Dancer from Khiva, The Read online

  The conductor said:

  “I’ll wake you when we get to Leningrad.”

  I was exhausted after the long journey and the huge noisy waiting room in Moscow and the endless line. I was dog-tired, and so I fell asleep straightaway.

  Early in the morning the conductor woke me up. I got out of the train. That day was June 13, 1983. There I was in Leningrad, where the great tsars Peter the Great and Catherine the Great once ruled. There it was in front of my eyes, legendary, mighty Leningrad. And as for the ticket clerk, she was right, there was a Finland Station in Leningrad. And all because of Finland I’d spent two hours standing in line like a fool at the Leningrad Station in Moscow.

  I walked along the street, and I saw a little railroad car coming toward me. I thought, are there really trains as small as that? I have to get into it. But it turned out to be a streetcar. I’d never been in any big cities before, not Tashkent or any other city.

  The streetcar moved along. After three stops a young woman as thin as a skeleton came up to me and said:

  “Your ticket?”

  I didn’t say anything.

  She said:

  “You have to pay a three-rouble fine.”

  I began to cry. There weren’t many passengers in the streetcar. One man said:

  “Inspector, why are you bothering her, can’t you see she’s crying?”

  Another passenger, a woman, said:

  “Look at her, all those braids! There must be forty of them.”

  The inspector said:

  “Is this the first time you’ve been here, then?”

  I nodded.

  She said:

  “What do you have in your town?”

  I cried and said:

  “We have donkeys and diesels.” That was what we called buses.

  The passengers in the streetcar listened to my explanation and laughed. The inspector said:

  “Who have you come to see? Going to study, are you?”

  “Hmm.”

  “In what college?”

  “The university.”

  “Ha-ha, with Russian like that she wants to go to the university!”

  I didn’t say anything.

  She told me again:

  “Now you’ll have to pay three roubles. And drop three kopecks in the box over there. You should have explained to me that this was your first time in the city. Look, I’ve already torn off your ticket for the fine.”

  I paid. I wonder how I was supposed to know I had to drop three kopecks in the box to pay for a ticket. In our kishlak we handed the money to the bus driver.

  The young woman inspector looked at me with pity and said:

  “And where are you going to go now?”

  “The university.”

  “And do you know how to get there?”

  “No.”

  “Then let me show you the way.”

  We got out of the car together and walked to a bus stop. At the bus stop she explained to me how to get to the university. We said good-bye and she put me on the bus.

  I reached the university and found the building where my friends, the orientalist students, had their classes, the group that had been in Khiva. I went to the dean’s office and said I was looking for some students—so-and-so and so-and-so. They told me that the students I was looking for had all gone away to the East on a field trip. After that answer, to be honest, I didn’t know what to do. I went out into the street with my suitcase and asked myself: Where do I go now?

  I walked up and down the sidewalks, like Lenin when he returned from exile. What next? I wondered. I walked for a while, got hungry, and went into a food store. They had everything you could think of in there! I went up to a sales assistant and pointed to a spice-cake, because I didn’t know the word “spice-cake.”

  She said:

  “What do you want?”

  I didn’t say anything, just pointed with my finger.

  She said:

  “You don’t even know what you want to buy! Get out of here, don’t hold up the line, time, time, people are waiting.”

  The shop had a check system—pay first, then take the check to the counter. Customers with checks were walking this way and that way to the different sections. But I had no idea what the system was like: why were they all walking about with little pieces of paper and standing in lines?

  I spent quite a long time in the shop without getting anywhere, and I was hungry! Alas, it was in vain. I left that shop still feeling hungry. I hadn’t had a hot meal for days.

  I walked along the sidewalks and suddenly saw a woman in a white coat who was shouting:

  “Hot piroshki with potato, with cabbage! Hot piroshki!”

  She was selling piroshki right there in the street. I walked up to her and gave her money without saying anything. And she gave me a hot pastry without saying anything.

  After the pastry I felt very thirsty. Where was the water? There wasn’t any anywhere, even though all of Leningrad was built on water. But I had to be patient. I walked on. I saw people going into a tunnel where there was a big letter M. Is that a toilet, then? I thought. But why is there only M written on it—is it only for men? But there were women going in as well. I had no idea what it was.

  Like curious Varvara in the folk proverbs, who lost her nose at the market, I went down the steps too. Well would you ever—it was the metro! Of course I started changing money, like everyone else. You dropped twenty kopecks or ten kopecks into the box and out came your change in five-kopeck coins. I played for a long time, it was very interesting for a primitive savage like me!

  Then I went to the entrance and tried to go down, but that machine (I found out later that it’s called a turnstile) squeezed me so hard I screamed as if I was being killed. But it was my own fault, because I dropped five kopecks into the machine of one gate and tried to go through a different one. So of course it squeezed me! Luckily the inspector or controller, or whoever it was, came over and let me through the gate that wasn’t working beside her little booth.

  After that accident I was afraid to ride in the metro for a long time. That’s the story of what happened.

  I walked down the stairs to the cars. It was all the same to me which way I went. So I got into a car and set off. I don’t know how many hours I was in the metro. I got out at one station, changed to the other platform and got in again, and rode like that—backward and forward. I didn’t know how to get out of the metro.

  I finally decided:

  What difference does it make where I get out, I’ve nowhere to go anyway. Wherever I might be, I’m getting out. I walked out of the metro and found I was in the Lenin district, at the Baltic metro station.

  All the time I wanted water, plain, simple water. Why plain water? Because I’d never drunk lemonade or Coca-Cola or champagne or wine or cognac or vodka. I’ve never tried them in my life, and I don’t intend to. To this day I don’t drink anything apart from plain water and green tea. No matter what’s happening: a birthday, New Year’s, a wedding, a party—I never drink.

  I had no food in my suitcase, apart from the stale bread. I walked to the Warsaw Station, sat down in the waiting hall, and gnawed on my bread. I wondered what I ought to do. Those students I knew weren’t there, and I didn’t want to go back home, I’d be ashamed. I could imagine the welcome they’d give me. And my memories of my childhood weren’t all that good . . .

  I thought: No, there’s no way back!

  Suddenly I remembered something. They’d given me their addresses. I opened the suitcase and took out my address book. And one address was in Leningrad. It was the address of the Georgian, Giya, he lived on Warsaw Street.

  I had to find that street, if I didn’t want to be left out on the street myself. I asked people here, there, and everywhere, and I found the street. I went up to the second floor or the third, I don’t remember now, and I stood in front of the door of the apartment. I knocked, although there was a special bell, but I wasn’t used to ringing. A woman’s voice answer
ed from behind the door:

  “Who’s there?”

  I knocked again. The same voice asked:

  “Who’s there?” And finally the door opened a little and a woman was standing there. “Who do you want?”

  “Giya.”

  “What do you mean, Giya?”

  “I want Giya!”

  “What’s that you say you want? Giya’s not here, he’s gone to the Far East.”

  I was nervous and I shouted:

  “I saw, I saw, I saw!”

  “What did you see? Who did you see? Ooph, I don’t understand a thing! Who did you see?”

  “I saw Giya.”

  “Girl, I told you, he’s not here and he won’t be for a long time!”

  “I want Giya, I saw Giya!”

  “Girl, go away, he’s not here!”

  I was almost crying, I could hardly stop myself. She sensed that and said:

  “Who are you? Where from? Who have you come to see?”

  “I Uzbekistan. I Bibish. I saw Giya. I want Giya.”

  “Maybe you’ve come to study?”

  “Hmm.” I nodded.

  “Where are you going to study?”

  “University.”

  “Which faculty?”

  “History.” I don’t know where I got that idea from, but that was what I said.

  “Girl, there’s nothing I can do to help you. Giya’s not here, and I can’t let you in. Oh, take our telephone number, when you get settled, call us, all right? Maybe when Giya gets back you’ll come to see us.”

  She went to write down the telephone number and came back out a few moments later.

  “There’s the number for you . . . Call, all right! Now excuse me, good-bye.” Then she closed the door and locked it. And I was left in the lobby. When she slammed the door, it felt like someone had hit me. I went out into the street and started sobbing, I told myself: You fool, you fool, why did you come here?

  I barely managed to calm myself. It was already late. About eleven o’clock in the evening, I suppose. I don’t remember exactly. I rode on a streetcar for a long, long time. I got out of the streetcar, and there was the student hostel of the engineering institute on the bank of the bypass canal. I saw a fountain in the yard of the hostel. I dashed over to it and began drinking the dirty water. I had no option: my mouth was all dry.

  Then I sat down on a bench and gnawed on my stale bread.

  Suddenly I saw two elderly women walking toward the bench. They sat down beside me. After a few minutes they turned to me and asked:

  “Do you study here, my girl?”

  “No.”

  “Then why are you sitting out here so late? It’s dark already, it’s dangerous out on the street.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “Oh, you’ve got such long braids! Where are you from?”

  “Uzbekistan.”

  “Has something happened to you?”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “And where are you going to spend the night?”

  I didn’t know the phrase “spend the night,” so I shook my head to show I didn’t understand the question.

  “Where are you going to sleep?”

  “Here.”

  “Don’t be silly,” said one of the women. “How can you do that, come with me to my place, my daughter. You can explain everything to me, tell me all about it, all right? Let’s go, it’s really very late.”

  “No.” I refused. I thought they would trick me, and I was afraid they would take my money away from me. That was all I was concerned about.

  The other woman said:

  “It’s dangerous to stay here, come with us, or you could get kidnapped, or raped, or killed, you know.”

  When I heard her say that, I agreed straightaway. I picked up the suitcase and went with them. One of them was called Svoboda Vasilievna, and the other was Aunty Tanya. Svoboda Vasilievna took me to her place. And Aunty Tanya sat with us for a while and went home. How good it is, I thought, that someone has given me shelter for tonight.

  I was so tired, I slept like a log. I was absolutely exhausted. Early in the morning Svoboda Vasilievna gave me a sandwich to eat and black tea to drink. She spoke to me very kindly:

  “You sit there like a deaf-mute. How are we going to find a common language, my daughter? I really don’t know what to do.”

  Svoboda Vasilievna was a well-educated woman. She told me she had graduated from the Institute of Culture and worked in houses of culture, and now she was retired, but she still worked as the director of a children’s club. And her friend Aunty Tanya worked in a movie theater, checking the tickets. Afterward, I remember, I went to the movies for free for a whole year.

  Both women were energetic and determined. They discussed what to do with me and how to help me. Svoboda Vasilievna said:

  “You need to get a job. You can always go back to your studies later, and anyway you don’t know the language. I talk to you and you just gape at me, that’s no way to carry on.”

  One day she came back from work with news:

  “Bibish, I’ve been looking for a suitable job for you. They don’t take on yardkeepers with diplomas.” (I had a diploma, and I had to work off the cost of that diploma. If I took a job as a yardkeeper, they’d have had to give me a room in a communal apartment straightaway.) “I can get you a job as a nanny in a kindergarten. Pack your things, and we’ll go out to a dacha in Komarovo. A friend of mine is the director. And the children are there for three months, for the summer. I’ll ask the director to take you on. Do you understand at least?”

  I nodded like I always did.

  The next day I went to the dacha in Komarovo with Svoboda Vasilievna. She talked to the director about me. Anyway, the director agreed to give me a job as a nanny. Svoboda Vasilievna encouraged me and went back to the city. And I stayed at the dacha.

  The director was a harsh and strict woman. Even when there was no need, she always shouted at everybody, and so the people who worked there were always leaving. The kindergarten was always short of either a teacher or a nanny. That was why she gave me a job straightaway, even without a residence permit. After all, when I made up my mind to run away to Leningrad I was in such a great hurry that I didn’t even cancel my registration at home.

  The director showed me the junior group I would be working with as a nanny.

  And I started working in the kindergarten. Of course, the director explained what my duties were. On the whole, it wasn’t difficult working as a nanny. I got the work done, and everything was fine. I got to know the girls working there: Anna Petrovna—I am still in touch with her, after twenty years. Olya, Lena, Tamara, Galya . . .

  When the cooks at the kindergarten found out I didn’t know Russian very well, they decided to have a joke with me.

  One day they called me:

  “Bibish, come here! Do you know what monthlies are?”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “Then take this bucket, go to the director, and ask her to give you a bucketful of monthlies, all right?”

  “All right, I’ll go straightaway.”

  I took the bucket and went to the director’s office. I knocked at the door. She said:

  “Come in!”

  I went in, held the bucket out toward her, and said calmly:

  “Zinaida Alexandrovna, please give me one monthlies bucket.”

  “What’s that?” She even got halfway out of her chair.

  “Give me one monthlies bucket.”

  “What monthlies! What are you saying? That’s disgusting, who sent you?”

  “The cooks.”

  “Right, then, send them to me, and I’ll show them! My monthlies finished a long time ago, let them bring a bucket of their own!”

  What a commotion there was!

  After that some time went by and the cooks started again:

  “Bibish, go and tell the director she’s a pompous gasbag! Go on!”

  And again, like a fool, I went—can you imagine!r />
  I knocked at the door of the office, but this time the cooks came running up and just managed to stop me in time:

  “Don’t say anything, we were only having a joke.”

  One day the teacher of my group came up to me and said:

  “Bibish, Maxim’s pooped in his pants, take them off and clean it all up!”

  “What?”

  “Maxim’s pooped in his pants!”

  It was the first time I’d heard the word “pooped,” and I said to her:

  “I don’t understand, what does ‘pooped’ mean?”

  The poor thing—she said:

  “What? How can you not understand, it’s elementary, people poop. Maxim for instance, or you, or anyone else.”

  “I don’t know. What’s ‘pooped’?”

  She began getting nervous:

  “My God, you must understand that: when someone eats, afterward they have to poop, now do you understand?”

  “No.”

  She was getting really hysterical now and tried to explain a different way.

  “When a person does poo-poo!”

  It was only then that I realized what “pooped” meant.

  Anyway, I worked and relaxed at the dacha for three months, and then we came back to the city, and I continued working for the same kindergarten in the city. I lived with Svoboda Vasilievna, but I was still like a deaf-mute. She gave me a few lessons in Russian. She gave me assignments: I wrote dictations, and she corrected the mistakes. Sometimes she encouraged me, sometimes she scolded me. That was how I gradually learned Russian. There in the city the cooks began making fun of me again.

  One day, I remember, two cooks came running up to me and said:

  “Bibish, do you know what a lecturer is?”

  “No, I don’t. What’s a lecturer?”

  “You know, Bibish, a lecturer is a kind of profession, how can I explain . . . In a word, a lecturer is someone who checks who’s a virgin and who isn’t. He checked us a long time ago already, and now it’s your turn. He’ll come in a minute to check you, understand? There’s the table, take your panties off, lie down, open your legs wide, and wait for the lecturer, understand?”