Snow in May: Stories (25 page)

“Makin? He almost got himself a bride.” Deda Misha burst into such a fit of laughter that Sonya knocked over her cup of tea. She got up and found a rag to wipe the table.

“As I was saying, I built clubhouses, movie theaters, libraries, and gathered books to fill them. I required my workers to read, and then I held meetings to discuss the books. Who is the positive character? Who is the negative character? What is the author’s message? Useful, isn’t it? All the young people in town dreamed of working at my depot. It’s very pleasant to remember. If someone showed up drunk, I cut their salary. They understood and corrected their behavior. I had half of my depot staffed with West Ukrainians—very hardworking people, don’t drink, don’t smoke. East Ukrainians, Russians, Tatars, they all like to drink and curse. Nothing in this life I hate more than cursing. I still get phone calls and letters from all over the country from people whom I helped in Magadan.
Da
.

“I worked for thirty years as the director of large projects, in Magadan and then in Ukraine, building a pipeline under the Dnieper, and I wasn’t arrested once. I was very honest. I never used my connections to advance myself—I could’ve gotten in touch with Brezhnev if I wanted to, through relatives—but I didn’t want any promotions or medals I didn’t deserve. I never accepted bribes.”

“Maybe you should have.” Sonya’s father was standing in the kitchen doorway.

“And if the bribes had been slipped secretly, I returned them,” Deda Misha said. His face settled from surprise to babyish hurt. “Tolik, I’m sure you know that I would have gone to the camp for that, in our own backyard.”

“What’s three years? The curious thing is you usually get punished for small-time stuff. Steal billions and you’ll probably get away with it. Become best friends with the president, drink vodka together, and listen to Gutman live at your dacha.”

“That’s a good lesson to be teaching your daughter.”

“All right, Papa, tell us about Makin, like promised. Before your audience nosedives into the tea.”

“I was just laying the groundwork. Do you want some tea, Tolik?”

“I’ll make it. You get to your story.” Sonya’s tall father took up all the space in the tiny kitchen and cast shadows on the table as he moved.

“Tak.”
Deda Misha cleared his throat. “Makin lived in a
kommunalka
room upstairs from us, on Park Street. As part of his sentence, he had loss of civil rights and was not allowed to travel beyond a certain region after he was released from the camp, and, of course, travel or move to the capital and major cities. Many people, after they had been officially acquitted, stayed in Magadan because their personal circumstances had changed. Say, they once had a wife, and now she’s dead or married to someone else. Or their family had rejected them. Many had found their second lives here.”

“Papa, we know you are an engineer to your core but less technical details, please.”

Sonya caught the spark in her father’s eyes and felt united with him against Deda Misha. Her father fixed the tea and brought it out to the living room. He returned and poured himself a glass of vodka.

“You drink too much, Tolik,” Deda Misha said.

“A little vodka keeps the spirit young and full of good ideas. A lot of vodka, on the other hand.” He drank from his glass. “She’s a grown-up, she made her own bed. She can sleep in his piss.”

Heat rushed to Sonya’s face when she realized he was talking about her mother and Oleg. She’d never actually seen Oleg drunk.

“My spirit is young, by natural method,” Deda Misha said.

“I wish we were all like you,” her father said.

“I am continuing. Tolik, please, no jokes.”

“I will leave in a minute,” Sonya’s father said. He remained by the window, his back pulling down on the pear-patterned curtains.

“Papa, you’ll snap the curtains,” Sonya said. “Just sit down, please.”

“I need to plan my great return, like the Count of Monte Cristo.”

“To America?” If that was true, she was ready to forgive him all his teasing, and everything he’d ever said about her mother.

“China,” her father said.

“China?”

“Sonya, what grade are you in?”

“Ninth.”

“Exactly. Don’t always believe the first thing you’re told.”

“Oh.” So, America! She could barely contain her thrill.

“
Vot,
continuing,” Deda Misha said loudly, like a teacher starting a lesson. “Makin was our upstairs neighbor, but once, he was the most famous tenor in the USSR.”

“Like Pavarotti and Domingo,” Sonya’s father said.

“Really?” Sonya said.

“His mother and grandmother were gypsies and singers. That’s where he got his singing genes. Gypsies have beautiful songs, almost as beautiful as Ukrainian songs. In the twenties and thirties, Makin sold out stadiums, and when a new record came out, the lines outside the record stores were so unruly that horse-mounted police were dispatched to maintain order.”

“Like Beatlemania,” Sonya said. Her father winked at her. They were fans of the Beatles together, and she was annoyed that Oleg also loved the Beatles. Sometimes, though, she wanted Oleg to like her; she couldn’t explain it. Even when Oleg had said that her father was like the fool from “The Fool on the Hill.” He’d intended it as a compliment, talking about the wise fool. Her mother had overheard and warned Oleg that for as long as he lived in their home and ate their food, he was forbidden to say a word about Sonya’s father. But Sonya had understood what Oleg meant, and, in a way, she even agreed.

“He wrote his own songs or collaborated with a lyricist. And he had his own piano accompanist, his friend Mikhail Bondarenko. Another Ukrainian.”

“I think Bondarenko was a Jew,” Sonya’s father said.

“Yes, Jews are good musicians. Like gypsies, but more educated in the classical tradition, not as soulful.”

“As Ukrainians?”

“You are yourself an almost full-blooded Ukrainian, Tolik, you should be proud.
Tak,
next. The war. Makin sang at the blockaded Leningrad, the besieged Sevastopol, and for the sailors in Arctic Murmansk. By the way, because there was an ingredient in the plastic records that was necessary for some very important military production, people were called to bring in their broken or even new records for recycling. But Makin’s records weren’t accepted. He told me himself. On the contrary, his records were given out as a reward to the most active recyclers. He could hypnotize people with his voice. That’s why he lasted as long as he did. The veterans say he made them want to not just survive, but to live. To return home and find love.” Deda Misha got teary-eyed for a second, which made Sonya uncomfortable. She wondered whether any veterans had come to Makin’s concert tonight.

“In ’42, shortly before Stalin’s birthday, Beria called Makin, the story goes, and asked why none of his songs were about Stalin. Have you studied Beria at school yet? He was the chief of secret police. At an earlier interview with the KGB Makin was asked—which means he was ordered—to write a song about Stalin. Makin replied that songs about Stalin did not suit a tenor voice. Can you imagine Beria getting such an answer? Beria! Who had personally signed thousands of execution orders. Who rode around Moscow in a black car, picking out women and girls on the street, then raped and murdered them. Stalin was like a jealous husband; he couldn’t stand when someone might be more popular than him. Makin was sentenced to eight years in one of Magadan’s camps. Not bad as Gulag sentences go, and he didn’t have to do the real hard labor, where people died in the mines and from cold and starvation. He was part of the agitprop brigade with other singers, actors, poets, and dancers and performed at different camps. It was a part of the so-called cultural and reeducation program. The camp leadership always loved art, and of course wanted to use the talents of so many accomplished people who came their way. These brigades even received bonuses and extra pay, and they felt welcomed and needed wherever they went. Makin’s talent saved him, but still it was devastating. He was cut down at the height of his career.”

“Just for not singing about Stalin?” Sonya said.

“People were arrested for less. Tell a political joke and you just signed your arrest warrant. There was a rumor of another reason—actually, many conflicting rumors—but rumors were a dangerous thing. People kept their mouths shut.”

“Love’s a bitch and life’s her lackey,” Sonya’s father said.

“Tolik, not for Sonya’s ears.”

“I’m sure she’s heard worse, in their
kommunalka
.” He poured himself more vodka. “The important question was not for what, Sonya, but for how long. With rights of correspondence, or without. If not, the family wouldn’t even know where you were, whether you were dead or alive.”

“Yes, it was like that. ‘If there is a person, an Article will be found for him.’” Deda Misha sighed. “So, Makin. After all the years of my friendship with him, I can confidently say that like so many artists, he was not practical. He didn’t know what was good for him. A tremendous shame, for someone of his stature.”

“Get to the point, comrade general,” Sonya’s father said.

Deda Misha waved him away. “Makin’s sentence was cut short, for good work and behavior. Afterward, he lived in Magadan with three cats. Everybody knew who he was, but many pretended not to. Even the walls have ears, that’s what we said. Housemates behind our thin walls could’ve been working surveillance for the KGB. I’d seen Makin on the staircase of our building many times. He always looked so fashionable—in a long checkered coat and a silk scarf. His cologne lingered on the stairs long after he’d passed. He still had foreign friends and admirers, who closed their eyes to certain of his proclivities. Just like I later would. They couldn’t help him move back to Moscow or restore his former glory, but they could procure for him an Italian scarf, a French beret.

“Every weekend, your baba Mila and I enjoyed music filtering down through the thin floor from his soirées. He played piano, his guests brought guitars, violins—and he sang, of course, he sang his long swan song. He was only in his mid-forties then and already starting to look old. His black gypsy eyes had sunk in and he was losing hair, but there was still an aura of nobility on his face, the way certain artists can look no matter how much they suffer. By the way, in ’43, when he was still in the camp, he was flown into Yalta for several hours.”

“Tehran,” Sonya’s father said.

“Yes, yes, Tehran. Yalta Conference was later. He was flown to Tehran under guard. It was Churchill’s birthday, and all the famous singers in the world gathered to perform for him. Churchill’s son had organized the concert and personally requested Makin. He, of course, had no idea that Makin was in the Gulag. As Makin was walking off the stage after his performance, he ran into Ida Shteynberg, a Yiddish singer he knew in his youth in St. Petersburg—she immigrated to Britain before the war. While everyone was applauding, she told him he must walk up to Roosevelt or Churchill, or even Churchill’s son, and ask to be taken for political asylum. It was his only chance for a free life. She even taught him how to say it in English. Makin didn’t do it.”

“But why?”

“At that point he still thought he would be rehabilitated and continue to be a star in his homeland. In America or England, who would he be? Artists need their audience. Without it, they wilt like unwatered flowers. When you are open-minded and listen, it’s not hard to figure people out.”

“He told you all of this?” Sonya said.

“He didn’t like talking about the past, Sonya. Understandable, with a past like his. Somebody else had told me.”

“
Nu,
honest folk, I am off to the land of dreams and fools.” Sonya’s father kissed her on the top of her head. “Don’t torture her for too long, Papa. Good night to all.”

“Good night,” Sonya said. She wanted to say something more—something comforting yet neutral—but couldn’t think of it fast enough. She had this feeling ever since her father had returned from America, like she was constantly chasing a loose thread.

“Good night, Tolik. Don’t worry, she’ll see what a mistake she’s made.”

Her father shrugged his shoulders and winked at Sonya.

She watched him disappear into the darkness of the living room. He wore an old woolen sweater he’d left in Magadan when he went to America. It was too small for him then, and Oleg had worn it when he lived with Sonya and her mother. Now it fit. For a whole year, Sonya had told her father on the phone what she wanted him to send with weekly flights: strawberry milk, sushi, cream-filled toaster strudels, yellow legal pads, highlighters. She had talked about school, complained about Faina Grigorievna and practicing piano, and described the ballroom dresses she wanted for the competitions. As if those were the most important things, the only things.

“I was never home in those years, that’s how hard I worked, Sonya,” Deda Misha continued. “Your father was just a baby, very fussy. Baba Mila noticed that in the evenings the singing from Makin’s room soothed Tolik to sleep, so during the day she began to play the one Makin record we had over and over. It had all of my favorite songs: ‘Friendship,’ ‘Autumn,’ ‘Good-bye, My Gypsy Camp.’ You know, after Makin’s first arrest, many of his records were pulled from stores, confiscated from people, and melted. He even burned his own records.”

“Why?”

“I think because he was depressed, broken. One weekend, as I passed him on the stairs, I told him about his youngest fan in the person of our baby, Tolik. You should’ve seen the way his gloomy face lit up—balsam on my heart. If you’d like, he said, I’d be happy to sing a song for your son; nothing would give me more pleasure. He had a very pleasant voice up close, very aristocratic. It was surreal to me, a lad from a Ukrainian
hutor
and now talking to someone who had personally known Stalin and Mayakovsky. I thought about another point quickly: Was he saying this to be polite? Who might see him going into my room and what conclusions would they draw? Who would they report to? I decided to take the risk. A person is a person. A bird flies, a singer sings, and that’s all there is to it. Never pass up an opportunity to do another person good, Sonya, even if it costs you a little extra. It will all be tallied up in the big book.