Natalya was called to the Re-education Camp Commander. She was wearing, as her woman Commander – Siberian heavy clothes and her old boots. The commander pulled out a letter from her coat’s pocket, and said, looking at it:
“Besarobina, you can pack- and rejoice. This is a telegram from Gepau Headquarters.”
“What?” shouted Natalya.
“The prison period of Natalaya Besarobina”- continued the commander to read loudly, “is cut into half!”
“I can’t believe it!” Natalya interrupted her.
“here it is,” the woman showed her the handwritten telegram,
“Effective date: immediately! ..It is signed by Head of Gepau.”.
“What shall I do? It’s so...unexpected!”
“You should pack and leave tomorrow - with the truck that will bring us food. The driver will take you to the nearest train station. Here are two hundred Rubles - for the voyage expenses. Everything has been calculated by our Gepau Head office in Moscow.”
She kissed Natalya’s cheek and mumbled:
“Let’s hope we’ll not meet here again. Bye, Natalichka, I have become to know your good heart and nice work. God bless you, wherever He be and wherever you go.”
Her commander gave Natalya a copy of the Release Order, signed by Gepau with its stamp. If somebody would try to detain her or inquire, this document is the evidence. Every Gepau commander would recognize Menzhinsky’s signature, and the stample of the Gepau Headquarters’ Office..
Natalya had not known who had caused her rescue. She thought it had been because at that time, (so women in Siberia were used to say)- Trotsky had been absolutely defeated, and expelled from the Soviet Union. . .Natalya did not imagine at all -that Rabbi Aaron was the man who had bothered regarding her case.
Though Natalya had known for long, that the split between Elya and herself was final and critical, she was recalling about her good first days with him. It was unwillingly, she was aware of that. ‘But my imagination,’ she reflected, ‘suddenly dragged me unintentionally, and only afterward I could scorn myself: Oh, foolish mind. The hell with your streaming reflections. . .’
She reflected how had she been enthralled by that young man, Elya? And how did it come about, that due to her stupidity, to her innocent confidence in a hypocrite like him, she was abandoned and thrown out to that hellish icy camp? Yes, now there is a weak flash of hope. It has come from the letters of that innocent and good hearted God fearing person. The Rabbi has become a symbol for her - in his pure and absolute belief in God. But he is a realist, too. In his belief that God might delay His intervention in human life and politics - to the End of The Days, which is far enough to mean a coninuation of the present terrible suffering of all…I think he doesn’t illusion himself…’
Natalya recollected again about Elya. She was sitting beside him, very serious, detached and enjoying the lights beaming out from a movie screen. She was watching a film with him. Now she remembers herself- wearing a blue, modest skirt, a pink blouse and a long gray jacket with a fox fur collar. She was nuzzling playfully in young Elya’s neck. .. They were surrounded by twenty or so young couples, who were sitting like them in the darkened theatre. They had come there for entertainment, but some - lacking another place for making love, found that ‘theater’ fit for fervent kissings. Only few of them were watching continuosly and with interest - the black and white film, showing the Russian Revolution. . . The hand of young Elya- played with her hair. He was dark haired, wearing a Russian white shirt with a collar, embroidered by red vertical “xxx.” A nice guy he was. Then the film had come to its end, and the words: “Konets Film” (= end of film) appeared on the screen, written in Russian Kyrilic letters. The couples went out of the cinema hut, most of them hand in hand. Natalya remembered she had wrapped her neck by a light shawl, and looked at her boyfriend, while they began walking, among others. What a happy night was it: watching an original Eizenstein Film, about Saint Peterburg’s revolution days. “We are going to remove the cinema hall from here.” suddenly Elya stopped the rows of youngsters, that followed him and his girlfriend. “This ugly place isn’t fit for cultural events”.
“Elya,” Natalya asked him with a laugh, “does our communistic Government have spare money for replenishing that stable?…”
“Don’t worry. Very soon we’ll have a stone built cinema, theatre, opera, concerts Hall- and The Party’s House.”
“Oh, a nice vision,” she laughed.
“It will become real,” he said, “I had participated in a meeting with Stalin, who has just become General Secretary of the Party.”
The young couples surrounding them applauded Elya. How proud she was at those moments, that he had been her boyfriend. She kissed him publicly, so that the girls would become jealous...
‘Now - all has been turned out to be a delusion, Fata Morgana’- said Natalya to herself. Her head dropped down on her train’s hard bench, and she was sleeping. Her dream took her to a sweet view of her childhood days. She saw her grandma, her mother’s mother, who stood with her outside a theater house.
“A play in theater does not show exactly what and how things are really in life,” the grandma told little Natalya. She was then five or six years old. “So, you should not be scared of what you see, Natalichka. Yes, we will both be permitted to enter - and get seats, to watch your mama playing in the drama. I am sure they’ll have empty chairs here; this drama will not fill the hall. ”
Natalya and her grandma clapped by their fingers - on the window glass of the cellar Make-up Room of the theater. They wanted to turn Natalya’s mother attention: She, Anna Besarobina, had to play then demon Puk in the Shakespeare’s ‘Summer Night Dream’.
Her mother was dressed in a tight trico garment and smeared white face, so she now remembers. She had two horns, made of fiber, and her lips were smeared by a pink color make up. Natalya saw her Mom inside the cellar, and her fingers tapped the glass again and again.
Her mother said through the glass: “Papa will hand you the tickets. He will soon finish his work with the forest decoration up there, on the stage”. But her grandma told her daughter, Natalya’s Mom: “We are freezing here, Annushka. Open your cellar, and let us in for ten minutes.” And her Mom indicated them to walk around and come to a low door, and both she and her grandma had to bend– while they had entered the theater’s cellar. It was warmed by coal stove, and soon Natalya was seated on a small box in the corner, looking at half naked actresses, who were smearing and coloring their faces and arms, chatting and laughing. Then somebody declaimed a dramatic ‘tears squeezing’ sentence, and some nice actor applauded the declaimer with bravos. . .Then she saw an actress who was wearing a long white dress, and a golden crown on her head. Her grandma whispered to her: ”You see? She is the Athenian Queen in the play. And there – you see the King, dressed in red.”
“Why did not they choose my Mom to be the queen?” asked Natalya, “Mom is much prettier than this queen woman. Even she is made up and smearing colors on her face.”
An actress who had been there heard Natalya’s protest and hushed her. She was preparing to be one of the demons in the play, and showed the girl a male actor having a donkey’s head mask. He was wearing it, while coming to Natalya’s Mom, elbowed her and ‘made his donkey’s lips’ kiss her. Natalya was irritated ...
Natalya remembered that when she had become twelve, her mother discovered to her that behind the curtain there was a permanent struggle: Who will get the best role in a drama, and receive most of the applauds and respect from the audience. She warned her :”Don’t bring yourself to study this humiliating and nervy art of the theatre. It’s not a profession for you. It’s for gypsies and mads like myself. It’s a very hard way of life- and you will be discriminated, as you are Jewish. Promise me not to be an actress.” Indeed Natalya was feeling her reluctance from that kind of life. She would not be fit to change herself every day to become a different character – wear diffe
rent faces and wait for the audience applauds, like a beggar to the ringing coins.
CHAPTER 28