I thought I saw John in Huntington Park on a February afternoon in 1997. Driving away from the library a man with John's proud, straight features in a black coat and dark hat was sitting on a bench set against a snowy background. He was looking straight ahead. I quickly leaned over to the passenger side preparing to wave but then realized that it couldn't be John. There followed a brief rush of sadness.
The legend was that John and Soya Takachenko fled Russia in the 1920s, spent the next several decades in Brazil and then found their way to Oneonta in the 1970s. Soya taught Russian language at Hartwick College and he became a self-taught watch repairman. There were no children. Soya died in the 1980s and was buried at the Holy Trinity Monastery in Jordanville. I would visit her grave once but primarily as a sidelight to strolling in the Russian Orthodox cemetery.
I then began to see John rather frequently as he took his morning walks. He had a route that included at the very least Church, Center, Elm and Main streets. John was a tall, elegant man with precise but rugged features and moved with strong, purposeful strides. He was always well dressed suitable to the season. No depressed, lost soul this European. When we met pleasantries were exchanged. I would practice my probably incoherent Russian on him. He would ask about my last or forthcoming trip to the USSR. We were always pleased to see each other. One such encounter occurred late in the era of "perestroika" in a grocery store parking lot. The Soviet Union had loosened the travel restrictions on its' citizens. John in exact, precise English announced that to his amazement and delight his niece was coming to Oneonta to visit him. "I am so happy!"
About two years later John invited me over to his house on Hill Street to meet his two brothers on the occasion of their first visit to the USA. In a rather dimly lite living room we would chat, share light snacks and vodka. Compared to John who was in his mid 60s, his brothers looked past 125. But of course it could also have been simply exhaustion. They had also been "cheated" out of several hundred dollars by a New York City cab driver who drove them from JFK to Oneonta. One of the brothers would also require a couple of days of hospitalization for diabetes.
John and I would chat only once more. On a couple of other occasions we were a block apart and did not meet. Someone told me that his health was deteriorating. Next I knew he had sold his house and in anticipation of dying returned to his old home town in southern Russia. During those years I had periodically thought about having John over for s small dinner and some chess. But I never did. It is now 2012 and I still regret it.
Charlie
