Lena Romanovsky (Fradkina)
Translated from Russian by the author
I didn’t have a real good friend at school – somehow there were no girls of the right kind around, while boys got totally unbearable by the age of eleven. But one day I was ill and staying at home, and a girl from my class came to bring me the homework and school news. I wasn’t really interested in the homework, but there was an unusual piece of news:
- There’s a new girl in our class.
For an unknown reason something inside me stirred at once.
- So what? In our group?
It was an “intensive English” school, and we were divided into three groups for our English classes.
- In our group.
- So what? And what’s her name?
- Alla.
- So what. – I concluded decidedly.
But when the girl left, I started thinking about that new classmate. Alla. Sounds like the Russian word for ‘scarlet’. So she must wear something that is scarlet. Scarlet, as I saw it, was a lighter shade of red. Aha, the pioneer tie. (Pioneers were Soviet scouts. All the children aged 10 to 15 were scout members and wore red ties to school). It was lighter than the red that all of us wore. And her dress was blue, to contrast with the scarlet. And her hair was black, like a raven’s wing. I had come across this ‘raven wing black’ in a book and liked it a lot.
At night I saw this girl in my dream, for some reason as Delacroix’s “Liberty Leading the People”, only she wore a blue dress instead of being half naked. And there was a scarlet flag above her, and her hair was black, raven wing colour.
I came back to school and what did I see? This new girl was sitting on my desk, on the top. Her pioneer tie was a lighter shade than all of us wore – it was scarlet, alyi. She was wearing a blue dress. We all wore brown dresses to school, but she had come from Byelorussia, as I found out later, and they had blue school uniforms there. Her short black hair was touching her pale cheek like a raven’s wing. (It turned out that she had had her hair cut not long before that, it had been long earlier.) Not bad at all this new girl was, only a little freckled.
Naturally, I drove her away from my desk. The girl knew the laws of the gang and beat it at once. But in the break I come to the Dark Corner and what do I see? This new girl is fighting with my two worst enemies! I sure hurried up to help her, and together we gave them quite a good thrashing. What a cool girl she was – if within a week she had already figured out who the enemy was, then she was a friend! Not just a friend – she was The Friend, my best friend from now and forever.
The drums of victory were still beating in our ears, the spirits were high, and I after school I went to her place with her, to Shamsheva Street. We spoke of trifles, and I thought – that’s not it, not the right thing to talk about, Alka, don’t you see that this is me, your best friend, from now and forever. It looked like she was testing me, couldn’t believe it at once, but I had no doubts - I knew it then and there.
Later these walks turned into a ritual: school – her place – my place and back again, for we could never talk enough. It turned out that we had a lot of things in common. Both were Jewish, something important even then for me. A common favourite book – “Far Away Goes the Road” - the two of us knew it almost by heart. Neither of us had brothers or sisters, just like Sashenka Yanovsky from that book, but later our little brothers were born, just like with Sashenka in the book. We even decided then: the one who first had a daughter would call her Sashenka. That’s what I did…
We had a lot of adventures together, and it was great fun to talk of them afterwards. We loved to climb up and down buildings under construction. We sailed down the Zhdanovka River in a boat without oars one day – we thought it was tied when we got into it, then another day we ran to see the Neva River flood, and then got into a tight spot making it out of the flooded Petropavlovskaya fortress… Yet another day we cut classes when we had to make it both to our art history class at the Hermitage and to the “Macbeth” performance by the Royal Shakespeare Theatre. Alka’s mother thought that all the mischief was Fradkina’s (that is, my) fault, but, as a matter of fact, Alka was a devil of a girl and no less of an adventuress than me, and quite a few of our outings were actually her ideas.
I was in constant fight with our headmistress about school ribbons. We were supposed to wear black or brown ribbons to school and white ones for public holidays. I hated it, and my mother gave me a very pretty brown ribbon, only it was checkered. Checkered ribbons were not allowed either, so the headmistress confiscated it. Then I came to school with red ribbons.
- Fradkina, why are you wearing red ribbons?
- It’s the French Commune day, - I answered cheekily.
It didn’t convince the headmistress and she grabbed me by my pigtails, and then Alka seized her by her hand – with her teeth! After that Alka’s mother was summoned to school by the outraged school mistress, and I had to tie my pigtails with elastic bands.
When Alka moved to Pushkin, she sometimes spent a night or two in my home. My parents somehow calculated that she had spent an eleventh part of the year with us and announced that she was their “eleven per cent daughter”. These nights together were real feasts for us – that’s when we could pour our hearts out! It wasn’t just two girls talking their heads off about trifles, like classmates, teachers and so on. Those were actually very important things, like talking about good and evil. About truth and lie, sincerity and hypocrisy. About courage and cowardice. About cruelty and mercy. About tolerance. About love. That’s how our world views crystallized, that’s how we shaped ourselves – looking into each other’s souls. Those who never experienced this are poor, but we were – rich.
Time passed, and the birdies grew wings, left their nests and flew out into the big world. And it so happened that Alka, a teacher’s daughter, became a guide, and I, a guide’s daughter, became a teacher. I found teaching extremely difficult in my first year at school – I wasn’t a born leader, like Alka and I lacked her talent of immediately connecting with everyone. I kept thinking – how does she do it? And I got it: Alka radiates optimism and a genuine interest in people. It’s impossible to imitate these things and it doesn’t work with kids, who know counterfeiters at first sight. But after some self-searching I dug out something that could do, and after that everything went smoother – the kids started liking and even obeying me.
At that time Alka worked as an engineer, and her talent for communicating found expression only on a small scale, among friends and family. She was always taking care of some old folks and mothering some schlemiels. I asked her: Alka, why do you always invite this crank? He just doesn’t belong here. And she replies: I just have to – he is an orphan. And her house was always full of these orphans – I don’t how Sasha could put up with all that.
Alka never learned psychology, but a psychologist she was – a born one. People were attracted to her, asked for advice and she gave it readily.
- Alka, how can you take such responsibility? – I asked, - What if it won’t do any good?
- When a person is in such dismay, - Al’ka said, - any advice and any decision will be better than this confusion state and inability to take a decision.
- OK, but why should this girl get married at all? I don’t see how she will adjust to family life.
-To tick the box – Alka said with confidence. To score a point, that is. This is important for self-assurance.
One of our common acquaintances once said: I don’t understand why everyone praises this Alka so much? She only helps people for her own pleasure. I enjoy buying a smart dress or going to a fashionable pub. So what’s the difference between us?
Sounds logical, but does not convince.
When Dale Carnegie’s book – I think it was “How to win Friends and Influence People” - appeared in the USSR, all of us laughed – it was as if Alka had written it, she could have written a dozen books like that. She also had some psychological tricks of her own invention.
-When I speak with some nasty boss,- Alka once told me,- I imagine him sitting on the toilet.
Believe it or not, but I tried it – it works!
In the end she did go to a guides’ course. It was not easy to get accepted, for in the Soviet Union you needed a degree in humanities for a course like that, while hers was in electrical engineering, but she charmed all the right people and convinced them that if she had once made a mistake – went to the College of Electrical Engineering – she did not necessarily have to suffer from it all the rest of her life.
And sure enough, there were always bright eyes and lit up faces around her. Her tourists went after her like children after the flute player from Hamelin. Alka’s funny stories about her work as a guide were told and retold dozens of times. Human ignorance amused her, but she always respected people, even complete ignoramuses. She was good at joking and making people laugh, but never did it in a cheap or tacky way.
Our families became friends, too, and we rented “dachas” (summer houses) together. These summers were something unforgettable: children’s parties with shows and games, barbeques at weekend nights, berry compote from forest berries we picked, kayak trips with all our Jewish gang…
It was I who pulled Alka into the Jewish movement – Fradkina’s doing again. And, of cause, she started doing there what she was best at – bringing joy to everyone. People came to Alka’s Jewish holidays’ celebrations, and some even said later that they came to Israel only because of Alka and Senya’s Purimspiels.
First thing Alka did in Israel was giving birth to Masha, then she started going abroad to raise funds for the Soviet Aliya. And either the work was tailor-made for her or she was tailor-made for the job, but cheque-books and wallets were readily opened with gratitude to her for giving this opportunity to the owners.
And then another guides’ course, and again our flute player took people to Israel’s roads, walks with them along the streets of Paris and Venetia. I never had luck to go on a tour with her, but once I heard from Sasha something that wonderfully portrayed Alka as a guide. When talking about travelling, somebody said: “The guide did it so brilliantly that the trip ended in applause”. “And I thought,- Sasha said - that tourists always applaud their guide. They always clapped hands to Alka”.
I don’t remember if I had dreams about Alka when she still was with us after she had appeared to me as “Liberty Leading the People”, but when she left, she started to come to me sometimes in my dreams. I will now tell one of them. It looks like I am sailing in a clumsy motor boat along a very strange river, and I see behind me a very fast silver kayak. The rower can’t be seen, but I know that it is Alka who is there, only she is too ill to stand or sit up. The kayak overcomes me, and I don’t even have time to shout anything to her. But then Alka and I meet on the bank, though it is not clear whether she has returned to our bank or I have somehow got to the other one. Alka gets up and walks and I get frightened: Alka, where are going? You will fall down, you are ill! And she says: I am well now, they set me on my feet again THERE. And that’s all, the dream ended.
…Somewhere she exists, Alka. Sails in a kayak, walks along the riverbank. And if that OTHER bank is only in the dreams – so then she lives in my soul, in all our souls.
We will meet again, Alka!
December 15 2011.