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Chapter 57. The Star of David

“All right… So today we’ll repeat what we studied the day before yesterday…”

Georgy Georgeyevich walked, shuffling his feet, between the rows of desks. He raised his clenched left hand to his mouth and coughed intermittently. He didn’t have a cold. It was his habit. He had a pointer in his right hand, which he waved and tapped on the floor. Oh no, not like GooPoo. Georgy Georgeyevich, our auto-repair teacher, was the nicest, most good-natured person. He was a bit funny, short and potbellied. He had light hair with streaks of grey, a bald spot on top of his head, an upturned Slavic nose and puffy blueish bags under his eyes. Georgy Georgeyevich liked to drink. He drank regularly, and he didn’t even try to conceal it from us high school students. According to him, he didn’t drink but “took” it as a preventative measure, in order to prevent the common cold and other ailments. In other words, he didn’t do it for fun; he had to take it to protect his health.

We were informed about these preventative measures by the smell Georgy Georgeyevich gave off. Our teacher began each day in the same fashion, with a hundred grams of vodka. And we had a double auto-repair class in the morning twice a week. That was our type of school, its specialization. We studied auto repair in earnest as we inhaled a thick aroma of alcohol in the upper grades of high school. Some other smells were added to it – perhaps pickled herring or sour salty cucumbers. But on the other hand, our teacher was always vigorous and merry, though he couldn’t quite remember exactly what we had covered in the previous class.

“Who can remember what we studied the day before yesterday?” Georgy Georgeyevich asked, allegedly with a pedagogical purpose.

Well, we couldn’t possibly all say that we didn’t remember. Besides, why should we mock such a kind teacher?

By the way, despite a certain forgetfulness, he knew his trade marvelously. And the auto-repair classroom, his pride and the subject of his ceaseless concern, was wonderful. Engines, appliances, spare parts, instruments, and everything that might be needed for the assembly or repair of a car were laid out in exemplary order on the shelves. Everything had been cleaned and sparkled as if in a display case. Each screw was in its place next to its nut. Georgy Georgeyevich demanded the same tidiness and attention from us, no matter what part of a car we were studying. We did it without drawings and models, probing the “guts” of a car with our own hands. As we did it, the “chief surgeon” was always at the side of the trainees and noticed any small thing, any oversight.

“Who has forgotten a bearing? You? What a dolt you are! No, not here, it should be attached to the crankshaft. Where’s your head? It goes on the rotor!”

And that’s how it went, on and on… But our kind teacher couldn’t become angry, he just couldn’t. We certainly did take advantage of his good nature, but we knew when to stop. Any commotion in class was mostly work related. Inventors, designers, and test drivers argued and made noise. Certainly, auto shop in itself was attractive to boys, so we were lucky to go to our school. But we were even luckier to have Georgy Georgeyevich: he possessed a pedagogical gift and a fertile imagination. He managed to instill in us an understanding that a driver-mechanic wasn’t just someone who had technical knowledge and skills but a person who was engaged in an important, dangerous and even romantic business, a person whose hands, head and soul were constantly working, a person on whom the lives of very many people depended. We had so many tank battles in our classes! We had so many car accidents.

Even inveterate lazybones didn’t miss Georgy Georgeyevich’s classes. Many of us had mopeds and scooters with small engines, and if they needed repair, we could always rely on our teachers’ help. In a word, we considered him our pal. We respected him and poked a little fun at his predilection for “preventive measures.” He most likely realized it but believed that none of the guys would report him. His trust in us was so great that when someone coughed or sneezed in class, Georgy Georgeyevich would say, to enlighten us, “That happens because you don’t take preventive measures. When you grow up, then, by all means…” and he would show the recommended dose in the air with his fingers.

I don’t know whether any of his students followed that “preventive measures” theory, but I can attest that our favorite teacher was never ill, and I don’t remember him ever sneezing. In general, he was a sturdy person, and he wore a tattered light coat, which he never buttoned, even when it was awfully cold.

* * *

The days of driving practice were especially long-awaited events. They were long awaited because each class had them only twice in a two-month semester.

The big dusty field where we learned the art of driving was a half-hour drive away from school. We rode there in a training truck, which awaited us near the school before classes. Georgy Georgeyevich drove the truck himself. We noisily disembarked from the truck onto the field, and Georgy Georgeyevich walked around the truck, climbed into the passenger seat, groaning slightly, and slammed the door loudly. While that ritual took place, we, some of us with fear, others with a sweet anticipation in our hearts, waited: who would be the first to be called.

“Lokshev, climb in!” Georgy Georgeyevich put a checkmark in a journal as tattered as his coat.

The truck jerked, moved away and began moving around the field in circles. And we, crowded together, commented on the quality of the driving as we nervously awaited our turn. We got covered with exhaust and the dust raised by the truck in dense clouds during the dry months, but that was immaterial to us. We just shook our heads and, with our eyes on the truck, discussed Lokshev’s every blunder. And he made quite a few of them.

“Look how he zigzags. What’s wrong with him?”

“He’s looking for a pole to run into.”

Everybody laughed, and I laughed along with them, but my laughter was feigned. It anyone was capable of finding a pole in the open field and running into it, it was me.

Our truck, like all domestically produced trucks, had a clutch pedal, and, on top of that, it was double. You had to press that pedal down to begin with if you wanted to change gears. It had to be pressed, as Georgy Georgeyevich taught us, without delay, smoothly and to the floor; otherwise the engine would stall. It was that damned pedal that caused me incredible agony, and not only me, of course, but it simply harassed me. It refused to be pressed without delay and certainly not smoothly. I mostly failed to feel whether it had reached the bottom and at what speed it should be released. It seemed that its only desire was to make the engine stall. And it quite often succeeded in doing that.

“Be careful! Don’t press too…” Georgy Georgeyevich’s face gradually became flushed. He was nervous too, for the hundredth time that day.

The engine roared. Before shifting to a higher gear, I revved the engine to the max. “All right… I’ll slow down by releasing the pedal… Now, the clutch pedal… and shift into neutral …” Oh my, I’d like to meet the person who invented the double clutch. Press… neutral… release… press again… and then one could shift into a higher gear. “I press…Oh!”

Once again, I hadn’t done it in time. The engine stalled. I broke out in a sweat. I started the motor once again, and now I would have to do everything all over again.

“Too fast, too fast,” Georgy Georgeyevich almost moaned. He didn’t look any better than I. “Don’t hurry. Look how you stagger and lurch, zigzagging across the field.”

“Look.” As if I didn’t know myself. As if I couldn’t hear the guys laughing and mocking over the roaring engine. And the torment continued. The truck first stalled, then moved jerkily. But at last I managed to shift into third gear and then fourth without a shameful failure. Gr-rr, gr-rrr, the engine roared less intensely. Holding the steering wheel very tightly, I stepped on the gas, this time with pleasure. Gosh, how it jumps over the bumps! I had a talent for picking them out deliberately. “Don’t speed! We’ll be thrown out!” Georgy Georgeyevich shouted. We both kept bouncing up and down, but he didn’t step on the instructor’s brake pedal. He was an understanding person and knew what guys like us needed.

Yay! Freedom! The long trail of dust, swirling and expanding, clouded most of the field behind the truck. Forward we went, forward, forward! “What Russian is not fond of driving fast?…” Who wrote that? Gogol? Yes, he did, as he described a swift ride through the snow in a sleigh drawn by three horses in the Russian countryside! E-eh-hh!

The engine was buzzing, the sides of the old body, once dark green but now faded, scratched and jagged, were squeaking loudly – I could hear it even in the cab. But we liked our old “horse,” even the noise and shaking. Is it actually a real ride when you drive down a smooth roadway without noise and shaking? You don’t even feel anything, as if you were standing in place. It’s a different story when you ride in a truck, especially inside its body on a bench placed lengthwise – even though you have to hold on to a transom, it feels like rock or Latin dancing. You sway, wriggle, all your muscles twitching in rhythm to the shaking. Your head bobs, and in another minute, it may fall off and roll somewhere…

Whee, how delightful!

“Stop! We’re done!” Georgy Georgeyevich commanded. I had gotten so worked up that I didn’t notice when he stepped on the brake pedal.

* * *

Auto shop was our favorite subject. It gave us valuable professional skills. But we also had other shop classes. We spent each Thursday in the one-story building in the school yard. And that was a sacred day for our class 9A, with no Party congresses, great writers or intricate algebra. After two great hours spent with Georgy Georgeyevich, we crossed the corridor to the workshop where we learned to work with metal for another two hours. There was a class where our girls learned the noble art of embroidery in the same building. They were prevented from learning how to drive, which seemed quite natural to us at that time. There was also a woodworking shop in the building. We had worked in it the previous year. Passing the door from which emanated the pleasant smell of wood shavings and sawdust, we sighed sadly.

Unlike metalworking, tinkering with wood was interesting and meaningful. I, for example, took pleasure in mastering the milling machine. I can still visualize how a bar gripped on both ends rotated, and turning now one caster, then another, I cut into the wood with a chisel, first on the surface, then deeper, now increasing the speed, now reducing it… The shavings twisted like a ribbon, the bar’s outline changed, acquiring the shape I wanted to give it. Here it turned either into the knob of a walking stick or a small potbellied column for a stairway balustrade… No matter what I made, I enjoyed the creative process enormously. I was happy to realize that I was turning into a craftsman and could learn to make amazing things on that machine.

Alas, nothing like that happened when we began working with metal. To be honest, we never understood what they were teaching us or why. Our teacher Mikhail Petrovich, a thickset, taciturn man whom we called “Piece of Iron” behind his back, would give us an assignment at the beginning of a lesson. His voice was so serious, even solemn, as if we had to carry out a project on which the destiny of mankind depended.

“Saw off this corner at forty-five degrees, and this one at sixty. Then drill three holes with a diameter of one centimeter each here, here and here,” he poked with a piece of chalk at something resembling a drawing he had made on a small portable blackboard.

Either the chalk or the blackboard was bad, but the drawing was barely visible. And when our teacher turned to the blackboard, it seemed to us that he wasn’t so much pointing at it but through it.

“Do you all understand?” Piece of Iron asked. His brows came together, his face taut. We felt as if we were about to begin building an interplanetary rocket. What was there to understand?

After giving us an assignment, Piece of Iron would disappear, after which he would show up at the workshop now and then for just a few minutes. Obviously, he had no desire to observe how we carried out the project. And we were left on our own, so we started sawing, sawing, sawing and chopping off… We worked by hand on pieces of small pipe, blocks, metal plates gripped in vises. Piece of Iron never informed us why we were doing it. There were few machines in the workshop, but we were allowed to get near the drilling machine only under supervision.

Never in my life have I met a person more indifferent to children than that teacher. Once, a heavy block fell on Sergey Belunin’s foot. Mikhail Petrovich came running when he heard him yelling, and he was yelling his head off. While writhing Sergey was pulling off his shoe, Mikhail Petrovich picked up the block and examined it, as if it was the block that had suffered from its contact with Belunin’s foot.

“You haven’t sawed enough off, and the angle is wrong… Haven’t I explained that it should be forty-five degrees?”

* * *

There were two rows of long tables in the workshop, with a dividing net in the middle so that work could be done on both sides of a table. There was a vise at each workplace. On that day, rectangular plates, each three- or four-centimeters thick, were gripped in the vises. We were given the following assignment: shape something like a pyramid on the top and on the bottom, round off the right and left edges and drill two holes in the middle. I still don’t know why we needed to make that strange object, though I shall always remember how it looked. I can close my eyes and see it. Why I remember it so well is the subject of what I am about to relate.

I was working on the upper corner. I rushed with all my might to saw it off. The guys who were stronger, like Belunin, had already finished working on both corners and were about to round off the edges. At that moment, we heard the door slam, and an unexpected guest, the school principal, Boris Alexandrovich, entered the workshop.

“Well, eagles, how are your labor achievements?” He asked with his special directorial voice.

Unlike Anton Pavlovich Chekhov before him, who assumed that everything about a human being should be wonderful, our Boris Alexandrovich thought that everything about a man had to be domineering, stern and tough if he was a school principal. Before Boris Alexandrovich began working at our school, he had taught soldiers, so he was like a drill sergeant. Besides, he taught social sciences, which meant, he believed, that he was an apostle of Soviet ideology. In a word, he wanted to be a lofty authority.

Quite recently, our principal’s authority had been rudely undermined, which was attested to by a large crimson-blue bruise under his left eye. Some tenth graders and their friends had punched the principal in the eye.

Three days before, late at night, a group of motorcyclists arrived at the school building. The guys thought there was nobody at school, so they decided to ride around the spacious schoolyard. They roared around the yard, stepping on the gas, yelling and laughing. And then, the principal walked out into the yard…

There’s no need to explain how he behaved, what expressions he used to tell the guys to get out of there immediately. The tenth graders were insulted. On top of that, they had long dreamed of settling scores with the principal for all sorts of offenses. I don’t know for sure how many of them took part in the retribution, but two tenth graders were the first to punch the principal. They were expelled from school the next day.

They were expelled all right, but the whole school was delighted to discuss how great it was that the principal had been taught a lesson and to gaze ecstatically at his black eye. We noted with malicious pleasure that our high-ranking administrator had become a bit more polite, more courteous, and, speaking in contemporary language, tried to be more democratic.

So now, he entered the workshop, with a sort of amiable smile on his face, which seemed totally unnatural when combined with the black eye and the commanding voice. Piece of Iron ran hastily into the workshop right after the principal.

“Well, what are we sawing here?” Boris Alexandrovich asked. He stopped near Vova Yefimchuk and began to scrutinize a detail. “How do you like that! What star are you cutting out? Is it Israeli?” And the principal chuckled and looked over us as if inviting us to make fun of it along with him. Piece of Iron joined him, even though Boris Alexandrovich was laughing at his assignment.

When the principal entered the workshop, the screech of files became louder – we were demonstrating our industriousness to him. But, after hearing his joke, many students turned toward Yefimchuk. The latter had taken the ugly-looking plate out of the vise, and the principal was now turning it in his hands, repeating “It’s just like an Israeli star.”

Something inside me snapped.

Whenever the word “Israel” was mentioned – on television or radio, in newspapers, at meetings or rallies, it sounded either malicious or mocking, not like the names of other countries mentioned –say Hungary, Yugoslavia, Egypt… Those were countries, but Israel… Israel was the symbol of everything bad. Israel was an invader, an aggressor, an instigator, which was clear from its very name.

If something undesirable happened in some country, if that country, from the point of view of the Soviet leadership, held a wrong position or even committed criminal acts, its rulers, not the whole country, were blamed for it. The leaders acted villainously in Chile, in the USA, but the people were victims; the people were absolutely not guilty. But not in Israel! The “people” did not exist in Israel; the people were Israel. The whole country propagated extremism and violence and dreamed of conquering the whole world.

In a word, the Jews lived there. And all of them, to a man, were disgusting.

That was the most offensive thing.

The noise of filing died out. The class was laughing loudly. Why and at what I didn’t know, but everybody laughed.

And I continued to saw… I bent over the vise, pushing the file down as hard as I could. I didn’t want to look at the principal: it seemed to me that he was laughing at me. After all, I was Jewish, the only Jew in this class. He surely knew it. So how could he… I didn’t want to look at anybody because the guys were laughing too. They knew I was Jewish, that I was right there, and they laughed. Had they forgotten about it? Did they do it deliberately? Was anyone looking at me?

“Are you actually supplying the whole Israeli army with nameplates?” the principal was having fun as he now addressed Piece of Iron. He was sure that the popular subject he had chosen for his quips would meet with approval, and he had been right.

No one worked but me. I bent even lower over the vise. I was choking with pain, humiliation and anger.

The class was laughing loudly, and the sounds of their laughter blended with the piercing grinding of my file, the grinding of metal against metal.

Chapter 58. Our Friends the Musheyevs

“Amun! Aren’t you ashamed, Amun?”

Those words were addressed to my father. Amun, not Amnun – that’s how his name was pronounced by Aunt Maria, Maria Musheyeva. She swallowed the “n” in the middle of his name. Now it was particularly noticeable for Aunt Maria cried out Father’s name. As she always did at moments of anger or sorrow, she spread her arms, raised them with her palms up and bent her head to her shoulder.

That very Amun had just hurt the feelings of her best friend, his wife Ester, at her table during a dinner to which the Yuabov family had been invited. And it was not the first time.

Today, Maria had served an especially delicious sirkaniz, something like pilaf, except with peas. Father stretched his hand toward the langari, the big platter, from which we were all eating, and said:

“You cook so wonderfully, Maria. Teach her how to cook,” and he motioned his head toward Mama.

That’s when Maria flared up.

“Amun, how can you? As if Ester’s cooking is worse. We’ve had dinner at your place many times!”

“Amnun must have cooked sirkaniz,” Uncle Yura, Maria’s husband said, trying to turn the conversation into a joke. “Amnun, is it you who keep house? Tell us, Ester.”

Both Father and Mother were silent. Mama could have answered Uncle Yura’s joke with a joke, but too many insults had piled up. It had been a few years since Mama had stopped tolerating them. If it happened at home, she answered Father, sometimes quite harshly, but only at home, never when visiting somebody. She remained reserved in her Eastern special way.

As for Father, he simply couldn’t shift easily to a different mood. He was silent, his lips twisted, which was what he did whenever he was angry or confused. What a strange man he was! He knew well that the Musheyevs would not back him up, that they would stand up for Mama without fail. Neither Aunt Maria nor Uncle Yura could bear Father’s rudeness. But he acted tough over and over again. Rudeness with respect to Mama had become so much of a habit with him that he couldn’t restrain himself, even in public. It was impossible to anticipate at what moment or why he would attack Mama. It was also impossible to know how he would do it. In a word, Mama was always tense in Father’s company, even when they were visiting somebody.

The Musheyevs were old friends of our family. We had become friends six years before. Once, at the beginning of September, as I was returning from school, I found a little black-haired boy, a bit younger than I, at our place.

“Meet Edik,” Father said. “He’s our new neighbors’ son. Help him. He just started first grade.”

I was flattered to help the first grader. I had already started third grade. Edik made himself comfortable at my desk and opened his alphabet book. The words, divided into syllables, were printed under a colorful drawing on the page: “DA-SHA, LET US GO HOME.” I was happy and even got excited: it was a familiar page. Once, I had also sat at this desk and read a syllable at a time about Dasha. I cleared my throat and said, “Let’s do it.”

Edik, who was the eldest of the Musheyevs’ three sons, and I and our parents soon became friends, though the real friendship, in the true sense of the word, a true closeness, sprang up between the women.

It might seem strange at first glance: my mama and Maria were so different in both their fates and personalities. Mama was taciturn, withdrawn, even distrustful. She couldn’t and didn’t want to tell people about her sorrows – how her married life had turned out or our financial difficulties. Aunt Maria was talkative, open, sincere, and if she befriended someone, she did it with all her heart, generosity and kindness. For her, friendship was not simply spending time enjoyably together; she was always ready to help, to take a part of her friend’s grief and worries upon herself.

Peace prevailed in the Musheyev family. I never heard Yura and Maria quarrel or hurt each other’s feelings. Yura was kind and generous. And this family lived in comfortable circumstances, which neither my poor Mama nor we kids could even dream of.

It’s funny but, perhaps one of the things that brought Aunt Maria and Mama together was exactly that wellbeing, or rather how it had been achieved. Just don’t assume that Mama was looking for wealthy friends. No, that was not the point.

The way in which Yura Musheyev achieved wellbeing was quite Soviet. He was engaged in a business which, in itself, opened up great possibilities and profits, particularly in the field in which Uncle Yura was involved: confectionary products. All the ingredients used to make them – sugar, butter, flour, and so on and so forth – were those very “possibilities” that Uncle Yura used quite extensively to arrange his own underground and very profitable business.

Why do I call that the Soviet way? Because in the Soviet Union, at least in our republic, practically everybody who had access to material of value stole, with rare exceptions. And that didn’t mean that the hundreds of thousands of people who did it were perverted or had an innate tendency to steal, or that poverty and a desire to live better prompted them to do it. I think there were other aspirations that were quite powerful.

Why do people in normal capitalist countries become businessmen? They do it not just for the sake of the “golden calf.” They obviously feel a need to have their own business, to put their creative energy into it, to plan, to live an active life filled with risk and competition. Passionate people, even those prone to risky adventures, often become good businessmen. The Soviet system paid no heed to such traits or needs of human nature. To be precise, the authorities didn’t recognize their existence, and they condemned and persecuted those who tried to implement them. As for officials on different levels who represented that power, they, without ceremony, transferred what belonged to the state and the people into their pockets. Now we know what became of it. But in the past, anyone who wanted to do business, anyone who was eager to have some independence, became a swindler sooner or later.

Yes, we lived in a strange country and led a strange life… It gradually corrupted souls and made the notions of what was good and what was bad fuzzy and illegible.

None of the people like Uncle Yura would have burglarized someone’s apartment or picked someone’s pocket. God forbid! But was it really stealing when someone snatched at least something from the Soviet state that deceived us all the time? The pastries, cakes, and other delicious things were sold to Soviet people at the same prices as at the state stores.

Uncle Yura, naturally, didn’t forget about his family. At their house I had as many sweets as I could wish for. And I could take some home.

Uncle Yura worked in Tashkent which meant that he was often away. Even though their house looked like it had plenty of everything, it seemed empty to Aunt Maria: she was lonely, often, very often. On top of that, she felt fear and tension. If he were caught, he couldn’t expect any mercy. No, Maria, unlike her husband, was not a passionate businesswoman.

That, I thought, was the reason the two women became friends: they were both unhappy. Both of them had something to complain about, something to confess to each other. It was gratifying for both of them to feel a kindred spirit next to them.

Once, arriving home from school, I entered the kitchen where Mama was busy at the blazing hot stove, but it wasn’t just her soups and pilafs that were seething and boiling, Mama was also at the boiling point. I could tell immediately from her voice, her very quick movements. It meant that something had happened. That morning I had heard Father’s voice, or rather his barking, coming from their bedroom.

After she put a plate in front of me, Mama ran out of the kitchen, wiping her hands on her apron, “Eat, I’ll be back…” And I heard her quiet voice from the living room. Of course, she was calling Maria. Whom else could she, seizing a moment, tell about yet another quarrel on the phone?

In America, women visit psychotherapists not just to get medical help. It’s well known that a conversation with an understanding, compassionate person brings feelings of relief and satisfaction.

Mama was back in the kitchen. Her face brightened up. “Have you eaten? Would you like more? Oh, Aunt Maria said that Edik had problems with his homework again. Perhaps, we can visit them together.”

“Aha,” I thought, “Uncle Yura is not back yet, and Aunt Maria is worried.”

The Musheyevs were not only emotionally kind. They knew how we lived, how carefree and selfish Father was. Mama often didn’t have enough money from one payday to the next, and she would run to the Musheyevs to borrow money for a week or two.

“What would I do without them?” she used to say.

Mama well knew how seldom one came across genuine kindness in our cruel world. Probably, the Musheyevs’ support seemed quite natural to me. They were rich, and our life was so hard.

Not that I thought about it all the time. Wealth in the Musheyevs’ house wasn’t that flashy. But I did really envy the Musheyev boys, and I still remember that painful, disgusting feeling.

A holiday was drawing near. Uncle Yura was assigning errands to Aunt Maria when he came to Chirchik for a short time and was about to leave again. “Oh, yes,” he remembered, “what about presents for the kids? All right, guys…” he approached the coatrack in the hallway where his casual pants were hanging and took a few crisp new banknotes out of the pocket. He turned the banknotes in his hands, as if he were teasing the boys, and then gave them to Edik and Sergey. “It’s yours, spend it. Buy whatever you want.”

That’s when the oppressive and shameful feeling of envy, of my own deprivation, gripped me. No, it was even more complex. I felt as if I had been separated from the realm of this wealthy family. I had a different fate and status that my friends Edik and Sergey knew nothing about, which they couldn’t possibly feel and understand.

* * *

But that didn’t happen often. I usually felt at home at the Musheyevs’.

We were having dinner, eating pilaf from the big plate. The youngest son, Sasha, was in his mother’s lap. He opened his mouth wide, like a baby bird, and Aunt Maria put pilaf into it, not like a mama bird with its beak but with her hand, and the baby bird munched happily.

“Boys, it’s time to do your homework,” Aunt Maria reminded them. “Valery, will you help Edik? Wait, have you had enough to eat? Would you like some more?” “Thank you,” I shook my head and stood up. It was impossible not to have enough at Aunt Maria’s table, but it was also difficult to stop eating.