IN THE CELLAR

CATEGORY: JURI

Juri and I were driving along the freeway.  It was a spring day.  I was ecstatically commenting on the blossoming and leafing verdure visible out the car window.  Juri said, “How come you know the names of everything–all the plants and trees and birds and animals”?  I was taken aback.  I said, “ I don’t know the names of everything.”  He said, “Yes you do.  What is that”?  I told him.  “And that’?  “And that”?  If this was a test I was just lucky.  Well, of course I knew the names of a lot of things. I said, “I suppose it is because my mother taught us to be curious.”  

Juri was quiet for awhile.  Then he said, “My mother taught us never to be curious, never to ask questions, and if anyone asked us a question or came knocking at the door, we were taught to run into the cellar and lock ourselves in.”

I thought of his house .  I thought it was no wonder he didn’t want windows onto the street, that he wanted high fences and locking gates.  I thought of the difference between his childhood and mine: his being afraid of everything and mine being afraid of nothing—well almost nothing; there was always my father.  Juri’s childhood was behind locked doors and mine had no locked doors at all.  I pictured him after his family escaped into Germany when he had lived in a ten foot cubicle of hanging sheets.  I compared it to mine with free run of a whole ranch and a whole town with caring people everywhere.  I turned my face to again look out the window and shed silent tears.