It Is Never Too Late: Short Stories

By Roman Litovsky and Sergio Drumond

This book is a true-to-life collection of 30 short stories from physicist and electrical engineer Roman Litovsky chronicling his family's harrowing emigration journey in 1989 from Ukraine to the United States during the height of the impending collapse of the USSR. It provides in detail his life in Kyiv, traveling throughout Europe to gain freed

• Language: English
• Publisher: Roman Litovsky
• Release date: Mar 8, 2024
• ISBN: 9798869237811

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Copyright 2023 © Roman Litovsky

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the author, with exception for the inclusion of properly cited references and quotations.

Second edition, corrected.

ISBN– 979–8–218–33296–9

E-ISBN– 979–8–869–23781–1

Dedication

This book is dedicated to the memory of our son Alexander (Sasha) Litovsky 1984–2020, whose life was tragically cut short. He loved life and lived it to the full extent. He cherished the notion that everything in life is illuminated and everything has its purpose. I believe that the purpose of his life was to make us, the living, stop for a while, get fascinated by the beauty of the world, recognize those who love us, and spread this love around to make this world a better place to live. Sasha was very good at that. We will remember him with love forever.

Living in The World

There are people dying,

People living,

There are people writing on the wall.

There are people thinking what's important,

What's the beauty,

What's it about,

What's all the noise.

The real beauty's in the nature,

It's in the life,

It's in the song.

That's what the real beauty looks like,

Now just go on and just read on.

Sasha Litovsky

1994

Table of Contents

Preface

Acknowledgments

It is Never Too Late

The Birthday Present

The Determinant Method

Venik

Atonement

The Marvel Problem

The Gentleman Set

Better than Mountains

Vilen Zevin

Per Aspera ad Astra

Enlightenment from the Tube

Chapayev

The Hot Summer

Poor Relatives

One Way Ticket

Roman Vacations

Trident

EXID

Hypocrisy

An American Dream

DIY or DIE

The Second Paycheck

Smart Protector

Rootkit

Twenty Years After

Bad Santa

Best Hated Speaker

Duncan

The Same Rake

Orange Kitten

Epilogue

About the Author

About the Illustrator

Preface

Every book reflects the mindset of the author. When writing is about real people, portraying their life and personality, the final picture is skewed by the author's perspective, particular encounters, and his analysis of the memorable information. My book is based on real events and my real–life experiences. And of course, everything here was processed through my own perception, selective memory, and personal likes or dislikes. Therefore, I apologize upfront to some people who I mentioned here, if they would prefer not to be mentioned in that context and otherwise – if I didn't mention someone who would like to be present in this book. At the end, this book is not an autobiography, but just my creative method of dealing with the past.

Because of that, I consider this book as a work of fiction, written with the desire to revive my most vivid recollections, and to commemorate some people who I met and who left on me an indelible impression. Also, I wanted to offer something personal to my children and grandchildren–to think about and remember when I am gone.

This book is about my generation and its heritage, the missing connection between the past and the present, so badly needed and so often broken due to life turmoil and the endless attacks of all evil forces on families and their values. It is also to tell youngers about my personal rights and wrongs–to prevent them from repeating some of them. I know this is mostly pointless because every generation wants to make their own mistakes as an inevitable part of the world evolution.

Last, but not least, as wisdom says, Every person should raise a child, plant a tree and write a book. Let's consider this book as the fulfillment of my task. And if the prospective reader, while reading, gets some smiles or sheds tears–I will consider my task fulfilled.

Roman Litovsky

Sarasota, FL

2023

Acknowledgments

My first Thank you goes to the leadership of Bose Corporation (Framingham, MA), who introduced in 2021 an immoral and unethical mandate, requiring all employees to succumb to Wuhan COVID–19 virus vaccination, which is not effective and a potentially damaging option for people's health in the long term. Without this mandate, I wouldn't have retired from my job then, and possibly, would be working longer, missing my unique life opportunities, including the writing of this book.

I want to express my gratitude to my daughter in law Nina Litovsky, who once, hearing me talking about my life experiences, said, You should write a book about that! I remembered her words, but it took me a few more years to settle in my new life as a retiree in beautiful Sarasota, to put my thoughts together and start working on this book.

I am grateful to my half lifelong friend Dmitri Menn, who was my first reader, my great wower and inspirator. He has been with me during my most difficult life moments, offering the unwavering help and support. His reaction and comments were an extremely helpful guide during my writing journey.

When writing this book, I discovered a few great people, whose professional help made this book not only possible, but elevated it to the level I would never be able to reach alone:

My first Editor/ Proofreader, Lili Marlene Booth, whose patience and wisdom helped me to get through the difficult process of expressing myself correctly on my third (not native) language, but still, not losing my original style and identity. Her emotional response was my best indicator that led me through the whole work.

My second Editor/Book Compiler, Marianne Thompson, who helped me with a myriad of things that are required to be done before an author can see the book published. She was very professional and detached from the content (to be an objective editor), but still, I was able to break through and her emotional response showed me that, probably, some of my stories will resonate with a broad readers audience.

And last, but not least, I discovered a great book illustrator Sergio Drumond, who created over 30 beautiful color illustrations – one for each story. Remember the Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, What is the use of a book, thought Alice, without pictures or conversations? Sergio's drawings tell their own story, illustrating and complimenting mine, making this book a real piece of art!

It is Never Too Late

When I was in kindergarten, I was always getting sick. That was a terrible situation for my mom, who couldn't work normally. There were two main reasons why I couldn't attend kindergarten for more than two weeks in a row: my fragile health and the shameless practices of many city daycares.

The first reason is predictable. A kid who was born in a large city, having two working parents, all living in a single, ten–square meter room of a ten–room communal apartment on the fifth floor under the roof of the building, could rarely be healthy. My tonsils were always swollen, and any temperature extremes immediately resulted in a fever.

The second one was more interesting. In the state kindergarten, where every caretaker had in her care twenty or even more (!) small kids, overcrowding was a real problem. Not surprisingly, the managers had found a way to solve it: after a day nap, when all kids were placed on chamber pots, they used to open the windows. Cold, fresh air quickly cooled these kids, warm and sweaty from a nap under the blankets, and the next day, half of them got sick–reducing the workload of the personnel. Was it possible to find a better daycare? There was joke answer to this question, "In principle–yes. Just tell me where is this Principle place. Good daycare centers were only available to the people servants". That is what the ruling class elite called themselves in the USSR.

My mother tried different ways to solve the daycare problem. For some time, she took me with her to the hospital where she worked as an obstetrician and gynecologist. In the inner hospital yard, there was a small, garage–size boiler room that was run by one person–Uncle Dmitri. So, my mom dropped me off there to his care in the morning with a little lunchbox, having a sandwich and a juice, and went to work. Dmitri was the keeper of the coal boiler fire. He used to open the heavy iron door, take a full shovel of coal, and throw it inside. The furnace woofed with bright sparks. It was warm and cozy in this room. When I was bored, I would wander around the hospital grounds, poking my nose into every hole, watching men bringing in their wives and then taking them back home in a few days carrying little red–faced babies, watching the happy moms showing through the glass windows the babies to their husbands, standing on the streets and shouting some happy nonsense to their wives. This didn't last long. Some hospital boss spotted me and demanded my mom take me out.

One day, my mom took me to one old lady, named Dr. Korf. She was a retired doctor from the same hospital, and she agreed to take care of me during the day. Dr. Korf lived alone in one–room apartment in old five–floor building with no elevator, located in the Pechersk district near city Bank–the most respectable part of Kyiv. These large stone buildings were built at the beginning of the twentieth century and were supposed to host one family per level. After WWII, these huge apartments were partitioned so every one of them could host as many families as there were rooms; typically, between five and ten. Families shared one common kitchen and one bathroom. Dr. Korf was in her late sixties, a small, sweet person who loved kids, but never had her own. When it was time for lunch, she made me latkes–potato pancakes that she fried to a high degree of crunchiness and called them khrustiki, meaning the crunchy, in Russian. I still remember their taste. She read me nice books and told me funny stories that she made up on the fly. Some of her stories were definitely not for my age, but I perceived them like any other fairytales, understanding their meaning many years after. In one of her stories, a young woman called Lisa came to the hospital for delivery and after she gave birth to a healthy 3.5 Kg baby girl, she said that she would leave it at the hospital. Lisa had no husband and nowhere to go afterwards. As I learned years later, such a story was rather frequent in those days. After Lisa's release, Dr. Korf took her home for a few days until Lisa got in touch with some relatives who helped her find a place to live and later, to work.

Because of my daycare problems, my mom couldn't wait until I turned seven years old–to qualify for first grade class at school. Instead, with the help of my aunt (her sister) who taught math in one of the Kyiv schools, she placed me into the first grade when I was six years old.

This created a lot of adjustment problems in my school life. I was smaller than my peers in the first grades (and beaten up sometimes), and I was despised by the girls in my classes in middle school (girls grow faster at this age). The right place in the school environment only occurred in high school, when wits and personality became the dominating factor in relations between the students.

Somewhere during my college years, when my mom was already gone, I recollected my days with Dr. Korf. To my sorrow, I didn't even remember her full name. By memory, I found her house, climbed to the fourth floor, and rang one of the multiple bells on the door. This apartment was still occupied by many families. A young woman opened the door and on my question about Dr. Korf, she said that she’d never heard such a name. Well, apparently, Dr. Korf died long ago before this woman moved in. I was too late.

****

Our first three weeks in the USA, we spent with Ken and Ellie, living in Lexington. Ken was a retired dentist, while his wife Ellie was a former nurse. Their children were all grownups–a son and two daughters. They had an empty nest split–level house with three bedrooms on the second floor, and they generously offered us two bedrooms. To understand their level of generosity, I must mention that Ellie was going through her last and most terrible stage of uncurable cancer and wore a belt clip morphine injector. But what was left in my memory was her smile, her ability to see life’s beauties, and most of all, her motherly attitude to my wife and all our family. As I look at those days with my eyes today, I probably would not be so nice. I would be critical, patronizing, and opinionated with newcomers who still would have a long way to go to find their place in this new life. We got a good and friendly kickstart that helped us to acclimate to our new life very quickly.

After we moved out to our new rented place in Waltham, we kept contact, especially during the first year. Ellie took us to various stores, teaching us how and where to buy clothes and household items, while Ken introduced me to Home Depot and other manly places of interest. In his advice, he was very timid, he didn't lecture me on rights and wrongs, but just slightly hinted me in the right direction. I was not used to it, confusing his lack of assertiveness with a lack of importance of the things he was talking about. At that time, I was driving a shabby AMC Concord car that not only was rusted through, but also out of wheel alignment. Because of that, it chewed up new tires in just three months. I’d never had a car before, so I had no idea how much tire wear was too bad. One day, after our visit, Ken pointed at my car tires and said, Your car tires are bald, you need to replace them. I agreed and decided to do it next month (or, maybe–in two months). Larisa at that time was taking classes in Burlington, so I drove her over there and picked her up afterwards. One night of her class, I was driving during a strong rain down Lexington road and stopped at a red light. That was what I wanted, but instead, my car kept sliding, rotated sixty degrees, and smashed into a curb. As a result of this collision, both front tires exploded. How lucky I was that there were no pedestrians or cars nearby. My natural instinct to save money costed me two times more: I had to pay for towing and Larisa, after half of an hour of waiting, had to pay for an Uber. Sorry, a taxi–this was twenty years before Uber.

Unfortunately, that tragic day came. We had to say farewell to Ellie at her last place of rest. All of Ken and Ellie’s family came, including their daughter from California who we’d never met before. She immediately felt my family bond with Ken and Ellie, and was surprised. Who are these people? I was pleased. If what I felt for Ken and Ellie was so instantly visible to a person I’d never talked to, it must be real!

We jumped into our new life. Lonely Ken tried to put together the pieces of his. He was able to find a woman friend, who made his life much more bearable. But fate was adamantly merciless. Sometime later, Ken's daughter in California died and a few years later, his second daughter Joyce died too from the same medical condition as had their mother, Ellie. The whole female line of this once–great family had been devastated! I still cannot forgive myself when once I called Joyce and left a message on her phone machine, asking for some advice and possibly help in trying to resolve my wife's medical problems that had persisted for years, getting worse and worse. Joyce didn't reply. After a month, I was told that she had died, leaving her great husband Tony with two small kids. The funeral for a young beautiful mother was a surreal event; that is how I saw it.

Well, when Ken died, I was not told. Maybe his partner, who arranged the funeral, simply didn't know us. It was a snowless winter, and for some reason, I started thinking about Ken. On my way home from work, without much ado, I turned and drove to Lexington. I remembered his address by heart–you never forget your first address in a new country. When I got to the house, I was stunned. The house was dark and it looked uninhabited. I rang the bell, just to be sure; nobody answered. When I came home, I immediately looked at the internet. Ken had died in his home a month ago. I was too late.

He had a younger son, Neil, who we knew. I found Neil. He was working as a manager of the bank branch in Boston. I contacted him, got his address, and sent him my gratitude–a few things as a small gift. My words were, This was our thank you to your father and mother. Now, please accept it in their name. Did it somehow help Ken or Ellie? No. Everything that we do in these situations we do for ourselves, to indulge us, to feel better, and to reduce the pain that we feel from losing people who we loved or were close to in the past.

****

This story was spread over fifty years. My school girlfriend, Sveta, after graduation from high school, was unable to get into college. She was applying to the State University, the best one and the most anti–Semitic college in Kyiv and was not accepted. She was a brilliant student, way above most college applicants, no doubt even for a second. I was accepted to the Kyiv Polytechnical Institute (KPI), but only to the worst possible department, and still with big difficulties.

The point is, our paths were splitting. I was busy going to college classes, and she had to sit home thinking about how unfair life was. Her mother, understanding the mental condition of her daughter, found a solution: she enrolled Sveta in Technology School, preparing technicians, where students were taught how to solder electronic circuits. Forget about designing them. At least Sveta was able to have some routine classes as most of her peers had.

This way, she spent a full semester, found some low paid job and in six months, she was able to apply to the same State University, but now to the evening division. It was designed to help working people to get a higher education without leaving their work. Theoretically, it was possible to get BS and MS degrees over there, the same way as by taking the day classes.

In spite of the fact that we still saw each other from time to time, our paths started diverging. Our relations by this time had cooled off and these external events just cemented what had already happened in our minds. I sometimes thought that she was not the right girl for me. She was a princess–type creature, expecting her boyfriend to be her everything: friend, father, protector, future lover, without actually giving anything back. I needed a girl who could become the center of my life with strong mother instincts to create a family. Sveta, definitely, did not fit this expectation. I didn't meet her expectations either. As she told me once, her mother, who had a strong influence on Sveta, told her that she would never give her daughter to me as a wife. That actually made a lot of sense. In the end, I agreed with that assessment. As young adults, we were not the best match. I eventually developed the right traits for a man. But this happened much later. At that time, we were only competing with each other–the childish behavior of not fully grownup Jewish kids.

One night, I went to her college by the end of her classes, hoping to see her and walk home together. Classes ended and a large crowd of students was pouring out through the door to the street. I was standing a few steps from the alley. Finally, I saw Sveta. She was accompanied by some student; he and she were talking and looking at each other. Sveta passed by me at arms distance without noticing. I stood there speechless and couldn't even call her name. Seeing her with her new friend was a deeply hurtful feeling. After I came back to my senses, I just went home.

Everything was pathetic and predictable. Every person will experience the same love triangle situation at least once in their life and it is always painful. Our final breakup conversation happened a few months later. Sveta told me that she was in love with Nikolas (that was his name) and she thanked me for being with her during the past years, giving her a chance to look around and find the right life companion. Interesting female logic.

We were still friends but from now on our lives were in parallel universes. I graduated from my college, got married, had kids, and had been working at Institute of Semiconductors (in Russian – IPAN). She graduated too, married that same guy, and they had a daughter and were living happily. Not coincidently, they both worked in the same Institute of Physics just across the street from my place of work. Once in a while, we would walk together during lunch time, enjoying the good weather in the surrounding woods park. Looking back, I had to recognize that Sveta's choice of a husband was right. Nikolas was able to offer her what she needed. He even became her research mentor and coworker in many science projects. They were like a science team, complementing each other. Most likely, they acted the same way outside of their work environment too.

I saw her once more, two years after the Chernobyl accident. She was walking by our institute with her daughter, Anna. She looked terrible. She was wearing some kind of hoodie, protecting her head, but from what? Airborne radiation at that time was negligeable. The next year, I emigrated from the USSR and after that, we settled