Ars Longa, Vita Brevis

There were many, but to the few, I keep going back. The innocence of youth, the friendships, the black sea and its beach stretching as far as eyes could see, the songs of Rod Steward mingling with the sounds of soft waves, the encounters with strangers, and with it the hope and its weariness — are of the most precious recollections I have preserved in a deep and safe vault of my memory. They say the reason we (read and) write is to enter that vault that we hold so dear in our hearts.

As the semester approached, Saruman, a close friend of mine, proposed a trip to Alushta, a coastal town in the Crimean Peninsula, during the summer vacation. Our university offered a vacation package. I had never been to any beach town. I have not even seen the real ocean with waves swaying back and forth. The only time I had seen the sea was during the winter break when visiting the Baltic states the previous year. With its water frozen, it looked more like a vast frozen lake. Two other friends and I immediately signed up for the trip. Later I found out that Saruman’s girlfriend Katya and her friends too were going with us.

When Amora learned about our trip, she too wanted to come. The weight of her around my back over the two weeks, while my friends roamed without any leashes, felt too restrictive. I wanted to spend my time freely with friends and with gorgeous ladies I had hoped I would meet on the trip. I invented some excuses. When she realized that I wasn’t taking her no matter how much she pleaded, she stopped pestering me. Perhaps she knew her love was one-sided. I was too excited to notice her pain and agony. She, however, tried her luck, “Will you at least come to Moscow with me when you come back?” I responded as I had before, “You know well I would if I had extra cash. I need to survive the rest of summer.”

After the exams, we packed our bags and went to the train station, from where first we took a train to Simferopol and then to Alushta. On the way, Katya noticed my bulging pocket and asked about it. I took out the bundle of rubles I had received in exchange for 25 dollars. She asked if she could hold it. When I handed her the bundle, her eyes widened, and said, “I have never seen this much money in my entire life.” I looked into her eyes, and I knew she was not lying.

Upon getting to the rest house, a staff took us to a large room with 20-25 beds stacked in rows and asked us to pick our spots. I looked around and the hall reminded me of a shelter, where they hold refugees or people facing an emergency. Some refugees stared at us with suspicious eyes as if they had never seen brown people in their lives. Katya and her friends went looking for three empty beds adjacent to each other and when they found them, they dropped their bags and threw their bodies on the cushy mattresses, filling the air with squeaky noises. How could we spend our vacation with this pastoral crowd? Frustrated, we went straight to the property manager and demanded a separate room. After some bickering, we got a big and bright room with 4 beds and an attached bathroom.

The next day when I woke up in the morning, the sun was already out. I got ready quickly and went outside while the others got ready. The morning air was refreshing. The vacationers were coming out of their rooms, excited, stretching their arms. When everybody got ready, we went to the cafeteria for breakfast. I imagined some fancy food that people in the movies or magazines ate on their vacation sitting on a table in an open space, their sunglasses resting on their visors, the table filled with baskets full of freshly baked bread, plates with pastries and fruits, butter and jam cubes scattered in the tablecloth, jugs filled with lemonades and orange juices, the ocean in the background. The cafeteria was already crowded with the vacationers. Excited, I grabbed the tray and stood in line only to be handed a bowl filled with kasha and a piece of rye bread. The only consolation was that the waitresses were young and lively; one of them even smiled at me while handing over the food.

After breakfast, we gathered our towels and headed to the beach. The walk to the beach was about 10-15 minutes. It wasn’t a town in a French or an Italian riviera, but for someone who was born and brought up in a land-locked third-world country, whose every summer and winter vacations were spent playing with his siblings and cousins in the same courtyard in front of their ancestral house, the town Alushta was magical. I have always gloated about my past in front of Katya and many others, but I was far less unfortunate than her and her compatriots. They were honest, but I was too shameful and vain to admit who I was. The street was filled with the crowd in shorts and colorful swimsuits, walking in their flip-flops, their towels around their necks, chattering with excitement, men looking amiable, women a bit flirtatious, children running ahead of their parents, and grannies relaxed and even forgiving to our mischievous gazes. We joined the procession. It was clear they all came to enjoy, to forget about their daily travails and travesties, some maybe to amend their past, some to start afresh, some like us were coquets on a hunt for companionship and fun. Behind the crowd and under the spotless blue sky, the ocean appeared teasingly. We hurried towards the sea.

When we reached the beach, I gazed at the ocean and its vastness with awe and wonder. The breeze was mild and the waves calm. I dipped my hands in the water sensing some cosmic connection. I could now say I had seen the ocean and touched its water. We looked around and saw two prone bodies of young ladies reading books. We picked an empty spot next to them. After putting our towels and the cassette player down, we ran to the water to take a dip. After swimming a bit, we came back to our spot, put Rod Stewart’s cassette in our player, hit the play button, and lay down. My body with its sensors took in all there was in the air — the heat, soothed by the occasional breeze, the smell of salt, wet sand, and the songs of Rod Stewart intermingled with the sound of soft waves gently hitting the shores, the sounds of splashings, the occasional screams and laughter. When the heat would get unbearable, I would take a few dips in the water, then come back to lie again and listen to the same songs. Even now, after so many years, when I hear those songs, I am immediately teleported to the beach and I can see the youth version of us lying prone on the sandy beach, our skin peeled and burned, and next to us the cassette player playing the same songs, and further up the two young ladies gazing at the ocean.

While lying, I was summoning up the courage to talk to our neighbors. One of them was skinny and attractive and now and then she threw her glances at us. Finally, I went and asked her if we could get introductions (that's how all the relations in the USSR started). Her name was Eva. I asked what she was reading. Most of her responses went over my head. Perhaps she quickly realized I was too naïve and empty in my head. I sat with her for some time, undecided whether to invest any efforts in her. She too was from Lviv and stayed at the same shelter where Katya and her friends were staying. I went to water with her, but stayed at the shore, afraid to go too far with her.

Around noon, we came back to our room, took a shower, and went to the cafeteria for lunch. A girl from the cafeteria came to our table with food and said to me, “From my girlfriend over there.” When I followed her gaze, it was the same girl who smiled at me in the morning. When I finished eating my food, I went to the kitchen thanked her, and asked for her name.

After lunch, I went to our room and tried to take a nap. When I couldn’t. I went out for a walk. I heard someone calling my name and when I looked around; it was Eva, smoking a cigarette outside the building. I went to her. She asked if I would like to take a walk with her. With nothing else to do, I followed her around the property. She wanted to know if I had a girlfriend in Lviv or met anyone in Alushta. Something told me that she would know if I lied to her. When I mentioned to her about Adora and her wish to join me, she defended her by saying that she would have scratched my face with her long and pointy nails had I refused to bring her. She asked me to compliment her, and I struggled with my limited vocabulary. She wouldn’t get satisfied and pressed for more. I couldn’t tell what she wanted from me. Did she want company, a pet to play with, or a serious relationship (I knew even then that I was no match for her)? I had tried hard to look for any signs, but she was too smart to leave any. The next day, we went to watch a movie. In the theater, she held my hand all the time, and I was debating whether to caress and kiss her or leave her alone. In the end, I just let her hold my hand afraid she might scream or scratch my face if I attempted to draw her near and start kissing. I came out of the theater with sweaty palms. That was the last time I saw her.

The next morning, I asked the cafeteria girl to meet me in the afternoon. When she came to see me, she had pink lipstick on her thin lips. She filled the air with cheap perfume. We talked and sat on a bench. I asked her to go to our room, which she refused. I pulled her to my lap and started to kiss her, tasting her pink lipstick. I tried to fuddle her breast, but she put my hand away. Perhaps it was too quick for her, but I didn't have too much time. When we parted, she asked me to come to her place in the evening. Excitedly, I went to her place in the evening. The room was crowded with her friends from the cafeteria. They were talking about spending the night out on the beach baking and eating potatoes. Some of her friends left to steal potatoes from the kitchen. Eating baked potatoes sounded so dull and stupid. While they were discussing their plan, I told her that I couldn’t go out with them and so I left feeling betrayed. The next morning at the cafeteria, she came to me and asked if I was upset with her. I didn’t have time if she wasn’t ready to entertain me (and herself). What was she expecting from me? That I would fall in love with her and move to her village, marry her, give her loads of children, live with her parents looking after their cattle, their potato fields, while our children ran around naked, and she baked some potatoes? I looked at her and she was looking pitiful and seeking my grace. I told her that I wasn’t upset with her. Nothing was wrong. But I didn’t hold her hands, nor ask her to sit next to me, nor promise to meet her later and she probably sensed that she had already lost me.

There was a friend of Katya whose looks were alright until she laughed, which she often did, exposing her big teeth and gum from ear to ear. One could ask what was wrong with that. For me, it was a deal breaker. The prospect of getting up close to her pinkish gum was too repulsive to even imagine. That was why every time Saruman or Katya had signaled me to take her out, I acted dumb, unable to decipher their signal.

In the afternoon, we would go again to the beach and lie down listening to the music. In the evening, we would eat dinner at a restaurant and go for a walk. On one of those evenings, while walking in the main street, my gaze landed on an attractive lady dressed in fashionable clothes. I went to her and asked if we could introduce each other. I don’t know what she saw in me or heard in my voice, “Lena,” she told me. After talking for a while, we agreed to meet the next day at the beach. The next day, I left my friends and walked along the beach looking for Lena. I found her with her younger sister. I sat with them for a few hours and took them to the city to buy an instant coffee. At the store, the owner showed me two types of coffee — one local with a reasonable price and another a foreign 5 times the price of the local. The local coffee would have been just fine, but with Lena beside me, I picked the other and paid with a wad of cash. She held my arm tightly while walking back to the beach. I asked her a few times to come to my room, but she never agreed, and neither did she invite me to her place. But we did meet every day, all day for the next few days until the time came for her and her sister to leave the town. She gave me a tight hug and a kiss, a piece of paper with her address and phone number took my address and promised to keep in touch.

After spending a week in Alushta, we got bored and decided to spend another week in Yalta instead. So, we took the train and headed to Yalta. On the train, I met a young girl. After getting to know each other, I told her that my aunt lives in the USA, and that I would be heading to her after finishing my studies. She looked impressed and spent the rest of the journey sticking with me. When her station came, I asked her to join me at Yalta, but she left leaving me with a piece of paper.

After a week, we returned to Lviv. I had nothing to tell or show as trophies except for a few pieces of paper with phone numbers and addresses written on them. I went to Amora’s room and knocked on her door. She was ecstatic to see me and welcomed me with hugs and kisses. She didn’t ask me much about my trip. She was content to have me back. She started to cook dinner when I said I was hungry. After dinner, she sat on a bed and started to write letters to her family. I put my head on her lap pressing my lips at her belly and hugged her tightly. She put her notebook and pen aside and started to ruffle my hair. She was leaving Lviv for good in a week. I had known her for a few years, but we were together only for 3 months. I whispered, “I will come to Moscow with you.” The next week, I spent all my time with her. We went to the city for a walk, watched a movie together for the first time, and spent the evening in her room. The week went by quickly.

The evening of her departure came. All her friends came to say goodbye. We went to the train station; she went to Moscow and I to Kiev to stamp her diploma at the embassy. I arrived in Kyiv in the morning. I went straight to the embassy, got her diploma stamped, and returned to the train station, from where I took a train bound for Moscow.

In Moscow, I went straight to the Education Ministry where Amora was supposed to collect her return ticket home. I saw her coming out of the building with an envelope in her hand. When she saw me, she ran towards me smiling. We walked around the city holding each other's hands and went to eat supper before heading to my friend’s room to spend the night. On the way, she asked me if we could rent a room for the next night, the last of our night. Sure, I said. The next morning, we went to MISIS to rent a room for a night. Once we got the key, we put our bags in the room and left for the city. We walked around the city aimlessly, holding each other’s hands, stopping only to eat or to rest. We went to Red Square and walked around St. Basil’s Cathedral, the Moskva River, and along the banks. We went to Arbat Street and strolled watching the various artifacts displayed on the street. I wanted to buy something for her, but she wouldn’t let me buy anything. We then wandered into Zaryadye Park and sat on the bench for a long time watching the kids playing nearby. We bought and shared a bottle of beer. As the evening approached, we became quieter and dragged ourselves to the metro station. We hopped a metro towards Oktyabr’skaya. We found two empty seats in the corner and sat, avoiding each other's gaze, each lost in our own thoughts. I played in my mind tomorrow’s events — taking a cab to the airport, seeing her off, taking a metro to the train station, train to Lviv, the hostel, Amora’s room, collecting the items she left for me, and taking one last glance of the room before closing the door. Without Amora, the city, the streets, and the hostel, all felt quiet and lifeless. Even my friends, whose companionships I prized dearly, seemed distant, inaccessible. It struck me right then that I would never see her again. She wouldn’t be looking for me in the evenings, or at night knocking at my friends’ doors when I didn’t show up at her door nor opening the door with a smile in the afternoons when I would get bored or hungry looking for something to bite. This reality was too much to bear. Suddenly, I burst into tears. I found myself alone in a dark, bottomless pit. What is happening to me? I never thought I would feel this way. I wasn’t aware of my love for her, it manifested only in the form of grief. But why now — when she is about to leave? I wanted the night to go on forever with her beside me. She hugged me tight. I dug my head in her bosom. I wanted to melt in her body so as not to be separated from her. I couldn’t stop crying, and she kept hugging me without saying a word. Her eyes were moist. We were a miserable sight. We avoided the gazes of the other passengers by looking outside. The city was getting dark. The night, the last of ours, awaited us.