REFLECTION. Michael Blekhman
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out I drowned, so I decided to emerge from the water one more time, just for her sake.
This was when she was noticed by a young sailor who lived nearby and had just come to the river-bank to take a swim. Without even taking his clothes off, he jumped in the river, dragged the brave girl out, and took her to Maria. Mom still got upset but I can only imagine how heart-broken she would have been, had I actually drowned. This just goes to show that one should always try to come up for air one last time. Who knows, maybe help is on the way at that very moment.
IV
Mary was beautiful, with thick dark hair, huge, slightly protruding eyes, and a touch of condescension in her smile.
At the age of sixteen, she married Zinovi Stolberg, an energetic, intelligent and enterprising young man. Three years later, in 1929, she gave birth to Klara and left her husband because he annoyed her with his opinions. Not his opinions as such since she never listened to what he said anyways but, rather, with his having the gall to express opinions.
Of course, Zinovi was Zinovi just as much as Aaron was Arkadi. His real name was Zalman, so Klara was in reality Klara Zalmanovna instead of Clarissa Zinovievna, as she started introducing herself later in life. Zinovi had planned to call her Elena, but having opinions turned out to be a bad idea for him. Maria ended up following her own rule that a son should be given his grandfather’s name, while a daughter should be named after her grandmother.
After the divorce and before the war began, Zinovi sometimes saw Klara but it happened so rarely that she felt she almost never met him at all.
In Kharkov, which was the first Ukrainian capital city after the revolution, Maria entered an engineering program and became its best student. That was no surprise because a person who can come out a winner from a struggle with the Dnieper will not be defeated by anything that can happen on even the most challenging stretch of land.
Arguing with her was impossible or, rather, it was completely useless. Her logic and her way of constructing an argument were more than ironclad, they were made of some yet-to-be-discovered refractory substance. Maria’s classmates, who were mostly Civil War veterans, used to say she had a male brain. Still, she was a woman. With a braid encircling her head, huge eyes, and the capacity to cross any river, no matter how challenging the task might be to any self-proclaimed hero.
Every morning, Maria would walk from her apartment in Pushkin Entry to Sumskaya Street, smiling at the soaring golden Engineering House, and the bright grey Gosprom sky-scraper, and the rising building of the Ukrainian Government in the endless – as endless as her entire life – Dzerzhinsky Square. Her life was only about to begin, and the world’s best monument to the poet Taras Shevchenko wasn’t there yet, just like the Glass Fountain wasn’t there, and she had no way of knowing that it was going to resemble her chiffon scarf.
Her heels clicked against the obedient paving stone and the timid asphalt, in her brief-case she had her homework, which was the best in her cohort, and in her blueprint tube she carried the best drawings of anybody in her program. The Sumskaya Street, endless in its regal flow, moved past her towards the tsarist buildings, the Salamander House, the imposing bank building, the Pushkin Square, and the festive Ukrainian theater. Then, it joined the Nikolaevskaya Square, where buildings designed before the war by the famous Professor Beketov winked at Maria with their crystal-clear windows. Lower down, she could see a tranquil grey no-frills building constructed as recently as 1925.
On weekends, Maria would leave Nikolaevskaya Square and walk down the prideful Pushkin Street, which at that time one couldn’t even imagine crossed by trams or railways. She would pass by the churches that made the street look the wife of a merchant guild’s honorary member. Then on to the buildings designed by the famous architect Beketov, which reminded her of a string of Christmas lights or October fireworks and which made the street look as aristocratic as it so richly deserved. She would return to her own Pushkin Entry to prepare for class, read, draw, and wield her slide rule.
And, of course, to come out to the balcony with Klara to stare into the skies that had blessed them with the miracle of their endlessly happy lives.
V
Maria had scores of faithful admirers, which interested her little, since every would-be lover had the gall or the misfortune to have his own opinion about something. This must have been the admirers’ way of asserting their male essence. Maria was more than happy with relying on her own essence, which was female. The only man she allowed to receive and adopt her opinions faithfully and without questioning was Vladimir Fedorovich, and this was what interested her about him. He was older, but she never felt the age difference. Anyways, six years were nothing to speak of.
Vladimir had been born in Warsaw when Poland was still part of the Russian Empire. He was a clerk. His job consisted of auditing the meat-packing and the produce-growing companies. For a while, he worked as an accountant for the Vtorchermet, then transferred to the Southern Railway Bureau, which was located in an imposing old building in the enormous Kharkov Railway Square. His supervisors admired how reliable and punctual he was.
He always knew how to locate the necessary paperwork simply because he never needed to search for any form or document. All paperwork that he wrote in a soft, straight handwriting without a single crossing out (when did Vladimir Petkevich ever make a cross out?) didn't need to be looked for since it was located in the right place at the right time – or, actually, any time one needed it.
When he was young, Vladimir was attracted to ballerinas, who were just as young. In his mature years, he fell in love with Mary, or, rather, he came to love her.
She allowed him to experience this feeling towards her only after making sure that he wasn't going to object to her about anything. He never even considered objecting because he loved Maria and Klara more than people normally know how to love others.
He also loved soccer. He didn't love playing it – that he didn't know how to do, – but he loved watching it. When Vladimir was twenty, Kharkov's team won the all-country championship, and he caught a glimpse of the famous players Privalov, Krotov, Norov, Kazakov, the Fomin brothers.
"In Odessa, in 1921," he would tell Klara, smiling, "Kazakov hit the crossbar, and it fell on the Odessa goalie's head. Can you imagine that?"
Maria didn't even shrug her shoulders because she was simply outraged about what he was teaching the child. Klara, however, wanted to see the crossbar fall, so she got interested in soccer. In the meanwhile, Vladimir Fedorovich got less and less passionate about soccer because after Privalov there was nobody who could play quite as well.
Vladimir couldn't swim, so when he was in the army he served as a coxswain of the launch. His slight frame didn't allow him to row but as a coxswain he was better than any one. He sat at the steer and kept count in a clear, loud voice, "One-two, one-two!"
I kept count to help the rowers set the speed. Once, near Phoros, which is close to Sevastopol, our launch got into the dead swells. Do you know what that means? On the surface, the water looks like glass, but underneath there are horrible swells, as if somebody were mixing the water in a shaker. Dead swells, may the devil take them, will not upset the launch, but it can cause one to fall asleep. One moment I was keeping count and then I was falling deep into sleep. If the rowers hadn't lost their rhythm and looked at me to see what was going on, I wouldn't be here right now. Of course, they lost the rhythm because I'd fallen asleep and stopped keeping count. They saved me from never waking up again.
Klara liked the story. It was even scarier than the one where the crossbar fell on the goalie's head.
After Maria graduated, she spent less time at home than on work-related trips, so Vladimir Fedorovich became Klara's primary caregiver. For him, this meant not intruding upon her growth and development and keeping watch over this process.
VI
In daycare, Klara was almost as much in charge as the adults. She didn't know why that happened and never thought about it. Everybody simply respected her opinion. Probably that happened because nobody but her actually had opinions, except, of course, the adults. She took the lead in all games (tag, hide-and-seek, anything), and she was never 'it', only when she really wanted to and not when it was her turn (when