“I borrowed it from an acquaintance,” Lokshev said.
“Has it overheated?”
“Seems it hasn’t…”
Two big reels with tape were turning on the Dnipro tape recorder. The Dnipro was considered portable, but it was terribly heavy and most certainly outdated. However, we were glad we could use it. Needless to say, none of us had his own tape recorder, and at that point we didn’t all even have a record player.
So, what was it about rock that captivated us? Perhaps the secret lay in the fact that it emancipated us. It gave us a feeling of freedom, freedom from irksome and presumptuous teachers, from boring classes, from parents who watched over us obtrusively – in a word, from everybody and everything.
We might ask ourselves – why rock? Why didn’t classical music or concerts of the famous Soviet pop singer Magomayev create the same sensation? Perhaps rock could convey the feelings that gripped a teenager. It gave vent to energy that raged inside you, drew you into its realm, turned you into a participant in an event. It’s not accidental that members of the audience scream at rock groups’ concerts. They all are very young. They badly need to “blow off steam.”
I still like rock. To tell you the truth, it scares me that this “madness” often knows no bounds. Rock turns into something like drugs, except that a person doesn’t need anything else and isn’t interested in anything else. Sometimes I think, at famous rock groups concerts, “Good heavens, is this yelling, screaming crowd listening to performers?” It seems that the music is for them only a signal for some sort of altered state.
Perhaps, I’m wrong – does that happen because I’m already past a certain age? But I know one thing for sure: it didn’t happen to us, my friends and me. We loved music and knew how to listen to it. We could dismiss the imitations and make the right choice – classic rock.
From time to time, I take out albums of our old favorite songs, go through them and listen with pleasure: “July Morning,” “Belladonna,” “Hotel California,” “Let It Be.”
And I remember our “musical repasts.” It seems to me – maybe my words are much too high-sounding – but it seems to me that our improvisation wasn’t just a childish affectation but a creative action. No? You don’t agree with me? Then try, just for half an hour to imitate a rock group, without instruments, reproducing the music with your whole body, every muscle, every cell.
Bulat Okudzhava, a famous bard of the 1960s, sang in his song “The Musician”:
I wasn’t simply curious; I was flying the sky.
No, I wasn’t bored at all, I was hoping to understand
how these hands could possibly make these magic sounds…
Something like that also happened to us.
Chapter 56. The Torture
“Remember, in fifty minutes, not before that,” Uncle Avner said sternly as he left the porch, walking after Mama. Mama turned around, nodded to me as if confirming his words, and sighed deeply.
I closed the door behind them and lingered there. Oh, how I didn’t want to return to that room. How scary it was to hear her groans… They weren’t quite groans but slow plaintive entreaties:
“O-oy, I can’t take it anymore. O-oy, Valery, I can’t. Where are you? Untie them.”
It was Grandma Abigai moaning and groaning. Pale and haggard, she was sitting up in her bed. Even though she was leaning against the pillows, her posture was tense, unnatural. That was because Grandma’s legs were bandaged to a board.
Grandma Abigai had had problems with her knees for a long time. I had heard about it so often that I had grown used to Grandma’s illness and her inability to walk properly, as if it were something totally natural. All old people had health problems… Mama, of course, worried, suffered and was eager to go to Tashkent. But I… When I heard about it, I felt sorry for her, but it would immediately leave my mind.
Two years after Grandpa Hanan passed away, it had become more than she could bear. She would spend practically the whole day in bed with her legs bent comfortably at the knees. Nobody had a clue about the consequences of such immobility. Her knees ceased to bend at all after a few months. And Grandma couldn’t walk.
That’s when Uncle Avner became alarmed and rushed to see doctors…
It turned out that there was nobody but Uncle Avner to take care of Grandma. Her three older daughters had long had their own families and moved away. Marusya lived in Bukhara, Mama in Chirchik, and Rosa had five adopted children. It was only twenty-year-old Rena, the youngest daughter, who still lived with Grandma Abigai. But Rena, the heavenly bird, could hardly take care of her mother for she couldn’t take care of herself. It was hard for Avner, but he didn’t complain. Avner had always helped his parents. And he loved his sisters. Perhaps, their difficult wartime childhood had brought them closer together. It seemed to me that he was particularly attached to my mama. Even his voice changed when he talked to her. Grandpa Hanan loved his daughter very much. How gaily, affectionately and melodiously he would say her name, Ester, every time he visited us. But still, Uncle Avner managed to say her name much more tenderly and gently.
As for Mama, she wasn’t as close to anyone else in her family as she was to her brother. It’s not enough to say that she loved Avner; she admired him. She admired his honesty and kindness, his abilities, energy and achievements.
After serving in the army, Avner graduated from the Institute of National Economy and very soon became an important administrator. By the time Grandma fell ill, Avner was the manager of the meat facility attached to the Military Trade Center. That was a senior position, and, as anyone who lived in the Soviet Union will know, a very advantageous one. In a country where it wasn’t easy to get a piece of good fresh meat, who wouldn’t want to do a favor for the “Meat King.”
I was too young to wonder whether Uncle Avner used those advantages and possibilities. Of course, I heard that there were spiteful people who envied him – anyone in his position would have had such critics. They tried to mar his reputation as much as they could. But Mama always repeated with pride: Uncle Avner was a really hard worker, and not the kind who spent long hours in jacket and tie in his office. He always preferred to wear overalls. He would put them on, go to his army of workers and soldiers and, working along with them, unload goods and arrange them in refrigerators and warehouses.
In a word, he didn’t behave like a boss. He behaved like a real, diligent administrator. And the enterprise worked very well.
But those weren’t Uncle Avner’s only merits. Like his father, Grandpa Hanan, the Meat King had a sunny poetic soul. His father had nurtured his love of music and singing.
The Bucharan Jews have a kind of old folk music – an instrumental-vocal genre called shashmakom. It consists of cycles of songs that incorporate verses by different poets, including famous ones like Alisher Navoiy, Omar Khayyam and Ganjavi Nizami. The cycle is set to folk music. A cycle consists of six parts, which is why it is called shashmakom: shash meaning “six” in Tadjik and makom meaning “part.” Humorous, wedding and, naturally, love songs are included in the cycle. When performed, they’re accompanied by Tadjik percussion and bowed instruments. The songs have a distinctive and complex vocal structure. One must sing higher and higher to reach the highest notes and then descend slowly. A singer needs a very wide vocal range to cope with such an arc.
By the time of the revolution, that wonderful skill had almost been forgotten. Surprisingly, it was the Bukharan Jews who remembered it and began to revive it. My Grandpa Hanan was one of them.