Fog of Nostalgia

by Kseniya Borisenko (Ukraine)

I didn't expect to find Ukraine

- Look! There is someone on that hill, it looks like a horse. - No, these are llamas! Let's go. - You probably made a mistake. How can llamas be in Norway? But they really were llamas on the island of Judaberg, somewhere among the fjords of Norway. And meeting them was Rosalyn’s little dream. Within a minute she faster than Sheldon crossed the moat with a stream, fences and was faced with the faces of llamas. Meanwhile, as I took out a sandwich from my backpack to treat the llamas, Rosalyn laughed and cried with joy, danced and jumped from the happiness of this meeting. From that day on, there was a foggy image of my wife laughing at the llamas and running away from them along the hill. This happened after 37 years, as we lived among the fjords of Norway. We said goodbye to the mainland in the city of Stavanger, as soon as we boarded a ferry that raced at the speed of a black Marlin. Along the way, we stopped on the islands as at a metro stop to drop some people off and pick up others. Soon we descended on our island, in the Nesheim area. Of the entire archipelago (9 islands), our island was an island of silence, which doesn’t happen in the world. A little more than ten houses with farms, and I guarantee you will meet there more heads of sheep and cows than people. The feeling of the first breath of northern air - like a beautiful frosty bird spreads its wings in your chest, giving you the gift of flight; and with every breath you rise higher, leaving behind all human anxieties. The first person we met was an elderly woman, incredibly sweet, like everyone’s “grandmother”. She was the owner of the only store on the island where you could find everything: fresh vegetables and fruits, frozen pizza and pastries, electrical appliances, wrenches, pastry molds, shampoo. And in the far corner of the store was yesterday’s shelf - newspapers, magazines, books and postcards - a favorite corner. - “Remember this sunny day”, - she told us smiling. It’s only rains, only rains. So we are waiting for the silver glow of the sky. However, that was the next month. On that, one of the few sunny days under the almost transparent northern plume of the hills, great silence reigned, which was broken only by the mooing of cows from a neighboring farm. Together with our rented house for a month, we found our ideal month of silence. The house was on the shore of the fjord. So slowly, measuredly, the waters of the fjords washed the shores of the islands, like the breath of the oceans from which the first man once left. Looking away from the fjords, I noticed how waves played around my wife, caressing the gold of her hair. Our bedroom had a window into the grace of northern nature: the green hills languidly settled under the cold sun of February, where they could not be reached by the mint waves of the ocean. Across the island were monuments to Freya, the Scandinavian goddess of love and fertility. The atmosphere and nature remained pristine. The sunset was unusually early, close to 3-4 p.m. At sunset, distinctiveness left, and a wind broke in with a howl, with rain and hail, shuddering with glasses, causing a strange, but not at all unpleasant feeling of defenselessness, hopelessness, which usually generates wind in winter. Then Rosalyn lit a lamp in the living room by the blue couch and everything became as if from the paintings of Toulouse-Lautrec. But the dawn was usually late, when the 8 a.m. A foggy, cold morning, when even the outlines of what is outside the window are not visible. It is necessary to watch vigilantly and gravely to notice a couple of black ravens in a foggy phantasmagoria. Holding my breath, I watched them while Sheldon was sleeping, waiting for the return of the Scandinavian gods to their lands. Accident is full of magic. An accident was that house, that island. It was an accident to find a photograph of that year, that house, that young couple of Rosalyn and Sheldon.