‘But how…’ I said almost crying. ‘I can’t stay alone… It will be very hard…’
‘How can you talk about such trivial things when it comes to the fate of your husband? Your spiritual level prevents you from seeing Oleg’s great purpose and high status. You have no right to interfere with the destiny of a man having a higher destiny than just sitting by your side.
Tears choked me. I thought I was so small, while everything around me seemed so large and hostile. I was looking at the great Tamara, at Alexander Vasilyevich. I felt dizzy as I saw something quite different from what I saw through my tears. My hearing seemed to be turned off; I could see Tamara’s little mouth moving, evil wizened wrinkles scurrying around it, and I heard quite different words Tamara would utter,
‘Do let him go with me. I like him very much, he is so young. I want him, let him go, do let him go, you greedy rat…’
‘Oh my God, what is it?’ I thought. ‘’The fear of losing my husband drives me crazy…’
Tamara went away. I was long accused for stopping my husband’s spiritual development.
I felt a kind of dissociated personality. I was an ordinary country woman, there was nothing special about me. And I was really preventing Oleg from developing… I had to let him go. Let him go. There are so many high-status women, and I wasn’t even able to comprehend a status as high as that…
Our yoga laws say that a man can have as many women as he wants, and the more women he has, the better. In other words, the man is ‘one’ while the woman is ‘zero’; zero follows one, and the more zeros the one has, the more powerful it is. Oleg and I make up 10. No doubt that a million is larger…
What shall I do?
My third meeting with the Master
My third encounter with the Master happened 2 years later in Moscow, where I came to take an exam to become a Category 1 healer. Oleg could not accompany me because a track-and-field contest was held at his working, and he was the major runner. I didn’t want to go. To begin with, I was afraid of meeting with Tamara, who occupied a high position there. Besides, I was so scared that I could develop a fever. So when I got off the train, I could hardly understand where I was. Or maybe Moscow always produced such an impression on me?
The Yoga Academy was in the heart of the capital; marriages had been registered there before. A two-story building with austere white columns. I stood in front of it and looked up…
I saw plaster moldings depicting a huge bronze eagle. In some places, the paint had faded substantially, especially on the claws and on the beak, but in general, the eagle looked menacing. That severe look was due to the eagle’s red human eyes. A steel plate on the entrance door said, “The Academy of Harmonious Development.” The eagle swung and went sideways.
I pulled the massive door and found myself immediately in a large room. The decor was mysterious. Candles burned in the corners. There were many visitors from all over Russia. They were met at the entrance by a high grey-haired woman in a green silk dress to the floor. There was a sign on her chest saying “Aristak”. The woman took us to the desk at some distance from the door. There were other elderly women sitting at the desk. They were making a detailed record of all visitors.
I was also questioned, and my answers were written down.
– ‘Purpose of the visit?’ I hesitated, because I didn’t know the correct variant: “to sit the healer” or “to get a healer diploma”. My head was buzzing. The woman was looking at me thoughtfully and even put on her glasses to get a better view. Judging by her enlarged eyes, I understood very well that she was thinking badly about me.
‘OK’, she sighed sadly. After that she put a bold cross against my name; she did it carefully and with obvious pleasure. Then he turned a questioning look at the person behind me. I stepped off full of foreboding. It was cold outside. I wanted to lie down.
It was not allowed to stay in the room, all those who had enrolled were ordered outside. They promised that they would call us if required. Only a handful of people deep into the room quickly, and I immediately joined them.
Unobserved, we slipped to the second floor. The staircase was high and steep. There was a carpet on the steps. Its color was juicy, and that succulence looked unnatural. Looking closer, I saw the faded flowers had been freshened up skillfully with markers. My companions bent down and touched the carpet carefully. It seemed to me that they were talking to each other in a foreign language. One could see a clear community in their group there is reflected in the fact that they kept close, in a tight bunch and whenever I came closer, they walked faster quietly though firmly.
There were weird things on the second floor, too. The hallway was very long and resembled a school corridor, but there were no doors that would manifest offices. The numerous windows bright reflected light to the walls. This happens late in the evening when lampposts are on. It was early in the morning though. I looked in a window. There was a church outside, close by, surrounded by ordinary residential buildings. It seemed that the house had just been put into operation because no window had curtains or any other reminder of human presence. Suddenly, the bells rang. I drew back from the window in fear.
There was no one in the hallway. The light from the windows on the walls became more distinct. I was gripped by fear. I almost ran back looking for the stairs. I failed to find it in the same place. “I think I screw it up somehow”, I decided and went ahead. I have such a feature, the ability to get lost in broad daylight.
I found a staircase at the end of the corridor. But it was quite different. First, it led up unexpectedly, although the building, as had clearly seen at the entrance, was a two-story one. Secondly, the carpet that covered the staircase was completely different. It was brand new, silvery, and made out of thick wool. Besides, it was firmly nailed to the stairs with nails having large iron heads. “Like on a ship.” I was surprised. “When a wave covers it causing panic, the passengers will leave the building easily.” I imagined a mobile magic carpet taking people rampant right into the deep.
In front of the stairs, on a wooden stand, there was a huge banner saying “Schedule.” The stand was adorned with numerous sheets of paper pinned with needles. The sheets were all inscribed in a small illegible handwriting and were similar like brothers as the headers were the same large letters, “Banned! Danger!”. From a distance, small letters was not visible at all, while “Banned! Danger!” merged into one.
I hesitated. I didn’t feel like go down; as to going up… My heart sank. I heard hammering and a saw screeching; probably it was a renovation. I rushed up.
The third floor was full of sounds. They were coming from the numerous doors numbered «1, 2, 3, 4…» I sighed with relief and went to the first door. It was unlocked. I looked in cautiously…
In the middle of the room a wet and very disheveled man stood on his knees on the floor. He was crying bitterly, clutching in his hands a banner, which he was kissing frantically. I determined that it was really a banner rather than just a rag by the wooden pole and some symbols on the pink silk, which roughly resembled a hammer and sickle, though it wasn’t a hammer and sickle. The man kept crying, and, in small gaps between the sobs, he was kissing the flag and wiping his wet miserable face with it, was taking vows. I could only comprehend a few sounds, “will honor… to honor… to give… to sacrifice.” There was something unpleasant in the misfortune the kneeling person was feeling.
‘It must be a rehearsal of a performance’, I decided. We often made fancy-balls based on Alexander Vasilyevich’s scenarios, an indispensable part of which were concerts, plays and dances.
My attention was attracted by a large ikebana hanging on the wall of the room. I even screwed up her eyes to better see it.
It was a composition artfully assembled from various forest herbs, mushrooms and cones. They were harmoniously intertwined with each other, with all the proportions. But they were united by not only the forest origin but also by the fact that all the parts were carefully painted with matte white paint, probably water-based. The paint was very fresh and in some places, especially on the mushrooms, was gleaming with dampness. And everything was striking with an unusual, sinister harmony.
I closed the door and went on. There was a rehearsal in each room… Was it a joint performance broken into parts or independent performances?
Solemn music sounded in room number 2. Grown men looking very serious and wearing long white hoods. Everything was well organized and carefully thought out. For example, a jury sat at a long table at the end of the room. There were three jurymen looking closely at the dancers. There were small things on the table, which were too far from me to to make out.
From time to time, one of the judges would clap hands to stop the motion, then the dancing people would stop smiling and stare at the table. The juryman would call one of them with a finger, and those behind him would look at him with deep envy. The lucky person was awarded some gift, mostly a yellow medal looking like a pointed star on a long satin ribbon. The star was hung on his chest and the guy, gasping with happiness, was clapped on the shoulder and shaken hands with. After that he joined not “his” circle but the one in which all the dancers had the same stars on their chests. I noticed that the biggest present was goggles with colored glass. Only three members had them, they kept apart and didn’t take part in the dance; instead, they were standing by the wall, their arms folded in pretzels, watching their fellow students with a smirk.
The smallest awards were red silk ribbons, which were piled on a table in a large heap. The jury members paid special attention to the one who accepted that award: they stroked his hair and patted his back approvingly. The favorites, in turn, looked very attentively at their motions in a circle, making them all the more carefully. Special attention was paid to turning the heads smoothly and bowing.
The third room was closed, I could hear screams behind the door… Especially distinct was a woman’s voice, it reached the highest hysterical note and suddenly choked and broke. The door swung open with a bang. A stout lady in a torn robe, with a black eye ran out of it, panting. Nice high breasts stuck out of the robe. The woman looked at me madly and, uttering a cry, disappeared again in the room. I hurried away in fear to another door, which was ajar more than others…
What I saw there impressed me greatly.
The little room was a kind of auditorium. There were a few chairs deep in the shadows, on which spectators were sitting. Intense attention was focused on the center. There was a tall black-haired man there with a long pointer, the end of which was a soft brush. He was telling the audience something enthusiastically waving a pointer, and his voice was very excited. He was dressed in a wide dropdown shirt of fine linen and similar broad oriental pants. I only caught some phrases spoken in a solid, confident tone, “It is very important… for moving forward… sound clarity.. harmony of the cosmos… with the consent of the gods…”
But the spectators were looking through the narrator and I also looked away.
Close to the wall, there was a large throne covered with red velvet, which was rubbed on the arms. A stout gentleman in a black ceremonial costume was sitting on the throne. His eyes were hidden by sunglasses with blue lenses. On his lap was a young girl looking like our young dancer Katya. Katya was naked. She was sitting, her body strained, both hands gripping the armrests; her legs wer clenched so tightly that they were quivering. It seemed that her teeth were tapping. But the man in the blue spectacles was whispering something from time to time in her ear stroking her small breast with pink nipples.
The black-haired man ended the lecture, bent down and carefully put the stick with a brush on the floor. Then he turned and walked slowly to the throne. The girl tightly closed her sad eyelids, and, assisted by the stout gentleman, spread her legs. The black-haired man threw her skirt with a smooth movement of his hands and fell to her voluptuously. The spectators sobbed excitedly, snatched notebooks hastily from the bags hanging on the chairs, and started frantically to record something. One of them kept raising his hand and waved it with anticipation so fast that it soon became a fan…
The black-haired man tried to look magnificent even in such a piquant situation. But there was nothing magnificent in what he was doing. The hair on the back of his head soon got wet from the zeal with which he was making convulsive hits with his bottom belly. Sweat streaming down his neck. His linen shirt darkened and stuck to his back. The fat guy in blue spectacles was also working: he was using his thick ankles to push the silent Katya, her child’s arms folded on her chest, towards the black-haired one…
Then, again, they were busy shifting her, probably changing places…
Choked with emotion, I closed the door quickly and even, just to be on the safe side, leaned against it with my back. My heart was beating loudly, the blood rushed to my cheeks. I was looking for a latch behind me, and it took me some time to realize that there can be no latch outside. But, to my surprise, I did find it. Although it was somewhat rusty and could hardly move, I managed to close the door.
A deep-chested sound of a trumpet was heard from beneath signaling the beginning of the exam. I hurried downstairs…
The exam consisted…
The exam consisted of several stages. First, the guests pulled out the questions, just like at any regular university, and gave their answers to the examiners, four good-humored women. The questions were simple. I pulled out “First aid for hip fracture.”
Those who passed the exam successfully, lined up in front of the door with a mysterious plate, Partimok’. People came out of there sad, heads down, staggering as if drunk. The fear grew. At the last second, I rushed away, but I was pushed in the back. I opened the door with trembling hands. A woman with black piercing eyes was sitting in the center of the oval room on a high throne of red velvet. I was horrified to recognize in her the great Tamara. She had a long iron rod with a pointed end in her hand; the rod looked like an ancient weapon…
Two older women were sitting on simple chairs close to her. One of them had a huge leather-bound book. When I came in, she turned over a page, ran his eyes over the lines, and significantly tapped there with a lacquered fingernail. The other one looked at the with fear; she was thin and melancholy and had an unusual high hairdo. Over her unfriendly eyes detached from the world were thin eyelids as thin as tissue paper.
‘They must have read that I was a thief at a marketplace’, I thought sadly again, and everything, just everything there became hostile. I looked with hatred at the queen Tamara sitting high, close to the sky; lava was flowing out of her eyes and nostrils. Suddenly, she yelled sharply and angrily across the room, her voice echoing in all the corners, hitting against the walls and coming back again,
‘She despises the g-o-o-o-ds!’
‘Yes’, her companions replied weakly and indifferently. ‘She really despises the gods.’
I rushed to the door longing for just one thing: to leave the asylum as soon as possible. But on the way, I came across tables covered with green baize. Books, notebooks, folders fell from them and slipped to my feet like a thick fan. Once I got through that pile, I hit my head on the iron screen with a hospital curtain that had a lot of holes due to numerous washings. Where did it come from? Is it possible to get out of here alive? The curtain wrapped up my legs. I made a new attempt to break out… and fell down on the floor. It was twenty centimeters or so to the door, but I lay there thinking, “These witches are going to jump upon me and stab my back with their stick. Their soles will trample me, and I will die…”
Suddenly the door opened, and I saw oriental shoes right before my face. They had chocolate color and smelled of expensive leather. Oh, what a familiar magic scent of sandalwood it was. Guru Rubin! He was watching in amazement while I was rising and shaking crumbs clinging to my body; then he looked inquiringly at the “holy trinity”.
‘She has a huge claim to the gods’, looking down humbly, explained Tamara seated on the throne.
The Master touched my half-crazy head and answered calmly and quietly,
‘She did. But she has none any longer.’
And he did with me all the procedures necessary in that case. First, he poured something on my poor head. It felt great because it quenched the heat in my head. Then he put on it a green silk hat was covered with little multi-colored stones. He also hung a scarlet ribbon with an iron bell on my chest. When I was walking to the door, the bell was bouncing on my breast and ringing dully…
I came back
I came back home with a first rate healer diploma. My temperature normalized. But something had happened to me in Moscow…
Reality and dreams, which were much brighter than life itself, became confused. Fear was now my constant companion. In my dreams, fear looked like a huge water boa or the devil representing lust. He whispered something softly and gently; I was extremely excited by its wet hair curl and a dangling emerald drop reflecting the depths of the sea. He exuded a disturbingly sharp smell of something forbidden and shameful. Everywhere I would turn to, the devil’s tight, springy body would hit me, quietly and firmly, evenly and passionately.
Oleg was alarmed and invited Alexander Vasilyevich over. He carefully examined me, and said, looking at Oleg with pity, “We should invite healers from Moscow.” I refused flatly. I remembered those healers who used to come to our city every month.
There were three of them: a tall young man and two arrogant elderly women. Numerous people who wanted to see them had to record in advance. The healers, dressed in long loose-fitting blue shirt, saw the patients in a small office in an abandoned suburban kindergarten.
I also wanted to be healthy, but the charges were high. All “poor” ones sat in the hallway waiting with eager curiosity for the lucky rich ones. Those “healed”, strangely enough, did not appear refreshed. They looked like skinny weeds torn ruthlessly out of the bed. We asked them thousands of questions interrupting each other. In order to place all the links in the chain of karma, the healers opened the secret to them, the link between the patient’s family members in the past life. It turned out that, centuries ago, the wives were murderers, the husbands were rapists to their wives, and all those terrible news were imprinted in the brain causing an overwhelming despair. No one knew what to do and how to live, if he or she committed awful crimes.
It became clear immediately that there were ways out; the sins were taken for an additional fee. The psychics claimed that no money would compensate the weight one has to carry one one’s shoulders.
I didn’t want to know who I was centuries ago. All I wanted to understand was WHO I AM in my present life.
‘It won’t be easy if I do it alone’, Alexander Vasilyevich said. He decided to carry with me the ritual of detaching me from all earthly things. Then the disease will go away. It cost three thousand. I agreed.
The ritual was held at our place, when the kids were not in. ‘We need a mat’, Alexander Vasilyevich said. ‘I will be burning paper.’
Oleg brought an old curtain of dark red velvet. It was put on the chair in which I sat down quietly. The room was in semi-darkness. Candles were burning. Long shadows were swaying on the walls. Alexander Vasilyevich stood before me singing guttural mantras. “Well, he looks like a wolf”, I thought. Sasha the Wolf burned all the papers which he had read and poured the ashes on my head. There was a smell of burning ash and wool. I sneezed, fidgeted, scratched my nose, feeling no majesty of the moment. On the contrary, all earthly sounds, smells, images the and touches became still shaper inside me. Alexander Vasilyevich looked at me perplexed. “She clings to the material too strongly”, he said to Oleg. “It is very hard for me to break those chains.” And he started singing his death mantras even sweeter, and sprinkled my head with black ash even thicker.
The phone rang, my husband was called to work, he had to bring some urgent documents. He left…
I wish there was at least one person who would see that picture! What should I do to describe it? No matter how hard I would try to make my words truthful, no matter how much I would try to make the air ring, those sounds cannot express real life …
The shadows deepened and surrounded me in a hot ring. The emerald drop trembled, then fell slowly to the floor mirror, banged loudly and shattered into many small sea sparks. They were ringing like underwater bells, jumping up to my hands, digging in them like cold sea needles. I was drinking something wonderful from a large jug, which Alexander Vasilyevich gave me.
‘He doesn’t look like a wolf’, I thought while boiling tar was pouring into my veins with each swallow. ‘He looks like…’ But my uncontrollable thoughts were floating independently, without acquiring any material shapes. Some of them appeared and disappeared at once on the seabed, giving birth to others an dived into the wave that was coming over. I didn’t have enough time to watch their ruinous distinctness.
Alexander Vasilyevich’s face was close by. It was so close that I could see his thoughts. ‘She is breathing like a child’, he was thinking. ‘You have a wonderful aura, it is purely lilac in color’, he said. His eyes were also very close… There was a whirl of emotions in them: amazement, embarrassment… and passion. The force of his passion was breaking through with anger… and with purity ringing like a gold coin. The heavy coin, coated with an ancient ornate of red gold, hit the floor mirror and jumped onto my knees. In order to withstand its weight, the knees became mercury strong. It slipped between my legs like a snake, which wrapped my hips tightly with elastic rings.
‘The woman must give away’, the snake was whispering.
‘If she wants to’, the sea tsar was roaring.
‘That’s her essence…’
‘But who invented it?’
‘Those who communicated with gods…’
‘Nonsense…’
‘Maybe she needs it?’
‘Then no questions would arise.’
‘Sometimes, questions are caused by fear.’
‘You think that fear is caused by desire?’
‘Look, her lips are trembling!’
‘Don’t! The right of choice belongs to her!’
All the elastic rings, tied with gold, faded instantly because of the hot whisper. The vicious, possessed soul leaked into the ground like a steam spray…
I remained
I remained a good student at Alexander Vasilyevich’s yoga classes. He didn’t make me suffer in the regular exams, and thanks to his generosity, I was moving quickly along the path of spiritual development.
I received awards and honors as crosses of different colors and put them in my nightstand drawer. There were a hat trimmed with colored stones and a scarlet ribbon with bells there. Once my son came up to me, looked at the pile and asked,
‘Mom, can we sell this and buy chewing gum?’
‘No’, I explained patiently. ‘These things cannot be exchanged for chewing gum. They are very, very…’
And then I first thought…
Yogi’s mass reverie was shrouded in blinding though lifeless light. We were like solid ice dolls performing a terrible swift dance on black ice…
I longed to escape to a warm, soft, tinkling, tangible happiness…
To small business…
I dedicated these lines to the smallest business, to my dear market tradeswomen who started from scratch…
There is a view here in Russia that market traders are no one but arrogant, unscrupulous women for whom cheating is as easy as drinking a glass of water.
There is everything in the marketplace, just like in a war. Human relations become absolutely clear there as nowhere else, except maybe in a prison. All the people became market traders during Perestroika. School teachers and doctors, artists and poets, people of those professions that were so far from commerce. They could have lived all their lives without seeing themselves in a totally unfamiliar environment…
Many didn’t even withstood a couple of days. Most hanged on for a month. Only a few survived in the market place having absorbed its Great Laws with blood.
A grateful student, I dedicate this confession to the people called ‘blacks’ here in Russia. Fear breaks my heart when I hear the words glowing in the sky with mere hatred, ‘They should be killed and driven back home, then we, the Russians, would have plenty of jobs.’
Fate brought me to them in the marketplace which I had previously had no idea of. As if I had found myself in an unfamiliar city at night and, wandering along its slippery streets I would have inevitably been lost even despite my frenzied courage. We all prayed to different gods, but in the single Universe, under the eternal sky, Savior’s live heart was beating in everyone.
Provocation, sent down to Earth by the Evil forces only, became strong as never before. Inflamed with rage and criminal recklessness, weakened by the struggle for survival and complete disunity, Russian people are ready to give their lives and bring unnecessary sacrifices…
But do I, a woman who gave birth to children and dreaming of love, need this war?
It was winter…
It was the winter of 1996. In the evening, after school, I went to the market with a girlfriend. It got dark so fast that, before we knew it, the marketplace was completely deserted. When we turned to the exit, I heard someone calling us. We turned around and saw two Tajiks, and old one and a young one, carefully stacking large lumpy pomegranates in cardboard boxes.
‘Hey, ladies, takea pomegranade free!’
I was naïve and went to them. Lyuba, also a primary school teacher, was waiting. I came up joyfully and stretched out a plastic bag. The younger one put a few large pomegranates in it. I thanked him cordially and was going back to Lyuba, when the old one told me,
‘Give us as much as you want. Maybe a hundred, maybe ninety rubles.’
In those times, the school teacher’s salary was exactly ninety rubles. I felt awfully ashamed, I have no words to express it. The old Tajik exclaimed,
‘Wow, if you haven’t money why should you come to the marketplace? Is you beggar?’
I turned red like a lobster, gave the parcel back to them and said, my eyes down,
‘No. I am definitely not a beggar.’
‘Why no money then, ah?’
‘I am a schoolteacher.’
‘A-a-a. Why not come to us work?’
‘Can I…?’
‘You can, you can’, the old one waved his hand as if turning a homeless dog away. ‘Get early, not forget.’
Lyuba was pulling my sleeve, ‘Why should talk with those blacks? Don’t you see that he is mocking at you?’
I got angry with myself, with the schoolteacher’s poverty wages, with the whole world. I was even called a beggar today…
There was a weekend ahead. And I made up my mind.
I got up at around five. I felt like sleeping awfully! It was the New Year’s in five days. Winter. The thermometer showed – 30о. The children were sleeping, cross-legged; my husband stretched luxuriously in his sleep. “Where the hell are you going to? Why are you not in bed? It’s do dark outside! And who’s waiting for you in the marketplace?”
So I was grumbling and muttering that to myself while dressing. I found a pair of felt boots 3 sizes larger and put on a downy shawl. After I began looking like a bread-ball, I rolled out to the frost.
But as soon as I found myself outside, all my doubts disappeared. The snow crunches under my feet, the sky is full of stars!
I came to the market place and started looking for my friends. In the long run, I did find them. They were neither surprised nor happy to see me. ‘Stand behind the counter’, the old one says. ‘Let’s see what you can do.’
As soon as stood behind the counter, a young guy selling tangerines opposite me yelled like crazy,
‘Did you at least see her documents? What if she’s infectious?’
I stood rooted to the spot, more dead than alive.
‘Yes’, the old Tajik squinted his eyes. ‘Do you have documents?’
‘I do’, I said.’ And the sanitary book, too. But I keep all that at my work.’
‘W-e-e-l’, the Tajik scratched his head. I saw that he was not sure.
They examined me incredulously from all sides, turned away and lost all interest in me. If though the guy with tangerines just erased. The old one moved me out of the counter little by little and said,
‘Come when you have the documents…’
I went back home, crying bitterly and feeling absolutely humiliated. I wished it were a fairytale so that a magic beast would stop me and ask,
‘Why are you crying, lady? Let me help you cope with your grief…’
‘Immigrant invasion’, I thought about the ‘blacks’. ‘We never invited you, OK?’ I didn’t want to go home, and I knew that I would never again make up my mind to be a tradeswoman. But what else can I do? So I decided to us my numerous friends selling apples at the marketplace.
‘Girls’, I said, ‘I need your advice. Please let me know what I should begin with, who I should contact here?’
They waved their hands at me turning me away,
‘Get away, we don’t want to see you!’
That’s how the marketplace met me! I went away without understanding what to do next.
Suddenly, out of nowhere, a puny Tajik guy with brisk eyes came up running. He grabbed my hand and whispered,
‘Come with me, I’ll help you.
I was happy to see at least one nice person, so I ran hopped after him. He placed me behind the counter. A box of tangerines fell down to the frozen snow under my feet, and a twisted balance miraculously appeared before me. The brisk-eyed Tajik looked around and whispers in my ear,
‘Here are excellent tangerines. I have sold them to everybody for four rubles, but you get them for three. I am sorry for you. But don’t tell anyone. I will pick up the money in the evening. OK, bye. Sell them.
And he disappeared. Actually, I didn’t even remember his face. ‘What does he mean by ‘selling’? Nobody taught me to I sell. I think his mother taught him as long ago as when she was breastfeeding him.’
It was embarrassing. I turned around and saw the guy who had called me infectious. As I learned later on, his name was Saeed. He had brown eyes, his hat was shifted sideways. When I saw him standing close to me, I straightened up proudly as if I had been doing nothing all my life but selling tangerines. I wanted those Tajiks who stood in front of me and had refused to give me a job to understand that they were wrong. I poured most of the tangerines on the counter and arranged them in a nice pile. Then I wrote the price with a lipstick on a piece of paper, 4 rubles, and began waiting for customers.
There was nobody though. Well, mean there were lots of people in the marketplace as it was the New Year’s eve. What I mean is that, for an unknown reason, nobody came to me! On the other hand, I was afraid of seeing an acquaintance; if someone who knows me passes by, I will dive under the counter as if looking for something. It seemed to me that all my acquaintances came to the marketplace to see me. But there was no reason to be scared. There was nobody, neither friends nor strangers. If Said had hundreds of customers, maybe it was due to a magic word. He was selling a third box already, and his hands were just flitting…
Time was passing, and the tangerines were getting frozen. I heard them knocking against each other. What will I tell the Tajik when he would be back to pick up the money? That his tangerines are all frozen?
Saeed came up running and asked me, ‘Why are you crying?’ Saying that, he was wiping sweat off his forehead, exhausted with hard work. As to me, I was as frozen as the tangerines.
‘Here’, I said, unable to say anything else as tears were choking me. Just waved my hand at the frozen tangerines and yelled loudly, ‘Here!’ Tears gushed from my eyes suddenly. I was so sorry that I had come to the marketplace! Besides, Saeed roared to me,
‘What have you done to the tangerines, stupid? Why didn’t you wrap them up in something warm? What kind of balance do you have? Don’t you know how to sell things?’
‘N-o-o-o..’ I said crying. ‘I don’t. I am a schoolteacher. I…’
‘Why didn’t you tell me that before?’
Saeed pushed me away like a sheaf of straw, put everything in order on the counter. Then he changed his mind. He grabbed me in his arms (even my boots went up) and dragged me and all the tangerines to his working place. Then he placed his balance between us. “That may be better”, he said mysteriously.
My tears dried up instantly. Busily sniffing, I watched eagerly his nimble hands. Here is what he did with my fruit. He spread out a huge flannel rag on the counter and began sorting the tangerines. He put the largest in front. The small frostbitten ones were behind, so that nobody would see them. And to make that look nice, he decorated the pile with his bright tangerines, which he had rubbed with sunflower oil. All his fruit were completely different: they were bigger and brighter than mine, and none of them was frostbitten as he wrapped them up tightly. Besides, Saeed gave me the price of three rubles a kilo, not four.
– Saleh fooled you as a rookie, he explained. ‘Rookies are always fooled. They don’t want too many traders in the marketplace. Look: the whole market sells tangerines for three rubles, while you had bought them for three. Just imagine what you should do to the balance to pay off your debt to him. I am also sure that he cheated you in the weight. The boxes should be weighed once more: a box should have at least twenty-five kilos, or you’ll be in trouble. Well, I’ll deal with him.
Said finished his educational speech and turned to his stuff as the line was huge already. Then he looked at me, waved his hand again, said a bad word and started selling both piles at the same time, his and mine. I just marveled. His hands were flickering like those of a magician. A naïve buyer would just hold out her hands to the incredible shining fruit when Saeed, smiling stunningly and moving quickly his young, lithe body of a tiger, managed to grab the selected tangerines immediately with one hand and kept waving with the other one diverting the customer (See what amazing things I have right here on the counter!, and made this manipulation quickly. I never stopped marveling the speed. He would put on the scales the tangerines chosen by the customer, but at the same time, in an incomprehensible way, he would replace them with small and spotted ones and returned the large and juicy ones to their rightful place. And all that was performed with a smile, with jokes and quips, so the women didn’t get their eyes off his rosy lips.
The day was drawing to a close. But it seemed to me that it had just begun. Said had sold all my tangerines long ago and didn’t stop bringing from the warehouse more and more boxes full of fruit. I was waiting for Saleh and trying to help Saeed.
Saleh came at last. Saeed walked stepped off with him. They spoke their language. I heard Saeed scolding him badly, sometimes, his voice sounded menacing. Then Saeed gave him money. I don’t know how much as he held all the money. ‘And this is yours’, he told me and gave me 25 rubles. He also gave me around 3 kilos of unsold tangerines. ‘Will you come here tomorrow?’
I nodded silently and went home. I could say nothing. Tears of gratitude were choking me…
I never told you those words, Saeed. Time flies so fast in the marketplace… I am telling you this now. You taught me trading. Pile the stuff nicely. Communicate with the customers. And I think I was in love with you, Saeed …
I came back on the next day, and I came there every weekend. Saeed took me to work as his sales assistant. He paid me 10-15 rubles a day. I think he was a bit greedy as sometimes he paid nothing saying that there was no profit. I wasn’t mad with him. First of all, he would always give me a bagful of fruit, and, besides, he was my Teacher.
I was very much ashamed to see my acquaintances. In such cases, I would hide under the counter. And would ask Saeed, for example, ‘Is the one in the blue jacket gone?
‘Yes, don’t worry’, Saeed would reply, laughing. When will you stop being scared?’
Well, it took me a long time to stop being scared, half a year. Later on, after Saeed went away home and I began working on my own, making good money, I felt a lot of pride! I did it! I withstood it! And when I saw my acquaintances, I told myself the same thing, ‘It’s not shameful! There is nothing shameful for a schoolteacher to trade at a marketplace!’
But it is easy to say ‘nothing shameful’! Reality is more complicated. When you stand there like a country woman, in a fluffy shawl and huge felt boots, sniffing, and your school students look at you from the other side of the counter, their mouths open, you only want one thing – to disappear…
If not for the Arab dances, I would have hardly withstood all that. More often than not, I failed to sell all the fruit: in wintertime, the marketplace was closed early, and as I didn’t have my own warehouse, I had to drag the boxes on a sledge to the bus stop. People who were going home from work bought all of them. Sometimes, I would squeeze in a bus (someone would help me carry the boxes) and stand inside blocking the passage; my wet hair would get into my eyes, but I couldn’t remove it because my hands were full of stuff. In such cases, I would close my eyes and think that I would be dancing at the restaurant at 2 a.m., and my soul would start ringing!
My dear little kids! I could hardly spend any time with them. I would drop in, kiss them, pour fruit on the table and begin my preparations. They would stick to me, and, holding their breath, watch her tired, disheveled mother turning into a mysterious and beautiful lady…
I was delighted to work for Saeed. He was happy with me, too. Due to me, he felt reluctant to stand behind the counter and, more and more often referred to the cold weather (in fact, I am not sure he was freezing), would go to the “Caucasian cuisine” for the whole day. That’s a small restaurant in the center of the marketplace. I was getting braver and was trading on my own.
My well-trained sonorous teacher’s voice resounded throughout the marketplace, “Here are tangerines! Ripe, sweet, sugary!” I brought good revenue to Saeed.
The marketplace people gradually became accustomed with me, and many of them would say ‘Hi’ to me. Nobody did anything wrong to me. For some reason, everyone thought that I was Saeed’s mistress. All except his brazen friend, whom everyone called Sasha. He alone knew that I wasn’t. And, I don’t know why, he kept trying to hurt me and humiliate me in some way. He would say something to make me feel ashamed or grip my neck from behind so that my eyes would darken. Saeed would get pale with rage, but he would say nothing. I thought he might be in debt to Sasha.
Once, it was in the summer, I broke down. I saw Sasha coming to me, grinning. “Well”, I thought, “He is going to pester me again.” I turned my back to the counter and clutched it with my hands so hard that my knuckles turned white. So I was standing, biting my lip…
I must say that I had never fought, even in childhood, and I had no idea how to do it. But when Sasha approached me at arm’s length, I, suddenly like Van Damme, no, better than Van Damme, threw my leg and kicked the guy right in the nose!
I think it was a powerful kick, because poor Sasha, who was rather a big, tall man, flew a couple of meters and fell down in pile of watermelons that belonged to a very important person called King at the marketplace.
Sasha got out of the heap of broken watermelons looking worse than a nuclear war, wiped the blood of his face with a sleeve, and walked towards me! I was scared to death, my knees were trembling, but there was nowhere to retreat. Either that damned Tajik will kill me as there was no escape from him, or I will beat him, no matter what!
I didn’t have to fight though. Saeed came up running, then the King, having iron fists. They beat the poor man like crazy, so I never saw him at the marketplace again.
The traders laughed at me for a long time since then repeating that I was clinging to the counter, ‘pale and awful, and we all were so terrified that had to hide under our counters.’
Soon Saeed went home to see his family: he had a wife and a young son there. I stayed alone. I came to the marketplace on the next day and didn’t know what to do.
It didn’t last long. Halim, a little elderly guy, Saeed’s tangerine supplier, came up to me, smelling of tobacco, and said, «Why aren’t you working? Let me give you the tangerines!»
I felt scared. ‘Me? I am alone, Saeed isn’t here.’
‘So what?’ Halim laughed. ‘Won’t you do without him? Don’t worry, everything will be OK!’
Saying that, he unloaded 8 boxes of tangerines before my feet, waved me goodbye and went away! I gasped. Working for Saeed was OK, but… But what am I afraid of? I have amazing tangerines, big, orange-colored, I can sell them out in no time! What should I be afraid of?
I adjusted the head scarf and set up, my hands shaking with joy… Then I straightened. It’s not easy to find goods on consignment if nobody knows you there. It was a very important day in the marketplace, as if I had raised over to a new step. The saleswomen looked at me with envy.
The day flew away quickly. And the major difference of that independent day was the scent of tangerine peels. Those tangerines were almost my own ones. I was selling and eating them, eating and selling, so my hands were sticky of the juice and sweet. Maybe that is why the line didn’t melt. ’They must think’, I thought looking at the customers, ‘that the tangerines are very good if the saleswoman is eating them, better than those the others are selling…’
Before I could enjoy that funny idea, someone touched my arm. Halim was back!
‘Did you take your share?’ he asked me.
I pulled all the crumpled money out of my breast apron and gave it to Halim. Well, how did I know how much I had to keep?
‘It’s up to you’, I said, ‘to decide how much is mine.’
Halim counted the money twice and gave me… a hundred rubles. I didn’t believe my eyes! It was as much as my monthly salary at school! I tried to refuse. ‘Halim’, I said, ‘you must be mistaken.’ He counted the money once more and, again, gave me a hundred rubles. Then I believed and rushed to his chest like a wild cat! Then I started jumping around him joyfully, laughing and crying! First, Halim was even scared, but then he also started laughing. We were surrounded by non-Russian traders: Tajiks, Georgians, Armenians, Azerbaijanis. All of them were looking at my celebration. An elderly Georgian was crying for some reason…
It took me very long to comprehend that I was able to make that much. That’s why I always asked Halim to double check my calculations. He enjoyed watching me being happy. Once Halim, standing in front of me in a white starched shirt, stammering and blushing terribly, invited me to a restaurant. And I thought that he sighed with relief when I held his white head, kissed the crown and refused…
Soon Halim left for his country, too. But I already had a lot of suppliers who wanted to give me their goods for consignment. The whole of the marketplace looked crazy as everyone was trying to lure me to work as a saleswoman for them.
The money made me awfully happy. I still could not get used to them. But there was one very special day. I relaxed and lost vigilance fancying myself a great saleswoman…
It happened on March 7…
It happened on March 7, on the eve of the International Women’s Day. The marketplace was packed! So I decided to take a chance and pay my own money for the stuff. It was all the money I had gathered at the marketplace. I paid about 700 rubles for 6 boxes of apples, 5 rubles per kilo.
The apples were just amazing – big, pink, looking like peaches. I even calculated in my mind how much I would make by selling them. But all of a sudden, two misfortunes fell on me…
The first thing I saw after opening the first box was little spotted apples under the beautiful upper layer. The rest of the boxes were the same.
More than that: unfortunately, a lot of trucks full of apples came to the marketplace from nobody knows where. Those apples were fresh and juicy, and their price was 3 and even 2 rubles per kilo, while I had bought mine, worm-eaten, for 5. I felt absolutely lost, just stood there crying.
All my money, just all of it! Oleg was off for a day on duty. He worked at the fire department. My head was going round. I was quite confused. The marketplace showed me its teeth like a wild wolf. The Great Laws of the Market have a logic of their own, and that logic will never be comprehended. Until that day, very few apples had been brought to the marketplace, and all of them had been given to me on consignment. Apples were expensive… I had fancied God knows what about myself! Come on, your marketplace price is not more than three dimes! A private vendor! I rubbed angry tears over my face, turning a tavern song over in my mind, “I’m a miserable private vendor, here I am, selling apples!”
All my hard work at the marketplace, all those awfully heavy boxes full of fruit, getting up in the crack of dawn, everything burst like a soap bubble! All my money, which I had gathered carefully working so hard, was there, in front of me, as rotten apples nobody would even take for free. Oh, my God, I wanted to invite all my colleagues over on the International Women’s Day, all the elementary school teachers of secondary school No. 38. We used to make holiday parties, although not rich ones, just inexpensive salami, cheese, salads and vodka. It’s only obvious as schoolteachers didn’t make much money at all. That’s why I dreamed of laying an unbelievable table to make my girlfriends gasp! Yellow butter and red caviar on slices of bread, all kinds of expensive salami, baked ham topped with dill, smoked fish and grilled sturgeon. But what I liked most of all was liquor in a fancy bottle with two necks: it was milk-cream color in one of the halves and chocolate-color in the other. That liquor looked unusually tasty, although I had never tasted it before because it was so expensive! Yes, very expensive, but I was absolutely crazy about buying it for a party! Don’t we, schoolteachers, deserve a decent party with a decent meal?! Do you agree?
And then I suddenly remembered about Vanga. The famous oracle used to say that any situation has three regular ways out and a brilliant one. I had to try and find the brilliant one.
I did have some ways out. One of them was doing nothing and just wait until night. Maybe the guys who had sold me the apples had given them to someone on consignment and would come back to get the money. Then I would make a scene and they would hopefully return my money to me.
Well, those who sell such apples usually don’t come back…
Another way out would be to sell the apples at any price, biting my lip, to get back at least part of my money. It was the most realistic solution.
I had to enter into the state of despair and anger to understand that the best way out would be not to care a dime and simply run home. And never come back to the marketplace!
Why should I suffer like that? Thank God, I have a job. And a decent job it is, not like this one. At the marketplace, I look like a vagabond, with a red nose and swollen eyes, which you can’t cover with any kind of makeup. The snow melted, and my felt boots without galoshes got wet…
But I had to find that brilliant way out! And, at the same time, to see whether the Great Vanga fooled the humankind.
Curiosity saved me from the desperation that was making me absolutely weak. And when curiosity becomes stronger than money, the money will definitely get back!
So I set off looking for a brilliant solution. I mean as brilliant as brilliant could be. I asked an old woman selling woolen socks close by to look after the boxes, and wandered somewhere aimlessly. Soon I forgot about the apples…
The market was roaring, bleeding with crushed fruit, pulsating unevenly, sending roiling blood along the working vessels like a huge tormented heart.
The snow was melting under my feet. Water squished in my boots. I felt no Women’s Day coming.
Suddenly, I saw a huge truck with a mimosa in the middle of the square. There were And two drunken Georgian behind a big table, selling the flowers piled like a sheaf of hay, and the sheaf was being stolen brazenly. Old women were swarming in the wondrous flowers, picking up full armfuls, then, as if by accident, they would bend over and somehow shove them in the bags, crumbling and breaking. Most of the people didn’t notice that, but who if not me would know that “operation”.
The ground all around was covered with fluffy yellow balls. They darkened quickly, extinguished hopelessly in the melted snow under the customers’ feet.
Mimosa was my favorite flower. That’s why, without thinking twice, I went over to the negligent sellers and asked to be their assistant. They were barely able to stand from fatigue and stared at me with evident suspicion. A young one and an old one, apparently father and son. Mimosa balls tangled in their black curly hair, as if the guys had spent the night in the flowers. They looked at each other, then at me, then at each other again.
‘Come on, there is nothing to be afraid of’, I said. ‘You have so many flowers stolen, no one can even count how many. I will bring you the order, trust me.
They agreed at last.
‘But you know what’, the old one said, ‘We’ll pay you 25 rubles for your work. Don’t ask for more, OK?
25 rubles for a truck like that was too little. But I had never sold mimosa before, that’s why I agreed…
I quickly cleaned up the counter and built a line strictly sideways from the table. Chronic female thieves, who were reselling the mimosa at the entrance to the marketplace, understood the situation and flew away quickly to other meadows.
Those sunny flowers had been sold previously for 2-3 rublesa twig. I sent the young owner to a store to buy cellophane and ribbons and made beautiful bouquets, which I started selling them for 5-10 and even 20 rubles for the most beautiful ones. That mimosa had no competitors at the marketplace.
The old Georgian didn’t get his eyes off me as he was afraid that I would steal their money. He didn’t even eat lest the food should distract him. I would put the money in a cardboard box that lay around.
The line was growing by the minute. There were no more trucks with flowers. I didn’t have time to make and sell flowers at a time. I was very happy and very proud. The day was amazing, the sun was blindingly bright. The mimosa balls also looked like the sun. Or little chicks. The world stunned me with a solid bright yellow glow. I stressed that color with purple ribbons I tied the bouquets with.
In the long run, I felt tired and hungry as I had eaten nothing the whole day. The Georgians continued to watch my hands, unblinking, now and then pulling large banknotes out of the box. “It would be much better if the chuffs helped me cut ribbons!” I thought, hurt deeply. I tried to negotiate a higher salary – to no avail. Unfortunately, there were no friends around whom I could simply present a bouquet not asking for money.
I wanted to hide a coin unnoticed. It was useless. I made several attempts – no success. I lingered with the change, so a young customer looked at me curiously. And I made up my mind. I leaned toward her and whispered in his ear,
‘Miss, I’m paid peanuts. If you can give me some money unnoticed, please do…’
The lady, although very young, without blinking an eye in surprise, immediately slipped 10 rubles calmly into my jacket sleeve.
More than that, I was terrified to see that she told the whole line about the heartless arrogant ‘blacks’ (thanks God they didn’t pay attention to her) fooling the poor Russian woman.
People in the line gasped. There were many men there, and I was afraid that they would turn the truck over. Maybe that was their first. But after discussing the whole thing, the line found another way to take their revenge.
The customers started inventing all sorts of ingenious secret ways to push money through to me.
God, what happened! I had a green pocketless jacket with elastic bands. So while some of the guys were distracting the owners’ attention asking them where the goods came from and whether they had all the necessary papers, others would quickly shove money into my sleeves and boots, even behind my collar. Every customer leaving with a bouquet felt obliged to tell the others about the “current situation”. During that time, so many heart-breaking details were invented that many people giving me money asked me secretly where I could be found so that they could help me. I was bursting with laughter! Finally, I stopped holding back and started laughing loudly so that the whole marketplace could help me!
I was dying with laughter.
First of all, the money made me swell and crunch every time I hit the counter. I feared that one of the owners would suddenly hug me. Against my will, though, I wanted that more and more! Crunching would be heard across the entire marketplace! Thank God, they didn’t seem to be fond of making love in public.
Secondly, I wanted to stop the people but could not. Well, it was impossible to yell at them,
‘Stop giving me money! I have a lot of it already!’
Importantly, most of the men were not quire sober on the holiday eve, so it was impossible to stop them from ‘saving, defending, revenging’.
It getting dark. The line was getting thinner. The marketplace was getting empty.
But there were many flowers left. So the Georgians asked me to go to the central city square and sell them there. All of a sudden, I remembered about my apples, pulled the young one by the sleeve and rushed to my previous place.
It was quite empty there. There was nothing and no one there except the boxes with apples and an old woman. She was crying because she thought that something bad had happened to me.
I thanked her cordially and gave her a pack of apples from the top layer. The Georgians carried the boxes quickly and placed them between the flowers. Then we went to Victory Square.
Victory Square was lit by street lamps. We got a table, put laid the flowers put the apples in a nice pile. They looked quite different in the light of the street lamps, even the spots were invisible.
A line formed quickly. People coming back from work didn’t always have time to buy flowers and fruit. We had no competitors. I sold the apples out at lightning speed, 10 rubles per kilo. All of them. The customers even noticed the apples I had put aside for home and requested them threateningly.
Everything was going on very well, until all the flowers were sold out.
The Georgians told me they would step off to count the money. They also said they would punish me if there is a discrepancy…
I must say that they were drunk by that time. I was scared. More than that, I was paralyzed with awe. Although I could run away while they were counting the money, I was standing there, paralyzed, like a criminal before execution. Time disappeared and condensed into a few moments filled with awe and reckoning.
At last they came back. Their faces were sweaty and happy.
‘Just imagine’, the old Georgian said warmly. This is the first time since we began bringing mimosa here that we have such a profit. It’s twice as much as usual. Sorry for not trusting you…’
The old Georgian shook my hand and gave me 200 rubles instead of 25. I burst into tears for shame and happiness. But crying was dangers: I would crunch if they hugged me to calm me…
We parted. The truck went away, and kept watching it. Then I crossed the square and approaches the nearest building. I squatted under the lighted windows, touched my jacket tight on money and cried as much as I wanted. After that, I wiped my face carefully and feeling that I could not resist the desire to unbutton my jacket a little. Money flowed out, and it took me some time to shove it back. I went away looking for a kiosk to buy goodies for the children as all the shops were already closed. There was nothing but chocolate bars with a creamy filling in the kiosk. I bought all the twenty three of them and went home.
The children were not asleep, they were waiting for me and for the chocolates. While they were unwrapping all the bars at a time, I closed the living-room door and started to get undressed.
I was taking off the jacket, and leaves were falling around me. Money was falling off me like leaves from an autumn birch-tree, rustling and turning over. Sitting on a heap of money, I sometimes hooked it with my hand, tossed it up, and thought, ‘What a woman, Vanga! She is unbelievable! Hurray!!’
I stood on the top…
I stood on top of a huge mountain, my cheek against the cold wall of a brick house. Because of the fear of height, I was not able to see the house I was clinging to. The stone wall was very precarious and fragile, apparently, the masonry had been made directly from the mountain. The wall was dangerously swinging if I touched it and could collapse under a gust of wind . But it was clear and calm weather, and the wall gave support. I could see in detail from the top what was going on at the foot of the mountain. My grandmother’s little house was there.
The was a real battle underway around the drooping and sagging house. It was a life-and-death fight between three animals that resembled a wolf, a bull, and a buffalo. But they were so huge that my grandmother’s house looked as small as a hoof. The animals would flee in different directions, then they would come together again, smashing each other to pieces; sparks and tufts were flying all over the place. All around was burning, including the grass and the trees, and the haystacks were burning especially brightly and frightfully. «I can imagine what would happen if I stood near the house». As if hearing my thoughts, the wolf lifted his head. He overcame the clouds in two strides and fell on me hitting me with his paws. I heard his bad breath, blood was flowing in streams from his mouth… My heart stopped beating, I closed my eyes. “Don’t worry”, I heard a calm male voice. ‘He won’t dare to touch you.” I opened my eyes. The wolf, stood at a distance, panting, without paying any attention to me. I crawled away carefully from that accursed place. The beast stood and looked after me. It seemed to me, though, that there was… hope in his fierce, bloody eyes…
I was born in a small village called Pavlovka. It had about 25 houses located 20 kilometers from the highway with cars and buses. My grandfather was killed at the Civil War when he was very young, my father drowned when I was 3 years old. So there are three of us, I, mother, and grandmother. To save electricity, grandmother used to turn off the light in the evenings, so we would lie in darkness, each with her own thoughts.
God, if you knew how dark it is in the village at night! What a unrestrained, terrible darkness it is!
No longer able to cope with the fear caused by that dream in which there was terrible carnage near my grandmother’s house every night, I finally begged,
‘Granny, dear, please tell me what my fault is. Why would you torture me like that? Tell me how I can help you? Why are those savage beasts fighting in front of me?
Granny replied, her voice almost inaudible,
‘All my life I’ve been saving money depriving myself of everything. So I saved four thousand, which was a lot at that time. And I wanted to give it to the child who would take care of me till I die. But my children learned about the money, which was not intended to everyone. My son and two daughters. And before my inevitable death, they suddenly wanted my money, though they didn’t want to bring me water. So I gave the money to the church so that the nuns would pray for my life. Then my children quarreled to death because of the money. Dying, I saw savage beasts fighting. They turned my house into mess with their hooves, desecrated the fruit gardens, tortured Mother Earth. They didn’t even wait for my soul to fly away. And then, in hell, my bones burned in a great torment. Let my children be always tormented, let them see that fierce picture in their dreams. It will go into their children’s blood, too. Because they ruined and tortured their descendants… Money was stronger than love…
‘Granny!’ I knelt and begged her. ‘Please stop scaring me with those fears. Wasn’t I your favorite granddaughter? I apologize for the whole family. Please forgive us, dear Granny. For they knew not what they did. Uncle Kolya and aunt Masha suffered awfully at the end of their lives and used to go to your grave repenting their sin. Don’t you know that? And my dear mother suffered for her whole life. Please forgive us, their innocent children, for their huge sin. Punish us by yourself the way you choose. Make us penniless if you want. But don’t scare us with those sad dreams, drive them away from your poor soul.
Granny looked into me and sighed frightfully.
‘OK, I will do it if you ask me’, she said. I will do what you ask me about because you have awakened my old bones. You will only have money if it doesn’t screen joy and light from you and don’t etch love in your heart. But if you violate this, all your treasures will be gone again and stay naked as when you were born…’
I do my best to follow Granny’s behest.
Things didn’t go on so smoothly…
Things didn’t go on so smoothly in the marketplace as it may seem. I haven’t told you about my relations with the supervisors, cops, and tax police. They were not simple though…
While I worked with Saeed, I knew nothing about that. I saw him shoving money to different people, but I didn’t know who they were and why he did it. Saeed never acquainted me with that side of the marketplace life…
Supervisors at the food market are a group of women with red armbands. They were headed by an insane woman named Polina. And if I still see the marketplace in my nightmares, it is necessarily Polina.
Polina was quite short, slightly hunchbacked, with huge bulging eyes and a large perforated nose. She had a loud, male voice, which she used skillfully. If something was against her rules, she would kick and overturn the boxes and trampled the scattered fruit. She was hated at the marketplace. She didn’t take bribes.
The fact is that the supervisors took money for a trading place. Good places were those on the front iron counters. They had been divided long ago among their friends. While standing in the rear was a hopeless task, especially since the fee for the place was the same and reached 90 rubles per day. Sometimes, all earnings was spent to pay for the trading place. The traders fought to the death for them. That chopped off the wings for the rookies.
I have told you about the cops and the tax police yet. And about the bandits, who would dive into the snowball rolling across the marketplace turning over and smashing the fans of easy money. When dusk, the snowball became enormous. Hopes and torn people were packed tightly inside. When rolling up to the gully, it flew smoothly into the abyss. When spring came and the ground got free of snow, not a single dog would run in…
The most daring ones used to trade from the ground, in the center of the marketplace. It was strictly forbidden but often violated. The supervisors would set up the place prices voluntarily, depending on how they felt. As to Polina, she was constantly sick…
City checkup authorities would come and scold the marketplace director for allowing people to trade from the ground. She would then scold Polina. The latter would inhale the air noisily through her nostrils, look around the marketplace with bloodshot eyes, and start smashing to pieces the boxes packed with fruit. The female traders had to be very strong to run away when they saw her carrying the boxes whose weight was up to 45 kilos. Besides, it was necessary to spend the night at the marketplace to keep ones place on the ground, which, otherwise, would have been occupied by someone else. Fighting was a usual thing at night. Once, a rookie woman was killed and dumped into the ravine; that lively girl had quarreled with someone. The cops circled around the marketplace the whole week showing her photo to the traders to find witnesses. They found none…
I had an unbearable pain in my back, shoulders, and, especially, in the lower abdomen. I asked the market women why all of us, without exception, had kidney problems. They said that the reason is fear.
Fear haunted everyone at the marketplace. It was impossible to trade without making tricks with the scale. Absolutely impossible under any circumstances. We used to cheat when weighing the boxes as we had to pay for the place, plus the cops, plus the tax police, sanitation center inspectors… O Lord, the supervisors were countless! And I had to give, give, give to all of them…
Sometimes I wanted to look at the marketplace day on a fast track photography. I think it would look like this…
A tradeswoman, not sweaty yet though quite tattered by life, selling apples. The center of the marketplace. Several huge boxes, one perched on the other. A scale on an empty box in front, scale weights near it. Start!
Her head hangs down low, a close look at the scales. Bang! A full package of apples hits the poor head with crunching – who?! The old woman shortchanged 50 kopecks! Very quickly, under the menacing roar of the line, the conflict is settled, – the money is returned to the old woman obsequiously and apologetically.
Bang! Someone else’s weight falls heavily on the scale – that’s a scale checkup! The scale is confiscated and taken away to the 2nd floor, to the police office. The main thing is not to miss the right moment! Look at your mates imploringly (if you have communication problems, your apples are gone for good and the shooting can be stopped; but our movie is about the strongest ones) and run, run, run to follow the local district cop, Pavel Nikolayevich!
It’s important to catch up with him on the staircase before he reached the office labeled ‘Police’ and made a protocol, shove 10 rubles in his hand, take the scale, and fly back to the line. Milles pardon, dear customers! Milles pardons!
«Polina is coming!» You can gear those words through the buzzing of the marketplace, even if they are whispered! Milles pardons, dear customers, I am awfully sorry, but the trading is over!
My legs are trembling (what if she notices me?) while I am hurrying to carry the boxes away and hide them under the nearest iron counters. (Again, you need to have cordial relationship with the neighboring traders, otherwise the boxes will fly back and fall right in front of Polina’s feet).
The boxes are back in place. The line is waiting patiently. Here is the trader, smiling piteously, her face is covered with red spots. There is a strange light in her unblinking eyes burn. The disgruntled customers huddle, many of them leave.
«Your documents!» Who? Tax inspection or tax police? If it is just a tax inspection, is it local or regional?
Local tax inspection is no problem. It’s the guy names Gena, his room on the 2nd floor, near the police office. He will take your documents slowly, so all you need is to be smart enough and catch up with him in the hallway, just like Pavel Nikolayevich. Gena doesn’t accept money though. You must give him some fruit, and that joyfully and sincerely as if he were your lover or a good friend. Chattering passionately and rolling your eyes, covering him with warmth and hot light. Then Gena will take the gift.
Pavel Nikolayevich is different. He is very short. He won’t cool of even after taking his 10 rubles. After work, you must duck your head with abjection and keep begging him long and painfully, ‘Pavel Nikolayevich, forgive me for goodness sake! I am just a miserable market woman who dared to sell apples in your possessions, sir!’
If it’s not the local tax inspection, you should contact Gena again. Give him fruit and money and beg him to pass it to the invisible ‘regional’ inspectors.
If it’s police, Gena can’t help you because there are many of them and they belong to a different department. The guys come in huge buses that swallow the poor market women up together with their scales, felt boots, and apple boxes. The boots are the last to shoot along.
In the evening, the buses split the miserable traders, blubbered and swollen from tears, without scales, apple boxes and hopes…
We are filming an ordinary sales day. That’s why everything is quiet, there is no panic. It was just Gena.
Another hit on the head. Because of all the troubles and tribulations, the poor trader lost her intuition and shortchanged an important and capricious person. «Milles pardons, lady. Milles pardons! No way… I beg you! Young children! Drinking husband! Rented apartment! Stomach pains! Thank God! She’s gone…»
«Polina is coming!» Grabbed a rotten plank. The box broke on the way… Nothing doing. The rest should be saved.
Catch up with Pavel Nikolayevich… Give him money… Another hit, in the face now… Polina is coming… Run away… Here is Gena – some fruit for him… Catch him up… A hit on the head. Shortchanged another one. «Speculators, thieves!» Swallow this up. «Your documents!» Who-o-o-o-?!
What will happen if you fail to catch up with Gena, or Pavel Nikolayevich, or someone else?.. A protocol. A call to the department. A long line. A lost marketplace day. The screaming and shrieking inspector in the office (I was afraid of her as much as of Polina). The penalty, first small, then getting higher and higher proportionally to the intensity of the inspector’s shrieking.
Evening… It is quiet, in a ragged grey coat, an old-fashioned hat, is walking tiredly along the marketplace. It lights the one-eyed lampposts. His footmarks are left among the garbage, scattered apples and boxes, they are wet and shiny like a woman’s blubbered eyes… Barely audible sighs or moaning. A trader’s lost soul is rushing desperately in the dense emptiness of the night marketplace…
Polina didn’t like me
Polina didn’t like me at once. I think I made a mistake at some moment. Or maybe she didn’t like my intellectually looking velvet hat… Although after working at school, I was obviously not ready for the new forms of relationships. I was proud, I had my own ideas about dignity and honor, which, according to the marketplace laws, was the worst sin. Besides, I was the only representative of intelligentsia at the marketplace, and it was a fresh and promising piece of news.
“Well, let’s see, let’s see how this pampered lady will have to spin”, everyone would say. Just everyone, including Polina, the police, the tax inspection, as well as non-Russian and Russian sellers. And all of them, at my slightest slip, considered it their duty would tell me with edification that it was not “thumb beat at school”. What did they think that working at school was so easy, I have no idea. Maybe that’s the typical relationship between the social strata. I could not just stand in the middle of the marketplace and yell, ‘I am absolutely one of you!’ No one would believe me anyway. These words should not be pronounced, should be proven by one’s deeds. In the meantime, all made fun of me and laughed.
I tried explain Polina patiently, as if she were one of my students, that it was impolite and rude to push me in the back. My boxes, which I had bought for my own money, would fly into the snow, the fruit were smashed fiercely. She had huge feet and liked to wear army boots with thick soles.
When I tried to give her money, she would kick my boxes with even more anger and indignation.
I wanted badly to choke that woman, break her thick neck with a crunch! And then scatter the pieces around the place!
When I saw her, my nostrils flared, blood hit my head. I imagined whipping her slowly and with pleasure, tearing her skin with the twig. How dares she?! Who is she?! An illiterate woman! I’ll find the way to calm her down!
I did something absolutely foolish: I complained of Polina to Alexandra Vasilyevna, the marketplace director. Without taking anyone’s advice, I arrogantly decided to find the truth in a place forgotten the truth forevermore. If I had asked any non-Russian, he would have replied that I was just crazy.
The money gathered by Polina was given to Alexandra Vasilyevna, who appreciated Polina greatly for her hot temper and permanent order at the marketplace. It was up to the director to distribute the income correspondingly… Unfortunately, I knew nothing about that…
Alexandra Vasilyevna listened to me attentively, nodding her head sympathetically, all her numerous little chins trembling. She was the embodiment of compassion and readiness to help. She asked me to tell her in detail where exactly I worked and with whom, and said she was sorry that the schoolteachers’ salaries were so low. The toy words, like plastic cubes, red, yellow, blue, filled the room. I felt happy like at a daycare holiday. I didn’t want to think about anything, just to get crunchy sweet candies out of the package, unpack them and put them in my mouth. Supported by her gentle eyes, dreaming of virtue and justice, singing like a nightingale, I poured out my soul…
The fairy godmother brought Polina. Strictly moving her eyebrows, the chastised her in my presence. Polina asked for forgiveness, bowed, and went out, her eyes flashing ominously. My heart fluttered with joy. Bouncing on the move and spinning like a snowflake, I flew out into the cold, full of all kinds of high hopes! I was approached by Roman, an good Armenian friend of mine. He grabbed my hand and dragged me quickly behind the corner.
‘Go home immediately. Polina has smashed all your boxes. Now she is coming off on us. Don’t come to the marketplace tomorrow. Don’t come here later either. Look, are you crazy?’
I went home, tormented with foreboding. The latter did happen almost immediately. At work, I was called by the school director Dmitri Dmitriyevich, a very strict person. He told me,
– Tamara Alexandrovna, to this day, knowing your financial situation, we have turned a blind eye to the fact that you have been making money at the marketplace. Although it is not proper for the teacher’s class rank. But yesterday I got a call from the marketplace and told in details how you, to say the least, “moonlighted” there. Do not misunderstand me, dear Tamara Alexandrovna, I, as school director, don’t want to disgrace the honor of the school. I don’t want anyone rumoring that our teachers are street vendors. I suggest you find a decent way out of this situation.
Without a word I wrote a letter of resignation and quietly left the room. Black tears didn’t make me feel better. I lost my job. No, two jobs. I lost and was disgraced. I was weak and unfit to fight.
Those desperate days spent at home left their mark. I read a lot. I especially liked the story of Don Juan, written by Carlos Castaneda. It said that Don Juan, as a very young man, found a job of an employee at a hacienda, whose manager disliked him fiercely and wanted to destroy him at any cost. But Don Juan survived by patience, endurance, self-discipline and gathering information about the opponent’s weaknesses. I was delighted! People fight in much worse conditions than I do. They can die if they make a tiny little mistake, while I have simple lost a profitable job! Crying about that? I felt ashamed…
I got ready to fight and went back to the marketplace. It turned out that Polina was at a hospital with a broken leg. God presented me with time to mobilize my inner resources.
I knew that Polina adored her three grandchildren, whom she helped in all ways possible. One of them, a boy, played the violin, the other one, a girl, was a good painter, the third was good at dancing. Polina hired god teachers for them and watched the studies with great attention.
