My mother’s stories
chapter 9
Living at the edge of the city
chapter 9
Living at the edge of the city
My future parents had to part when the time came for my father to join the army. The orphanage organized a big farewell party on this occasion and a lot of villagers came there attracted by free treat. Following the tradition some of them left some money on a small table standing in the corner. Young recruits usually left that money to their parents to wait for them to come back. As my father had no parents he came to my mother with a considerable sum in his hands and asked her to keep it safe for him. But she told him she couldn’t accept it as with her heart problems she could die at any moment. She advised him to make some hiding place in his trunk or clothes. My father was not a very practical man – nevertheless, somehow he managed to save his money and ten years later it became the initial investment when my parents started to build our house.
They used that money exactly how those people who collected it for a future soldier meant to: for building a nest for a new family. Survival and continuation of your kin – that is the point of rural tradition. I have never been a part of it and have never felt comfortable as a tiny part of human crowd but there is something touching in rural tradition for me. This aspiration to share all the significant events of their lives with their neighbours, whether it was a wedding or a funeral, this readiness to unite their efforts to face some natural disaster – it was the only way to survive. This tradition is lost in the cities completely. What is more, the inhabitants of the cities usually consider themselves superior to the villagers, comfortably forgetting that, in spite of all the achievements of modern technology, they couldn’t live long without those people working hard for them in the fields. Yet it can’t be denied that due to scientific and technological progress the percentage of the villagers has dropped dramatically since the beginning of the 20th century.
Most of those, who flew away from the villages, were young people– it was a global process, actually. My mother didn’t know anything about it, but it seemed that everything led her to the decision to leave her village for ever. Later in our family’s mythology my mother’s daring to leave the village was always presented as a great feat and, as a matter of fact, I still think that it really was. It doesn’t matter that she was one of many who were brave enough to leave their habitual life and rush forward to meet their unknown destiny. I have never been able to repeat my mother’s feat myself, in spite of a strong desire to do it at the same age of twenty one, when my mother and my future husband were ruthlessly pulling me in opposite directions.
I have lived in our settlement, at the edge of the city, for fifty years. Inhabitants of many-storeyd blocks of flats on the other side of the railroad often called our settlement “the village”, usually with a note of slight contempt in their voices. I remember the time when it hurt my feelings. As a young clumsy wife, who could never have dinner ready on time, I dreamt about a flat with all conveniences, where I could be more successful with my housework. A lot of time passed before I understood what living in a flat would have meant for me. I would have been deprived of all the things that I loved so much: fresh sweet air (‘exactly like in the country-side’ as some of our guests used to say), nightingales singing in the forest belt near the railroad in May, our games among the trees and a strong sweet odour of grass squashed by our children’s feet filling the air. And orange tremulous glow on our faces when we were sitting around the fire on summer evenings. And discordant roll-call of roosters early in the morning. I wouldn’t have had any of it if my mother hadn’t chosen a place for living at the edge of the city where she could keep more or less rural style of life.
Nowadays things changed, of course. The city expansion couldn’t leave the world of my childhood untouched. It’s very nice and helpful to have a gas stove and hot water in the house, especially for a person who dislikes housework as I do. Yet the price for it is a belt of garages, which replaced the forest belt with nightingales. The air isn’t fresh and sweet any more and the trees don’t shade generously our streets in summer heat as they used to do. Some of the trees were felled for different reasons and others were ruthlessly mutilated to prevent them from damaging electrical and Internet wires. Too many wires on our telegraph poles and not enough trees – that is our reality. But still I can get out of my house into my yard in spring and watch some things blooming and butterflies fluttering above them as much as I want to.
It’s funny how often in my youth I used to reproach my mother for her choice to live in a house and not in a flat. And only much later I understood it was really a blessing for me to live in such a place. Didn’t I feel ill and uncomfortable every time when I lived in some flat even for a short period? It was a sensation of living in a too closed space with not enough air in it. Maybe it’s some kind of claustrophobia. And whenever I looked at my favourite landscape of wide open fields covered with motley grass - hasn’t it always stirred up a strong desire within me to turn into a light-footed antelope and rush forward, feeling a fragrant wind whistling in my ears?
To be continued...
(c) Anna Shevchenko
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