Life in Harbin: Leonard

My father says Leonard very rarely talked of his childhood in Harbin. He spoke once of his mother’s “home remedies” and once of a conflict with a Guomindang officer:
Aga, his mother, would brew a glass of raw ground liver each morning for Leonard to drink; Aga considered it an aid for a health problem of [...]

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Aga 2

Tagging along with Aga was another young woman whose husband was also aboard Kolchak’s train. . . .
Snippets of the story:
A little boat ferried people across the river at Irkutsk. As Aga stepped from the boat clutching a freshly-bought sausage, a man offered to help with her package. She passed it to him—and off he [...]

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Aga 1

Verbally recounting her stories, it seemed as though Aga was again in the midst of
dramatic wartime scenes (says my father), and that the emotions 70 years ago were still as keen in her mind.
Aga’s husband, Kuka (Victor), was an aide to Admiral Kolchak, head of the White forces in Siberia during the Russian Civil War. [...]

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Mother and Brother

I’m going to diverge from Susi’s stories for a moment—or maybe for a few posts. Leonard always complained about his mother, that she would force him to eat raw ground liver every morning before school. He was quite harsh with her, one day identifying himself on the phone (after hearing, “Who’s this!”) as Anatole, her long-dead [...]

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By Her Hand

My father just discovered a series of stories written by Susi. The first, the shortest, was written in the point of view of my grandfather Leonard. Her depiction of him is sweet, one of tenderness. In it he is guilty of flaws as everyone is, and through that he is unguarded and accessible. She includes [...]

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Stand Apart

Leonard and Susi were extremely young when they married—Susi 20 and Leonard 23. I believed that provided a sort of justification for his affairs: in order to ground themselves in a relationship a young person may feel the necessity to branch out, making up for missed experiences. However, my father feels this excuse of age [...]

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Intimacy or Strain

Although my father had told me of my grandpa’s affairs, it never set in. As my dad talked of Leonard’s womanizing ways, I wondered about the extent; and I believed it safe to trust my grandfather in general-loyalty to his wife. But recently my dad very casually brought up the somewhat familiar story of my [...]

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Glimpsing

Although my cousin and I were slightly afraid and timid in his presence, my feeling of my grandfather Leonard was of love and of respect. Stories of him are filled mostly with ferocious daring, so I had begun to picture him only with those traits. I was surprised when my dad told me recently he [...]

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Sides

To understand my family I cannot leave my grandfather out, who through influence of behavior and blood moved its course from the tracings laid out by Susi. He was a fiery and rascally character who in the womb had been pummeled around in his mother’s war-time escape from Russia. With deeply Russian features and tall, [...]

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Two of Four

My dad feels that Steve, his older brother, was affected more dramatically by the war—via its direct effects on Susi, their mother. Steve was born on the war’s cusp, in 1944, the eldest of four brothers. My dad says Steve reacted to the Holocaust’s underpinnings in a different way than the other three, as reactions are always [...]

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In Raw Form

“Andy sucking on his bottle”—as said by my grandmother—is a phrase strange to hear. I don’t associate this Andy with my dad, but the idea is a familiar image, as if I had known him at the time. His growth, because I am similar to him in many ways, is not a world separated by [...]

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In Theory

My dad describes Susi’s nature as having a “bundled up aspect”. He feels it may have been from the unfolding of events in the 1930s and 40s—or from the burden of societal expectations, which now are far less restrictive for women. He says, “you and Daria [my sister] have her deep concentration, her thoughtful air [...]

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Poor Little Rough Tough Man

Susi (my grandmother) kept extensive journals from a young age, writing in German. My father compares her journals to mine except she wrote about her ideas rather than feelings. As they transitioned to English, it is interesting to see how her language progressed: her essays were covered in a teacher’s correctional red ink, though underneath [...]

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Scouring

From what I perceive, people victimized by war or traumatic upbringing speak very little of their past. It seems to me—perhaps I’m wrong—that we fill in those missing spots mostly, say, after a grandparent’s death: Scouring and piecing-together signs, we can faintly merge feelings that, in reflection, feed or skew our understanding. In general we [...]

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Theory #372

Craning back my neck to a time somehow faded into the distance, I feel I have lost familiarity. It was so recent—my grandmother lived and we could still set down our bags on her cold red-and-white tiled floor, traipsing through the vast wooden house distinctly smelling of musky cedar and books. I have the [...]

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A “German” Girl in Czechoslovakia

Since my grandmother Susi’s passing four years ago, my parents and I have been digging up articles of her past — journals, newspaper clippings, photos, wallets. They’ve all been well-used and each bear the delectable feel of a cherished hidden item unveiled at last; smelling of old wood, dusty and wrinkled in their own way; [...]

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The Yes Men Take on Top Bananas

By Yenny Martin
As many of us meditate the possibilities, the impossibility, the complexities, simplicities and strategies that factor in to building a world without greed, without corruption, without shady, immoral and truth-dodging swindling . . . The Yes Men embark on a mission. Or rather, a series of missions. Under false names and distorted objectives, [...]

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