Page 21 - Revelation

Svetlana de Rohan-Levashova. Revelation

As usual my mother was tender and warm, but I felt with my whole being that
this story oppressed her and she truly did not know how to begin our conversation.
We were talking for a very long time. I did my very best to explain to her how much
all that meant to me and how terrible I would feel if I lost it. But it seemed that this
time I had indeed scared her and she said that, if I did not want her to tell my father
everything, when he came back home, I must promise that that kind of thing would
never be repeated again.

She did not understand that these bizarre "surprises" of mine did not happen at
my will and I almost never knew, when one or another "surprise" would happen. But
because my father’s opinion mattered to me more than anything else, I promised my
mother that I would not do anything of the kind, as far as it depended solely on me.

Everyday life

Like all other children I went to school, did my homework, played with my
"ordinary" friends and infinitely missed my other, unusual and shining "star friends".
Regrettably, complications sprang up on every side at school too. I began to attend it
when I was six (normally, children began school in the former USSR at the age of
seven), because the testing showed that I could go right into grade 3 or 4, which,
certainly, pleased nobody. My school friends considered that everything came too
easily to me, and their mothers quite disliked me for that for some reason. So, it turned
out that I was alone almost all the time at school too.
I had only one real school friend, the girl with whom I shared a desk. We sat
together for the whole twelve school years, but the relationships with other children
did not turn out right for some reason. And not because I did not want that, or because
I did not try, on the contrary, I did. But I always had a very strange feeling, as if we
lived at different poles. I never did my homework, or better to say I did it, but it took
just several minutes. My parents, certainly, always checked it, and because usually
there were no errors, I had plenty of free time. I attended a musical school (studied
playing the piano and also singing), painted, embroidered and read a lot. But all the
same, I had a lot of free time left…

It was winter. All the neighbourhood boys skied because they were all older than
me (and they were precisely my best friends then) and I had to content myself with
sleighing, which to my mind was good enough only for kids. And, certainly, I
desperately wanted to ski!
Finally I somehow managed to entreat my softhearted mother and she bought me
the smallest skis she could ever get. I was in seventh heaven!!! I immediately rushed
to share the news with my friends and was absolutely ready to try my new acquisitions
on the same day. Usually they went to a large mountain to ski, near the river, where
the princely castle once was. The ice-hills were very high there and in order to ski one
had to have at least some initial skills, which, unfortunately, I did not.

But of course, I was not going to yield to anybody in this respect. When at last,
puffing and sweating (despite the temperature of 25 C below zero!), I clambered
behind the others to the top, I, frankly speaking, was terrified. Romas, one of the
boys, asked me whether I wanted to watch them ski down first, but of course I said no

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