“That drummer was me”

“For many years we rented the same dacha above Oredezh. Now they say Oredezh – why? In the feminine gender there is something tender, flexible, characteristic of the river. She winds below, and we – above. We swing in a hammock tied to two pines. More precisely, a neighbor girl is swinging a hammock, she is sitting on the very edge of the net, and I am lying next to her, looking at her. I’m seven years old – I think no more than seven, but her rhythmic movements are already disturbing me. We are a boat on the waves, and the river below us rises up and disappears, turning into the tops of pines. With every rise, her loose hair touches me, they flow over my eyes, cheeks, lips, but I don’t turn away, I watch how the wet spot on her dress expands between the shoulder blades. I put my hand on the stain, and she does not throw it off, because she, like me, is pleased, and when my palm moves to the left, I feel her heart beating. Often and strongly. This is our little wet secret with her and my very first love.

There was such a long Church street in Siverskaya, it went from the mill, past the church of Peter and Paul, to the distant bridge across the river. I went up from Oredezh and went down to it, which made a detour. Our detachment marched along this street. The detachment was small, but combative and well-equipped. Ahead is a banner with a double-headed eagle, behind it is a bugler with a drummer, and then the detachment itself. Most of the road was flat, it was good to mint a step on it. The banner fluttered, the bugler blew, and the drummer, respectively, drummed. Well, that drummer was me. For the Siver marches, my father bought me a drum – a real one, covered with leather. Unlike a toy, he made a long, ringing and at the same time deep sound. And then it drummed so well, so sweetly for me: thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, thump.

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• Eugene Vodolazkin “Laurel”

Hearing us, retired generals approached the fences of their dachas. They saluted us. In this case, the generals had faded caps with cockades, to which they put their hands. Everything below – quilted robes, knitted vests and other non-military property – was hidden behind the fence. The generals looked after us for a long time, because their youth passed before them. Drumming, I gradually watched them, and in their eyes I saw tears. Maybe that’s how it was, at least that’s how I wanted it then.

Where were we going and why? Now I cannot answer this in any clear way, just as I probably could not have answered then either. Most likely, it was the happiness of a joint movement, a kind of triumph of rhythm. Not a trumpet, not a banner, but a drum made our little flock a detachment, it gave our procession something that tore those walking off the ground. The drum resounded in the chest, in the very heart, it seemed, and its power fascinated. It entered our ears, nostrils, pores with the warm July wind and the noise of the pines. When I was in Siverskaya years later (in late autumn, quite by accident), I discerned its distant fraction in the rain.

The smell of flowers in Siverskaya. They were grown in many dachas. When renting a dacha, St. Petersburg residents specifically stipulated the presence of a flower bed, and the flowers were gratefully fragrant. In the evenings, when the slightest breath of the wind subsided, the air turned into sweet nectar. You could drink it – which we did, sitting on the open veranda, admiring the piercing sunset, towards the end of summer – in the twilight and with a candle.¹.

^1. An excerpt from an essay by Evgeny Vodolazkin “The experience of describing a summer cottage.”