[The Voyage] On the ship, during its voyage, Anatolee would reminisce, grieve his past, the old kerosene lamps on the wooden floors in his home became lit: which lit up the pathway to the bedrooms—kitchen, and out to the out-house at night; and those rugs, those old, old, old warn out rugs kept over the wooden floors, over them to keep in the heat from the cold drafts seeping in from underneath the house through the floorboards, the winds that try to sneak through, as long winters gave little mercy— through the windows, winds oozing over ice, in circles freeze up everything. He would remember his older brother whom would inherit the farm now, and the soldiers whom would go searching from farm to farm looking for the younger sons of the family to fight in the Great War in progress, he would not be there for them to take to battle, to be dragged from the farm should he refuse
Unbreakable Men
[Kirovsk: Yulie's Youth—l885-l889]
Yulie, in his younger days, his youthful days, had worked in the black factory one-hundred miles north of the Arctic Circle before becoming a farmer.
There the average climate was five below zero; he worked in the quarry that was part of a mountain. It became eventually, Stalin's Gulag in the coming 1920s.
But back in those far off days, apatite: a fertilizer component was the main source of income for the small town nearby the factory. He had told his youngest son that he had hired a man with a horse and wagon to ride him up the long stretched-out road to the factory that had three building structures in somewhat of a perpendicular alignment: the planted buildings facing one another in somewhat of a horse-shoe fashion.
Thus, they climbed the snow capped mountain—with its drudgery of pushing forward snow forcefully to the sides of the road, up to ones waist it was; between the men and the horse, they cleared the path, it was his taxi and he paid a fair price for it, even though it was but a few rubles; it was a matter of survival, there was no work elsewhere, and his father was likened to a peasant; and now with no pension, he collected bottles to sell for a living. That is what drove him inch by inch up that mountain through the arctic winds. His father was born in l851, and his grandfather was born in about l831, or thereabouts, he was Turkish—and like them, he went where the work was. It was the way things were.
If anything, one thing Yulie was witnessing, as Anatolee was now witnessing more so, was the industrialization of the world, yes, Russia included.
he had departed forever, he would never return—that would be his anecdote. His head back-flung, he leaned more of his weight on the ships edge overlooking the water as it swayed to and fro, his stomach a bit mucky: as he looked about the ship he saw an assortment of Catholic variety of lives on board, and some Russian Jews, a few Protestants, and gypsies to boot. Everyone going to America, he expels his breath, it is just a sign if anything of relief.
In days to follow even a worse depression would sweep over the Baltic area, and especially Lithuania to where his family would pack up whatever they had left of value in life, and move to Warsaw, Poland with relatives; there the older brother would find a job. But as Anatolee stood stone-still against the ships staircase, gazing into the waters-still gazing into the waters—his action being silent, for silence made him more comfortable now, the cold Atlantic filled his face; a pipe his father had given him, he filled with tobacco, he lit it, the eighteen-year old endlessly looked at the ocean, now with the lit pipe—fiddling with that pipe, a puff, a look at the pipe, the water, and trying to look beyond the water was impossible now, it was all water—henceforward, he had become a man, he would have to be sufficient or parish in the winds of the world, into the deep-blue; on the other hand this was an adventure of a lifetime, his new beginnings, opportunity. Things would never be the same for sure, nor would he want them to be, for sure.
He walked back and forth the ships wooden deck, pacing, as he would in future time—pace, it would, or seemingly would become part of his DNA, part of his genetic code I do believe, as it would be for his children to pace, his daughters and sons, none born yet. As he paced his voice became soft, reminiscent, lost now in a dream. America to him was kind of a postcard, a pretty postcard, a golden age postcard if you will.
In addition to his working on the farm he worked as a tailor in a city called, Grodno, he was quite young back then, but he liked working, it was part of life, as his father explained to him many times: "Get used to it; it will be your life's journey."
Impalpable dust, turned into daydreams, flagging Grodno into his mind for a moment:
Grodno
[The Milk bottle and the Taylor—1901]
He did not know it was a restaurant at first, he was only eight-years old, it was 1901, and his father had taken him to Grodno, a small town close to the boarder of Poland in Russia. But he'd not forget walking through those doors the first time, and his father outwardly being known by all the patrons there. All saying:
"Hi, Yulie, how's it going?" just nice old fashion greetings, that's all it was, but they make for lasting memories. It was his first trip to Grodno, and as I mentioned, his first in the restaurant for that matter.
Most of the folks in the restaurant were having soup, a few with a bottle of vodka hidden under their coats, pouring it into their coffee. Mostly they were older men, a few business types looking men, no children; Anatolee was the only child he could see. 'Papa pulled out a cigar, and like a few others in the eatery, filled it up with smoke,' he would tell his children of later years. The tables had very solid looking wood to them, but his papa didn't sit at the table, he pulled out a stool for himself and one for Tony, and Tony imitated his father as they both sat down, he putting his elbows on the long stretched out wooden bar.
"Milk and pie for the kid," he told the person behind the bar, as the barkeep told the waitress down a ways from the bar, "And for me, just coffee, that'll do."
Tony noticed the waitress pull the milk from under the counter out, it was warm milk in a bottle; it was how they drank it normally. Then she took the top off and poured it in a glass, and cut the pie in sections, giving him no more or less than the other pieces, pulling out a fork, and then delivered it to the barkeep, and on to the boy. Yulie had already gotten his coffee.
All of a sudden approached a short fat little man, half balled, cigar in his mouth,
"So Yulie, is this our youngest, the one you told me about, the tailor to be?"
"Sure is Ivan," said Yulie with a smile, and then introduced his son to him properly. Anatolee was a bit taken back, he didn't know he was going to be a tailor someday. He thought what a good surprise, 'Papa was thinking of me.'
It was a trying time for the country, a revolutionary spirit was in the air, and work was not plentiful, and a trade was the best way to insure the boy could make a living and Anatolee would practice at this trade in years to come.
This day would remain in Anatolee's head all his life for some reason it had taught him if anything, that one had to look at long term goals, instead of short term gains; that is to say, one must not grab, but rather plan.
Dennis Siluk's books can be seen at many web sites such as http://www.bn.com or http://www.amazon.com |
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