When I saw the place where our car stopped, I was very surprised: that was a house, not big and not small, just it looked good and tidy, everything seemed to be cozy, comfortable and without ceremony. Then a man
opened the door – he was smiling, he had kind sad eyes, but they were
full of craftiness and bright smart face. When I got to his apartment he
told me the story about himself and his life. I understood that he had
been a friend of my father for ages and he truly
appreciated the fact that I had chosen exactly him as an interviewee.
And what is the most exciting here, he told me the story about a man,
who became a ‘hero’ of my homework – in other words, he told me the chronicle of his grandfather. Here is what he said:
‘I have only one person,
who is my genius and my idol all this time. My grandpa. Unfortunately,
he is not alive now, but a memory of him is still in my mind and heart.
Everybody called him uncle Michael. He was a gambler, a professional gambler. And
according to this fact a lot of people didn’t like him. The thing was
that they were associating this word with fraud, scam, trickery and
vehemence (which was like a human vice). So uncle Michael seemed to be a
bad person almost for anyone: even if one didn’t know him, he had that
preconceived attitude. Thus his life was not so simple.
But you know, Ksusha,
what was special with him? He was not a person that he seemed to be.
Yes, he knew everything about cards, a lot of different techniques,
methods, playing strategies, etc. – he was a devotee! And this card love
was not casual. Cards were EVERYTHING for him, they
were replacing his job, and he was able to earn playing and getting the
money from people in a beautiful manner. As you see, he was a true smart
and wise person, somebody who had a passion to dedicate himself to a
work that he liked. As a result he was a professional. And this skill, I
mean a skill of being a pro in any card game one day helped him to save people’s lives.
I got to know it only after his death, because he didn’t tell me this
story: only one of his friends opened that secret for me.
So, that was a hard time for our country (a period of Great Patriotic War),
but my grandfather wasn’t a military man, he continued playing while
the war was passing. He played in an occupied Kharkiv with Germans. One
day while he was playing with a German military officer, he won and
suddenly got to know that Germans would like to deliver a few hundreds
of Jews to Poland and so they were doomed to death. Then my grandfather
gave that officer a term: if he won in the next game,
then this officer should leave 10 Jews and give him a life, if the
officer won, my grandfather would give him all that he won before. The
officer agreed with terms, but he said he was ready to give freedom only
to 5 Jews. The agreement was done.
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