We Are Not in Pakistan

we are not in Pakistan

Other fiction by SHAUNA SINGH BALDWIN

English Lessons and Other Stories

What the Body Remembers

The Tiger Claw

we are not in Pakistan

Shauna Singh Baldwin

Copyright © 2007 by Vichar. Vichar is a division of Shauna Singh Baldwin associates, inc.

All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced or used in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher or a licence from the Canadian Copyright Licensing agency (access Copyright). To contact access Copyright, visit www.accesscopyright.ca or call 1-800-893-5777.

Author photo by David J. Baldwin.

Cover image © irina Opachevsky, istock.

Cover and interior book design by Julie Scriver.

Printed in Canada.

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Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Baldwin, Shauna Singh, 1962-

we are not in Pakistan / Shauna Singh Baldwin.

ISBN 978-0-86492-488-9

I. Title.

PS8553.A4493W4 2007    C813’.54     C2007-903124-2

Goose Lane Editions acknowledges the financial support of the Canada Council for the Arts, the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program (BPIDP), and the New Brunswick Department of Wellness, Culture and Sport for its publishing activities.

Goose Lane Editions

Suite 330, 500 Beaverbrook Court

Fredericton, New Brunswick

CANADA E3B 5X4

www.gooselane.com

for Adesh Bhuaji

who said to keep my stories short

and Manjit Uncle

who said to keep them long

Contents

Only a Button

Naina

Rendezvous

Fletcher

The View from the Mountain

We Are Not in Pakistan

Night of the Leonids

This Raghead

Nocturne for a Blue Day

The Distance Between Us

Acknowledgments

Only a Button

October 1985

The front door flings open — Viktor. Breathless, as if he took the stairs two at a time. Olena, I’m assigned to the Lenin Power Station! Off come his coat and shoes. His arms are strong around his wife. Her feet leave the ground, the kitchen whirls. Kisses jab her cheeks.

She is laughing, kissing back fiercely, but her inside voice is saying oh, no, oh no … we will have to move. Move from Moscow, close to Kyiv. Close to Matushka.

Why must Olena call her Matushka? Because that’s what Viktor calls his mother.

A lock of dark hair falls across his forehead, words spill from him as never before. Viktor is delighted; Olena should be happy. The station is in Ukraine, near her home.

She brings out the vodka, raises a glass. Shalom, Viktor! The secret greeting comes to her lips as though warding off the future. Omayn! he says, downing his drink. So excited he doesn’t even tell her to hush.

But behind the locked door of the washroom, anger makes her heave and retch. Emptied and exhausted, she sits on the toilet seat, legs straight forward, an auburn veil of hair obscuring her face.

This man she loves is the one person she can’t tell how she feels.

At seven, Viktor stood with other school children chosen to hail the man code-named Borodin, The Beard: Igor Kurchatov, father of the Soviet atomic bomb. Viktor was chosen to study Borodin and more Borodin. While Olena was reading folk tales in school, Viktor read Dollezhal on reactor design. When they met, standing in line for Bulgarian cigarettes, she was a teacher of seven-year-olds, and he was almost through his six years at the Moscow Institute of Physical Engineering.

Olena rises, moves to the sink and splashes water over her face.

Viktor used to call her his Ukrainian samovar — and it’s still true that she has a small face, slender arms and a long narrow torso perched on the flare of her hips. And he’s still a methodical fireplug of a man with a rare but wide smile. A hard-working man, which makes him different from many husbands. And a member of the Party.

She cups one hand beneath the faucet, releases a trickle of water with the other. She rinses her mouth.

Matushka and Viktor — and Viktor’s father when he was alive — always belonged to the Party. Olena’s family never did. Dedushka, her grandfather, was detained by Stalin. Her grandmother too. Detained in a camp for years, despite his Stalingrad war medal, just for hiding a kulak from the secret police. Olena’s mother was born in that camp. Still, Dedushka calls Party members crownless clown tsars and the new feudals — how lucky Olena is that he is seventy-one and alive.

Her father came from good proletarian roots. The son of a blacksmith. But he came to Moscow and was so seduced by the Lenin Library that he became a perpetual student of Chekov and Dostoyevsky. Olena’s mother said he was living in someone else’s story rather than his own. They divorced when Olena was only two, and her mother took her back to Ukraine and Dedushka. By the time Olena met Viktor, her parents were gone. And marrying Viktor washed her clean of her family’s sins.

For Viktor. But never for Matushka.

Olena squeezes paste onto her toothbrush and begins to brush slowly.

She was so young then, so naive. Newly married. Living in Matushka’s Moscow apartment until Viktor graduated and his name came up among the thousands on Moscow’s waiting list for housing. Hoping to win a single smile from her five-foot Tartar-faced mother-in-law. All those two years, Olena thought obedience would make Matushka love her. But even after the unthinkable, Matushka’s lips stayed permanently pursed, as if she wouldn’t deign to spit in Olena’s direction.

Foam and water swirl down the drain.

Five years ago, during all the excitement of the Moscow Olympics, soon after Viktor and Olena first moved to this apartment, Olena came home from work to find Viktor and Anatoli sitting at the kitchen table. She thought Viktor had invited the swift-talking, lighthearted Anatoli to help her celebrate her twenty-fourth birthday, but no. The same Viktor who, two years earlier, when he couldn’t afford a present, had given her a large box with a small card inside promising a thousand kisses, had forgotten it. And so had Anatoli, his college friend, who had known her now for three years. But as soon as Olena mentioned it, Viktor invited two more guests! Olena had spent her whole lunch break standing in line and all she could buy was a sliver of beef. Baby Galina’s bare bottom riding her arm, Viktor and three guests to feed, and Matushka called. From Kyiv, thousands of kilometres away.

Viktor took the phone and relayed the message: Matushka lost a button in the apartment during her visit. She wanted Olena to find it. An embroidered button, it’s true, but — a button. Worth ten or twenty kopeks? Olena said to Viktor, Tell her I will look, and if I find it, I will keep it for her.

But no! Viktor stood with his palm over the phone cup, eyebrows a straight line. Look for it. She needs it.

Now? said Olena. A trickle of urine crept down her hip from Galina.

That’s what she said. He said this in Russian, not Ukrainian. Yes, Olena remembers that.

He expected Olena to search for his mother’s button, so she did. She propped Galina on her baby pot, then took her into the bedroom. She laid the baby on the bed and began searching, keeping her eye on Galina all the while. Searched through the bedroom, the kitchen, the washroom. Even pushed aside Viktor’s shirts in the tub room and looked in the bathtub. She searched for more than fifteen minutes, picked up Galina, and returned to Viktor and his guests. Please believe me, Viktor, I cannot find it.

Viktor placed a call to Kyiv. Olena says she cannot find it.

He should have said, Olena cannot find it. That might have kept Matushka quiet. He could have said, We have been trying to find your button ever since you called, and we have looked everywhere, but we cannot find it. He could have said, as one says to a child, Don’t worry, it’s only a button. We’ll find another just like it. Not Viktor.

So, of course, Matushka said, Tell her to try harder.

Meanwhile Viktor’s friends persuaded him to bring out his balalaika, and between songs, they grumbled at the wait for dinner and passed the vodka. Every hour, between chopping, peeling and stirring, Olena searched. She shushed Galina whenever the singing woke her, and she searched. And every hour, Olena told Viktor she still couldn’t find the button, and he called Matushka in Kyiv.

Then it became late and he was hungry and shamed before his friends, so Olena got one, then two slaps across her cheeks. Olena didn’t blame him. She might have hit someone too if she could — someone so dear he would have to forgive her. She thought this as she muttered under her breath that even her mother had never hit her — never. No matter how frustrated she was from never having enough money.

It was midnight by the time Viktor let Olena give up searching for the button and three in the morning by the time she finished cleaning up. And then to work the next day.

Olena holds a towel to her eyes, dries the rest of her face. Lipstick would make her look more festive, but she has none.

She would rather move to the other side of the world than to Kyiv. But she is like a cloud that must go where the wind blows. Viktor has worked so hard for this. Olena must have faith in love the way Dedushka has faith in his God.

Viktor said they’ll be living in Pripyat. Pripyat is two and a half hours — about seventy kilometres — from Kyiv. They will be very close to her old home, Dedushka’s farmhouse. Her little mushroom, her sunshine, her Galina is almost seven now, old enough that she’ll come to know her great-grandfather.

They will not be living with Matushka.

And her Viktor will be happy.

Olena returns the towel to the rack and leaves the washroom.

November 1985

Viktor’s ninth-floor apartment in Pripyat, immediately allotted in this city of only half a million, is larger and airier than the Moscow apartment. And the building is so new! It is as if someone had Viktor and Olena in mind: here is a maroon-upholstered sofa set, sheer curtains, their own TV, and a bookcase where she can display her father’s collection of novels and Viktor can stack his military magazines and English scientific journals. Viktor’s balalaika fits perfectly under their bed. And there’s a balcony where Olena can see far across the city as she hangs her wash to dry.

Olena finds four different kinds of cheese available in Pripyat stores, and such short lines. Galina is assigned to a beautiful new school. Olena can take her to the amusement park, where there’s even a Ferris wheel. And it’s only a bus ride to Dedushka’s home. She does have to take a train or a hydrofoil across the reservoir with Viktor and Galina to visit Matushka in Kyiv. But only on Sundays.

Viktor, Anatoli and Anatoli’s twenty-year-old wife Laima take Olena and Galina to admire the huge white blocks of the power station. In the shuttle bus, Anatoli and blond, plump Laima steal a long kiss in the seat behind Olena as Viktor points out the turbine halls, the administrative block where he works, the three chimneys of the old reactors and the red and white chimney of the new one, Unit 4. Olena half turns, catches Laima’s eye, hides a smile. But Viktor is pointing out a line of pylons marching like giants across sunflower and wheat fields and telling Galina they supply electricity to Kyiv. If he has noticed, he will say Laima should be more dignified.

Anatoli shows them the flagstone commemorating the opening of the power station in March, 1984. He and Laima attended the ceremony, along with ministers, Party leaders from Kyiv, and the President of the Academy of Sciences. Olena wishes they had been here for the speeches, the fireworks, the lights, the Zils pulling up before the entrance to the House of Culture, and so many Volgas in a cavalcade down Lenin Street.

The bus passes a slogan painted on the wall of the plant: Communism Will Triumph! When Anatoli rises, stands in the aisle, and salutes, Olena wonders if he is joking. Laima and Viktor don’t laugh, and others in the bus don’t laugh, so Olena doesn’t either.

We employ seventy people per shift, Viktor tells Olena on the way home. In capitalist power stations, they can only employ ten or eleven.

Olena is proud for Viktor, so proud she could cry.

But a few days later, as Viktor slices into the molten core of Olena’s Chicken Kyiv, he says, It’s nothing like Moscow. My title is Assistant Safety Engineer, but maybe it should be Official Signer of Certificates of Exemption. And now I know which workers work and which play cards and read books. Most are happy with grades of four and three.

Olena remains silent. I too sometimes miss my friends in Moscow, and my little students, but not for long. Viktor will get used to it soon. He must — what else can he do?

Viktor dips half the chicken in the butter oozing from the other half and stuffs it in his mouth. But for everyone to get a five and be rated a pyatorka would take more organization and training. Effort that can’t be shown off to Party leaders visiting from Moscow.

With that, he licks his fingers and laughs as she never heard him laugh in Moscow.

It’s better that I’m at home now. Viktor will never have to wait for dinner. He’ll never get frustrated enough to slap me. Many other women are not so lucky.

As she undresses for bed, Olena can smell warm garlic from her special borscht all the way to the bedroom. She made it for Viktor and Galina as a celebration: only a month since their arrival at Pripyat, and already someone is transferred and Viktor has been promoted to Deputy Safety Engineer in Unit 4. He has received permission to own a motorcycle. And a paper Viktor wrote, published under his director’s name, as all his papers are, actually came to the attention of Plant Director Brukhanov.

Olena has put Galina to bed and persuaded her to stay there. She slips into her nightgown, then between the sheets with Victor. His body presses hers to sizzling elation.

With the weight of his arm and leg across her, Viktor whispers, One more promotion, and we’ll celebrate without a condom.

Olena’s inside voice is saying, Tell him. Say it, tell him. But her unthinkable is unsayable.

I want a boy, she says instead. To know what you were like when you were a little boy. And maybe another girl. Galina should never feel alone when we are no longer with her. She must not be an only child, as we are.

Viktor rolls away, clasps his hands behind his head and looks beyond her. When I was a boy, the plans for the RBMK reactors were just approved, and look, here I am, husbanding them.

Husbanding is not the right word. Maybe Comrade Borodin created a new temple and Viktor is part of its priesthood — but Olena doesn’t want to say that.

She is drifting but Viktor is now awake. We move so much faster these days. Can you believe it’s taken nine years for a recommendation from the head of safety in Moscow to arrive on my desk?

Was it not important? says Olena.

Oh, it was just telling us that extra boron rods should be installed here in the Lenin station, because they found they needed more for the Kursk reactor. But nine years!

What will you do? Olena yawns, head on his chest, his heartbeat steady in her ear.

Do? Nothing. We have heat sensors, water to absorb neutrons, automatic pumps, the Skala computer, and two hundred and eleven control rods installed already. If our reactors were designed by capitalists only interested in profit, maybe I would worry. But they’re designed by Soviet engineers for the people. We have procedures, safeguards, rules, rules — almost too many to remember.

But what if …

An accident is unthinkable. And besides, the rods cost billions of rubles! By the time we ask Moscow to buy them, it could be another nine years until we get them.

Olena drifts beneath a leaden shield. Boron rods dip and plunge in her dreams, cooling the core.

March - April 1986

Olena takes Galina to a performance of the Babi Yar Symphony and meets Rivka in the line before the House of Culture. A Belorussian, like many here. Rivka too lived in Moscow before she came to Pripyat.

She has no husband or children. But somehow Rivka doesn’t look sorrowful. With her cloud of brown hair, her sharply pointed chin and large eyes, she looks like Princess Diana.

Olena isn’t sure Rivka likes her. Olena likes Rivka but she doesn’t say that to Viktor. He might say, in his Party voice, She’s too chatty, when he really means, Don’t see her again.

Two weeks later, in Pripyat’s central square, Olena stops to buy radishes from a babushka — she still has the Moscow habit of always carrying her string shopping bag. A big sign above the weather-beaten old woman reads Tribuna Energetica. Pripyat’s newspaper, where Rivka works.

Olena decides she will apply for an office job, just a few days a week and while Galina is at school. Two salaries will be better than one. She climbs the stairs into the grey concrete building beneath the sign and asks a stern-faced woman for Rivka. When Rivka enters the reception area, the room feels brighter.

How kindly she greets Olena! She even shows Olena her office.

Such a big newspaper with such a big sign is published from only a few rooms. But it’s a new city, a new newspaper.

Rivka shows Olena into her director’s office and introduces her. The director says to Olena, Your husband is working at the power station? Tell him a fourth unit is unnecessary, and so are the fifth and sixth. Just hook all the pylons to Rivka and her energy will fuel the country.

Rivka laughs, and a spark flies between her and the director like a little of the current that flows between Viktor and Olena at night. In her own office, Rivka shows Olena a poem she wrote to commemorate International Women’s Day. Olena has never met anyone who writes poetry. Rivka asks what Olena thinks of her poem.

It is beautiful, says Olena immediately. Believe me, beautiful!

Without checking with her director, Rivka tells Olena she can start working with her the day after May Day.

Olena feels she has been given a great gift. But then she is not sure … how will she tell Viktor?

Back in the square, Olena adds carrots from the babushka to her shopping bag. Then the joke strikes her and she laughs. Rivka asked what Olena thought of her poem — as if what Olena thinks mattered!

Viktor is picking at his food, though Olena has served one of his favourites, fish kotlety. She wants to tell him about Rivka, about Rivka’s poem, about her new job. She will tell him that Laima is working too, and Anatoli doesn’t object. She is waiting for the right moment.

Our power station has been ordered to produce consumer goods, says Viktor, washing his breaded fish down with vodka. Because of Gorbachev and his glasnost. His eyebrows knot and rise. What can a reactor make but electricity? Personal nuclear bombs and batteries, maybe?

This is not the right moment.

Viktor tosses and turns all night, worrying, worrying, till Olena rises, fetches oil and massages him. You’ll think of something, she assures him as he falls asleep.

And the next day, over breakfast, he does think of a good suggestion: meat-mincing machines. He leaves for a meeting with his director and Plant Director Burkhanov. But that evening, he tells her they rejected his suggestion. They decided to propose hay storage facilities to Party leaders in Moscow.

Imagine how that will look: horse-drawn carts delivering hay to the Lenin reactor, he says with a hurt laugh.

Olena will tell Viktor about her job when he is more calm. Maybe on the weekend before May Day, when they are going to Sochi on the Black Sea.

Olena packs a picnic basket with three matzoh in a napkin, a bottle of Georgian wine, and horseradish. She adds a few sweet prune-stuffed pampushky and a lokshyna noodle ring filled with creamed vegetables. No salo, no sausage.

With Galina, she rides an accordion bus that stops at a village with no name. Her grandfather is lean and bright-eyed, and these days he’s more hopeful, he says because of the new man Gorbachev and his glasnost, but Olena knows it’s because she is closer. Who else will remember to bring him Passover foods he cannot find in old Chernobyl, the nearest town?

Outside Dedushka’s wooden farmhouse, the scent of black earth surrounds Olena as if she were a child again. Dedushka has a Passover present for Galina — a mink purse that belonged to her great-grandmother. He brings out photo albums and gives her a black and white snapshot of Olena’s mother. The little girl balances her plate on her knees and chews solemnly as she listens to a story about the night Olena was born. Later, Dedushka goes inside and returns triumphant, the tarnished rattle that once cheered baby Olena clutched in his hand. I remember things your mother cannot, he says, laughing as he gives it to Galina.

Friends stop to greet him, linger to exclaim over Olena and Galina and ask his advice. A farmer gives Galina a ride in his cart; Olena will bathe the manure smell away when she gets home.

Olena tells Dedushka they will leave on Saturday morning, tomorrow, after Viktor finishes the safety test at the station. She cannot hide the pride in her voice: they will be guests of Viktor’s director at his dacha. And now, since Viktor’s director is travelling with Director Burkhanov to Moscow to report their progress on hay storage, it will be just Viktor, Galina and Olena.

Six days — just the three of them in Sochi! Olena has made pampushky and berry-filled nalysnyky. Viktor has stocked up on vodka because Anatoli told him Gorbachev will ban it after May 1. Olena has packed cans of dried milk in a suitcase.

They’ll be home on Thursday to watch the May Day parades. Galina is excited about May Day, and so are all her friends. Olena too loves the parade, the streamers, the flags, the placards with the familiar slogans.

Enjoy this week, Olena, says Dedushka, as she kisses his forehead and brings Galina forward to say goodbye. There’ll never be another like it.

As soon as Olena gets home, the phone rings. Matushka, from Kyiv. A message for Viktor: Ask what have I done that he is not coming to visit his Matushka on Passover weekend.

The column of Olena’s neck feels as hollow as if she had scoured it, removed her larynx and other organs. Her anger sours the sauerkraut soup she makes for dinner.

And she doesn’t tell Viktor