Keith Gessen - A Terrible Country

Miklos said he’d be working on Dima’s place for at least another month, so if we wanted to take that long to move our grandmother, we could. But I didn’t want to. I wanted to get it done and over with. I had ten days before my visa expired, and I spent the first days looking for an apartment in our neighborhood with a real estate agent recommended by Anton. But nothing worked. Most of the buildings near us were old, and though the apartments I was looking at had been remodeled, there were no elevators, and all sorts of stairs for my grandmother to fall down. Finally Dima heard of a place through a friend; it was in a quiet neighborhood across the river, it had a balcony for my grandmother to sit on, and most of all it had an elevator. The rent was just fifteen hundred dollars a month. Dima needed a hundred thousand out of the apartment sale for his legal fees, which meant that we had one eighty left over; if we paid Seraphima Mikhailovna one thousand, and budgeted another thousand for everything else, we didn’t have to worry about any Grandma expenses for the next four years. We took the apartment, and three days later Dima flew in to help with my grandmother’s move.

Once again he stayed in our room, and in virtual silence we packed up my grandmother’s books, her clothes, all the photos and little knickknacks, her medicine, her letters. We told our grandmother that she would be moving temporarily while this apartment underwent renovations, and she accepted this, then forgot, then accepted it, then forgot, then accepted it again. It took three long, miserable, hot days to pack the apartment into boxes, and at the end of it two guys came with a small but adequate flatbed truck, and while the driver sat in the truck and smoked, his partner helped us load my grandmother’s stuff, including all the furniture from her room, so we could basically re-create it verbatim in her new bedroom. Then we went. We thought it would take us two or three trips, but all our grandmother’s stuff fit onto the flatbed, and we managed in just one. Seraphima Mikhailovna was already at the apartment, and after unloading the truck I left her and Dima to unpack and went back to our place to keep our grandmother company in the now almost empty apartment. She was sitting on the lone remaining chair in the kitchen when I got back, looking through her phone books. Instead of waiting in that ravaged apartment, we went outside for a walk and sat in one of the neighboring courtyards and took in the sun. It was still the middle of the afternoon. Eventually my phone rang; it was Dima, who had returned in the small Nissan he’d rented at the airport, and it was time to go.

I sat in the back, my grandmother in front, and Dima drove. It was a ten-minute drive, but it was far too long. Coming out of our courtyard onto the boulevard, Dima had to turn right, and as we went down the hill toward Trubnaya, for a second a vista of Moscow opened up before us—the golden steeples sparkling in the sun, a few glass towers, and the blue sky over the city. “Ah,” said my grandmother, “how beautiful! Look!” she said to both of us. “Look how beautiful it is.”

We got to Trubnaya, and Dima pulled a U-turn. “Why are you turning around?” asked my grandmother. “Where are we going?”

The right we took must have made her think we were going to Emma Abramovna’s—that was usually where we went when we went in a car in that direction.

“We’re going to the new apartment,” said Dima.

“The new apartment,” said my grandmother. It was half a question, but we did not answer.

Everything was quiet for a while, but then we passed Clean Ponds and my grandmother suspected something was up.

“You know,” she said, turning to Dima, as if just thinking of something, “let’s go back. I think it’s time to go back.”

“It’s OK,” said Dima. “We’re almost there.”

My grandmother saw that we were not turning back, and she tried to take an interest in the sights. We were traveling along Clean Ponds, one of the most beautiful areas of Moscow, and it was a warm summer day, and there wasn’t much traffic, so we sped along.

I thought I was going to cry. What were we doing? Already so much of her memory had been erased. And much of the city she knew had been erased. Now we were erasing her physical connection to the place she’d lived for fifty years.

We crossed the bridge over the Yauza River, in the shadow of one of the huge Stalin-era stone skyscrapers, and here my grandmother tried again.

“You know what,” she said, as if very casually. “Let’s go back. Don’t you think it’s time to go back?”

“Grandma,” said Dima. I looked up when I heard the tone of his voice. He was crying. In the back I also started crying. Dima said, “We’re almost there.”

And in just a few minutes we were. By the time we got out of the car our eyes were dry again.

Dima and Seraphima Mikhailovna had done a good job with the apartment: the bedroom was set up to look almost exactly like her old bedroom, with her same cot, her old desk, and all her photos of us and Uncle Lev arranged on a little shelf above it, and next to her bed the green armchair on which I’d started sitting while she read. Into the living room we had imported the green foldout couch and, heroically, the standing closet. Nonetheless my grandmother was confused. She was tired from the ride and we brought her into her new bedroom so she could lie down. She recognized her bed and her bedding. “This is my bed,” she said experimentally.

“Yes,” we said.

She lay down and we left her, but a few minutes later she came out and asked, very politely, like a guest, where the bathroom was. I walked her there. Then she came into the living room, where we were still unpacking the boxes, and said, “How terrible!” about the mess. “Andryushik,” she said, “tell me, where do I live?” I walked her the few steps to her bedroom, and once again she recognized it, and turned to me and asked, “This is my room, right?”

I said yes.

In the late afternoon, as we continued to unpack, she took a long nap in her room. When she woke up she was even more disoriented. When I came into her room to check on her, she was happy and surprised to see me. “Andryushik,” she said, “my Andryushik.” Then she asked me when we were going back to Moscow.

“We are in Moscow,” I said.

“Oh,” she said. She looked confused. If we were in Moscow, why weren’t we in her apartment? “Well,” she said, “just let me know what time the train is.”

“What train, Grandma?”

“Back to Moscow. Just tell me the time and I’ll be there.”

“OK,” I said. The move had somehow triggered a deep confusion in my grandmother. I started heading out of the room but she called me back.

“What time is the train?” she said.

“Grandma,” I said again, “to where?”

“Pereyaslavl’.” It was where she’d been born.

I knew if I tried to say anything I would burst into tears, and that this would worry her. So I didn’t say anything.

“Just tell me what time the train is,” she said again.

“In the morning.”

“What time in the morning?” She was very businesslike now. “How are we going to arrange it? Will I call you?” She pointed to me. “Or will you call me?” She pointed to herself.

I waited a second before answering.

“Let’s do this,” I said. “I’ll come over in the morning, and we’ll have tea.” This was a lie—my flight out was early the next morning—but I couldn’t think of what else to say. I said, “OK?”

“Tea?” said my grandmother. “Yes, that sounds good. I’ll see you in the morning.” And she closed her eyes.