On the Dancing Cloud

By Igor Troitski

In my previous three books, “Six steps towards the Dancing Cloud”, “Laser steps to Dancing Cloud” and “Business steps to Dancing Cloud”, I described the steps of the ladder that led me to where my house is now. Walking in the mornings in the nearby Wetlands Park, I realized that not only the steps themselves are important, but also the reasons, why I chose them, and not some others. Facts and events, that, it seems to me, directly or indirectly motivated the direction of my life path, are described in this book. In particular, the reader will learn the reasons why I parted from my old, beloved home, in which I grew up and in which I dreamed of meeting my old age.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Accent Graphics Communications
• Release date: Jul 24, 2023

Book preview

From the author

In my previous three books, Six steps towards the Dancing Cloud, Laser steps to Dancing Cloud and Business steps to Dancing Cloud, I described the steps of the ladder that led me to where my house is now. Walking in the mornings in the nearby Wetlands Park, I realized that not only the steps themselves are important, but also the reasons, why I chose them, and not some others. Facts and events that, it seems to me, directly or indirectly motivated the direction of my life path are described in this book. In particular, the reader will learn the reasons why I parted from my old, beloved home, in which I grew up and in which I dreamed of meeting my old age.

Content

You will never see America

In the kindergarten near the church. The first lessons of playing cards. My Easter. First fight. You will leave, but not to America, but much closer, from where no one quickly returns. Substitution of objective concepts for subjective ones. They couldn't save the church from demolition, but they saved themselves from the Communist Youth Union. How I collected money near the Assumption Cathedral. A man should beat first Failure in the exam at MEPhI. They don’t hit on the passport, but on the face. Woodworker – pattern maker. Church or Synagogue. Philosophy or physics. Exam at the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology.

It is easy to be baptized –

the main thing is not to be crucified later

Seminary student. Journey through the monasteries of the Russian North. Instead of human souls, he began to treat mortal human bodies. My sister. Officer of the counterrevolutionary army. From counterrevolutionaries to communists. Men's secrets.

At the crossroads

Important Decisions. Reconstruction of the grandmother's house. Russian bath. Playing cards with a card sharper. To Yakutia for sable and arctic fox skins. Quarrel with my neighbors. Fight at Moscow Higher Technical University. My teacher. Farewell to my old house.

New Life

Building your own house. Preparing for a journey across the ocean. How a secret scientist got rid of his secrecy. Is Tartakovsky also a Jew? On board the Dawn Princess. Pray as if everything depends on God, but act as if everything depends on you. How a Tahitian woman tried to seduce Leonid. I came into this world to see the Sun, but you - to see the stars! My grandson.

YOU WILL NEVER

SEE AMERICA

In a kindergarten near the church

I sit on the balcony of my house on Dance Cloud Avenue and, through the gaps in the branches of a tree growing next to the house, I look at the children splashing in the pool. I hear their joyful laughter, and I am surprised how different my childhood was from the childhood of these cute kids.

My first childhood memories are connected with a dacha village not far from Moscow, where I lived with my grandmother and mother after the end of the Second World War. My kindergarten was located on the outskirts of our village, where the field began.

Bright, sunny summer day. Our teacher leads the children for a walk in the field. We, pushing each other, run to a low hill, which is closer to the center of the field, and suddenly, we hear the ringing of a church bell. We freeze and our eyes go to the other end of the field, where the church is. The next moment, everything starts moving again. Soon we are already sitting on a hill and listening to the stories of our teacher. Church bells stopped ringing. Around us, ears of ripening wheat sway peacefully, and high in the sky they fly, describing intricate figures, restless larks.

I was friends with a little girl, Lena. Her house was next to mine, and our grandmothers took turns taking us to kindergarten. When we moved to the older group, grandmothers often allowed us to return home on our own. Lena was taller than me and a little older. Taking my hand, she was proudly leading me through the streets of our village. One day, suddenly, two unfamiliar girls of our age appeared from the gate of the house we were passing by and, shouting: The big girl is taking the little girl home, they began to run around us. I stopped in total confusion. Tears came to my eyes: what could be more terrible, when you’re being called a little girl. Lena, releasing my hand, rushed at my offenders with a cry and, waving some kind of stick, began to drive them away from me.

In winter, I took small sleds with me to kindergarten and, returning home, we took each other in turns in them. It was very funny and always gave us great pleasure.

Years were passing, but always, driving up to my dacha village on the train or in my car, I admired the church and recalled my kindergarten walks in the field near this church and winter travels on sleds. And very often these memories were replaced by thoughts about how quickly our future becomes our past and how our past decorates our present.

A winter evening

Dinner is over. Grandmother has cleared the dishes from the table and, smiling, says: Now we can play a little. For me, a six-year-old boy, this means that now we will play cards.

I love to play with my grandmother. In my hands, the cards seem to come to life: from simple pictures they can sometimes become trump cards and, entering a fight, they can either win or lose. I feel like the cards are in constant dynamics and their own special relationships arise between them, and I understand them and command them.

My grandmother taught me to treat cards not as a serious occupation, but only as pleasant entertainment, and that winning depends not only on the ability to play, but also in many respects on luck. And the main thing that I learned is that fortune is very changeable, so if luck smiles at me now, then the next moment it can turn away from me.

Usually, my grandmother limited the time of the game, after which she read, and I drew or leafed through various books, looking at their illustrations.

Remembering these long winter evenings, I still feel the special peace of the unique village atmosphere. The firebox is open, the firewood in the stove has already burned out, and the last flashes of flame appear and disappear on the coals remaining from them. Our cat is sitting on a small stool. He is in a state of absolute satisfaction. One day, a small mouse appeared under his chair. She sat for a while, and then ran away, and the cat did not even move his mustache.

As I found out much later, cards appeared in our house thanks to my grandfather Gregory. He was an avid card player. When my grandmother was giving birth to my mother, and this was happening in their house, my grandfather went to his friends to play cards. It is not known whether he won or not, but when he returned, his daughter was already in her bed. I think when Gregory was alive, my grandmother didn't really like cards, but he died many years ago and over time her attitude towards cards changed. It is very possible that whenever she offered me to play cards, she remembered her youth and her Gregory, whose portrait always hung on the wall next to her bed and next to the portraits of my great and great-grandfathers.

Two Easters

Sunny spring day. I sit on the edge of a ditch and wonder why my friends can't be seen. Finally, Valery and Sasha appear, followed by Vladimir with a pair of colored chicken eggs. One egg is golden with overflows, and the shell of the other is painted with intricate color patterns on a purple background.

As soon as Sasha and Valery saw these eggs, they immediately rushed to their gates. Sasha returned first. In his hand, he held a small burgundy egg with bright spots. Behind him, a gloomy Valery appeared, who looked very upset, and with the words: Mom did not give me colored eggs, he plopped down on the cobblestone. Vladimir and Sasha began to check whose eggs had a harder shell. Sasha won, and Vladimir dragged his broken eggs home.

What I saw impressed me so much that when I ran home to take a sip of water, I immediately told my grandmother about everything I saw.

- There is nothing unusual in what you saw, - my grandmother became to explain to me, - Russian Easter began today, and painting eggs for Easter is an ancient folk tradition. Figuring out who has the hardest egg is just a game.

- Why don't you paint the eggs? - I asked her.

- Because we are Jews, and the Jews have already passed Easter, and they celebrate it in a wholly different way, - my grandmother explained.

I already knew very well how we celebrated Easter: usually, matzoh appeared, part of which was passed through a meat grinder, and various goodies were prepared from the resulting flour. What I heard made me