Sheremetyevo International Airport was like the gateway
to the world, a gate you could never go through. Some of my friends went there to eat in the cafeteria. You could have a sausage sandwich and hear “Moscow-London, Moscow-Paris, Moscow-New York.” Masochism! We had a silly joke back then. “I want to go to Paris again.”
‘‘When were you in Paris?”
“Never. It’s just that I wanted to go yesterday, too.”
Of course, our only salvation lay in a sense of humor. We fantasized and made up funny stories and laughed until we cried. There was something hysterical about it.
Nevertheless, we expected a miracle. Everything would change, and a normal, human life would begin. However, we knew that the only real miracle would be to go abroad. We dreamed of a handsome prince (not necessarily with blue balls) who would take us away over the Alps or across the ocean. What about my parents, though? Ed wake up at night and think: No, I can't leave, no, never, I’ll manage here somehow.
JANUARY 8. I loved my first job. It was wonderful and a tormenting illusion of another life. Almost every day I spent time with foreigners who told me about their lives and gave me books and magazines. They were exactly like me; it was just that they had been born in another country. And every time they flew off to what I considered their happy planet, I had to stay in the “Communist paradise.” We went on living in our country, which we loved but in which we felt unneeded and damned.
It was only recently that we began speaking about the values of human life and about the right to happiness. The word
charity had been struck from the dictionaries as a bourgeois concept. Only a few years ago we saw that our lives were worth nothing, that every day dozens or hundreds of young men were dying senselessly in Afghanistan. I hated and loved my country, afraid to leave it but no longer able to live in it. I wasn’t so sure that I would be happy “out there.” The word “homeland,” made trite and cheap by Soviet slogans, had meaning for me.
I paid for my double life. Often, as I saw off another group to their inaccessible world, I’d weep uncontrollably. I didn’t know how I could go on living. I had no ground under my feet. The poet’s line came back to haunt us decades later: “We live not feeling the country beneath us.”
JANUARY 9. At long last I can live on my salary, I think. It’s considered impolite to ask about salary when you’re applying for a job. You’re supposed to feel that the joy of free Communist labor is reward enough. The rest is your parents’ worry. There’s even a joke on the matter. “His parents are so irresponsible. They can t take care of him until he retires.” Of course, my prosperity is also illusory, and most of my big expenses have been covered by my parents.
When you start counting up and comparing, you feel sad and ridiculous. I ve worked for so many years, and my salary is only slightly over 200 rubles a month. If you figure it in dollars, it’s around $40 a month, even less on the black market. Of course, it s hard to make a real comparison. Our apartments are inexpensive, and so is public transportation. You can buy a loaf
THE INTIMATE DIARY OF A RUSSIAN WOMAN 115
of bread for 20 kopecks. Basically you won’t starve, and you can even buy a pair of winter boots in a month, if you don’t eat. But how do the people making 120 rubles a month manage?
Every day we see wonderful examples of Soviet social justice parading by our office—fat speculators in luxurious Western duds. There used to be a commissary, or secondhand store, here which sold Western electronics. The store was moved to another location, but the speculators remained. They have an open-air office. When it’s cold, they work out of their cars. There’s no such thing as a speculator without a car.
We’re work neighbors. They know the girls from our place and say hello every morning. The girls earn five or ten rubles a day while the chic boys make several hundred or even thousand a day. The “boys” (some of them pushing sixty) have good on- the-job protection. Once a young inexperienced policeman came over to them and asked about their profession. The policeman was told never to show his face there again if he wanted to keep his job. Of course, the boys do end up in jail from time to time. Often it’s their “colleagues” who arrange it. As a rule, they don’t stay in long and come back enriched by the life experience. The major speculators, I’ve heard, often pick up a new job inside; they become professional stoolies. I saw one once. He drove around Moscow in a fancy Western car, a real European gentleman.
There are marvelous stories told about them. One millionaire was arrested over a deal that called for him to bring a briefcase with goods valued at about two thousand rubles to the next building. He did it for a thrill, and they got him. The speculators are tough cookies. They control the best restaurants,
where only foreigners are allowed. When they see a beautiful woman, they invite her date out into the lobby and offer him a easeful of money, just to leave the lady on her own.
So our neighbors are wonderful and inspire us in our joyous free labor.
JANUARY 11. My diary seems awfully gloomy—just wastrels disillusioned with life or fat-cat speculators. I’m put off by it myself.
After all, there are talented, wise, and noble people. At our institute we have several brilliant teachers who give marvelous lectures and write books. It’s funny, but almost all of them are bearded and wear glasses, the traditional image of the Russian intellectual.
Russia was famous for its excellent professors. Unfortunately almost none of them remain, for the old generation is gone and there are only a few individuals in the new.
Coeds traditionally fall in love with these teachers. When I was at college, we had several idols. Their lectures were beauty contests for us. We all put on fresh makeup and fixed our hair in the breaks and naturally had no time to prepare the lessons. My girl friend and I were part of the general madness. We made sure we were the last ones for the oral exam with the most inaccessible and smart professor. We tried to overwhelm him with our charm and certain knowledge of the subject. Neither was enough. He gave us each a C and suggested we learn the sound correlations in the Indo-European languages. Blinded by love, we didn’t even notice our bad grades, and instead of
studying for the next exam, we followed our idol around the institute. As a result, we both got C’s on the next exam, too.
Incidentally that specialist on Indo-European languages later married a student.
JANUARY 18. Now here's a story in reverse. Today I had another date with my former student. The word “student" is rather misleading since he is older than I am and could be my teacher.
I admit that this whole affair was my doing. I figured everything out accurately to the very day. But what if he had been doing his own calculations?
All right, if this is an intimate diary, then all my secrets must be out on the table. I saw him last year, when he came to our office on business. He was an attractive young man, educated and well brought up. As people say, “I noticed him," because it's important to have a reserve of potential admirers, especially in Moscow, where they’re in such short supply.
Six months passed. I was gradually returning to life after the divorce, and I remembered Aleksandr, Sasha for short. An excuse turned up, or I invented it, to discuss a scholarly article. The topic of my article just “happened" to coincide with his field. Things didn’t go beyond several meetings at work and a trip to the movies. Of course, I wasn’t in a rush.
Suddenly, O Providence, I ran into him at the institute, where he had come to study for a month. I quickly began finishing the article, and we saw each other every day. It was time to move on. I made a date for a particularly detailed discus-