Alisa Roft - He is real

Book translation – the publisher ID RiS Literary name. I want to say thanks to the editors and translators.

Let’s start!

2010 Russia. Krasnoyarsk Region

From 8.20 to noon.

Siberian summer morning on the bank of the river in those lands where I grew up and had a carefree time, was especially sunny that day. Sitting on the grass, wet with dew, pressing my knees to my chest and staring into the distance, I was saying goodbye in my mind’s eye. Painfully familiar, frozen in the beauty of nature, the view seemed to be new and exciting. I was watching the slow stream course, along the steep banks framed with endless coniferous forest, rocking in the wind. It went beyond the horizon, and the tops of centuries-old trees mingled, forming the green boundary line, separating the earth from the sky.

I took a deep breath of the cool, refreshingly clean air, which was saturated with pine needles and slight savor of the swamp dampness that came from the reeds growing under the cliffs. At night they turned into an improvised scene for frogs and grasshoppers, and these small representatives of the fauna sang in sync so loudly and annoyingly that I wanted to get my father’s gun from the utility room and shoot them all. I wish had known how to shoot a gun.

– Well, Anna, are you ready to go? – My mom asked timidly, standing a little bit away from me and waiting. She distracted me from contemplating the beauty of nature, disrupting the order of the farewell.

My mother is kind to everyone, too kind. She has lived most of her life, caring more often of her errant husband and children than about herself. She had two children, me and my elder brother. By the time of my departure he had already managed to start a family for the second time.

By the way, about my brother. When I looked at him, the thought involuntarily sneaked into my head that everything should be the other way around: I wish we could change places – and here it is, the ideal of a brother and sister. Brother weak and sentimenta – qualities more appropriate for women, – unlike me, who was driven by madness, “relative devil-may-care attitude” (it shouldn’t be confused with indifference), the eternal desire to make my case in the fight against injustice and gain my point, which is usually characteristic of men with a strong will power. Though, these traits of my character manifested themselves only when I entered the adolescence, when the familiar world turned upside down. Having grown up, I could afford to make fun of my brother, forgetting that he was older and – as it should be – smarter. He did not take offense and was not impertinent to me, he did not know how to be impudent.

Mom took my hand, and we headed to the sixth model of “Zhiguli” in white, parked near the crooked lath fence.

My father was waiting for us in the car, thoroughly checking the contents of the glove compartment, trying to see if he had forgotten anything. Without a doubt, he could be called “the one who is fancy to forget the most needed things.” What clouds he had his head in, was known only to himself, and it was from him that I unconsciously adopted this quality.

That morning, I looked back at the green forests spread out across the river, swept my eyes over the old wooden house full of memories, with blue shutters and a pointed tiled roof and got into the car.

In about six hours we would have reached the international airport of Krasnoyarsk, where the passenger Boeing would take me thousands of kilometers away from my routine life.

I know that long journeys lie heavy on my mom. She was sitting in the front seat and on the way to the airport she was thinking how to get back to her blossoming garden as quickly as possible.

“Have I put enough fertilizer in the dill bed?” She was wondering in her thoughts. And later she recalled about carrots and radishes as well; their weeding then had to be postponed.

Yes, I knew her thoughts, as well as the thoughts of many other people who I spoke to. Soon I will tell you how I did it.

When the sunset notified her about the completion of work in the vegetable garden, she went to the little garden with the bushes of currant, honeysuckle, gooseberries, sea buckthorns (it seems to me that there grew even some perennial shrubs I don’t remember exactly), and gathering part of the crop in a large iron mug, under the rays of the Siberian sunset, she enjoyed the taste of her own homegrown berries.

With unabashed pride my father not only thought, but also spoke about his night take, falling silent from time to time, picturing himself – what he would be like tomorrow – again, having his head in the clouds, known only for him.

– Have you seen what a huge sturgeon I caught at night? – he asked, driving into the highway, passing the town exit, then pressed the gas pedal harder, and the streets of my home town were left behind, remaining in memory for many years. – I managed to salt it up and got it to the fridge, so that it will be ready for tomorrow, and your mom and I will taste it. And there are no sturgeons of this kind in Israel.

He laughed so openly and merrily that time, but, as in most cases, my mother and I did not uphold his laughter, because, actually, he did not say anything funny. He just likes to laugh about some reason and without any (more often without), humming songs and laugh, to say silly toasts and laugh. He comments on the news presenter and laughs. He watches how the smash-hit characters beat one another up to the blood, which is scattered in droplets into all the unthinkable sides – and definitely he will laugh. He tells the same jokes again and again – it is already clear what he is going to do

It surprised me every time when, suddenly, he began to argue with seriousness that was not characteristic of him and could give me a good life advice. But the image of a silly merry fellow was much more likable for him. After all, everyone without exception loved him in this role. Innocent merry fellow, how can you dislike a man like that.

And what about me? Seeing me off to another country, my parents knew about my intention to stay there for a long time, and perhaps forever, in a place that they had no idea about, but still – garden beds and fishing, here they are, their immediate concerns. I did not look back as for my choice, I just did not expect that my closest people would accept it in such a calm way, as if they didn’t need me at all. At the airport, they will say a few parting words, since I am still their child, and then they will hurry back to the old house on the bank of the river, to the place where they have been for so many years, to their native, familiar and beloved place. They have lived the most part of their lives, did their duty, my father has already planted more than one tree, and my mother gave birth to and raised more than one child. It no longer matters if they have done it together or not. The main thing is that everything is done as it should be, according to generally accepted standards.

Leaving for the country of three religions and four seas at the other end of the world, so far from our Siberian backwater, I set my heart on starting from scratch. From the beginning and with full confidence that everything will work out in the best way, because I will not be alone.

Why did my choice fall on Israel? This state opened its borders to all the descendants of the Jews, giving them the opportunity to build it and develop it, providing initial financial aid. Jumping ahead a bit, I should say that the majority of indigenous Israelis do not even know about such a region of Russia as Siberia, many times surpassing their country in area. They generally believe that Russia is supposedly situated in a different world, separated by the border, behind which lie poverty, devastation, eternal frost and girls of incredible beauty, that sometimes can be found in the streets of their native country, causing associations with mercenary girls. That is their stereotype.

Coming back to the story about my past life, I would like to mention a period when there was no understanding of myself as a person with a firm life philosophy.

The period when I considered myself inferior compared to others, drowning in a pile of my own complexes. The surrounding seemed gray and dull. The weather in Siberia most of the days of the year is really nasty, especially in fall and spring, when trees are losing their leaves or, on the contrary, when new buds swell on their branches. Dirty muddy streams flow along the curved fractures of asphalt roads, flooding the sidewalks. The sky becomes leaden and severe. People, the majority of them, walk with sullen faces, angrily, jumping over and walking around puddles. Only young girls wearing bright fashionable clothes diluted the whole picture with colors. They were like colored spots on a gray canvas. These young beauties were always cheerful, they were walking arm in arm with their friends or boyfriends. How much I wanted to be one of them at that time. But I was too unattractive, indecisive and miserable.

I was stuck in the routine monotonous pace of life, when I was in high school no one paid any attention to me, I walked along the corridors of secondary school and ballet school, like a ghost, I was there just because I had to. Unalterably, bell-to-bell. I also studied poorly and was not interested in anything, after some time I gave up my ballet classes, although I managed to hold on for seven years.

It seems to me, that I should stop here, there’s no point in focusing upon this good-for-nothing. She fits right in a forgotten and once-existed place.

In the small room of the parent log house, which was considered to be mine, there was a wooden wardrobe with full-length mirror doors. On one of the usual boring days, before going to bed, I (sometimes I will give this letter “I” kind of detached and characteristic meaning), so, “Anna the inconspicuous” put on her pyjamas, sewn by her mother in the due hour. Lingering around the wardrobe, she began to stare intently at her reflection in the mirror, seeing there a humble girl with long skinny arms and legs, a flat body, a shapeless shock of dark hair and flapping eyelashes framing green eyes. There was nothing remarkable in this young person, a sort of faceless “gray mouse”.

– Now what? Aren’t you tired of walking around the streets and mixing with the gray mass of people. Try to make them turn around to look at you, smile at the sight of you, – I distinctly heard an unfamiliar voice, of a young guy. Having turned quickly, I looked around my room. It was empty, not even a fly or a mosquito could be seen, and they usually fly into the open window. But I felt a sharp cold – it ran down my back, transpired small goosebumps along the spine and then spread all over the body. I froze in a daze.

– Believe me, it is not so difficult, – he continued speaking; the voice was already coming from behind. Turning my head slightly, I glanced toward the sound, although it was expected that I would not find anyone there. – Do not be afraid of me, I am here to help you. – I backed away, and with horror fell on the bed. – We have a lot of fun and interesting days ahead. You will realize who you are. You can become whoever you want and what you want, the main thing is that you must trust me.

That’s how I heard it for the first time. In a weird way my fear disappeared quickly and most of the night was spent talking to a new acquaintance, and in remaining hours, when I fell asleep, he came to my dream in the form of a young dark-haired boy, we were riding white horses together. He easily managed to win my confidence and get on my right side. Subsequently, I appropriately called him – “an invisible friend.”