Untouchable
My dad remembers when Stalin died. When he got the message he ran over the roof tops of Moscow. It was a cold morning in March and one can imagine the terrified excitement he, and his fellow classmates felt when they rushed so fast as if they were flying in the Russian sky. Far, down on Red Square, surrounded by thousands, they saw him.
One does not want to think about if the roofs were slippery. Of course they were.
Sometimes, a present coincident reminds you of things in history that makes one wonder how much information is possible to mix and pour in to a person before the body gets filled.
Like when he is lying on the floor now, installing some banal wireless Internet facility that makes life so much easier, and reflexively mutters a Russian word without noticing. A reference, that perhaps was created in his backyard while waiting for the toilet that he shared with eight families, that now gets thrown out in the Swedish air. Words that time and new languages have made impossible to catch.
Here, in his daughters own, bought flat.
Or when he buys that dark bread that he eats standing, without butter and nothing to drink because he was raised without space to be demanding. Or when I see him sleep, always on his left side with both hands placed under the cheek, because that was how the boys were ordered to sleep at summer camp.
Him doing the Sunday afternoon grocery shopping, in an overfilled suburban supermarket, where nobody cares about nothing but who won Eurovision Song Contest but demonstratively sighs if there is a line, and were the blond full- time college student earns more money in one weekend than his mom did during a whole career.
Yet, she does not know about Stalin.
It might actually help to slip once in a while. Just to rearrange the mix a bit.
