Two Lines
by Roman Malynovsky
Translated from the Ukrainian by Mykyta Moskaliuk
My father has a tattoo, and it’s one of the strangest I’ve ever seen. It’s just the letter Г from the Cyrillic alphabet. Nothing more, just Г. It’s on his left palm, between his thumb and index finger: two perpendicular lines, a long and a short one, intersect.
Once I asked my father about the story behind this tattoo. He told me that after serving in the Soviet army (which stripped young men of their identity as if they had never existed) he decided to get his name—Gena—tattooed on his hand, so as never to ever forget that he was not just a private or a sergeant but an actual person.
He chose Gena—this strange abbreviation of Yevhen—because his parents and friends always called him that. It was crucial for him to avoid any formalities.
It was also the times when the Soviets had forbidden the letter Ґ from the Ukrainian alphabet to make it more similar to Russian: the tattoo had to commence with the letter Г which replaced it. So, Gena it was.
My father asked his friend to stop after finishing the first letter. He said that it was enough and that the letter would remind him of all the others which followed. My father was always—and still remains—a man of few words. He was reserved, conserving his words and intonations even while telling me this story. I wasn’t surprised that he remained faithful to his way of being laconic, which he always professed as a religion: Г—that was enough. Г—Gena.
That sign would always be there, on his left hand. And this tattoo was always something quotidian in our family, something that was both ordinary and discreet.
When I first flew to Thailand as an adult to spend the winter between the Tropics of Cancer and Capricorn with my girlfriend, I chose a route through the United Arab Emirates, with a layover in Dubai. The layover was short, and we were in a hurry to catch our flight that would finally take us beyond the Tropic of Cancer, to which we had gotten very close. We raced through the airport, went through all the formal procedures, and made it to our seats in less than an hour. Some older man was sitting next to us. We watched the ground below us become smaller and smaller as the plane was taking off, and while we were up there in the clouds, each of us did our own thing. My girlfriend was listening to music (as I remember, it was the new Arctic Monkeys album), and I was reading (if memory serves me right) Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose.
As I turned to the next page in my book, I suddenly noticed my father’s hand beside me. I recognized it from that tattoo with the letter Г on the palm, between the thumb and the index finger. Two perpendicular lines, a shorter and a longer one, crossing. The letter which referred to his name. The only difference was that the hand belonged to the stranger sitting next to me.
His name was Luca (stressing the “u,” as Italians do). He was flying from Milano to Kuala-Lumpur with layovers in Dubai and Bangkok. I started our conversation by pointing out that my father had the very same tattoo. But Luca’s tattoo was of another letter: the Latin letter L. He told me those lines represented his two sons, the elder and younger. Their names also started with L. The longer line represented the elder son and the shorter one - the younger. The lines intersected. “They are two rays emanating from me,” he said.
Luca was an engineer who built bridges. He shared with me that what he missed the most during his numerous trips were his sons, who by then were already adults. He said that a line was his favorite geometrical figure, and those two intersecting lines on his hand reminded him of his children. Luca believed there couldn’t be too many reminders in life like that.
I like small and non-binding wonders that don’t lead anywhere or influence anything in particular but remind one of how multifaceted this world is. Wonders that tell me: “Look how many elements there are in space and how unexpectedly and interestingly they can fold, like the facets of a Rubik’s cube.” I like these enchanting wonders that leave behind only memory so as not to forget that they genuinely exist.
Because isn’t it a miracle to meet a part of your father in a stranger high above the Arabian sea? To recognize this love of a parent, which is so familiar, in another individual?
This is the miracle that occurs when you realize that there is something familiar in every stranger.
You just have to pay attention to notice it.
Cover image by Julia Dragan