Cassandra Voices

Tag: Nina Kossman fiction

  • Indiana Jones on a Kharkiv Bus

    Marina and I wait for a bus, and when it comes, we squeeze our way into it, blending in with a crowd that pushes and carries us like a wave into the sea. I say “squeeze”. This is literally what it feels like – something very familiar to me and, at the same time, almost forgotten, because this happened every morning in my childhood when I rode trolleybus number…Oh my, I wish I could remember the number of that trolley bus I used to ride every morning to my kindergarten, with my father holding my hand while the crowd carried us along. I both remember it and don’t remember it because, although it happened every morning back then, it never happened once my childhood was over. I told Marina what it used to be like, who is so squeezed from all sides. There’s no need for her feet to touch the floor – the crowd holds her so well. And while I am squeezed between a plump young man in uniform, Marina is squeezed between me, on one side, and, on the other, the crowd of people that keeps growing every second. Still more people enter the bus, until finally, the door closes—a miracle—and the closing door pushes everyone even further in.

    An old woman behind the plump young man in uniform, to whom I will refer as “soldier” for short, says, in a chastising tone that older women in Ukraine and other post-Soviet countries often use: “Muzhchina, you swerve me. Stop swerving me!”

    It sounds funny to me because I never heard the Russian verb she uses, “kolyshete,” used this way means “push” and, as far as I know, it is not a transitive verb, that is, it is not usually followed by an object, which, in this case, is “menia” (me).  The old lady’s complaint is just her way of saying a simple thing: “Sir, you are pushing me”. It sounds funny but I tell myself I should be careful saying “funny” about anyone’s speech here, after all, what do I know about funny, I, who had left the Soviet Union so long ago and whose ancestors lived in Ukraine when none of the people alive here had even been born. Whether funny or not, I tell myself to remember the old woman’s use of “kolyshete”– not so much because I want to use it myself but because I like colorful expressions, and hearing it from the old lady on this crowded bus seems like a find I should treasure.

    Muzhchina, i.e., the soldier she addresses, says, “Lady, it is not I swerving you! People, she says I’m swerving her! But it is not I who is swerving her! It is my bulletproof jacket! I would never swerve anyone alive!”

    He pauses, unzips a mini sack with a little carry-on pharmacy he carries on top of his bulletproof jacket, takes out a small set of medical wound dressings, and pushes it into my closed hand: “A gift for you, Indiana Jones!”

    I say, “Indiana Jones… Is that because of my hat?”

    “The lady is from America,” Marina says. I am getting used to this explanation of my presence in Ukraine, because even though I don’t feel like a foreigner here, it helps making my Russian-only speech, which might have been perceived as unpatriotic otherwise, (or for that matter the strangeness of my Indiana Jones hat) seem fine.

    “True, the lady is from America,” I say about myself, “but the hat is actually from Australia, where no one thought of it as an Indiana Jones hat.”

    I take off my hat to show its underside to the soldier. “See, what it says here? I point at a tag: Designed in Australia.”

    He doesn’t react to my mention of Australia but nods when I say “America,” and at the end confirms: “Indiana Jones, yes.”

    Again, he unzips his portable pharmacy and takes out a little present for me. This time it’s a small rolled-up package of gauze. “No, no,” I say with more conviction than before, “You need it much more than I do! Please keep it!”

    “Indiana Jones,” says the soldier in all seriousness. “This is for you. Do not reject it. I imbibed a little more than necessary last night, but it doesn’t change the fact that this humble medical gift is all I can offer you. In honor of Indiana Jones movies, which I loved so much in the days of yore.”

    He pushes the small package of gauze into my hand, and I must accept it, if only out of politeness.

    “Well, thank you,” I say. “Not that I ever thought of myself as a replica of Indiana Jones…”

    The old woman who complained about the soldier swerving her is now immersed in light – her toothless smile lights up her face, and every wrinkle on her face seems to exude light. I say ‘quite a sight’ to myself, considering that we are squeezed in the back of the bus like chopped-up herring in a tin can.

    I say, “Really, I don’t want it.”

    I give the small rolled-up package back to the soldier: “Not because I dare to refuse the honor of the gift, but because you need it much more than I do. In fact,” I say, “One day, your life may depend on having it. Which is why it would be wrong of me to accept it.”

    “No, Indiana Jones, it is my gift for you. I would have given you a gun, but this is all I can give you right now.”

    Marina says it’s time for us to get off, and I’m getting ready to make my uneasy way towards the door. Luckily, most people standing between us and the door get off at the same stop, and right before Marina and I leave, I try to push the gauze and the wound dressing into the soldier’s hand again. Still, he’s adamant: he closes his hand into a fist so no gifts can be returned, and that is that. The door shuts behind us, and the bus is gone, and along with it, the plump soldier with the little pharmacy sack on his chest and the old woman with wrinkles that exude light.

    I say, “Wasn’t it funny, being called Indiana Jones because of my hat?”

    Marina says that the soldier was sincere. She uses the word “iskrenniy”: he earnestly wanted to give me these things, and he meant well, so I shouldn’t hold this Indiana Jones thing against him.

    “I know he meant well,” I say. “I just thought these medical supplies should have stayed in his little pharmacy bag. He needs them more than I do.”

    “Well,” she walks ahead, showing me the way to go. “He did say that he had imbibed more than usual the night before. Although I still think it was very touching…the way he was so happy to see his Indiana Jones on this crowded bus.”

    We walk some more toward Drobitsky Yar, the Holocaust Memorial just outside of Kharkiv, the goal of our trip, when Marina says, “Here’s a checkpoint. I hope you have your passport with you.”

    I reassure her, “Don’t worry. I have two, which is more than enough for one checkpoint.”

    ____________________

    FOOTNOTES

    1Muzhchina – a male.  “[…] you swerve me!” is a literal translation of “Мужчина, вы меня колышeте!” (romanized: Muzhchina, vy menya kolyshete”).

     

  • Three Parables / Short Tales

    ABOUT A GIRL AND HER DATE OF BIRTH

    Once upon a time, there lived a girl who was so used to being accompanied by her date of birth, that she couldn’t imagine herself separated from it. For seven years following her first birthday, the girl and her date of birth were always seen holding hands, and people who knew the girl well were surprised when on her eighth birthday, they saw the girl walking alone, although strictly speaking, she was not alone, as her date of birth ran just a little behind her. Everyone got so used to seeing the girl’s date of birth running just a little behind her, that when the girl turned 15, they were surprised yet again to see her date of birth lagging behind, not just two steps away as it did during the last seven years but almost fifteen steps away from the girl. The number of steps between the girl and her date of birth grew with each birthday, and when the girl turned twenty-five, her date of birth was lagging twenty-two or twenty-five steps away, no one knew for sure how many, as there was no way to measure the number of steps. When the girl, by now no longer a girl but a woman of course, was celebrating her thirty-fifth birthday, her date of birth was so far behind her that it was no more than a small dark silhouette on the horizon, running, running, trying to catch up with the girl, that is, the woman, and of course, its efforts were in vain, as there was no way for the date of birth to catch up. Ten years later, when the woman was celebrating her thirty-ninth birthday in the new millennium, her date of birth tumbled back into the 20th century where it belonged and, no matter how hard the woman tried to pull it back into the 21st century so the two of them would stay together, she could not see her date of birth in the darkness of the past millennium. From then on, the separation grew harder for both of them, the woman and the woman’s date of birth. When the woman turned fifty, she walked to the Edge of the World, which was nothing but a precipice that divided the third millennium from the past, and she called out to her date of birth, hoping to hear its voice, even if she could no longer see it, but her date of birth did not respond. The woman spent the next ten years weaving an unusually strong rope, and when the rope was finally long enough as well as strong enough, the woman once again came to the so-called Edge of the World. She dropped her rope into the darkness and waited. Finally, someone tugged on the rope at the other end, ever so slightly, and although the tug was ever so weak, the woman knew it was her date of birth tugging, for who else would care to catch the other end of her rope? The woman spent the next twenty years standing at the Edge of the World, trying to pull her date of birth out of the abyss of the past century, but as every passing year her date of birth fell deeper and deeper into the past, the woman’s task looked quite hopeless, even to the woman herself, who just couldn’t quit and she stood there year after year and pulled and pulled, until her hands were so sore that she couldn’t hold the rope anymore, and when she gave up and died at the age of eighty-three, she was finally reunited with her date of birth.

    ABOUT THE APACHE AND A POET

    A long time ago, when the Spanish first encountered the Apache, whom they called Querechos, the Apache managed to capture five Spaniards, and they did to four of them what they always did to their enemies, and when they were about to do the same to the fifth man, their medicine man warned the Apache chief that the man they were about to execute was what the Spaniards called “poet”, which was similar to what a “medicine man” was to the Apache. It was decided that the life of the “poet” would be spared if he composed a “poem” every day, so the Apache medicine man could use it as a spell in his healing ceremony, and of course the Spaniard complied, under fear of death, and produced a poem per day, for many days, and after six months of this, the chief of the Apache pardoned him and changed the sentence from death by lancing and scalping to suicide. Thus, as soon as the poet ran out of poems, he would have to kill himself. Under this sentence, the poet went on and on writing poems every day, until he outlived all the Apache who had been present at his sentencing, and even though no one any longer remembered the sentence of suicide, he continued composing a short poem daily, because he knew that he would kill himself if he stopped composing poems. Come to think of it, this isn’t very different from the way some of us write poems today, is it?

    ABOUT INDIFFERENCE TO FAME

    One poet was very concerned about his future immortality, therefore he did everything possible to ensure that his works would remain for centuries. We will not waste time recounting unnecessary details of the steps he took to achieve his goal. We can only say that when that which will happen to all of us, happened to him, his soul instantly forgot about its existence in his body and began to fly around the world. In its seemingly aimless flying around the world, his soul sometimes flew over the city in which the poet had lived, but it recognized none of the streets or houses, including the poet’s own house. The poet’s soul flew into a book fair where his books were being sold and advertised, but after circling first over his books beautifully laid out on counters, then over the magnificently illuminated advertisements of his books, it flew out the window, as if the image of its former self on book covers had nothing to do with it. Just as accidentally, it flew into the house where the poet’s wife and children were still living, and without recognizing them, flew out the open door. The soul, freed from the body, was deeply indifferent to the man’s dreams of the immortality of his name, which it had long forgotten.

    Feature Image Daniele Idini