Secondhand Time: The Last of the Soviets

by Svetlana Alexievich

In the course of a day, you can run around until your feet turn black and blue. We didn’t have any shoes. You go to bed, and your aunt wraps your feet in the hem of her nightgown to warm them. She’d swaddle me. You can lie there somewhere near her stomach…It’s like being in the womb…And that’s why I don’t remember anything evil. I’ve forgotten it all…It’s hidden away in some distant place. In the morning, I would be woken up by my aunt’s voice: “I made potato pancakes. Have some.” “Auntie, I want to sleep more.” “Eat some and then you can go back to sleep.” She understood that food, bliny, were like medicine to me. Pancakes and love. My uncle Vitalik was a shepherd, he carried a whip over his shoulder and had a long birch-bark pipe. He went around in his military jacket and breeches. He’d bring us “feed” from the pasture—there’d be some cheese and a piece of salo—whatever the women gave him while the animals grazed. Holy poverty! It didn’t mean anything to them, they weren’t upset or insulted by it. All of this is so important to me…so precious. One of my friends complains, “I can’t afford a new car…” another, “I dreamt of it my whole life, but I never did manage to buy myself a mink coat…” When people say those kinds of things to me, it’s like they’re speaking from behind glass…The only thing I regret is not being able to wear short skirts anymore…[We laugh.]