Ch 44
People could only be young once. So it was said. But some people were foreverly young. Like those youthful men and women who never came back from the battlefield. Like the Pushkin statue in the street park.
People living near the Pushkin Square could often see an old couple taking their walks. There was something wrong with the old man's right leg but he insisted on not using a wheelchair; the old lady would support his right side with her hands. Many people recognized them—the distinguished astronomist Toris Lorinaitis and opera singer Natalia Lorinaitis. But those were their reputations later. In the most beautiful, passionate and powerful time of their life, he was a scout and she was an army nurse.
After they got married, they lived in the suburb of Moscow near the Planetarium where Toris worked. Since retirement, their elder son Feliks brought them to the city to live together, near the Pushkin Square. Now, this big family had the fourth generation. In the sixtieth anniversary of the victory of the Great Patriotic War, President Putin said in a speech to the teenagers, "…Ask these veterans about things happened during the war, my children. Because you will be the last generation to hear it from them…"
The children wanted to dig out some marvelous legends from them, but those awe-inspiring names were only a small fraction. Most veterans were people like them—an ordinary soldier who faithfully fulfilled a soldier's duty. Thus, in their voices and actions, there preserved a simple, earthy sensibility
On May 9, 2005, the 60th anniversary celebration of the Victory of the Great Patriotic War was held in the Red Square. Before the parade started, president Putin said in his speech, "…May 9 was and always will be a sacred day for our country, a celebration that not only inspires and elevates us but also fills our hearts with a most complex mix of feelings—joy and sorrow, sympathy and nobility…"
On this day, after the march of soldiers, a total of 130 trucks carrying 2600 veterans chosen from previous Soviet Union countries traveled across the Red Square in the highest honour. Among them there was eighty-two-year-old Natasha. She cried. Even though the charming opera singer Natasha had received countless applauses and flowers throughout her career on stage, only this once was the honour dedicated to the army nurse Natasha…
When the celebration was over, Natasha took out a note from her pocket. It was what Toris handed to her before she left home whom repeatedly instructed her to only open it till this time. "The old fool!" the old lady shook her head. "Older than dirt and still thought we're dating…"
The evening glow rained down from the end of sky like a flaming waterfall, casting a golden crown on the two people who were sitting on the bench. Not faraway stood the Pushkin statue. If it wasn't the festive atmosphere everywhere in the park, it would almost feel like that distant autumn evening of 1941 when the nineteen-year-old scout Toris asked the eighteen-year-old nurse Natasha out for the first time…
"Natasha…Natashenka, listen to me…" He stuttered from the excitement, just like sixty years ago, "Today is our fifty-ninth wedding anniversary…"
"You old fool, Toris. It's obviously the sixty-third year."
"No, I remember very clearly. We got married in 1946, on the one-year anniversary of the Victory Day…"
Toris had to swallow down the rest of the sentence because Natasha gripped his hands tightly, just like decades ago when she taught the young soldier a lesson, and with a faintly mocking smile, "Comrade Lorinaitis, we clearly got married on Febuary 14, 1942, right in the October Station of Moscow. So stop arguing with me…"
To him, of course, she was always right. The good-tempered old man nodded with a smile and stared with melancholy into the distance, at the Pushkin who stayed foreverly young. "It has been sixty something years…but it feels like yesterday! Natasha, do you know? When I first asked you out here in 1941, I always felt that there were someone hiding behind that Pushkin statue looking at us…"
"Me too. Even after the war, everytime I passed here, I always felt as if there were two people behind it…they've been hiding there for sixty years." Her withered small hands pointed to the poet, "And even now, I feel that they're right there, as young as they were back then. Toris, do you believe something like this?"
"I do. You gotta believe in something magical…"
"Enough of that. Toris, where is the present you mentioned on your note? Take it out."
"It's right above us, Natasha."
Above them was the brilliant Milky Way. The city filled with lights was not suitable for observing stars compared to the Planetarium in suburb, but the stars tonight were even brighter than the festive lights of Moscow.
His arms surrounded her waist that had long lost the slenderness of a young girl, "Natasha, do you know? Many stars have long died out before we were born, but they left light and heat behind them, traveled thousands of lightyears and reached us."
"How can an astronomist's wife not know this…I also know that the Milky Way in the sky is the road of scouts…Toris! The entire frontline knew about your word! When I was in the parade during the day, an old gunner beside me was saying it…"
"How nice…"
"How nice." In low voice, she repeated his words. "I almost felt that I'm going to be young once again…"
At first, he didn't realize. But when her white-haired head fell on his shoulder and moved no more, he knew.
"Natasha! My little girl!" With the last bit of tenderness of his long life, he whispered into her ears that could hear no more, "My singing little star…"
When their children were here to find them, that most beautiful star in the north sky had already ascended to the highest place.
The generation that was dying out had undergone the cruellest test of blood and fire. But in their hearts still remained the belief of magical things—for example, that stars were actually a trail of eternal glorious footsteps, that before the end of life, there still remained the possibility to reunite with everything one believed and loved.
And now, in May 2011, ninty-year-old Ivan Braginsky could hardly find a person who could say to him, "Do you still remember? Remember how young we once were…"
But he believed that he could find one. As the train to Volga slowly driving out of Moscow, looking at the luxuriantly green field full of spirit and vigor, the bold confidence that belonged to the youthful years once again came back to the old professor. They were both the workers of the earth! And such exuberant land was like a promise of the reunion.
The passenger sitting on the opposite side was a lady. Although she only looked sixty, the professor knew that she was already seventy-six—because she was on the television the other day as a visiting expert on children education, Elizaveta Beilschmidt. Maybe she didn't know who he was, but she fixed her eyes on the little white horse hanging from his neck, then blinked those green eyes like a naughty little girl and spoke with a foreign accent,
"Sir, I don't know who you are, but I know who you love!"
All of a sudden, he remembered when he met her. So he smiled and said, "Then, do you know where my lover is?"
"Right here in the heart!" She pat her chest like a general, but spoke with a young girl's tone, "People who love each other always stay together, right inside the heart. My papa and mama were together…"
He could no longer lift her up high like he did with that little girl, but her laughter was still like seventy years ago, as if a nimble skylark with feathers colored by the frosted dawn, flying into the depth of the sky.
Without much hold back, the professor told her everything that he was willing to tell. After all, to someone who was ninty years old, there was nothing in the world that could embarrass him. They talked in a language that was typical to someone who had gone through the war, so the children and grandchildren beside the professor didn't understand too well.
"I'm going with you." She held his hand tightly, "I was planning to visit Volgograd in between my lectures, but detouring to Topol isn't inconvenient either. And I'd be glad to see my brother…Yes, don't be surprised. I ordered him to be my brother…"
The former "general" and now the education expert Elizaveta didn't tell professor Braginsky that a child's memory before the age of three was highly prone to mix-ups. The fact that the student remembered the youthful Wang Yao at the age of three wasn't believable.
But why tell him? To dissapoint him, and thus, to dissapoint herself? Whoever had witnessed happiness and believed in miracles since childhood would hardly be the beaten by time's burden.