"Koksinel" by Dina Rubina, summary Automatic translate

This book is a collection of short stories and novellas published in 2011. The texts are united by themes of memory, emigration, and human vulnerability, set against the backdrop of historical catastrophes and everyday dramas. The characters seek refuge from the past in various cities: from Jerusalem and Safed to Venice and Bruges.

High water of the Venetians

The first story tells the story of an Israeli biochemist, Dr. Lurye. Her school friends call her Kuteya. She learns of a single metastasis in her lung. Secretly from her husband, Misha, and her college-age daughter, she flies to Venice for a few days. Kuteya wanders through Italian squares, visits ancient churches, and admires Tintoretto paintings. The heroine encounters an autumn flood, the so-called high water.

At the hotel, Kutia meets Antonio, the receptionist. The young man bears a striking resemblance to her brother, Antosha, who died of a heroin overdose. Kutia spends a passionate night with Antonio. The next morning, she calls her colleague, Yurik. He asks the doctor to tell her husband a fictitious diagnosis: severe tuberculosis. Afterward, she returns home for treatment, having found the courage to fight the disease.

Jazz band on Charles Bridge

The narrator travels with her family through Prague and Karlovy Vary. They stroll through the old Jewish ghetto and the ancient streets of the Czech capital. The woman buys books and immerses herself in a biography of Franz Kafka. She studies in detail the story of his painful love for the translator Milena Jesenská.

The writer’s historical fears of the surrounding hostile environment are closely intertwined in her mind with news of contemporary terrorist attacks in Israel. The author reflects on European anti-Semitism and the fate of the Jewish community. That evening, on the bridge, the family listens to a street jazz band perform, the lead singer a virtuoso washboard player.

Coxinelle

On her way to the Frankfurt Book Fair, the heroine stops in Germany. In a small wine-growing town on the Rhine, she sees Roberta. She’s an elderly massage therapist, dressed in a green dress and having experienced a difficult life tragedy. Her ex-husband wanders the streets, accompanied by a calico cat.

Later, on the plane, the woman meets a bald Israeli architect, Yona. He tells how, as a young child, he fled Nazi Berlin with his father for Jaffa. The boy lost his sense of fear forever after his father threw him from the high side of an arriving ship, straight into the arms of rescuers.

Adam and Miriam

In Vaso and Manana’s basement restaurant in Jerusalem, a storyteller treats a fellow traveler, Miriam, to mushroom soup. The old woman shares her incredible story of survival. During the mass execution of Jews in the Grodno ghetto, she miraculously escaped from a mass grave. Later, the wounded girl hid in a barn under the warm body of a huge boar.

Miriam then spent two years in a hole dug under the oven of a compassionate farmer named Semyon. Having arrived in the United States, decades later she met her youthful lover, Adam, at a biology symposium in San Francisco. They married and lived together for twenty-one years, constantly moving between Israel and America.

Jewish bride

The author, her husband Boris, and their daughter Eva travel to Brussels to visit their old friend Yoska. During the war, the little boy was rescued by Dutch farmers, while his entire wealthy family perished in Nazi camps. As an adult, Yoska left for Israel. He bought a cottage in the Ma’ale Adumim settlement, worked as a simple security guard, and searched in vain for a wife.

Having suffered a setback in his personal life, he sold his house and returned to Belgium to care for his elderly father, a former opera tenor. The friends strolled through Bruges and Amsterdam, admiring the paintings of Van Dyck, Memling, and Rembrandt. Boris lingered in admiration of the famous painting "The Jewish Bride."

Big-eyed emperor, a family of sea breams

Former Russian investigator Arkady earns extra money in Israel by caring for sick elderly people. He cares for a legless captain with a German Shepherd, the deranged partisan Fanya Fishman, the former underground fighter Motya, and Mark, a Bergen-Belsen escapee. Later, Arkady teaches drawing to the depressed, overweight Dani, the heir to the wealthy Mintz family.

Tired of the blatant snobbery of his student’s relatives, the hero flees a lavish banquet. On the street, he accidentally gets into a brutal fight. Arkady smashes a diner window, courageously defending old Mark from the insults of local hooligans. In the hospital, the hero tells his story to his wardmate, Senya.

You and I under peach clouds

The author tenderly describes her pet, a Tibetan terrier named Kondrat. The dog joined the family during their harsh years in an asbestos-filled trailer in Samaria. Kondrat jealously guards plush slippers, fiercely fights with a black Great Dane on the neighboring balcony, and chases ground squirrels. The dog is terrified of holiday fireworks, yet remains absolutely devoted to his owners.

Grandfather and Laima

The narrator writes a letter to Irina Efremovna, an employee of the Yad Vashem memorial complex. She describes in detail the fate of her grandfather, Moisei Gurevich, exiled to the Siberian uranium mines, and his camp companion, Laima. Having given birth to a son, Sergei, on the way, the exhausted Laima miraculously reached the Latvian capital.

Soon, the woman received news and returned to Moses, who had settled in Siberia. After his full rehabilitation, the grandfather showed remarkable resourcefulness. He found his first children in Saratov right on his daughter’s wedding day.

Ralph and Shura

A short story about a dog named Ralph, who grew up under the strict guardianship of his overbearing cat, Shura. The animals peacefully shared their food bowl and gave way to the elderly tortoise, Ryndey. When Shura was brutally murdered by street thugs, Ralph mourned her for a long time, searching inconsolably for her throughout the apartment.

Santa Claus’s staff

Young theater actor Mikhail Martynov agrees to work as Father Frost at a remote pioneer camp near Leningrad. Arriving without a beard or a proper suit, he completely fails his evening performance. That night, in an empty, cold gymnasium, he is awakened by a red-haired girl, Tanya, who passionately dreams of becoming an actress.

Mikhail enthusiastically performs the finale of Edmond Rostand’s play for her. The actor reads the monologues of Cyrano and Roxane. He brings the stunned girl to tears of delight, gives her an old bus pass with the theater studio’s phone number, and on a clear, frosty morning, cheerfully heads off to the commuter train.

Fog

Safed police investigator Arkady investigates the strange suicide of an Arab girl, Jamila. It turns out that her brother, Salah, forced his sister to drink poison because of damaging rumors about her secret nocturnal encounters with a young soldier. The unfortunate woman lay dying for four long days. Despite grueling interrogations and autopsy results, Arkady is unable to prove murder.

On a foggy winter night, the hero wanders into the empty basement of old Duvid-Azis. Arkady listens to a philosophical debate between two Kabbalists, sips homemade wine, and releases his inner rage. Due to lack of evidence, the case is transferred to the Ministry of Justice, and a satisfied Salah is sent home.

The last wild boar from the forests of Pontevedra

This sprawling story takes place in the Israeli Palace of Culture, a municipal institution called Matnas. The narrator, Dina, is temporarily working as the coordinator of Russian programs. Director Alfonso — a narcissistic, handsome man from a fashion magazine cover — is in constant conflict with the music school’s director, Taisiya. The prop master and dwarf, Lucio, suffers because of his plump wife, who is secretly dating her half-brother, Alfonso.

Lucio entertains troubled teenagers with stories of bullfighting, frightens his colleagues with severed limbs, and stages puppet shows. The dwarf tells Dina a legend about an ancient family curse. According to him, men in their Spanish family die from boar tusks or sharp bull horns. A real drama unfolds at the Purim carnival. Bruria, a flamenco teacher in love with Alfonso, hints to everyone from the stage about his affair with his half-sister.

Lucio immediately changes into Maximilian’s knightly armor and attacks the director with a fake sword. A frightened Alfonso flees into the night street. Soon, the dwarf is found dead at the bottom of an ancient water cistern at the Byzantine monastery of Martyrius. Police rule the tragedy an accident. Investigators conclude that Lucio simply fell from an iron staircase.

Dina is certain that the brilliant prop master staged his own death, completely resembling a hunted wild boar from the forests of Pontevedra. Disgraced, Alfonso returns to Argentina forever with Bruria. Taisiya secures the long-awaited separation of the music school from the city’s Palace of Culture.