Читать книгу Mission 777 Possible - Марина Спроуз - Страница 17

It happened one May evening; I went out with a friend and, like a good girl, called my grandparents from a payphone from time to time.

“Marianna… Marianna… hurry home!” I heard a strange hoarse voice from Grandpa on the phone, it seemed he was crying.

At home, I saw two of our relatives from the neighboring village, everyone sitting around the table. Grandma informed me of my mother’s death, Grandpa couldn’t say anything, just wheezed and sobbed, having drunk Corvalol. Of course, I didn’t fully realize it at first, and I didn’t feel the pain right away; there was Mom, and now no Mom, it couldn’t be true. And I cried a lot in the bathroom, my eyes turned into two swollen bags. I remember Mom… she was like an angel, with extraordinary eyes. Then they said she was killed. One memory remains in my mind: I was sitting next to Mom when she was still alive, and my soul was incredibly warm, perhaps this feeling a fetus feels in the womb. Her eyes were especially memorable, large unusual upper eyelids, her face reminded me of an angel and Leonardo da Vinci’s painting “Head of an Angel,” and her hands were very delicate. Like some virgin maiden hides Leonardo’s painting, and in the picture – my mom, my mommy:

You’re tender, like something fragile and delicate,

What are you like… as if something is in a daze.

Vulnerable, like a virgin flower,

Grown-up and spring stem.

You look like a girl from a painting:

Semi-transparent face and canopies;

The mouth is slightly open sensually,

As if getting ready for a trip;

And a tired look aimed,

Olive eyes – without falsehood.

Vulnerable, invisible, barefoot,

She came down from the picture – you, heavenly – such…

I will look at the lips and eyes,

As if they can tell you,

About the secret of the eternal tender maiden;

And listen to the first tunes,

When the morning dew rings…

The funeral of my mother was terrible. Grandpa no longer cried but wheezed, and the nurse injected him with injections right through his clothes. Grandma’s face was without tears, and Marianna’s eyes swelled and puffed up from crying. We said our last words of farewell. A stranger woman standing by the grave threw a handful of dirt over Marianna’s collar and said, “So she wouldn’t be afraid of the dead.”