Chapter 21
The familiar path from the Namangan station to the mosque yard seemed, to Kim, to be endless. With difficulty, shifting around on his swollen, unbearably painful legs, he somehow made his way to Braina’s kibitka and, exhausted, helpless, barely alive, appeared before his mother.. Apparently, Kim, like the biblical “prodigal son,” was destined to come to her in such a state, so that he could fully feel the life-giving power of maternal care.
He heard not a word of reproach or resentment for his past unworthy behavior. For his treatment Braina immediately called for not only the district physician but also an old woman-healer. Braina’s devoted, heart-warming care, sensitivity, delicacy, and cordiality were perceived by Kim with deep gratitude and appreciation. He clearly realized what a great boon and good fortune for him, exhausted and frostbitten, was the opportunity to find shelter and timely help from his own mother.
Her son’s former alienation disappeared, replaced by sympathy and compassion for his mother, who had been crippled and prematurely aged in the hard labor camps. Since then, a warm, friendly, trusting relationship was established between them, albeit somewhat restrained. True, the reverent filial love, accumulated in the soul during the years of separation and intended for a young and charming mother from childhood memories, remained forever unspent.
In the end, medicines, folk remedies, and proper nutrition, on which Braina generously spent her modest savings, did their job. The danger of gangrene dissipated safely, and in a few weeks, Kim was fully recovered and strengthened.
Sisters Braina and Genya with their children. Kim and Raya are standing.
Sitting from left to right are Braina, Fira, and Genya. Namangan, 1947.
Braina had no trouble convincing him to continue his education. He himself understood that in order to be more secure in life he should finish at least a technical school. However, to get there he needed a seven-year diploma, which Kim didn’t have. Studying in a normal day school among the 14-year-olds seemed to the 17-year-old boy to be improper, so Kim, with the approval of Braina, decided to go to an evening school for working youth and got a job at a construction office as an auxiliary laborer.
But in September it suddenly turned out that the only Russian evening school would not open a seventh-grade class due to a lack of students. There was nothing to do: Braina begged the principal of the school where her orphanage boys were studying, to allow Kim to attend classes. Even though Kim looked overgrown in the class and felt awkward at first, it didn’t stop him from studying with great effort and eventually getting a certificate with high grades.
It was time to decide where and what to study next. After his unsuccessful experience at Akhtuba, Kim didn’t want to pursue a career as a railroad worker. Meanwhile, on the radio, in newspapers, and at gatherings was often discussed the construction of grandiose hydroelectric power plants on large Russian rivers. In spite of everything, Kim, who still felt patriotic toward the Soviet Motherland, believed that he too should take part in these projects that were important for the country. This circumstance more strongly than any others influenced his choice of future profession, and he sent his documents to the river college located near Namangan, in the city of Chardzhou.
The school was of the paramilitary type and, among other things, attracted Kim by the fact that its cadets were provided with free lodging, meals, and a beautiful romantic uniform, similar to a naval one, with epaulets and anchors. Based on the results of the certificate competition and the conclusion of the medical commission, Kim was enrolled in the hydraulic engineering department. In September of 1948 he departed from Namangan, promising to write to Braina often and to visit her on vacations.
While Kim was still in Namangan, several letters arrived from Minsk from Genya with sad news about the death of her mother by a German bomb in Bobruisk, about the fact that, in the terrible Minsk ghetto, where the Nazis murdered many thousands of Jews, the last traces of Ida had been lost, about Solomon who had been missing in the war… In Kim’s presence, Braina tried to show her feelings about these terrible losses with restraint.
But after his departure, when in the evenings she found herself alone in the empty kibitka, she irrepressibly overwhelmed with sorrowful grief for the untimely loss of the infinite relatives and dear people, who had only recently formed her close-knit family, but who by the whim of incomprehensible fate had become the tragic victims of their time. In the dim light of the kerosene lamp, Braina saw their unforgettable images, burning tears involuntarily streamed down her face, desperate longing devastated her soul, depriving her of the desire to live. Restoring equilibrium to her soul in such critical moments was aided only by a sense of belonging to the staff of the orphanage, which in many respects replaced family for Braina. In the morning she habitually hurried to the children, with the full confidence that they were waiting and needed her participation. The children responded to her with sincere respect, trust, and touching affection. Such relationships lifted Braina’s spirits, and she was so absorbed in various activities with the children, that she did not notice how time flew by.
Braina’s relationship with the orphanage management and the entire staff developed in the best ways possible, which made it possible for her to look forward to having many years of fruitful work together. Nothing seemed to portend any trouble, which again came unexpectedly, like thunder in the clear blue sky.
At the end of the summer of 1949 on an ordinary unremarkable day off, a 16-year-old pupil of the orphanage named Galya Sitnikova committed suicide. Taking advantage of the fact that the children and the teachers on duty gathered in the club in the evenings to watch a movie, she locked herself in the washroom, stood on a stool and tied a cord with a loop that was prepared in advance to a hook in the ceiling… In her suicide note, Galya wrote that she voluntarily was going on an indefinite voyage, and asked not to have anyone be blamed for it.
During the war, she had been rescued from the besieged city of Leningrad, where Galina’s entire family had perished in the battles and from starvation, and she partially lost her hearing after a contusion from a blast wave. The romantic girl under the influence of her grandfather and father — hereditary sailors — dreamed of distant sea voyages, and deafness, it seemed to Galya, deprived her of the hope of making this dream a reality. She had to enroll in medical school, although she had no interest in medicine, and studying to be a nurse was, she had said, worse than captivity.
Braina took what had happened very hard. Galya was not officially listed among her pupils, but Braina considered herself, as well as the entire teaching staff, responsible for the fact that they did not recognize in time the condition of the girl’s soul and did not prevent the fatal act. Braina stated this frankly to the members of the commission, who arrived from Tashkent to investigate the circumstances of this emergency situation.
Such a “confession” turned out to be in the hands of the commission, whose main task was not to deeply understand the matter, but to as quickly as possible identify and punish those responsible. And since none of the teachers admitted their involvement in the incident, the principal and the teacher Gershon B.B. became the “scapegoats”. The principal received a reprimand and was transferred to another job, and Braina was dismissed as being unsuitable for her position.
Another cynical and humiliating injustice, that harshly interrupted Braina’s life-giving connection with the children’s team, which made her daily life active and purposeful, affected a heavy depression. All day long Braina lay on the couch, not leaving her home, doing nothing, eating only bread and boiling water.
And Kim after completing his first year of school was in a remote province, where he was doing a geodesic practicum in an expedition, and knew nothing of his mother’s plight. And who knows how Braina’s seclusion would have ended if not for the intervention of her former wards of children from the orphanage. One day a whole delegation of them showed up at her kibitka, they cleaned, brought water, cooked food, and reported that they had already sent a collective letter to the Central Committee of the Party and the Ministry of Education of Uzbekistan with a request to return to work a good, honest and completely innocent educator.
Braina was moved to tears by the boys’ words, that if only Galya could have foreseen the consequences of her action, she would certainly not have committed it. The heated, sincere sympathy of the children helped Braina recover back to her senses. She needed to make a living somehow, and she was already ready to return to her former activities, as one of the boys handed her an invitation to stop by the school where her students were studying.
It turned out that the teachers of that school, having heard from the students about what had happened to Braina, were not indifferent to her plight and offered to recommend her to the parents of underachieving students as a worthy tutor. Braina gratefully agreed: after all, such an occupation was incomparable to knitting or collecting apricot pits in the streets. The earnings from tutoring a few students in mathematics, Russian, literature, and history were not much, but still provided a tolerable existence.
A few weeks after her dismissal, Braina was summoned to the regional department of public education, which had received collective letters from children in her defense. Braina sincerely hoped that her uninvolvement in the girl’s death was no longer doubted by anyone, but suddenly the cabinet members furiously lashed out at her with accusations of criminal incitement of children to collective action in her defense, and threatened her with punishment for illegal pedagogical activity per not having the proper documents confirming her education.
With ‘unsalted bread,’ Braina returned to the kibitka, but remembering the threat of punishment, decided that it was time to take action to restore her lost documents. A protracted correspondence began about the case, but it did not bring any encouraging results because there was an absence of the necessary archival materials, which had been destroyed during the war.