My Grandfather, a tale.

My grandfather would have been 105 today. Grisha Arad, he was called.

In the year 2000, having discovered the wonders of email, he began sending me his life story in instalments. Eventually he would print and bind what became known in our family as “The Tales”. He made four copies of the book, one for each granddaughter.

I’ll take this opportunity to share a few music-tinted excerpts with you, because it’s more delightful than anything I could write myself. I’ve replicated the original exactly, as I was never too sure whether his grammatical idiosyncrasies and portmanteaus were typos, foreignisms, or poetry.

From the very first Tale:

Lail I have an idea: to give you the opportunity to compare your adolescence with another reality,I will try to tell you some episodes of my youth and if it will be of some interest for you I can continue almost ad infinitum,until you inform me(having enough audacity and straightforwardness((oh Lord,what a bloody language!))that you have enough and order me to stop.

*

My parents opened a shoeshop in Tashkent and Sara and myself had quite a regular childhood there.Sara played violin and piano and I was quite good with the violin. I remember appearing with my sister before a big youthcongregation.I played the Violinconcerto and I still remember the applause.But my teacher said that my violin was lacking soul.So I took the instrument apart to look for her soul and that was the end of my musical career.

*

My father bought an old piano and I had my place beneath it,the “walls”consisting of a russian luxuryedition of classics like Goethe Shiller Shakespeare etc.I read them,my sister playing above me and until today, when I happen to hear as example Chachturian,I see in my mind King Richard offering his kingdom for a horse.Or visa verca, reading Pushkin,I hear a fugue of Bach…

And seeing as I already introduced you to my grandmother and her paintings a few weeks ago, I will end with these lines from Tale 28, in which my grandfather describes their courtship. The year is probably 1938.

Near my flat was a theatre,where the Philharmonic Orshestra gave the concerts.Since there were no tickets available,the abonnements taking all the seats,I detected,that on a platform at the end of the emergency stairs outside the building,we could listen to music in an absolutely satisfying manner.There we spent many evenings and on one of them, to the tune of some beautiful melody,we kissed in a most romantic,elevating and heartbeatstopping way.

Hanging with my grandfather, late 1980s.

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Lastly, I was super honoured to be featured on Substack’s newsletter: Why writers are making their home on Substack. As you can see below I was even illustrated by Jo Petroni. Look at that eyebrow! Welcome, new subscribers... Until next Sunday!