Marusya’s parents didn’t often visit their daughter, and preferred that she herself visit them at home. Jacob’s family really was very wealthy, and to Pinchas Kerns, a struggling master craftsman, the Ossetsky patriarch appeared haughty and overbearing. As for Marusya’s mother, she was shy by nature, and visiting the grand apartment where her daughter lived was a trial.
Seeing how solicitous everyone was toward her, Dusya, the servant, began calling Marusya “Princess.” But after the exaggerated burdens of pregnancy followed a truly difficult birth, which almost cost Marusya her life. She was in labor with her firstborn for two days. Professor Bruno, the head of the Faculty of Gynecology and Obstetrics, and the best surgeon in town, performed an operation that saved the life of both mother and child. After the operation, she began to hemorrhage, however, and her life hung in the balance for several more days.
Jacob spent those terrible days in the public library on Alexandrovskaya Street. To try to understand what his wife was going through, he borrowed a volume of Surgical Obstetrics by Fenomenov. Here he encountered many unfamiliar words and horrifying pictures. He empathized and suffered with her, barely thinking about the child—the precious life of Marusya overshadowed the rest of the world, which seemed to be quaking under his feet.
Sofia Semyonovna, cursing herself for her dismissive attitude about what she had thought were the exaggerated sufferings of her daughter-in-law during her pregnancy, now sat in her room with the woman’s prayer book in Yiddish, wept over it, and prayed, not according to the book, but as her own heart moved her to pray. Dusya ran to the Mariinsko-Blagoveshchenskaya Church, ordered a service for Marusya’s recovery, and lit a fat candle for her.
Marusya was still suffering, but the esteemed Professor Bruno assured her that her current pain was only to be expected, that her life was no longer in danger, and that the best thing she could do now was to return home. The heating in the hospital was inadequate, and he felt she would recover more quickly amid the comforts of home. They did not show the baby to Marusya until the third day. She had never seen newborn babies, and was upset, having expected a pretty little child; this wrinkly bit of a thing, with its crumpled little face, inspired only pity in her. She began to cry.
A week later, Jacob brought his growing family home with him, but here there were new difficulties to contend with. Though Marusya’s childlike breasts were swollen with milk by this time, her flat nipples refused to open, and seemed to want to lock in the milk for good. Expressing the milk was painful, and the newborn was too weak to suck the milk out of her breasts for himself. Mastitis set in, followed by fever. Breast-feeding was out of the question. During the first days, the child was saved by a precious can of Nestlé powdered milk, which they managed to get hold of in the impoverished city through their combined efforts. Sofia Semyonovna, with the help of her extended family, found a wet nurse—a young village girl with a seven-month-old soldier’s son named Kolya. She and Kolya were settled in Eva and Rayechka’s room, and they moved into the living room. The baby, named Genrikh, stopped crying. Now he spent most of his time next to the ample breast of the wet nurse, and started squealing whenever he was removed from her. Kolya, the nurse’s own child, didn’t object. He clearly preferred the porridge of milk and white bread crusts that the experienced Sofia Semyonovna cooked for him.
Then Asya Smolkina, a relative of Marusya’s who was a certified nurse, showed up at their home. Always ready to offer medical assistance to her relatives, friends, and acquaintances, she worked as a surgical nurse in Kiev Hospital, where the wounded were transferred to undergo complicated operations that were impossible to carry out in the field hospitals. She rushed over to Marusya either early in the morning or late in the evening and made her compresses, applied lotions, gave massages, always wearing an expression that suggested it was an honor for her to be invited to their home. A week later, Asya managed to express the rest of the standing milk—it was excruciatingly painful—and bind Marusya’s breasts with a long linen wrapper, to kill the milk. She also massaged and manipulated her stomach, from navel to pubis, admiring the precise, evenly spaced stitches, which were Professor Bruno’s masterful handiwork. Asya idolized Marusya and was prepared to offer her medical services to her until the end of her life, if Marusya would permit it.
For the first six months of Genrikh’s life, Marusya was sick and in pain much of the time. Little Genrikh had brought her many new difficulties. In the evenings, when Jacob returned home from the library (he couldn’t study at home any longer), they brought the baby to them. Jacob and Marusya put him on display, examining his tiny little hands and feet; they felt surprised by, and gradually grew accustomed to, the new member of their little family. The three of them passed the time in one another’s company until the little one began to cry. Then Sofia Semyonovna took him back to the wet nurse.
After that the two of them were alone. Tenderness gave way to passion. Their mutual desire was as strong as ever, and fear of causing pain spurred the discovery of new ways of touching, new kinds of intimacy. Marusya, despairing at how disfigured her stomach was, covered it with her nightgown; but Jacob said that the stitches were particularly dear to him. He told her that the stitches not only did not spoil her looks, they bound the two of them together. They were a mark of her heroic deed, and she meant even more to him with them than without them. The dream of a family with many children had been foolish and empty: he would never again allow her to undergo such suffering.
Jacob kissed the wound that was suddenly right next to his lips, his fingers touched the moist forbidden depths, and for the first time in their relations they discovered not only the smell but also the taste of each other … They again began to talk about things that were in no way related to their ever more complicated domestic life. They made plans, and more plans for the future.
When the future arrived, it was not at all the one they had envisioned or hoped for. Things were going from bad to worse on the front. In the fall of 1916, after he had secured his teaching position at the Commercial Institute, Jacob was called up, and transferred from the reserves to active army service. He was sent to Kharkov, to the Second Sappers Reserve Battalion, in which there was a company orchestra. This was not the kind of music he longed for, but a rifle was even less enticing. He was stranded in Kharkov for a long time. The war turned into revolution, and revolution into civil war. Now frontiers and fronts lay between him and his family, and their communications were sometimes disrupted for many months.
30 Endings
(1988–1989)
Nora had known for a long time already that no year ever ended uneventfully. The last weeks of December always brought surprises—both good and bad—as though all the events that were supposed to happen during the course of the year ran out of time and piled up in a heap during these pre–New Year’s days. On December 16, Taisia came over with a box of chocolates and a huge bale, out of which she pulled a checked blanket clearly of Scottish provenance. While Nora was still blinking in astonishment, Taisia dexterously put the teakettle on to boil.