“They stood and applauded. But— “Another minute. Still applauded. They were standing up, and still applauding, as Stalin stood in front of the lectern and listened with a humble smile on his face, the epitome of humility. Another minute. And still applauded.
“No one knew what to do. They waited for a signal from the Chairman to cease, but no such signal came from the humble and diminutive man. Another minute went by. And still they stood and applauded.
“It had now been eleven minutes. And no one knew what to do. Someone had to stop applauding. But who?
“Twelve minutes of applause.
“Thirteen minutes of applause. And still he stood there. And still they stood there.
“Fourteen minutes.
“Fifteen minutes.
“Finally, at the fifteen-minute mark, the man in the front, the Secretary of Transportation, stopped. As soon as he stopped, the entire auditorium fell mute.
“The following week the Secretary of Transportation was shot for treason.”
“Tania!” exclaimed a startled Dasha. “That was supposed to be funny?”
“Yes,” said Tatiana. “Funny, as in, cheer up, things could be worse. You could be the Secretary of Transportation.”
“You are insane!” Dasha moved Tatiana off her and got up to go get a cigarette. “Where in the world do you hear this stuff from?”
“Blanca. Berta. Oleg. Deda. Everyone just loves to tell me things.”
“I forbid you to talk to them.”
“Who are you, my mother?”
Dasha fell mute as she lit up.
Tatiana patted her arm. “I’m sorry. When is Mama leaving, by the way? She punished me again, you know. I can’t go out for four days.”
“You deserve it, digging holes in the ground for her to fall in.”
“Hole wasn’t meant for her, was meant for Pasha.”
“I didn’t see Pasha sticking up for you as Mama was beating you with the stinging nettles.”
Tatiana rubbed her sore legs. She didn’t know what else to say. “Dasha ...are you upset?”
“Why should I be upset?” Dasha looked so upset when she said it.
Tatiana didn’t reply, studying her sister.
“Stay out of adults’ business, Tanechka, all right?” Dasha whispered. “We’ll figure it out without you.”
Tatiana cleared her throat. “Can I ask you a question?”
“What?”
“Do you think I’m going to start developing soon? Growing . . . things?”
The sadness gone from Dasha’s eyes, the twinkle back, Dasha chuckled and said, “Girly-girl, come outside.” They went down the steps to the yard. “Come into the hammock,” Dasha said, “and climb on me.”
Happily Tatiana climbed in and lay in the crook of her sister’s arm while Dasha swung them back and forth. “Tanechka,” Dasha asked fondly, “what’s your hurry?”
“Oh, no, no, you misunderstand,” said Tatiana. “Just the opposite. I’m wondering how many decent years I’ve got left.”
“What—”
“Well, yes. Look at the magnificent swamp you’re in, all because you have boobs and dark hair on your body. I’m just wondering how much longer before the good life is over for me, too.”
Dasha hugged her. “Tania,” she said, “you are the funniest girl.” She laughed. “Who in the world is going to give you dark hair? You’ll be lucky to get any hair at all, but it’s never going to be dark, is it?”
“I already have a little hair,” Tatiana said defiantly. “And you don’t know. Mama said that when she was young she had blonde hair—and look at her now.”
“Yes, Mama said that. However, I’m skeptical. And Babushka said that when she got married she weighed only forty-seven kilo.”
“Stop it right now,” said Tatiana. The sisters laughed quietly. They lay in the hammock in the dark, swinging and swaying.
“I just want to find some love, Tanechka,” Dasha whispered. “Can you hear me? That’s all. Some real love.”
The dim kerosene light from the porch was flickering out. The crickets were loud, the air was fresh. Tatiana had fallen asleep, unworried, unfettered, untainted, untouched, and young.
Two Girls in the Trees at Night
“Tania, are you sleeping?” It was Saika.
Tania was sleeping. Happily in her bed. She groaned. Oh, no, not again.
“Come on. Come outside with me.”
When would the girl stop lurking at her window? “What time is it?”
“Late. Come on. They’ll never know.”
“Are you joking? They check on me every five minutes. Besides I’m punished.”
“Why are you asleep so early? I thought you were reading.”
Saika wanted her asleep late, awake early. Was Tatiana ever going to get any peace? Reluctantly she lifted her head.
“Climb out. We’ll go in my yard.”
“And do what?”
“Nothing. Talk. I got something.”
Tatiana slept in her underwear and vest now that Saika knocked at her window every morning and night. She slipped on a dress and climbed out. They crossed the yard, and flitted through the nettles and the broken fence pieces. They climbed a tree. In the tree Tatiana sat on a thick branch above Saika who perched on a lower one. She pulled out two cigarettes and handed one to Tatiana. “I stole these from Mama. Come on, take one.”
“You stole from your mother?”
Saika laughed. “She doesn’t care; it’s just cigarettes. It’s not her immortal soul as you put it.”
“So you do draw the line then.” Tatiana did not take the offered cigarettes.
“Oh, come on. Don’t be a ninny. Everybody does it.”
“What, steal from their mothers?”
“No, smoke.” Proudly she lit up and added, “I’ve been smoking since I was nine.”
“That’s great.” Why was she in the trees? Truth was . . . curiosity about the scars brought Tatiana out. Saika’s scars were not just a punishment gone wrong. They were not an overzealous parent disciplining a wayward child. No, Saika was not beaten—she was branded. Her back was her fleur de lis. It was her brand of monstrous dishonor; no one who saw those could ever not think with a frightened heart of what a young girl could possibly have done to have warranted such a cicatrix of shame.
Night was quiet. The leaves in the trees where they sat smelled of woodsy acorns. From above, Tatiana watched Saika inhale and exhale, ash falling on her thighs. Cigarette smoke, blossoms, fresh water and moist earth, moist grass. Maybe it was things like pinching cigarettes from her mother that got Saika into trouble. Tatiana didn’t know. She didn’t want to speculate, she wanted to ask outright. She was curious herself, and Pasha had been prodding her for days. “Come on, Tania. She likes you. She’s always Tania this and Tania that. She’ll tell you anything. You can’t just not ask.”
Dasha said, “He’s right. It’s rude not to ask. The worst thing that’s happened to a girl, and you don’t even ask?”
“Wouldn’t she tell me herself if she wanted me to know?” Tatiana had said.
“No! Asking shows you’re interested.”
Even Babushka said to ask. (Mama didn’t care, but Mama, to her credit, didn’t care about much.) Only Deda, reading quietly on the couch, stayed out of it until the end when he glanced up and commanded, “Tania, stay out of it. It’s not your business.”
So Deda decreed. And now Tatiana sat in the tree and tried to forget Deda’s words because she really wanted to ask. She heard Saika laugh softly. “Do you think I disconcerted your friends the other day? Haven’t they ever seen a girl naked? You go naked in front of them, don’t you, Tania?”
“I’m a child.”
“Do you want to stay a child?” Saika whispered.
“What?”
Shaking her head, Saika smoked, while Tatiana carefully formulated her questions.
“Well?” Saika said. “What do you want? Do you want to touch them?”
Now
, Tatiana was disconcerted. “Touch what?” she asked faintly.
“The scars, silly.” Saika laughed, pulling down her dress to expose her bare back.
Reaching down, Tatiana gently touched one of the rough-hewn ridges, but when she did, Saika flinched and moved away. Tatiana reached out again to put her palm on Saika’s back, to comfort her with her hand, but Saika flinched again, emitted a tiny groan and moved farther away, nearly off the branch, far enough so that no part of Tatiana could touch any part of her.
“What’s the matter?” Tatiana said. “I’m not...hurting you, am I?”
“No, no,” Saika said. “Just . . .” But before she pulled up her dress, she turned around to Tatiana, her breasts rising with her heavy breath. “Do you want to touch them?” she said throatily, and now it was Tatiana’s turn to move uncomfortably away.
“No.” Tatiana swallowed. “But . . . how did you get those scars, Saika?”
Sighing, Saika pulled up her dress, covered herself. “I did something my father didn’t like.”
“What?”
“Just...I was bad...”
“Is that why you came here? Why you left Saki?”
Saika looked at Tatiana with surprise. “You think because of a small personal matter my father would abandon his post?”
“His post as a goat-herder?” Tatiana rejoined with equal surprise.
Her eyes dark, Saika said, “Our leaving had nothing to do with this. This didn’t happen in Saki, anyway, it happened right before. But when our work was done, we left and went where there was work. Nothing to do with this.”
Tatiana waited. “What small personal matter?” she said at last.
“I took up with a local boy,” said Saika casually. “My father was upset with me.”
“You took up with a local boy,” Tatiana repeated without inflection.
“Yes.”
“And your father beat you like that?” Tatiana tried to say it without inflection. She failed.
Saika smiled. There was no emotion in her eyes. “What do you think your father would do to you, Tania,” she asked, “for taking up with a local boy?”
“I don’t know,” Tatiana replied dully. “He might not be very happy with the local boy.”
“Who says my father was happy with the local boy?”
When Tatiana didn’t speak—when Tatiana was speechless—Saika said, “What surprises you, here, Tanechka? My taking up with the local boy? Or the beating?”
Tatiana was very careful when she answered. “It’s the reaction to the action that surprises me,” she said slowly, still thinking. “I really like physics, Saika. Like my grandfather’s math, classical physics is a good, concrete science, with good absolute laws that govern matter—solid things that have mass and occupy space. Things you can touch and see. There is a law in physics that says that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. I like that law a lot.” Tatiana broke off. She listened to too many adult conversations these days and she didn’t want to say to Saika that this made her think of human justice more than she wanted to. “Almost as if Newtonian science,” she continued excitedly, “was founded, was sprung whole from principles that govern things that are not science, that are things we can’t touch and see. Invisible, irrational things that govern human stories, that rule over myth and legend and fairy tales and our behavior. Things like: All our actions have meaning—and therefore have consequences.”
“That’s right,” said Saika. “Well, that makes sense. I did wrong and I was punished. Perfect Newton. An eye for an eye.”
“I don’t think your father was trying to punish you,” Tatiana said. “I think he was trying to kill you.”
Saika sat up straighter in the tree. “Are you judging him for treating me too harshly?”
“I’m not judging at all, no.”
“Oh, Tania.” Shrugging, Saika lit another cigarette. “You might understand physics, but you clearly don’t understand many things about human beings. You don’t understand Azeri justice.”
Tatiana was looking at the branches and not at Saika. “Is Azeri justice unique?”
Saika smiled her knowing smile again. “How do you know,” she said, “that it wasn’t an eye for an eye?”
After a moment of stunned silence, Tatiana said, “You know what? I’ve got to get back. Or I’ll be beaten without mercy.”
“Is that what you think?” Saika’s tone suddenly changed. It became cold, almost menacing. “Is that how you think I was beaten—without mercy?”
Tatiana didn’t say anything. Clearly that is how Saika had been beaten.
“Where in your little Newtonian theories does it say anything about mercy?” Saika persisted acidly. “Who tempers his physics with mercy, Tatiana?”
Tatiana was quiet, prickles of fear crawling on her back like venomous ants.
“I disgraced and dishonored my family and was appropriately punished,” said Saika.
“Okay, Saika.” Tatiana’s gaze was on the ground below.
“How do you know my father’s justice wasn’t steeped in mercy?” Saika leaned in. “My father says he had mercy on me. What do you think of that? Judge that, why don’t you?”
“I’m nobody. I’m judging no one,” Tatiana said, jumping off the tree, two meters down, to Saika’s gasp and subsequent applause. Without turning around, she clambered through the fence and the nettles and climbed through her window. She wished she could lock it.
Sleep would not come for a long time to Tatiana.
A Small Matter of a Large Cherry Tree
Pasha heard Tatiana before he saw her. Volodya and Kirill Iglenko were standing at the foot of a large cherry tree at the end of the village road. Tatiana’s voice was chiming, “Ready? Catch!” Volodya and Kirill were looking up with their mouths gaping open. Pasha saw something small and red fall from the tree. Kirill caught it with his hand and popped it into his mouth. Another cherry fell. Volodya caught it, popped it into his mouth. They never stopped looking up at Tatiana. Pasha, as he came closer, could see her bare legs propped up on two branches half a meter apart. He shook his head and quickened his step, cursing under his breath. When he got to the bottom of the tree, without even looking up at his sister, without saying a word to her, or to them, he shoved them hard out of the way of the falling cherries, pushed them away even though they were bigger, and said, “What are you doing?”
“What? Nothing. She’s getting us cherries,” said Volodya, blinking innocently.
“Get the hell out of here.” Pasha lowered his voice. “Who are you talking to? I’m not Tania. I told you and told you, stay away from her. Now go.”
“Pasha—”
“I said go!”
They slowly walked away, regretfully waving to Tatiana.
“Pasha,” Tatiana called to him, “what did you say to poor Volodya? Why did you shoo him like a fly?”
Pasha paused and then looked up. He looked up quickly, in the hope that maybe he was wrong, maybe this one time, his sister’s dress was not hitched to her hips, maybe she had tucked it under herself, maybe her bare white panties and the whites of the insides of her thighs were not exposed to two teenaged boys as they stood gawking up at her while she dropped cherries into their mouths.
But he was not wrong.
“Tania, get down,” Pasha said, looking away with a sigh.
“Why? Come up here. Want some cherries?”
“No!”
She threw some down to him anyway, and he swatted them away and said resignedly, “Just get down, will you?”
She jumped down like a cat in a floral sundress, landing on the balls of her feet with bent knees, with hardly a noise when she touched the ground. As she straightened up, she looked into Pasha’s face. “What’s wrong with you?”
“Nothing,” he said. “Tania, when will you—” He broke off. Her face was flushed and smiling and happy and he just could not.
“When will I what?”
“Forget it, nothing. Let’s go. Das
ha is making potatoes.”
“Oh, potatoes! Well, let me run. I’ve never had that delicacy before. Wherever did she get them?”
“Go ahead, mock. Can’t eat mock for dinner, Tania.”
“I’ll eat cherries instead,” said Tatiana, shoving her brother but he was not in a playful mood.
When they got home, Tatiana disappeared to her room to read, and Pasha went to Dasha who was outside peeling potatoes into the bushes. He slumped down by her. “Dasha, what are you planning to do about Tania?”
“Oh, no, what did she do now?”
“You know where I found her again?”
Dasha laughed. “In the cherry tree?”
Pasha nodded with exasperation.
“So talk to her, Pasha.” She smiled.
“You’re her sister. That conversation is much better left to the girls.”
“You think I should talk to her?”
“She is fourteen next week! She can’t be that oblivious anymore. She is not a child.”
Dasha was still smiling when she said quietly, “But Pasha, she is a child.”
“Well, it’s not appropriate.”
“So talk to her.”
“I can’t. You talk to her.”
“You want her to listen to someone? Have Deda talk to her.”
And Deda’s strong voice sounded from the cucumber beds where Dasha and Pasha had not seen him. “I will not be talking to her.” He came out from the cucumber leaves, holding rope in his hands, his thick gray hair disheveled. “I think if you should be talking to anyone, Pasha, it should be to your two friends. After all, it is not Tatiana who is behaving inappropriately.”
Dasha and Pasha said nothing.
Deda studied the two of them for a few moments and then said, “Have you two got nothing better to do? Once you talk to her, she won’t be able to be friends with them anymore. You want to ruin her summer? Oh, and also—she’ll never horseplay with you, or tickle you, or swim in the river with you, or tie you up, or kiss you unexpectedly or sit on your lap again. She will never again do any of the things she does, because she will have eaten from your cursed cherry tree. Is that what you want?”
They said nothing.
“I didn’t think so. Your sister,” said Deda, “knows everything she needs to. Dasha, why don’t you ask her to tell you how to behave. Better yet, leave the child alone. And Pasha, talk to the wild beasts you call your friends—or I will.”