Kandinsky and aunt's notes

Mikhail Andreevich tells a story that he considers symbolic.

‘When  I used to study at an art institute and live in a hostel, my aunt sent  me food from home. And once I was cooking eggs for dinner. I unfolded  the wrapper with the eggs, laying the paper aside, and suddenly my  attention was attracted by a familiar image. When I looked closely I saw  the reproductions of paintings by Vasily Kandinsky banned in the USSR.

I collected those strange pieces of paper and hid it for a while. Arriving on a summer vacation home, I showed them to my aunt.

‘Where did you get them?’ I asked her.

“Well, this is my “Frenchman” (in such a way his aunt called her husband - ed.), keeps them in his suitcase, rereads from time to time.’

‘Show me.’

My aunt brought a book in a simple gray binding, published in French (self-publishing of 1951), and told the following.

When  her husband and she were going back to the USSR from France in 1952,  almost all things were taken away from them on the border. But when the  Soviet customs officer turned away, uncle quickly snatched the first  book from the drawer and hid it in his bosom. This book was an edition  dedicated to Kandinsky.

In Ukraine, instead of a rich life,  ex-emigrants experienced poverty and deprivation. In order not to die of  hunger, they had to sell the remaining clothes, the violins brought  from France. Of the nine children, only two were saved...

From  time to time, my uncle, in order not to forget French, re-read the book  about Kandinsky. But my aunt used it differently. On the flyleaf one can  distinguish the notes made by her hand:

‘Took the cow to the bull (date).’

‘Put the goose on eggs (date).’

Wow! Kandinsky, this abstraction and... my aunt’s notes. It’s like a story for the film “Kandinsky and Ukraine.”