Голубые ступени / Stepping into the blue - стр. 13
«What do you mean, Grandma? I’m already forty!»
«It’s not that you’re forty, it’s that I’m ninety. I never have asked Him. It happened once that – a verbrennen soll alts wern… das ich hab gemeint… du verstehst, du verstehst alts – und ich hab gerechnet – das ist ein sof (I should let it all all burn up… that’s what I thought… you understand, you understand it all, and I decided then that this was the end). But He decided otherwise.»
«Bobei, meine teure Bobei! Ich bet dir, leb noch ein hundert jahr! (Grandma, my dear Grandma! I beg you, live a hundred years more!)»
«Oh, you’re tricky! Yeshefitcha (A real sweetikins)! You still want to be young! No, no, enough about that. I still won’t go in your car. But if you change a rouble for me and give me ten-kopeck pieces, I can give out some money to everyone as they walk out.»
Little by little she got herself ready. She deposited the change from the rouble into a ragged little purse with a button in the middle. Another purse, a little larger and fatter, was dropped into the pocket of a long black skirt. Then she pulled on an old but still quite respectable overcoat which barely covered her skirt (though it wasn’t a dirty-looking coat like the ones most women her age wore). After checking her keys, she took out a home-made juniper walking-stick, a very nice one with a long curved handle, on which she could even support herself with one elbow, and set foot out the door.
She had turned ninety two months ago. There was no fancy celebration. But all the neighbors somehow found out about it and came round. They rang the doorbell and offered their congratulations, even though they could have done this on the street. But still they came. She hadn’t really been close friends with them, the neighbors, but whenever she learned that someone was ill, she invariably went over and simply extended her help without even asking whether the help was required. She had done this even as a young woman. She had been living in this same spot for several decades already.
She wasn’t afraid to ring anyone’s bell. Their husbands had all been taken away by the secret police. And where both parents had been taken, she wasn’t afraid to go and feed the children that had been left behind. And when disaster befell her, and nobody rang the doorbell, and when people saw her on the street, and would simply cross to the other side and not say hello so as not to make trouble,12 she didn’t take offense. People were people, after all. Some lived one way, some another.
«How old was I then? Sixty? Well, what is there to be afraid of at sixty? I didn’t know then I’d be alive at ninety!»
She didn’t like remembering everything all at once, which she considered tanatamount to «throwing everything together in a heap», but if she happened to recall something, she would remember it in such detail as though it had occurred just a few moments ago and she were simply explaining the scene to a blind person so that he would know what was going on.
And then at every opportunity she would tell Him the story too, not necessarily about herself, but today was special, and after her account she allowed herself to ask: «Gotteniu, du bist hat nicht vergessen – ich hab doch allein geblieben? Gotteniu, ich bet dir, nicht vergess uben mir. Ich nur dermahn dir.