Vegetables

That night Luida and Vika take me to the town’s camp, where many of my students are for the summer.

As I walk up to the fence, I hear “Anglichanka (English woman)!” being screamed out across the small territory by a small girl who comes running up to me, wrapping her hands around my waist.  I soon see heads pop out of doors and faces in windows, as the news is spread.  Groups of girls come up to me, while the boys hang around the cabin looking on.  I see Nastya, Yulia, Marina, all my old students, who stand around me, asking me questions. 

“How was your tour,” they ask.  “My tour?”  I say, “Oh it was nice.” 

They tell me about the nightly discos, the way the boys spend all day playing football without stopping, the concert which will soon happen.  They give me a tour of the place, which is half the size of a football field, consisting of small houses where the kids sleep, a cafeteria, a shower house, and a volleyball court.  I feel claustrophobic already in the small space, to which they are allowed to leave just once a week. 

“It’s a different life here,” Luida says beaming, looking around camp.  “Yes it is,” I say, thoughts of London and Paris now far away.

That night, as I am in my apartment, my doorbell rings.  I open the door to find my neighbor from the fourth floor. “Hello!” I say.  “Hello!, how was your trip?” She asks.  “It was great.” 

She then says something I don’t quite understand, to which she guides me outside with her finger.  I follow her downstairs into the cellar somewhat hesitantly, a place I have never been, down a dark, musty hallway to a closet. 

She pulls out three large green vegetables, to which I take to be some kind of squash and hands them to me.  “Oh!” I say surprised, “thank you”, to which she then hands me a jar of blueberries. 

“Now don’t come down here alone,” she warns.

“Oh don’t worry,” I say, feeling my old life coming back to me,

“I won’t.”