My mother's stories (chapter fifteen)

My mother’s stories

chapter 15

The only man she ever loved

Devotion – it was the basic feature of my aunt’s character and this quality determined all her future life. She was, as it turned out, a one-man woman and he ruined her life as most of them usually do.

I remember how startled my parents were when I told them that my future husband’s name was Peter. It was the very name of the only man my aunt Zina had ever loved. Maybe he loved her too – at least he kept his intention to marry another woman a secret from her. They even had a date on the day before the wedding. For a long time I considered this as a top of treachery, but now when I am much older and wiser, as I’d like to believe, I think it was rather a sign of passion.

Anyway, some time later after his wedding they resumed their relationship and through all my teens my mother used to tell me how wrong it was to love a man like that. After my aunt reached her thirties she felt, as she once told me, a strong desire to have some little creature trotting beside her, holding her hand. So she began to save money till she had a sum big enough to allow her to look after her baby for a year without having to go to work.

At that time society greatly disapproved of single mothers and deprecating whispers could often be heard behind their backs. My aunt, however, was a strong personality: she decided to have a baby without a husband and she gave birth to her daughter when she was 35. Yet nobody knew who the father of her baby was – she took this secret into her untimely grave. In her daughter’s birth certificate she wrote a different name – not Peter. Had she split up with him by that time or had she promised him not to reveal his paternity? Or, probably, it was some kind of protest against his treatment of her. There was a time when I really wished to know the truth but now I think it’s better like that. I have had my own reasons since then to have a grudge against the name of Peter without knowing the details of my poor aunt’s sufferings.

So that was the only relative our family kept in touch with. I was very fond of my aunt, especially in my early childhood, and was very proud that she allowed me to call her just by her name Zina as if we were sisters. Her presents always made me happy.  She didn’t give them to me very often but this only increased their value in my eyes. What a pretty set of toy china tableware she gave me once! Or my sledges - they were so light, with good slippery runners. Or my first tights. It was not so easy to find them in our shops – just as it had always been with things which were new and fashionable. All the girls dreamt about them! That was the difference between my aunt and my parents: she usually bought me those things that I really longed to have.

Another good thing about my aunt was her readiness to share her knowledge with me. My mother had never been consistent in this question. On one hand she often blamed me for my laziness and on the other hand was often reluctant to teach me. Sometimes she confused me with her completely incomprehensible to me hostility when I tried to clean or to put things in order in our messy dwelling. She used to grumble she couldn’t find anything after that. As I understand now she perceived our house and yard as her realm, created with her own hands, and no one could infringe on her supreme power there. Besides, deeply inside she had never wanted me to become a day older than five and a half. Most of my wrongdoings were usually followed by her stories about me being kind and responsible at this age.

My aunt, on the contrary, was glad to help me to grow up. I regret I was not interested in cooking at that time, because she was an excellent cook. But she taught me to swim, for example. Not being a very good swimmer herself, she helped me to overcome my fear of water. I remember how soothingly she tried to persuade me, telling me that every girl had to learn how to dance, cycle and swim. She regretted she couldn’t cycle herself. And I really took her directives close to heart. I didn’t manage to learn properly the art of dancing but swimming and cycling have become my favourite leisure activities.

I was 13 when my aunt’s daughter was born and, of course, it changed our relationship. She couldn’t support me as she used to and, I have to admit, I was not too eager to help her. Besides, I didn’t have a lot of opportunities for that because suddenly and completely unexpectedly for me my father’s usual friendliness towards my aunt turned into total coldness. My aunt became a rare guest in our house since her pregnancy and tried not to face my father if she could help it. I remember how shocked I was when my mother explained that my father didn’t want to see my aunt after she disgraced herself giving birth to an illegitimate child. Only much later she confessed that the real reason of this dramatic change in our family life had been my aunt’s request to let her live in our cabin, which was situated at the back of our yard. We lived there before our big house was finished. My aunt promised to leave after she got a room in the family dormitory. My father, however, was frightened by his co-workers. They told him a scary story about their acquaintance, who invited his relative to stay at his place for a short while and that person lived there for years and in the end sued him and got half of his house. It was not, actually, odd that my father was scared. At that time people got their dwellings for free but they were waiting for them in a queue for years, even decades. It was an especially slow process because there had always been people with money, who knew whose palms to grease to get their flats out of turn.

My aunt, for example, had been waiting for her two-room flat for thirty years. But she got her room in the family dormitory more or less quickly: in half a year or so. I think her room-mates’ complaints helped her in this matter. They weren’t happy, of course, to live in one room with a baby, when they had to get up early in the morning. Some of them had night shifts and wanted to have peace and quiet at the day-time too. But most of all it was my poor aunt who was suffering. Every night she was walking in the corridor with the baby in her arms trying not to disturb the other girls in their sleep. I remember how much older she began to look after this awful time. I am afraid I used to blame an innocent child for that.

In course of time we began to see each other more often and from time to time my cousin and I tried to make friends but it was always a failure. Mutual jealousy was the main obstacle, I think, which had always stood between us. I have gained only a few friends during my lifetime and now I regret that my cousin has never been among them.

To be continued…

(c) Anna Shevchenko

1. Festive demonstrations
2. A merry-go-round
3. The settlement in the steppe
4. The settlement in the steppe (the ending)
5. Urban life and its advantages
6. Collectivization and electrification of all the country

7. Roaming through the village and a man with two horses

8. My mother's struggle for freedom

9. A boy from the orphanage across the road

10. Living at the edge of the city

11. My grandmother's imprisonment

12. My mother's departure from the village forever

13. My mother's triumphs and mishaps in Bashkiria

14. My mother's triumphs and mishaps in Bashkiria (the ending)

15. The last visit to the village

16. My mother's helping hand

My mother's stories (chapter fourteen)

My mother’s stories

chapter 14

My mother's helping hand

My aunt was not very happy in Odessa doing hard masculine work at the plant and wrote several letters to my mother expressing a desire to join her in Bushkiria. My mother discouraged her sister, describing long winters with bitter frosts, piles of snow and lack of fresh fruit and vegetables. She was not in a hurry to leave Bushkiria herself but suddenly changed her mind after receiving a letter from one of her sister’s room-mates. This sympathetic girl asked my mother to come to Odessa as soon as she could and protect her sister from her so called friends. The girl wrote in her letter that Zina agreed to do some hard and dirty work at the plant, as it was better paid, and every time she received her salary, her friends, who preferred easier work, waited for her somewhere nearby with their hands stretched out.  It turned out that Zina inherited her mother’s non-ability to say “no” if people stared at her with ingratiating smiles and asked her to lend them some money. So when she reached her room in the dormitory, which was situated just across the road from the plant, she had less than half the salary on her.
       One cunning girl volunteered to protect my mother’s sister from her greedy friends and offered to become her cashier. Zina agreed with relief but as it turned out she didn’t know what she had signed up for. In reality the girl just took all her salary and gave her one ruble a day for her everyday needs. The rest of the money the girl pocketed for her own needs, explaining that she was building a house somewhere on the edge of the city and had high expenses. She promised to return her debt some time later, of course.

So my mother arrived in Odessa just in time. First of all, she gave her sister’s friends a good dressing down demanding to take their greedy hands away from her money. Then she went to her sister’s boss and told him about the girl, who was building the house. Eventually, they did manage to get at least part of Zina’s money back. Nobody, actually, knew how much of it that girl had taken. And she didn’t stay long at the plant after my mother’s arrival. Was she dismissed because of her bad behaviour or did she flee herself not to pay back the rest of her debt? My mother forgot the details. Nevertheless, it’s amazing how much she remembers about the events, which happened so long ago.

Even now, 60 years later, when she forgets what she was doing one or two minutes ago, she can still recollect how she arrived in Odessa for the first time and was struck by her sister’s shabby clothes and two left shoes on her feet. Or how some time later they went to the First of May demonstration and Zina put on one white and one blue sock and that on her white blouse there were buttons of different size and colour. So, before going anywhere else, she took her sister to a shop to buy new socks and Zina was arguing with her, saying there was no need for that because her mismatched socks were clean and new.

As my mother discovered her younger sister had to be taught a lot of things and not only about socks and buttons. First of all she persisted that Zina had to give up this rural habit of lending her things to everybody, who asked for them with a friendly smile. My mother was sure her sister didn’t even notice when her sly friends replaced her new clothes with their shabby ones. It wouldn’t be really difficult for them because there was not a big choice of garments and shoes in the shops. Moreover, my mother persuaded Zina to stop eating fried pasties, washing them down with some water, instead of proper meals. It would be much healthier and cheaper for her to cook herself. There was a long stove in the dormitory kitchen – although it was a slow process to cook on it. Girls usually left pans filled with all the ingredients on the stove and went to their rooms to rest. So my mother explained to her sister that she should not leave her pan alone for too long. Otherwise she could find it half-empty by the end of the cooking, because there was always someone who preferred to fill their plates from somebody else’s pans. It was not so easy for a young artless girl like my favourite aunt Zina to learn how to survive in that menagerie known as human society.

My mother was Zina’s first teacher and taught her a lot of useful things. She gave her first lessons of hygiene. It was not an easy task – as a naughty spoilt child Zina never allowed to wash or comb her hair. I believe it’s a rather painful process when you have long entangled hair and your mother’s hand is impatient and heavy. So I can understand a poor scruffy girl, who ran away and climbed the highest tree in the yard as soon as she saw that adults were going to catch her for bathing. As a result, the child was always lice-ridden and nobody wanted to sleep with her in one bed. It lasted till her elder sister, my mother that is, discovered that their neighbours regularly washed their bed-clothes and unlike them didn’t sleep on the sheets which were dark grey with dirt. Luckily, my mother had just found a pile of table-clothes in the attic. They were almost new – only a bit stained with wine. She boiled them with the soap on the advice of a neighbouring woman and after that had a lot of material to make sheets and pillows. Her elder sister’s new bed struck Zina to the very core. She pleaded eagerly, saying she was ready to endure anything to get rid of lice – just to be allowed to sleep with her sister on those marvelous snow-white sheets.

My mother was too enthusiastic with her hygienic treatment and burnt out some patches on her sister’s head with petrol, which she used instead of kerosene. In panic she ran to a local witch doctor for help and treated her sister’s head with prescribed herbal decoctions and ointments till those bald patches were healed and overgrown with hair. But before that Zina was devotedly hiding her head under the kerchief in order to safe her elder sister from their mother’s wrath.

To be continued…

(c) Anna Shevchenko

1. Festive demonstrations
2. A merry-go-round
3. The settlement in the steppe
4. The settlement in the steppe (the ending)
5. Urban life and its advantages
6. Collectivization and electrification of all the country

7. Roaming through the village and a man with two horses

8. My mother's struggle for freedom

9. A boy from the orphanage across the road

10. Living at the edge of the city

11. My grandmother's imprisonment

12. My mother's departure from the village forever

13. My mother's triumphs and mishaps in Bashkiria

14. My mother's triumphs and mishaps in Bashkiria (the ending)

15. The last visit to the village

My mother's stories (chapter thirteen)

My mother’s stories

chapter 13

The last visit to the village

Long after my mother left Bushkiria, her two cousins kept visiting her mother every summer, living in her shabby hut and devouring a lot of food at her expense, as my mother used to tell me with irritation. She, however, was as firm as her word and visited her village only once since she left it at the age of 21. It was 31 years later after she learnt that her mother had had serious problems with her health.

So she went to her simultaneously hateful and beloved village to look after her mother. To a local nurse’s surprise a big unhealing wound on her patient’s buttock began to skin over under my mother’s care. The secret was simple – she just changed spirit lotion and bandages twice a day instead of three times a week as local medicine prescribed. That wound was a result of numerous injections that the old woman had been so eager to have. My mother was sure the main cause of her mother’s poor state was her obsession with medicines. The old woman replenished her enormous supply of remedies every time she heard that some pills or mixtures had helped to someone. So without a second thought my mother burnt it all and continued with her simple treatment. In a month her mother recovered enough to be able to travel to Odessa where she could live with one of her daughters according to her own choice. She lived in the city only two more years, quarreling with her two daughters and regularly changing her place of living, not forgetting to attend an apothecary, of course.

We never liked each other with my grandmother but it’s a relief for me to remember that she really got attached to my little children. Even if she began to attract them just to tease my mother, her feelings for them became undoubtedly sincere. She was at her younger daughter’s flat when she got worse and on her last day she was waiting for those two little ones to come. We didn’t come for some reason and I really regret it. Yet it’s some comfort for me to know that her two little great-grandchildren gave her a bit of true love which she had been desperate to find all her life but never managed to. I was told that on her last day my grandmother regretted she hadn’t followed her elder daughter’s advice. We will never learn what she really meant. Was it about her daughter’s advice in general or about giving up medicines? Or was it maybe about her inclination to lend everything to everybody or about not having affairs with married men? I’d like to believe that she regretted they hadn’t allowed themselves to love and support each other. It’s so sad that such understanding often comes too late when you don’t have enough time to change anything in your life. Yet, I am not sure my grandmother would have liked to change something if she had been full of energy again and had years and years to waste before her. And isn’t it most of people’s attitude to their lives?

I could finish my narration with this slightly depressing reflection if I didn’t like my stories to end on more optimistic note. Maybe it’s just the weather with its dull raining and the darkest time of year that has caused this mood. In early winter I always feel like that – as if the spring is far away. But in three months it will definitely come. So I must continue my work in spite of the season and all the whims of the weather as I have a lot of things to tell about. My grandfather, for instance, who was annihilated by Stalin’s repressive machine, when my mother was only seven. He had a bright personality and left a deep trace in my mother’s mind. Or my great-grandmother, who could make home-spun fabric and a lot of other amazing things. And, of course, my favourite aunt, my mother’s younger sister Zina, who started working at the machine building plant when she was only 15. 

 To be continued…

(c) Anna Shevchenko

1. Festive demonstrations
2. A merry-go-round
3. The settlement in the steppe
4. The settlement in the steppe (the ending)
5. Urban life and its advantages
6. Collectivization and electrification of all the country

7. Roaming through the village and a man with two horses

8. My mother's struggle for freedom

9. A boy from the orphanage across the road

10. Living at the edge of the city

11. My grandmother's imprisonment

12. My mother's departure from the village forever

13. My mother's triumphs and mishaps in Bashkiria

14. My mother's triumphs and mishaps in Bashkiria (the ending)

Пять любимых вещей моего детства (часть первая)

Снег

Мне всегда нравились гладкие или волнистые поверхности, отражающие свет. Эти мерцающие блики солнечного света на поверхности воды или яркие вспышки осколков стекла на обочине дороги, словно приходили к нам из какого-то другого лучшего мира. Конечно, это была только игра моего воображения, но, сколько я себя помню, я никогда не могла остаться равнодушной к водной глади моря, озера или даже лужи, освещенной солнцем. Помню с какой радостью я и моя подружка Тоня отправлялись бродить вдоль объездной дороги сразу после летнего ливня. Асфальт на дороге был теплым и влажным, и серебристый пар подымался отовсюду. Мы брели неторопливо, заглядывая во встречающиеся по пути лужи, в которых отражалась чистая синева неба и легкие белые облака. В то время на окраине города машины проезжали редко, и воздух был восхитительно свеж и напоен ароматом озона. А какое это было удовольствие сбросить сандалии и пройтись по теплым прозрачным лужам босиком!

Но, конечно, ничто не могло сравниться с тем радостным возбуждением, которое испытывали все дети в округе, когда с неба начинали валиться пушистые белые хлопья. Эти грязные серые скучные Одесские зимы были такими утомительными, что выпавший внезапно снег воспринимался как чудо, как подарок судьбы. Я помню, как я плакала, когда снег, выпавший вечером, утром начинал таять под безжалостными лучами солнца и голос мамы где-то над головой: «Я же тебе говорила, что первый снег всегда тает!».

Когда я училась в начальной школе, нам повезло, и две или три зимы подряд были по-настоящему снежными. Всех детей охватывало радостное волнение, когда надвигались тяжелые серые тучи и в воздухе начинали кружиться первые белые снежинки. Утром мы, казалось, просыпались в новом мире, ярком и праздничном, где все деревья, заборы, крыши домов и все, что мог охватить глаз, было покрыто искрящимся белым снегом, и морозный свежий аромат врывался через приоткрытую дверь. И как много интересных занятий у нас сразу появлялось. Можно было скатываться на санках по любой наклонной поверхности, пусть даже с риском свернуть себе шею, или толкать друг друга в мягкие слегка пружинящие сугробы, или лихо разбежавшись, скользить по блестящим ледяным дорожкам. Взрослые ворчали, воспринимая это как покушение на безопасность передвижения, и теперь я их понимаю. Но в то время, когда я была маленькой и легкой, какое это было удовольствие разбежаться и пронестись, скользя по узкой сияющей полоске, по которой до меня скользило так много других детских ног. В этот момент я, как будто принадлежала к какому-то таинственному детскому братству, в которое взрослым не было доступа.

Когда снег начинал подтаивать, появлялись новые забавы, к которым и взрослые могли подключиться. Не так просто это было скатать два огромных снежных шара для туловища и один поменьше для головы, и потом слепить все это вместе. После этого оставалось раздобыть два уголька для глаз, веточку для носа, нахлобучить что-нибудь подходящее на голову, и снеговик был готов. Ну, и конечно, мальчишки тут же начинали яростно сражаться, перебрасываясь снежками. Я никогда не умела бросать камни или снежки как следует и поэтому старалась всеми силами уклоняться от этих снежных баталий.

Мне нравилось просто бродить со своей подругой среди покрытых снегом деревьев, выискивая самые красивые места, или ловить падающие снежинки своими слегка заледеневшими варежками исследовать их строение. У них были такие сложные и необыкновенно красивые формы. И у каждого снегопада были свои неповторимые снежинки! Казалось, они прилетали к нам из какой-то волшебной страны, таинственной и прекрасной.

My mother's stories (chapter twelve - the ending)

My mother’s stories

chapter 12

My mother's triuphs and mishaps in Bashkiria 

(the ending)

So it was not astonishing that some of my mother’s things disappeared from time to time. Once, for instance, even pretty buttons on her blouse were neatly cut off. And it was not a very big surprise for her when she discovered it was not one of her suitors, as it was thought at first, but her two cousins, who maliciously continued to steal her photographs from the board of honour. Nevertheless, my mother was not inclined to leave her uncle’s house till her cousins resorted to real violence. It was my mother’s diary, I think, that roused them to this cruelty. They took it in secret and, as their reading and writing skills were rather limited, most likely asked one of their friends to read it. I can imagine how it would have intensified their humiliation if some outsider had read aloud my mother’s picturesque description of their own stupidity and lack of success among the boys.

Although there was, I think, another reason to redouble those girls’ hostility. My mother didn’t drink alcohol and in our country such weirdoes have always been strongly disapproved of by those for whom drinking is part of their culture. The refusal to drink together without good reasons has always been taken as a sign of disrespect or arrogance. Sometimes, it seems, drinkers and non-drinkers belong to different species. I remember my relief when I discovered that none of my fellow students watched attentively how much I drank. There were some jokes about it, of course, but they recognized my right to drink as little as I wanted.

Surely my mother’s cousins weren’t so tolerant. They were simple, uneducated, plain girls without any noticeable talents to distinguish them among the crowd, except that one of them was a kleptomaniac and another had squint and epilepsy. I understand they could feel ill-fated and hold a grudge against the whole world. Nevertheless, as much as I try, I can’t find an excuse for those girls’ actions.

I don’t know exactly what brought the tense relationship between my mother and her cousins to the breaking point. Maybe it was an argument because of the stolen diary or just her usual refusal to drink with them. Anyway, once when their parents weren’t at home those two harpies attacked my mother and poured the whole bottle of French brandy down her throat. Then they hurled her down on the sofa and were standing nearby, watching her and laughing their heads off. My mother told me she couldn’t stir a limb and only her tongue was moving. So she was lying motionless on the sofa telling her laughing cousins how stupid they were and promising to win their suitors away as soon as they had at least one. I believe her cousins did spill at least half of the bottle, because my mother was able to get up early in the morning. She packed her things, then burnt her diary and left her uncle’s house forever.

One friendly woman, who lived in the neighbourhood, sheltered my mother in her house. When her two sobered cousins came looking for her the woman said she was not there. Then her uncle came begging her to come back and promising on oath to punish his daughters. My mother refused point blank. Some time later she got a place in the dormitory. Maybe at that time she decided once and for all not to have any affairs with her relatives.

Years later, however, my mother always remembered Bushkiria with warm feelings. Despite all those troubles her uncle had always been kind to her, she was young and at the height of her beauty, surrounded by suitors, who always sought an opportunity to dance with her. Moreover, she successfully learnt the craft of technical drawing and was praised by her boss.

By the end of the year that she had spent in Bushkiria she received a letter written by an unfamiliar hand from her mother’s dictation. Her mother was discharged from prison at last and asked her daughter to come back, telling her how happily they would live together.

“Can you believe it?” my mother used to ask me with indignation. “She thought I would be working hard for her as I used to! And she would be combing her long black plait, reading newspapers by syllables for hours or having fun with her lovers. So I wrote to her I would rather die under the bridge. As for living happily together I reminded her that leather belt that hung on the nail near the entrance door, which she had used so often on me”.

To be continued…

(c) Anna Shevchenko

1. Festive demonstrations
2. A merry-go-round
3. The settlement in the steppe
4. The settlement in the steppe (the ending)
5. Urban life and its advantages
6. Collectivization and electrification of all the country

7. Roaming through the village and a man with two horses

8. My mother's struggle for freedom

9. A boy from the orphanage across the road

10. Living at the edge of the city

11. My grandmother's imprisonment

12. My mother's departure from the village forever

13. My mother's triumphs and mishaps in Bashkiria

My mother's stories (chapter twelve)

My mother’s stories

chapter 12

My mother's triuphs and mishaps in Bashkiria

It was exactly how her uncle, who knew her mother’s character too well, had foretold her: the further her train went away from the village the better she felt. And the first thing that she did after she crossed half the country - she went to a dance with her cousins. She was asked to dance almost immediately but seeing that nobody had invited her cousins yet she tried to reject an offer saying she couldn’t dance. A young man was persistent, however, and said he was a dance teacher. After some argument my mother agreed at last and they were dancing, joking and laughing all the evening, while her cousins stood uninvited leaning against the wall.

“Small wonder it was,” my mother usually concluded this scene with satisfaction “as they were so stupid and ugly”. She, unlike her cousins, was never deprived of dancing partners and after the ending of that first party three or four young fellows insisted on accompanying her to her uncle’s house. It was a real triumph to return with an escort of admirers. But this was, I suppose, the beginning of strong mutual dislike between her and her cousins.
        She got on well with her uncle’s younger son and daughter but his elder daughters never missed an opportunity to harm her. One of those girls was known as a kleptomaniac. She reached the peak of her ill fame by stealing the money which her parents had been saving to buy a cow. They discovered the absence of the money after their neighbour came to their house and reported that their daughter had been seen in town sitting on the bench surrounded by a bunch of boys treating all of them to expensive sweets and biscuits. After being caught by her father, the girl denied everything until he seized her, pulled her skirt up and found the money, or rather what was left of it, shoved in one of her stockings.

Nevertheless, she was not properly punished even then because she had a faultless weapon against her father. Every time after being caught stealing, the girl began to shout, reminding her father that he stole a horse at the age of 17 and was caught trying to sell it. He was deported for this crime beyond the boundaries of Ukraine. Nowadays, people consider an opportunity to leave these boundaries as good luck, but at the time of Stalin’s government it was a wide-spread punishment. “I should be send beyond the boundaries of Ukraine for this,” my mother used to say this phrase very often, usually when she blamed herself for something. So that is why my mother’s uncle was sent to the distant northern republic, where the frost reached minus 45 degrees of Celsius in winter, snow-drifts could reach the roofs of the houses and people usually attended the first of May demonstrations in their hats and warm coats. Her uncle, however, got married there, settled down and became a respectable member of society, but every time his kleptomaniac daughter hurled accusations into his face he was lost for words.

To be continued… 

(c) Anna Shevchenko

1. Festive demonstrations
2. A merry-go-round
3. The settlement in the steppe
4. The settlement in the steppe (the ending)
5. Urban life and its advantages
6. Collectivization and electrification of all the country

7. Roaming through the village and a man with two horses

8. My mother's struggle for freedom

9. A boy from the orphanage across the road

10. Living at the edge of the city

11. My grandmother's imprisonment

12. My mother's departure from the village forever

My mother's stories (chapter eleven)

My mother’s stories

chapter 11

My mother's departure from the village forever

As my mother believed that with her weak heart she could die at any moment, as soon as her sister finished her seventh form she went to the district centre to obtain permission for her to leave the village. Maybe it was even her sister’s sixth form because they lost one or two school years during the Second World War. For a long time I thought that my favourite aunt Zina needed that document because of her young age and only much later I learnt that at that time peasants could not move from their villages of their own free will. I remember my shock when I found out that our peasants didn’t have any passports till 1974. How could I shut my ears to such information? There was nothing about this in our textbooks and we rarely communicated with our rural relatives but surely I should have heard something about it. I think it was one of those cases when you didn’t comprehend the meaning of what you had just heard.

A passport for me has always been a document to be proud of. When I think about it, the slashing rhythm of Vladimir Mayakovsky’s poetry begins to sound in my ears, and I can see his face with its strong chin and tragic expression of his big eyes – exactly how he looked in our textbook on literature. “The fiery tribune” they called him and he really was. It was impossible not to trust him when he was triumphantly finishing the poem about “his red leather-bound passport” – “Read it and envy me: I am the citizen of the USSR!” And at the same time when I recited these full of exaltation lines at school half the population in our country didn’t have their passports at all.

Yet it was not too big an obstacle for young people if they really wanted to leave the village as the state needed more and more hands to work at the factories. So after some trouble my mother got the permission for her sister. I think my fifteen-year-old aunt was glad to escape – perhaps she thought the wide world was waiting for her to find her own nice place under the sun. In reality most of her life she had been living in the dormitory, doing the hard masculine work at the machine-building plant and raising a daughter as a single mother till she died at the age of 52. And the same was going on everywhere: people flew away from poverty and hard work in the villages and found the same life in the cities, only without fresh air, tasty water and natural food. Most of them, however, never came back. Was their life in the villages even worse than that or was it merely the global process of industrialization that left them no choice?

Despite all my mother’s hatred and bitterness towards the woman who brought her into the world there was some well-suppressed admiration deeply inside her. It slipped out sometimes when she was telling me about her mother’s mad tempers and reckless bravery. There was, undoubtedly, some bond between them, which my mother had never been able to break. We all have this bond with our mothers despite all our attempts to free ourselves from it and bitter feelings and old grudges. At the age of 20 my mother was determined to break this bond forever and the only thing which could stop her was her poor health.

“Can you imagine?” my mother used to tell me “I was so ill when I was 20 that a person standing beside me could see my blouse stirring, because my heart was thumping so hard. And every time, when I was slowly dragging my feet along the street, one or two well-wishers emerged from their gates to let me know that everybody said I was going to die soon. How can it be possible to say things like that to a person?”

Even now in spite of the problems with her memory my 84-year-old mother still mentions those well-wishers from time to time. Fluffing her natural grey curls and looking at me with her weak-sighted eyes, she usually exclaims with simple-hearted joy, “Can you imagine? Nobody of those people reached the age of forty and here I am! Who could have predicted this? So don’t wish ill to your neighbour”.

And back then two sympathetic male teachers encouraged her to leave the village, telling her that it was the only way to recover her health. One of those teachers, who had a big house in a nighbouring village and was definitely in love, asked my mother to marry him. She declined his offer, saying she couldn’t marry a man without loving him. So she decided to move to her uncle, who lived in the distant northern Soviet republic of Bashkiria. He was especially fond of my mother because she was the only one who wrote him letters while he was fighting in the Second World War. Later, when he visited the village, the War hero, his entire breast decorated with medals, he invited his favourite niece to live with him and his family after she finished school and try her luck there. 

My mother needed money for tickets and some warm clothes, I suppose, but she was lucky. They had a very fertile sow, which had 12 piglets three times a year. As peasants never received any money for their work in the collective farm fields selling their own produce was the only way to get some cash. Luckily, my mother made a good profit from those piglets and provided her sister with money when the latter was leaving. In the end when she sold the sow, she had enough money for her own trip. So a year after her sister’s departure my mother did it at last – she left her village forever.

To be continued…

(c) Anna Shevchenko

1. Festive demonstrations
2. A merry-go-round
3. The settlement in the steppe
4. The settlement in the steppe (the ending)
5. Urban life and its advantages
6. Collectivization and electrification of all the country

7. Roaming through the village and a man with two horses

8. My mother's struggle for freedom

9. A boy from the orphanage across the road

10. Living at the edge of the city

11. My grandmother's imprisonment