My Past Life by Frieda Belakhova

Author:Frieda Belakhova [Belakhova, Frieda]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Memoir
ISBN: 9780994256423
Publisher: JoJo Publishing
Published: 2015-02-23T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 15

Passion for Travelling

My passion for travelling started nudging me at that time. The first time I broke away to be totally free was in summer 1960. It happened after I ended my relationship with Noal. I was depressed. Meeting guys at the beach brought only disappointment and irritation. Mum had managed to save some money as our food was provided at the expense of the canteen where Mum worked, so she gave it to me. I am not sure whose idea it was – hers or mine. I think it was my idea and Mum did not resist it, as always.

I am also not sure if I had written to my cousin Sopha in Moscow or just unexpectedly turned up but I took presents with me and caught a train to Moscow at the age of twenty. On the train I met a young engineer who was coming home from a business trip and we had a stormy love affair for the whole two days of travel. We talked, sang, told jokes to each other and kissed passionately. Once, at a stop, we nearly missed the train as we were queuing for beer in the station buffet. It all worked out well when my new friend threw me into the train as it was moving off and then jumped in himself.

The train arrived in Moscow at night and nobody was meeting me. According to my plan, I was first going to visit my mother’s uncle and aunt in Kalinin (Tver). They were fairly elderly people then. I had to catch another train to Kalinin the next day from a different railway station. My new friend offered to put me up at his place. It never stops surprising me how I always trust people, even strangers, but equally surprising is that my trust has never ended up badly.

The young man lived by himself in a room which was part of a communal flat. Having arrived there by taxi we found the room covered in dust and the furniture draped in rags. He removed the rags, gave me his bed and went to sleep on a small sofa. In the morning he took me to the railway station and left for work, leaving me his phone number (in Moscow a lot of people had the luxury of a phone).

The presents for my Moscow and Kalinin relatives were very heavy glass jars full of sour cherry jam which my mum had made in abundance in summer. To make it easier for myself, I decided to leave the jars for my Moscow relatives with this man instead of dragging them all the way to Kalinin and back to Moscow where I was going to stay at my cousin’s place on the way back. I also bribed my new friend with a jar of jam.

Thus I left for Kalinin where I spent a week with two old people in a real peasant house (izba) made of wooden logs. The water had to be brought in buckets from the street and all other conveniences were outside too.

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