If You Squint Hard Enough
They used to place a kind of iron washing tubs by all the buildings at that time in order to let everyone wash their boots. In spring pools would crop out from nowhere even in the center of a town: whether asphalt sank, or something else happened. In short, slush came out; willy-nilly one stumbled there on his way. Right for that case they set such a trough with some water wherever possible, not unlike cow drinking bowl. But no cow would drink the water there from, too dirty it was.
So my Mom and I arrived to the town booted. Nothing special, they all wore boots then. I wouldn’t mention the boots if we didn’t walk half a day to come across the apartment block #35 at last. The house number was large; not the first one in the street! So we had to stamp for long to find it, a regular five-storey building made of grey brick. The entire street was full of builds alike, that’s why we had been looking for it a long time. I thought it to be a special house if I had been referred there: a major signboard or a line from the street to get to reception. Nothing of the kind!
An ordinary house stood there, just like the neighboring ones, up or down the street. When one doesn’t know a way it seems long to go, and we had been searching it for long. Mom had stopped passersby and asked for help, to tell us a way, and her voice was false. Not a pleading one or a plaintive voice, no, it sounded somewhat confused and helpless, as if she were a small girl, not my mother but a little sister. It perplexed me and I felt sick.
I could think of no alternative and just averted my face, as if I happened to stop there by accident, or as if I was passing by and stopped for a moment. One could simply linger on there to scour down his boots in a puddle or stand rubbing down one’s spectacles nearby. I’d started wearing glasses and that’s why they brought me to the town.
We got there in boots, though puddles got dry. The sun was shining on the washed toes of women’s half boots, or it might a broken glass of my recently new spectacles be sparkling. Many folk walked by in boots, but mine looked not the same, even after washing with a red rag from a trough. Mine had longer tops or there was something else about them. With the tops folded the boots looked even more preposterous, as if Puss’ in Boots.
And I wore spectacles at the time, when I first got to the town with Mom. And her topcoat, quite new one, bristled at her back in a rural way. That spring I had grown up and my sight weakened, so I had to wear glasses. Then Mom took a doctor’s referral to examine my eyes. I didn’t feel like examining them, and what’s the point of doing it, “If you squint hard enough, everything is beautiful–except you.” No need to entreat anybody and ask the folk! I was able to find the house # 35 myself and paced ahead not letting Mom finish speaking or hear out one. And she followed me in a hurry because that summer I’d turned up taller than Mom.
Then I used to call her “Mother” instead of my usual - Mom. I did so out-of-doors, and kept on calling her Mom when at home. And we went on along the street with my “Mother”-Mom to house #35. The builds were prolonged, somehow elongated to make one tired while passing them. And we dropped in a coffee shop signboarded Rocket, in a glass-faced cube. Maybe, Mom wished to treat me to something “town-like”, I don’t remember it except that she was devouring a cucumber salad with her eyes on a side plate a visitor had left.
Those were ordinary green cucumbers cut into slices, served up with sour cream or mayonnaise, I didn’t discern then, I’m afraid. I simply caught Mom’s covert glance at green cucumbers in spring in a left dish on the next table, as if in a reverie she had entered her second childhood, the starving time during the WWII.
And the doctor’s office proved to be right in the next building to the café. They had a signboard hung out there, one in small print.
…These days a sleeping accessories shop is to be found there, called Shlaffen Sie! or Guten Nacht!, something like this, German.
Into the Blue on New Year Eve or Slumber in Mother's Lap
I haven’t been to seaside for long. It had been long time since then and I forgot the sea smell. And a sea odor in Sharma-al-Sheikh was more perceptible than the waves’ rustle and one felt it earlier than would watch the sea.
…In my dream I had been swimming in sea so lightly and careless as ever did. I wouldn’t say I was swimming like a fish then, no, I enjoyed myself like a dolphin, so to say. And at the same moment I didn’t feel lonely. There was no dull feeling of a lone man. However, I was a man swimming in sea and I had a sensation of a man being not lonely. I had a feeling that I was in love and on the shore there was a girl waiting for me. And I knew that and I was so happy at the moment. And I was swimming quite happy there and I wouldn’t think of anything else. There was nothing more to desire but to drown one! So I was swimming then and enjoyed myself in my fancy dream where there was nothing but sea and me. And there I was full of joy as if I would drop off to sleep in my mother’s lap.
But I don’t remember it and I wouldn’t ask my mother about. Rather she wouldn’t remember it in any case and she would have felt uneasy. I don’t think she can recollect every detail nowadays, she is an elderly one. And she is better recalling some other details than I do. It seems that we have been living at different times.
And there was no time point at my sea. I don’t know if it was noon or evening there, so to say. Well, I felt sea around, sensed it and couldn’t tell the clock. One is happy while can’t tell the clock as a child. And I was enjoying the sea then: swimming, diving and turning over in water and I enjoyed it.
But it was not as pleasing as when I would have enjoyed with a girl. So I was swimming there and kept in mind that a girl was in love with me. Once one in love his mind would change. A man changes because of love and then he is out of his mind, so one lives as if dreaming. One can bathe in love, or swim in it and dive in. In my dream I enjoyed sea, and there I was in love with a girl I could not even envisage, and I was bathing in a not existing sea. Still I can recall trickles of water on my skin, beads of air to touch my eyes and me, full of joy. I was choking with joy there then.
…So, I arrived at Sharma-al-Sheikh waiting for such luck – love and good fortune. In the sea big liners were steaming on the very horizon there. On the shore there were girls eager to love. There was everything one needed to be happy, all but joy. There I was like a dolphin on shore; or rather I was like a mad dolphin that went aground. Though I liked the sea I was not free there, I felt no flight neither joy. I was just swimming around, forwards and backwards, far and wide, dived in water and watched the shore.
I might have watched a wrong side, not the sea direction, the horizon. Like a child I’d better look for luck behind a skyline.
But I had had my dream where I’d dissolved in sea with no wish to wake up. And I recalled my bathing as a flight at zero-gravity. And I was well-liked there, they just loved me there. And I was like a drop of love myself!
One can’t enter the same dream twice. And I had no joy at the sea. But they do love me – my Mum, not young any more, and my ever younger sister, then my brother and my son. And they are uneasy whenever I go into the blue. And I, unfaithful, forget them there, on the shore, where waves stir gently, and days are infinite and vacillating like winter nights in Russian country.
…And I am swimming along the moon way that leads nowhere. And I can’t swim away for one can’t leave oneself even in his dream. But I’d like to be drowned in sleep and awake in my mother’s lap – a little one, small like a dot.
And leave all the words behind.