RuKsaK

That’s what my wife said to me thirty minutes ago. I didn’t ask.
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When Grandma was seven, she ate crusty caramel from the floor of a field. In Leningrad, the Fascists had bombed the sugar warehouse – spreading an acre-slap of toffee which sunk into the ground. By the time Grandma got there, people were already scraping into the soil, sucking sods of grassy, soily caramel.
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Another time, she got pissed up with her family. Her mum got a bonus for her hard work in the boot factory – her own stash of treated leather. This made good soup, from the alcohol-steeped cowhide. The family all swallowed it up and lounged around tanked up through an air raid.
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When the side of their second floor building was ripped away by the suction of a blast, her mum’s gravity shifted back ninety degrees for half a second and she gusted into the square. Grandma looked into the street to see her mum, sitting on their wall, which now looked very different. She was alright. They moved after this into a communal flat.
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She saw a woman stoned in the street because the woman was dragging her dead father’s body. One of his legs was absent. The stones fell on her because the people were convinced she’d eaten the leg. Eating people’s legs and bodies was not uncommon in this time. Starvation being the general reason.
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Stalin, the leader when Grandma was born, and until she became an adult, used to say to his dearest pals:
‘Look at this glass of water. Note the depth of the water.’
He’d then dip in his finger.
‘Do you see water on finger? Do you see a difference in the glass? Ah – my friends, that is the people.’
Stalin’s pals always gave the right answers. They didn’t want to be dripping from his little pinkie.
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From 1941 to 1945, forty-five million Russians were killed. Fifteen million by the Fascists. Stalin had very fat, spongy fingers I guess.
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It must be that either a young girl’s teeth are afraid of Fascists, Stalin didn’t like them or muddy toffee is very bad for you. My Russian grandma was seventy last week, and she just got her teeth finally.
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I've enjoyed these stories round tables buckled with food and vodka.

Wednesday, November 10, 2004

Grandma got her teeth finally…