Relaxing with Luda

Shortly before midnight, we leave our aerie on the cliff and head to our room under the roof. The thermometer is at 33 degrees. Bathed in our own sweat, we roll from left to right on the old mattresses. Mosquitoes feel right at home in this ambience. They buzz around us in large swarms and drink our blood senselessly. There is no doubt that we suffer like dogs. My butt burns like Harry’s and starts to itch terribly. I would never have thought that a bottom could burn and itch at the same time. From time to time I get up, climb down the narrow steel stairs and go to the shower. Then, having cooled down a bit, I smear the bike seat cream on my backside and lie down in the sweat castle again. It doesn’t take long and my body feels like a blast furnace again. Tanja, meanwhile, turns like a chicken on the grill. She also suffers and shows off in one go. “I’m sorry. I would have liked to have found better accommodation,” I say, just to say something. “Hm,” is all I hear. Annoyed by the mosquitoes, I sit up and as it’s not just my bottom that’s itching now, I scratch my whole body. “I’m not staying here another night,” Tanja curses angrily to herself. “Me neither,” I reply without knowing where else to go. With my headlamp on my head, I sit on the edge of the bed like a broken knight and stare at the floor. Then I lift my head and look around the now dark room. Where could you attach a cord for the mosquito net? As our beds are in front of the open window, through which a hot breeze blows, I don’t see any possibility of attaching a cord. “You can’t tie a string in an open window,” I whisper. After an hour, I still hadn’t come up with anything. Then I get up and climb back down the narrow iron steps into the courtyard, go to the trailer, unlock it and fetch the net. Back in the room, I sit down on the edge of the bed, place the net on my lap and continue to ponder. After a total of 90 minutes, at around 2:00 a.m., I stand in front of the window and try to wrap the cord around the open sash. Not a chance. Then I have a saving thought. “I’ll just wrap the thin rope around the window hinge. That should work, right?” I think aloud to myself. “Hmmm,” hisses dangerously from the bed. “Yes, that’s it,” I am convinced. “Um, Tanja?” I whisper faintly. “Hmmmmm,” whispers from the corner. “Uh, please stand up. I think I’ve found a solution.” “What kind of solution?” “Well, I’ll hang up the mosquito net.” “It’s far too warm under the net,” she protests. “It’s no warmer under the net than without it, but we don’t get stung any more,” I explain. Grumpy and visibly stung by the mosquitoes, she gets up to move my bed with me to hers. Now we have a double bed. I pull the cord from the hinge to a rusty nail that was hammered into a piece of wood on the side wall a long time ago. Then I thread the rope through the eyelet of the net and lo and behold, our luxury bed is ready. Satisfied, we crawl under the Brettschneider mosquito net. Tanja immediately falls into a deep sleep. I, on the other hand, continue to lie there with my eyes open. My bottom burns and itches and the 30 degrees continue to cook me. Nevertheless, the now mosquito-free zone is much better than before.

In the morning, we both leave our dwelling with bodies that are bruised and bloated from the heat. We have breakfast and think about how to organize the day. “I need an Internet connection for my interview,” says Tanja. She is to give another interview for a women’s magazine. She is now busier with interviews than I am. A situation I’m very happy about, because it means I can take care of our records. What’s more, I don’t have to drive around in the sweltering heat to look for an Internet coffee shop. Valentina takes Tanja to a neighboring town in her car. I, on the other hand, am looking for a place where I can write down our experiences without getting heatstroke. “What are you doing?” the landlady asks me after she sees me sneaking back and forth. I explain my problem to her. “Why don’t you come to my house? There’s air conditioning,” she invites me. “Air conditioning?” I ask in surprise, as I didn’t expect anything like that here. “There,” she says and leads me into the living room of her house. And indeed, it soon feels like a fridge in here. So that’s why people here don’t look like zombies the next morning after such a mercilessly hot night. I think to myself.

Luda’s living room looks like it has been vandalized by a street gang. Sitting right next to the dressing table, I look around, amazed at such a perfect mess. Used cotton buds lie on the dirty tabletop in front of a grubby mirror. Eyeshadow, mascara and other make-up items are on display. Recently used. Granddaughter Anastasia’s toys are spilling out of all the cupboards, lying on the floor and cluttering the shelves. A whole tin of ear buds fell out of a cupboard right next to me. They are scattered on the soiled carpet. A pile of dolls is piled up on the windowsill, enthroned by a pair of diving goggles. An air mattress hangs its limp end from the cupboard. The ashtray is tipped out. Its contents eat into the sofa when combined with water. Cables run through the room. The plugs are brown from the electricity. An iron, books and an infinite amount of other stuff is spilling out of the various shelves that are no longer able to hold anything. I just can’t believe it. In 20 years of traveling I have seen a lot of disorder and chaos, but this room is trying to break the record. The friendly Luda keeps coming into the room and asking if the temperature is right. “But of course, perfect,” I say. Then she hands me the remote control for the system. So now I can control the ice cream maker on the wall myself.

Tanja returns in the afternoon, somewhat exasperated. “There was no internet. We couldn’t find a store where the computers worked”. “And what do we do now?” I ask. “I don’t know,” answers Tanja, shrugging her shoulders helplessly.

Luda gets a visitor. A woman called Valeri and her son Eugen greet us. Luda convinces Valeri that Tanja needs Internet access. Valeri and her son drive to Odessa with Tanja without even sitting down for a moment. This time the campaign is a success and Tanja is able to answer the magazine’s questions.

In the evening, we all sit together in the courtyard and chat. Do you want to go swimming with us? At this time of year, you can see a lot of plankton flashing in the water while swimming,” says Helena. “Sure, let’s go,” we reply. We leave the accommodation and head into the hot valley to the beach. We walk past the stinking, overflowing garbage cans. Then we walk through an alley lined with simple huts. Vacationers stand in front of it. They laugh or have a lively conversation. Some of them are firing up the barbecue, while others are getting ready for the evening in the simple dwellings. The windows are locked with iron bars. “Zapzerap” (meaning to steal) is how Valeri explains the many bars. It looks like everyone here is stealing from everyone else. A kind of natural balance. People change in the huts without hesitation. There are no curtains and if there are, they are usually not drawn. The dirt in the alley is breathtaking. Everything seems to be bursting at the seams. Far too many people for such a limited space. The earth is saturated with sewage. Bottles and plastic everywhere. It’s unbelievable how people go on vacation here and how easy it is to have fun.

At sea, a guest drags a net across the bottom. He catches shrimps. He comes to the beach every 20 minutes. The women collect the small sea creatures from the mud in the net. I light them up with my headlamp. “Fkusno”, (tasty), they say with a laugh. This area of the sea must undoubtedly be heavily polluted. Not for a lot of money would I want to eat these things, it goes through my head. “Denis, come on!” shout Helena and Valeri. “I’m coming,” I reply and step out into the smooth sea. Tanja doesn’t feel like going into the water. In the meantime, she looks after our clothes. The water is tepid and soft. I swim slowly into the darkness, away from the beach. In fact, there are flashing dots around my body. Plankton, I once read, consists of a wide variety of organisms, such as protozoa and small crustaceans, jellyfish, worms and molluscs, as well as the eggs and larvae of many sea creatures. One liter of seawater can contain more than 500 million plankton organisms. I wonder how many millions of little creatures are swimming around my body now? My gaze falls on the illuminated backdrop of Odessa. Today, too, rockets shoot into the black sky. The thunder of exploding fireworks echoes across the water to us. It is a unique and idiosyncratic atmosphere to swim in the Black Sea in the middle of the night, surrounded by flashing plankton and looking up at the sky lit up by fireworks.

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