from the hybrid collection “Voices in the Radiator”
(the whole manuscript is available upon request)
There was one summer when it was raining for the whole month straight. It was pouring on the ground, washing out the paths, bending trees, knocking the black currants to the ground. Except for the short breaks—when I instantly ran out to meet my next-door friend, inhaled all the summer, mid-rain scents at once, and returned with my ankles speckled in mud—the rain kept falling like it was on a mission: to soak the earth to its core.
That summer I mostly spent in front of the window, with a book and a bowl of fruit in my hands. Sometimes, I’d watch TV or draw. That was my June of 19XX.
My mother was next to me, constantly cooking, or laundering, or doing dishes. Until now, I don’t fully understand where she got that amount of housework from: it was just two of us in the rooms that we had been renting for two summer months for a few years now. Our tiny rooms were part of the bigger, but still quite small dacha that was rented out to unlucky vacationers. In other rooms, there was another lady with her daughter who was slightly older than me, and an owner himself, a retired man who slept for most of the day. In the evenings, we all met on the terrace – to play cards, to drink tea and to complain about the nasty weather.
I went to bed, listening to the rain tapping on the roof. I woke up to the same sound.
Going back to the city was not an option. My mom had her summer vacation and so did I. Spending blessed summer days in a polluted city would mean wasting them.
“The rain will stop. Eventually,” mom said.
As it often happens with moms, she was right.
One day, I woke up and squinted: the sun was blinding my eyes. The next minute (or it seemed so) my neighbor friends, a whole flock of them, were shifting on the doorstep. We greeted each other with a feeling—we almost hugged, even though it was uncommon at that time and age—as if we escaped from prison. As if we’d just woken from a long and heavy dream—and our luck for exploring the world had returned to us.
The world couldn’t wait for us.
“Come on, hurry!” one of my girlfriends said. I fastened my sandals and off we went.
Our village has just begun to wake – and did it vigorously. Here and there, on different plots, silhouettes moved with shovels, hammers, and shears in hand. Anonymous figures, all at work, making up the time lost to the rain. They greeted one another with a wave, then turned their backs and got on with it—just fellow dacha owners with tasks to do.
The street smelled of jasmine, gooseberries and mud. And it was all covered in water. The month-long rain poured so heavily that the street smelled of jasmine, gooseberries and mud. And it was soaked in water. The outdated drain system could not handle a heavy rain for a month and simply gave up. Puddles had turned into ponds, while the ponds, once meant for scenery, not for bathing, had swelled into full-sized lakes. The trees were waist deep in water. Fishermen, I remember, were catching the fish with their bare hands. Elderly village ladies were doing their laundry in a new lake, and they did it in such massive amounts, as if they had stocked it for a month somewhere.
We headed to the footbridges, which, before the rain, had hung highly above the water, or, in case with the smaller ones, were perfect for sitting with your feet dangling in the stream and enjoying a scenic, yet familiar landscape. All this was gone: the footbridges were barely seen beneath the water’s surface and if one, like us, wanted to use them, they had to step into the water first.
We decided to go to the other side of the former pond. The water was cold and unwelcoming. My toes shrank and my ankles went numb. I couldn’t say that to my friends – they looked excited and so brave! Like world explorers on the brick of discovery. Besides, I was the youngest in the group. Even though the girls appreciated my communication skills, I knew that telling them about being scared would mean excluding me from the “board”. I kept going, thinking of my mother, and my dad who was far away in the city, being busy and unavailable.
Somewhere in the middle of the endless lake my sandal came unfastened. I sat down to fix it, my foot slipped – and the next thing I knew, the body of water was swallowing me whole. I could not breathe and I could not move. I was going down – to the bottom of the ocean, no less. I felt the darkness and the weight of the deep water. I was losing it. Then the girls pulled me out. They grabbed me under my armpits, so, presumably, it was not that deep, and not so long that I had been under the water, after all. The water was dripping from every part of me. I looked like a berry bush after the rain.
The way back was silent. The girls said an abrupt “Bye” and left me at the gate of our summer hut. I appeared on the doorstep of our tiny kitchen, still dripping and shivering. My mom was wearing an apron, had a kitchen towel on her neck like some kind of scarf, and her hair was pulled back in a ponytail. At that time, mom was younger than I am, writing it now. She was peeling the potatoes for supper, tilting her head to the side. When she saw me, she screamed – my mom was very emotional. Then she grabbed her neck towel and spanked me with it.
These old summer huts, despite their austerity, all had stoves. My mom kindled the stove, and the whole evening I sat in front of the fire, wearing wool socks and a wool jacket under the warmest blanket she could find, drinking tea and eating biscuits. That day, I learned that the rain was a wild element.
The rest of the summer went uneventfully.
The city where I was born and lived for 30 years is famous not only for its northern beauty, but also for its bad weather. Rare sunny days, exhausting winters, gloomy skies – all this is a background of life, nothing special. Rain isn’t something you can avoid, or pretend not to notice. Any citizen of my birth town more than 7 years old has quite a collection of umbrellas: for the weekdays, for going out (say, for taking to the theater), compact and foldable ones, and larger ones to accommodate a mother and child, or a couple. Umbrellas were commonly left open to dry (I’ve never seen such a habit anywhere else), becoming temporary shelters for pets and small kids.
To make life under the gloomy, always-ready-to-pour skies a bit easier, or more joyful, citizens come up with their own coping tricks. For instance, they say that the air after one heavy rain – or better yet, a thunderstorm – feels nicer, and that the entire city bursts with freshness. This urban legend has something to do with the asphalt pavement and the way it absorbs heat, moisture and electricity, and then releases that scent once the storm has passed. The asphalt does smell different after the storm. After the years living in awful climate conditions, the people of my hometown develop a mental connection between short periods of tolerable, or even good weather and the post-rain scent.
Whether it is a monotonous autumn drizzle, or a passionate storm in May, the after-rain remains important to anyone who lives there. Unless the storm destroyed electric wires and roofs, people celebrate the end of it. Witnessing the last drop of rain is similar to experiencing the generosity of life, an act of kindness from fate itself. Rain-free days are when people can go to parks, play badminton, wear white clothes (though not many have white in the wardrobe), and just – stay dry and safe.
I can be poetic about my northern rain, because I don’t live there anymore. I don’t have to carry an umbrella 300 days a year. My shoes are usually dry and they come home clean after a walk. I rarely have to sidestep puddles, or leap over them. Rainy weather is a convenient excuse to cancel plans. I think of rain showers as of seasonal disasters. I don’t call a “sun shower” a “mushroom rain” anymore: partly, because I never go mushroom picking. Neither do I breathe in an after-rain air.
And yet, I brought my own rain with me – to the new city I now call home. At least, I thought so.
Once, during a rare rain in Budapest, I was sitting at home, patiently waiting for it to finish, as I had planned a cultural evening out. It came as a wave of reminiscence. Suddenly I wondered: how is it there, in St. Petersburg, right now? Is it raining there too? I thought of a lonely shabby flat. Of a balcony that had been leaking for years, and was probably leaking until now. I thought if it was the same rain here and there, the very same body of water pouring in two different, distant cities at once. I checked the forecast for St. Petersburg and, unsurprisingly, it predicted rain from 7AM to the sunset. I wondered if the rain carried messages with it.
As if someone – some weather superior – heard me, the following days in Budapest were soaking wet.
Then I began comparing two rains: one on the street and the other – inside my own psyche. I compared the sound of it, their intensity, length and the consequences they brought. I quickly concluded that the rain in Budapest, unlike its northern relative, tended to remain an outsider, a passerby, if a slightly annoying one. It started in the evening, when most working people and students were already home. It poured through the pipes and disappeared in the drain, while we carried on with our usual evening. The rain in St. Petersburg was much more ambitious. It wanted to interfere with our lives, leaking through the little kitchen window vent. It exposed that we ran out of bread, or milk, or something else essential, and one of the parents had to equip themselves and go on an expedition to the nearest grocery store. It left wet footprints and stains on the floor. It made our landline ring: someone was supposed to come over, but was stranded at the bus stop without an umbrella.
I laughed at the Budapest rain and my grin brought the storm.
We ended up having a leak in our bedroom which, besides being a deeply irritating event, caused an episode of nostalgia. I drew all the curtains and turned off the ceiling lights, as if I were trying to hide all reminders of the current time and the current place. I wanted to fall asleep, listening to the wandering rain, and to wake up to the same sound. None of it happened: I slept like a log and, in the morning, that noisy, fussy time traveler had already gone, without leaving even a hint of freshness and enveloping scent.
The rain in Budapest turned out, for the most part, to be characterless. It was a disappointing revelation—like re-reading a book you once loved or re-watching an old film, only to realize it doesn’t do anything for you. I sniffed the air after the storm—nothing. No scent of asphalt, no hint of flowers. Just the usual morning air.
Only once did I have a chance to experience the old rain smell. It happened when the road in front of our building was being renovated. The workers dug a huge hole, drilling and breaking into the ground, when the rain began. It poured straight into the hole, releasing an intense smell of asphalt. I stood there, mesmerized, until the workers covered it up with a stupid tarpaulin sheet.
I don’t know where it all vanished to. My rain has been replaced with something else. The rain that comes to me now is not romantic, neither cozy nor friendly-looking. This new rain brings anxiety and a flood of thoughts. It is like looking at old photos, or eating a dinner that was delicious yesterday, but has become stale and flavorless.
Once, when I was upset with the rain, my son, trying to cheer me up, said that he was a shaman and that he could make the rain go away. He, indeed, started performing a “shaman” dance and shortly after, the rain stopped. Convinced of his powers, my son continued his occasional weather rituals. For instance, when the skies darken, and he wants to stay outdoors, he starts dancing and does that with a persistence I rarely see in him at all. Usually it works – the sky clears.
We spend time in the park, or on the beach, while the rain clouds drift past, smiling at us. And I can’t help but wonder: where did my rain go?