Anxious Memory

By Alexander Kalmanov

This book is about 38 years of my life in the USSR. And if you do not delve into the details - the normal life of an ordinary person. I grew up in the difficult post-war years in a good family. Graduated from school. Became a doctor. Was in the army. I worked as an ambulance doctor in my beautiful St. Petersburg. I was a doctor on ships of the merchant marine. I taught. And I completed my practice in Russia as a family doctor. But ... I lived in the country in which 800 years of tyranny ruled. And it changes so much everything I said above that to call it a normal life is to lie. Russians do not understand the word freedom. 800 years of personal suppression raised a nation of potencial slaves. It has changed the awareness of oneself as a person. It has taken away faith. And today it does not bring happiness. This is what my book is about.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Alexander Kalmanov
• Release date: Nov 9, 2020
• ISBN: 9781393210825

Book preview

Dedicated  to  my

gentle and affection

close and faithful

intelligent and beautiful

wife and a friend !!

Contents 

Introduction...... ............page   4

Part   1  ........................page  10

Part  2  .......................page  166

Part  3  .......................page  179

Part  4  .......................page 236

Part  5  .......................page  278

Part  6  .......................page  330

Introduction !

Several years ago, when I returned from the third business trip on a road, I4 felt so tired that I asked for a three-week leave from my editor and bought a 14-day cruise to the Panama Canal. I knew this was not one of the most interesting cruises, but that was not what I was looking for. A two-week vacation on an ocean liner promised to bring me peace to my mind I needed so much, sound laid back sleep and complete loneliness among the crowd of thousands.

A huge white as white can be liner greeted me with bustle, long lines, music and a very specific mixture of smell of ocean air and port dust mixed with industrial oils and sweat of human bodies. Hardly contained expectations vibrated in an air around me.

After I filled out a few forms and received the plastic key, I boarded the ship, found my cabin. It’s good I spent some more money and now I would stay alone. I put my gentleman’s luggage in the wall closet and sat on the neatly made bed. Now I had to free myself from the memories of the last trips. I must remove the tension that was holding me the last two months and a half, ...remove the tension.

I closed my eyes. First, I relaxed my neck, then my shoulders, then... and so on until I felt I could not keep my body in a straight position anymore. I laid back on the blanket and fell asleep.

I woke up in an hour and a half. Checked myself from inside out. I felt rested. My tension was gone. I got from the bed and stepped briskly towards relaxation. Once on the main deck, I realized how a bee feels in a hive. People scurried around, interrupting themselves. As it should be on the first day, everyone took pictures of everything.

Stand here.

Oh, look how beautiful!

Excuse me, would you please take a picture of us?

Indeed, three-year-old liner was a beautiful ship. Designed to surprise, delight, conquer to when even thought to travel on the feet would disappear from your mind. For relatively little money, where

else you will be fed, transported from the unseen to the unseen, and during the travel time - shows, movies, dances, music, and classical too, and even to be put to night sleep in very comfortable cabins.

Wonderful!! But I was looking for something else - solitude.

I knew from my old experience that the least visited place on cruise ships is the stern. During the daytime, only old athletes running at a brisk pace would slip through. And after seven in the evening there is only a view of the white lambs of boiling water disappearing into the night. I dragged in there a comfortable chair, put it almost to the railings, put my feet on them, and even smacked my lips with pleasure. The rest has begun! I took with me several books from the Russian classics, being sure that I will have time to read them in the next two weeks of doing nothing.  I was wrong!

When the next day, after dinner, I came to my seat it was taken. The chair where I supposed to seat and enjoy reading was occupied by the mature balding man, seventy or seventy-five years old, who was dressed in an impeccable tracksuit from an expensive store. A presentable man was idly twirling a glass of red wine in his long, arthritic fingers. I shrugged my shoulders in indignation, but in a way for him not to see it, and wanted to leave, but something held me back. He didn’t see me. He was looking at the escaping waves, but he did not follow it like it normally happened. His eyes froze over the water, but did not follow the waves. He looked directly at something just a few inches over the water, looked at something I did not see. Suddenly I noticed his muscle on his right cheek was twitching. But he either ignored it, or...?

Sorry! Are you alright? Do you need help?

He turned his head to the right, just noticing me.

I'm alright! Why did you ask? Neither his voice nor his posture showed any displeasure.

"You looked at the water, but did not see it. And then I noticed that ...

That my right cheek is trembling. It's a bad habit to play with this muscle when I am deep in my thoughts. You are observant!  Actor?!

Journalist.

You have an accent like mine. And you are holding a book in Russian. Are you Russian too?

Yes! Tampa, Florida.  And you? If I am not intrusive?

Much further north. I live in New York. But please, join me, if you are not against the company of an old Jew.

Well, young or old, two Jews always have something to talk about ...

(Well, that was a shot right in the target.) "

I’ll bring another chair.

Two minutes later we were sitting side by side.

Why aren't you where everybody else is?  -  I asked him after the usual short exchange of biographical data.

And you?

You know!  I worked so hard on the last several business trips that reading two lines, taking a nap for five minutes and surrendering to the thoughtlessness of the waves - that's all I would like from Destiny today.

He looked at me attentively for a little longer than my words demanded.

I am a doctor. - he said - People are my profession, but sometimes I also want to run away from them even for a few weeks, like now. So we have the same problem, haven’t we?

He smiled, and then slowly turned his face fully to me and asked.

Do you really believe in Destiny, or it was just a way of saying? 

From the look on his face and the tone in which he asked, I understood he was asking seriously.

What can I say!? It always seems to me that someone else is present in my life. Someone who corrects me, but so unobtrusively that I still cannot explain this feeling to myself, and I cannot define it as someone or something. I called it Destiny. For me, finding a word is always important, the profession obliges. And the word ‘Destiny' seems to explain everything. What do you think?

I don’t think. I know. Destiny is not a word. She is a very serious Lady.  And the lucky one whom she favors. Very lucky!

Ya, sure!  You're right!

He realized I did not take his word seriously and said.

My whole life, from the day of birth, and I hope until death, is determined by Destiny. Neither I nor you, no one has the power to live as he/she wants. As you SUPPOSED to, this is how you will live your life. And so not sound unfounded, and if you have the time and desire, I can tell you the story of my life. And you, I hope, will believe that Destiny - is very serious matter.

I made myself comfortable.

I have plenty of time and even more of interest. How can I miss such an opportunity? This is my bread. I would not forgive myself.

"Have you ever wondered what memory is? I am a doctor, but I find it difficult to accept that memory is chemical-electrical stimuli, with the help of which we, with no tension and often without our desire, write the history of our life in our brain cells, with the smallest details. And then this ‘Anxious Memory’ returns us to the past. Makes us rethink our own life, understand ourselves based on the many thousands of details it obligingly provides us, whether or not we want it. And then sarcastically asks - are we satisfied with our life?!

And the older we get, the more persistently memory asks us this question. Sometimes it even seems to me: is it not preparing us for ..., well, if you like, for the Day of Judgment? When only Truth is expected from you. Here I am more and more often going over my life, and sometimes it is easy for me to look at a bright light, and sometimes I want to close my eyes.

I won't undress myself in front of you. I'm sorry, some of it is a personal pain. I will tell only the truth within the limits of my dignity, without offending myself." 

Smiled.

Are you still willing to listen?

I just nodded my head.

During most of the trip, he talked about his life. And the longer I listened to him, the more I became amazed - how lucky one person can be to live a life that would be enough for several people. And so filled with events it seemed utterly necessary to write about. For several days I walked under the impression, and then I could not resist myself.

Why don't you write a book about your life?

Oh, really?!  Who is going to be interested in this?!  And I'm not a writer. Plus, I don't have time. There is almost no time left.

Here I can help you, if you don’t mind!

He looked at me thoughtfully again, then smiled.

So write it! Then you will send it to me and I will read about myself at my leisure. Besides, do you know how memory works? It holds it, and holds it, but when your brain lets it go, it will be gone forever. But please change names. Write it! You are professional, you can do it better.

What if I am serious?

I'm serious too! Do it, I don’t mind! No, I really don’t mind ...  -  he repeated, looking into my doubting face.  -  It will be interesting to read about myself. I would say - spooky even."

I held out my hand to him and he shook it. The contract was signed.

Here is his story.

CHAPTER  1   

The sky seemed angry ... It looked gloomily with heavy watery eyelids made of the clouds at the people swarming below, thinking - to send them to hell or to bring down its own melancholy forcing them to scatter under the icy streams of rain, thus making happier itself. The city lay below, tired of the passing day, lazily breathing the chilly air. Not at all ready for what soon should have made it shudder with horror. The evening of March 28, 1941, flowed away tensely. The night of the 29th was getting ready to take over. Fear hung over the country, despite the loud bullshit promises from the loudspeakers about a quick victory in the event of... And few citizens were ready to raise proudly heads knowing there is no truth behind the words from the patriotic song-spell  -  If tomorrow will be war, if tomorrow will be fight .... Even the military, to which my father and my uncle were belong to, have been frightened by this song-lie. The country was not ready for war.

Nestling on the powerful branches of an old maple, birds screamed incessantly. They were not afraid of the leaden sky overhead. They were not afraid of a possibility of war. Looking into the windows of the delivery room, they empathized with the mixture of pain and anticipation, the groans and tortured smiles of women giving birth on cold tables covered with many times used sheets, ready to bring new inhabitants into this world.

One woman stood at the window and looked at the birds. Her teeth clenched the window sill that had peeled off by time. It was easier that way to fight pain when it became intolerable. She was my mom.

I was born at the Leningrad Pediatric Medical Institute, which I graduated from twenty-four years later. Scattered among the alleys running between old maples, lindens, oaks and other deciduous trees I know a little, the old, long time not re-painted buildings of the country's only Center for Children's Diseases kept within their walls the faith, pain, suffering, joy and sorrow of many generations. The sickest children from all over Russia were brought here. The last hope lived in this place.

I remember my birthday, but vaguely. Do you remember yours? Especially if you had just two minutes to breathe the fresh air. It was scary, yes!  Well, you know, after such a long peaceful development in silence and calm of the womb, you suddenly underwent punching and forming, like a piece of dough before baking, pushed out of the safe in mama life into who knows where, and along the way would be strangled with an umbilical cord, then you swallow amniotic fluid, like the submarine in diving, and there was somebody yelling with scary voice - mommy, I can’t handle it anymore. Do you think I can!? Of course it was scary!

Yes, you probably know this, though it is not clear where it comes from, feeling of fear of TOMORROW...  The first impression was LIGHT. Even through my closed eyelids, I could feel the force of its pressure. I know for sure that LIGHT meets us on both sides of our LIFE. It's good! That means nobody hide anything from us. We ourselves then create our own corners and nooks, into which it, the light, does not penetrate. We have no one to blame for our sins, although sometimes we really want to. But that for later. Now - I was just born!

When the umbilical cord was cut I realized that there was

no way back and started yelling. Everyone pounded - he is shouting, he is shouting, strong boy. Well, that I was a boy wasn’t necessary to go to ask a fortune-teller. It was enough to look at me downwards. But why that insinuation that I am strong. It was insulting. I screamed with fear and dangled like a sack on the outstretched hand of some bloke in a white hat. And they scoff. I yelled louder, now from resentment, but I wet that son-of-a-gun. As my childhood friend said - if you have enough urine, you don’t need lots of brain. Who are we when we are born? What do we know? Do we have a memory of the past? Do we appreciate what is happening around us? On those questions only we newborns have answers, but we can’t speak yet. And if to tell the truth, you see us, you just don't understand us. Look, look, he smiles!  Please, stop it. At this age they don't smile, they grimace. It's your face is one ugly grimace. We do smile! Not to you though, who needs you We smile to ourselves, nod to our thoughts, remembering WHERE we came from. Don't giggle, you pimply, I'm not talking about what is smeared on your face. I am talking about what was before. You, old jerk, already forgot what is the Big Past. But I, I still remember very well. That's why I swing my legs. (Did you think I'm learning to walk?!) OK, adults! Did you ever wonder why sometimes it seems like - that has already happened once before, that you have already been in this room, that situation is very similar to another, and now the door will open ... and door opens.’ Don't rack your brains. All this really happened. With you! Not here, but in the life you no longer remember. But I have not forgotten yet. And pay attention. I have not read the Bible and I know nothing about the afterlife. I am a newborn. I still remember THERE, and I am comfortable with it. But what awaits me HERE!?  I don’t want to forget myself in that other dimension ... I want, unlike you, to keep my past in my memory. I know it is possible. It happened. I will tell you about it sometime. But now I am trying to memorize as many details as possible, and I grimace if I feel that something is slipping away, and I am smiling if I remember something... And you call it grimaces!?  If you would have more such grimaces, you will be smarter today... Past teaching us a lot!

Come on, I am angry because I have not yet recovered from the shock. There is saying -  be born again is a synonym for to start life fresh, but I think it means  - go again through the fire, water and copper pipes. Though even this comparison is rather weak.

Well, the body I settled in was born. Finally, we met face to face. Me and she, my mother. Nice woman. She treated me well all this time. True, she loves sweets very much, so I was a little cramped in the womb. I caught up with a lot of weight, and it was unnecessary, alright. But at that time I didn't really pay attention. She was carrying me, I was not carrying myself. By the way, this confirmed the great truth - genetics. It did not disappoint the hopes of my family, except for my father's, whom I met much later. All together, grandpa-grandma-mother-me weighed well over normal. We became friends. As usual, everyone loved me, and I enjoyed the benefits of a child. No one knew what I would grow up into. And it seems that no one asked this question at that time. And I wasn’t care for sure.

‘While child is in the womb, you need to talk to him a lot, let him listen to classical music, etc.’

And where did you adults get this?!  From us. We  - Who Remember - prompted you when you matured. Someone will always object to you it is funny to communicate with someone who does not have a sufficiently developed brain not only to hear but also to understand and to accept. Those people are right, for they are talking about the developing ‘fruit’, the forming flesh. But they don't know about ME! They don't believe in ME. Only Those Who Remember or those who believed us know the corpuscle of energy, what we call the soul, already live in it, in this forming flesh. Able to understand you without words. Ready to meet you and to live one more life with you. Die and return, ‘with' or ‘without' memory of the past which I desperately want to preserve.

I was born right before the war. It happened so I don’t remember the war. I don't remember explosions or cold. I don't remember what hunger is, but I know about it from my grandmother, by the way she persuaded me to finish eating and did not understand what it meant - I’m not hungry. She was like many grandmothers in this world, but she was mine, and therefore better than anyone’s else. And if you do not agree, you are right, your grandmother was better ... for you, but for me ... let's not continue that nonsense - mine was better.

When I first time saw my father, I was four years old. My father and grandfather, like my uncle, spent the whole war at the battle. My uncle didn't come back. He has always lived in our family heart. I was very much look like him in my youth and my grandmother often called me by his name. I kicked up at first, but when I grew wiser, I asked questions and she told me a lot about him. I will talk about my grandfather separately. He was the indisputable authority during the most difficult years of my character formation. He was  the ‘road’ I took when I grew up. And I was not mistaken in choosing this path.

My mom was my mom. She loved me simply, but persistently. I do not remember any hugs or lisps with her little boy, but during my first twelve months of extrauterine existence, she saved my life twice. At three and a half months of age, I developed an abscess located dangerously close to the left carotid artery. There was a war going on. The Pediatric Medical Institute has already been evacuated. Mom was a student there, but did not leave with them. She stayed with her mother and me in the Leningrad. Nevertheless, she found an associate professor with department of surgery who had not left yet and the two of them, in our apartment, operated on me. The professor was pleased, said - a few more days and he could not guarantee the outcome of the operation. I could not survive.

But I want to say - the fact is, if it's too early, then it's too early. When you finish what you came in at this world for, then you will go to where you came from. Everything in our life has a PURPOSE. And this is the main reason all those turns in our life occur. And don't try to understand those turns on the spot. Don’t look for the answers on the bend of events. The answer will come! Only in due time. At the end of 1942, the three of us, along with hundreds of emaciated people, were taken out of besieged Leningrad by train. At one stop, the mother developed diarrhea, which happened often with long-starved people. She runs far away from the train, for there were no toilets in the train. Suddenly train started moving. My grandmother and I remained in it. If mother would not have caught up with the train and had not grabbed the rail of the last carriage, and two soldiers would not have dragged her inside - my grandmother and I would have died of hunger. Mom kept money and jewelry in her purse. She kept it with her all the time for that not to be stolen. You say - she was lucky. But I insist - it's not the time yet.... And when TIME comes, turn back, bow to the Past and calmly go into the Future. I know that many books have been written about this, and I do not pretend to be ‘the first time spoken’. But as a physician I meet with this phenomenon every day - fear of death! ... Live, we will try to help. But if you are going to die, don’t be afraid. You are returning to where you came from. It just would be nice to understand  - why we were here?! But that understanding will come to you at the end of your life ... if you're lucky!! 

I had strayed so far from the story of my mother that I decided to start a new paragraph. To her, and to everyone else from the rest of my family, I will return.

Father! Some human characters cannot be easily told. They must be written out in connection with events. For example, if I write - I did not love my father - it does not paint me well and is not true. I loved him when I was a child until I realized one day that my father didn’t love me and I paid him the same. And this will explain some. But still will not answer the question - why? Therefore, let events speak about him. And since I'm not really going to lie, you will figure it out.

Grandfather!  Talking about him, I will remember and promote my life. He was, as it should be in our family, a Jew. His name was Abram. Abrasha, if you like. Born in 1895, as a boy, in a family of a shoemaker in Orsha. Never smoke after his birth and throughout his entire life. He had three brothers and two sisters. At fifteen, with a letter from his father, he left Russia for London, which still is on the Thames River, to seek happiness with a help from his uncle, whom he never heard of before. With difficulty, but he found him. The uncle asked without tears in his eyes.

Do you want to Become rich or Learn how to become rich.

I want to learn. - my grandfather said without hesitation. 

He was not stupid to be played with.

The uncle, by the way, owned a five-story supermarket in London. So he arranged for my grandfather, means for his nephew, to work as a messenger boy at his store. Four years later, my grandfather became the manager of that whole enterprise. His uncle was also with brains. He knew how to make a strong man from the boy.

Grandpa decided to go back to the Orsha to say goodbye to his relatives.

It was 1914. The war started in the Europe, and the way back to England was only through the Far East. I must say that the grandfather was a stocky and very physically strong young man. He shaved his head from an early age, so he looked much older than his years. And he was smart. He took his childhood friend with him and they moved to the Chinese border. My grandfather straightened his papers for leaving Russia, but his friend did not have official papers for leaving. Therefore, they rode on the roof of the train. Yasha had tuberculosis. Almost near Lake Baikal, in Siberia, they were caught by a military patrol. The young men who were caught with no papers were regarded as deserters and therefor can be imprisoned. My grandfather realized that if he leaves, then I will not be born (as I insisted before - everything was outlined for us in this complete confusion of life) and Yakov would die in prison or at the war from tuberculosis, so he just gave his papers to Yasha  (fortunately, there were no photographs on his papers) who went to America, and my grandfather went to prison.

By this time, my grandpa was in love with my grandmother, with the proud name of Rokhlya-Leia, and in everyday life - Elizaveta, Lizonka, whom, after arriving in England, he thought to invite there as his bride. 

There is a family legend that the Tsar's uncle, Nikolai Nikolaevich, seeing my grandmother arm in arm with my grandfather, stopped the carriage in the middle of the central street of Orsha, called them to him and told grandfather that he had not met such a lovely bride with a soldier in Russia for a long time. Grandfather was not even in uniform.

But back to the story. After the arrest, grandfather found the way to let grandma know where he was and what happened. The character of the grandma was as strong as of the grandfather. She came to the military guardhouse, seduced the guard, gave him drinks, took the keys from the sleeping man, freed my grandfather, and until October 1917 they never saw him.

Only Rokhli-Lei family did not accept my grandfather. His family was no match to them.  But grandmother - she thought he was a sweet soul. So they lived together without official marriage. In 1918, according to the plan, my grandmother gave birth to my mother. (You see how smoothly everything goes, because after my mother - I go). Then she gave birth to two twins, all died before they were two years old. And then my uncle Joseph was born, He disappeared from my life when I was just five months old baby. But I grew up with the common memory of him and our common love for him. He is the hero of my childhood. Those from our neighborhood who remembered him told me how in winter, every morning, in any frost, he went out bare chest to play with a snow. The body was overflowing with muscles. But he was not a bully. At school he was a hooligan, as it should be, but he studied well. Before the war, he graduated from the Artillery Military School. When he went to the war, my grandmother would not let him go. Her mother's heart felt that she would never see him again. He lifted her in his arms, my big grandma, and he carried her on his arms seven miles from the house on Perovskaya to the railway station. The place where his unit was assembled ... His bride come to visit grandma almost until her death in 1960.

At war he was an artillery scout, the one who calls fire on himself. Maybe Konstantin Simonov wrote my favorite poem about him, or maybe that's why it is my favorite - The Son of an Artilleryman.  Almost at the beginning of the war, a group of scouts was coming back from behind the German lines, headed by Senior Lieutenant Joseph, my uncle. They went around a large clearing. And on the other side of the clearing, an army reconnaissance group was coming back as well. Joseph sent the soldier to compare the information with them, but the clearing was under fire cover by fascists, and the soldier was cut down by a burst from a machine gun. Then Joseph crawled on his own. He just got to the soldier, knelt down to turn him over on his stomach, and the Germans shot again, and Joseph got bullets in the face. Army reconnaissance and two from the Joseph group returned and destroyed the german’s group from the flanks. They dragged both of them to the medical battalion. Medics stabilized him and sent him further from the combat zone. Joseph was already on the mend in couple weeks. He even wrote a letter home with the whole story. But one night the temperature rose, he became delirious at night, and being out of consciousness he tore off the bandages from his face. There were not enough staff around. Only at the morning they discovered that he had died from massive and prolonged bleeding. This is what his friend said when he returned from the war. Also, an artillery scout. They finished the same military school, and they fought together. It's good that he survived. He was ‘lucky’. He was wounded and sent deep in the country a few weeks before General Vlasov betrayed to the Germans. They both fought in this general army. Otherwise he would be put against the wall and shot as a traitor, even if he never was one. There were many whom they put against the wall. Stalin said - when you cut the forest, chips fly.

Joseph was not even a year old when the NEP (new economy policy - return to private sector) began. Grandpa left Orsha for Moscow for reconnaissance - were the communists lying or really came to real senses? And ... disappeared. No letters, no telegrams, no addresses.  As one of my local relatives says - my grandmother became suspicious. She took kids, my mom and Joseph, and left for the capital of their homeland - Moscow. She hired a horse carriage at the station, asked what the main street named, and ordered a horseman to drive her back and forth on that street until she said stop ...

And this is how the grandpa tells his side of the story with some pride. Grandma frowns, but giggles.

"I'm walking along the current Gorky Street with a lady. Was telling something, I got carried away with the anticipation. Suddenly at my back, like a whip, my wife’s voice - A-B-R-A-S-H-A.  I turn around ... a two-horse carriage with a coachman and Rokhlya-Leia  standing in a stroller with a child on one arm, and the other hand is inserted into the waist, with an icy look. I can't take my legs off the pavement, and a crazy thought pulsating in my head: - am I dreaming?!

I saw people standing, laughing around.  And Liza to me - ITS TIME TO GO HOME, CHILDREN ARE HUNGRY.  I hardly said goodbye to the lady. She has long since disappeared. I seemed to ask what train she had arrived on, but, of course, I did not expect the answer. I just try to get from the shock."

Here is for you the provincial Rokhlya-Leia Mendelevna from Orsha.  And the grandpa was good. Carbon copy of me!

They didn’t stay in the Moscow for a long, only for a few years. Well, if I got it wrong, there is no one around anymore to correct me. But when Father Joseph (Stalin) was about to slam the NEP, grandpa moved family to Leningrad, and Joseph’s trap did not catch him. For many years, I thought my grandpa guessed the moment. He felt the impoverished Soviet Power needed the money of those ‘snickering Nepmans’, and this is partially true. He never believed that pack of hyenas. But there was another moment, as I now understand (I have matured and I don’t believe anymore in random accidents). My grandfather's sister worked with Nadezda K. Krupskaya (Lenin’s wife) for many years. How much Nadezda loved Joseph Stalin, even school children today can guess. Therefore, I have no doubts she shared bolshevik’s proposed action with those close to her at work. And, of course, sister warned grandpa. What do you think?

I know little about that period of my family life. My grandfather owned several hairdressing salons in Moscow, where he employed my grandmother's brothers and worked himself, of course. Nobody got salaries. Each of them took from cashier-machine as much as he was entitled to by the agreement. If needed more - they asked my grandpa. They raised children and hoped for future. However, the KGB was always on the alert. They would drink a glass of vodka and went ahead with searches of civilians.

They visited my grandfather. The doorbell rang as usual, but late. The grandmother opened the door, and they went straight to their room, presented a warrant and started. When they got into the wardrobe - where else rich people keep their money? - the grandfather understood - the kitten is dead. But when they left that thing alone, he was very surprised. Even wanted to check it by himself. The KGB left with nothing. Grandma smiled maliciously.

What happened, where is everything? - asked the grandpa.

When I went to open the door, I put the whole package in our neighbor’s boots in the corridor.  -  modestly blushed from the upcoming praise Rokhlya, and Leia added.

They like to take the other people's money too much, bastards.

And I put the stone here.  - said the grandfather and proudly pulled out a fairly large diamond from a crystal glass 3/4 full of water standing on the table. The husband and wife nodded proudly to each other. The big daughter Luba clung to her mother, and the little Joseph flipped a glass of water on the table and fumbled over the wet tablecloth with his hands. He liked the trick with the pebble.

The Jewish people love to have tears in half with a smile. Several jokes about that. If you already heard it - matters neither, smile again.

‘Two representatives of KGB came to the owner of the store.

We have information that you are hiding from us fifty-five lbs of gold!!

You are wrong. I do have gold, but much more than that, about two hundred twenty lbs.

That’s right that you don’t lie to us.

And the second smiled.

Can we look?

Sure! Edochka, honey, they came for you.

When grandfather laughed, his tummy laughed with him. Eyes laugh, cheeks, mouth and belly. I could never hold myself. And having told something funny, but already laughed it off with friends, I cackled with him, so contagiously he laughed at a good joke.

And this is one of his favorite jokes: (soviet car has the name of a big Russian river - Volga)

One rich Jew was summoned to the authorities ...

Grigory Isaakovich, we know you have the money. And not from the salary saved. Let's talk openly at least once. If we offered you to buy the Volga, could you pay for it, say, tomorrow?

Well, you know, somehow for a moment you dumbfounded me ... if I got help from my brother and two nephews...I think I could.

Well, brother, nephews - so we can too.  OK, go, but remember, we are near, we are watching.

Grigory Isaakovich strolled along the embankment and muttered to himself, looking at the water:

Volga!  Why do I need the Volga?! So much trouble. Berths. Steamers ...

My grandfather was strict with children, but he loved them. More than once or twice, mother and Yuzik knelt on peas. They did not take offense, they knew exactly why. My mother did not punish me like that, she said it hurt. They put my nose in the gap between the wall and the ceiling high stove, after removing the cobwebs. Every time in the same corner. In an attempt to escape justice, I argued that I was afraid of the cobwebs, so in the same corner, so not to clean it often. When the family fled from the defeat of the NEP to Leningrad, all the relatives remained in Moscow. However, all of them continued to love the grandfather. Who... for what! He was always wealthy and always helpful. I knew only two of my uncles, the alcoholic Tolya, who died early, and my favorite Michael, who loved him just the way I did. But this was just another part of a character of Abram Yakovlevich. He had a practical mind, knew life was difficult, and was always ready to help. My great wonderful Grandpa!

I was born in Leningrad-city. The most beautiful city in Russia. This city was and is the city of Peter. And although I was not used to it, I accepted it right away when they called it again - Petersburg. Born in the very middle of it, on Sophia Perovskaya Street, named after a woman for whom the Russian people should be forever ashamed. She was a terrorist who took part in killing the only one Russian Tsar who did so much for country and freed peasant from the Russian type of slavery. For twenty-five years, with short interruptions, I lived in a house that is now rented, or maybe bought, by the same country that owned it before October 1917. The war did not leave it unattended. Misfortunes rained down on it, like on many houses of my beloved city. The war left scars on its walls and in the souls of the people who lived in it. Here they loved, suffered, died and killed. True love and filthy meanness lived in those buildings. There it flashed with burning pain and will remain for centuries, as a symbol of maternal love, the story of a simple woman I will tell you, like other stories of my apartment house. When the siege began, there were three of us: grandmother, mother and me. The men went to the fight. The famine came soon. They gave small portions of bread for me and my grandmother. Mom divided all the bread into three. From her part, she added to mine. She had no more milk. And at night, the grandmother cut off her portion for mom and put it on her bed end table. They quarreled in the morning, but my grandma most often won. She had two trump cards - my mother's job and me. (Having written this line, I suddenly stopped myself. I repeat the word grandmother without even thinking. This woman, my grandmother, was only 46 years old. And she calmly gave her chance to survive, saving us). 

They cooked glue, like thousands of others, and waited for a miracle or death. My mother had a friend with a son of the same age as me. She is already dead, I can talk about it. She knew when my mother was feeding me, and she always came with her son, who watched every piece of bread that my mother gave me soaked in water. Matilda ate his portion. At first, the mother could not stand it and gave this boy some bread, but then she stopped to open the door for this woman. Matilda survived, her son did not. I don’t blame, and my mother did not blame her. After the war, they continued to meet. I loved Matilda. I didn't know this story for a long time. And when I found out, I had already learned to forgive. Forgive weakness, but not meanness. Vileness is when you know that it is vile, you can not do that, but you do it and you don’t regret it. But Matilda never forgave herself. So she lived with it, poor woman.

Another story of our house is terrible, how terrible can be stories about people who have reached the level of moral deformity, behind which the concept of ‘human’ disappears.

My mother was returning from work with another woman from our building. They were stopped by one of the janitor sisters who lived together in an apartment in the middle yard. She said that she got a parcel from the village with lard and butter. She invited my mother to come in to get some for me. Mother was late in time for my feeding, so she thanked, but refused (is it by the accident again? I don't think so). And the second woman said she would take her daughter, four years old, and come. Three hours later mother of this woman came to my mother, thinking she was with us. Mom told her where to look for her daughter. Then my mother found out when that woman came to the door of the sisters' apartment. She heard voices, but they didn’t open the door to her and everything fell silent behind the door. She called the house manager, who brought the attesting witnesses. They heard the floor being washed, but sisters refused to open the door for them. They broke down the door. In the room they found a naked and crying girl, and in the closet - the mother being cut to pieces. Well! You can find cannibalism today, in Central Africa, sixty years later. And if you are indignant, they will not understand you.

Life, death, truth, lie. Concepts. Well-established concepts. Everyone and I mean everyone knows what is good and what is bad. Everyone judges each other by standards that have long been tested by life. How good it is to know what the truth is, and how good it is to sleep to the lulling melodies of the inviolability of one's conviction. Now I will wake you up! And this also happened in my apartment’s building...

The family lived in the house. Mother, daughter - twelve years old, daughter - eight years old and a two-year-old girl. The father was at the war. There was nothing to eat. Time was against them. Everyone was already barely moving. And one morning the mother told the older girls that their sister had died and she took her to the Neva river. Corpses were taken there. The next day, she said she would go to look