Infirmity Studies

Must-Have-Look of November 2009: presenting The Swine Flu Outfit! This fall it is all about layers, comrades, keeping warm has never been more in! Wear tights under your p-j pants, match with carefully chosen knitted items such as socks [wholes included], cardigan [complete with faint smell of sweat] and pink wrist-warmers to add a splash of color. To get that tussled-right-out-bed-hair all you need to do is spend most of the day under covers…

Disease Day nr. 7: No fever. No appetite. Still coughing my lungs up. Finding it difficult to breathe at times. Wonder what that’s about? Spent most of the day in bed with John Mayer. The only light at the end of the tunnel right now seems to be his new album “Battle Studies”. He is the only artist that I always download straight to my iPod, then go and hide somewhere dark [preferably in bed] , put his music in my ears and listen to nothing but his voice for hours and hours until I’ve remembered all the lines that he sings. John Mayer soothes me. He heals my nerves. I think his latest album might be his best ever. But then again, I always say that.

I didn’t eat any real food during the first five days of my disease, but yesterday I fried two eggs in lots of oil and ate them with plenty of beans. Today I’ve fried green lenses with onions and garlic and beans in just as much oil. I pushed everything down my throat in a desperate effort to cure this condition of mine in which it is only a matter of time until I can actually rest my iPod on top of my hipbones.

Ural State will be in quarantine until the 21st of November. Before I thought this was good because it meant that I will have plenty of time this whole week to get some things done that I’ve been putting off doing for weeks now. I need to write an essay about Avvakum’s autobiography, prepare two presentations for that class in self-education I’m taking and start working on that analysis of Mayakovsky’s “My Soviet Passport” in Swedish translation for my last class of Russian Verse Theory. But so far this week I have proved unable to remain outside of my bed for more than an hour at a time… And since the fever left I have made no improvements in my ill condition.

Thank God for John Mayer. Without him I don’t know what I’d do. I would be left listening to Robbie Williams' new album, but there’s only two really good songs on that one and that’s no fun. John Mayer doesn’t do bad songs. He’s all good. I’m going back to bed with him now.

Memorabilia

Putincity. Fall of 2004. I was 19 and everything had just begun…

*

[oпыт феноменологического рассказа]

I remember a late, warm evening one summer somewhere in a small Russian village. He’s waiting for me with hot, black tea in glasses – not cups – and dry cookies in the almost empty kitchen of his little summer house. The sun is far from setting, though it is already late, and I look around as I step out of the tiny building which is his banya that he has built with his own two hands. I am warm and wet and clean and smell of strawberry soap and birch trees… Everything around me is full of stillness, stillness of the coming night, stillness remaining after another lazy summer day in the country side; the trees are bending down heavy over the small garden and the blue, cloudy sky seems lower and lower by the hour, but it is not going to rain; no, tonight it will not rain. I wrap the towel around my wet hair, leaving a couple of strands to fall down my damp back… The front door is open and he’s standing there, smoking his Belamor kanal, watching me as I step down the little stone path leading from the banya up to the house. The house is almost empty now. We’re the only ones here now. His wife is in the hospital. He has been alone for three weeks and now I’m here to clean off the dirt of dusty Russian summer roads that I’ve walked, walked, walked barefoot while picking berries in the fields and looking around me in the woods and thinking that after all, despite of everything: this must be it.

I remember how he cared for me that evening; I remember how he turned out to be something of a country side gentleman left here, so it seemed, from another time very long ago. I remember his heavy grey eyebrows and his long, straight forehead, and his hair that lay like curly silver on top of his large head, and those big, blue eyes as he placed the glass in front of me on the table. I sit down on the chair by the table; he places himself on the bed behind the table as to be closer to me. We talked of old times and of his wife and he told me of his grand children and I listened to his soft voice echoing in such a poor room… There was nothing on the walls. Not even a single picture. Except for the icon over the stove. There was only one single, lonely light bulb hanging from the ceiling. It was the only light. The cookies placed on the wooden table without anything underneath them. The glass was old and steaming with hot tea. I sip and he sips as he watches me and I remember how I liked the way his blue eyes kept looking at me. I remember his large hands, I remember how they lay so still placed on his knees and how we discussed old times and how I couldn’t help but not to forget that we belong to different generations; of this we also talked and he sat so close to me and kept filling my glass with more tea and never tired of caring for me. He didn’t let a single glance of mine pass unseen. His name is Anatoly, but he insist I call him Tolya. Uncle Tolya. I do not object; I call him uncle Tolya and he smiles. Sitting there in that kitchen in a Russian summer house that evening made me remember another kitchen in another Russian summer house two summers before this…

I remember waking up in the double bed next to him, on white, wet sheets; I remember stretching out my arms to touch the yellow sunrays coming in through the open window; his body was sweaty and young next to mine and I was wearing a purple silk nightgown and we had the entire house to ourselves. We had the entire day to ourselves. We had the entire world to ourselves. There was nothing outside our window but blue sky and green trees and deep Russian woods and somewhere, further down the road, a river running through from somewhere, and all of this belonged to us. We were young and we had never promised each other anything, and in the mornings I would make him breakfast while he walked the dog – yes, there was a dog, we had a dog – I fried eggs, made a salad from fresh vegetables that I picked in the garden, brewed black coffee and cleaned the table from what had been left there the night before: an empty wine bottle, a torn copy of some Murakami book in a poor Russian translation, a half-empty package of condoms… And then we sat there and ate together, playing with each other laughing about something, drinking our coffee slowly and looking out over the garden, expecting nothing but another hot day filled with sunshine. I remember we took long walks together with the dog. I remember how we sat together in the dark in the evenings and read Murakami together, how we discussed everything and nothing and then it really seemed to me that there would be no end to this summer. That there would be no end to our youth, that we would always be this young and that this summer house would forever stand in sunshine and warmth and that the fall would never come, that our arguments would never begin, we would never fight, we would never have any worries every again but stay like this. Right there. I remember running through the wet grass in the evenings down to the lake after sitting in the banya for an hour, sweating and beating each other’s naked bodies with birch trees… I remember jumping into the water, I remember swimming side by side with him; I can’t forget the way the grass felt against my bare feet, how the water felt to my naked body, how free we were that summer. It was as if everything in the whole world was just us: the house, the dog, he, I.

I remember standing outside in the small garden with uncle Tolya, we’re standing barefoot in together the grass and he’s smoking Belamor kanal and I’m smoking what he calls ‘women’s cigarettes’; it is dark outside now. The sun has set, the moon has come out. We’re watching our shadows on the grass in front of us, the light coming from the kitchen is behind us and falls before us on the grass. His shade is bigger than mine; his shoulders are broad, the smoke coming from his cigarette is thicker, fuller than the smoke coming from mine. My hair has almost dried now and I remember letting it out of the towel as we stand there looking at our two shadows – so different and yet almost the same – on the ground before us and in silence we contemplate. Somehow both of us know that life must go on, that life always goes on, that I will have to take my things and walk back from where I came, that his wife will come back from the hospital, and that we’ll never have an evening together like this again. We want to tell each other what’s important, what matters, and I remember thinking that even in silence, even when we’re not saying anything, we’re still staying within the territory of what matters the most, what is truly important in this world. “I don’t think I’ve ever loved anyone,” I say and he nods. “What makes you think that?” “All of this is so new to me…” He smiles: “It is new to all of us, my dear.” “Can you love more than once in your life?” “You can love a million times,” he answers. “But will it ever be like the first time?” “Every time is special, every time is a universe in itself,” he says and continues: “Every relationship is a world of its own, and you will never know that world if you don’t close your eyes and let go and fall into it with your back first… keeping your arms stretched out as if you wanted to fly, as if you not only could fly, but knew that this is the time that you’ll really soar.” “I think I’m scared,” I say. I remember how uncle Tolya looked at me, how his stern face of an old man who’s served over thirty years in the Russian army broke into the kindest, the warmest glow and how his one hand took a hold of mine. “I don’t know what it is like for you young people these days…” “I think it is nothing new, I think it is the same as it was for you, just…” “Just?” “Just nothing.” He smiles again and again and again. “I want to love another man now, and I want to give him everything, but I’ve already given everything once and that…” “We’re not in this for eternity, we’re in it for the moment,” says uncle Tolya. “It is not about forever?” I ask. He shakes his head. “No, my dear, it is all about now.”

The Psychological Upper-hand

Curing oneself Russian style: here’s everything that the doctor told me to buy at the pharmacy today. And yes, comrades, we [Sweden & South Korea] have a quilt on our window sill placed up against our window to keep the cold out. Today it’s only -11, but we all know that’s just the start.

On Tuesday evening I spent a couple of hours talking to my boyfriend on Skype – which was lovely as always since A. is not just my boyfriend but also my friend – then I went to bed straight away afterward though it was only half past nine. And fell asleep. And woke up at 2 a.m. because I received an sms from A. I answered him and then thought: ‘Well, there’s no way I’m going to fall asleep again now…’ After this I fell asleep and when I woke up it was already 10 a.m. and I had slept for more than twelve hours. I paid little to no attention to this strange fact as I went about my duties yesterdays. In the evening I felt very tired and decided to go to bed already at 11 p.m., and so I did. I noticed this strange pain in my throat and lunges and how my body was sort of strangely shaking the whole evening, but again I paid little to no attention to this odd behavior of mine. Only when I woke up today and realized that it hurts so bad to breathe and that I can’t stop coughing and that I have a headache that doesn’t want to go away did I become afraid. Ever since the swine flu arrived in the world I’ve been saying that I’ve got “the psychological upper-hand” and thus I will not become ill. Today I understood that the psychological upper-hand may not be working out so greatly anymore, especially since we’re currently having ourselves a real epidemic situation here in Yekaterinburg. They’ve closed down two universities – not Ural State, though (yet!) – and everywhere you go people are wearing those ridiculous masks. And they’re even getting foreigners vaccinated these days. I haven’t done that; I thought I didn’t have to because I have the psychological upper-hand, you know.

Today after breakfast I went to the university doctor. On my way there I couldn’t help but to cough once in a while, and whenever I coughed people around me jumped away, giving me worried looks as they covered their mouths (if they weren’t already wearing those masks, that is, which almost everyone is anyway). As I waited in line outside the doctor’s office I started thinking about what would happen next to me if this really is the swine flu, or pneumonia (could happen), or TBC (could also happen – this is after all Russia, a third world country when it comes to diseases) – and arrived at the conclusion that if I’m really sick, then they’ll probably need a sample of my blood to figure out just what sickness it is. Thinking of having to give blood made me so scared (I’m scared to death of anything related to the human body when it is in an unwell condition) that I started to cry. Thinking of having to actually go to a real hospital made me so afraid that I couldn’t even stand still anymore, but I had to start jumping around and the other people started to stare at me and probably thought that I was in a most ailing condition and on the verge of dying. Of course, when the doctor told me to come in I was already crying with mascara running down my cheeks but she showed me no mercy, since she is Russian and Russians are not prone to showing mercy to those suffering from illogical fears. She looked at me with stern eyes: ‘Josefina, why are we crying?’ I said: ‘I’m sick!’ She took my temperature and wrote me a note with a number of things to cure myself with. I didn’t have any fever. ‘So it is not the swine flu, then?’ She shook her head: ‘No, it’s just a flu. There’s a lot going around these days. Go home and stay in bed for three days and you’ll be fine.’ Okay, I nodded and left.

There it is. I’m sick. I had to cancel my Swedish classes today and tomorrow, but now I’m really going to do my best at getting better and thus I am now officially headed for my bed. I hate being sick. But on the other hand, right now everyone is sick in the city and thus it is not really surprising that I would also come down with something.

Sinnesfrid

I think this picture – taken while I took an extended walk to the university to teach yesterday evening – turned out nicely. I can’t thank Mother enough for giving me this new camera for my B’day this summer… It is awesome!

Yesterday was Friday, and since I have two seminars next week [one on Chekhov’s play “The Cherry Orchard” in modern interpretation and one on phenomenology in Russian literary theory] I had to go to the library to pick up some necessary materials during the day. I arrived at the library and everything went smoothly until someone ‘felt me up’ as is the colloquial expression. I happened to stand absorbed in my own thoughts for a while and then took a careless step backwards without looking, thus bumping into the man standing behind me. Now the usual reaction in cases like these is to say: «Ой! Простите!» [“Oops! Sorry!”] Then the other person should reply: «Ничего» [“That’s okay”]. But in this case yesterday – not so much. The man instantly grabbed a hold of my waist with one hand. I was shocked, turned around, looked at him – he was young, good-looking and [it seemed] smiling nervously – and then my reaction was naturally to jump right back again to where I had initially been standing. He didn’t say anything. I walked away puzzled. Now let’s say this was an accident, that he was just going about his own business when I bumped into him. But then why was his hand ready to be placed in just the right spot? No, this was not an accident. This was another repetition of the classic scenario when a man doesn’t have the courage to walk up to a girl and start a conversation by using the simple: «Привет!» [“Hi!”] Or a version of another equally archetypal situation – when a man doesn’t really want to talk to the girl, but just simply wants to ‘feel her up’. And since we have created ourselves a culture in which women are relentlessly perceived only as objects [for male sexuality in particular] then it is no surprise that men today cannot comprehend that looking at a woman in that way and wanting her in that way is wrong. I am baffled every time something like this happens to me since because of it the only feeling I can ever truly feel for a man is pity. I pity the whole male half of humanity if this is the kind of behaviour they claim they ‘can’t help’. Ever since God realized that Adam was lonely and ‘in need of someone to help him’ and Eva was created, men have perceived women as someTHING exclusively made to match their needs. Jesus, however, realized that this had led men to make many momentous mistakes in the history of mankind and thus He was clear on this point from the very beginning: “If a man so much as looks at a woman with desire, then he has already broken her marriage” [Gospel of Matthew 5:28]. Jesus only mentions ‘marriage’ here but I will take some freedom and interpret this as: “…then he has already objectified her and thus also disrespected her as a human being in his mind”. Jesus was not fuzzy on this subject, as He was not fuzzy when expressing his opinions on other matters; Jesus said it like it is. He always did.

The thing is that most men don’t understand that their entire way of perceiving women is immoral and incorrect at its very root. I don’t want to use too many examples of this from my own life since I do not consider myself ready for this kind of honesty. I have thought about it during last night and during this morning and now arrived at the conclusion that I can write about three times from my own life here on the blog, because more than this will not serve any real purpose – not for me, not for [potential] readers. Twice in my life I have been sexually assaulted in Russian public parks [in what way is not important] and since every Russian public park is always served by a group of guards or policemen [sometimes this is combined in the same group of men, thus they are both guards and working for the police at the same time] I have always turned to them directly to report the occurrence. This was in two different parks in two different cities but the reactions of the policemen were one and the same: “Well, who can blame him, really? You’re a pretty girl. I myself would too… You know, not in reality but… Ehm. Anyway, you should just know by now that this is the kind of thing that happens to beautiful women. We’ll go look for him, of course, but…” And it was obvious that they did not consider this act a crime at all. Just something that ‘happens’ and something I should ‘get used to’. With this I’m not saying that Russia is exceptional in this way, or that the opinions of Russian men of the law differ enormously from the opinions of men in other countries. This is just a real example of terribly misinformed male attitude and it just happens to be from Russia – I think any country in the world is the same. Russia might be a bit worse, though, since Russian men are brought up not to respect a woman as such, not even in the role of ‘wife’, but only a woman as a ‘mother’. It is no coincidence that you’ll often find the tattoo “I will not forget my mother” on the arms of many Russian criminals. The third example from my life happened on the subway here in Yekaterinburg this summer. A man sat down very closely next to me, and tried to start a conversation with me, but by now I’ve learned not to take this from any man and so I said calmly to him: “I consider my body my private property so I would appreciate it if you didn’t rub yourself against it.” He flew back in surprise and ended up at the other end of the seat. After this he wasn’t so interested in making conversation anymore. Since this I have become an expert at telling men to keep their distance. It doesn’t matter if they’re standing or sitting close to me on purpose or not – women were granted the right to vote not even a hundred years ago so you can just consider this payback for centuries of lost power because you stole it from us.

Yesterday I thought about this for a long time and came to the conclusion that I would vote for a party if it was for castration of rapists. This is the only political question of importance in my opinion. I would also give electrical shockers to every woman in the world and allow her to use it as she thinks appropriate. Is that anarchy? You think? I think men have already practised their own form of anarchy toward women for centuries and thus it is high time for the tables to turn. I am not against torture against rapists, sexual assaulters and paedophiles – I am as a matter of fact only for it. Women were tortured for centuries by corsets so you can just consider this payback for previous male sins. Ideally we need to start changing things by bringing up the next generation of men better than the previous one, but what can we do – women and mothers – when children are unfortunate enough to also have fathers? Ideally we need to change our culture. As long as our culture uses a fundament of ignorance no electrical shockers can ever make any difference what so ever. It is sad, but true.

In my life nothing happens. Nothing that I feel like sharing with anyone, anyway. I find myself writing less and less letters to family and friends and spending more and more time inside thoughts and scientific researches. I finally sent my application to Berkeley. Now I wait… On Thursday I discussed with my third years students what they want for Christmas. One of them asked me what I want for Christmas and I answered: “Sinnesfrid” [“Peace of mind”]. That is the only thing I a) don’t have; and b) actually need.

Girl from the North Country

On my wall above my desk I have very few, but very inspirational things: a picture of my sister Lillbubb, a pink post-it with how to say “I kiss you” in Hungarian, and today came this new addition: a hamster! I get so inspired when I look at the hamster, comrades. So cute!

Last night I stayed up until three am writing and finally finishing a short story that I’ve been thinking about since the summer. The first idea for it came to me during my trip to Krasnovishersk in the northern Urals, where Shalamov spent his first three year sentence in a concentration camp in the 1930’s. But for the longest time I didn’t know how to write the story, even though I had plenty of ideas for it, and pretty much knew what it was going to be about. Then – all of the sudden – last Sunday I woke up and I knew exactly what the form of the story was going to look like, and not only the content of it! I love it when that happens! When it is pure inspiration. But for obvious reasons – my studies, my jobs and my almost-finished application to graduate school – I did not get a chance to finally start writing it until last night. Perhaps it is not very good. Maybe it lacks many things, mainly in the area of correct English grammar. It is very likely that this is yet another example of me dealing with my ‘pretty girl complex’ by channeling it into a work of art. Whatever it is, it should be read while listening to Johnny Cash & Bob Dylan’s “Girl from the North Country” on repeat. One does not have to much knowledge of Varlam Shalamov, his life and work, in order to enjoy this short story. Or so I try to convince myself… But of course, if you know something about Shalamov, then you’ll understand this ‘antinovella’ on another level, and you might even be able to tell why the genre I’ve chosen for it is ‘antinovella’ and not ‘short story’.

*

“Girl from the North Country”

antinovella

It was the day of the first snow. It was the day that fall turned to winter and the snow was wet and heavy. It kept falling against the asphalt and at first it melted immediately. It took several hours before the streets turned white that evening.

The first thing the old poet noticed when he came home was her boots – grey with four inch heels and fur on top – standing dirty with wet soles in the hallway. That’s how he knew that the young teacher was already home. Her door was closed. Since there was no light coming out from underneath the door leading from the communal apartment’s hallway to the kitchen he didn’t think he would find anyone in there. Yet there she was. She was standing by the window in the dark, looking out at the snow that kept coming down while she smoked a cigarette. Usually she didn’t smoke. She smoked rarely, sporadically. Only in periods of time that she referred to as 'difficult'.

He entered the kitchen and made a noise that could be interpreted as a form of greeting. She didn’t turn around to look at him. After switching on the light he instantly walked up to the kitchen sink and started pouring water into a kettle. He needed something warm; he needed something to heat him up from inside. It felt like his entire body had been frozen completely, as if he had spent several hours standing outside in minus fifty. Yet he had only walked the quick twenty minutes that was necessary to get back home from the university. Cold always had this effect on him. Ever since he came back – though that was over forty years ago now – he could not handle cold weather. His hands refused to function when it was cold. He had to hold them against the kettle as it warmed up. He would often let his hands remain on the kettle until it boiled. His fingers didn’t feel the heat until it was too late – until they had been burned.

“Do you want a cup of tea?” he asked her.

She turned her face toward him for a second and this was enough for him to see that she had been crying. She didn’t say anything and turned her eyes back to face the window.

He placed two cups on the kitchen table. He dropped a teabag into each one and then placed the sugar bowl in between them on the table. Once the water had boiled he poured the steaming fluid into both cups and sat down on a chair. She had been standing by the window on the other side of the table, but when she saw that the tea was ready, she also sat down. They were now facing each other. She didn’t try to hide her flushed cheeks, she didn’t even reach for a napkin to clean up the black mascara that had left her eyes smudged.

He pushed her tea cup a bit closer to her.

“Thank you,” she said, and then she looked at him for a moment as if in deep thought, as if unsure of how to begin, as if sure of only thing – that she must say something. “Have you ever thought that beauty can be a curse?” she asked.

“I have always thought that beauty can both be the biggest curse and the biggest blessing, depending on in whose hands it ends up.”

“Depending on in whose face it ends up,” she corrected.

“No,” he said, “that I do not agree with. Because the people who have beauty can never see it; they can only see it in the reaction of others. Besides, you don’t choose beauty. You can’t choose what you’re going to look like. Beauty is always in the eyes of the beholder. And thus it is also in the hands of this person.”

“If I could, then I would have it go away,” she said and looked him straight in the eyes. She looked at him with those eyes of hers that he could not fathom, that he was yet unable to understand. No matter how much he looked at them, no matter how he tried to read them, they remained a mystery to him. They refused to speak.

When he returned from his ‘years of ordeal’, as he preferred to refer to that time of his life, he was always able to recognize other people around him who had been through the same thing. Back then he had thought himself old when he returned; with time he understood that he still had been young when he was given a second – or was it third? – life. He could see it in their eyes. It was always in their eyes. Eyes that were scared of what they once saw. These eyes were filled with pain and with such experience that the mouth can never speak of it; filled of what the pen can not do justice to, eyes that were grateful simply for being alive still and now able to see something else. This gratefulness combined with endless wisdom of depths and darkness was always in their eyes and he always knew them when he saw them. And they recognized him, too. Still – though with the years fewer and fewer survivors continued their survival – he would meet them every now and then and when they did, they would exchange glances of mutual understanding. Understanding of that which can never be spoken of. No matter how many words one tries to use. He had not expected to find these eyes in the face of a young woman born many, many years after that time. Logically he knew that she could not have been there; neither was she one of the many children born in camps or prisons – this he knew. She had been born in another country. It was impossible. And yet it was there. The pain was there yet her eyes refused to tell him of it.

“I would give anything not to have another man look at me like that,” she continued.


And he understood. Tonight was the night her eyes would speak. He didn’t say anything.

“But how could you ever understand? You’re a man. And you’re tall. In your youth you were probably even taller and strong, too. You’ve never been a girl and beautiful and tiny at one and the same time. You don’t know what it feels like. You don’t know what it’s like to be wanted by every man who looks at you, to be even loved by some of them only because of… this.” She sighed and tried to smile. “What is this? This is nothing.”

“It doesn’t define you,” he said.

“Beauty?”

“The way they look at you. It doesn’t define who you are.”

She shrugged her shoulders: “Sometimes I think it does.”

He shook his head. “Never.” And continued: “Maybe I don’t know what it feels like, but I think I can understand.”

She looked up from her tea cup with a questioning look on her face.

“I want to tell you a story of a girl I once knew. A girl that was just like you, not only did she look a lot like you, but your characters have some things in common also. At least that’s what I think. You’ll judge for yourself, of course. You always do,” he said and smiled a kind smile. “If you want to hear it, that is.”

“Very much.”

“This girl was my first wife. I met her a long, long time ago, and – so it seems to me now – in a different world. I met her during my first sentence in the northern Urals. I was very young back then, I was only twenty-four years old and serving the last months of my three year sentence in a concentration camp. She arrived there in early June in the summer of 1933 together with a delegation of foreign students from the Institute of Marxism in Moscow. They were there to do their practice and also to witness the astonishing progress of the young communistic state with their own eyes. I do not remember the names of the other students, but I remember that they were four young men from different countries: France, Germany, the United States and Finland. She was from Sweden, just like you.

“She was a sight for sore eyes, this girl! She arrived in camp on a sunny, warm summer day with clear skies and I will never forget how she looked the first time I saw her: she was wearing a white sleeveless dress with red high heels and had a red bow in her long, blonde hair. She was the prettiest thing I had ever seen. She was so petite and small, she moved as if on air and she was always smiling… As she walked together with the others around the muddy territory there was not a man there who missed out on the chance to lend her a helping hand or an arm for her to lean on. Everyone in the whole small town, every man in the entire camp fell in love with her. Not only were women scarce in these areas in general; pretty women there were scarce in particular. I watched her from a distance as she performed the same duties in camp as the other foreigners did – she helped out in the kitchen and would always serve me my bowl of soup with a smile consisting of straight, white teeth framed by red lipstick. Not until the concentration camp’s director decided that he was the only one of us all that actually had a right to get her, did we actually meet.

“I was standing by the river Vishera late on the evening of my 24th birthday – the 18th of June. I was just looking out on the water and watching the sun set and didn’t really think about much except that I was already 24 years old and had not yet done anything in life. I had not yet done anything to deserve immortality. And back when I was really young I thought the most important thing to deserve in life was this. What can I say? I was young and I wanted to write and I blamed my sentence and the camp for hindering me from doing so… Suddenly I heard some sounds coming from further down the riverbank. It sounded strange and so I decided to go have a look. And it was good that I did, because if I hadn’t then… Everything would have been differently. I would probably not have married her if I hadn’t. Or – which is even truer – she would probably not have married me if I hadn’t.

“I didn’t catch the director in the action, so to speak, but almost. I didn’t even have to think before I had grabbed a hold of him and given him such a blow to the head with my fist that he fell to the ground. He took one look at me from below and decided not to bother, but quickly got up on his knees and first crawled away a couple of meters. Then he ran.

“She remained sitting in the grass and so I sat down beside her. For many minutes we looked at each other in silence. Honestly, I didn’t know what to say. After a long while I asked her if she was alright. She took a deep breath and looked at me and said: “Thank you”. Then she added: “It happens.” “Often?” I asked. “Enough,” she smiled. She stood up and asked me if I wouldn’t mind walking with her for a while, I didn’t mind it at all and so we walked along the river for an hour or two, I don’t know how long, only that we kept walking until it got dark. She talked much during our walk and as I listened to her talk I forgot entirely what she looked like… She tried to make a joke, but I didn’t laugh because I thought it wasn’t meant as a joke, and then she told me that in Sweden all jokes must be like that – that in her culture jokes must sound serious and dry and border on the tragic in order to be considered humorous. Then I laughed and so did she. At the end of our walk, before we parted ways, she said something to me that seemed strange to me at the time, something that it took many years before I understood fully.

“Every tiny and beautiful girl needs a big and strong man in her life,” she said. “And in my life I choose this man to be you.”

“To be protected?” I asked.

“To be safe,” she answered.

The old poet smiled at the memory for a while before finishing his story:

“She went back to Moscow a month later – after she also had turned twenty-four – and I was released from the camp in October the same year. She left me her address in the capital and said that she had one year left to study there. She lived in a little room in a dormitory, and when I came to Moscow in November the first thing I did was to go visit her. And I didn’t go home after that. Not simply because I didn’t really have anywhere else to stay in Moscow, or any real home for that matter, but because I didn’t want to.”

“And you married her?” the girl sipping tea in front of him asked.

He nodded. “Or as we had made a habit of doing back in those days – we got registered as husband and wife in the spring of 1934 and received a small room in a communal apartment in Moscow. She finished the Institute of Marxism in the summer but was allowed to stay in the country after receiving a position there as a teacher at the department of international communism. I worked at different papers as a journalist while I wrote short stories and poetry…”

“What happened to her?” she interrupted him.

“She died.”

“How?”

“Do you know what happened in this country in the year of 1937?” he asked.

She nodded. She didn’t have to say anything more. He understood that she knew.

“When they knocked on our door in the middle of one night in February 1937 I thought that they were coming for me. Since I had already been sentenced once before, since I had already been judged dangerous to society six years previously, it seemed only natural to me that they would come knocking on my door… But she, she was a member of the party, she was writing her doctor’s thesis on international communism, she had never done anything that could be considered suspect. Except for being Swedish and not applying for a new citizenship in time, I guess… When I watched them take her away that night, when I looked at her as she turned around quickly to catch one last glance of me before walking out the door, I didn’t think I would ever see her again. Two months later they knocked on my door again and this time I was the one they wanted to imprison.” He paused. “And I was sentenced to five years in forced labor on Kolyma. But this you already know.”

“Did you ever see her again?”

“One time,” he answered.

“Only one time?”

He nodded and swallowed before speaking: “It was in 1946. By then I had managed to both serve off my first sentence and receive a new one – the new one was ten years. Despite this I had been able to get work as a sanitarian at a hospital in a small village next to a bigger camp way up north, several miles from Magadan. It was my second year working there. The war was over. Things were back to normal again. Well, ‘normal’ in this case means worse but this you also already know… During my first nine years on Kolyma I would often hear stories about her, hear many people talk about her, both men and women. Yes, people loved to talk about her! They always did. She was known by many, many people, even by those who had never seen her with their own eyes. She was known as the beautiful Swedish woman. When I heard people talking of her, saying that they had seen her somewhere or other, I would never say a word. I never told them that she was my wife. Except to one doctor at the hospital where I worked, him I told because I could trust him. He had first laughed when he had found out that ‘the beautiful Swedish woman’ was my wife, and then he had cried for a long, long time…

“It was he who told me that she was in our hospital. He had heard rumors of her arrival there already in the morning, but been able to see her with his own eyes only in the afternoon. It was already evening when he brought me to her bed…

“She was still beautiful. Despite everything. It was as if the survival of her pretty face was payback to them for everything they had done to her, for everything they had taken from her despite all that she had tried to give to this country. She was lying so fragile and skinny and smaller than ever before there in the bed with the heavy, grey blanket pulled up almost all the way to her cheeks. At first she didn’t recognize me. My face had not survived as intact and unchanged as hers. I took her hand and whispered her name in her ear. And then her eyes lit up as if she had seen something frightening, something disgusting, or perhaps something so wonderful that she did not dare to believe in it… Her hand grabbed a firm hold of mine and she didn’t speak for several minutes. She just looked at me; she simply stared up at my face without saying anything. She didn’t even cry. I kissed her on the forehead and remained sitting by her bed the whole night through. We spoke very little. I don’t remember of what, all I remember now is that she kept repeating one and the same phrase over and over again: I’m safe now, I’m safe now, I’m safe now…

“In the morning she died.”

*

The next evening the old poet came home after a long day at the university to find the young teacher smoking in the kitchen once again. This time the light was on and she wasn’t crying. She was sitting at the table reading a thick book. He came in and did what he always did – started pouring water into the kettle and then placing it on the stove. He warmed his hands on it with his back turned against her.

“I’ve been reading your biography,” she said.

He looked over his shoulder and gave her a smile. “Anything interesting?”

“It says here that you married for the first time in 1954, not in 1934,” she said.

He removed his cold hands from the kettle, turned around and looked at her in silence for a while before sitting down on a chair.

“Did she even exist? Or did you make her up for me?”

“I didn’t make her up for you; I remembered her because of you. But she did exist,” he said. “And everything else about her is true.”

“Except she was never your wife?”

“Only did I wish she was. I tried. I asked her many, many times. I went down on my knees before her once a week for three years without any results. She never said no, but she never said yes either.” He smiled, maybe it was a smile more meant for himself than for her, as he concluded: “This is not the type of woman that you can marry. And you know this. You of all people should know this. This type of woman is known as a muse. And no poet – no matter how great he is or how much he might wish to and think he should – can never marry his muse”.

“Am I a muse too?”

The old poet didn’t say. He only smiled as he warmed his hands.

Rush

When I find out that my students are but twenty years old [or even younger! some of my new students this year are only seventeen!] I like to remember what I was like when I was their age. And here I am – the week before I turned twenty back in July 2005 I spent in a tent in the Altai Mountains. Evidentially, I’ve had good hair for many, many years now…

The past week I’ve spent finishing my application to graduate school at Berkeley. I’ve been working on my application every once in a while for little over a year now, but for some reason I’ve been putting off writing two key items that I need to send with my application – “Personal History Statement” and “Statement of Purpose”. On Wednesday evening I finished the first one and while I was writing it I was forced to take a long trip down memory lane… I had to write about my “personal history” [as this statement clearly says in its title] and that means mainly my academic history, thus I had to recount everything beginning with the first time I read a Russian novel in Swedish translation [it was “War & Peace” and I was 17] and fell in love with Russia and decided that I just had to become a professor of Russian literature or else there was no real point for me to be alive at all. Actually I didn’t make this crucial decision until I had finished “Crime & Punishment” a month later, during the summer of 2003. To say the least, it was a healthy experience for me to go through all of the five years and two months that I’ve spent in institutions of higher education so far… I tried my best to point out my constant search for means of making a living on my own money while I studied [it says on Berkeley’s website that they consider this a sign of dedication] and fixated every challenge I’ve ever faced and duly conquered [this they interpret as a sign of endurance]. But it is difficult for me to ‘brag’ enough, since I am after all Swedish and Swedes have yet to make a habit of bragging. Yet I know that American culture differs from my native culture in the way that Americans have no problem with saying everything they’re good at and showing off all the wonderful stuff they’ve done in their lives. I’m trying, though, I’m really trying! On Thursday evening I finished writing my “Statement of Purpose” and in it I succeeded in bragging a bit more than in the first one, and I think it turned out very good. If you admit me, Berkeley’s Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures, you will not be disappointed! If you decide to grant me a full scholarship and free tuition for six years then I promise you that you’ll never regret it! If you choose me, then I’ll show you exactly what it means to have a REAL scholar on campus. If I get in, then I’m going to rock research on Shalamov! You won’t even know what hit you, let me tell you!

That’s not exactly what I wrote, as a matter of fact that’s not at all what I wrote, but if you read between the lines you’ll see that it’s all there. The thing is that I’m not sure that I’m going to get in [and if I really want to go there once I do get in] because I don’t know if I’m enough of a ‘prospective student’. But I think I am. After all, I’ve lived in Russia for over five years and thus I speak fluent Russian and I know this country pretty good by now, and I know Russian literature even better. And despite having spent all this time in Russia, my BA is still from a recognized university in Sweden. Also my academic guidance consular at Gothenburg University – my darling professor M – is a worldly renowned scholar and known by everyone in the field of Slavic studies. To have worked with him is an honor in itself. But I haven’t just worked with him; M and I are more than just professor and student – we’re friends and we’ve shared a dialogue for almost four years which started with me learning from him and has now arrived at a place where we’re almost equal. We share thoughts and ideas and he’s not the only one who knows most anymore. He retired two days ago. And then it’s official – he is no longer my academic guidance consular. I’ve been very anxious about this for over a year now, since I was scared that without him I would feel lost and alone and not know where to go when I’m back home in Gothenburg since his office is the first place I want to go when I’m home, but when it happened I didn’t feel a thing. That is because our dialogue continued. I sent him a letter this morning and he answered me by the afternoon. And instantly I felt like writing him back. And I know that if I did, then he would answer me within a day. We’ve had conversations that have involved up to five e-mails each a day. I’ve never had that with anyone else. Nobody has ever listened to my thoughts the way he does. So having M write a letter of recommendation for me is a big plus on my application.

One of my professor that I had a class with last spring semester – in theater of all subjects! why did we have a class in theater in a MA program for Russian literature? Russian universities work in mysterious ways – and she gave me the best compliment I’ve ever received. She said: “When people ask me about you and I try to explain how you look to them, I always say: she looks like a girl in an Ingmar Bergman movie. You look just like that girl from his 1950’s movie ‘Smultronstället’,” The more I think about it, the more I realize that I’m exactly like that girl from “Smultronstället”. Especially when you consider the ending, when she looks up at the old professor standing on the balcony and says to him: “But don’t you understand that I love you most of all? I only love you” [this is not an exact quotation; this is a quotation from my memory of the movie]. And then she follows the two young men – and still she can’t make up her mind as to who to marry… I am that girl and I have a hunch that I’ll always be that girl. I didn’t fully understand the ending of that movie until I saw that it is really about me. Then I understood it.

I’m afraid that Berkeley will argue that I don’t speak enough languages. I do not know French or German. I’m afraid that I don’t have enough academic publications – even though I just enough to fill the seven lines reserved for publications. I’m afraid that Berkeley will think me lazy for only applying to one graduate school in the US. And think I’m not serious enough because of it. But the thing is – and I’ve said it before – that if I don’t go to Berkeley, then I’ll go to Gothenburg University and do my Ph. D there instead. M has already told me that he secretly whishes I won’t be accepted so that I’ll go ‘home’ and work with my new academic guidance consular there. And that’s a chapter of its own entirely. I’ve never switched before. It’s not that I don’t know the girl who’s taking over after M, I know her very well. It’s just… I don’t know. I guess I just need to get used to a new person. It could be fun to work with a woman, since that’s something I haven’t done before.

There’s a new Swedish speaking girl in town, by the way! Her name is Jessica, she’s actually from Finland, but her native language is Swedish, and she’s been sent here from Gothenburg University. She’s currently doing her practice at one of the universities here in Yekaterinburg and on Thursday she came to Ural State to help me out with my third year students. It was awesome! It was such a great experience to have another teacher in the room and even though I felt nervous at first – what if she tells me I’m doing it all wrong?! – everything went great. I can’t wait to bring her to my beginners group in two weeks. I think that would be just as much fun, even though they don’t speak that much Swedish yet… I think my experience as a university teacher of Swedish looks very good on my application, by the way.

I should’ve spent tonight working on my ‘writing sample’ that I need to put in the mail by next week if it’s going to get to California in time. But I just had no strength left when I got home and ended up blogging… Though I should’ve really work-blogged tonight. Well, we can’t have everything, now can we? And I’m actually sending my application off by the end of this week – probably on Sunday. I sent both of the ‘statements’ to Aaron for him to check for grammar and content. Once he’s done with them, then I’ll take the plunge.

God, I put it all in Your hands! Back where it belongs, so to speak.

What I Never Became

Picture of the year from Marina’s birthday party last night – this is what happens when you want to take a group picture after X number of drinks and thus place the camera on the table in front of you… From the left: Vasya number 2, Vasya number 1, Sasha, I, Marina and Anya.

*

Only much later, only now

do we realize, do we know

how young we were back then –

standing on the bridge when

we promised to be together

until forever…

Forever came too soon, you say

but I think it was never on its way;

we were never meant to share more

than all that we received before –

early summer morning sunlight

waking up holding your hand,

snowfall on a late winter night

walking with you in this land –

where I arrived with dreams,

where nothing is what it seems,

where I buried my youth,

where I found the truth,

where I became a woman,

where I met the first man

I could look up at and say:

“Yes, for you I will stay.”

Tonight as we sit here together talking

the memories once again come stalking

through red wine and dimmed candle lights

we travel back in time to all our fights –

battles and victories opening up old sores,

but now that nobody’s keeping scores

it doesn’t matter at all anymore –

what were we fighting for?

Our eyes meet and I see it clearly –

we were children loving sincerely

not knowing life is much longer,

that the next love might be stronger…

Tonight I add to all I never became

Josefina Akisheva

that is what will forever remain

as I move on to the next

letter in the alphabet…