A Lion's Tale

“I was a perfectly well-behaved child.” It always made me laugh when Ruslan would say such a thing sincerely and with a straight face, as if he believed the words that flowed from his mouth. While staring at nothing at all, he would scrunch up his eyes a bit, as if maybe looking hard enough would allow him to see more details. Then he’d recount another story, a narrative of a childhood claimed to be filled with innocence and commendable virtue.

It was especially hot that summer, a year that leapt directly from winter into summer and skipped spring altogether, prompting flowers to explode in color quickly before their time slipped away. I won’t complain about the heat, though. Had it not been torrid, our worlds would never have collided. As I dashed around the corner, a wasp, irate at my audacious attempt to swat it away from my ice cream cone, gave chase. We both toppled. The wasp stung my butt, my ice cream went flying into the grass, and an unlikely friendship sparked up immediately.

I was old enough to be his mother, but he was an eighty-year-old trapped in a twenty-five-year-old body, so it seemed to even out. I would saunter by in the late afternoon and wave brightly, and he’d call out from his porch to come and sit and share a glass of cherry compote.

He once asked, “Did you know my name means lion?” precipitating a tale about his name’s origin. This story naturally segued into a chat about Tatars, their character traits, and an amusing anecdote about a rooster’s fate sealed by its daring defiance of his Tatar father’s authority. The image of a plump boy furiously pedaling his tricycle, shrieking in vain to evade the rooster perched on his head, made my belly bubble with laughter. By a twist of fate, that very rooster turned out to be the most delicious meal he’d ever had.

I never failed to see the irony that he could be such a blatantly honest man with critical observations while simultaneously never seeing his adventures as a torment for his poor mother. Bless her heart. Without hesitation or sugarcoating, the man attentively listened to my attempt at a new phrase in Russian and unexpectedly declared, “That’s the worst pronunciation I’ve ever heard. Try again.”

He was also the man who could fondly tell me about the entire morning when his mother believed he had drowned in the lake. He had snuck out before everyone had woken up and left his bike on the bank before wandering off somewhere else. After hours of the village’s fruitless search, he nonchalantly waltzed in and requested lunch, while she was still sobbing hysterically at the kitchen table.

One sultry evening, when the toads were too hot to croak, he told me of the time he took his bike down the main road before turning a sharp corner and running directly into an elderly gent walking his Pomeranian. He flew, head over handlebars, and landed in a thick patch of nettles, but rushed to verify he hadn’t damaged his bicycle before he bothered to check the old man or the myriad of wounds he had himself incurred. 

“What did your mother have to say about your scratches?” I’d asked, trying to picture her expression as a bloodied boy, slightly resembling her son, walked into the house and asked for cookies. 

     “Nothing. It was normal.” He shrugged and glanced at me. "Branches would hit me as I fell out of trees, or I would lose in a battle of swords."

“But you were a perfect angel who never troubled your parents?” Ruslan pointedly ignored my sarcasm and glanced down at his empty glass. “Comparatively. Do you want another drink?”

Over the course of the next few weeks, he told me of the stray dogs that roamed the village and how he’d befriended them all. A little wild-man, feeding scraps of broccoli or cooked carrots to eager pups with happy tails just so he wouldn’t have to be the one to eat his vegetables. I imagined him as a slightly more domesticated Mowgli, prancing off with his collection of beasts.

Ruslan’s reminiscing painted a vivid mosaic of remembered mischief. He regaled me with stories of grumpy old ladies who were always watching and garages full of puppies—one of which he casually adopted without permission—and how he and his friends would beat each other with sticks. Many of his adventures truly involved innocent miscalculations, such as the time that, left unsupervised, he set out to make himself lunch and accidentally ended up cooking enough pasta to feed the entire village. His family ate pasta for an entire week. But not all of his foibles were unintentional.

His neighbor had an irresistible cherry tree in their backyard. Ruslan loves cherries. These two facts combined to find Ruslan sitting in their tree, gorging himself on a harvest that wasn’t his to enjoy. The neighbors noticed that afternoon—that’s how many he ate—but lost all anger when he was called into the room by his mother to ask if he happened to be the cherry thief. Once he denied it—with cherry-stained cheeks and a noticeably rounded belly—it was let go with a punishment so mild, he couldn't even recall the specifics. 

On an afternoon draped in a muggy cloak of impending rain, two children meandered by, their voices a low murmur of discontent about a friend confined indoors. As we lounged in the cool embrace of the shade, Ruslan perked up, his eyes alight with mischief and a crooked grin spreading across his face. He watched the kids disappear around the corner and turned to me in a conspiratorial fashion. “I didn’t let a lack of permission stop me. I’d just jump out of the second-story window and go play.”

I imagined how close to broken bones he must have been on a fairly regular basis, and I blessed his mother silently once again. “How were you not caught?” I didn’t expect him to say he would ask adults who walked by to help push him back inside before his mother could discover him missing when she expected to find an obedient child. I snorted as I imagined his top half hanging inside the shadows of the room and his little legs, still covered in baby fat, kicking furiously as he tried to squirm his way back in.

“She never said I couldn’t leave the house. She only said I couldn’t walk out the front door.”

It became my favorite part of the day. We would meet up at the same time and place, like we'd always had that schedule. Ruslan delighted me with outrageous accounts, and I would share my own. Together, we built a repertoire of hobbies. Movie nights turned into a regular event, and I soon realized that sharing my favorite films with him was only wise if I was prepared for his sharp and merciless critiques of the things I cherished. 

I introduced him to the culinary arts. In return, he showed me how to maneuver my dragon in his favorite video game. I expressed my belief in the virtues of universal healthcare and suggested that we don’t need to eat all the rich; if we eat just two or three, the rest would probably shape up. He laughed and called me a communist. 

All the while, we exchanged enough life stories to fill a book, each a reflection of our disparate upbringings—a Russian boy and an American woman, often fumbling our way through misunderstood translations. He clung to Russia with no desire to leave her borders, while I was resolute in not staying in the States. We agreed on the world’s immensity, yet his contentment lay in one spot, and my resolve was to roam. It was in that tiny, shared space that our paths intersected. That’s where our stories came to life. 

“Did I ever tell you about the time I let all the goats out of their pen because one of them urinated on my new shoes?”

“I want a goat.”

“No, you certainly do not.”

“But I really do.” I insisted, which would prompt a comprehensive argument on the diabolical nature of goats. One reason listed was that he stayed out well past midnight to find all the goats and bring them home, resulting in a month-long ban on any treats for that stunt. Despite his claims of indifference to sweets, there he was, indulging in an entire cake, all while bemoaning that specific discipline.

That summer, Ruslan recounted tales of a bike he once took without asking, his solitary attempt at smoking, and a New Year’s celebration where he unwittingly sipped from every unwatched cup, only to learn they held alcohol. To this day, he abstains from alcohol, a decision shaped by that festive blunder. He also disclosed how failing to close his father’s new car door led to the morning discovery of a vehicle brimming with snow.

Summer blasted through in a timeless way, somehow both too fast and languidly slow, and I felt the growing urge to weave more stories. The thought of wintering in Italy rather than this land of arctic enchantment enticed me. I began the preparations, both physically and emotionally, as my time in this haven dwindled. The evenings cooled drastically, and I, clad in the ridiculous garb of an out-of-place tourist, strolled with Ruslan to the teahouse. It was only when the warmth of spiced tea seeped into my palms that I shared the news of my impending adventure. 

“You’re being silly about the weather. It’s not that bad,” he chided. I smiled slightly. “I know. It’s just that I still have things to see before I can sit in one place for too long.”

His gaze drifted to the window, squinting against the light falling across his face before nodding nearly imperceptibly. “You thought you would see Pompeii before anywhere else. It was supposed to be your first stop.”

“Yes, well, life unfolds while we’re busy plotting,” I mused.

He met my eyes with that lopsided smile, leaned in, and stage whispered across the table. "Then, I suppose, life will make sure we both have stories to tell when we see each other again. I hope you can do me a favor before you leave, though.”

“Of course. What do you need?”

“The recipe for your banana sponge cake.”

The Tuscan coast was bustling when I landed, even though it was rather late. The sea’s presence was palpable, even unseen and unheard, as I navigated my way through the enveloping scents and sounds of a vibrant city wrapped in both history and modern flair. My hotel welcomed me swiftly, and as I settled in, I pulled out my phone. The cityscape twinkled like stars had descended, and his familiar voice broke the silence.

“Hello again. Did I ever tell you about the time I tried to run away from home and thought it was a good idea to pack the cat in my suitcase to take along with me?”