“Right,” Zina’s dad would say. “You’re absolutely right. You know, we had this incident at work today: we got the wrong grade of steel delivered, and...”

Factory life was familiar and clear to him, and the way he talked about it was very different from the way he talked about politics. He waved his arms around, laughed and got angry, got up and ran around the room, stepping on our feet. But we didn’t care about the factory news; we were far more interested in sports, in aviation, in movies. Zina’s dad spent his whole life working with a lathe and chunks of metal; we listened to him with the cruel indifference of youth. Eventually, he would catch on and get embarrassed.

“That’s not important, of course. We need to look further afield, I know.”

“He’s just so meek,” Zina would lament. “I can’t reeducate him no matter how hard I try, it’s terrible.”

“Birth marks,” Iskra concluded with authority. “Those born under the dreadful yoke of tsarism keep feeling a paralysis of will and a fear of the future for a long time afterward.”

Iskra knew how to explain and analyze, and Zina knew how to listen. She listened to each person differently, but always with her whole being, as if she not only heard but also saw, touched, and smelled, all at the same time. She was extremely curious and far too gregarious, which was why some did not want to make her their confidante, but also the reason they did like visiting this family with a girlish bent.

Perhaps this was why it was especially cozy here, especially friendly and especially quiet. Zina’s mom and dad spoke softly, because there was no one to yell at. There was always something being laundered or starched, cleaned or shaken out, fried or steamed, and, invariably, there was pie baking. The pies were made with cheap, dark flour; I still remember how they tasted, and I am still convinced that I have never eaten anything better than those potato pies. We would drink tea with cheap caramels, inhale the pies, and talk, while Valka wandered around the apartment, looking for new things to invent.

“Hey, what if I attach a primus burner to the faucet?”

“To make kerosene-flavored tea?”

“No, to warm it up. You strike a match, the pipe warms up, and you get hot water.”

“Go ahead then,” agreed Zina.

Valka would make a racket, poke holes in the wall, and bend pipes, but would never accomplish anything worthwhile. Iskra believed it was the idea that was important:

“Edison didn’t always succeed either.”

“Maybe I should try lifting him by his ears,” Pashka suggested. “Someone did it to Edison once and he became a great inventor right away.”

Pashka really could lift Valya by the ears: he was very strong. He could climb a rope with his legs bent, could do a handstand, and could spin on the high bar. This demanded hours of practice, and Pashka did not read much, but he liked listening to others read aloud. And since our usual reader was Lena Bokova, Pashka would listen not so much with his ears as with his eyes; he had been friends with Lena since fifth grade, and was consistent in his affections and occupations. Iskra was also a tolerable reader, but she was far too fond of explicating what she was reading, and we preferred Lena for particularly interesting books. And we did a great deal of reading, because television had not yet been invented, and we could not afford to see even the cheapest movies.

From childhood, we played at the same world we lived in. Classes competed, not for marks or percentages, but for the honor of writing to the Papanov expedition or of being named the Chkalov class, for the right to visit the grand opening of a new factory or to send a delegation to meet with Spanish children fleeing the war. 

I was once part of such a delegation because I won the 100-meter race, and Iskra was there as a straight-A student and social activist. We carried away from this encounter a hatred of fascism, overflowing hearts, and four oranges each. We ate those oranges together with the entire class, with great ceremony: each of us got a slice and a half, and a little bit of rind. To this day, I remember the particular smell of those oranges.

I remember, too, how disappointed I was that I would not be able to help the crew of the Chelyuskin, because my plane made an emergency landing somewhere in Yakutia, before ever reaching their camp on the Arctic ice. A real live landing: I got a “poor” on my report card, for failing to memorize a poem. I did end up learning it afterwards: “Yea, were there men when I was young…” The thing was, though, that on the wall of our classroom there hung an enormous homemade map, and each student had his own plane. An excellent mark gave you five hundred kilometers, but I got a “poor”, which meant my plane was removed from the route. It was not only my mark that was poor; I felt truly poor for having failed the Chelyuskinites so badly.

It was Iskra that thought of the map.

Smile at me, my friend. I have forgotten how you smiled, I’m sorry. I am now far older than you, I have so much to do, I have grown burdens as a ship does barnacles. More and more, I hear my own heart sobbing in the night; it is exhausted. Tired of hurting.

I have grown gray, and there are those who yield me their seats on buses and trains. Younger people, girls and boys very much like you, my friends. And then I ask God to keep them from repeating your fate. And if they do repeat it, to let them become exactly like you.

Between you, yesterday, and them, today, is not just a generation. We knew for certain that war would come, and they are confident that it will not. And this is wonderful: they are freer than we were. It is only too bad that this freedom at times turns into carelessness…

In ninth grade, Valentina Andronovna assigned us an essay on the topic of “Who I want to be”. Every one of the boys wrote that he wanted to become a commander in the Red Army. Even Vovik Hramov expressed his desire to crew a tank, causing a storm of delight. Yes, we sincerely wanted our fate to be severe. We chose it, dreaming of the army, the air force, the navy; we considered ourselves men, and there were no manlier professions.

In this I was lucky. I had reached my father’s height by the eighth grade, and since he was a career commander in the Red Army, his old uniform was passed along to me. A tunic and trousers, boots and a commander’s belt, an overcoat and a hat made from gray fabric. One wonderful day, I put these beautiful things on, and did not take them off for fifteen years, until I was discharged. The uniform was different by then, but its meaning remained the same: it was still the clothing of my generation. The most beautiful and the most fashionable.

All of the guys were fiercely jealous of me. Even Iskra Polyakova.

“It’s a little big for me, of course,” said Iskra, trying on my tunic. “But it’s so cozy. Especially if you tighten the belt.”

I often think of those words, because they carry a sense of the time. We all strove to tighten our belts, as if at every turn, a rank of soldiers waited for us to join it, as if the success of that rank, its readiness for battle and victory, was dependent only on our appearance. We were young, yet we yearned not for great joy, but for great deeds. We did not know that great deeds need first to be sown and raised. That they ripen slowly, imperceptibly flooding with strength, to one day erupt in a blinding flame, flashes of which are long seen by coming generations. We did not know, but our mothers and fathers did, who had gone through the fierce blaze of the revolution.

I don’t think any of us had a bath at home. Or rather, no, one apartment did have a bath, but more about that later. Valka, Pashka, and I usually went to the public baths together. Pashka scrubbed our backs violently, and then took his time luxuriating in the steam room. He insisted that the steam room be kept unbearably hot, and Valka and I did so, but we stayed on the bottom bench while Pashka laughed at us from the very top. 

“Hello there, young people.”

One day, Andrey Ivanovich Kovalenko, Zinochka’s father, slipped into the steam room, bashfully covering himself with a basin. Naked, he was even smaller, even more insignificant.

“It’s a bit hot in here.”

“You think this is heat?” Pashka yelled contemptuously from up top. “This is the subtropics! Valka, come on, add some more!”

“It’s Borka’s turn,” Valka declared. “Borka, go ahead.”

“Maybe you shouldn’t?” Kovalenko asked timidly.

“Yes we should!” I snapped. “Steam breaks no bones.”

“That depends.” Andrey Ivanovich smiled quietly.

And then I threw a full basin of water on the heater. The steam exploded with a crack. Pashka howled in delight, and Kovalenko sighed. He stood there for a bit, thinking, took his basin, turned around and left.

Turned around…

I remember his back to this day. It had been stabbed with bayonets, sliced with knives and swords, covered in knotted scars. There wasn’t a bare spot on that back - all of it was taken up by that blue and burgundy autograph of the civil war.

Iskra’s mother came out of the same war different. I don’t know if her body bore any scars, but her soul did, that much I would later understand. The same kind of scars that Zinochka’s father had on his back.

Iskra’s mother - I have forgotten her name, and no one can remind me of it now - often gave talks in schools, at evening classes, on collective farms and in factories. She spoke sharply and briefly, as if she was giving commands, and we were a little afraid of her.

“The revolution continues, remember that. And it will continue until we break the resistance of the enemies of the working class. Be ready for battle. Grim and merciless.” 

Or maybe it’s just my imagination? I am getting old, every passing day brings me further from that time, and not reality itself, but the image of it now rules me. Perhaps, but I want to escape what is dictated to me by age. I want to return to those days, to become young and naive...