The After-Victory Waltz

For some days I have been obsessed with Aleksandr Rosenbaum's "Послепобедный вальс" ("The After-Victory Waltz", the title doesn't translate to well into English), and I wondered if this meant another memory was coming forward. The song is from the 1980s, however, so Maksim couldn't have heard it during his lifetime; I didn't understand all the words either, so I finally had the idea to google the lyrics and translate them with the help of my dictionary. (It helps enhance the vocabulary if I do everything "by hand", every now and then a word gets stuck in my mind :-) )

The song is about a post-war dance on a fine summer's evening, there are happy couples everywhere, the birds are singing and a brass band is playing for the couples to dance to. The singer lyrically describes this lovely evening and how his parents met and fell in love on such an evening ("It was then that my mother fell in love for life/And my father's lot was decided."). Then he laments that such moments are a thing of the past now, that the bands playing dance tunes have gone out of fashion and that nobody listens to Vertinsky anymore.
The lyrics are beautiful in Russian, but like most poetry they don't translate well...

But I digress! Back to the gist - the flashback I had today. It is a spring day, the first thaw after a long and cold winter. There still are some patches of snow, but most of it is thawing, and the sun has a lot of power already. Vadim, Natasha and Maksim are walking in the park; Maksim, nine or ten years old at the time, is skipping and running in front of them while Vadim and Natasha walk along the slightly muddy path (the ground is yellowish, like sand mixed with clay) a bit more sedately, arm in arm, chatting about this and that. Vadim says something Maksim can't hear, and Natasha giggles and slaps his arm.

They have been to a concert, something with a choir, one or two solo singers and a small orchestra, and Maksim, who has always loved music, is filled with a golden glow produced by the combined effect of the warm spring sunshine and the lovely music he has listened to. He draws a deep breath, notices how the air is already smelling of spring and feels wonderfully happy and relieved; true, times still are far from good so shortly after the war, but he is happy - perhaps not only because it is such a lovely day, but also because he has recently resolved the first great conflict of his young life, the conflict that arose when Vadim entered his life and declared that he was going to marry Natasha. Maksim's sister had been the only attachment figure for him after their mother's death (their father had been killed in action in 1942 and Maksim had never really got to know him), and he had been wary of Vadim at first, fearing that his sister would have no love left for him and would give it all to her husband only. But Vadim had managed to win Maksim's trust, and now everything was well...

I have posted this photo before, but it fits this post as well and I really love it because this young couple reminds me so much of Vadim and Natasha. I wish I knew who they are, where they lived, and what became of them...




















Edit: I really wonder now why the abovementioned song fascinated me so much even though I only understood a fraction of the lyrics? Does it mean my subconscious still understands more Russian than I am aware of?