The Native from the Eastern Shores

She was near 50. Her face had typical features of the people who lived along the northern sea: high cheekbones, large blue eyes, a small nose. You could see she was beauty in her youth. Even now, she says her husband is jealous.

“He’s young – five years younger than I am. We’ve got four children, two girls and two boys.”

She took up the guitar, ran her fingers over the strings, and hummed some gypsy songs. And at the same time she continued her story:

“My father was a fisherman. Everyone in the family liked to make things. I remember my grandfather was knitting some enormous object with gigantic needles. He said it relaxed him. I’m pretty good at needlework. During the war, there was no thread so my sister and I unraveled nets and made some rough lace and embroidered richelieu.”

She put the guitar down. Sadness overcame her. It was though memories had taken hold of her and led her out of our cabin on the boat. But then suddenly she came back to herself and continued:

“Life wasn’t easy, moving from place to place. I was born in Central Asia, then we lived along the coast, where my grandmother and grandfather are from, and then on Sakhalin. My twins were born at Kamchatka. My little girl had such dark skin – my husband was from Asia, but my boy had pink skin and blue veins just like me, and I liked to kiss them on their little buttocks. It wasn’t until then that I settled down in my own house.”

She took some fruit drops out of her purse and, interrupting herself, offered the jangling tin box with a golden cock on the lid to myself and my traveling companion. The red, yellow, and green candies were transparent. We each took one. She grew bolder and poured us out a whole handful. Then she took up her story again.

“My husband was at sea, fishing for Pacific herring on a SRT – that’s how we call the mid-sized fishing trawlers – all the way to Canada. He brought home good money but life was tough. There were no fresh vegetables in the stores, and if they got some, they were horribly expensive. One day a woman from Krasnodar was selling onions; she had twenty-five bags of them – I counted them as I was standing in line. She said she sent them baggage on the train to Petropavlovsk and then the rest of the way by plane. She was getting heap of dollars a kilo for them. And Georgians and gypsies come now and then from the mainland.”

She sucked on the candy. She offered us some more, even though our cheeks were stuffed full with them. A sense of warmth and simplicity seemed to come from her presence.

“On Kamchatka we got an apartment and set it up with furniture, rugs, nice dishes. But we kept having earthquakes. The last time I was frightened to death and even my husband was weeping. Thank goodness the television set has legs; it jumped from corner into the middle of the room. The china coffee set and crystal for cognac crashed together. At least they were insured. The earthquake measured 7.0, and the apartment was only built for 9.”

She got up. She decided to make tea and went to the galley to ask for some boiling water. It was cozy being in the same room with her. You could sense that no matter where she was, she was used to making herself at home.