At the beginning of Pushkinskaya Street was a Soyuzpechat newspaper kiosk. It used to be a chapel of a church that was
razed in the thirties. My father and uncle had gone to church there for Easter services. They would be awakened in the middle of the night, dressed in their sailor suits, and then make their way mysteriously through the festive darkness. On the left side of the street stood a large red building, the “home for little ones.” I was horrified by the very idea. How could anyone live without parents and grandparents!
JULY 3. I’ve been in a horrible mood, which has made me feel weak, and I’m not much better, even now. Ive discovered a new, marvelous masochistic leitmotiv: my ruined life. It shimmers with new shades every day. Mixing with the alarm that comes externally (from books, newspapers, magazines, the television, and people), my anxiety grows to universal proportions. The leitmotiv has many smaller motivs running through it: I’m a poorly educated person; I don’t know how to do anything well; I’m tired of lying and playing at working. Everything irritates me; from sounds and smells to my inability to solve the simplest problems in my life. My personal life is a shambles; the ones I want to see are far away, and the rest I don’t care about. How do I get out of this circle? Depend on Fazil Iskander’s understanding of the sense of humor—the trail you leave behind as you climb out of the abyss? This mood brings with it unexpected physical sensations. Yesterday I was in a restaurant with friends, and at the next table some guy dumped black and red caviar into his plate and mixed them together. I still can’t shake the revulsion I felt at the sight of that mixture. Maybe it was the dream I had in which I ate a nauseating black and red sweet-
tasting mush. My doctor would probably blame my liver or ask if I was pregnant. Whatever the explanation, I feel vile.
JULY 5. Is it possible to be completely frank? I’ll try. What am I afraid of in life? The death of family (I have only my mother left), heights (I get dizzy and sick), enclosed spaces (a subway car or an elevator if it stops unexpectedly), pain (that’s normal), crowds (ever since childhood, when we were trapped in one near the subway on a holiday), metal constructions (especially if covered with soot and dirt), the thought that someone might attack me or get into the apartment through the balcony. And I’m afraid of steps. That’s my Yalta disease. I had been waked at night to come to the phone at the resort hotel. My mother hadn’t been able to get through to my room, and she called the desk and asked someone to get me. Someone did. Sleepy, I ran down the stairs. I didn’t fall, but the sense of running and sliding half asleep is with me today, even when I make my way firmly and cautiously down the stairs. I began thinking about fears and realized that I have too many. Even the movement of my beloved turtle in its box can startle me into spasms of fear.
Of course, most of my fears go back to my childhood. Then they were related to secrets and childish fantasies rather than to actual danger. There was a toilet set up in the corner of the kitchen in our Kaluga apartment, and I had to muster all my courage to go there at night. I had to cross the small entry to reach it, and the front door was there. What if someone opened the door and came in? I was afraid of the little window near the kitchen ceiling that our cats used in order to come in and out.
What if some goblin used it instead? From the living-room windows I could see the attic of the house next door, where, according to the neighborhood kids, a deathly pale hand emerged and waved. At night a monstrous face might peer into our windows that opened on the street. I wasn’t afraid in the bedroom. Grandmother shut the heavy curtains tightly and lit the votive light beneath the icon of St. Nicholas, the miracle worker.
The childish fear of death tormented me, too. A small yard had miraculously survived in front of our house. The branches of two American maples hung over a wooden table and benches. A paper lantern was suspended over the table. We drew, played cards, had tea, and sometimes ate meals there. Moths circled the lantern on warm summer evenings and beat their wings against the bright lamp. An adult remarked that moths lived only twenty-four hours. We didn’t believe it, discussed it for a long time, and then forgot it as something unpleasant and therefore unnecessary.
JULY 9. There are two ways to survive in Moscow: either take up a deeply defensive position, reducing forays into the world to a minimum, or become a biofeedback virtuoso. Otherwise you are doomed or turned into a constant victim of lines and the accompanying squabbles they engender. I stick to the first tactic; my nerves aren’t the best. Unfortunately staying home isn’t always possible. Today I left the house to get my shoes repaired and pick up some groceries—bread, milk, and butter. There was a long line at the shoe repair shop, with only one
clerk accepting and returning shoes as well as placing the finished work on the shelves. There was something mystical about the whole process. The shoes were always found, but locating each pair took almost seven minutes. The line waited patiently. My biofeedback didn’t work, and I began to boil over. My first desire was to tell all of them in the line that they were stupid sheep and shouldn’t allow themselves to be treated this way. But you need a partner for scenes like this. Recently Olya (small and fragile but with an explosive temper) and I had made a scene. It was rather funny. Someone in the crowd responded that “this was better than being under the Germans.” We expressed our doubts and gave figures on the number of people leaving for Germany. But Olya wasn’t with me today, so I waited patiently. I did have a small scene anyway because the woman behind me decided “to straighten things out” and push me back three places in line. But there is a higher justice after all. Her shoes weren’t accepted because the sewing machine was out of order and the store didn’t have the material for the repair. The clerk took two pairs out of the three I brought. Incredible luck. I felt avenged. In short, everything developed according to the best laws of drama.
There was a second act, too, that took place in the grocery store and was less interesting. I couldn’t buy a thing, not even milk. A customer leaving empty-handed is regarded with suspicion; maybe you stole something. My bag was checked at the exit, and I opened it gladly: Look, I’m an honest Soviet citizen. Then I headed for the section for special customers—people with large families or invalids. The shelves were pretty bare there, too, but there was butter. There had been butter in the
main section, but I would have had to stand in line for it. I asked if I could buy the butter in the special section. The two cashiers were obviously bored without work. With enviable inventiveness they suggested I return to the original line to buy several packs of butter instead of one. That way I wouldn’t feel so bad about standing in line and I’d have a supply on hand.
As I write, I’ve thought of a third way to deal with life: a sense of humor. For some reason I have trouble managing that. It keeps slipping away.
JULY 14. It turns out that it’s “in” to be healthy in America. Not here yet. It is said that in America people even consider how you look when you’re being hired for work. We all consider it acceptable to be sick several times a year—a flu epidemic or a cold in bad weather or exhaustion from work and worries. Very few of my women friends exercise or play sports.