My grandmother drifted into our communalka with dead eyes that were not offset by the ruby necklace and boa she insisted on wearing from that moment on—needless to say, she was already a bit cuckoo at that point—and I did not know how she would survive without her former splendor. My family shared one large room of a three-family communalka; ours was the most desirable because it had a balcony. Our apartment also contained three lovely items: two ivory cabinets with engravings of dancing elephants that the Dimitrev brothers gave my parents as a wedding gift, and a pink divan of unknown origin. Mama and Papa slept on a cot they folded out at night and Polya and I rested on two tiny mattresses behind a seamstress’s curtain Mama had fashioned to give us some privacy. Now Polya and I would have to share one tiny mattress and Baba would dominate the other. When Mama showed my grandmother her new sleeping arrangement, she looked like she had been backed up against a fence and shot.
However, my grandmother’s arrival soon became a matter of secondary concern. By spring, I could feel the tension rising in our communalka and our streets. By eavesdropping on my parents and the occasional neighbor, I was gaining troubling intelligence: Hitler could be invading the Soviet Union, and Kiev, any day now. In June, Molotov’s voice shook over the radio when he confirmed it: the Germans had bombed us, and we were going to war.
The next month, Uncle Pasha and his colleagues from the Kharkov factory evacuated to Shalya, a town to the west of the Ural Mountains, halfway to Siberia. In August, Uncle Konstantin called in the middle of the night to tell us to pack up our things to prepare to head into the vast nothingness, just as my uncle did. From now on, my father and the engineers who had erected practical structures like bridges and university buildings would have to put their minds to the nasty business of war, constructing tanks and other weapons. The next morning, the workers of the Industrial Engineering Institute and their families would evacuate to the remote town of Lower Turinsk, where we would stay until it was safe to go home.
“And so the war begins at last,” says Stas from somewhere in the distance, approaching the screen, his face shiny with sweat from the outdoors. When did the homeless boy even return to the apartment? “With all due respect, Larissa Fyodorovna, I thought you’d never get there,” the impudent creature adds.
“Every word I have said is necessary. And with all due respect to you, I did not invite you to listen to begin with.”
“I couldn’t help myself.”
“Then my story must not be so dull after all.”
He shrugs with a smile, tucking a greasy strand of hair behind his ear, rascal that he is. Natasha smacks the boy across the chest. “Don’t be rude.”
He shakes his head and picks up Sharik, and mercifully disappears from view. This impudent long-haired homosexual—if only he could go back to where he came from and leave Natasha alone.
My sun has gone down hours ago, but Natasha is a radiant wonder on the screen, having perked up from my opening salvo. Her unsightly daughter rudely slept through the entirety of my tale, and is only now waking up, grumbling and flailing her crooked limbs.
“And what happened on the train?” Natasha says. “I remember there was a little girl who died.”
“This has been more than enough for one day,” I say.
She nods and moves her silly tot closer to the screen, as if her blighted face would compel me to keep talking. “Isn’t she a beauty?”
The nearly bald, snot-covered girl scrunches up her face, preparing to unleash a torrent of cries. I scowl at the girl, yet her mother has the nerve to ask again if she is a beauty and then shoves her nipple into the girl’s mouth.
“Her nature must make up for her looks,” I assure Natasha, and she shakes her head.
“She’s your blood, Baba.”
“Of course she is mine. You think I myself am some great beauty? Even in my heyday, I did not look much better than this rodent-child, though I made up for it in charm—and you should have seen your father. As hideous as the day was long! His rear was far superior to his face for quite a while. Until he was a university student, at least. But you, on the other hand—a beauty from the moment you were born.”
How can I explain it? When I first held her tiny form, I knew Natasha was the child I was waiting for. After her father lowered her in my arms, she spit up all over my new blouse and broke into a devilish smile and I thought, Thank heavens, the girl has spirit! Her father was mild, considerate, and melancholy almost from birth—how he bored me! When Valentina forced the family to America—claiming she was discriminated against as a Jew, and perhaps she was, but was it worth the turmoil?—my heart crumpled, I couldn’t bear Natasha’s absence. I had to resign myself to a yearly visit to America and having the girl visit me at my seaside cottage for a few weeks every summer, I had to pour all of my happiness into those days like it was the fine Georgian wine Volodya Shoshenko, a charming Gogol scholar with a beguiling goatee, had once gently guided into my patiently waiting lips one evening on the patio of the cottage in question while Natasha was resting.
Though I look forward to returning to my seaside home for good in a few weeks, I would give anything to be walking along that shore with Natasha again, as she danced by the water and recited Shakespeare. “ ‘O, wonder!’ ” the girl had cried as we maneuvered around the sunburned seaside flesh to stake out our own sandy territory. “ ‘How many goodly creatures there are here! How beauteous mankind is!’ ” Even as she grew up, I could not help but see her as the sharp, curious creature in my arms.
“If only you could have seen yourself,” I tell her. “Your eyes were as big as moons. It was something unbelievable.”
“They still are,” Yuri interjects, giving me a wave and a wide grin.
Had he been there the whole time too? No, no, he has just walked in the door, it seems. He is a competent, handsome man with thick hair and a solid nose, a substantial patriarch compared to his wimpy friend. I love him as my own. He was the only man able to calm down my granddaughter during her wildest, darkest years, pacifying the frenetic girl at long last, and I will always treasure him for it.
“You’re looking lovely, Larissa Fyodorovna,” he tells me.
“Stop it, you rogue,” I say, waving him away.
“I can’t help myself. How are you?”
“Awaiting the grave with open arms, my boy.”
“A lucky grave it will be, to have you all to itself.”
“You butter me up, silly man,” I tell him, and he chuckles until Natasha pops the child off her breast and tells him to knock it off.
“How’s the packing?” he asks.
“You know how it is. Either I will finish it, or it will finish me.”
“Enough of that,” Natasha says, burping her little nothing. “I’ll call you in a few days, Baba. You must be tired.”