Page 28 - Revelation

Svetlana de Rohan-Levashova. Revelation

everywhere: at other lessons, during breaks, at home and outside. I drew on sand,
paper and window-glass, in short
– anywhere possible. I drew only human eyes for some reason. It seemed to me then
that it would help me to find a very important answer. I was always fond of observing
human faces, eyes in particular, because very often people dislike saying what they
truly think, but their eyes tell everything. It is obvious that not in vain they say that
eyes are the mirror of our soul. And I drew hundreds and hundreds of these eyes – sad
and happy, grieving and satisfied, kind and wicked. For me it was again a time of
cognition of something, the next attempt to dig down to some truth, although I had
no idea of what truth. It was just the next time of "search", which, with different
"digressions", lasted almost my whole conscious life.

Giving up eating
Day flew after day, months passed, and I continued to surprise (and sometimes
terrify!) my family and very often myself with my numerous new "unbelievable" and
sometimes unsafe adventures. When I was nine I suddenly, for some unknown to me
reason, stopped eating, which terribly frightened my mother and upset my
grandmother.

My grandmother was a genuine first-class cook! All the members of our family
gathered at the table to enjoy her famous cabbage pirozhki, including my mother’s
brother, who lived then 150 kilometres away. Nevertheless, he came to visit us every
time when my grandma baked her pirozhki. Even now I remember very well and with
enormous warmth those "great and mysterious" preparations: the smell of the fresh yeast
pastry, which had been rising for the whole night in a clay pot near the stove and turned
in the morning into dozens of white circles spread all over the kitchen table, waiting for
their magic time to turn into fluffy pirozhki... and my grandma, concentrating, her hands
covered with white flour, busy, like a bee buzzing around the stove. I also remember
how impatiently we waited for the moment when our "craving" nostrils could finally
snatch the first amazing, deliciously delicate, savour of freshly baked pastry…
It always was a very special occasion, a true feast, because everybody adored her
pirozhki. And whoever came to our house, there always was a place for him at my
grandma’s large and hospitable table. We always stayed late at night, trying to prolong
the delight of being together. But even when our tea-drinking was over, nobody
wanted to leave; it was as if my grandma "baked" part of her kind soul into her
pirozhki and everybody wanted to sit a little bit longer and warm themselves near her
cosy hearth and big heart.

My grandma truly loved to cook; whatever she made was always incredibly
delicious. It could be Siberian meat dumplings, smelling so good that all our
neighbours mouths watered "hungrily", or my favourite cherry-and-cottage cheese
vatrushkas which literally melted in my mouth, leaving the amazing taste of warm
and fresh cherries and milk for a long time. And even her most plain pickled
mushrooms, which she made every year in the oak tub adding currant leaves, dill and
garlic, were the most delicious food I ever ate in my life, despite the fact that by now
I have travelled more than half the world and tested every delicacy one could possibly

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