Polina Panassenko
Translated from the French by Maggie Vlietstra
from Hold Your Tongue
My hearing takes place at the Bobigny district court. 9 a.m. summons. I’ve never been there before, so I leave early. Heading down into the metro, I type how to speak to a judge into my phone’s search bar. Three stations later, I wonder if I really need to begin each sentence with votre honneur, monsieur le Président, or madame la juge. I wonder if in court they act the way some parents do. If you just say yes, they’ll say, yes who? and ignore you until you say yes, Madame la juge.
Once I get to the courthouse, I wait for my lawyer outside the hearing room. Anxious little groups huddle together on either side of the door. One woman is asking why some lawyers have fur on the tips of their ties and others don’t. Her nerves make her chatty. I see my lawyer hurrying through the revolving door. At security, she opens her bag and pulls out a large ball of black fabric, which she tucks under her arm. When she sees me, she says, Ah, there you are. She slips her robes over her street clothes as the order of hearings is announced. Mine is fourth out of sixteen.
They call for Pauline Panassenko. Room 2. Three women are sitting on the bench: two side by side, one sitting slightly apart. I don’t know who’s who. Prosecutor, magistrate, clerk, says my lawyer, then she begins: My client requested to reclaim her birth name in the place of her Gallicized name. Her petition was denied. However, she has shown that she uses her birth name in familial, social, administrative, and professional settings, and has done so for several years. She simply wishes to have her birth name restored to her French identity papers. The request was denied on the grounds of being “without merit.” There must have been a mistake . . .
She pleads, but she pleads in vain. The prosecutor listens absently, as if skimming a set of terms and conditions. My lawyer’s premise is flawed. She thinks the prosecutor rejected my request due to a bureaucratic hiccup. A form wrongly filled out, a box mischecked, a mix-up. But that’s not it. Not even close. There is no technical error. The prosecutor rejected it because she doesn’t see why someone whose name was Frenchified in childhood would want to reclaim her birth name as an adult. She doesn’t see why someone would want to bear the name passed down by their parents rather than the one given to them by the Republic. She sees no reason Polina should reappear on my identity papers instead of Pauline. She says, But counselor, your client is French now. Then, to me: If all your papers say Polina, well then, you can change them. Make them say Pauline. As you’re well aware, madame, well aware. And I’m sure you’re aware, madame, that if your name was Gallicized, then it was to facilitate your integration into French society.
Of course I know that. It’s written right there on interieur.gouv.fr. “To facilitate your integration, you may request to Gallicize your first and/or last names.” They even give examples:
Ahmed becomes Alain.
Giovanni becomes Charles.
Antonia becomes Adrienne.
Kouassi becomes Paul.
I look at the prosecutor and wonder if my integration into French society could be considered a success. I look at the prosecutor and wonder what difference it makes to her if my name forces her tongue to deviate by a single vowel.
Would it scratch her? Make her bleed? Maybe she’s afraid I’ll infiltrate her prosecutor language, my name a Trojan horse. And once I’m inside, splat. A dripping egg yolk. Pow. A rocket in her eye. She’s afraid I’ll impregnate her, yeah. She’safraid I’ll slip my tongue inside her, afraid of what might happen. She’s scared of her own children, actually. Honestly, it’d be better if we licked each other’s tongues. A full-on linguistic fuckfest—that’d calm everyone down. In my head, tongues are fucking on the courtroom bench at Bobigny district court. The prosecutor says, I have one last question for your client, counselor. My lawyer steps aside. I step forward. Do you think it’s in your best interest to have a Russian name in French society?
I think of my father, his composure, and of my genes. I’ve got his face, minus the mustache, but I don’t have his composure. I admire my father’s composure. I admire it but I don’t understand it. His French friends explain to him over dinner that collectivization is great. Call him “comrade,” rolling the r, going on about the means of production. I ask him, But doesn’t it bother you? Don’t you want to tell them to shut the hell up? No, says my father. Not at all. They’re good people. I don’t know how he does it. I don’t know how he manages to put up with his friends and all their kolkhoz fantasies. When they finally leave, I ask him, But how do you do it? He says, You’re a maximalist, my girl. You need to be more tolerant.
He’s right. I’m not tolerant. I stopped going to a friend’s house after she’d hung Lissitzky’s Beat the Whites with the Red Wedge on her wall. The one with the triangle penetrating the white circle. I stopped going to her place first and connected the dots later. Maybe I should tell her. I should tell my friend that seeing my bloodied country on her wall bothers me. Her little propaganda poster in the living room bothers me. My civil war as a backdrop while we gorge on Apericubes bothers me.
We’d already talked about the October Revolution a while back. It went off the rails:
Now wait a second you don’t own the October Revolution it’s a world event it belongs to everyone hold on now do you have a problem with the October Revolution you don’t like the Aurora or something hey guys she doesn’t like the Aurora no but seriously are you a right-winger just admit it you’re a right-winger be honest you don’t like Lenin you don’t like Trotsky you’ve got a problem with communism huh I bet you read Le Figaro hey guys she reads Le Figaro or else you’re a white Russian you’re a white Russian and you’re scared to admit it oh yeah that’s it you’re actually a Romanov hey we’ve got a Romanov over here come on you’re really named Anastasia you’re the tsar’s daughter and you hate the Revolution ’cause they took your jewels hey they took her jewels so now she’s pissed no no of course it wasn’t all good but that’s not the point that isn’t the point you shouldn’t throw the baby out with the bathwater shouldn’t mix apples and oranges flies and cutlets that’s not the point a chicken is not a bird Lenin isn’t Stalin Stalin isn’t Trotsky and here come the conflations here they come!
The prosecutor repeats her question. The problem I have with rage is that it’s good for action but it’s terrible for speaking. I need to cool down, or else I just let out a sort of trill, an angry yodel. I focus on my breathing. In acting school, I had a yoga teacher named Gaourang. His real name was Jean-Luc but he had us call him Gaourang. During yoga classes, he’d always tell us: Feel the cool air entering your nostrils and the warm air going out. I look at the prosecutor. I think of Gaourang but I don’t feel any cool air.
I open my mouth. I make sounds. I say USSR, I say Jewish, I say hide her name. I don’t hear what I’m saying, but I hear my voice. An octave lower than usual. Once I’m quiet, it isn’t like in American movies where there’s a brief silence before one far-away person starts applauding and then the whole room gets to their feet. That’s not what happens. What happens is the prosecutor says to the magistrate: That’s interesting. We were right to summon her for a hearing. Then she says, Put that in writing for me, as testimony. And attach it to the case file, counselor. My lawyer suggests she decide here and now. Spare us another year of proceedings, another dismissal, another hearing. No. The prosecutor doesn’t care. She wants her paper.
We leave. My lawyer looks at me. She says, Yikes, you seem upset. She consoles me. Or tries to. She says, Of course, if you were trying to change the name Blanche for Geneviève, we wouldn’t be having this conversation, but we need to look on the bright side. There’s a Russian expression that goes, “He who served in the army doesn’t laugh at the circus.” I don’t see the bright side. My lawyer says, Don’t be stubborn. I am being stubborn. Don’t be stubborn. Too late, I say.
Fine. As soon as you get home, send me your testimony for the prosecutor. Cerfa form number 11527*03.
I head for the metro, thinking: Whatever you do, don’t work yourself up. I take a seat on the 5 train. All the way from Bobigny to Oberkampf, I work myself up. From Oberkampf to Croix-de-Chavaux, I’m fuming. Is it in my best interest? Is it in my best interest? B i t c h. You miserable old hag. Shall I recite her a few lines of Malraux at the Panthéon? She wants her Appeal of June 18th? Americans on tanks riding into Auschwitz and presto! Godwin’s law? Who gives a shit. So she wants a little Jean Moulin at Bobigny? Your carrots are cooked, you dumb cow. Alright, I need to cool it.
I go home. I print out the form. I testify.
Madame Prosecutor of the Republic,
I was born in Moscow, in the USSR. My parents named me Polina, after my paternal grandmother. She was Jewish. Her family fled the pogroms in Ukraine and Lithuania. When she was born, her parents named her Pesach. That means Passover, the day celebrating the Exodus.
When my father was born, my grandmother changed her name. She Russified it. To protect her children. To give them a future. To offer them a little freedom in a country that didn’t have it. On my father’s birth certificate, Pesach became Polina.
In 1993, my parents emigrated to France with my sister and me. When I obtained French citizenship, my father Frenchified my name. He, too, wanted to protect me. To do for his daughter what his mother had done for him.
What I want is to use the name I was given at birth. Without hiding it, without doctoring it, without modifying it. Without fear. To do in France what my grandmother couldn’t do in the Soviet Union.
I don’t have children, but I’d like to have them one day. On their birth certificate, next to “mother’s name,” I want to be able to write “Polina.”
It’s an inheritance, to know that one’s mother was free to use her birth name. This is the inheritance I want to pass down, not one of fear.
I want to believe I’m free to use my birth name in France.
I want to take that risk.
My name is Polina.
* * *
January 1990. The first McDonald’s in the USSR opens in Moscow. Thirty thousand people. A line stretching a kilometer and a half. I’m standing in it with my parents and my sister. It’s cold out but worth it. We shuffle ahead for buterbrods from the West, each individually wrapped. Once we’ve eaten the contents, we don’t throw the wrappers out. We wash and keep them. They’re evidence. My mother orders an extra bag of fries for my grandfather—just for him. My grand- mother made it clear she refuses to touch them. If she wants a potato, she’ll make one herself. Don’t need Americans for that. Ever since the night before, she’s been denouncing our outing with theatrical silence. When we left, she sat on the shoe rack, eyes glued to the front door. A silent protest works best in plain sight.
Back in the two-room kommunalka on Lenin Avenue, the fries are cold and my grandmother is no longer on the shoe rack. My mother sends my sister to announce we’ve returned. They could hear us, of course, from down the hall, but the announcement is also an invitation. My mother’s parents live in the bedroom with a balcony. My father, mother, sister, and I are in the one facing south. The cold fries bring everyone to the kitchen. He says he’ll try a fry! says my sister. We gather around the table to hear the verdict.
Slowly, my grandfather grabs a limp stick from the top of the pile, lifts it between his fingertips, and inspects it in the light filtering through the tulle curtains. On the knuckle of his right ring finger, the mauve knob of flesh covering a piece of shrapnel stands out against the fry. With two flicks, he pops the piece of kartofel into his mouth and begins to chew, blowing air from his nostrils in short, sharp gusts. A pioneer of taste. His chewing slows. The sorry fry succumbs to his state-issued dentures and dissolves in his mouth. A quick lick of his acrylic canines, then the final swallow. Well? my sister asks. Well, it’s a cold tater, my grandfather says. In the silence that follows, my grandmother pushes up from the table with her good hand, stands, and leaves. Her left leg, paralyzed, drags on the kitchen linoleum. We hear the rhythm of her uneven walk fade down the hall.
* * *
August 19, 1991. My grandfather takes me for a walk along his usual route. Past the neighboring building, we cross the road to the circus near the stage door. In the summer, they keep the door open and you can make out the shadow of the watchman inside. In front of the door are two wooden benches facing each other. If you’re lucky, you can see an acrobat, or a smoking clown. One time we saw a man with a chimpanzee. Whenever we see someone out of costume, we make up a job for him. After all, if they’re here, they must work for the circus. That one’s an artist, my grandfather says, trailing off. Today, no one’s there and the door is closed.
We keep going until we reach the statue of Jawaharlal Nehru sitting on his chair, but we don’t stop—you’re not allowed to climb on it. Once we’ve passed it, my grandfather starts up again with the story of how he met the actress Galina Polskikh at this very spot the time he brought my sister to the circus. Galina Polskikh looked at my grandfather and smiled at him, but he hadn’t recognized her and didn’t smile back. Can you imagine? At Galina Polskikh! Then he took a few steps and said to my sister, What?! That’s Galina Polskikh! They turned around, Galina Polskikh turned too, smiled at him again, and this time my grandfather smiled right back. At this point in the story, he lets out a sigh of relief. Once the statue is behind us, he says once or twice more, And to think I didn’t even recognize her!
We skirt around the circus to get to the Sats Theater, a musical theater for children. I’ve seen The Iron Bird, Snow White, and The Wolf and the Seven Little Goats there. I thought it was strange that the mother goat never noticed her little goats calling for her. A girl in the first row had even pointed right at them.
There’s a stage door here too, with actors smoking in costume, but we’re not allowed to go up to them. My mother once heard them cursing like cabbies. I asked for details; she said it was so bad it made her ears shrivel up and roll into little tubes, so she couldn’t tell me any more. Whenever we get a chance, we observe the princes, rabbits, and spotted mushrooms taking drags on their cigarettes. Today, there’s no one here either.
In front of the theater is a large green park with sculptures and fountains that no one’s ever seen turned on. The most beautiful one is the woman with the dolphin. My grandfather perches on the rim of the empty marble basin and sets me loose. The play area is determined by a simple rule: if I stay in his sight, then it’s alright. The field is flat and sprawling. I have plenty of room to maneuver. It’s an unspoken rule not to go near the large main road that borders the theater grounds. After climbing up every angle of the woman with the dolphin, I run toward the lawn that stretches along the road. Halfway there, I hear my grandfather calling my name in a voice I don’t recognize. I stop. I hear him call me again. I turn and see something I’ve never seen before: my grandfather is running. My mother always said, Grandpa is old. Grandpa can’t run. Grandpa can’t carry you. Because of some sort of ball that could fall out of his stomach. A ball of what, I’m not sure, but I know it can’t be good. I took this to mean these things were impossible for him to do. As impossible as the Queen’s mirror in Snow White or the feather in The Iron Bird. But today, my grandfather does both at the same time. He runs to me, lifts me by my waist, drops me onto his shoulder, and just as quickly heads toward the house. Behind us, on the road, large khaki-colored boxes with some kind of built-in kaleidoscope on top roll along, one after another. I watch them shrink in the distance. I think of the ball that must be falling out.
Back at home, we’re hardly through the door when the magic continues. The ball did not fall out. No one even mentions it. My grandfather says, There are tanks. And everyone repeats: tanks, tanks, tanks. No one tells me to wash my hands. Normally, my mother points to the bathroom, then my grandfather asks if I really used soap, then my grandmother asks him if she really washed her hands. Today, no one asks a thing. There are tanks on the avenue, repeats my grandfather.
At this point, my father arrives, arms loaded down with chairs he brought from the dacha. He says, I think they’re parading again. When my grandmother sees him, she goes quiet, her face darkens, and she leaves for her bedroom. Bad idea: that’s where our only TV set is. Everyone follows her. They turn on the screen and shut the door behind them. I stand alone in the hallway.
In the days that follow, no more cartoons, no more Good Night, Little Ones. On the TV from morning to night, on every channel, people are dancing. I want the Little Ones to come back and for these people to go dance somewhere else. They’re not just people, this is Swan Lake, says my mother. A swan song, my father retorts. Song or lake, it plays on repeat. We mute the volume but keep it on just in case. From time to time, the dancers disappear. In their place, the khaki boxes with the built-in kaleidoscopes that were rolling past the theater appear, and men are climbing on them. That looks even more fun than the woman with the dolphin. Whenever that happens, my father turns the sound back up and my mother sends me out of the room.
Then one morning, the khaki boxes and the swans are gone. That night, the Little Ones return. My grandmother drags her bottled-up rage from the bedroom to the kitchen. This is all Lebed’s doing! Parasite! Traitor . . . When she sees me, she stops abruptly. But I’d like her to keep going. I’d like to know who this Lebed is and what role he played in the lake.
Polina Panassenko is a French-Russian writer, translator, and actress. In 2022, her debut novel Tenir sa langue (Hold your tongue) won the Prix Femina des lycéens.
Maggie Vlietstra is a Minneapolis-born, Brooklyn-based translator from French.