Gingerbread

‘And who can tell me,’ Mr Navitski goes on, ‘what country their mamas and papas were born in?’

More hands shoot up. Some cry out without being asked: Belarus! Because the answer is obvious, and the prize will go to whoever gets there most swiftly.

But Mr Navitski shakes his head. ‘Trick question!’ he beams. ‘This country wasn’t always Belarus, was it?’

Yuri shakes his head so fiercely it draws Mr Navitski’s eye. ‘What country was it, Yuri?’

Yuri can only shake his head again, admitting that he doesn’t know.

‘Well, Yuri’s half got it right. Because once, not so very long ago – though long ago might mean a different thing to you little things – Belarus wasn’t truly a country at all. In just a few short years, it was part of many other countries and had different names: Poland, Germany, a great, sprawling land called the Soviet Union. And before that it was part of the Russias. Who knows what the Russias are?’

Though Yuri throws his hand up, this time Mr Navitski knows not to ask.

‘It’s an empire,’ says the boy.

‘Well, half-right again … Russia was a nation, with emperors called tsars, and it stretched all the way from the farthest east to the forests where we live today. What’s special about those forests?’

Now there is silence, all across the class.

‘Well, I’ll tell you,’ he says. ‘Once, all of the world was covered in forests. But, slowly, over the years, those forests were driven back – by people just like us. They chopped them down to make timber, and burned them back to make farms. But this little corner of the world where we live is very special. Because half our country is covered in forests that have never been chopped or cut back. The oaks in those forests are hundreds of years old. They’ve grown wizened and wise. And those forests have seen it all: the Russias, and Poland, and Germany, emperors and kings and too many wars. Those trees would tell some stories, if only they could speak!

‘And the truly amazing thing about Belarus is that, no matter how many times an empire came and made us their own, no matter how many soldiers and armies tramped through this little country and carved it up … not once, in the whole of history, have those forests ever been conquered. Those forests will always be, and have always been, ruled by no man or beast. And that makes them the wildest, most free place on Earth …’

The boy looks down. Yuri has been desperately drawing trees on his piece of paper. In between, he scrawls words: wild … free … Belarus. He presses down hard, promptly breaks the tip of his pencil, and looks up with aggrieved eyes – but the boy just keeps on staring at the page.

At the end of the day, Grandfather is waiting. As the boy hurries to meet him, something settles in his stomach: a promise has been fulfilled.

‘Mama?’ he asks, before he even says hello.

‘She’s …’

The boy pulls back from Grandfather’s touch, shrinking at eyes that glimmer with such goodness.

‘… waiting for you,’ Grandfather goes on. ‘She made you her kapusta.’

To get back to the tenement, they have to take another bus. This time, it feels better to sit next to Grandfather, which is foolish because the difference is only a few short hours. Now he can ask Grandfather questions, and Grandfather will answer: how long have you lived in the tenement? How old are you, papa, and what was it like so long ago? And, most important of all, what kind of story will it be tonight, papa, when we have our story?

The tenement is filled with the smells of spice and smoked kielbasa, that rubbery sausage on whose tips the boy remembers suckling, like a piglet, when he was very small.

He leaves Grandfather at the door, where the old man bends to remove his black jackboots, and gambols through the steam to collide with mama in the kitchen. He is too strong, and mama flails back, catching herself on the countertop.

‘Easy, little man!’

She smothers him with kisses. When he pulls his arms from around her neck, he sees that she is wearing a kind of white handkerchief across her head. It gives her the air of a pirate, or a pilot downed in a desert.

‘What is it?’

‘I have a special job for you. But not until after dinner …’

‘Papa’s going to tell us a story.’

As he says it, Grandfather appears through the reefs of steam to join them in the kitchen.

‘After we eat,’ says mama. ‘Now, go and clean up!’

Dinner is the soup of kapusta with slices of sausage, thin and flavoursome on top, thick like porridge at the bottom. It is for chewing and slurping, all from the same bowl. After dinner, the boy is to help mama with the washing up, but Grandfather wrestles her out of the way, so instead he helps his papa instead. As they work, Grandfather seems in a haze, quite as thick as the steam that still envelops them. It is, the boy decides, the rhythm of the work, working a kind of enchantment.

When they are finished, he finds mama in the corner room with the gas fire burning. It is too warm in here, but he doesn’t say a thing.

‘Come here, little man.’

She is in the rocking chair where Grandfather sleeps, and on a pile of newspapers at her side is a pair of silver scissors, a comb, a glass of the burgundy juice that the hospital told her she has to drink.

‘I’ll need your help.’

She hands him the scissors, and unknots the handkerchief that has been hiding her head. The boy can see now, the patches where the locks have been left on the pillow. In places there is hardly any hair at all, in others a tract of downy fluff like a baby might have. From a certain angle, however, she is still the same mama, with her long blonde-grey locks framing her face.

She puts the scissors in his hands and lifts him onto her lap, which is a place he isn’t supposed to sit anymore, not since the last operation. Showing him how to hold them steady, she runs her fingers in her hair and takes the first strands between finger and thumb.

‘Just slide it on, and get as close as you can. See?’

The boy is tentative about making the first cut, but after that it gets easier. Blonde and grey rain down. Mama cuts his hair, and now the boy cuts hers too. As he takes the strands, Grandfather appears behind him, kneading his hands on a washing-up rag.

‘Vika …’

‘Shhhh, papa,’ whispers mama. ‘You’ll break his thinking.’

There is another chair by the fire, a simple wooden thing. Grandfather settles in it, obscuring the pitiful blue flames.

‘What about our story, papa?’

Grandfather says, ‘A story, is it?’

Though he is concentrating on cutting the next lock, the boy sees his mama give Grandfather a questing look.

‘What kind of a story would you like?’ asks mama.

The boy pauses, too lost in thought to see the scratches he has lain into the papery skin of mama’s scalp, too spoilt to see the way he has beaten back what is left of her hair like a forester managing a fire.

‘One of the old stories, papa,’ says mama. ‘Like you used to tell me.’

This pleases the boy. The scissors dangle.

‘Vika, I don’t tell such stories.’

‘Please, papa. For your little boy.’

There is a pained look in Grandfather’s eyes, though what can be so painful about a simple story the boy cannot tell.