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| Kristina Gorcheva-Newberry |
Anya is a character in The Orchard [published 2022], by Kristina Gorcheva-Newberry. Though her story is told in the first person and it happens to her, Anya tells it as if she were a part of something greater, part of a family, a generation, or a country.
Anya lives with her parents, who are aero-space engineers, and her grandmother, at the edge of Moscow. She and her best friend, Milka, are inseparable, going to school together, sharing homework and plans. Milka is thin, always famished, but very smart and possessed of a fearless honesty which Anya envies. Milka lives with her mother and stepfather. Anya’s mother thinks her hunger is from the lovelessness in her household.
In summer, Milka spends all three months with Anya’s family at their dacha near Moscow, a modest summer home set in an apple orchard. Everyone enjoys the long summer days, gathers mushrooms and herbs and helps preserve apples to liven up their winter diets. Victory day in May is celebrated with a barbecue with the neighbors.
Though loving, Anya’s parents never stop arguing about their country. Her father feels Russia saved the world from Nazi fascists in World War II, but her mother feels they aren’t free, that their lives are controlled by their government. Grandmother survived the Leningrad blockade. She doesn’t argue, “courage and sadness tucked into the folds of her face.”
Anya and Milka are 14 in 1982 when Brezhnev dies. They want to travel, enjoy life. They smoke and explore their bodies, playing a Queen tape over and over, “We are the champions, and we’ll keep on fighting to the end.”
When Andropov dies in 1984, Anya’s father feels that it is the end of an era. He is frightened for his daughter. Anya and Milka invite two boys into their close friendship. Lopatin is of peasant stock, attractive but not smart. Trifonov is a bookworm, of noble blood, but asthmatic. “If the iron curtain collapses, we’ll be blinded by the light,” they think. “But the world will see our disabilities.” “Maybe the world has its own disabilities.” “Our country is the only thing we will love and hate forever,” says Milka.
The four friends stick together when they take a class trip to the Crimea, visiting Chekhov’s home and Yalta where peace was concluded in 1945. It is sunny and warm. Milka is sleeping with Lopatin, and Anya with Trifonov by this time. At night they bring cherries and wine to the beach, swimming naked out to a rock and looking out at the infinite sky and stars beyond.
Every day the news sounds worse that year, but at New Years there is still enough for a celebration at Anya’s house, with duck, potato salad, caviar, chocolate, mandarins, champagne and presents. Anya is infinitely happy, in love with life. In March, Gorbachev comes to power. Everyone worries, but they teeter on the cusp of happiness. Anya’s class prepares to present Hamlet with Milka playing the lead role.
At Easter, at the dacha, the four start a fire to keep warm, but Trifonov sees that Lopatin is burning the pages of a book. “The country is like this orchard. Your ancestors were dutiful revolutionaries, but they walked on corpses,” he says. Lopatin responds, “Your people pretty much fucked up this country and then tried to blame mine. But it’s over. We’ll build a new country, plant a new orchard.” They fight and Trifonov ends up in the hospital.
Later that spring, Milka asks Anya to punch her in the stomach. She is pregnant by her stepfather and hopes to miscarry. Anya is horrified, at first refuses, and then pummels Milka. She goes home, but Milka calls her, asking Anya to come and bury the dead baby. Anya does this, taking the baby out to the dacha and burying it under an apple tree. Then she hears that Hamlet cannot continue, as Milka is dead. Anya is in shock. She cannot tell anyone what really happened, cannot betray her friend. She goes to the funeral. Both Lopatin and Trifonov speak, but Anya does not emerge from her depression for months.
At last Anya matriculates into the Institute of Foreign Languages. She loses herself in the study of literature. She goes to the United States as an exchange student, meets a contractor named Mike, and marries him in a small country wedding in Virginia in 1991. Though she talks to her parents constantly by phone, she does not return to Russia for 19 years.
When she does finally go back, she finds things much the same. Her grandmother has died and her parents are retired, though her father goes to an outdoor market every day to sell what he can. Everything is shabby and run down, the stores full of luxury goods, but the prices are so high, her family cannot afford them. They refuse the money Anya tries to give them. A developer wants to put a resort where their dacha and orchard are. A meeting of all the neighbors is called and they refuse to sell. Anya finds that Lopatin is associated with the developer. He tells them it is a good deal. “The developer always gets what he wants.”
Anya goes to Milka’s house, trying to find out how she died. She tells Milka’s stepfather Milka died because of him, but he insists it was Anya’s fault. “She bled to death,” he finally says. “We couldn’t save her.” No one wanted to say what had really happened.
At New Year’s, Anya’s family again plans a family celebration. Lopatin arrives in a Father Frost costume. When Anya suggests they call Trifonov, Lopatin is startled to find that she doesn’t know he died protesting in the coup in 1991. Anya accuses her parents of hiding the news from her and leaves with Lopatin. They go out to the dacha.
“What is it like to live in the United States?” Lopatin asks. “Like I have no legs. I can’t find my footing. It’s familiar and foreign at the same time.” She tells Lopatin about her husband, about what happened to Milka. Lopatin has never married, has Milka’s name tattooed on his arm. “Trifonov waited for the moment he could prove himself a hero. He was reciting from Chekhov when the tank mowed him down. We are the survivors, the champions of the world.” Anya finds that “no amount of truth could change us, but the little that we knew felt like everything.”
The dacha and cherry orchard are sold and Anya’s mother and father come to Virginia for a visit. They lay out and plant an orchard with Anya’s husband, language being no barrier. Anya finds the rootstock often comes from Russia.
The intimacy with which Anya’s story is told, full of sensuous detail and human truth, allows us to fully enter the world she describes. Kristina Gorcheva-Newberry wanted to tell the story of her Generation Perestroika, which uncovered truths and then had their hope betrayed. The story is full of her own nostalgia as an emigrant, longing for a home to which she cannot return. I hear the depths and breadth in her voice which we have come to expect from the great country of Russia.
