GLASNOST , CHAPTER 4
It was Monday morning 8 am Jan 7th of a new decade , 1980 .
“ Daniel, it’s me, Tracy “
“ Where are you Sis , is everything alright , when are you coming into San Francisco ? I understood next nothing from your last call, Daisy and I have been worried sick.”
“ I’m at the Palace Hotel on Market St. , when would it be possible for you to fetch me , please don’t skip any classes , I’m fine waiting.”
I don’t start until Thursday but it wouldn’t matter , I’ll be there in half an hour, what room are you in , I’ll help you lug your things . “
“ Hold on Daniel , is Daisy home ? And is Donna in school today ? “
“ Daisy goes in to work at noon but she doesn’t have to , I just got back from walking Donna to school , what the hell is going on.”
“ I’ll be out front by where the taxis line up , I can grab you a coffee , the brew they serve out of the cafe in the lobby is sublime.”
Daisy insisted on going with me . Tracy was excited to see us , more animated than she normally is but she’d certainly had lost some weight and seemed a bit pale. Everything about this is feeling off .
Back at the apartment Trace sinks into the beanbag warning us she has a long story to tell and is unsure where to start.
“ I resigned in November , it became effective Jan 1st , I flew into Frisco Friday. Mom knows some of this , the rest she’ll hear from the two of us next week in person “
“ Tracy , I won’t be in Jersey until June ! ”
“ I think I know where this is going dear , Danny should catch up in a bit “
“ Thanks Daisy “
It occurs to me that was the first time I’ve heard her laugh since we found her in front of the Palace.
“ Danny , in your reading have you come across the Russian word Samizdat ? “
“Yes , I believe it is underground , dissident writing that gets passed person to person”
“ Pretty close , keep in mind “ dissident “ has a broader meaning to the Soviet authorities than strictly anti -government and that a wide range of prohibited stuff gets tolerated at any given time ”
From here Trace launches into the story of her semi risky dalliances with underground writers pushing back on the stagnant status quo . She says that such stuff is not uncommon among her peers . Early on Franklin , knowing her pretty well, had carefully explained that Pepsi while not monitoring your life among the general population expected discretion and common sense . As a rule you’d have the company’s full support unless you got really stupid . Tracy figured she was okay because she had no interest in the big name dissidents living one step ahead of “Black Marias “ heading to the Gulag. Her love was for regular people trying to live their own lives and small artists just interested in expressing themselves.
For over two months last summer she was going to Tuesday afternoon readings in a large studio apartment in central Moscow a few blocks off Pushkin Square. For her it was heaven , samplings of fair to middling poetry and fiction that experimented with frowned upon modernist techniques . Occasionally there was a middle aged guitarist who dressed like and tried to emulate the style of Elvis but whose songwriting was a Russian stab at classic Dylan. Occasionally there was tea and little cakes.
“And then Tamara shows up , a very slight , dark haired young girl with a surprisingly husky voice . She reads three poems , they are oddly composed and openly Sapphic , in the case of the last one quite eroticly so. “
I’m feeling myself blush and wondering if Daisy understands “ Sapphic” , she obviously does , appears unsurprised and unfazed .
“The small crowd is tense and visibly displeased which Tamara takes in stride as she walks to the back sits down and introduces herself to me . She tells me that she has a license for a stand in Pushkin Square where every Thursday - Sunday she sells the Ukrainian style borscht ( when she can get the beef ) which her grandmother taught her to make , she brags that it’s the best soup in the whole city and that I should visit her , any day after four. At this point I am feeling very confused and self conscious . She sees this and laughs at me.”
“No ,no ,no , not like that , you will meet my Marina , we would give you some poems , and you will eat soup. “
“So as you guys can guess I’m still confused but also intrigued , this little girl seems fearless in a way I can barely imagine . Pushkin Square is one of the most popular spaces in all of Moscow . That Friday I found myself walking to the spot she’s directed me to about fifty yards in front of the poet’s statue.”
“ She espies me as she is berating an elderly man for not tipping her or admitting how great the soup is , they were both laughing though. She addresses me as ‘ my newest friend’ and I realize she’d never asked my name and I ,rudely , had not thought to volunteer it.”
I interrupted asking if “ Marina “ was there , Daisy and Tracy both tell me to shut up and listen.
As Tracy resumed the next thing we got was a full load of Marina ,who showed up as Tamara was walking her elderly friend , he got soup every afternoon , to his favorite bench .
“Before I could even greet Tamara, and properly introduce myself, Marina is shaking my hand saying I must be her Kisa’a ( one of many nicknames I’d learn the two shared with each other ) new friend . Marina wants to tell me about herself and how she met Tamara “
Marina grew up in the Crimea just outside of Sevastopol . She came from a well connected family and was in school for engineering . While in school she discovered she was “different” and by mutual agreement with her parents she left home to find her way in Moscow .
“ They let me go with some of their love and some of their blessings , Papa arranged for me to get training and a job as a conductor on the Metro underground .Many girls have so much less left from their families , I am lucky.”
It was at a train station two years ago that Marina first encountered Tamara . Marina was 22 at the time , Tamara barely 16 . Marina’s train was waiting for service , she was having a smoke figuring she was probably done for the day . Tamara , in filthy clothes ,using a small dirty bag containing everything she owned as a pillow , was passed out on one of those hard wooden benches in the station directly underneath a leak from the ceiling . Marina at first only wanted the poor girl to move somewhere dry but after rousing her and realizing how totally lost the kid was she took her back to her small apartment planning to get her a meal or two and some sleep.
After a couple of weeks when neighbors were asking if the new girl was Maina’s cousin or sister she’d tell them she was a “Metro Water Rat” whom she adopted , they’ve been together ever since . Through the right connections and a few bribes Marina was able to get Tamara papers to live in the city along with the soup cart permit.
Over that first weekend visiting them three afternoons in a row Sis was to learn much of their story, though she realized afterwards much was purposely left out . She never knew in what section of Moscow they resided let alone their address , nor did they ever volunteer their full family names or the names of the towns they’d left behind.
Tamara is clear that she knew exactly who she was at an early age. She grew up in a small village on the Sea of Azov . Her family had been targets of the state since just after the Revolution when a grandfather was executed for possibly playing a small role in the Hryhoriv uprising . In the decades since it probably didn’t help that they were Jewish . As soon as she thought she’d saved enough to strike out she ran away from home to start her own life and to not bring trouble to her family .
Sis was getting emotional and had to stop to collect herself.
“ She was two days from home , begging rides from truckers before she was robbed and raped . Her assailant left her the bag of clothes and somehow did not find a small roll of notes hidden in a pair of cutoffs . She wouldn’t talk about whatever hell and horror the three weeks it took to reach the city after this entailed except to say she has known girls that have suffered worse . She says her poems help her to forget , she does not and will not talk of this time to Marina . “
“ Daisy, you would adore Marina . The following Thursday I got there just as they were wrapping things up . As Tamara was hauling away the rubbish bin a very arrogant younger man asks Marina what can he get for half price . I stayed back as I was sure he was state security. Marina looks him straight in the eye and says . I can let you have two bowls of pigeon shit but you will have to climb up the pedestal of Pushkin’s statue over there and scoop it off his right boot yourself “
“ Now that is beautiful , what did the asshole do ?”
“ He paid full price for two bowls of soup and left them a very good tip. In Russia even the assholes usually respect a top rate insult. “
At this point in the story I was growing very apprehensive , I’m certain that in real time Tracy was even more so. But while there is no sweet fairy tale ending coming neither would it be Gogol or Brothers Grimm .
Marina had been contacted by her brother and an uncle . Her family wanted her home Rumors were flying about various upcoming crackdowns , both girls were more than worldly wise enough to understand the precariousness of their current existence , they’d tempted luck and fate long enough. Marina’s father believed he could get them a permit to sell borscht in Sevastopol , it seems Tamara’s beet soup really was legendary . Of course they couldn’t live in the same domicile , Tamara would have to behave , no readings , but it seems if they can be discrete they can be together.
“ Tamara next tells me it is very important to her that her poems are somewhere in the world and she would like for me to have them. “
Tracy tells us she was honored and promised to preserve them along with reading and sharing them. Thing is though she wants to know why her? Even if Tamara was able to understand who , in essence , she was so quickly by some supernatural like intuition how did they know they could open up their lives to a girl they knew for mere days with so much at stake, and do so with so much trust?
Here is where I interrupted and , quite unintentionally, outdid myself in the jerk front.
“ Sis you know how much I love you , I will always support you and be there for you . So then sitting in Pushkin Square with the help of two amazing girls you had an epiphany and realized you are gay. This is one of the most beautiful things I have ever heard “
I thought I was being magnanimously enlightened , Daisy had a different take .
“ Danny , I love you more than you can possibly know but sometimes you are the most clueless idiot in the whole state of California . In all the years being close to your sister did you ever know her to even go on a single date with a boy or a man ? What the fuck did you think was up with that ? “
“I just thought she was always seriously focused on her studies I guess .”
Before Daisy could further destroy me Tracy laughed for the second time.
“ It’s okay Danny , Dad is an even bigger idiot than you , he has been worried I was having an affair with Franklin . I have known for years deep down that Mom and Aunt Sarah knew . I believe you did also Daisy , I remember not long after you’d had Donna where you talked to me about a woman having to have the balls to live her real life , I fooled myself into thinking you were talking about your own situation . “
“ Anyway though , I wasn’t really expecting any kind answer from Tamara ,at least not the comprehensive one I got .”
“She said she’d seen me at the readings before and she knew I was sad and lonely . She also said because I was so pretty ( and believe me I was seriously blushing at this ) and so smart that I must have a “love” back home but the reason I was so deeply sad was because I was afraid. The crazy part is that when she’d come to that last meeting her plan was to read large swaths of The Bronze Horseman then do a sales pitch for her borscht stand. At the dias she was suddenly inspired to read her own poems , the third one she’d never read to anyone before , using the minor scene she knew would ensue to entice me , as it were . In the park now all three of us laughed at the idea of a Russian poetess being inspired to NOT read Akhmatova , unthinkable ! “
Besides her original poems they also wanted to read to me a very strange, very beautiful poem by Bella Akhmadulina , they did their own translation of it which they gave to me with some lovely drawings of seabirds Marina drew.
Rain flogs my face and my bones
As storms thunder over
Your thrust upon soul and flesh
Is as tempests upon ships will thrust
I do not want to yet know
What will befall me next
Shall I be crashed into my woe
Or thrown into happiness
In awe and joy elated
like a ship that's gone through tempests
I am not sorry that I've met you
And not afraid to love you , too.
At this point I have to admit I am feeling overwhelmed , also have completely lost track of time as Daisy reminds us we have to pick up Donna .
“ Tracy, why don’t we get Donna and all go together and meet your friend “
“ I would love that but would it perhaps be too much for Donna ? “
“ Yeah , last month she insisted on getting a christmas present for her second grade teacher whom she adores . I told her we could go down to the boutique and Linda would help her pick out a nice bracelet . She loved that idea and said we could get a matching one for her teacher’s girlfriend . I laughed and said I think you mean friend honey. She said no mom, they share a house together”
In the meantime I’m losing my way again and ask who is this friend ?
“ Sophie flew in from New Jersey saturday , she’s waiting for us at the hotel. “
“ What ? Sophie from school , you’ve had the same girlfriend all these years ?”
That came out way wrong and I knew right away I was screwed .
“ Jesus Daniel , 10 minutes ago you admitted that for years you thought your sister was a frigid ice queen , now you seem shocked I’m not a fucking slut , make your mind up! “
I know I have to try way harder at keeping my foot out of my mouth but honestly I’m just happy Tracy is still Tracy.
Donna was thrilled to see her aunt Tracy and confused to see her crying . Tracy was explaining to her about Sophie and why it took so long for all of us to meet her. Sis was as discombobulated as I could ever imagine her being yet Donna seemed to fully grasp the situation.
“ But Aunt Tracy , last summer I explained to you how to tell people ‘ that’s none of your fucking business ‘ .
“ I know you did sweetheart but I’m a slow learner “
Daisy in meantime asked her daughter where she got that one from . .
“ Li nda “
We wouldn’t get the full story there until that evening back at the apartment.
Sophie was beaming when we all got into the room and were doing the introductions . Actually it was a suite , happy to see the girls were splurging. A good four hours starting to get to all know each other . We got coffee and snacks sent up by room service at one point , Trace was spot on about the coffee . Sophie has such a rich , warm laugh and it is downright a cliche to relay that the two girls were positively glowing at each other.
They plan on being in Frisco for three more days . At one point Sis apologizes to me for refusing to allow us to take her to City Lights last May. Sophie majored in American Literature at school and in particular loved Ginsburg and the Beats . She wrote a term paper on the founding , history , and influence of the bookstore and they promised each other they would one day visit it together.
This is where Donna pipes up about our friend Mr. Crew Cut and being made “ Special Reader ;Order of the Chinese Dragon “ . Sophie freaks out at this and asks if I know the famous story of the door in one of the back rooms with a wooden sign on it that reads “ I AM THE DOOR “ . I know the door but not the story.
“ Just after the store opened in 1953 one of it’s co-owners, Beat poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti, came upon a loose sheet of old plywood . Pushing it in led to a basement . At one time the basement had hosted meetings of some kind of a weird Christian group. They left behind wooden signs , besides that door one “ Remember Lot’s Wife “ , “ Born in Sin Shapen in Niquity” and others.
Better yet a giant Chinese dragon was stored in there by a group of Chinese electricians and technicians . The basement exits out on to an alley that leads to Adler Street . Every year during a day in the second week of February the dragon gets snaked out of the basement to participate in the Chinese New Year parade.
Ferlinghetti wrote a poem about it “ The Great Chinese Dragon “ , you simply must read it Daniel ! “
Wow , and Donna and I must visit our friend Mr. Crew cut so she can thank him again for the honor he bestowed upon her.
I tried insisting on taking everyone out for a nice dinner but Daisy let them demur by arguing they were probably exhausted and needed some rest . I’m sure she was right as I certainly was drained . We agreed to meet for lunch the next day and some tourist type sightseeing . Sophie was shameless about hitting all the usual draws for out of towners . They wanted to do the wharves so I told them about pier 39 , then it was to be Alcatraz . Can’t overstate how charming Sophie is , wish they had more than a few days but of course I am aware that Mom must be desperate to the point of frantic to see her daughter .
In the back of my mind I was worried about where Tracy was going career wise . Happy to learn she has what sounds like a good deal doing consulting with a large NGO headquartered in Manhattan lined up . She landed this with the help of Franklin who has turned out to be a spectacularly good friend .
Sophie started last fall as a lit teacher at a very prestigious preparatory school in Greenwich Village . They are already scheduled to view an apartment on Bedford St. that would be open for rent beginning in March . Until then they will be staying with mom and dad . So Trace wasn’t kidding when she told me mom already knew “ some “ of what I’m just learning today. Can’t wait to hear from mom about how many ridiculous and inappropriate things issued out of dad’s mouth for which she had to slap him down. And it’s alright , he doesn’t mean any of it , all three of us know there is nothing on earth he wouldn’t try and do for us if he thought it was needed.
I’ve also realized that for the past two years I have somewhere deep down been frightened and apprehensive about Tracy living in Russia for 3 to 5 months at a clip . I have no doubt that those fears were much more in the forefront for mom and dad . Her living in The Village sounds pretty freaking idyllic at this point , wonder how far The Strand is from Bedford Street ? I’ll have to ask Sophie tomorrow at lunch , I’m sure they’ll laugh at me. And I’m sure they will be happy to hear we’d already planned to visit home for all of June and the first week of July this summer . Poor Donna was worried it would mean she’d have to spend time with “ The Shirley” , reassured her already on that front even before we knew Aunt Tracy would be around to have her back.