Comrade Nico, trying to disguise his own lack of knowledge, said, “Dima, when the Party wants you to know, the Party will inform you.”
“Yes, Comrade Nico,” Dima replied with a military salute. “The education is us.”
The movie didn’t arrive for a long time. In the meantime, Silvia taught Norah how to play ping-pong, Dima brought back food from the countryside, and Victoria knit scarves for all of them.
* * *
Almost half a year after the four comrades started working together at the theater, the cultural commissar informed Norah of the imminent arrival of the movie. He gave her a written description of the film, provided by the Party.
Brave Soldier Ivanov’s Visit Home
This famous film from our brothers in the Soviet Union depicts Private Ivanov, who single-handedly destroys several enemy tanks. For this heroic accomplishment, he is rewarded with a week’s leave. Instead of going straight home to repair the roof of his mother’s house, the private puts aside his personal needs to deliver letters from his comrades. The war hero stops to comfort an older couple who have just lost their son in battle. Finally, when he arrives in the village, he is welcomed by his beautiful, blonde girlfriend, and the Agrarian Revolution’s Commissary. From the cornfield, his mother and other villagers run to him. They admire his war medals. However, the drama is that Private Ivanov has spent all his time on the road and has to return to his unit immediately upon his arrival. He cannot stay even for dinner—and he certainly has no time to repair the roof. He must return to fight in the war; the army needs him! Mother Russia first! His girlfriend is very proud of his heroic acts and encourages him to return to the front. His mother walks with him to the edge of the village. She watches him leave, as the narrator’s voice tells the audience that the heroic soldier Ivanov—the courageous, generous, hardworking, honest, loyal, self-critical, tall, good-looking young man, the hero ready to put the interest of the country and the people above his own personal needs, the son prompted to sacrifice in order to help others, the patriot—will never return home.
In preparation for the film’s arrival, Silvia went to the Party’s warehouse to find whatever paint she could. She returned with several cans of paint, some of them already opened. She also brought back the ornate Venetian mirror, which she propped against the wall in her workspace. Reflected in the mirror, the long-abandoned backyard brought into Silvia’s workspace a perfectly arranged, wild, and mysterious English garden.
“What did you give the warehouse manager in exchange for the mirror?” Norah asked Silvia.
“An icon, ‘Jesus weeping over Jerusalem.’”
Dima repaired the billboard—four wooden doors nailed together with metal braces—and Silvia painted it white. Norah asked Comrade Nico what should be painted on the billboard.
“I want to see the blonde girl when she greets the soldier,” Comrade Nico said. “Make her beautiful, like one of our girls. Tell Silvia to give her a curvy form, like Victoria’s.” Then, thinking about the film that none of them had yet seen, he added, “Put in the mother, too, and a red flag.”
Silvia painted a couple holding hands near a tank, an older woman offering them some bread, the city’s orphanage on fire—to represent the devastation of war—and, in the background, our local monument to the Unknown Soldier.
One day, nearly three months later, the movie arrived. Silvia painted the title in orange-gold letters on the billboard, “Brave Soldier Ivanov’s Visit Home,” and Dima installed the billboard above the long canopy of the theater.
Comrade Nico, as Commissar of Art, Culture, and Education, officially opened the hall. The first couple of weeks, only members of the Communist Party were able to get tickets to see the movie. But an air of progress and happiness swept over the entire city and eventually every person in town had seen it.
What Norah and Silvia didn’t know, however, was that for a long while this would be the only film shown at the theater. Now and then a short documentary of news from around the country arrived, but these bland, ten-minute, Party-approved newsreels were hardly enough to entice the population to visit the theater again. And so the hall was empty most of the time.
Norah found herself in a critical position. The Party wanted glowing statistics of attendance, but she could not fill the hall. The Party might think she was sabotaging the education of the masses. She could be criticized and transferred to a lesser job.
After numerous discussions with Dima, Victoria, and Silvia, it was decided that every month Silvia would paint a new scene on the billboard, as if a new movie had come to town. The city’s residents looked at the billboard, commented on the scene, and then the rumor that it was the same movie circulated and no one came again. In the countryside, nobody wanted to see the movie either. Only newcomers ventured in to see the film and then, only once. Nothing the four of them did brought people back to see the drama of Private Ivanov.
Every evening when Norah sent the money to the commissar, she gave extravagant explanations why tickets could not be sold. Most chairs were wet from a leak in the roof. Due to a strong wind, the windows had opened by themselves and dust covered the screen. The chairs needed repair or had to be repainted. The curtains had caught fire. The key to the movie theater was lost, stolen, stuck in the lock. The film melted, the projector fell apart, the ladder to the projection booth was stolen.
Meanwhile, Norah and Silvia played ping-pong. Victoria, since she had nothing else to do, sat on her ass, as recommended, knitting all day in the theater’s small ticket booth. Dima painted the van, transported people and food to the city, and, on his dashboard, wrote a poem of his own that explained his view of the world:
Noi ne facem ca muncim They pretend that we are paid,
Ei se fac ca ne platesc. We pretend that we are working.
Your book looks interesting. Is it available at local bookstores? I hope your reading scheduled for February 10 gets rescheduled.