The Calling

The story of a young Zoya Savard who stands at a forked path. Frustrated by the single identity that life allows, she must make her decision paving her future.

Isn’t it scary that we get to be only one person in our entire life? I am a girl living in California, short black hair, pale white skin, no freckles but I have a wide grin. But what if I wanted to be .. Harry? Harry who stands six feet tall, big blue eyes that have the depth of the ocean and when Harry smiles there are around fifty lines on his face; you can still see the blue through the slits, glistening the way the water in the dancing brook shines when hit by sunlight. Or what if I wanted to be teenage mother raising a beautiful child? I have always wondered what it would be like to be the other person. Literature and art for me are the only ways by which I can dive into an ocean of unknown experiences. I wouldn’t know what it would be like to be an 11 year old red head orphan girl in Green Gables if it weren’t for Anne Shirley and Lucy Maud Montgomery or how Wordsworth felt when he stood beside the lake, all alone looking at the dancing golden daffodils. Although art isn’t as blunt as writing when it comes to sharing experiences, the way she narrates stories are more fragile and delicate. Unlike writing art doesn’t leave the door ajar but keeps it locked under different combinations. The observer experiences something new with each combination she tries. So by now you should know that Literature and art are like my left and my right lungs, they help me breathe. Till I was eighteen and in high school it was completely okay to be equally passionate about both these subjects. Now that I am done with high school I need to make a choice. The art college I’ve always wanted to go to doesn’t have a literature course and the literature college I got into won’t let me get a degree in art. This is the thing I dread the most! How do I make this choice?  I Have troubles choosing between waffles or pancakes!

So here’s how I made my first big decision. It was Bea Bea’s Sunday .Twice a month the whole Savard family- me, Shaun Savard( that’s my dad) and Lyla Savard( that’s ma) go to our favorite breakfast place called Bea Bea’s. You probably won’t hear this  for a lot of cafes in Lakeside, San Diego (especially one with the name Bea Bea’s) but this tiny cozy café reminded me so much of Russia. It was maybe because Egor and Phillipa the owners of the café were Russian and all the three cream colored walls were adorned with paintings of my favorite Russian painter Wasilly Kandinsky. Egor and Phillipa had come to know us quite well by now and reserved our table by the window with the daisies for all the Sundays we visited. “What have the paintings whispered to you today?” Egor asked me. The confused soul that I was, I could never decide on what to choose from the menu although I’d tasted almost every dish on it. I could smell the gooey molten strands of cheese; I could almost taste the sweet nectar that had seeped into the tiny holes in the pancake that I saw on the next table. Decisions decisions!! I had gotten so used to this irksome nature of mine and had devised a way of making up my mind. While my olfactory receptors were busy at work, I looked at the painting in front of me, well what I saw was ‘Houses in Munich’ and the yellow in the painting spoke to me- “I’ll have a  grilled cheese sandwich”, I said. This had become a habit of mine. I listened to paintings and I saw writing to make up my mind. While I was enjoying my grilled cheese sandwich my dad asked me” Zoya, I and ma have come up with a plan we would like to propose to you”. This made me really nervous. The plans my parents come up with are generally brilliant but also very, very scary. “We think you should a year off and travel, read, write, go to art galleries, go to inspiring places. Maybe it’ll help make your decision. We don’t want you to hurry into anything. We’re giving you something that we never had, time. What do you think?” I thought they were unknown continent?

All I could ever write about or paint were my adventures. I decided I have to know what it’s like to be an eighteen year old girl in Russia. So I packed my bags and did my research.

Before I knew it, I was walking down the streets of St Petersburg with my palms wrapped around an old and perhaps frequently read edition of Anna Karenina which I bought from Haslam’s Books on 2397, Jr St. The November air was a little too crisp and bit me on my exposed skin but there was something so comforting about holding that book that once belonged to an Alexander. I wonder what he was like.

After the impulse visit to the second hand bookstore, my second destination was the church of our savior on spilled blood”. I’d only marveled at the most intricate mosaics and the onion domes in pictures. Now that they were before me they looked even more detailed and intricate. I stood amidst the most beautiful artworks I’d ever seen and thought about how every building must have its own story to tell but only a handful are heard. Just like each of us must have a book in us but only some of us publish them. Lost in my own thoughts I slipped out into the streets again. The Griboyedov canal embankment was busy with people, pulsating with energy while this lone white bench sat whistling to itself right in in the middle of the pavement. I decided to give it some company. I was reading my book as the bench whistled a little louder, an old man around the age of eighty, (the wrinkles on his round face give it away) joined the both of us. “Are you American” he asked me. “Yes, sir, I’m from San Diego, California”. “Lovely place” he said. Curious me was dying to know his story “Tell me sir how was it like to be a young man in Russia” I asked him. His bright eyes dimmed a little as he tried hard to extend his lips into a smile.” I remember those days so well, times were hard. We were merely puppets in the play Joseph Stalin was directing. I felt caged, like a dog, like it was someone else’s life I was living.  I would sit out for hours before walking into our single room home thinking how to tell my darling Agata that she’d have to go to bed on an empty stomach for the seventh time. We had heard of famines in the past and there had been days when my father yelled at my little brother and me when we’d say we were hungry because my father had no money. I made a promise to myself as a young man that my wife and my children would not see a day when they had to lay their heads on the pillow, hold their aching stomachs with clenched fists and shut their eyes so tight that they’d hope they didn’t wake up the next day. Little girl, it was the evening of the 18^th of July ,1928 when my wife walked up to me, rested her fragile head on my bony shoulder, she looked into my eyes for a moment and then couldn’t hold her pain in anymore. Her eyes bled tears of agony, hunger and frustration. She told me that she was pregnant, that we were going to have a baby.” He paused for a bit as he looked up at the grey clouds that hovered over us.” Agata and I both knew that we weren’t raising our baby in a square box according to the terms of some man siting and controlling our lives. My child would not have to join the octobrists at the age of eight, the pioneers at the age of ten and the Komsomal at the age of nineteen. My child would have the freedom to read, write about things she wanted to, draw, and paint whatever she desired.” “So what did you do?” I asked. “We decided to escape to America. I had saved up money for this very purpose. It was the 20^th of October, 1928 when we aboded the ship to America. I was never this sure about anything.” “Not even about marrying Agata” I asked. His skin wrapped around his face tighter but etched more lines around his eyes as his serious face eased into a smile. “oh dear girl! of course not. Agata was the love of my life. I could never be as sure of anything else. No, no.” He went on with his story after a sigh. “I and Agata got a small chamber in the ship. Although it was smaller than the room we lived in, the thought of the sea outside made it feel so much bigger. From the first night on the sea I began reading to Agata. I read ‘The Escape’ by Dimitri Adaksin to her. Agata would curl around on the edge of the wide window sill, with eyes gleaming in excitement to know what happened ahead. She fell in love with Agilia the protagonist in the novel; Agata loved her guts and her humor. She hoped that our child girl or boy would discover the beauty and power of writing.” After three months and twenty days on the 20^th of February 1929 the longest wait of our lives was over. We stepped into a foreign land feeling the joy of a prisoner ending his fifty year parole and also his anxiety about what to do next. It was a struggle but we did settle in. It took me two weeks to find an editor’s post in a local paper; and rent a house that felt too large though it had only two rooms and a bathroom.  After two months Yara-my strength was born. We had to go through tough times in America too but my daughter was free there. Little girl, once you feel the chains of oppression crush you, you start valuing freedom and you want to hold onto it with dear life.” We both listened to the silence for a while, the grey clouds had cleared now but the air was as crisp as ever. “Oh my! I’ve got to pick my granddaughter from school, I better get going little girl.” I watched uhh…I never asked him his name; well Agata’s husband left me and the bench and vanished around the bend. Maybe this is the story Ill share with the world. I realized that my brush could capture certain moments in Agata and her husband’s life but my pen could help connect all their moments and narrate  their story. Maybe in this life I choose to be Zoya Savard- a writer.