Rediscovery

By Volodymyr Serdiuk

Wars scare people. But people are in Wars. Suffering their pains and losses, people invent their own stories about their surroundings and events. The main character of the REDISCOVERY novel reads the Columbus diaries trying to save his mind clear. From his trenches, he goes with Columbus to discover America again as his own Land of Promise.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Volodymyr Serdiuk
• Release date: Jun 13, 2020
• ISBN: 9781393480631

Volodymyr Serdiuk

Volodymyr Serdiuk is a Ukrainian Writer wanting to share his books also among the English-language Readers Worldwide.  Reading his books you'll get a chance to discover another European Nation's Way of Life, Way of Thinking, and Way of Love.

Book preview

Volodymyr Serdiuk

REDISCOVERY

(Small novel)

––––––––

Dedicated to them who do not even guess about it.

***

It was during sunset. The feeling of easy joy felt down at me together with the evening dusk. That evening was short as it is in autumn, and also quiet and windless. I was slightly shocked by that feeling which at last set in peace everything around me and my city of rush and the previous hard neurotic day I was presented with.

I was walking in the park for some time smelling the fragrances of fallen leaves hearing the peace-making children’s laugh and the knocking of stones, which was the signal promising food for watchful squirrels. Squirrels were easy to come but they never let anybody to caress them.

Having enough with my walk, I left the park and before I sit into my car, clasping my gloves, I glanced to the sky trying to foreseeing what kind of weather could be. Checking the sky, I noticed that the horizon soaked with red auguring wind.

Breathing the full chest, I felt an incredible avalanche-like relief as if taking off a heavy knapsack after a long walking trip. I felt my young age and the city already seemed to be neither tensed nor hostile for me. The engine of my car was functioning calming-steadily. In the cabin there was warm and cozy and for the very beginning there was a slight trace of propane-butane but movement made this smell go out deputy it with neutral smell of warm iron which seeded my soul with assuredness.

When I went through the middle of the city and the advertising lights became rare; a dusty rain started to leak from the sky. It was not noticeable from its beginning but after some time it made me to turn on the windscreen vipers, which do not irritated me with their spring monotonous jerks that evening rather reminding of their old ancestor metronome, that means music and everything connected with music:  inspiring ladness and order of thoughts. Radio just played something rhythmical, dancing on the background and I even began to go slower to catch unison of the harmony of sounds, movements, colors and smells.

Order was around me and order mastered in my soul.

Slowly passing by empty streets I felt that in my life order mastering too at last. At least the order inside me and with myself. I was in peace with the city around me, and with the modest European nature, which my city does not press concretely and does not push outside but somehow respectfully-care was spreading, liberating the space for the new buildings here and there leaving huge pieces of untouched landscape. This time lake, another time wild wooded hill or bewitched tiny park breaking perfect straight lines of streets and rows of buildings of concrete. Some when, I remember I use to love this city and that love was bilateral, promising and welcoming. Then happened the period of separation. After that period I returned to the city being absolutely another, maybe even alien to its routine-civilized existence but, however, the city accepted me again, giving me the new chance to see closer its traditions and habits and, at last to decide if we are heading the same direction and meditate, we to I am especially trying to drift?

The railway station waved to me its wave of alarming whistling sounds and metal clenching, sounds of sudden braking and the cacophony of panel announcements. Passing by I was trying not to glance rightward: I do not like railway stations generally, there were too many of them in my life. Their mess of multicolored lights, their rush and their smell of burnt flash from cheap restaurants always remind about human loses, loneliness and uncertainty in chosen ways. The railway station was strange in that city.

The man’s buttery voice continued to talk on the radio about the discovery of America by Columbus. I had to change the wave but broken street-lights, mad taxi-drivers, rush of a crowd needed the trice as attention that is why the voice still was talking and talking about the difficulties of sailing till I passed by the railway station and its warehouses finally turning to the side of brewery.

I continued to listen to the words of that story and had a feeling that if everything in it is true that truth is different, cleaned and combed like a well-bread boy in his shining shoes. A little bit showy and not very deep.

My genetic memory kept some other truth.

***

THURSDAY, September 6th.

We launched from shoal at eight in the morning and with the cross wind we made 60 miles, or 15 leagues before the sunset.

In Dogs’ Islands (One of the names of the Canary Islands), we took sweet water, woods, meat and everything else what will be needed. We went the whole day and night and the next morning occurred to be between La Gomera and Tenerife. Plutarch called them Islands of Happiness. Let God us have our luck too.

***

Dusk became as almost thick as night. Heavy shining sky became dark-blue. Warm wind throwing to my car heavenly water from time to time, jerkily draw aside the dropped curtain and then, during some long seconds, none of them touched surface making their flight over the road. Having executed some daedal pas of their miraculous dance, they slowly and lazily fall down to the green grass of flowerbeds and to the wild bushes, which were still untouched by active constructing.

Heading out of the City I felt the smell of dust, as if the easy boring street turned to be a romantic country guests’ road. I used to be in hurry from morning until early evening constantly checking my watch and nevertheless being unable to execute all my duties, heaving in mind that that rush shall continue forever. Now the Time disappear. I took of my watch from my left wrist and put it to the glove-box enjoying the new wave of easiness, because the clocks tickling, even inaudible, always irritated me reminding of Inevitable.

I was driving wandering of the bright-white color of the middle of the road and of the strange brown clouds, spotted with green and orange stains. There was a calm emptiness in me, and a sure thrill of the unmissable feeling that this joy is accidental. It will not last long without proper support. I knew that Future does not exist and besides my hands were sure at the stern, which reminds the knot connecting the line of the Past with the point of the Contemporary, I knew beforehand that the line of the Future never comes out from that point. I knew that my joy only signalizes that - the very minute which I was dreamed of and which I avoided trying to post-pond, will take place sharp and correct in its provided time and that time will take place this night and it is impossible to change because I am driving that definite way where it is waiting for me.

***

FRIDAY, September 7th.

At Friday and to the third hour after midnight in Saturday the sea was calm. People was also calm, gradually awaking from hangover they begin to work normally. This trip is not the first of all my trips but this time our Captain is not a fool too, this time we shall overcome.

Turtles double in the hold. They have enough sea-grass to stay alive. Sea lions make their roars here and again. We also begin to eat them when we will be full of ham. There is always some water leaking into the hold and they feel comfort yet there. The cabin boy