In search of Maxim

Crossword and astronomical yearbook

2010-06-27T00:09:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I sat in the garden reading the Russian newspaper (with the help of a dictionary, of course) a friend had given me. As I opened the page with the crossword (incidentally, the word "crossword" has made it into the Russian language as a loanword), I had a very intense flashback:

Maksim is sitting on the balcony on a hot summer's day, reading the newspaper. He opens the page with the crossword and picks up a yellow pencil to do it. The pencil is hard and sometimes tears the paper, but there is no other possibility - if he did the crossword in ink, the paper would absorb too much ink and the letters would become blotted.
Just as Maksim is pondering a rather difficult question, absent-mindedly playing with the pencil, Vadim peeks over his shoulder and teases his brother-in-law saying: "Why try, you're too stupid to do it anyway." Maksim playfully hits his hand backwards, slapping Vadim's chest and saying the famous Russian three-letter word :-)

Another flashback came to me later that day, as I was reading an astronomical yearbook.
Maksim is lying on a checkered blanket (red and blue) by one of the lakes near Chelyabinsk, reading an astronomical yearbook or a similar publication Lyoshka has lent him.
Lyoshka is standing next to him, wearing black swimming trunks cut like boxer shorts because he has just been swimming in the lake, and says something to Maksim I can't "hear". Maksim replies: "Go away, Eisenstein, you're dripping water all over me."
Lyoshka picks up a cup from the picnic basket, fills it with water and threatens to pour it over Maksim, and the flashback fades out...

Quoting Maxim Gorki without having read him

2010-06-10T01:53:00.001-07:00

This is not a flashback as such, but I still thought it a remarkable experience - I was chatting with a friend yesterday, and we talked about arrogant and stuck-up people. She said she couldn't stand them, and I agreed, then I heard myself say: "I don't see the point of doing that, if we all take off our clothes we're all naked underneath." She looked at me and asked if I had read anything by Maxim Gorki and I replied: "No, why?" She then told me that Maxim Gorki had once said that, to people laughing about him behind his back for his rather humble appearance. Quite funny...coincidence, or did my brain indeed dig up a quote I must have known in my past life? I really wonder...

Books

2010-05-27T14:10:00.000-07:00

Looking along a bookshelf full of grammar books at work today I had the following flashback:

Maksim, between twenty and twenty-five, is at Lyoshka's for a chat and a cup of tea after work. Lyoshka is in the kitchen, Maksim can hear cups and saucers rattling and a muffled (and unexpectedly rude) curse from Lyoshka as he drops a spoon.
Maksim is quietly humming a song that is stuck in his mind and looking at Lyoshka's bookshelf, a comparatively huge piece of furniture that fills almost the entire wall of Lyoshka's living room. He perceives the smell of lacquer, furniture polish and leather-bound books and notices that several of the books look a bit scuffed, but still very expensive with their leather or linen covers with golden letters on their backs. Most of them are Russian books, of course, but some are in German - Maksim thinks he can decipher the word "grammar". (My Russian friend has just confirmed that he must certainly have had German classes at school - not very many perhaps, and not very good ones, but there is a great chance that he learned enough just to read and write some German and perhaps say a few words.)
There could be a very old Latin grammar or dictionary as well, and there are many books about radio technology and electrical engineering and books with titles like "How to build your own radio".

When Maksim was a child he had the feeling that Lyoshka knew everything under the sun, that you could ask him any question and he would answer it - the selection of books in his bookshelf certainly seemed to confirm that!

Fire and water

2010-05-19T23:48:00.000-07:00

First flashback, triggered by a fire engine racing past some days ago - a fire in one of the chemical plants in Chelyabinsk. Maksim isn't at work that day, he is walking along a street near his home when suddenly a fire engine (a ZIL painted red with a water tank on its back) races past towards one of the factories, where a column of greasy, yellowish-black smoke is rising to the sky. I don't know what was burning there, but it clearly was noxious - the bitter, acrid and somehow metallic taste in the mouth and a stinging in the throat that Maksim experienced stayed with me for at least one hour after the flashback, and as I write this, it comes back with full intensity.
The street along which Maksim walked was rather wide, one of those elegant streets built for representation, and there were poplars or similar small trees with bright green leaves along its sides. The trees can't have been very old, so the street must have been newly-built or refurbished, perhaps due to the rapid growth Chelyabinsk experienced during and after the war.

Flashback number two - Maksim is watching the newsreel in the cinema (still in black and white), and they show the inauguration of a hydroelectric plant somewhere in the Far East of Russia, on one of the large streams in Siberia.
Maksim sees the enormous jets of water gushing into the turbines (?) for the first time, and he is impressed by the enormous power that water can have, even more so when the presenter reads out the technical data of the new plant ("so and so many turbines with an output of so and so much each, so many thousands litres of water go past them every hour, so and so many tons of concrete were used for the dam wall...")
As he sits comfortably in his upholstered seat in the cinema, he thinks that building this plant must have been a real effort, and at the same time he is grateful that he only has to drive trucks, which isn't that hard if you really look at it rationally - at least that is what he thinks...

More about Lyoshka and the moonlit wasteland

2010-04-29T12:52:00.000-07:00

Some days ago I chatted on Skype with a few Russian friends, and when one of them said a sentence in French I immediately thought of Lyoshka - he spoke some French as well, and how this young man sounded was very familiar in a comfortable, heart-warming way.
This led to more thinking about Lyoshka and, finally, to the emergence of the following flashback:

Maksim and Lyoshka are sitting in Lyoshka's living room, drinking tea and eating biscuits. Maksim is about twenty years old, so this is none of the after-school homework and repetition sessions of Maksim's schooldays. Maybe Maksim had just popped by for a chat; he liked Lyoshka, who was his brother-in-law's best friend very much as well.
They talk about this and that, and all of a sudden one of the two (I can't say if it was Maksim or Lyoshka) mentions the GULAG. Lyoshka quietly says: "The worst thing, Maksimka, the worst thing about it was that it made you lose your humanity. If someone in front of you collapsed with exhaustion, you didn't pity him, you just thought: 'Idiot, why do you have to do that here and lie in my way?' And then you'd raise your foot, step over him and march on as if he were just a log, a stone in the road..."
Maksim has a big lump in the throat as he imagines this, and he looks at Lyoshka's face - visible in profile from where he sits - and thinks: How can a person survive this? How can anyone survive this and still function normally, be a helpful, cheerful and compassionate friend? How can he still sleep at night? Like so often before, he feels great respect for Lyoshka and gets an inkling of the immense courage that must lie under Lyoshka's rather unobtrusive and ordinary exterior...

Flashback number two - I'm finally able to place that image of a moonlit wasteland across which Maksim walked one humid, muggy summer's night!
He was on the road with his ZIL and stopped for the night at the edge of this wasteland. It was an absolutely quiet night, he could hear crickets chirping and the sound of running water from the distance. Having driven in the stuffy heat all day, he was sweaty and dusty and longing for a wash, so he fetched his towel, soap and washcloth from the cab and set out across the wasteland (dry and cracked because it hadn't rained for a long time, bumpy and strewn with upturned roots that looked like driftwood as well as stones in various shapes and sizes) towards the sound of the running water. He took his tea kettle with him as well, the kettle dangling from the little finger of his left hand, the hand in which he was carrying his washing things.
It was a very beautiful in a moment, the pale, almost otherworldly light, the chirping of the crickets (a sound Maksim would of course never hear in Chelyabinsk), the smell of the water and the cooling earth...

Orthography Olympics

2010-03-12T12:39:00.000-08:00

Flashbacks often come in series of two or three, and apparently this time is not an exception. This is another one of the time when Maksim did his homework at Lyoshka's and Lyoshka helped him whenever he had difficulties with a subject.

One of Maksim's weak points at the time was orthography; the method Lyoshka thought up was brilliant and helped him very much. Lyoshka would fetch the big old encyclopedia from his bookshelf (a heavy volume bound in brown leather, with slightly yellowed pages), open it at random and say "Hey Maksimka, bet you can't spell this word", then he'd say it and Maksim would try to spell it. When he had got it right, Lyoshka would hand the book over to Maksim and let him pick a word, strategically misspelling it when he felt Maksim could use a little triumph. Maksim loved the little game, and it helped his spelling enormously, without him noticing it. Lyoshka was a true genius when it came to teaching and motivating people...

The After-Victory Waltz

2010-03-11T12:46:00.000-08:00

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?

Twelfth Night

2010-02-05T00:12:00.000-08:00

This memory was brought on by a song, and it ties in with the last one I posted - I sensed that I would soon remember more about the old man, and indeed I did!

One of the many songs by Vladimir Troshin I have has always fascinated me, and since I usually listen to the CD in the car, I didn't know the title (my car radio can't read Cyrillic characters and so it assigns random number and letter combinations to each song). But last night as I drove home the song came on and this time it really struck a chord with me. So I looked up the title at home and googled it - it is from a 1955 screen adaptation of Shakespeare's "Twelfth Night"!
This realisation brought on another memory; Maksim, then fourteen or fifteen, is staying with Lyoshka after school, so it must be during the time when he had bad marks at school due to his own laziness.
Lyoshka asks Maksim if he is finished with his homework, and Maksim says he has done everything; he shows it to Lyoshka, who nods and says "Alright". The he announces that he has a special treat for Maksim today: They will go to the cinema and see "Twelfth Night" by Shakespeare! Maksim groans, as he thinks this can only be boring. But Lyoshka says: "Stop making such a face and get your coat; I know you'll like it!"
Maksim still isn't too pleased, but he knows resistance is futile, so he puts on his coat and plods behind Lyoshka, who tells him that they will visit an old friend of his after they've been to the cinema. Lyoshka explains that this old friend is a former teacher (or something similar) of his, someone who "has been through hard times", as he puts it - Maksim asks no further questions, as he knows that "hard times" is Lyoshka's way of referring to the last Stalinist purge, during which Lyoshka was also arrested and sent to a GULAG; Lyoshka was only released in the previous year (due to Stalin's death), and so the memories are still too fresh and he prefers not to speak about them.

They reach the cinema, sit down - Lyoshka has bought a bag of snacks, perhaps sunflower seeds, to appease Maksim - and after the newsreel the film begins and Maksim is prepared to hate it. But to his surprise it isn't boring at all, it is funny, light-hearted and entertaining.
As they leave the cinema and walk to where Lyoshka's old friend lives, Maksim asks Lyoshka if he has any books by Shakespeare he can borrow. Lyoshka says he has some, and of course Maksim can read them; after the visit to the old man Lyoshka accompanies Maksim on his way home, and when Maksim tells Vadim and Natasha about the film, how much he enjoyed it and that he is going to read more by Shakespeare, Vadim grins and says: "I don't know how you did it, Morkovich ("Morkovich", or "Son of the carrot", was Vadim's nickname for Lyoshka due to his bright red hair), but you've really turned him into a bookworm." Lyoshka laughs and playfully boxes Vadim on the arm, and the memory fades out...

An old man

2010-02-02T04:11:00.000-08:00

I don't know what to do with this flashback, how to place and classify it - but I'll post it anyway, since it was very intense and I may find a connection in the future.

Maksim is still rather young, in his early teens. The flashback must be set in the time when he used to stay with Lyoshka after school, to do his homework and repeat what he had learned at school. But that's all the background I know.

That day, after Maksim has done all his homework, Lyoshka tells him to put on his coat, as he wants to visist someone and asks Maksim to come along.
They go somewhere, I can't say where (could be a tiny, gloomy flat in a house even older than Lyoshka's) and visit a rather frail old man with a long grey beard. I don't know if the old man was a relative of Lyoshka's or an old family friend, but I'm sure that the two spoke in a language Maksim didn't understand, and then switched to Russian because they thought it impolite. But what was that language they spoke - Yiddish, perhaps? I think Russian wasn't the old man's native language, he spoke it with a slight, melodic accent.

The old man then addressed Maksim, asked him how old he was, what school he went to, what he loved to do in his free time and so on. Maksim was a bit shy, awed by the old man's presence and not really knowing how to deal with him, so he replied in an unusually quiet voice and was unusually taciturn. It wasn't that he disliked the old man, he just didn't know how to behave properly in his presence, and he was at an awkward age anyway...

Lyoshka then helped the old man with something, gently and carefully as always, and when Maksim remembered his manners and asked if he could help as well, he said it was alright, they would get along.

The klimat of this scene was one of warmth, understanding and helpfulness - but who was this old man?

I would really like to know more about this - time will tell, if I'm meant to find out!

Дневник (The day-book)

2010-01-23T05:48:00.000-08:00

A flashback brought on what I heard about in my last Russian lesson; my teacher told me that Russian pupils have a дневник (could be translated as "day-book") into which all marks are written by the teacher, and if the pupil behaves badly, that, too, is noted down. The book must be shown to one's parents regularly and is signed both by the class teacher and by them, so pupils have no possibility to hide bad marks from their parents. (Sounds quite effective to me, and there certainly are some pupils over here wh could use this!)

I suddenly realised that the paper I "saw" lying in front of Vadim in this memory was not a newspaper, as I had first thought, but Maksim's day-book. Apparently Vadim had been going through Maksim's day-book, perhaps it was him or Natasha who had to sign it since Maksim's parents were no longer alive. Vadim could see for himself how bad his young brother-in-law's marks had become, but he preferred to hear it from Maksim again, making sure the boy realised and understood that this was a serious matter. It certainly was more painful for Maksim to list all his bad marks - Vadim's method, however, worked and there never was any more trouble at school after that.

Тучи над городом встали

2010-01-12T03:23:00.000-08:00

I've always liked the song "Тучи над городом встали" ("Clouds have risen over the city") by Mark Bernes, and it has always struck a chord with me - no doubt it did so for Maksim as well. (For those that don't speak Russian, the song is about a young man bidding farewell to his girl when he becomes a soldier; he says that even though they said goodbye to each other on her doorstep, their love will last forever. He swears he will not forget, not even unto the grave, that she has waited for him.)

As I said, I've always liked the song, but today it made me cry; could it be that there is another memory lurking in the background? Such sudden emotional responses to songs have been an indicator in the past, so we will wait and see...watch this space! :-)

A dead man's photograph

2010-01-11T10:53:00.001-08:00

Had this flashback as I was driving today, thinking of nothing...Maksim is sitting at the table, possibly on this day. In front of him is the cardboard box with the letters, and as he goes through them he finds something else - a photograph. It shows his father in uniform; perhaps he had his picture taken when he was drafted into the army, so his family would have something to remember him by.

Maksim stares at the yellowing photo, into that stranger's face that is yet so familiar, so similar to his own face; he has his mother's dark eyes instead of his father's bright blue ones (of course you can't see that in a sepia-tone picture, but Natasha and his mother have told him) but apart from that, Maksim very much resembles his long-lost father. As Maksim thinks about all this, suddenly a great sadness wells up in him. How he wishes he had more memories of his father than just this single one, and he wishes he had been able to spend more time with him, to get to know his father. But, like so many others of his generation, he would never have the opportunity...

The fancy new House of Culture (?)

2009-12-30T00:37:00.000-08:00

Time to own up - sometimes I like playing mindless games on Facebook, it's a good way to spend a gloomy Sunday afternoon when you're too lethargic to read. But I would never have thought that one of those mindless games would indirectly trigger a flashback, this was quite a big surprise!
In one of the games, you can furnish a house and "work" to earn more money, and when I saw that there was a whole selection of 1950s furniture available I decided to get these for my house in the game. It was fun and brought back some of the klimat I'd been missing so much; one can really get used to those flashbacks and enjoy them very much!

That night I was teaching Spanish for adults again, and when I half rose from my chair to push it a little towards the table, I had this flashback, probably induced by playing around with those 1950s items in the game.

Maksim and a few friends from work (among them Vadim and two other truck drivers, a Kazakh whose name I don't know and "Handsome Vanya") are sitting in the lobby of a relatively new public building, equipped with low tables made of some dark wood and armchairs a bit like this one.
Perhaps the building is new, or it has been newly furnished; it could be the House of Culture or a kind of workers' club. Whatever it is, Maksim thinks it looks great with all this wonderful modern furniture and the wall mosaic; I think the mosaic shows a landscape or historical scenes, but in a more refined style instead of the usual "Socialist Realism". (How I wish that there was a way of recording klimat! I can feel it so clearly as I write, wish I could make it accessible to you, too!)
There is a metal ashtray on the table the friends are sitting around; they are laughing and joking and one of them is fiddling around with a newspaper. I don't know if there was anything important in the newspaper that day, or if he was just carrying it with him to read it at home...
It must be a warm but not hot day, perhaps in late spring, as they are all wearing plain checkered summer shirts.
Maksim, lounging in his armchair, makes a joke; I can't "hear" what Vanya, the target of the joke, replies, but Maksim half rises from his chair and pretends to grasp Vanya by his dark curly hair, threatening to kiss him while the others also start laughing.

Radio flashback

2009-12-27T02:46:00.000-08:00

During the last few days I've had several flashbacks, but most of them were just glimpses with nothing happening. This one isn't that significant either, but since there is some "action" in it I wanted to post it.

Maksim and his family are visiting Lyoshka like they often do on Sundays. It is the beginning of winter, not really cold yet but beginning to snow.
As they enter the corridor of Lyoshka's house (an art nouveau-style house from the turn of the century, elegant then but a bit down at heel now though still inhabitable) Maksim notes how nice it is to come in from the still-damp cold, and he enjoys the heat radiating through his body as he stomps the snow off his boots in the entrance.

Just as Vadim lifts his hand to knock, Lyoshka opens the door of his flat. Vadim laughs and asks: "How did you know we were here?" and Lyoshka replies: "How could I not notice, with your brother-in-law stamping like a mammoth in the corridor?" Vadim laughs even louder and pats Lyoshka on the back while Maksim throws his right mitten at him.
Lyoshka asks them to come in and guides them into the small living-room; Maksim notices the delicious smell of the dishes that Lyoshka (an excellent and passionate cook) has prepared for them. It reminds him of the time when Lyoshka lived with them, after he had been released from the GULAG - when he was better, he used to cook and do the housework to give something back to his friends and repay their kindness.
They sit down and start to eat, and since they are a bit late and their favourite programme is about to begin, Lyoshka switches on the radio directly. The first song they hear after the valves of the radio have heated up sufficiently is one sung by a woman, and little Belyanka, then about six, spontaneously presses her cheek against the soft fabric covering the loudspeaker, carefully hugs the radio and exclaims "Oh! That's my favourite song!" The three adults look at each other and smile...

Waiting around to die

2009-12-23T07:31:00.000-08:00

The title for this entry was inspired by Townes van Zandt's great song "Waiting Around To Die" - not that the contents of the song have anything to do with the memory I am about to record, the title of the song just got stuck in my head. I love Townes van Zandt's music, even though it is like sandpaper for the soul at times...but I can see where he is coming from, having had my own experience with major depression in the past. Anyway, back on topic!

My dear friend who has always been so helpful in the past sent me a Christmas present that brought back the following memory; it was a model of the Warszawa 200, the Polish version of the GAZ-M20 Pobeda. As I held the model car in my hand, turning it this way and that, I had a flashback of Maksim stomping across the dusty factory yard in early summer, turning back over his shoulder, heatedly arguing with someone. The other person says something I can't "hear", to which Maksim makes a very rude and probably anatomically impossible suggestion. As he has now reached the GAZ-M20 he is to drive that day, he opens the door, sits down on the driver's seat and slams the door shut. As the other person is still shouting something at him, Maksim rolls up the window despite the heat and says something, possibly "Sod off, I can't hear you anyway". Then he violently slams the car into reverse gear, grimly rejoicing as the gears grind and irrationally thinking "That serves you right". He steps on the gas, reverses with more speed than necessary, then he changes gear and floors the accelerator again, still irritated and angry. I suppose this loss of self-control was what cost him his life, perhaps it was responsible for him mixing up the brake and the accelerator when someone suddenly stepped into his path, and slamming into a brick wall. It was an unnecessary death, but perhaps it was meant to happen for some reason...we will never know!

Edit: When I saw Maksim changing gears, I clearly visualised a stick shift on the steering column, left hand side. A photo in the magazine that came with the car confirmed that - can't thank you enough, my friend, as usual, your gift has been very helpful!

A present for Yurochka

2009-11-29T02:33:00.000-08:00

This flashback came to me as I was wrapping a present for a Russian friend; I put the items in a box and stuffed balled-up old newspapers around them for padding. Just as I was doing that, boom! Flashback!

Maksim is sitting at the kitchen table; it is snowing outside, but inside it is nice and warm, and he is happy. A wooden box is standing in front of him, and he is putting some things into it, New Year presents for his friend Yurochka, who won't be able to come home for New Year this time. This makes Maksim sad, as he had looked forward to seeing his friend again; however, nothing can be done about it, so he and his family decided to send Yurochka a box with presents. In order to save postage and make things easier, everyone who wanted to send something to Yurochka have given their presents to Maksim, who has taken it upon him to do the packing and sending.
I think he is using wood shavings as padding, not old newspapers, which had to be collected and handed in if you wanted to buy any really good books. Perhaps wood shavings were easier to get...

Maksim is humming a song as he packs the presents, longingly thinking of his friend. But it cheers him up that Yurochka will like the surprise, and that the gifts will show him that his friends and relatives are thinking of him at home...

Deathwatch

2009-11-24T02:49:00.000-08:00

This flashback came to me out of the blue as I was driving to my Polish lesson; I was glad about the lesson being immediately afterwards, as the flashback was very intense and emotionally taxing! I don't know what prompted this flashback, or if it randomly appeared...

It is a short time after Maksim's death; he has been washed, combed and dressed into his best suit and laid out on his bed by Natasha, who is now sitting by the bed, stroking her brother's face and hair and crying bitterly. I think her hair is covered with a black veil or headscarf, and she is holding a balled-up handkerchief in her free hand with which she occasionally wipes away the tears from her face.
Maksim's body is covered with a white sheet up to his chest, about the height of his folded hands. I can't clearly "see" what is in his hands, either a small icon or cross. He and his family were not very religious, but there were certain things you just did, out of respect for the deceased and the higher powers-that-be - placing a sacred object in the hands of a corpse was one of them. There could be coins on his closed eyelids, but I'm not entirely sure about that.

Suddenly the door, which had been ajar, is pushed gently open, and Vadim peeks in. He, too, looks as if he has cried a lot lately, he is pale and looking very sad. Close behind him is Belyanka, then about fourteen, holding her father's hand and looking shaken and scared.
Vadim's voice is husky as he says something, two words, the last of which is "телеграмму" (telegraph) - I suppose he is telling Natasha that he sent a telegraph to Moscow, to Maksim's best friend Yurochka.
Vadim bends forward, puts his free hand on Natasha's shoulder and gives it a reassuring squeeze, then he brushes a strand of hair out of her face and says something I can't understand, softly and gently.

I cried myself when I had this vision; not for Maksim, who was past all pains and worries for the time being, but for his little family and their pain and sadness about the unexpected loss. I only hope nobody had a guilty conscience because Maksim's injuries from the accident had seemed so harmless that nobody thought about taking him to hospital - nobody could have known that he would die in his sleep, of a subdural hemorrhage!

Que tu as la maison douce, giroflé, girofla...

2009-11-04T04:04:00.000-08:00

Woke up this morning with "Giroflé, girofla" by Yves Montand playing in my head. It was strange because it came out of the blue, I'd last heard the song at least five years ago. That's why I thought its sudden reappearance must have some significance. So I googled "Yves Montand Soviet Union" and came across this interesting passage (from IMDB):

"Toured as a jazz singer in the Soviet Union in 1956 and in 1963, and met with Nikita Khrushchev. Became critical of the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968, then made a movie about socialist dictatorship."

Perhaps Maksim listened to one of Montand's concerts on the radio; if the announcer hadn't translated the lyrics, Lyoshka would have been able to do that for Maksim and his friends. Perhaps one of the songs that were performed was "Giroflé, girofla"...

Saying hello to Vadim

2009-10-29T11:35:00.000-07:00

This flashback came to me when I discovered there was a hole in my exhaust pipe and I wondered if I'd be able to mend it without a pit or hydraulic ramp. (Haven't found the hole yet since it was too dark, tomorrow morning will be a better time for such tasks.)

In the flashback, Maksim is wandering across the factory grounds; he isn't due for a delivery yet, maybe there has been a delay or he arrived abit earlier. He strays into the workshop, where Vadim (now I definitely know that he worked as a mechanic in the factory Maksim drove for) is standing in a pit, banging away at the front brake of a smaller truck with a hammer. The tiles in the workshop are a grubby beige, and it smells of oil, brake fluid and antifreeze, a smell Maksim has come to love because he loves his job so much.
Vadim can't hear him as he is banging at the brake and swearing because it won't come off, and Maksim grins to himself at Vadim's choice of words, thinking that Natasha would give him one of her hard looks if she heard him. But of course there are tasks that require a lot of swearing, and trying to loosen a stuck brake definitely is one of them!
Maksim tiptoes to the pit, picking up a heavy screw-nut that is lying around, grimy with oil and dust. He drops the screw-nut behind Vadim's back; it hits the ground with a loud "plonk" and Maksim jumps back, yelling "Watch out! It's coming down!" Vadim jumps, dropping the hammer, and as he sees his brother-in-law the startled look in his face turns into a mock scowl. He growls "You prick, you nearly scared me to death", then scrunches up an oily rag that is lying at the edge of the pit (he has used it to wipe his oily hands) and throws it at Maksim. He climbs out of the pit, saying "I should have know that it was you by the stink", the he pats Maksim on the back and says something else I can't "hear".

A little football game

2009-10-16T01:09:00.001-07:00

This was triggered by the sight of this fenced-off, empty plot which I saw while driving to a client.
The sight took me back to a similar empty plot in Chelyabinsk (perhaps in that area which later became Gagarin Park). Maksim is still rather young, between twelve and fourteen perhaps.
He and Vadim are strolling towards this empty plot, and Vadim is carrying a brown leather football under his arm. He has noted that Maksim was a bit downcast, so he has decided to play with him in order to cheer him up.
It is a sunny but chilly day, the air feels crisp and clear and the sun is still rather strong, even though you can feel that winter isn't so far away. They put down their coats to mark the goal, and Vadim starts dribbling the ball while Maksim tries to get the ball under his control. At first Maksim lacks enthusiasm, but Vadim encourages him by shouting: "Come on, little warrior! You can do better than that!" He doesn't make things too easy for Maksim, but sometimes he makes deliberate "mistakes" that allow Maksim to get the ball and score a goal. They play for about one hour and a half, and at the end they are sweating and red-faced but happy.
Vadim pats Maksim on the shoulder as they put on their sweaters again, then he buys a bag of sunflower seeds from a street vendor and they eat the seeds as they walk home. Vadim, whose own boyhood doesn't lie that far behind, has enjoyed himself as much as his little brother-in-law, perhaps he, too, could use the distraction and the workout...

Fragments

2009-10-14T00:44:00.000-07:00

Some brief flashbacks and fragments that I still thought worth recording:

During the war, Maksim, his mother and sister once survived by digging up frozen turnips from an abandoned field outside the city and boiling them; the result was terrible, but at least it filled the stomach for a while and made them feel at least a bit warm.

Another one - I have the feeling Vadim once owned a kind of scooter or small motorbike, a very old and rickety one that he repaired and traded in for something else. But I know no further details about this.

Once someone approached Maksim as he was walking across the yard between his block of flats and the neighbouring one (I think he was coming back from work), and handed him a parcel in a paper bag, saying "Give this to your brother-in-law, with thanks from (name)". Maksim thanked the man, then walked on feeling the packet and wondering what was in it. He bent to smell it and noticed that it contained coffee - good, fragrant coffee, undoubtedly acquired from the black market!

Two memories, a happy one and a sad one

2009-10-13T07:06:00.001-07:00

These two memories occured within the space of two days; I think the sad one was triggered by the cold weather we've had recently. The happy one came first, so it shall be the first to be written down.

This memory was brought on by the song Песня о Щорсе (Song of Shtshors), a 1940s song about an officer named Shtshors who had fought on the "right" side in the civil war. It was in a huge collection of songs Maksim would have known, sent to me by a Russian friend.

Maksim's best friend Yurotchka, who had decided to become a soldier and attend a military academy in Moscow, had come home on leave with good news - he had been promoted, to lieutenant, I think. So Maksim, Vadim and the rest of the gang decided that this needed to be celebrated, so they bought the necessary provisions and met, it seems to me, in the flat Yurotchka and his mother lived in.
They ate and drank and had a lot of fun, and as the celebration wore on, Maksim and Vadim suddenly decided that their nearly-promoted friend should be honoured by a song. They adapted the "Song of Shtshors" so that it fit Yurotchka - brave Lieutenant Shumik (Shumik was Yurotchka's surname) marched not under the red banner, as Shtshors had done, but under a vodka bottle, and it was not Shtshors' red banner that flew in the wind in their version of the song, but a certain body part of newly-appointed Lieutenant Shumik; I won't go into detail as there might be minors reading, but I think the adults among my readers are familiar with drunken instant poetry and get the picture :-)
It was a nice evening, everybody had a lot of fun - though I suspect that the next morning wasn't too nice for the participants. :-)

The other memory is set in about 1945 or 1946; can't place it exactly, but it must be before 1948, since that is the year in which Maksim's mother died. It was the cold, chilly weather that brought on that memory, since it is set on a cold, unpleasant summer or early winter day. It is icy in the room Maksim shares with his mother and his sister Natasha; I think the room is part of the flat in which his friend Yurotchka's mother, also a soldier's widow, lived with her son (there may have been a sister as well, but I'm not sure). It is in an old house with high stucco ceilings, but everything is shabby and run down, due to the hard times the country is going through.
Natasha, then about twelve, is sitting at the small, rickety white table, doing her homework (they felt it was important to keep up at least a kind of normality, keeping school at least helped the children a bit since it took their minds off the situation at least for a while).
They are all wearing their warmest winter clothes, since there is no heating at the moment and what little wood or coal they have must be used for cooking, not for heating. Maksim complains: "Mummy, I'm so cold" and Natasha pulls him onto her lap, puts a pencil in his hand and says "Come on, Maksimka, I'll teach you to write", then she guides his hand, teaching him to write "Mama" and "Maksim" and "Natasha", hoping that it will distract her little brother at least for a while.

That flashback touched me very deeply emotionally, as it was so full of the tenderness and love the three felt for each other, despite the hopelessness of the situation. I don't know if Maksim noticed at the time, but as I saw this vision I noticed that their mother was in very bad shape already, looking gaunt and sickly. Perhaps she was already suffering from the TB that finally cost her life; she always made sure that her children had enough to eat, even though that meant she sometimes went hungry. She was such a kind and caring soul...

Lyoshka cooks

2009-09-30T03:49:00.000-07:00

I had this flashback while making some roast potatoes for dinner last night - it was set during the time when Maksim was 13 or 14, the time when his brother-in-law's friend Lyoshka still lived with them after he had been released from the GULAG.
It is early afternoon, about 3 PM perhaps, and Maksim is coming home from school. As he unlocks the door of their flat (he always wears the key around his neck on a piece of string) he smells roast potatoes, and as he takes off his shoes and coat in the corridor, he hears a scraping noise, as if someone is turning something in the pan with a wooden spoon.
He puts on his slippers and peeks into the kitchen, where Lyoshka is standing at the stove, making roast potatoes with egg. Lyoshka is wearing a light blue shirt, a knitted vest over it, and brown trousers that are far too large for him. He has stuffed a tea towel into the waistband of his trousers to protect them from grease, and he has that far-away, dreamy look on his face that he often has. Perhaps he is thinking of something nice, or he is composing a new poem (Lyoshka was not only a skilled chess player, but also a quite talented amateur poet). When he sees Maksim, he looks up, smiles and says, "Ah, Maksimka. How was your day?" Maksim replies "Fine" and bends over the pan to sniff at the food. Lyoshka pretends to smack him on the nose with the wooden spoon, and then both look at each other and giggle.
It will still be some time until Vadim and Natasha come home, so Maksim sits down as Lyoshka serves him some food, then Lyoshka puts some on his own plate and sits down facing Maksim, and both begin to eat. Lyoshka usually did the cooking and cleaning while he was staying with his friends and looking for work and a place to live, and it was his way of making up for their help and kindness.

A tiny memory of Maksim's mother

2009-09-21T23:49:00.000-07:00

This was triggered by an unexpected nicety - my Russian teacher gave me a lovely pencil case in my favourite colour, dark blue. I thought that was lovely of her, and when she said "seeing you with that old pencil case makes my heart bleed" (there was just an ink stain on it), that triggered another flashback.

In the post-war years times were very hard, not only for Maksim's family but also for many other people. Food and clothing was scarce, and often there was no heating in winter. However, for Maksim's mother it was very important that her children had everything they needed and that their school things were in a good condition. She would rather go hungry (telling Natasha and Maksim that she'd already eaten or that she wasn't hungry) than allow herself to let her children be ragged and hungry. She had such a good heart; it's a shame that she had to die so young, and so painfully!

Autumn is flashback time

2009-09-20T03:19:00.000-07:00

We are having a spell of truly wonderful autumn weather with a lot of sunshine, and that seems to bring forth lots of flashbacks. However, they are more of the "snapshot" type, but enjoyable nevertheless.

First one - I'm driving along a country road, listening to Mark Bernes singing "В дальнем рейсе" ("On the long trip"). Flashback to Maksim driving along a similar stretch of road, singing to entertain himself and break the monotony of the straight road leading through endless fields. There isn't much "action" in this flashback, but the klimat was very strong; I could smell the characteristic smell of the ZIL's cab (oil, petrol, another "mechanical smell" I can't place - brake fluid?) and the brown fake leather of the seat), and I had to blink to make sure the hands on the wheel in front of me were mine and not those of a young Russian from a different time and place.

Another flashback occurred yesterday; I'd got a delivery of firewood and had to take it behind the house, to stack it under the overhanging roof.
As I picked up an armful of beech logs with one hand and a large basket with more logs with the other I had this vision: Maksim is coming in from the cold, carrying a basket of firewood in one hand and a stack of logs in the other. It is snowing outside and he makes sure to brush off his feet as he comes in, not wanting to carry all that snow into the house. He is wearing a black fur-lined cap with ear flaps, a thick, long scarf Natasha has knitted for him, and fur mittens and a black winter coat that reaches down almost to his knees.
This is not in Chelyabinsk, but I can't say where it is - I feel this is in a village, but Maksim is not visiting anyone, he knows nobody there. Is it a village where he stopped for the night during a longer cross-country delivery? It could be that the villagers have invited him to stay at one of their houses and to use their banya, and he wants to repay the kindness by bringing in some firewood for them. Maksim is happy in that flashback, and as he enters the room someone says something that makes him laugh. He replies, grinning, as he puts down the firewood and takes off his cap, coat and mittens. I think the person who addressed Maksim is an older man, but this is all I know. I get the impression that the walls of the building are made of darkened wood, and there is a wooden floor covered with a colourful rag rug or something similar. Unfortunately, this is all I can "see"..´.

A realisation

2009-09-02T01:54:00.000-07:00

This came to me yesterday as I was driving - after Natasha's and Maksim's mother had died they lived with Maksim's friend Yuroshka and his mother. Yuroshka's father had also died in the war, he and Natasha's and Maksim's father had been best friends, and from what their surviving family members were told, they had also died together.

Yuroshka's mother only had a small flat as well, in an older building that must have been from the turn of the century or older, but somehow she still found room for the two children. Maksim and Natasha slept in one bed because of the lack of space and heating, and one night Maksim awoke and heard Natasha sob quietly; however, he didn't want to show that he was awake since he sensed she would be even more upset and trying to be brave for her little brother's sake. Hearing that Natasha, who always seemed so strong despite her tender age, was crying, scared him, but he got over it and managed to go back to sleep. Perhaps he told himself that nothing could go wrong if his big sister was with him, that they had managed so far and would go on managing....

Barter trade

2009-08-24T03:59:00.001-07:00

I harvested the first of my sunflowers yesterday evening, and when I put the heads containing the seeds on the table, the sight of them lying there triggered another flashback.

Maksim has just returned from a longer trip delivering goods; he has taken some watches Natasha had "liberated" at the watch factory where she works, to trade them for vegetables, fresh decent meat and so on in one of the villages he passes.
He has been successful; the potato sack he is carrying over one shoulder is full of goodies that will liven up the menu at home for a few weeks. There is smoked bacon, smoked or sun-dried sausages, some cheese, even a dozen eggs, carefully packed into a small plywood box cushioned with sawdust, jars of jam or pickles (mushrooms and cucumbers) and several cut-off and dried sunflower heads. They are on top, so they are the first things Maksim takes out of the sack and lays on the table. He takes out all the accumulated treasures, one by one, and notices that they make quite an impressive heap. He is happy because it means he and his family will eat well during the next weeks, and that there will be some special treats for them. He takes a deep breath, inhaling the mouth-watering smell of smoked bacon (good and fresh, not like the ancient, gristly stuff you usually got in the shop, if you got any meat at all), and he is content that everything turned out so well, that he got so much good food and managed to bring it all home undamaged and in one piece...

A puppet show

2009-08-22T03:21:00.001-07:00

Driving on a country road between fields of ripening wheat and corn, the sun warm but already taking on that yellowish quality of light that is so typical for autumn, whose cold can be felt early in the morning or in the shade, I was often transported back to a different driver's seat in another time and place - no flashbacks as such, just small but very intense pockets of klimat.

However, there is one flashback to be recorded: Maksim and Belyanka are walking through Gagarin Park on a sunny late summer or early autumn day. They are going to see a puppet show about Ilya Muromets and Nightingale the Robber at the children's theatre, and Belyanka, about nine or ten at the time, is very excited and looking forward to seeing it. I think Maksim has offered to look after Belyanka since he has the day off, and he remembers only very well from his own childhood how dull those long summer holidays could be if there was nothing interesting to do because your parents (or, in Maksim's case, your sister) had to work and couldn't look after you. But it's no great sacrifice for him, since he is very fond of his little niece and enjoys spending time with her!

They enter the children's theatre, noticing that quite a lot of children (some alone, some with their parents, older siblings or other relatives) have come to watch the play. As they approach the ticket booth, Maksim reaches into his pocket and takes out a handful of coins; he counts off the price for two tickets and tells Belyanka to say to the lady selling the tickets (a rather pretty young woman with long, smooth reddish-brown hair which she wears in one of those large buns fashionable at the time) "one adult, one child" and give her the money. Belyanka skips over, as pleased as Punch, and Maksim smiles and lights a cigarette. There is still some time until the show begins, so he's decided to have another quick smoke.

Finally, when the puppet show begins, Maksim notes that he is enjoying it a lot as well, since the puppets are very elaborate and the players are taking great pains to deliver a good performance that pleases the audience. Soon he, too, is carried away by the ancient story and claps and cheers with Belyanka as Ilya Muromets vanquishes Nightingale.
After the play they walk over to Lyoshka's place, chatting about the play as they go. Belyanka, who holds Maksim's hand, looks at her uncle and asks: "That was exciting when he fought Nightingale, wasn't it, Uncle Maksim?" Maksim nods, then bends down and plants a light kiss on his niece's forehead. "It was, my little mouse, it was," he says, and they both stroll on, towards Lyoshka's, for a cup of tea, a few biscuits and perhaps a game of Durak or two...

Enjoy your bath!

2009-08-19T07:46:00.000-07:00

This flashback, apparently triggered by nothing special, takes place relatively early one winter's morning. Maksim, Vadim, Lyoshka and Vanya (Yuroshka is still in Moscow, studying at the military academy) have decided to visit the banya (Russian sauna), and since it is early in the morning (are they all on holiday, or is it a public holiday?) they have it almost to themselves.
They are alone in one of the sweating rooms, and while Maksim and Vanya have sat down on one of the wooden benches, Lyoshka decides to have a little fun with Vadim and splashes him with water from the pail standing in the corner; the water must just have been brought in, since it is icy and makes Vadim snort and address Lyoshka with "terms of endearment" that would make Natasha frown. Lyoshka, however, knows his friend is only joking, and giggles - his laughter is catching and soon Vadim giggles as well.
Maksim wonders if he should join the horseplay, but the heat and laziness are stronger than him, so he just leans back after having adjusted the white towel around his waist more comfortably, and leans back, watching Vadim's and Lyoshka's capers with half-closed eyes. He is relaxed, happy and contented and thinks life is good as long as you have friends like these...

Three small flashbacks

2009-08-15T03:38:00.001-07:00

After an absence of almost a month (thank you for reminding me, my blogging friend!), finally something new to record! It isn't much, but better than nothing. The phase of having more detailed flashbacks with a lot of action seems to be over, now it is apparently time for the little vignettes and atmospheric pictures - something I don't enjoy any less, of course!

First one - Maksim visits his friend Lyoshka after he had sprained his ankle. The house Lyoshka lives in is an older one, from the 1920s or earlier, with high stucco ceilings, age-darkened wooden floors smelling of varnish and floor wax (a smell that immediately transports me back to Maksim's life and time whenever I smell it now) , the walls painted a light eggshell blue.
Maksim walks up the three or four steps leading to Lyoshka's flat, and as he reaches the door Lyoshka, who must have heard him, calls from within "It's open!"
Maksim opens the door and enters, finding Lyoshka sitting at the kitchen table bathing his foot in a white enamel bowl with a blue rim. He turns his head over his shoulder as he sees Maksim and greets him with a big smile.
Maksim pats Lyoshka on the shoulder and smiles back, then he looks at Lyoshka's foot, still swollen but looking better already. Lyoshka has big feet, and Maksim notes how long and slim his toes are, compared to his own, rather stubby ones. He asks how Lyoshka's foot is and his friend tentatively waggles his toes and says it's much better - suddenly a random thought pops into Maksim's mind that his friend must be a lot tougher than his soft, bookish exterior suggests; Maksim thinks that somewhere under all that must be a strong, resilient spirit, a driving force that helped Lyoshka survive the GULAG. Suddenly he has an inkling that he had better not stand in Lyoshka's way if his friend was provoked to an extreme...

The second flashback is set somewhere on the road - Maksim has stopped his truck for the night somewhere, next to a stretch of wasteland covered with thistles, scraggly grass and seedling birches. He is walking across that field, eyes fixed on the ground, picking something up every now and then...but what? Sticks for lighting a fire?

Flashback number three, as of this morning (just as I'd decided to blog the others today): Maksim is driving along a lonely country road, whistling a song, when suddenly he has a flashback to his own childhood, about how he and his friend Yuroshka would play at Cossacks, "galloping" through the mud and using sticks as swords. He wonders that they still found the energy for such raucous games despite all the hunger and misery of those post-war years, but somehow they always managed...
They often came home all muddy and scratched, but blissfully tired and able to sleep and forget everything at least for a few hours....

A toy rocket

2009-07-18T02:32:00.000-07:00

This flashback was triggered by a crime thriller I saw last night, one that featured a boy who enjoyed building toy rockets. The crime thriller as such was nothing special, but I'm glad I saw it because of the flashback!

Like all children, Belyanka was mightily impressed with Gagarin's flight (she was seven or eight at the time), and one day she approached her parents and told them she wanted a toy rocket. So Vadim sat down with her at the kitchen table one rainy Sunday afternoon, and using glue and cardboard, they built a little rocket together. Vadim was very patient with his little daughter, and you could get the impression that he enjoyed rocket-building as much as she...
When the rocket was finished, he carefully coloured it, drew a Soviet flag on it on Belyanka's demand and wrote "СССР" and Gagarin's name on it because she requested it. Then Belyanka grabbed her new toy after having hugged her father and thanked him, "launched" it from the kitchen table and ran through the tiny flat, holding up her rocket and performing the most daring flight maneuvers with it and making "rocket noises". It was a lot of fun to watch her!

A safety note

2009-07-16T02:11:00.000-07:00

One evening Maksim and his family and friends were having a little party; I don't know if there was a reason for a celebration or if it was just for the fun of it.
Lyoshka was there, as well as Maksim's colleague Vanya and a few of Natasha's friends; I don't know if Yuroshka was there, but it seems unlikely.
It was a nice, warm day so they could keep the door to the balcony open for fresh air; perhaps some of the guests were sitting on the tiny balcony as well. Drinks flowed freely and there was a lot of food, and everybody was laughing and singing and thoroughly enjoying themselves.

At one point, though, Maksim had to go to the toilet, and since he'd had a few too many, he bumped into the doorframe when trying to negotiate it. He sorted himself out immediately, not being that drunk, but Vadim still had to tease him, quoting a line from the song "Крепче за баранку держись, шофёр" ("Driver, grasp the wheel more firmly"). He called after Maksim: "Слева поворот, осторожней шофёр" ("There's a bend to the left, be careful, driver") - Maksim turned round to him, laughed and addressed him with the famous Russian three-letter word, jokingly of course. Vadim knew that Maksim was not really insulting him, just teasing him back, so he also laughed.

Again, this is one of the flashbacks where not much happens, but they are very rich in detail. Unfortunately it is hard, if not impossible, to describe all those details, to convey the atmosphere...

Another snapshot

2009-07-08T00:53:00.000-07:00

As always while having breakfast, I read in my Russian fairy-tale children's book for language practice. It was a story about Baba Yaga, in which she is receiving a young man on a quest as a guest. She gives him food and drink and then heats the banya for him and makes him a bed, and as he lies down to sleep she sat down by his bedside and asked him what he was looking for. When I read that line, I had this flashback; it's short and rather insignificant, but I wanted to record it nevertheless.

Vadim and Maksim are at Lyoshka's, possibly during the time when he was sick. Lyoshka still isn't completely well, but he is looking much better than before. He is lying on his bed, dressed in a light blue shirt and his favourite knitted slipover (striped black and another colour - cream-coloured perhaps?) and dark trousers, with warm woolen socks knitted for him by Yuroshka's mother on his feet. Just as Maksim enters the room, he pulls a woolen blanket over his legs and feet.
Vadim is sitting on a chair by Lyoshka's bedside, and Lyoshka is turning his head towards Vadim and saying something, making a little joke. I think he was quite well already but still got dizzy rather easily; he didn't need someone to look after him all the time, but his friends still came over for an hour or two each day to see if he was alright or needed help. Maybe he had felt a bit weak and dizzy again so Vadim had told him to lie down for a moment...

"And a bomber above her wherever she goes..."

2009-07-06T03:39:00.000-07:00

Driving home from my Russian lesson today, I suddenly spied a low-flying AWACS plane, a menacing black silhouette against a sky full of grey rain clouds. It gave me a lump in the throat and truly startled me for a moment - was that just an atavistic reaction to a black bird-of-prey silhouette suddenly popping into my field of vision, or was there more to it? The line from "The Crow on the Cradle" I quoted in the title immediately came to my head when I saw the plane, and I spent the rest of the trip thinking about it.

Could it be that the silhouette of the plane with its large jet engines reminded me of planes like the Superfortress, planes whose silhouettes Maksim would have been taught to distinguish during his time in the radar troops? Would they have had large posters with silhouettes of the different aircraft, so they could memorise what each of them looked like?
At the time, Maksim was still very young and impressionable, and perhaps they were told lots of scary scenarios of what would happen "if the Americans drop the bomb on us". Or is it just a residue to this life, where we were force-fed lots of cheerful stories about life after a nuclear disaster or war at school? (The Chernobyl incident happened when I was 11, apparently that inspired all our teachers to give us only such kinds of reading assignments. Thanks for nothing.) Or another possibility - since my classmates didn't seem to mind those stories, did I only react to them so strongly because they jogged my memory and reminded me of something heard in another time and place?

A simple but effective remedy

2009-06-25T15:21:00.000-07:00

I had this flashback while standing in the cue in front of the checkout at the chemists - what a strange place for a flashback! I stood there, the things I was planning to purchase under my arm, staring at my feet, when suddenly this flashback came.

Maksim is about fourteen, he has just come home from school. Vadim is sitting at the kitchen table, he receives his brother-in-law and virtual stepson with a kind of icy politeness that sets off all of Maksim's inner alarms. Nevertheless, he tries to make a "poker face" and stay calm. Not very easy, since he senses what could have made Vadim so angry (he already knows that Vadim becomes so icy when he's inwardly boiling with rage).
Vadim says: "I met your teacher today." (Oh dear. Maksim gulps and notes that his premonition was correct.) "He told me about your latest marks in Russian." (Maksim opens his mouth to say something, but then snaps it shut again and decides it's better not to say a thing. A wise decision.) Vadim still doesn't let Maksim go. He goes on: "What mark did you get, Maksim?" Maksim squeezes out "A Two." (Two is the worst mark, and Five is the best.) He expects Vadim to start telling him off, but nothing like that happens. Somehow Vadim's composure is much scarier than a telling-off would have been.
Vadim carefully folds the newspaper lying on the table and puts it aside before continuing: "A Two. And what did I tell you, what marks do I want you to take home?" Maksim clears his throat. "A Four." Vadim nods, still as calm as before. "Very well. From now on you won't play with your friends after school, you'll go to Lyoshka's and do your homework there, and when you have questions or don't understand something, you'll ask him. When your marks get better and stay better, you'll be allowed to play football again. Understood?" Maksim sniffles and nods. He knows there's no arguing with Vadim, and he'd better agree.

Maksim liked Lyoshka very much, but he wasn't too pleased about having to stay at Lyoshka's flat instead of playing outside; however, Lyoshka always found a way to make those afternoons interesting, he always found something nice that was related to the subjects Maksim was studying at school. And indeed, after a relatively short time, Maksim's marks improved and he was allowed more free time again. Looking back at this later, he realised that it all had been for his best...

Instant time travel!

2009-06-16T12:53:00.000-07:00

Last night I went to a small cinema in a nearby small town with a student from one of my Spanish clubs, as we wanted to see an Ecuadorian film with subtitles. The film as such was interesting, but when I saw the cinema, I nearly fell over backwards - it looked exactly like the cinema Maksim knew in Chelyabinsk, and, as crazy as it sounds, it also smelled like that! If only there were a way of recording smells...I can't say what it was exactly, wood, the fabric and upholstery of the seats, perhaps varnish, and something else...I would describe it as a "warm, dark" smell, but of course that's not an apt description!

You can see the cinema here - click on "Bildergalerie" (picture gallery) and then on "Album Kinosaal" (album cinema hall). The impression was so strong that I wondered for a few moments whether I was myself, in this present time and place, or Maksim in 1960s Chelyabinsk, and whether the film about to begin was an Ecuadorian film of this decade or an old Soviet musical comedy...

An explanation for something that has always puzzled me

2009-06-07T12:02:00.001-07:00

Chatting on the phone with my friend Julia she unwittingly solved a question for me: Why did Lyoshka buy a car, and not Vadim or Maksim even though they could certainly have afforded it? Julia mentioned that it was easier for certain people, like engineers, to get a car, and then it struck me: Lyoshka was an engineer or something related, and that's why he bought the car he shared with Maksim's family - because it was easier for him and he didn't have to go through all the hassle! I think that perhaps Vadim, Maksim and Natasha contributed to the car with their money, and they could borrow it whenever they needed it.

Thank you, Julia, you've helped me again!

Village flashback

2009-06-04T14:39:00.000-07:00

I don't know where to put this; I had this flashback this morning, walking down the street to cut grass for my rabbit.

Maksim is walking down the street in a small Russian village; there is asphalt on the road, and the usual deep ditches are on either side. The houses are small, wooden, low and painted blue, and there are sunflowers growing behind many a fence.
The ground is loamy and yellow, but it hasn't rained for a long time so it is dry and crumbly and if you drive across it you raise a cloud of dust. (Did Maksim notice it as he drove there, or when watching other vehicles?)

It is early in the morning and the air is rather cool, so Maksim is wearing a long-sleeved, checkered flannel shirt. He reaches into his shirt pocket to fish out his cigarettes, but then he changes his mind; in his opinion the crisp, fresh morning air is too pleasant to be spoiled by the smell of cigarette smoke. He draws a deep breath, walking on, closes his eyes for a moment to savour it, then exhales and lets out a contented sigh. He enjoys being alone, it gives him a peaceful feeling. He likes the company of his family and friends, but sometimes he prefers the quiet and solitude.

I don't know where he is in this flashback, what he is doing in that village, but I sense he was there on his own, without Natasha, Vadim or Belyanka, and he enjoyed his stay in the village very much. Was he visiting relatives, or was he staying with friends, with people he'd got to know on the road? Or was he delayed for a day or two because of problems with his truck or with the road ahead?

Is today the anniversary of Maksim's death?

2009-05-27T15:10:00.001-07:00

The thought that today, the 27th of May, is an important day, has been on my mind for at least one week. I checked the calendar to see if I had forgotten an important appointment, but no, nothing out of the ordinary was in it. Going through my emails today I realised that I'd thought of Maksim and his death a lot, and suddenly it came to me - today must be the anniversary of his death! Yes, that definitely feels right; reading that old blog post I linked to brought it all back.

Interestingly enough, I've had no physical symptoms, such as a headache, but I had rather nasty ones during the last few days. However, those may have been brought on by the weather, so perhaps that's just coincidence.

By the way, there will be a Russian version coming soon; I'll translate the blog by and by and after it has been corrected by my tireless Russian friend Julia, I will put it online. Stay tuned! (She has also found a list of all the Aleksashkins in the Chelyabinsk area - apparently there are lots of them! - and will contact them all and ask if they had a relative named Maksim. Of course I'll let you know if there are any interesting discoveries!

The perfect moment

2009-05-25T13:31:00.000-07:00

Not a memory this time, but the recording of a perfect moment - of course those things always happen when you don't have a camera with you, and if you have one, it happens when you have no time to stop!

I was driving up a hill and along a high plateau surrounded by deep valleys, the green corn about thirty centimetres high. The sun was setting, but there was still enough light.
Suddenly I spotted a little red two-seated plane flying above me, and for a moment I was back in the cab of the ZIL, the little red plane had turned into an An-2 about to spray a different crop (potatoes or cabbage maybe, though it might be wheat after all). Everything fit, the klimat (atmosphere, mood, flavour all rolled into one) of the moment was perfect and I felt as if I was right there again, in Maksim's "when" and "where". Then, in a blink of the eye, the perfect moment was gone...I will take a camera with me more often, and when the conditions are similar I will try to take another picture. We'll have to imagine the plane being in it then ;-)

Brother

2009-05-18T13:04:00.001-07:00

Just a little snippet that came to me as I was driving today; tiny though it is, I thought it might be worth recording. Hopefully I don't bore my dear readers too much!

It's sunny and warm, so perhaps it's spring or summer. Natasha is having some visitors, some of her friends; perhaps Vadim's stepsister is among them. The women are chatting and eating and drinking tea in the kitchen while Maksim and Vadim (and probably Lyoshka) are sitting in the living-room, balcony door wide open so the smoke of Maksim's and Vadim's cigarettes doesn't collect in the tiny room. At one point Maksim gets up, picks up his plate and says he wants to see if the ladies have left over any pickled gherkins; as he enters the kitchen Natasha is saying "That would be about as difficult as teaching my brother to think", and the other women giggle. They know that Maksim and Natasha love teasing each other, and they probably admire Natasha's timing :-) Maksim blows her a kiss and replies: "Thank you, I also love you, little cow", eliciting more laughter from Natasha's guests.
The funny thing about this flashback is that I "heard" what Natasha was saying in English, but Maksim's reply in Russian...I have no idea why, the brain sometimes works in the strangest ways!

"Tango Magnolia" again

2009-05-14T14:24:00.001-07:00

It seems I'm haunted by the song "Tango Magnolia" ("Танго Магнолия")... it was featured in another mini-flashback I had the other day!

Maksim and his family are having a party, some of their friends have been invited as well. I can "see" Lyoshka in his favourite grey knitted jumper if I picture that scene, but I can't say who else was there; probably Maksim's colleague Vanya, his best friend Yuroshka's mother, perhaps Vadim's stepsister (his mother's child from her first marriage) as well...

The tiny living-room is crowded and stuffy, but everyone is too busy having fun to notice. They suddenly decide that they want to dance, and Vadim, slightly tipsy, starts recounting how he met Natasha at a dance when they were in their late teens.
Some of the young people soon sneaked off to some private place where someone had put up an old record player (perhaps even a gramophone?) and was playing old tango records. I think tango was frowned upon at the time (early to mid-fifties) as being "sinful" and "decadent", so it probably wasn't played at official events. But that made it all even more interesting for those young people, of course! Vadim and Natasha had known each other earlier but had lost touch, and now they met again at that dance event.

Back to the "present", that is, the actual flashback! Vadim, as I said, slightly tipsy, brandishes a half-empty beer bottle and tells his guests how he and Natasha met. He tells them that the first song they ever danced to together was "Tango Magnolia"; to demonstrate, he grasps an equally tipsy Natasha round the waist and tries to dance a tango in the crowded little room with her, trying to sing "Tango Magnolia" with an exaggerated Ukrainian (?) accent as he does that. (Vadim was not Ukrainian, but Aleksandr Vertinsky, the artist who sang that song, was.) Natasha tries to join him, but they soon collapse on the sofa, giggling, having managed not to fall over the table or over one of their guests.
Lyoshka, who is sitting in his favourite armchair at Vadim's place (the one he also loved sitting in while he lived with them), raises his glass and says something important-sounding. Perhaps he declaims some verses or holds ain improvised but silly speech. Someone (Maksim?) hands him a piece of cake on a white plate with a thin, faded golden border and says something teasing to him that makes Lyoshka reach out and lightly slap the other fellow across the chest.

Whatever they were celebrating, it was great fun and probably lasted until early morning. I think it was either spring or summer, and it was relatively warm...

It's great to have smart friends

2009-05-04T12:38:00.000-07:00

After another "dry spell", a new flashback when I least expected it! It's funny how they come in no particular order, how they are often triggered by the most mundane events...

I watched one of my pupils write something on the blackboard today and whoosh - all of a sudden I am back in early 1960s Chelyabinsk!
Maksim is visiting his friend Lyoshka at the university where he lectures. Maybe Maksim came home from work early or had the day off and he wanted to pick Lyoshka up. Maybe they wanted to go for a walk together or Maksim's family had invited Lyoshka for supper - I can't really say.

Maksim opens the door of the room where Lyoshka is lecturing; he carefully opens the door which creaks slightly (he closes it with equal care to make sure it doesn't disturb Lyoshka or his students) then he tiptoes to the next free seat in the back row and sits down.
Lyoshka is standing at the blackboard, a piece of chalk in his hand, gesturing towards a complicated-looking formula he has written on the board.
The board is not green like modern ones, but a slab of wood painted black with a special kind of paint that enables you to write on it with chalk. The room has a high ceiling and there seem to be some stucco ornaments on the ceiling; perhaps the building is one of the few older ones remaining in Chelyabinsk. It smells of floor polish and of something else I can't place - "oil paint" comes to mind, but I don't know why, perhaps this is just a random word that has come to the surface.

Maksim watches Lyoshka as he scribbles another formula on the board and draws a wavy line (a sine wave?) underneath; he says something funny that makes his students, about fifteen serious-looking young men and women, giggle. I can't "hear" what he is saying, but it's something along the lines of "and now our (electron? particle?) gets bored and looks for a partner elsewhere". Then he goes on explaining how this particular phenomenon works, and Maksim keeps on watching him, thinking that Lyoshka must be very intelligent indeed if he understands all those complicated things and can explain them so easily.
He watches his friend outlined against the blackboard, his pale skin, pointy, freckled nose, unruly red hair, wearing his favourite baggy grey turtleneck woolen sweater (it's not winter, but it's relatively cold inside the building even if the sun shines outside), scribbling formula after formula in his spidery handwriting while his students watch him attentively and scribble notes. It's obvious that Lyoshka is enjoying himself immensely and that his students like his classes very much because he has the talent of making those classes interesting and understandable.
Maksim thinks of all the bad years Lyoshka has gone through, and he's glad his friend has found some happiness at last.

During that flashback I felt a great longing, almost a kind of homesickness, for Chelyabinsk and for Lyoshka, Vadim and all the others; that doesn't happen with all flashbacks, but with some of them. I also felt a great affection for Lyoshka; he had been Vadim's closest friend since childhood, and Maksim had grown very fond of him as well. Perhaps that's why I felt like that, perhaps I was reliving that...

Snapshots, part 2

2009-04-21T13:42:00.000-07:00

After an internet absence of a few days, due to computer damage and provider screw-up, here I am again! Those new posts are just flashes, but I thought they were worth recording nevertheless. Here we go:

Number one - at Vadim's and Natasha's wedding. Vadim is pale and nervous, and his friend Vanya says he has kept them awake all night, having last doubts that he'd be a good husband for Natasha. After the registrar had announced that they were now legally married, poor Vadim sat there like a block of stone, unable to move, until Vanya (one of the two witnesses at the wedding) poked him in the side and hissed: "Kiss her, you dolt!" Of course Vadim did just that, and it helped him shake off his nervousness at last...
Thinking about this now, I think that maybe one reason why Vadim was so beside himself was the thought that Lyoshka, his best friend since childhood, couldn't be there at the wedding because he was imprisoned in a GULAG at the time, for the terrible crime of making a joke about Stalin; Lyoshka and Vadim were very close friends, but Vadim never mentioned him, perhaps feeling that he would put his little family in danger if he did and showed that he knew such an "enemy of the people". It can't have been an easy situation for him!

Another flashback - I moved house and guided the friend who drove the small truck with my furniture to the new place by driving in front of him with my car, loaded with smaller and more fragile stuff. Suddenly I saw myself back in Maksim's time, at the place up north where he was doing his army service. Maksim enters the "mess hall", the barracks where the day's orders are pinned to the wall. He looks at them and reads "Column driving drill today." And then, a line further, he reads that "Aleksashkin and Popovich (?) will lead", and he feels a sudden rush of pride when he finally sits behind the wheel on the big day, the older, more experienced other man next to him but still - leader of the column!

This is very vague, but I think Maksim once met a little old lady who was introduced to him by someone else - Vadim's stepsister perhaps? He was quite surprised that this little old lady had fought in the civil war when she was young, that she had used a gun like a man...Who she was, I can't remember, though, but I can almost "see" her face, and I think Maksim only met her two or three times. I hope to find out more, and if I do, I will post it, of course.

Parisian Memories

2009-04-02T11:46:00.000-07:00

This flashback was caused by something I experienced at the bakery today; a woman had bought a baguette and gave it to her little girl (about two years old) to carry. The child didn't know what to do with the baguette at first, so her mother showed her how to put it under her arm, saying "you can carry it like that, like a Frenchman".

Instant flashback - Maksim, fourteen or fifteen years old, is sitting on the sofa in Lyoshka's flat. Lyoshka is sitting in an armchair facing him, wearing a thick brown woolen jumper and holding a mug of tea in both hands. He is still very thin and pale, it must have been during the time when he recovered from his time in the GULAG and the subsequent illness (he fell severely ill once he was in a flat of his own again, perhaps because he felt safe at last and could allow himself to let down his guard). During that time and during his recovery there always was someone else with him, either Vadim or Maksim or another friend of theirs. They thought it better, since Lyoshka was still very weak and they were worried that he might stumble or faint and hurt himself, and they felt he could use some company.
Natasha also helped look after Lyoshka, but the lads thought it unfair to burden her with too much work, since she already had to work full-time in the watch factory and take care of little Belyanka. Nevertheless, she still cooked extra food for Lyoshka and gave it to Vadim whenever he went to visit his friend; after all, she also liked him very much and wanted to help him regain his strength as soon as possible.

But back to the flashback; Maksim has just finished his homework, as he had come to Lyoshka's directly after school, and now the two are chatting and drinking tea. After a while Lyoshka starts talking about his maternal grandfather (the name could have been Lefkowitz or Leibowitz, or something that sounded similar), who lived in Paris for a year or two as a young man, in the 1880s or 1890s. Lyoshka recounts how his grandfather taught him French whenever he visited them, and how much he, Lyoshka, had enjoyed that. He mentions seeing a picture of his grandfather as a young man, and he calls him a "handsome young rake". Then his eyes get a bit misty as he tells Maksim about a gift his grandfather gave him, saying that it made him look "like a little French boy", but I can't recall what that gift was. A cap perhaps, or another piece of clothing?
Maksim is about to ask what happened to Lyoshka's grandparents, but fortunately he remembers to bite his tongue and not say anything, as he realises that they must have been killed in the Great Purge, probably labelled as "enemies of the people" due to the fact that they were Jews and members of the former bourgeoisie. Maksim feels very sorry for his friend Lyoshka and racks his brain for a way to comfort him, but he can't think of anything, so he just lets Lyoshka talk. Then, after some time, his friend interrupts himself, clears his throat and gets up, saying "How about a game of chess?" Maksim isn't a very good chess player and not particularly fond of the game, but he knows that playing chess is one of Lyoshka's passions and thinks that it will probably soothe his mind, so he agrees. As the flashback fades out I can see them both sitting at the chessboard, Maksim trying as hard as he can to play well and realising that he does enjoy it a little bit this time...

Dung beetle

2009-03-31T12:38:00.000-07:00

I discussed the "dung beetle" nickname Vadim gave to Maksim with my Russian friend, and she said that she had also been called "dung beetle" by her mother when she came home from playing outside all dirty. I think that must be the reason why Vadim gave Maksim that same nickname - he sometimes used it in a joking manner even when Maksim was grown up.

Thinking about all this, I suddenly realised what childhood memory had made Maksim grin in this episode; he'd been playing outside with his friend Yuroshka, and the two were rather dirty when they came home. So dirty, in fact, that Yuroshka's mother joked: "That must be my son, I recognise his eyes!" But they'd had a lot of fun outside, and they didn't really get into trouble as they had put on old clothes reserved for such purposes as playing in the mud.

Double Flashback

2009-03-21T12:37:00.001-07:00

The following flashbacks, one occurring within seconds of the other, were triggered by two sights I saw on the road. Number one - a boy of about fourteen holding his little brother, about three, by the hand and making sure the little one didn't fall off the wall he was balancing on.
The flashback it triggered was that of two orphan boys in the last year or immediately after the war. Maksim's mother was walking along the road with Maksim and Natasha, holding them both by the hand (even though Natasha was twelve or thirteen already, but she was afraid of her getting lost). Maksim sees two young boys in ill-fitting, threadbare clothing; perhaps they are begging, perhaps they are just sitting there, waiting for the day to pass, not knowing where to go. They are about the same age as those two boys I saw where, and the younger one is huddling against his brother to keep warm. Maksim's mother stops, presses her lips together as she always does when she's thinking about something, then she takes something out of the sack or bag she's carrying and gives it to those two boys. It may be a piece of salted meat or a small loaf of bread; not much since they have only very little to eat themselves, but Maksim's mother still feels sorry for them and wants to help them. She probably went without food herself that day, but she couldn't walk past those two children in need without giving them at least a little bit of food...I sense they tried to find those boys again, but they were gone the next day; whether they died during the night or moved on, I don't know.

Flashback number two, a few metres down the road, of a more cheerful occasion. An ancient tractor came towards me, driven by an old man in blue working clothes.
Flash to a nice, dry, sunny summer's day; Maksim is driving his truck along an unmade country road. The road is rutted, but it doesn't matter as the light yellow ground is dry and a few small ruts are no problem for the ZIL, even if it means the going is slow.
A tractor comes towards Maksim (it must be the similar setting that set off the memory, then), driven by a man with a tanned, weather-beaten face wh could be any age between forty and one hundred if one goes by his appearance. He's wearing blue drill working clothes and a cloth cap, and there's a cigarette with a homemade look between his lips. As he passes Maksim, he stops his tractor and shouts: "Hey, driver!" Maksim hears it, since he's driving with the window open, and stops. The tractor driver half-rises from his seat (I don't know if he switches off his engine, but I think he does), and asks, "Excuse me for bothering you, but are you driving to ...?" (can't remember the name of the place he mentioned). Maksim has trouble understanding the man at first, since he is missing a few front teeth which messes up his pronunciation, which proably was slurred in the first place anyway. But then he figures out what the tractor driver wants and nods. The other man reaches into the pocket of his drill jacket, takes out a small parcel and asks him to take it to "my brother, So-and-so, he's the .... of the kolkhoz over there". (I don't remember the brother's name or his function in the kolkhoz, only that it was a relatively minor one that had to do with the machinery.)
Maksim takes the parcel and reaches down to turn the key and re-start his engine, but the man motions him to wait. He reaches into his shirt pocket and pulls out a few cigarettes with the same homemade look as the one he's smoking, and hands them to Maksim. Maksim accepts them, of course; he thinks he has seen better cigarettes, but he's not going to look a gift horse in the mouth and a smoke is a smoke, no matter how good or bad the quality of the tobacco is. But I think they were surprisingly good, perhaps because they had been made of home-grown tobacco, with leaves that had been chosen with care instead of anything that could be stuffed into the machine, like some of the industrially-produced cigarettes available to everyone...

One for the Road

2009-03-18T14:01:00.000-07:00

Went to the Russian food shop where I like to buy my snacks and tea today, and the owner and I chatted partly in German and partly in Russian. (That way we can both practise.) She gave me a free Russian newspaper that the customers of her shop can take home, telling me that it was "for reading practice" and promised she'd look through her books to see if there was anything appropriate for a beginner.

I put the newspaper on my passenger seat as I drove home, and when I saw it out of the corner of my eye once I had the following flashback:

Maksim is driving along an unmade country road whistling a song. It's summer, and he's wearing one of those short-sleeved checkered shirts he likes so much. A copy of the "Pravda" is lying on the passenger seat next to him, the huge headline (as can be seen in this picture, just a random copy to give you an idea of what it looked like) well visible. Next to it there are a few pancakes and some sausage wrapped up in waxed paper - the usual food parcel Natasha prepared for Maksim; it was her way of expressing her love for her "little" brother - and a bottle of something...juice or cold tea?
It's not that Maksim found the Pravda as such so terribly interesting, but he never liked going anywhere without at least a newspaper to read. He often had to wait for something to be done, which could be very boring without some reading matter, and good books were hard to get.

Maksim is very happy that day, he's enjoying himself as he loves being on the road in good weather. Days like these make up for the annoyance and unpleasantness of others!

A Nightly Driving Lesson

2009-03-17T13:05:00.000-07:00

A flashback brought on by listening to "Песенка фронтового шофёра" ("Song of the Front Driver") by Mark Bernes while driving home in the dark. (The video as such is very interesting for me; some of the film snippets, such as the one at 0:17 seem very familiar to me. I'll have to try and find out what films they come from, it would be interesting to watch them again when my Russian gets better - I doubt there are subtitled versions available...)

Maksim is getting a driving lesson in the dark; he has become a relatively good driver during the da already, but of course driving at night (and through difficult terrain as well) also has to be part of the training. Moreover, it's going to be a night driving lesson under difficult conditions, namely with slitted blinds like in this picture on the headlights. They were meant to dim the headlights so the enemy wouldn't see it, while still enabling the driver to see at least roughly where he was going.
Maksim has overcome much of his previous nervousness, but he finds driving like this relatively exhausting, his nose is almost on the windshield as he peers out to see where he's steering the truck. The instructor tells him not to worry and stay relaxed, as "she can take a lot". ("Truck" is masculine in Russian, but perhaps he said "she" because he was thinking of it as "машина" - "machine", another word for "car" which is feminine in Russian. Stupid mind, automatically translating into English again!)
The instructor is right, Maksim relaxes and notices that he really enjoys doing this, even though it takes a lot of concentration. The first line of "Песенка фронтового шофёра" ("Through rivers, across mountains and through valleys, through snowstorm, fire and black smoke...") comes to his mind, putting a slight grin on his face. He realises at last that, despite his earlier fears, this is what he really wants to do in his life, driving a truck like his father did! Steering such a big monster of a truck must have been a nice feeling for the scrawny eighteen-year-old that he was, all that mass and power obeying his every command...

If you wish, take a look at this site and especially the video; all those things you see in the video, the hollow sound of slamming the door and the engine covers shut, the interior of the cab - all that is so familiar to me!

"Let's hope nobody sees this..."

2009-03-10T14:18:00.000-07:00

This flashback was brought on by me daydreaming and taking the wrong road at a crossing, only discovering my error several hundred metres later. I had to turn my car around on the road, and as I did that, I had this flashback.

Maksim is driving along a country road and through a small village. The houses are square and low, there are gardens next to each of them, surrounded by ornate wooden fences. Most of those fences are painted blue, but there are a few white ones among them as well. There are tall sunflowers in most of the gardens, and there is a kind of small awning in front of the doors of some of them, under which peppers and herbs are hung to dry on strings.
All the people seem to be out working on the fields or tending to their cattle, as not a soul can be seen, just a few solitary chickens scratching in the dirt by the side of the road.

I don't know if Maksim has spotted one of the rare road signs, but consulting the piece of paper with the directions lying on the seat next to him, he notices that he has taken the wrong road at the last crossing, daydreaming a bit and singing behind the wheel as he often did to break the monotony. There are deep ditches on either side of the road - covered with boards or brick "bridges" in front of houses so people can get across them, and there's something like a lay-by to the left a few metres in front. It still isn't large enough for the entire ZIL, but it's better than nothing, and Maksim turns into it, swearing under his breath at himself for being such an oaf and missing that road.
He turns the wheel around, straining, as it's hard to give it a full turn anyway, and the slightly muddy ground doesn't help. He releases the clutch and steps on the accelerator, but he makes a typical beginner's mistake and doesn't coordinate the two actions too well. The engine roars, just as it did during his first driving lessons, and he cringes inwardly and thinks "Oh dear, I hope nobody sees this...how embarrassing!!!!" But fortunately not a soul is to be seen, and the occasional dog or chicken doesn't mind!
After what feels like an hour, Maksim finally gets the ZIL to cooperate, he can drive back in the direction he came from, and he makes a mental note to be more careful in the future. (Well, until the next time he daydreams and takes the wrong road, that is...)

"Kakhovka"

2009-03-05T11:02:00.000-08:00

Found another old song named "Kakhovka" ("Каховка") - I had no idea what the title meant, but it appealed to me and so I downloaded it. Halfway into the first verse I had a very intense flashback - Maksim is in the cinema, watching a dramatic film about a war in black and white. He's still rather young, in his early twenties, and I think he went to the cinema alone. Perhaps none of his friends had time or was interested in the film.
He stares at the screen, spellbound, and suffers with the film characters; perhaps they remind him of his unknown father and of the fathers of his friends and classmates who also lost their lives in the war. When the film is over he walks out quietly into the bright sunlight, lost in thoughts. He decides to walk home instead of taking the tramway, as he needs the time to think and digest everything.

This flashback was very short, but I intensely re-experienced Maksim's emotions. So I googled the words "Kakhovka" and "film" in Russian and found out that Kakhovka was a small settling in southern Ukraine, the location of a battle in the civil war. And there was indeed a film called "Three Comrades" ("Три товарища") made about it in 1935, a comedy according to the descriptions I've read. (See this page - in Russian - for more information.) But maybe the film Maksim saw was a different one (it clearly was a drama, I'm definitely sure of that), and the song just jogged that memory - maybe he saw "Three Comrades" as well and I've just mixed up the two!

Thunderstorm

2009-03-02T12:40:00.001-08:00

A memory of a hot and stuffy summer's night in Chelyabinsk - Maksim, about twenty-five, is lying in bed and feeling far too hot. He has already opened the tiny window of his room (which had never been planned as a bedroom and thus only had a relatively small window that didn't let in much fresh air) and taken off his pyjama jacket, but it's still too warm. He removes the blanket on his bed and only covers himself with the sheet, but he's still feeling too hot.
He's sweating, and that annoys him because he has just changed the sheets and pillowcase and wants to enjoy the fresh, clean smell a bit longer. So he decides to get up, puts on his pyjama jacket (don't know why, maybe he was afraid of catching a chill or he thought it was indecent to run around bare-chested even at home, outside the context of working outside or bathing) and walks bare-footed to the balcony door, which he opens in hope of getting a fresh breath of air. But the air outside is only marginally cooler and feels sticky and heavy. He hears a rumbling in the distance and hopes the thunderstorm will arrive soon, but it doesn't seem like it. Soon the first flashes can be seen on the horizon, but the thunderstorm still isn't close enough to bring any relief.

Maksim briefly considers smoking a cigarette, but he hates the taste of stale nicotine in the morning when he has smoked before going to bed. Of course he could smoke and then brush his teeth, but he can't be bothered, so he just stands and watches. A verse from "Танго Магнолия" ("Tango Magnolia") comes to his mind, and he hums it as he stands in the open balcony door, leaning against its frame and sings a verse or two quietly to himself, completely lost in thoughts.

Later he lies in bed and listens to the rain beating against his window; his mind drifts off to the tropical fictitious Singapore described in the song, and he pictures it all in his mind, the birds and monkeys, the palm trees shaken by the tropical storm...At last he falls asleep and when he wakes up the next morning (must have been a free Saturday or a Sunday, as I feel he didn't have to go to work that day) the nightly thunderstorm seems more like a dream than something he really experienced, perhaps because he wasn't fully awake at the time...

A Weekend Idyll

2009-02-11T12:47:00.000-08:00

This flashback was probably triggered by the thought that I'll soon have my own tiny garden; I was considering buying a charcoal samowar to use outside (of corurse I won't throw my nice old electrical one away!).

Yuroshka's mother, like so many other citizens of Chelyabinsk, had a small garden plot near where we lived, in one of the large patches of green within the city limits. She grew vegetables there for her own consumption, and she made pickles to send to the military academy Yuroshka attended, making sure her son would have something decent to eat. When there was a surplus, she probably sold it on the market, gave it to friends or traded it for other things.
We always used to help her, and we got some of the vegetables and fruit the garden produced for our work. It was a nice break from sitting behind the wheel of a truck, repairing or assembling vehicles (Vadim's job) or watches (Natasha's), and so we always looked forward to those sunny summer days in the garden of Yuroshka's mother.

In the most recent flashback we're all sitting on blankets spread on the grass or wooden stools (can't really "see" them), gathered around a low table with a charcoal samowar, mugs and plates. Yuroshka's mother gets up but Vadim gestures to her, telling her to remain seated. "Rest yourself, Ekaterina Ivanovna (or whatever her name was, unfortunately I can't remember it), we'll do the rest." Lyoshka is with us, and while Vadim fiddles with a small bellows, Lyoshka picks up a piece of glowing coal with a pair of tongs and drops it into the samowar's "furnace". Natasha unpacks the food Yuroshka's mother has brought for us - blini, bread and sausage and homemade pickles - and arranges them on the little table. (Belyanka doesn't seem to be with us, perhaps she's staying with a friend.)
We eat and drink, talk and make jokes, and perhaps Vadim later fetches his accordion from the boot of Lyoshka's car and plays a few tunes.
We all feel very relaxed and happy; the sunshine and fresh air (even by non-Chelyabinsk standards) is very pleasant. As it gets cooler, we pack up and go home; I think it is Saturday evening, so we take a bath as we come home and go to bed soon, after having a little talk in the kitchen and after Vadim and I have smoked a bedtime cigarette.

I think the garden plot wasn't too far from where we all lived, but Lyoshka usually came to pick us up so we wouldn't have to carry everything there. He, too, was very fond of Yuroshka's mother, saying he still owed her a lot for all the kindness she had shown him after his release from the GULAG. Of course she said it was nothing, but she had indeed been very kind to Lyoshka, helping him out with a mattress and bedding and some of Yuroshka's old clothes and shoes, which were still in good shape, but of course he couldn't use them in the military. Yuroshka was tall and lanky as well, and his clothes fit Lyoshka better than Vadim's...

I've been pondering all those memories, and it has occurred to me that I only seem to recall the happy moments of that lifetime. Living conditions were far from ideal, but eeven despite that fact I would say it was a happy life. Material goods are nice to have, but peace of mind, love and friendship are more important and can't be bought with money. And love and friendship was something we had in great quantities back then!

Déjà vu

2009-02-05T12:24:00.000-08:00

A friend sent me those pages with many pictures - check them out, dear readers, and you'll get a glimpse of the klimat of Maksim's time!

Life in the Fifties

Note the huge but almost empty streets; hardly anyone had a car back then, everyone used public transport or walked.

Life in the Sixties

The déjà vu feeling isn't so strong in the first picture, but some do stand out. The one with the young men doing the gas mask drill, for instance; I remember one such drill, though I don't know where. (Perhaps on the factory grounds - did they have regular gas mask drills for the employees?). Maybe Maksim had been suffering from an upset stomach, or it was the chemical, acrid smell of the gas mask - he suddenly felt very sick and almost vomited into the gas mask (ugh!!!), but thought it better not to take it off before the signal was given. Perhaps he was worried that it might be regarded as disobedience; you never knew and it was better to be safe than sorry and not stand out!

The young men in front of the green locomotive further down the page (too bad that the pictures aren't numbered) stood out to me as well; the one on the left wears the checkered shirts that Maksim and Vadim usually wore in summer!

A few pictures further down - the blocks of flats with the pond. A bit fancier than the area in which Maksim lived in Chelyabinsk; they had no pond, just a few scraggly birches and benches between the houses. But the atmosphere is exactly the same! The picture of the houses eleven pictures down from this one fits my memories better...

Still further down, the picture of the people walking along the street with the red tulips in the foreground; this could be an impression of a Sunday walk in Chelyabinsk! Maksim hated suits and ties and could probably have counted the times when he wore them on both hands, but Vadim liked "dressing up" a bit on Sundays or holidays when going out with Natasha. He used to say that he couldn't well walk around in his everyday clothes with such a pretty woman at his side...

Last picture - an An-2 spraying a field. Those planes were omnipresent, especially in rural regions and in the north where Maksim did his military service in the radar troops.

Soviet Weddings

The third picture brought a déjà vu of Vadim's and Natasha's wedding; it was a very happy event, but little Maksim, about ten years old at the time, had mixed feelings about it. He was afraid that he'd lose Natasha's love, that she would like Vadim better than him and forget him. Irrational fears from an adult perspective, but perhaps understandable in a child.

Radio

2009-02-04T12:24:00.000-08:00

Found this radio station that plays only songs from the 1950s - 1970s, in a quality Maksim wouldn't even have dreamt of. Listening to them is like time-travelling; the only thing I miss is the poems and anecdotes being read between songs, as it was done in Maksim's and his family's favourite programme - it may have been called something like "Golden Hour" or "Happy Hour", and it was broadcast on Sunday afternoons. I had the impression that the announcer also read fan mail from listeners all over the USSR, something my dear blogging friend confirmed as correct. (Thank you, it was a great relief to know that!)

Maksim, Vadim, Natasha and even little Belyanka loved the "Golden Hour", and since they had no radio they went to Lyoshka's to listen to the programme. Lyoshka would probably not have been able to buy a good radio with his meagre academic's pay, but since he was an expert in radio technology he built his own, with parts probably acquired through Vadim's "connections". The radio Lyoshka built was quite powerful; I think that on clear winter nights we could even receive European radio stations, if faintly and in bad quality...but that didn't matter, the most important thing was that we could catch an aural glimpse of the West!

But enough of the prologue, back to the latest flashback! Listening to the above-mentioned radio station I suddenly had the following flashback, not spectacular in content but very rich in klimat - I wish I could take you, my dear readers, there and show you the look and feel of those little vignettes of 1960s Soviet life!
Maksim and Lyoshka are sitting on the sofa and Natasha and Vadim in the two armchairs facing them while Belyanka is sitting on the floor, either drawing a picture or playing with her cosmonaut doll, her favourite toy. The low coffee table between us is laden with snacks - biscuits, pickled gherkins, potato salad, bread and butter and the like, served in the heavy cut-glass bowls and dishes that Lyoshka had inherited from his grandparents (who had probably perished in the Revolution, being quite well-to-do citizens that fit the Bolsheviks' idea of the "enemy of the people"). They are drinking tea along with their snacks, part of which Lyoshka's visitors have most likely brought along as a "thank you" gesture to their host.
A song they particularly like is on, and since Maksim doesn't want to interrupt by speaking, he lightly punches Lyoshka on the arm and points to the dish with the biscuits to let Lyoshka know that he wants some of them. Lyoshka hands Maksim the dish, and Maksim nods at his friend, smiles and mouthes "thank you". He takes a few biscuits from the plate and hands them back, but he notices that he can't hear the song properly when he chews the biscuit, so he puts it down on his saucer and waits until the song is over.

Sometimes Maksim and his family worried that it might get on Lyoshka's nerves if they visited him every Sunday to listen to the radio, but he said it was no trouble at all, especially not after all they had done for him after he had been released from the GULAG. But none of them ever thought of balancing one favour against the other; where help was needed, it was offered and no questions were asked and no fuss was made. Each of them knew that they might need the other's help one day, so it was only natural to help the others when they needed it.

A Clever Retort

2009-02-02T12:51:00.000-08:00

Some months ago the words "Шофёрская песня" ("The Driver's Song") came to my mind, and after some googling I found out that there was indeed a song of that name, sung by Vladimir Troshin, one of the most popular actors and singers of Maksim's time. It appeared in the 1958 film "Очеребной рейс" ("The Next Journey"); I have the feeling that the film was quite popular at the time.

Cut to the flashback - I managed to find the lyrics of the song online, quite nice since my Russian is far from being good enough to understand everything yet. When I read the line from the chorus that goes "Don't think, my dear, that drivers are unreliable friends" this flashback came up:
Maksim and a few of his fellow drivers were hanging round in the yard where the trucks were loaded and parked, smoking and drinking tea. There must have been something in the air that made them silly and frisky; they giggled and joked and enjoyed themselves very much. Perhaps they were waiting for their trucks to be loaded, or there had been some delay (that sometimes happened, quite often actually). A young woman, perhaps a secretary, walked past them; she was quite pretty, and one of the drivers couldn't resist asking her to come over and join them, quoting that line from the song to her as the others snorted and giggled. The young woman just gave them a very cool look and replied: "You definitely aren't unreliable friends - you're childish idiots, and since I've outgrown kindergarten I have no time for you, sorry."
She knew the drivers were joking and she was joking as well; I have the feeling they teased each other quite often, but come Women's Day one of the drivers would always turn up at her office door with a bunch of flowers, either because he had taken a liking to her or because he had been sent as a delegate from his colleagues. It could be that she ended up marrying one of them - was she Lena, the girl Maksim's colleague Vanya married?

Just a little note

2009-01-29T14:19:00.000-08:00

Found this link - it's a link to a site that sells model cars. So far, nothing exciting, but it's giving another bit of validation!

The site shows a blue ZIL with a crane on the back, with a caption saying:

"ZIL 157 mit Bleichert Kran in ziviler Farbgebung." ("ZIL 157 with Bleichert crane in civilian colouring"). What a nice bit of proof that, despite the many pictures showing olive green ZILs, there WERE indeed blue ones!!!

Moonstruck

2009-01-28T13:12:00.000-08:00

This morning's otherworldly light - caused by the rising sun shining through a dense layer of cirrus clouds - brought forth another memory. At first I didn't know in which season it was taking place, only that the ground was dry and firm, but now that I think about it I think it was summer, as I can clearly "feel" the mild night air on my skin when I go back to that scene.

Maksim had been on a longer journey, and now he was on his way back, probably carrying a cargo he was to take from his destination back to Chelyabinsk. (Mini-flashback as I write this - Maksim is in some office at his destination, explaining to the pen pusher behind the desk who he is and what he is doing here. The natchalnik gives him a look that reminds Maksim of the look someone has who has just discovered that he has stepped into something unpleasant on the street and drawls: "Wait...I'll phone Chelyabinsk and then we'll see what to do next." Probably the "prequel" to this memory.)

Anyway, back to the original memory! Maksim, as I said, was on his way back, and it was about 9 PM. He stopped to get ready for the night, but just as he was brushing his teeth with water from the jerrycan containing the water for the ZIL's radiator (not the nicest water in the world, but just about right for washing, shaving and brushing your teeth, it was better to save the water he filled into bottles at streams or village wells for making tea) he realised that he wasn't tired at all and that it would be a good night for driving. He was longing to get home, and he also hoped he might be given a bonus if he arrived ahead of the schedule. Of course one should never overdo things and be too eager, thus becoming a "norm-breaker" and making things harder for one's colleagues, but it always paid off to brownnose a little every now and then, in homeopathic doses, so to speak.

Maksim finished brushing his teeth nevertheless, and as he tidied his washing things away again he decided to drive for as long as he still felt awake and then stop before he got too sleepy and sleep or at least doze a few hours. (I don't know how he managed to wake up on time, but perhaps he took the large blue alarm clock with the annoyingly loud, tinny ring he used at home with him.) He climbed back into the cab, started the engine and drove back onto the road. The full moon was very bright, the ground was dry - very vital, since the road was unmade in those parts - and everything seemed unnaturally quiet to Maksim, despite the sound of his engine. He sang a little to himself as he sometimes did when driving, but after a while he even stopped doing that because it seemed too loud in a strange, surreal way, not quite fitting the dream-like surroundings. I don't remember how long he drove, but I know for sure that he enjoyed the quite unusual drive a lot!

By the way, I think I now know who was on the picture in the newspaper clipping Maksim had put up in his room (using pins stuck into the wallpaper): I could only "see" a short, tubby man in a suit whenever I tried to focus on the newspaper clipping, but it has just come to me - I think it could have been Krushchev shaking Yurij Gagarin's hand, perhaps at a reception or when congratulating him on his successful flight...

Children's theatre

2009-01-24T11:24:00.000-08:00

Another out-of-the-blue flashback, this one occurred as I was cleaning the kitchen and probably not thinking much. Perhaps that allowed the memory to come through.

It's Saturday or Sunday, and Belyanka is pretty excited because she's about to go to a children's theatre performance with Maksim, giving her parents a few hours to themselves. She doesn't mind, she loves "going to town with Uncle Maksim" and Maksim doesn't mind either.
Maybe Vadim and Natasha have already left as well; in that flashback, Maksim is putting a white fur or knitted hat on his niece's head, making sure it's well-secured. It's not winter anymore but spring, but the wind is still very chilly, especially in the shade, and it's better to keep your and your children's heads warm.
After putting on Belyanka's hat, Maksim buttons her coat while she chatters on excitedly about past shows she's seen and about how she is looking forward to this one. I think it's a performance of a fairytale, and I get the impression that such entertainments were quite good and rather enjoyable.

After getting Belyanka ready, Maksim grabs his knee-length black woolen coat from the coat rack and puts on his fur hat with ear flaps; he walks out of the door after Belyanka, then stops just as he's about to pull the door shut, takes some knitted gloves from the shoe cabinet and puts them on after closing and locking the door. The flashback ends here; I can't say what happened afterwards, but I think everyone had a great time! It seems likely that Maksim and Belyanka visited Lyoshka after the performance if he wasn't busy playing chess with someone. Maybe Vadim and Natasha went to a dance, as they liked to dance...

A little celebration

2009-01-18T01:01:00.001-08:00

Perhaps the new snowfall provided the klimat for this flashback...it's just a very short one, but I wanted to post it anyway.

There's a little social gathering going on in Maksim's flat; Lyoshka is sitting in an armchair to the left, holding a mug of tea and grinning, and Yuroshka has settled down in the other one, trying to arrange his long legs as comfortably as possible. He has been talking to Lyoshka earlier, joking with him. Two more people are sitting on the sofa to the right, on the other side of the small coffee table, but I can't "see" them clearly. One seems to be a young man, and the other one might be Yuroshka's mother - of course Natasha and Maksim would have invited her as well, since they were very fond of her and felt that they owed her so much. Without her, they would certainly have been lost in those difficult years after their mother died!

To the right of the sofa, next to the door, there's a low footstool, and Vadim is sitting on it, playing the accordion and singing while Natasha is standing behind him, her hand on his shoulder and a tender smile on her face. Vadim has a nice, full baritone voice and it's a pleasure to listen to him. Sometimes the others sing along, sometimes they just listen. Maksim thinks that Vadim is as good as any of the singers you can hear on the radio, although, of course, he often teased his brother-in-law about his supposed lack of talent. It just wouldn't be the same without that!

The coffee table is full of tea mugs, little plates (white with a faded gold rim and small, pale pink flowers painted on them) and cut-glass dessert bowls containing pickled mushrooms and gherkins, herring in jelly and other treats. There was no room for the bread basket, so someone has pulled up a chair and put the bread basket and a few other things (the sugar bowl, among other things) on the chair. I don't know where Belyanka is at the time - I'd say the event took place in 1963 or 1964, so she was already born - but perhaps she was staying at a friend's place. I suppose that would have been more interesting for her than hanging around with all those adults, even if her beloved Uncle Lyoshka was one of the guests...

I don't know what they were celebrating, but I'm sure it wasn't New Year's Eve, as I can't "see" a ёлка (New Year Tree) anywhere - even though only a tiny one fit into their living-room, they always had one. Perhaps it was a birthday, or they had decided to meet without any special occasion, just for fun. It was a nice evening in any case, sometime in early winter (November?).

Truck-cleaning day

2009-01-16T04:24:00.000-08:00

I washed the salt and muck off my car yesterday, and as I did that I had another little flashback. Maksim is standing in the yard of the factory he drove for, smoking a cigarette and hosing down his blue ZIL. There's a lot of mud in the wheel cases, and whenever Maksim directs the water there, mud comes off in huge globs and falls to the ground. Maksim can't resist being a bit playful, so he tries to push them across the yard by pointing the water jet at them, and whenever a friend or colleague comes near, Maksim tries at least to sprinkle him with water, grinning at the playful insults he gets for his pains. In fact, Maksim is getting a bit wet himself, but he doesn't mind as it's a nice, sunny day, and he's in high spirits because there are much worse things than enjoying the sunshine, a cigarette and his little water games :-) Perhaps he was waiting for his cargo to get ready and decided to wash his truck in the meantime, or he was told to because he'd been driving through a lot of mud and the truck was accordingly dirty. I don't remember anything of the circumstances, just the event as such...

Smallpox vaccination, part 2

2009-01-09T03:13:00.000-08:00

I was peacefully typing and my thoughts were far from the subject of past lives today when suddenly I felt a dull throb in my left upper arm, in the spot where Maksim was vaccinated against smallpox. I wondered if that was just out of the blue or if it was announcing a new memory, but since I didn't want to force things or indulge in wishful thinking, I went on with what I was doing.
That strange sensation indeed turned out to be the precursor of a memory; it may not be a spectacular one, but it was atmospherically intense.

Yuroshka and Maksim are sitting on the sofa at Yuroshka's place and are looking at a book borrowed from the library. It's a few days after their smallpox vaccination, and since their arms still hurt and the scabs haven't healed yet they have decided not to play football outside but stay indoors and look at that book. (Probably much to the relief of Yuroshka's mother and Vadim and Natasha, as that would diminish the chance of the two getting into trouble...)
Both boys are wearing dark trousers, one (Yuroshka, I think) is wearing a white shirt with a pale check pattern (think of checkered paper) and Maksim a pale blue one. Both have put on woolen slipovers or sleeveless vests over their shirts, so perhaps it's one of the colder seasons.

Yuroshka reaches out to turn a page with his left hand - I think the book is something like a picture encyclopedia of planes or trucks, something that fascinates both boys - and winces. Maksim asks him: "Does your arm still hurt?" and Yuroshka replies: "No, not much...I'm just keeping quiet because Mama wants me to." (Translation: "Yes, a lot, but I'm older than you and don't want to look like a wimp.")
Yuroshka's mother comes in and puts two mugs of tea down on the table in front of her; they thank her and go on looking at the book, commenting on the photos. Yuroshka points at a picture and says: "Boy, I would love to have one of these when I'm older!" (I think the picture shows a motorbike), but Maksim says he likes the trucks better. Yuroshka insists that motorbikes are better, and soon the two are having a good-natured argument about who is right.

I can clearly "hear" the sound of Yuroshka's adolescent voice, which had already begun to break, but I can't "hear" the words he is saying in Russian, my mind automatically translates them. Very strange!

Smallpox vaccination

2009-01-05T23:46:00.000-08:00

Thinking about an entry in my friend's blog about an old vaccine plant unexpectedly brought up another memory!

When Maksim was twelve or thirteen (roughly guessing) he, like all the rest of his class, were vaccinated against smallpox. Maksim was a bit worried that it might hurt, and he talked to Vadim about his fears. Vadim, however, assured him that it wouldn't be too bad and bared his arm to show him his own vaccination scar. He said it might be a bit unpleasant for a few days, but it would soon pass and it wouldn't be half as bad as getting the disease itself. That seemed to put Maksim at ease, and when the big day came he bravely lined up with all the other boys, in their undershirts so the doctor would easily have access to their upper arms.
When his turn came he noticed that Vadim had been right, it really hadn't been that bad - just a small prick, and that was all. Even the reaction to the vaccine wasn't that bad, and the spot healed without problems, leaving the usual scar on Maksim's left upper arm.

The funny thing is, when I was little in this life I insisted that I would have to be vaccinated against smallpox, but when I was told that wasn't necessary I had a hard time believing it. Perhaps we were told so often to make sure we got our vaccination in Maksim's time that it stuck in my mind somehow...

A lesson in mechanics

2009-01-05T23:19:00.000-08:00

This little memory was triggered by watching the mechanic exchange the wheel bearings of my car - he knows that I'm interested in such things, so he always lets me watch. Seeing him remove the old, worn wheel bearing took me right back to 1950s Chelyabinsk - Maksim and the other boys in his class, either in secondary school or trade school are standing around the workbench where the instructor is taking apart something I can't "see" clearly. It could be a clutch, judging by the size and shape of it, and he points out what each individual part is and does as he is taking it apart. Some of the boys, including Maksim, are genuinely interested (it probably is in his blood, after all his father was a truck driver and possibly mechanic, too), but others just look bored.
Maksim turns his head to the left and sees his best friend Yuroshka, almost a head taller than the other boys, the faded blue work coat he, like the rest of the class and the instructor, is wearing, too short at the sleeves. Yuroshka looks as if he's going to fall asleep on his feet, and he yawns provokingly a few times. He knew from an early age that he'd be a soldier and sees no point in learning all about cars, but he has to take those classes like all the rest. He probably did just enough not to fail, whereas Maksim was genuinely interested in mechanics. At the time he had vowed to himself that he'd never be a driver (perhaps he was subconsciously afraid that he'd meet the same fate as his father), but he was still interested in how cars and machines work.

"Ilya Muromets"

2009-01-03T12:09:00.000-08:00

I'm currently reading a book of Russian fairy tales for practice - started reading a science fiction novel but found it difficult after a while and decided to put it aside for the moment and read something easier first - and one of the stories in it, the story of Ilya Muromets, somehow captivated me. It wasn't the story as such, the name just got stuck in my mind, so I googled it and found out that there was a film about the mythical hero made in 1956 (available on Google Video). The film as such doesn't seem familiar; that would probably mean asking too much after all those years, but I think it's quite likely that I saw it as Maksim. I certainly read the story as well, or it was read to me by our mother - or did the name stand out to me because I knew the story in my earlier Siberian lifetime? Perhaps I'll never know for sure, but there definitely is some familiarity there!

Ice-skating fun

2008-12-28T05:29:00.000-08:00

I went ice-skating today; the ice on the lake isn't thick enough yet despite the frost - better to wait a few more days for safety - but I went to the ice stadium in a nearby city. When two young Russians skated past me, talking in Russian, I had the following flashback:

Maksim and his friends (Lyoshka, Vadim, Vanya and perhaps one more, but I'm not sure) are at the ice stadium in Chelyabinsk. It is around New Year's Eve, and they're all in high spirits. They put on their skates (can't say if they were borrowed ones or their own), and get out onto the ice. Lyoshka and Vadim go first, and when they have skated about halfway around the stadium, Maksim and Vanya are ready and on the ice as well. They wink at each other, then speed up to Vadim and Lyoshka and give them a playful shove from behind - of course it's not strong enough to push the two off their feet. Vadim and Lyoshka turn round and retaliate, and soon there is a bit of horseplay going on.
Later Maksim skates backwards in front of Lyoshka, making jokes and/or showing off; Lyoshka says nothing, he just smiles, and suddenly Maksim's skates catch on a groove in the ice and Maksim falls flat on his bum. He pretends to glare at Lyoshka and growls: "If you laugh now, I'll kill you, Morkovich!" Lyoshka laughs, of course, but Maksim remains sitting on the ice. Lyoshka gives him a puzzled look and asks: "Weren't you going to kill me?", to which Maksim shrugs and says: "Oh, I think I'll kill you later...I'm too cosy and comfortable at the moment..."

A short but intense flashback, unfortunately without context

2008-12-25T01:58:00.000-08:00

Two or three days ago I visited a student who lives only a few hundred metres from me; I took along a bag of Russian oat and raisin biscuits and some chocolate as a little Christmas gift.
Temperatures are above zero over here - pretty normal for Christmas, it will probably get colder soon - but as I put on my boots and coat and picked up the bag of biscuits I experienced another very short but intense flashback.

Maksim is in the tiny corridor of his flat, putting on his coat. It's very cold outside, the wind is howling and it is snowing. He steps into his valenki (felt boots), puts on mittens, then picks up a bag of biscuits and puts some chocolate into the pocket of his coat. He's afraid of losing those small, toffee-sized treats if he carries them in his hand, but they won't melt in his coat pocket so that's no problem. He's alone in the flat, perhaps the rest of the family have gone to visit someone - but where is he going, and where is he taking those sweets? Did he maybe come home later because he had had to stand in line for the biscuits and chocolate? Or did he have to work longer than the others?
It could be that he's going to visit Lyoshka, perhaps they have decided to celebrate New Year's Eve together. But I'm not at all sure.

Regarding New Year's Eve, here's another short flashback! Natasha, Vadim and Maksim are in the kitchen, and Belyanka is in the living-room, playing with her cosmonaut doll.
Vadim is standing at the stove stirring a pot, a white-and-red checkered teatowel tied round his waist to protect his trousers from splashes from whatever he is stirring. Maksim is sitting at the table peeling something - potatoes and hard-boiled eggs? - while Natasha is standing in the door, a shopping net in her hand. She's explaining something to the two men, perhaps she tells them what to do while she's going out trying to get some of the things they still need.
Perhaps they're preparing food for another New Year's Eve invitation, or for one without a special occasion; they're all looking forward to it because they know it's going to be fun - Lyoshka will be invited, of course, as well as Yuroshka's mother and perhaps Wassily and his wife and two daughters, both teenagers at the time but still willing to play with Belyanka.
Vadim and Maksim quite enjoy helping, as they like cooking very much; Vadim definitely makes the best blini of the three, even Maksim has to admit that! :-)

A video of a blue ZIL!

2008-12-21T23:18:00.001-08:00

Found another great video of a ZIL-157 in action - and this time it's a blue one as well! This video takes me right back there, and again I wish I could sit behind the wheel, just for a few minutes...

An addendum to the An-2 memory

2008-12-19T14:47:00.000-08:00

Chatting with my dear blogging friend brought forth this little addendum to the An-2 memory - the driver of the truck that brought us to the airfield cheerfully ignored all the potholes and bumps in the "road" (in reality nothing more than a dirt track over which he drove at breakneck speed for the road conditions and such a heavy truck, in any case; in reality he probably didn't go any faster than 50 or 60 km/h), and we poor souls sitting on the bed of the truck clung on to dear life, looping our arms around the laths that formed the framing of the truck bed (it's hard to explain, I don't even know the German word, let alone the English one!) When the truck stopped at last we all jumped off, glad to have survived a ride with "that madman".

When the planes had arrived, we started unloading as previously reported; the pilots, however, were far too "cool" to help, so they just sat down in the shade of their planes, drank tea, smoked and chatted while we toiled. At the time I thought how nice it would be to be a pilot, but in the end being a truck driver proved to be a good thing as well!

"Дорога" ("The Road")

2008-12-19T13:12:00.000-08:00

Some time ago I found the song "Дорога" ("The Road") by Boris Fomin here; I've always loved it, but I have to admit I didn't understand much of the lyrics, just the first two words. But I liked it very much and kept listening to it over and over again. I felt it was one of the songs that were on Maksim's mind when he travelled to Arkhangelsk - a seemingly endless journey through a flat landscape with little changes, but he still enjoyed it in a way, since it was the first time he got away from Chelyabinsk. He was seventeen or eighteen at the time and had seen nothing else so far, travelling wasn't easy for a Soviet citizen in those days...

Tonight it finally occurred to me to look up the lyrics, and when I translated them I realised why they seem so familiar. Finally understanding what the song said triggered another memory as well, but more of that later. (The original lyrics can be found at the link above.) The song tells the story of a young man travelling on a train, sitting by the window with his "garmoska" (either an accordion or a mouth organ, but an accordion would be more fitting and more typical, I guess.) The young man looks out of the window and says, "Brothers, I remember this place outside the window, I remember..." Then he begins to talk about the war, how a girl in a printed dress saved his life in that grove, helping him when he was wounded. Another passenger quietly opens the door and says, "Tell me, lad, what became of that girl?", to which the young man softly replies: "She became my wife a long time ago."
The song is sentimental in a very Russian way, but not cheesily so - and I have to admit I still like it very much! Maksim loved it as well, and since it's about a train trip, it probably is no wonder that it came to his mind as that train rattled along its way through the grasslands, moors and clumps of birches...

As for the memory that translating the lyrics triggered - I recall that "Дорога" was another one of the staples in Vadim's repertoire; he was a rather gifted accordion player and knew lots of songs by heart. I don't know where he learned them all, whether sheet music was widely available in the Soviet Union (I guess not, at least not for the ordinary folks), but I think he just had to listen to a song a few times to memorise it, something we all found quite amazing.
I clearly remember the loving look Vadim would give Natasha whenever he reached the line "She became my wife a long time ago". He must have loved her very much indeed; even after all those years the thought gives me a warm feeling. Dear Vadim, he was always there when a friend needed his help, and without him Natasha and I probably wouldn't have survived those difficult years after our mother died...he never asked any question, he just did what he could to help and had a hard time accepting any thanks; he'd just mutter "No, this is nothing really, don't mention it..." We certainly were lucky to have met him, nothing better could have happened to us. I hope we thanked him or let him know how much we appreciated his help in some other way...

Not getting away with it

2008-12-15T12:47:00.000-08:00

This is an older memory, one I'd forgotten to blog so far; it has only just come to my mind again.

When Maksim was thirteen or fourteen, he went through a difficult phase, quite natural for a teenager. But since Vadim and Natasha weren't often at home and he was on his own so often, he thought he might get away with being lazy and doing nothing at school. That day he spent the history lesson staring out of the window (not that there was much to see, he did it just on principle), and since the teacher didn't say a thing, he thought nobody had noticed. But he was wrong.
When Vadim came home in the evening, he gave Maksim a very dark look and led him into the kitchen, announcing "We have to talk." Maksim's heart sank and slowly it dawned on him that he had perhaps been too naive, thinking the teacher hadn't noticed his daydreaming in class.
Indeed, Vadim told him to sit down at the kitchen table and told Maksim that he had met his teacher after work. The teacher had told Vadim that his "stepson" hadn't been paying attention, and that he would soon be unable to catch up with the other pupils if he went on like that.
Maksim didn't say a thing, blushing as red as a beetroot and staring at his hands, but Vadim didn't let him go. He looked Maksim in the eye and asked how long he'd been going on like that, and Maksim squeezed out a hoarse "three or four weeks maybe".
He expected Vadim to start shouting and maybe hit him, but nothing like that happened. Vadim remained serious and calm and said "You know that you'll have missed too much soon, and that you'll get bad marks, don't you?" Maksim just nodded, and Vadim went on. "We'll have to do something about that, you'll have to catch up with everything."
That was when the idea was born that Maksim should go to Lyoshka's place after school, do his homework there and repeat what he had missed with Lyoshka. Maksim was quite relieved, since the other option would have been repeating everything with his teacher, and he wasn't too keen on that...Luckily he never behaved like that afterwards, he'd probably just wanted to test his limits, and when he left school his marks were quite good and he had discovered that learning could be fun. I suppose we all need those little reminders every now and then, and he certainly was no exception!

Another realisation about Lyoshka

2008-12-11T13:25:00.000-08:00

This came to me as I was driving; I often have flashbacks then, probably because I don't need to think and can let my mind wander.

I had remembered quite early on that Belyanka and Lyoshka were quite fond of each other and that "Uncle Lyoshka" was almost a real uncle for her. But yesterday I finally realised one thing - Belyanka must have been born either shortly before he was released from the GULAG (I can't "see" her in the memories of Lyoshka returning, but perhaps that is because it isn't important for those memories).
I recalled how he regretted being "useless" and "another mouth to feed" (though we insisted he absolutely was no burden), so he tried to make up for our efforts by cooking or doing the dishes when we were all at work. He also looked after Belyanka, which was a great help because it meant that Natasha and Vadim could go to work without worrying about where to leave the baby. Maybe some men would have regarded it as "unmanly", but Lyoshka didn't mind at all, quite the opposite. He was very tender and loving with Belyanka, and he loved reading her stories in his soft voice.
Maybe their attachment to each other stemmed from this time spent together; we thought that was nice because it meant Belyanka had another adult "family member" besides her parents and her uncle Maksim to talk to or spend time with, and Lyoshka was happy as well. He didn't seem to have any surviving family members, poor chap; I wonder what happened to them, but I think I can imagine what must have happened...

"Statistics"

2008-12-09T22:14:00.001-08:00

Another little flashback that just hit me out of the blue, while I was checking my emails!

Maksim's mother used to measure him and Natasha each month, putting a book on their heads and marking their current height on the door frame with a pencil, with the date. After her death, Natasha and later Vadim continued doing that for Maksim; it wasn't necessary for a long time, since Maksim stopped growing at about 1.55 or 1.60 m, but he liked the fact that the little ritual was continued!

A flat tyre in the middle of nowhere

2008-12-09T12:33:00.000-08:00

The weirdest things can serve as flashback triggers; this time it was a pair of leather working gloves I saw at the filling station. I was waiting for my turn to pay, and when I looked around my eyes fell on this pair of gloves, and bang! There was another memory!

In that memory I'm driving throug ha rather-deserted looking landscape - I left a kolkhoz behind a few miles back but now there's virtually nothing, not even fields. Was it on the Ural trip? I don't really know, but it seems likely.
The right front tyre starts behaving in a funny way, so I stop and inflate it a bit - the ZIL-157 had a pressure system with which you could regulate the pressure of each individual tyre from the cab. Pretty cool, and definitely handy on Russian roads, or what sometimes passed for them!
Everything is alright for a while, but then the tyre starts acting up again. I sigh, park the truck by the wayside and get out. Hooray, the tyre has gone flat, what fun!

I open the toolbox and get out all the necessary tools, the large, unwieldy car jack, wheel brace and hammer (in case the tyre refuses to budge), and a pair of grubby, oily working gloves. I put on the gloves, swearing under my breath, and set up the jack, swearing some more. At least it's raining, but changing one of those large, unwieldy tyres in the middle of nowhere, where there's nobody to help you, definitely isn't high on my list of favourite things!
I loosen the wheel nuts (unhooking it from the pressure system is a pain in the rear, but I manage; after all, we've done it often enough in the army!), bang the wheel with a hammer to get it to move, and it finally comes off. I breathe a sigh of relief, so far, so good.

The flat wheel docilely rolls down the slight slope to the side of the truck, the place where the spare wheel is located. I loosen the spare wheel, push it off its mounting (the stupid thing nearly lands on my foot, I can jump back in the last second), then roll it to the front axle. Now how am I going to get that wheel up on the wheel bearings? It's not that it is so heavy, but it's awfully unhandy. Damn that wheel, I needed that flat like a hole in the head!
But I'm very stubborn, so in the end the spare wheel is where it belongs, and the flat one is on the mounting where the spare one was. I put the car jack and tools back into the toolbox under the freight bed (behind the rear left wheel), throw the gloves into it and slam it shut, then I climb back into the cab and start the engine. I wipe my brow, breathe a deep sigh and go on my way, hopefully without any other punctures!

Another thing - after finishing "The GULAG Archipelago" on Sunday, my dreams were haunted by the word "посылка" (posylka - meaning "packet, mailing, premise"). At first I thought it had to do with "ссылка" (ssylka - "banishment"), as that would have made sense after reading the book, but when I looked the word up I saw that I was totally wrong. Perhaps it's just coincidence, or maybe it does have to do with "The GULAG Archipelago" and Lyoshka...did Vadim ever send him packets of things he could use, hoping that some of it would finally get through to his friend? Perhaps not much did, as Lyoshka was a "political" prisoner, an "enemy of the people"...but I'm sure if Vadim did, Lyoshka certainly appreciated the gesture!

More about Lyoshka

2008-12-07T13:36:00.000-08:00

I finished "The GULAG Archipelago" today, and reading how those imprisoned in GULAGs were often deprived of sleep made me remember another thing.
After we had taken Lyoshka home, we gave him some hot soup and tea while Natasha prepared a hot bath for him. Vadim lent Lyoshka one of his own pyjamas (a burgundy one, too large around the waist for Lyoshka, who had lost a tremendous lot of weight in the GULAG, and he hadn't had much to lose in the first place), but too short in the arms and legs as Lyoshka was a good ten centimentres taller than Vadim. But it didn't matter, he would be alright.
Lyoshka had his bath, then he lay down on the mattress we had put on the living-room floor for him, and he probably was asleep before his head hit the pillow. We had moved to the kitchen so we wouldn't disturb him, but he was so exhausted that not even a pneumatic drill next to his head would have woken him up. He slept for ages, about twenty hours if I remember correctly, and spent most of the following week sleeping as well, only waking up long enough to eat a bit more, get a bit of fresh air or read a little.
I think we sometimes moved his mattress to Natasha's and Vadim's bedroom during the day, squeezing it into the small space between the bed and the wall, but sometimes we'd just leave it where it was, as Lyoshka really didn't mind us walking around and climbing over him during the day. Poor thing, how long must he have been deprived of proper sleep!

It was only some months later that he became seriously ill; perhaps this was in 1955 and not 1954, as I had thought initially. His body must have run on adrenaline all the time, and only when he realised that he was safe at last he could allow himself to fall ill. Fortunately he recovered completely! It's a sad shame that people should do such horrible things to other people, but I suppose humans are just like that, unfortunately...Will we ever learn?

How Lyoshka was arrested

2008-11-27T13:19:00.000-08:00

I borrowed "The Gulag Archipelago" from the library today, and when I leafed through it and found the page where the author mentions the various creative methods of arrest, I recalled Lyoshka telling Maksim/me once how he was arrested. He was sitting on the sofa in his flat that day, I was sitting opposite him and we talked about various things. I don't know what exactly we talked about, but all of a sudden Lyoshka started to tell me how he was approached by a young man with a bandaged hand once; the young man asked him for help with "the big box he had to take home", and when Lyoshka followed him to a little side street, the young man suddenly flashed the red KGB (?) passport at him and told him that he was arrested - for the terrible crime of telling a political joke! He was accompanied to his place to pick up a few belongings, and then transported to one of the labour camps, probably in Vorkuta.

I can clearly "see" Lyoshka sitting on the sofa, staring at his hands, folded in his lap, and telling me in a flat, emotionless, matter-of-fact tone that probably helped him keep an emotional distance to those things, how he had been arrested. My heart ached for him because he looked so sad and I wished I could help him, but I didn't quite know what to say, so I just squeezed out a muffled "Lyoshka, if there's anything I can do for you..." But Lyoshka only nodded and said, "You're a fine fellow, Maksimka, it's alright", then he drew a deep breath and suggested going for a walk in the park. I sensed that he didn't want to discuss the matter any further, and that perhaps a walk would be the best thing for him, so I agreed, jokingly making him promise that he wouldn't force me to play chess with anyone. He patted my shoulder and laughed, of course he would never make me do that! Then he gave my arm a slight squeeze and said, "Thank you", and then we didn't talk about the matter again. None of us ever asked, as we didn't want to open up old wounds. Lyoshka seemed to get over it quite well that way, though he was prone to bouts of depression every now and then. When this happened, we usually took him for a walk or invited him over for dinner - whatever was within the scope of our possibilities and whatever we hoped would distract him a little...

A miniature memory triggered by a photo

2008-11-26T14:33:00.000-08:00

My dear fellow blogger and friend sent me a few links, asking if they triggered any memories; the one that jumped out at me was this one. We had winters like that in Chelyabinsk like that, and I clearly remember lying in bed one night in winter as the storm howled round the house and piled up the snow; I was warm and comfortable in my bed under the thick, soft blankets, and I thought back with gratitude, remembering those horrible winters of my childhood during the war, when coal had often been scarce and the houses were not heated; Natasha, Mama and I used to crawl into bed together fully dressed, piling all available blankets, coats and what else came in handy on top of ourselves, trying with little success to stay warm. The pipes sometimes burst because the water froze in them, and I think a considerable number of people died from the cold each winter. It probably aggravated our mother's respiratory ailment (brought on, as my friend suggested, by handling dangerous substances in a chemical plant?) and contributed to her early death.

Roughly twenty years later, this was a thing of the past, and I was very glad about that and could definitely appreciate it. Who cared if the window in my room was a bit draughty and that our flat was lacking in some other aspects as well? At least we were warm and protected from the elements! If only our mother had lived long enough to see those better times...

The biggest hot water bottle in the world

2008-11-18T14:18:00.000-08:00

Just spent a few quiet minutes looking at the photos in the wonderful ZIL Gallery (I must really be a sad case, as I love looking at them!), and the picture of the ZIL radiator set off another little memory.

On an especially cold day in winter, Maksim made a local delivery, and while he was waiting for the papers to be processed (asking him to come in would have been too much of a favour, thank you very much, guys!) he stood next to his truck at least, but after a while the cold began to seep through his valenki and his warm winter clothes. So he started pacing up and down, rubbing his gloved hands, and then he had an idea - he sat down on the bumper and leaned his back against the radiator, which had become quite hot from pulling a heavy load through the deep snow. The heat soon seeped through his coat and warmed his back and kidneys, making him feel very good and almost comfortable, considering the circumstances. He briefly considered lighting a cigarette, but decided he'd have to take off his mitten to do that - having warm hands won over having a smoke, so it must have been really cold :-)

Thousands cranes flying in at Linum/Brandenburg

2008-11-18T12:56:00.001-08:00

Saw another flock of cranes the other day, and it was huge...I had thought the one I had seen two weeks ago was large, but this enormous flock passed over us as well. I was at work at the time and heard them calling despite the closed windows, so I found an excuse to go to the copier and peer out of the window at all those birds :-)

They're nothing directly past-life related, of course, but I wanted to share this video with my faithful readers. Besides, I'm still very fond of them...good luck and have a safe journey, you cranes! We'll see you again in spring!

Tango "Magnolia"

2008-11-14T13:36:00.000-08:00

A little flashback that I had today - it's a Sunday afternoon in summer, around 1965. I'm sitting at the kitchen table with Belyanka on my lap, and Vadim, in a white shirt and tie, is carefully combing his hair in front of the small rectangular mirror hung on a nail over the kitchen sink. He's humming the "Tango 'Magnolia'", a song he loves because it reminds him of the dance where he first met Natasha.
They're going to a dance this afternoon, really looking forward to it, and I've promised to look after Belyanka and go to the park with her. It must be a really special occasion for the two, since the last time I've seen Vadim wear a tie must have been for their wedding.
Natasha comes into the kitchen, wearing a flower-patterned dress in which she looks very pretty; it's not the kind of dress a normal citizen would get in a shop, but Yuroshka's mother helped her sew it - the fabric probably came from one of Vadim's "connections". She had put her hair on curlers earlier, and now she looks quite different with curly hair which she has adorned with some small artifical flowers.
She proceedds to tell me what do do ("make some rice when you come back from the park and you can eat that with the meat balls left over from yesterday, and make sure Belyanka puts on her coat and gets some rest after eating..."); I inwardly roll my eyes and think "As if we didn't know that already!" but don't say a thing.

Vadim turns round to Natasha, putting his comb down on the sink, and asks her: "Do I look alright?" She nods and smoothes down the lock of hair over Vadim's forehead that just won't stay in place, no matter what he does. Of course that doesn't help, and so she gives up and hands him his jacket instead. Natasha jokingly admonishes us: "And don't do anything stupid, you two," as she walks out of the door, to which Belyanka tells her not to worry, she will keep an eye on Uncle Maksim. I threaten to tickle her, and she slips off my lap with a squeal and runs to fetch her cosmonaut doll. We go to the park, I buy her something (a balloon, or a bag of snacks?) and later we go home, have rice and meatballs, and quietly spend the rest of the day at home or outside the house. Maybe we visited Lyoshka later on - I don't remember doing that, but perhaps we did, since he always loved having visitors and he and Belyanka were very fond of each other. So we all had a nice day, Vadim and Natasha at the dance and Belyanka and I at home!

Snapshots

2008-11-11T11:22:00.000-08:00

This post won't contain any significant revelations, but just some little snapshots I thought worth noting down, even if they don't bring up anything interesting.

First one - Belyanka, still a baby, is lying in her cot in the living-room. She is bundled up tightly, like all Russian babies at the time, she's awake and looking around. Vadim comes in, tea glass in his hand, sets the glass down on the table and peers into the cot. When he notices that Belyanka is awake, he tickles her cheek, coos sweet nonsense to her and is delighted when she makes funny noises back at him. Then he bends over her, pokes her nose with his and keeps on doing that, since she clearly enjoys it. He loved his little daughter very much and would have loved having more children, but sadly, he and Natasha just couldn't have more...

The other one - I put on some salt water in my favourite cooking pot some minutes ago, since I wanted to cook some rice. All of a sudden I see a different pair of hands filling a similar pot at a different sink in a tiny kitchen in Chelyabinsk, and I suddenly realise why this old pot is my favourite pot - it probably reminds me of the ones we had back in Maksim's time! It could be old enough for that, or almost...

Still making good progress with learning Russian; sometimes I look at a sentence, feeling I should understand it even though it contains new words, and if I'm lucky they suddenly come back. It doesn't always work, unfortunately, but I'm glad everytime it does!

"Chez Lyoshka"

2008-11-04T02:48:00.001-08:00

This is not a memory as such, just a (very vivid) image that flashed through my mind as I was falling asleep last night. I saw how Lyoshka used to lay the table each time I came to his after school; there was a worn sofa on the right as you entered the room, and the small, equally worn table in front of it, made of dark wood and from the 1920s or 1930s, judging by its style. There was an armchair in the far corner of the room, it usually stood by the window because Lyoshka loved sitting in it and reading if he was at home during daytime; he used to pull either that up to the table or fetch a chair if we ate together. I think the table usually stood on the left, with a few chairs around it, or was there a second small table? I really don't know. For some reason we always ate there, maybe it was more comfortable...

Anyway, whenever I (or another visitorI came to his place, Lyoshka took great pains to lay the table nicely, to make it look appealing. He used to put a white tablecloth with blue flowers on it - embroidered, either by Natasha or Yuroshka's mother as a "welcome home" gift after Lyoshka had returned from Vorkuta - then white plates with faded pink flowers and perhaps a faded gilt rim (from the same era as the table I'd say), fork, knife and teaspoon neatly arranged next to and above the plate, and of course the omnipresent tea glasses.
Lyoshka usually served potato salad in a porcelain bowl, with treats like herring in jelly put on heavy cut-glass dishes that must have been quite old as well; as I type this I get the impression that all those things had been handed down to him from his French-speaking grandparents. I don't know what happened to them, but perhaps they were quite well-to-do before the revolution and could afford all that fancy cutlery.
Lyoshka was the most modest person I can think of, and it wasn't that he used those things for showing off; he just liked using them and he liked it when a laid table looked nice. Natasha used to tease Vadim and me at times, saying she wished we were a bit less like pigs and a bit more like Lyoshka; of course she was exaggerating, though, our manners weren't really that bad!

Picture of a triangular letter and another memory of Lyoshka

2008-11-01T01:41:00.000-07:00

I've finally managed to locate a picture of a triangular letter like the ones Maksim's father used to send home from the war! This photo (taken from this site) looks exactly like the ones I remember reading in this memory.
It was nice to have a confirmation for the mental image I was having!

Another thing - in a German forum for students of Russian I read that single letters are often pronounced in the French way in Russian if you're speaking of chess moves or pronouncing chemical formulas. This brought forth another flashback:

Maksim is at Lyoshka's again one day after school doing his homework. He often goes there if nobody else is at home and Lyoshka has already returned from work (lecturing at the polytechnical university), as they both enjoy each other's company and Maksim sometimes feels a bit lonely if he's in the flat all by himself. In that memory he's fourteen or fifteen years old.
It's a cold, wet day and Maksim is glad to get inside as Lyoshka opens the door of his tiny flat for him. He rubs his hands, takes off his coat (which Lyoshka takes out of his hands and puts on the coat rack), picks up his satchel and goes into the living-room, where Lyoshka has already prepared some tea and a light snack (blini, I think).
Maksim sits down on the worn couch and takes out his books, exercise books, pencil case and ruler, and Lyoshka comes in with the teapot, pours some tea for both of them and asks what they have learned at school that day. Maksim tells him, and Lyoshka listens intently, his head slightly inclined to one side as he always does when he's concentrating on something.
Maksim talks about some chemical substances they have heard about that day, and he asks: "Why are those pronounced in such a weird way? It makes no sense!" Lyoshka smiles and tells him that's French, and Maksim asks: "How do you know? Do you speak French?" Lyoshka tells him that it's the same in chess, and besides, yes, he does speak a bit of French because his grandparents used to speak the language quite well and taught it to him. He sighs, saying "Unfortunately I forgot most of it", and when Maksim asks him what he still knows, Lyoshka teaches him a few words, such as "bonjour" or merci". Maksim has fun trying out those strange words, but he has some trouble with the pronunciation. He smiles at Lyoshka and says: "I think I'd better stick to Russian, that's one language I don't mangle too much..."

Enter Vadim, stage left

2008-10-18T06:11:00.000-07:00

Another memory of Vadim - and a very enjoyable one as well!

I think Vadim and Natasha had known each other for some time; maybe they had chatted a few times or even gone for a walk together, but nothing more serious. Then Vadim left to do his military service, and while he was away our mother died, either of tuberculosis or, as a friend of mine suggested, of a respiratory ailment brought on by handling dangerous chemicals in the factory where she worked without any protection (as it was usual then).
One early ev,ening in 1949 or early 1950 Natasha and I were at home when suddenly there was a knock at the door. Natasha rose to answer it, closely followed by her curious little brother, and when she opened the door she discovered a slim, handsome young man with black hair, wearing a light coat and a cloth cap which he had, of course taken off and now held it in his hand.
He looked a bit sheepish when Natasha didn't recognise him at first, then he explained: "I'm Vadim (father's name - can't remember it unfortunately!)...I've heard that your mother has died and I wanted to tell you that I'm very sorry and ask if I can help you in anyway." Natasha replied that it was very kind of him and asked him to come in, calling over her shoulder "Maksimka, put the kettle on, please!" I did, straining my ears to hear what they were talking about, but it seemed that Natasha just took Vadim's coat and put it on the coat rack, then led him into the tiny living-room and bade him sit down on the sofa. She fetched three tea glasses and the sugar bowl and apologised for not having expected a visitor, else she would have baked some pancakes. Vadim said it didn't matter, and they made some small talk until I joined them. He also asked me a few question, what my name was, if I liked playing football, how I did at school and so on. I don't know how the rest of the evening went, but it was very nice, and when he got ready to leave, Natasha asked Vadim to come round more often.

This he did; he usually knocked at our living-room or kitchen window (our flat was on the ground floor), and when we turned round to look he'd sometimes duck and just hold up the flowers he had picked for Natasha, or he'd put his cap on the other way around and make a funny face to make me laugh. We actually looked forward to hearing that knock at the window, as we knew that it announced one of Vadim's visits, and those cheered us up enormously. He was such a kind and cheerful soul; later on I realised how silly it had been to be jealous of him when it turned out that he was going to marry Natasha, but I was a little boy of ten or eleven then who lacked the maturity or understanding...

Vadim, the orthography expert

2008-10-17T12:37:00.000-07:00

One afternoon I sat at the kitchen table, either writing a letter or filling out a form. I was sitting in my usual place, in the corner with my face to the door and the wall that separated the kitchen and my tiny bedroom on my right.
The paper I was writing on was rather rough, not the best quality and not really bleached either, and I was writing with a pencil (striped red and black?). I was wearing one of my usual chequered shirts, blue and black or a darker blue, and dark trousers, but no jumper over the shirt, so perhaps it wasn't winter yet.
Vadim came in, poured himself a glass of tea from the samovar, took a sip from it and then set the glass down next to the samovar, which stood next to the sink, on the right. (It was, if I remember correctly, an electrical one - luxury of luxuries!) He craned his neck to see what I was doing, but since he couldn't see properly, he squeezed himself behind me and looked over my shoulder, just as I signed whatever I had been writing with my full name, Maksim Nikolayevich Aleksashkin.
Vadim said, "But you're doing it wrong," and when I asked him what he meant he explained: "A gnome like you shouldn't write his name with a capital letter, a small letter would be just enough." I raised my arm, slapping his chest with the back of my hand, and said "Dimwit!", to which he replied "Bigger dimwit!", and we bantered and playfully insulted each other for a while. We loved those little exchanges, it was so much fun!

Some nice snapshots of Chelyabinsk

2008-10-16T01:49:00.001-07:00

The more modern buildings in this video are totally unfamiliar, of course, but I liked the other pictures - they definitely convey the atmosphere and "klimat" of the Chelyabinsk I knew!

Wallpaper ghosts of the past

2008-10-14T06:09:00.000-07:00

Seeing that wallpaper at a place where I'm teaching Latin as a stand-in at the moment made me laugh out loud - that wallpaper wouldn't have looked out of place in Chelyabinsk in the 1950s and 1960s at all! The wallpaper in our flat and in those of the people we knew wasn't as colourful, but if we'd had the means and the materials, we would probably have got the same kind!
Unfortunately the staircase where this wallpaper is found is very dark, and I had to use a flash that reflected on the wallpaper. But I didn't want to take all my photo equipment with me and set it up, I don't think my employer would have been so happy if any of the people living in the house told them that they caught me taking pictures of wallpaper...

It was a bit difficult to photograph it, the flash distorted the colours a bit, and without a flash it was too dark because of the backlighting. But nevertheless, another fine example of the kind of interior design we would have loved back then!
The colours aren't as bright and red in reality, that must have been caused by the flash. But it still gives the onlooker a good impression of what that wallpaper looks like!

Edit: I saw the first flying cranes for this year the other day, but that sight doesn't make me sad anymore, not like it always used to...Maybe that is because I now know what they remind me of, and because I know that my former long-lost father is reincarnated now, alive and well, and that he and his wife have been given more time together in this life. I'm very glad for them!

Remember the wheels!

2008-10-14T01:47:00.001-07:00

I found the poster on the left on the A Soviet Poster a Day blog;
it says: "Mind/remember the wheels" and below the illustration: "In the year 1925, 200 people died under the tramway".
It instantly looked familiar, and a corresponding memory followed a few days later. When I was little (as Maksim), the poster already was some twenty years old, but you could still see one or two, at the station if I remember correctly. I think they were put up at the platforms, to make sure people stayed well away from the tracks.
The poster impressed me a lot, and since I was still so young, the skull scared me quite badly at first. I can't remember seeing the poster again later in life, but apparently we had all seen and memorised it. So much indeed that we used "Mind the wheels" in the sense of "I'm coming, get out of the way", when carrying something heavy or unwieldy. But I think that was just limited to our little group of friends, though it may be that it was also used in the factory for which I worked as a truck driver.

Processed cheese, the food of heroes!

2008-10-12T09:41:00.000-07:00

One fine Sunday (?) afternoon we all gathered at Lyoshka's flat to listen to a football match on the radio, drinking tea and eating snacks as usual. The match was rather exciting, so the snacks and tea remained virtually untouched as we all listened intently to what the reporter was saying. After the match, however, we felt hungry and decided it was time for a snack. Vanya had brought a packet of crackers, Lyoshka had made some tea and had contributed the jam to put in it, Vadim had brought a packet of processed cheese and I a jar of something, most likely pickled gherkins.
Vadim put the processed cheese on the table and started to peel off the tinfoil it was wrapped in; not an easy task, as the stuff was rather sticky. He wondered aloud what it was made of, and soon we were all developing the most interesting (or rather, disgusting) theories as to the origins of that processed cheese. It was a good thing that Natasha wasn't there, she would probably have shot us some of her scathing glances and spoiled all the fun :-)

Wayfarer: Chelyabinsk

2008-10-06T04:18:00.001-07:00

An interesting video - I wish they had shown more of the city, but the landscape looks very familiar, too. The "hunting and gathering" mentioned in the video is something I remember as well - it was a popular activity for us back then, too!

A piece of advice and a crow on the cradle

2008-09-29T14:34:00.000-07:00

Another memory that came to me while driving - I had been suspecting that there was another one in the making because the "Song of the Front Driver" had been stuck in my mind for a few days. When that happens with a song that Maksim knew, that is a sure thing that something new is coming up...

Driving across the country this morning, the engine of my car was a bit sluggish at first - quite normal after a cold, damp night. I was driving up a steep slope, out of the thick mist in the valley and into the sunlight. I stepped on the gas a bit too hard, and the engine roared in protest, as it still was cold. (If it had been warm, it would have mastered that slope without problems. I'm a rather experienced driver, spending a lot of time behind the wheel each week, but sometimes you have those "senior moments"...)
Suddenly I saw myself back in the ZIL's cab, on a similarly cold and damp morning, driving around with the instructor at my side. Again, I can clearly "see" the bigger, probably wooden steering wheel, the olive-green dashboard and the old-fashioned speedometer and other dials with their black faces and white numbers and hands, the red button that I guess is the differential lock. One detail that catches my mind's eye is the plain ignition key, looking relatively small to me, and with a piece of twiested wire looped through it instead of a keyring. There may have been a tab on the key stating which vehicle it belonged to, but I'm not entirely sure about that.

In the flashback, I also step on the gas too hard, and the engine makes the same strained noises that the engine of my car made this morning. The instructor turns to me and says: "Moshka, an engine is just like a woman, you have to warm them up properly before you get what you want from them." He blinks at me in a knowing way, and I, beardless youth of eighteen that I am, wink back, hoping he doesn't realise that I'm still a total novice in those matters and haven't even held hands with a girl yet. (Not that I had much interest in girls or in sex of any kind as Maksim anyway...) The funny thing is, I heard the first part in Russian, in the instructor's deep and slightly hoarse voice, and the second part in English in my "mind's voice". Maybe my mind switched languages in mid-sentence because it realised that I hadn't learned (or rather, re-learned) all the Russian words in the second part and would not be able to remember them. Who knows in what mysterious ways our minds work at times?

A song I hadn't listened to or thought of for ages came to my mind as I came home tonight, Jackson Browne's "The Crow on the Cradle". My mother had another version of it on a record, sung by an unknown folk singer. That song always fascinated me, and I think it was one of the first I taught myself on the guitar. I googled it because I thought it hadn't popped up without a reason, and realised for the first time that it was about the Cold War. Did the original version, by whoever recorded it, come out during Maksim's lifetime, was it ever played on Radio Free Europe, and did Maksim ever hear it? Would he have known enough English to understand the lyrics, let alone the meaning behind them? Or did it just fascinate me so much because some part of my mind understood what it was about, only I didn't consciously realise it? I can't say...

Edit: I found out earlier this morning that "The Crow on the Cradle" was first recorded by Pete Seeger in 1961, so there would have been plenty of time for Maksim to hear it on the radio. Could it be that they had the speaker translate, or at least give the gist of, topically important songs meant to deliver a message, before they were played?

Of the difficulty of downshifting

2008-09-24T23:14:00.000-07:00

Another memory of the first driving experience after getting my license - again, it came to me as I was driving along a country road with some trucks in front of me and another one behind.

I could clearly "see" the olive-green or brown uniform-style shirt I was wearing, sleeves rolled up and a packet of cigarettes in the left breast pocket. The trousers I was wearing were of a similar, perhaps slightly darker, colour, and I think I wore ankle-high laced black boots.
It was during the first hour or so of the journey when I was still very nervous; I had to wipe my sweaty hands on the trouser leg every now and then so I wouldn't lose my grip on the wheel. We went up a slight slope - calling it a hill would be too much, as it really was just a rise of the ground - but it was high enough to slow down our heavily-loaded vehicles. I wanted to downshift, stepped on the clutch and grabbed the gearstick, but I must have got the wrong gear; all that happened was a nasty grinding noise and so I hastily flipped back the gearstick in its former position, hoping the engine wouldn't stall (how embarrassing!!!!).
I drew a deep breath and tried again, but with the same result. So I gave the instructor a helpless look, fully expecting a dressing-down from him, but he just gave me a little reassuring smile, said "Step on the clutch" and engaged the correct gear for me.
I suppose I didn't manage to do it properly out of nervousness; the gearshift of the ZIL was more complicated than the ones commonly found in cars, but I had already become quite good in using it. But that had been when I was alone, or just with the instructor, and not while driving in a column with vehicles in front of me and behind me...

Return of a Lost Friend

2008-09-17T13:19:00.000-07:00

I've already mentioned that our friend Lyoshka was imprisoned (probably for "sedition") in the early 1950s and pardoned after Stalin's death; I feel he may have been at Vorkuta, but I'm not sure, as he hardly ever spoke about it and we never bothered him about it, not wanting to upset him and bring everything back.

The memory I had today was one of meeting Lyoshka at the station when he returned from wherever he had been; Vadim had never talked much about him while Lyoshka was imprisoned, most likely because he feared for his and our safety if the "wrong" kind of people heard of him being associated with an "enemy of the people". But when it became known that all those imprisoned by the Stalinist regime would be pardoned, he somehow learned that Lyoshka was among them, and in some way or the other he also found out when Lyoshka would return to Chelyabinsk.
We went to the station to meet him; the train that arrived not soon afterwards was full of people, and Vadim had to crane his neck, looking everywhere for his friend. He finally spotted him in a crowd of elderly women, a pale, skinny, red-headed, bespectacled young man in a tattered grey coat clutching a small, equally tattered-looking brown leather suitcase. He looked a bit lost, perhaps he expected nobody to meet him and perhaps he didn't quite know where to go yet. When Vadim spied him, he started towards him at a trot, apologising to some people he bumped into. When he reached his friend he couldn't hold back his tears; he hugged Lyoshka, who had dropped his suitcase in surprise, and repeated over and over again: "I didn't think I'd see you again!" It was only then that Natasha and I realised how hard it must have been for Vadim not to speak about his friend's fate, and how he must have worried about him. Lyoshka didn't say much; perhaps he was still dazed and surprised. Vadim took him by the arm, picking up the small suitcase, and led him towards us to introduce us to each other.

I don't remember anything else, but I think we let Lyoshka live in our flat for the first few weeks, until he managed to find a place of his own. He insisted on doing so as soon as possible, as he didn't want to bother us (not that we minded, of course!), and fortunately he soon found a job as well. We were glad that things finally turned out well for him, as we got to like him very much; we could definitely understand why he was Vadim's best friend!

The Golden Fish

2008-09-16T14:27:00.000-07:00

On a chilly autumn day not unlike this one our friend Lyoshka came to visit us; Natasha and Vadim had probably invited him over for dinner. I can't say when exactly that was, but my mind insists that I was 21 or 22 at the time, so that would be 1962, give or take a year.
Belyanka was overjoyed, and when "Uncle Lyoshka" came in she immediately persuaded him to read her a story. She loved listening to Lyoshka because he was very good at reading aloud, he got the intonations and everything just right...the poor chap hardly ever got away without reading a story to her!

The story he chose was "The Golden Fish", a story about a fisherman catching a golden fish that granted him three wishes; when Lyoshka reached that part of the story, Belyanka proceeded to tell him the wishes she would ask from the golden fish if she ever caught it. Then she asked us what we would want, and before anyone else could say a thing, Natasha (standing in the doorframe wearing a faded white apron with blue stripes, as she had probably just been cooking) drily replied: "I would ask the fish to bring some brains for my brother."
I pretended not to know what she was talking about, but Vadim grinned and said something I don't remember. I suppose he was about to bring up the old story about the "balloons" again, or perhaps another one of my glorious youthful deeds :-)

While doing a web search for the "Golden Fish" I came across this Wikipedia article; I have to admit that I found it quite fascinating that there was a 1950 animated film about it, and the picture looks very familiar indeed!

To live and die for chess...

2008-09-07T03:42:00.000-07:00

Sometimes flashback triggers have a direct connection to past-life events, but sometimes the most unlikely things can apparently bring forth another memory! What did it for me was hearing the 1980s song "One Night in Bangkok" on the radio as I was driving home yesterday; it's about a chess enthusiast who cares for little else but his game. In other words, he was just like our Lyoshka! :-) We often used to tease him that his erotic dreams, if he had any, would probably consist of very clever chess moves...

Thinking about all this for the rest of the trip brought up another memory that has to do with the entry about the "Star Diaries" - one day in summer I wasn't at work for some reason (Holiday, or had the goods I was to transport not been delivered yet?), so I could go shopping for Lyoshka. The poor chap had sprained his ankle slipping on the steps in front of his house some days ago, and while getting to work was no problem, standing in line at the Univermag with a sprained ankle wasn't much fun. So I offered to do that for him; the flashback begins with me walking along the corridor to the door of his flat carrying one of those plastic shopping nets that painfully cut the circulation in your fingers and made your fingertips turn cold and blue if you carried them in the same hand for too long. I hated those, but for some reason we never had another, better alternative...
The net is full of bottles (milk, a few bottles of beer because he's expecting us for the football match on Sunday, there's going to be one on the radio), a few square loaves of bread, some tins, a few bags or packages of tea and a bag of biscuits. The tins and bottles clink against each other as I walk down the corridor, and I wonder if Lyoshka is going to hear that, if they're going to announce that I'm coming. Indeed, he must have heard because he opens the door just as I'm digging for his key in my pocket. (I think we all had keys of each other's flats, so we didn't have to hunt for one in case we needed one.)

Lyoshka greets me, leaning on the stick he had borrowed, as his ankle still doesn't carry his full weight and it's easier for him to walk like that. I follow him into the kitchen, placing the net on the small, white-painted table, catching a milk bottle at the last moment just as it is about to roll off the table.
Lyoshka thanks me and invites me to sit down on the living-room sofa for a mug of tea before I go home again. I gladly accept since I enjoy his company and it reminds me of those afternoons we used to spend together after school, all those times when he helped me with my homework.
Lyoska goes to the kitchen, and I hear him fill the kettle and light the gas stove. Then he returns to the living-room and takes a small, square package wrapped in brown paper from the small, dark brown sideboard. He walks over to me and says, "My colleague (name?) gave this to me; I already know it, so I thought you might like it." He hands it over to me, explaining that it's "a little thank-you for your help". I open the wrapping and find this book, Stanislaw Lem's "Star Diaries"! I know Lyoshka doesn't earn much, being an "intellectual", so I ask him if he really didn't have to spend any money for it (I would have felt very bad if he'd done that), and since he says he was also given the book for free, I gratefully accept it.

The water boils, so Lyoshka returns to the kitchen and I leaf through the book. It looks promising, and I can't wait to read it! Since I'm so delighted with having it, I make a mental note of getting a little treat for Lyoshka, something he'll really enjoy. Maybe I can get Vadim to procure a pretty chessboard for him!

"Song of the Front Driver"

2008-09-06T00:49:00.000-07:00

Looking for songs by Mark Bernes, another singer and actor popular in Maksim's time (first mentioned here), I came across another one of his songs, the 1945 "Песенка фронтового шофёра", or "Song of the Front Driver". The song resonated very deeply with me, so I looked for the lyrics and translated them (with the help of Google Language Tools, I have to admit, since my Russian still isn't so advanced yet). Reading the translated lyrics triggered another memory, one of hearing that song somewhere (on the radio in someone else's flat, most likely) as a small child. The song immediately captured my imagination, and I wondered if my father had been like the brave driver in the song who "never let go of the wheel" even in the most dangerous situations. I used to picture him driving through enemy territory with his best friend Grisha at his side, and I wished once more that I had a picture of him so I could know what he really looked like. My image of my father was based on the one memory I have of him, and on the recollection of people that had known him, people like Yuroshka's mother. Of course it was an idealised one, but perhaps that was because I had never really known him...

An accidental discovery

2008-09-04T03:12:00.000-07:00

Finally found another bit of confirmation - as I've mentioned elsewhere, I've always been fascinated by Stanislaw Lem's "Star Diaries", and when I read them some months ago (in the German translation, of course) some of the stories seemed pretty familiar. But I could never find definite proof that the book was around in Maksim's time.

This morning, however, I made an interesting discovery - I had wanted to look up the "Star Diaries" in the Russian Wikipedia because I wanted to tell a Russian pen friend about the book and wasn't sure how the name "Ijon Tichy" was spelled in Cyrillic.
I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw this cover from 1961 (you can find the article in Russian here) - that really looks very familiar! I was pleased to find a list of the individual stories and the year of their publication in Russian; will check my copy later and see if the stories I liked best and found most familiar are indeed the ones that were published during Maksim's lifetime.

I was especially pleased to see that the book was available in the Soviet Union as early as 1961, as I was sure that it was very familiar to Maksim and he read it very often. When I look at the picture of the 1961 edition, I can "see" Maksim's copy, the cheap binding falling apart but lovingly glued back together, several times perhaps, the greyish, coarse paper, going a bit yellow at the edges, and I have flashbacks of reading it in bed at night, or in the cab of my truck, enjoying the accounts of Ijon Tichy's travels, giggling at the satire and wondering forever what a "sepulki" is. (Ijon Tichy never finds out what a sepulki is, when he looks it up in the Cosmic Encyclopedia it says "SEPULKI - an important element of Ardrite civilization (see there) from the planet Enteropiya (see there). See SEPULKARII ". When he does that he finds the entry: "SEPULKARII - sepuleniya device (see there)". He looks that up as well and finds the entry: "SEPULENIE - Ardrite occupation (see there) from the planet Enteropiya (see there). See "SEPULKI ". So he's back to where he started from...)

Incidentally, "тихий" (tichij), the Russian word for "quiet", from which the intrepid space traveller's surname is derived, has always been one of my favourite Russian words...

Bright blue eyes

2008-09-01T12:54:00.001-07:00

Met the man who I think was Maksim's father today - he's my Russian teacher's husband, and it seems that Fate gave them a chance to spend another lifetime as a married couple, without being so brutally separated after only a few short years this time. The thought makes me very happy for them!

I've known him for some years, but strangely enough I have never noticed that he has extremely bright blue eyes, a colour you don't see very often. Finally noticing that (after how many years? Four? Five? Well, duh!) set off another memory. While there was more "action" in the earlier memories, the "facts" now seem to come forward; but that's fine for me as well!
It made me remember that Belyanka inherited her grandfather's bright blue eyes; Natasha had brown eyes and Maksim green ones, like his mother. Yuroshka's mother often said that Belyanka had "Kolya's eyes" and she told us once that she had first noticed Kolya because of his unusual eye colour, but it was short, slightly bow-legged Grisha who managed to capture her heart. The four (Yuroshka's mother, Grisha, Kolya and Lena, Maksim's and Natasha's mother) remained great friends during the rest of their lives; Yuroshka's mother was the last survivor of the quartet, and since she extended her love to Natasha and Maksim, she always was a great help and a trustworthy friend to them, too, something that was very important in those difficult times!

Another memory of a lost father

2008-08-31T05:41:00.000-07:00

I have mentioned before that both Maksim's and his best friend Yuroshka's father lost their lives in the war. Driving home from work yesterday, I finally had a revelation that brought forth more details. The two men were very close friends who spent a lot of time in each other's company; when they were drafted into the army they made sure they served in the same unit as well. The last flashback shows that they, too, were drivers; Kolya, Maksim's father, drove a supply truck, usually accompanied by his friend Grisha, Yuroshka's father. (Their full names were Grigorij and Nikolaj, but nobody ever called them by those names...)
This is why they died together as well when hidden mine detonated under the weight of their truck, killing them both instantly. They probably didn't suffer much; that was at least a small consolation to the ones they'd left behind. We were told that my father had been at the wheel when it happened, with Grisha sitting on the passenger seat; but that's all the information we got.

Pondering all this, it suddenly occurred to me that the man I suspect to have been Maksim's father drives very carefully despite never having had an accident in this life; experiencing such a death would make anyone be more careful even in lives to come, I suppose!
This must be the reason why I wasn't altogether pleased as Maksim when I was told I had been picked to become one of the new drivers; I must have wondered if the same thing would happen to me. But in the end I discovered that driving one of those new ZIL trucks was a lot of fun and it was safer as well - fortunately!

There aren't many things that make me cry, but when I had that revelation I couldn't help shedding a few tears, even though I hadn't really known my father in that life. However, if he's the man I'm "suspecting", it's good to have him back and to be able to spend some time in his company! How I would love asking him if he has any memories...but the time for that isn't there yet.

Starved for Entertainment

2008-08-26T12:57:00.000-07:00

Another flashback from the radar unit - somehow one of us managed to get his hands on a rickety film projector, not the large kind you'd get in a cinema, but a small, portable one. Heaven knows where he got it and why! He also managed to get his hands on one single film, an old chestnut from WW2 times with an immaculate hero who would always appear perfectly groomed, except in dramatic scenes, where he would look dramatically tousled; no matter if the situation demanded whacking those pesky Germans or breaking into song, he was master of it and did just the right thing in a jiffy, a true Soviet superhero! :-)

Under normal circumstances, we would have watched the film only once and then forgotten about it, but there was so precious little to do in our off-duty time that we watched it over and over again, and it even gained a kind of cult status, even though (or because?) we used to make fun of it and laugh our heads off over the many inconsistencies and the thickly-laid-on patriotism - the latter when no superiors or known telltales were within earshot, of course!
We used to put up a sheet for a screen in the Nissen hut-type building that served us as a "mess", and after everybody had pulled up a stool or a crate to sit on, the show would begin. The film often broke when the projector got stuck, and then the loose end would smack against the case of the projector, accompanied by the muffled curses of the projectionist - he had a very interesting vocabulary in situations like those! This fellow - I don't remember his name, only that the (pet) name he was addressed with ended in "-chik" - was quite gentle and polite in normal life, but he knew the vilest curses I ever heard, and freely used them when the projector, or one of the machines and appliances he handled while on duty, did not cooperate...

I think there were some songs in the film as well, and we soon knew them by heart and made our own versions of them (not always printable, of course, but we were young men cooped up with too much energy that had to go somewhere!). Mark Berness may have played a leading role in that film, but it was not the one that the song "Любимый город" ("Beloved City") was from.