Page 32

The smell of vinegar would permeate the apartment for weeks on end.

Every day, Yurka’s mother would watch the dubbed Brazilian soap Isaura: Slave Girl while boiling either jam or jeans (doing a homemade acid wash).

Commercials appeared on TV for the first time.

More and more new TV programs kept appearing.

Yurka watched his father’s beloved 600 Seconds and Fifth Wheel out of the corner of his eye.

The airwaves were also filled with something fundamentally new, something even more strange and suspicious: performances by the faith healer Allan Chumak and the hypnotist Anatoly Kashpirovsky. Of the latter, who had been popularly nicknamed “Koshmarovsky”—“Nightmare-ovsky”—Volodya wrote, “Hypnosis is a charlatan’s trick, it doesn’t actually work ...”

To which Yurka replied by asking, “In the unfinished barracks you were saying hypnosis was what would help you, so how are you coming to this conclusion now?”

But Volodya responded evasively: “A friend of mine went to one. He had another problem, not like mine: he can’t sleep. And since it couldn’t solve his problem, there’s no way it’ll solve mine.”

Yurka started to suspect that Volodya didn’t have any such friend and that he’d tried it himself. On the one hand, Yurka knew hypnosis wasn’t as dangerous as other “cures,” like getting shots to induce nausea, so he relaxed somewhat. But then he got panicky all over again: if Volodya had gone to that kind of doctor, he might go to another kind of doctor, too. So he began to focus on convincing Volodya to wait before going to a psychiatrist.

In the midst of these negotiations, as tense as trade talks, he forgot how angry he’d been at himself for failing the conservatory entrance exams. What would’ve once been a huge blow to his self-esteem before was unimportant now. Yurka knew he’d try again next year, and that if he failed then, he’d try again, and eventually he’d get in. Trying to get in and not making it—that wasn’t a failure. Quitting his studies was the failure. But an even worse failure would be letting Volodya mess himself up.

Not even a month went by before Yurka’s fears began to be substantiated. Volodya’s letters were different. His handwriting had changed! Whereas Yurka used to be able to recognize Volodya’s mood from the way he wrote, now Yurka was haunted by the distinct sensation that the letters were being written by someone else entirely. Volodya’s handwriting was now looser and bigger. But what was even scarier was that he’d started making basic spelling and punctuation mistakes, which would have been completely impossible for the Volodya Yurka knew. But before asking Volodya directly whether he’d gone in for treatment, Yurka reread all Volodya’s letters several times to catch anything he’d missed before. Yurka was trying to pinpoint when exactly Volodya had changed, to guess what had caused the change—because despite what Volodya had seemed to think, the AIDS outbreak in Elista had nothing to do with either of them, and in his heart of hearts Yurka thought this reason was so stupid that it couldn’t possibly be the cause. But no matter how many times he sat down to reread the whole heap of Volodya’s letters, no matter how carefully he read, he was unable to discern a cause or even a date when Volodya had suddenly changed. Eventually he began to doubt whether there had ever even been a reason, and whether Volodya had actually changed at all ...

There was no help for it. Yurka started asking to come visit and inviting Volodya to visit him. But Volodya refused to either come visit or let Yurka visit him. Yurka even threatened to come anyway, but the threats had no effect. Apparently, Volodya had guessed that Yurka simply didn’t have enough money for tickets, and so he replied in broad, sweeping handwriting: “Yura, do you remember our agreement? I won’t come see you or invite you to see me until you get into conservatory.”

Yurka was dumbfounded. The conservatory?! In his last paragraph, he scrawled, “Did you mean that about the conservatory? I’ll still have so long to wait! Volod, I miss you, I really want to see you. What’s going on? Because I can tell something’s off. Be honest: Did you go to treatment?”

Volodya’s response was some time in coming. Yurka had grown tired of waiting and was about to write Volodya again when he saw the familiar colored-in corner of a letter in his mailbox. He opened the envelope with trembling hands and took out the letter. In the last paragraphs he read, “I wanted to lie to you, but I realized I can’t. You don’t deserve lies. But I was in no hurry to talk, either, until I’d made up my mind for sure.

Yes, Yura, I did confess to my parents. I would’ve had to do it at some point anyway, but what happened at Elista made me do it now. It was scary to talk and hard to begin. The thing I was most afraid of was that they wouldn’t take the news seriously, like the way Irina didn’t believe Masha that time. But they believed me. They were in shock, of course. I really disappointed them. But the main thing is that they understood: it’s as much a problem for them as it is for me. It took my father a long time to find a doctor who’d give me treatments unofficially so my records wouldn’t show I’d been to a psychiatric clinic. And also because he’d started his own business and made a name for himself in certain circles, so there was his reputation, too ... You get it.

The doctor and I talk for a long time at our sessions. He prescribed me some pills and said that if I have people I’m close to, people I can be open with, I should both tell them about the disease and let them know I’m in treatment for it, in case I need their moral support. He also told me to start looking at the pretty girls around me. Just look at them for now, not meet anyone or go on dates. This is so I learn to see their beauty. It’s funny, Yur, but I see it perfectly well already, and in fact I think a lot of girls are pretty, but ... not a single one of them attracts me. But that’s just right now, I hope ... not permanently ...

Yurka read the letter and felt the hair raising on the back of his neck. He was scared, both for Volodya and for himself. Inside him, his hurt shouted, He wants to cure himself of me! Of his love for me! He wants to forget everything! After all the times I asked him not to go, he still went, he still did everything his way! He betrayed me!

But once his emotions calmed a little, other thoughts occurred to Yurka. Volodya hadn’t betrayed him. He had told him the truth. He was still thinking about Yurka. He needed him! Volodya’s letter was a cry for help, after all. He needed support. Yurka realized that Volodya had it even harder now: the fact that Volodya’s parents knew, and were even paying for his treatment, made it Volodya’s responsibility to ensure the treatment was a success. But what if it wasn’t, or what if it took a long time? If Yurka, his single, solitary real friend, didn’t support him, then he’d be the one betraying Volodya. However much it hurt him—however much he doubted that Volodya even needed treatment—he had to help.

Yurka spent a long time composing his reply to Volodya’s letter. He wasn’t satisfied until the fourth version:

Volodya, you know perfectly well that you’re my only close friend. I asked you not to go. I won’t lie, I’m not happy you did it, but I trust you. If you decided it was your only choice, that you’d only feel better by going to a doctor, then I support you. But I’m also even more worried about you now. Tell me how everything’s going. Are you sure it’s not causing you harm? What kind of pills are you taking? Do they help? How?

I’ll say it again, and I’ll keep saying it over and over: you are my only friend, my best friend, my dearest friend. You can be honest with me about everything. Absolutely everything, always. Don’t feel awkward about any of it, okay?

I’m really looking forward to your reply. I want to know everything about you. If I can help in any way, just tell me, and I will.

This time the letter from Volodya took two days longer to arrive than usual, leaving Yurka plenty of time to wear himself out worrying.

We just talk. The doctor asks me about everything. It was hard for me to open up to him. It’s too personal, after all. But he’s a psychiatrist: I can trust him with what has been tormenting and terrifying me for so long. And these conversations really are making me feel better. The pills are just sedatives. Thanks to them, I’ve stopped having panic attacks and I’ve stopped washing my hands in burning-hot water—remember that old habit? Looks like this treatment really is helping me!

And no matter how much these letters scared Yurka, no matter how much they made him feel like Volodya was growing more and more distant from him, Yurka was glad for his friend. If Volodya was feeling better, if it was helping Volodya, then all Yurka could do was support him. And he did, that whole year.

That autumn, the international news hit like a thunderclap: the Berlin Wall had fallen.

The physical boundary between East Germany and West Germany no longer existed. Officially, the two countries weren’t planning on reunifying for a long time, but Yurka’s uncle heard from his friends in the government of East Germany that unification was going to happen, and not in the distant future but soon. He wrote Yurka’s mom that the whole family had to pull it together and get to the East German consulate first, because immigrating to Germany would be even harder once the countries united. His mother went.

Listening to her, Yurka was astonished at how difficult it was. For the time being, the only way they could immigrate was as a Jewish family. For that to happen, then at least his mother, if not all of them, had to have the word “Jew” showing in her passport as her designated ethnicity, and she had to be a member of a Jewish religious community. But the ethnicity listed in his mother’s passport was Russian. And despite all of Yurka’s grandma’s efforts, Yurka’s mother had stubbornly refused to join any Jewish organization. The only thing she’d agree to do was let Yurka be circumcised. Yurka’s grandma had changed both her first and last names back at the beginning of the war, and on top of that all her German documents, including her marriage certificate, had been destroyed. His grandpa’s life had come to an end in Dachau, which meant that Yurka’s mother and Yurka were legally eligible to be treated as victims of the Holocaust, but they still had to prove they were related to him. The only relative they had in Germany, the uncle on his grandfather’s side, was his mother’s cousin, and Yurka’s cousin twice removed, so it wasn’t clear whether this relationship would be of any help to the Konevs. The one thing that was crystal clear, however, was that they’d have to track down and replace a great many identification documents. In spite of everything, though, none of them—not Yurka, not his parents, not the uncle—lost faith in their return to their historical motherland.

Meanwhile, a terrible time of shortages began in the USSR. The stores ran out of everything, even soap and laundry powder. Staples like macaroni and buckwheat kasha were nowhere to be found. Yurka’s family, like all the rest, began getting ration tickets for sugar. Yurka’s father began to work longer and longer hours; sometimes he was stuck at work for whole days at a time. His mother was bedridden from a long bout of pneumonia. Yurka, already used to standing in hours-long lines, stood even longer now in lines of enraged citizens, reading his German textbook while freezing and listening to people talking about the coal miners’ strike: half a million people beating their helmets on the pavement.

In Kharkiv, everything was more or less calm, but Volodya wrote that in Moscow it wasn’t just the coal miners but all the rest of the Soviet citizenry, too, tired of always being half-starved, that was going out to demonstrate. And Volodya, always with his keen interest in political events, went right out with them.

As he stepped onto the next square concrete paver, Yura looked at its blank surface, wet and glistening, and for some reason felt like any minute now an ant would run out onto it from the grass, and then another one, and then more and more of them, until the entire paver was crisscrossed with long lines of ants, the way the entire year of 1990 had been crisscrossed with lines. There had been lines everywhere, for everything you could imagine: vodka, cigarettes, food ... They stretched out from stores and kiosks; they stood unmoving in front of the conservatory’s administrative offices; they swelled to kilometer-long columns at embassies.

The whole country was in a fever. In every news program Yurka saw the same thing—he could’ve recited it from memory: “Alcoholism and crime rates have grown to epic proportions,” “Profiteers are getting fat,” and “Refugees from Nagorno-Karabakh are hiding everywhere.” The programs spoke about how the cigarette shortage made the populace run riot: they went on strike and stopped production lines, they burned and looted stores, and they overturned bigwigs’ cars. People started referring to the Soviet Union contemptuously as sovok, “dustpan.”

But Yurka felt that the TV news reports must be exaggerating things. Yes, all that did exist, but life didn’t seem quite that doom-and-gloomy to him. In some ways it was just the opposite, blooming with vibrant color: now there were uncensored, nongovernmental radio stations that played so much new music that it seemed like Yurka never heard the same song twice. At dance clubs he knew that people were dancing the lambada, although he didn’t go out dancing himself or look up girls’ miniskirts; he just sat at home, working hard on his German and continuing to prepare for his conservatory entrance exams. Now he was practicing on his own: his family couldn’t pay the tutor anymore since his mother had been cut to part-time and his father hadn’t gotten his pay in several months. But Yurka worked hard, putting in as much time as he could at the piano. He mentally prepared himself for another failure. This time, though, this time—he got in!

“I did it!” Yurka wrote in his next letter.

I thought they’d fail me again, but I finally did it, Volodya! Just like I promised you! And now that I’ve made it, everything’s different in my mind. I used to dream about becoming a pianist, but now it’s not a dream anymore, it’s a goal. And what I really want now is something else: not to play music, but to write it. My dream is to become a composer. I dream of writing something special, something that doesn’t just sound good but is full of meaning.

And in the last paragraph of his letter, Yurka reminded Volodya of their agreement:

I remember you promised we’d meet as soon as I made it into conservatory. So there you go!

For days there was no reply, but Yurka chalked it up to issues with the postal service. When the answer did come a week later, Volodya was so happy for him that Yurka smiled as he read. But Volodya wouldn’t agree to meet, saying that he had absolutely no time since he’d failed one of his exams and the retake was scheduled in September. He had to study for that, plus he had to help his dad with the business, and also it wasn’t a good time to be in Moscow, what with all the demonstrations and riots and strikes.

“And another thing,” wrote Volodya. “I want to ask you to hold off on our meeting for a while, since I’m afraid it might have a negative effect on my treatment. Because, Yur, I remember you ...

I’m learning how to control myself. For example, at the last session the psychiatrist brought in some pictures of ... well, pictures he thought I’d like. Then he started asking me to say what I could possibly like about them, how I could even like them, but get this: of the twenty pictures he showed me, only one caught my eye! And even that was probably just because it really reminded me of our last night at camp. Then he gave me other pictures, of women this time. And this time he also asked me to look at them closely and talk about what specifically I liked about this one or that one, and what I didn’t like at all. And he gave me some homework.

You asked me to be very honest. It’s a little hard to do, but I’ll try. Because we’re grown-ups, after all, and even though this is something people don’t talk about in polite company, it’s different for us—we can understand each other. So anyway ... he gave me some pictures to take home, pictures that are the kind I’m supposed to like later after we’ve cured my disease. He said that sometime when I’m by myself I should try to relax and take a good long look at the prettiest ones, so that ... Well, you get it ... so I learn how to get real physical pleasure from looking at them and imagining things ... And Yur—! What a relief! I did it! I thought only about what I saw in the picture, and I was able to! I was able to do it!

It took Yurka an effort of will to suppress the emotions Volodya’s letter called forth. What helped most was the realization that this was the lesser of two evils: he knew that if Volodya hadn’t been suffering from these problems, he would have been in a relationship with a real person by now and would have been doing real things with that person, not just imagining things when he was alone.

So they didn’t broach the topic of a visit anymore. Their letters to each other went flat and neutral. Yurka finally accepted that the treatment was helping Volodya and making him happier. Yurka should’ve been glad, but in reality it made him uncomfortable. It seemed as though once Volodya had rid himself of his fear, he’d also rid himself of his thoughts about Yurka: he had forgotten him, stopped loving him.

That letter was the last one that year in which Volodya wrote about anything personal.

In October, the thing Yurka’s uncle had been saying would happen did happen: the unification of Germany. The Konevs went to the embassy, stood in line for five hours, and finally succeeded in submitting their documentation.

Three families that Yurka’s parents knew had already managed to leave for the West, and it made Yurka’s mom go from difficult to completely unbearable. Almost daily, her voice dripping with poisonous envy, she counted off the names of coworkers who had gotten out: “The Mankos left. The Kolomiyetses left. Even the Tyndiks left! Never mind that in America they’re nothing, while we have full right to German citizenship! We waited too long to try! How much longer will it be now? Until we die of hunger?!”

Yurka’s dad could never refrain from a weary, reluctant, half-whispered rebuttal: “You don’t have to be a citizen to move to Germany.”

In November the only people in their building that the Konevs were friends with left. This turn of events devastated Yurka’s mother.

“I’m an engineer!” she fumed constantly. “I have an advanced degree! I gave my whole life to that damn factory! I ruined my health! And what do I get in return? I get my salary paid in ball bearings! But Valka, that trashy street vendor with her dinky little stall, eking out a living bringing in crappy clothes from Turkey—that Valka, she gets out! She’s living it up!”

She didn’t blame Yurka’s father, although his salary hadn’t been paid in months; she blamed the German embassy and the world as a whole. Her health really had taken a turn for the worse. She’d started having lung problems. The unrelenting illnesses and poverty had finally and irrevocably ruined her once kind disposition. As though she were seeking yet another piece of proof of how bad things were, she even asked about Yurka’s pen pal, “the one from Moscow”: How were they faring out there in the capital? “Just as badly as we are?”

Yurka shrugged vaguely. “Probably so ...” But he couldn’t add any specifics. Volodya’s family wasn’t suffering. Volodya’s father had really thrown himself into his business. He’d started a construction company and in less than a year had started pulling in such a profit that Volodya’s mother didn’t need to keep working. Volodya himself continued his studies at MGIMO while also devouring economics textbooks on the side so he could start helping his dad as soon as possible.

Smiling, Yurka wrote Volodya: “Now there’s an irony of fate: the country is falling apart, but you are building it back up.”

When he said the country was falling apart, Yurka meant it literally. One by one the republics of the Soviet Union began to declare independence, all through 1989 and into 1990. This Parade of Sovereignties was the beginning of the end of the USSR.

In answer to the “you are building it back up,” Volodya said modestly:

I’m doing what I can to help, but there’s not much use for experts in international law here. On the other hand, I know English. I got a bunch of textbooks on market economics and Pops scrounged up a couple of books on how to run a business. “It’s called management,” he explained. So I’m sitting here, studying. It’s important. The country’s transitioning from a planned economy to a market economy, and nobody knows how to do business in this new environment. But I’m going to know. My brains will be our company’s advantage. Now don’t you dare think I’m bragging! It’s too early to brag.

In another letter, Volodya had joked, “Who knows? Maybe by next year our different cities will be in different countries. Wait while I settle some things here and establish that my treatment worked, and then I’ll come see you while we’re still citizens of the same country.”

“Citizens of the same country,” Yurka repeated aloud. He felt his heart drop like a stone. He was in no hurry to inform Volodya that the German embassy had finally accepted their documents and moved them to the next stage. Yurka was afraid both of jinxing his application and of breaking the bad news to Volodya any sooner than he had to. Yurka had written Volodya about Germany more than once, but he’d talked about it casually, as an aside, with no faith that he really had a chance. But now, all of a sudden, it hit home that they really might end up in different countries after all. Maybe even on different continents. Because even if Yurka didn’t end up living in Germany, Volodya had always dreamed of hightailing it out to America. And Volodya was so stubborn that if he really, truly wanted to do something, he did it. Yurka knew that.

He’d no sooner opened Volodya’s latest letter than he knew it had been written hurriedly, in a panic. It was wrinkled and full of blots, and the letters tilted over onto each other, and the lines of writing weren’t even but slid down at the end:

That filth is crawling back into my brain again! The pills only help every so often, and I can’t repeat my earlier success with the pictures because I keep getting distracted thinking about that! And I’ve started having dreams again! Today I had such a vivid dream that when I woke up, I almost lost it. Why isn’t this real?!

I dreamed I was standing on a platform at a train station and in the crowd of people coming out of a train car I see U. She smiles and I put my arms around her. We go down into the metro. We’re standing on the escalator, going down, but instead of looking around to admire one of the most beautiful metro stations, U. looks only at me. It’s like she doesn’t care where she is or what’s happening around her; all she cares about is me. We go to the VDNKh pavilion and sit by the rockets that are on display and stroll around the fountains. It’s hot. She puts her face and hands into the water. Then we take the metro back home. I lay my jacket over our knees and hold her hand tightly underneath it. We’re at my place. There’s nobody else home. I fold out the sleeper sofa. She gets a jar of cherry jam out of her bag and puts it on the table.

Yurka knew that “U.” was “you” and “she” was “he.” Volodya was writing about him. Yurka could tell Volodya was panicking. He knew how bad Volodya must be feeling and that Volodya was scared. But at the same time Yurka couldn’t stop smiling: Volodya was dreaming about him! And even though joy was completely inappropriate at the moment, he couldn’t keep his emotions in check when he wrote his reply. Once he’d sent it, he bitterly regretted what he’d said: “I don’t give a damn about secrecy! I’m not ‘she’! And I still love you! And also ... we submitted our documents at the embassy. I’m probably moving to Germany soon.”

He sent that letter at the end of December. Three days later he got a telegram from Volodya: DO NOT WRITE ME AT THIS ADDRESS ANYMORE. WILL WRITE YOU LATER.

The concrete paver for 1990 was the last one. After that, the ground broke off in a sandy cliff. The year 1990 was when his and Volodya’s relationship suddenly broke off, too.