April 30
Lida had never been afraid of anything. Maybe because she did not watch TV or read the newspapers. Lida would listen to the radio and knit. She would sit in her small, cramped room on the bed under a monochrome tapestry (a naked woman on a riverbank), knit, and, of course, listen to the radio.
Lida swam in the Dnipro all year. Almost every day, fearless and hardened by nature, she went to the river, resolutely crossed the long sandy beach covered with islands of ice and mounds of snow, walked out on the frozen surface, looked for an ice hole left by fishermen, took off her clothes, but for a faded-pink and at one time red swimsuit, firmly rested her hands on the edges of the hole, and dove in. And all this happened year after year, until one February day she didn’t resurface from beneath the ice.
Continue Reading
