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Թեմա: The skates-a short story

  1. #1
    Մշտական անդամ Hripsimee-ի ավատար
    Գրանցման ամսաթիվ
    03.03.2008
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    The skates-a short story

    Summury
    How much does the past shape our present? Do we need to overcome the past to go on with the present or should we just forget all about it? With the purchase of a pair of new skates, the heroine of this story starts pondering on these issues and her thoughts go back to the past events that had been long tried to be forgotten.

    The skates

    She did not know when exactly did the idea come to her. Was it when she saw her friend’s new, nice-looking skates or when for the first time in 5 years she stepped on the newly-opened big skating rink and unconsciously, without even knowing why, held her breath and, for a short time, closed her eyes?
    The idea, initially unclear and unsteady and then gradually more and more firm and consistent, had been living inside her head for several months already. It was not a haunting, restless wish or itch for something, on the contrary (and to her great surprise), it was a sweet and nice idea inside her head to which she sometimes referred in relaxed and dreamy moods. She waited for the proper time of its realization without any haste or restlessness, the lovely image lived inside her head patiently and confidently. And then finally, the money gathered and the time being proper, she felt like doing it. With the same unchanging (yet surprising) devotion, care and (even!) love, she started the search. She made some research in the internet , found all the necessary information about the best and most recommended models and planned the next step. She went to the best sporting goods store of the city, carefully examined all the models available with lovely, sweet calmness of mind. Finally, she found them. She loved them from the very first time she laid eyes on them. They were one of the most expensive and certainly the best looking models in the shop. Reebok Snowflakes (as she later found it was called) really WAS beautiful. All white, covered here and there with lovely grey shining snowflakes and a layer of fur inside and grey latches in the front part, firm, reliable, with a sharp, perfect-looking blade at the bottom, it oozed both loveliness and professionalism. She did not have a moment of hesitation. The lovely pair bas bought and carried home with serene caution.
    It was in the evening, all work done and the time being free, when she reopened the package and took the two beauties out of the box. The door of the room being locked, she put the lovely pair on the armchair and herself sat in front of it, looking, admiring. Weren’t they beautiful? Didn’t she deserve them? Wouldn’t she feel good in them? And wasn’t skating itself beautiful? All that gliding, circles, steps and movements… Wasn’t it graceful? No, certainly, she wouldn’t feel like a duck in a swan’s feathers with these skates, no. They were hers. And she deserved them. And yet… what was this? What strange whim? What sudden change of attitude!
    Leisurely, she let the ideas, questions pass inside her head, never taking her admiring, fixed eyes from the newly-bought skates.
    “Strange”, she thought, “ I used to hate all that now connects me with these two. And yet, I carry no prejudice against them. Moreover, I sympathize with them. A new born, lovely child, pretty and faultless they seem to me. And how could they be anything bad or evil? This snow-white, clean covering? These pretty snowflakes or this warm, welcoming opening for my legs? I trust them, I know we’ll be fine together’’.
    And what use was there? What use was there to compare them with their predecessors? She gave a little, hard-to-interpret smile. There was no edge of comparison. Those worn-out, overused models she used to wear, those easily bent, uncomfortable and unreliable ones, with shaky, unsteady blades, thin covering. She already felt much more attached to these two than she ever did to the two pairs of skates she previously had.
    True, there was no use of comparison. But she leisurely let her mind dwell on the past, (again, it was rather strange since she usually shunned the topic). Now she could already see it clearly. There she was. A little girl, frozen from head to toe, half-trembling, her head low, her movements unsure, her head blank from fear of another public reproach. She was gliding on that uneven, low-quality, small skating rink in that dimly-lit, cold and unwelcoming building with her shoulders low, her spirits crouched somewhere deep inside, her eyes dead and her only wish to be as unnoticeable as possible. And when she did get noticed by her vigilant coach, she took the torment of rude reproaches and yells as bravely as a well-trained soldier, shielding herself with an invisible barrier, pretending to be non-seeing, non-hearing, non-feeling. She took the humiliation and mocking of her fellow members of figure skating group (crude, rude-languaged boys and less cruel but equally sarcastic, arrogant and remote-looking girls) with the same cowardly silence, with same indifferent coldness and stone-likedness, for so many years did she bind her soul inside, did she hide herself, did she refuse to see and to hear, to listen and to answer, for so many years did she hide behind the wall of extreme cowardness, fear…
    She felt like the ugliest, the dumbest, the most awkward thing in the world when her choreography trainer continually stung her whole soul with mocking, cruel Russian-languaged reproaches in front of the whole group (the boys evilly imitating her awkward movements). At those moments, more than any other time, she felt so bad, so hopelessly useless and awkward, that immediately she let all her weak self-protection down, at those moments she most cowardly abandoned her little, trembling, utterly unconfident, helpless elf alone and coldly watched from aside how it was being tortured and humiliated.
    For 9 years did she go to that figure skating school and never did she find a single friend there and hardly could she recall a single pleasant or heart-warming memory from those years. All she could remember was misery, humiliation and pain.
    “Oh if they saw me now,” she thought”, If I saw then NOW. How equal would I feel to my so-dreaded coach or group members, how directly would I look at them, how clearly would I show them my self-esteem, self-love and self-confidence”.
    And yet past was past and present was present. And though present could neither influence nor change the past, the past had the capacity of both. Ever since she finally gathered all her strength and left that school, she did her best to dispose of every single memory from those times. Gave away her skates, threw away her skating dresses, never spoke of it, never thought of it. She was a different person now. A more confident, respected, loved person. And only a few timed did she feel the presence of that little, helpless girl inside her, but those glimpses of the past became rarer and rarer.
    And yet she sometimes contemplated how much of her present character was shaped by those days. How different she might have been without having experienced those miserable years? What part of her was the reminiscent of all the things she had experienced and gone through? When the time of complete denial, desire for utter oblivion passed, came the time of remembrance and reevaluation. First, she felt pain and frustration. Then those feelings came to be accompanied with some degree of curiosity. The time had separated to a certain degree her present self from the experiences of not so distant past, and she could now re-watch everything with the cold and unbiased eyes of a third party. After all, we never do speak openly about our pain until we are no longer enduring it. And now, her heart and senses less attached to the past, she felt a strange eagerness to go back, to re-experience.
    A few months ago she had happened to spend some days in the resort town where their coach used to bring them to train during summer. From the very first she had felt a strange, acute longing for the places she knew. The place she once shunned even in her thoughts suddenly started to evade her mind more and more constantly. She did go to the big stadium where they used to train every day. Even while approaching it, her eyes re-encountering, greeting the familiar scenes and objects, she felt her heart heavy under her chest. She felt anxiety, fear and strange excitement inside and the world seemed silent to her. There she was now. The steep, oh-so-well-known steps leading down to the red, partially grassy big stadium with occasional trees here and there surrounding it. Sharpening her senses and taking deep long breaths, she approached to the white thick line that used to serve them as a starting point for running. How often had she wished that those lines would disappear and everything would stop. And now, voluntarily, she stood in front of those lines and felt a firm wish to run. She started. Her nostrils wide open, she could clearly feel the painfully familiar scent rising from the stadium (a mixture of grass and concrete), her eyes wide open, she didn’t pass a single shrub or half-erased line without recognizing it, her legs firm and her movements clear and free, she felt how every muscle, every part of her body experienced, listened and remembered.
    The past-honoring, almost ritual circle over, she felt half-surprised not to find her coach in his usual place, under the big tree facing the start line, lazily smoking his cigarette and marking the time.
    In that stadium past seemed almost palpable, it existed, it WAS there. The place contained it. And though she couldn’t see it, she clearly could feel it in everything she saw. She felt it even in the air. Smelling it she saw faces and recalled events. And turning her glance she always searched and was always a bit surprised not to find what she expected. All those faces, all the reminiscence of the past seemed to be right beside her, shielded with some invisible magic, existing in some parallel reality.
    “How interesting”, she thought, “for me this place is so rich, so bitterly sweet, so meaningful and so full of life, it doesn’t matter how many years passes, it wouldn’t matter if I run this stadium’s circle for thousands of times, this place knows me, I know it, my heart will recognize it every time I approach it. Others would walk past it without a single sign of interest, with complete and justified indifference. I will always stop”.
    The stadium, the figure-skating school (which she never visited after leaving it), her coaches, her group members, all the people she knew and remembered from those times, all the things she could recall, were now inside her, inside the very gaze which was now fixed at the newly-bought skates.
    ……………………………………….

  2. #2
    Մշտական անդամ Hripsimee-ի ավատար
    Գրանցման ամսաթիվ
    03.03.2008
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    She did let herself visit the skating rink frequently. The world she so eagerly abandoned would sooner or later sent its agents. She was sure of it. Some faces she knew very well, others were dimly familiar. And then one day as she approached the skating rink…
    “O hallo! Don’t you recognize me?”
    “How could I possibly not recognize you?”she thought.
    “Karen,” she said aloud, “how are you? Do you train here?”
    No, he didn’t train, he said in his coarse manner, fixing his sheepish, non-intelligent eyes on her. He was just coming for pleasure. Did she buy her skates? How much did they cost? Aw! So little? He had bought his own ones at a price three times higher. It was sent directly form Moscow! Those she wears are surely useless, broken things! Ha! No doubt this is why she can’t do that simple spinning! She has gone so much backwards!
    He himself was showing off as hard as he could. Constantly laughing hysterically with the typical, weird, stupid laugh at those who couldn’t skate properly, Karen himself did nothing more remarkable than some teenage-fashioned tricks on the ice. Being 5 years older than she and having in his disposal only smooth gliding and a few boyish tricks to impress the crowd , he couldn’t possibly aspire for anything more than being the hero in the eyes of a first-time-on-the-ice kid. Did he pursue any profession? What interests did he have in life? Twice having been dropped from the University (as he boastingly mentioned to her), Karen didn’t seem to have any future career plans.
    Now and then she would carelessly watch him. She had changed so much and he had stayed the same crude, silly, in-need-to-grow-up fellow. As she watched his beastly movement and superficial, depthless eyes, she gave herself account that this ignorant, rude, unsophisticated boy didn’t have the slightest idea of the lasting wound his coarse, crude nature had once inflicted on her delicate, yet-to-be-developed character. He couldn’t possibly know that the complexes she still had about her own appearance, the doubts about her possible attractiveness, the fear she still felt while communicating with people, all these were connected with an invisible fiber to the hysterical laughs he and his fellow friends had the habit of giving at her crooked legs, her undeveloped breast, her shyness, her helplessness, her awkwardness.
    She didn’t feel pain, she didn’t feel reproach, neither fear, nor anguish, nor excitement… her mind was blank. It was a faceless, dull blankness.
    On the way home she felt like she had just swallowed something the taste of which she couldn’t yet identify. Something shapeless, nameless. Such is the taste of the dead bodies of the past sorrows. No longer active and bitter, they cease from being wounds or even scars and only the corpse, the dead, the cold, the dull and the flavorless corpse remains…
    Laying down in her bed that night she felt like a runner who, finally reaching the long-desired finish line, suddenly finds out that all the players had long gone. She felt like crying, but the tears stuck somewhere in her throat.

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