“How can I do that?” Natasha whined as she and Boris meandered along Primorsky Boulevard, surrounded by mothers pushing baby carriages and old people strolling, arm in arm, beneath the blooming trees. “He didn’t say where he was going!”
“Siberia, that’s where he’s going.” Boris appeared eager to change the subject.
“He can say hello to my Baba Daria,” Natasha snapped, tired of Boris whipping out the threat of Siberia whenever he needed to win an argument.
Boris maneuvered Natasha toward the statue of Alexander Pushkin. The great man’s bust stood surrounded by three small fountains shooting streams from its base. When Natasha and Boris played there as children, they’d splashed and called it Pushkin’s pee-pee. Now, Boris was hoping for the water to muffle the sounds of Natasha’s criminal dissent.
“Spoiled brat,” Boris mumbled. “Doesn’t get his way, and it’s the whole system that’s to blame, not him. How do we even know the story he told was true? Maybe he didn’t study, failed his exams, and is using anti-Semitism as an excuse. It’s not as if there are no Jewish doctors in the USSR, so someone must get accepted. Maybe he just wasn’t good enough.”
“Those people have connections. We don’t. I didn’t deserve a three, and neither did you.”
“They can’t take everyone who applies. Only as many candidates as there are jobs planned. What would happen if everyone was allowed to study whatever they wanted? If everyone wanted to be a . . . an actor, for instance. There aren’t enough theaters or films. Or a writer. They can’t publish everyone. Sure, every city has its own newspaper, but they all run the same stories from Moscow, and we already have plenty of books. They graduate, and then what? Unemployment, like in the West. You can’t have one hundred percent employment if people are left to pick their own positions. Can you imagine what that kind of capitalist competition would lead to? If you don’t assign people jobs, how can you ensure that everybody has one?”
A week ago, a day, heck, earlier that morning, Natasha would’ve parroted identical rhetoric. But that was when she’d believed her years of study, dedication, and good behavior would lead to being accepted at the university, garnering more academic excellence, rising to the top of her profession, getting showered with accolades, and dying in glory—as long as she followed the rules. Now that Natasha understood it had all been out of reach for her from the start, the idea of keeping her head down and doing what she was told suddenly seemed asinine. If she could see it—if she could, thanks to Dima, suddenly see beyond the borders they’d been raised with, why couldn’t Boris? He’d been right there. He’d heard what Dima said. They didn’t have to settle. “So you’re just going to keep believing and doing whatever they tell you?”
“When you have a better idea . . .” Now it was Boris’s turn to make fun of Dima. He rocked from leg to leg and hiked his clenched fists to his waist, an ungainly bear stomping around without concern for what he destroyed, performing as apt a mockery of Dima as Dima had earlier of him. Boris patted Natasha’s shoulder condescendingly. “You come find me.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Having found Boris an unenthusiastic audience for her distress, Natasha shifted to her parents. And Boris’s. Their families had split a kommunalka since Natasha was four, becoming best friends out of necessity and proximity. Because the Rozengurts were there first, they claimed the main bedroom, and the tiny room off it. Boris’s room was filled with his bed. His clothes hung from hangers off a metal pipe overhead. Beneath it were makeshift bookshelves nailed into the wall. It was a palace compared to the living room, into which Natasha and her parents were crammed. All six of them shared the kitchen and sole bathroom.
“About the Jewish problems?” Natasha grilled. “Did you know about them?”
Natasha’s parents exchanged looks. Boris’s parents exchanged looks. Even Boris looked guiltily down at the floor. Realizing he’d known all along, Natasha demanded, “Why didn’t any of you warn me? And why did you claim they were a myth, earlier?”
“I didn’t want to discourage you from reapplying next year,” Boris said. “Some Jews are allowed to pass eventually.”
“We wanted you to study hard,” her mother said.
“Even though it didn’t matter? My grade was decided before I went in.”
“No,” her father insisted. “If you had done horribly on all the problems, you would have failed unequivocally.”
“Not everyone fails,” Boris’s mother echoed her son. “We wanted to give you both the best chance. We didn’t want you approaching your studies already defeated. If you thought there was no hope, why would you try?”
“An excellent question,” Natasha said, stomping off into their room and slamming the door behind her.
Mama let Natasha stew for exactly an hour. She couldn’t let it go more than that because there were items in their room she needed. Mama ordered Natasha to hand over the documents testifying to her grade. She told Natasha to wash her hands, put on an apron, and start dinner: they were having Olivier salad. There were potatoes cooking on the stove. Natasha could cool them; peel them; slice them; mix them in with the eggs her mother had hard-boiled earlier; add some canned peas, pickles, and onions; and set the whole thing in sour cream. Mama would be back by the time it was ready.
Meanwhile, Mama had roused Natasha’s father to review the list of men he’d served with. She was unafraid to use Papa’s lost eye to guilt men who’d gotten through unscathed. Mama then had him go through the list of men he drank with. Between the two groups—there was overlap—they came up with three solid prospects who, after Natasha’s parents explained the situation, were able to use their assorted influence to get Natasha a spot in college.
“A teachers’ college?” Natasha all but spat. Her parents had waited until supper before springing the news on her. They thought she might be happier over a small plate of cookies they’d set out to “celebrate” the occasion.
“Mathematics,” Papa said, handing Natasha a cookie to keep her from crushing the teacup she was holding. “You will be teaching mathematics.”
“But I don’t want to be a teacher.”
“You would rather work in a factory?” Mama removed the cup and cookie from Natasha’s hands. If her daughter wasn’t going to be pleasant, she wouldn’t eat. Stalin had taught them that. “Or maybe a butcher shop, sweeping bloodied scraps? I know! You would prefer to wash public toilets rather than take advantage of this opportunity Papa and I slaved to provide you.”
“You brought a bottle of vodka to one of his friends.”
“Three bottles of vodka,” her father corrected. “You did not come cheap, my kitten.”
September 1. First-time first graders hurried down the streets bearing bouquets of flowers—the boys in brown slacks and crisply ironed white shirts, the girls in brown dresses covered with white aprons decorated in as much lace as their grandmothers could beg and bargain, the ribbons in their hair dwarfing the size of their heads.
The same day, Natasha began her own first year of teachers’ college.
Two weeks later, she was pulled out of school so its students could be shipped out to the countryside for their patriotic kolkhoz duty. For one month, they would be helping harvest corn alongside the glorious workers.
When Natasha asked Mama why they didn’t hire locals to help until the season was over, her mother said dismissively, “No locals want to—they get paid so little. Students are free labor.”
No one cared that Natasha disliked the outside, prone as she was to sunburn in summer, frostbite in winter, and allergies in spring and fall. She expected Boris would be equally reluctant. His idea of a good time was to stay indoors and read, or for other people to play soccer outdoors while he cheered from the safer side of the radio. Yet Boris acted happy to be going.
That, Natasha ventured, was because Boris didn’t need to worry about a menstrual period hitting him, with no place to buy the cotton balls and gauze necessary to roll sanitary napkins. Natasha was forced to bring her own, and to find a place to hide her indecent supplies among the clothes she was bringing, which included workpants, shirts, shoes, and hats, as well as one pretty sundress. Because a girl never knew whom she might run into.
The kolkhoz sent a fleet of open-backed trucks to drive them to Krasnoznamensk. There were more than one hundred students gathered at the meeting spot. Natasha looked through them. She always looked through crowds now. Though she wasn’t admitting to herself what—or whom—she was looking for. Boris was so used to her ritual that he waited, hands on his hips, for Natasha to complete her overview, followed by the sigh of disappointment she could not quite suppress.
“Done?” Boris asked. “Can we get on now?”
He gestured toward the truck back, indicating Natasha should climb in first and he’d follow. But instead of hefting herself into the spot he’d picked, Natasha walked away, wandering between the available vehicles parked on the street and the gaggle of exuberant youth who were throwing their duffels onto the truck backs, positioning the bags as seats, jostling for position, and waving goodbye to anxious parents. Natasha spied an empty space next to a boy with hair so light, it might have been white, already unwrapping the butter-and-sausage sandwich his mother had packed for him. He took a huge bite, ripping the bread with his teeth. Crumbs flew every which way, and pink bologna flapped like a bird’s tongue.
He caught sight of Natasha, swallowed, then grinned, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “Why wait to enjoy yourself, right?”
“Right,” Natasha affirmed the new life philosophy she hadn’t been aware of until right this minute, and sat down next to him, leaving no room for Boris.