-Do you remember our first time playing like this in a public place, Dimitri?
-Oh yeah! like it was yesterday, Sergei
-Forty years, Dimitri, and here we are together with the same old music. But the place has changed a lot.
-Do you remember the old joke from the years of the cold war?
-Yeah. What’s a Chamber Orchestra? Sergei began
-A Russian symphonic Orchestra coming home after an international tour, answered both of them at one voice.
-Ah, we did it, didn’t we? Said Dimitri, our American dream.
-Yes, we escaped from our old Orchestra in the intermission of the concert in St Louis, remembered Sergei
-I felt bad for our comrades. The newspaper described how the Party guards who controlled us closed the back doors of the hall and put all the musicians in line to interrogate them one by one about our whereabouts before letting them board the buses. The tour was abruptly canceled and everybody returned home.
-What a mess! we had planned our escape to the detail. Nobody else knew anything.
-Do you think they would forgive us? They were our friends!
-After all these years? I hope so. The world has changed there are no longer Party guards to control them or us.
-I don’t know. I’m nervous.
-Don’t be. Let’s play the same pieces we played our first day of freedom when we were begging for alms. We will celebrate our 40th anniversary out of that old jail that way.
-OK. You always has been the leader.
The music filled the place and transported the two companions to a world of fantasy and peace.
Suddenly, a loud voice said:
-All the passengers of the flight LH 465 to Moscow, please proceed to gate 124.
The two musicians stoped playing
-Here we go, said Dimitri
-What can we expect at home after 40 years?
-We only will know when we arrive.
-I miss that damn Country and its people so much, I can’t wait for that moment no matter what.
The photo is from Jessica Gale at Morguefile.com.