Scattered Wonders

by Sergei Rutinov (Russia)

I didn't expect to find Lithuania

I always thank my job for it gives me trips with mysterious trajectories. What is my job? Online sport broadcasting: soccer, ice-hockey, volleyball etc. Often I find myself in God-forsaken places, away from ant sugar trails, where I probably would never have come to. Work is work, but I remember that this world is full of scattered wonders and our hidden agenda is collecting these wonders. Here I tell you about my trip in December of 2018. It started in Barcelona, at a flea market. A wooden figure: old man - white beard, yellow jacket, fishing hat, cigarette in his teeth. I recognized him at first sight. He was a frequent character in my childhood dreams. He waited for me among old lampshades, battered catechisms, countless stolen watches, busts of General Franco, obscene comics, and other trinkets. 5 Euros. I didn't bargain. In the city of Rodez I met my toponymic homeland. The inhabitants of Rodez, the capital of the Comté de Rouergue, the land of ancient Celtic Ruthenians, call themselves "rutenois". This is absolutely in tune with my last name - Rutinov - and I, as soon as the game ended (we won!) ran up to the fans and took a picture with a huge red-yellow footcloth "proud to be rutenois" behind me. Then I had a volleyball match in Sète, the place where the brilliant “Mektoub, My Love“ was made. To be honest, I did not manage to plunge into the Tunisian exoticism sung by Kechiche, but I found out why the colors of the local volleyball team are blue, lilac, and pink. To do this, I had to take two hundred steps and see how the sky and clouds reflect in quiet water of the bay. Then there was a bus, which broke down 2 hours before departure (deep night), and if not three romanian students (philology) - Burebista (I changed her name), Rubabosta (the same story) and Sanda ( this is the real one) - I would stay in Montpellier instead of working in Cuneo next morning. Nobody wanted to work at basketball match in Varese because of Christmas Eve. Italians prefer wine, pasta and kisses, but I'm Russian, we celebrate Christmas in January and for me it was just a day I spent in the refreshing walk from the railway station to the Palazzo dello Sport (buses preferred pasta and kisses too) and then back through the seemingly ghost town. The wonder of this place was a girl who twice (on the way back and forth) pulled back the curtains and looked at me from the window of a gray Villa and immediately drew them back. I named her Elma (two elms in front of the Villa). Leipzig, Dresden, Prague led me to the end of my journey, to the last wonder. Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania. "Must visit" places, indispensable "zeppelins" at a local restaurant, yellow-green-red flags... Ok, I just roamed around the downtown, waiting for the train to Moscow. It was an old narrow street. Somebody looked at me. Not actually human. Of course human, but figuratively. There was a strange monument between the houses: a head of a Hebrew wise man with a huge beard on a modest pedestal. The head looked like a churchbell. I asked passing by tourists to take a picture of me and this strange sculpture. When they were handing me the phone back, it rang. It was my father. I must say that I met him when I was 27 and later we did not communicate too much, so his call was rather unexpected. I did not answer him, just wrote I am not in Russia and sent him a pic: me and stone Rabbi. He replied with lightning speed: - Take another photo next to him, but not standing by his side. Hug him. - Why? - This is the Vilna Gaon - our ancestor. You are his direct descendant. Read about him in Wikipedia. I didn't know what to say. New tourists took a new pic: Me, hugging the monument of Elijah ben Solomon Zalmana, talmudist, kabbalist, the foremost leader of non-hasidic jewelry of the past few centuries ( as wiki says) and a wooden fisherman in the palm of my hand.