chapter 26
Too much of a good thing
(the ending)
It may seem strange but I still remember my mother's expression when she started to tell me about her first teacher. She smiled in some confusion, blushed a little and confessed that unlike me she was fond of that woman. Actually she liked her so much that found her very pretty in spite of that nose of hers, which was very long and slightly crooked with its tip almost reaching her upper lip. My mother thought it was really attractive and for a while she was seen walking around the village with her face oddly distorted. Perhaps people were afraid she was losing her marbles. But it was not so. My mother just wished to look like her beloved teacher and tried to bring her own well-shaped nose closer to her lips.
There was another remarkable story connected with that teacher. I imagine my mother always watched her with loving eyes and what a shock it was for her when she saw that kind and well-educated woman going to the loo! She just couldn't believe it at first. I was seven or eight myself when I was laughing my head off after I learnt that at my age my mother believed that adults didn't have any natural needs to go to the loo. Now it strikes me as rather odd. How could it be that she had been so ignorant in those matters? And it was not something unique. My mother's mother could tell the the same story. She was even a couple of years older when she was shocked by the sight of a priest going to the lavatory. It's a pity that owing to discord between my mother and grandmother I know so little about rural life and can only guess where the roots of this mystery lie.
According to my mother, villagers didn't have any special toilets at that time. So perhaps it was just a clever tactics to train small children to be properly ashamed of their actions and to use secluded bushes or remote corners of kitchen gardens for natural needs. But most likely working hard since dawn to dusk, parents didn't have enough time to teach their little ones. The neglect of small children – that was what my mother could never forgive her own mother and relatives. But that was how they grew and life itself gave them their first lessons.
When leaving for work, peasants usually locked small children up in their huts. Of course, it was not safe for such small kids to stay alone, but it was a widespread custom. My mother herself was about five when she had to look after her baby-sister. No wonder that once when they ran out of clean swaddling clothes she pushed the little one away in irritation. To her dismay being shaped like a loaf of bread in her nappies the baby rolled off the high bench-stove bouncing down the steps on its way to the floor. Luckily, her sister got off easy, paying for her fall with only one or two scratches on her forehead. What is more, it was one of those rare cases when my mother managed to avoid her punishment. She was quick enough to hide in a narrow space behind the stove where her mother couldn't reach her with her leather belt. Somehow it didn't seem right to her because she was even guiltier than her mother thought. In fact, she just couldn't resist the temptation and drank all the milk that was meant for the baby. That's why she fed it with borsch, that is vegetable soup with tomatoes and beetroot, and provoked her sister's diarrhea. Anyway, on the whole that episode had a happy ending. Yet, it was not always so.
I think my mother was a baby herself when an awful tragedy happened in the village. Later it became a legend which adults told to their kids when they wished to remind them how dangerous it was to play with fire. If those poor children had not played with it they wouldn't have been trapped in the burning house. But nobody really knew what had happened as nobody was left to tell the story. Parents as usual locked their kids up and left for work or maybe for the market place in the neighbouring town. When the house caught fire those poor souls couldn't find their way out without outside help. But their rescuers arrived too late to save the two elder kids. Only a baby was found miraculously alive among the smoking ruins. It was saved by a wash-tub that fell over it from the wall or, perhaps, as people believed, it was the elder boy, who covered the little one with it in the nick of time.
The entire village was shaken by that terrible accident and the authorities realized at last that they had to do something about it. Soon after the tragedy some official visited all the houses in the village, threatening with severe punishment for anyone who would lock their children up. I don't know exactly when the first kindergarten appeared in the village but in the early sixties, during my only visit to the village, I learnt that they had already had one. I was only five then but I remember this clearly, because it was my grandmother's working place.
I must admit that my attitude to my former country changed dramatically after the Soviet Union collapsed. It's not really surprising, considering how many nasty revelations we have had since then. Still after thinking things over it suddenly came to me that there was after all something good that Soviet state had done for the peasants – for example, kindergartens and universal education. Unfortunately, it can't outweigh, of course, the disaster of collectivization or the huge bloody machine of political repressions.
To be continued...
(c) Anna Shevchenko
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