In a word, the Jews lived there. And all of them, to a man, were disgusting.
That was the most offensive thing.
The noise of filing died out. The class was laughing loudly. Why and at what I didn’t know, but everybody laughed.
And I continued to saw… I bent over the vise, pushing the file down as hard as I could. I didn’t want to look at the principaclass="underline" it seemed to me that he was laughing at me. After all, I was Jewish, the only Jew in this class. He surely knew it. So how could he… I didn’t want to look at anybody because the guys were laughing too. They knew I was Jewish, that I was right there, and they laughed. Had they forgotten about it? Did they do it deliberately? Was anyone looking at me?
“Are you actually supplying the whole Israeli army with nameplates?” the principal was having fun as he now addressed Piece of Iron. He was sure that the popular subject he had chosen for his quips would meet with approval, and he had been right.
No one worked but me. I bent even lower over the vise. I was choking with pain, humiliation and anger.
The class was laughing loudly, and the sounds of their laughter blended with the piercing grinding of my file, the grinding of metal against metal.
Chapter 58. Our Friends the Musheyevs
“Amun! Aren’t you ashamed, Amun?”
Those words were addressed to my father. Amun, not Amnun – that’s how his name was pronounced by Aunt Maria, Maria Musheyeva. She swallowed the “n” in the middle of his name. Now it was particularly noticeable for Aunt Maria cried out Father’s name. As she always did at moments of anger or sorrow, she spread her arms, raised them with her palms up and bent her head to her shoulder.
That very Amun had just hurt the feelings of her best friend, his wife Ester, at her table during a dinner to which the Yuabov family had been invited. And it was not the first time.
Today, Maria had served an especially delicious sirkaniz, something like pilaf, except with peas. Father stretched his hand toward the langari, the big platter, from which we were all eating, and said:
“You cook so wonderfully, Maria. Teach her how to cook,” and he motioned his head toward Mama.
That’s when Maria flared up.
“Amun, how can you? As if Ester’s cooking is worse. We’ve had dinner at your place many times!”
“Amnun must have cooked sirkaniz,” Uncle Yura, Maria’s husband said, trying to turn the conversation into a joke. “Amnun, is it you who keep house? Tell us, Ester.”
Both Father and Mother were silent. Mama could have answered Uncle Yura’s joke with a joke, but too many insults had piled up. It had been a few years since Mama had stopped tolerating them. If it happened at home, she answered Father, sometimes quite harshly, but only at home, never when visiting somebody. She remained reserved in her Eastern special way.
As for Father, he simply couldn’t shift easily to a different mood. He was silent, his lips twisted, which was what he did whenever he was angry or confused. What a strange man he was! He knew well that the Musheyevs would not back him up, that they would stand up for Mama without fail. Neither Aunt Maria nor Uncle Yura could bear Father’s rudeness. But he acted tough over and over again. Rudeness with respect to Mama had become so much of a habit with him that he couldn’t restrain himself, even in public. It was impossible to anticipate at what moment or why he would attack Mama. It was also impossible to know how he would do it. In a word, Mama was always tense in Father’s company, even when they were visiting somebody.
The Musheyevs were old friends of our family. We had become friends six years before. Once, at the beginning of September, as I was returning from school, I found a little black-haired boy, a bit younger than I, at our place.
“Meet Edik,” Father said. “He’s our new neighbors’ son. Help him. He just started first grade.”
I was flattered to help the first grader. I had already started third grade. Edik made himself comfortable at my desk and opened his alphabet book. The words, divided into syllables, were printed under a colorful drawing on the page: “DA-SHA, LET US GO HOME.” I was happy and even got excited: it was a familiar page. Once, I had also sat at this desk and read a syllable at a time about Dasha. I cleared my throat and said, “Let’s do it.”
Edik, who was the eldest of the Musheyevs’ three sons, and I and our parents soon became friends, though the real friendship, in the true sense of the word, a true closeness, sprang up between the women.
It might seem strange at first glance: my mama and Maria were so different in both their fates and personalities. Mama was taciturn, withdrawn, even distrustful. She couldn’t and didn’t want to tell people about her sorrows – how her married life had turned out or our financial difficulties. Aunt Maria was talkative, open, sincere, and if she befriended someone, she did it with all her heart, generosity and kindness. For her, friendship was not simply spending time enjoyably together; she was always ready to help, to take a part of her friend’s grief and worries upon herself.
Peace prevailed in the Musheyev family. I never heard Yura and Maria quarrel or hurt each other’s feelings. Yura was kind and generous. And this family lived in comfortable circumstances, which neither my poor Mama nor we kids could even dream of.
It’s funny but, perhaps one of the things that brought Aunt Maria and Mama together was exactly that wellbeing, or rather how it had been achieved. Just don’t assume that Mama was looking for wealthy friends. No, that was not the point.
The way in which Yura Musheyev achieved wellbeing was quite Soviet. He was engaged in a business which, in itself, opened up great possibilities and profits, particularly in the field in which Uncle Yura was involved: confectionary products. All the ingredients used to make them – sugar, butter, flour, and so on and so forth – were those very “possibilities” that Uncle Yura used quite extensively to arrange his own underground and very profitable business.
Why do I call that the Soviet way? Because in the Soviet Union, at least in our republic, practically everybody who had access to material of value stole, with rare exceptions. And that didn’t mean that the hundreds of thousands of people who did it were perverted or had an innate tendency to steal, or that poverty and a desire to live better prompted them to do it. I think there were other aspirations that were quite powerful.
Why do people in normal capitalist countries become businessmen? They do it not just for the sake of the “golden calf.” They obviously feel a need to have their own business, to put their creative energy into it, to plan, to live an active life filled with risk and competition. Passionate people, even those prone to risky adventures, often become good businessmen. The Soviet system paid no heed to such traits or needs of human nature. To be precise, the authorities didn’t recognize their existence, and they condemned and persecuted those who tried to implement them. As for officials on different levels who represented that power, they, without ceremony, transferred what belonged to the state and the people into their pockets. Now we know what became of it. But in the past, anyone who wanted to do business, anyone who was eager to have some independence, became a swindler sooner or later.
Yes, we lived in a strange country and led a strange life… It gradually corrupted souls and made the notions of what was good and what was bad fuzzy and illegible.