“Not at all, those are tales for children, and we are grown-ups,” Vital defied.
“Actually, I gotta go home,” Red began to hurry, peering at the window. “And the rain has just stopped.”
“Mom’s going to be mad if I come home late. Well, I should probably go, too.”
“So you were scared, anyway,” you concluded sneeringly.
“We were not, it’s just my father and he’s going to beat me up.” Vital voiced his thoughts aloud. “I swear we are not afraid of anything.”
“If it really matters, you run.” I smiled amiably.
“But if you suddenly get bored and wish to try that again, you’re welcome,” you chopped in.
“Only one thing I beg of you,” I said. “Don’t approach the window.”
“Especially at night,” you added, “when it’s raining.”
But they weren’t listening. They’d already jumped up, off like two bullets.
We haven’t seen them since then.
After they left we sat at the smouldering fire for a long time, drying our wet clothes. Looking at the fire, I thought how often luck depends on chance. And is it fair that a small incident can totally change a person’s destiny? Eventually we got up and went to our bedroom, back to old ghosts and imaginary fears.
Our life was going imperceptibly by when the last day of April came. Twilight fell over the city as we were slowly walking in the innocent rain. Our loyal blanket got soaked in cool water, but I didn’t notice, hurrying to breathe in the spring and let my soul green out. While the rain was pouring down, we, inconspicuous like everyone else around us, merged with a harmonious picture of the world hidden under raincoats, jackets, covers and umbrellas. Trying to outshout the noisy rain, you unexpectedly brought up an uncomfortable topic I didn’t want to discuss.
“We’ve been living perhaps next door to her in the same city, but have never made any attempt to see her.”
I immediately understood that you were talking about our mother. Since our earliest childhood I have never stopped wondering: why did she do it? Did she have any feelings when she abandoned us? What motivated her? I couldn’t manage to put myself in her place; resentment rose up in my throat and choked me like a loop at the very thought of her reasons. We didn’t have any information about her, neither who she was nor what she did for a living; we didn’t even know her name, but we always dreamed of her. I usually associated her with a heroine of labor, a great scientist or a well-known actress, because I wanted so much to be proud of her. But as far as I knew, none of these notions was true. I had always thought of our mother as a myth, as something impossible and inconceivable, as something that didn’t seem to exist but nonetheless was encountered every day.
I can’t describe my feelings at that moment. It is one thing to imagine her but a totally different thing to see her for real. In addition, she believed we were dead; at least that was what they had told us in the boarding school. But what if she didn’t believe in our death and had been looking for us for all these years? That was the inevitable discussion – of a tale as old as time, which you started all over again.
And you know what? I just thought, “Hope, you were so eager to go to the capital just in order to find your mother, not ours, all for yourself; and all these hospitals and doctors were just a convenient pretext. I can’t say that I blame you; I only wish I’d realized it sooner.”
“You must understand, Faith, we shouldn’t take offence at her,” you continued speaking. “Well, let’s try to be at least a little bit positive about meeting her. After all, we can’t lose anything by having a positive attitude.”
I remained silent, meaningfully silent.
“Do you love her at least a little bit?” you continued.
“Do I love her?” Love is an intended sacrifice for the sake of a person of like spirit and flesh. And I would like to feel this kind of love, but she has never merited it. But how is it possible to love a person whom we don’t even know, a person who probably betrayed us at the moment of paramount importance when we were so badly in need of her? I wanted to understand what made her do so. Was it her fault, and if it was, would she be able to acknowledge her mistakes in order to get things right? And at the same time I was ferociously scared to meet her. How would she react to the fact that we were still alive?
“Anyway, we cannot find her in such a big city, so why go on about it?” I objected, trying to instill severity into my tone. “All we have is her last name.”
“I don’t think so,” you objected. “Actually, we know her name, too. We heard Ivan Borisovich mentioning it. Don’t you remember? She has an unordinary name, Lyuba.” (Lyuba is a short name for Lyubov which has the meaning “love” in Russian. A name with a close meaning, Charity, will be used hereinafter instead of Lyubov in order to highlight the connotation of the name)
No way! I had completely forgotten that Ivan Borisovich, the doctor at the institute of traumatology, had named her. Even when I tried to remember, I hardly managed; it seemed so long ago. How come you have never said it aloud and never mentioned it when conversing with me? And now, it turns out that our mother’s name means benevolence and generosity to people as objects of her love! A unique and beautiful name! Charity! “It is one of life’s cruel ironies,” I thought, “that a midwife, or whoever filled in the documents, must have known our mom’s name. I suppose she had a lot of fun naming us Hope and Faith! Or, on the contrary, she sympathized.”
“If we put Mom’s name next to our last name, we have a chance of finding her address in the telephone directory,” you triumphed with dazzlingly sparkling eyes. “And she could definitely help us to get passports,” you added in a tone which admitted no doubt.
A passport, the treasured document giving a person the right to a human existence! So, this word, strengthened by the determination in your voice, possessed a miraculous power at that moment; and it was this last argument that was probably decisive.
A couple of days passed. In spite of our decision, we didn’t initiate a search for our mother right away. Perhaps you wished to consider everything rationally and think over your small hopes and fears again. Indeed, making a step towards a reunion was very hard, and what bothered us most was the fact that we had to appear before her in our present dejection. The decision was soaring and roaring in the air, but we didn’t hurry to put it into action. Everything remained the same. We carried on standing in the walking tunnel and begging the conscientious passersby for trifles. But one day, all of a sudden, like everything else in life, from within the depths of the tunnel, I heard the sounds of a violin. A true maestro was playing; the instrument came to life in his hands, and the divine music spread to every corner of the tunnel. I was perplexed. How had he happened to come to this pathetic lower world of faceless shadows indifferent to truth and to reality, to the sufferings of human beings? I caught myself staring at him. He was slightly hunched and round-shouldered, plainly dressed, looking about thirty-five, with a serene face, a mild smile and an old man’s eyes. He put a sign on his breast with an inscription asking for help for his dying son. Then he played a waltz – vivid, breezy, spring-spirited, and absolutely incongruous. Moreover, it was impossible to raise the huge amount of money necessary for the rare and expensive surgery his son needed. He too was aware of this but still he played on, muffling the roar of his grief with music. And the greater the pain he felt, the shriller the violin sounded. He was dying very slowly, together with his son, perishing from his own powerlessness and feebleness; all in all, it resembled rather a dying agony than a musician playing. What a pity that all beautiful things are so fragile and so fleeting! Soon, two supervisors of stately proportions approached the poor man and rudely pushed him outside. I can’t describe the pain I had at that moment: literally, physically, I felt his despair, this awful, inhuman torment when we cannot change anything because it is already too late. That’s when I thought that finding someone to love was more important than anything else. Of course, our mother probably didn’t go through the tortures suffered by that unfortunate violinist, and furthermore she didn’t need us like he needed his son. But, maybe she too had felt the need to let a load off her mind over all the long years. Anticipating this, I almost saw Mother right in front of me, clothed in white, vivid and real. From that moment on, I had one irresistible desire – to look into her eyes. Now I was anxious to see her and believed it would definitely happen.