I've written before about the strong attachment I feel to Oksi, my Russian home help. Besides helping with the housework, Oksi takes a keen interest in life at home. In the good old days before Covid, when I travelled a lot, Oksi got more excited than I did about every trip of mine, or the lack of one.
“Niechka, a whole month already you have not travelled… everysing all right?”
If I tell her I'll soon be going somewhere, her face lights up. She puts down her cloth and takes me conspiratorially by the arm. With a flush risen to her cheeks, she whispers to me a story along the following lines:
“You know how lucky you are you are only forty-one goda.” ( Oksi is 75, but she has the zest for life of an 18-year-old and the looks of a 50-year-old at most.) “Niechka, you know how nice time you can have on ein business trip, for example? When I was forty years, I was on business trip in Varna. And when we closed the congress, one tall, distinguished muzh stopped his Volga by me. He had heard I am speaking Russian speech; he invited me to spend night with him. And next day he would personally drive me back in Volga to Sofia. And I thought very much, I thoooought very much and in the end I refused. Because of Old Sourrpuss I refused.” ( Old Sourpuss is Oksi's husband.)
Oksi makes the necessary pause before the grand finale…. “And potom it turned out the unknown distinguished muzh was” – here the very air around Oksi is sparkling and quivering – “the Very Glavniy Ministr of Heavy Industry of SSSR-a.”
“So there, Niechka,” Oksi finishes, loudly now. “I looove business trips.” After a brief reflection she adds: “Nu, I am very old now, there is nobody to invite me. For you there is still chance to make at least one wonderful memory from business trip. To warm you till end of life. And do not repeat my mistakes,” she gives me a meaningful look.
Emo, my husband, walks past us. There's no way he can know what we were talking about just a minute ago, because as he approaches, Oksi instantly suspends the feature “Practical-tips-from-one-married-lady-to-another” and starts diligently polishing the kitchen tiles, assuming a servile pose.
Ever since she found out Emo is a Cancer, Oksi's tactic has been to have little to do with him. About Cancers, Oksi has told me that they “are responsible to families, but very much like to boss their wives.”. She reached this conclusion from personal experience, since it turns out that Old Sourrpuss is also a representative of the same sign.
At first Emo regarded the closeness between Oksi and me with indifference. But she is such a funny and interesting person to talk to that, from a certain point on, Emo began wanting to join our merry little circle. Bit by bit he's been trying to win her favour:
“Oksi, how old are you, are you 55?”
Oksi coquettishly replies that she is 76, but she is simply cursed with a very young-looking gene. Otherwise, she has had no plastic opyerations at all.
“Ooooh, I can just imagine what a hot chick you were when you were young!”
I'm not sure how far compliments of the “not bad for a hundred-year-old” type would win her over, since
1. most women hate exactly that type of compliment
2. after all, Oksi is extremely prejudiced against his star sign. Several times she has launched into how much these Cancers like to commahnd and how their moods unpryedictable. She sings that one song so relentlessly that even I've started to get sick of it. Because, after all (and on top of everything), both my sons are Cancers too. I tell her so.
“Ooooy, the little children too…..” Oksi puts her hand over her mouth to stifle her grief for the life I am doomed to live, surrounded by 3 future Old Sourrpusses. “If only there was at least ein little Libra around you, Niechka, to protect you,” she pities me. Then she briskly and tactfully leaves the room, because she thinks she's overdone it with the advice. Before that, though, she explains to me that if I had a little Libra, it would protect me the way beloved Putin protects her and her people. (I check on Google – yes, Putin really is a Libra.)
Oksi is very gentle, well-mannered and humane. She is broad-minded. She takes many human weaknesses philosophically, believing that each of us must walk our own path. She adores her job – she cleans with pleasure and doesn't want to lead a sedentary life “like the little old grannies”. But there is one subject on which she won't tolerate any comment – the subject of Putin.
One day I could see her soul seething and boiling inside over some injustice. Since I knew she would soon be leaving for her summer holiday in Nizhny Novgorod, I decided to cheer her up by getting her talking about the trip. I asked her which airline she'd be flying with.
Oksi absent-mindedly answered with the name of some Russian airline. Her mind was wandering somewhere far away. After a few minutes of feverish silence, she decided to share after all:
- “I am thinking how to give my syn a good salting. Yesterday he very much insulted Putin.”
When Oksi booked her ticket to N. Novgorod, it turned out she had to pay extra for her luggage. Her son ( I can't believe how little he knows his own mother), probably as a joke, told her that “her Putin doesn't seem to look after his people very well if he makes Russians pay extra for luggage on their own airlines”. That remark had brought Oksana to her current feverish state and to plotting her counter-strike.
“I will tell him, Niechka, I will tell him: ‘PAH!!! You do not know what you are saying! You are not vorthy even to mention the name of the most velikiy gumanist in the world – the name of Putin.’” Oksi's blue eyes burn right through me. The interjection “PAH” was delivered with all the contemptuous passion the boundless Russian soul is capable of.
What on earth is a gumanist? It sounded to me like a communist who runs a chewing-gum stall. Then it clicked – when she gets worked up, Oksi switches from Bulgarian with bits of Russian to Russian with bits of Bulgarian. And Russians say “G” instead of “H”. They called Hitler Gitler, after all. So – humanist is what she meant.
While I'm wondering how to respond, Emo, who is still fighting for her friendship, chimes in: “You're right, Oksi! But don't be cross with your son – it's not his fault. After all, he's only 50% Russian – your husband's blood flows in him too.”
Oksi says nothing, but you can tell from her expression that she agrees. You can't expect much sense from someone who carries half the genes of Old Sourrpuss.
The following week, when Oksi is at ours again, I walk in on the following scene:
Emo, pinned in a corner by Oksi. She has remembered that he wondered what she looked like when she was young and has decided to deliver him from the torment of not knowing. She is holding a stack of black-and-white photos and hands them to him one by one:
“And here is me in sixty-eight at the seaside on Solnechniy Beach. Can you say I gave birth to syn one year before?”
I think it's official now: Oksana has forgotten her prejudices against Cancers and Emo has won her trust.
This is just a small part of the stories about my humane Oksana, full of joy, full of the will to live, to work and to be happy! My beloved Gumanist!
