Chapter 1.
Old House.
My old house stood outside a small city. Somewhere far away, between two train stations and two rivers.
It stood among farmland, forests, and gardens that were together for hundreds of years, like invisible guards watching over the whole our region wich was older then thousand of years according to found historical objects.
How many times did I come here?
And how many times I did not want to come here.
I was very young, almost a child, and those days felt as though they would last forever.
My grandmother is reading a book. My great-grandmother is sitting quietly, looking out the window. She was always at the window, it was her favorite place when she was at home.
Their friends are visiting. Our living room. The wooden table. The benches. All near the window. The bed close to the door. Big mirror on the wall. One bed room. One small room. Traditional fireplace. The garden. The trees. The birds. Even the neighbour's cow.
Fresh smell of grass fills the air, while bright sunlight dances with the wind just outside the window.
"If it rains, we don't have to water the garden," - my grandmother says stretching from the reading book in the same pose...
Now I realize that I am older then some of the people who used to visit this house. People who were old through the eyes of a child. My mother is now almost the same age as my grandmother was at that time.
I never truly understood how precious those moments were. I never valued them as much as I should have.
Today, I would give a great deal to sit at that table one more time and listen to every conversation or ask for advice.
Someone would always say:
"Everything is all right. The most important thing is that there is no war."
Several women would quietly cross themselves and nod in agreement.
To me, the old people all seemed tall, strong, powerful, and just a little frightening.
Once a year they wore their jackets covered with medals. Even my grandmother wore a medal pinned to her blue blouse. The same blue blouse I secretly borrowed and wore to school, although never with the medal. She kept it together with my grandfather's medals.
He had gone to war as well.
The older women were always serious. They listened without interrupting, allowing everyone to finish every thought before speaking. Then they would remain silent for another minute or two before quietly sharing their opinion.
Near the house stood an old apple tree and a small traditional wooden sauna where ancient rituals of cleansing had once taken place.
A bright, breezy hallway welcomed every visitor. The wooden floor creaked with every step, as though announcing to everyone inside that someone had arrived.
Almost immediately, the living room door would open, and someone would invite you inside.
During the day, the front door was never locked.
It was always open. Always welcoming.
The old women sat around the table with a pot of boiled potatoes, fresh homemade bread, milk from the neighbour's cow, bread, and salt.
They knitted while teaching me how to knit. The long knitting needles often poked my fingers, but that was all right. I was learning.
Even today, I still knit the same way they taught me, using techniques from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. I could learn newer methods, but I choose not to. I want to keep that connection with the old traditions.
"Our things are made for healing," - the women would say.
"Our food is made for healing too."
And I listened.
They told stories from long ago, especially about their youth, before the wars and before the revolution.
I listened, although I did not always understand or even try to remember.
I wanted to run outside. And I did.
With my friends, I ran across the enormous fields. Sometimes we crossed the nearby river in a small wooden boat to explore the land on the other side. We were never afraid. Often we wandered into the forest, played in the flooded meadows with their brilliant green grass, and returned home before evening.
The garden around the house overflowed with herbs and flowers. In summer it was filled with warm sunshine beneath a bright blue sky without a single cloud.
At night the sky was crowded with stars. The fresh scent of grass drifted through the darkness.
It seemed as though I could see the entire galaxy.
Thousands of stars. Soft pink and purple circles of light. Tiny white dots. Perhaps even Perseus' Arm stretching across the sky. Sometimes I noticed thin streaks of light disappearing into the darkness.
Summer evenings were spent cooking over an open fire, caring for the garden, dreaming, and talking about the future.
New visitors always stopped by.
I still remember one woman with long dark hair. She is so clear in my memory. She sits beside the fire, serving soup from a large metal pot. Her smile glows in the firelight. Her eyes shine as she talks about simple things, the market, neighbours, everyday life. Gypsy song.
Many years later, while I was at work, I suddenly began to see that old house differently.
Not through the eyes of the teenager who wanted to escape it.
But through the eyes of an adult who wanted to see, to hear, and finally to understand.
Chapter 2.
Wizard and Warlock
We met on a former Soviet farm where I was working for a bank.
The farm had once been successful, full of life, hope, and opportunity. Now it was almost abandoned.
All the farms in our region had once been lively. My grandmother used to tell me stories about Friday and Saturday night dances. She and her friends would dress up, curl their hair using small strips of newspaper, and walk to the village club, to talk and dance, sing funny songs called "chastushki" infront of the club entrance.
"It was a lot of fun", - she always said.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union, everything changed.
Many farms closed. Others became much smaller or were sold in small pieces of land.
Farm clubs became close together with their different stuff inside, books, papers, benches, wall paintings of Soviet life and inspiring posters.
There were two kinds of people who stayed behind in the farm where I started to work twice a week.
The first fought against poverty. They started their own farms, bought land, opened small businesses, or simply moved away.
The second accepted what had happened and continued living on the little the farm could still provide.
The Wizard belonged to the second group.
He accepted everything.
He lived with very little.
And he liked me a lot.
We mostly talked about all books in the world. I have never seen this passion for literature in anyone else. I had books at home, and every week I brought him another one to read. It became the reason for our friendship.
There was something about his energy.
It was bright.
Every time I met him, I felt as if I am washing my face in cool, clean water. The water from a secret special place. Always fresh, splashy in sparkling clear pearls of glass crystals.
Wizard was calm and polite, shy. He wore old clothes, shirt, sweater, pants stretched on the knees and rubber boots, but the roads were always muddy, so they suited him perfectly. His hair were clean, but he didn't go to barber often.
We would talk for a while. Then he would return to his work, saying he was already looking forward to the next book, or promising to bring me one of his own.
One day I asked him: "Why do you want to live here? Why don't you move to a big city? Everything would be easier."
He smiled.
There was sadness in that smile.
"And do what?" - he asked.
For some reason, I understood.
He would never feel at home anywhere else.
Here, surrounded by fields and open sky, he looked different.
Tall.
Strong.
There was an unusual beauty about him, especially outdoors.
One afternoon we walked together across the farmland toward his house.
It felt as though the weather changed around him.
The sun came out.
The sky turned deep blue.
Birds began to sing.
Then he started singing.
His voice was beautiful, the song reminded old Slavic style songs from movies.
Warlock
One day I had to bring some documents for a client to sign. It was business deal in a company where I was a new lawyer.
After walking for a while, I realized something felt strange.
The feeling was like walking inside of an invisible bubble, controlled by thicker air around. The air seemed different. A little darker.
He lived in a small house, a good one, really standing out around all the construction mess. It was one taken care house.
I rang the bell.
An old man opened the door.
He could barely see me.
Instead, he seemed to sniff the air before looking in my direction. Almost invisible inhale of the air.
Then something unusual happened.
It felt as something invisible stopped him.
Almost like an unseen hand had appeared between us, telling him to stop.
He stepped back with expression on his face that everything is fine, almost with smile.
The room was small. Clean. Almost empty, but rich in a way.
There was only expensive table, expensive television, and expensive bed. All looked like bedroom in the soap opera.
When the curtain opened, the scent of dry grass filled the house.
He returned carrying a magnifying glass.
Very slowly, he began reading the documents.
Every line. Every word.
It took him almost more then hour to read a single page. I was sitting on the fancy chair moved from the table, watching news programs changing each other.
When he finally finished, he signed the papers and handed them back to me.
On the walk home, the strange feeling remained.
It was as though I were still inside that invisible bubble.
Only when I was far away from the house the air become ordinary again.
Warm. Light. Breezy.
