Oswald's Tale (21 page)

All the same, it was a smooth and even life until Marina arrived to stay with them permanently late in 1959. New problems came with her.

3

Larissa

Ludmila’s sister, Larissa, fourteen years younger than Ludmila, is now a lovely, even voluptuous, woman. Her manners are formal, but she smiles a good deal, and it offers a hint of that state of bliss in which she claims to have lived when young. In that time, due to great crowding at home, because Larissa’s mother and her mother’s sister and that sister’s husband all lived in one room nine square meters in size, it was decided that Larissa should stay with Ludmila and her husband, Misha, and she adored them both.

In those years of early adolescence, Larissa wanted to become a doctor. She wanted to emulate Ludmila. She did well in school, but then in the ninth grade discovered that she could not look at blood. So, she could never go into a dissecting room or a morgue. After that, she even gave the Medical Institute a wide berth. There were corpses in that building.

In adolescence she dated a lot of boys and had some favorites, but essentially they were all part of a group, and one boy, Misha Smolsky, not to be confused with Ludmila’s husband, Misha Kuzmich, happened to be the soul of their company, one in a million. Misha Smolsky was interested in Western culture. Everything he wore was elegant yet never flashy. It was a beautiful group; they knew how to spend their time tastefully. A lot of dancing went on, and in fact they formed a dancing group called Minchanka, which means “a female inhabitant of Minsk.” She even traveled to other republics with her group. Larissa was slim then, very slim.

Now, Larissa knew Marina for a long time. She first knew her as a thirteen-year-old schoolgirl who came from Leningrad to Minsk to visit her grandmother in 1954, and that was at a time when Valya and Ilya dwelt across the hall.

Larissa admired Marina. At thirteen, she was so beautiful, and so curious. And very bright. You looked at her and you were attracted. So, they were friends. At that time, embroidery was popular and they did a lot of that, and took walks together or went to movies. And when Marina went back to Leningrad to live again with her mother and stepfather, Larissa found it hard to part.

Then Marina came again for a summer visit in 1957, and she had become more practical. She had matured. Larissa was still starry-eyed, but Marina, being now sixteen, knew a thing or two about real life. Her mother was dead, and Larissa could see by the expression in Marina’s eyes that events had left another imprint.

Then, in 1959, Marina came to live permanently with Valya and Ilya. There she was again, on the same floor, and both girls were now enthusiasts about opera and never missed a premiere in Minsk. “Our standard of living was different in those days,” said Larissa. “What we had wasn’t the worst: We could buy smoked salmon and all sorts of fish, and clothes of some variety were available in stores. In that period we had attractive imported shoes, pretty clothes, and good craftsmen were about.

“As for sex education—none in those days, none at all. Parents never spoke to one, and you were never taught anything in school—God forbid, no!” Although Ludmila was a doctor, she explained no more to Larissa than that there were physical changes in a woman around early adolescence. There was no talk about sexual life. By tradition, girls were brought up to believe that marriage was not sex but security. So, they were raised in a very romantic way: “Fall in love with a man, kiss him, but you’ll never know what’s really going on—then a child comes. That’s about how it was,” said Larissa.

Marina knew more, but after all, she was from Leningrad. Even so, they never discussed sex. If they talked about a boyfriend, it was whether he was good at kissing. They might also decide questions of behavior—did he bring flowers? Did he rise to his feet when you entered a room? If he didn’t, Larissa would not pay attention to the fellow, no matter how good-looking he might be. She thinks one reason Marina was attracted to Misha Smolsky’s group is that they all had such good manners. Having come from Leningrad, Marina was more culturally sophisticated than the pharmacy girls she worked with, and so life was probably more interesting for her among Larissa and her friends. Yet, their desire to meet men with good intellect was also accompanied by how such an intelligent person dressed: Did he wear nice white shirts? Did his shoes shine brightly?

On New Year’s Eve, Larissa went with Marina to give their welcome to 1960 at Misha Smolsky’s
dacha,
all the way out on Kryzhovka Street, and when they walked in, Marina said, “Guys, no dirty jokes, please! She’s a very modest girl.” Marina treated her as if she were the only source of clear cold water, at least it seems that way to Larissa now. She was naive, and maybe Marina saw how when Larissa loved someone, her love was sincere. All she can say is that this New Year’s celebration was full of life and filled with literate, erudite young people. Larissa will remember it always.

Misha had come to his family’s
dacha
early and fixed the place nicely—put up a little Christmas tree, had a table of food laid out. Everything was wonderful. Their jokes were witty, and their records were both Russian and Western. Since they were all good dancers, they did fox-trots, tangos, and waltzes, even a Charleston.

There were six girls and maybe a few more boys and everyone was dancing with everyone else. It wasn’t as if people had favorites that night; Larissa felt it more as a collective. They all slept over—chastely, of course—girls with girls, boys with boys; but on the next evening, on the first of January, when she and Marina came back by train from Misha’s family
dacha,
Marina did talk a little about a Jewish fellow she liked, Leonid Gelfant, who had been at the party and was twenty-three years old and, even so, seemed to like her. Larissa thought he was awfully old for their age.

Larissa remembers that Valya felt herself responsible for Marina and certainly didn’t want her getting mixed up with any wrong people. So, whenever Marina was planning to go somewhere, Aunt Valya would always ask, “Is Lyalya going along?” Because if Larissa was with her, it meant everything would be all right. Larissa is not sure how to say it exactly, but she had had no experience with men and wasn’t looking for any. To her, morality was important and all the rest was terrible. One was supposed to be honest when one got married, a virgin.

4

Misha

In telling about himself, Misha Smolsky, elegant when young and now saddled with bad teeth, wants to state that he belongs at present with high conviction to his minority in Byelorussia, who are called Lithuanian Tatars. Smolsky’s roots, which he is devoted to studying, go back to a very old fifteenth-century family, very old roots. His grandparents were noble people and had their own heraldry.

In his day, Misha was educated like other Soviet people, which means being obedient, not asking a lot of questions. Actually, he and his friends spent their time thinking about girls; it was very dangerous to discuss politics during those late Fifties and Sixties. When they were twenty years old, all they talked about was where to drink, whom to date.

While he came from a large family, his father was in construction and had a good financial situation. So, Misha always had money for good clothing. When he was young, his hair was very blond, his Slavonic blood was strong, and he could say that the late Fifties and early Sixties was a period when he loved everybody and everybody loved him.

He was introduced to Marina through his friend Vladimir Kruglov at the time when Marina was a little bit in love with that guy. Once, they even went to Leningrad together—Kruglov, Marina, and himself. She was returning to her stepfather’s home after her summer vacation, and Misha can say that he, personally, was overcome by Leningrad: “Can you conceive of it? You keep walking and there are buildings, buildings, buildings—you are caught in a stone forest. Then you go through an arch and suddenly you see this space, an unimaginable space—it is so large that you can’t even think after seeing so many narrow streets. The people who built this are very great.”

In that period, he wouldn’t characterize Marina as being popular. She was certainly attractive enough and some young men were drawn to her, but that didn’t mean she had a long line of people paying court. What was most striking about her was that she came from Leningrad. In those days, Minsk was a joke.

Misha used to go to movies with her, and they went out on riverboat trips where they could dance, and listen to Bach, Prokofiev, and Elvis Presley. In those days, Misha wore narrow trousers and shoes with high platforms—as a protest, perhaps. And he was a fan of serious jazz—of Armstrong, Sidney Bechet, Goodman, Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra.

He wouldn’t say his group had the highest morals. But he and Marina were great friends and they didn’t gossip about each other; they were higher than gossiping about each other. Real friends, very funny, nice company. Yet, because of that difficult relationship with her stepfather in Leningrad, he thought she was a most unhappy person.

5

Leonid

Leonid Gelfant was only sixteen when he finished high school and began to work on architectural jobs in Minsk. In fact, he has by now been thirty-three years in his profession, and his work is everywhere—but always as a part of his Minsk group.

At sixteen, he was not open at all, but closed, very shy. Still, he was goal-oriented and knew what his profession would be. Never interested in sports or tourism, he was brought up in a conservative family of doctors, and did like literature and opera. While his family was not religious and followed no Jewish traditions except for those holidays represented by certain kinds of food, his father had graduated from Hebrew school and could speak a bit of Hebrew and Yiddish. Yet, at this period of time, educated people were not brought up to acquire religion. His family did congratulate him for his thirteenth birthday, but no bar mitzvah took place.

He was friends with Misha Smolsky, who was always sparkling with energy. And during a New Year’s party in 1960, he met Marina at Misha Smolsky’s family’s
dacha.
He was twenty-three years old and not thinking of marriage. He didn’t even date a lot of girls; he was still shy. Of this party, he only remembers a few details.

He sees a room with a stove. It’s cold outdoors, but inside is cozy because there’s a fire in that stove. Next, he remembers seeing this same stove, but now a girl has arrived. It is Marina, a slender girl with large, luminous eyes, standing near that stove. It is all he remembers. Perhaps there were fifteen people at this party.

Marina had a way of looking at you. It was simple, yet it attracted. Something in her was unprotected. It gave a special charm. She had trembling lips and, for that matter, her nose was a little blue because she was always cold—she was one person who always felt cold—and a specific odor came off her, which she found embarrassing. When a person does pharmacy work, one’s clothes and hair keep some whiff of medicine clinging to them, and she hated that. But Gelfant, personally, did not mind. Somehow, that seemed something good about her. It attracted him. Perhaps he was also drawn to her because she didn’t have her own home, or a father or mother.

Gelfant, in comparison, had a close family. His father had been completely devoted to his home life and children, an attractive man, very charming, full of tact. In turn, Gelfant considers himself also a devoted man, who would like to live, perhaps, like his father. So, Marina and he were in different environmental and emotional situations, and had different goals. When they met, it was an agreeable surprise, but it was never something he saw as his future. Call it a New Year’s adventure. On New Year’s Eve, you always expect a miracle. Since she produced on him an impression of a person who needs protection, she inspired his desire to help her, to be tender with her.

Their relationship—which he never calls an affair—went on about six months, but it was not continuous. There were times when they wouldn’t see each other for a couple of months. Perhaps on five occasions they had an intimacy—not more than that. And, indeed, he would not have wanted anything to develop with greater speed. It was a modest relationship, then.