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The Piece Of Bread
That cloudy, cold day began badly. I had forgotten to wind up my alarm-clock, and its shrill voice didn't wake me. I had no time for breakfast because I was late, but I burned myself with hot coffee. 'What a terrible morning!' I though with disgust.
However, no matter what, I needed to visit the police department to get my passport. In the dusty, stuffy office, which I had visited uncountable times, was a usually long and dissatisfied line of people, leading up to a small window. I spent three hours in this line, leaning onto the dirty-gray wall, cursing inwardly at this sweat-smelling office in particular, and the Russian bureaucracy in general. My head spun, and I was ready to sink into a faint: the feeling of hunger was unbearable. "Maybe, I need to visit an endocrinologist," I thought glumly.
Suddenly the line surged and people whispered, "It's them! It's them!" and I spun around. A small group of people, who all looked alike, passed me, talking in guttural voices. Women, wearing only black, led children by their hands, dressed in multicolored holiday clothes, covered with lace and ribbons. Each girl had a large ribbon on her curly head, too. The children looked around with curiosity, smiled, and calmly asked their mothers questions.
The women's faces were deadly motionless, pale and frozen, like a masks from Greek or Japanese theatre. It was ghastly to look at their faces. I couldn't imagine that they could smile again. They were residents of Beslan. They were people who had passed through hell.
They came, and I felt much worse. In addition to my sickness and fatigue, I fully remembered three terrible days of hope, then despair, of blood, fear and rage, when more than a thousand people were imprisoned in Beslan's school. They came to the school with large bunches of flowers for a feast, on the first school day, and fell into a trap. I remembered how I sat and looked at TV; it was impossible to watch and at same time, impossible to switch off.
Apparently I looked very unhappy, because a bit later one of these girls passing me glanced at my face and suddenly offered me a piece of sour wheat bread, which she held in her swarthy hands. Children from Beslan always bring food along, just in case.
She looked at me and put her hand out with that bread. We, in Moscow, never could imagine that somebody might be really hungry. Only very lazy people are hungry in Moscow. For this reason, we don't offer food to anybody. We in Moscow also, under no circumstances, take food from strangers' hands. Living in huge town with uncontrolled migration, hepatitis, and tuberculosis, makes us very careful and squeamish. There I was, standing in the police office, in a state of insensibility, a bundle of nerves, and a quiet, polite, well-dressed, dark-eyed girl was offering me some slightly crumbled bread. How could I refuse? This child saw; she understood that I was tortured by the same hunger she had experienced recently in the fiery, stuffy gym of Beslan's school. How could I refuse to take food offered by a child who was tried by unimaginable terror and hopelessness? She gave me that bread, for I was her sister in hardship. How could I push away this hand, existing now only by good fortune? It would be like kicking away Christ if he came when "Formula-1" was showing on TV.
Of course, I took the bread and said, constrainedly, "Thank you!" It smelled of rural Russia: of small log cabins with narrow sleepy windows; of low heavy skies with wet, dark clouds; of the small dirty barns where it's rarely possible to find more than one skinny cow; of the endless golden fields; of summer thunderstorms. I couldn't link this sour bread with the gaily dressed girl with the dark, bright eyes of southern people.
Then, holding this tiny piece of bread, I remembered my mother. When she was the age of this girl she went through Leningrad's blockade. In the winter of 1941-1942, people in that town sometimes could barely get more than 125 grams of bread per day, and nothing else. She did not talk about this experience, but I know she never threw away any food. There in the dim corridor, I was caught between my mother's memory and the girl's face. The sad past and the terrible present joined each other in that moment, inside me, and it was hard.
I just couldn't feel hunger anymore. Instead, I was raving with hatred. At that moment, I had forgotten about all my troubles, about the passport, even about magic Switzerland, where I would go. I ran outside. I cried, smoked, and cursed everybody, who tortured, or helped to torture, or permitted the torture, or had not prevented it, or had not saved those hazel-eyed children in that common-as-dirt school, in the small and formerly unknown town. I cursed everybody, who permitted such cruelty, which now causes the children to always keep food with them.
When I returned to the police office, the line was almost gone. I got my new, clean, desired passport, my key to different borders, but I did not got happiness. Things like this had lost their importance. All my family was free and healthy -- that is what mattered. And the bothersome morning was only a small part of life, where I was - in general - happy.
There is very useful Russian saying: "Never say never." It means approximately, "Don't be sure of something in the future." I'll break this rule. I know very well: I'll never forget this girl and her wheat bread.
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