Part 3 - No Guitar Lessons

📖 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 glass and added just enough boiling water to darken them.

There were only the two of us there, and three empty stoves covered in pots and pans.

The boiler in the corner broke the silence with a small, startling gasp, then settled into a deep, constant roar.

The fire flickered beneath the metal tank.

Vova was heating water for a shower, I thought.

“See you tonight, kid,” he said and walked slowly back toward his room, carrying the glass as if it wasn't hot at all.

He disappeared into the long, narrow darkness of the corridor.

“I think she took meat from my pot again,” my mother says, ladling borsch into bowls and searching unsuccessfully for the pieces she usually saves for my father.

“First, the coat. Now this.”

Last month, Tasia stole my father’s winter coat from the communal corridor. My mother still talks about it with disbelief, as though theft itself offends her more than the loss.

“I told you never to leave things outside the room.”

She lowers her voice.

“But to steal meat from soup while it’s cooking…”

My mother doesn't know the meat is for Vova, or that he will become my new guitar teacher tonight.

My mother returns to the kitchen while my father and I make our way through the dark corridor toward the smallest room in the apartment—Vova’s bedroom.

Vova leans against the wall on his uncovered mattress, still wearing his singlet and boxers.

A small lamp glows on a wooden stool beside the bed. With his bare foot, Vova pushes another stool toward me. My father sits beside him on the mattress.

My eyes stay fixed on the blue church bells across his shoulders, the wolf above his elbow, the broken heart on his neck.

His fingers, each marked with a blue ring, move slowly across the strings.

The song suddenly grows louder and faster. His voice, roughened by liquor and dark tea, strains toward impossible notes.

No guitar lessons happened that night.

I am quietly relieved.

My father never mentioned the guitar again.

A few weeks later, Vova disappears again.

He walks into the nearest shoe shop and steals a single shoe.

That is enough.

The meat in my mother's borsch never disappears again after that.

← Part 2 — Rosa

📖 The Rooms We Live In — Contents

→ Part 4  —  The Evacuation  — Coming Soon