Bombardirovka
Crystal Allene Cook
www.bombardirovka.com
Bombardirovka
Copyright (c) 2008
by Crystal Allene Cook
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2008 by Crystal Allene Cook
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Library of Congress Control Number: 2008909584
ISBN 9780615226071
I want to thank Dodie Bellamy, Antioch University Los Angeles, the American University of Armenia, Barnard College (where I started my journey with Russian) and all of those other folks in Armenia, Karabakh, the US, Georgia, and the rest of the Caucasus that assisted me-you know who you are. I wish to thank Stefan Tobler, Joan Dempsey, Sevan Yousefian, Marianna Grigoryan, Leila Walker, Scott MacFarlane, and Mairead Liberace, for their research, revision, formatting, and/or editing assistance. I would like to thank Terry Wolverton for her insights into writing and art. I would like to thank the US Fulbright Committee for the grant to go to Armenia in 2004 to do research, and ACTR for the grant in 1991 to study in Soviet Russia. I also would like to thank everyone that directed me to texts, allowed me to conduct an interview, and/or opened their homes to me while I was in the Caucasus. You are dear to my heart!
For the victims and survivors of war, and, for Constance.
What counts is not what your road is paved with, but whether it leads to hell.
From Evil in Modern Thought by Susan Leiman.
Lispector: What is the most important thing in the world?
Neruda: To try and make the world a worthy place for everyone, not just for the privileged few.
From an interview with Pablo Neruda by Clarice Lispector in Selected Cronicas.
If one reckons the average enlisted man's weight at 69kg, a million defunct combatants would then yield 69,000 metric tons of high-grade compost, while a corresponding million generals would furnish 82,000 tons of manure-to be sure not of the same quality, but by no means second-rate either. To this must be added rotting footgear, belts, and feces already excreted from living participants, which indeed amounted to no little in the course of the months... If one today observes and evaluates the thin, young, pale green leafy forest on the fields of Verdun, one may be tempted to think that the result of the organic materials added is perhaps unpromising. One must not, however, fail to take into account the enormous time a tree needs in order to grow up, compared with the time needed to shoot it away with dynamite.
From Moment of Freedom by Jens Bjørneboe.
Jada Perlmutter, Labor Day, 2005
The sun just peeks over Roosevelt Island. Refreshing to look down from my apartment window for once on a Monday and not see traffic backed up the Eastside Highway. Labor Day. Have to love it. At least one more day of freedom before I'm back to my classroom, dissecting decimals, mooshing out multiplication.
Holding both crutches in one hand, I fold the futon back to reset the couch. I brush a crumb from the woven mat, slide to the floor by easing down the crutch-legs, then launch into my full usual routine of exercises: light weights for arms, crunches for my abdomen, light stretches for my one hip; I turn over and do kneeling push-ups.
From the physical exercises I prepare for the mental ones. I light the white, unscented candle on the end table. I haven't been able to handle a lot of perfumes since the anesthesia and medicines. After the hemi-pelvectomy my immune system has remained weaker, my sense of smell more sensitive.
Using my fingertips, I scoot toward the couch and prop my favorite pillow behind my lower back. I close my eyes, envision a life free of physical pain, free of phantom pain; I plan my goals just for the day [today = breakfast, planning curriculum, cooking an early dinner by myself; I will do these successfully, free of pain, free of phantom pain, and have energy left for socializing late into the evening with friends]; I see myself that day on crutches, moving smoothly on the New York streets around pedestrians, angling myself correctly around fire hydrants, hopping with ease onto buses, bending adeptly into cabs.
I end my morning exercises [I go through a longer set at night. To sleep without pain, to try to sleep without nightmares] by massaging my lump through the folded-over pant leg. There isn't enough left of my pelvis to have a stump, so I call it my "lump." Often colder than the rest of my body, I wrap it in a blanket.
After the lump is good and warm, I pull my prosthesis over. My prosthetist Waleed did a great job. Thank God, this one is more comfortable, although I'd become attached to the last one. Waleed laughed when I'd commented that no matter what, it's never easy to lose a leg.
I unfold the straps on the corset, but when I unwrap my lump a pain shoots down the leg-that-isn't-there, taking my breath. I sit upright and fight. The ghost is not going to ruin my day. I slide out of my pants and shove my prosthesis against the strange empty scoop next to my vagina. I run my hand along the scar from removing my womb and ovaries. Doctors removed them a couple of years ago when my womb started to fall from lack of support underneath. It took a long time to get over that. I mean, I couldn't have supported a baby with half a pelvis anyway, but I knew that.
Because I have found other things to love. That's what you do. Find other things. Other ways to fill time on this earth.
I slip the corset around my waist and fuss with the new Velcro straps.
Alabaster, Waleed joked. A limb of ivory, eh, beautiful? A master sculptor, kind, an Algerian, hairy and smiling and flattering with gold rings and eyes the green of a preying mantis. Eh, something dazzling, eh, precious? A limb of jewels. Something spectacular, a bedecked and wondrous ornament. Not that he hadn't even matched the dimple in my knee with perfection, but... Together we decorated my new leg, setting into the "flesh-toned" covering a mosaic of multicolored rhinestones and sequins and tattoo designs in acrylic. Then we pulled my new appendage over the light, metal frame. I fasten the straps around my waist, strap an electronic impulse to my side. Then I pull myself to the futon, slide backward, grab a crutch and push myself to standing.
I hobble 'cause that is what I do quite visibly and awkwardly. I "walk" closer to the fireplace, to look again at what Alya had sent me that spring, before I went back, before I went again to Armenia, to Nagorno-Karabakh:
The painting from our Lyosha. Four feet by three. In it I am fourteen years younger. My hair hangs past my shoulders in waves. Lyosha painted onto me an electric red bikini. He'd once asked me my favorite flower; he'd never heard of a tiger lily. I'd described the bends, the points, the long stems, the petals-orange with black dots. In the painting, tiger lilies creep up my leg. They aren't really what tiger lilies look like, but in the same way a prosthetic is not what a leg looks like, either.
-1-
Story
Moscow's cold grabbed and pulled at my neck, setting the nerves there to twirling and the muscles to eating my throat, to tightening, like kudzu's ever-encroach around the trees back home in the Virginia mountains. This cold pierced, like, like the time Timmey, a day off from kindergarten for some reason or another, like the time he stabbed at my neck with our mother's pincushion full of pins, dull pricks and infuriating tingles, their flat sides stunning more than hurt. Like many things, the pain was more in the attempt. He could have killed me, I guess, maybe, if a needle had loosed. Strayed. We stood in the living room, the stitched fir-green carpet spreading in the abyss between us. We stood, staring. A second or two, I rubbed at the red now my neck's markings. Insult mixed with fear, I lunged forward and whacked the side of his head with my toy's flat side, that kind of paddle with the ball attached on a rubber band, that kind that after breaking (they always broke) was carried in a purse to threaten whuppings. But when Mom raced in after I started crying, neither Timmey nor I, neither said a word. Nary a peep. We stood together, looking at her, looking at our living room, at most of what was our world.
For sure, mid-November Moscow cold bit just like this: common and vengeful. Back in the States, I had forgotten how bitter-cold Moscow gets. Skin is not something you usually notice, but here, mine ached dull, like an asleep limb at that moment your nerves scatter. Besides, my neck itched. Too freezing to take off gloves, so I scratched through my scarf. I scratched, looked the street up-down, up-down again, and tried to decide which way to go on the Arbat, on the boulevard.
The late morning was angry, a pitching bustle. From rickety, wood-framed balconies fell sharpened icicle stakes. I looked at the balconies. Only a couple of meters to the ground. On the ground, cheap boots packed and repacked the crackling snow.
1991. Jada Perlmutter, twenty-three. Alone. Hopeless. Empty-handed. And.... These things making her, me, Oh-so-Soviet.
T. Timmey-T. Brother Mo. Balcony.
My neck was itching me to death from the cold. Off came these damned thermal gloves; my nails dug underneath to the scarf. Relief. Tingles. Sweet relief. Onto the low buildings the sky opened and poured forth a golden hue. Rebundling, I jerked my gloves almost on, knocking into a man going by. "Watch out, devushka," he barked. Yes, watch out, girl. What I needed. Yes. I needed to watch out. I no longer paid such close attention. Pay attention!
Watch!
Watch. Wake up and smell the bacon-coffee-vodka-puke-story. I needed a story, T. You had a story. You went and had your story. I needed a new story. According to the editor I had just cornered and badgered at Newsweek, I wrote sad-sack sappy babushka ballads no one wanted to read. Well, she didn't really say it quite that way, but I'd heard her nonetheless. Alliteration teetered my skull as she droned about my uselessness. I can't give you any advice, she said, and no, I don't know anyone looking for stories like this. From the bureau to the Arbat, I'd sung my own praise: "sad-sack sappy." On a loop in my head: "sad-sack sappy."
A real story. I needed a real story.
Earlier this year, spring in New York, New Baby magazine-not exactly what I'd had in mind when I studied journalism: elite preschools, test-marketing baby bottles, which homely white shoes had the best soles-my copy landing between Pampers and foot cream ads. Everywhere else the world snapped like winter peas: empires fell, Scuds dropped, masses moved, dictators dove. My brother Timmey covered a war, and I stood in an office overlooking Madison, as our dad would say, with my finger implanted, whistling Dixie.
Closer to the low wall, tourist trappers-varsovsheks-lined along. Clouds enclosed the sky and its orange. One varsovshek looked, met my eye. Young, too, but like me, not exactly a kid. He turned to talk to a pal, the swing of his arm fluid, the socket easy not with relaxation, but the careless gesture of despair. My lungs twisted around my heart. Freezing hands moved up to my chest. Timothey. I wanted Timothey Junior here. Curly headed Virginia brother, gap toothed. One Saturday in junior high he'd taken his own braces off with pliers. A cousin, she and I sat on upturned buckets in the garage and witnessed as he stared into a purse mirror of Mom's. But we didn't run and tell. I wouldn't run and tell. Today at Newsweek, a brother's wrath, he'd have grinned, then talked a frog out of green. Talked a preacher out of God. And me? Gawky and gangly, skinny redhead, my curly hair always wild. I used to stammer. Awkward and bookish me. But, Timothey, T., mean as a striped-ass snake. My goddamned brother has, had, always known what and how to say.
In the hall of Newsweek this morning my big brother would have smooshed the editor up, patted her down like putty; he'd have run clear across town, wrestled the dancing bear at the Moscow Circus just for a tale to tell. Last time I was back, back in the USSR, T.'d tried to get his way here. He was in the Army. "Hey, Jay-duh. We're mothas. Motha-a-Pearls." He'd grasp knuckles in-between the clamp-clasp formed from his hand. "Jay-duh Sister Motha-a-Pearl, you should've seen the look on that tamer's face when the bear-when we got together and danced one of those Russian step-jumps, you know, a hoppin' sort of jig." T. would have leaned, laughed a spleen-splitting laugh, the kind that rolls around the navel before cracking through the throat.
But T. was dead. This past summer. And buried up on the hill one fucking kerjillion miles away, above a Virginia valley just now entering its yellow-dead season. Before T. jumped off the house right up above the little downward twist on Main Street, the house up and above all of town, he called me in New York City. I hadn't been home. Out on assignment for loathsome New Baby. But by God I still have his message; I disconnected the whole answering machine and plopped the plastic into the little fireproof safe with my college newspaper awards, high school and UVA diplomas. On that machine probably spit T.'s last words. "Bye-bye, Sister Jay-duh Motha-a-Pearl," he'd said and laughed spleen-splitting. "Bye-bye. You know. Don't worry. Ya'll will be fine." A long pause followed. "Wish we could've talked. But," another long pause. "Sister Motha-of-pearl, shine on, glimmer true, bye-bye."
Toward the east in this country capped at that end by Asia, the sky now matched the ground's grey and filth swirls. I scratched at my neck and ears. If I looked much longer at the varsovshek, right into a Moscow gutter I'd fall, keep falling, slip off this side of the world and end up-ass in China.
Ahead represented a united front against hypothermia. Past the farther low wall, pug-nosed tracksuited thugs, bespectacled college students, and sturdy-legged mothers formed combat units, their artillery constant: vodka swigs, thermoses of tea, calisthenics. Behind us, rival varsovshek gangs demarcated territories with their own cheap card tables, propped anyhow with cardboard under their leg-ends to keep the rickety aluminum poles from collapsing on the uneven sidewalk.
Territory?
Hey, T., which way do I turn? Where, to a story?
Where to now, Sister Jada Motha-mutter-pearl?
That afternoon near Red Square a press conference was happening, the most logical place to start a story. Politics. Politics and logic. Maybe protestors already chanted. But not I, not me, I walked in the direction opposite, into the wind dampening with the smell of coming snow.
I turned. In the row along the narrower walkway, a matushka squatting on a stool patted her cheeks, sighed an "ah" of relief. The tchotchkes on her table drew me. Through my glove, I fingered a bright and shiny speckled box resting on faded black velour. The box's painted-flower top glistened red and white and clear and bronze, freckled and fluorescent. Letting loose with the ends of my fingers, I picked up a heavy and wide metallic bracelet. Some sort of writing wrestled along the side.
"What language is this?" I asked, jump-starting my Russian for the first time that day.
"Armenian," the round-eyed thick-glasses-wearing, pear-shaped, be-shapka-ed hawker answered, not looking up from her thin pamphlet of word puzzles.
"What's it say?"
The hawker filled in a letter, sighed. "A prayer. A prayer. It's a prayer." She squinted at the paper. I didn't pray. I was not a pray-er.
Relief raised along the metal struck me as broken, repetitive, too hard for anyone's everyday use. Rubbing my gloved finger along the words, winding again and again the same bends and curves, I asked, "What's the prayer?"
The woman looked up, then back down, "Hope, faith, love." She scratched with a small pencil in her book as she spoke. Pausing, she wrote, then glanced again at the metal in my hands. "You want it?" she added, her voice flat, low.
"Which word says 'hope'?" My mouth popped out the words in staccato.
"Does it really matter?" Her voice dropped.
The broken lines and curving figures hooked like crooked fingers. "Then how do you know," I pointed at a random group of letters, "That says 'love.'"
I was successfully being a pain in her ass.
"Here, let me see," she sighed again, nodded. Fumbling through a ratty handbag, the hawker withdrew a magnifying glass, stacked its thick bottle before her right eye. "This one," she pointed at an upside-down horseshoe next to a half-cross followed by a p-shaped squiggle.
"What's the word in Armenian?"
Her forehead wrinkled. "What's the difference? Hope, faith, love—all the same really—"
"Which word?" I pointed at the bracelet. The woman's jaw flexed.
Pointing to a shape that seemed to start with two different u's,' "s-ehr," she pressed air through her teeth, a hard 's' with a trilled 'r' rolling. She dropped the magnifying glass back into her bag and the bracelet back onto the velour.
Retrieving the band, I fingered the word she spit. "How much?" I asked.
"Fifteen dollars."
"Three," I countered. "Yep," I could also play games. "Only worth three for love."
I succeeded! The hawker choked a laugh. "Maybe true... but unlike other loves, this love is permanent." She one-upped, her grin missing teeth, bearing out one tooth of shiny gold. "Three for love, three for hope, three for faith and just three for the translation—how about twelve?" she countered. "Devushka, it's a steal! For a love that lasts!"
"I wouldn't know the difference," I said. "Lasting or not."
"But aren't you married? You're the right age."
"We don't marry so young where I'm from."
"Oh, you Estonians!"
I nodded, laughed to myself. Yes! Not an Amerikanka. She was fooled! Most Russians mistook my staccato accent for a Finnish or another type of Ugric speaker.
"And you? What are you?"
"I'm—" she swallowed. "It's not important."
"But you read Armenian?"
"I read several things," she answered, her face sinking into the loose skin on her neck. Shitty of me to pry. Circumstances forced many to do what they'd never imagined.
I rubbed my fingers again on the relief, breathed the damp air deep into my lungs till they burned, then I told her the truth.
"I only have five dollars," I said, and with that, disappointment robed her and she stood, smirking, opened her palm and reached across the table for the bracelet.
Jerking away, I glanced toward the Irish pub on up the street. A couple of cars slid toward each other on the road's new ice and blared their horns. Faith, love. A moister, thin haze entered the atmosphere, softened the looks of the corners on the two-story buildings across the Arbat. Hope. T. was dead.
"Prayers don't come cheap, devushka," the woman said, her voice flat. The tone change worked, as if she'd wanted this, to make me even sadder. I hated her. I knew that any moment I would reach across the table and one, two, smack.
Away I turned, toward the thug-varsovshek who'd earlier caught my eye, but spite, spite! I tossed the metal at the table. "I see that," I said.
She caught the band as it rolled.
"Go on," she said, her face flushing. "Go! No need to act a fool!" A few hawkers looked up. She called behind, "Rich foreigner and she wants me to give things away! To hell with her!"
"To hell with you!" I returned, over my shoulder.
Sappy sad-sack.
I was crying. Light, but real. The Soviets would laugh-what would an American have to cry about?
Air poured around my eyeballs, around their sockets. The damp ratcheted up. Through the snow and slush I slid, past a plethora of crapola: matrioshki, painted wooden eggs, Soviet Army hats and coats, carved bird-shaped whistles, flower-printed scarves, hats with earflaps, Soviet pins and medallions, boot-knives and switchblades, amber beads on strings, leather purses, lace doilies. Nothing of use in the stores and nothing but shit on the street. My tears ended. I stood. Breathed.
How had I let myself get down to so little money? That last beer this weekend with Lyosha? God, let Leprechaun Tom lend something to tide me. God, how I hated to ask, God! And if the lady-hawker had said, okay, five? What then? I'd have hope and faith and love in my hand, but Timothey Junior would still be dead!
Another twenty meters, I paused, people pushed past. My teeth ground together. My tongue rolled to the roof of my mouth.
A story.
Outside the Irish pub and co-op, from the end of the cement foundation and another three meters into the air, grey paint, pasted over with black paper around the inside, blocked all but the topmost view. Visible in that narrow space fluorescent lights gleamed. Up the steps and through the door, a square- and bare-headed, drab-uniformed bruiser of a guard checked passports: you could enter only if you were Soviet with the right "authorization," or, if you were foreign like me, and in either case, you could only pay in foreign currency. Nearby a tram screeched. I flashed the navy blue cover of my coveted American identification; it exempted me from much of the country's usual hassle. Inside the foyer, behind the store window, a woman in a mink and black-and-silver fuck-me boots dragged around a peanut-shaped little girl stuffed into a sparkling white and garishly brand-new snowsuit. Struggling over items in a wire cart, the nouveau riche pair yanked each other down the aisle. The bright colors of Pringles, Fritos, Cheez Whiz, and Skippys blinked out from a shelf. On I continued, into the other business on this property, the Blarney Stone.
Behind the thick wood door, late morning, the pub shrank, the air somehow even thinner, its particles smaller. No gobs of plastered Foreign Service folk draped over the bar. No Czech cameramen, fretting Italian Embassy workers, Slavophile Brits, armchair Austrian and Scottish socialists, or the entire Greenpeace office arguing at a large round table. No huge, billowy screen of smoke or Irish folk or rock blasting. Even the floor and the engraved mirror on the wall behind the bar still glistened from a polish. Igor, the long-legged Russian barback, nodded as I entered, resumed clinking mugs onto the glass stacking rafters above the counter's right side. Only one person was there that I didn't recognize. He perched on a stool near the opposite wall, looked out the one window to the Arbat and the park across.
Behind the counter, Leprechaun Tom, the manager, a tall, full-chested, dark-haired, light-eyed Dubliner, glowed with health and spirit. I glanced at the clock above the mirror. Already at eleven-something a.m. Leprechaun Tom looked up from where he tallied over a log, closed the ledger, his heavy-boned face cracking into a toothy smile. Good. A smile was good. Especially to borrow money. "If it isn't Jada the Jerry," he said, reaching below the wide wooden bar and turning a long, clear teacup, a toddy glass, with a ping, onto a saucer. My last five dollars. How did I ask? Leprechaun Tom tapped the cup's rim. It rang out and vibrated. "Halloween I thought you'da come as a SS. What were you anyway? A homeless?"
"From a Russian novel," I said. "Got to do something useful with Russian. My dad was right, 'What you wanna go and study that for?'"
"For getting to know yer enemies," Leprechaun Tom squeezed Igor on the arm. The Russian-only-speaking barback nodded, stopped. Tom shook his head. No, he didn't need anything after all.
"Here I am," I said, my shapka before me. "To bring understanding between peoples."
Sad. Still sad.
"That good of a mornin', huh?"
"'Aw hell's bells,' my dad had said, 'You learned Russian because it's hard. You and your brother, you like doin' hard things. Now that's why.'"
"Sounds like a smart man."
My brother. My brother.
I dropped my hat into a bar chair. "Yes-sir," I said, changing my mood, forcing, piercing, sticking through to cheer.
Timothey lay crumpled on the ground in front of—
"And your homeless get-up?" Tom poured whiskey into the glass.
I blinked back to reality. "From the Ukrainian author, Gogol, The Overcoat. But, Tom," I stretched his name with a put-on Southern accent, fell into the teasing he loved. Tom, lift my spirits. Lift my spirits. When could I ask him for money?
He cocked an eyebrow. My nerve stung, frittered out.
Snapping open and unzipping my sausage coat, warmth, real heat filled my bones. My neck! The itching stopped! My eyeballs melted back to normal, to neutral.
"Not even you can make me laugh today," I dared.
Sad sack sappy. I managed a half-grin.
"Oh, no, my sweet?" he shook his head, moving from frown to smile, motioning me in a little closer. "How about a little secret?" As he had, I leaned in. "There. The frizzy-haired bastard staring out the window, he just got into town—works for American TV—what is it—I don't know. Seems a good sort. If you don't know him already, you'd do well to pay a call."
I glanced over my shoulder. A broadcast journalist. Folding my coat over the back of the bar chair, I said "I don't know anything about TV." This morning, the last five from my savings: an old sock I kept in back of the third shelf in my wardrobe.
Did I ask now?
"Suit yourself," Leprechaun Tom said. "But, even if you ain't on the telly, you well oughta be-" He pulled an up and down tsk-tsk look. Igor smiled as he passed with a damp cloth. "Privet," he said. "Kak perezhivaesh?" "All right," I answered. "You?" He shrugged, wiped down one chair, and the next.
"On the telly," I imitated Tom's accent. "They want someone semi-refined," I drew out my Virginia "i." "And, anyway, who the hell wants to look at me?" I pulled on my knotty hair.
"Aw, I say horseshit, Perlmutter." Tom turned, waved his thumb at me, said to Igor. "She's all right. What do you think?" "All," Igor repeated.
"Some aberrant Irish gene causes you to knee-jerk react to me as a redhead," I said.
"If I thought so much of redheads," Tom continued. "I woulda married one."
Money. I wrapped my scarf around my gloves and shoved them and my hat into the arm of my coat. Directness. Strength and courage, T. always said. Strength. I bit my lip, breathed in. Stalled. "Tom-" I opened my mouth, but the sound gurgled. Don't take anything from anyone. Do for yourself, our parents said.
Tom added another lemon slice next to the last. I toyed with the toddy, lifted the glass to my lips. Heat slid back, down my throat. Honey smoothed my soul. I stuck the other lemon slice in my glass, rolled my tongue behind my teeth. Honey wouldn't melt in a lady's mouth. What would I have done if the hawker on the Arbat had said, okay, ladno, five dollars? Five dollars for a prayer.
Picking up the remote, Leprechaun Tom clicked down the volume on CNN and grinned.
"Hey," Tom called, smiling, and winked at me. The man at the window turned. Sad. Sack. "Perlmutter here's American and in TV, too." In my head, I typed, "limerick-spewing gold-at-the-end-of-the-rainbow, potato-famined jack-ass" all over Tom's dimpled, friendly face. The TV guy pushed himself to standing, straightened at his shirt, heavy-stepped over, mug in hand.
"That so?" A wide mouth moved in the guy's cream-colored face. A light mustache of foam rested above his lip. Greasy, wiry hair the shade of the beer he swigged framed a puffy brow. "Who for?" he asked, indicating a real question.
"I don't know anything about TV," I repeated, sipped only to find that the lemon soured what was in my glass. I needed more honey. My anxiety rose.
Wiping a spoon clean, Leprechaun Tom grinned wider. "Me, you know already, but Perlmutter here, she's frum th' Sahwuth," he declared, taking a stab at a hillbilly impression.
"That so?" this guy said again. "Perlmutter, is it?" He stuck out his hand, "Jeff."
I rattled myself to. "Jada," I sang, shoved my fingers into Jeff's, firm and forceful, laying in with the kind of after-church reception-line handshake that Dad always approved.
"Aa-oop," Jeff said, pumping back with his pudgy fingers. "So, Jada," he winked over at Tom, who still grinned and in turn winked again at me. "What brings you to Moscow?"
Tom's face fell. Tom—
What you wanna study that for?
On the walk, in-town, highonthehill home.
Because if I study Russian and live in Moscow I can guarantee I'll never end up living down below our parents in a trailer and waking up one day to find I've got three kids and a husband that likes my baloney-cheese "samiches" best. Because my brother-he studied journalism, he wrote for the Army, he wrote and he saw and he went-he studied journalism so I studied journalism, too, because I was always doing what he did, and he went overseas, so I found a way, a way to go, to try.
Moscow. Because I already knew Moscow. I needed money and I didn't have any other skills and I didn't know what else to do; because I was in Manhattan writing copy for New Baby magazine and I had to do something else, get out and do something else, and this was what I said I was going to do. I saw the revolution on TV, the one where the Russian leader fell; I was watching the revolutions on TV; that meant, nope, I was not there, live and center. You know, I was going to go to Moscow and finally, absolutely, did I say really? work as a journalist.
My chest went thump, thwack, thump-had been going thump, thwack, thump. A little film spun through a reel, the end spiraling-thuhp, thuhp, thuhp, thuhp, thuhp-then private scenes played, almost pornographic in their immodesty: me, this angle. Me, from here. How about T. over there. Me, asking the tough questions, the questions T. would never get a chance now to ask. I would, though; I would win the Pulitzer, while on a split-screen run the shocked expressions of Tazewell, VA elite, moneyed crackers amazed that I was on cable TV; T's Virginia old-family girlfriend, kicked out of private school, shell-shocked at his funeral, not the only one shell-shocked, she gawked like a belching alcoholic sitting at home all day in a Shenandoah antebellum. Why her, T.? Why all those powerful hard to reach?
That's what for.
Jeff picked up the Guinness Leprechaun Tom had freshened.
What'd brought me to Moscow?
"Fuck if I know," I answered, took a quick sip on the last drops of toddy.
Tom looked at me. His face relaxed.
From my front inside jacket pocket I slid out my cigarettes, plucked one. It was broken. The bits fell into my lap. Brushing those away, I picked out another, offered it to Jeff. He shook his head. "Just stringing," I added. "That'll probably be my epitaph." I lit the cig and stuck my matches on the bar.
The fuzz above Jeff's lip had disintegrated. "Anything in the works?" he asked.
"Drugs. She writes about drug dealers." Leprechaun Tom tapped my glass, walked to the calculator next to the cash register. Igor passed behind him and wet the rag in the bar sink.
"Not only that. Why?" Oh, Tom. This lemon. When am I going to ask? "How about you?" I turned the tables. Get people to talk about themselves. That was a journalist's job, right? To find a goddamned—.
"Here with ABC."
"That's it then," Tom called out from the end of the bar, where he filled up a small bowl with peanuts. "See, Perlmutter. Can't keep those American channels straight."
I was tired now. Just tired.
"What you working on?" I studied the flat mole on Jeff's right cheek. I'd had to get out of New York. Had to get out at the end of that hot summer. Couldn't just sit in New York when the world was going down. Had to stick my neck out. Stick.
"Just got back," he said. "Looks like things might heat up in Abkhazia."
"Where the hell is that?" Tom asked. He looked at me, set the bowl of peanuts before us. "South of here, right? What is it? Georgia?"
I shrugged, stuck my pack of cigarettes back in my jacket. I picked up a few peanuts.
"It's in the Caucasus," Jeff withdrew a billfold from his front jeans pocket.
"And?" Leprechaun Tom leaned against the bar, scooped up some peanuts for himself. Igor swung out another round of fresh glasses from the kitchen. Tom straightened and they started stacking them in the overhead rack. In the background, through the little service window, a radio announced the approaching noon hour and the news. I strained to listen, half-listen, from where I was.
"What'd you see?" I asked. That was the important part.
"Demonstrations. What else is there here these days?" He took out a card.
"About what?"
"I don't know exactly. That whole damn place is a mess."
"How?" Leprechaun Tom chimed in before I could follow through.
"Some people say it's Georgia, other people say no," he said, swigged at his beer. He motioned to Tom for a pen.
"Why don't you know?" I asked. "Would-didn't you try to figure it out?" I snuck a few more peanuts, picked up the bowl and offered Jeff. Offer him. Offer the ABC guy. He shook them off.
"Sweetheart, my job is to film shit. I just go where I'm sent. I'm happy to be back in a big town, resting on the great expense account that is the American Broadcasting Corporation."
"How great?" Tom perked up at the mention of cash, handed Jeff a ballpoint.
"Four hundred a night's pretty soft."
"Rubles?" I asked, downed the remaining congealed honey from the bottom of my glass. The announcer on the kitchen radio babbled about Yeltsin. Focus. Focus. I switched my attention back, lit another cigarette.
Jeff held the pen in the air as he laughed out loud. "That's a joke, right?" he shrugged. "Dollars. Of course, dollars!" I laughed, too, hating myself for the phoniness. Oh, our dad would say, what's wrong with makin' money, Jada? You got somethin' against capitalism? That's why you went to Moscow?
The toddy had made me tired. Fuck. No money. I didn't know what I was doing. I fingered my cigarette, stamped it out in the black ceramic ashtray. Cigarettes relaxed my mouth—I could speak more clearly, thus I reached for another, lit, set my matches back on the bar.
"Nice, that hotel? Got a gym, everything, eh?" Leprechaun Tom asked.
"Yep. Even got a pool," Jeff smiled.
"But people here don't make that much a year," I said, looking to be steady, calm.
"How about you, Tom? How much you make a year?" Jeff finished writing on the card, started to stick the pen in his inside shirt pocket, pulled it back-some ink had smudged on his fingers. With a smile, pressing his lips together, he passed the ballpoint back to Tom. My friend shook his head, stacked more glasses on the rafters.
"Look, Jada—" Jeff continued. "Something tells me you might latch onto something good."
"Huh?" I asked. "You that drunk already by noon on a Monday?"
He laughed, handed me his card. "But listen, if you do run into a story—let me know. Maybe I can get it to someone useful. I always pick up my messages from," he pointed out the number, then reached in his pocket and laid a twenty-dollar bill on the bar. Tom motioned to make change but Jeff shook his head. Twenty dollars-almost an average Russian's monthly salary.
"Pay for hers, too," he smiled.
Why was Jeff being so nice? What did he actually stand to gain from me?
"Oh, hers is on the house." Tom said. "But yours, you with the American expense account, your cash I'll take."
I looked down. Say thank you. Say thank you.
"Oh, Tom," I said. I mouthed the words of appreciation. He nodded, turned to the register.
I drew on the cig in my mouth, examined the business card, rubbed the quality stock. Nicotine smudged his name in yellow. You can do it! Tom was right—who cares why? This guy could help you! You need help! Don't say you don't need help!
"I'll keep you in mind if there is anything," I said. Four-hundred dollars? You could buy a place here for that amount a month and have live-in servants. Four-hundred dollars. Think how much the ruddy bastard must be getting paid.
"Thanks," I followed up. Tipping back the empty toddy, I pulled the lemon to my teeth, sour, final sour.
Jeff plodded back to the front wall, pulled his coat off a hook, struggled with the sleeves. Once back, he reached toward Leprechaun Tom. They shook hands. "You going to the press conference?" he said to me, his face flushing.
I shook my head.
"You need in?" he asked. Tom raised his thick eyebrows at me, like, go, go. I shook my head again. "Hey, thanks," I said. "If I do ever get something good, I'll call you." We exchanged good-byes, and a few seconds later he passed in front of the narrow window that faced onto the Arbat, followed by a few other foreign passersby: fur-coated, lamb-hatted, Soviet-shapka-wearing American tourists.
The radio in the kitchen clicked off. Leprechaun Tom took his ledger back out. Lost in a momentary haze, I stared. "Why didn't you go?" Tom pointed his pen at me. "He gave you an in." In the mirror behind the bar, my pale face even paler-among the strawberry ones, my dark freckles stood out like moles. "That all seemed to have gone better than expected," Tom added.
"Hm," I said, looking-but-not-looking now toward the window; I shook a little. Igor clinked glasses.
The issue of the morning: m-o-n-e-y. Now, after he'd given me the free drink?
"Tom," I began. At the window. Now? Hell! Lyosha stood, cupping his bare hands, clearing a place, pressing his face on what would be wretchedly cold glass. Upright my spine snapped. The lemon slice dropped into my lap. Waving with just the ends of his fingers, Lyosha smiled. How could the hippy doof go gloveless? At least he had on a scarf and a hat with his ever-present denim jacket. He motioned for me to come out.
Leprechaun Tom left the accounts book, walked from around the bar, stood to my right side. "I know that fella. You know—" he said. I fumbled the lemon slice back to the glass. How could I ask for money now? Why hadn't I gone with Jeff? Could meet useful people. Useful.
"A lead—" I explained, standing. "A friend of Alya's—"
"Alya's friend you say. He's a drug dealer, eh? Part of your research, huh? He was outside here Halloween." Lines tightened around his eyes. Up he drew to his full height.
"Tom," I started again. Lyosha still waved. I motioned I'd be right out.
"I don't think it's good if you're hanging around with his sort."
"He's okay." My voice rang too high. How'd I say I was sleeping with his sort? How'd I say I grew up with his sort?
That so?"
My face flushed. I laughed a fake laugh. In the bar mirror, I looked like a spotted and overripe tomato. I picked up my coat. I couldn't ask for money. I couldn't ask. Not with Lyosha standing there. Tom would think, ask him. Why hadn't I asked my "okay guy"?
"You worried about me?" I changed my tone, lifting my words to sound on pitch.
"Yes." Tom shook his head. "There is enough going on with you to worry about." He shook his head again. I stood there, just stood. Tom continued, "All right now, go to your Soviet shit-seller, what is he—"
"Korean." My face was burning.
"Allow me," Tom took my coat by the collar. I let loose and he stretched his arms, Russian-man style, turned the garment around. I pushed down my hat. Five dollars. What'd Lyosha want?
Tom stepped a half-foot forward. I put my arms through, moved my face as if to smile. "Please, Perlmutter," he looked toward the window, his brow now in a knot, "Be careful." He squeezed his arm around me, let loose.
From the kitchen, Igor appeared with another stack of glasses.
I waved to Lyosha that I was on my way. Muscle tension rose in my neck.
I pointed at the empty toddy glass. "Thanks," I said. Tom nodded. Sucking in my breath, I patted through my coat toward the money still in my pocket. At the door I turned on my heels, and Tom and Igor waved. Out I plodded, into the Moscow eyeball-freezing neck-itching bitter-cold.
Broke. Still. Broke.
In the foyer, for my own amusement I threw a grin at the grim-faced guard. He remained a grim-faced guard.
In a pile on the walk before that house. T. Junior.
Lyosha waited down the steps on the slushy and icy path. Despite the wrong place and the wrong moment, I was happy to see him; I liked seeing him. I switched gears again into Russian.
"What're you doing here?"
He shook his head, bounced his jingly-bell language back at me. "Out mixing business and pleasure." His eyes drooped. Serene. He was shot up, silly and serene.
"Business? So, you weren't looking for me?" I flirted, but only with my voice. Maybe Leprechaun Tom watched from the pub. I stepped to the side, back in the direction I'd come from. In typical Soviet fashion, Lyosha linked my arm through his.
He smiled, shook his head again. "Always looking for you, Yablochka. And even when not, you appear—"
"Anyone else you hoped to find in the Blarney?" Down the side of his cheek and onto his jawbone ran a small scratch. Shaving?
He dragged us along. Noticing he was pulling me, he stooped a little to keep my arm from stretching. "You wrote your article already. Let's talk about something else." He stopped, righted himself. "I'm hungry. You? Maybe you've been before, but I know something good." We changed directions, right out in view of the Blarney window. Tom was no dummy! I grasped Lyosha's arm. Easy to eat in Moscow for a couple of days on five dollars. Five dollars, then what?
Fifty meters down, we took one step at a time into the underground crosswalk. In the tunnel, a ton of new small biznizmen, which also included women, hustled their goods from more card tables: newspapers, formerly forbidden books about sex and astrology, dyed carnations grown impossibly in apartment-maintained greenhouses, cheap Soviet cigarettes or name-brand Western makes bootlegged from Vietnam, Latvian beer, Pepsi, and the worst of all worst imports: Milwaukee's Best. Seems someone got it in his mind that the rich and delicious and dark Russian home brands couldn't hold up to the stale pond water of the American Midwest.
So tall he could reach up and touch the ceiling, Lyosha guided me around the increasing noontime throng. Before the drainage grate, I slid in what Russians call kasha, or porridge: slushy, dirty snow and ice. Lyosha caught me in my almost sideways split, my skinny legs wobbling; he laughed his plucky, electric-guitar giggle. Yep. Serene and silly. I adopted his happiness. I pulled his happiness over me like a debutante's fur coat. I guffawed out, threw my hand over my mouth so passersby didn't stare. They stared anyway, looks of irritation crossing cold, wrinkled faces. "Yablochka, Yablochka, Yablochka," Lyosha tsked.
I took each stair, stopped; at each landing, my lover-friend saluted the sky; grinning into the damp air, we played, goofed our way up to the other side of the boulevard.
"Yablochka," Lyosha said again, or "little apple," his and Alya's pet name for me. Out in the open, the cold once again penetrated my shoes. "Miserable," I said.
"Nowhere is colder than prison," Lyosha returned, patting the top of my hat down across my eyes, "miserable jail." I pushed it up with my free hand. We crossed a path to an open field. He didn't follow up with anything. I wasn't sure I wanted him to.
In the snow-cloud sky, one spot of sun peeked through, again, clearing a very small some-blue. I wanted another cigarette but couldn't bear digging through all the layers to get to the pack, and Lyosha, though a junkie, didn't smoke. My craving waned. Nowhere colder than prison. The phrase danced a circle in my head. Sappy sad-sack babushkas—nowhere colder than prison... Ironda, nonsense, nonsense danced in my brain. I should've gone with Jeff to the press conference. Why didn't I go?
On a clear, late summer day, Lyosha'd told me about prison. We'd been strolling in Gorky Park. Alya had taken his hand. After prison, we don't want any more limits, she said, explaining to me their "arrangement." We don't want to miss out on anything life has to offer, to ever put the other in a cage. With this she had also taken me by the arm, and the three of us continued, entwined. Each can do, live, free. She squeezed my arm with hers. Live free? Nothing to lose.
T. free.
Perestroika made more addicts than it reduced, Lyosha had shrugged, his comment out of sequence. His shoulders fell in defeat. I just want to paint, he added.
When will he be done with yours? Alya's voice bubbled, light, unlike that of her husband.
Lyosha had talked me into sitting nude. I fidget too much, I said, I keep imagining the horrified looks on my parents' faces. Our Baptist parents. T. would kick my ass. Kick my ass over this.
Yablochka, Lyosha said—worrying about what your parents might think, that sort of narrows the scope of my work, doesn't it? He'd laughed that electric-guitar laugh. My freckled face had flushed.
I'm American. I spun the site around, took aim at my own shame. We are famous for our modesty, I said, and I joined them in their laughter.
Shortly past noon, and the park near the Arbat was livening up. Some other people strutted arm-in-arm. Others, alone, pounded by in uncomfortable high-heeled boots or boxy workman's shoes. The smell of grilling meat hit my nostrils, sent me to salivating. Yes, I was hungry. I didn't see where the smell was coming from.
Lyosha steered me from a thick patch of ice. "Come on, let's not have you fall this time," he whispered, low, playful and concerned. We came in toward the other side of a clearing, and roasting flesh wafted again. Along a park road near a broken, iced-over walkway stood a dark, youngish guy in a heavy, black sheepskin coat; maybe he was a little older than me, but really, who could tell? Often Soviets were younger than they seemed. Especially the men. Drinking and smoking, the cold, politics, prison, drugs, the army, aged them. Those, and, of course, the burden of carrying around the heavy, Russian soul, Lyosha once had joked.
"No, I've never been here before," I said. Something about the guy before us I would've remembered. Lyosha looked at my face. "You're in for a real treat," he said.
Busy at the grill until we approached, the guy looked up, his face cracking into a smile. In a deep voice, he called out, "Anh-hah," then, "Privet!" Letting go of Lyosha's arm, Russian-woman style, I walked to the side, out of the way. The two men shook hands across the side of the barbecue. A beat later, the barbecue hawker went to back to turning meat on the grate, then slid the make-shift barrel lid closed.
"Vahan's got the best shashliki in Moscow," Lyosha announced over to me.
Vahan. Vah-hahn. I repeated it in my head to remember how to pronounce this name.
"Agh," Vahan's whole body caved as he sighed, then unfolded as he smiled that full-faced grin again. A gold tooth glinted on the side as he spoke. "My shashliki? It's the best in the Sovetsky Soyuz." An accent lifted the last two words. Or maybe just sarcasm? "That is," Vahan continued, "after my father's." He looked at me, his expression blank, then his eyebrows lifted as he looked again toward Lyosha. "Two?"
"Yeah, you know—" Lyosha said.
"Okay, okay, Korean, I know, I know. Extra hot sauce for you. You real Asians like it spicy." Vahan's face relaxed, became joking: each one of his words snide—real, Asians, spicy?
Lyosha smirked, pulled a cassette tape from his pocket. "Hey," he said. "My Caucasian comrade, you should listen to this." He handed the tape around the kebab grill.
Vahan startled, plucked the tape from Lyosha's hand, shoved the plastic box into a coat pocket. Their eyes met. "Thanks," Vahan's tone deepened again; he turned toward me. Compared to that of most Russians, his skin was swarthy and bronze, his eyes darker and much larger, rounder, but still he had those high cheekbones. Though a lot taller than me, he was a head shorter than Lyosha. "And for you?" he used the polite form of address.
Lyosha spoke. "She's an American." His voice revealed a little too much pride.
"American?" Vahan's voice lifted again. "A real one?"
"One hundred percent," I answered, and then for some odd reason, blushed. I was blushing. I wanted to hide my face.
Behind us, laughter rose. A group of teenage boys was passing, crunching and joking in the snow.
"Journalistka," Lyosha added again, for me. "Jada Perlmutter," he pronounced my name as did most Russians, "Zhe-deh Pehr-r-l-moo-tuh-r-r."
"My pleasure," Vahan answered, tilting from the waist in a slight bow. He turned and opened the top of the cut-off barrel again, set another two prongs padded with chopped meat onto the grill. Nodding his head, as if adding something together, he noted. "Relatives of mine left for the USA a couple of months ago. For Los Angeles."
"I've never been to the West Coast." I wiped at my eyes, the sides of my face rough and frozen. I stomped my feet to warm them. My neck itched again, but I fought the urge to scratch. "I'm from the East. From the South and the East," I added.
"As we all are." Vahan laughed then, as if his flat, gruff voice had turned inside out. With his gloved hands, he shifted the prongs.
"He's Armenian," Lyosha said. Again, Caucasus. Oh, Tom! Five dollars! Jeff's Abkhazia. The bracelet I'd examined this morning, the swirling and jutting writing had been Armenian. Hope, faith, love. Sad. I wouldn't be sad. I wouldn't be worried. Five dollars. No story! Oh, Brother Timothey Mo, why the fuck had I come to Moscow?
"I'm not Armenian," Vahan spit as he shook a plastic bottle of basting sauce. "I'm a Karabakhtsi."
I tried not to act as if I didn't know what that was.
Vahan looked at me, "And you? What are you?"
This I was used to-the what-are-you, what-are-you, because American indicated country, it didn't, for a Soviet, say anything about nationality. For a supposedly one race in Soviet brotherhood, everyone immediately asked your ethnic background: are you friend, foe, long-standing enemy?
"Scottish, German, maybe Native American," I responded.
"German?" Vahan asked not me, but Lyosha, resorting directly to a type he maybe had some experience with. "Is she smart?"
"Yeah," Lyosha teased. "And the other stuff is what makes her pretty and," he sighed, "impractical."
"Culture," I butted in, "culture is what makes you more of who you are-for me, American culture."
Lyosha shook his head, his trademark. "But what is in your blood is just as important." Vahan nodded in agreement.
"And if you don't know? If you are maybe ten different things?" I added.
"Then the worse for you," Lyosha answered. "The more confused you'll be."
"I don't think who you are has anything to do with the blood," I argued.
In the way of certain Soviet men, the Karabakhtsi grinned, as if indulging the females. His face cracked in a way that shot anxiety up my spine.
"I think it has everything to do with it-" he said.
I insisted. "It's—" I stuttered, searching for the right Russian word, "upbringing."
"And where does upbringing come from?" Lyosha asked. The Soviets looked at each other.
I gave up. "All right." I changed the subject-the Soviets and their bullshit-instead I asked what I didn't know. "An Armenian, a Karabakhtsi," I shrugged. "What's the difference?"
Vahan pumped his hands in a classic Brooklyn gesture, a just-you-wait-a minute, pal. "A Karabakhtsi-Armenian is a mountain man. We are mountain people," he said.
Mountains. Tazewell, VA. "I'm from the mountains, too," I explained, then felt foolish.
"Then you must be strong. Mountain people are strong," Vahan smiled. Again his gold tooth flashed.
"That she is," Lyosha answered and hugged me to him. I wanted to run, leave them standing, watching me on the frozen horizon far away.
"Devushka," Vahan turned toward me. He still spoke in the polite form. "Do you know where Karabakh is?"
I hated not knowing. So much I didn't know. Did I lie? I breathed in; what would come out of my mouth, roll off my body? Surprising myself, I shook my head No. To focus my attention elsewhere, I unzipped my sausage coat, dug through a layer to pull out my cigarettes, cold air rushing in. Turning the pack upside down, I fumbled out a few. Vahan studied, sizing me up; he refused my offer, shook his head, pointed at the pack next to the clean kebab sticks. What did I know about the South and the East? I was as bad as Jeff the ABC guy. I should know.
"It's between Armenia and Azerbaijan," he said.
"Who the hell knows where that is?" Lyosha laughed. My thoughts exactly.
I turned my cigarette into my mouth. Damn! I'd left my matches back on the bar at the Blarney. Karabakh? I tried to picture the map back in my room. Karabakh. Somewhere out in the mess and tangle of what seemed like hundreds of ethnicities and territories and republics between the Black and Caspian Seas. I motioned for a light. Vahan lifted the cover on his grill. I re-zipped my coat.
"Here, give it to me," he said. I looked at Lyosha. He shrugged, as if to say, Who knows what an Armenian does? A Karabakhtsi does. I passed my cigarette to the guy.
"In Karabakh," Vahan said, "we're going to have our own country." He stuck the dampened tip of my cigarette into his mouth. I nodded. Lyosha shrugged, boredom crossing his face. He hated talking politics. Thought everyone everywhere was corrupt. His opinion of perestroika: the old guard simply turned their Soviet stars around into American stars 'n' stripes. The fact remained-the same guys still controlled the country; they hadn't left power. Alya had more hope; she wanted to see the crony system truly crumble. Just in my lifetime, she had said. In my lifetime, just to witness a system that's fairer.
My cigarette in his mouth, Vahan slid over the kebabs, and, before I could protest, shoved his handsome face almost into the flame. He lifted up, puffing, handed me what had just been between his lips. "Should be sweeter now," he smiled. My face bloomed again into red splotches. I jerked my scarf up to hide my speckling neck. I shouldn't have gone with Lyosha. Blushing! I didn't know which way to look.
Vahan winked both eyes at me as he finally pulled a couple of metal sticks off the flames, doused them both with a different bottle of sauce and a teaspoon of pepper flakes. He handed one to each of us. Lyosha dug in. "This is what really matters," he said. "Food."
Cigarette in one hand, I gnawed the kebab in the other. The Karabakhtsi's power of suggestion had worked-when I puffed again, the cig did taste better. Vahan scooted closer to the barrel, warmed himself. He stoked the fire and added more sticks from a bag. We ate in silence.
Toward the center of the park, high-heel booted women teetered their way across the snow and ice toward the busier streets near the Arbat, tugging behind them kids outfitted from head to toe in wool stockings, caps, coats, boots, mittens attached by knitted strings and safety pins, and neck- and headscarves.
I needed silence. I had come to mull silence. What? What? "Caucasus," I said. I didn't really know a damn thing about them/it. Estonia, Lithuania, and Ukraine-I knew something about those. "So, Karabakh," I said, a stutter I felt coming on now in check, "is that like Abkhazia?"
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