Kremlin bride. Valeriy Zhiglov

      Created with intellectual publishing system Ridero

      Süsse Milch

      Dedicated to all emigrants

      After graduating from a university, I got some free time and I decided to spend it on vacations high in the mountains, by the lake Issyk Kul. It was early morning, when I and other tourists took a long trip in a bus across mountain saddles. The city Almaty and the mountain lake Issyk Kul may be separated by 50 km only; yet it took around 10 hours in the bus to pass Tien Shan mountain passage in between, which serpentines in a manner that goes far beyond one’s wildest expectations. On our way, there were several short stopovers, and tonight, we finally arrived to the destination point, a tourist camp Tamga, located on the southern shore of the lake. Tired after such a long journey, we had supper and went to bed.

      The weather was cool during our holidays. Those were sunny days, and one could even get sunburns, yet water in the lake was pretty cold. Therefore, the second day of my vacations was marked with some weakness, and tonight I already had full-scale fever heat. I did not have any medicine against fever with me; therefore, I had no choice but to try to get some in a local medical station.

      Having entered the station, I saw a young and nice lady, approximately 18 years old, full of optimism. Her whites emphasized her good body, and the white headscarf did not fully hide her golden hair. Her blue eyes, opened wide, on her face full of sunspots, really impressed with their innocent look of a child. I remembered I saw her earlier, not in her white uniform, but wearing some dress full of colors, and she looked different to other relaxed tourists.

      We exchanged glances, and I told her about my fever and asked for some remedy against it. I took the pills she kindly offered, but for some reason did not hurry to leave. We spoke a little, and soon I knew she had her practice of a nurse after her first year of studying medicine in a university, at this tourist camp.

      Her name was Maria; she also told me a little later that her close relatives called her Süße Milch, apparently, because she liked that sweet milk drink when she was a child. I also started calling her Süße Milch, or “sweet milk”, if translated from German. There were many German families living on those lands, after they were moved to Central Asia during the Second World War. Almost all of them were known as people that work hard and are very accurate in their work.

      Very soon we became friends, then even more. We often walked together with Maria across beautiful surroundings of the nice lake, enjoying watching blue water of the lake framed by a stone ring of white mountain peaks, and talked about various things.

      Sometime I was reading for her the poems of my favorite poets of the Silver Age, like Merezhkovsky, Ldov, Apukhtin, Mirra Lokhvitskaya, Taeffi, Golenischev-Kutuzov, Soloviev, Severianin, Nadson, Schepkina-Kupernik, Balmont, Bunin and many others.

      She carefully listed to the lines of the poems that I was reading for her by memory:

      After I finished reading yet another poem, she asked for more poems. So, I started to read poems again:

      And again:

      Hidden in bush of sandthorn beneath a cliff hanging over us, we were together, innocent and forgotten in time. But one day I was in her little room at the station, where she also lived, very late, and we decided to have some rest together on her narrow folding bed. I thought she never had an affair with anyone else before, and that was when I saw I was right.

      We were attracted to each other stronger and stronger day after day, and we were realizing with sorrow that my three weeks of vacations were to expire one day. We did not want to split at all, but I had to start my obligatory military service then. I took a guitar that I always had with me, and I started singing one of my songs, the music for which I composed yet when I was a student, for the poem written by Anatoly Merzlikin, a modern poet:

      Maria was sitting opposite to me, listening to my sad song with tears on her large eyes. I embraced and kissed her cheeks full of sunspots feeling the salty taste of the Sweet Milk.

      The night ended fast for us, as one moment of time. The next morning, a bus took me back by a bumpy road, and we never met again. That was the time when German families often repatriated to Germany, their historical motherland.

      Nevertheless, I still would like to believe she sometime remembers me in her secret dreams with nice words, which would reflect all our joyful emotions that we shared during those unforgettable days.

      Three Vertebrae of Fish