The thought of writing an autobiography never occurred to me until I found myself reading the biographies of my friends or mere acquaintances. My peers began indulging in recollections. I, genuinely trying-turning away from the mirror first, then peering into the depths of everything precious I possess-wanted to understand how far I, too, might wish to entrust to paper the warmth and the vague charm of what turned out to be my life. It"s time, I decided, fully aware that something still vaguely troubles me, that something secret remains, despite my life being so openly lived that it has resembled the stage of a small, home-like theater more than any serious, deliberate pursuit-an existence that, in the end, always slips into what is called a "biographical" state, where events give way to memories. Even so, I will not be able to be so candid as to call this undertaking a "Confession," especially since I have hardly committed any misdeeds; or maybe the day has not yet come for that faint, hidden game to stop stirring me enough to freely reveal the passions or doubts that still cause me to wake in the night with strange fright from dreams merging into reality, that rouse me and drive my consciousness to dream, my heart beating fast, faster and faster, as though it"s fleeing. These pages will not reveal that secret. Instead, I will withdraw into my childhood, which shaped me into the person I have been my entire life-unchanged in principle, like the crystalline molecular lattice of a minimally reactive substance, copper for example. Back to childhood, a time without my own authority, which therefore amounted almost to an alibi for innocence.
[Paragraph 2]
Childhood began for me with the words "Grandma," "Grandma Glafira," so tender that they seemed to encompass every feeling. You could say them, whisper them, sing them, or think them, and immediately it was clear that life was granted to us for love. Love. By nature, I was meant for love. Nothing ever interested me more, and anything lesser I passed over quickly, barely looking back. Grandma"s hands were the first and most marvelous books I ever read. Her love of life was so great that even when she drank water, she swallowed it all at once, nearly gasping. Everything Grandma did was instantaneous. She worked without sitting or pausing, holding her breath to channel her energy directly into the result. If she started sewing, for instance, we might go the entire night without sleeping, and by morning, I"d have a little dress-perhaps with a slightly crooked collar-still brimming with passion and thirst for novelty. Sometimes I"d show a bit of weakness, timidly asking her to redo something, to adjust a detail. But Grandma, childishly offended, would say helplessly, "Lenochka, it"s easier for me to sew a new one than fix the old one." And so I bravely wore that prematurely "aged" dress-its age hastened by my own discontent-and continued wearing Grandma"s creations until I reached that grown-up age when it seemed I might forever remain a spinster. I chose differently, marrying at twenty-one and leaving behind Grandma"s dresses and my parents" home as my only refuge. By marrying, I freed myself from the love of my family, only to find myself alone with a stranger I had known for just six days before we were pronounced husband and wife, united in our every thought and in fate itself. And yet Grandma"s upbringing bore strange fruit, because in my life there was no place for concepts like rehearsal, rough draft, or study sketches. Everything I have ever done was always done once, never revised.
Grandma"s cheerful eyes taught me to laugh. Joy shoved fears and failures, self-esteem and achievements, into dark corners. All those social norms and models withered away in the twilight, swept aside by Grandma"s thorough broom into the backyard of a healthy, life-loving faith in happiness and in oneself.
[Paragraph 3]
I began for myself with a memory. I was one year and two months old. Dad was in the hospital. Mom took me there to see him. It was warm, perhaps summer, though Mom says it was September. Dad looked out the window; he was so kind in that moment, almost tender, asked me something, then told Mom to wipe my nose. I felt terribly embarrassed about my nose, which had ruined the charm of that warm day.
[Paragraph 4]
Summer. A land of heat, freedom, a dacha with a small house barely taller than I was. My parents planted a huge garden, and Grandma tended the thick, unending rows of strawberries, growing giant berries that filled your mouth with syrup so sweet and thick it was like a dream, painting your lips red. Growing up in nature fosters an inclination toward the equality bestowed by freedom. Lying on the grass, with the hard, faintly cool earth underneath and the vast sky overhead, you feel no need to compare yourself, nor do you suffer over your size, shape, or unattained ambitions. You simply grow as part of nature"s immensity. Nature also provides enemies-but they"re not always the ones you fight in battle. Often we fight with those we harm, whereas true enemies are the ones we fear. The geese-strong, fast, and attacking in flocks-were real enemies intent on pecking. Unable to run away, I flung myself at them with a scream, arms flailing, not realizing I could grab a stick. They bit me a bit, then just as quickly, waddled off, still hissing and turning back. Yet they left me with nothing but the joy of victory and carefree laughter.
[Paragraph 5]
Summer also meant the river called Vonyuchka ("Smelly"), which trickled out from a tire factory and crawled along the ravine like a huge, glistening black snake, passing a Gypsy camp before merging with the main river, muddying the clear babbling waters with its hunger for darkness. The tiny bridge was small, but my cousin and I were strictly forbidden from crossing it. Vonyuchka itself and that prohibition both scared us, so we obeyed. But once, a dire circumstance forced me to dash across that pair of planks. Besides us, another creature lived in our little house: a wasp that had built its gray papery nest under the ceiling. Grandma went out for milk, leaving me outside in the garden and locking the house, so the wasp couldn"t get inside to its nest. It was buzzing around, agitated. I pictured its hungry offspring, and in that moment, I was certain: I had to run for help, even over that forbidden bridge-maybe precisely because it was forbidden. I stood on the edge, screaming, imagining that Vonyuchka would devour me in its stench, but the wasp"s babies seemed more important than my small, cautious life. Grandma was sitting on a stool, chatting with the milkmaid and clearly enjoying herself, unhurried. Out of breath from running, I gulped in air until I couldn"t speak. Only a cry-"Wasp!"-escaped my body, drained by distress. As soon as we reached home, Grandma threw out the wasp"s nest. The memory of my hour-ago good intentions didn"t ease my suffering.
By the gate was a pile of sand like a giant sandbox, where I could build castles, grottos, roads, even entire cities. But my imagination only produced brick-like lumps, big square mounds all around that sandy hill. From childhood, I had a certain "gigantism," loving bricks for their simplicity and quantity. One day, a loud, energetic Gypsy woman swept me up, instantly tearing me away from my brick production. Touching her exotic clothes, breathing in the pungent unfamiliar scent of her body, I was ready, without question, to forget the boredom of my sandy fortress forever-yet I still called for Grandma in my three-year-old voice. Grandma rushed out, gasped, and began prying me away from the Gypsy woman. In their tug-of-war, which almost became a brawl, I took Grandma"s side, though I admit I briefly felt a twinge of desire to be whisked away into the secret life of the Gypsy camp-but only for a moment. The Gypsy woman shouted that I was theirs, that I looked like them, but Grandma, wasting no time on arguments, pulled me out of her enticing hold. Grandma won that day, but even now, sometimes an unknown place calls out to me from home.
[Paragraph 6]
One special, festive trip with Mom in the middle of summer, to a little town near our dacha. Ice cream. Licking its cold milky top under a gorgeous, heavy yellow rose of cream, I was afraid it would plop down onto the asphalt. Then it would be spoiled: Mom would never let me eat anything that fell on the ground. But I still hesitated to devour the rose, comforted by the thought that delight lay ahead. A boy and his mom approached, also enjoying ice cream. She was attractive but had an incredibly large belly. They were chatting cheerfully, full of happiness. Curious, I asked Mom what was wrong with that woman. Mom"s answer was "abdominal dropsy." Suddenly, the cream rose fell into a puddle, forming oily rainbow circles on the water. Three or four days later, assuming Mom had forgotten, I quietly asked whether people die of abdominal dropsy. Mom sighed sadly and confirmed my worst fears. I cried the whole night, thinking of that mother and her boy. Years later, I realized the woman had been pregnant. It"s still a mystery to me, that naive acceptance of the "immaculate conception" of a married woman, combined with branding the expectant mother as sinful. Who needed to label a person sinful by mere fact of birth and force them to spend their life justifying themselves?
[Paragraph 7]
Winter. I"m still three years old. It"s my first run-in with a proverb-a piece of folk wisdom-and thus my first social and spiritual contact. Grandma, in a moment of frustration, said about someone, "Fools don"t need laws." My passionate response was that I would definitely write laws for them. Yet I spent another four years illiterate, inventing my own letters, spilling ink wherever I could, memorizing instead of writing. Ultimately, I never kept my impulsive promise to Grandma, back when I knew so little of people; I never met a single fool. They don"t exist. Sometimes people pretend to be fools, trying to hide behind that label, easily accepted as truth by others-though in fact it"s false. We probably ought to pay more attention to folk omens; people sometimes hide the truth there.
[Paragraph 8]
Summer again. Next to us stood the guard"s small house. He lived there with his wife, the guard"s wife. He was clever, mean, always around, either him or his judgments. He had a shotgun, maybe for hunting or for protecting our cooperative"s dachas from outsiders or from random drifters-or perhaps just from drunks. Once he quarreled with Grandma, who could deliver the truth so swiftly that one didn"t even have time to blink. This same guard-who, when at peace, had nonchalantly sampled all the varieties of our apples-fired his gun at the unsuspecting apple tree, whose branches were spread wide, bearing huge, sunlit Crimean apples as big as melons. The tree dried up, killed in the name of "truth."
Still, Grandma and I kept quietly visiting the guard"s wife whenever he was out. Dressed head-to-toe in black, she was small, gentle, devout, smelling sweetly and intriguingly of dried herbs. The soft glow of her oil lamp under the icons made everything mysterious. She told stories-stories full of temptations, hooves, and tails that slipped into view and thus gave themselves away as devilish works. Even upon realizing the truth, her heroines (usually women) didn"t want to believe it yet, wrestling with themselves and their unbelief that the late husband, who had so passionately embraced them at night, was not actually the husband but a demon. Out of love for him, she drove him away forever with her accusations and suspicions. Sometimes her gentle eyes turned suspicious and rested on me. "She needs to be baptized. She lives as a heathen," she would say to Grandma. Being kind to me, they promised candy in exchange for my conversion. But even then, as someone who already preferred the evolutionary theory of creation, I ate the candy Grandma so trustingly bought me a few times but still refused to go to church. The guard"s wife fashioned tiny silver flowers out of the candy wrappers, which still smelled sweet, and carried them to adorn the church.
[Paragraph 9]
I desperately wanted to swim. August was urging me on, so I quickly found a coach-our dacha neighbor. I arranged it in secret, without telling my parents, always suspicious of any lively pursuit from me. All I knew was that I"d be thrown in the middle of the river. I wasn"t afraid, yet I needed details. Everyone I asked replied with vague smiles or something akin to a poster saying: "If you want to live, you"ll swim." Even the neighbor himself, supposedly my coach, was tight-lipped. The middle of the river-yes, definitely the middle, I measured. Now he"d let go, and I"d swim. So here I was, alone, brimming with excitement, fearing any movement might break the sacred thirst for life gathered within me. Suddenly, I was alone, sinking rapidly to the river"s bottom, tugged along by the current. My eyes were open; all around me I saw stones, algae, even little fish. Someone yanked me hard-my neighbor. He silently dragged me back home. For a long while, local boys teased me for sinking like an axe, and said the neighbor had barely located me in the muddy waters. A shame; I thought I"d learned to swim. But apparently a love of life doesn"t guarantee the skill of swimming.
[Paragraph 10]
A ravine. I"m five years old now. The sun is scorching my black hair, which I haven"t protected with the sunhat left at home. A big group of children of various ages-from me and my cousin, a year younger than I am, up to tenth graders-resembles a high society gathering, all because of a strange ambiguity in the moment. It"s midday; everyone"s heading off after laughter, jokes, and picking every last wild strawberry they could find. Three older kids invite me to stay and play poker. I"m embarrassed about not having my sunhat, but I quickly agree; playing poker is like stepping onstage before a focused crowd, where your pretense is applauded, and you can be someone else for a while, like a chameleon adjusting to its surroundings. So of course, I stay. An hour later, my head feels like it"s on fire. I timidly ask if I can leave, blaming the missing sunhat. This timidness is because one of the young men is the same boy every girl likes-and, inevitably, I did too. Yet this very boy barks at me, harshly, "Play!" The sun punished my early taste for gambling. I threw up, my head pounded for days. My fling with gambling ended, and so did any attraction I might have had to doping in all its forms, including society-approved ones like tea, which I never even tried. Nor was I ever again smitten by the "everyone"s favorite" types.
[Paragraph 11]
Birthday-six years old, in August. I woke up early from sheer happiness. Everyone else was still asleep. I dashed to the meadow to think about my happiness. A small bull-calf, just a bit taller than me, was there. I told him all about my birthday. He listened pleasantly, chewing grass. The sun began to warmly caress my face. I decided to play bullfighting with him, yet out of compassion-since he was always fated to be the bull-I decided he would be the bullfighter this time. I started gently butting him with my forehead against his bumpy one. He jumped eagerly into the game but never gave up his role as a bull. He tossed me into the air. As I fled, I got another shove; I fell, but the calf"s rope came to an end. The "bullfighter" crawled off, whimpering. I wanted to complain or cry, but I wouldn"t spoil my birthday.
Back home, everyone was still sleeping. I opened the chest hiding my cousin"s cookies-anything her parents brought was hers alone. I took out the box of candies my mother had given me for my birthday and devoured them all at once so I wouldn"t have to share. The memory of that sugary overindulgence has stayed with me forever.
In the evening, our whole gang-about fifteen children-arrived. Each brought a book for me. I couldn"t read yet, but I adored books intensely. And now fifteen books at once! Something felt off, though: each cover looked exactly the same. By comparing the shapes of the letters (I couldn"t read yet, just recognized patterns), I discovered it was the same book repeated fifteen times. Later, I learned that this was the only children"s book on sale at the station"s department store. Still, I patiently awaited my celebration.
We sat at the festive table. The food was delicious, but in the middle of a heated argument, I choked on a chicken bone. It lodged in my throat, blocking my air. I wanted to cry, but I was afraid the bone would slip down inside me forever, and I was also embarrassed in front of everyone. Mom commanded me to open my mouth-people already teased me about how big it was-and stuck her hand in nearly to the elbow, extracting the bone. My throat hurt, and fighting no longer interested me. Even learning to read for the sake of just one book seemed pointless. I realized my life had failed.
[Paragraph 12]
Autumn, snow. I"m six now. Passion. Somehow I overlooked its arrival-didn"t slam the door on its boundless face. My brother"s friend. The three of us spent countless hours together: fighting, fencing with plastic swords, playing chess. If my brother and I used anything we could-yes, even the chessboard itself-as a weapon to avoid losing, that friend was quiet and neat, and conceded any defeat without arguments. Passion burned in my throat and spilled out in cries, songs, tears. Then came suspicious doubts. Even a quick glance at my reflection showed eyes aflame in the oval of bruises, lips bitten with uncertainty. His face never changed. That"s how I realized my love was unrequited. Initially, doubt gnawed at me, then dried out my reason. Assuming his indifference to be innate callousness-like mannequins in a store, existing only to display clothes-I decided, out of pity, to rescue him from the torment of ignorance, from this unfeeling state, by poisoning him. Why should he go on living as a phantom of my love, a pseudo-human? For what? To torture me? Ink! That poet"s instrument, that poet"s breath-ink is always the solution. I"d cook kholodets (aspic), everyone"s favorite dish, and spike it with ink. I was always a terrible cook. I took a small pot from the pile of abandoned dolls, managed to reach the faucet, poured in water, added ink, and set this "love potion" outside to freeze. That evening, he came by, looking pale. I felt intensely sorry for him as he stood next to my cheerful brother. Smiling sweetly-within the limits of the situation-I quietly asked, without worrying about my brother"s fate, "Boys, do you want something to eat? Some kholodets?" My brother instantly shouted with excitement. Once he, too, nodded, I brought in the frozen ink, heartlessly watered down. After a pause, there were shouts and a chase. My brother decided I must have eaten it or hidden it. But my beloved understood everything. "Idiot!" he yelled unexpectedly sharply, causing real pain. I never saw him again. But I was convinced forever a power of ink.