I'm surprised… I'm astonished… More than anything I'm astonished by how short life is. People say: «When I was young», but I was young only recently, I was still young yesterday. For some reason it took me a long time to get pregnant the second time. The first time it was a snap. But the second time, I just couldn't. For three years. One day I went into a church. I stood by the Virgin and it was as if she spoke to me:
«What do you want?»
«A son.»
Maybe that's it… (Musing). No matter how far we are from the stars… No matter… They're there, watching us, looking after us, I went to bed again that night and thought, I can't remember what I thought. I'll be honest: I've always wanted to write letters to people, or rather to a certain person, I've always dreamed of meeting a person like that, even if we couldn't live together, I could write to him. Sometimes he would answer. Fantasies… Fantasies are everything… I'm sorry, I suppose, sorry that we're all lonely. (Pauses). Although no, I realize now… Women are never lonely, men are lonely. I feel sorry for them. Always. Even though they've let me down and haven't lived up to my hopes, I still feel sorry for them. I don't love them so much as I feel sorry for them. That's the main thing, the biggest confession I have to make. About my life. And actually, if I think about it, I've never known where my life is, unless it's with the children. Which is why I just cover my face with my hands and forge ahead…
My father was in the military. A veterinary doctor. We moved all over the Urals with him. Our gypsy life drove my mother to tears, as soon as we'd gotten used to one place, we'd be sent to another. When Solzhenitsyn's Gulag Archipelago first came out here, everyone was talking about it. I bought a copy and gave it to my brother. A few days later he asked me:
«Have you read it?»
«Not yet.»
«Read it. It's about everything you and I saw as children.»
I began reading… The first things to enter my mind were not pictures, but sounds. And the barking of dogs… Some kind of weeping… not human weeping, but the weeping of a violin… My brother and I, we'd run out of the house, sit on a tree stump and listen. We lived on a hill. Surrounded by the taiga. In a military settlement: a few houses for officers, a commissary in the center, and soldiers' barracks. Down below was a prison compound. A camp. In the evening someone there played the violin. Papa said: «A music professor from Moscow.» The first real music of my life. We didn't have a radio, or a gramophone and records, I'd never heard music like that before. As if someone were playing not down below, but up above… In the sky… And the barking of dogs… The camp was guarded by fierce Alsatians. And there were watch-towers…
We had a good view from up above, it was interesting.
«Look what a big bird house,» my brother pointed.
«Where?»
«Over there. A man's sitting in it with a rifle.»
Mama found us and led us away…
Papa treated sick horses. The winters in the Urals were bitterly cold. Men streamed into the taiga. In endless columns… gray… black… They were going to work. The work was backbreaking. In the taiga they made trestles out of logs, then pushed timber-loaded trolleys on metal wheels along that wooden road to the main road. There the horses helped, they pulled the draughts to the station stop. Papa always said: «I'm sorry for the horses. Car engines will stall in the cold, but these are animals.» Men in the columns collapsed. The Alsatians got them up, forced them to stand up… Black Alsatians, black men… Some of them would strip naked, their bodies exuding steam… That was how they protested when they no longer had the strength to work… Or else they wanted to die without anything on… without those black clothes… I don't know… And I still don't understand… One man put his hand down on a stump… And chopped it off… They picked up the hand, tied it to his back and made him walk the whole way to the hospital. Six miles from our settlement… Papa told us about it…
Once we saw an Alsatian tearing a man to pieces… A man who'd collapsed… «Wolf! Wolf!» I screamed. «People, help! Help!!»
Mama found us and led us away…
When Stalin died, everyone was afraid. A neighbor came and told Mama. Mama began to cry. But one officer… he was so happy he started dancing… He laughed and danced by the commissary… They locked him up in the guardhouse… (Pauses). I was a little girl… but I remember this clearly… Two men walked out of the compound carrying something. One was young, the other old. They stopped. My brother and I were playing nearby and I had two lumps of sugar in my pocket. I jumped up and ran to them. I gave them to the young man. He smiled. The old man began to cry.
Mama found us and led us away…
Maybe that's it, um-hum… From then on… from then on whenever I saw a lot of men, at a train station or a stadium, I always thought of that… Even now… I think of that… Decades later… (Happy or sad, you can't tell). I didn't pick a very good husband either. I didn't fall in love with him, I felt sorry for him… We met at a dance; he was five years older. I'd just started university, he'd already finished. He would walk me home and then stand around, he wouldn't go away. I'd look out the window and he'd be standing there in the dark, when I turned out the light he'd still be there. He froze his ears off that winter. I wasn't planning to marry anyone yet, certainly not him, but he said: «Without you I'll become a drunk. I'll fall apart.» And, actually, as soon as we became friends he stopped drinking, stopped smoking. His sisters — there were four of them, he was the only boy in the family — couldn't get over it: «He loves you, he's become a different person. Completely changed.» I thought so, too. That spring, on my birthday, he arrived with two buckets of flowers, he'd carried them around the city that way: a bucket of bird cherry in one hand, a bucket of lilacs in the other. «You're crazy!» I couldn't stop laughing. «Marry me. I'll fall apart without you.» Mama tried to talk me out of it:' That's how he is now, but one day it'll start all over again. He'll go back to drinking. And you'll feel sorry for him. My mother knew me through and through. But we got married… Maybe that's it, um-hum… I was fond of him, cooked him delicious meals. The house was always neat. I baked the pies he liked. I thought: that's what love is. A clean house and hot pies. I wanted a daughter first… The doctors made me happy: «You're going to have a girl.» I moved into my belly… (Laughs). My soul moved into my belly. Mama's advice: «When you've had your baby, ask them to bring it to you right away and make sure you kiss it. You may not want to, but you must. If you kiss it, you'll love it.» They brought me my daughter and I kissed her on the cheek. One child… Then another… A boy… My heart was full… I thought: and this is love… But he began to drink. A lot. Life was hard enough and now he wasn't bringing any money home. We lived in Perm, a big industrial city. When we were first sent there after university, it was considered well supplied, but gradually everything disappeared. Food, things. You'd walk into a store and there wouldn't even be any cans, no canned vegetables, no canned fish, nothing but three-quart jars of birch juice. As soon as any meat turned up, there was a huge line, if you started to complain — that you'd been given a bad piece or that the meat was old and refrozen — you'd be kicked out of the line. Take it, or get out of here! Everyone was angry. I guess I'm strong… A good friend of mine couldn't take it: «Life is hopeless. My husband drinks.» I remember the moment… I'm strong… He got down on his knees: «I'll fall apart without you.» I didn't believe him… not anymore. I decided to get divorced… He didn't fall apart, he found another woman who took him as he was. Here any man is in demand… Like after the war… Still… But two years after we'd divorced we were still living together in the same apartment, two small rooms — we couldn't swap them for anything. On days off he'd buy himself a carpetbag full of wine, cheap apple wine, and stretch out on the couch. Come evening I couldn't help saying: «Go eat something. You'll die of hunger.» I felt sorry for him… That was my whole first marriage… My whole love… (Laughs).