All families are complicated. Those forced to live according to the whims of a totalitarian regime perhaps more so. And those, like mine, where some members of the family flee, leaving the remaining members exposed to unhelpful levels of KGB scrutiny, can be described as completely fucked. The day my parents filed their application to leave the Soviet Union, both of my mother’s parents were forced to resign from their jobs at the pharmaceutical research institutes where they had worked for over twenty-five years. By way of explanation they were posed the following rhetorical question: “How can you be expected to produce good research when you can’t even discipline your own child?” A few years later they joined us in Massachusetts. My father’s family, on the other hand, was left more or less unmolested; Papa’s parents both managed to keep their jobs and seemed to live contentedly enough. But soon bad news began drifting over to us from Ukraine, in letters written on painfully
translucent paper and via phone calls from my father’s cousin. A year after we emigrated, my grandfather was forced to retire from his job. Then, in the post-Perestroika years, the family suffered a series of financial setbacks followed by my grandmother’s sudden death from diabetes. Aunt Lyuda blamed Papa’s flight from the Soviet Union for putting them all in peril, and for all of the family’s current problems besides. So they no longer spoke to each other, and Mama, who already used the word
idiot
as if it were a common pronoun, especially had nothing nice to say about that side of the family.
But family matters aside, Kharkov lacked other kinds of appeal. It didn’t cast a particularly long shadow over world history like the ancient capital of Kiev. Nor was it a beautiful jewel-box city like Lvov. Invariably, the two words people used to describe Kharkov were either
industrial
or
big
. Occasionally
big
and
industrial
were helpfully combined to yield the illuminating phrase “a big industrial city.” I grew up in a sleepy colonial town west of Boston and had very little experience with big industrial cities. So I pictured Kharkov as an apocalyptic version of Springfield or Worcester, places we drove through from time to time on our way to somewhere more picturesque. And I had to admit, traveling five thousand miles just to visit the Worcester of Ukraine wasn’t the most enticing proposition.
After my grandfather died, the only member of the family who Papa stayed in touch with was the Cousin Who Drinks Water. This was the nickname we gave my father’s cousin Lyonya after he sent Papa a twelve-page letter which began with the question “What is Health?” The answer, it turned out, was water. In particular, salt water. And the letter went on to detail the many benefits of drinking salt water in various unorthodox ways, culminating in the optimally beneficial process of drawing it up through your nose. Lyonya was a loyal proponent of this system and vigorously recommended Papa adopt it for himself. The only
drawback, he explained, is that sometimes a loose bit of water might fall out of your face during the course of conversation. A small enough price to pay for immortality.
Papa was greatly amused by the letter and felt the urge to share it with someone, but when it came to letters from Kharkov, Mama was never in a sharing mood. So he called me into his study instead and read it out loud, which is how Lyonya became the Cousin Who Drinks Water. It was a long nickname to be sure, a bit awkward in the mouth, but Papa and I were committed to it. The only other story I ever remembered hearing about Lyonya was after my parents’ sole return to the former Soviet Union in 1990. I asked Papa how it was seeing his cousin again for the first time in almost fifteen years, and Papa replied, “It was great. He stood on his head for us.”
Now, I knew that Papa was very fond of Lyonya, who had supported him through many difficult times back in Kharkov and dutifully passed on the American dollars he sent every month to cover my grandfather’s living expenses. The rather fanciful image of his cousin Papa conjured for me can probably be chalked up to the fact that I was a child at the time. Perhaps he also wanted to somehow lighten my impression of life in Kharkov, which only seemed to run the short gamut from crappy to unbearable. In any case, despite my warped image of the Cousin Who Drinks Water, after my grandfather died, Lyonya was the only person left who could show me the things I wanted to see in Kharkov. And it suddenly occurred to me that he wasn’t getting any younger either.
When I announced that I was planning to visit Kharkov, my normally absentminded father snapped to attention. The first thing he said was “That’s a bad idea,” followed quickly by “Do me a favor and don’t tell Mama.”
But Mama did not react as badly as we thought she would.
“Great!” she yelled, launching into full-throated someone-is-shoving-an-ice-cube-down-my-pants mode. “Now maybe you will finally know what a godforsaken hole we rescued you from!” Mama assured me that I would return from Ukraine and spend the rest of my days showering her with things she liked: marzipan molded into animal shapes, gift certificates to Loehmann’s, et cetera.
For weeks Papa kept trying to dissuade me from going, but when I held firm and even managed to convince Josh, my long-suffering husband, to come along, he grudgingly arranged for a meeting with the Cousin Who Drinks Water. Then, shortly before we left, Papa also coughed up the following unenthusiastic summary of Places of Family Importance in Kharkov:
The most important place is the house where we lived. The address is Krasnoshkol’naya Naberezhnaya 26, apt. 96. It stands near a rather stinky river called Lopan. You are welcome to take a walk along the bank.
The next destination is Kharkov State University. This is in a very big square. In the middle of the square is a park named after Dzerzhinsky—the founder of the KGB. I skipped many classes reading physics books in this park.
Right next to the university is a park called Sad Shevchenko. The marble statue of Shevchenko (a famous Ukrainian poet) is kind of OK. I studied in this park as well.
From Sad Shevchenko you can get to the zoo and see the sad animals. I had a brief career as a night watchman in the zoo, and a more lasting one guarding a small kiosk in the zoo, called Café Petushok.
And just to make sure I hadn’t somehow missed his point, Papa added a final note: “Even if this sounds like fun, I suspect it won’t be.”
Josh and I arrived by train from Kiev on the Stolichniy Express, seated on a bench of genuine Soviet pleather, nervously squeezing hands when we felt the final jolt signaling our arrival. Then an attendant lowered a metal ladder to the platform, and we stepped down, feet finally firm on warm Kharkov concrete. Blinking back nonexistent tears, I stood there uncertainly, waited for the rush of feeling. But there was nothing. Nothing but this sense of whistling disorientation. Making our way to the station, I stopped to examine the Kharkov city emblem prominently mounted to the wall. It featured wreaths of wheat, bushels of fruit, and, hovering above them both, the symbol for nuclear energy. Radiation and produce, I thought to myself, a combination that screamed an urgent need for rebranding. Once inside, we found the station itself unexpectedly sumptuous. From the soaring ceilings and massive chandeliers, one would think we’d just pulled in to one of the loftier cities of Europe. There was no trace of the cold boot of Soviet oppression. If only my family had lived in the train station, we could have been happy here.
The first practical order of business was to inform my parents we hadn’t been vaporized at the border. Conveniently, we found an internet kiosk right inside the station. The cramped room had three computers lined up against one wall and was presided over by a bulbous woman stuffed behind a desk.
“Can I buy fifteen minutes of internet time?” I asked in Russian.
The woman gave me a sour look. I found myself unable to tear my eyes away from her halo of pinkish-burgundy hair. It
looked like one of those fiber-optic lamps you see in the windows of head shops, and I half expected it to start rotating.
“Internet? What internet?” she barked.
I apologized for mistaking her for someone who might help us and we went next door to see if the lady at the dry-cleaning kiosk knew where to find whoever was in charge.
“Wait a minute,” said the dry-cleaning lady, and tore open the side door separating the two rooms.
“Sveta!” she yelled. “For God’s sake, you can’t just pretend you don’t work here whenever the tourists come around.”
Confused by the torrent of Russian, Josh turned to me.
“What was that?”
“She was pretending she didn’t work here.”
“Oh,” Josh said. “I’m going to go find a bathroom.”
I was still working on the email when Josh wandered back into the room.
“No one will tell me where the bathroom is.”
“Maybe they can’t understand English?”
“It’s weird,” he said, “I think they understand me fine. They just didn’t want to tell me where it is.”
So we went off in search of the men’s room, and it turned out to be a good thing because I’d forgotten that the ladies’ room would only be marked by an inscrutable Cyrillic letter that looks like nothing so much as a caterpillar trying its best to run away from you.
We had booked a room at the Hotel Kharkov because, in my parents’ day, it had been the grandest hotel in the city. And clearly it
had
once been grand. The richly columned interior looked as though the Sistine Chapel had thrown up on it. Unlike the train station, though, the Hotel Kharkov was also alarmingly run-down. As I struggled to find a camera angle that didn’t include child-sized holes in the wall, gaping wires, or what I could have sworn were traces of bullet-strafing, I detected an unmistakable whiff
of downtown Beirut to the place. On the way to our room, we found that an army unit had been stationed down the hall from us. The wiry young men, all naked from the waist up, regarded us suspiciously as we made our way past them, their eyes glinting like hard candy.
As soon as we closed the door behind us, Josh went over to one of the cot-sized beds and lay down, face-first.
“Do me a favor?” he said, voice muffled. “Don’t go out there.”
I took a photo of him lying there, then walked over to the window and pulled back the curtain. There, in vivid green and gray, were the Soviet postcards of my youth. The hotel overlooked Freedom Square, which was supposedly the largest square in Europe, second in size worldwide only to China’s Tiananmen Square. As Papa mentioned, it used to be called Dzerzhinsky Square, and perhaps for that reason, its new name still managed to sound ominous. The western end was completely dominated by a statue of Lenin that looked to be about three stories high. And although most of the vast cobble-stoned expanse was empty, the grassy stretch surrounding Lenin was teeming with students. They sat in colorful clumps on each of the four tiers that made up the base of his pedestal. Lenin himself was dressed in a business suit, tie tucked into vest, with a rather stylish coat rakishly thrown across his shoulders. In his left hand he held what appeared to be a rolled-up newspaper or an umbrella, but was probably something far more symbolic, like a small, frightened farmer. His right hand was raised, outstretched toward the square in a gesture meant to say, “Come, Comrades, join me in building a glorious future!” but which today looked a little more Vanna White–ish. “Welcome, Comrades, to Europe’s biggest parking lot!”
We had agreed to meet the Cousin Who Drinks Water for our tour of Important Family Places in front of the hotel at three, and so we went outside to wait. Ten minutes later, a lonely figure emerged, trekking toward us across the endless slab of freedom.
At first sight, I had to admit I was a little disappointed. Cousin Lyonya was a balding, slightly paunchy guy with soft features. He wore beachy knee-length shorts and a black t-shirt that said “Yacht Club,” and could easily have been mistaken for a customer-service representative from Hertz Rent-a-Car. He didn’t look much like Papa at all. Nor did he resemble Popeye the Sailor or some other quirky superhero who might thrive on salt water alone. It had been my secret hope that at some point during the afternoon, we might slip away to some shady spot where Cousin Lyonya would stand on his head for us. This hope was quietly dashed. Trying not to sound despondent, I asked Lyonya if he was still drinking water. But at this he only shook his head and laughed.
The suggestion to visit Dedushka’s grave was waved away as too complicated, so instead we struck off on the scenic route toward our first destination, Krasnoshkol’naya Naberezhnaya 26, the apartment building where my family once lived. It was a beautiful July day and downtown Kharkov’s dignified prerevolutionary buildings were lit up like pastel flares in the sun. We had just settled into a pleasant amble, crossing the square and turning down a wide, leafy boulevard, when Lyonya turned to me and asked, “So why don’t you have any children?”
Even though we had known each other for all of eight minutes, I wasn’t surprised by the question, having grown up fending off the invasive inquiries of ruthlessly blunt Russians. I still remembered being greeted at the door by my parents’ friends one Thanksgiving with the exclamation “But you are so much greasier than last year!”
“How old are you anyway?” Lyonya continued. “You must be at least thirty by now.”