The Kim family album

The quarantine started in March. The bazaar is open only in small hours, the bus does not go, the post office is closed except for pensions. We stay at home, Nelli and I. I put 220 tomato seedlings on every windowsill because I could not stop myself. For forty years I ran a thousand hectares and now I have a window.

Vika writes every morning from Seoul, in the afternoon her time. She says in Korea they have masks in the vending machines. I asked how much. She said 1,500 won, and I started to translate it into som, and stopped, because it does not matter.

In the evening the whole street is quiet. There is no singing, no children, only the water in the canal and the dogs. I walk to the end of the street and back, I count to 400 steps. I think of the freight cars in 1937. My mother's sentence is in my head: "We put the little ones in the middle." Now I understand that sentence differently. Today we put the old ones in the middle, and the young stand at the door.