Ариель Абарбанель - Manchester Diary

He stood, whispering his unpretentious requests with his lips – pleas for a safe trip, for blessing, for a good departure and return. He whispered, said “Amen,” and went to his retirement, on his own, this night, cabin 10218, whose iron lock was opened with a paper key.

On the upper left bunk was a sign: “Use the stairs”.

Levy hoped for his height and “sportiness”, climbed, but could not beat the climb the first time, jumped back to the floor, and then, the second time, still having overcome, rolled onto his back and sighed in relief:

– Well, the day has run out.

In another situation, it would not be easy to fall asleep in such a solid iron box, sloppy painted in a hospital-white color, like a real archaic safe, but the tiredness of the day, impressions, family twists and turns, moved so powerfully forever that he almost immediately plunged into a deep a sea dream, similar to the last view from the porthole – the black, impenetrable mess of the sea and sky, ominously toothless and silent, and fell asleep. Till tomorrow.

– Seryozha Kunder called you.

– Yes mom. For a long time nothing was heard about him. What did he want?

– He said that he was discharged from a psychiatric hospital, where he was under examination and treatment. There he was diagnosed with Schizophrenia and was given the second group of disability.

Now he won’t have to work, as he had once dreamed of as a child, Levy thought sadly.

“What did he want, mom?”

– Nothing. Just wondered where you are and how you are doing.

– We must go to him.

– Is it necessary?

Mom always protected Levy from unfavorable, as it seemed to her, acquaintances. Absolutely right. But she still failed to save everyone. Of the entire class of that ill-fated school number two hundred sixty-eight, Serezha was probably the best candidate for a friend, but only against the background of the students of this school. He did not want to study and do any kind of work. In a three-room apartment, his grandmother, mother and brother lived with him. My brother toiled for a long time in search of work, but then he nevertheless got a job as a collector on the Railway. He married, gave birth to a girl and died, at an early age for this common stomach disease. Sergei was left alone with his mother and grandmother. He brought rare records from the black market, put them on his gramophone, and at full volume with an open window he listened for days on end to the “space music” of various foreign artists. Levy occasionally came to him, called to walk around the city:

– Come, Seryoga, why sit at home? Look, the weather is so wonderful in the courtyard!

At first Sergey was going to take a walk, put on his sneakers, but at the last moment he changed his mind:

– You know, come on another time? Now I listen to music a little better.

They had not seen each other for a very long time, and now, now this is a bleak message. Levy came to his mother from abroad, where he had been for many years. Not much joyful happened during this time in St. Petersburg, in “their” area – mostly disappointing and sad things. And not only in the Kunder’s family.

Nevertheless, you need to visit a guy without saying aloud so as not to upset your mother, Levy thought.

The top floor of the deaf Petersburg front door of a gray well-house. The bell at the red-painted door:

– Who's there?

– Hello!

Further beyond the door you hear animation and a smoky voice unmistakably names the exact Levi’s data, up to the home address and phone. Then the door swings open and Seryozha, easily recognizable, invites Levi inside with his tongue twister:

– How glad I am! How glad i am! Come in, come in! Do you want to smoke a cigarette or listen to music, for example, “Electric Light Orchestra” or “Prompter's Box”?

On the table in the middle of the room rises a mountain of packs of cheap cigarettes – Baltic, Prima. The room is covered with smoke. Seryozha has almost no teeth left, he smokes a cigarette one after another. Hair covered with smoked yellow gray hair, earthy skin color, puffy face.

Leo doesn’t understand anything in such music, and answers:

– No, thank you.

– Do you want to take a plate for memory?

Levy nods his head.

“Can I do something for you?” Here I have some tidy, still solid things, can they come in handy?

Sergei willingly picks up the bag. Thanks indifferently. In the room to the noise of the conversation of old friends enter the aged mother of Sergei. She still remembers and immediately recognizes Levy.

“Would you like to buy us some vegetables?”

Levy does not refuse, and with a carefully given out list and hunt, she goes first to the pharmacy and then to the food store. When he returns with purchases, Seryozha's mother asks him to repeat this procurement trip again. Levy does not refuse again and soon returns again loaded with packets. On the third attempt of an older but more energetic mother of a friend to send Levy to the next shopping trip, Levy addresses both of them:

– My dear! I am very glad that we saw each other, that I could at least help you a little. I apologize, urgent business is waiting for me and people to whom I can also be, maybe, a little useful.

The tacit consent, painted with slight disappointment, spreads over the hallway – the visit is over.

Seryozha, closing the opening speech for Levi, escorts him with his machine-gun speech line:

– Come again! Be sure to come in! We’ll listen to the music, or we’ll take a walk somewhere and walk around the city.

– Of course! I'll definitely come! – Levy sends her words already from the bottom of the stairs, standing in front of the barred elevator car. The old box on iron cables lazily and creakily lowers it down to the first floor, which pours Levi with the musty smell of the old building, the smells of cheap cooked food, escaping from several apartments at once and mixing with each other on the ground floor. Levy tries to hold his breath and goes towards the light and a clean stream of air, seeping through the ajar front door. He jerks it open, and is surrounded by the walls of a stone gray well. A hole gapes from above, from which the same gray as the walls of houses looks, the sky, from the torn slits of which golden azure flows, which is like a precious the hiding place is hidden behind the clouds. Levi inhales deeply and lightly this fresh, fertile air of the street:

– Glory to Gd! The important visit of the day is over! Keeps them all Gd!

Levy woke up, and immediately felt himself on the ship in an iron safe and in time close to six, the rise time. He felt the switch on the wall of the safe and pressed it. He gurgled, blinked, and white neon light flashed.

– I thank you for the fact that through your great mercy you have returned my soul to me. Your confidence in me is great, ”Levy whispered, feeling alive and realizing that he had been given a new day. So he began a new day: the seventh day of February.

The safe-cabin is so small, without windows, that there was no question of at least somehow pushing it out and invigorating the half-awakened body with charging. It was possible to take a shower, and Levy used this opportunity to the maximum, enjoying first hot and then cold jets of water. He dressed quickly and went upstairs to the wardroom while the fenders were still sleeping. He never saw them again. Velvet darkness enveloped the ship. Levy stood at the sheathed table and asked, whispering the wish for a good day, a good road. He finished and looked around: the shops were already shining with lamps and the sluggish movement of staff and customers, trying to sell their goods even more before arriving at the port. Levy went over to the Dutch-speaking receptionist and asked in her language:

“Madam, excuse me when we arrive?”

“Already approached,” the lady replied, “we must wait for the immigration authorities.” Coming soon. The authorities really did not keep themselves waiting while Levi sat in the children's room and looked at the sweet love story of brown Pocahontas. A signal sounded, and a voice in four languages invited me to the deck to my cars.

At the same steep and winding exit as during the arrival, Levy drove along with other motorists to a wide pier and stood in one of the rows. These rows lined up on a large platform awaiting entry into this island country called Great Britain.

The engines hummed and the movement began. At the exit gate stood people in jackets with yellow reflective stripes. Near them it was necessary to slow down and show the passport so that you could leave the port. Here an anthracite tape of a high-speed road – Motor way – was tangled between low, but noble mountains. On the right, every now and then, peered gray, shrouded in light gray furs, fogs restless sea. It was possible to understand the frequent fogs by special signs located in the middle of the road. In their black frames, bulbs burned in the three-letter word “FOG”. A very long distance, almost to Manchester itself, Levy accompanied these “FOG”. The road was completely confusing, it went straight to Leed, and through it to Manchester. One hundred eighty kilometers from the port. Nonsense, by European standards. Here is the congress and highways, and immediately the right area – Salford. This is a good sign. But how to find the right Brun Lane street now, because there is no map, no navigation. Levy looks in the dictionary: broome – broom, lane – track. It is necessary, therefore, to search for the “path”. Only, in order not to search too long, it is better to ask, Levy decides and enters the first large store with his own parking and a sign on the roof of the Kopi. There are few customers in the basement. Behind the cash register are nosy women in wigs. Levy shows them a piece of paper with an address.

“Everything is straight and straight, and at the Net store to the left, and there again to the left – you will find or ask again,” the women instruct.

Lancaster Street repeatedly rose and fell, raising and lowering Levy, rocking him in his typewriter. He had to repeatedly ask passers-by to understand at what turn this “Panic Path” would be. That's the number you need. Mezuzah on the door jamb. Levy pressed the bell button. A short, round, like a barrel, woman with a straw-colored wig on her head opened the door:

– Who you are?

“Hello, my last name is Taube,” said Levy, “your spouse and I agreed on my arrival by phone before the Shabbat.”

– Ah. Now the husband is not at home, – the woman was about to close the door.

“And when will he be back?”

“An hour later,” the woman thought for a moment, “Taube, Taube … Yeah!” Come inside. You really agreed.

Levy entered the house. The usual house. Not small, but could have been bigger. The woman was bustling funny:

– Follow me.

She, often breathing, climbed a rather steep staircase, upholstered by the carpet.

“Here, your little room,” she opened the door to a small but bright booth.

“It's not an iron safe,” Levy thought, but said out loud:

– Fine. Very lovely.

The woman went out, and Levy laid out his things on the bed and went down after her into the kitchen. Out of the kitchen window, he saw a large nine hundred and forty Volvo carriage entering. A bearded man in a hat and glasses came out and entered the house. He held out his hand to Levy, and he – to him, and they shook them together, at the same time introducing themselves.

“I already gave him the keys to the house,” the woman in a straw wig grated.