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Michael Blekhman
REFLECTION
Michael Blekhman's novel "Reflection" describes three generations of people living in the Soviet Union in the 20s, 30s, 40s of the XX century, as well as in a Jewish village Rechitsa in Belarus, in the XIX century. The novel is focused on a young couple, Klara Stolberg and Samuil Blekhman, their relatives and friends. The author and his characters seek to answer the central questions of human life. Together with them, Blekhman is reflecting on whether human beings can be happy, retain their individuality, be loved and love, dream and make their most cherished wishes come true despite all the tragic problems, which may seem insurmountable to the present generation. Blekhmn shows Klara and Samuil growing up, the boy becoming a man, and the girl turning into a woman, enjoying things that may seem not very important to others, but are quite significant to them. At the beginning of the novel, the female protagonist of the novel, Klara, who is 9 years old at that time, comes across an enigmatic line in a collections of poems by Alexander Pushkin: No happiness exists, just force of will and peace. In fact, Blekhman's novel is an attempt to answer the question, “Does happiness exist?” Together with his characters, the author answers, “Yes, it definitely does!”
To those people whom, God willing, I will once live up to.
I
There were so many shooting stars in the sky that I ran out of things to wish on them. Someone shook them off his big, cold hand and they started descending quietly, creating sleepy, sugary snow mounds or writing on my window-pane funny and complex symbols of an unknown alphabet. It was as if that same someone used them to wish merry Christmas to our city and after that decided to find his reflection in my window, look into my notebook, and read the last lines of my recently finished novel.
“Who first called it a snowfall?” I reflected, striving to decipher the main idea behind these symbols. What was the connection between them and my novel? Were they each other’s reflection or did they represent two different alphabets of the same language?
“A snowfall?” I asked myself, crestfallen. “Is that how snow falls? Or is it, rather, what it feels like when things befall you? Or when you fall for a cold-hearted woman? Or when a friend’s coldness causes your downfall? Or when a critic lets the gavel fall — more on his work than on mine? But actual snow doesn’t fall like this at all.”
“But if it weren’t for my notebook, would you make any sense at all?”
“Anyways, why am I talking to you about sense? In the place you descended from this is hopefully a lot better understood, even though — and this is what I fear — in a completely different way.”
“Then who needs this alphabet of mine if you have one of your own? And you will always descend, regardless of my wishes.”
“… And you will keep descending onto the city that just celebrated Christmas and is preparing for New Year’s — an entirely new year…”
“… Not even noticing that in the new year there will be someone completely different on this side of the window from the person who was here before. And you will not even inquire where the one who was here before went.”
Is there anything else I can say in my notebook that you haven’t heard before? Anything you haven’t seen and haven’t touched yet?
I sighed, rapped my fingers on the notebook’s cover which still didn’t bear the name of my novel, opened the notebook on a random page, on a Roman numeral, and looked out of the window once again.
“In any case, you are here, even though you are on the other side of the window, since a window doesn’t exist for you. Let it be non-existent for me as well, then you will be able to translate the contents of my notebook into your other-worldly — or not? — language.”
“… And we will find a name for my novel together.”
If you came here to see me, it means my downfall can be postponed. In case, of course, the window doesn’t suggest a different kind of fall…”
“You see, and I almost lost all hope.”
Books were staring at me out of bookcases, trying to catch a glimpse of what my still nameless notebook contained. The notebook was filled with words that were hardly capable of saying anything and with the almost meaningless Roman numerals.
Books were staring out of bookcases: the old volume in a mother-of-pearl cover that was deciphered for me but not by me, as well as these, my favorite ones, which don’t help me but at least — and most importantly — they don’t get in the way. And this one… I still don’t understand its role completely but by the time my notebook is finished I hope I will… Otherwise, writing in my notebook would have been a risky business and who even knows if it would have been justified?..
Still, was I the one who wrote it? I was looking past my notebook and thinking that, of course, it had already existed and all I had to do was find it. So I set out in search of it — like the medieval Admiral who set out in the search of an old world that turned out to be a completely new one.
“I must be more fortunate than many of my fellow-explorers because I did find it and now the only thing my notebook lacks in order to become a book is a title,” I thought contentedly. Of course, I could leave it as is. If one can write a poem without a protagonist, why can’t one write a novel without a title?
No, I should still give a name to my novel. I will definitely give it a name and they will help me since I have removed this window that has been separating us.
Otherwise, how will a cold-hearted woman, a cold-blooded enemy and a cool-headed critic manage to decide for themselves and inform the world that my notebook doesn't deserve to be read? If the author has a name and his work has a specific title, it is easy to say that nothing else needs to be known. In the absence of a name and a title, though, one will have to read the book in order to be able to proclaim that it is not worth reading.
It's true that often a novel's beginning is so similar to a title as to replace it… My novel, however, needs a title because its opening lines don't substitute or predict it. They actually do the exact opposite.
At first, the city prepares for New Year's and only after ringing it in it will start getting ready for Christmas. Instead of making wishes at a speed matching that of the shooting stars falling on her city, she kept thinking that, in all truth, she had no more wishes left to make. And if old-fashioned snow stars descended onto the city instead of the usual gloomy haze, there would be nothing for her to wish on them.
"It's funny," she thought while she was getting into a trolley and checking perfunctorily on her handbag. "It's funny how nature helps those who have nothing else to wish for. If I had any more wishes, shooting stars would have come at once."
She was lucky in that the trolley was almost empty and her usual seat was free.
"Turns out I did have a wish," she smiled and pressed herself against the window that protected her from the street. Now, she could look more calmly at the hospital and its fence which remained behind the closing doors and the locked windows of the trolley.
"I remember the wish I wanted to make."
She opened a book that looked exactly like my notebook although it seemed to have a title already. She took it everywhere she went. Every now and then, she looked out of the window without really interrupting her reading. She liked seeing snow mounds that looked incredibly similar to cotton wool and that could have fallen off from a huge Christmas tree right before that. The frozen, eggnog-colored lamplights looked drab against this background.
"Or is that eggnog?" she asked herself sternly but had no time to think of an answer since she noticed a couple walking towards the hospital at an uneven pace. Samuil's face was the same color as these unnatural snow mounds. Klara was moaning and trying to bend to the ground. Her full-term pregnancy was getting in the way, even as it was the only thing that kept her grounded.
"I need to rest!" she moaned, sitting down in a heap of snow.
"Klara, my love," said Samuil while trying to raise her. "You'll catch a cold, let's go, we are so close already."
They would get up and walk several more steps before she subsided into the snow again in order to catch her breath even though the breath refused to be caught. As bad luck might have it, Klara had gone into labor in the small hours when not only a cab was impossible to find but even hitching a ride on a road that was incredibly white for such a dark time of the night was out of the question. So they set off on foot towards the maternity ward.
They had been walking for over an hour, stopping, sitting down, and getting up again. The snow was blinding them, but Klara's vision had clouded over back home when she tried to get dressed and her back felt like it was crumbling into pieces in the manner of a stale bagel. The pain made both walking and sitting equally impossible. Klara's fur-coat kept her warm but its weight kept dragging her down into the snow mound and the only thing she wanted was to give birth already and finally go to sleep, not having to think about giving birth any more. Inside her furry mittens, her fingers were sweaty and so swollen that she couldn't clench her fist any more. Her kerchief slid away and for the first time in her life she felt wrinkles gathering on her forehead. If she could see herself in the mirror, she would be terrified of this change in her appearance. Now, however, she had no energy left to feel fear just like that time when she was drowning in the Dnieper all those years ago.
"God, when will the baby finally come?!" I moaned while clutching Senya's hand and subsiding into a temptingly warm snow mound. "Poor women, why do they suffer so?!.. Jesus, why do I say 'they' if I'm one of them?"
He was on the verge of tears and as he was kissing my mittened hands, he tried raising me out of the snow mound.
"Klarochka," he was saying, "let's go, we are really close. When we get there they will help you undress, get this stupid fur-coat off you…"
"And everything else, too!" I gasped, not even trying to get up because the pain was more than I could bear and I had no more energy to keep bearing it.
"Of course, they will take everything off, just like they should, and you'll forget ever dragging all this heavy stuff around. They'll give you some medication, put you on a comfortable table, you'll make one last effort, and give us a son or a daughter."
"A son!" I barked confidently, getting up almost in spite of myself.
"A son!" she told me in a whisper but firmly.
"A son!" rang out in the trolley through the closed window.
And Klara strode to give birth to a son, strode instead of trudging.
Or rather, they strode together, as usual.
II
Now Klara temporarily forgot — how could any one remember anything any more? — that she strove, or rather dreamt, of getting past New Year's. There were many reasons for that but the main was to delay her son's enlistment for a year. In any case, one was always better off being considered born a year later, of course, just considered.
"And what if it's a girl?" asked or maybe just said Maria Isaakovna, with a barely perceptible hint of sarcasm.
"Mama, such things don't just happen," Klara answered reassuringly and went back to her Roman Law textbook. Professor Fuks delivered his lectures as well as any famous actor would, let alone any Roman tribune. So many students gathered to hear his lectures that not only was there no room to swing a cat but even the tiniest kitten could hardly be swung in the lecture-hall. Passing Fuks's final exam, especially while being pregnant, was harder than conquering the Roman Empire. Klara, however, never doubted herself and neither did Samuil. Vladimir Fedorovich didn't doubt her either, although when Maria Isaakovna spoke, he remained mostly silent and sometimes smiled, albeit not sarcastically but in agreement.
"Volodia, why do you keep smiling?" Maria Isaakovna asked in a voice of a temporarily dethroned empress. "No, this man will drive me crazy one day! A serious issue is being discussed, and he's sitting here like nothing's happening and keeps smiling. Volodia, stop smiling right now! I'm talking to you!"
"What do you think I should do, cry?" Vladimir Fedorovich smiled broadly and shrugged his shoulders.
How can one be expected not to smile if the war has been over for six and a half years, and even though they share their apartment with neighbors, it's still better than some shack in the evacuation to the Ural Mountains, everybody is healthy and sound, and the ration cards are no longer in use, Samuil is about to graduate from medical school and Klara from law school? And I will soon have a grandson, or maybe a granddaughter, which is just as well, even though Klara is certain she will have a boy. Should this make one cry, or what?
"This issue isn't being discussed, Mama," Klara observed without raising her eyes from her notes, written in a soft, leftward-sloping handwriting. "This issue was resolved a long time ago. I can remember the approximate date this issue was resolved and even the time of day or, rather, night. Of course, I can't be completely sure about that since the occasion was both solemn and significant."
Even though she stopped short of clarifying what the occasion in question was, her statement made an impression. Samuil was the only one who was one hundred per cent content with it, given that he was in possession of all the facts, which allowed him to admire the precision of his wife's description. Vladimir Fedorovich smiled again, while Maria Isaakovna flashed like a lightning in response to Klara's comment, Vladimir Fedorovich's smile, and Samuil's contented thoughtfulness.
III
Before the war, Klara, Maria Isaakovna and Vladimir Fedorovich lived in a privileged two-bedroom apartment that, of course, they didn't have to share with any neighbors. It was located in what was maybe the coziest neighborhood of Kharkov, called Nagorny neighborhood. Maria Isaakovna worked as a construction engineer. She supervised extremely important construction projects and designed huge power plants at Lakes Sevan and Balkhash, and in many other parts of the Soviet Union.
Maria had been born in Byelorussia in a Dnieper shtetl called Rechitsa.
Her real name was Mary and not Maria, but Mary sounded too British, which made little sense when one was from Rechitsa. Isaak, her father, was the best cabinet-maker in the entire province, while her mother, Klara, was considered illiterate and had given birth to eight children. It was true that she didn't know her letters but that hardly made her illiterate. It was just that she had no time to learn, what with eight children and a husband permanently stuck in his cabinet-making workshop.
Still, she was smarter than many of those who knew how to read and write. People from all over the shtetl came to her for advice, just like they did to Sancho Panza on his island. The advice she dispensed was very good. Not once in her life was she known to offer a bad piece of advice.
Among her eight children, there were two girls — Mary and Haya, the rest were boys who — once they grew up — became socialists and died. That is, some of them died because they were socialists, while the others died in the war, which had nothing to do with them being socialists.
One of Mary's brothers turned out to be a mathematician. He proved a theorem that couldn't be proven. Or, rather, aided by his very Jewish spirit of contradiction so disliked by many, he disproved an axiom. Of course, it wasn’t really an axiom since if it were one nobody could have disproven it. Aaron disagreed it was an axiom and this allowed him to prove it wrong. The Imperial Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg appreciated his outstanding capabilities and awarded him a silver medal on the condition that he would change his unscientific Jewish name of Aaron into a more Russian-sounding Arkadi. His last name, Krupetsky, sounded almost like the aristocratic Russian family names of Obolensky or even Golitsynsky. If only, of course, one could forget about needless particularities.
Her older siblings were always busy, so Mary learned to entertain herself. When she was little, she went to the Dnieper which was so wide it touched the horizon. Only an inexperienced and excessively romantic observer could perceive this river as tranquil in a calm weather (to use Gogol's famed line). In reality, even next to the river-banks there were scores of pits and breakers. One can only imagine how many there were in the middle of the river, which Mary’s four-year-old height barely permitted her to see.
Nobody had taught Mary to fear the river. Nobody had taught her anything except reading and writing but these skills turned out to be useless in dealing with the river. So she entered the water just like she entered her father’s workshop to stare at a new cabinet and holiday chairs or her mother’s kitchen to try knodel, latkes, or gefilte fish. She had no idea she could drown because she didn’t know what drowning was. This is why Mary just started swimming and discovered she liked it. Eventually, she learned to cross the Dnieper and walk on the opposite bank which turned out to be just as ordinary, that is, just as amazing, as her bank where she was born. Then, she would come home by dinner-time.
Klara, as they would later discover, followed in her mother’s footsteps. Once, when they were visiting Rechitsa, she also decided to visit the Dnieper, see what it was like, and take a swim. She was six years old but she still had no idea that in order to swim one had to know how to do it. So she simply ran away and went to the Dnieper, especially since it was so close to her grandparents’ house. Nobody noticed her leaving. A child wandering off on her own was no big deal in Rechitsa. Pogroms had been long gone, the war long over, and there wasn’t as much as a cloud in sight. Klara ran to the river, enjoying life and singing “Stand up, damned of the Earth”, and threw herself into that water that seemed as harmless as fresh soup in her Nana’s old bowl. The river was lots of fun until suddenly its bottom fell through and Klara went under.
She managed to come up for air a couple of times but every gasp of air required more effort than the one before. In the end, she had no more energy to come up and decided to stop trying since it was useless anyways. And then I realized how upset Mom would be when she finds out I drowned, so I decided to emerge from the water one more time, just for her sake.
This was when she was noticed by a young sailor who lived nearby and had just come to the river-bank to take a swim. Without even taking his clothes off, he jumped in the river, dragged the brave girl out, and took her to Maria. Mom still got upset but I can only imagine how heart-broken she would have been, had I actually drowned. This just goes to show that one should always try to come up for air one last time. Who knows, maybe help is on the way at that very moment.
IV
Mary was beautiful, with thick dark hair, huge, slightly protruding eyes, and a touch of condescension in her smile.
At the age of sixteen, she married Zinovi Stolberg, an energetic, intelligent and enterprising young man. Three years later, in 1929, she gave birth to Klara and left her husband because he annoyed her with his opinions. Not his opinions as such since she never listened to what he said anyways but, rather, with his having the gall to express opinions.
Of course, Zinovi was Zinovi just as much as Aaron was Arkadi. His real name was Zalman, so Klara was in reality Klara Zalmanovna instead of Clarissa Zinovievna, as she started introducing herself later in life. Zinovi had planned to call her Elena, but having opinions turned out to be a bad idea for him. Maria ended up following her own rule that a son should be given his grandfather’s name, while a daughter should be named after her grandmother.
After the divorce and before the war began, Zinovi sometimes saw Klara but it happened so rarely that she felt she almost never met him at all.
In Kharkov, which was the first Ukrainian capital city after the revolution, Maria entered an engineering program and became its best student. That was no surprise because a person who can come out a winner from a struggle with the Dnieper will not be defeated by anything that can happen on even the most challenging stretch of land.
Arguing with her was impossible or, rather, it was completely useless. Her logic and her way of constructing an argument were more than ironclad, they were made of some yet-to-be-discovered refractory substance. Maria’s classmates, who were mostly Civil War veterans, used to say she had a male brain. Still, she was a woman. With a braid encircling her head, huge eyes, and the capacity to cross any river, no matter how challenging the task might be to any self-proclaimed hero.
Every morning, Maria would walk from her apartment in Pushkin Entry to Sumskaya Street, smiling at the soaring golden Engineering House, and the bright grey Gosprom sky-scraper, and the rising building of the Ukrainian Government in the endless — as endless as her entire life — Dzerzhinsky Square. Her life was only about to begin, and the world’s best monument to the poet Taras Shevchenko wasn’t there yet, just like the Glass Fountain wasn’t there, and she had no way of knowing that it was going to resemble her chiffon scarf.
Her heels clicked against the obedient paving stone and the timid asphalt, in her brief-case she had her homework, which was the best in her cohort, and in her blueprint tube she carried the best drawings of anybody in her program. The Sumskaya Street, endless in its regal flow, moved past her towards the tsarist buildings, the Salamander House, the imposing bank building, the Pushkin Square, and the festive Ukrainian theater. Then, it joined the Nikolaevskaya Square, where buildings designed before the war by the famous Professor Beketov winked at Maria with their crystal-clear windows. Lower down, she could see a tranquil grey no-frills building constructed as recently as 1925.
On weekends, Maria would leave Nikolaevskaya Square and walk down the prideful Pushkin Street, which at that time one couldn’t even imagine crossed by trams or railways. She would pass by the churches that made the street look the wife of a merchant guild’s honorary member. Then on to the buildings designed by the famous architect Beketov, which reminded her of a string of Christmas lights or October fireworks and which made the street look as aristocratic as it so richly deserved. She would return to her own Pushkin Entry to prepare for class, read, draw, and wield her slide rule.
And, of course, to come out to the balcony with Klara to stare into the skies that had blessed them with the miracle of their endlessly happy lives.
V
Maria had scores of faithful admirers, which interested her little, since every would-be lover had the gall or the misfortune to have his own opinion about something. This must have been the admirers’ way of asserting their male essence. Maria was more than happy with relying on her own essence, which was female. The only man she allowed to receive and adopt her opinions faithfully and without questioning was Vladimir Fedorovich, and this was what interested her about him. He was older, but she never felt the age difference. Anyways, six years were nothing to speak of.
Vladimir had been born in Warsaw when Poland was still part of the Russian Empire. He was a clerk. His job consisted of auditing the meat-packing and the produce-growing companies. For a while, he worked as an accountant for the Vtorchermet, then transferred to the Southern Railway Bureau, which was located in an imposing old building in the enormous Kharkov Railway Square. His supervisors admired how reliable and punctual he was.
He always knew how to locate the necessary paperwork simply because he never needed to search for any form or document. All paperwork that he wrote in a soft, straight handwriting without a single crossing out (when did Vladimir Petkevich ever make a cross out?) didn't need to be looked for since it was located in the right place at the right time — or, actually, any time one needed it.
When he was young, Vladimir was attracted to ballerinas, who were just as young. In his mature years, he fell in love with Mary, or, rather, he came to love her.
She allowed him to experience this feeling towards her only after making sure that he wasn't going to object to her about anything. He never even considered objecting because he loved Maria and Klara more than people normally know how to love others.
He also loved soccer. He didn't love playing it — that he didn't know how to do, — but he loved watching it. When Vladimir was twenty, Kharkov's team won the all-country championship, and he caught a glimpse of the famous players Privalov, Krotov, Norov, Kazakov, the Fomin brothers.
"In Odessa, in 1921," he would tell Klara, smiling, "Kazakov hit the crossbar, and it fell on the Odessa goalie's head. Can you imagine that?"
Maria didn't even shrug her shoulders because she was simply outraged about what he was teaching the child. Klara, however, wanted to see the crossbar fall, so she got interested in soccer. In the meanwhile, Vladimir Fedorovich got less and less passionate about soccer because after Privalov there was nobody who could play quite as well.
Vladimir couldn't swim, so when he was in the army he served as a coxswain of the launch. His slight frame didn't allow him to row but as a coxswain he was better than any one. He sat at the steer and kept count in a clear, loud voice, "One-two, one-two!"
I kept count to help the rowers set the speed. Once, near Phoros, which is close to Sevastopol, our launch got into the dead swells. Do you know what that means? On the surface, the water looks like glass, but underneath there are horrible swells, as if somebody were mixing the water in a shaker. Dead swells, may the devil take them, will not upset the launch, but it can cause one to fall asleep. One moment I was keeping count and then I was falling deep into sleep. If the rowers hadn't lost their rhythm and looked at me to see what was going on, I wouldn't be here right now. Of course, they lost the rhythm because I'd fallen asleep and stopped keeping count. They saved me from never waking up again.
Klara liked the story. It was even scarier than the one where the crossbar fell on the goalie's head.
After Maria graduated, she spent less time at home than on work-related trips, so Vladimir Fedorovich became Klara's primary caregiver. For him, this meant not intruding upon her growth and development and keeping watch over this process.
VI
In daycare, Klara was almost as much in charge as the adults. She didn't know why that happened and never thought about it. Everybody simply respected her opinion. Probably that happened because nobody but her actually had opinions, except, of course, the adults. She took the lead in all games (tag, hide-and-seek, anything), and she was never 'it', only when she really wanted to and not when it was her turn (when did Stolberg ever have a bad turn?)
At home she was happy, too, even more than simply happy. Klara would come home from daycare, and later from school, which turned out to be special, as special as their Pushkin Entry. She would rush into their amazing apartment that before Vladimir Fedorovich moved in was always empty. There were lots of delicious food, even caviar, but Mom was never there. She traveled for work: to Central Asia, the Caucasus, Siberia, Lake Baikal, the Crimea, Lake Balkhash, uranium mines. Maria Isaakovna would go from one place to another on a special small airplane. She was a high-class construction engineer who never had any conflicts with those who sent the airplane to fetch her: I never let myself overstep my bounds and never told anybody what I was doing, including about the uranium mines.
At home, Klara did endless homework, which she didn't dislike. She also had stamps, coins, and a white baby grand piano. There were hundreds or thousands of books that could be easier read than counted, as well. Klara learned to read the same way Maria learned to swim. Only, she was three, not four then. That's why she always had more fun at home than outside. Everywhere but at home she felt how much she missed her parents, which was something she hardly ever perceived when she was home because there she had the aura of the yearned-for eighteenth century, stamps with haughty Queen Victoria and King George who looked neither like Queen Victoria nor like each other, silver rubles of Peter the Great's and Tsar Nicholas's times.
Then Vladimir Fedorovich came into their lives, and things got better. He smiled, was always on her side, never got frazzled, let alone annoyed (when did Vladimir Fedorovich ever get annoyed?), and helped any way he could including coin and stamp collecting, the latter especially, even though I could never understand the fascination with all these useless kings and queens. Our stamps are a lot more interesting. Well, what can you expect from a child?
He took Klara to the Shevchenko Gardens, to the Pioneers' Palace to see the New Year's tree, and for all kinds of festive occasions. At the Pioneers' Palace she was once photographed with her gift, sitting in the lap of Postyshev, a high-ranking Soviet official, and Maria Isaakovna was very proud of this picture. Vladimir Fedorovich just smiled, and even though he said nothing, he kept thinking that it wasn't clear who should have been more proud.
He kept taking Klara around — to the beautiful Gorky Park and the endless Lesopark, down the Pushkinskaya Street that kept changing with every passing year, and the Basseinaya Street that was clanging with tram bells and thumping at the rail junctures, down the dreamy Chernyshevskaya Street.