Читать книгу One Cup Chronicles. Tales Within a Tale of the Russian Underworld - Владимир Росс - Страница 3

My first audience, critics as they were, have been gracious friends. As it happens, the earliest reading of my work was in a little café on the East River Side. There we gathered on that first extraordinary Tuesday, drinking coffee. I, overcoming my own embarrassment, humbly read the tale about a gentleman immigrant from the collection of “One Cup Chronicles.” Having lived through similar experiences themselves, the two criminal authorities turned out to be a first-rate audience and knowledgeable critics. Fact keeps with fact. For me their opinions were more precious than all of the sales on Amazon. Senya arrived a few years ago in the first wave of immigrants. He was content and spoke a simple English. With first-hand knowledge of the docks, he reasoned about American politics. He had managed to marry a full-blooded American woman, and it was no surprise that he wanted to put in his rusty two cents on the tale.

“Valdemar, I say, this is nowhere near good enough! You write about the pickpocket as if he’s a dead soul. Enliven him. Nazar is a man who deserves praise, and you make him out to be a common bandit. In the past at the Kolyma work camps, I knew many such men, punks of a noble and honorable nature. A righteous kind of thief, not associating himself with just any sort of brigand.”

Ignoring his nonsense, I felt no need to defend myself against what he said, and yet at home I quickly wrote out a part of the narrative in accordance with his comments.

Anastas was much less expressive. Expelled from his homeland of Greece by Greek criminals, carrying only that which was in his pockets, he found refuge in the United States, just outside the range of the Greek community. He usually just nodded and grinned and, when my story caught his imagination, rubbed the bridge of his nose. He always listened through until the end of the story. He was growing acquainted with our Senya, whom I had known already for thirty years. I didn’t know what the two of them had been occupying their time with, but the fact that they found time for a few cups of coffee and my ravings elevated them in my eyes, not because of anything concerning title or class. I am thankful for them. Perhaps it was because of them that the idea for the stories of “One Cup Chronicles” came to fruition.