To say that it was customary to bargain at Asian bazaars is an understatement. It was a special ritual, a sort of skill, a game that spiced up the monotonous life. A price given by a seller was not just challenged. One needed to present an argument about why a price should be reduced. At the same time, the dignity of the seller and the produce was never debased.
Mama had a great command of that skill, and her Uzbek was perfect. She spoke it so well and grammatically correctly that people who conversed with her had no doubt that she was Uzbek. And generally, Mama who was tall and slender, with jet-black hair, was considered Uzbek at first sight. It often helped her get better prices. And it did help us that day.
We returned home after shopping. Mama had just started cooking when Emma began to whine and act capricious. She was sluggish on the way home, her cheeks red, her eyes crossed. It was clear without a thermometer that she had a fever.
Emma was often ill, now with the flu, now – pneumonia.
Seeing that Emma wasn’t well, Mama ran to bring the doctor, who lived nearby and visited us often.
“It’s the flu, a viral flu,” she said. “She must have got it at the kindergarten.”
She gave Emma an injection and warned Mama that she needed a shot every day. Seeing the doctor to the door, Mama gave her a bag of macaroni.
“Please, take it. I don’t have any money. It’s so embarrassing. We bother you so often.”
It was customary to pay visiting doctors or give them presents. But we had neither money nor nice things.
“Oh, c’mon, Ester,” the doctor was embarrassed. “You mustn’t.”
Pressing the bag of crunchy macaroni to her chest, Mama said, “I don’t have money to pay for injections. Please, send Emma to the hospital.”
An ambulance arrived in the evening. Emma understood that she would again be parted from her mama and began to cry, “Mama! Mommy! Don’t send me there alone! Please! Come with me!”
It was terribly noisy in the yard. Emma was crying and shouting. Jack was barking and straining at his leash. Confused, Valya and Misha were looking out of their window.
Mama, of course, couldn’t stand it any longer. She grabbed me by the hand, ran to the ambulance and persuaded the medics to allow her to accompany her daughter. We rode away.
I didn’t see the final scene, but I can reconstruct it for I had witnessed many of them.
It grew still. The yard went back to normal – a quiet, happy yard in which nothing was happening. Grandma Lisa walked slowly onto the porch.
“Misha! Valya! Why was the dog barking? Was someone here?”
Chapter 10. We shouldn’t live like this any longer
Tashkent was changing rapidly. Even I noticed it. Teams of construction workers from all the Republics in the Union came in after the earthquake. The city was overgrown with scaffolding. Cranes rose everywhere. It seemed to me that their booms looked like the barrels of huge cannons. Etched high against the sky, they spun from side to side as if looking for their target somewhere far away on the horizon. Each crane had an operator who would direct it to the proper place when prompted by a worker standing on the ground. A large curved hook would pick up a huge slab of reinforced concrete, and the crane would raise it to the very top of a building, rocking it like a swaddled baby. Their cables looked like very thin threads from afar, and it seemed that the loads they carried stayed in the air, held up by some magical force. I could have watched that amazing spectacle for hours.
The whole city was obsessed with the ongoing construction work. The radio broadcast the achievements of construction workers almost every day. And that was the truth – their help was very noticeable. The Soviet government knew how to demonstrate its might, which it unfortunately chose not to demonstrate when it was needed to take care of its people. It demonstrated its might only when it was possible to brag, to show off to the whole world.
No matter what achievements were made in construction or how fast they were carried out, it could not solve the housing problem, which had been really critical even before the earthquake. It was just as critical as in any big city in the Soviet Union. And now, after the disaster, it seemed that all people could think and talk about was housing.
People who were left without a roof over their heads formed “live lines” at every agency. There was a crowd of people at one of the buildings near Turkmen Bazaar, which housed the commission that evaluated apartments to determine how safe they were, and people, concerned and worried, would wait there to learn how their fate would be decided. Those whose apartments had been damaged were offered the option of leaving Tashkent. They were offered apartments in other, less populated cities in the Republic, or even beyond its boundaries.
Summer arrived, and it was hot and dry, as usual, though it seemed abnormally sultry. Our yard would become a desert by ten in the morning. Quiet birds hid in the crowns of the trees. Jack, trying to escape the heat in the shade of his kennel, lay with his tongue out, breathing heavily. Even flies didn’t fly above the extremely hot, soft asphalt.
Father couldn’t stand the heat. For people with asthma it’s usually easier to breathe when the weather is dry, but he would gasp for breath. He was so weak he couldn’t walk. He was taken to the hospital again.
And since, before that, Father had managed to quarrel with Grandma Lisa, the old story began again – Mama was once again the target at which all arrows were shot…
“Hey, you, ignoramus!” my “intelligent” Uncle Misha called to her. “Rent an apartment somewhere else. I’m willing to pay your rent.”
Mama would only shrug her shoulders in response. She was ready to move anywhere, even to the ends of the earth. But where? And how?
Father was feeling better at the hospital. Once, when the doctor was making her rounds, she saw Mama and said with satisfaction, “Well, he’s feeling better and better. You can take him home.”
She expected Mama’s usual reply, “Oh, I’m so glad. Thank you, doctor.” But this time Mama proclaimed decisively, her voice unusually sharp, “I have nowhere to take him.”
“What do you mean?” the surprised doctor asked.
“Our apartment was damaged. We’re staying in a tent in his parents’ yard.”
It was my turn to be surprised. What tent were we staying in? Fortunately, I didn’t ask Mama about it.
“Why don’t you stay with his parents?” the doctor asked.
And Mama answered – this time in her normal voice – and it was the truth, “Who has need of him, ill as he is? They’ve turned him away.”
I looked at Father. He bent his head low and didn’t interfere in the conversation. And what could he say? He knew that Mama was right. It was necessary to move away, at all costs.
“All right,” the doctor said after a pause. “Summon an official from the Evaluation Commission and bring us a certificate. Then we’ll decide what to do about it.”
We went from the hospital to Turkmen Bazaar, and Mama applied for an inspection of our apartment.
Then we went home, and I was thinking that I would see the tent Mama had spoken about, but it wasn’t in the yard.
I stayed outside to play near the summer shower. The big yellow tank was filled through a hose attached to the spigot. Besides the shower head, it had a faucet below. It couldn’t be turned off properly and there was always a small puddle below it, which I found very useful. Pigeons drank water from it. It was also good for playing.
I was having a great time at the puddle when I heard muted blows. Boom-m… Boom-m… Boom-m. They were becoming louder and more frequent. They were coming from behind our door. Frightened, I rushed to the house and threw open the door. The blows, now very loud, were coming from the bedroom. I looked inside.