chapter 28
The study in dark colours
(the ending)
Sometimes I think that perhaps my fate in that gloomy yard would have been easier if I had had a brother or a sister, even a younger one. At least it would have taught me responsibility from an early age. And, who knows, maybe I would have learnt much earlier how to defend not only my sibling but myself too. On the other hand, I am not sure that it would have really changed my destiny very much. I used to believe that as I had two children, they wouldn't share my psychological problems. However, my younger son has always had the same difficulties with socializing. Actually, it's quite understandable as he, unlike my daughter, has always been much closer to me by nature. And that explains, I think, why we still live under one roof.
By now I have learnt that I can rely upon my son when I am in a tight corner. Still I regret that I have never had a brother or a sister who I could ask for help or advice when I desperately needed a friendly shoulder. And how nice it would have been to have tea together, discussing our everyday life, occasionally reminding each other of something that happened in our half-forgotten childhood. Surely, we would remember different details and it would be most curious to compare our memories. I understand that it's some kind of idealization but that's how I imagine having a sibling nowadays.
But back then, that is in my early childhood, I didn't feel like that at all. I suspect I felt rather irritated when various adults asked me if I would like my mother to give me a little brother. At that time people believed that it was a proper question to start a conversation with when talking to a little girl, especially if her mother was somewhere nearby. I think I was about three when I was asked about it for the first time, or at least it was the case that stuck in my memory. I remember I felt a bit confused but blurted out “no!” without thinking. My parents' acquaintance was so obviously startled by my reply that I ran away from her, still shouting “no,no!”, before hiding behind my mother's skirt. It was long and wide enough to give me a good shelter but it didn't save me from a little lecture that followed. The woman, who we so unluckily met in the street, told me with some heat that I was completely wrong and explained to me what a blessing it would be for me to have a little brother to play with. I was sharp enough to understand what was expected from me and after that never failed to answer “yes” when some smiling woman pestered me with that question.
It can seem incredible but only after I wrote the previous sentence did it suddenly occur to me how painful all those conversations must have been for my mother. I used to listen to a lot of her stories, and one of them was about my poor little brother, who was born when I was about two, and who lived only 15 minutes after his birth. There was something wrong with my mother's second pregnancy, and it was one of those unfortunate cases when doctors had to choose between a mother and her baby. Perhaps she had some foreboding of it because she delayed going to the maternity home until my father led her there by the hand. My mother knew beforehand that she was going to have a C-section but she was not ready for what happened to her after that.
My mother had never liked official medicine – first of all because her own mother was so fond of it. But this time it was the closest collision with the Soviet health service that she couldn't avoid. After her operation she was lying in a hospital bed, completely helpless and entirely in their power. She couldn't just leave and slam the door behind her back. Personally, what I always disliked about Soviet doctors was their manner to communicate with their patients. As a rule, they were frowning and scribbling something in your medical card, explaining to you as little as it was possible, even if there was nothing life-threatening in your diagnosis.
Still, I believe my mother's doctor didn't tell her at once about her baby's death for a different reason. He saw that she was extremely weak, recovering longer than usual after anesthesia, and, in spite of everything, impatient to see her new-born son. So he decided to tell her later, and it was a real shock for her when some nurse came and asked her rudely why her husband hadn't taken her baby's body away. No wonder that after such a brutal revelation my mother had a fit of hysterics and couldn't be calmed down for a long time. The doctor scolded the nurse furiously but it looked like he didn't have much power over his nurses. For instance, he knew that my mother suffered from constipation after her operation. Every morning he ordered a junior nurse to give an enema to her. Every time one of those unpleasant middle-aged women who usually did that kind of work in hospital answered “yes” but did nothing afterwards.
It was going on in that fashion for a few days until my mother's ward-mates explained to her in secret that the nurse was just waiting for some money offered to her for her services. To my mother's distress her young naive husband and younger sister refused indignantly to give money for that, saying that in the USSR, thank God, they had free medical care. Weren't they taught at school that such habits were just the vestiges of capitalism that had to be rooted out? She didn't waste much time, trying to dissuade them, but unexpectedly quickly found a way out of the situation. It was really simple. By that time her bedside-table was packed with apples, oranges, cookies, and sweets, because in her state she had no appetite for all those tasty things that her visitors had brought to her. So, without further ado, my mother gave all of this to the nurse and, sure enough, she got the prescribed treatment that very day.
Hypocrisy – that's what I have always hated about the USSR. I understand, of course, that any human society is partly based on it. Yet the Soviet system was one of those where it flourished most lavishly. We were taught from an early age that our country had free education and free medical care. But everybody knew it was not really true. If you wanted your child to enter some prestigious university or get good medical care in hospital you had to be ready to pay or, to be precise, to bribe, because such payment was forbidden in the USSR.
Luckily for my parents I wished to become a physicist, and the physics department was one of the bribery free ones at university. Although, all our neighbours, as my mother sarcastically informed me, refused to believe that I joined it without greasing somebody's palm. But there was no doubt that the Medical University was one of the most corrupt in our city. There were scary rumours going around that it was completely impossible to join it without a hefty bribe. I remember one pitiful story that was popular when I was just finishing school. A poor girl, who was obsessed with her desire to become a doctor, tried to enter the Medical University for free for seven or eight years. Miraculously, she did succeed in the end but relinquished her studies some time later. Maybe she really had a nervous break-down, as people believed. But I suspect the girl had just discovered that she had to pay for every single exam if she wanted to finish her education. And, perhaps, her parents just couldn't afford it.
No wonder that after such an educational race, doctors were eager to get some extra money in addition to their more than moderate salaries. Actually, a lot of people in the country were looking for some illegal or half-legal ways to increase their small incomes. All that talking about equality and the bright communist future, when everybody would have everything in abundance, didn't deceive most of the people. They tried desperately to get some extra money or creature comforts at any cost. As a result, our medical personnel were frowning and often rude, our shop-assistants were usually rude and malicious. What I especially hated about doctors, nurses and, strange to say, hairdressers, was a widespread custom to put surreptitiously some money into one of the big pockets of their white uniform. I have never been good at it. As for me, it was humiliating for both: for those specialists and for their patients or clients. I am glad that those times are over and that nowadays I can look a doctor in the eye and ask how much I owe him or her. If they offer me a choice to pay them or to go to the cashier, I always choose a doctor because those 35 years that I lived in the USSR taught me not to trust the state.
But coming back to my 28-year-old mother, as she told me later, she left the maternal house extremely thin with big gray patches in her beautiful auburn hair and with a firm decision in her sore heart not to step over that threshold ever again. For some reason she believed those health problems that she developed after her ill-fated C-section were caused by the anesthesia or narcosis, as she always called it with distaste. But I believe it was just bad treatment and her grief because of the loss of her baby-son. As far as I can remember my mother had always had a soft spot for boys.
To be continued...
(c) Anna Shevchenko
