Читать книгу The Secret Life of the Two-Faced Virgin. Part 1 - Группа авторов - Страница 3

Natasha was also fortunate when it came to her parents. Her father, Nikolai Pavlovich, was a tall, handsome brunette with a stately figure and remarkable physical strength. Yet his character was modest and kind. When Natasha was born, her father worked as a shop supervisor at a machine-building plant and studied in the evening program at the Polytechnic Institute. Her mother, Maria Alexeyevna, was also a very beautiful woman; she had graduated from a culinary school and worked as a cook at the same plant as her husband. In character, however, she differed from her husband, as she was quite vain and self-centered – something that later greatly complicated Natasha’s life. But despite such differences in temperament, the parents of the twins lived in love and harmony.

There was also an older child in the family – a son, who was 4 years old at the time the twins were born. If our heroine was fortunate with her parents, then with her brother she was disastrously unlucky. The birth of two sisters was met by the boy, who had an egocentric personality, with jealousy that later grew into pathological hatred, accompanied by numerous direct attempts to kill his sisters or to arrange “accidents” for them.

Before her birth, Natasha’s parents lived in a private house where they rented a room while waiting for their cooperative apartment – a two-room flat they had already paid for halfway – to be completed. But after the birth of the twins, the state immediately provided them with a two-room, unrenovated apartment on the first floor, with one walk-through room, shared outdoor facilities, and a cellar. A few years later, the family received a four-room apartment from the state in a new building on the 8th floor with all amenities, and the cooperative apartment under construction was given to the grandmother – the mother’s mother – who was brought from the village to the city, where she settled with the mother’s younger brother.*

Natasha’s early childhood was not as joyful or carefree as that of most children. Together with her sister, she caused her parents a great deal of trouble. Life for Soviet women was not easy, as maternity leave lasted no more than 3—6 months, after which a child had to be placed in daycare or left with a grandmother. Shopping for groceries took a long time, as stores had huge lines, and the shortage of most essential household and children’s goods made the lives of Soviet mothers a heavy burden. As Natasha’s mother later said, “She spent half her life standing in queues.” Clothes also had to be sewn or knitted at home. Instead of diapers there were mountains of cloth swaddles that had to be washed daily, and instead of automatic washing machines – everything was washed by hand. Managing one child in a home with no modern conveniences, during breaks between work, was difficult; managing three children was three times harder.

Seeing how hard their mother worked, one day Natasha and her sister decided to help her with housework. The sisters “cooked” porridge, destroying an entire month’s supply of grains and pasta by mixing everything together in a basin and pouring water over it. When their mother came home, she scolded the girls, and afterwards cried for a long time. Another favorite pastime of the sisters was ripping wallpaper off the walls, for which their mother also punished them.

Natasha and her sister rarely heard affectionate words or praise from their mother, and only in the presence of others or relatives. At home, she did not call her daughters by their names, only by nicknames she had invented: Natasha was “cow” or “Sivka-Burka,” and her sister was “cracker” or “dry twig.” It is hard to say what caused such an attitude – whether exhaustion from domestic routines and poor living conditions, or problems at work – but the phrase “you amaze me in batches” often came from her lips directed at her daughters. Natasha’s mother clearly had not adopted the experience of her own mother, who had raised seven children, including two older twin brothers, who had also caused the grandmother many troubles. It was precisely this attitude of their mother toward Natasha and her sister that caused the daughters to drift farther and farther away from her, trusting her neither with their secrets nor their problems. But there were joyful moments in Natasha’s life as well, when she and her sister would put on entire performances for guests. They sang, recited poems, and even staged puppet-theater shows.

Natasha and her sister hardly attended kindergarten like other children. Rather, their parents enrolled them, but something there displeased them. What exactly Natasha did not like, she never understood. Perhaps it was that boys and girls slept in the same rooms, or simply the collective environment away from family. Natasha and her sister would run away from kindergarten and go home. Their mother would take them through a private housing area to the trolleybus stop, then they rode several stops by trolleybus. By that time, Natasha already knew her exact address and last name. She and her sister would crawl through a hole in the fence and walk to the trolleybus stop. They would get on the trolleybus, ride exactly two stops, and get off. All the passengers would ask the girls where their parents were, and Natasha would reply that they were going home by themselves. Natasha and her sister ran away from kindergarten many times. After the last time, their mother decided it was better for the girls to stay at home. By then, Natasha and her sister had begun to fall ill often. According to their mother, their sicknesses had been caused by a vaccination administered by a nurse from the clinic. But in truth, the cause of their deteriorating health was the jealousy of their older brother.

When Natasha was three years old, a rat appeared in the cellar where food was stored, and it bit their father. After that, the father forbade his son and daughters to go into the cellar, because he had placed bread there covered with rat poison. But the brother, left alone with his sisters, climbed into the cellar and forced them to lick what was on the bread. Natasha and her sister, remembering their father’s warning, refused to lick the poisoned bread because it was life-threatening. But their brother insisted that his sisters taste the rat poison.

Although childhood memory usually does not allow recalling life events before the age of five – except the most emotional or dangerous – Natasha and her sister remembered that day very well. On that day Natasha fell outside, and an ambulance took her unconscious to the hospital. Her twin sister suffered a heart attack, doctors later even diagnosing a congenital heart defect, and for the first time they discovered serious vision problems. Of course, Natasha could not say with certainty whether she had licked the rat poison at age three or not. But considering that rat poison, in small doses when it does not kill, affects the respiratory center, the heart, and the retina, the conclusion is clear: their brother had indeed “treated” his sisters to poison. After that fateful day, Natasha spent most of her childhood in hospitals and sanatoriums with a diagnosis of bronchial asthma, which she suffered from until the age of thirteen. Another hardship for Natasha was a speech defect – stuttering. What caused it, neither she nor her parents knew. Only when she grew older was she able to almost overcome her stutter, though under strong emotional stress it still made itself known.