Bite-size Stories

The Friendship Strategy Spring was rushing towards summer, and it was nearly the end of my first year at school. Most of my friends looked forward to the holidays. I dreaded that. I knew the summer Pioneer camp was approaching. I was far too young to be a Pioneer. The honour began at ten, which meant I still had three years before I could officially devote myself to the construction of Communism through extensive marching. Unfortunately, summer camp had no such age restrictions. My mother, who had grown up attending Pioneer camps, was already making plans to send me. She admitted that she had hated them too, but believed strongly in discipline, fresh air, and exercise. And, as far as I could tell, marching. I wanted to stay home and read books. Not because I was a dissident. At seven, I had no political opinions whatsoever. My concerns were far more serious. I had recently discovered books and found them vastly superior to discipline and organised recreation. As usual, my mother was wi...

The Soviet Union spent a great deal of time and money attempting to turn children into model citizens. The results were mixed. In my case, there was simply a persistent series of misunderstandings. This collection contains several incidents involving gladioli, books, milk, Pioneer camps, Lenin, firearms, organised recreation and other childhood hazards of the 1970s and 1980s. None of the lessons described here should be relied upon. Most of them ended badly. I survived anyway. Chapter 1 — The Gladiolus Problem Or How to Transport a Bouquet Larger Than Yourself. At six and three-quarters, I was the second smallest child in my kindergarten group. I was a fussy eater, disliked sport, and was about to begin school. My new school uniform had been purchased well in advance by my mother and was at least two sizes too large. The dress reached somewhere below my knees and suggested a future I had not yet grown into. The academic side of school did not concern me. I had already passed the ...

📖 The Rooms We Live In — Contents Mathematics tomorrow. I remembered late. I am in Year 4, and homework still feels sacred. Besides, Sashka Popov will never let me copy his work. I spread my books across the dining table.  My father jumps up from his chair in front of the television.  Loud and animated, he shouts at the referee on the screen. It is the semi-final: Dinamo Kyiv against Spartak Moscow. Dinamo is leading by one goal. The Central Stadium stands at the end of our street. The rolling hum enters through the open balcony doors. The game is nearing full-time. The referee gives Dinamo another penalty. The clock strikes nine. The match disappears. Nine is time for Vremya. Mechanical trumpets explode from the television. My father swears loudly at the man in the grey suit with the square face. The voice is grey too, I think. He is new. Usually, the nightly news is read by an ageless woman who looks like my school principal, only with heavier lipstick. The television sits ...

📖 The Rooms We Live In — Contents   I never met her. My father did not have a single photograph of Rosa, his mother. Nor of her sister, who studied voice at the Kyiv Conservatory, her older brother, who later made his name in medicine, or their parents. They owned this apartment before the revolutions, before the wars, before the communal kitchens and Czech wall units. In the years after the Revolution, the apartment began to shrink. Another family was assigned several rooms. Doors that had once connected bedrooms and sitting rooms now separated neighbours. By the time war came, Rosa's world occupied only part of the apartment she had grown up in. But back in 1916, the building was brand new. The streets around the old centre were filled with curved balconies, coloured tiles, wrought iron and tall windows. The balcony doors stayed open late into summer evenings.  Music drifted upward from the synagogue and mingled with the sounds of the streetcars below.  At night, the p...

📖 The Rooms We Live In — Contents   "We’ll go to Vova’s tonight," my father says. Vova—my father's childhood friend and guitar virtuoso—is back from the prison camp. During the occupation, the Germans moved new families into the rooms left empty by evacuated families. One of them was Tasia and her son, Vova.  By the time I was born, four families lived in the apartment, each occupying a room and sharing the long corridors, bathroom, and communal kitchen. My father and Vova grew up together there. Whenever Vova returned, my father became animated in a way I rarely saw. His voice lost its gruff edge as he slipped into the slang he used only with Vova. Around Vova, my father always seemed younger. I know Vova is back. I saw him in the kitchen early in the morning, wearing only his grey singlet and boxer shorts. The smell around him was a heady mix of sweat and unfamiliar cigarettes. He was making his tea. He emptied an entire packet of black tea leaves into a thick faceted ...

It was 6 am, and I could see the Zócalo from my window. I couldn't take my eyes off it. The sacred ceremonial centre of Tenochtitlan. The beating heart of Mexico City. The red pavement, like rich Oaxacan embroidery, stretched below me.  It glowed in the morning light. Even that early, it was already loud — traffic, heat, cathedral bells. She was parked in a no-parking zone right across from the Gran Hotel de la Ciudad, where I was staying.  "Impossible to park near the Zócalo," she said, stretching out her hand. "Micaela." Short dark hair, large expressive eyes fixed on me, a cigarette balanced in the corner of her mouth. We were probably the same age, I thought. "Nothing good or easy ever comes out of the Gran Ciudad," she told me later. Micaela was my guide. I had booked a day trip around Mexico City months earlier for Veronica and me. That morning, Veronica woke up sick, and I had Micaela waiting outside. Her car blocked the alleyway near the hotel ...