"Through the Hat’s Net" by Dina Rubina, summary Automatic translate

This book is a collection of travel essays and short stories. The main texts were written in 2004 and 2005. The author documents life in European and Israeli cities through small, everyday details, lively dialogues, and encounters with random passersby. The author deliberately avoids well-known tourist routes, preferring to observe the authentic lives of local residents. In her texts, the author reflects on the craft of writing, the origins of creativity, and the twists and turns of human destinies.

Jerusalem Sketches

In the preface, the author speaks of searching for the soul of the city. She collects weightless trophies: the rustling of trees, the morning calls of birds, the unusual arrangement of stones.

The story "Jerusalemites" meticulously documents the colorful life of the Israeli capital. The narrator sits in an evening at a street cafe on Yoel Solomon Street, observing the passersby. She records snippets of conversations and phone calls from readers and fellow writers. Poet Igor Guberman calls, indignantly telling her about a traffic ticket. Humorist Yulian Bezrodny calls, wanting to provide a grand plot for a novel. The reader is presented with the grotesque stories of ordinary people.

Police investigator Misha is investigating a family dispute between repatriates. A daughter stabbed her father for choking her with a tape recorder cord because the music was too loud. Reservists on vacation frighten Russian pilgrims with jokes about Zionist cannibals. An elderly non-Jewish woman from Russia is seeking a diploma in Jewish identity so she can proudly stand under the chuppah at her daughter’s wedding. A memory comes to mind of the elderly nanny Nyusha, who came from Moscow with her Jewish family in the 1990s and was buried in a Christian cemetery on Mount Zion.

Pets and morning walks

The text "You and I Under Peach Clouds" is dedicated to a shaggy Tibetan terrier named Kondrat. The dog came into the family by chance when the writer was living in an asbestos trailer in Samaria. The family later moved to a high-rise apartment in a Jerusalem suburb. The dog loves to bark at the neighbors from the captain’s bridge — a chair by a large window. The author describes the dog’s habits with humor. He is fearless, jealously guards old socks, is deathly afraid of holiday fireworks, and loves sleeping on the owners’ beds.

The dog has two stuffed rabbits, which he adores like a sultan in his harem. The narrator confesses her boundless affection for the animal as they gaze together at the Jerusalem hills. The essay "Time of the Nightingale" captures early morning walks with the dog. At four in the morning, the muezzin in the Arab village of Al-Azaria calls the faithful to prayer. Bedouin women search for useful items in trash cans.

Arab Ibrahim and his sons sweep the streets, discussing how buying a new wife is cheaper than buying a car. A delivery girl tosses newspapers onto balconies as she goes. The day becomes oppressively hot, and the streets echo with the cries of a junk dealer demanding old computers and washing machines.

Traveling in Europe

The story "School of Light" takes place in the Netherlands. The heroine flies to Amsterdam after a lecture in Leiden. Together with her husband, Boris, she visits The Hague and views paintings by Jan Vermeer and Carel Fabritius at the Mauritshuis. The artist admires the precise mathematical calculations of chiaroscuro in the old Dutch masters. The couple stays in Delft, in a small inn in an old building. A darkened copy of Vermeer’s "View of Delft" hangs on the wall of their room.

The dramatic history of this painting soon comes to light. In the 1940s, the innkeeper’s mother, Mrs. Van Lowe, hid Jews in the basement. One of them, the ailing young artist Samuel, painted this copy by candlelight shortly before his death. The elderly owner drily refuses the title of Righteous Among the Nations, declaring bluntly: "I don’t want a reward for my fate."

The story "Villa Consolation" takes us to Italy. A writer and a friend travel south to Sorrento. They stay in an ancient house on a cliff above the Bay of Naples. The friend recounts the tragic family history of the villa’s owner, Maria. Maria’s grandfather, a wealthy merchant from Odessa, fled the country in 1917. His wife died in childbirth on a ship. The child was nursed by a local girl, Lucia, who had a daughter with a cleft lip.

Lucia’s grandfather lived with her for 20 years. When he died, he left her no inheritance. Inconsolable, Lucia hanged herself in the kitchen, cursing all future daughters of her family. Now Maria has restored the abandoned house. She secretly meets here with her Israeli lover, Shimon. Shimon’s legal wife has long been bedridden with a serious illness.

Germany and the return to the sea

The essay "Coccinelle" describes a trip to a book fair in Frankfurt. The writer is oppressed by German reality. She sees the ghosts of the catastrophe of the last century everywhere. In Munich, nudists sunbathe and play cards on a green lawn in the English Garden. This sight evokes a strong sense of unease in the narrator. In Leipzig, she notices teenagers marching and is alarmed by their measured stride.

In a tourist town on the Rhine, the heroine watches an organ grinder with a white dog. Soon, an elderly man in a green dress walks down the street. It’s a coccinelle named Roberta. It turns out he used to work as a massage therapist at an orthopedic sanatorium. That evening, Roberta expertly massages the narrator’s stiff shoulders, relieving muscle tension and emotional anxiety.

On the plane, the heroine meets the Israeli architect Yona. He shares memories of his childhood in Berlin. His neighbor, the janitor Krügge, took the fire truck his father had given him from young Yona and gave it to his son. Yona’s family fled to Palestine on the last ship. In the port of Jaffa, his father threw the boy over the high side of the ship into the arms of a boatman. In the short flight above the sea, Yona’s childhood fear disappeared forever.

The text "At the End of August" recounts the author’s return to Israel after three years of grueling bureaucratic work in Moscow. The writer falls gravely ill from exhaustion. An elderly homeopath advises her to write down all her pent-up bitterness and walk barefoot on the sea sand. The narrator buys sedative drops from a war-crippled invalid named Gabi at a Tel Aviv pharmacy.

Then she dines on turkey shawarma in a quiet café. The radio broadcasts breaking news about a bus bombing in Jerusalem. People are dying. The heroine walks to the Mediterranean Sea, takes off her sandals, and wades into the salty water. Schools of small fish peck at her feet. At sunset, she experiences a poignant love for life.

In the footsteps of Van Gogh and Kafka

In the story "Cold Spring in Provence," the heroine and her husband travel through the south of France. A cold spring rain falls constantly. In Antibes, at a flea market, the writer buys an old book of Vincent van Gogh’s letters in Russian. Reading these letters becomes the main plot of the trip. The couple visits Arles and Saint-Rémy, where the great artist lived and was treated.

They take refuge from the downpours in cramped bars reminiscent of those the artist painted. The husband tries in vain to order real absinthe, but receives only anisette. Van Gogh’s letters to his brother Theo reveal an abyss of loneliness, fear of life, and obsession with work. In Aix-en-Provence, the couple tours Paul Cézanne’s studio. They wander along the wet roads, peering at the surroundings through the streams.

The story ends with a grim and fortuitous revelation. The writer reads a terrible piece of news in an old English newspaper on the train floor. In Amsterdam, an Islamic fanatic shot and killed director Theo van Gogh, the artist’s great-nephew. The perpetrator left a note with verses from the Koran at the scene.

The collection concludes with the story "Jazz Band on the Charles Bridge." A married couple arrives in Prague, then travels to Karlovy Vary. Hot springs flow ceaselessly in the wooden colonnades. Crowds of elderly spa guests drink water from flat mugs. The writer reads two books about Franz Kafka, reflecting on his tragic affair with the writer Milena Jesenská.

The letters convey the writer’s endless fear of the flesh, authority, and the mundane world. That evening, a jazz band performs on Charles Bridge. One of the musicians masterfully plays washboards with thimbles on his fingers. The music resonates with joyful rhythms. Life goes on, despite historical catastrophes and the personal tragedies of 20th-century geniuses.