Kaleidoscope. English edition - Irina Bjørnø

Kaleidoscope

English edition

Irina Bjørnø

Proofreader Jeanne Richardson

Photograph Irina Bjørnø

© Irina Bjørnø, 2019

© Irina Bjørnø, photos, 2019

Created with Ridero smart publishing system

Introduction

I. Bjørnø

All of my work (all of my stories) is a fantasy of the author. All matches of names and events are pure coincidence! My style is mystical realism.

TREASURE HANT

The gift

Everyone is given a gift in his life. One person receives a small one, another  the great, some- for loan time, and some  forever. Each and everybody. The gift  to write books and to make new discoveries, the gift  to comfort people or the gift to entertain and to make the people forget their lifes problems for a moment, the gift  to organize the life in a better way or the gift to love one. Everyone gets his own, personal and unique gift.

Dimitry had got a strange gift from his fate, not many people in the world had such a gift: he was able to find fake banknotes and stock bonds and sort them out from the real one printed in the National Bank. He could tot only distinguish but feel fake signature on the bank check or bank bonds. He didnt know how he managed to do it. He just knew it as a famous chef knows how much salt or spices should he add into the famous sauce. And Dimitry  he felt the money, he felt it with his whole body, brain, fingers, as a pianist feels the music, as a lover feels the women body  with all his cells, with the whole being. He had been working in the financial department of criminality in the Scandinavian National Bank for many years. There were only a few experts in the world like him, but he could work without ultraviolet light lamps or infrared devices, except his antique magnifying glass, which he had got from his grandfather and used daily.

Being an expert in false money banknotes he was involved in the investigations dealing with controversial cases of signatures forgery on people wills and other securities papers, and he had never made a mistake. NEVER!!!

His work was paid fairly well, and it was enough to have a little house with a garden, a car and a small pension in private insurance company. He loved his job, as well as his cold Nordic country, purged by winds, with the most socialistic system in the world with a rich welfare with equally distribution of social benefits among the not so big and rather generous population.

People in his country were neither particularly the rich nor the noble, in spite of the oldest royal house in the world and fairytale of world famous H. C. Andersen about princes and princesses, where a simple driver monthly wages was the same as a bank clerk wages. Dimitry was used to it, even though he was differed from the other Scandinavians because of his name.

His name showed his belongingness to the history of Russia. He was called Dimitry Romanoff, was a prince by blood and a surviving relatives of the Tsar Romanoffs deadly affected branch. He was the offspring of the family which managed to escape from Peter the Thirds repressions and was the survivor relative of Peter the Great.

He was born in Switzerland, but moved to Scandinavia many years ago, when he had remarried his second Scandinavian and totally not-noble wife.

For many years he had lived in the shadow of storms that raged in Russia in connection with the building of so called New Russian mafia-controlled capitalism model, but from time to time the rumours that some political groups in Russia would wished to see the Romanoffs dynasty to sit on the patriarchal throne of mother Russia and to take the responsibilities for the fortunes of the people, suffering from the greedy post capitalist criminal bands, reached him.

Dimitry was not interested in politics, but he played a role in Russian emigrant society, which was established in Scandinavia since the time of the execution of Nicholai the Second family and the escape of Nicholai mother, a little fragile and doll-beautiful Minnie  Tsarina Maria Feodorovna, and a sister of Scandinavian king, who was firmly seated on his throne in that time and was beloved by everybody in his rainy homeland.

Dimitry Romanoff was a part of a small circle of titled noble Russian-related persons still living in Scandinavia with their traditions of Russian Christmas bazaar, Faberge Easter eggs with diamonds and rare exhibitions of the pictures and portraits belonged to the Russian Grand Duchess Olga, who ended her life in Canada unknown and in poverty.

These people, who were last peaces of Russian Empire of Tsar Nikolai time assemble together several ones or twice a year on the occasion of birthdays, funerals and the Russian Easter, playing their noble roles in this small society as usual.

Dimitrys Russian language was poor and with a strong French accent, but he would always attended these yearly assemblies with his immensely upstanding neck, holding out his hand ready for the aristocratic and surely Romanoff way to greet others. But no one kissed his hand, and he could not stand that advanced familiarity with kisses on the cheeks. It is at those meetings he felt his blue blood of Romanoffs house very vividly, but later, coming back to a little house with a garden, where everything had to be done by himself  he felt different, not as Romanoff with blue blood, but as best in the world specialist in banknotes forgery, which make him almost the most unique person in the world, and that he was the most proud of.

Russia  always being so unpredictable  suddenly felt great love for everything, connecting with Romanoff, the Tsar, to everything that had gone in the past and trying now to patch the blood holes of its history by insisting on reburial of the exiled Russian Tsarina, little Minnie, who had been lying peacefully since the distant 1928 in Roskildes Cathedral and now shoul be reburied next to the glorious Russians Tsars and Grand Duchess, next to her legitimate Russian husband, tsar Alexander III.

She, Minnie, did not actually loved her Russian husband and even was a little afraid of, but political marriages were at her time in vogue, and she could not deny her fathers will, who betrothed her first with a gentle and intelligent Grand Duke of Russia, Nicholas, who had suddenly died in Nice, and later to the next living pretender to the Russian throne, big and not so culturally polished Alexander, Nikolas brother.

Dimitry was invited to the ceremony of reburial as a living representative of the Romanoffs House of Glory. He and his untitled wife were sent the first class tickets from the Putins government and he went to his first meeting with the unknown Mother Russia together with some representatives of the Scandinavian Royal House.

He was greeted in the airport with fanfare, the red carpet from the plane into the airport building, a first-class hotel, for which he was never able to pay for himself and the real royal honourers. He had a personal guide: long-legged Russian Natasha who has adorable makeup and latest fashion dress and actually looking like Natasha Rostova from Leo Tolstoy very thick and very famous roman. She accompanied him and his wife everywhere  during Tsarina Minnies reburial, and during their trip to the gold plated Peterhof, and during the excursions into the Winter Palace as well.

Natasha organized tickets for the first row of the Kirov, now Mariinsky Theater on ballet, dinners at best and pricy restaurants in Nevsky Prospect and visits to other palaces, where his firstly crowned and then innocently murdered relatives had anniversary balls, entertainment, dinners, and just lived there everyday lifes.

In one of such country palaces Dimitry met the official delegation of Russians and was asked timidly if he can accept as a gift this small royal country house with a hundred of rooms, which is only an hour drive from St. Petersburg and really needs to have supervision and the royal income for keeping the place in proper standards.

Dimitry grew cold inside. He had barely enough money for his own tiny Scandinavian house with the garden, but there was a palace!

No, thanks, I am used to living in Scandinavia, said Dimitry politely, but he continued to discus the proposal with his wife in a hotel later in the night thinking about the life cost of such palace.

No, and no again! If only he was elected as the legitimate Russian Tsar and rewarded generously with money. But Russia has had already his uncrown tsar, sitting firmly in Moscow and not intending to shear his responsibility and money with anybody around. Dimitry new that he is not a competitor knowing well the destiny of others who dreamed about Russia and power.

But back to surprising suggestion about the palace close to Skt. Petersburg: He new for sure, that he would not be able to cover even the monthly expenses for this small summer place. He undoubtedly liked the palace, as well as Russian honours, and long legs Natasha, but it was like a mirage, fatamorgana, horrible sleeping dream, which snick secretly into his simple life of a bank clerk.

And he returned to his homeland, which was not rich but understandable and predictable Scandinavia, to his small house with a garden and to his job in the National Bank, money security department. He was given by fate only one gift in his lifetime  to feel false money, banknotes, bonds, checks, but not to manage this big, confusing and dangerous Russia, where tsars were usually assassinate by shutting, and then their relatives were invited or forced to fill the place of the murdered.

Oh no! Let them try to find the other Romanoff  a stupid one! I myself feel rather well here!

Those were the thoughts of one of the last Romanoffs descent on the way to his job in the National Bank, where he had his own small office with a old chair, and a modern computer, his fathers old amplifying glass, and a bookcase with the files about forgery and false money, many of which had been made in this strange as true idiot and unsolved by anyone Russia.

The Сountess

The Сountess was old and sick. She was overweight, her feet were swollen from gout, and the blood was circulating in her massive body with various drugs, which she was taken from morning till night, and a angina pectoris was the precise title of her heart failure, because when she breathed, she did it heavily and noisily as a fat pimply toad seemed to live in it.

She was dying. She was in her late eighties, and she had lived a long life, where she played the role of the Countess every day, and she played this role great. She had fused with this role so much that she started to believe in all the true and invented stories from the life of the countess, which she often was happy to tell to others. In those moments when the audience became still and opened their mouth in surprise, she really enjoyed her life of a real Russian countess.

And now the Countess was sitting on her old, leaky and faded chair with a portrait of her great-grandfather behind her as she assured them all  the Count and the hero of Russian-Turkish war, with fluffy sideburns and horse-faced. She did not want to die.

There was her mothers gold necklace with five small Faberge eggs on her neck studded with varicoloured stones, which she did not leave day or night.

She wore the ring called gold baptistery on the little finger of her left hand, but a huge, Siberian blue diamond with a unique Russian diamond cut  was not there any more: it might have fallen in the hospital, where she spent more and more time, or it was stolen as she was lying unconscious after her next blood transfusion.

But these things, as well as a small brooch with a double-headed royal eagle with big diamonds, which travelled from one blouse to the other, were part of her role of the Countess, and she would never sell them, under no circumstances. She wouldnt feel herself the Countess without them.

She lived in a small apartment with three small rooms and paid for it from her

little pension. The apartment was in an old house with no lift on the third

floor, and now for half a year the Countess did not go out, because she could not climb the steep steps up: swollen legs did not keep her heavy body properly any more.

But the prospect of moving to a nursing home for the old was impossible for her. Only in this apartment, stuffed with old Russian paintings, water-colours belonged to sisters of murdered last Russian Tzar, a portrait of her mother in a ball gown from 1904 and furniture from the study cabinet of Alexander the Third, she felt herself the Countess.

She hadnt got any children. She met her second husband, a former White officer in Paris, where he had whiled away the life as a taxi driver, so she hadnt got money for servants, and other Countesss fun at home.

She loved her phone, especially when it called, and at that moments she seems to came to real life of Countess, when each time she screamed into the phone, not allowing the caller to say a word, Kisya are you coming to me?. She named Kissya (or Pussy cat in Russian) referring to anybody. She had no more memory for names, except those that she needed for her stories, and the others, she needed in her troubled life of old lady, recorded them carefully in her notebook, which was always next to her chair.

So, she invited persistently all the listeners of her stories and those who might render small, but necessary for her life daily services as cleaning, washing up or buying something eatable. If a man called, then, irrespective of age, she called him such a little nasty chap and used to say always the same:" I know you and your dirty thoughts! You want to go to bed with me  but I do not love you. She didnt probably love anyone but herself and her role as a real Russian Countess, who lived in exile.

She was born in a foreign country  not in Russia, and the first time came to Russia in the eighties  at the end of Brezhnevs Empire of the developed socialism. She hated the communists, because she believed that they were guilty for everything that had happened in distant October of the seventeenth 1917.

The Countesss mother, lady-in-waiting of the old Russian Empress, blowing from Russia and her place in the aristocratic society by revolution strong wind, left Russia together with the mother of murdered last Russian Tzar, with one of her Cossack and her dear spouse. She was pregnant with our Countess at that distant and shaking time. They had taken out of Russia some of the royal furniture, pictures and, of course, compact and smart diamonds which they had sewn in all bras of their dresses.