Part One – There
(Eastern Hemisphere)
CHAPTER FIFTY NINE – THE NEW OLD ACQUAINTANCE
Unexpectedly, I found out that I would meet a girl this month. Well, I meet her if I’ll try. And I wanted this to happen. She should had to come to pick up her grandmother and take her to Moscow.
From the age of six, I knew her mother Anna, aunt Iza, grandfather Boris and grandmother Teitl (in Russian – Tanya), who lived in our yard. Although it would be more correct to say that these were we, who moved into their yard.
Their grandfather Boris was from Lodz. When my mother’s mother Sofa settled with us, they found many common themes with her fellow countryman. After the war, he became a fashionable men’s tailor, and former front-line officers paid him for sewing suits with captured valuables instead of money. Grandfather had a dream – to buy a small private house with a garden. To achieve this, he accumulated valuables in a small suitcase (a briefcase), in which men carried a towel, washcloth and fresh linen to the bathhouse at those years in USSR. After long years of work, the suitcase got filled, and the family was preparing to exchange it together with their apartment of two rooms, a floor laid directly on the ground and a public toilet in the yard and for a small house on the mountain behind the train station.
But one day, which can hardly be called wonderful, grandfather was accused of tax violations and was arrested for three days in order to be thoroughly interrogated – what if something interesting would come up? At that time, people clearly understood that an arrest was followed by a search. It’s fortunate that they didn’t immediately search him, otherwise the suitcase with valuables would have been confiscated, and he would have had to pay bribes to avoid going to jail. When the grandfather was taking away, he said,
“Gein zu di kino Teitl, du zalst niht zein a nar! (Go to the cinema, Tanya, don’t be a fool!)
Grandma Tanya noticed that his eye was twitching like in an epileptic attack. After some perplexity, why would his eye twitch and why should she go to the cinema, she guessed that Boris was hinting at a prepared plan of action.
She took the suitcase and brought it to hide for a while with her best friends who lived nearby, near our “court” cinema “Tauris”. When Grandfather Boris was released three days later for lack of evidence of a crime, but promising to establish strict control over his “atelier,” he and Grandmother Tanya hurried to their friends with gratitude.
They greeted them with sobs – a terrible tragedy had occurred! They were robbed and two suitcases were taken away: a large old suitcase with dirty linen prepared for washing, and Boris’s small old suitcase, which they treasured like the apple of their eye. They didn’t even know what was in the suitcase, and therefore they couldn’t call the police, but now, Boris may report his lost…
Boris did not report to the police. Alas, “both no lost spoons were found, and the sediment has remained…”
So the dream of a house went out the window. They never recovered financially. The eldest daughter married a Tbilisi man, a military engineer, and went with him to Siberia. In the summer they visited their parents, and when I was in elementary or middle school, I saw their cute little girl Lilya. Then the boy Tolya. Then I played with the children in the summer; I demonstrated a sclerotic neighbor and her reaction to my stories about a mouse the size of a tiger; I hid with Grandmother Tanya when I didn’t protect my sister from burns. I went with the my neighbors’ youngest daughter Iza to the city pioneer camp, where she worked in the summer while studying in Moscow; I brought an embalmer from the Institute of Traumatology when grandfather Boris died, and now I found out that Lilya was coming to pick up old grandmother Tanya in Moscow.
I saw Lilya and Tolya a couple of years ago when I accidentally ran into them in the yard. They were already students, and we went for a walk together in the park on the Holy Mountain. And then I took them to their other grandmother, their father’s mother, who really liked me, and she immediately began to woo me to her granddaughter. I remember that Lilya laughed out of embarrassment then. I don’t know how she reacted to her grandmother’s words, but I apparently remembered something, and now, inspired by the conquest of all of Odessa, I decided that I should see the girl from my childhood.
Hah, she was already waiting for my visit! We hugged and kissed. My heart started beating slightly faster. The girl has grown and blossomed – blood with milk and my favorite eye shape!
“Take off your shoes,” I asked.
Lilya was surprised, but didn’t argue and took them off. I really liked this too. I walked almost close to her compared our heights.
“You’re all right for me!” I gave my verdict.
“Are you hinting at my height?” she asked.
“On the contrary, you are shorter than me, and I have the average male height.”
“But I’m taller than you!”
“Only morally,” I said and kissed her on the forehead, “You see, if I were shorter, I couldn’t have reached it. If you don’t mind, I will accompany you and entertain you all your days here.”
And the carousel started spinning…
Lilya came again for New Year. On a business trip. She managed to fit into the group of the Food Industry Research Institute, inspecting Georgian enterprises – a tea factory and a champagne wine factory. I also squeezed into their group and visited both of these places. It was very interesting to get acquainted with the production of products and participate in their tasting.
At the tea factory, I learned a “terrible secret” – the grades of Georgian tea depended on the percentage of Ceylon tea added. The more added, the higher the grade. The highest grade consisted half of export tea. The director sadly stated that with the introduction of a tea harvester, the quality of local tea has decreased significantly due to the speed and quantity of collection.
And at the champagne factory, almost all the Moscow inspectors got drunk: at the tasting, they could not afford to pour out a whole glass of champagne into a giant crystal bath. They drank all their glasses to the bottom.
Grandma Tanya had already moved in with her daughter, and Lilya was staying in her apartment.
“I want to have a lot of children, and you?” I said.
“How many is a lot?”
“Well, at least three, and not two, like everyone else.”
“I think three will suit me,” Lilya smiled.
“Then tell me, if I propose to you, will you agree?”
“What is this, a proposal?”
“No, for now it’s just gathering public opinion. I agree, and you?”
“And I agree.”
“Then marry me!”
I confess that the old bed, broken into pieces, is on my conscience.
When Lilya was flying home, I gave her a letter to my future father-in-law. I wrote that I couldn’t stand next to him and ask for his daughter’s hand in marriage, but I wanted to be present at least in some form (in the form of a message) when Lilya would be telling her parents about our plans.
Then I called Nataly in Odessa. I said that I would no longer write letters and raise unrealistic expectations by coming to visit, but I would remain her friend. I shared my news and Nataly wished me happiness. She was a brave and strong woman, I knew that for a long time.
“Promise not to refuse my parting gift. I knitted a white sweater for you as a keepsake of our closeness.”
I promised. And I kept my word. There is a photo of me in a white sweater filling out an application at the registry office. But this is the next chapter…
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