The Perfect Island

The Prologue.

"Many many years ago, when there were no visas and no border controls, and people
took boats to escape and to be saved, a single-eyed sailor woke up as a sharp rush of
wind slapped his salt-dry unshaven face. After another night of storms and prayers he
could hardly remember who he was and where he was. He slowly walked to the upper
deck. His ragged dirty clothes smelled of rum. He watched indifferently as the wind
chased the early morning clouds dissipating a dazzling mantle of clouds into small
white dots. "A Perfect Island". He screamed to the wind. His only eye was sufficient to
recognize the point where the sea lost its monopoly to a tiny plot of land. Other sailors
cried out: «Land!» The ship, that moments ago was just a kitchen board arranged for
sharks, instantly became a place of brotherhood oaths, a fiesta with showers of rum and
forgive-you all promises.

He was not an ordinary sailor. He was a defector. A defector, trying to get as far as he
could from the Order of the Crown, protesting his innocence to all who would listen.
But during the storms, he confessed his sins to God. And as storm after storm ravaged
the boat he watched the falling stars, felt his clothes, plastered to his body with a glue of
vomit and sweat, he understood that God had forgiven him. Then, all he needed was a
piece of land where he could spend his remaining days and demonstrate to God that he
was worthy of salvation.

The islanders were neither welcoming nor protective. He kept his eye on the horizon,
and thought. "Will it be a land for me to take root and praise the mercy of the Lord." He
took a beautiful local girl as his wife. Unable to tell him all she thought, she watched
him with her trusting eyes and each autumn prayed to her Gods to give her a son. The
sailor did not have to wait long to arrange a prosperous trading relationship with the
Crown and to involve himself in several wars on behalf of the island. Autumns passed
by and he finally got his son. Watching ships leaving the island, he felt strong and
content. His beautiful wife, although happy to have her baby boy, cried silently each
time a huge ship was taking away the sacred stone of the island. The sailor unable to
understand her motivations took her to a missionary. The missionary with other local
converts explained her about God. Since then things went pretty much smoothly
between them. The son was growing up watching the limitless horizon. And the trade in
a much valued stone brought the family well-deserved prosperity."

This was a bedtime, once-upon-a-time story that Wainggai told his son Herman every
night of thousand nights they spent in the Australian immigration detention centre in
Nauru. Five days away in the open sea but West Papua life seemed to be centuries away,
in the way that Australia remained centuries ahead. They were transferred to Nauru
Island, where thousands of people, coming from a variety of troubled nations, were
waiting. Just as they did.

Through time, refugees either got asylum seekers visas or were deported back to their
homelands. Day by day, the crowd was shrinking, as if an ancient Nauru God had risen
from the semi-desert ground and was ruthlessly swallowing everyone.
Wainggai did not know whether to loose hope or to remain calm. He lost count of
people whose faces he could not find anymore. Inside his heart, he trusted that God had
granted them the key to a better life. But unavoidable rumours challenged his faith day
after day. Nevertheless each night, with the heroic smile of a father, he made his son go
to bed and told him the same story. When the son would doubt and say, "Father, should
we pray to the single-eyed sailor god instead? We are on the land but nobody lets us out.
We sailed, we prayed and but there is no island for us." Wainggai would just softly tell
him. "Our God is as powerful as the sailor's, if we loose hope and doubt, the wind will
never come to destroy the veil that separates us from Australia. We wait here because
we came to find a new land." The little boy would eventually fell asleep, and Wainggai
gathering his last bits of manhood and strength, swallowing his uncontrollable grief
would think. "Tomorrow is a new day my boy, and as for today no news is good news."

***

When life hit hard on her, she always cooked pasta. Easy to make, impossible to burn,
difficult to injure herself. Typically, she would listen to a piano concert while arranging
the ingredients. She considered it very important to have a glass of red wine present in
her little ceremony. Pasta would go into boiling water, two cloves of crushed garlic and
tomato halves, into hot oil. Toasted pine nuts and a few gratings of romano would make
the sauce just delicious. Then she will arrange a table for herself and eat in silence.

Because she felt life had hit hard on her many times, her pasta-cooking skills would
shame a professional cook. Later in life, her big nose and her name, Clara, would
confuse everyone into thinking she was an Italian.

Her mother, Julia was what the majority of Mainland Chinese would consider a typical
Russian beauty- unbearably beautiful in her singles days and heavily overweighed since
childbirth. She was born during the rough winter, in Karaganda, just a few days before
Nikita Khrushchev delivered his immortal secret speech denouncing the cult of
personality of Mr. Stalin. Not that the Grandmother Anna was too much into politics,
but she kind of felt that the upcoming spring could bring something new and fresh into
the air.

Grandfather Johan was a second-generation Russian immigrant in South Africa. His

father was a romantic who joined the "Friends of the Soviet Union" group in
Johannesburg in the mid thirties. Eventually his proletarian spirit and intolerance to
South African policies made him flee with his wife and two children to the Soviet
Union. They happily settled in a small town on the outskirts of Saint Petersburg. Their
peaceful life didn't last long, just like thousands of other foreign communists, the whole
family was arrested and eventually perished during Stalin's Great Purges. Grandfather
Johan, the eldest of two children, uncertain of the destiny of others, found himself
locked up in the limitless barbed wire camps of Karlag .

He mainly worked in the construction of railroads and housing around Karaganda. Each
day he wore the same reefer, prisoner hat and heavy boots. Ten years passed, and by the
time he was released in 1950 he was a lifeless, crushed, helpless slave, who
mechanically ate balanda , worked and slept on a plank bed. He was assigned to work
mowing hay in the village near Karaganda until he was offered a job as an English
teacher in a local school. During one of the regional inter-school English competitions
he met Anna. She also taught English at school in Karaganda. A twenty-nine year old
Muscovite, with decadent ideas, she was recovering from her own six-year long
corrective confinement.

Julia's childhood had been quiet and untroubled. At school she had the best history, arts,
piano and literature teachers in the Soviet Union. Semi-desert, semi-Siberian land
overpopulated with anti-regime society scums was a centre of the world for her. On the
same street, together with poets and scientists from Moscow and Saint Petersburg, lived
Germans, on their the perfectly clean and organized mini-farms, Jews with amazing
private libraries, Koreans cooking delicious kuksi soup, Kazakhs, Ukrainians and
Russians - all full of hope.

In 1959 Karlag was officially closed. Abstemious Johan came home with a bottle of
vodka. Anna prepared fried potatoes. Outside, the stepped wind was scattering the strips
of hundred thousands inmates souls through the grassland. Johan and Anna silently sat
around the small table in the kitchen and drank. Julia, too young to understand their
incurable sorrow, patiently practised Oginsky's Polonaise in the room.

On the 12 April 1961, the whole family listened to the radio news when Gagarin
became the first human to travel into space. Johan and Anna believed that his space trip
was destined to bring some sense to the whole thing; although the news quoted him
saying "I don't see any God up here" they still hoped there was somebody up there
watching over them. Since that day they agreed to forget loneliness, persecution,
unemployment, cold and hunger. And just carry on.

After 1961 time accelerated. The Karaganda economy flourished. New mines grew up
like mushrooms after the rain. The city grew, absorbing villages and countryside. Julia
graduated from Karaganda State Technical University, majoring in Economics and
Engineering. She got married to a fellow student, a mining engineer, and soon after the
graduation got a position in the local mining company in the finance department. One
year later Clara was born.

Clara grew up as a gentle studious girl. She hardly remembered her grandparents, both
of whom died when she still was a little baby. Her childhood and teenager years fell on
the uneasy eighties and nineties. The worn-out out Soviet Machine corrupted by
corrosion, operated on its last breath, squeaking and creaking to no end. She never
became a member of a Young Communist League, instead she watched her childhood
friends emigrate to Germany or Israel, even the ones known as ethnic Ukrainians. Ex-
sportsmen replaced police and seized the control over the city, driving through
boulevards in their second-hand foreign made cars. She read novels by the Marquis de
Sade and watched "Gone with the wind" for the first time. She grew to disrespect her
history teacher, who along with history books, changed one year after another
chronicles and analysis of the same events.

In the year, when her first love died of a drug overdose, spring came early releasing
tired grass from underneath the snow. She shut herself in her room for months and
studied hard for her graduation exams. To fight the pain she started cooking pasta. Why
she chose pasta, and not potatoes or stuffed bell peppers nobody could explain. The
very first pasta dish Clara had ever cooked was Soviet macaronis with corned beef hash.
She made her parents eat macaronis several times a week. They never complained. They
knew their daughter was undergoing a terrible loss and eating macaronis was the least
they could do for her. In the meantime, they quit their state jobs, started their own
business and moved into a private apartment.

Clara graduated from secondary school at the top of the student's list. Soon after the
graduation party she found herself in Moscow, accepted to the Moscow State Institute
of International Relations. By then, Kazakhstan and Russia were too separate countries,
and at her Mother's insistence she chose to become a citizen of Russia. Her parents ran
around the city bribing government officials to get a registration in Moscow. With
everything arranged, they bought a three-room apartment in the South-West of Moscow
and started an import business with former colleagues from Karaganda.

The Moscow life didn't prove much different. Ambulances were routinely called during
student's parties to save overdosed future diplomats. Random dates regularly turned out
to be connected to the criminal world. Daily, the city habitants were killed, raped and
impoverished; ex Young Communist League members were taking ownership of the
industrial companies built on the frozen bones of the communist slaves; financial
pyramids were sucking the half-empty pockets of pensioners and drunken proletariat.
All the while Moscow was partying in the craze of openness and democracy.

Of course, the innate curiosity of Clara was satisfied with the possibilities that the
Megapolis could offer. She was studying Chinese and Japanese in the university, visited
hundreds of art exhibitions. She started travelling abroad. Her parent's income allowed
her to make trips twice a year to a variety of locations. Latin America, India, Nepal,
Tibet, let along the popular European spots. As her passport got stamped with visas,
new drawing pins landed on the world map in her bedroom.

She graduated among the best students and was offered a junior consultant position in
an international consulting company. She spent her first years in Moscow office, getting
frequently involved in the cross-border projects. She worked long hours and had a
couple of short-term romances with co-workers. In her third year she was transferred to
Cyprus office and in the fifth year to London. By then, her parents were divorced.
Unable to cope with the temptations their new life offered, they grew to become
strangers to each other. They peacefully separated and each went their own way. Her
father soon moved in with his Personal Assistant, the girl fifteen years younger than him;
her mother started dating her chauffer, a tall handsome man, who moved to Moscow
from a small Siberian city. Neither of parents felt bad. After the years of hardship and
struggle, all they wanted was to live their new lives to the full.

And all that time Clara just worked hard. Moving from country to country. From one
embassy to another, getting her work permits and visas. She didn't mind and got used to
packing her modest belongings and relocating. Karaganda was in ancient remains in her
memory, Moscow was nobody's city and she left no friends behind she could miss.
Although sometimes she thought about her first love and felt sad she wasn't there, in
Kazakhstan, to look after his grave overgrown with grass. Her flexibility towards
working hours and geographical mobility all of a sudden made her a consultant that
every office wanted. Efficient and adaptable, she was a good team player who never
complained. She accepted all projects and was generously rewarded.
In London, she rented a small centrally located apartment in front of the hospital. She
avoided corporate after-work drinking, cooked her pasta and sipped a red wine instead,
listening to the orchestra of ambulances that broke evening city lights with a dismal
howl of urgency. One day, on a cold windy night, just as pre-Christmas shopping was
reaching its culmination; she was getting onto a bus and accidentally stepped on the foot
of a good-looking guy who uttered a familiar "Oy". Denis was a Ukrainian. In the
beginning he seemed to be just another ordinary guy. He was definitely not her dream.
She actually didn't have any man of her dreams. After the tragic death of her teenager
love, she was reluctant to open herself to any feelings. But Denis was gentle and
supportive. With him she could talk, call him any time of the day or night. She could be
spontaneous and many times they understood each other without saying a word.

They spent their time wandering through Central London streets, discovering small
hidden restaurants and dreaming. They dreamt of travelling together, of finding a
perfect country and doing something interesting. Clara started thinking of quitting her
job and running her own business. Denis was enrolled in MBA program in a prestigious
business school, but he didn't really like it. His father was a rich Ukrainian businessman.
He wanted Denis to continue the business, but they didn't really get along. Denis's
mother had died years ago, and new stepmothers, changing as often as fashion models
on the covers of glossy magazines, kept separating the son and the father. Eventually
they made a deal, his father put some funds into an offshore trust and Denis moved to
London.

By the time Clara and Denis felt they had known each other all their lives, their little
harmony was shaken by unexpected events. Denis got into a fight in the pub. Nothing
special, nobody got really injured; it was an ordinary conflict between drunken people.
But Denis got arrested. And the next day all the front pages were covered with his photo
and titles: "Suspected terrorist from Uzbekistan, attacks British Citizen in Drunken
Brawl."

"I was born in Tashkent, when the Soviet Union was still alive, where my father served
in the military." He started as Clara was arranging all ingredients to prepare avocado
gnocchi.

"After the collapse we moved to Dnepropetrovsk. Several of my father's old

connections were settled there. And then he started typical post-perestroika business.
Getting involved in everything from mining to banking. He was not like other ex-
military men who just went into drinking and sucking the wallets of their wives. He was
a strong man, he changed and fought his way to the top." Clara could feel in his voice a
trace of longing. But she concentrated on forming an avocado-cheese mixture into small
balls and rolling them into flour.

"He had to travel abroad a lot and hated those stupid embassies. "What are you planning
to do in the Czech Republic sir? Do you have enough money sir to support yourself
during your trip?" As if he wanted to stay there illegally to harvest barley. So eventually
he got obsessed with the visa thing, and on my twentieth birthday he gave us both a
present - a Republic of Nauru passport. We also have Uzbekistan passports. It wasn't
legal to have this along with a Ukrainian passport, but he bribed somebody in Tashkent
and we got it. He is a passport freak, my dad."
"Ultimately, as his top models became mean, so did he. He and his schoolmate set up a
financial labyrinth and did some dirty things transferring money from Ukraine to Nauru.
I did not study at school where this bloody island is. When he gave me a passport I
looked it up in altavista. Can you imagine they do not have an official capital? Really a
ghost island."

Gnocchi was cooked and Clara arranged plates on the table. She served gnocchi in
white soup-plates, topped with cumin tomato sauce.

"Now, my father and I, his schoolmate, along other Ukrainians - Russians and
foreigners who purchased Nauru passports in Hong Kong, we are all on a CIA hot list.
After 9/11 Nauru got hit very hard. They sold passports to anybody who would pay a
$ 15,000. On top of that, my father is accused of money laundering. They say he has
transferred millions of dollars abroad though fictitious Nauru bank branches registered
in the Ukraine. What a dad I have." He took his spoon, stared at Clara and said "When I
am in Russia I am a stinky Ukrainian, when I am in London I am a bloody Russian. And
now, I am an international terrorist. So who am I, Ladies and Gentlemen?"

They ate in silence. Clara tried to imagine Nauru. "It must be a Pacific paradise. The
island everyone is dreaming off."

"Do you want to stay in London? Probably they will never leave you in peace after
this." She finally said.

"I don't care about London. I came here because that was the place everyone I knew
went. I might as well be anywhere else." He took his glass of wine and sat by the
window.

An ambulance was parking at the hospital entrance. Two nurses were pulling down an
emergency trolley with a man laying on it. A woman, touching her chest walked
following the hospital staff. Through the open window Denis could hear she wept. As
Denis glanced at the street, he saw a Funeral service company office just next to the
hospital. "What a perfect location for a business. Somebody dies in the hospital and here
you are with a promotional discount. "If you die on Wednesday we will make you a
special offer." Human life is just an assembly line, a continuous offer to make us feel
better. At the end of the day that's how it is" He thought as he finished his wine.

After they cleaned the kitchen, they looked and the world map Clara had on the wall at
the entrance and decided to move to China.

During the first month in China they simply travelled. They went to Beijing, Xian,
Hangzhou, Kunming. Clara had been to China before, during her student years, when
she participated in various student exchange projects. But this time was special. It was
the first time she made a decision where she wanted to live. Unlike before, when her
parents did it for her or her employer made her move, she was in China because she
wanted to be.

Once they had rested and Denis's troubles seemed to have happened centuries ago, they
settled in Shanghai. They rented a house in the French Concession and started preparing
a business plan. They put together a start-up capital from Clara's savings and Denis
father's funds. They did a market research, made a couple of phone calls and in a matter
of weeks started a business. A custom-made coffins business. They provided peculiarly
shaped coffins or custom-made designs to clients specifications. With prints of footballs
and rugby clubs, favourite cars and even first love pictures.

The coffin business flourished. They delivered to Russia, the Ukraine, the UK and the
USA. When they partnered with coffin manufacturers in Europe, they doubled their
orders. They began receiving long specifications of personalised coffins from persons
still alive. People wanted to leave this world with a very personal statement. Chinese
entrepreneurs were used to the strange demands of Western customers. Clara was busy
travelling to various factories throughout China to make sure they delivered 100%
perfect coffins, while Denis was involved with international customers. Two years
passed by and they still got along pretty well. But they stopped dreaming. Not that they
didn't have any dreams, but they didn't have the one in common. To make a couple you
need a crush; to make a couple work you need a common project. Of course they had a
coffin business to look after, but that was not a kind of a project you need to create a
family.

The once upon a time loneliness united them in London, but in China the same
loneliness made them disconnect from each other. Clara fought her's by integrating. She
made friends among local Chinese and could sing a good hundred songs in KTV's.
Denis on the other hand went to Russian and Ukrainian meet-ups and got close to some
people from consulates in Shanghai. They started to go independently on holidays and
each met a different group of people on weekends.

The truth was, Denis never really liked it in China. He couldn't understand the language
and didn't try to learn it. He kept on eating only Western food. As Clara was polishing
her Shanghainese dialect, he travelled more often to Ukraine. "I've decided I will stay in
Kiev. Less polluted." He wrote her in an email. She had anticipated this but thought it
was too cold a farewell even for him. She did not complain and they just continued as
good business partners.

She got invited to more expatriates and Chinese parties in Shanghai, met new people
and discovered new cuisines. Eventually she found it more and more touchy to mention
her coffin business to strangers. Thirsty for something less useful but sexier, she started
"The Family Tree Image Company", that later was known as an easy-to-ear U-r-brand.
She hired an experienced French man with a good taste and fluent Chinese to oversee
coffin production while she dedicated her own time to the new venture.

In the beginning, all she offered was to create a brand name for families and individuals.
The need for a brand name and logo was justified by an unlimited collection of albums
and books illustrating coats of arms of glorious European nobles. Celebrity news
archives also proved useful. The first customers came referring to a random
advertisement in the luxury spots in Shanghai, but eventually through word of mouth
and the Internet a line of customers built up in front of the entrance to the office. "Only
by appointment" scared off unnecessary hassle and gave a well-needed luxury appeal to
the rest.

She hired a team of foreign students who spent days and nights translating Chinese
names, adjectives and family photos into a single powerful image. Into a brand. Rich
husbands, smoking Zhong Hua to an asthma in their lungs, attentively listened to the
meaning that each single element of symbols represented. They liked it. At the end of
the day it was like a Chinese name giving. You have a boy - you pick up the characters
"Yong" for brave, or "Ding Xiang" for fortune and stability. U-r-brand offered a Lion
for Deathless courage, a wheel for a Fortune and all in blue for loyalty and truth.

When U-r-brand services turned into a must-have, more liberal orders came through.
Young entrepreneurs wanted anything from a Spiderman to David Beckham. As the
world was changing in the reports of CNN and BBC, customers were demanding more
and more extravagant solutions.

Because China had a flexible business base, soon U-r-brands replaced prestigious
logotypes.

Donald D and Washington's Wu were printed on a variety of personal objects. Shirts,

underwear, car seat belts, car number plates were adorned with sometimes delicate
personal statements. Even coffins, thanks to Clara's reliable supplier base, were carved
with eternal emblems. For a while multinational companies turned a blind eye on the
new trend. They remained silent, even when monogram handbags sales went
unmistakably down. Everything exploded when a photo of Yu Yu, the most
international Chinese actress, appeared on the web featuring her with a recognizable
handbag embroidered with unknown logo. The logo pictured a mermaid with arms
widely spread holding a golden sword.

Clara received many phone calls. Complaints, threats, pleas for cooperation all got
mixed up in one big headache, while thousands of factories were printing people's
brands on all sorts of things. She stayed cool. She had no control over her customers
and where they wanted their brands to appear. Overall, the Chinese economy was
bursting, with a consumption of white label goods being the unexpected out performer.

She liked it there, in China. The Chinese, although considering Russians to be crazy at
times, never really made her feel any kind of outsider. She lived there, did her own
thing and as soon as she mentioned she liked Chinese food, their faces greeted her with
millions of sincere smiles. An old German friend of hers used to say: "There will be a
day our children would stay in a line in the Chinese embassies round the world trying to
obtain a visa for a better life." Visa issues aside all she wanted after the last month of
incoming calls, was to get safely home and cook some pasta.

Scared of publicity she took a break and shut herself in her apartment. When Denis left,
she moved to another area, where Chinese upper middle class families lived in
American style town houses. Not that she was heartbroken, but changing the air seemed
to be a good option. And she didn't like her memory playing association tricks anyway.
She spent her time playing piano and getting friendly with neighbours. She even met a
woman who used to work in the same consulting company as she did, but in the Miami
office. Her neighbours, distant in the beginning grew fond of her, as she spoke both
Mandarin and Shanghainese. Several mothers approached her to ask if she could give
piano classes to their children. She happily took to her new hobby and spent her
evenings with ambitious kids who diligently did their homework and came to her
classes well prepared.
"When I grow up I will be like a Lang Lang or even better." - a tall nine-year old boy
would say, as they practised Gnossiennes No.1.

"But you are also enrolled in English, basketball and a young managers courses, you
can choose any of the three?" Clara would say when they had a glass of orange juice
after the class.

"If I cannot make it to Lang Lang, I will become like Yao Ming and even marry the
tallest model in the world".

"You are still nine years old, probably you won't be as tall as the tallest model in the
world when you are twenty".

"Then I will be like Li Ning. And will make people wear my t-shirts and still will marry
a model."

Just like that, each child had his own passion and a role model. As for Clara, she just
wanted to make peaceful arrangements with herself and carry on. Working as a part-
time teacher exhausted her, as she got too involved with each pupil. In the nights she
cooked her pasta and read. Encouraged by her interest and satisfied with her lessons,
several neighbours showed her how to cook Chinese dishes. Mainly noodle dishes.

That's how her self-confinement days passed by. Sometimes in the evenings a thing
grew hard inside her, so she just kept on cooking and tasting her own creations. When
she could not tell whether they were good or bad, she started inviting neighbours to
share a meal. One night she got drunk. After everyone left she lay on the sofa in the
living room watching TV. Nothing could keep her attention, so she just kept switching
channels. By the time she landed on CNN, a young blond reporter was in the middle of
his report on Nauru. He was not promoting the next honeymoon destination; he solely
focused on West Papuan asylum seekers stacked on Nauru for several years on their
way to Australia. Clara did not know why people had fled Western New Guinea, but she
knew why her own grandparents would. Sometimes, she thought, all we did was to
move from prison to prison. And we were millions, multiracial and polyglots; hidden or
hiding; called anything from white-collar workers to expatriates, international assholes,
immigrants, asylum seekers or refugees. All united by hope to find the next best
kingdom.

She resumed her U-r-brand routines in the autumn. Sometimes she missed Denis, but
she knew it was better for both of them to finish as they did. As the U-r-brand business
got very popular she had to make it more professional. She partnered with a famous
marketing guru stationed in Singapore. Brian was an Australian, a divorcee renowned
for dating the most beautiful Chinese girls. In the beginning they kept a work-private
life distance and limited their encounters to business needs. But as time passed they
started calling each other on weekends and even met outside of office hours. Their
relationships did not have any of the confessions or dreams that she had with Denis, nor
did it have a first-love sense of eternity. They simply made short-term plans, went to
new places together and discussed the ever-changing world. Brian liked her. Her British
accent, fluent Chinese, long Slavic surname and a Mediterranean look confused
everyone, including him. She was what he considered to be star girl. But since she
hardly spoke of anything else than geopolitics, he also felt excited by a challenge to
break into her heart. As for her, she enjoyed his fit body and the opportunity to share
pasta with somebody. She did not fully give up her plans to settle down eventually, but
she also wasn't in any rush for that. She knew that Brian was seeing other girls in
Singapore, but she wasn't jealous at all. "At the end of the day why shouldn't he?" She
reasoned. "Basically," she thought, "Pasta can be replaced by noodles. Denis with Brian.
And Brian probably with some Mr. Wu."

An old kukushka clock ticked its sequence. She turned thirty-four. People still politely
inquired if she was Jewish, Turkish or Italian. She got an uncontrollable quantity of new
orders for new family brands. As water boiled in a large saucepan, Jerome Rose thinned
the moist of the kitchen air with Liebestraum No. 3., new towers popped-up on
Shanghai's skyline. For Clara, she was still a Russian who just tried to prepare some
pasta.

"You have forgotten your roots. You cannot properly speak Russian anymore." Each
New Years Eve in Moscow, her mother Julia scolded Clara with submission in her
voice. "Now, I have no daughter, no grandchildren. We are all possessed by a wasting
disease."

Probably if Clara designed her own family logo, it would be just a little blue ball,
washed over with casual white strokes. "The Earth is blue. How wonderful. It is
amazing." Gagarin reported to the ground control. But for the time being she was more
concerned that spaghetti remained in the boiling water for exact seven minutes and her
kukushka clock had the most reliable measure for that.

***

The once-upon-a-time, the single-eyed sailor's story had a mixed, happy-unhappy

ending.

A single-eyed sailor's son got killed during the Japanese occupation in 1942. But he did
have a son before the war broke out in the Pacific. The son, with his light hand and a
good business scent became a phosphorite magnate. After the phosphorite rich reserves
had been devastated, he created an offshore banking empire letting the new world's rich
to pull in and out billions of undeclared dollars. For his own sons, he successfully
envisioned less rigid careers. The oldest went on the Olympic ring as a heavyweight
lifting champion; the youngest got involved in the musical business. And indeed, the
perfect island was internationally mapped as "Nauru".