“If you don’t forget it, like a wave can forget all the waves…”

Who said – if you even have forgotten your last kiss, you still remember the first one? But I don’t remember. Perhaps, a little girl kissed me in the kindergarten or in the yard. But I still remember much…
 

Me and parents are visiting my uncle and aunt. The table has already been laid. How much There are so many kinds of different and tasty meal! Therefore, there is a unique odour in the flat. I have still kept in mind this odour.
My recollection about another odour is the following. I lived my Granny and Grandpa for a few years. Grandpa was lorry driver. He carried me a couple of cheap patties every evening. They smelled with gas.
 

There is a sailing-ship in our kindergarten. What does a tremendous and beautiful vessel mean for a five-year-old sprat? It’s something unearthly and unachievable. Even if simply to stay beside and look at it. I remember this vessel still. Next sailing-ships in my life probably appeared from the short novels by Alexander Green or William Jackobs.
 

There was a picture in our school textbook on history. A mammoth fell into a pit and ancient people were killing him with stones. The mammoth was shaggy and sympathetic. I was so sorry for it - perhaps due to the fact that it was very huge but absolutely helpless. It happens not only with mammoths …
 

One evening I was walking along some waste ground and heard a rustle. I decided  it was  a rat, and threw a stone. Then I neared and saw - it was a hedgehog. I carried him home. He died in an hour. Being an ordinary child, I sobbed a bit, and then buried it at the waste ground. It’s a sad recollection…
 

We lived in a communal flat near the old Planetarium. A Jewish family lived there also. The parents of the woman had been killed during the Second World War by fascists under her very eyes. She got some problems, as they say. She tried to commit suicide several times. Once at night she threw herself out of the window. I was sleeping, later my parents told me about that. If your parents are killed just in front of you – can you live after this? Live and remember?
 
 

There is a granite border on Kreschatik sidewalk in Kiev. While walking along Kreschatik with my mother, I was clattering along the border and holding my mother's hand. Then Ilia grew up and used to clatter along the border, holding my hand. All moves in a circle; everything repeats itself…
When my father came home, I asked him, “What yum-yum have you brought me?”
Now Ilia asks me the same. Really,  all moves in a circle…
 

I have seen a living steam locomotive! He was enormous, and he was puffing! He was in puffs of smoke and steam! He was dragging the train, by which I went. I was five years old. His congeners stand on pedestals on some railway stations nowadays. Like mammoths or dinosaurs.
 

It remained two month before Ilya’s birth. Marina and me got into the concert of chamber music in church by chance. It was the first time I heard an alive violin. It turned out that alive violin sounds didn’t resemble a violin voice on record. It turned out that it resembled nothing at all. I found out that I was shedding tears. Tears due to the sounds of violin?
 

Granny. Her name  was Matriona Antonovna Berezina . She was born in the Tambov province. She told me about her Granny. Her Granny used to say to her, “I’ll just give you in marriage, and then I may die.”
And my Granny said the same to me, “As soon as you marry I may die.”
I married, and two months later, my Granny died. It’s a coincidence, of course.
Granny - it is not like Mommy. It is another cup of tea.
 

A cemetery. The large Town of the Dead. Once I had a strange feeling, some kind of euphoria at the cemetery. I told them, “You are already not in this world. And you’ll never be. But I can lift up my head and see this shrill-blue sky.” 
Probably it’s ashamed of confessing it. Last two years I have been trying to visit cemeteries as rarely as possible.
Once I saw a trumpeter at the cemetery. He was blowing his trumpet near a grave. I wish so much the one for whom the music was sounding were able to hear it! Are we already able to hear those who are near by during the life? And after death?..
 

My second Granny lived in a village. I would spend my summers there. A forest, a lake, fresh milk… Do you remember how a cow smells? The road to the lake leads through the forest. There’s a spring on its border. I used to come to the spring and scoop water with a box – even not being thirsty. ” It happens that your heart needs water too”. Another rite was the following. There was an aged oak on the border of the forest. I should be sitting under it for a couple of minutes. “Rites must be observed”.
 

We learned poetries on the lessons of English at the University. Our teacher used to say, “When you forget all I taught you, you would still remember these verses.”
I suppose, you were right, Tatyana Georgievna:
“When you were in the war, Daddy,
Did you have a cowboy gun?”
 

My son. He was one year old at that moment. He looked like a little man – because he began to walk. He wore a romper suit with yellow chickens and a green sleeveless jacket with a duckling. He had red  slippers on his feet. Being equipped in such a manner, he set off his journey via life. I keep those slippers. I think I will present them for his birthday when he grows up. He really must be surprised!
 

My son. He was six years old already. He found a sound card playing  ”Happy birthday to you”. It had been his mother’s gift for his birthday a couple years earlier. 
The music is sounding. Suddenly Ilia begins to cry. We run up and ask what happened. Ilia answered, “I  don’t   want to leave my childhood.”
Marina and me didn’t know what to do, to cry or to laugh.

 
 My son. He is nine already. He was playing with his friend in the yard. The friend threw a stone and hit a passer-by occasionally. Then the friend shouted, “It’s him,” pointed at Ilia and ran away. The man rushed to Ilia and punched him. Ilia came home drowned in tears. But he was crying not only because of pain. He said, “I’ve never been betrayed in such a way.”
I told him, “My boy, you will be betrayed many more times in your life - so wags the world.”
And then my wife and me explained him that if a person is wise and strong, he must be able to forgive. And Ilia forgave his friend. 
 

I remember that terrible place in the Bykovnya forest. That place used to be dug up by “archaeologists” from cesspits. The heaps of skulls, bones, the remains of clothes were scattered all over the clearing. There was a hole in the back of every skull’s head. Clothes and shoes were preserved very well. It was dreadful for me when bones, i.e. phalanges, poured out from shoes. What does a man think about – if he knows he will be killed and he knows he is guilty of nothing? There is a memorial at that forest now.
 

One day I will take a swallow of the water of Lethe; each of us must take it. As the legend claims, they would give a swallow of that water to a dying person, and he could forget everything that had happened to him in his life. So, I’ll forget, too. But I remember still… “If you don’t forget it, like a wave can forget all the waves…”

 

September 2003, Kiev