| مستخلص: |
In the summer of 1973, when I was 18, I camped on a Black Sea beach with a Ukrainian boy named Boris, whose blue eyes and sun-bleached hair made my knees wobble every time I looked in his direction. Had my mother discovered this transgression (I was supposed to be vacationing at my girlfriend's family's dacha), I would have felt a shame greater than what befell me six years later, when I betrayed my country by marrying an American and leaving Russia. But that summer, the Crimean sun, the turquoise sea and Boris's cinnamon tan led me astray into the adult world of vranyo. Vranyo is a Russian word for lying -- a special form of lying. I learned of it in a Leningrad nursery school from Aunt Polya, who was in charge of the kitchen and who wasn't really my aunt. She loomed over us with a pitcher of warm milk and a tray with slices of buttered bread that had absorbed all the rancid smells of the kitchen, watching closely to make sure we ate and drank everything. We all knew she was watching us, she knew that we knew and we knew she knew that we knew. She gave us surprise glances, and we chewed diligently, pretending we didn't expect her to look. We all played the game: my sister played it at school, and my parents played it at work. All of us pretended, the watchers and the watched. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER] |
