Washington DC, USA
2014
I shuffle slowly down a sidewalk in that great American metropolis, Washington DC. All around me, its citizens are bustling, rushing, crowding one another as they hurry about their lives and daily business.
It feels strange to walk these bright streets, as free and unremarkable as any tourist. It's true, I mean no trouble to this country now- even if I did, I think, aware of my aching joints and bent back, how far would I get?- but I remember a different Konstantin Yenin, a younger and angrier man, dedicated to the destruction of these busy streets and the corrupt men who built them as a shrine to their own power.
It's hard to get excited about it now, hard to get excited about anything really. I've seen and done so much in my eighty-five years, done so much good work and also made so many mistakes, that all I feel today is tired. I no longer yearn to topple governments and change history- another generation is hard at work today, continuing to chase those dreams, building on the foundations that we old ones have laid. Such is always the way.
I am content to leave them to it. I am not long now for this world or its problems, and I really want only to spend my remaining days with my family, the ones who know me best.
That's why I'm here.
My eldest son, Andrei, moved here many years ago at the age of eighteen, courtesy of a relative rich in both money and sentiment. 'Come to America, attend an American university, live the dream of the free', he had said, and my firstborn had gone as if there were no reason on earth to stay.
It had broken my heart. I remember now the stiff pride, the cold anger, with which I had treated him for the first several years following his emigration; but under the anger was a deep well of hurt. I missed my son, but more bitter than his absence was the realization that he had been absent already, for years- as perhaps had I. We really didn't know or understand one another, and now, with the distance of oceans between us, perhaps we never would.
To know and be known… the longer I live, the more I realize that this is the true purpose of friends, of a family. I wish I had done so sooner.
As my daughter, Vasilisa, and younger son, Mikhail, each came of age, this sad little drama played out again and again; until at last I, by then a widower, was left alone in Novosibirsk to await the occasional letter or costly phone call.
Today, wearied with walking, I carefully lower myself onto a shaded bench and gaze blindly at the crowded bus stop across the street. I am staying with Andrei and his family in Albany, but accepted his offer of a ride into Washington today. Mikhail, now a businessman, is working nearby, and made time in his schedule for a stilted lunch date with me. It had gone as it always did; superficial conversation, an awkward silence here and there, hesitancy, like two people dancing without knowing the steps. My conversations with all my children were like that, as if we were merely friendly acquaintances instead of actual flesh and blood. Perhaps that's normal. We had very different lives, very different countries, and few common frames of reference to share. They were never as close as I would have wished, and they had only grown further from me during their years away from me. Yet how ironic, I think without bitterness, that it was never really the lure of this brash and colorful America that drove my children from my side.
No, it was probably HYDRA that did that.