Secondhand Time: The Last of the Soviets

by Svetlana Alexievich

Old age means, first and foremost, loneliness. The last old man I knew—he lived in the adjacent courtyard—died five years ago, or maybe it’s been even longer…seven years ago…I’m surrounded by strangers. People come from the museum, the archive, the encyclopedia…I’m like a reference book, a living library! But I have no one to talk to…Who would I like to talk to? Lazar Kaganovich*2 would be good…There aren’t many of us who are still around, and even fewer who aren’t completely senile. He’s even older than me, he’s already ninety. I read in the papers…[He laughs.] In the newspaper, it said that the old men in his courtyard refuse to play dominos with him. Or cards. They drive him away: “Fiend!” And he weeps from the hurt. Ages ago, he was a steel-hearted People’s Commissar. He’d sign the execution lists, he sent tens of thousands of people to their deaths. Spent thirty years by Stalin’s side. But in his old age, he doesn’t even have anyone to play dominoes with…[After this, he speaks very quietly. I can’t tell what he’s saying, I only catch a few words.] It’s scary…Living too long is scary.