среда, 18 сентября 2024 г.

My mother's stories (chapter twenty nine - the Victory Day)

 

chapter 29

The village that I lost

(The Victory Day)


       It can seem odd how much my perception of the world was influenced by the Second World War, considering that I was born 11 years after it was over. Perhaps it's just the fate of any generation that comes soon after a war. My parents were too young to take part in it and my only known to me grandfather was killed by Stalin's bloody regime in 1938 – a year before it started. We never called it the World War though. First of all, it was the Great Patriotic War for us, that is the war that started in 1941 when Germans crossed the borders of the USSR. “On the 22nd of June, exactly at 4 am, Kiev was bombed and we were informed that the war came to our land” - incredible but I still remember how touched I was when I first heard one actor singing those simple uneven lines in some long-forgotten Soviet movie. And even now, when Russians crossed our borders and have been bombing Ukrainian cities, towns and villages for more than two years, I still find this old song touching. It's difficult not to feel that there is something wrong about it, especially remembering how zealously our former compatriots use the memory of the last war to justify their unjustifiable aggression against Ukraine. Yet my attitude towards it is quite understandable. We were brought up on books, movies and songs dedicated to that war, and most of them were created by people who took part in it or lost their loved ones because of it. No wonder that most of those works of art were so good and touching. All of them, it seemed, tried to show to people why that horrible war should never be repeated again.

      At school we swallowed a lot of information about it, studying in detail all the battles with their maps and war heroes with their biographies. Too much information, perhaps. That's why, I think, feeling a bit confused, I asked my father once what the difference between our War and the Second World War actually was. And what a surprise it was to learn suddenly that one was just the part of the other! Father was a man whom I could trust in such matters as he had served in the Soviet Army for ten years. They definitely had to have some lectures about it all. It was Father who once struck my imagination telling me with pride that the USSR had never fought aggressive wars. Obviously, he didn't know it was not really true. As for me, I loved the idea of my country being so peaceful. Our teachers, newspapers and TV programmes told us the same. Our country was always fighting for peaceful co-existence. It seemed completely logical that after all the horrors of the last war, which our films and books showed so vividly, the USSR fought so eagerly for the peace in the whole world. Or celebrated a bit noisily and pompously the Victory Day on the 9th of May. Personally, I couldn't notice any discordance in that.

      It was one of my favourite holidays. The weather was usually nice and sunny on that day, and the chestnut trees were in full bloom. It's nowadays because of that damn global warming, that these shapely trees begin to blossom in April, but in those days they usually started flowering shortly before the Victory Day. It's amazing how much I remember about its celebration. For instance, old men in military jackets with decorations on their chests. I always had a warm feeling watching one of them walking somewhere in the street or in the park on that day. Or I still remember my jubilation when I was 11 or 12 and our class took part in the Young Pioneer Parade. It was really exciting to march along the main streets and then through the Central Park, reciting loudly some rhymes that we had learned by heart for this occasion. 

      “Good training for your boys, who were supposed to serve in the Soviet Army,” my son remarked sarcastically many years later. But I didn't feel like that. There was only a pleasant sensation that we looked very picturesque in our white shirts with bright red ties and blue field caps on our heads. Perhaps for that reason at the young pioneer's age we often participated in some outdoor celebrations. On one especially hot day one of our boys even fainted when we were standing motionless in the sun before the war memorial, listening to some long dull speech about peaceful co-existence - or maybe it was about the USSR saving the world from the fascist plague, I don't remember anymore. Anyway, that boy's fainting caused a great panic among our teachers. But mostly my recollections are warm and light. And no wonder in that as May with its bright greenery and bloom has always been my favourite time of the year.

      If I stayed at home on the 9th of May I used to sit with my father in front of our black and white TV watching Military Parade on Red Square in Moscow. At first, well drilled soldiers were marching across the square, measuring out their pace. I didn't find them very interesting. But I did like my father's explanations about military machinery that followed after them. Most of all, I was impressed by large missiles crawling by like huge swollen caterpillars. They looked rather innocent, but I knew it was a deadly weapon. Father assured me there was no need for worry as those things on the screen were completely harmless dummies. Sometimes they showed us the real missiles on TV too and it was even more impressive. They were well-hidden somewhere under the ground, and I still remember how a heavy hatch cover silently slipped aside, showing a dark hole underneath. Then a sharp nose began to emerge followed by a light gray body of a missile and some time later it all sank into the dark tunnel again. Almost certainly there was some disquieting music to go with those video-shots in order to give the audience the right impression.

      It's so difficult to accept it but perhaps now Russians destroy our cities, sea-ports and power-stations, and kill our people with some of those missiles, whose dummies my father and I discussed so peacefully on the Victory Day. But at the time of my childhood and youth we sincerely believed that we needed our weapons only for self-protection. Who could have had any doubts about it, remembering the innumerable victims and great devastation of the last war? Definitely, peaceful co-existence seemed to be the only right way to follow. That's why, I think, my generation had never accepted clumsy attempts of Soviet propaganda to justify the invasion of Afghanistan. There were a lot of jokes about “the limited contingent of the Soviet Army” there. Our propagandists' stupid terminology was really annoying and could deceive nobody. No one believed that we had anything to do with Afghanistan or that we had to interfere in their inner conflict.

      It was especially infuriating because by that time the lack of food on the shelves in our shops had become well palpable, not to mention permanent deficit of other important things. I can't be sure here but maybe it was Afghanistan that became the last straw for the Soviet economy. People usually explained it all by our endless help to brotherly countries from the Socialist Camp and all over the world. On this irritating background the Afghan campaign seemed really idiotic. Moreover, it contradicted too much the idea of peaceful co-existence that they had proclaimed so many times before. Our leader Leonid Brezhnev fought in the Second World War himself and seemed to be sincere in his fight for the peace in the world. That's why Afghanistan sounded as a discordant note in our ears.

      But, in fact, it was not something really new or unexpected – just 10 years before that, in 1968, they sent Soviet tanks to Czechoslovakia to help our brothers communists to stay at the steering wheel. It's a pity that I can't remember my parents' attitude towards the event. I was only 11 then. Maybe they discussed the matter out of my earshot because the memory of Stalin's dark times was still fresh in their minds. All that I can recall is that people suddenly got a bit crazy and started to buy salt, matches and soap in big quantities. “Who knows, maybe a new war is on its way,” my mother explained to me in a low voice. After that she handed a three liter milk-can to me to buy salt and sent me to the queue that was winding like a snake in front of the local shop. “No more than two (or three, or five) items in the same hands,” our shop-assistants usually cried to the crowd in such cases. I forgot the exact quantity but I do remember standing in that long queue, trying to guess how much it would take to reach the counter. A smart young girl passing by stopped to ask about the cause of agiotage. After being told she sniffed so scornfully that I felt a wave of shame rushing over me for standing there. 

      I am not sure if I saw it then but there it was, a notorious gap between generations, showing itself in all its clarity. People in the queue were mostly elderly or at least over forty. They surely knew what a real war was and tried to be prepared for a new one at any cost. As for the girl in a smart dress, the war for her was something thrilling from a book or a movie, something unreal that couldn't come and kill her and her relatives or burn her house to the ground. I am afraid that's how fertile soil for a new war begins to develop. My mother was a good narrator. But even I, listening to her stories through all my childhood and teens, could never understand in full measure all the atrocities and horrors of the real war. Obviously, nothing can be a better teacher than your own experience. That's why human collective memory has always been too short.

To be continued...

(c) Anna Shevchenko

32. The informer (the continuation)

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суббота, 13 апреля 2024 г.

My mother's stories (chapter twenty nine - my great grandma)

 

chapter 29

The village that I lost

(my great grandma)

     


       I don't know exactly why my mother felt the loss of her new-born son so keenly that she decided once and for all not to have children any more. After all, she lived in the village till the age of 21 and had to be hardened by that experience. I think it was that damn C-section that did it. My mother was told, of course, that after such an operation she wouldn't be able to have another child without going through the C-section again. But at the very thought of it she always felt a thrill of revulsion. I think in the past people weren't so sensitive or, at least, nowadays we believe they weren't. God gave and God took away – was it not their usual consolation for a woman who lost her baby?

       To my mother's misfortune she spent her childhood and teens in a shabby hut that was situated not far from a local cemetery. It was not a pleasant experience and perhaps that's why she was always so perceptive to the dark side of life. I remember her complaining to me how she couldn't help hearing all that crying and sobbing because by rural tradition it was a proper behaviour for close relatives. “Such hypocrisy!” my mother used to tell me with bitterness. “At first they made me listen to all of that and then after a few drinks at the funeral banquet most of them forgot what all that was about and were almost ready to dance.”

       Nevertheless, even my mother with her flat rejection of rural customs had to admit that it was not always the case. Sometimes one person's grief was so strong that nobody could be left unmoved. It was definitely so with that poor mother whose babies lived only a few months after they were born. Villagers were whispering, telling each other that she lost 13 or even 17 of them. I believe they exaggerated the number, as rumours usually do, but there was no doubt about that inconsolable mother's grief. At first, she tried to be patient, listening to the old wise women's advice. But, in the end, something snapped inside her and to people's horror she suddenly started shouting offenses to the sky, shaking her fists and asking God why He was so cruel to take all her babies away from her. Everyone stood there rooted to the spot, expecting that at any moment the lightning would flash from the sky and incinerate that lunatic of a woman. But it never came. What is more, the poor soul came to her senses in the end and afterwards had two or three children, who all lived to grow up. It really looked like a miracle after all her previous losses.

        My own maternal instinct has never been as strong as that woman's. Actually, it was a bit slow to reveal itself. I have never been one of those girls who like to play with somebody else's kids, and was already 25 when, to my surprise, I suddenly understood I'd like to have children of my own. Still, even before that time I had always felt that the ending of this story was extremely comforting. The poor woman wanted to have children so badly, and she got them in the end. When I am thinking of it nowadays, I usually feel a pang of regret that I have never been able to overcome my atheistic up-bringing. In such stories I feel the presence of God. Here He is as I'd like Him to be: strict but at the same time kind and understanding.

       I don't really know when and why Christian tradition was broken in our family. Most of my playmates were baptized and had godparents in spite of official disapproval of such things. I remember when we were already at secondary school one of my friends told me in secret: “You know, my mother and I discussed it all and decided it's the right thing to celebrate Easter and Christmas. Just in case. They say there is no God. But who really knows?” Actually, it was a wide-spread attitude towards religion in the USSR, even among communists, I suspect. Only they, especially those of higher rank, couldn't afford to show it in public. There were no communists in our family. So why was it so uncompromisingly atheistic? My mother used to bake Easter cakes every spring. But she always emphasized that it had nothing to do with religion, that she just loved the taste of them. As for making them in the shape of prolonged rolls, according to her words, she was simply incapable of baking them thoroughly in their traditional cylindrical form. Yet, I am not sure it was entirely true. Perhaps it was that aspiration of hers for being different and her desperate desire to forget her old rural customs.

       It was not so with my great-grandmother Euphemia, who taught my mother to say her first prayers. As far as I can remember my mother's stories about her: she was devout, hard-working and had immense knowledge of life that was really priceless during those hard times. If to think about it, she was a typical representative of rural women of her generation. Besides, she belonged to that part of the female population, who were tough and resilient enough to live till old age in spite of poverty, hard labour, famines and epidemics. But what frightens me most is those poor women's fate to give birth to a lot of children knowing that as likely as not only some of them will survive.

       Euphemia, or Euhima as everybody in the village called her, was born in 1870. I believe that after the revolution of 1917 and the Civil war that followed it all old records were lost. Not to mention that all the churches, where they usually kept such documents, were ransacked during that awful time and later were closed or turned into store-houses by Bolsheviks. Anyway, it was the year that Euhima remembered and always gave as her year of birth to her relatives. The same year when Lenin was born as my mother liked to emphasize. It was the easiest way to remember it. Everybody, who finished school in the USSR, knew when the first communist leader was born, especially taking into account that every April Soviet propaganda made a great fuss about it.

       Unlike her grandchildren, Euphemia was ignorant in such matters. She had never attended school and couldn't read or write just like most of her contemporaries from the lower classes. Actually, from an early age she had to work and take care of her invalid mother. Soon after her mother's death, when Euhima was about 16, she was forced to get married. In her own words it was not something unusual, because at the time of her youth parents didn't pay much attention to their daughter's actual age. If a girl began to look more or less feminine, it was a sign that they could marry her off and preferably without delay. After that her main task would be to have children and bring them up properly, that is to ensure the continuation of her kin. And hasn't it always been the main part of any female in human society or in the wild nature?

       Euphemia undoubtedly followed this tradition. But when she was over 30 and already had five children an epidemic of typhoid fever or some other intestinal infection rolled over the villages. All five of her children died, including her elder girl, who was at least 16, because she was just about to get married at that time. Euphemia herself was close to death and it seemed there was little hope for her recovery. Still, she obediently followed a local doctor's strict orders not to eat anything at all. I suppose her husband watched her in secret, because the doctor definitely warned them that eating in that state would mean the death of her. Nevertheless, the time came when Euhima couldn't stand it any longer and surreptitiously stole into the inner porch, where a big barrel with sour cabbage stood in the corner. As she confessed to my mother many years later, she had never had more pleasure from food than at that moment when, after breaking the thin crust of ice, she started gobbling the icy cold sour cabbage. After eating her fill, she resignedly hobbled to her bed and lay down to wait for her death. Miraculously, it didn't come. What is more, it was the beginning of her recovery, and it only confirmed my great-grandmother's inner belief that nature had always had some hidden wonderful remedies. The only problem was that very few people were able to find them.

       After her full recovery, Euphemia didn't fall into some incurable nervous break-down or anything of the sort but continued to work as hard as before and gave birth to four more children who all lived till old age. Even her two sons survived, although they fought Germans during the Second World War.

To be continued...

(c) Anna Shevchenko

32. The informer (the continuation)
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среда, 7 февраля 2024 г.

My mother's stories (chapter twenty eight - the ending)

 

chapter 28

The study in dark colours

(the ending)


       Sometimes I think that perhaps my fate in that gloomy yard would have been easier if I had had a brother or a sister, even a younger one. At least it would have taught me responsibility from an early age. And, who knows, maybe I would have learnt much earlier how to defend not only my sibling but myself too. On the other hand, I am not sure that it would have really changed my destiny very much. I used to believe that as I had two children, they wouldn't share my psychological problems. However, my younger son has always had the same difficulties with socializing. Actually, it's quite understandable as he, unlike my daughter, has always been much closer to me by nature. And that explains, I think, why we still live under one roof.

       By now I have learnt that I can rely upon my son when I am in a tight corner. Still I regret that I have never had a brother or a sister who I could ask for help or advice when I desperately needed a friendly shoulder. And how nice it would have been to have tea together, discussing our everyday life, occasionally reminding each other of something that happened in our half-forgotten childhood. Surely, we would remember different details and it would be most curious to compare our memories. I understand that it's some kind of idealization but that's how I imagine having a sibling nowadays.

       But back then, that is in my early childhood, I didn't feel like that at all. I suspect I felt rather irritated when various adults asked me if I would like my mother to give me a little brother. At that time people believed that it was a proper question to start a conversation with when talking to a little girl, especially if her mother was somewhere nearby. I think I was about three when I was asked about it for the first time, or at least it was the case that stuck in my memory. I remember I felt a bit confused but blurted out “no!” without thinking. My parents' acquaintance was so obviously startled by my reply that I ran away from her, still shouting “no,no!”, before hiding behind my mother's skirt. It was long and wide enough to give me a good shelter but it didn't save me from a little lecture that followed. The woman, who we so unluckily met in the street, told me with some heat that I was completely wrong and explained to me what a blessing it would be for me to have a little brother to play with. I was sharp enough to understand what was expected from me and after that never failed to answer “yes” when some smiling woman pestered me with that question.

       It can seem incredible but only after I wrote the previous sentence did it suddenly occur to me how painful all those conversations must have been for my mother. I used to listen to a lot of her stories, and one of them was about my poor little brother, who was born when I was about two, and who lived only 15 minutes after his birth. There was something wrong with my mother's second pregnancy, and it was one of those unfortunate cases when doctors had to choose between a mother and her baby. Perhaps she had some foreboding of it because she delayed going to the maternity home until my father led her there by the hand. My mother knew beforehand that she was going to have a C-section but she was not ready for what happened to her after that.

       My mother had never liked official medicine – first of all because her own mother was so fond of it. But this time it was the closest collision with the Soviet health service that she couldn't avoid. After her operation she was lying in a hospital bed, completely helpless and entirely in their power. She couldn't just leave and slam the door behind her back. Personally, what I always disliked about Soviet doctors was their manner to communicate with their patients. As a rule, they were frowning and scribbling something in your medical card, explaining to you as little as it was possible, even if there was nothing life-threatening in your diagnosis.

       Still, I believe my mother's doctor didn't tell her at once about her baby's death for a different reason. He saw that she was extremely weak, recovering longer than usual after anesthesia, and, in spite of everything, impatient to see her new-born son. So he decided to tell her later, and it was a real shock for her when some nurse came and asked her rudely why her husband hadn't taken her baby's body away. No wonder that after such a brutal revelation my mother had a fit of hysterics and couldn't be calmed down for a long time. The doctor scolded the nurse furiously but it looked like he didn't have much power over his nurses. For instance, he knew that my mother suffered from constipation after her operation. Every morning he ordered a junior nurse to give an enema to her. Every time one of those unpleasant middle-aged women who usually did that kind of work in hospital answered “yes” but did nothing afterwards.

       It was going on in that fashion for a few days until my mother's ward-mates explained to her in secret that the nurse was just waiting for some money offered to her for her services. To my mother's distress her young naive husband and younger sister refused indignantly to give money for that, saying that in the USSR, thank God, they had free medical care. Weren't they taught at school that such habits were just the vestiges of capitalism that had to be rooted out? She didn't waste much time, trying to dissuade them, but unexpectedly quickly found a way out of the situation. It was really simple. By that time her bedside-table was packed with apples, oranges, cookies, and sweets, because in her state she had no appetite for all those tasty things that her visitors had brought to her. So, without further ado, my mother gave all of this to the nurse and, sure enough, she got the prescribed treatment that very day.

       Hypocrisy – that's what I have always hated about the USSR. I understand, of course, that any human society is partly based on it. Yet the Soviet system was one of those where it flourished most lavishly. We were taught from an early age that our country had free education and free medical care. But everybody knew it was not really true. If you wanted your child to enter some prestigious university or get good medical care in hospital you had to be ready to pay or, to be precise, to bribe, because such payment was forbidden in the USSR.

       Luckily for my parents I wished to become a physicist, and the physics department was one of the bribery free ones at university. Although, all our neighbours, as my mother sarcastically informed me, refused to believe that I joined it without greasing somebody's palm. But there was no doubt that the Medical University was one of the most corrupt in our city. There were scary rumours going around that it was completely impossible to join it without a hefty bribe. I remember one pitiful story that was popular when I was just finishing school. A poor girl, who was obsessed with her desire to become a doctor, tried to enter the Medical University for free for seven or eight years. Miraculously, she did succeed in the end but relinquished her studies some time later. Maybe she really had a nervous break-down, as people believed. But I suspect the girl had just discovered that she had to pay for every single exam if she wanted to finish her education. And, perhaps, her parents just couldn't afford it.

       No wonder that after such an educational race, doctors were eager to get some extra money in addition to their more than moderate salaries. Actually, a lot of people in the country were looking for some illegal or half-legal ways to increase their small incomes. All that talking about equality and the bright communist future, when everybody would have everything in abundance, didn't deceive most of the people. They tried desperately to get some extra money or creature comforts at any cost. As a result, our medical personnel were frowning and often rude, our shop-assistants were usually rude and malicious. What I especially hated about doctors, nurses and, strange to say, hairdressers, was a widespread custom to put surreptitiously some money into one of the big pockets of their white uniform. I have never been good at it. As for me, it was humiliating for both: for those specialists and for their patients or clients. I am glad that those times are over and that nowadays I can look a doctor in the eye and ask how much I owe him or her. If they offer me a choice to pay them or to go to the cashier, I always choose a doctor because those 35 years that I lived in the USSR taught me not to trust the state.

       But coming back to my 28-year-old mother, as she told me later, she left the maternal house extremely thin with big gray patches in her beautiful auburn hair and with a firm decision in her sore heart not to step over that threshold ever again. For some reason she believed those health problems that she developed after her ill-fated C-section were caused by the anesthesia or narcosis, as she always called it with distaste. But I believe it was just bad treatment and her grief because of the loss of her baby-son. As far as I can remember my mother had always had a soft spot for boys.

To be continued...

(c) Anna Shevchenko

32. The informer (the continuation)


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понедельник, 11 декабря 2023 г.

My mother's stories (chapter twenty eight - the continuation)

chapter 28

The study in dark colours

(the continuation)


      It's such a pity that I forgot all about my father playing the guitar. I can't even say that my memory is that bad because I remember a lot of little episodes from that time when we lived in the factory region. It looks like I was especially receptive to nice colours. No wonder I still remember that fine piece of fabric that my father brought for my mother from his business trip. It was lilac crepe de Chine with an unobtrusive tracery of dainty catkins scattered all over it. I was not forgotten either and got a bright yellow stuffed ostrich that was taken away from me by some child on that very day and my mother had to run somewhere to get my toy back. I completely forgot if she was successful in her quest or not. I think I was about three then and it seems I was not attached to my toys too much. The appreciation came a bit later and after that my mother had a real trouble pulling me away from a counter behind which dolls of different sizes and shapes were sitting or standing on the shelves. At that age I couldn't share my mother's feelings when she was telling me with a note of pride in her voice how I treated my very first doll. I was slightly shocked to hear that I cut its head open as soon as I managed to grab a suitable tool with my little hands. “Why!” my mother exclaimed in disbelief. “Don't you get it? You just wished to see what was inside its head.” That was so typical of my mother. Being non-trivial herself, she always thought highly of originality in others.

      To my mother's luck, by the age of four I had already understood the meaning of toys and loved to play with a couple of tiny plastic dolls that were really cheap. So it was not a problem to buy a new one if I lost or broke one of them. It's amazing how easily I can withdraw them from my memory. The slightly bigger doll named “Ballerina” was quite pretty. Although its brown curls were just engraved on its plastic head, its blue eyes were surrounded by real eyelashes. And, what is more, its tutu was made from real fabric despite its small size. As for the smaller doll, it was rather homely and naked with short crooked arms and legs. Yet I found it even more fascinating because it came with a nice open-work bed, red or blue. Surely I couldn't accept my mother's explanation that my little doll was just a baby in a cot. So I always urged her to sew a long skirt for it to hide those bandy legs. Every girl desired her doll to look like a little princess! It was so captivating to dress and undress it, especially if you had some pretty clothes for it in stock. I remember once one of my playmates shook my imagination when she showed me her own baby doll in a bright red swimming costume, which she painted herself right on her doll's body, borrowing in secret her mother's nail polish. That was definitely an unusual approach.

      As for real babies, I found them rather frightening, with that habit of theirs to start shouting all of a sudden. That was the price for being the only child in the family, I suppose. Sometimes I could observe our neighbour's trouble with their baby but I didn't have the slightest desire to cast a closer look at it. The reek that was coming from their front garden was too overwhelming. My reluctance to approach that little creature only increased when I learned from my mother's acid remarks that the stink was wafted to us from its wetted swaddling-clothes, which its lazy parents didn't want to wash and preferred to dry in the sun instead. As if we hadn't had enough foul smells in our yard even without them. However my main problem was not that - but my inability to find my place among all those children who were playing in our yard or running through the intricate labyrinth of yards that formed our surroundings. I was afraid of babies and found those who were two or three years younger than me rather stupid. Most of them couldn't talk properly and their drawings seemed to me just laughable.

      I remember my surprise when we once visited my parents' acquaintances and their little boy showed me his sketch-book scribbled all over with incomprehensible twisted lines. To my bewilderment he hastily drew two more lines with a wry loop on the top of each and informed me proudly that those were his mum and dad. I just couldn't get it but his parents only smiled warmly at their so-called portraits. My mother assured me that the boy would draw much better when he grew up a bit but I could hardly believe it. Actually it didn't really matter whether I could or not because in our yard most of the children were older than me and it was a much bigger problem. I don't know exactly why I provoked those children's aggression. Was it only my stubborn refusal to hold my tongue and inability to defend my convictions with my own fists? Perhaps I shouldn't have boasted that my parents never used beating as a punishment to force me to behave. Wasn't it rather natural that all those children were inclined to make up for that deficiency in my up-bringing?

      As far as I can recall, mostly I got it from that girl, just a year older than me, who lived on the opposite side of our yard. It seemed that she could attack me without any reason at all. It definitely looked like that when I was once standing, surrounded by other children, telling them an idea for a new game. Funny, I still remember that most of the children were taller than me and that meant that they were also older as I was not too short for my age. Yet all of them were listening attentively to my little speech. Suddenly that fiend of a girl jumped out of nowhere and pushed me to the ground. If I did say something that infuriated her I wasn't aware of it because her attack took me completely by surprise. I remember it was a painful fall as there was some sharp stone just where I landed. But that time I didn't run home in tears as usual because the others persuaded me not to, telling me a scary story about that girl's fierce parents who would beat her for certain with a leather belt if they learnt that she attacked me again. I believe they threatened her with that after my mother, having lost her temper at last, banged against their gates, shouting that she would kill anyone who touched a hair on my head. I'm afraid it was the only way to protect your child at that place, where I started to learn what “the law of the jungle” was.

      I can't say I was completely friendless at that time. In fact, when I was five I even had a suitor – a curly-haired boy of three. My mother loved to tell me later how persistent that little fellow was in his desire to marry me as soon as possible. He wished me to move to their flat or else was ready to live with my parents. In the end, we started to build our own house from shell rock debris, some boards and tin-plates that were piled up in our yard. For me it was just a game, but I think my little friend really believed we were going to live there. To our resentment every morning we found our house destroyed by an angry woman who took care of our yard. In response to our complaints my mother advised us to be quiet and consider ourselves lucky that our parents weren't fined for our willfulness. A year or so later my little friend's desire to marry me evaporated of course. It's a usual story with men. Nevertheless it's nice to remember that once I met a suitor, who believed that marriage was a necessary institution.

To be continued...

(c) Anna Shevchenko


32. The informer (the continuation)
41. The study in dark colours
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