SHELTER - RE-POST

    

 For a little while I tried and almost forgot about the role that my children might play in the fortunes of mankind. It's autumn, after-all, busy time of harvesting in our small gardens and gathering foods and herbs in the forest that we will need in coming winter. Hunters go out every day and stay out long. They bring killed prey, and we spend most of our days butchering it and curing meat and pelts. It's hard work, but it keeps me from the unwelcome thoughts about my family's future.
     At night we hear taiga. There is no real silence here. A noise of a startled bird or a deer, wind in the ancient trees - they surround our little community, they are the background of the normal current of life. Time to time, we hear wolves. Then Midori answers them with howls full of desire to belong, but, more often than not, she limps into our yard injured after meeting members of her species. Terrible wounds heal remarkably fast, though. In a day or so she begins to feel too closed in inside the house and we open door for her to go back into the forest. The village dogs can't stand a sight of her, but one look at the raised crest of stiff red and blue hair on her spine (she grew it over the last winter) sends them yipping and hiding under the bushes.
     Tonight is too hot and muggy. The moment that I open the window, the pandemonium breaks out. Midori howls in the distance, but these are not her usual calls. She sounds urgent,  almost barks at times! The dogs in our village and the Evenks' too take up the howling. Lights go on in the houses and yurts, people yell to each other.
     In the morning, a party is sent to explore the reasons for last night's disturbance. They find an abandoned camp not a mile away from where we live. Straight lines in which the tents were pitched and the fires lit up, as well as the acrid smell of the ammo, tell them that there are soldiers wandering our woods.
     Midori keeps howling. We can hear that she is moving around the perimeter of some unknown area, keeping the village as a center. Then she falls silent.
     Men in khaki uniforms walk into the village. They carry guns, tents and supplies. The Evenks meet them, but they are forced to stand down under the barrels of the guns pointed at them. 
     I go ahead of a small group of men with my hands raised in a gesture of peace and calm. The leader of the military comes towards me. He is a tall black man in his forties who introduces himself as Captain Sawanni. I ask about the reason for their presence in taiga. He just shrugs and says that, the less I know, the safer my people will be.
     I don't argue with him, but invite him to my home. Amur and Dular are hanging behind the welcoming committee, their eyes as round as saucers.

        

Soldiers... They walked into my house and it immediately looked like somebody else's. Even though they made an effort to be polite, things still got messed up and broken. The floors were hopelessly muddied; a few men started to disrobe in the front yard to wash up after the long trek. I had to stop another from chasing after chickens. I will make supper to retain control over the house and the kitchen.

     Captain Sawanni and I had to talk. He appropriated the table and spread maps and gadgets over it. I came in and stood silently, until he could afford to pay some attention for me.

     "Maam, we are grateful for the roof over our heads, but you need to stay away from this room. I need to be able to work with my men here."
     I simply informed Captain that there was a meal available outside in the yard and left.
     I called my boys and gave them instructions. As the soldiers filed into the yard, I observed them from a kitchen's window. They were a mixed group: I recognized Russian and, similar to it, Croat languages; the Black men kept apart from others, they were from some African countries, as was their Captain. They didn't look like regular army, there was more watchfulness to them - they were, probably, a band of mercenaries used as a private force.
     Amur and Dular began to bring out the stew to the men. They handed them the bowls and, in the Evenk fashion, swept their hands with their own in a gesture of hospitality. Some of our occupants smiled and ruffled their hair, some ignored them and quickly fell to eating. 
     The Captain came out into the yard, and Dular brought him his meal, also bowing and sweeping his hands with his own. Sawanni managed a grimace that passed for a smile, took a piece of our homemade bread in one huge paw and began to eat. 
     Boys slept in my room. Most of the house was taken over by the soldiers.
     In the middle of the night I heard voices outside my window. I leaned to the wall so that they wouldn't hear me and listened in:
     - "Beautiful country! What a shame!"
     - "Yeah, there won't be much left around here after we are through!"
     - "That family is nice too. I hate what we are about to do to them!"
     - "Shh, the Captain will hear you. What can we do, anyway? Orders are orders!"
     - "I have my own mind! Orders or not - I don't have to like this mission!"
     They extinguished their cigarettes and went in. I looked outside: another man stood by the barn, smoking and listening. 
     I put some clothes on and went outside. Captain Sawanni was standing by the barn, a cigarette's point flaring and lighting his features for brief moments.
     - "You are not asleep?" - he asked.
     - "Can you blame me?"
     - "No, you seem to be amazingly calm, though, considering the circumstances!"
     - "There's no point in being excitable. I am responsible for this community, after all."
     - "How did you happen to be here? I can tell that you are from another world."
     I told Captain that my ancestors settled here many years ago and mixed with the Evenks. Then I asked him, where he was from. He looked at me for some minutes without answering, as if some words were too difficult to push out. Then he told me of how many years ago he was taken by the militants from his village in Sudan when he was just a teenager. He was beaten and abused in other ways and      made fight and do terrible things to his own countrymen. When he could get away, there was no place for him to go, except to become a mercenary. 
     - "And now you are going to destroy my family?"
     - "Orders are orders!"
     He left. I made my way to the Evenks's yurts. The chief and the shaman were talking to the elders in one of them. They plied me with questions that I was afraid to answer. There was no certainty in my mind that we will be alive to see another week. 
     - "They are carrying poison with them! My men saw the containers with those bad pictures that you showed us before. What are we going to do?" 
     - "Don't attempt anything yet. I will talk to the Captain and try to assess the danger. Stay away from the soldiers!"
     Next morning brought trouble. As the mercenaries washed up and prepared for the day, Midori sneaked into our yard. A neighbor's dog began barking at her and attracted attention of our unwanted visitors. I ran to the sound of the voices raised in alarm and weapons being readied to fire. Midori, the red streaks under her eyes flushing angrily and the crest of red and blue upthrust and rattling on her green back, was snarling in the corner by the barn. Amur was trying to cover her with his body and shouting at the soldiers. His brother was also there, in front of the guns, sobbing and begging the men to stop.
     Captain's voice cut through the noise: "Halt! Lower your weapons! Then to me: "Maam, what kind of animal is this?! Is it dangerous? I mean, I can see that it's dangerous, but will it attack us?!"
     - "Not if you stop attacking her! She was raised by my sons, we trust her. Please, don't harm her!"
     Sawanni glowered at me, then ordered his men to stand down. Dular ran up and hugged him around the middle. I saw a tremendous internal struggle on the older man's face, as he looked down at the boy. Then he freed himself and strode away. 

To Be Continued...

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SOME CANDY for LAZY BONES

     

                                                                          

The cats are lazy and get off their butts only to go check, what someone is eating or move to a new place to nap. People in my house do the same.
   

 Reina is choosing a school where she will enrol in the fall of this year. She'll go to Japan, get her student visa and come back to study. We found one place for her, and already got an application to fill out, but my niece stayed in her room until 2 today. She came out then and we finished her application. I just pray that, everything will go right with her schooling: it would be too embarrassing if we mix something up, and she'll end up losing money and not being able to go to school!
      Sonny stayed in bed 'til 4:30 in the afternoon, then came out and, full of noble intentions, asked me, what chores he should do today. Then he sat down and began to tell me about some videos that he watched!
     Roberta came out of her room and said, handing me $5.00: "I need a comb! Dr. Park took all my combs!"
     I raided our own bathroom, but didn't find a comb suitable for Roberta's "cotton-candy" hair. It's not in my character to give up on such low-intensity quests, so I continued to search, until I found a small, but sturdy green comb and took it to Roberta's hair.
     She recently had a "wash and set"; the key word being "set", since after all the hair spray with which a lady-beautician doused her, I could hardly pull the comb through the sticky, fine, white web on Roberta's head. She is a tough cookie, though, and didn't complain at all! As a result of my ministrations, Roberta ended up looking like one of the America's Founding Fathers!
   

      Despite my pessimistic outlook, Sonny finished his chores, took $5.00 and went to look for a comb. I found one just then and called him to relay Roberta's words: "Don't need a comb, but us some candy!"

She doesn't look all that bad, after all!

     
     

SHELTER RE-POST

SHELTER

     I am looking out of the window at my boys chopping wood in front of the house. At least, that is what they are supposed to do! Dular is chasing the goat across the yard and Amur, his elder brother who should be more mature, is rolling in the grass, laughing at his younger sibling's antics.

     Two ordinary boys. One - 10, another - 12 years old. I never noticed anything different about them, except, may be, unusual kindness and an ability to elicit kindness from anyone: human or animal alike. 

     Yes, I read it in the diaries: Joon and Anita continued their work long after they came to Siberia. They enhanced their consciences; that's how they were able to earn sympathy and help of the Evenks. They enhanced their children's consciences. The diaries said that with each generation, the strength to follow ones' principles and getting others to do the same should grow. In fact, by Joon's calculations, my children should be able to trigger that kind of a response by only touching another person!

     Dular caught the goat and the two of them are now running into and bumping each other. The goat ended up rubbing against Dular and bleating ecstatically. Amur is smiling widely at a scene in front of him. 

     Somewhere in the world soldiers expend their lives defending interests of the greedy corporations. There aren't any governments anymore: all the power is concentrated in the hands of the global conglomerates. Decisions to use chemical or nuclear weaponry      belongs to them, and they don't hesitate to employ any means necessary to achieve desired goals. The only way to survive is to retreat to a hamlet like ours, protected by miles and miles of the impenetrable forest. But sooner or later, the distraction and violent death will come here too. 

     My boys have it in them to stop all that. With a touch. All I need to do is expose them to the world immeasurably crueler than anything they have ever experienced before. I don't know if I can do it!

     The winds from the East still bring smells of death. We heard tales of how, after the bombs fell and the land growled in anger, ugly dark clouds hung there for weeks, shedding black tears over taiga. The hunters who were dispatched to find out the reason for such calamity came back and, with tears in their eyes, told of great distraction of all life and forest on the other side of lake Baikal. This happened during summer, so the poison didn't spread to the West, but in about ten years after the catastrophe, strange, deformed animals began to make their way through taiga. The Evenks fear and destroy them on sight.
     One day, not so long ago, Amur and Dular played in the forest. They heard a whimper and went to investigate. They wouldn't have found the cub, but she (it was a female) rose to her unsteady yet paws, and the boys froze in their tracks. Small wolfling was green, with red stripes under her soulful brown eyes! Gathering their courage, they first made sure that she was alone. Ever since my kids were toddlers, the Evenks taught them the ways of the forest-dwellers. One of the rules was to never interfere in the life of wild animals. 

     The next day boys returned to check on the cub. She was hungry and thirsty. They scooped some water into the tree bark and gave to her. On the third day the mother still didn't appear. She, probably, abandoned her strange offspring.There were no fresh paw-prints around the animal's hiding place. Small wolf was so weak from the lack of nourishment that she couldn't even lift her head anymore. 

     Amur and Dular brought the tiny mutant home. As the news of that spread, the shaman made his way to our house. He gazed at a cub for a long time, his eyebrows furrowed in consternation, but as Dular hugged him and asked to allow the animal to live, the shaman couldn't resist. He announced to his people who gathered outside the house, that the cub didn't seem to present any immediate danger, and they should leave her alone for a while, until she can show her nature to them.

     Boys called the wolf cub Midori, which means green in Japanese: before my husband died, he managed to teach them a few words in his ancestors' language. For the first two years, they and Midori were inseparable, then she began to disappear in the forest. She was, obviously, able to hunt for herself, and I convinced my sons to let her follow her own path. Any time when they became lonesome for her, they would just call, and she'd turn up, to greet them effusively and poke her dark green nose into everything they were doing. 

To be continued...

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RE-POST: SHELTER

I want to re-post a story that I wrote about half a year ago (it seems like ages!). Here it is. I may be deluding myself, but it's not bad, in my opinion! You all are welcome to share yours!

SHELTER

     We lived here for ages. The wars in Europe spilled into the rest of the world and raged for years leaving billions dead and the planet devastated. My great-grandparents escaped to this obscure place in Siberia from their own home in the United States. When North America and Japan were obliterated by a nuclear blast, they were already safely ensconced in a small house among the snows and ancient trees of taiga, a primeval forest in the Far East of Russia. 

     Life hasn't been easy here. They had to survive in a merciless environment, relying only on their own resources. Fortunately, they found friends and support in the Evenks, the indigenous people of this land. 
     That was almost seventy years ago. My great-grandparents had two children, two boys, who married Evenk women. We came from a Japanese-European background, and the Asian genes became even more pronounced in the following generations. The families multiplied, and now there is a small village here that lives it's simple, busy everyday life.
     I often asked myself a question: who was that couple that made a heart-wrenching decision to move to this, seemingly, God forsaken part of the world? It couldn't be easy, and they must've made an educated guess, where the war and it's consequences won't reach them. I rummage in the things that are left from them: a lot of papers and science manuals, photographs and knick-knacks from their age and culture, but my efforts to decipher their identities and reasons for coming here were fruitless. That is until a week ago.
     Amur and Dular, my two sons, were restless and hot, with nothing to do before school would start again in a few weeks. An old underground shelter that was not used or visited by anyone since their grandparents' time was the one place forbidden for them to explore, and they zeroed in on it, like a tiger zeroes in on a grazing deer. 
     My husband and I both heard Dular's cries, as he ran to the main house. Fortunately for his brother, it was a lunch hour, and many men were at their homes, so it was easy to dig him out of a collapsed hole. Covered with dirt and slobber, my boys didn't remember about their find at first : a metal trunk that was hidden for many years in the shelter.

SHELTER
   
 

Now I spend hours at night, sifting trough the journals from the trunk. My parents taught me some science and math, but it is not nearly enough to understand what all the formulaes and language in the journals mean, andwhat it all means for our community and families.
     When I came upon a series of diaries bound together by a rubber band, I thought that my task will get easier. It did. Joon, my great-grandfather, wrote in it every day. The events leading to my progenitors' leaving the U.S. and coming here became clear at last. But what I read in the yellowed pages deprived me of sleep and peace of mind for many years to come.
     Joon and his wife, Anita, were geneticists. Prior to the global warfare, they worked on cloning vegetables and raised their family. As one country after another became involved in a conflict, Joon and Anita had to face some tough choices imposed on them by the military. They were offered an opportunity  to create super-soldiers by using their science. They refused. 
     They lost their jobs, but as they wondered how they were going to feed their boys, a certain organization contacted them. It seems, their struggle to stay true to their principles didn't go unnoticed. They were given a chance to work in safety for the survival of mankind 
     The war raged on. Many years passed until my ancestors were able to find a solution to the loss of human life. They isolated a gene that was responsible for amplifying human conscience. If enhanced, that gene's influence could lead to all sides stopping the hostilities and resuming peace.

     Joon and Anita were not able to achieve results in their work. They became hunted fugitives from the intelligence services of many countries. Things in the world were also going badly. When a threat of the nuclear war between the United States and Japan became apparent, Joon and Anita put all their efforts in looking for a place of safety for their family.
     That is how they ended up in Siberia. 



To Be Continued...

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