Chapter 18
Home Bound
On the upriver trip I made a lot of good shots with it, and did the same during the coming year from the excursions with my fellow students. Also, about my family I still have photographs with that simple Russian camera. It was handy, and I could take it with me everywhere.
About the famous Soviet Union I have got an impression that made it impossible for anyone to try to convince me about the opposite. I have visited the same place in two years, and my first trip to a really large Soviet city happened in 7 years after that first visit. My view has been greatly formed by these experiences.
The upriver trip has lasted much longer. The tug could not make more than 3 miles per hour to the bank, sometimes less. And the long hours to do nothing made bad-mannered people worse.
To buy provisions for the kitchen, our commander decided to stop in a Bulgarian port, Russe. There I also went to shore and in a shop -- there were ordinary shops as in my home country -- I bought a pair of leather gloves. I had always considered leather gloves a luxury, in my life before all my gloves had been knit by my mother.
After many days on the lower Danube, our towage has arrived to the cataracts again. We had 10 barges, and it was a slow work to shift all through the three bottlenecks. A good week’s work, at least nobody had time to make practical jokes. It was a custom on the boats of the company, that in the engine room, outside the cataracts, there were 8 hours daily to be on duty, while at the cataracts we had to be downstairs 12 hours a day.
When the normal routine began again, I was secure from bad men, I had learned how to defend myself. And never again on any ship or in any company could anybody disturb me permanently. It has been a good training and I took it for my advantage.
Once more we stopped, that time in Belgrade. Slowly I understood that, if crew members are given currency of different states that the crew has crossed, they have the right to spend that money. In my childhood I had read about the battle of Nandorfehervar, i.e. now Belgrade. Now I had the opportunity to see the fortress by my own eyes. I felt a little disappointment, it was very small and unimportant in look.
After almost six weeks far away we have crossed the frontier and came home. In the first big town all crew members stepped ashore to buy food, I went to the post office and called Y.
She told me shortly that she had sent me back her wedding ring. I could not draw a word more out of her. For one day I felt awfully, but, as in the back of my mind I had known it long that our future would be better in a separate way, slowly a large calmness wrapped around my soul.