Eleven years after my mother's passing, my father also left this world. My relationship with him, to put it mildly, was complicated. He always had his own opinion, singular and unassailable. Any attempt to argue with him would trigger a fit of rage.
His opinions extended to everything, from geopolitics to the party's agricultural policies, and from the length of girls' skirts to boys' hairstyles.
It so happened that I was born into this. Our parents, our native languages, our homelands whether big or small aren't choices we make. They're circumstances. We live with what we’re given.
After his death, it fell upon me to sell the apartment. It was an exceptionally complex and bureaucratic task, entangled in a web of red tape. Officially, the apartment was mine. It was registered in my name. I spent my childhood, adolescence, and youth in that place. But now, I live with my wife somewhere else. I can't afford to maintain an empty apartment on my meager pension. And my daughter has no desire to live in that apartment.
What could I do? I had to sell it.
To sell an apartment, it needs to be "prepared," meaning it should either be in ideal condition—turnkey—or reduced to bare walls for the new tenants to arrange according to their tastes.
My father had long since "organized" the apartment. He had chopped up most of the furniture and threw it in the trash. The remaining furniture he dismantled, reducing it to pieces he reassembled using bolts, nuts, and mounting brackets to create monstrous, lumbering structures. You couldn't sit or lie on them, nor could you even look at them without tears and amazement. Asking my father why he did this was an invitation to an immediate row.
The contents of the apartment, including bedding, clothing, kitchenware, and everyday items, had also largely ended up in the dumpster. Observing how things, sometimes the most essential ones, disappeared from the apartment, I asked him where they went. In response, he barked that there was no need to clutter the living space, punctuating it with a few unprintable expressions. This turned the apartment into an uninhabitable den, an indescribable shamble.
My sister, urged and guided by her husband, a real estate expert, decided to get as much as possible from the sale. But that's a separate topic.
I was given a mandate to "clear out the apartment."
I arrive at the apartment. An hour and a half later, my son and son-in-law come to help with the "cleanup." They sort through and dismantle the remnants of the furniture. Even the polished armoire ends up in the trash heap. I tell my son to leave it, sell it for a low price, or keep the excellent polished boards for himself. Perhaps, one day, he’ll make shelves out of them. But my son dismantles everything indiscriminately. I only manage to save my sergeant's uniform from the closet. Yes, I remember how I returned in it from the Army, and how my mother nearly fainted at the doorstep with unexpected joy. "My son is back!"
Among the bedding, my mother kept my baby wrap (I was born a tiny baby and barely survived). Sometimes, I saw her pull that baby outfit from under the sheets and gaze at it for a long time, pensively, her eyes moist. I used to think it was meaningless, some unnecessary sentimentality. Now, as a grandfather, I think differently.
I keep my son’s baby wrap stashed somewhere in a remote drawer with the bed linens. It doesn’t take up much space. It's just a small item, connecting me with a long-lost past, a reminder of what once was.
But my father threw it all away. He vented his intense hatred for people (who, according to him, all lived incorrectly) on things, including his son's belongings, even his toys. A healthy, grown man gleefully smashed a plastic toy rooster. He rummaged through his son's desk and, finding the drawings that had been carefully preserved for many years, threw them in the trash.
While I was serving in the army, he got hold of my college notebooks that were in the lower section of the bookcase. I had used them to jot down Arabic words and expressions while I was working in Africa. He ripped out all the filled-in pages, leaving only the blank ones. It was a matter of economy. He didn't spare the boxes with chess and chess pieces. His emotions needed satisfaction...
How different that is from my attitude towards my son. By chance, I found an instruction manual in the attic that my son had written on how to put together a bicycle. It even had drawings. I joyfully handed it over to my wife. Keep it, dear! It's from our son.
The apartment... It was a highly typical "Khrushchyovka" apartment. Small, humble, and uncomfortable. But it provided a semblance of private life and intimate solitude for countless millions of our people after the huts, barracks, and communal apartments of the post-war years.
Yes, we had an ordinary apartment. My mother kept everything clean and tidy. Each of us had our own clothing, from underwear to coats and hats. I slept like a king, sprawling on the pull-out couch. My sister slept nearby on a folding chair. Our parents had embedded in an adjacent room. That's how millions and millions of our compatriots lived back then. Nowadays, many live differently. My sister, for instance, in her spacious, well-furnished apartment. Times change.
Mother was meticulous. Everything was "up to the mark." We had a radio, a television (a black and white Gorizont purchased after long periods of resistance from my father, an opponent of all things new, while our neighbors already had color TVs). There was a washing machine and even a vacuum cleaner. Statuettes adorned the dresser. Two of the walls were adorned with rugs—which were very hard to come by during Soviet times...
My son and son-in-law work diligently and, without a hint of sentiment, dismantle the furniture, stacking the debris in the center of the room. I carry it out to the dumpster.
My wife told me, "Don't bring anything into the house. I don't need anything."
By nature, I'm thrifty and dislike wastefulness. I never throw away food; I consider it indecent. Take smaller portions, but never discard food! It's a sin. And I never dispose of functional items or things that might come in handy. At the very least, metal objects are sent to recycling. I can't do it any other way. But here...
With a heavy heart, I toss in my father's homemade knives and forks, cups, spoons, can openers, and little saucers into the bin. I did manage to slip one little cup into my bag. Now, I regret not taking that bulbous cup I used to carry to school for some tea party. Who needs feathers for school pens from the early sixties? I wish I could keep the wooden mushrooms that my children played with, the ones you'd pick up with a metal ring on a stick. My grandchildren would enjoy them now. But the mushrooms met the fate of other toys.
I carry the mirror from the wardrobe to the dumpster, and the one from the hallway wall as well. Offering this old stuff to someone would only be an insult. My son and son-in-law are removing an ugly wooden structure, assembled from boards my father took from the couch he had disassembled.
"Why didn't he sleep on a regular couch?" I say.
"There's no mystique in a regular couch," my son-in-law explains.
They’re carrying the refrigerator out. It's as old as a dinosaur. The factory once rewarded my father with a luxurious Finnish Rosenlew refrigerator. But my father never used it. Naturally, my mother didn't either (how could she disobey my father?). She repurposed the refrigerator as a wardrobe. In the end, the Rosenlew was given to my granddaughter. However, she found it insufficiently modern and sold it.
The rooms are empty. I almost shed tears while gazing at the walls. Life used to bubble here. With a heavy heart, I step outside and sit on my bicycle. Buffeted by the cold November wind, I ride back to Zarechye.
I couldn’t sleep that night. I kept thinking about all those things: brushes, paints, feathers. And suddenly, I remembered - the ABACUS. My school abacus. My aunt gave it to me before I started school. On the first of September, I struggled to fit it into my backpack, which immediately stretched out and became difficult to close. It was sitting on a shelf in the little cupboard. I had meant to bring it home with me, but I forgot it in the chaos. This is the last of those early things that connect me to my childhood.
That's it! I don't have anything else from that time! I need to get it back! Even if it's just a small piece of my childhood in the form of an abacus, a wooden frame with beads on a wire.
I hop on my bike and ride back to the apartment. Here are the garbage containers. There are no more furniture scraps. People have already come to the rescue, preventing these treasures from being lost. They've taken the intact boards, mirrors, and the rug nailed to the base of that miraculous couch. God willing, may those items still be of use to someone.
I look in the container. It's empty. The abacuses are nowhere to be found. It feels like I have been thrown in the trash myself. I have nothing, absolutely nothing left from my previous life. I'm a person without a past. At least, that's how it seems to me. Some might judge me. "Why are you so attached to worthless things?" they might say. What can I say in response? If things had developed differently, in a more reasonable and healthy manner, I'd probably have different emotions. I wouldn’t have this painful yearning for old possessions from my former life. But now, right now, it's painful to feel that something that was a part of me, something I could have preserved and touched, is now irretrievably gone. The awareness of this weighs heavily on my soul. I’m hurting...
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