5. Travelling.
Of
course we were eager to have a better look at Gorbachev’s summer cottage. One
guy from our company tried to swim along the coast in its direction at night
but failed because the searchlights began to look for the cause of disturbance
very energetically. So we decided to try again at the day time. We swam one or
two hundred meters towards the ships – we didn’t dare to swim towards the villa
of course. Our friend’s wife was a bad swimmer so she was in flippers, but I
got tired worse than she as I was in my glasses and didn’t want them to be
splashed.
The
distance was too great, and we didn’t discover anything interesting. Only that
the roof we had seen belonged to the smaller house, for service staff
supposedly, and the villa itself looked the same: an orange roof and white
walls. Maybe there were marble stairs leading to the beach, I’m not sure, and a
lot of green colour around. I forgot what kind of plants they were but at such
a distance we couldn’t really see it properly.
We were planning to repeat this camping
holiday next summer but it never happened. We had some financial difficulties –
so we went to the sandbar instead. It was in 1991 actually and I
regretted a lot we weren’t in the Crimea in August as we planned. It would have
been so exciting – Gorbachev was trapped in his villa with his wife, and I am
afraid the same ships stood on their guard in the sea.
We didn’t know it was the beginning of
the end of our world and the new life was about to start. It was already
starting but I don’t think anybody could indicate the exact moment when it
actually began. Did it start maybe when they stopped to pay our salaries regularly?
But this was nothing compared with what was to come.
Some
time later they stopped paying our money at all. Then food disappeared from the
shelves in our shops. When it appeared again in more or less noticeable quantity,
it was too expensive for us to buy. My husband went to several scientific
conferences abroad and tried to find a job there but failed. We got thin
because of the lack of food but we were still haughty. My husband was giving
private lessons only of English not physics because he wanted to improve his
English. I tried to be a tutor and gave up, had some temporary teaching job and
refused to continue though I was offered to stay. The new world was ruthless
but we still didn’t understand that and continued to pass our beloved sandbar every
summer right up to the time when our marriage followed our late country and
collapsed too.
After some period of half-starving existence
and still deeply in shock I went to sell newspapers stubbornly refusing to try
teaching physics again as I wasn’t good at it. Maybe watching me selling press
for 13 hours a day was the last straw that caused my father’s death when he was
only 69.
So
this was the hardest period of my life and my country as I could remember. Nevertheless
when we both began our recovery the first thing I did was cycling with my
children around the salt lake Kuyalnik. It was about 70 kilometers trip during
a day. I was not in a good form and hadn’t ridden a bicycle for several years.
This, I think, deteriorated my problems with veins in my legs but I have never regretted
it. I remember my first feeling of joyful surprise when I discovered that the
world I loved was still there with its wide green fields, bright blue sky and
fresh air with sweet and bitterish odour of steppe grass.
I joined my children only twice after that and then the doctors told me I couldn’t overload my legs like that any more. I tried different treatments: pills, ointments and swimming in the salt water of the lake and the sea as the vascular surgeon recommended. And I bothered my friends with conversations about my plans how to bring my legs to a condition as they were in my youth - everything for the purpose of joining my children in this annual summer trip around the lake. It was for me as a journey around the world in miniature. I pestered my friends with this for 2 or 3 years before I understood that they were smiling behind my back thinking I was slightly touched in the head. I knew they liked me like that – just a weirdo but I didn’t want to be tiresome. So I stopped talking about that.
But
I couldn’t resign myself – I woke up early on the day of the journey and helped
my daughter with cooking but when my children were leaving I was hiding inside
the house at first. Some years later I began to go out with them and as they
were standing in the street, young and strong, with their friends and their
bicycles I took the first photo of the trip, But every time as they were
leaving without me I felt a prickle in my heart.
I
hadn’t ridden my bicycle for three or four years for doctors said I was not
allowed to. But then, with some encouragement from my daughter, I began to
cycle again – using compressive breeches and within short distances at first.
Some time later I discovered that when I was in an especially good form,
usually in the middle of summer, I could even take a journey of about 20
kilometers once in one or two years. And it was definitely better than nothing.
Once
or twice a year my friend from university phoned and told me about some
excursion she was going to have with her colleagues. I refused to join them
only twice: once - when the only attraction of the trip was a winery and the
second time – when it was too expensive for me. Mostly I was ready to go
anywhere only to break the monotonous course of life –
just to feel the fresh wind on my face and see pure blue sky with fluffy white
clouds above my head. And was not it enough for happiness to watch the winding
stripe of the road unrolling in front of my eyes or a narrow path running among
the grass, promising new impressions and new adventures?
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