Sleeping on the Stove

In the year of my Big Broken Heart, I went to see Baba, because she
was the only person I believed could make sense of the messiness of my
life.

I was 21, and my affair with Dr. Stefan Eger, ugly-lovely, hawk-nosed,
Hungarian Professor of Population Anthropology, had come to its
inevitable end. After months of passionate couplings and fondlings
which I stupidly mistook for love, Stefan brought me back to reality
with a crash. During my last tutorial of the winter term, he made it
abundantly clear that, though bored with his marriage, he had no
intention of leaving his children or his seemingly perpetually pregnant
wife.

I plummeted into depression and self-loathing. But then, after reaching
rock bottom, something snapped. My mood changed. How dare he regard me
as a diversion, an amusement, a sexual toy? How could he be so shallow,
so selfish? Resentment worked its way up until it spilled over into
action. A gardening programme on TV gave me an idea. I picked up the
phone, and pretending to be Mrs. Eger, ordered a lorry load of fresh
manure to be delivered to "my" driveway.

That afternoon, unable to stay away from the scene of the crime, I
pedalled my bike past his neat suburban house. Sure enough, the huge,
malodorous mountain had come - if not to Mohomet, then certainly to a
very deserving alternative. So there it was. The End. I pedalled my
broken heart back to my room and began to pack.

I rejected the impulse to go home to my mother (Papa had left her for
another woman two years before). I knew what would happen. She would
listen to me with her sharp little face on one side, her expression a
mixture of tragic icon and triumphant I-told-you-so. Then she would
subject me to a barrage of cloyingly sympathetic gestures that always
ran to a pattern: invitations to soak in a hot tub scented with rose
geranium bath salts, plus little childhood favourites like blinis and
sour cream for breakfast. On a tray. In bed. In other words, she would
treat me like an invalid, and would probably succeed in making me feel
like one.

It wasn't cosseting I craved, but wisdom. And that, for me, meant Baba.
I set off on the first train. It was no good telephoning to say I was
coming. My grandmother refused to have a phone in the house. "For
centuries," I remember her saying as she fitted a black cigarette into
its long, amber holder, "only servants ran in answer to ringing bells.
Then Pavlov conditioned laboratory dogs to do the same. I don't wish to
be compared to either, thank you very much." And then she would smile,
revealing two rows of perfect, though heavily nicotined teeth.

Baba was my maternal grandmother. Her real name was Ilyena Minovich
Antonovskaya, daughter of one of the old minor Russian nobility -
landowners who had lost everything in 1917. They had fled to Paris in
the first days after the Revolution, when Baba was only five. Many
years later, freed by widowhood from the last ties to France, she had
moved to a large Victorian house overlooking Dartmouth harbour because,
she claimed, " I like looking at the young naval officers in their
smart uniforms."

It was Baba's companion, Mira, who let me in. She said nothing, just
waited for me to stamp the snow off my boots, then wagged her head in
disapproval as she set off to fetch the dustpan and brush.

As I entered the parlour, Baba's droll, intelligent face looked up from
her copy of the Sporting Life. "Darling, how nice," she said. "Sit down
and tell me what you fancy in the four o'clock at Kempton Park. If this
wretched snow doesn't get there first." We hadn't seen one another for
nearly two years, but there were no effusive greetings; I might have
been returning from a brief outing to the shops. I found that
wonderfully comforting.

We sat together on a huge sofa draped with paisley shawls, drinking hot
black tea laced with brandy. Baba's long, graceful fingers, now sadly
knotted with arthritis, folded the newspaper neatly and laid it aside.
"Well? You're going to tell me? Because, if you're not, I'm going
upstairs for a nap." Just like that. No preamble, no coyness. And no
change from her routine; she hated the "prancing about" some people did
for their guests. That, too, suited me.

I told her as briskly as possible about my tattered love life. When I'd
finished, she kissed my cheek and said, "There. That's a
congratulation."

"For what, Baba?"

"For the load of manure. That will give you something to laugh about,
on the day when you remember how."

I waited. "Is that all?" I asked, slightly offended. I'd travelled
rather a long way, and had hoped for something a little more
substantial.

Baba leaned back against the arm of the sofa and regarded me silently,
smiling. "What do you want me to say? That it's all going to be all
right? That you will forget in a moment? That you should blame the
stupid man for everything? If that's what you expect, you should have
gone to your mother."

Confused, still not satisfied, I scrunched one of the silk cushions in
my hands, tugging the corners fiercely as I tried to express my need.
"No, of course I don't want silly, patronising answers. I just
thought?I don't know what I expected you to say. But something."

"Very well," she sighed. "I shall perform like the legendary, wise
Russian grandmother and tell you a story - a true story, of course. But
it's up to you to figure out what it means. Then I'm definitely going
upstairs for my nap."
I kicked off my shoes and drew my feet under me, curling up as I used
to as a little girl, listening to old fairy stories.

"It happened in my grandfather's time, on one of his estates. There was
a very bad winter. Extremely cold. Venturing outside the house was
dangerous; some of the peasants who did, froze to death. My
grandparents, of course, were in Moscow for the winter, as usual. But
their house was still maintained, just in case they or their friends or
even the estate manager decided to pay a little visit. And it was kept
warm - at least the kitchen was. It lay at the centre of the house, and
its heart was the huge, thickly tiled kitchen stove.

"Now, if you've ever read any Russian stories, you'll know that this
stove was much more than a means of cooking or heating. In the winter,
the servants - sometimes as many as six - threw their bedding on top of
the stove and slept there all night. What could be better? Outside, 40
degrees below freezing; inside, warm as toast, with the fire damped
down and giving a stead, gentle heat all through the night.

" On this occasion the house was in the care of just one old retainer.
His name was Vassily. One night, it was bitter, bitter cold. Worse than
ever. Like most of the peasants, Vassily drank; this night, he got a
real skinful of vodka. Then, who knows what went through his head?
Perhaps he decided he would celebrate his good fortune. After all, he
had the run of the place: larder, cellar, kitchen. So he ate, he drank
even more, and he stuffed the stove with wood, building up a roaring
fire that would last a long, long time.

"Then, no doubt, just for good measure, he drank a little more. And
finally, barely able to stand, somehow he got his bedroll spread out on
the stove, clambered up and fell asleep. But he never woke up
again."

I gasped. "What happened?"

My grandmother yawned and smiled. "I suppose you could say he was
roasted. No. Not roasted. Just very lightly poached, like an egg. He
never damped down the fire. It was far too hot and it went on burning
brightly for many hours. Vassily was paralytic - too full of alcohol to
wake up as he literally began to cook."

"But that's horrible!" I interrupted. "Who found him?"

Baba shrugged. "One of the other servants. The ground was frozen to the
depth of two metres; it was impossible to dig a grave. Nonetheless,
Vassily's body was placed in a coffin and taken to church. And when his
family arrived for the service next day, it was said - maybe it's a
lie, I don't know - there was still steam rising from the box. There.
That's all. Finis."

"Wait, Baba. Don't go."

"Now, darling," she chuckled. "I warned you that you'd have to decide
for yourself what it means." And then she left me, climbing slowly up
the creaking stairs to her bedroom.

My grandmother died that same winter, and I never had the opportunity
to quiz her again about why she told me that story. At the time, it
didn't seem to have much relevance to my problems. I've often puzzled
over it since, however; and as I grow older, more and more
possibilities suggest themselves.

Perhaps Baba was trying to tell me that we live life in a delicate
balance between fire and ice, between the heat of passion and the cold
of lovelessness, and that if we throw ourselves headlong into either
extreme, we perish. Or again, maybe she was saying that, like Vassily,
we've got everything we need, if we've just got the sense to know how
to enjoy it. Perhaps everything would have been all right if he just
hadn't had that one drink too many that switched off his judgement. You
can have it all. You can even be a fool about love - but not a total
fool, or again, you're destroyed.

My grandmother's story could have meant any of these things?or nothing
at all. From the altered perspective of middle age and motherhood, I
realise that it might just have been one of her jokes. Maybe all she
really wanted to do was to set me a riddle that would stop me tearing
myself to shreds in a lost cause.

Of one thing I am absolutely certain: my grandmother spared me untold
heartache. In the years that followed my Big Broken Heart, whenever I
found myself at the thorny end of a romantic bed of roses, I would
simply conjure up the memory of that pile of dung on my ex-lover's
lawn. Or picture poor, pickled Vassily poaching on the kitchen stove.
And then the benison of laughter would save me from myself.