All Russians Love Birch Trees by Olga Grjasnowa

Author:Olga Grjasnowa
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Contemporary
ISBN: 9781590515853
Publisher: Other Press
Published: 2012-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

12

I started packing everything into boxes. On some I wrote my name, on most the names of Elisha’s parents. More than half a year had passed since his death and his parents had regularly sent me postcards reminding me to send Elisha’s things. The postcards displayed Thuringian landscape shots. They came every week and in white envelopes, so that their content wouldn’t force itself upon the mailman. After a while the motifs started to repeat themselves. The cards were always written with a black ballpoint pen and in Horst’s narrow handwriting. Polite nothings became increasingly rare and often some words were illegible, because Horst was probably drunk and wrote them in phases of emotional turmoil, complaining about the injustice done to him. I didn’t understand why, among all the options, he chose Thuringian landscapes. Thuringia had nothing to do with our subjective sense of justice.

It was not for me to judge, but Horst was anything but a good father. He drank away the proceeds from his wife’s restaurant and now and then coached the local soccer team. Elisha, never one to excel at sports, got a beating after every game. The way he saw it, the coach’s son shouldn’t grow up to be a weakling, or a homosexual. It had taken Elisha a while to comprehend that love isn’t expressed with fists.

Explaining to Horst or Elke that I needed Elisha’s things had been impossible. I needed his things close by, because I would roam our apartment for hours and days on end, telling myself that Elisha would come through the door any minute.

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