In our officers’ barracks there were two front entrances. In each entrance lived five families. Each family occupied one room, regardless of the size of the family. There was a long shared corridor; along the corridor wall stood (at this point I can barely keep from laughing!) well, what could have stood there? By the door of our room stood a wooden table, probably knocked together by someone, an old stool, and at the end, along the other wall, there was a small niche where Mama put the green basin with black speckles.
Mama both washed laundry and washed me in that basin; a little later I got my own personal zinc trough. All of everyday life took place in the corridor. At the end of the corridor there was a window and the entrance to a toilet with two stalls and a washbasin with cold water. Only this part of the barracks had privileges: a toilet with two stalls and a washbasin. The second part of the barracks, that is the second entrance, had no toilet, but two washbasins in the kitchen. The toilet was shared, wooden, about 50 metres from the entrance. Enamelled chamber pots with lids were popular. These household details push into my brain with inexplicable force. I think: what a rotten everyday life the officers’ wives had! They cooked, washed by hand; the gas was brought in cylinders.
Oh! In our barracks there was a basement with a boiler room. The barracks was heated with coal, and the coal was unloaded right under our room window! For me that was enormous bliss: watching a dump truck drive up, unload the coal, raise the body and drive away! I alone felt that rapture. Coal dust was a constant companion of our window.
I remember how Mama washed laundry. Then there was only household soap; the first washing powder appeared, I think, in the 60s and was called “Novost.” Ha-ha! Brand-trend. (These are just little words; pay no attention to my chatter now.) She used to tell and lament: the water in the basin cooled quickly because she was always being distracted by something: a neighbour would ask to borrow money, or a carrot for the soup. You couldn’t run to the shop — it was far. So it was the custom to borrow something. I remember Mama complained to Papa that she had lent out all the money, didn’t know how to refuse. And Papa said to her: “Next time say that all the money is with your husband…”
In the settlement there were also sights. An open, that is roofless, wooden round dance floor. In the evening people dressed up for dances, and after the dances, when it was already dark, they hung a screen and showed films. Next to the dance floor there were wooden benches; people cracked sunflower seeds and watched the film. Now I remember only two films. Both about the war: Baltic Sky and Thirst.
From the film Thirst I still remember the song: “The night was with downpours, and the grass in dew, about me they all said ‘Happy!’ and I myself believed, against my heart, we are two banks of one river.” I sang that song from about the age of five. Then it was unusual for those around: a child singing about love, an adult song… If they asked, I sang.
At the entrance-exit to the settlement stood a small wooden house with gates. On the blue gates were two large red stars. This was called, for short, the checkpoint. I have already mentioned it. Checkpoints were everywhere: at plants, factories, military settlements and so on. Since the duty officers knew the inhabitants of the settlement “by sight,” passes were not shown. I loved going there, chatting with the duty auntie. Her name was Aunt Olya; she knitted socks on five needles. I very much liked watching how she knitted quickly, without looking.
Sometimes I went there to meet Papa coming off duty. I have written “coming off duty” now, because people came home from work on time, and from duty they did not. You had to wait… The duty officer had a special booth-house. Of course the duty officers knew everything about all the inhabitants of the settlement. That was the job! — “about everyone and everything.” Some, passing through the checkpoint, would stop to talk, pick up the mail.
I remember how Aunt Olya told one woman a “funny story.” I have put it in quotation marks because then I did not understand why they were laughing, but I remembered it. And now I will write it. Although in Soviet times there was such a notion as “friendship of peoples” and a common nation for all, “the Soviet people,” still… every Soviet person knew their nationality. And mixed marriages, of course, erased “those national boundaries.”
Children from our settlement often ran to Aunt Olya at the checkpoint. Among them was a little girl, Sveta; she pronounced words poorly, she lisped. And Aunt Olya asked her: “Svet, what are you? A katsapka or a khokhlushka?” And Sveta, lisping, answered: “I’m not a zasapka and not a zasushka!” (Sveta’s mama was Russian, and her papa Ukrainian.) And so Aunt Olya would retell these “funny” little words, the meaning of which neither I nor little Sveta knew then.
Here I have stopped and think that I shall have to continue describing my childhood in the settlement. By the way, information for Kievans: on the site of this settlement there is now City Hospital No. 12 in the central Pechersk district, and in my childhood there was a football field, but the hospital “was in the plans,” and not twenty years had passed before they built it, sometime in the 80s (before the Chernobyl events).
I remember well Friendship of Peoples Boulevard. The first name was Avtostrada. Mama told me that the Avtostrada was built by German prisoners after the war. The Avtostrada connected us with the city centre: Tolstoy Square, the Kiev cinema, and further Bessarabka, Khreshchatyk, the Passage. Trolleybus number 10 “ran.” Always overcrowded. Mama was “light on her feet,” as she always said, and often went with me to the centre, to a daytime film.
And so that I would not starve during the film, she would buy some fried pie on the street, from which I had stomach trouble. It is strange that this did not stop her, and on the next trip to the cinema she would again buy me some “fresh” pie, and again my tender organism would not take it. Mama was surprised: she ate the same pie — and nothing! And I was like that! Mama could not instil in me a love of public catering — “obshchepit,” as they said then. And it had to be such a “misfortune,” laid down in childhood, that to this day I feel a certain “phobia” toward restaurants, cafés and other eateries, living far from the Motherland.
From the cinema we always returned on an overcrowded trolleybus. We had to stand. Once we were squeezed so hard we were almost suffocated. Mama cried out… As you see, it ended all right; I am alive and unharmed, all in memories.
So, I “return” to the settlement: oh how wonderful it was in summer in our settlement! And in winter it was good too! In summer Mama went to Vladimirsky Market (on that site the Ukraina Palace has now been built) for strawberries and cherries, to make jam for winter. Strawberries and cherries were sold by the bucket, and bought by the bucket too. I had to clean them. Mama, “without a twinge of conscience,” sat me on the front porch of our barracks, put an enamelled bucket of strawberries or cherries in front of me, and I, a girl of five, sat and cleaned them without protest. And potatoes I peeled when I was 6.
When I told my Norwegian husband this fact, he asked in surprise: “And why didn’t your sister help you?” To which I answered: “My sister had not yet been born.” How grateful I am now to my mama for teaching me everything and training me! How it helps later in life! How important it is in childhood to get a good “base” of skills and abilities.
I remember well how I waited for Sunday — the only day off in those times. A neighbour had a boat with a little cabin, and he would take our family of three and his family of four on a boat outing on the Dnieper. How we all fitted I don’t remember. (The boat was small) and not fast; the motors were not powerful. We would sail to some sandy island where there were no people, and spend the whole day off there until evening. The men, of course, drank. That I remember. The women scolded them, but in vain. We returned with drunken men in the boat. Thank God, without adventures!
Winter…. I want to continue “the peasant, triumphing, renews the path on the sledge, his little horse, scenting the snow, trudges along at a trot somehow.” New Year! The first trip to the New Year tree was at the October Palace. The children were let in without parents; Mama stayed outside, and my mood immediately spoiled… And when I found myself in that round dance around the tree before the performance, I was already thinking only of how I would get back out and whether I would lose Mama when I left. In short, the New Year morning party passed in stress, as they say now.
And there was another event that shook my soul — the loss…. of a fur mitten on a walk in the settlement…. I sobbed for a long time; the whole barracks ran to comfort me. It was evening, and sending out a search party was useless. Everyone was notified of the loss! My mitten was found… in the spring! A neighbour’s grandmother found it and solemnly handed it to me. That was happiness!
And to be continued…..