Manchester Diary

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Manchester Diary
Ариель Давидович Абарбанель

The story is narrated by a certain Levi – a native of Leningrad, living in the Jewish ghetto of Antwerp. At the Shamesh of the Van den Nest synagogue, Levy asks about the possibility of staying for "a couple of days" with the family of his newly-minted son-in-law to get to know the life of English Jews. Walking the streets of “Jewish” Manchester and “Secular” Manchester, memories of the Leninsky District of Leningrad emerge in his memory and imagination.

Introduction

The thick tires of a small children's bike rustle on the cracked asphalt of Courland Street. Most likely, the month of April began – the sun is not only shining, but also warming pleasantly. Blackened snow with frosty heaps lies along the wide sidewalk, slowly evaporating and melting. Pleasant cold freshness penetrates through the nostrils and mouth into the lungs, dizzy joyfully. Yellow houses are approaching the boy from above, left and right, and a bicycle with thick tires inexorably carries him forward, towards the long-ago covered with sand and earth of the Tarakanovka river. The boy boldly pedals and a bicycle with a picture of a bear on the frame sleeve carries him towards the future, which has opened its arms. He deftly manages to keep his balance on the remaining two wheels, despite the fact that the other two, auxiliary, were dismantled only a few minutes ago. The child rolls and holds in the saddle as if he was born with this bike.

Early morning. This may be the beginning of the summer of St. Petersburg – early sunrises in the light sky that does not know at this time of sunset. The so-called “White Nights”. The hands of the clock move somewhere at four in the morning, but the boy can no longer sleep. He looks out the window at a blue and white sky with delicate pink brush strokes against his background, pastel strokes from the awakening sun. The boy cannot sleep, and he is overwhelmed by a warm unfamiliar delight and a feeling of deep happiness: in the corridor is his brand new bicycle “Eaglet”, his mother bought him yesterday, and finally, having accumulated a large sum for his engineer’s salary. The frame of the bicycle is dark blue, and the wings are nickel-plated, reflecting in themselves, like in a mirror, grass, cars, everything around. The boy, dressed quietly and sneaking into the corridor so as not to wake his mom and grandmother asleep, takes his new bike to the landing, hangs it on his shoulder, and with a light jog goes down from the fifth floor to his well-yard. There, riding an iron skate named “Eaglet”, he rolls it through cloudy yards, smiling restraintly at him with a pinkish dawn, onto Courland Street, and rushes towards the June wind, the freshness of which fills his lungs through his nose and mouth, circling his head joyfully and fervently. This dizzying wind is woven from the smells of stored malt at the neighboring Stepan Razin factory, from the fragrant components of the perfume factory located opposite the Shipbuilding College and from flowering poplars, which are planted in abundance all the alleys and streets of the district.

* * *

A strong wind bursts under the jacket at the throat and at the sleeves, hugging the whole body with prickly goosebumps. A chilling wind through the nose and mouth fills the lungs and dizzy. The teenage boy joyfully and enthusiastically continues to pedal, despite the rather steep climb of the Lieutenant Schmidt bridge. A brand-new adult bicycle brand "Ukraine" shines with black paint on the frame, wings and, most notably, two luggage racks, front and rear. The grown up boy cleverly maneuvers on this skate between other “horses”, rather dangerous heavyweights-trucks and light vehicles. If his mother saw how he is alone between cars like this drives on the road! She would have immediately and completely covered herself with gray hair, and would have locked her son under lock and key until he himself grew old and peacefully turned gray. All boys, and indeed all children, once bring anxiety and anxiety to their caring loving mothers. Probably, until the end of life, residents of Ogorodnikov Avenue will be heard the inhuman cry of one of the mothers who did not follow their boy named Yura. Probably, all mothers will try to monitor their children, boys and girls even more closely. Then this five-year-old boy, Yura, remained alive, but the sleeve of his jacket remained forever empty, thrust into his pocket unattended and lonely. The car driver, seeing this child’s hand lying on the rails, probably quit her job and never got into the tram cabin again.

“One-armed, one-armed,” one boy called out in revenge against the insult, responding to the aggression and anger of a disabled child with this cruel, thoughtless insult, later regretting it all his life, regretting his own restraint, about these evil words.

The descent from the bridge was easy, and the enthusiastic, grown-up boy did not look around and did not even think about the iron smoking monsters surrounding him. A black-glossy, now fully grown-up, bicycle with two luggage carriers carried him forward and forward, as he thought, into a bright and cloudless future. On both sides of the bridge the northern Neva crawled, filling and permeating the grown child with its stern breath.

February 08, 2005 Trip to Manchester

It was the day before yesterday. Shamesh of the Central Synagogue of the City of Antwerp promised everything and promised Levi to send him to Manchester – England to look, to look at the English Jews and at their way of life. The day of the trip shifted each time in one or another circumstance: either the right person left somewhere, then his grandson was suddenly born and many other life events. After almost a year of “broaching,” he approached, at the end of the morning service, to Levi Shamesh by the name Bezborody and informed him:

– Well, now in February you can go.

They were going on the road for a long, long time. They measured and rechecked the route, the duration of the trip. Finally, the decision was made – to go to Rotterdam, to Europoort, from there to Gul, and from there to Manchester with respect and hand in hand. All the pleasure of two hundred and six euros, and approximately five hundred kilometers round trip.

School 268

Leninsky district of the city of Leningrad, where from one street you can go to another and the third, using only the gates and passage yards. Not far from the Sovetskaya Hotel, among these courtyards there is a large rectangular courtyard, which houses a rectangular pink building with white columns. This is a two hundred and sixty-eighth school. At some point, all the students of school number two hundred seventy-one were transferred to this school quite arbitrarily, because someone from the City Department of Education apparently needed this nice building with a good location. For a whole year Levi had to go to this “building with a good location” and sit in it for lessons where no one taught and no one studied. Pupils smoked in the classroom, played cards, scolded teachers, even abusively most often, teachers cried. After the lessons were over, it was impossible to get out of the building without passing by a half-old dropout who, like a security guard, stood at the door and demanded to give a trifle from all who came out – he was shaking. He shook this trifle on the subsequent purchase of booze and cigarettes. Each such exit from this school was accompanied either by a short fight, or, in any case, a spoiled mood.

Levy was alone. He had no friends, no friends. Some passersby, the defendants, surrounded him. Since childhood, Levy was fond of learning languages and one of his classmates found out about it.

– Can you please translate what is written on this disc? – asked his classmate.

Levy translated. Then this young man came up more than once, asking him to translate texts from various overseas packages, texts of foreign songs. They then got closer a little and after school they returned home together. This classmate lived in a house on the corner of Ogorodnikov Avenue on the road toward the left-wing house. Having reached this dark gray monumental building, covered with plaster, like goosebumps, one guy went up to his apartment, the other went on to his house. That guy’s name was not entirely in Russian – Seryozha Kunder.

Sunday February 6th. Manchester

A ticket is ordered, things are packed in a bag, but there’s no way to put your heart in it! Neither in a suitcase nor in a bag. She does not want to part with either her family or the house. Levy lay on the couch and in one pose, and in the other – but we must go. I left the house once, went back. Again and again. But now he is already sitting behind the wheel of a car, waving to everyone who has stuck to the windows and standing on the porch: let's go!

The sun was shining. The weather was not February at all, but the spring. Today is Sunday. There are no traffic jams at all. For now, it seemed that the endless Haringsfleetbridge through Willimstad was left behind, and the gaping mouth of the underground dragon – the Jaenord tunnel – was waiting ahead. The Levy’s motorway leads first around Rotterdam, and then along endless refineries and the navigable river Maas. Which harbor number did I need?

– 5870. So this is it.

– Hallo! Your passport, please, the official nods.

– You are welcome. Here is the passport. Here is a Visa card. Is there no storm at sea? Not? Good. Then we go further.

– Hallo! Open, your trunk, please, – the gendarmes contact me.

– You are welcome.

The gendarmes, having not found there twenty or even at least some frozen Chinese or Indians, regretfully slam the trunk lid and point further towards the ship.

To get into his womb, you need to drive along an incredibly steep hill-climb, this womb continues to absorb and absorb the moving stream of cars, like sacrificial animals for a predatory gluttonous dragon. The name of the dragon liner is “Pryde of Rotterdam”.

Levy with a car in the womb of this dragon, in a cargo hold. He closes the car and steps to the counter, where he is handed the “key” from the cabin.

Standing on the right deck, Ari opened the door with a paper key card. I went inside. Two lower places are already occupied by more agile fellow passengers. Well, upstairs have a good place too. Settled. The co-passengers are completely taciturn – one German named Thomas Schuler, studying, for some reason, in England, and the other – it is not known who and where from – did not utter a word for this whole sea trip.

The hair of the head of the “other” and the tail of his beard were painted white, his face was decorated with earrings and piercings, he slept all the time while Levy was awake, and only informed him of the stink coming from him, declaring his love for alcohol and tobacco. Leaving this small colorful team, Levy left the cabin and went down to the lower deck into a spacious hall. Slot machines in rows, like soldiers in a parade, lined up on both sides of this hall. There were still others covered with covers, preparing to fire and defeat anyone who dared to approach them, guns, tables, roulettes. Steamboat-casino – rightly concluded Levy and went on, looking at and studying the insides and sights of the “Rotterdam Pride”. The farther he moved, the less he was surrounded by anything worthy of attention: numerous tables, bent under the weight of different-sized bottles, half-drunken imposing faces, reclining on burgundy plush sofas. At the end of the hall there were ship shops, clogged with a kind of weapon of mass destruction and objects of fleeting vicious pleasures: tobacco and alcohol products, piles of magazines with naked white-toothed beauties on their covers.

“Vanity and chasing after the wind,” Levy thought, “with the wind in his head and in his wallet.”

He went to the huge oval porthole window. A bottomless darkness silently looked at him in response. Waves not visible and not heard, not visible

and you cannot hear the stars and the moon. This is usually the night of the North Sea. Levy stood still a moment before this empty silent giant eye socket.

He stood, whispering his unpretentious requests with his lips – pleas for a safe trip, for blessing, for a good departure and return. He whispered, said “Amen,” and went to his retirement, on his own, this night, cabin 10218, whose iron lock was opened with a paper key.

On the upper left bunk was a sign: “Use the stairs”.

Levy hoped for his height and “sportiness”, climbed, but could not beat the climb the first time, jumped back to the floor, and then, the second time, still having overcome, rolled onto his back and sighed in relief:

– Well, the day has run out.

In another situation, it would not be easy to fall asleep in such a solid iron box, sloppy painted in a hospital-white color, like a real archaic safe, but the tiredness of the day, impressions, family twists and turns, moved so powerfully forever that he almost immediately plunged into a deep a sea dream, similar to the last view from the porthole – the black, impenetrable mess of the sea and sky, ominously toothless and silent, and fell asleep. Till tomorrow.

Seryozha Kunder

– Seryozha Kunder called you.

– Yes mom. For a long time nothing was heard about him. What did he want?

– He said that he was discharged from a psychiatric hospital, where he was under examination and treatment. There he was diagnosed with Schizophrenia and was given the second group of disability.

Now he won’t have to work, as he had once dreamed of as a child, Levy thought sadly.

“What did he want, mom?”

– Nothing. Just wondered where you are and how you are doing.

– We must go to him.

– Is it necessary?

Mom always protected Levy from unfavorable, as it seemed to her, acquaintances. Absolutely right. But she still failed to save everyone. Of the entire class of that ill-fated school number two hundred sixty-eight, Serezha was probably the best candidate for a friend, but only against the background of the students of this school. He did not want to study and do any kind of work. In a three-room apartment, his grandmother, mother and brother lived with him. My brother toiled for a long time in search of work, but then he nevertheless got a job as a collector on the Railway. He married, gave birth to a girl and died, at an early age for this common stomach disease. Sergei was left alone with his mother and grandmother. He brought rare records from the black market, put them on his gramophone, and at full volume with an open window he listened for days on end to the “space music” of various foreign artists. Levy occasionally came to him, called to walk around the city:

– Come, Seryoga, why sit at home? Look, the weather is so wonderful in the courtyard!

At first Sergey was going to take a walk, put on his sneakers, but at the last moment he changed his mind:

– You know, come on another time? Now I listen to music a little better.

They had not seen each other for a very long time, and now, now this is a bleak message. Levy came to his mother from abroad, where he had been for many years. Not much joyful happened during this time in St. Petersburg, in “their” area – mostly disappointing and sad things. And not only in the Kunder’s family.

Nevertheless, you need to visit a guy without saying aloud so as not to upset your mother, Levy thought.

The top floor of the deaf Petersburg front door of a gray well-house. The bell at the red-painted door:

– Who's there?

– Hello!

Further beyond the door you hear animation and a smoky voice unmistakably names the exact Levi’s data, up to the home address and phone. Then the door swings open and Seryozha, easily recognizable, invites Levi inside with his tongue twister:

– How glad I am! How glad i am! Come in, come in! Do you want to smoke a cigarette or listen to music, for example, “Electric Light Orchestra” or “Prompter's Box”?

On the table in the middle of the room rises a mountain of packs of cheap cigarettes – Baltic, Prima. The room is covered with smoke. Seryozha has almost no teeth left, he smokes a cigarette one after another. Hair covered with smoked yellow gray hair, earthy skin color, puffy face.

Leo doesn’t understand anything in such music, and answers:

– No, thank you.

– Do you want to take a plate for memory?

Levy nods his head.

“Can I do something for you?” Here I have some tidy, still solid things, can they come in handy?

Sergei willingly picks up the bag. Thanks indifferently. In the room to the noise of the conversation of old friends enter the aged mother of Sergei. She still remembers and immediately recognizes Levy.

“Would you like to buy us some vegetables?”

Levy does not refuse, and with a carefully given out list and hunt, she goes first to the pharmacy and then to the food store. When he returns with purchases, Seryozha's mother asks him to repeat this procurement trip again. Levy does not refuse again and soon returns again loaded with packets. On the third attempt of an older but more energetic mother of a friend to send Levy to the next shopping trip, Levy addresses both of them:

– My dear! I am very glad that we saw each other, that I could at least help you a little. I apologize, urgent business is waiting for me and people to whom I can also be, maybe, a little useful.

The tacit consent, painted with slight disappointment, spreads over the hallway – the visit is over.

Seryozha, closing the opening speech for Levi, escorts him with his machine-gun speech line:

– Come again! Be sure to come in! We’ll listen to the music, or we’ll take a walk somewhere and walk around the city.

– Of course! I'll definitely come! – Levy sends her words already from the bottom of the stairs, standing in front of the barred elevator car. The old box on iron cables lazily and creakily lowers it down to the first floor, which pours Levi with the musty smell of the old building, the smells of cheap cooked food, escaping from several apartments at once and mixing with each other on the ground floor. Levy tries to hold his breath and goes towards the light and a clean stream of air, seeping through the ajar front door. He jerks it open, and is surrounded by the walls of a stone gray well. A hole gapes from above, from which the same gray as the walls of houses looks, the sky, from the torn slits of which golden azure flows, which is like a precious the hiding place is hidden behind the clouds. Levi inhales deeply and lightly this fresh, fertile air of the street:

– Glory to Gd! The important visit of the day is over! Keeps them all Gd!

February 7th. Manchester

Levy woke up, and immediately felt himself on the ship in an iron safe and in time close to six, the rise time. He felt the switch on the wall of the safe and pressed it. He gurgled, blinked, and white neon light flashed.

– I thank you for the fact that through your great mercy you have returned my soul to me. Your confidence in me is great, ”Levy whispered, feeling alive and realizing that he had been given a new day. So he began a new day: the seventh day of February.

The safe-cabin is so small, without windows, that there was no question of at least somehow pushing it out and invigorating the half-awakened body with charging. It was possible to take a shower, and Levy used this opportunity to the maximum, enjoying first hot and then cold jets of water. He dressed quickly and went upstairs to the wardroom while the fenders were still sleeping. He never saw them again. Velvet darkness enveloped the ship. Levy stood at the sheathed table and asked, whispering the wish for a good day, a good road. He finished and looked around: the shops were already shining with lamps and the sluggish movement of staff and customers, trying to sell their goods even more before arriving at the port. Levy went over to the Dutch-speaking receptionist and asked in her language:

“Madam, excuse me when we arrive?”

“Already approached,” the lady replied, “we must wait for the immigration authorities.” Coming soon. The authorities really did not keep themselves waiting while Levi sat in the children's room and looked at the sweet love story of brown Pocahontas. A signal sounded, and a voice in four languages invited me to the deck to my cars.

At the same steep and winding exit as during the arrival, Levy drove along with other motorists to a wide pier and stood in one of the rows. These rows lined up on a large platform awaiting entry into this island country called Great Britain.

The engines hummed and the movement began. At the exit gate stood people in jackets with yellow reflective stripes. Near them it was necessary to slow down and show the passport so that you could leave the port. Here an anthracite tape of a high-speed road – Motor way – was tangled between low, but noble mountains. On the right, every now and then, peered gray, shrouded in light gray furs, fogs restless sea. It was possible to understand the frequent fogs by special signs located in the middle of the road. In their black frames, bulbs burned in the three-letter word “FOG”. A very long distance, almost to Manchester itself, Levy accompanied these “FOG”. The road was completely confusing, it went straight to Leed, and through it to Manchester. One hundred eighty kilometers from the port. Nonsense, by European standards. Here is the congress and highways, and immediately the right area – Salford. This is a good sign. But how to find the right Brun Lane street now, because there is no map, no navigation. Levy looks in the dictionary: broome – broom, lane – track. It is necessary, therefore, to search for the “path”. Only, in order not to search too long, it is better to ask, Levy decides and enters the first large store with his own parking and a sign on the roof of the Kopi. There are few customers in the basement. Behind the cash register are nosy women in wigs. Levy shows them a piece of paper with an address.

“Everything is straight and straight, and at the Net store to the left, and there again to the left – you will find or ask again,” the women instruct.

Lancaster Street repeatedly rose and fell, raising and lowering Levy, rocking him in his typewriter. He had to repeatedly ask passers-by to understand at what turn this “Panic Path” would be. That's the number you need. Mezuzah on the door jamb. Levy pressed the bell button. A short, round, like a barrel, woman with a straw-colored wig on her head opened the door:

– Who you are?

“Hello, my last name is Taube,” said Levy, “your spouse and I agreed on my arrival by phone before the Shabbat.”

– Ah. Now the husband is not at home, – the woman was about to close the door.

“And when will he be back?”

“An hour later,” the woman thought for a moment, “Taube, Taube … Yeah!” Come inside. You really agreed.

Levy entered the house. The usual house. Not small, but could have been bigger. The woman was bustling funny:

– Follow me.

She, often breathing, climbed a rather steep staircase, upholstered by the carpet.

“Here, your little room,” she opened the door to a small but bright booth.

“It's not an iron safe,” Levy thought, but said out loud:

– Fine. Very lovely.

The woman went out, and Levy laid out his things on the bed and went down after her into the kitchen. Out of the kitchen window, he saw a large nine hundred and forty Volvo carriage entering. A bearded man in a hat and glasses came out and entered the house. He held out his hand to Levy, and he – to him, and they shook them together, at the same time introducing themselves.

“I already gave him the keys to the house,” the woman in a straw wig grated.

“Good, good,” her husband only said.

After a little standing, everyone sat down at the table together. They took and ate a piece of bread, anointing it with some kind of yellow paste from a can with a large seal and the inscription “Kosher”. After such a short meal, they all began to read “Thanksgiving for food and for the earth” together, and when finished, they said together and in chorus “Amen ve Amen” – so be it. They said “Amen” and all, as if by magic, disappeared. Mr. Lightner ran to his job, and Mrs. returned to her endless economy. Levy, tired of the road, left to himself. But how can one sit still and lose time when everything around is so exciting and interesting?!

For the sake of chronology and justice, it should be mentioned that before the mini-meal Mr. Lightner Levy drove to the nearest yeshiva, where he and many youth students prayed the afternoon prayer of Minch.