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| 1998, Volume 4, No.1(8) pages 6-9 |
ZINAIDA
M. Gruzinova
I first met
Zinaida in a shop packed with people. Actually we were in line for liver, which
was a rare thing to find in shops at the time. Maybe, I should not have started
my story with a notorious description of food scarcity problem, and maybe my
reader will be disappointed or even hurt. But what could I do for it? As they
say, that's the naked truth. Of course, if I only had wanted to please the
reader all along, I'd have called all my imagination to offer this meeting scene
in some other place.
But I would
never do it just because it all happened in the real life already and I can't
help it. Besides, we live in the city, where shop lines add much to its
landscape indeed. Because it's people of the city mainly, women who just come
to get some food and feed their families. So they have to stand in lines for
something tasty and yet inexpensive.
These days,
shops in Moscow are full of visiting guests from other places mainly from rural
regions of the Russian province, where houses stand abandoned in many numbers.
They have left their homes to come and fill up lines in Moscow shops. So food
has been hard to find. It looks like we first create a problem and then try to
solve it. But it is just talking of that, nothing more. And now it's all about
her, Zinaida.
She was a
little thin woman. She looked very fragile in her strange oversized rabbit's fur
cap, which made her look like a teenage girl indeed. Whatever she told me I only
understood one thing. She had come to Central Moscow to get her salary. She said
she worked as a cleaning woman in one of Moscow ministries. It was her second
job at the time. Her principle job was the construction site, where she painted
walls as she told me. Her salary was good enough but she tried to have some odd
job as well. Anyway she had to work hard to raise her two daughters, but the
time I met her she had been an invalid of labor. Now she could not work very
much like she did before.
We talked for
about 2 hours while we stood in the line. Of course I know that the job of a
wall painter is difficult. But recently I was thinking about it and I was
shocked to learn that the paints they used on the job are a mere poison. And I
thought just how they could stand it for years. And also I thought if the paint
makers had to work with these harmful paints during a year or so, then probably
they would be able to offer less harmful paints after all. But in the meantime
the paints are still the same. One day Zinaida fell ill. She became a labor
invalid, when she was still young. Word. by word Zinaida told me every- thing
about her simply modest life. She was born in a village somewhere in the Kursk
province. After the war, when she was 14, she and three sisters had to move for
fear of famine. The father died from wounds shortly after the war, and the
mother was permanently ill as she had been working hard and recklessly during
the wartime just like many did. So she decided to send all her daughters to a
place near Moscow where her distant relatives lived. "You'll never believe me",
she once told me, "but our family never ate enough bread in the wartime and ever
after. Some-' times we had to gather sorrel with some herbs. Then mother mixed
it with some starch powder and baked some cakes. When we got them hot and
crispy, we had a real feast. But when cakes got cool, they were hard to bite.
That's that. But we were happy to eat what we had, so was the life. One day we
went to leave our poor home for the city." And now that she felt ill fated with
all her health problems at hand, Zinaida sometimes complained to her old mother
why she hadn't kept her youngest daughter with her in the village. She was sure
that they could have lived by a meager food and survived anyway. But every time
she re- covered her senses, she understood that it just had happened so and
there was nobody to blame for it. Mother obviously did not want any harm to her
kids. She only wanted to save them from troubles. But life was harder. Zinaida
just felt revived when she remembered her native place. She could find beautiful
words to describe it. As I listened to her exciting story she told me with a bad
cough and with some difficulty in breathing, I tried to imagine how she would
have looked like if she had stayed in her native home provided that they had a
fairly good living as well. Surely the country women usually work very hard in
the home and on the collective farm, so they get old before their counterparts
in town, Physical labor can make them look older but they usually are much
stronger than townswomen. That's that. So I was looking at her eyes blue and gay
despite her poor health. The blue eyes underlined her pale face as I watched it
and thoug11t it was just a very un- usual face that seems to look at you from
far beyond, There is some doom as it shows in the face. The one who wears such a
face is still alive but he is like not with us. Such a sad mask face. But I
wanted to imagine her a young country woman. And I saw her white clean skin and
blue eyes and her silk rye hair and I understood she could have been a good
dancer singing good folk songs, equally good at work and at rest, And how many
lads she might have turned the head in her own time! But she had a different
life. She knew no free time in her youth nor she lived in her parental sweet
home, but she spent her life in a big noisy city with paved streets where she
was among strange indifferent people. But how hard her life was we shall see
below.
So Zinaida
came to her father's sister near Moscow, and she sheltered her. The girl began
to keep up the house and watch after her aunt's child. Besides, she did all the
washing, cleaning and cooking in the house. As a matter of fact she never was
idle. Still she always had food to eat, yes, she was never hungry, but she was
still a kid, and had to work like grownups. So she always got tired. Once she
was rocking the baby in the carriage and she suddenly felt asleep. This happened
outside the house where she lived. Soon the baby suddenly woke up and fell out
of the carriage. It was crying very loudly, but Zinaida was still fast asleep
having a dream. She saw her taking a swim in the river together with her girl
friends on a very hot day. So they were having a real good time. They were
laughing and shouting all the time. It was a great fun indeed. In the meantime
the neighboring women picked up the crying baby and took it away. Then they
gathered around the sleeping girl and started to laugh. The girl woke up and
saw people around looking and laughing at her. Then she saw the carriage
was empty. She was seized by fear and burst out crying bitterly. Of course the
mother of the baby knew it from the women at once. Her husband was very tough.
He told her to go, and her relatives decided to send the girl to work in
tiberculosis hospital in Sokolniki. She was 15 at the time. So she began to work
there. She had to eat up all food scraps from the plates of the sick patients. I
was really scared to hear this story. Just think! The young girl was eating food
after TB patients. "And you didn't pick up TB, Zinaida?" -I exclaimed. "No, I
didn't", she said simply. "Maybe God saved me for my honesty. Some others told
me just to steal some meat or chopstick like they did. They said the sick men
were to die soon any- way. No I never. I only picked up the leftovers." Zinaida
lived in the hostel. Those were the good days for her youth. That's what she
told me. Once she even sang me this song, "I put a seed in the ground. It then
gave young growth. noise were the days in my green years." So she finished her
song and gave a coy smile. Then she took off her strange cap and she looked very
young at the moment so that I pitied her. Now I think she could have been a
medical nurse as she was kind and very smart. But over the time in the hospital
she failed not to be afraid of blood sight, and she just could not help it.
Probably she was fit for that. Later she met a kind handsome man who never
smoked or drank alcohol. She was looking for her own family. So they went to
work at the construction site to earn them- selves a flat. Anal they got it
made. And they had two nice daughters there. But her husband died untimely 8
years before I met her. "It's alright now. The daughters have grown, the younger
will be in the 10th grade this year. The elder girl is 21 now. She's been
married for a year already. Her husband has three rooms in his flat. It's a good
family. And my daughter is alright by there. Her man, he's a good ~man. They
seem to have everything they need. Now it's the time for me to live in peace."
But her health, I wished she could have it a little better. She evidently had a
heart problem. Sometimes she even lost her voice. Her feet often swelled so much
that she could not feel them. Soon after Zinaida went back to work, she had a
word out with her superior.
For she wanted an
easy job now, but the man insisted she should remain on the construction site
and paint her walls again. But Zinaida got the upper hand after all when she
came to the City district council and said, "It looks like they wanted me so bad
as long as I was in good health. But now I am sick and they want me out!" At
last they gave her a job she could do. But then came another problem: she should
think of her pension. It happened so that Zinaida had to work a little longer
before she could resign. Certainly she wanted to get a good pension which she
had deserved and rightfully expected. But the problem was she had a low salary
at the time. She was afraid to bum on her daughters when she was old. As Zinaida
spoke of her life, I forgot about every- thing indeed. But when she became
silent I felt fit to rush out of the stuffy shop. What the hell was with the
liver... But she resumed her story and I couldn't help but listen. Honestly I
just couldn't walk out on her now. I decided to listen till she finished to
unfold her life story .And besides, she did it with some artistry though she
never meant to move me. Anyway she was telling me such personal things as if she
had blown me a .long time be- fore. So she didn't expect me to be surprised or
pity her. I was very interested to hear things she told me as I felt her story
was very typical of her generation. All her trials and tribulations more or less
were not strange to me at all and if so I felt them close to me. Although
Zinaida was older than me but I remembered when country people were trying to
escape to Moscow. I was still a child, but I saw many abandoned houses near
Moscow. I felt some fear and sadness as I saw empty windows or rusty hinges and
loose gates. Everything looked rundown and shabby. Certainly I couldn't realize
then where we all should get in our life after all. When I got older I suffered
as I didn't know how to improve this terrible situation. As I listened, I
thought somewhere at the bottom of my mind, -Listen, listen, it's life itself
that gives you a dear present. The life of Zinaida sounded like a story to be
described in letters of a book. The writer then would only have to put down
every word she said. So I stood and listened. And I imagined there was nobody
else but two of us, me and this unhappy woman. She had deserved a better life,
her daughters had
