Free The Education of a Traitor: A Memoir of Growing Up in Cold War Russia by Svetlana Grobman Page B

stops, tanned, loud-voiced women in headscarves bring apples, cherries, and grapes to the idling train and sell them in paper cones made out of torn newspapers.
    Mom orders me to take care of Tanya and joins other passengers hurrying outside to stretch their legs and buy some goodies. I try to protest: “What if you miss the train? What will we do then?” Nothing bad happens, though. Mom comes back with a paper cone full of cherries so sweet that I forgive her for the fright she has given me and savor the cherries, one by one. 
    Late in the afternoon, the train takes a wide turn and an immense glimmering turquoise surface opens up before our eyes like a mirage. Yet unlike a mirage that can deceive human vision but not our sense of smell, this surface emanates a mineral fragrance I have never inhaled before.  Exclamations of “Look, look! That’s the Black Sea!” sweep through the train, and everybody rushes to the windows to look at the wonder. 
    Two hours later, our panting train comes to a halt and passengers begin unloading. A small crowd of women in dark clothes and headscarves hurries toward the newcomers:
    “Do you need a place to stay?”
    Deals are made quickly, and the platform empties in no time. We follow an old woman with a stooped back and crow-like features.  
    “Did you bring your passport, my dear?” She says to my mother—her black eyes looking out sharply from under her headscarf. 
    “Yes,” Mom nods. She knows better than to leave Moscow without her passport. 
    For the next ten days or so we stay in a dark six-by-nine-foot room with a small window whose deep sill serves as a dinner table. Days pass, each indistinguishable from the next, like the envelopes Mom uses to mail letters to Dad. After breakfast, we walk to the beach, which looks like a huge quilt patched with numerous blankets in a variety shapes and colors. The blankets stake a one-day claim to a small piece of southern luxury. The earlier the vacationers bring their blankets, the better the places they get—closer to the water, with finer sand, and, if one is really lucky, in the shade of one of the tall wooden umbrellas that stick in the ground like enormous mushrooms. The only spaces left for late sleepers are the rocks at the edge of the beach.               
    There is just enough space between the blankets to walk among sunburned bodies—some tiny and resilient, others saggy and misshapen—to the water’s edge, where playful waves call vacationers to the depths of the sea. We maneuver toward our blanket—which Mom takes to the beach early in the morning while Tanya and I are still asleep. Here we spend most of our day. Like everybody else, we breathe the intoxicating sea air, sunbathe, bury each other under the hot sand, and wade in the water. I have not learned how to swim yet, and Tanya is just a baby. Mom sometimes goes for a short swim, still keeping an eye on us even as her body sinks into the clear water.
     

    Me, Tanya, and Mom in the Black Sea
     
    When Mom and I are hungry, we snack on vobla (dry and salty Caspian Roach fish, a perennial favorite of our countrymen), and at noon, Mom opens a can of Spam and makes us sandwiches. For supper, we go to a nearby diner.
    Mom goes first to take a place in line, and I stay on the beach with Tanya. An hour or so later, when Mom’s turn seems close, she comes back and gets us. The food in the diner is always the same— solyanka (a soup made with pickles and tomato paste), kotlety (hamburgers), and compot (a sweet drink made of dry fruit). I mostly drink the sweet compot , Mom eats her dinner and the rest of mine, and little Tanya squeals in Mom’s arms. 
    At night, before going to sleep, we join a crowd of vacationers strolling along the town’s promenade, which is bordered by the shore on one side and blooming acacia and chestnut trees on the other. Here, the sultry smell of the sea mixes with the light aroma of the acacias and the heavy perfume of the