#11 - Name
Jul. 26th, 2010 05:51 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
fearful_symmetry"May I ask you something?"
It's late, and Linette's eyes are bothering her. How long has she been picking her slow, tortuous way through this children's primer? Jack and Jill and their fucking dog can drown in that red-roofed well, for all she gives a shit. She's only too happy to toss the book aside, knuckle some life back into her eyes and turn to Caroline. The older woman sits curled on the window seat, framing her golden warmth with rich burgundy brocade. Linette smiles, puzzled, and says, "Whatever you want."
"'Linette'," The way she says it makes it a statement, not a name. "It isn't...that is, you are decidedly Russian, but your name is just as definitively not."
"Oh." Lynn touches her nose, her chin, the less delicate features that must mark her as 'decidedly' Russian. "Ni bispakoytish*. It's nothing, really. Just something my parents did, when they came to America."
"I'd very much like to hear the story," Caroline sits up, twining a lock of hair round her index finger. She tucks her feet under her like a girl, leaning forward eagerly, and Linette remembers her kuasha's abiding love of stories. Of secrets. There's not a book in the world that can confound her, Lynn is certain.
"I heard it from my mother," she begins, only a little hesitant. She does not want to feed Caroline any misinformation, any details her parents might have exaggerated. And what might she have forgotten since the last time she heard the telling? It's been so long since her mother died, Linette can't even remember the pain of missing her. "She and my father were from a small village near Kishinev. My mother, she had a brother who'd married a Jewess. I don't know the story there, mother never said, but I don't think she ever forgave him for it. It probably would have worked out all right if Tsar Alexander hadn't been blown up, and if the government hadn't tried to pin it on the Jews. Then the pogroms started."
"Ah..." understanding dawns, but Caroline waits breathlessly. She is a wonderful audience.
"My mother said they had to leave, that everybody connected to the Hebrews were being dragged into the streets and shot. Sometimes I think about how bad it must've been, to scare a couple with a newborn and not much money all the way across an ocean..."
How much worse than the slums? 'Dragged into the streets and shot' definitely describes daily life in the Bower, and could Kishinev really be so much colder , grayer, meaner than New York? She tries to paint the picture in her head, but she has always lacked imagination. Her attempts come up as gray-washed and boring as a bad watercolor, nothing to risk life and limb to flee.
Linette realizes she's trailed off, that Caroline is watching her with a calculated lack of expression, and she gives herself a shake.
"Anyway, there were a lot of refugees, Hebrew and Christian and whatever else, all coming off the boats at once. My parents didn't have much, but they'd made sure to salvage the family icons. My mother said that, when the immigration clerk got 'round to them, my father fished out the icon of St. Paul and kept pointing to it, saying 'Not a Jew, not a Jew.'" Linette breaks off with a chuckle, "He didn't speak any English, see. In the end, the clerk just wrote that down: St. Paul, husband, wife, baby boy."
"Your brother?" Caroline does not explicitely ask if she means the dead man in the alley. She does not have to. Linette simply shakes her head.
"Piotr. Peter. He died when I was still in diapers. The cough took him."
A pause follows, no more than a beat of silence before Caroline asks: "And 'Linette'?"
"I think they were trying not to sound Russian," her smile feels brittle, wrong, "I think maybe they always feared the pogroms. And there are plenty of Russian Jews, but not so many French or English ones."
"They were trying to protect you," Caroline nods decisively, as if satisfied with the strategy. For her part, Lynn shrugs and draws her knees to her chest, no doubt wrinkling her skirts beyond repair.
"They never called me that at home. It was always liubov** or dragotsenya***. We never called Luca 'Lucas' or Yuri 'Joseph' or Erzibet 'Ellie' in our prayers. But God forbid you called out the wrong name in the neighborhood - father would beat us black." And again she wonders just how horrible the pogroms could have been, to grind such bone-deep fear into a man. She remembers her mother's white lips and stony silence, remembers the salvaged icons displayed on a little table amidst half-melted votive candles. St. Paul was depicted as a balding man with tufts of hair above his ears, a divine circle around his head and an open bible in his arms. She remembers that the visible page read, "The just shall live by faith", and wonders what that meant for her parents, who fled rather than submit theirs to testing.
"Names are funny things," Caroline muses, reaching out to draw Linette in. She does not resist as her kuasha's fingers weave through her hair, rounded nails kneading at her scalp. "We have our use-name, to get us through our daily tasks. We have our deed-name, by which our enemies and allies may know us. But lastly, oh, my kit, lastly we have our true name, known only to ourselves, that no one may bind us."
Linette was lost at 'deed-name,' but she's come to realize that Caroline never means people when she says 'us'. She tries to make sense of it even as her head sags to Caroline's knee, all tension loosened by the gentle pressure of fingers on the bones behind her ears.
"But I don't know my true name," she murmurs, even as her eyelids droop shut. The elder Kahn's only response is a soft gurgle of laugher.
"All in good time, liubov. That I promise."
*don't worry about it, nevermind
**my love - also a common girl's name
***precious
It's late, and Linette's eyes are bothering her. How long has she been picking her slow, tortuous way through this children's primer? Jack and Jill and their fucking dog can drown in that red-roofed well, for all she gives a shit. She's only too happy to toss the book aside, knuckle some life back into her eyes and turn to Caroline. The older woman sits curled on the window seat, framing her golden warmth with rich burgundy brocade. Linette smiles, puzzled, and says, "Whatever you want."
"'Linette'," The way she says it makes it a statement, not a name. "It isn't...that is, you are decidedly Russian, but your name is just as definitively not."
"Oh." Lynn touches her nose, her chin, the less delicate features that must mark her as 'decidedly' Russian. "Ni bispakoytish*. It's nothing, really. Just something my parents did, when they came to America."
"I'd very much like to hear the story," Caroline sits up, twining a lock of hair round her index finger. She tucks her feet under her like a girl, leaning forward eagerly, and Linette remembers her kuasha's abiding love of stories. Of secrets. There's not a book in the world that can confound her, Lynn is certain.
"I heard it from my mother," she begins, only a little hesitant. She does not want to feed Caroline any misinformation, any details her parents might have exaggerated. And what might she have forgotten since the last time she heard the telling? It's been so long since her mother died, Linette can't even remember the pain of missing her. "She and my father were from a small village near Kishinev. My mother, she had a brother who'd married a Jewess. I don't know the story there, mother never said, but I don't think she ever forgave him for it. It probably would have worked out all right if Tsar Alexander hadn't been blown up, and if the government hadn't tried to pin it on the Jews. Then the pogroms started."
"Ah..." understanding dawns, but Caroline waits breathlessly. She is a wonderful audience.
"My mother said they had to leave, that everybody connected to the Hebrews were being dragged into the streets and shot. Sometimes I think about how bad it must've been, to scare a couple with a newborn and not much money all the way across an ocean..."
How much worse than the slums? 'Dragged into the streets and shot' definitely describes daily life in the Bower, and could Kishinev really be so much colder , grayer, meaner than New York? She tries to paint the picture in her head, but she has always lacked imagination. Her attempts come up as gray-washed and boring as a bad watercolor, nothing to risk life and limb to flee.
Linette realizes she's trailed off, that Caroline is watching her with a calculated lack of expression, and she gives herself a shake.
"Anyway, there were a lot of refugees, Hebrew and Christian and whatever else, all coming off the boats at once. My parents didn't have much, but they'd made sure to salvage the family icons. My mother said that, when the immigration clerk got 'round to them, my father fished out the icon of St. Paul and kept pointing to it, saying 'Not a Jew, not a Jew.'" Linette breaks off with a chuckle, "He didn't speak any English, see. In the end, the clerk just wrote that down: St. Paul, husband, wife, baby boy."
"Your brother?" Caroline does not explicitely ask if she means the dead man in the alley. She does not have to. Linette simply shakes her head.
"Piotr. Peter. He died when I was still in diapers. The cough took him."
A pause follows, no more than a beat of silence before Caroline asks: "And 'Linette'?"
"I think they were trying not to sound Russian," her smile feels brittle, wrong, "I think maybe they always feared the pogroms. And there are plenty of Russian Jews, but not so many French or English ones."
"They were trying to protect you," Caroline nods decisively, as if satisfied with the strategy. For her part, Lynn shrugs and draws her knees to her chest, no doubt wrinkling her skirts beyond repair.
"They never called me that at home. It was always liubov** or dragotsenya***. We never called Luca 'Lucas' or Yuri 'Joseph' or Erzibet 'Ellie' in our prayers. But God forbid you called out the wrong name in the neighborhood - father would beat us black." And again she wonders just how horrible the pogroms could have been, to grind such bone-deep fear into a man. She remembers her mother's white lips and stony silence, remembers the salvaged icons displayed on a little table amidst half-melted votive candles. St. Paul was depicted as a balding man with tufts of hair above his ears, a divine circle around his head and an open bible in his arms. She remembers that the visible page read, "The just shall live by faith", and wonders what that meant for her parents, who fled rather than submit theirs to testing.
"Names are funny things," Caroline muses, reaching out to draw Linette in. She does not resist as her kuasha's fingers weave through her hair, rounded nails kneading at her scalp. "We have our use-name, to get us through our daily tasks. We have our deed-name, by which our enemies and allies may know us. But lastly, oh, my kit, lastly we have our true name, known only to ourselves, that no one may bind us."
Linette was lost at 'deed-name,' but she's come to realize that Caroline never means people when she says 'us'. She tries to make sense of it even as her head sags to Caroline's knee, all tension loosened by the gentle pressure of fingers on the bones behind her ears.
"But I don't know my true name," she murmurs, even as her eyelids droop shut. The elder Kahn's only response is a soft gurgle of laugher.
"All in good time, liubov. That I promise."
*don't worry about it, nevermind
**my love - also a common girl's name
***precious
