“I’d like to live with you in a small town, where there are eternal twilights and eternal bells”.
Marina Tsvetaeva
Once, when I was a child, my life changed drastically just during one summer. Boys stopped playing football with me and started looking at me differently. My best friend Petya was fighting with everyone almost all the time. It turned out I was the reason of it, as he was in love with me and didn’t let anyone get close to me. Every morning he took my bag and followed me right to the school desk. In the evening, he used to come to the class door and lead me home, like he said, so that I didn’t get into troubles on the way. I liked it, and I didn’t realize then that my childhood was melting, and a new period of my life started. I became fond of poetry, I was reading love poems, dreaming with poets, admiring love letters between Napoleon and Josephine, crying over tragic love between Lilya Brik and Mayakovsky, studying Esenin’s works. I was astonished by Beethoven adoring his beloved. Meanwhile, somehow, I wouldn’t notice (or wouldn’t want to) these tender feelings for me from Petya, although the whole neighborhood knew that. I would still visit him. After his parents’ death, he became the only hope and centre of attention for his grandmother. She liked to treat me with pancakes, and we could sit in the kitchen for hours, drinking tea and listening to her interesting stories.
One evening, before my 17th birthday, Petya came to me. He looked not so good, but I didn’t notice it and started telling something. Suddenly, he grabbed me by my shoulders and kissed strongly. I don’t know for how long it lasted, but when I came to my senses, I saw him standing before me and looking into my eyes as if he was waiting for continuation… I started shaking, it was strange and unpleasant, I shouted: “Are you insane?”
Petya sat on the chair and said with his head down: “I’m leaving to army tomorrow. I love you and I want to be sure that you’ll be waiting for me. I will fall asleep and wake up with the thought that you love me”.
Suddenly, I started laughing and then, as if someone else is doing it, said quietly and strictly: “I don’t love you, Petya, and I won’t be waiting for you, leave!” He left silently and I, speechless, sat on the coach and fell asleep.
In the morning, everyone heard horrible cries of Petya’s grandmother, who found her grandson hanged in the bedroom. There was a letter on the table:
I lived in a small town, where there are eternal twilights and eternal bells…
It was dream which could never come true.
The young man wrote those lines in his goodbye letter, knowing how strongly I adored the love of Pasternak to Marina Tsvetaeva. I used to read this letter to Petya and explained that it was a poet’s dream which would never come true. I couldn’t cry. I had no tears. I had courage to come to requiem service only on the third day. His grandmother was sitting near the coffin all white, like a wax figure. Noticing that I came in, she looked at me with her empty eyes. They sparked with hatred in a moment. “Damn you!”, – I heard, leaving the room. I was surprised: it was her voice, but I didn’t see how she said it, as her lips didn’t even move.
I moved to Moscow, where I started studying at the university, leaving the “town with eternal twilights”. I married a guy, who served at a special department of the city’s police, and we had a daughter. When the girl turned one year old, my husband had to go to Chechnya. Three months later, he was brought in a zinc coffin with a medal for bravery.
I tried to fix my personal life twice after that: four years after my husband’s death. The first time, a man who was ready to marry a widow, hit a pedestrian and was sent to jail for three years. I was looking for ways to leave Russia, hoping to start a new life. I was introduced to a Canadian man, he came in Moscow to me several times, we were dating and then registered our relationships. I moved to Toronto and everything went fine. But three years later, my husband got a lung cancer and he burned out just in a few months. After that I decided not to search for happiness anymore and focus fully on raising my daughter Dasha, who got married five years ago and became a mother of a great kid. From time to time, I took my grandson and played with him. Once, I met a woman at the children’s playground. She told me about her life and I told her about mine. The woman promised to introduce me to Leila – she had been a nanny at her house for several years. She said I DEFINITELY needed to visit Leila in order to clean my karma. I agreed unwillingly, but the reason that pushed me into it, was the fact that after this conversation and offer to visit Leila, I started thinking about Petya’s grandmother often. She would come to me in dreams and she would have a light blurred stain instead of her face.
As soon as I entered the mind-healer’s office, I was shocked with a sentence. “You are cursed, girl. You have a BLACK WIDOW’S curse. Your every marriage is doomed for tragedy”. Leila did a cleaning ritual, gave me healing herbs and many other strange things and explained what to do with it.
After my last visit she told me something that sounded like a thunder: “You didn’t love the previous three men, that’s why death freed you from them. My ritual will have force only if you love someone with all your heart. Then you’ll be together till the end of your long lives. If He loves you more, no rituals will help you, and he will follow the previous men. Save Him”.
Several months later, I met a man and fell in love with him like a cat. Despite my strong rejection to register our relationships, my beloved made me not only do it, but also have a ceremony in church. I’ve been married for seven years already, my husband is healthy and feels great, because I LOVE HIM!
P.S.: Leila was a maid of honor at my wedding, and she said that many, many years later my husband will outlive me and then soon follow me, AND WE’LL LIVE TOGETHER IN A PLACE WITH LIGHT AND SILENT BELLS.