Yesterday

Author Natalia Zagrebina-Wirth

translated by Igor Step

Yesterday I turned 90 years old. I look back on the past – it’s like a lizard’s tail that sticks to me until the time comes, and then it will disappear as if it has never happened to me.

The children became adults long ago. They are not close, not even in this country. I remember the youth. Now, where are the women who used to be envious of my and my husband’s state summer house? He was a general. Stalin himself gave me the ring with an eight-grainer. Not long ago I gave it to a jeweler so that he would polish it thoroughly.

Where are all those who have gone like the wind?

And where will I be in some four or eight years?

Our garden plot got overgrown with weeds and the summer house declined. But sometimes I sink into a reverie and take a new look at everything. It often scares me. But I do have my eyes. Have arms and legs. And I can go anywhere I want. Everything changed in my life. But the sky. Only the sky is the same as when I was five years old. Of the same blue color with clouds in it. It’s so nice that I can see it. It will remain the same even after my death. That’s why I motivate myself. I say to myself: “Move! Will rest in the grave when roots of trees will sprout into your chest. Stand up and go. Stand up and go. Stand up and go. Close your eyes and recollect your youth. Open your eyes and look up. What’s more wonderful than a billion of these sparkling stars in the sky? What’s more wonderful than this word: life”? Stand up and go while you’re alive. And then, then you will attain what the Creator prepared for you. And if he once managed to create these stars, then he managed to invent something even more fascinating.

I’m really sure about it...