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from Russian Conversation by Tara Bergin
‘You are here to fall in love. I was a girl once you know.’ The old woman smiles with her mouth but her eyes are harder to read. I wonder if she simply considers me a foolish tourist.
And I do feel mindless without my tongue. I am no-one, no where. I have no jokes to tell or stories, or songs to sing. I am dumb and sulky. Where are all those phrases and paragraphs that I have been re-learning in my room? I didn’t realise how much I had lost of this language, until now. I wonder will it return?
The old woman has turned to talk to her cousin and I pick up my glass and hold it, looking about. On the dark, polished dining table are many small, uneaten pastries filled with fish and white cheeses, and many glasses made of Bohemian crystal out of which have been drunk single mouthfuls of locally made vodka. The apartment is big but the old grand furniture makes it cramped. Afternoon sunlight shines through a white lace curtain and makes shadows on the window-sill. I try to rehearse some phrases in my mind but I am thinking now of this Kostya, the poet I have never met. Is he here? I wonder could I fall in love with him? I put the glass down. How ridiculous to think like that, especially when I’m not here for falling in love. But it would be interesting to read what he writes. Everybody here is starting to move around, they are getting ready to go to a concert, it’s The Barber of Seville. It’s being shown in the floodlit grounds of the old castle and the new bride who is a cellist is very excited about this production. I can’t bear to go to the concert, so I decide to go back to the lodging house where I’m living. I don’t mind that I’m leaving early, I’m better off that way. I say goodbye to the old woman but she holds my arm and calls to a young man to come and meet me – Kostya of course. He is quiet but interested in the fact that I’m learning Russian.
‘Are you interested in translating something?’ he says.
‘I could try.’
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