When I was 14, I lived in Ukraine. I had parents lacking any imagination. While that made my life miserable, occasionally it was to my advantage. Once I, quite unexpectedly for myself, left alone on a trip to Moscow to attend a meeting of, mind you, anarchists, and please remember, that was not long after the collapse of the soviet empire, and my mother at least was a staunch communist. I half-heartedly lied to her that I was going to find out what I needed in order to be accepted to Moscow State University. To my astonishment, this lame lie worked like a charm. Later, I did get accepted to Moscow State University, but it had nothing to do with this trip. I got on the train with my classmate, a girl who was much closer to anarchists than I ever was. To tell the truth, being a dreamer, I was not particularly close to any people at all, since I lived in my own world. We shared a compartment with a journalist, a person in his forties who kept us entertained all the time without even trying to. He told us a very long story on how to make borshct, the story that deserves to be told separately, if only I can remember it. When he was changing to sleep (this being quite normal in russian trains), he advised us to close our eyes, since his body was so beautiful that we stood a good chance to be blinded by the sight. Later, he said that he was somewhat of a psychic and he wanted to foretell our future. About my friend, he said that she was going to be a great beauty and lead many men to their downfall. About me, he said I would marry early and be fiercely loyal to my family. This being a time of all kinds of shortages in Ukraine, he actually said: “I can see you fighting to get that chicken for your family”
Boy, was he a lousy fortune-teller. I am a vegetarian.
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