It seems he’s been standing here—in the corner by the supermarket entrance—over the past few weeks. Nobody can tell how old he is: perhaps sixty or sixty five. He never looks up at the people moving inside and outside or holds out his hand. He just stands there, in the corner, and barely moves, making himself as inconspicuous as possible, trying not be an eyesore to anyone. It’s hard to notice him right away. Few people do that. Something is unusual about him. Something about him is wrong…
Honestly, I have a vast experience of interacting with people like him. In my student days, I used to give alms to a young daring gypsy woman. In the end, she started to recognize me and shouted hello to me from afar, whereas I felt embarrassed, especially when I was walking with someone. Turning away, I pretended she shouted at someone else. How can I have a gypsy woman among my friends? How is that even possible? No way!
Then there was an old woman weeping in the downtown underpass by the post office. I slipped a bill into her hand and went away. Walking home, I was tormenting myself with reproaches: “Trying to pay your way out, huh? Ten hryvnias—and you’re done, you think? You don’t give a damn about other people’s trouble. A do-gooder for five minutes, right? You’re just telling your conscience to shut up, Sergii, you despicable bastard. Go back! Now!” Finally, I got sick of the whole business and went back, even though I already walked quite far. I stroke up a conversation. The old woman told me through tears about her sister who’d undergone surgery and was bleeding to death, about her house in a village which someone had taken away from her, about her miserable pension. I slipped another ten-hryvnia bill into her hand, asking when she’d come there next time. I’d return and help her properly—that’s what I meant. We set a time. But when I was walking downstairs toward the old woman that day, a lady in a leather jacket blocked my way.
“She’s from another town,” said the lady, turning her eyes away. “She just needs eighty hryvnias for a ticket to Kyiv.”
Meanwhile, the old woman was steeped in tears. Grabbing our hands, she screamed at the sky that she got only two protectors—me and that lady in the leather jacket.
Little by little it dawned on me.
“What you do?” the lady asked, looking me in the eye, sizing me up.
“What does it matter to you?” I said, having already learned my lesson who should hear the real answer to that question.
“Nothing. Just asking. Maybe you could help me, too? Huh, buddy? Help me. Will you?”
“I’m not sure,” I mumbled. As usual in situations like this. In twenty minutes, all angry, hard-hitting words I should have said would come back to me, but at that moment I just stood on the slippery stairs, wordless. The old woman kept weeping, wringing her hands.
“Get out of here,” the lady hissed, her friendly smile turning into an evil grin.
And I did, straight to the prosecutor I knew. Back then, it was not a big deal for me, as I was a journalist.
“What on earth is she doing there?” I asked him.
“Are you kidding me? She’s an underboss. Keeps an eye on those like you who’re messing with her business.”
“What if I kick up a fuss? Make a noise about it? Cause some media mayhem? I’m sure I can do something!”
“I wonder how. Your weeping grandma won’t admit for the life of her that she’s working for them. Don’t you get it? Nothing will come out of it. They’ll just move her somewhere else—and she’ll weep there. She doesn’t care. Wherever they say. They keep her on a tight leash. Clear? You know, if I were you, I’d write about utility companies or stolen manholes—it’s safer. And here…well, if you knew where it all goes… I don’t even know it myself. That’s why I sleep like a baby.”
Over the next couple of years after that incident, I gave no alms to the beggars. Not a single coin. I had enough time to mull it all over and make certain conclusions. Yes, all these beggars, mothers with babies, miserable old women, and cripples with their shoes carefully untied, exploit…no, not our kindness. First and foremost, they exploit our desire to look kind in our own eyes. You’ll realize that’s the truth if you dare to admit it to yourself. Because you know… Those eager to bring kindness, real kindness, into the world, always know where to bring it. There’re large or dysfunctional families. Orphanages. Hospices. It’s easy to find a soul that badly needs your warmth. But they need it for real, for long, or maybe even forever. We are often afraid to commit ourselves “for real”, though. You can’t warm up the entire planet, right? So we share our warmth with the old women on the stairs, without noticing that today a dirty piece of cardboard in front of them says, “Please help with my daughter’s funeral” and tomorrow: “For an operation for my blind grandson.” We don’t remember details like that well. We rarely take a second look at the babies in prams who are always silent for some reason—are these the same babies as yesterday? Or maybe new ones? We just need to feel good about ourselves, here and now. We don’t take a second look, because we don’t look at all.
Some two or three years ago, shopping at a local grocery store, I came across the retired secretary from my university. She was buying a bottle of milk and a loaf of bread. Having given fifty hryvnias to the shop assistant, she got back as little change as she would had she given her twenty hryvnias. She couldn’t prove she’d been overcharged, though. I was standing in line behind her; when she went out, I caught up with her and said, “Dear Kateryna Ivanivna, please take it. No really, it’s not a big deal. I was standing right behind you and saw everything. You remember me, right?”
Shrinking back in horror as if I offered her a viper, she waved her hands, gasping, “What’s that? Oh no! How could you…?!”
She hurried away.
Watching her walk with short clumsy steps, wrapping an old coat around her, her knees rubbing against one another, I realized that you have to learn how to be kind. I understood that you should give something in such a way that another person could take it from you. Without any please-take-it-no-really-it’s-not-a-big-deal. What a swine.
Honestly, I still give alms sometimes. Not always money. Or rather, almost never money… And definitely not to those I’ve seen in one and the same spot for the past twenty years—the ones who keep rewriting the words on their pieces of cardboard. Most often, I help those who don’t even ask for it.
For example, an old blind woman who played the accordion with a smile on her lips, inspired and enlightened, by the gates to a spotlessly white building with a plate saying, “Eye Disease Unit. Ophthalmology Department.” Or another one who showered me with her blessings after I gave her a pound of peaches at the bus stop at one o’clock in the morning. She wished me so many good things that perhaps that’s the reason I still have so much luck with people. How else to explain that? Who on earth would stand at an empty bus stop at midnight, waiting until someone comes and gives them alms? Who?
I still make mistakes giving money to strangers. Do I go wrong? Sure. Does someone take advantage of me? Most probably. Do I keep deceiving myself? Do I still try to catch the passing feeling of humanness? Do I crave to be kind to myself? I do, and there’s no ace up my sleeve. I have never found someone who’d desperately need help. I’m not ready to take responsibility, nor do I have spare cash. I’m also scared of letting a random stranger into my heart. For they might stay there forever.
This morning, I went for it again. I bought a cup of yoghurt and a pack of wafers and, before leaving the supermarket, took a deep breath and offered it to him, “Here, please, take it.” Raising his eyes—pale, almost white—at me, he said, “Thank you.” In Ukrainian, not in Russian. The paper rustled, as he started to unwrap the wafers.
I rushed out of the supermarket, so I wouldn’t have to meet his eye again. On my way home, I realized that we don’t know anything. Neither about a column where this or that action of ours goes, recorded by the celestial bureaucracy. Nor about the real value of an enlightened smile, an old man’s sigh, or a child’s tear. We know nothing. Nothing.
Perhaps we just have to be more observant. Enjoying ourselves, shaking sides with laughing, we should probably keep in mind that someone around might be depressed that very minute. Or the other way round: feeling down, we should remember that someone out there is joyful. And that this moment of joy might never happen again in their life.