Stalina Read Free Page A

It is all about how things in the universe fit together, like a well-packed valise.”
    “Your universe is a curious place,” he said as he ran his fingers along the top of the bras I had packed.
    He touched everything in my bag. Under each of his fingernails was a line of black dirt collected from digging into other people’s possessions. I had systematically packed my double-strapped leather valise with the twenty-four brassieres, sizes 75B to 85DD. Sized in our metric system, I hoped these undergarments would make American ladies feel grand; 34B to 44DD is otherwise unimpressive. I used several of the larger sized bras to protect my collection of porcelain cats. The oldest one, a Siamese, was a present from Olga for my ninth birthday. Underneath the cats I had packed my father’s copy of Julius Caesar , his favorite play, and a leather-bound copy of Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass , which he read to me every year on my birthday when I was young. A photo album with pictures of my family and friends lay at the bottom of the bag, along with framed photos of my grandparents cushioned by my grandmother’s fur hat and gloves. I’d heard the American winters were bad—not as cold as Leningrad, but very wet. Poetry books by Anna Akhmatova had stockings and other undergarments wrapped around them. Into five pairs of socks I packed ten Russian matryoshka dolls, which I understood to be popular in America. I find them disturbing, as they show how easily a woman can be reduced to practically nothing. On top I laid my lab coat, which I’d received as a gift from Trofim, my chemistry professor from university. My lover.
    The customs man read my name on the passport. “Stalina, that’s a lovely name.”
    He obviously did not go to school with me. My fellow students would belittle me about my name. They would say, “Take another name, Stalina. How about Lotte or Anna or Tatiana? Millions died under Stalin. You are not his namesake anymore. Take this monster away from your life.”
    “I will never change it,” I told them. “My name is our past.”
    Perhaps this customs officer was a supporter of Stalin. There are those who wish for a return to Stalinism, and to honor the general for stopping the Nazis. In Petersburg today a small group stands in front of the Grostiny Dvor department store on Nevsky Prospekt with sandwich boards and petitions disseminating information for their cause. Occasionally an argument erupts between them and passersby, but in general they are just thought to be crazy and are whispered about in the cafés.
    I passed him my papers. There are no lies on my passport. A capital letter J stamped in the lower left corner indicates I am a Jew. When I left, the government made it easy for Jews, especially an oldie like me, to leave. The customs inspector handed back my passport and made a slow, deliberate stroke with his forefinger along the top of my hand. I took my bag and smiled out of relief at passing the inspection. As I walked through the gate, I felt his stare on my heavily padded behind swinging from side to side like a cushion-covered pendulum.
    I did not sleep and mostly cried during the twelve-hour flight to America. The clouds surrounded us like steam at my local banya. Instead of glistening bodies revealed in the breaks of heavy mist, I saw a landscape of clouds and ice-capped mountains as we crossed over Finland and then Greenland, where the sun’s light was tippling off the waves of the Atlantic. When we lost the sun and the moon rose, the dark waters looked like scores of crystal chandeliers lighting our way. The sun had come up when we left Petersburg, and I saw it rise again as we passed over an island the stewardess called Prince Edward. While in the air, I sorted through memories and divided them like the test tubes I once cleaned in the lab. Long, short, cracked, hard to see through, lined with residue, all dropped into the washbasin of my brain, bobbing to the surface when a