I woke up from a powerful explosion. I jumped up and for a long time could not understand where I was.
Just the day before yesterday I walked through an incredible Brussels park, breathed the northern sea in a tiny Dutch town, and had breakfast with croissants in a real French bakery. Yesterday I drove all day, more than a thousand kilometers, and was dead tired. I fell asleep in some strange semi-delirium. Everything mixed up: Ukrainian landscapes on the Kyiv-Chop highway, the Gothic architecture of Vienna, the Bratislava embankment, the central square of Lille. I fell asleep.
And in the morning a Russian drone was shot down over my house in Kharkov. The windows shook as usual. The dog rushed into the bathroom. Everything instantly fell into place. I'm home.
The last time I allowed myself a full three-week vacation was almost never. And then, it happened by accident. I went to visit my daughter in Lviv for a couple of days. Driving with a Doberman. Friends, whom the war had scattered all over Europe, upon learning about this, immediately said: if you don’t stop by, we won’t forgive you. I left my dog and my car, got on the bus and headed straight from Lviv to peaceful life. God, how beautiful she is. Is it true. This thought ran through my spontaneous vacation like a yellow thread.
Previously, in the distant pre-war past, I would certainly have visited all the historical places, museums, castles and ruins. Without removing the radio guide from your ear. Today I sit on a bench in a Brussels park and eagerly observe ordinary life. Here is a business duck walking along the parapet of the palace fountain. Behind her is a flock of tiny chicks. Funny. To the left, on a sandy alley, teenagers are playing two-on-two badminton, talking noisily. On the right, a gray-haired man, a gardener, is trimming a strange bush. Carefully rearranges the old-fashioned wooden stepladder – again, and again climbs with scissors to the top of the plant. In my opinion, she is already perfect. On the next bench, a dark-skinned guy rocks a newborn baby in his arms, it’s so touching. The baby's mother is jogging, and every five minutes she runs past us with a bottle of water and a towel on her shoulders. Smiles and waves to his friends. The guy shows her with an “everything is ok” gesture.
It would seem that nothing is happening. Nothing at all. But only when you come from a front-line city, with its endless sirens, explosions, fires, basements and military equipment on the roads, do you understand: the most important thing is happening – ordinary life. People laugh in it. The birds sing amazingly in it. So loud, so beautiful. And flowers. Incredibly many colors. Especially in Belgium. This is, in general, not a country, but one continuous botanical garden. I fell in love. Out of the thousand photos on my phone, probably nine hundred are of flower beds, front gardens, rose gardens.
On the third day of vacation, I suddenly realized that I had stopped thinking about death. At all. In Bratislava, Vienna, Brussels – in every city I was able to visit, I thought only about life. About the life that was taken from us. Honestly, it’s impossible to get rid of this thought. Not for a minute. I’m standing on a picturesque historical bridge in the amazing town of Bruges, and my phone in my pocket is bursting with Kharkov alerts “missile towards the city, everyone take cover”, “drone heading for Saltovka”. And such rage suffocates, until there is a lump in the throat, to tears. Well why!?
Why is the world so arranged that in one second it can be beautiful and monstrous. Why did some people create this amazing, endless garden with canals, fountains, sculptures… And others have been “taking” the ruins of Malaya Tokmachka for five years. Why do some people jog along green alleys, while others jog with St. George ribbons and “Kyiv in three days” T-shirts? Why?
In France, I saw through the window a beautiful woman in a small pastry shop, pouring hot chocolate into molds. I was staring at it. And I thought that right now the same woman, somewhere in Yelabuga, with the same expression on her face, was standing behind a drone assembly line. And these drones will fly into my city, again and again – to kill. Tell me how. How. Such. Maybe.
I know there is no answer. An explosion has just thundered over my house again. While I am writing this text, it is already the third one. Everything is fine, they write in chats that the air defense is working. Even when I set off on the return journey, I was afraid that adaptation would be difficult. Returning from a peaceful life to this hellish place is not easy. But I accidentally adapted before reaching Kharkov. Some guy in a gray Mitsubishi and I took turns overtaking each other all the way. Either he blinks his headlights at me, saying, let me pass, then he leaves the left lane, his nerves give way. We drove about four hundred kilometers like that. And we met at a gas station. I get out of the car, and he exclaims with sincere surprise: “Baba?” And then he adds: “Well, you’re a man!” I have never been given a more dubious compliment. While he was drinking coffee, Hector and I walked a little. And again we synchronously get into our cars with him and start driving. He opens the window and shouts in a friendly manner: “You don’t have to slow down behind Valki, the camera doesn’t work there! Well, come on, let’s go, it’s 50 km to the house.”
I breathed in the evening air, so clean after the rain. And I felt a hint of burning. The siren screamed. Yeah, man, home is close. Let's go.
P.S. What's the Kremlin “verdict” according to my book: incites hatred? Perhaps yes, fair enough. I hate you. The creatures that took our lives.
The fourth vibration at Kharkov.
Source: Anna Gin / Facebook
