Russia

“For me this night is outside the law, I write — at night there is more darkness. I grab the telephone dial and dial the eternal 07. ‘Girl, hello! What’s your name?’ — ‘Toma. Seventy-two! I wait, holding my breath! It can’t be, say it again, I’m sure — he’s home! Ah, here they have already answered… Well, hello — it’s me!’ This night for me is outside the law. I don’t sleep, I shout — quicker! Why on credit, on a coupon, do they offer me the people I love? …… The telephone for me is like an icon. The telephone book is a triptych, the operator has become a Madonna, having shortened the distances for a moment. Girl, dear! I beg you, extend it! You are now like an angel — don’t come down from the altar! The most important thing is still ahead, understand, Here they have already answered… Well, hello — it’s me!” ...

I don’t know who said it, but just in case I put today’s story in quotation marks. I was struck, having read a post about the rescue of a family from a burning car in the city of Mykolaiv (in the south of Ukraine). Two men, hearing a child’s cry, without delaying a second, rushed to help. The driver was unconscious, and they saved him too, a minute before the explosion! Honour and praise to these two Human Beings! I was very struck by their act — a heroic deed. ...

It is not always possible to admire their beauty and grace. It turns out they can also be aggressive! And here is a little story that was posted on Facebook at Epiphany. In the little town of Drohobych (Western Ukraine) a man decided to wash away his sins by dipping in a pond where swans were swimming gracefully. And when he surfaced, he came under a swan attack! At first he tried to wave them off, but without success. He had to take up a threatening boxer’s stance right in the icy water, but even that did not save him. What saved him was running for the shore. ...

Today is 19 December 2018, St Nicholas’s Day. And on this day in 1995 my grandmother Anna Vasilyevna died, mama’s mama. She was 89 years old. More than 50 years she lived in marriage with my grandfather Sergei Sergeyevich “not in peace and not in accord”! But the 50-year anniversary, the so-called Golden Wedding, they celebrated in a restaurant in Bolshevo, and of course the initiative came only from grandmother. Grandfather did not want to go to the restaurant at all, he had to be persuaded. ...

If it were not for Facebook, I would not have remembered Aunt Rufa with her children. The other day on FB they posted such a short funny film (I think it was a staging), how a mama feeds her boy porridge, brings a spoon to his mouth, he shakes his head no, and… here mama grabs a rolling pin and hits the toy bear on the head, and the boy at once opens his mouth and swallows the spoon of porridge. This scene seemed amusingly funny to me. ...

All the same it is dangerous to make a long pause in writing a blog. Some kind of vacuum in the brains. Having been in the homeland, I understood that I have two lives. In the homeland one has to recall the most elementary everyday moments: again adapt to a gas stove, to the absence of hot water, to “native” money which is catastrophically losing value, to people… I lived in the centre of the city of Kyiv. Round the clock noisy, dusty, hot. And at 6 in the morning, on top of that, one can hear how the first metro train passes “under my bed.” What can one say? — The central district of the capital — Pechersk! I beheld a clear advantage over other districts: every evening a virtuoso rubbish truck squeezed through cars parked every which way and with a light movement of the lift quickly threw the rubbish into its body. As they say: “The work fears the master!” Once again one wants to repeat “virtuoso rubbish truck.” I admire their work! The poetry of Labour! Without them we are nowhere! ...

I remember very clearly an incident when I was 9. My sister was about 2 months old. Mama had already taught me how to handle her correctly: how to swaddle, how to take her in my arms, how to give her a drink in case Mama should not be at home. And so I remember it was not early morning, about 11 o’clock, Mama went to the shop and left me with the sleeping sister. Suddenly a persistent doorbell rang. I went to the door and asked: “who?” A woman’s voice was heard: “Boy, open, your papa is not at work!” I thought and said through the closed door: “I am not a boy, but a girl!” ...

I think many Soviet people could allow themselves a holiday by the sea. I remember how some reasoned: for example “go south to eat fruit” or “for apricots,” “for cherries” or “for peaches.” Mama had a colleague at the children’s atelier Nona Markovna. So she would say in a tearful little voice: “Oh, will I manage this season to eat a little melon with bread, from poverty….” She went to the sea “from poverty” every year. ...

Well, not so much about the “khrushchoba.” We are still at the sea in Yevpatoria. There I got a local girlfriend Rita, Aunt Tonya’s daughter, and an adult girlfriend Lyuda, Aunt Tonya’s niece. My parents “entrusted” me to Lyuda and usually we went with her to the wild beach. Lyuda was an advanced student of the then fashionable philology faculty, well-read and pretty. And of course she attracted the glances of young men on the beach. But rarely did anyone decide to get acquainted with Lyuda. ...

Mama was “light on her feet.” If she decided to go, we went at once. That is how the first trip to the sea in Yevpatoria came about. We arrived with the whole family on my birthday, 11 August. Acquaintances advised and gave an address at Moinaki (there is such a district with healing muds and a liman). Here is how interestingly the locals lived in the holiday season: their best housing, and that was one room in a communal apartment, they rented to wild holidaymakers, like our family, and themselves lived in sheds nearby, and by these sheds they cemented small platforms for benches and a table. It turned out like gazebos twined with grapes. Of course we did not sit in our holiday rooms, but went out into the air and talked with the locals. Some even had televisions in the sheds. ...