After the first two exhibition halls my head started to spin. I found a bench and sat down. Here was a world to sweep you off your feet. I didn’t attempt to understand Teacher Blūms’ descriptions. I just allowed his words and the paintings to flow through me like fine grains through a sieve, catching here and there, and sprouting in the fertile soil of my imagination.
Time stood still. We wandered through the halls as if possessed. Soon we were close to exhausted. Then I saw a brilliant green moon set in a black painting. I sat on the floor before the painting and could not leave. The painting drew me into its darkness and its light, which were fighting each other in the small, square-framed space. I was there between the green moon and the darkness into which everything vanished – me, my mother, my grandmother and step-grandfather, the hamster in its cage, the tiny clay figure I had made. Everything spiralled as if in a whirlpool, then vanished into darkness.
I came to my senses. Teacher Blūms was saying, ‘You fainted by the Kuindzhi.’ The frightened members of my group stood around me. The museum guards had brought a glass of water.
At night we went to see how the bridges are raised over the Neva. The bridge jaws gaped open and rose majestically to meet the star-filled heavens. Below flowed the river that I was to say hello to from my mother.
My daughter came to see me four weeks after her spring holiday. She had grown thin. She spent her time in her room or in the kitchen gazing apathetically out of the window. Something had happened.
We weren’t accustomed to questioning one another. In the evening muffled sobs issued from my daughter’s room. I stepped inside.
‘Mamma,’ she said through tears, ‘after the Leningrad trip they let Teacher Blūms go. Someone told the headmistress that I fainted by a painting and he was let go. But that’s not all.’
‘You fainted by a painting?’ I asked.
‘Yes, I was tired and I had my period. Besides, that painting was incredibly beautiful, just the darkness and a green moon. I looked at it for a long time. Then suddenly it was as if the darkness drew all of us into it – me, you, Grandmother and Step-Grandfather, and the little clay baby. It grew dark in front of my eyes and I fainted.’
She cried so dreadfully, weighed down by a great guilt that should not have been hers to carry.
‘That’s no reason to dismiss a teacher.’
‘It was only an excuse, Mamma. It turns out they had been watching our teacher from the very first day our group met. It turns out that someone among us reported everything, absolutely everything, to the headmistress. She relayed everything on to the KGB.’
I sat by my daughter’s bed, listening. A wave of suffocating hatred washed over me. It was as if the ghost of Winston was standing outside the window. The marks of his torture were visible – he was hardly recognizable. He had been forced to confess and to accept ‘their’ truth. This spectre that had burdened me for so long now also burdened my daughter.
‘But that’s not all, Mamma,’ she said, through tears. ‘A week after the trip, the head called me out of class and led me to a room beside her office. It was like that time when we had graffiti scrawled on the pavement. There, in that room, sat a dreadful man. Dreadful, Mamma, with a massive head, light hair and evil eyes.’
I stroked my daughter’s head. Shudders passed through me as if rushing in from a distance – from the stand of young spruce trees which my father had tried to protect, from the cold suitcase in which my mother had hidden me, from the old professor who had reported our talk about God, from the Engels Street room in which I denied everything, from Serafima’s husband’s ugly face, from my Soviet cage, where I went on living without the courage to eat my child. I fought with all my strength against this battering. My hands must not tremble. I must comfort my crying child.
‘He asked me, “Did Teacher Blūms take you to a church?” straight out like that. I was so frightened by his evil expression that I just trembled and said nothing. Then he walked behind me, Mamma, he placed a hand on my shoulder and said in a chilling voice, “You won’t graduate from this school, and you’ll never be accepted at a university if you don’t answer.” And, Mamma, I said he took us! I said he took us, Mamma,’ my daughter sobbed. ‘I should have lied, said that he didn’t take us, but I told him the truth, that he took us.
‘The evil man went on tormenting me. “Did he read poetry and other texts to you that aren’t in the school curriculum?” I said he did read them, and I was crying. I should have lied and said he didn’t, but I told him the truth, that he did read them. Mamma, I should have denied everything and lied. And then he returned to his desk, pulled out a blank sheet of paper and a ballpoint pen and placed them both in front of me. And in just as cold and calm a voice he said, “And now you’ll write all this down. You’ll write that Teacher Blūms took you to a church and read poetry and other texts that aren’t in the school curriculum to you. And you’ll sign – your name, surname and class.”
‘I refused to write. The evil man got up from his desk once more, Mamma. He stood behind me once more, but this time he put both hands on my shoulders and squeezed them so hard it hurt.
‘“You do know, of course, how life has turned out for your mother” – that’s what he said, Mamma. “By tomorrow you’ll be expelled from school, and your good marks won’t help you.”
‘He turned me around to face him. His face grew red and he was yelling.
‘“Comrade Blūms’ sort poisons our young, poisons and leads them away from the Soviet path. If I had my say, he would be in prison. Unfortunately, these are no longer the times for that. But he will not set foot in this school again. Never again. Write!”’
How my child wept then. I tried to comfort her.
‘And then, Mamma, the door opened and the headmistress came in. Her face was hard and mean. She sat down at the desk, crossed her thick fingers and started talking just like that evil man.
‘“Now you have the opportunity to ruin the rest of your life. The others have already written their pieces and signed.”
‘“All the eleven others?” I asked through tears.
‘“All eleven and without such melodrama,” she replied.
‘Mamma, that means the wunderkind had already written his confession! And then the head added, “If you didn’t have such good marks, I wouldn’t go so easy on you. Write and sign it.” And then, Mamma, I did write it.’
My daughter was crying so dreadfully that my heart was breaking.
‘I wrote that Teacher Blūms took us to a church and read poetry and other texts that aren’t in the school curriculum. I wrote and I signed my name, surname and class.’
I brewed some camomile tea with honey for my daughter. She drank it and fell asleep, having wept until her tears ran out. When I heard her breathing calmly, I closed her bedroom door.
The darkness in my room enveloped me. I opened the window. Outside, spring was in the air. I lit a cigarette. The shudders slowly receded.
The sky was unusually bright. I stepped into the garden. Such a star-filled sky! Directly above my head flowed the Milky Way, unreachable and infinite. I gazed at it all night until dawn. I gazed until the Milky Way vanished and a cockerel began to crow in a neighbour’s yard.
Without Teacher Blūms, school felt empty. I tried not to catch the wunderkind’s eye – although he behaved as if nothing special had happened. I avoided meeting the rest of the group, but when I ran into them accidentally in the school corridors, they also behaved as if nothing had happened. Everyone had spring on their minds. Just a little over a month and the summer holidays would begin. I had caused so much worry for my grandparents. After the interrogation, they worried about me so much that it became a burden. They had decided to rent a couple of rooms by the sea and spend the summer there. I decided to go to my mother’s.