The addresses of these women don’t appear in any directory, and in any case it’s no use simply knowing who they are – you must be sent by someone, by an Authority. They will never open the door to you if they haven’t been forewarned of your arrival, or if they don’t recognize the signature on your arm.
Before moving to Transnistria, Aunt Anfisa had lived in a small town in central Russia, and occasionally put criminals up in her flat. They would go to her house as soon as they got out of prison, partly just to spend some time with a woman who was capable of loving as a criminal was used to being loved, and partly to inquire about the whereabouts of their friends, find out what was going on in the criminal world and ask for help in their new life.
One evening Aunt Anfisa was visited by a fugitive whom the police had been hunting for some time. He and the rest of his gang had carried out several bank robberies, but one day something had gone wrong and the police had succeeded in catching them at it. A violent chase had ensued, and the criminals, as they fled and endeavoured to throw the cops off the scent, had shared out the loot and split up. Each had gone his own way, but, as far as Anfisa knew, only two of them had managed to get away; the other six had been killed in clashes with the police. The group had killed more than twenty officers and security guards, so as far as the police were concerned it had been a matter of pride not to let any of the robbers escape, and to give them all an exemplary punishment, so as to deter other people from doing the same.
This fugitive turned up at Anfisa’s house with a baby girl, who was only a few months old. He explained to her that his original plan, to escape via the Caucasus, Turkey and Greece, had never even got off the ground: the police had burst into his flat, and one officer had killed his wife, the child’s mother; but he had made his escape, and now had come to Anfisa’s house, sent by a friend.
He left Anfisa his little girl – along with a bag full of money, a few diamonds, and three ingots of gold – and asked her to take care of the child. She agreed, and not only because of the money: Anfisa couldn’t have children herself, and like any woman who longs for children, had found the prospect irresistible.
The man told her that if she wanted a quiet life she would have to disappear. He advised her to go to Transnistria – to the town of Bender, a land of criminals, where he had the right connections and where no one could find her and harm her.
That same night Anfisa, with a bag full of money and food and with the little girl in her arms, had left for Transnistria. Later she heard the child’s father had been killed in a shoot-out with the police while trying to reach the Caucasus.
Anfisa didn’t know what the little girl was called: in all the confusion the man had forgotten to tell her his daughter’s name. So she had decided to give her the name of the patron saint of parents, Saint Ksenya: or ‘Ksyusha’, as we called her affectionately.
Right from the start Anfisa had understood that Ksyusha was different from other children, but that never stopped her being proud of her: they had a wonderful relationship, those two – they were a true family.
Ksyusha was always going off on her own, all over the place, and wherever she went she found open doors and people who loved her.
Sometimes her autism was more obvious than usuaclass="underline" all of a sudden she would freeze and stand motionless for a long while, gazing into the distance, as if concentrating on something a long way off. Nothing, it seemed, could wake her or bring her back to her senses. Then she would suddenly come out of that state and resume whatever she had been doing before.
There was an old doctor who lived in our area, who had a theory of his own about Ksyusha and her moments of absence.
He was an excellent doctor, and a man who loved literature and life. He lent me a lot of books, especially ones by American authors who were banned in the Soviet Union, and also some uncensored translations of European classics, such as Dante.
Under Stalin’s regime he had been put in a gulag for hiding in his apartment a family of Jews who, like many Jews in those years, had been declared enemies of the people. Since he had collaborated with ‘enemies of the people’ he had been given a harsh sentence, and like many political prisoners during that period, had been sent to a gulag together with ordinary convicts, who hated political prisoners. Already on the train journey to the camp he had made himself useful to the outlaw community by setting the broken bones of an important criminal who had been savagely beaten by the soldiers on guard. In the camp he had been officially declared a lepíla, or doctor of the criminals.
After several years in the gulag he had developed such a close relationship with the criminal community, despite not being a criminal himself, that when he was released he no longer felt he belonged to the civilized world. So he decided to go on living in the criminal community, and therefore had come to Transnistria, to our district, where he had a friend.
This doctor was a very interesting individual because he was a complicated character of many layers: a physician, an intellectual who had preserved the taste and refinement of a person with a university education, but also a man with a past as a convict, a friend of criminals, whose language he spoke fluently and whom he resembled in almost every respect.
On the question of Ksyusha he used to say it was very important not to disturb her when she was motionless, but that one thing in particular was essentiaclass="underline" when she returned to her senses, everything around her must be just as it had been at the moment of separation.
So we boys knew we mustn’t touch her when she went into that state. We knew this, and we tried as hard as we could to protect our Ksyusha from any possible shock, but as often happens among youngsters, sometimes we overdid things in our attempt to follow the doctor’s advice.
Once, for example, we were out in a boat. There were three of us plus Ksyusha and we were going upstream along the river when suddenly the motor conked out. We put the oars into the water, but after a few minutes I noticed that Ksyusha had changed: she was sitting with her back erect and her head quite still, like a statue, and staring at the unknown… So we, poor fools, started frantically rowing against the current, because we were scared that if on Ksyusha’s reawakening the scenery around her was different, her health would be seriously affected.
We rowed like mad for almost an hour; we took turns but were still exhausted. People watched us from the bank, trying to make out what these idiots were doing on a boat in the middle of the river, where the current was strongest, and why they kept rowing against the current in order to stay in the same position.
When Ksyusha woke up we all gave a sigh of relief and we went straight home, though she kept asking us to go on a little further…
We thought the world of our Ksyusha; she was our little sister.
When I was released from prison after my second juvenile conviction, I went wild for a week. Then I spent a whole day in the sauna: I fell asleep under the hot steam, perfumed with pine essence, which pinned me to the boiling hot wooden bed. Afterwards I went fishing with my friends.
We took four boats and some large nets, and travelled a long way: we went upriver as far as the hills, where the mountains began. There the river was much wider – sometimes you couldn’t see the opposite bank – and the current was less strong. A whole plain scattered with small pools among wild woods and fields, and a scent of flowers and grass carried on the wind; when you breathed it you felt you were in heaven.
We fished at night and relaxed by day; we would build a fire and make fish soup or fish baked in the earth, our favourite dishes. We talked a lot: I told the others what I had seen in jail, the everyday stories of prison, the people I had met and the interesting things I had heard from others. My friends filled me in on what had happened in our area while I’d been in prison: who had left, who had been put inside, who had died, who had fallen ill or disappeared, the troubles in our part of town and the conflicts with people from another area, the quarrels that had broken out during my absence. Someone talked about his previous conviction, someone else about what he’d heard from his relatives who had returned from jail. That’s how we spent the days.