During the first years of Yurik’s life, Nora thought a great deal about her own family history. Only now had she come to understand why she had so wanted a son, and had rejected even the possibility that she might give birth to a girl. The thought alone had frightened her. Her memories of her maternal grandmother, Zinaida Filippovna, were vague. She had died before Nora turned seven, and had been bedridden the last two years of her life, growing weaker and weaker. She always wore a woolen cap and lipstick, and from time to time she shouted at Amalia—vociferously if rather indistinctly, though the individual curse words were completely audible.
Much later, after she had grown up, Nora asked Amalia to tell her about her mother. Her story was quite short. Zinaida had had an unhappy life. Her parents, former merchants whose finances had been ruined, threw their daughter onto the street when she was only sixteen. Though Amalia didn’t know exactly why, she suspected it was because her mother had had a secret lover. Zinaida left for Moscow and worked as a servant in various homes. She married the last master she worked for: Alexander Ignatievich Kotenko. He was much older than she was, a widower, and half blind. In his younger years, he had been a precentor in a choir, and continued to sing in the choir in a deep, booming bass, for which Zinaida called him the “Trumpet of Jericho.”
The marriage was difficult. Her husband drank too much and beat her from time to time. Not to be brutal with her—just to teach her how to behave. Into this joyless marriage, Zinaida’s daughter, Amalia, was born. Kotenko claimed that the child was illegitimate, that he had not fathered it, but he didn’t throw his wife out. He was indifferent toward Amalia, but for the most part treated her well. True, Kotenko, who remained in doubt of his own paternity, insisted on having her christened as Magdalena; but she later changed the name to Amalia on her official ID. This was Zinaida’s life, putting up with silent battering and verbal abuse at the hands of her husband, now completely blind, until he died, in 1924.
“I remember the funeral service at the church where he sang in the choir, somewhere in the neighborhood of Dolgorukovskaya Street, on a small lane. If Mother ever knew any peace in her life, it could only have been after her husband’s death; but she was never happy. She was afraid of everything, especially her husband. I felt so sorry for her. And she was very beautiful; everyone turned around to look at her when she walked by. Perhaps her beauty annoyed your grandfather—I don’t know. Sometimes I think that there was someone else she loved. She was aware of her own beauty—she curled her hair, used lipstick. She didn’t pay too much attention to me. At the end of her life, she was senile, and she cursed up a storm. At the end, I put up with a lot of grief from her, but all in all, no, there was no love lost between us…” Here Amalia ended her brief account.
In her childhood, Nora had been very attached to her mother, in part out of protest against her father, and the hostility she had felt toward him from an early age. Her relations with her mother were uneventful and calm: no childhood passions or conflicts. The alienation between them occurred later, when Andrei Ivanovich entered their lives.
In her adolescence, Nora considered her mother’s relationship with him to be a betrayal. The way her mother shone in his presence, the way her voice changed, and the coquettishness and tenderness that appeared when her mother looked at him filled Nora with fastidious irritation. This was exacerbated by the fact that her mother took Nora, not very wisely, into her confidence, extolling the high moral virtues of her chosen one. Finally, Nora remarked very sharply that it was impossible for one and the same person to be an exemplary husband and family man, and at the same time someone’s devoted lover. Amalia sighed sorrowfully. “You’re too young to understand, Nora, that such a thing is possible. Andrei doesn’t want to cause his wife and children pain, and I am prepared to put up with the equivocality of my situation for his sake. You realize that he would have left his family long ago if I wanted him to. But I know how much he would suffer.”
“What about you? Don’t you suffer from this ambiguity?” Nora said hotly.
Here Amalia started to laugh, her pretty face beaming.
“Ambiguity? Don’t be silly! It’s a very small price to pay for love.”
“Well, I find it humiliating. I would never stand for that kind of relationship. I would break it off. You have no character, you’re just weak! It should be one way or the other.” And Nora lifted her chin, proudly and defiantly.
Amalia laughed again. “You silly girl! I’ve left two husbands. I didn’t love either Tisha, my first husband, or Genrikh. I didn’t even know what love was. I only began to understand it with Andrei. And you’re still too young to understand.”
Their secret love affair lasted for years. Until he finally decided to leave his family, he stood next to the entrance of their apartment building every morning at quarter to eight, waiting for Amalia to come out, so he could walk her to work. She had already divorced Genrikh long before …
At exactly five in the evening, she would rush home and make dinner for Andrei. Nora never got home before seven. This was their agreement—don’t disturb. If Andrei was working the second shift, Amalia met him by the sound-recording studio where he worked; now it was she who accompanied him, to the train station. He lived out of town and took the commuter train to work, until he bought a car in the late sixties.
This was their routine, every day except Sundays and national holidays, for many years. The lonely New Year’s and May Day holidays were only a small sacrifice for Amalia. She never visited other people on these days. Society viewed single women with hostility; they made married women uneasy. Amalia had no desire to spend time in the company of other single women, sharing in their complaints, their gossip, and their wounds and hurts. She spent these holidays at home. She put on her nightgown, smeared her face with cold cream, and went to bed with a good book and the telephone (which she had moved into her room). Sometimes Andrei called her from home; when she picked up, he either remained silent or said, “Excuse me, I must have dialed the wrong number.”
Chicken; silly goose—this was how Nora dismissed her mother. But these judgments were in fact about herself, herself alone … As the years passed, a peaceable alienation set in. There was one other curious angle to Nora’s relations with her mother. When she was about fifteen, Nora discovered that in one sense she was more mature than her mother. Amalia acknowledged this seniority with a cheerful equanimity. She had a simple, open heart, but she was no fool. She sensed in her daughter a maturity that exceeded her age, and she surrendered without a struggle. Not only did she stop trying to manage Nora; she even stopped trying to guide her with advice, especially after the scandalous school episode.
After Yurik was born, Nora realized that the entire female line to which she belonged suffered from some general defect—an illness, as it were—the daughters didn’t love their mothers, and protested against the model of behavior their mothers represented. Nora herself inherited this deep-seated negativity, this mistrust and concealed enmity. Where did it come from? About such matters, Grandmother Marusya would have said, “It’s all in the genes.”