BlogKharkov, 1953
It was a chilly spring morning with a cloudy sky, when Sasha and his nanny, Galina, went out for a walk. Around the corner, at the center of a small square covered with dirty piles of melting snow, stood an ominous gray stone monument. Sasha knew that it was Stalin, a significant person whose name everyone uttered in a low voice as they did not want to bring his attention to them.
That morning, the statue and the buildings around the square were all dressed up with red and black flags. “What are these flags about?” asked Sasha, not impressed by decorations. “Is there a holiday today?”
“Shh… Be quiet!” Galina looked around to be sure nobody heard him. “It’s not a holiday. Stalin is dead.”
When they returned home, there was endless melancholy music emanating from a large black radio speaker fixed in the corner of their room. That speaker always looked scary to Sasha, despite it sometimes telling the children stories. Mourning music made it even more menacing now.
Sasha already knew the meaning of death. The previous fall, his grandfather, Aaron, had passed away. Despite his serious heart problem, Aaron was drafted at the beginning of the war to serve as an essential supply specialist. He survived the war and eventually returned home, but his heart stopped in a few short years after that. He wasn’t sixty yet. That day, Grandma Leeba’s hair turned gray overnight.
Just before his unexpected death, the whole Aaron family went to a photo studio for a family portrait.
Sasha looked unhappy in that photo because his nanny, Galina, was not with them. Sasha knew that Galina avoided being in the pictures. She was from some religious sect that did not approve it, but Sasha hoped that something might be done about it.
Galina was a late teenager when she and her older sister came to Kharkov looking for a job. Unlike her sister, Galina didn’t have all the required documents. The only way for her to stay in the city was to work privately for some years.
When Sasha was six months old, his mother, Lisa, was injured during her first post-War family vacation. A neighbor recommended Galina as a nanny, and she lived with their family since then. She already received her papers but continued as Sasha’s nanny, which satisfied everybody’s interests.
The day was gray and foreboding. Sasha decided to write a letter to his father, Lyonya, to tell him about those red and black flags in the square and about the sad music from the black radio speaker. Despite being only five, he read and wrote quite well. He wanted to be a scientist, like his dad. Sasha assumed that all that the scientists do is read from large heavy manuscripts and write in their notebooks. That was what his father did at home. He called it “my thesis”.
Lyonya left for the Siberian city of Novosibirsk a few months before that day to work as a college professor. An apartment for his family should have been ready by the end of the summer, and Sasha and Lisa couldn’t wait to join him.
In Kharkov, Lisa and Sasha lived in the same place where Sasha’s great-grandfather, Chayim, had moved his family from Glukhov after the Russian Revolution 1905.
There was a large private courtyard in the heart of that place, surrounded by several houses where all Chayim’s children – Moshe, Aaron, Zelik, Ilya, and Sonia – settled their families before the War. In that yard, their kids played and grew up together, and family events were celebrated there as well, weather permitting. It was like residing in a community and within a family at the same time.
The mood of that place had changed. After the War, Moshe’s family found another, larger house. Zelik’s moved to live in St. Petersburg. Sonia’s husband was killed in combat. With Aaron passed away and Lyonya gone to Novosibirsk, there were no men left, except Ilya, Sasha’s one-legged great uncle, who lived in a small apartment across the yard. Now, the place felt like women’s convent, with Sasha – the only child – among them all.
Lyonya left with only one suitcase and it was Lisa who took the burden to gather and pack everything they would need for their life in Siberia.
Their friends and relatives told each other that the Siberian assignment would be temporary and that Lisa and Lyonya would return in a few years. In their hearts, yet, they all knew that coming back wouldn’t be quick or easy.
Everybody was desperate to help with the relocation. The memories of being evacuees in 1941 with almost nothing in their backpacks were still fresh in their minds. They all wanted Lisa and Lyonya’s transfer to Siberia to be as pleasant as possible. And they all gave them gifts.
There were tranks, and boxes, and bags with clothes, linens, blankets, pillows, kitchen utensils, dishes, books, pieces of furniture, lamps, shades, and whatever else one would ever need when moving to a new place. Little by little, it spread throughout the whole house.
One day in the middle of the summer, everything was loaded into the railroad container, sealed, and shipped to Novosibirsk well in advance – whatever the schedule was, the delivery would be delayed for weeks.
Sasha missed those mountains of boxes and packs that he could quickly repurpose for his games of building fortresses and designing battles, but everybody else in the house was much happier without them.
Grandma Leeba said that, as if suffering from the very notion that Sasha and Lisa were leaving for Siberia was not enough, the baggage made it almost unbearable.
Sofia, Lisa’s younger sister, said that it was so unfair to clog the house for so long, and there were only a few weeks left in the season to invite her friends over. Sofia graduated from the University and was ready to leave in September for the small city of Dubrovytsia in Western Ukraine to fulfill her mandatory three-year assignment as a schoolteacher.
Sasha knew that Sofia really didn’t mean it. He was the one who socialized with Sofia’s friends, at least with some of them. When Sofia had a date and did not want the others to know about it, she would announce that she would take Sasha for a walk and they went to a park or concert under the sky, where her date stood waiting. Sofia never asked Sasha to keep it a secret, and she never had to. He understood that telling anyone, even Galina, would be a betrayal. Anyway, Sofia was always his friend, more than his aunt, throughout her life.
The newly emptied space encouraged imagination, inspiring Leeba and Galina to discuss how they would rearrange the furniture after Lisa, Sasha, and Sofia would go. Lisa and Sofia naturally added their opinions. When those discussions became too heated, Sasha quietly disappeared to visit Uncle Ilya, who, being disabled, had a workshop at home where he assembled some pieces for a nearby factory.
Sasha used the newly opened space in the house to prepare his books, toys, and games for the long trip. Sofia gave him her school-bag which she used at University, but Sasha complained that the bag wasn’t large enough. “If it was good for a University student,” said Lisa once in a convincing tone that she would usually reserve for the courtroom, “it should be enough for you too.” Sasha had questioned that logic, but he couldn’t find the right counter-argument. Lisa won her case, again.
Free, at last, from that baggage nuisance, Lisa spent her leisure time with tailors. Sasha didn’t like tailors. Lisa took him with her almost every time, and he had to wait while Lisa was trying her dresses or coats. He would wait for what seemed like an eternity in those musty and dark rooms, with dusty ficus trees in the corner, and with strange and attractive things that he was not allowed even to touch, much less to play with.
Second, he hated to come there because those tailors sewed something for him too, from the leftover fabrics. He didn’t like those clothes at all. He didn’t enjoy trying them on; he didn’t want to be dressed and undressed; and he didn’t like to stand still while the tailor, madam Fira, used sharp pins to make her marks. Fira had a habit to hold the ends of the pins in her mouth while talking to Lisa. Sasha was certain that eventually, that would not end well. And, after all, those clothes were uncomfortable and, in his opinion, looked ridiculous.
Grandma Leeba, however, insisted that Lisa should take photos of him in every new costume, and Sasha didn’t like that even more.
History proved that his intuition on the new clothes was correct. In the Siberian winter, they proved useless and when the next summer came around, Sasha, to his relief, grew out and never wore them again. But the photos left…
By the last day of September, all the preparations for the Siberian trip were completed, everything was packed, all good-buy visits made, and Grandma Leeba was busy preparing special food for the trip.
The day of departure felt crazy, messy, busy, and disturbing. They moved at last, and the wheels started clacking the song of the new beginning.
The trip was long. Very long. It took more than a week for a train to run to Novosibirsk. First, the train went north and then turned east, to the Trans-Siberian railway running across the two continents and leading them to a new life, new friends, and new relatives.
The train was a world in itself, waiting for Sasha to explore it. Along with other children, he investigated those marvels in the passenger’s car or played games that everybody had for a long ride. What he loved the most was to climb on the upper berth in their compartment to watch the world outside the window that was so different from what he used to know.
There was a dining car a few passenger cars away. Lisa and Sasha came there for a meal or two. Sasha loved that, Lisa – not so much. It was not bad, but crazy expensive. To rely on that food alone would cost several times more than the ticket – not much had changed in the transportation industry service since that time.
For a hot dinner, most riders waited for the train stations in big cities. There were long tables with hundreds of seats set on the platform. The food was hot, decent, served fast, and much cheaper than the in-train food. Stops in big stations were long. It was long enough not only for dinner but for sending telegrams – the most common way for fast communications, and even for a short walk through the city.
Long stops were scheduled not for the passengers’ pleasure. Steam power engines required time to refill fuel and water, and safety squads needed to check the conditions of the wheels under each car. Long stops for passenger trains also allowed the military and freight ones to proceed without delays.
At the small stations, where the train stopped only for a few minutes, food vendors lined up in front of each passenger car. They sold pies, hot boiled potatoes, corn, fruits, pickled vegetables, cakes, all prepacked for a fast sale. The conductor didn’t allow passengers to leave the train as it could move any second without a warning, and all trades were carried out through the car windows.
The most sacred meal, traditionally associated with railroad travels, was the morning tea. There was a large boiler across the steward’s cabin at the end of each passenger car, regardless of class. A steward lit the boiler in the early morning and passengers waited in anticipation.
On the small table next to the boiler, a steward lined up rows of glasses in podstacanniks, which means “a holder for glasses”. He poured the strong, fresh-brewed tea in it and brought tea to each compartment with individually wrapped sugar cubes.
Podstacanniks had been popular in Russia for centuries to hold glasses with hot tea. If intended as a gift, they were made from silver, usually blackened or with artistic images, but a cheaper metal, which does not transfer heat easily, was more practical for daily use.
Even late sleepers woke up when hearing a sound of podstacanniks hitting each other on the steward’s table and, after a moment, his call “Tea. Tea. Would you like to have tea?” Everybody started opening their bags and containers with breakfast meals.
On the first few days of travel, everything smelled of homemade delicacy, but no snacks could stay fresh for such a long trip unless it was made by the cooking magicians – if you were lucky enough to know one.
Luckily for Sasha, Grandma Leeba was definitely one of them. There was a lot to choose from, but Sasha’s favorite was Leeba’s ponchiki – deep-fried balls of yeast dough with various fillings. Sasha was always looking for the ones filled with cherry jam, and Leeba knew his taste. There was enough even for their long trip.
The trip was so long that even looking through the window became a bit too much. The lands were mostly flat, except for the Ural Mountains. Unsurprisingly, it was called the East European Plain and the West Siberian Plain, and plain it was.
The major attraction in the Ural Mountains, besides the mountains itself, was a large obelisk next to the railway that revealed the boundary between Europe and Asia. The train usually slowed down at that point, allowing the passengers to take pictures of the marker. Some years later, Sasha took a picture too.
Crossing the border to Asia underlined harsh changes in the weather. The temperature dropped below freezing and snowstorms painted everything white. Even for Siberia, such conditions were not common at the beginning of October.
Like other passengers, Lisa began unpacking and reviewing the warm clothes in their luggage. It wasn’t much – the major winter stuff was in the baggage wagon and was inaccessible until their arrival.
Cold and snow became bitterly more so, and even those riders who lived in Siberia expressed their concerns. Several times they stopped to allow special snow-pusher locomotives to clean the rails. The train was ambling and everybody tried to figure out what would be the delay at their destination.
Lisa and Sasha reached Novosibirsk almost a day later than scheduled. Lisa was on the edge of her limits and relaxed a little only when she finally saw Lyonya on the platform. Lyonya came not alone. There were several strong young men with him, each with different bags, ropes, and belts.
Lyonya was the first to jump into their car and in a few short moments reserved for hugging and kissing, it was every man to his rope or gun.
One of those men took Lisa’s receipts for the baggage wagon and without a word disappeared with several others.
Another gave Lisa a large bag with winter pants, boots, a coat, and a fur hat and took their suitcases out, leaving space for Lisa to change.
A man with a pack of blankets had an improvised seat fixed on his shoulder. In a second, Sasha was wrapped from head to toe in the blankets with only a narrow slit left for his eyes. They secured him into the seat and ran to the square outside the station, where a car and a pickup truck waited with its engines running.
It went through like a military operation. And, in a way, it was. In Lyonya’s college, there was a veteran’s club, and he became its member. Lyonya served in the Army from the beginning of the War to Berlin and Prague, growing from private to command sergeant major of the Special Communication Battalion. He had a lot to share with fellow club members, many of whom were his students. When they learned that Lyonya’s wife and son were coming unprepared for that spike of Siberian cold, they eagerly offered to help.
It was a late evening when they came to their new home. Lyonya finally received the order for one room in a two-room apartment in one of the college campus buildings. It was common for more than one family to live in the same apartment and share a kitchen and a bathroom. The family of another college professor had already occupied the second room.
Their room was huge and almost empty, with a large undressed window overlooking the college park. The window had a wide sill that Lyonya used as a bookshelf and as a work table. The only furniture was an old wooden stool in front of the window and two military-style metal beds, covered with thin mattresses, linens, and blankets that Lyonya borrowed from the student’s dormitory.
Sasha fell asleep at once. The next morning he woke up late, after Lyonya already left for work. At night, Lyonya assembled the children-size dinner table and chair – a last-minute gift from Uncle Moshe. On that table, Lisa put a bouquet of wildflowers that Lyonya prepared for her arrival.
Lisa was unpacking their baggage, complaining aloud that there was no closet or a dresser where she could place their stuff; that the railroad container was not there yet; that there was no pot in the kitchen and she didn’t know how she would boil eggs for breakfast and that she might need to boil them in the teapot; and that she had no choice but to leave all their clothes in the suitcases. At some point, she stopped complaining, sat on that children-size chair, and started weeping.
At that very moment, they heard a knock at the door and in came a couple in their 50s, holding a few packets.
“Good Morning,” said the man. “My name is Mark Rosenberg. I am Lyonya’s colleague, but from a different department, and this is my wife, Inna.”
Inna interrupted. “Mark has a class soon and has to leave, but I will stay with you for a while, would you mind? We know from Lyonya that your container did not come yet. We are living in the same building and I collected some things that could be helpful for your first days. Mark, we’ll see you later, OK?”
They became the best of friends from day one. Mark and Inna evacuated to Novosibirsk in 1941, with Mark’s research institute. Later he became the head of one of the college’s departments. Unlike his wife, knowledgeable and practical in everyday life, Mark was a scientist and professor for whom the life outside his work was a kind of mystery.
Mark and Sasha happened to have a birthday on the same day and for the next decade, their birthdays were always celebrated together, starting with all their guests in one apartment and ending in another.
It was the dawn of a new day.
But that will be another story.
