You must be here for the concert? You know, I used to go to school with him. The golden boy. Yeah, for real. We were on the archery team together. I was the captain. He wasn’t bad, but had too many distractions. His band was already getting kinda big. And he always had 2-3-4 girlfriends at a time. Busy man.

In the senior year, we made it to this regional tournament. The first three winners were supposed to go to the nationals. All the guys were excited. Except for him, he didn’t really give a shit. Kept missing practice and making lame-ass excuses. And everyone just ate it up, cause, you know, he was god. But I was getting pissed, cause archery was all I had going. Archery and my special gift. But the gift was tricky cause I couldn’t use it on myself. I mean, it was cool that I could make anyone fall in love with anyone, but I had never even kissed a girl at that point. I was thinking, maybe, if we win…

So, I took him aside and said, dude, be serious. You’ve got to come to practice. We win, and I will make any girl you want fall for you hard. That blond preacher’s daughter. Or Dee, who only thinks about her swim practice and getting far away from this town on a scholarship.

And he just laughed like I said something hilarious. Told me he was already a better archer than all of us put together, he was only on the team out of pity. And he definitely didn’t need my help with girls, could already get anyone he wanted.

So when in social studies I saw him ask Dee for a pencil, I did my thing. A little golden arrow into his heart. When his eyes suddenly got wide and he sort of stuttered a bit, I knew it had worked. So I also shot a lead arrow into hers, even though I didn’t think she’d have any interest regardless.

We placed fourth. Two people dropped off the team after that. I had to promise two others to hook them up with cheerleaders to make them stay.

And he was turning into Dee’s shadow. Sat with her at lunch, followed her to the library. For homecoming, there was that stupid tradition, guys painting posters to ask girls to be their dates. So dumb. So one day he comes to social studies class late, and the teacher asks why, but not too sternly, cause he is everybody’s darling. And he responds, sorry, Mr. Zit, I had to make a big entrance, and unrolls that thing that reads “Will you be my Dee-Date?” and everyone oohs and awwws, but Dee looks down and says, I was asking you not to do this. No one could believe it, least of all, him.

The three of us were on the same bus, so I was watching him on the ride home, and knew from his face that something was brewing. When the bus got to her stop, he got off also. I stayed on, but my mind… That’s my other special thing that people at school didn’t know about. It started when my old man got super-drunk and was going after mom, and she was crying…Since then, my mind can go places without my body following.

Dee’s dad was a ranger, so they lived in that cabin by the river. She took the shortcut. When she heard his footsteps, she stopped. I didn’t hear what they were talking about. Then he tried to kiss her. She pushed him away. He grabbed her arm, pulled on her skirt. She managed to get away and ran. He ran after her.

She was very athletic, and at first I thought she’d make it. But he was gaining on her. She was already almost by the cabin, I saw her dad on the porch, staring into space with glassy eyes. I realized that he was totally wasted, barely registering what was happening. But then she yelled, “Daddy!” There was such a mix of terror and relief in her voice. I felt his response. It’s like she was his little girl again, and this time he was not going to let her down. His eyes focused, his shoulders straightened…

Until that moment I had no idea that he also had gifts. I was about to shoot my golden arrow into her, it would’ve worked at that distance. Would’ve fixed it. They would’ve gone to homecoming together. But the stupid old drunk yells, “Daddy is here, honey!” and, before I can blink, she starts turning into a tree. Have you ever watched a person turn into a tree? Poor Daphne. There was that moment when her mouth was already covered with bark, but her eyes were still screaming. And then that stopped, too. And old Peneus is just sitting slack-jawed in his chair, like he had just used up all his wits. And Apollo is all shaking… but he got over it pretty fast. Went to homecoming with the cheerleading captain.

Can you buy me another drink?

Do you want to know why I didn’t save her? Yes, I know what I said. Been telling that to myself for years. But you want to know the truth? I didn’t help her because I couldn’t. I didn’t have those powers. Had I really been able to make people fall in love, would Apollo have done what he did? Does that sound like love to you? I didn’t have it. Didn’t save mom either.

Another drink, for the road? Your road. I am not going anywhere, but you have that show to go to. Must go on and all that. And tomorrow, before you leave town, are you going to the river? Nice place for a picnic. Shady spot under a willow. Tourists like it.

Hey, one last one, for old time’s sake? The good old times.

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At the luggage carousel, they overhear flight attendants talk about an impending strike.They look at each other incredulously. Missing their return flight would initiate a domino effect of undesirable events: rescheduling medical appointments and work meetings, a flurry of household reshuffling. Worse, he may miss a trip to a European conference where he is receiving an award. Picking up her suitcase from the belt, he says, let’s postpone worrying.

Outside the airport gate, the air is hazy and smells of fire. In the hectic crush of the past months, they haven’t done any research or preparation beyond booking tickets and a lodge. It hadn’t occurred to them to check the map of forest fires. On the highway, he exclaims, “Whoa, these aren’t Rocky Mountains, these are Smoky Mountains!” The air quality index is 10, a “severe health risk,” triggering a recommendation to stay indoors. From their cabin window, they glimpse the grey of the impossibly blue lake. The mountains behind are a vague shadow. She sighs and thinks, well, she has the laptop with the story she had started at home, and there is that Netflix show they’ve been meaning to catch up on.

In the middle of the night, she wakes up, reaches for her phone to check the time, and notices that the battery charger indicator is off. She pushes on the plug to no avail, then tiptoes to the bathroom and can’t turn on the light. From the balcony, the whole village seems dark. She returns to bed.

In the morning, it turns out that the power is still out. It’s the whole valley. The implications slowly sink in: the food in the fridge, the stove, the restaurants, the stores… The hot spring pool they wanted to visit. Gas stations. Laptops. She says, now what? With an amused air, he says, “let’s play the game where we make up plot twists about how this vacation could get worse.” She feels her chest tighten, “Don’t laugh… What if there is a medical emergency?” She remembers the time she had a panic attack. He says, “After we outline all the bad options, we attach probabilities to them.”

She laughs and buries her face in his shoulder. He kisses the top of her head, her forehead, her temple… His lips find her mouth. She whispers, is this a good idea now? Is there hot water in the shower? The shower slips from her mind.

The day is an unhurried quiet gift.

The next morning, they wake up to discover that the power has been restored, the strike is over, and the changed winds cleared the air, revealing the impossibly bright water framed by iconic peaks.

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The room is sunlit and quiet, and its calm is different from the straitjacketed naptime calm next door. Here, we are free and grown-up, unsupervised, untethered, engrossed in our mission. Hannah and I aren’t friends, but the task unites us into easy working harmony.

The duty hour is ending, solemn and precious, and, pausing to remove an errant wisp of hair from her face, Hannah says, with thoughtful satisfaction,

“We are having such a good day. We need to remember to give thanks to God for this in church on Sunday.”

I look at Hannah, surprised.

“Who is God?”

She explains, drawing an image of a bearded Grandpa Frost-like being looking down on us from a throne set on a fluffy cloud. All-powerful. The decider of who is allowed to skip naptime.

I am stunned. For one thing, my inner implausibility detector-siren is wailing. I am a cynical child. A chair on a cloud? But also, if this God character really does exist, how come no one thought to mention him to me until now? How did I manage to live to be four-and-a-half and not know?

What I cannot appreciate yet is that Hannah’s family is playing with fire. This is the Soviet Union, in which God is banished into official non-being status. Religious faith is treated as a sign of backwardness at best, subversion at worst. True, our region of Ukraine is the newest addition to the atheist empire, and clandestine resistance is strong. People quietly go to churches to have their infants baptized and their Easter eggs blessed, but Hannah’s parents are so careless that they seem to have skipped the important precaution of teaching their child not to blab, and here she is spilling it to an alien, a Russian-speaking secular kid whose parents aren’t native to the region.

Naptime ends and we reunite with our group. In the evening, Dad comes to pick me up. I walk with him on old cobblestoned streets, my small hand in his big one, my throat burning with the question.

“Dad, is there a God?”

“No.”

His response is immediate and final. He does not ask where I heard the word, does not talk about people who may disagree. Case closed.

We keep walking, holding hands. I am relieved. The world remains logical and orderly.

Some decades later, I am visiting my parents in another city in another country. Dad and I go for a walk. We walk slowly, as his gait is affected by a condition from which he’ll never fully recover. The slowness is meditative. My mind stops whirling, lets go of a few work and kids’ worries, and takes a philosophical turn.

“Dad, do you remember… Doesn’t matter, but… Do you ever think that there might be God?”

There is a pause.

“Well, generally, no. Except…”

“Except what?”

“Some proofs and formulas. Makes you think, there’s got to be something behind such beauty.”

Dad is a mathematician. At the time of our walk, he’d call himself a “former mathematician,” a loss of his beloved work accepted in exchange for better opportunities for us and our children, but never not aching. But of course, there is no past tense in this relationship.

We keep walking.

It’s been fifteen years since Dad crossed the line behind which the answer to the question may lie. As years go by, missing him grows duller, but deeper.

And Hannah, I have no idea what has become of her. Is she still in Ukraine? Was she able to maintain her gratitude for small things and her faith, despite the tragedies that befell her city, her country, her generation? Wherever she may be, I hope her life still has patches of sunlit quiet freedom.

Photo by Sasha Freemind on Unsplash

Schweblin writes in a genre that’s hard to classify. Playing with writing made me peek into the worlds of publishing and marketing and learn many new terms, including “speculative fiction”, an umbrella genre for things that bend and dilute reality. The genre encompasses fantasy, sci-fi, and dystopias, but also includes works that do the bending ever-so-slightly.

Many, though not all, Schweblin’s stories have a speculative element, as well as touches of horror and magical realism. During Covid, when we were all desperate to find meaningful ways to Zoom, my extended family had a short-story club. For our first gathering, I chose Schweblin’s “Preserves,” a story about an unexpected pregnancy. The two young people to whom this happens love each other and want children, want this child, but are woefully not ready for him or her just yet. Something happens, and that something is magically ineffable and stunningly unorthodox. When my lovely family popped into Zoom squares from six different locations and I opened with “well, what did you think?”, there was stunned silence. It persisted, until my son, then twenty, said, “Permission to speak freely? I am going to speak for everyone here besides mom. Whaaat tha blip did I just read??” Faces relaxed into nodding and laughing. I thought, ok, great. This is exactly the question that a good story should leave one with.

Since then, Schweblin has become my book club favorite. I discussed several of her stories with a teen-girls-plus-moms club that I did for my daughter and her friends. The girls, fourteen, would also often start with “what the blip was THAT?”, and then we would unwrap layer after layer, study clues and metaphors, debate possibilities, and agree that, while our close reading did not reduce the uncertainty, it changed the tone of the “what the blip?” from bafflement to admiration.

When Schweblin shifts planes of reality, she puts us into a world that demands a fresh look, directed both at our surroundings and inward. “What if?” becomes “who am I?” What would you do, if you found out that your adolescent daughter stopped eating normal food and would only eat live birds, feathers and all? This is exactly what happens to a divorced father in the title story of the “Mouthful of Birds” collection. Would you react the way Gregor Samsa’s parents did or call yourself an ally and drive to your local pet store to buy some canaries? While the story may be a metaphor for a number of familiar parent-child conflicts, it also may not be, and, in any case, it is anything but straightforward and didactic.

“Good and Evil,” Schweblin’s latest book, came out last year. In comparison with the 2009 “Mouthful of Birds,” or the 2015 collection “Six Empty Houses,” “Good and Evil,” it is softer and sadder, with the kind of sadness that is less gothic horror, more the deep ache of middle adulthood. The fantastical is no longer glaring at the reader from the center. Instead, it is lurking at the edges, and you are not always sure if it is really there. One day, I practically burst into a discussion with my Spanish club friends, exclaiming, “It took me almost till the end of the story to realize that this character was a ghost!” Ok, “burst” may be an exaggeration, I do not burst into speeches in Spanish, but enunciate slowly, thinking all the while, “should I have used the imperfect instead of the preterite?” But the point is, my very text-savvy partners are looking at me with surprise. A ghost? Yes, look, no one ever sees that person, except for the protagonist, and look also at this and that detail. They say, hmm, this is true, but then consider this and this as a counterargument. And I am thinking, I thought I was following the breadcrumbs, but, perhaps, I was falling into a rabbit hole. Or, put differently, every breadcrumb is a magic mushroom that takes each reader on their own tailored trip.

A writer’s imagination. I used to think the gold of creative imagination was the ability to think up exotic universes or string high-stakes events together: enter the police, enter the dragon, enter police riding dragons, “”Luke, I am your father.” The precious gift of Schweblin’s imagination in “Good and Evil” is not in big leaps and flights, but in achieving a great deal with very little. In “William in the Window” a writer hears in her hotel room faint sounds of a beloved pet she had lost. Distraught - is she losing her mind? - she invites a friend to visit and listen. Yes, there really are sounds of paws, jumping and scratching. From this, we get to a powerful revelation about love and grief, with the addition of very few ingredients, introduced with perfect timing and proportion.

In my writing explorations, I signed up for Story Club with George Saunders, in which George teaches his subscribers to read short stories closely. In one of his posts, George talks about story structure in terms of platforms and step ladders. Platforms are places that contextualize and solidify information. Step ladders are events that move the narrative forward, from platform to platform, increasing tension and raising stakes. Having read the post, I started trying to observe this structure and anticipate what may happen next.

Sometimes, it’s easy. Little Red Riding Hood is walking merrily through the platform of the dark forest, picking berries and flowers when - bam! - Big Bad Wolf emerges on the scene and asks her where her grandmother lives. What is likely to happen? One of two things, of course: either she does not tell him, or she does. If she does not tell him, there is no story, so there is, really, only one possibility. This predictability works, because Little Red Riding Hood is a familiar archetypal story: an innocent’s journey, a charming villain, dangerous seduction, death and rebirth. Here, familiarity allows us to experience the thrill of terror, while also being assured of the happy ending (except for the wolf).

But Schweblin is a modern-day writer who speaks a different language. When I climb her platform and start looking for ladders, I find myself at a loss and then start sliding into banalities. The closing story of the book, “The Superior Pays a Visit,” starts in a nursing home where the protagonist, a tired middle-aged woman, is reading a book in a hallway outside her mother’s room. The protagonist’s life is in a rut. She is long-divorced, her adult daughter lives on another continent, her mom no longer recognizes her. To give herself a reason to keep moving from one day to another, she buys an expensive apartment, thus ensuring that she can never retire from her job, which involves sitting at the computer and sending form emails to customers. This is a good narrative platform, flat and promising - clearly, something needs to happen. What happens is that a little old lady wearing a nursing home gown, clearly a resident, stops in front of the protagonist and asks her for a few coins “for the train.”

The protagonist (nameless, I’ll call her Lydia) hesitates and then gives the old lady a few coins, thinking, what can happen, she will not be able to exit the facility. This nice ladder elevates us to the next narrative platform, which is an actual subway train platform, where Lydia, waiting for her train, spots the little lady in her gown. She feels responsible. There is no phone reception so she cannot alert the nursing home.

Ultimately, Lydia gets on the same train, approaches the old woman, strikes up a conversation, and invites the runaway to her place for some tea. Next platform: the two women are sitting on the couch drinking tea, eating biscuits, and watching TV, Lydia musing about how long it’s been since she did this with someone. I pause. If this were my story, where would I take it from here? Clearly, I’d want to show some inner transformation of the Lydia character. I’d want her to shake off her torpor, quit her boring job, and go to a meditation retreat in Thailand, or on Tinder, or… But what kind of external catalyst is likely to bring about such a change of an internal state? My mind goes through a deck of possibilities. One: Lydia adopts the little old lady and never returns her to the nursing home, finding strange happiness in this surrogacy. Two: as they sit together on the coach, the old lady tells Lydia some revelatory truth that only young children and old people with dementia are able to see. Three: investigating her guest’s, Lydia discovers something shocking (an international spy?), or great (a famous actress?) or tragic (a loss?) that makes her reexamine her own life. Four… I think I am done. Unfortunately, all these ideas are rather banal. Fortunately, what Schweblin does is a lot more interesting.

Do check out the book. “Good and Evil.”

Photo by Vitaliy Shevchenko on Unsplash

Two weeks ago, I did something stupid: opened a Trader Joe’s can without looking at my hands (always know where your hands are!) and sliced one of them open. This made me break my 4-month streak of weekly posts. But the stitches are finally off, and I am so happy about that.

After two weeks of forced abstinence, a slightly longer-then-usual piece. But not by much, and, hopefully, good entertainment.

Thank you for reading!

***

Travel guides to large countries with extensive railway networks always make a point of recommending long-distance travel by train. They also advise against booking the expensive coach class with air conditioning and private cabins, where privacy isolates one from the special camaraderie that is the reason for taking the train in the first place. Having grown up in the Soviet Union, I remember that camaraderie of sharing a long, idle stretch of time in close quarters with strangers you will never see again. As the train rocks with a steady monotone, passengers in shared compartments unwrap their foods for a communal feast: cold chicken, hard boiled eggs, dark bread. The conductor brings damp grey linens and tea in straight-sided glasses in metal holders, and one of the passengers produces a bottle of homemade hard liquor. Soon, stories start flowing. In this rare combination of closeness and near-anonymity, conversations often acquire a confessional flavor. And then, there is train sleep, the best in the world, on a berth that rocks gently to the steady lullaby of the wheels.

The special quality of train conversations makes train travel a pivotal plot development device in Russian literature. For example, Leo Tolstoy’s The Kreutzer Sonata is a novella-long train monologue that is a murder confession. The protagonist, who stabbed his wife in a fit of jealous rage and was acquitted on the grounds of insanity, feverishly narrates his tale, expounding his theories of gender, sexuality, and morality to the captive audience of stunned co-passengers. The steadily moving train is not just a setting, but a metaphor for inevitability: of marital dissatisfaction, descent into madness, the inability to avoid talking or listening. This novella is Tolstoy at his moralistic worst, but the train deserves a shoutout.

My personal love affair with long-distance train travel started when I was little, with trips from Lviv, our hometown in Western Ukraine, to Kyiv. Overnight trains carried me to summer swimming in the Dnipro River, sour cherries, little ivory elephants on my grandparents’ mantelpiece, the bustle of their communal apartment. Later, I would take that train with friends to perform at music festivals and roam Kyiv’s streets, filling the night with adolescent laughter.

In between, there was a school class trip on an overnight train to Brest, a town on the Belarusian border with Poland. The trip was supposed to be solemn. Brest, the site of many important historical events throughout the centuries, was canonized in Soviet propaganda for its role in World War II. When Nazi Germany launched its attack on the Soviet Union, Brest’s 19th-century fortress became one of the first battlegrounds of the Eastern Front. The attack came to the Soviets as a surprise: having recently jointly invaded Poland, the two countries were strategic partners. Although multiple sources had warned Stalin, he dismissed them all. Soviet unpreparedness was aggravated by recent purges in the army. Despite the suddenness and overwhelming force of the attack, the defenders of the Brest Fortress responded with fierce resistance, holding off the enemy for much longer than the Germans had anticipated.

Soviet history textbooks did not talk about the Soviet Union’s 1939 pact with Germany that partitioned Poland. Neither did they talk about the purges that crippled the Soviet army. But every Soviet schoolchild knew about Germany’s treacherous assault and Brest’s heroic defense. After the war, the fortress, honored with the title of the “Hero-Fortress”, became a revered memorial and a site of school pilgrimages. When I was in third grade, my class won a competition in metal scrap recycling and, to our unbounded joy, was rewarded with a trip there. We were going to Brest for an induction ceremony into the Young Pioneers, the junior wing of the Communist Party.

We rode to Brest in the lowest-fare open-plan car: practically, a rolling single-room hostel with bunk berths arranged along a central aisle. For nine-year-olds, this was the perfect setting for parkour-style jumping between the berths and scaring one another with ghost stories. Our teacher and the three parent-chaperones were running themselves ragged trying to maintain order, but they were vastly outnumbered. Well past midnight, the hum of whispers and giggles was broken by sobs: Igor spat a ball of chewing gum into Yulia’s hair, and Soviet gum turned out to be as clingy to a nine-year-old’s head as Soviet ideology. The teacher who came to Yulia’s rescue with a comb and a pair of scissors started berating Igor, opining that, perhaps, he was not deserving of membership in the Young Pioneers and should not be inducted tomorrow. Now we had two sobbing third-graders.

Many years later, I find myself traveling with my American husband and daughter across the former Soviet countries of the Caucasus: Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Armenia. We are in Tbilisi, the capital of Georgia, planning the transfer to Armenia. There are options: a 40-minute flight, a five-hour drive with scenic stops, or an overnight train. Upon hearing the word “train,” I light up like a Christmas tree. We go to the train station and buy three tickets for a second-class coach with four-person locking compartments, much more civilized than the Lviv-Brest rolling dorm. I describe to my eight-year-old Eva how nice it’s going to be, and she is swept up into my excitement. I overhear her FaceTime with a friend: tomorrow, we are taking a sleeper! She is describing a cruise ship on wheels, but my radar remains mute.

When the day comes, we rush to the station amidst an apocalyptic downpour. Our roommate, a young Japanese backpacker, is already making himself comfortable inside the compartment. Eva takes it in and whispers in my ear, “If this is second class, what does third class look like?” Then my American little girl sits down on her berth and starts blinking rapidly. I look around and see the place through her eyes: the decor that hasn’t changed since the 1980s, the very narrow aisle with a total stranger getting ready for bed within less than an arm’s length, the mattress that had seen better days... This is definitely no cruise ship. Somehow, this image settles on my memories the way oil does on water, separating into layers without mixing. I am still loving it, unsuccessfully trying to pull Eva into my orbit. When she starts weeping quietly, my husband goes into his full-on Jay mode, spinning funny absurd stories about Eva’s own future parenting faux pas. With his efforts, Eva’s weeping finally transforms into laughter, though with somewhat hysterical undertones.

Watching my daughter while inhabiting two worlds at the same time, I suddenly know exactly when the next crisis is going to happen. When I walk Eva to the train bathroom before bedtime, she takes one look, exclaims “No way!” and slams the door. To be fair, the place is exactly the same as it was when I was her age, that is to say, it makes a Burning Man porta-potty at the end of the week look luxurious. I draw a deep breath and explain that, as far as bathrooms are concerned, this is the only option until the following morning. As the realization sinks in, Eva starts weeping with renewed vigor. Somehow, we get through that, and through the ugliness of the spotted towels, and through there being no dining car... Finally, after saying, “I’ll never fall asleep here!!” Eva sinks into a deep sleep. For a bit, Jay and I ride in exhausted silence. Then he leans over and gently says, “I thought the point of moving to the US was to protect your children from Soviet-style experiences, not to expose them to those.” I say, “But aren’t YOU loving this?” The look in his eyes tells me that, sometimes, love means not speaking your mind freely. Oh, well. I stretch out on my bunk and sink into the bliss of sensory memories.

In the middle of the night, I am startled awake by a loud knock. The compartment door slides open, the light switch is flipped on. In the door frame stands a short, thin, tired-looking man, perhaps in his thirties, wearing a uniform. With a glance around the compartment, he pronounces with authority, “Border control!”, a tinge of irritation in his voice.

This is a novelty to me. During the night rides of my childhood, the Soviet Union was a seemingly indivisible monolith, and no border control ever interrupted my train dreams. The officer asks for our passports. He does it in Russian, the language of the empire to which Armenia used to belong until recently, which presents a problem for the Japanese backpacker. The officer shakes his head and switches to rudimentary English, which helps things some, but not tremendously. The officer starts running a critical commentary on the quality of language education in China. The commentary is in Russian, so I can’t help saying aloud that the traveler whose passport is being inspected is from Japan, not China. The officer dismisses my uncalled-for comment: it’s the same thing.

We are next. I hand over our passports, glance at Eva, who is miraculously asleep despite the commotion, and ask in my most polite voice if we could please let my daughter sleep. Even with her eyes closed and her mouth slightly agape, Eva bears sufficient resemblance to her passport photo, or so I believe. The officer is flipping through my passport without answering, looking at various stamps. Then, he raises his head.

“You visited Azerbaijan. Why did you go there?”

Even as I come up with “It was just a layover,” I understand that Eva getting to sleep through this encounter just became very unlikely.

While Armenia and Azerbaijan are not at war with each other during our trip, the relationship is as taut as a bowstring, because of a territorial dispute over the Nagorno-Karabakh region. The dispute is the heritage of Stalin’s divide-and-rule policy which gave the region to Azerbaijan, despite its Armenian-majority population. In the Soviet years, the iron-fist regime kept the lid on the brewing tension. Once the Soviet Union started collapsing, hell broke out.

Pondering history, I begin to think of ways to calm Eva’s upcoming meltdown. The officer turns to Jay, prompting me to say, “If you have any questions, I will translate.”

He looks at me and says, “Your husband does not speak Russian.”

“No,” I confirm, “he is American.”

“And you,” he asks with exasperation, “What are you? You speak Russian, your passport is American, and your last name is…” He pauses. “It’s not Russian. Keselman, what kind of name is that?”

I sigh to myself, wondering whether this would constitute a further transgression in his eyes, and say,

“It’s Jewish.”

“Jewish?” he repeats.

His gaze softens, and he stays silent for a bit. Then, looking at me without a trace of previous animosity, he says, “I have a lot of respect for your people. You suffered a lot, like us. There is a museum of the Armenian Genocide in Yerevan. You should go see it.”

Then he adds, “Your little girl may sleep,” and hands me back our passports.

“Is everything ok?”, asks Jay when the door closes.

“Yes, I say. We have suffered enough, we may rest.”

When the conductor wakes us with “Thirty minutes to Yerevan!”, the view from the window is of snow-capped majestic Mount Ararat. Opening her eyes, Eva asks me whether the Yerevan train station has “a normal bathroom.” Once I say yes, she becomes the happy, resilient traveler we know.

Several years later, Jay and I are in India, flying from Varanasi to Delhi the day before our scheduled return flight to the US. The Varanasi flight is cancelled, and we rush to the train station to catch the night train. We read the guidebook and know that trains tend to run with delays, but our international flight isn’t until the next evening. We should be fine.

To our delight, the train departs Varanasi only a couple of hours behind schedule, but when we wake up ready to disembark in an hour or two, we discover that Delhi is still very, very far away. Given the train’s average speed, we may not reach it by the evening. Our fellow passengers treat the situation with equanimity: uncertainty is a part of life, fretting will not speed up the ride, only make it unpleasant. But we were careless enough to think that ten hours was a sufficient margin. India laughs in the face of such hubris.

Desperate, we get off the train in a city we have never heard of, in search of a driver who would agree to drive us to Delhi, seven hours away, leaving immediately. At the station, we are instantly surrounded by a throng of tuk-tuk drivers, promising to deliver us to any place in the universe in no time. Somehow, we push through the pandemonium and manage to find a reasonable car and a driver for an only slightly unreasonable sum.

We make it to Delhi on time, although just barely. As it turns out, so does our Varanasi train. Somehow, after many hours of glacial crawl, it picks up speed and makes up for all the lost time with the determination of an Olympic runner in the final stretch of a race. Perhaps, this was the universe testing us, but whether the test was on patience or resourcefulness, we’ll never know. Maybe, it was a “choose your own adventure” game designed to deliver all the players to the same endpoint safely, none the wiser. Or, maybe, the destination still awaits.

Photo by Sara Hobbs on Unsplash

Natasha picked a flag and skipped down the corridor past the poster depicting a muscular man with a serious expression. The man’s stern eyes emphasized the message: “Be vigilant! Saboteurs and enemies of the State are hiding in our midst!” Natasha’s dream was to help the guards uncover a saboteur and have her name displayed on the Heroes Board.

She unlocked the apartment door and ran to the communal kitchen. Passing the Borzovsky room, Natasha overheard Anna Borzovsky say something to her husband Ivan about “those saboteur vermin steps away.” She sounded excited. Anna was good at spotting saboteurs, and her name was often displayed on the Heroes Board in the lobby. Anna’s vigilance was the reason the Borzovsky had their own private entrance to the communal bathroom.

In the kitchen, Natasha’s mom was stirring her tea in a glass with a distant, lost look.

“Are you worried about saboteurs?” asked Natasha.

Mom startled, “What? Hi, darling.”

“Don’t worry. I will help Anna find them.”

Mom’s right hand massaged the wrist of her left. “Look what dad got for you today.”

From her apron pocket, mom took out a carefully folded piece of red latex. Natasha couldn’t believe her eyes. “A balloon!” She drew air into her lungs and danced around the kitchen, “A balloon, a balloon, a balloon, a BALOOON!!!!!”

Mon smiled, but the smile stopped at her mouth without reaching the eyes.

_______

Natasha was walking to the march with Lily. The girls agreed to share with the balloon: Natasha would carry it first, then, when the march reached the Apothecary, it would be Lily’s turn.

Lily was talking excitedly.

“At the last march, Annika had TWO balloons! Can you imagine? Her dad brought them from the Main. But then one of the balloons burst. Annika cried and cried. But we don’t think it burst on its own. We think it was saboteurs. They come to marches with hidden razor blades, to ruin our celebration. But we will protect your balloon.”

“If we see a saboteur, we will report him to the guards!”

“Yes! And get an award! Let’s hold hands.”

__________

At the Square the girls joined one of the spontaneous formations. Adults and older children stood along the sidewalk, waving. From the City Hall podium, the Supreme Governor was smiling his kindly smile under the large portrait of the Dear Leader.

As their formation turned the corner into Loyalty Street, Natasha noticed 11-year old Anton Borzovsky in the crowd. This was the first year Anton was old enough to attend as a cheerer. Anton’s mouth was opening and closing in chants. When Natasha and Lily reached the Founders Statue, Anton saw Natasha and his eyes narrowed. He started making his way through the crowd towards her.

As Anton squeezed past her, Natasha heard a loud exploding noise. Something soft and wrinkled fell onto her shoe. With horror, Natasha recognized it as an inexplicable incarnation of her shiny red balloon. An itchy cloud enveloped the inside of her throat, nose, and eyes.

A firm hand grasped Natasha’s shoulder.

“Don’t you dare ruin communal joy!”

The Teacher was towering above her.

“He is a saboteur! He had a razor! I can show the guards where he lives!”

“Pull yourself together this second! Balloons are fragile. You need to take better care of your things. Our workers sacrifice endlessly to provide for you.”

_______

Natasha dove into the sidewalk crowd, pushed through, and ran towards home. Mom and dad will understand.They will help her explain things to the guards. Anton will get his just punishment. Perhans, Anna and Ivan will be ordered to switch rooms with Natasha’s family, and she won’t have to imagine the hollow dark corridor when she has an urge to pee in the middle of the night …She’ll finally stop wetting her bed, and mom won’t have to carry the large laundry bag to the Civility Pier!

_____

A guards’ cruiser was parked by the building. But how did they find out? What impressive vigilance! Like the Teacher said, nipping evil in the bud. It was too bad that she didn’t get to help, though.

In the kitchen, filled with neighbors, Mom stood by the window looking outside, her shoulders shaking.

“Mom!”

Mom did not turn around.

Natasha ran to the window and climbed on the windowsill.

Below, the building door swung open. Why didn’t she meet them on the stairs? The guards must have taken Anton down in the elevator. Natasha would’ve liked to look him in the eye and catch the look on his face. She would’ve liked to say, “Look who is crying now? I hope your just punishment is severe!”

Two guards stepped outside leading a familiar slightly stooped figure. As they were pushing him towards the car, Natasha’s dad looked up and gave her and mom an awkward wave with his handcuffed hands.

THE END

_____

In case you are curious how this story came to be:

I subscribe to Story Club with George Saunders and What Now? by Mary G.

George Saunders posts short stories by different writers with questions for his subscribers and a week later presents his own detailed analysis. Following those is an amazing experience.

George’s latest discussion focused on a short story called “Feelings” by my favorite Ruth Ozeki, from her new “The Typing Lady” collection. The story is about two young friends whose teacher gives their class an assignment: do a project that requires acting with empathy, then write a report about it. The two girls decide to collaborate, and their project turns out to be anything but empathetic.

Mary G. is a fellow-member of the Story Club who is a writer and a creative writing teacher. Her newsletter presents weekly flash fiction prompts. Mary’s recent prompt, influenced by the Story Club with Ruth Ozeki, invited her followers to “Write a story about some form of childhood cruelty.”

This got me reminiscing about Soviet holiday parades of my childhood. When I was little, I loved carrying balloons at those parades. Balloons were precious. To our devastation, older kids entertained themselves by popping little kids’ balloons with discreetly carried sharp objects. I remember being inconsolable. Then, a few years later, I went to a parade as a pre-teen with a friend, both of us hiding needles in our pockets. Even as I was doing this, I felt horribly ashamed, and yet, unable to reject the adventure. That night, I felt so guilt-ridden that I confessed to my mom, hoping for an absolution. It was the angriest I had ever seen her. Somehow, my memories evolved into this story.

Photo by Jana Shnipelson on Unsplash

The year is, let’s say, 2012. The lady in the checkout line, or at a nearby bench or table, is flashing a disarming smile of an extrovert who has just established a comfortable connection and is ready to take the conversation to the next level. By the time we make it to the register, we may be exchanging phone numbers. Or not. Because I bristle.

I once read a book about how to have better conversations. The author was a self-professed guru in the style of Dale Carnegie: give her $15 and she’d tell you how to walk into a room full of strangers and leave with a phone page full of promises (parties, job interviews, kids’ playdates). One piece of advice, which I did like, was “carry a conversation piece.” A purse, a t-shirt, a haircut. Memorable, yes, but something that will earn not just a compliment, “I like your shoes!” but a question.

For example:

What should follow is something like this.

“That formula on your t-shirt, what is it?”

“It’s the Birthday Paradox. The probability that, in a group of n people, at least two share the same birthday. When is yours? Oh, late April, perfect for outdoor celebrations! Are you into hiking? No? Want to switch birthdays, mine is in February? So, what are your favorite things to do?”

I am an introvert with sporadic bursts of extroversion, so I’ll occasionally do this to people. It feels akin to travelling to an exotic land or trying a new activity. Like riding a camel, which I have done three times in my life, each time swearing to never again.

The thing is, if you speak with an accent, your conversation piece is tattooed on your forehead, and it’s not necessarily the piece you would have chosen for the occasion.

“So, Ukraine! Do you miss home?”

Home. Where do I begin?

I was born in Lviv when Ukraine was part of the Soviet Union and immigrated to the US from the newly independent Ukraine in 1992. Was it home? Yes and no. On the one hand, I did love Lviv. It was a place I never took for granted. I remember walking cobblestoned, chestnut-lined streets or riding trams past stunning Gothic and Renaissance cathedrals, thinking, “Wow, how lucky I am to live in such a beautiful place!” Now that I am much older and have traveled, I still think of Lviv as one of the most beautiful cities ever. Add to this childhood memories, first love, intense friendships - yes, of course, it was home.

But there was also a sense of not belonging, which started early. In preschool, I used to think it was because my mom didn’t know how to sew and braid hair. For our winter holiday parties, girls were supposed to dress up as snowflakes (boys as bunnies). In old black-and-white photos from those occasions, all the other girls are dressed in puffy tutu skirts and wear large organza puffballs in their braided hair. The tutus are homemade, because this is the Soviet Union, and beauty isn’t sold in the stores. Such exquisite, magnificent snowflakes. Me? I sport the 1970s New York BoHo aesthetic, wearing a minimalist straight calf-length dress with a few sparkles at the neckline and a simple headband over a short bob. Instead of smiling at the camera, I am looking askance enviously at the other girls. I would have given anything for a puffy tutu and braids, and yet, I never mention this to my mom, because denying her dress choices feels like a betrayal. Worse yet, it’s like accusing her of lacking essential feminine skills.

So, mom doesn’t braid my hair and doesn’t embroider my shirts with cross-stitched ornaments. There are other weird things. For example, one December day, the other kids are having an excited discussion, telling each other about the gifts that Saint Nicholas had brought them the night before. They ask me, what about you? I respond, a doll. In a real fabric dress. Her eyes open and close. I can’t let them know I have never heard of Saint Nicholas.

Later, I learn that we are Jews. In the Soviet Union, being Jewish isn’t a religion. Officially, we are all atheists. Instead, it’s a “nationality,” which is to say, ethnicity. Like the language of most Soviet Jews, my family’s first language is Russian, though we are also fluent in Ukrainian. My grandparents spoke Yiddish, but the Soviet Empire closed Yiddish schools and prodded Jews to align with the Biggest Brother.

In the absence of dedicated territorial borders, language, or religion, you’d think Jewish “nationality” would feel thin and elusive. Cultural distinctions are subtle, like those between a braid and a bob cut. Yet, the concept of nationality is also very concrete, inscribed in our passports as “Item #5,” and heavy in the shame it causes. A “Jew” isn’t a word you say aloud, but something you whisper, unless you are not the one afflicted. One day in my Russian school, which I attend after Ukrainian preschool, our homeroom teacher has to step out, and one of the kids grabs the class roster and starts reading the class list aloud - the last names and the nationalities next to them. The nationalities, of course, are the punchline. We are about eleven, no longer naive, everyone knows who is what, reading it with the finality granted by the official document is the next level. I am sitting in my seat, the color of beet soup, praying for the teacher to come back before the prankster gets to the letter “K.” I am not the only one. There are a couple of other Jews, a Tatar girl, a boy from an indigenous group in Northern Russia, all looking down or glancing at the door.

When people ask, “Where are you from?” what they really mean is “What are you?” When I lived in Lviv, I knew the answer, even though admitting it was uncomfortable. Once I immigrated, things became complicated. There is no longer a one-word answer to the question; my identity is a history lesson. I used to think a complex cultural identity was a rarity. Later, I came to realize how many people in the world have it. Also, how many places. For example, over the centuries, my beloved Ukrainian Lviv changed many greedy hands: the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, Austria-Hungary, Poland again, the USSR… And now, its freedom, once again, is being attacked.

When, in 2014, Putin annexed Crimea, “What are you?” suddenly became simpler. A Russian-speaker from Ukraine, raised in the dominant Russian literature and culture, I now much preferred to identify myself with the land than with the language. And then came the full-scale Russian invasion in February of 2022. Like very many of my Ukrainian and Russian-speaking American friends, regardless of their country of origin, I was donating, volunteering, and going to rallies. I also did something I haven’t done since high school - started reading Ukrainian novels and poetry. And I ordered some traditional Ukrainian art: a purse painted with sunflowers, a throw blanket picturing a young woman in traditional Ukrainian garb. Before, owning such symbols would have been unfathomable for me, like wearing a cross necklace.

One day in 2024, a volunteer chat to which I belonged issued a call. An organization was bringing wounded Ukrainian veterans to the area for prosthetic rehabilitation. They were looking for volunteers to drive and translate at the clinic. I signed up. That Tuesday, I drove my Honda to the apartment building where a man missing his right arm was smoking on a bench. I stepped out of the car, and he broke out laughing at my bright orange harem-style pants. The man, Pavlo, explained his mirth: in these pants, I reminded him of Der kleine Muk, or Little Muk, a fairy tale character popular in Ukraine. Little Muk was Turkish and had such a misshapen figure that his clothes never fitted, so people made fun of him. Once again, I was clearly failing Ukrainian femininity standards, but this time it filled me with ease. I was nervous: how do you talk with someone in the middle of an unspeakable tragedy? Pavlo’s approach to dealing with horror was banter. We immediately clicked.

For a few weeks, I became Pavlo’s regular driver. We talked a lot, though I mostly listened and asked questions. Normally, bonding in social situations is established via discovering “me as well!” moments (“My husband’s cousin’s wife is also Ukrainian!”), but our lives so lacked in parallels that sharing mine after his felt macabre. He was from a small village in eastern Ukraine. At the beginning of the war, his wife went with their kids to Spain and broke up with him. He was missing his kids desperately. He had spent over a year in hospitals, undergoing progressively more aggressive amputations. He was a carpenter by trade. He suffered from phantom pains. When his phantom pains became unbearable, he got drunk, but tried not to do this often, having seen too many people ruin their lives that way. In Ukraine, he grew weed, which was better for this purpose than alcohol, but there was no way for him to buy it in DC. What could I share in exchange? My worry about my daughter getting a C in physics? I brought him weed.

Despite all the unspeakable things that had happened, Pavlo was full of intense curiosity. He loved kayaking and horseback riding, activities organized by volunteers. One day, my son, a rock climber, offered to take him rock climbing at the gym. Pavlo’s eyes lit up. He talked of woodworking instruments that could be operated with one arm. Since our first meeting, he continued calling me Little Muk, commenting on my style. There was some daredevil abandon in him that even the war could not put out, something that used to be youthful recklessness, but became a respectable defense mechanism of choice.

While Pavlo still did a lot of banter, there were times when his conversation grew very dark. One day, we spent a couple of hours at the rehab with the PT specialist teaching him to operate the hand of his prosthetic. It takes a while to learn, because control movements are not intuitive. A shoulder twitch extends fingers into an open position. A different shoulder move brings the thumb and the index fingers together. Another rotates the wrist. The therapist spilled a handful of Cheerios on the floor. Pavlo’s job was to collect them into a plastic cup without crushing them. It was difficult. Pavlo was sweating from exertion.

On the way back, Pavlo started talking about dead bodies in the fields near the front lines, things he saw that no human should see. For a while, we drove in silence. Then, thankfully, he switched to the lighter subject of corruption in Ukraine, including around the army provisions, which led to a bitter invective against the Ukrainian President and his circle. I wasn’t surprised. While at the beginning of the war Volodymyr Zelensky’s approval rating was in the near-90s, two years into the war it declined significantly. Corruption has always been a problem, and while wars bring out heroism and determination in some, they also exacerbate problems. I was too removed from the situation to have an opinion on Ukrainian domestic matters.

Pavlo went on:

“Well, no wonder our leaders are all crooks and thieves, because you know what they are.”

“What do you mean, ‘what they are’?”

“Jews, that’s what they are.” Except “Jews” wasn’t the word he used.

I wondered, should I let it go? Did it matter to me what he thought of Jews? Then I thought, to me - no, but there were still Jews living in Ukraine.

“Ok, Pavlo, this is the awkward moment when I tell you I am a Jew.”

“Shit. Oh, shit. Are you mad at me? Of course you are. Please don’t be mad, I am just an uneducated idiot from a backward village who repeats stupid things he hears. Are you very angry?”

“No.”

“Please don’t be.”

I was telling the truth. How could I be angry at someone whom I just witnessed crawling on the floor sweating, trying to collect spilled Cheerios? At someone who just talked about dead bodies abandoned on village roads? After I got home, I took a bottle of vodka from the freezer and poured myself a generous portion into a teacup. My teenage daughter came out of her room asking if she could buy an $80 hoodie. She knew I’d probably say no, it’s expensive, and she had plenty of those, but… To her amazement, I nodded and handed her my credit card.

Of the Ukrainian veterans I visited, Pavlo was the one with whom I grew the closest. When it was time for him to go back home, he brought me a gift, a tin of Lviv coffee that one of the other volunteers had gifted him and the other guys. I was about to point out that, technically, it was shared property he wasn’t supposed to give away, then took it. He asked me not to remember him by what he had said that day in the car. I asked him to think about his US days in Ukraine when the conversation turned to Jews. For a while, we stayed in touch. He sent me videos: he relearned to swim, he rode a scooter. He also went back to woodworking and took some of his wood art to an exhibition in a nearby town. I explored the idea of bringing it to US galleries, but shipment was too expensive. It’s been a while since we last talked.

When people ask me these days where I am from, and I say “Ukraine,” they rarely respond by bringing up their “husband’s cousin’s wife.” Usually, they say “I am so sorry for what’s happening there.” Or “Your people are so brave.” Or “Do you still have family there?”

Many want to show support. Once, at a street festival, an Argentine vendor refused to take money for the lunch I had ordered for three people. I kept trying to explain that I was not a refugee, that by now I had lived in the US twice as long as I had lived in Ukraine. He said it did not matter.

These interactions make me feel awkward. My awkwardness is no longer about my identity not fitting the mold of assumptions. Rather, now I feel like an impostor who has no right to the compassion strangers extend to me. I have been in the US for 34 years. I live in a safe, comfortable home. I just bought my daughter an $80 hoodie that she did not need.

But I am learning to treat my identity as a conversation piece that can create deeper connections. I can tell the full story, a brief version. I am from Ukraine - imperfect, ridden with many faults, but also, stunningly courageous and resilient. I speak Russian, and after two years of refusing to read anything in that language for pleasure, I decided that I was not giving my library to Putin. I am American, and the state of today’s America is breaking my heart, but I am forever grateful to this country. I am Jewish, with a Jewish identity that is complex and in many ways conflicted. Being all these things means that I am also Ukrainian.

A brief note to my email subscribers who signed up to receive short fiction. My plan for this blog is approximately two parts flash fiction, one part essays about books, etc. This is a second essay week in a row, with fiction coming next Friday. As always, writing this with gratitude for your time and attention.

________________

Humans are terrible at seeing reality. I am not talking about my teenager estimating the number of hours she needs to write her English paper, or me renewing an aspirational gym membership. No, I am thinking about the most basic existential reality: natural laws, physical scale, space, and time. Our senses tell us that the Earth is flat and motionless, and that our bodies are made of solid, static material. We have an intellectual grasp of the truth, but its abstraction clashes sharply with our perceptual experience. On a daily basis, our delusions provide a habitual lens through which we see the world.

Occasionally, though, we come into experiences that give us a glimpse of the world as it truly is. Take a total solar eclipse. It happens when the Moon passes between the Earth and the Sun, blocking the Sun entirely. Suddenly, the relationship between celestial bodies becomes tangible. The sky grows dark, and the air cools with dramatic speed. The Sun is replaced by a black disk surrounded by a fiery corona. The Earth takes its real, humble place in the universe.

Although an eclipse occurs somewhere on Earth approximately every eighteen months, catching one is tricky business. Most happen over remote ocean waters. Often, they are obscured by clouds. For centuries, their sightings, rare and incomprehensible, were taken as omens that changed the course of wars.

I am married to an eclipse chaser. Eclipse chasers are a small, committed tribe bordering on a cult. By the time mainstream media started covering the upcoming Great American Eclipse of 2017, my husband was many months into ordering telescope filters and booking cancellable hotel reservations in three states in places with potentially good viewing conditions.

Jay was placing his largest bet on Casper, Wyoming. That summer, my work schedule was intense, and getting to Casper from DC was complicated, so I suggested: what if you take the kids to Wyoming, and I meet you after in Salt Lake City? Salt Lake was an easy-to-reach hub over which 91% of the Sun’s diameter was going to be occluded. Ninety one is almost one hundred, I reasoned. Jay responded that, according to experts, the difference between partial and total eclipses was like that between a kiss on the cheek and passionate lovemaking, and we absolutely had to share the experience. I did not have a counterargument.

In the two weeks leading up to the eclipse, Jay became difficult to live with, constantly fretting over maps and checking weather apps. He made us promise that should the skies act up and turn cloudy, we’d be willing to get up in the middle of the night and drive 3 hours, 5 hours, 7 hours. We promised, but his anxiety was hard to alleviate. Deep within the least populous US state, Jay worried about traffic congestion. Four days before the eclipse he insisted on filling our trunk with non-perishable food, water, and flashlight batteries. In his mind, the whole world was descending on Casper to watch the eclipse, emptying store shelves and bringing traffic to a standstill.

The weather obliged, and we ended up viewing the totality in Casper. I know that my attempt to adequately describe it with words will fail, because none of the many accounts I had read prior to it had prepared me for what happened. Perhaps, in this way, it does resemble lovemaking. I do not imply that the experience is sexual, but rather, like an orgasm, it is impossible to explain to someone who has not experienced it.

Also, like an orgasm, it’s an all-or-none sensory phenomenon. Technically, an eclipse is measured in percentages of the Sun’s occlusion by the Moon. There is the “first contact” between the two, and then the overlap gets bigger, and bigger, and bigger, going from 0 to 100%. But even though those percentages are scientifically correct, neuropsychologically, they are nonsense, because, as stated previously, humans are terrible at seeing reality.

So, the Moon and the Sun keep overlapping, and the Moon keeps obscuring more and more of the Sun, with less and less sunlight reaching our planet... But our brain, protecting us from the Unknowable, keeps normalizing and adjusting, not allowing us to detect the abnormal reduction in light. The percentage of overlap gets into the 90s, but still, our accommodating brain makes us barely notice it, prompting us to go about our human business of shopping, yelling at kids, or rallying troops for battle. The only way to notice something uncommon is by donning special glasses and looking directly at the Sun.

Otherwise, nothing happens. For a while. And then….Then, if you are in the right place, totality happens. About a minute before the complete overlap, your brain can no longer hold the floodgate comfortably shut, and reality starts pouring in. It gets strangely cold. The shadow moves in from the horizon and quickly overtakes the sky. It grows dark, and the darkness is eerie, transparent, and purple. Planets and stars make an unexpected appearance. And, in the center of it all, is the absence of the Sun. Instead, what you have is a black disc surrounded by a white glow, and you no longer need those glasses. The experience is extremely intense. A revelation. All around you, people are gasping, crying out; some are actually crying. You take your partner’s hand and think, now, I get it. Also, thank you.

The only other time I experienced a related glimpse of unfiltered reality was during meditation. Writing this makes me seem like a serious, regular practitioner. I am not. But once upon a time, we spent the weekend of my 40th birthday in a small Buddhist monastery in West Virginia, led by an amazing abbot who was also a gifted teacher and writer. Over the next decade, I took meditation classes and practiced in short bursts. It was difficult. The idea was simple: sit down in a quiet place, close your eyes, and observe your breath. When the mind wanders and blows out a smoky thought cloud, notice it without judgement, then gently let go of it.

The goal of meditation is to become acquainted with the content of your own mind as a place where thoughts and feelings happen, and to learn not to identify with those. You are not them. They are not you. They are just clouds passing across the sky of your mind. The trouble is, the experience can get very uncomfortable. Those clouds can be dark, stormy, making you yearn for a distraction. At other times, boredom can become a persistent itch breeding a swarm of question marks: are we there yet? You are supposed to give it a respectful acknowledgement and return to the breath.

During one turbulent period of my life, I got myself into the routine of meditating daily. This went on for several months, with meditation sessions lasting 10-20 minutes, still a far cry from mastery. Yet, at one point during those months, focusing on inhalation and exhalation became easier. Then, one day, feeling the light flow of air touch my nostrils, I had a sudden awareness of being a complex organism in the process of respiration. My consciousness simultaneously held the air flowing into my lungs, the oxygen entering capillaries and binding to hemoglobin, the resulting complex molecules traveling to every cell in my body, and the parallel process moving in the opposite direction. It was not intellectual knowledge, but a perception of self existing as part of ever-changing awe-inspiring complexity. The glimpse of reality was amazing and brief. It left me with a desire to re-experience it, and in many subsequent meditation sessions I tried to catch and ride its wave. Of course, I should have known better: the process is not about chasing desires, and fulfillment does not come when called.

And then more life happened, I fell out of my meditation routine, and, once again, returned to a firm view of myself as a solid body living inside my head on a motionless plane in the center of the universe.

At the outset of my next decade I had once again made a list of goals - to accomplish before turning 40: start earning six figures, buy a home, have another child, and… finish Ulysses. When I later told friends about that list, they concluded that I was practical, organized, and determined. The truth was far from it: I was utterly mystified by many simple tasks of daily living and anxiously dissatisfied with myself for it. Organizing a linen closet seemed like a less attainable accomplishment than publishing a research paper. Selecting wall paints and supervising painters felt like major milestones. My early thirties were rocky: divorce, single-parenting, the gymnastics of fitting childcare and grocery bills into a postdoc salary. Most of my fellow-immigrant peers by then lived like functional adults, and I felt very much in need of adulting. As the decade unfolded, I met a guy who could make me laugh in any circumstance and managed to check off all but one item on my list. The tower of Ulysses stood unconquerable on the shore of the snotgreen Irish Sea.

In my 40s, I have finally grown out of caring about traditional milestones. I wanted to camp in Africa, write a couple of books, and study languages. With my husband and daughter, we drove through Namibia. I co-wrote and co-edited three books, my favorite of them being about online health misinformation. I also managed to get decent in Spanish and semi-decent in French. Ulysses was not on the list. I no longer cared about reading books I didn’t enjoy because some experts deemed them important.

Then, at 51, I picked up Ulysses yet again. By that point in my life, a lot had happened. One of my children was an adult, the other a teenager. I had dealt with a serious chronic illness, caregiving, and loss. My record of mistakes was substantial, but there were also second chances and second winds. This made the scope of human experiences to which I could relate a lot broader than when I was young. I can’t remember what made me pick up Ulysses again, but once I did, I couldn’t put it down. Some weeks later, I read the last page of the last chapter and closed the book, thinking, well, this was worth waiting for.

The passage of about 25 years hasn’t exactly transformed the book into a page-turner for me. It was slow reading, with frequent recourse to annotations. I still barely touched the surface of the book’s depth. A literary scholar said that Ulysses can’t be read, only reread. It certainly felt like that. That said, even on the first read, it was the book that had absolutely everything in it: nationalism, technology, humor, religion, philosophy, Shakespeare, Homer (of course), music, love, death, sex, masturbation, menstruation, cooking, urination, defecation, seduction, estrangement, escape, return. In one of the chapters, the language reflects the evolution of the English language throughout the centuries. Another is a feverishly absurdist surreal play set in a whorehouse. The book was a universe folded between two glossy sheets, waiting to spill out, explode.

I read Ulysses at a time of my life when I did a lot of travel blogging, musing about whether, when, and how travel shapes the traveler. Ulysses is the ultimate travel manifesto, powerfully stating that it’s not the distance that makes travel meaningful. While the novel runs an interpretive parallel to Homer’s Odyssey, its geographic span is much narrower. It took the ancient hero twenty years to return home from Troy to Ithaca, during which time he visited many exotic lands, encountered deities and monsters, and even journeyed to the underworld. The events of Joyce’s novel take place over the course of one day in a single city. Yet, the metaphorical distance the characters travel is as great as that of Homer’s Odysseus.

Full of unfamiliar words and obscure historical references, the book, nevertheless, felt highly relevant to the events of the time of my reading.When I was in the midst of Chapter 16, Donald Trump had just been elected for his second term, and the country was in uproar. One day, I needed to get a blood test. Holding a syringe, the phlebotomist, who looked like a movie actor often cast in the role of a villain, suddenly asked, “You didn’t vote for that woman, did you?” Surprised, I responded that it wouldn’t be wise of me to discuss politics with a man getting ready to stab me. He responded with disappointment, “So you did.” Later, at home, I picked up my Ulysses and followed gentle fatherly Leopold Bloom and young brilliant Stephen Dedalus to a shelter after their long night of carousing. Bloom tried to talk about politics and Stephen uttered with drunken wisdom: “We can’t change the country. Let us change the subject.”

For all its intellectual and linguistic acrobatics, Ulysses is a warm book about love, humanity, and forgiveness. Leopold Bloom is a character who continuously shows kindness to various creatures throughout the novel: a stray dog, a blind piano tuner trying to cross the street, a pregnant woman in painful labor, the drunk vulnerable Stephen begging to get robbed or arrested, even his unfaithful wife Molly. Love and kindness, as his approach to all things, big and small, are eloquently and painfully expressed by Bloom-the-Jew when he has to respond to an outburst of a rabid antisemite. Bloom says, “Force, hatred, history, all that. That’s not life for men and women, insult and hatred. And everybody knows that it’s the very opposite of that that is really life.... Love, says Bloom. I mean the opposite of hatred.”

Had I had a better guide, would it have been possible for me to read and enjoy Ulysses in my twenties or thirties? I don’t think so. A book about everything in the world requires the reader to have lived experience with which it can resonate. It is a travel book for people who have travelled. Now, I wonder about the right age for reading Finnegans Wake. I think there is still some growing up for me to do, but perhaps one day.

Outside, it was beginning to drizzle. Yet another neighbor thoroughly wiped his shoes on a rag by the door and stepped into the room. Girshl stared in fascination. He had never seen so many people in their house. The neighbor went through the same motion as the others before him: awkwardly hugged dad, murmured something about “strong,” and “for the kids,” and “what can you do,” squeezed 12-year old Ada’s shoulder, then turned to Girshl and patted him on the cheek. Girshl beamed in anticipation, trying to guess what he’d get this time. A sugar cube? A ten-kopeeks coin? A pencil?

The neighbor’s hand lingered on Girshl’s face. That felt nice. “Girshele, tell me, what’s nineteen plus nineteen plus nineteen?” That was easy: three twenties, take away three. “One hundred eleven!” The words came out a little slurred, like they did when he was overexcited. Two women and a man talking in hushed voices by the kitchen stopped their conversation and were now looking at him. “Is that correct?” asked the neighbor of the man. The man frowned, his lips moving. “Correct!” The neighbor put a small coin in Girshl’s palm. “You are a smart boy, Girshele!” One of the women, Rivka, shook her head and said, “The Lord works in mysterious ways.” Ada gave Rivka a sharp glance, and Rivka looked away.

Girshl tugged his sister’s arm. “Ada, what’s a ‘retard’?”

“Who said that to you?”

“No one.”

Girshl heard the word from Rivka about a year ago, when Ada was pushing his cart past the fence of Rivka’s yard. Rivka stood there listlessly, dressed in the same black as today, her face red and swollen. She was surrounded by several women. When she saw Ada and Girshl, her head suddenly jerked with force. “How can this be fair? Someone like this gets to live and my Shoshannocka is gone?” As Rivka’s words carried down the street, Ada’s body tensed and she quickened her pace. That night, helping mom make the bed for him and his brothers, Ada whispered to Girshl, “You’ll be walking soon, promise. Boruch also took a while and look at him.” Girshl thought, this would be nice. Then he could go to the river with his brothers.

Ada held his shoulders. “Let’s go get you some food in the kitchen. Uncle Demian brought potatoes.”

To get to the kitchen, they had to walk past mom. She was lying in the center of the room, covered with a white blanket. Her face was visible, but her eyes were closed. Girshl tried not to look.

In the kitchen, more neighbors, talking.

“At least Motl came back. No one would’ve taken in the kids.”

“Shhh.”

The women smiled at Ada and Girshl.

Girshl started feeling drowsy, when the energy in the room suddenly changed. Everyone stood up. His uncle and two cousins went to where mom was lying, lifting her, carrying her out, others following. Girshl felt frightened. He looked around the room searching for Ada, but she was nowhere to be seen. Maneuvering his way through the procession of neighbors, Girshl ran outside and saw dad by a horse-drawn wagon, giving some instructions to the bearers.

Dad looked at Girshl.

“Go inside.”

“Why? Where are you going?”

“To the cemetery.”

Girshl knew the word, which, when mentioned, threw a long cool shadow over the conversation.

“I want to go with you!”

Dad thought for a few seconds.

“All right. But you can’t go like this, you need your cap. Go put it on.”

Girshl rushed back inside the house. It was summer, so his cap had to be in the trunk in which mom kept their autumn and winter clothes. The trunk was heavy, and it took Girshl a while to pull it from under the parents’ bed. Twice, he had to stop to let his arms rest. He scraped his elbow on the bed’s metal frame, but that was ok: his shirt sleeve wasn’t torn. Finally, he managed to get out the trunk and open the lid. Rummaging through the content, Girshl found the cap. Last year it used to be Joseph’s, and before then Boruch’s, but Girshl remembered mom saying that he’d be wearing it this fall. Squeezing the brim, he ran outside and stood there, looking in both directions. The street was empty.

*****

2026

Dad was an amazing storyteller. He talked about his childhood in a terse style that was striking in what it highlighted and what it kept out. Highlighted: details that stay with me decades later - the ten-kopeeks coin, the white blanket, the cap. Kept out: any editorializing or character judgement. He’d do Hemingway proud.

Lack of editorializing made me slow to grasp the context. Dad was born in 1931, the youngest of four children of a cobbler and a homemaker, in a very poor Jewish family in a small Ukrainian district town. It took me a while to connect his childhood developmental delays with the Holodomor.

Amazingly, dad never turned tragedies of his childhood, which were many, into dramas of adult score-setting. As an adult, he maintained that his dad (and, later, stepmom) raised their kids the best they could, or knew how, and remained a respectful, dutiful son. Dad’s math aptitude became his life’s fuel. The only of the siblings to graduate from school, he went on to become a math professor. Ultimately, his life unfolded in a David-Copperfield-style narrative arc: a devastating childhood followed by stability. At least, as much stability as the time and place permitted. A fulfilling career, a loving marriage.

Ada died of cancer several years before I was born. My older sister Inna once told me that she saw dad cry twice in his life. The second was when saying goodbye to Inna as she was leaving for the US. The first was at Ada’s funeral. Real-life Ada’s name was Asya - a difficult pronunciation in English. I am named after her.

In contrast with the clothes, the smooth polished white rock in her palm felt cool and calming. Whenever Mira travelled, whether to a conference or for a vacation, she brought back a rock for dad’s memorial marker. Although not observant, Mira appreciated this Jewish tradition and wished there were more for the occasion.Judaism was thin on cemetery visiting rituals, which made Mira feel adrift: one drives for forty, forty-five minutes, get out of the car, walk to the flat inconspicuous marker, and then what? You just stand. She thought of cemeteries she visited in Mexico with Pablo’s friends, with gravesites akin to little gardens where family members spend hours touching up the paint on the gates and tending flowers, and wished for something of the sort.

She found the marker. The familiar inscription read “Dr. Simeon Mottl, 4/5/1930 - 7/12/2012. Family, mathematics, and uncompromising integrity were his life.” Mira thought of how difficult it was for her and her siblings to come up with a single phrase that would express dad’s essence and how imperative it felt that they did. Math. Her childhood memories of the green shade of his desk lamp giving a soft glow to pages of hand-written formulas. Drying purple ink. Later, already in this country, to which he came too late to enter a university career, formulas in newspaper margins, on napkins, on loose sheets of paper by his hospital bed. Family. Because they couldn’t really say “wife,” their mom, the love of his life, whom he adored with an enduring sense of wonder, and whose life he, nevertheless, managed to make difficult with his irritable, stubborn streak. Uncompromising integrity. She remembered a grateful graduate student coming to their third-floor apartment with a gift, a beautiful imported camel wool throw blanket. Dad interpreted the offering as borderline bribery, even though the student had already passed the exams and was about to graduate. There was a brief skirmish by the door. The student, who managed to leave the throw on the hallway dresser, made a hasty retreat down the staircase. Dad opened the apartment door and threw the throw onto the landing, to the soundtrack of retreating footsteps. The door slammed. When Mira’s mom returned from work that evening, she found the throw on the landing, understood what had transpired, and brought it inside. Later Mira loved to read in their oversized armchair with that throw wrapped around her shoulders.

Mira placed the rock on the plaque and whispered, “Love you, dad.”

Her memories felt extraneous to the place in which she was experiencing them. To prolong the visit, Mira started doing what she always did here: wander around the memorial garden reading inscriptions on other gravesites. Most of them she remembered from previous visits, and the immutability of the reunion fitted her frame of mind well. From the dates and sparse words, she was trying to infer stories: good long satisfying lives, regular lives, tragedies, accidents. Then Mira noticed something she had never seen before. Ilona Fischer, 1914 - 1990, loving wife, mother, grandmother, aunt. And below that registry of roles, a brass plate with a text: “Grandma, I graduated med school. Love, Ben. June 21,1992.” Mira snorted out a short explosive laugh, the kind which, when it happened in public places, made her children cringe with embarrassment. She thought, good thing I am alone here. And then she saw that she wasn’t: a man wearing hiking shorts and an olive t-shirt was reading a book on a marble bench under a nearby tree. He was not young, around sixty, but lean and muscular, tall, with curious eyes and short greying hair. Mira thought, bringing a book here is a good idea, why not. Upon hearing Mira’s laugh, the man looked up, rose from the bench, and walked towards her.

“I am sorry,” said Mira, “My kids would be totally mortified now. But there is something really funny here… Jewish family dysfunction in a nutshell.”

He nodded.

“I take responsibility. But grandma was so proud when my brother and I both went to med school.”

“Oh my God. I am so, so sorry. Can you let me unsay what I just said?”

“No need. This is total Phillip Roth. Although this wasn’t the angle from which my family saw it. For her and for my parents, over the years it grew into a classic heroic journey of horror and redemption. A Jewish woman miraculously survives the Nazis, escapes the communists, arrives in America, works in the Manhattan garment district, schemes, sacrifices, wakes up from nightmares most nights. Two generations later, two doctors on the way. The American dream come true. And the opening line of every conversation - you know, my grandson, a medical student....”

“I have to laugh again.”

“Feel free. Everyone got a progress report. Friends, neighbors, store clerks. I am sure they all hated us. She did not care. And then as she was getting sicker, it really pained her that she would not get to see us graduate. Also, get married. To nice Jewish girls. My brother was in LA at that time, so I saw her a lot more. At one point I said, grandma, I promise, I will have my graduation date etched on your gravestone. That got a chuckle out of her. I didn’t think then that things would go downhill so fast.”

“Yeah.”

“I make her sound vain. But, you know, of course deep down it was all about safety. The most coveted jewel in Jewish history. Almost till the end, she had the energy to worry about whether I had eaten.I am glad I didn’t disappoint her.”

“I definitely don’t find this funny anymore. What is your specialty, Dr. Ben?”

“So let me make it funny again. My name is Ron. Ben is my twin brother. He is an orthopedic surgeon in Palo Alto. I never graduated. Didn’t marry a Jewish girl either. But grandma didn’t see that part.”

“What happened?”

“Now I know that I went into med school on autopilot. You know, because I didn’t want to be a lawyer. The first two years were fine. But then clinicals started in the third year, and I quickly realized that it wasn’t for me. I hated hospitals. There was so much hierarchy, egos, competition. And so much bureaucracy. Also, constant pressure. It was like living inside a bad simulation. I ended up withdrawing in April of the fourth year, less than two months before graduation.”

“That must have been incredibly hard.”

“It was really hard to tell my parents. That was the first time I really disappointed them. And knowing that I had racked up all those student loans without the prospect of a doctor’s salary. Thankfully, I went to a cheap school and had scholarships. But it was also liberating.”

“What do you do now?”

“I train seeing-eye dogs. My husband and I have a center. I got my first dog in college. Uma, a German shepherd. My college roommate adopted her without thinking, then left her. I had no choice. She was such a handful that I had to learn a ton about training dogs. But she helped me through all the hardest times. When I left med school, she was the only loving being who continued to look at me without pain in her eyes. Unconditional acceptance. That made me want to spend more time around dogs.”

“You like what you do?”

“Very much.”

“What about Ben?”

“Ben’s doing great.”

“You know, maybe people are more flexible than what we give them credit for. My dad was a math professor who used to see math proficiency as a measure of character. When I was little, I was afraid to ask for his help with math homework. You should have seen the look in his eyes when I asked questions. Then we immigrated. I had just finished high school in Ukraine. We all worked crappy jobs for the first year, and then I started applying for colleges. So, I got an SAT prep book at the local library. I was working seven days a week, and then at night I’d open the book and stare at the math questions, realizing I had forgotten everything. One time, I threw the book across the living room. Dad picked it up and asked what page I was on. I thought he’d scold me for being stupid. Instead, he sat down next to me and started explaining in the gentlest voice I ever heard from him. At the end, my score objectively sucked, but was enough to get me a scholarship at a place that also objectively sucked. But it was a start.”

“That’s a good story.”

“Thanks. Maybe your grandma would have surprised you?.”

“Maybe. I like the thought.”

Mira looked at the plaque. She tried to imagine what Ilona Fisher, loving wife, mother, grandmother, aunt, was like as a young woman.What forces were shaping her then? Infinite possibilities.

They stood in silence. Humid afternoon air smelled like wet grass. From the nearby road on the other side of the cemetery fence came steady humming of cars.

“Yeah.”

The kid was looking at his drink. Not into chatting.

Corey liked talking to strangers when he travelled. It was like dipping into that “never know what you’re gonna get” box of chocolates. Guessing who they were, where they were going. Learning a thing or two. Teaching a thing or two, also - no need to be overly humble.

The kid was young, mid-twenties, by the look of him. Jeans, a hoodie. Judging by his calm amidst the chaos, probably single, definitely no kids, with a flexible job, returning home.

The kid and Corey seemed the only non-frazzled people in this whole small airport. The rest were all punching frantically into their phones, cupping their faces, pushing human time against the gate agents who couldn’t help but keep repeating the same things over and over. The weather. No flights at all. Until further notice.

The kid got a notebook and a fancy ink pen out of his backpack and started drawing.

“I see you are an artist?” Second try.

The kid kinda shrugged and made a non-committal sound. Ok, got it.

Corey took out his phone and glanced at the wallpaper image: seven-year-old Billy behind his birthday cake, looking very serious, calculating the amount of air his lungs needed to put out seven candles in one blow. Linda behind him, in a blue dress. Now that Billy was in college, Linda looked at Corey with hesitant, strained expression. As if asking him what they should be talking about. Heck if he knew. It was a good thing that his work put him on the road so much. Funny, how he felt the most at home at the airports.

Corey glanced into the kid’s notebook. It was a drawing of a middle-aged man at an airport bar counter. The man wore Corey’s sweater and Corey’s watch. Corey’s face.

“Dude, you are good! Though you made me look kinda sad.”

“Thanks. Sorry, I should have asked.”

“Not at all. Hey, creative freedom. Right?”

A nod. This time, with real eye contact.

“What’s your name?”

“Adam.”

“Nice to meet you, Adam. I am Corey.”

“Nice to meet you as well.”

“Where are you flying to?”

“Atlanta.”

“Is Atlanta home?”

“No. I am from Denver. Was visiting friends here.”

“What’s in Atlanta then?”

“Mercedez-Benz USA headquarters. A job interview.”

These kids today! Never judge them by their hoodies. Probably, made six figures right out of college.

“Oh, wow. An in-person one! You are high up on their list. Congratulations! What’s your field?”

“Software engineering.”

“Cool! When is your interview?”

“Tomorrow morning.”

“Tomorrow? Shit, man. You may not make it.”

“I probably won’t.”

The kid smiled the kind of smile that made Corey put a brake on what he was about to say. Then tore the drawing out of his notebook.

“Here. This is for you. Take care.”

Adam got up, swung his backpack onto his shoulder, and motioned for the check.

Prompt credit: at

Full prompt:

“Write a single-scene flash involving two characters who are traveling. Something goes wrong and they must find a solution, together. What does this bring out in their personalities? Their relationship? They are in a liminal space, neither here nor there (yet). Lean into that feeling of trying, but failing, to arrive. This may be funny or dark or sad or all three at the same time. Maybe end on a resonant image…”

I followed it somewhat loosely.

It had been an awful year at the Organization, ever since the Corporation took over the government after paying off the national debt. The Corporation could not abolish the Organization, because the Organization managed distribution of metabolic essentials to the population. Cutting essentials-related projects would mean hunger, spread of infections, and all sorts of ensuing disruptions that even the Corporation would not contain. So, instead of closing the Organization, like it did many others, the Corporation set out to reshape it, cut “non-essential” initiatives, and take over some of the infrastructures. On the ground, this meant new leadership, rampant layoffs, sudden departmental restructuring without rhyme or reason, and non-stop “loyalty and efficiency” requirements.

The initiatives were implemented by a cadre of CIs. CIs ran employee checks, reassigned space and projects, and created “departure lists”. They were all-powerful. Also elusive. Despite a daily barrage of “firm grounds for dismissal” e-mails, no one knew where they sat or what they looked like. As a result, every new face in the building sent a wave of panic. It could be a dignified gentleman in a well-tailored suit making inquiries about the location of the Director’s office, but also, just as easily, a young courier in bicycle shorts. Suspicion was not limited to random walk-ins. Almost everyone was suddenly a suspect. Rumors ran wild. Everyone in Nina’s division agreed that Dale, the old custodian, had to have something to do with CIs. For years, to every request - to adjust the heat, to clean up a spill - he responded with a scowl and a grumble. His favorite words, almost the only ones anyone ever heard from him, were “Above my paygrade,” spoken with a hard-to-place accent. Lately, Dale seemed to be working more shifts. They all agreed about what that meant.

But enough digressions. Nina pulled on her card. The card did not move. Strange. Nina pulled harder. The card reader slot suddenly flashed a red light and made a clicking sound. WTF?

Nina grabbed her phone. Andy, her most technically-savvy friend, her high school crush, she could trust him.

After listening to her, Andy fell silent for a second, then said, “Nina, I am so sorry. It’s not stuck, it’s locked. Those fuckers. They must have implemented this new thing... If your computer goes into sleep mode with the card in, it locks after 20 minutes. You need to put in an IT ticket to unlock it. And if it’s locked at midnight…”

Nina looked at her phone screen. 11:56 pm. “Then what?”

Another pause. “It goes to the CI database.”

“Grounds for dismissal?”

Good luck to her trying to find another professional job in this market. Or any job.

Andy’s voice was full of pain. “I am so, so sorry. Do you want me to come over?”

“Thanks. Not tonight. I’ll call you.”

Nina ended the call and stared into her dark monitor. So, that was that. Fifteen years. What was she good at that wasn’t this? Could she learn to cut hair? Not a chance. Maybe, electrics?

She realized that she probably wouldn’t be able to get into the building tomorrow. She should take something home as a memento. There wasn’t much on her desk since CIs standardized their workspaces. A pack of yellow sticky notes, a few pens. And a handful of tiny colorful plastic dragons. These dragons started appearing in the nooks and corners of the building - on windowsills, by vent grates - soon after the Corporation took over and started issuing executive orders. Spotting a dragon felt like receiving a secret handshake, a symbolic assurance that kindness and resistance were still possible. Employees collected dragons: by now, each desk had a little display.

“Ok, guys, we are getting out of here.”

Nina picked up a dark green dragon and closed her palm around it. The palm felt suddenly hot and Nina opened her fist. A bright fiery spark flew out of the dragon’s mouth. A moment later, Nina heard a click: the card reader spat out the card.

The clock on the wall was showing 11:58 pm. Nina got up and went into the hallway, the card in her purse next to the dragon. At the end of the hallway she saw Dale’s stooping figure, a vacuum by his side. He was fidgeting with the pushbar of the emergency exit door. Nina remembered how earlier that week, at lunch, Beverly from security had told her about CIs installing loads of secret cameras. Then, without seeing her, Dale straightened, walked down the hallway, and turned the corner, trailing the vacuum behind him.

Nina ran to the emergency door and looked at the bar. Three little dragons, two green, one yellow, were standing on top of it.

Nina ran after Dale, calling, “Hey! Dale, wait! Please, wait!”

He slowly turned around and frowned. “What do you want?”

“It’s you!”

“What are you talking about?”

“The dragons! You are the one putting them around for us to find.”

“Are you soft in the head? I hate that plastic crap. Jam the vacuum.”

She kept looking at him.

“Aren’t you too old to play with toys? What’s the matter with you people? Should be smarter with all those shiny degrees.” Shaking his head, he turned away and kept walking, muttering under his breath.

There was only one other person on the platform. A very young Asian woman in a large puffy coat and a child’s woolen panda-hat with round eyes and perky ears. A thick long white scarf looped around her neck. The woman kept glancing at Allie. Allie tried to distract herself from the cold by inventing her backstory. A free-spirit taking a sick day from her entry-level job to catch an art exhibition in Manhattan?

The woman made her way towards Allie.

“Hello. Excuse me. I think we may have met. Well, sort of. Were you the person who paid for our dinner at Rara’s? A few months ago? We asked for the check, and the waiter said the woman from the next table had already paid.”

Allie laughed, “Oh my god, wow.”

“So, that was you! Well, thank you! Very much. That was extremely kind. But why did you do it? Like, a random act of kindness?”

“Well, no. I overheard you telling your date that you were a Butoh dancer. I didn’t mean to eavesdrop, but those tables are so close together.”

That was why Allie frequented Rara. A perfect place for a writer in search of material.

“Seriously? Because of that? Are you a Butoh fan?”

In the distance, the sound of an approaching train appeared.

“Butoh played a big role in my life. Is this your train? I am waiting for the South-bound. Best of luck to you. Hey, by the way, how did that date go?”

The woman laughed, “A one-off. Well, thanks again. Take care!”

As the train pulled away, Allie went down the station stairs, deciding to call an uber rather than continue freezing while waiting for the next one.

She thought back to the only Butoh performance she saw in her life.

At the time, she lived in Washington, DC. Her son Ben was seven. She had just gone through a painful divorce. Life was a tangle of stressors. And then came December, with its approaching New Year’s holiday.

Her otherwise quite assimilated post-Soviet family held the New Year sacred. For Americans, New Year’s Eve was a night to go out, dance, toast, see fireworks. For the diaspora, like back home, it was an affair that absorbed all the trappings of Christmas, which the Bolsheviks had abolished. As for her dispersed Ukrainian-American extended family, it was the anchor that tied them to their collective identity, around which they structure reunions full of love, bickering, overindulging, and seeing each other’s kids grow up - “the full catastrophe.”

That year, the traditional multi-day reunion was in DC. On one of the last December days, they all bundled up and went to the city in search of the holiday spirit - festive lights, holiday markets, ice skating rinks. But the evening was brutally cold and the city felt desolate. Taking random turns, they came upon the imposing marble block of Kennedy Center. They went in to warm up, and then spontaneously decided to check the listings. Last-minute pickings were slim, but one caught their eye, a Japanese Butoh dance performance. Her family was hesitant - Butoh? What is that, exactly? - but she pushed -hey, let’s do something cultural, dance is fun, and Japan is cool, and afterwards we can order sushi. So, in they went, a large group, Ben its youngest member.

From the start, Allie realized that this was not the kind of a dance performance she had imagined. Afterwards, she would learn that Butoh was a dance style that originated in post-WWII Japan as a response to the war trauma. Its stylistic language, fittingly, involved stark settings, very slow movements, and grotesque, taboo subjects that often involved sexual imagery. The show had only one dancer, male. For the first ten or so minutes, the dancer, wearing white loin cloth and white body paint, stood in the middle of the stage very still to the accompaniment of minimalist music. In the eleventh minute, he started making tiny, barely perceptible movements. Allie anxiously checked the brochure for the total running time, bracing herself for a post-show family intervention.

Fortunately, Ben was enduring the affair stoically. He shifted in his seat a few times, whispered a half-hearted request for his gameboy, sighed at the expected “no,” and did the most reasonable thing possible: fell asleep. Had he slept through the entire remaining performance, the day would later be barely remembered as a bad entertainment choice, or forgotten altogether. Unfortunately, Ben woke up. It happened at the moment when the dancer, having removed his loincloth, stood in the middle of the stage stark naked, hitting his chest with his fists while making small high-pitched throaty sounds. Once again, Ben had the most reasonable seven-year old’s reaction: he burst into joyful laughter. Finally, the show was starting to be fun. After Allie’s repeated ‘hush’, his bursts became quieter and more intermittent, and they would have made it through, but at that moment Allie noticed the shoulders of her sister sitting in front of her. The shoulders were shaking: Emma was unmistakably laughing. Since they were kids, Allie always envied and tried to imitate Emma’s ability to laugh soundlessly. But she never succeeded, which evidenced itself the moment she inevitably succumbed to the contagion. The next family member to catch the laughing bug was their dad. Then Allie’s cousin. At that point, Ben stopped trying to suppress his joy. Their group had no choice but to hastily get up and stampede to the nearest exit, accompanied by daggerlike stares of Butoh aficionados.

Of course, the story became part of family lore. It had all the essential elements: a cute kid, a bad decision, the camaraderie of a collectively broken taboo. They called it their family’s Kennedy Center performance. And then one day she was in the company of musicians-friends, who were complaining about disrespectful, distracting ignoramuses in the audience, those who coughed incessantly and whose phones start playing Mozart during Bach performances. Allie thought, oh, god, that Butoh dancer, he is probably talking about us somewhere. Did we ruin his performance for which he flew half across the globe, on which he pinned high hopes?

That night at Rara Allie was not thinking about culture. Ben had just announced that he had dropped out of medical school. She was poking her salad with a fork distractedly, when the guy at the table to her right started telling his companion something about karma in an overly loud, pompous voice. Irritated, Allie shifted her attention to the couple at the table on her left, clearly on their first date. The cute young Asian girl there was saying, “...and I am also a Butoh dancer.” Her date asked, “Butoh, what’s that?” Sensing an approaching fit of laughter, Allie grabbed her purse and rushed to the bar.

Everything here is a 3-4 minute read. But still.

Is this worth your attention?

Let me try to help you decide.

Do you enjoy:

• stories that are emotionally charged, but do not tip into despair?

• ambiguity that draws you into wondering what comes next?

• meditations on the role of time and memory in shaping perception?

• plots in which reality shifts and, occasionally, bends?

• humor and self-irony as essential remedies for the otherwise unbearable?

If you said yes to at least 3 of the 5, please, stay.

_____

To give you a taste of what’s on these pages, here are a few opening excerpts:

_____

WHO IS THERE?

“Knock-knock!” Jonny’s stare was tinged with gleeful meanness.

“Who is there?” Whispered Anita, her eyes widening.

She knew she was not supposed to ask that. She was in danger. It could somehow result in a terrible misstep called “laughter.” Laughter was punishable by expulsion into the Void, the only offense with the sentence not modified for minors. It represented the worst of cardinal sins, pride. Pride meant you thought you were superior, refusing to fit in your community, a deviationist.

Anita knew she needed to walk away. But, somehow, she could not resist. Dad said curiosity was like an itch. If you did not scratch it, it grew stronger until it overpowered you. You could yield quickly or you could let it grow and consume you, becoming the only thing that mattered. She needed to know who or what was knocking. Full story

_____

MEETING BUTOH DANCERS

There was only one other person on the platform. A very young Asian woman in a large puffy coat and a child’s woolen panda-hat with round eyes and perky ears. […] The woman made her way towards Allie.

“Hello. Excuse me. I think we may have met. Well, sort of. Were you the person who paid for our dinner at Rara’s? A few months ago? We asked for the check, and the waiter said the woman from the next table had already paid.”

Allie laughed, “Oh my god, wow.”

“So, that was you! Well, thank you! Very much. That was extremely kind. But why did you do it? Like, a random act of kindness?”

“Well, no. I overheard you telling your date that you were a Butoh dancer. I didn’t mean to eavesdrop, but those tables are so close together.” Full story

_____

LAYING DOWN THE ROCKS

Eva slowly opened her eyes. The morning was pushing freshness through the open window. She stretched, turned her face towards the sunlight, and felt the clouds roll in. Every day was this. You wake up whole, and then memory reopens the emptiness inside. You have the half-second to be the old you, and then it catches up, the memory of what happened to you, the thing that split the life into the before and the after. Full story

_____

There is more. I post weekly, usually, on Fridays. Look around. Visit the archive. Share with a friend. Drop me a note.

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… Igor Stein, born in Ukraine, 1957, studied in Kyiv Academy of Applied Arts, returned to Lviv… immigrated in 1989… lives in Athens…

Maria’s heart was speed-drumming a soundtrack to the excited jumble of her memories. It had to be him. She was studying the photo. Forty years is a long time. She remembered a young man with dark curly hair, a kind perceptive smile, questions that demanded the kind of attention that made mundane feel extraordinary. The man in the photo had short grey hair and wrinkles in the corners of his eyes. But the eyes framed by those wrinkles were full of life, and he looked healthy and strong.

… international renown… retrospectives in Buenos Aires, New York, Copenhagen… artist in residence at… master classes and guest seminars…

This was a relief. Maria used to wonder about how life had treated him, worrying about grim things that were the fate of so many artists, talented and not: soul-crushing struggle to make ends meet, bitterness, drinking binges. Sometimes she wondered if he really was as talented an artist as she had imagined. What did she know back then, a girl growing up in the stifling air of a failing authoritarian state?

Maria lifted her eyes from the brochure. There he stood, in the middle of the room, the man from the photo, a wine glass in hand, chatting with an elegant couple. Come on, thought Maria to herself, you are not a shy wallflower of a Soviet child anymore, you are a confident worldly New Yorker.

“Excuse me, Mr. Stein… Igor.” She realized that she had walked towards him before having looked at any of the paintings. “May I ask you a question. Did you teach at a children’s art studio in a regional Young Pioneers’ Palace in Lviv in the 1980s?”

He looked at her with a surprised smile. “Yes, I did.”

“I was one of your students. Maria Znam.”

His polite smile has not changed. She continued. “It’s okay if you don’t remember me. I am very glad to have this opportunity to thank you. My childhood sucked, and the art studio was one of the good things. You were a very talented teacher. I remember how you talked to me about whether I wanted to draw an elephant from the jungle or an elephant from my mind. I was so proud of how my elephant came out.”

The insufficiency of words. Her childhood sucked because of constant bullying. At school, on the street, in the basketball club to which her parents sent her because children needed exercise. The worst was the clique of tough neighborhood kids who chose the stairway of her building as their habitual hangout. Whenever she had to leave the apartment, she wondered, would they be there that day, to push her, spit on her jacket, or grab her backpack and throw it against the wall? More often than not, they were.

But the art studio. The place where she felt seen and capable. The serene concentration in which she chose colors for her brushstrokes. Later, she learned the term for this serene state. Flow. The seriousness and warmth with which Igor talked to them. And his studio. Not the Young Pioneers’ Palace classroom, but the one where he made his art, in the midst of Lviv’s Stryisky Park, to which he took them one Sunday afternoon. Canvases everywhere, subtle hues bursting into sudden colors. After he was fired, Maria spent months wandering the park looking for his studio. It felt as if the park’s alleys were mocking her, folding upon themselves, throwing hints that triggered recognition, then quickly taking them back.

Igor’s dismissal was a blinding flash. One day, he was summoned from the classroom to the director’s office. He instructed them to carry on, he’ll be right back. When he returned, he looked stunned, his eyes glistening with what looked like tears (unthinkable!). He told them that, unfortunately, he had been let go and had to leave immediately. He would miss their lessons.The good news was, the city’s central Pioneers’ Palace also had an art studio, and it had much better supplies than this little one. They would be welcome there. He left hastily.

In the first act of leadership in her life, Maria led their art class to the director’s office, where, interrupting one another, they made their impassioned plea. The director looked at them curiously and said, but I did not fire him, he must have misunderstood, run and bring him back. Elated, they ran outside. It was drizzling. The street was empty.

Maria did try going to the central Palace. Its art studio was, indeed, very well-supplied. In the year she had gone there, she had not made anything she could remember as an adult. By the time she reached high school she thought of herself as someone who had no artistic bend or ability.

“I am so happy to see you so successful. Now that I know your last name, I look forward to finding more of your works.”

He beamed and told her about his art studio overlooking the Aegean Sea, his latest exhibition, his grandchildren.

From the entryway, the young curator was looking at them, clearly needing his attention.

“I don’t want to keep monopolizing you. May I just ask you something before I let you go? Why did they fire you from that Pioneers’ Palace?”

This was the question she had thought about often when she remembered him later in life. Did a parent complain about some anti-Soviet influences in his art? Was he gay? Did the Palace director want to repurpose the studio?

“I can’t recall why I stopped working there. I liked it, you were wonderful kids.”

She nodded. Of course. Life is not a novel. It’s a branching library, in which every major character of every book has their own book in which they are a minor character. They were wonderful kids from another lifetime, before the studio by the Aegean Sea and the exhibition in Buenos Aires.

“It was great seeing you.”

“It was wonderful seeing you as well.”

She was about to turn away, when he added, “I do remember your elephant quite well.”

She smiled. Kindness. Still.

“You spent so long deciding on the green that would not merge with the trees. Came out beautifully.”

Her elephant was supposed to be a chameleon, of a limited spectrum, able to assume any shade of green. Sensing danger, she turned the moss green of jungle leaves and slipped past unnoticed. But when happy, she became fluorescent, exuberant neon green. That was the color Maria made her in the painting.

Eva slowly opened her eyes. The morning was pushing freshness through the open window. She stretched, turned her face towards the sunlight, and felt the clouds roll in. Every day was this. You wake up whole, and then memory reopens the emptiness inside. You have the half-second to be the old you, and then it catches up, the memory of what happened to you, the thing that split the life into the before and the after. This emptiness inside is a paradox, because it’s not weightless. It’s so friggin’ physics-defyingly heavy. Ok, said old Eva’s voice, maybe, you just suck at metaphors. If it’s heavy, maybe it’s not emptiness, how about a rock, maybe you shouldn’t go for the weepy verbose elegance. It was not a metaphor, whispered the new Eva-Eva, you wouldn’t know, because lucky for you, but I have no strength to argue. So, let it be a rock. A rock that you have to pick up - no choice but to pick it up - and carry it around all day, while pretending that you are not carrying it. Mid-sentence, you realize you forgot where you started, while people are looking at you expectantly. Colleagues, students, friends, watching not realizing that you are lost in the forest of jumbled sentences.

Eva took a notebook and a pen from her bedside table and wrote:

1. Brush teeth

2. Make coffee

3. Drink it

4. Get dressed

She looked at the list. Ok, brush teeth. She slowly got up and carried her rock to the bathroom.

Eva made her way to the lecture hall. Giving the lecture may help, or it may make things worse. Seeing young expectant faces. God, it’s hard to deal today with their hopeful eagerness of puppies pushing around a feed bowl. But she shouldn’t think this way. Unkind.

While explaining perceptual constancy to the class, Eva noticed a frowned gaze of the one “non-traditional student,” a woman Eva’s age, typing into her laptop in the front row. Juliette. What were her parents thinking? It must be hard for Juliette to juggle all the things she had on her plate - work, kids, this, who knows, what else. Eva slowed down her explanation.

After the lecture, Juliette waited till the room emptied and walked over to the professor’s desk: “Eva, is something rough happening in your life?”

This was unexpected.“Why? Was I too abrupt with answering questions today?”

“No, but you have difficulty finishing your sentences.”

Uh-oh. That was bad.

“Don’t worry, no one else noticed,” - Juliette added calmly. “Look, I realize this isn’t exactly proper, but do you want to grab coffee and talk?”

Eva hesitated for a second. Confiding was tempting. “No, but thank you for asking. I really appreciate it.”

Juliette opened her purse and took out a plastic bag. “Here, take this. Eat a third tonight. It’s just a brownie, no big deal.” She put the bag on Eva’s desk, turned around, and walked out of the classroom.

ii.

Eva slowly opened her eyes and tried to remember why she had closed them. She did not. The question was gone. She observed that she had no eyes. Nor ear, arms, legs, lungs, or stomach. She was not a person, but some kind of a container. Whatever was in that brownie, it was not the stuff she had assumed. Eva noted that she was not worried.

A container, was she? Yes. With emptiness. Eva felt sound and movement inside her. Steps. Moving chairs. A podium. Holy crap, she was a room! She was being filled with people. So many. Dressed-up for an occasion that was a bit hard to read - not a funeral, but not festive, not much bare skin. Not work-related, either.

An old woman walked to the podium with an unsteady gait and started speaking. It took Eva a while to start understanding her - after all, Eva had no body and getting a hang of her new modes of perception took some practice. The woman was talking about uncertainty. Is this a university? No. Uncertainty as a basic feature of reality. Living with uncertainty. Reality as anti-literature. No narrative arcs, no end points. Her audience was listening intently.

“We now turn to the laying-down of the rocks. If your life has not been split by your rock into the before and after, the service is over for you. I wish you a meaningful day and respectfully ask that you leave the sanctuary.” Eva realized that the old woman was wearing a flowy purple robe.

Only a handful of people stood up and moved towards the exit, looking down. A man, young and wiry, stopped in the doorway: “What if your life did not break into two, but sort of slowly sunk to the bottom?”

The old woman looked at him not unkindly: “I will see you at 7 pm, Aaron.”

Eva realized that every person remaining in the room was holding a large rock. She knew the exact composition of each rock, be it a child’s addiction or a cancer diagnosis. Some of them were so very young…

The woman in the purple robe rang a little silver bell and the people in the room started slowly putting down their rocks and closing their eyes, hands folded in their lap. Sleep. Eva tried to assume maximum softness, envelope them, willing the air to still. Let them sleep.

The silver bell rang again. Already? The people opening their eyes looked refreshed and relaxed. But only for a split second. Eva knew the exact moment when tension returned to each because she felt each as a sharp sting. Not looking at each other, people were getting up and gathering their rocks.

iii.

Eva slowly opened her eyes and lay still. A blossoming cherry tree outside her window was snowing petals on Eva’s porch. Eva inhaled the faint smell, knowing that she was forgetting something. Then she remembered.

Eva ran her hand along the wall above the bedside table and reached for the notebook and the pen.

We just spent a week road-tripping through college campuses with my daughter. This is a time-honored tradition of a certain class of American families with high school juniors. College visits, that is, not road trips. Though the same can be said about road trips, minus juniors.

We toured eight schools in five days, exhausting ourselves with daily packing and unpacking. Prior to the trip, a college counselor advised us to make sure to take detailed notes. If you don’t, all the schools will clump in your mind the way dumplings do when you get distracted and leave them on the stove for too long. She was wrong. The eight schools we saw all felt very different. They weren’t eight dumplings. They were a dumpling, a meatball, a piece of broccoli, a… You get it. As someone who entered the social strata of people who tour colleges late in life, I was amazed. Large campuses with their own bus routes, small campuses that looked like summer camps, service-learning, experiential learning, core courses, design-your-own-major places, places near water, near mountains, near hills, flat places, places that will give you calves, thighs, and buns of steel. The only similarity was in the price tag - enormous.

Having started at Middle Tennessee State as a fresh immigrant in the early nineties, I don’t take my family’s current access to these options for granted. This is a privilege, yes. But also, given that it is 2026 and the world is changing even faster than US college tuition rises, does this make sense? In other words, what will we be paying for?

When our older son started looking at colleges eight years ago, he wanted to write programming code for robotic vision. That specific. I considered us blessed - his interests aligned with a prosperous profession. Without much soul-searching, he went straight for our state’s flagship university. The school was (is) highly reputable, very highly ranked in CS, but in every other respect rather similar to my MTSU of the 1990s: in-state-affordable, large classes, nearly non-existent advisement, sink-or-swim approach. His academic path had some ups, downs, and doubts, during which I was sending up a parental prayer: Dear God, please, have him hold fast and graduate with a comp sci degree. Once he does, I will never have to worry about him again. He will be all set in the world. Comp sci. Safety. Security. The jackpot. My son did graduate with a comp sci degree, and at his graduation, Dear God laughed at my presumptuousness in an LLM voice, as the job market for tech graduates started to shape-shift and disintegrate.

And now our daughter is about to enter college, at a time when I no longer believe that either of my kids can do anything that would stop me worrying about their future. What careers are safe from the AI creep? Writers are in despair. Artists are not safe. Translators and interpreters are becoming an endangered species. Just the other day, a friend sent me a “Nature Medicine” article reporting on a clinical trial in which AI outperformed therapists in providing CBT interventions.

In this environment, sending a young person to an institution that holds on to them for four years, teaching them things from the curriculum that was developed practically in the dark ages and paying an obscene amount of money feels like a giant joke. The joke is on us. But we keep jumping through the hoops and onto the conveyor belt leading to a big fat question mark.

My daughter wants to major in cognitive neuroscience. I gently ask, how about neonatal nursing, darling? Although people may be stopping having babies, and who can blame them. Perhaps, geriatrics? But she wants neuroscience. She has been interning at a university lab for a year. God help her and us.

So, we visit campuses - she, excited; me - dazed, perplexed, befuddled. On a beautiful campus, a student guide takes us to the blue outdoor pool surrounded by lounge chairs and talks to us about advocacy, community, self-expression, study abroad, and close relationships with professors who answer “cold email.” Any questions?

I do have a question: and then what? What do you learn in this sunny, easy world that will help you succeed in the unfriendly, harsh one outside? In a recent conversation about education, a smart friend expressed a belief that good education in today’s unpredictable landscape should be about skills: critical thinking, writing, communicating, data manipulation. But to what entry-level positions that pay more than, say, 50K a year do you take that noble but vague skillset in the era of ChatGPT and Claude? And do colleges really teach critical thinking?

I raise my hand and ask the guide, “You talked a lot about diversity at your school. What about intellectual diversity? How is it handled by the faculty and students?”

“What do you mean?”

“For example, you talked about how the school’s philosophy aligns with liberal values. Would a conservative student feel comfortable sharing their views and engaging in a debate in the classroom and outside?”

The guide is looking at me like I just sprouted an extra head. So does my daughter, who is clearly wishing at this moment that I had not come on this trip, but hey, embarrassing teenagers is in the parents’ job description. I restrain my impulse to explain that I am not a conservative. But I do want my daughter to meet a few, engage with them with respect, and learn a thing or two from them.

The guide finds her ability to speak, “To be honest… We are very intolerant of bigotry here. They would not be comfortable. Why would a conservative student want to come here?”

So much for critical thinking skills at this particular 90K-a-year place.

Walking back to the car, I am thinking that I am “team professional training.” Team “graduate with majors that equal job titles.” Except which professions? And what is a young person who decidedly does not want to be a nurse, a speech pathologist, or a school administrator to do in 2026?

As my husband is starting the car, I am musing that I am ready for a five-point manifesto.

So, here we go. Alla’s message to young people setting out on life’s quest.

1. Learn to get people to like you. Learn to network. If you are shy - pretend not to be, and fake it till you make it. Develop a genuine interest in people, treat everyone with positive regard, and convince yourself that they see you the same way. Help others. Ask for help - not from those you helped. Pretend that you are not afraid.

2. Whether you go to college or not, learn a trade. Be it installing electrical outlets or grooming dogs, have something you can offer the world that will bring you $100 today. Have a way to pay for groceries and rent while you are figuring out what to do with your hopes and dreams.

3. Don’t confuse your education and profession with your identity. Expect to change occupations more than once in your lifetime. Expect to retrain and pivot at some point in life. Don’t see it as tragic.

4. As your income grows, keep your spending habits steady. When you land a job with a good salary, treat it as temporary fortune, not new status-quo. Don’t expect it to last forever.

5. Read for pleasure every day. Make it a habit. Learning to enjoy literature is the surest way to have a good, meaningful, adventurous, interesting life in a way that won’t cost you an extra penny.

Since I am in advice-giving mode, I decided to treat myself to some. I am telling myself to trust my kids’ choices. I can’t know what the bleep their world is going to be like. But then again, when my family came to the US from Ukraine in 1992, my parents did not know what my world was going to be like. They had no choice but trust that I would figure it out. The first thing I did was switch my intended degree from engineering to psychology. Things got interesting. I can’t say my every career and life decision was stellar. But they got me to a place where, 34 year later, despite my impractical degrees, I am taking my kid on a tour of private colleges. That’s not nothing. A pinch of young optimism is a good spice for life’s recipe.

- We have met before, haven’t we? I don’t mean to be impolite, but I really don’t need you in here. I am able to manage just fine. This is not personal, I just do not need assistance. This is difficult, I will not lie, but I am still managing. I will tell you a secret, I am still brilliant. And modest. Nothing wrong with that, being both at the same time, right?

- Is it ok if I smoke? No, I have no objections to opening the window. These snowflakes are beautiful. Would you mind helping me by moving my chair closer? I think this device needs to be transported with it. I do not understand why there are all these cords and all this beeping. Would you please hand me my pipe? Yes, thank you. It was a gift from the great Bertrand, he was a connoisseur, though I do not recall the occasion. Perhaps, there was none. Friends can just give each other gifts without a special occasion, can’t they?

- Thank you so much for agreeing with me. Do you happen to know why there are so many flowers everywhere? I do not believe I brought them myself. I don’t think I leave this room much anymore. They are very elegant. I used to buy flowers for Judy when we lived together. Judy was my wife. I bought her white roses, she loved their delicacy. Judy was very delicate. She was a pianist, did you know? But I never brought so many. This is a whole flower store in here. Now I am wondering, why did I never bring Judy so many flowers?

- May I share something puzzling with you? I know that I did not buy these flowers, even if I do not know how I know. This happens more and more, not knowing how I know or what I know. Feeling lost. Being so lost, it’s a strange, strange feeling. Not knowing clearly. But I think, even when I forget, something remains in memory. It’s hard to explain. But you understand me, right? It feels like you understand me. Oh, I just love your smile, there is something special about that. You remind me of my Judy, the smile. We have met before, haven’t we? Is it okay if I give you some advice? You seem like a very lovely person, so I want to give you special advice. Stay young. Do you understand what I mean?

- Do you happen to know why there are so many flowers here? My birthday? A week ago? That would explain why they are a little wilted. I don’t mean to be impolite, they are still beautiful. A little throbbingly so. Aging and brilliant. Like me. I am still brilliant, I think. And modest. And who are these white roses from?

- My daughter? Have you met my daughter? This is so strange. She is my daughter, my child, but she is not a young woman anymore. It is a little difficult to fathom such extensive reality. My daughter is 61. We are here. You are here. How did we manage to put it all together?

- Have you met my daughter? On Fridays, you say? Every Friday and most Tuesdays? Are you certain of it? I am delighted that she visits so much. I hope I am not causing her too much trouble. It is inexplicable how the world becomes stranger as you age. I am still brilliant, but some things become inexplicably difficult. Let me give you advice. Stay young. If you can. What do you think about that?

- There was a man here before you, I believe, asking me questions. Such peculiar questions. A lot of them had to do with time. I don’t think you young people understand what a challenging concept time is. You need special devices just to keep track of it all, but then you forget how to operate those devices… And then he asked me to name words that started with a single specific letter, F. Fidelity, fluidity, furthermore, following, fluctuating, fastidious, foundation… It was like a quest, and, perhaps, it was. But words are not particularly confusing, thankfully, until you have to start linking them, connecting them with time. This used to be so much easier. May I give you some advice, if you don’t mind? Stay young. Try.

- In that photo? That’s me and Judy. It is very kind of you to say so. The third person - I don’t remember. There may be something written in the back. Guggenheim Fellowship? I am not too sure right now. I am sorry. Thank you. Oh, your smile! You remind me of Judy. You and I have a good relationship, am I correct?

- Excuse me, what are you trying to do? There is no need to be doing this! This is hurting me! What is leaking, I do not understand… No, I insist that you go away immediately! This is BULLSHIT! This is some BULLSHIT!

- I am sorry, I did not mean to lose my temper in this manner. This is embarrassing. I apologize. Such a difficult job you have. I hope they are paying you well. Thank you. I am getting a little fatigued, I would prefer to lie down.

- This is my daughter in that photograph. She looks different now. I hope I am not causing her too much trouble. She has a busy life. That’s why she never visits. Can I share something with you? I really miss my daughter. And Judy. I hope it’s okay to give you some advice. Stay young. If you can.

- Why are you touching my face? My tears? I was not aware. It must be something in these pumps. And the beeping.

- Excuse me, do you happen to know the occasion for all these flowers in my room?

“So you were a viola player,” asked Martha, without raising her eyes from Anna’s file.

The past tense felt like a dull punch, delivered by a trained schoolyard bully.

“I am a viola player,” said Anna. She refrained from stressing the “AM.” When resistance is futile, marginal is the wiser choice.

Anna was watching the clerk’s hands paging through her file. Martha’s long nails with bright glitter-pink nail polish stood in sharp contrast with the rest of her, as if the hands belonged to another person. Anna thought that she and Martha both worked where people were drawn to watch their hands. Conscious of this, Anna always took meticulous care of her nails, getting weekly manicures at a salon next to her house. She tried not to think about the people who were now living in her apartment. Of course, her nails always had to be trimmed very short and her polish choices were very different from Martha’s. The philharmonic’s code required muted colors. Even if it hadn’t been for the code, it would have never occurred to Anna to go for garish pink.

But this is unkind, thought Anna. What do I know about her. Anna liked weaving stories. In her imagination, she gave Martha a young niece with Down Syndrome and sent them for a weekend outing to a beauty spa. Perhaps, the niece’s birthday? “Do you want to get matching colors? You pick.” “Yes, that one! It sparkles!” Or, perhaps, it was Martha’s wedding anniversary, and she thought a playful touch would rekindle an old flame…

“I have to be honest with you,” - Martha’s voice interrupted Anna’s thoughts. “You are not getting placed as a viola player. That’s just a fact. And, before you ask, not as a music teacher. Your country flooded us with musicians.” The way she said “musicians” made it hard for Anna to imagine Martha treating a child to a spa.

“And you need evidence of work to stay here. Also a fact.” She seemed to be relishing telling those facts.

“Okay,” - said Anna. “What are you able to offer?”

Martha looked bored, “The problem is, you are overqualified for most jobs. We can try entering you in a food service pool, but few places are willing to interview people with your background. In their experience, overeducated people from your country come with a lot of resentment and a sense of entitlement.”

Anna closed her eyes briefly, “Your flier said that you had a program for people in creative professions.”

“Right,” - said Martha, - “we have a new program. So far, it’s a pilot, but very successful. You undergo a procedure that erases professional memories, then go through two-weeks conditioning….”

“A what?!” - gasped Anna. “You are… erasing people’s memories?”

“Professional memories. Temporarily. In a controlled environment in a special sanatorium. It’s like a vacation. The food is really good. It’s absolutely free. After two weeks your memory gradually returns, but only its cognitive component. The emotional component does not return. You remember facts, but feel no emotions attached to them. This makes it much easier to place you through our work program. And you are a lot happier.”

Anna was staring.

“Look, we don’t expect you to decide right here. I am going to email you all kinds of materials, with links to information sessions. Think it over. But, honestly, this is your best bet, if you don’t want to go back.”

____

Anna was riding the 24 tram looking at chestnut trees gliding past the window. This was not the shortest route to the sanatorium, but it ran old trams that reminded Anna of Lviv. To keep her thoughts from racing, she was replaying Bach’s fugue in C minor in her head. The perfect balanced gem. Anna spent the last two weeks reading incessantly about The Procedure: official materials, opinion pieces by independent Czech experts from all points of the political spectrum, immigrant press. Progressives called it a sinister attempt at mind control by the increasingly authoritarian government, stressing that refugees were a vulnerable group, unable to give true consent. Academics debated the connection between memory and identity. Yet others pointed out that the process of abandoning attachment was the time-honored Buddhist path to Nirvana. No one had ever accused Buddhism of aiding totalitarianism. Anna felt she could agree with that. Perhaps, after The Procedure she, once again, will be able to listen to music like she used to, without the pain of feeling on the wrong side of the curtain?

As the tram curved around the Cavalry monument, Anna noticed a woman’s hand holding the handrail. Bright glitter-pink nail polish.The woman’s face and figure were obscured by other passengers. Martha? Probably not. The hand looked strong and elegant, not how Anna remembered Martha’s. But that color… Perhaps, this woman chose it because she was bright and cheerful, in a chirpy, uncomplicated way. Or, maybe, she really had a young niece whom she adored and took out for identical manicures.

The tram doors opened at the Bridge Plaza, pouring people out onto the street. This was a popular stop, close to offices and the market. As the tram emptied, Anna saw the face and the body of the pink-nailed woman. Anna knew her. Inna, a quiet introverted violinist from Kazan State Orchestra, with whom Anna once toured. Inna also recognized her and, with a wave and a bright smile, started making her way towards Anna.

Anna was standing in the middle of the pavement, eyes fixed on the receding tram, the crowd of passerbies flowing around her. She had no memory of the exit, only of the fugue in C minor, on so many stages, perfectly balanced.