chapter 27
The same pattern
(the ending)
After sending a letter with her consent my mother left Odessa for Georgia where my future father served in the army as an extended-service man. They got married in the small town with an exotic name of Manglisy. I used to love my parents' stories about Georgia and its beautiful nature. It was so exciting to listen how my reckless mother, being already pregnant with me, used to climb some dangerous path in the mountains just to see some breath-taking landscape from there. I deeply regretted that I had never seen all that beauty with my own eyes. Yet Georgia was out of reach for me. As I knew from my own bitter experience, there was no hope to persuade my parents to visit any place that was further than the center of our city. My young pregnant mother, as I suspect, was glad to leave Georgia. She was fond of its beautiful nature but local folk's attitude sometimes spoilt her pleasure. I could hardly believe some of my mother's stories.
For instance, that story about a shop assistant in the local grocery – he was supposed to like my mother as she was young and good-looking but he didn't. He never looked at her and made every effort not to serve her. It was just ridiculous - as soon as my mother reached him at last after standing in a queue he went to the opposite end of his long counter and began to serve other people there. When my mother approached him for the second time that adamant man repeated his trick and she found herself standing in the end of a long queue again. If some kind soul hadn't helped my mother to deceive that salesman, she wouldn't have bought anything on that day. This story seemed to me completely incredible. Shop assistants in the USSR were rarely friendly or polite but in that case it was undisguised hostility. I just couldn't understand why that man with his southern temperament didn't like my young mother so much if she was as pretty as her old photographs clearly show.
My mother was sure it was her nationality that caused all the trouble. This explanation seemed to me out of place too. I was brought up to believe that our country was a big happy family of friendly republics. We were taught this at school and of course our books, films and TV programmes always tried to show us that it was truly so. I remember how I loved those big concerts on our TV where skillful actors in national costumes performed dances of different republics. They followed one after another and I was always eager to discuss whose dance and attire I liked best. Girls from Central Asia with a lot of plaits seemed to me most appealing. They looked so exotic in their embroidered skull-caps and light wide trousers. And what a pleasure it was to watch those girls dancing with their numerous plaits flying behind them! In spite of my pleading, my mother didn't allow me to grow my hair long enough for plaits. She had too much trouble with her own long and thick hair when she was a child. All that combing and braiding took so much time. It was even worse when she was too little to do it herself - her harpy of a mother used to braid her hair so tightly that she thought her eyes would pop out of her head.
My mother was right, of course, saying that I was not industrious enough to take care of long hair. So inspired by those oriental girls I just took some darning thread and made a wig with several plaits for my favourite doll. Something still worried me though. Finishing the story about that Georgian salesman my mother told me that people from eastern republics disliked Russians. It meant Ukrainians too as we looked so similar. How could it be true? It didn't correspond too much with the idea of international friendship that was cultivated in our country.
Nowadays it seems really odd that in my young days so many Ukrainians didn't distinguish themselves from Russians. We seemed so brotherly. Maybe that's why now there are so many elderly people who still can't realize the fact that Russians spat at more than thirty years of our independence and crossed our borders in a malicious attempt to bite off as much of our territory as they were able to. I can do it, thank God, and the story of that Georgian salesman became clear in my mind at last. Surely, he disliked my young pretty mother so much because she was a wife of a military man who was an occupant on his land. It's natural to hate occupants. And did it really matter to that man if they were Russians or Ukrainians?
By the way, I had the same experience in Poland when I was twenty. At that time it was not so easy to visit other country even if it belonged to the socialist camp. But to our luck there was some exchange programme between universities. That's why, in spite of the “iron curtain”, I went abroad and stayed in Polish city of Katowice for three weeks. At first I felt a bit depressed because of my boyfriend who was not allowed to join our group. He was very irritated that I didn't cancel my trip for his sake and didn't even see me off. It was rumoured later that he and his friend were had been struck off our list because of their zeal to tell political jokes and ask provocative questions during our lectures on political economy. And what else could it be, considering that they were both excellent students?
My close friend's young man was not with us either for some reason. Maybe it was also for his tongue because he was a great lover to joke, inventing nicknames for everyone and everything. So we both were rather upset but soon we felt better going with other girls through all the shops. It was so exciting to buy things that could be found only in the black market in our own country. Moreover we discovered a cosy cafe where we could taste delicious strawberry ice-cream and whipped cream with various fruit. When we were leaving Poland all the girls sighed not so much for the shops with cheap tights, pretty knickers, and abundance of cosmetics, but for that cafe with its wonderful desserts.
As for people's attitude to us I can't be really sure. We weren't spoilt by our own authorities' or shop-assistants' consideration and wouldn't have noticed anything even if there had been some frostiness in the air. Our student-guides seemed friendly enough, accompanying us almost everywhere, and only an old porter in our hostel seemed to hate us. He had never looked at us, exactly like that Georgian salesman in my mother's story. What is more, he tried very hard not to give us our key, pretending he didn't understand Russian at all. Being stubborn too, we learnt how to pronounce 188 in Polish. It sounded similar enough to the Russian version, but in vain we repeated in turn the number of our room. The old man only muttered something under his nose, not looking at us as before. So we gave up in the end and just started to write our number on the piece of paper.
That settled the matter at last but one question was left unanswered. Why did that old Pole dislike us so much? Here we had again the contradiction between reality and the nice picture that was drawn for us at school. They had always told us that people from Eastern Europe were very much obliged to the USSR for being freed from German occupation. So it didn't even occur to us that those people could perceive our country as another occupant or at least something close to that. It was not actually a secret that the USSR kept countries from the socialist camp under its thumb. Yet you can't understand such things when you have lived all your life in the great empire. We would say of course that they lived “under our protection”. It's amazing how the choice of one word can change the whole meaning of the phrase.
I don't think my young mother understood all of this at the time. She was just glad to leave Georgia for Odessa. Here she was at home. “Odessa welcomed me warmly,” - she used to tell me, describing her first impressions when she came here from Bashkiria. I am sure she felt the same when she returned here from Georgia. Here, in this southern city of Ukraine, I was born. I can't say I have ever felt at home in Odessa, but I have always loved its surroundings: wide fields, the sea and our estuary with its salt as brine waters. I think my mother was also fond of the land in the first place. She came from a family of peasants after all, and that's why she has always cared for gardening so much.
To be continued...
(c) Anna Shevchenko
