We Are Not in Pakistan Read Online Free PDF

joke — a feeble joke.
    â€œStudying life everywhere is my job,” says Rivka.
    Olena says, “I want to live my own life, not study other people’s.”
    â€œThen you must want that so much that nothing else and no one else is important to you.” Matushka closes the door behind Rivka and says, “You have such individualist friends.”
    She picks up her handbag, jerks her chin at the crumbed dishes and says, “I have a meeting. I’ll return by the time Galina comes home from school.”
    Olena takes the dishes to the kitchen.
    How can any woman ever want anything so much that nothing else and no one else would be important to her?
    Viktor is important to me, Galina is important to me, Dedushkais important to me. Matushka too, because Viktor loves her. In the face of their needs, my wants can’t possibly matter.
    Olena rinses the dishes with cold boiled water. She boils some more, sets it aside for drinking. She pours a tumbler full for herself and watches as the tea leaves fall below the surface. Suddenly, the unthinkable must be thought, the inconceivable must be conceived. Her older daughter. A year before Galina, she lived. At least, maybe she was a daughter. Condoms were expensive — they still are, the Party wants women to produce many babies. Matushka said maybe Olena wanted a baby, but she didn’t need one. Viktor’s career was more important, she said. And he couldn’t afford a child before he graduated, before he had an apartment. How would they raise one without borrowing from her? If Olena didn’t agree, Matushka would tell Viktor to refuse to sign the papers so the baby could get a propiska. And without that resident registration stamp, preferably from Moscow, the baby would have no care from any doctor, no education and no right to inherit from either Viktor or Olena. So Matushka sent Olena to her doctor friend, boasting that he made seventeen abortions for her through the years Viktor’s father was alive.
    When Olena left the doctor she went to the cinema. A black and white movie — she could n’t understand the language. Something Party leaders imported from India to show friendship with a Socialist Democracy. She sat with other living, breathing men and women and let the cramps come. Unseen, a bloodstain crept over her green dress. On screen, a woman with eyes so large they took up half her face shed tears for her, and an actor — she even remembers his name, Raj Kapoor — danced his way through mansions and fields with a smile just like Viktor’s, a smile that said, You know you love me.
    Would Viktor really have refused to sign his own baby’s propis-ka? Viktor always does what Matushka wants. If he knew whatMatushka had made Olena do, would it not break his heart too? It was too late to ask him, too late to tell him.
    As Olena bled away a life that could have been, she cursed Matushka with each spasm. She might have to live with Matushka, but no one could command her to love her mother-in-law. Not Viktor, not anyone.
    Olena remained seated as people filed past in the dark, stayed even when the lights came on. Surely there would be another show. Darkness came again and the names of actors began flashing past to tinny music.
    She doubled over, sobbing, till she felt a hand squeeze her shoulder. A grandmotherly woman in uniform offered her a glass of water, her handkerchief and silence.
    Olena sobs as on that day, tears mingling with her cooling tea. Does she cry for the young woman she left in the theatre or her older daughter?
    Matushka has not changed. She is like a cesium isotope, contaminating Viktor with her expectations. Unmeetable expectations. Not one word of concern for Olena since she arrived in Kyiv, and no chance of rest. When Viktor comes on weekends, he might as well still be dressed in that green mask he wears on duty, and she might as well be his butler, personal assistant and cleaning woman. She is