Once upon a time on Friday.
1. The Russian News.
I wake up in a hurry with a strange feeling of guilt: it’s eight o’clock, just two hours to the Russian news. The Russian news is the time when the morning starts for everybody in our, er… household. What time is the Russian news at? Ten o’clock. It’s not that we are all crazy, but my children don’t attend school. They stay home and sleep in late and I think it’s good for them to relax. The Russian news provides some motivation for everybody to get out of bed. And then the thirty minutes oblivion bliss starts. It’s not that we always like what they say – it doesn’t matter- I don’t even listen sometimes. But the sound of their voices is like a lullaby – from my dear and almost forgotten, but always here with me Soviet childhood.
But oops! The thirty minutes of precious daily illusion are over! It’s time to get moving. Today is Friday.
2. Crosswords.
Once breakfast is over, my son and I start doing a crossword. We do one nearly everyday. The best way to do it, I found, is to choose one from a Nintendo game. It’s called ‘crosswords DS’ and even the sound it plays is nice and pleasant. The nicest and bestest game of all, but who, I wonder, chooses the questions to fill a crossword grid? Whoever does it, seems to know a lot about myself, and, boy, he doesn’t like me at all. Examples include, as they put it in newspapers: A grain for a pony – this is oat – this is because my son is allergic to wheat. A cleaning cloth – this is a rag – this is because I used to work as a carer with people who are disabled. A work of fiction is a novel – this is because I like them. Novel is intersected with love (passion) and con (cheat). These two are just natural, I guess. How does it happen? And who offers this rubbish to me? How do they know what I am and was up to? I vaguely imagine an android creature with a mouth full of blue teeth, and recall two more of today’s questions. Little devils are imps and an oaf is – oh, I’ve forgotten how it was hinted at – or, maybe, didn’t want to remember.
It would be, perhaps, good for him, if my son didn’t notice any of this – but he does. And as he does, he starts throwing a tantrum – screaming and grabbing his arms and legs bent by convulsions.
3. Convulsions.
Oh, convulsions! It reminds me – I should call a neurologist and make an appointment. I do so, only to find out that they never got a referral – a letter another doctor promised to send them about a month ago, when the convulsions started. I start telephoning, and as I cannot just put up with the fact that they left us in the cold – or rather in the heat – I try to make my voice to sound as icy as possible. I suspect this is not what a native would do in my shoes – if they ever could be in my shoes, of course. The logic here, as I see it, is that if they lied to me about sending out a letter and didn’t, it’s me who is guilty. It means it’s me (and my son as part of the same package) is not worthy of a good person’s good attitude. I know this is the logic, but can’t live up to it, anyway.
4. Going out.
The crossword is completed, and the appointment is made, now we have time to go out. Where? Anywhere. We both love new places. This love is what brought me once where I am now.
Today, I decide, we’ll go to change my driver’s license first – it’s too hot outside anyway, in the middle of this Australian summer. We catch a bus and come to a post office in a big shopping centre – this is where changing licenses happen. The woman at the counter becomes instantaneously suspicious of me. It takes some persuading as well as showing a passport to convince her to take my photo. In the end she does, and I’m smiling – Swiss cheese.
After this, we catch a train that goes to the beach. Before it comes to the beach, however, it passes by a small gallery – and we get off. I’ve read in a newspaper that today they are exhibiting the work of some Aboriginal prisoners looking for their identities. They found these identities, the newspaper pointed out, in prison. Or, rather, the painters found themselves in prison at the same time as they found their identities. Presumably, before or after this. No causal link, just more or less within the same timeframe.
I find all this very interesting and we come in to have a look. As we look at the paintings, a middle-aged couple arrives and starts moving along the walls too. They look at the paintings as much as they look at us. What are they thinking, I wonder, as my son loudly talks about some of the things he sees. Do they think, maybe, that it would serve both of us good to place us in the same or similar prison? Actually, it should be admitted, on the basis of experience, that I have no clue to what they may be thinking. It makes it a bit scary, when you come to think of it.
5. Tea with the girls.
We come back home, and have a tea. Then I get ready to leave. I’m going to have a cuppa with friends. Well, they are friends who I met just recently in a café. It turned out that they meet there every Friday and I was pleasantly surprised. They are a bunch of middle-aged ladies interested in culture. Over coffee we have wonderful discussions such as:
- I’ m sewing a cover rug for my piano – one of them goes – and I don’t know what colour to choose.
- Red – I suggest, trying to socialise as hard as I can. – It’s the colour of passion.
- No – the lady rejects it. – I want it to be classy.
- Maybe, lilac, then – says another lady.
- No – the one with the piano cover rug is not satisfied.
- What is the classiest colour of all? – I am curious. I have never even heard that a colour can be classy. Not in these words, anyway. Unexpectedly for me, the lady has an answer to this.
- Ivory – the cover rug lady says.
Suddenly I feel very sad. I’m sorry, of course, as anybody would be in my shoes, for poor grey elephants with their white beautiful tusks who are caught and killed for the ivory in black hot Africa. Is it still hotter there than it is here, just at the moment? But it seems very true: the colour of ivory you get must be the classiest colour of all. I let myself to drift off a bit and reflect: I’m not feeling I belong with them at all. I’m not feeling of the same class – I don’t want to be. And I am not even feeling as I am of the same colour. I don’t want to be.
I try to concentrate on my cake and suddenly a memory starts flashing somewhere in the back of my mind and after a few seconds surfaces. A friend showed to me once how to make a marbled cake. If you make two kinds of dough, say, white and chocolate, it’s really easy: you just have to fill your cake tin with both, a spoon of white and then a spoon of chocolate next to it, then again a spoon of white and again a spoon of chocolate. After it’s baked, it will be marbled, when cut. Looks nice and different. If you want to make it into a good expressive and even more transparent metaphor, put it this way: whatever way you cut and carve this cake, there is no chance of getting a slice of one colour.
Now, guess what kind of cake am I eating today? It’s chocolate mudcake, of course. Yumm.