On Being Socialist

This is from touching yet hilariously funny Lewycka's novel A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian, a dialog between Nadhezda and her big sister Vera on becoming socialist --or its opposite side

Of course she remembers. She hasn't forgotten the smell of diesel, the swish of the windscreen wipers, the unsteady sway of the bus as it churned newly fallen snow into slush; coloured lights outside the windows; Christmas Eve 1952. Vera and I, muffled against the cold, snuggling up against Mother on the backseat. And a kind woman in a fur coat who leaned across the aisle and pressed sixpence into Mother's hand: 'For the kiddies at Christmas.'

'The woman who gave Mother sixpence.'

Mother, our mother, did not dash the coin in her face; she mumbled, 'Thank you, lady,' and slipped it into her pocket. The shame of it!

'Oh, that. I think she was a bit drunk. You mentioned it once before. I don't know why you go on about it.'

'It was that moment -more than anything that happened to me afterwards- that turned me into lifelong socialist.'

There is silence on the other end of the telephone and for a moment I think she has hung up on me. Then: Maybe it was what turned me into the woman in the fur coat.'

If you come to think of it, for one to be a socialist or capitalist can come from similar trauma, or event, you may want to call it --and they share quite similar imagined ending. But in between, the process, the method, is extremely different. And it is what matters, I guess.

Oh, and the book. It is a very recommended weekend reading by the way --an English wit poking on technology, immigration, European future, politics and class consciousness.