Their Grandmothers

Old lady, standing outside the heavy metro doors at Rechnoi Voksal metro station in Moscow. It is  minus 4 celcius and she is holding two transparent plastic folders in her bare outstretched hand. . It could be a flower, it often is a flower, or a bunch of flowers. It could be a bunch of herbs, a jar of homemade jam, a pair of socks or something from the bottom of a long forgotten drawer that she thinks she might be able to sell. This dear old lady was selling two plastic folders. They cost 4 rubles in the shop, I had seen the  same ones just the day before at the Biblio Globus bookshop in Lubyanka. She is dressed in a grey coat, her face is white from the cold, she is stooped and shaking.  Where does she come from? Where does she live? Where does she go home to? Real charity, it's been said, is not giving when you can give, but sharing the last scrap of meat you have, when you are also hungry. Charity and giving from a position of wealth springs more from guilt than from love. And when it's real, the question isn't "how much can I give"? but "What should I do?".
She looked like all the blood had drained from her face and hands, she was ash white, shaking like a robin's feathers in the wind.
I put three ten ruble notes in her tiny white hand. ( about 80 pence). She says "no, it's 10 rubles for both". "No, I'm sure it's 30 rubles for one". She looks at me with the gratitude of a grandmother whose grandson had traveled from the other side of Russia to see her. I hear so many words bandied about, everywhere outside Russia. Like the word "heartbreaking". I have never heard Russians complain, about anything, and I have never heard them say, with a 'poor them' pitying tone "Ah, that's heartbreaking". It's a place where the broken heart has no name, where it isn't  called anything, or given a voice, but where it just is. In Russia, the words describing pain, and suffering, and love, go whispered on the breath, or as a deep hum underground, like the rumbling and groaning of plates as they grind together before an earthquake, and the angels go to heaven  unannounced, untainted by pity,  as innocent as Robins.