Genrikh, letting go of her hand, almost rolled down the stairs and rushed toward the mountain from which the flying machines seemed to be taking off. Marusya ran after him, shouting for him to stop, but he couldn’t hear her. He very soon tired, and slowed his pace. Marusya caught up to him and walked beside him, not saying a word. As a Froebel Miss, a specialist in childhood education, she felt herself to be a pedagogical failure. She had no choice but to follow after her son, however, without stopping. She understood that she shouldn’t say anything at the moment—she was too annoyed and upset. Genrikh had spoiled the visit she had so long dreamed about.
Max Voloshin was one of those who a decade earlier—in another lifetime, which had passed away leaving barely a trace—had written with enthusiasm about Rabenek, about the studio of movement in which Marusya’s curtailed career as a “barefoot dancer” had begun. Marusya very much wanted to turn the conversation back to those times, to allude to her own involvement in that refined art form. Instead of having the conversation she knew she would happily recall for the rest of her life, she found herself scrambling up a mountain to God knew where, chasing after her unruly and troublesome—yes, troublesome!—child, to see gliders.
It turned out to be quite far away. Marusya suggested that they return to the mountain the next day, early in the morning, but Genrikh did not intend to give up. He was consumed with excitement.
Yes, Jacob was right, a thousand times over, when he said, watching the repulsive tantrums accompanied by screaming, kicking, and thrashing about on the floor, which Genrikh had indulged in regularly since about the age of four: “Marusya, this isn’t epilepsy, it’s something completely different. It is a conflict between will and reality. He has an intense desire to realize some childish nonsense that we are preventing. When he is faced with a real problem or task, this energy will be invested in overcoming actual problems. Sublimation is a magnificent thing.”
In their family, this word was repeated often.
It was very hot. The dusty, stony road was burning hot. She was so thirsty that even the back of her throat was dry. Marusya’s head felt light, as though she might fall into a faint at any moment. But she couldn’t allow herself that weakness, or luxury, and she steeled herself against it. Her son, limping a bit in stiff sandals that had rubbed his feet raw, walked on ahead, decisive and single-minded.
No one was waiting for them on the mountaintop, but there were a few dozen people there. They were all stroking and probing the glider, as a veterinarian does with a large animal. Genrikh melted into the crowd immediately. Though no one chased him away, they didn’t pay any attention to him, either. A few other boys were hovering around, too. Marusya stepped gingerly around the dry wormwood bushes in the shadow of the tarpaulin hangar. A sharp, bitter scent wafted upward: wormwood, sage, thyme … She sat down on dry, odorous earth.
Everything swam before her eyes. She didn’t lose consciousness, but dropped out of reality for a time. Then she opened her eyes and saw, yawning below her, a serpentine valley, Tatar hamlets clinging to the slopes, grazing goats, cliffs of the Kara Dag Mountain, and a glider, soaring in the clear blue air. And she was happy.
She approached a group of people who were watching the glider’s flight and met the eyes of one of them—someone wearing civilian dress, but with a military bearing and the stern expression of an officer, and a mustache in the Caucasian style. She addressed him in an animated, upbeat manner: “Comrade! Could you help us to get back to Koktebel from here? We are so very tired, having climbed all the way up the mountain.”
The comrade turned around.
“The flights are all finished for the day. Someone is coming to fetch us in half an hour. If you wait a bit, we can give you a lift.”
Genrikh didn’t see her. He had wormed his way into a group of local boys and was chattering away with them, waving his arms around with enthusiasm. Half an hour later, snorting and spitting, a dusty truck rolled up. The boys immediately forgot about the glider and crowded around the truck. Marusya pulled her straggling son out of the noisy crowd.
“Do you want to ride in the truck?”
Oh, joy! The plainly dressed military man proffered Marusya his arm, and she jumped lightly into the back. Marusya smiled seductively: “Could you drop us off at Max’s?” The man’s face broke into a broad smile; he had immediately guessed that the woman was one of their own, a kindred spirit. He was one of their own, too: the grandson of Ivan Aivazovsky, the great Russian artist. But Marusya didn’t know this, and would never learn it. He got in next to the driver. About ten people packed into the back of the truck. Genrikh was about to make a scene, demanding to sit in the front seat, too. But here Marusya put her foot down, and calmly summoned up her dormant pedagogical skills. “We can always get out and walk. Is that what you want?” He most certainly did not.
Five days later, Marusya and her son were back in Moscow. Jacob Ossetsky met his family at the station. His reddish, neatly shorn mustache on a clean-shaven face, fresh haircut, proper suit from a former way of life, the bouquet of purple asters in one hand and his briefcase in the other, distinguished him from the rest of the slovenly crowd of welcomers. He had missed his family terribly, but on the whole was satisfied with the time away from them. During a month and a half of loneliness, he had written a handbook on statistics for communications workers and two articles for economics journals, and had begun to write a story about his life in the army, which he struggled to finish.
Marusya, wearing an elegant broad-brimmed hat and a linen dress with Ukrainian embroidery around the collar, appeared on the steps of the train. Wriggling out from under her hand, which had reached for a railing to steady her descent, a swarthy-looking Genrikh jumped down onto the platform first, swiveling his head with his newly long curls. When he saw his father, he made a rush for him, shouting: “Papa! We saw the gliders! Papa! I’m going to be a glider pilot when I grow up! Papa! Have you ever flown in a glider?”
Not wanting to put a damper on his enthusiasm, his father said that it was more complicated than he thought. It required not only physical training, but the knowledge of many subjects: physics, geography, meteorology … even foreign languages, because the first glider pilots were foreigners—Chinese and Arabs in ancient times, and, in the modern world, Germans and Frenchmen. And there were many articles he would have to read. And a lot to learn.
“For example, did you know that today, of all days, the pilot Gromov is trying to make the first flight from Peking to Tokyo? How many kilometers do you think he will fly?”
“A thousand!” Genrikh shouted.
“You’re off by half. Two thousand,” his father said. “I’ll bring you today’s paper, and we’ll read about it. You can read it yourself.”
Marusya stood behind her son, who was dangling around his father. Jacob smiled, nodded at her, and even winked slightly. After he had gently loosened Genrikh’s grip, he embraced Marusya and whispered in her ear: “Silly girl, my sweet silly girl I love so much!”
He grabbed the suitcase and the portable bedding, and they proceeded to the square, where Jacob had hired a horse cab. Genrikh whined that he wanted to go in a motorized taxi, but there were none to be seen. He pouted, stamping his foot on the ground and digging in his heels, but his father scooped him up, lifting him slightly off the ground, then dropped him down again, saying, “Next time!”