The memory of our childhood returns, the more than sibling solidarity that bonded us together, a redirection onto our schoolfellows of our longing for a close relative to love. The search indeed for an absent mother in the features of a female teacher, a fellow pupil … As a child, I must have stared at Kira’s face in that way.
I should like to reassure the little girl whose presence I sense deep inside this beautiful, self-confident young woman, in reality so defenseless.
“You’re right, Kira. Absolutely right. This society can’t last much longer. And your artist friends, I can understand them: censorship, the impossibility of traveling, empty shops. Except that … Look at the two of us, for instance. We were brought up in an orphanage, right? Did you ever go without food? No. The same for clothes. It was very simple, but we didn’t walk around in rags. And later on you and I were both able to go to college without rich parents paying for private tutors and lodging for us. But above all …”
I am interrupted by a mighty shout of laughter. Kira stands up in the pool and hurls great spurts of water at me, with both hands.
“You’re a hopeless Leninist! Yes, I remember now. You were the one who dragged us off, me and some other girls, trying to find an old madwoman who’d met Lenin, or so she said! Look, by the age of twelve you were already completely brainwashed … It’s unbelievable how people still hang on to that rotten concept of communism! You’d be a first-rate propagandist for the Soviet paradise. Free education, free health care. What are you going to give us next? Free rail travel to the gulag, I suppose?”
She weeps tears of laughter and for a short while I begin to have doubts about that vulnerability covered up by her self-assurance. She seems like a young woman completely comfortable in the life she has chosen.
“Go on. Take off your shirt and pants! Do a bit of sunbathing; it’ll drive away your gloom. If you haven’t got trunks it doesn’t matter. We all know Soviet industry only produces a single type of underpants, big enough to fit three fellows like you at once …”
Embarrassed and reverting to being a schoolboy confronted by a mocking girl, I take off my shirt, murmuring, “Actually the doctor told me to be careful of the sun. On account of my burns …”
My back, in particular, is still marked with red patches where the new skin is delicate and sensitive. Kira abandons her jeering manner.
“Go into the shade. But, you know, those wounds will form scar tissue better out in the air …”
Our generation has retained this pious respect for wounded soldiers. Very soon, however, my friend remembers she is dealing with a special kind of soldier, one of those who took part in a war waged by an abominable regime. So this is an army man not entitled to the customary consideration.
“And you still dare to find excuses for those geriatrics in the Kremlin who’ve turned you into a leopard! Have you seen your back in a mirror? It looks like squashed tomatoes. I hope they gave you a medal for your bravery!”
I hesitate for a moment, then tell myself that, in her eyes, I have nothing left to lose.
“It was even more stupid than you might think. Our helicopter crashed just before landing. When we jumped clear the chopper was already on fire. I was lucky enough to land on something like a mattress — a very big guy. I don’t know how many of his ribs I cracked. And this saved me from breaking anything myself. And thanks to me, he escaped burns on his face. In point of fact I took all the heat on my back. We used to tease one another at the hospital. He’d say, ‘You smashed my ribs, you bastard!’ and I’d say, ‘Feast your eyes on this, you swine. This is how your face would look if I hadn’t protected you!’ And I’d turn and show him my back. Yes, squashed tomatoes, as you say … So, you see there was no reason to stick a medal on me …”
Kira laughs again, this time with a hint of contempt. And I regret having told her about my regimental comrade. He and I, she thinks, belong in the same category: we are stupid enough not to have totally rejected the world we were born into and grew up in, which is now dying of a pitiful and often ridiculous old age. I ought to spit out this past, deride the people who had the misfortune to live through it, that way I could satisfy Kira and her friends. How can I explain to her that the past of this country, which is on the brink of disappearing forever, also contains our childhood? And this brief fragment of memory, too: high up on a grandstand, in the middle of a huge park covered in snow, I see the pupils from our class, far away, heading toward the orphanage after clearing the pathways, and there, apart from the others, already bridling at discipline, walks a little girl, whom I can recognize by her red hat … Must that memory also be rejected? And this apple orchard, too? And its intoxicating beauty? Must it be derided, seen as a failure on the part of a society that promised a dreamlike future and has lamentably run aground? But derided in the name of what other future?
Kira’s laughter calms down, she gives a pitying sigh.
“Your problem is that you can’t free yourself mentally. You can’t even imagine how people could live and think differently. How life could be radically different!”
“Wait, this radically different life interests me. So tomorrow communism’s rotten shanty will be razed to the ground. That’s clear. But what, in fact, do you and your friends propose to replace it? What kind of society? What way of life?”
“We propose freedom! And a civilized society, do you understand? A way of life where you don’t have to stand in line for three hours to get hold of a pair of boots. Where you can travel without a visa. Where you can publish your manuscripts freely. Yes, a material and social life to a modern standard. And where you can happily …”
“Drive your convertible along Sunset Boulevard …”
“You satirize everything. That’s another habit of the good little Soviet citizen you’ve never stopped being … Well, why not a convertible? Why despise people who like to own nice things and enjoy life to the full? After all, God created men the way they are …”
“Well, I think it was more a case of men creating that kind of god. But let it pass … OK, no more satire, I promise. So tomorrow, thanks to your friends, we’ll have freedom. Shoes bought without having to stand in line. Thirty television channels. In a word, a multiparty system plus material comfort for everyone, or almost everyone … And then what?”
“How do you mean: then what? Well, that’s how it’ll go on being.”
“And that’s all? Don’t you find the prospect a bit dispiriting?”
The thought that the society her friends long for might become a matter of routine, might lose its dazzle as a future dream, is an idea that puzzles Kira. I suspect she has never foreseen a sequel to the paradise of freedom and abundance that inspires her dissident activity. She stretches out on the sand again, somewhat sulkily, like a child not wanting to admit reality, and grumbles with a sigh, “OK, if you prefer to remain stuck in the communist lunatic asylum, stay right here in this orchard. You couldn’t have chosen a place more suited to your tastes. Only, as I warned you, these apple trees are barren. You’ll never get a bite to eat here. It’s just like the empty stores in this country …”
The voice she says it in allows a weary indifference to be heard, a refusal to argue. With a yawn she turns away, stretches out her hand, scoops up a little water, pats her forehead and her neck, then lies still.