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...
Sunday, June 27, 2010
Thursday, June 10, 2010
Quoting Maxim Gorki without having read him
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...
Thursday, May 27, 2010
Books
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!
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!
Wednesday, May 19, 2010
Fire and water
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...
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...
Thursday, April 29, 2010
More about Lyoshka and the moonlit wasteland
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...
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...
Friday, March 12, 2010
Orthography Olympics
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...
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...
Thursday, March 11, 2010
The After-Victory Waltz
For some days I have been obsessed with Aleksandr Rosenbaum's "Послепобедный вальс" ("The After-Victory Waltz", the title doesn't translate to well into English), and I wondered if this meant another memory was coming forward. The song is from the 1980s, however, so Maksim couldn't have heard it during his lifetime; I didn't understand all the words either, so I finally had the idea to google the lyrics and translate them with the help of my dictionary. (It helps enhance the vocabulary if I do everything "by hand", every now and then a word gets stuck in my mind :-) )
The song is about a post-war dance on a fine summer's evening, there are happy couples everywhere, the birds are singing and a brass band is playing for the couples to dance to. The singer lyrically describes this lovely evening and how his parents met and fell in love on such an evening ("It was then that my mother fell in love for life/And my father's lot was decided."). Then he laments that such moments are a thing of the past now, that the bands playing dance tunes have gone out of fashion and that nobody listens to Vertinsky anymore.
The lyrics are beautiful in Russian, but like most poetry they don't translate well...
But I digress! Back to the gist - the flashback I had today. It is a spring day, the first thaw after a long and cold winter. There still are some patches of snow, but most of it is thawing, and the sun has a lot of power already. Vadim, Natasha and Maksim are walking in the park; Maksim, nine or ten years old at the time, is skipping and running in front of them while Vadim and Natasha walk along the slightly muddy path (the ground is yellowish, like sand mixed with clay) a bit more sedately, arm in arm, chatting about this and that. Vadim says something Maksim can't hear, and Natasha giggles and slaps his arm.
They have been to a concert, something with a choir, one or two solo singers and a small orchestra, and Maksim, who has always loved music, is filled with a golden glow produced by the combined effect of the warm spring sunshine and the lovely music he has listened to. He draws a deep breath, notices how the air is already smelling of spring and feels wonderfully happy and relieved; true, times still are far from good so shortly after the war, but he is happy - perhaps not only because it is such a lovely day, but also because he has recently resolved the first great conflict of his young life, the conflict that arose when Vadim entered his life and declared that he was going to marry Natasha. Maksim's sister had been the only attachment figure for him after their mother's death (their father had been killed in action in 1942 and Maksim had never really got to know him), and he had been wary of Vadim at first, fearing that his sister would have no love left for him and would give it all to her husband only. But Vadim had managed to win Maksim's trust, and now everything was well...
I have posted this photo before, but it fits this post as well and I really love it because this young couple reminds me so much of Vadim and Natasha. I wish I knew who they are, where they lived, and what became of them...
Edit: I really wonder now why the abovementioned song fascinated me so much even though I only understood a fraction of the lyrics? Does it mean my subconscious still understands more Russian than I am aware of?
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?
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