits rotate through the empty spots on Moscow’s walls, my grandfather will never be disposable to me, and his place in my heart will never be filled. In my mind’s eye, I will always see him winking at me or hear him singing, and eventually I will follow his wish and immigrate to America.

On the chess board of history my grandfather may have been only a pawn, but for me he remains the greatest of chess grandmasters, greater than Tigran Petrosian or the American Bobby Fisher. Not only because I loved him, but also because, like them, he was never tricked by false maneuvers. He saw things clearly—as they were—and several moves ahead.

CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR

BABI YAR

“Isn’t it beautiful?” Mother says, and a smile spreads across her face like ripples in water.

“It sure is,” Dad echoes, also breaking into a wide grin and lovingly caressing our new
shkaf
(wardrobe)—a polished dark-oak affair with two doors and a large, top-to-bottom mirror.

My sister Tanya dashes to our new acquisition and pulls both doors wide open. One side of the wardrobe is divided into six horizontal sections; the other, with a cross-beam at the top, is for hanging clothes.

“I want my own shelf,” Tanya announces loudly, like a prospector filing a mining claim.

“We’ll see about that,” Mother says, visibly pleased by the immense possibilities our new furniture gives her in organizing our meager possessions.

I take several steps forward and carefully close the doors—Tanya is so rough with everything, she can break this beauty even before we start using it. For a time, I, too, admire its shiny surface and the broad pattern of the wood. Our botany teacher says that it is possible to find out how old a tree is by its rings and layers, maybe even where it grew and what the weather was like while it stood in all its splendor somewhere in the woods before an ax brought it down.

Behind me, I hear Mother chat with our neighbor Klavdia Davidovna, who drops in attracted by the commotion
“for just a second.” Mom tells Klavdia Davidovna how long she had to wait in line for a chance to buy the wardrobe, and how much she wanted to buy a dining table to match it but could not afford it.

“Not even a bedside table,” Mother sighs. “They are so expensive, you know.”  Klavdia Davidovna sighs, too, “Too bad, dear,” although the only sentiment I detect in her voice is jealous satisfaction.

I turn my attention to the mirrored side of the wardrobe. I step back and look at my reflection in its silvery surface, and my heart sinks. The girl looking at me is gangly, with dark, slightly wavy hair, a swarthy complexion, and a very prominent nose. I stare at my reflection, grief-stricken—surely I must stand out among my light-haired, light-skinned, small-nosed peers. I look so-o-o Jewish. Being unattractive is bad enough, but being unattractive
and
so typically Jewish definitely quadruples my bad luck. Of course, with the exception of my mother and cousin Sima, all my relatives stand out.

“Mom, why doesn’t Sima look like us?”

Both Mother and Klavdia Davidovna turn to me in surprise.

“Why should she?” Mother says. “She’s not
our
daughter.” And Klavdia Davidovna who has no interest in our family affairs quickly reports, “I have things to do,” and retires to her room.

“But she’s your sister’s daughter,” I insist. “Aunt Raya looks Jewish, Roma (Sima’s half-brother) looks Jewish, but Sima doesn’t. She’s blond and her eyes are blue. Why?”

Grandmother, Sima, and Grandfather, 1951

“The mother is not all, you know. Roma’s father Abraham is a Jew. Sima’s father is Russian, so she takes after him.”

I gawk at Mom. “Sima’s father is
Russian
? I never knew that!”

Mother winks but says nothing.

“Didn’t you say that he was killed in the war?” I continue my investigation.

“Well,” Mother stumbles. “Maybe he was, maybe he wasn’t.” Then she quickly recovers and reaches for her habitual magic wand, “Did you do your homework?”

“Mom, wait! Which one is it?”

“Don’t tell anybody that you know,” Mother says and glances in the direction of our new wardrobe, as if somebody might be hiding there. “Raya and Sima’s father got divorced.”

Divorced?! This is the first time I have heard about
anybody
in our family getting divorced. I had always thought that only bad people get divorced: incurable alcoholics, adulterers, people like that. What did Aunt Raya’s first husband do?

“Well, our father would not allow Raya to marry a goy.”

“Why?”

“Because people should stick to their own kind. Those who don’t end up badly,” Mother says in an instructive tone of voice. “It’s not good for a Jewish woman to marry a Russian man. Even if things seem to be fine at first, his family hates her.” (Obviously, our family did not love that Russian husband either!) “So, eventually, they turn him against her, and they all treat her badly.” (As if Uncle Abraham always treats my aunt very well!) “Now, did you finish your homework?”

“So, Sima is Russian?” I say, disregarding Mother’s question, fascinated with the fact that my own cousin Sima has a
live
Russian father and therefore may be Russian herself.

“Well, she could’ve been registered as Russian. When she turned sixteen and went to get her passport (the most important document in our country), they expected her to register as Russian, but she said no.”

“She did not!” I choke.

“Yes, she did. The clerk in the passport office told her that she was making a big mistake and gave her a week to think it over. But she didn’t change her mind!” Mother says, and her face takes on the proud expression of a TV announcer reporting about the great achievements of Soviet agriculture. Then she pauses and the pride on her face melts away, “Well, it wouldn’t be good for her to displease Abraham. After all, he raised her.” With that, Mother turns around and heads to the kitchen, leaving me to ponder the news.

Sima said no? She must be crazy! I always knew that she was
vibrazhala
(one who puts on airs)—all older girls are. But I never thought of her as stupid! What Jewish kid would pass up a once-in-a-life-time chance to be registered as Russian? Life would be so much easier. Nobody would scowl at you, nobody would call you names, not to mention that you would never hear “You Jew, go to your Israel!” thrown at your face.

Of course, having a passport that reads “Nationality—Russian” would never work for somebody like me. But if blond, fair-skinned Sima had registered as Russian,
nobody
in the world would guess that she was tainted by anything Jewish. In fact, people must be surprised to learn otherwise.

Time goes by, and, on May 9, our whole family gets together to celebrate Victory Day—the capitulation of Nazi Germany.

“If not for our victory, you children wouldn’t have been born,” Mother says to Tanya and me when our loud argument begins drowning the sounds of a TV broadcast of the military parade from Red Square. “Sit down and watch the parade.”

Mother says this every year while watching huge rocket launchers, missiles and tanks clattering over Red Square's cobblestones and hundreds of troops goose-stepping in front of Lenin's red-granite mausoleum, where high government officials wave at them and smile to shouts of "
Slava
!" (glory) from the crowd.

I know Mother is right. If the Nazis had won the war, they would have killed all the Jews in our country and, possibly, everywhere in the world. Sometimes, I even try to imagine what life would be like with all of us gone. Who would live in our apartment, sit in my class, or play my piano? These thoughts make me feel invisible and also weightless, like a balloon torn from its thread and rising into the sky to its inevitable demise. Yet the parades are always the same, with deafening military machinery crawling through the Square, orchestras playing rousing marches, and solemn announcers reciting patriotic slogans over the loudspeakers.

I sit down, but instead of watching TV, I watch my older cousin. Sima no longer takes part in our “childish” games. Her light eyelashes are colored black, her blond hair is pulled back and arranged into an elegant bun on top of her head, and her blue eyes are turned to the ceiling, as if she is praying to an invisible deity to get her out of this boring place ASAP.

Ever since I learned about Sima’s true identity, I cannot decide if she is a hero like Alexander Matrosov, who sacrificed his life by throwing himself onto a German pill-box, or a crazy woman like the wife of Mr. Rochester from
Jane Eyre
. Also, my old doubts about my own identity surface with renewed intensity.

If my family managed to hide the fact of Sima’s parentage for all these years, who knows what else they might be hiding. What if I
am
adopted? While I do look like my father, I don’t look at all like my mother. For all I know, I could be my father’s daughter from a previous marriage! Of course, if that is true, my parents will never tell me. My only chance to find out the truth is by talking to Grandma.

The Victory Day parade is over and most of my family goes for a walk in the park. Under the pretense of helping to wash dishes, I stay behind with Grandma, who does not believe in walking for pleasure.

“Grandma, what did Mom look like when she was little?” I say, drying off a porcelain tea cup with a flowery pattern, from a set of china that my grandma uses for festive occasions.

“Oh, she was a tomboy. Short hair, very fast. Just like Tanya,” Grandma says, handing me another thoroughly washed cup.

I carefully dry it off, put it on top of the first cup, and, trying to sound very casual, say, “Did she ever look like me?”

“No.”

“And she was always pretty,” I continue my line of questioning. “Right?”

“
Bubala
, don’t get it into your head. You know what they say, ‘
Ne rodis crasivoi a rodis schastlivoi
.’ (Do not be born pretty, be born lucky, Russian proverb.) You’re good as you are,” Grandma says and picks up another dirty cup. Then she suddenly turns to me and, still holding the cup in one hand and a washcloth in the other, says, “My brother Pinchas had a fiancée, Dorka. She was so beautiful—tall, slender, eyes like violets, lips like red roses. All young men in her
shtetl
were crazy about her.”

I wait for Grandma to continue, but she just stands there, staring at something above my head, as if expecting beautiful Dorka to appear somewhere behind me.

“Did they get married?” I hurry Grandma.

Grandma puts down the cup and the washcloth, and lowers herself heavily on a chair next to the kitchen table. “Just before the wedding, they drafted Pinchas to the Tsar’s Army. And while he was at the front (during the First World War), the Cossacks raided Dorka’s shtetl—a pogrom, you know. Killed and looted, and whatnot.”

Memories cloud Grandma’s face and rain drops appear in her tired eyes, but she continues. “One Cossack chased after Dorka. She ran to the lake nearby, but he caught up with her and …” Here Grandma stops and gives me a strange look.

“Did he kill her, Grandma?” I say, goose bumps tickling my skin.

Grandma bites her lower lip, “No. But he … taunted her and left her there, unconscious.” Then she takes a long breath and continues. “It was in the winter, and she lay on the ice all night long. In the morning, people found her and brought her home. But she never fully recovered. Got tuberculosis on that lake.”

Grandma puts her hand with fingers distorted by arthritis and life-long work on my head and strokes my hair, “So you see what her beauty brought her? Nothing but
tsores
(misery, Yiddish).”

“Did she die?”

“Not then,” Grandma sighs, getting up and picking up her washcloth. “Pinchas came back from the war and married her anyway. They moved to Kiev (capital of Ukraine). She was very sickly, though. He took her to doctors and sanatoriums, and she would be better for a while, and then worse again. Up and down all the time. They did have two daughters, though, Shura and Rosa … Well,
genug
, enough talking. Go read a book,
bubala
.”

“Grandma, when did Dorka die?”

“Soon as the war started, in 1941. But let’s not talk about that.”

“Grandma, we studied that war in school. The battles, the generals, the war heroes—everything. You can tell me,” I say, feeling confident and worldly.

The washcloth in my grandmother’s hand flies up as if she is about to strike me, “Heroes, you say? They’re only heroes if they’re Russians. We, Jews, don’t count. When
we
die, they don’t even put up a tombstone!”

“What are you talking about, Grandma?” I say, shrinking back.