Marina Sening, storyteller

personal project

The sun is going down, hiding behind the mountains in the west. In summer, it fills everything with golden light in the evenings. But now it’s the beginning of May, and it’s freezing. The light from the sunset isn’t golden, it’s dim and grayish.

I put on my old pants and the yellow polo-neck I’ve been wearing since fourth grade, then shuffle into an old coat. I leave the house and turn the corner, heading straight down a short alley. On the left are the community gardens, though many people have fenced off their plots. On the right, there’s a meadow where we used to play lapta until it got dark.

It’s unusually cold for May, so I walk quickly through the alley and turn onto the street. The second house on the corner belongs to my Granddad.

I approach the gate and lift the latch. It seems locked from inside, but the door opens easily. I step into an empty, run-down yard.

Right in front of me is a black hole, the old garage that used to hold a red Lada Niva. It’s built right next to the old hut. The wooden walls are aged and gray, nearly black. There’s an empty doghouse and no pile of wood that once blocked the fence from the neighbors. The chickens no longer roam the yard.

New shiny locks are on the doors of both the house and the hut. I don’t have the keys. I walk around the yard for a bit, peeking into the extensions, what people here call "sarai". Then I head back out and sit on the bench next to the fence.

I sit for twenty minutes and freeze completely. I call my cousin.

"Hi."

"Hi."

"Are you on your way?"

"We are."

"Where are you now?"

"Just passed Uzhur."

"Then I’m going home."

A couple of hours later, I come back. I walk into the yard and see a car with its back door open. Behind the door is Andrey, pulling the collar of his jacket over his head, so I can’t see his face, he’s joking around.

My cousins, Andrey and Alexander, came to pick up the rest of the stuff. My Granddad has been living with Aunt Galina, their mom and my dad’s older sister. My cousins brought a car with a trailer.

Alexander comes out of the house, he was lighting the stove. He says the stove is smoking and opens the door. Grandad’s old cat is weaving between my legs. She is missing one eye.

The cats were left here. The male cat is difficult to find, he wanders around all day in summer. The female cat rubs against my legs.

I ask Andrey if they’re taking the cat. He says no.

"What's going to happen to them?"

"Nothing. They’ll be homeless."

I look blank.

"Well, that’s wonderful!"

"You take them!"

"To Tomsk?"

"Why not? We can’t take them either. Alright, they’ll be homeless. That’s a pity. I feel sorry for them too, especially Vaska."

Andrey raises his voice, which is unlike him. I realize this is painful for him, and if I keep pushing, we’ll end up fighting, so I stay quiet.

If there’s anything I’ve learned since last year, it’s that you shouldn’t lose touch with your family.

"Did you get married?" he suddenly asks.

I’m irritated and snap back.

"What kind of question is that? You’re smarter than that."

Alexander smiles at my reaction and teases Andrey. My cousins are securing the rubber bands around the edges of the workbench to load it into the trailer.

Alexander goes back into the house to change. The house is old, I don’t know how old, but at least seventy years. There are two small rooms, a tiny kitchen, and a hallway. There’s an entryway and two pantries, one on each side. In the center of the kitchen is the stove. Some time ago, there used to be a Russian stove here. Grandma used to bake plain rolls in it and Rivel Kuchen, a German sweet pie. Now it’s an ordinary stove, not big, whitewashed like the rest of the walls in lime with blue color.

While Alexander is changing in the hallway, I walk around the main room and take pictures of the ruins. The faded blue walls. The old wardrobe. The extension table. The console mirror. A nearly new sofa, bought by Aunt Galina. On the floor, a folded, woven woolen carpet. Some clothes, plastic bags, medicine, newspapers scattered everywhere.

Inside the grandparent’s room are two iron beds. By the window stands an old chest of drawers. I open the top drawer and find jars inside.

Outside, my cousins fix a rope to one edge of the workbench, the other one to the car, and try to move it. The workbench wouldn’t budge. I doubt whether it’s even possible. It’s been here for ages, rooted to the ground.

The cat is rubbing against my legs, she has only one eye. We go back into the house. I try to turn on the light to take some pictures, flip the switch, but nothing happens. Then I remember my cousins cut all the wires to the house.

The hut is a small room with a stove and a tiny bathhouse with another stove and a water tank. The hut used to be the kitchen. Grandma always cooked there, we had breakfast, lunch and dinner in that room. It was also used for storing food and dishes.

The cat runs around the hut as if searching for a bowl. I find a small jar with a wide mouth in the cupboard and pour some milk into it. The cat eats greedily but doesn’t finish. I stroke her — she is so thin. I leave the hut and call her to follow me. She sits in the center, next to the wooden column that supports the ceiling. This column was placed by Granddad 18 years ago. Maybe even earlier. Eventually, the cat leaves the hut, reluctantly.

The workbench moved.

Granddad always kept everything tidy in his workbench, almost like a German: wrenches, hammers, and other tools hung in a neat row, sorted into iron boxes, lying next to each other in order. When Grandma bought a watermelon in summer, she’d place it in an iron bowl on the workbench — the metal kept it cool, and the watermelon wouldn’t spoil. Granddad worked at that workbench. There was an electric knife sharpener. My father used to come over to sharpen knives, bringing everything from our house. Now the sharpener is gone, my cousins probably took it the first time they came.

I look at these ruins and my heart explodes. I’m going home. I cry on the way.

In the morning, I come back again. My cousins have to leave by lunchtime. They finally manage to load the workbench into the truck bed. They pull it over the overlapping boards and then into the trailer. They also take the chest of drawers out of the room and load it as well. Then they go to have some tea. They heat it in a pot using a coil heater. The cat is nearby. Andrey peels the casing off the sausage and gives it to her.

"Isn't that too much?" Alexander asks.

"Let the cat enjoy it while we’re here," Andrey replies.

"Hello from Achinks," Alexander adds.

We don’t see each other often, maybe once a year or every year and a half. I live in Tomsk, and they live in Achinsk. In our childhood, we used to see each other more often, here in a small village in Khakassia. Both Andrey and Alexander almost grew up here, they often came to visit our grandparents. Andrey is 20 months older than me, Alexander is 17 years older.

I’m so happy to see them. We talk about nothing in particular and try to guess what name Andrey and Tatiana will give their second daughter (we'll find out in a month that her name is Yaroslava). Alexander says that Andrey is going to take the kitchen table too. A few times, they remind each other not to forget the bedside locker from the hut, and a razor. The razor is from Soviet times, it’s old. Granddad asked them to bring it to him. He needed that exact razor.

"He's used to it, or maybe he just needs to have it. Marina, take something for yourself to remember this place by," Alexander says.

"What can I take from here?"

I look around the ruined kitchen. The whole house is in despair: there’s a pile of clothes in the hall, plastic bags by the window, a mess in the room, some boxes, medicine bags, newspapers, a box with threads…

"I have a vase from Grandma," I say to them. "When Grandma died, Aunt Galina cleaned everything out, and I took a vase. It’s small, made of glass. It must be seventy years old."

"An antique," Alexander adds.

I don’t wait until they leave, I head home early. I hug them both goodbye. Alexander kisses me on the cheek. He hands me over a big blue torch, probably Granddad’s.

"You can charge it. Open it here — there’s a wire."

At home, it turns out the wire on the torch is damaged.

My Granddad is 90 years old.

He’s been sick for a while. He has respiratory failure. There are days when he’s suffocating, he can’t take a deep breath. On those days, he groans and moans, "I can’t do this anymore. What the hell is this? Marina, I can’t stand it!"

For the last five years, Aunt Galina, my father’s older sister, lived with Granddad. She came when Grandma got sick with hypertension. My father already had cancer by then. He died a few months after. My Grandma passed away the same year as my father.

We couldn’t leave Granddad alone. He had cataracts, he could hardly see. Lately, his health got worse, and it became more difficult for Aunt Galina to take care of him. My cousins came and brought them to the city.

"When we arrived, Granddad was already dressed and waiting," Alexander told me. "He went straight to the car. We said, 'Wait, we need to pack everything up first. You’ll get tired just sitting in the car.' But he still went and sat there!"

The last time I saw Granddad was in winter, during the holidays. Before I left, I came to say goodbye. Granddad was having dinner in the hut with Aunt Galina and Uncle Vladimir, Granddad’s younger brother.

It is so strange to be here now and for Granddad not to be. It’s strange that his house is up for sale. And that it’s so run-down.

The fields are turning green right before our eyes. About thirty meters from the house, firebreak plowing is underway. Ever since the fire in Shira in 2015, the villages have been strictly plowed as a safety measure. When the new head of the village council came into power, the rules became even stricter. Plowing ruins the view of the fields — the earth is churned up, and between the clumps of roots are plastic scraps brought in by the wind.

It’s neighborhood clean-up day. Everyone is tidying the area around their yards. After lunch, I go to my Granddad’s house to clean up. There’s a cat sitting on the bench by the house.

I go into the yard and look for a rake. I check the kitchen garden. I peek into Granddad’s temporary shed, where he stored grain, tools, buckets, sheep wool, or whatever else he needed over the years. I check the animal pens — there used to be sheep, pigs, and cows near the hayloft. The tree nearby is dark gray from age, with deep wrinkles in its bark. Now there are only a few hayforks left. And emptiness.

I look at the side of the hut. Usually, there’s a ladder leaned against it, but it’s not there now. Granddad used to climb that ladder to the roof — there were chicken nests up there. I remember once climbing up with Andrey to collect eggs. We dropped one, and Granddad’s sheepdog Silva licked it up. If Granddad had found out, he would’ve scolded us for sure.

I find some wooden rakes used for gathering hay during haymaking. They’re not suitable for picking up trash. But as soon as I see them, I’m transported to scorching July, bright blue skies, and endless grass. We used those rakes to gather dried hay into small piles. Then we used hayforks to stack it into shocks. Granddad once told us that after haymaking, you should lift the rakes, spin them around their axis, and say "Rain, rain, pour, pour." So that’s what we did.

Where did it all go?

The voices, postcards in German, the loud feasts, Aunt Galina and mom singing along to Uncle Yuri’s button accordion.
It’s all gone. My childhood is gone.

Eventually, I found an orchard rake. I go outside the fence and gather last year’s grass, and the bones that the dogs dragged in. I put them in the bags. A fearless neighbor’s goat comes up to sniff me. It nibbles at the fresh young grass growing nearby.

I collect three bags of trash and leave them by the fence. I look at the house. That’s better — tidy and clean. The cat slips under the fence through a gap.

The house across from Granddad’s is empty. On the pole next to it, three small flags wave — red, blue, and white.

Grandma always cooked in the hut. She rolled out thin flatbread to make noodles, then dried them on a thread and cut them into thin strips.

She baked the tastiest, fluffiest buns in the world in the Russian oven. Later, she taught me and my sister Galina how to shape them as beautifully as she did: first, she’d roll out the dough, brush it lightly with sunflower oil, sprinkle it with sugar, and then roll it up. She’d cut the roll into several pieces with a sharp knife. Then she’d make small cuts in each piece and open them up. If you cut them across, you’d get flowers. If you cut them lengthwise, you’d get beautiful figure-eight roses.

She made Rievel Kuchen, but my grandparents called it "kukha". Nowadays, Germans probably wouldn’t understand my grandparents speaking German. The main ingredient of this cake was the crumb topping, made of flour, butter, and sugar. Grandma always topped the kukha with a thick layer of big lumps. As kids, we loved to break off those lumps and skip the dough — we were scolded for that.

When I was even younger, Grandma used to bake bread. She and Granddad would come to our bathhouse on Saturdays, and she’d bring freshly baked buns. After the bath, mom would cut a piece for me, sprinkle it with a little salt, and give it to Galina and me. The crust was crisp, and the inside was warm and dense.

I will never feel that again.

It’s sunny and quiet at the cemetery. Tall yellow grass sways gently. Here and there, remnants of wrappers from Radonitsa. My cousin Olga and my niece Nika walk toward the place where my dad and Grandma Alma are buried. We bring a large sprayer to treat the graves for weeds. Olga is the daughter of my father’s older sister, Nina, who passed away a few years ago in Germany.

I haven’t been here in about two years. Around the time of my father’s death anniversary in February, he came to me in a dream — a few times, saying small things, nothing important. He didn’t ask me to visit, just talked about everyday stuff. I couldn’t come then, I was sick. For the first time in my life, I tried to cook pancakes. They didn’t turn out well.

I haven’t been with my father in so long. I miss him deeply.

I step inside the grave’s little fence and seem to be happy to meet dad. At first, it seems like there’s a mark on my father’s face, but as I get closer, it’s fine. The graves are covered with artificial flowers — huge bunches of plastic dahlias. Shiny yellow blooms, carnations, daisies, chamomiles.

We struggle with the sprayer for a while, then give up and just pour the weed solution from a jar. Nearby are the graves of grandma’s father and brother. Her brother was named Heinrich, but everyone called him Andrey. I ask Olga why. "Well, what about Granddad?" she says. His name is Friedrich, but everyone calls him Feodor.

We pour poison on the bird cherry tree next to Great-grandma Polina’s grave — she was our Grandma Alma’s mother. Olga looks at the dates. Great-grandma Polina lived only 39 years. Grandpa Andrey (Heinrich) lived just 35.

We visit the graves of all our relatives and place biscuits and candies on them. Another car pulls into the cemetery — my cousin Alexey gets out. He arrived yesterday. Alexey is my mom’s nephew, so he isn’t related to Olga.

He walks into the fenced area around my father’s grave. He lights a cigarette. "Hi, Uncle Andrey," he says, eyes red. Alexey takes another cigarette from the pack, lights it and places it on my father’s grave.

"Alexey, you can’t leave it lit," I say.

"It's fine here," he snaps back. He stays quiet, then says: "Give me a cigarette, Alexey. Olga (my mom — M.S.) keeps cursing at me."

"That's why he died," I say coldly.

My father died of pleural lung cancer, a disease often called ‘the smoker’s cancer'.

Alexey visits the other graves. I watch his body moving behind monuments and trees. The cigarette leans against a stone, protected from the wind. It’s still burning, with a long, even pipe of ash. I pick it up, put it out, and place it back.

After the cemetery, Olga, Nika, and I go to Granddad’s house. As we open the gate, we see a red-haired cat sitting beside Granddad’s cat. A darker cat is eating something from her dish. Granddad’s cat runs to us and rubs against our legs. Olga unlocks the house and takes out jars of pickled cucumbers and jam. "Aunt Galina always adds too much sugar," she says about the jam, implying it’s still good. The jars are thick with dust — they’d been stored in the pantry. The cucumber jars are clear, the vegetables arranged in neat layers. The cat wanders around the hallway, confused. She walks into the kitchen and meows. I call her back.

We open the second pantry. Boots hang from the ceiling. There’s a fridge in the corner. Against the wall, an old hand spindle rests. "Look how the boots are hanging," Nika says. "It's like someone’s up there. Creepy."

"I thought maybe they’d come again," Olga says. "Grandpa was getting better — maybe they would’ve visited."

Olga feels sorry for the cat.

"I tried talking to Andrey," I say.

"I also tried talking to Aunt Galina. Cats are grieving. Our parents didn’t love animals that much, but after they left for Germany, the cats died," Olga says. "It's still warm now, but what happens later [when it gets cold]…"

Before saying goodbye, Olga and I hug. I see tears in her eyes. I know she sees mine.

She gets into the car and puts on her sunglasses.

I sit with the cat on the bench for a while. I stroke her and suddenly notice a small tick behind her ear.

It takes me a long time to get it out. First, I try using a piece of paper. Then I tear a strip from a plastic bag and finally manage to remove it. I find matches in the hut and burn the tick. The neighbors are doing something in the garden.

Why does it hurt so much? What can I do with this pain? Where do I take it?

The cat eats her food. I leave.

In August, slippery jacks grow all around the village. They’re red with thick stems and light brown, some with dark spots. When we were kids, the three of us, Galina, Andrey, and I, used to go mushroom picking under the wide-spreading larch trees. Andrey had a watch, and kept track of time. We always made it back by three o’clock, just in time for Disney cartoons on TV.

I throw the strap of an old bag over my shoulder. Inside, I put a small knife with a blue handle and another bag for collecting mushrooms. It’s the same knife I used in childhood. In a separate bag, I pack a bit of cat food. And I set off to pick mushrooms. 

On the way, I want to stop by Granddad’s house. I approach the gate and try to open it, but it’s locked from the inside.

I make my way to the front yard, now overgrown with nettle, and realize I’ll have to climb in. 

First, I step onto the garden beams. The garden is separated from the gate by a small cubby hole that once held brooms, bricks — whatever was needed. From the bars of the garden, I climb onto the fence boards of the cubby hole. Everything is overgrown with nettle. Now I have to descend carefully, trying not to get stung. The nettle stalks are thick, stiff, and covered in fine needles. I lower my legs, hold on to the fence with my hands, and gently push the nettle aside. I stamp out a narrow path and finally make it through the gate.

The yard is choked with tall grass. Huge goosefoot tower over me, their lush green bushes filling the space. On their thick stalks hang clusters of unripe green seeds.

From the gate to the house, there’s a narrow, trodden path. Another path leads from the house to the hut. A large lock hangs on the door. I don’t have the key — Olga has it, and so does Aunt Alena, my father’s cousin. I knew that before coming here, but I didn’t ask for the keys. 

I walk slowly around the paths and call for the cat, timidly at first. She doesn’t respond. I call louder. Still no response. I don’t dare to shout.

I go back in the shed, stepping over the flattened nettle, and climb through the fence to get back onto the street. I walk a little way from the house, but then return. I toss the cat food through a crack in the door.

I don’t want to come here anymore.

The house will be sold in two months.

All autumn, I want to visit my Granddad.

I call Aunt Galina on October 1st. She says Granddad is already in bed, but she’ll pass along my congratulations. I plan to visit during the November holidays — but I don’t. Then I plan to come during the New Year’s holidays — but again, I don’t. Then the February university break starts — I teach there — but I still don’t go.

In Achinsk, Granddad spends much of his time in hospitals. He’s sick. He breaks his thigh, has surgery, and walks with a frame. In February, at 91, he has a stroke. He’s hospitalized again. He falls into a coma. We all know how it will end.

I spend half of February at my mom’s. When I return to Tomsk, I catch the flu or maybe COVID. I spend several days with a fever. I don’t like February. Since 2018, I haven’t liked February. I still can’t think of it as just another month, like the other eleven. Every year at this time, I remember the coffin in the house, the cold cutting wind, and the long procession of cars following the hearse. I don’t want to remember. But I can’t help it.

February 22, 2024, marks six years since my father’s death. I no longer have a fever, but I have no energy either. My mom prepares a memorial dinner at her house in Khakassia. I don’t cook anything. I lie on the sofa with my laptop and watch some Japanese drama series. Then I get a message from my mom: "Granddad passed away".

Because of the holidays, the funeral is postponed until February 26. Grandpa is buried in Achinsk. My sister and I arrive there from Tomsk late at night on the 25th. 

Our nephew, Alexander’s son, meets us. He drives Galina and me to dinner at his father’s house. Olga and her husband are already there; they arrived a bit earlier. The table is, as always, full of food. February 22 is not only the day of my father’s death — and now, of granddad’s death too — but it’s also the birthday of Alexander’s children, Alexey and Yulia. They were born 10 years apart.

My cousins have a drink, everyone is happy to see each other, and there’s a lot of joking. Nobody talks about Granddad. "Almost all the cousins are here," Alexander says happily. Since we grew up, this doesn’t happen often, and I think it’s Granddad who brought us all together. I want to talk about him, but I keep silent.

Andrey, from the other end of the table, notices that one of my eyes is red. This morning, I accidentally sprayed some vinegar in my eye and got a small burn. That evening, as I sit next to everyone at the table, I feel awful — both physically and emotionally.

Granddad didn’t have an easy character. But I loved him very much.

Aunt Galina’s flat is on the 4th floor of an old five-storey building. Granddad lived in Andrey’s old room. I remember that room with its blue wallpaper and many medals on the wall — awards from various volleyball competitions. In the corner, there was a triangular computer desk, and next to it, a guitar.

Now everything looks different.

Against the wall, there’s a big bed with special fixtures for those who have difficulty walking or can’t walk at all. Next to the bed is a small table. On it are a bandage, a clothespin, a sign that says ‘War Children' and a pull-off calendar titled "Useful tips".

Every year, my grandparents bought a pull-off calendar. They didn’t hang it on the wall but read it like a book. It was about gardening, growing vegetables, useful tips, and all sorts of practical things. On Granddad’s table is the 2024 calendar. It shows a girl in a pin-up style illustration.

On the wall opposite the bed is an honorary certificate that Granddad received on his 90th birthday from the mayor of the district, back when he lived in Khakassia. Below the certificate is a flat-screen TV. In the corners of the room are a chest of drawers and a wardrobe.

That’s all of his household.

My Aunt says Granddad asked to be buried in Achinsk. He said: "Why would you carry me?" And: "I will be in the skies, and where my body is doesn’t matter." I think it’s not right, but I keep silent.

If there’s anything I’ve learned over the past two years, it’s that you shouldn’t argue with your family.

The last respect service is held at the funeral parlor. We rented it for half an hour.

We arrive a bit early, about five minutes before, but they let us in. Granddad lies in a large black coffin, decorated with golden patterns. I walk up to the head of the coffin and look at his face. His eyes are slightly sunken, and his large, square-shaped chin juts out a little. Granddad lies with his eyes tightly closed. His face features are strong, his lips tightly pressed together. I touch the dark-blue, almost black sweater, and feel the cold body underneath.

For the next half an hour, I stand and stroke Granddad’s sweater. Sometimes I start crying. I keep looking at him, without turning my eyes away. I don’t notice or understand who enters or who leaves the room. My Aunt, also crying, tells me to calm down. I don’t understand why.

Galina comes up to me and whispers: "Let's go outside and stand with Uncle Vladimir."

"No!" I say so sharply that I scare even myself. My sister quietly leaves.

When they come to take the coffin, I don’t understand how fast the time has passed. I don’t understand why I didn’t visit him all the time that he lived in Achinsk. I cry.

"Grandpa…"

When my father died, I hardly cried. I calmed my mother down. In those first horrible hours, when dad lay on the floor and mom and Aunt Alena were writhing in hysterics next to him, I simply observed everything silently. Until Granddad called me.

He shouted, crying into the phone: "Marina!!" And then I couldn’t hold back anymore.

"Grandpaaa!"

I was crawling across the floor, holding the phone to my ear.

"Marinaaa!"

"Grandpaa!"

"Grandpaa!" Now, that’s what I want to scream again. But instead, I just stroke the cold sweater and cry quietly.

The road to the cemetery seems very long. I think about how Granddad often traveled using trip vouchers — so many times — and now even his last journey isn’t from his own home. Later, when I tell this thought to Mom, she’ll say that Dad used to get those trip vouchers and gave them to Granddad.

"Why?" I ask.

"Well," she says, "you see, he was very home-grown."

We drive for a long time along unfamiliar roads. In the car next to the coffin are Olga and me. We don’t talk. I feel very tired.

At the cemetery, it’s sunny and snowy. The grave is at the edge, right by the road. The earth is dense, wet, and sticky. In the cemetery back in Khakassia, the ground is rocky.

The workers lower the coffin into the grave and begin throwing earth over it. The snow around us is blinding under the sunlight. "Here's another elderly man, they’ll keep each other company," says Aunt, pointing at the neighboring grave. The workers place funeral wreaths on the fresh mound and fix Granddad’s portrait to the cross. In the picture, he’s wearing a maritime cap, smiling as he sits on a bench by his house. His hands are resting on the walking stick he always carried instead of a cane.

I took that picture — Granddad’s last summer in his own home. The last summer of my childhood.

I have a few shirts left from my father, an uneven left eyebrow, and a reserved character.

I have a big striped vest left from my Granddad, and a warm fleece shirt that I had planned to wear in the spring instead of a jacket and cold-blue Sening eyes. 

What do we inherit from the ones who leave us?

What do they leave behind in us?

At the funeral dinner, Aunt says that Grandpa lived a long and difficult life. He survived the repressions, a hungry childhood during the war, and years of hard work. He was deported from the Volga Region in 1941, when he was just nine years old, because of a "nationality issue". His father was imprisoned in Siberia as an "enemy of the people". He disappeared somewhere in the camps.

The family had four brothers and one sister. Granddad was the eldest. During the war, their life was full of poverty. They had left their household behind in the Volga Region and arrived in Siberia with nothing. At one point, Granddad was hospitalized, and when he returned, he noticed that his brother German’s legs were swollen from hunger. Then Granddad started catching gophers — they saved the family from starving to death.

Later, Granddad promised himself: when he grew up and had his own family, there would always be meat on the table. And he kept that promise.

…In Khakassia, there’s a tradition — family stones. These stones were placed many years ago, and every family gathers at their stone. The Abdin family. The Kokov family. The Kapchigashev family… Relatives come from all over the world for these meetings.

In the spring after my father’s death, Uncle Vladimir — my father’s cousin, German’s son — told me that he wanted to place a family stone too. In 2041. And he wants to write: "Sening family has lived here for 100 years."

In February, just a few weeks before Granddad’s death, my Uncle reminded me again. He said he had already chosen the place. "I'll live through it," he said, "for everyone."

I can’t fit into these lines everything I want to say, everything I feel, everything that happened to Granddad, to all of us, the history of our family, my own history. But I’m still writing. Granddad told me things, but I didn’t remember them. Sometimes I wrote it down, but not much. You always think that you’ll do it later. 

I’m not writing this for anyone else — it’s selfish, really, just for myself. So I don’t keep this pain inside. Thanks to my dad, I know how to carry things quietly. But I don’t want to. I don’t understand when I can carry it and when I can’t anymore. I don’t know when I should slow down, or when I need to take a break. My way of thinking things through is writing. So I’m writing.

I know they will live in these lines. Uncle Vladimir wants me to write a book. I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to. It hurts so much.

Late Easter — sunny and dry, unexpectedly warm. Almost 20 degrees, with a soft spring wind. I came to visit Mom during the May holidays — and for the first time in many years, I’m spending Easter here.

Mom and I visit Aunt Alena’s family, and afterward, I go for a walk. I turn the corner, go straight down the short alley. On the left are community gardens. On the right, a meadow where we used to play lapta until late at night.

I pass quickly through the alley and stop at the corner of the street. The second house is Granddad’s.

I squint as I look at it. The lonely bench. White curtains in the windows. The green, worn-out fence. Even though the house was sold, no one lives there. And it looks like no one is going to.

I walk to the river, to the mountains where the television tower stands. The air rings with spring cleanness. It smells of dry grass and damp earth. I walk straight on, listening to the rustle of dry grass, looking at the still-yellow mountains, at cows grazing nearby, at a lone standing larch tree. In my head I hear the lyrics of a song: "The clouds were flying, were flying far, like Mom’s hand, like Dad’s wing…" In the original, it was "dad's pants". But for me, my dad has a wing.

I reach the hill where we used to go sledding as kids. On the sunny slope, shaggy buttercups are already beginning to wither. A scattering of tiny yellow flowers. White ‘porridge' flowers. The wind stirs last year’s feather grass stems. Nearby, a gopher’s hole.

I take off my denim jacket, lay it on the ground, and sit. I look out at the village, the mountains around, the yellow meadows — and I listen to the wind.

Text & Photos: Marina Sening
Design: Vasily Vershinin
Translation: Anastasia Shirokikh
Teaser: Elizaveta Materi

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