He laughed like the most serious child I ever knew, telling me the story about the country where everyone was deaf. He was not disappointed, a man of fifty staring at the juicy watermelon meat right there on the sidewalk.

I did ask once: a man was holding two huge watermelons, one in each arm.īut as I asked more questions, his face grew red and ah! one watermelon fell on the ground as he attempted to gesticulate through the conversation. In Odessa, language always involved gestures – it was impossible to ask someone for directions if their hands were busy. A city famous for its drunk tailors, huge mausoleums of rabbis, horse owners and horse thieves, and most of all, for its stuffed and baked fish. In the beginning was the sea – we heard the surf in our breathing, certain that we carried sea water in our veins. I retell the story the light etches into my hand: Little book, go to the city without me.Īrmy of Clones: On 9 June, 2014, a group of pro-Russian terrorists shot and destroyed all sculptures in the series that was exhibited at Izolyatsia Art Centre, Donetsk, Ukraine Image: Courtesy of Maria Kulikovska Travelling Musicians The sun began a routine narration, whitening their bodies: mother, father dancing, moving as the darkness spoke behind them. At the local factory, my father took a handful of snow, put it in my mouth. At night, I woke to whisper: yes, we lived. The city trembled, a ghost-ship setting sail. My grandfathers fought the German tanks on tractors, I kept a suitcase full of Brodsky’s poems. This dance evidently presents all aspects of body, effort, space, shape and time through the dancers movement. He was an angel, he had no name, we wrestled, yes. And my classmate invented twenty names for Jew. At this, my doctor laughed, his granddaughter touched my eyelid – I kissed the back of her knee. The night undressed us (I counted its pulse) my mother danced, she filled the past with peaches, casseroles. She understood loneliness, hid the dead in the earth like partisans.

A bust-cut sculpture cast from artist Maria Kulikovska’s body, created in ballistic soap and flowers inside, in a collection of Odessa Fine Arts Museum (Summer 2019) Image: Courtesy of Maria Kulikovska

Dancing in Odessa by Ilya Kaminsky