The Empty Seat Across the Table
You can read Chapter 1 here…
Chapter 2
The Vologda village of 1928 was now behind us. But the argument about why a person drinks—and what changes when fewer and fewer people remain at the table—was only beginning.
The next stop was Leningrad in the late 1950s: the Baltic Shipyard and a communal apartment where several families lived in separate rooms but shared the kitchen, corridor, bathroom, and toilet. There was little personal space there, and sometimes almost too much human contact.
…Leningrad. The late 1950s.
Outside, it was an ordinary November evening. In the courtyard of a large communal apartment building on the Obvodny Canal embankment, in one of the city’s old working-class districts, the yellowish light of a streetlamp was reflected in puddles already beginning to freeze. Damp air drifted in from the Neva. Somewhere in the distance, a tram rattled by.
In the large communal apartment, life did not end when the working day was over. Someone was frying potatoes in the shared kitchen. A child was crying in the next room. A radio played quietly behind the wall. Someone was arguing about the line for the toilet. Someone was laughing. Someone was discussing the latest news.
In the small corner room, Grandfather, who had just come home from work, hung his jacket over the back of a chair. He had been working as a fitter-assembler at the Baltic Shipyard for more than ten years. Every morning, he walked the same route to the factory gates.
The day had been long—not the hardest, but certainly not an easy one either.
He took a small but heavy decanter filled with clear liquid from the cupboard and carried it to the kitchen. The vodka inside looked almost indistinguishable from water. Only the smell gave it away.
A decanter was quieter than a bottle with a visible label. A bottle announced far too loudly to everyone around that a person was drinking. And in a communal apartment, there were always other people’s eyes watching.
Grandfather sat down at the table. His wife placed a deep bowl of borscht in front of him—a hearty beet soup that was a staple of everyday home cooking. Everyone added sour cream to their own bowl, so it would last longer.
He could have a drink by himself. But being truly alone was almost impossible
Folder inscription: “Winner of the Socialist Competition”
(a Soviet-era award recognizing outstanding workplace performance)
Next came a frying pan of potatoes and several meat patties that looked far more appetizing than the ones served in the factory cafeteria. Slices of dark rye bread, a plate of sauerkraut, and pickles were set on the table. Beside them appeared a shallow dish of herring, cleaned and cut into pieces beforehand, with rings of onion.
Grandfather slowly poured himself a shot from the decanter and drank it without hurry, narrowing his eyes slightly as the alcohol burned his palate.
His wife sat beside him, darning socks. She glanced disapprovingly at the shot glass, knowing there was no point in starting the same argument again. He was older than many of their neighbors in the apartment.
— Again? — was all she asked.
— Just a hundred grams, — Grandfather said with a shrug.
— But a hundred grams every day.
— So?
— Nothing.
Grandfather smiled. He did not bother defending himself yet again. The war had ended more than ten years earlier, but some wartime habits—the famous “People’s Commissar’s hundred grams,” the daily ration of vodka issued to soldiers during the war—had outlived the reasons that had created them.
Grandmother put her darning aside.
— A letter came from my sister today.
— From Vologda?
— Where else?
They began talking about relatives. Then neighbors. Then prices. Then the new foreman at the factory. Then the upcoming roof repairs.
The conversation flowed calmly and unhurriedly. The shot glass had long been empty. The decanter remained on the table, but Grandfather did not touch it again.
Dinner was over. His wife put the dishes in the sink and quickly washed them. Grandfather took the decanter back to their room and returned it to the cupboard.
Their son had long since fallen asleep behind a curtain in the corner.
If Grandfather ever thought he was drinking alone, Grandmother could always object:
— I was always sitting beside you, not the television.
By then, Grandfather and Grandmother usually ate dinner alone together
Someone knocked at the door. A neighbor asked for some salt. Ten minutes later, another came by to return a book. Then someone else dropped in.
A communal apartment had little understanding of the meaning of the word “solitude.” Even when someone desperately wanted to be alone.
In Soviet cities, there was no established culture of the neighborhood pub or small local bar where someone could regularly stop after work for a beer and a conversation. That role was often played by the kitchen, the courtyard, the factory smoking area, the long corridor of a communal apartment, or simply the neighbors’ room on the other side of the wall.
Conversation took place not at a bar counter, but around a shared table, beside the stove, while waiting in line at the washbasin, or through the half-open door of the next room. You could say that in the West, people went to alcohol, while in the Soviet Union, alcohol more often came to the people.
Today, many of those traditional spaces for human interaction have gradually disappeared or moved online.
Back in the kitchen, people were still arguing about hockey. Music was playing behind the wall. Someone was walking down the long corridor. Someone was getting ready for bed. Life continued in every room at once.
— Do you think I never wanted some peace and quiet? Of course I did. We just almost never had any.
In that world, Grandfather could drink a shot by himself. But he could seldom truly be alone.
— 🪑 —
And then the voice of Great-Grandfather, who had remained silent until now, was heard.
— For me, drinking like this for no particular reason—without guests, without relatives, without conversation—would have seemed strange.
Grandfather immediately answered him:
— Oh, come on, Dad. Having a drink after work is perfectly normal.
At that point, Grandmother joined in:
— After work, yes. But he isn’t drinking after work. He’s been home for hours. And he’s alone.
The Great-Grandson turned the empty shot glass in his hands. Then he looked first at Great-Grandfather, then at Grandfather.
— Easy for you to say.
Great-Grandfather raised an eyebrow in surprise from the photograph.
— Easy?
— Of course.
The Great-Grandson gave a joyless smile.
— You always had a house full of people. Your problem wasn’t finding someone to talk to. It was finding somewhere to hide from them.
He turned his gaze to Grandfather.
— And it was much the same for you. The communal apartment. The factory. Neighbors. Relatives. Friends.
In those days, it was difficult for a person to be alone even when they wanted to. The factory, the communal apartment, relatives, neighbors, and friends constantly drew people into conversations, arguments, requests, and other people’s problems.
He shrugged.
— Things are completely different for us now.
He began explaining about freedom, comfort, independence, money, and the absence of obligations.
Grandfather listened carefully and then observed:
— I understand. There’s just one thing I didn’t hear anywhere on that list—a person beside you.
The Great-Grandson tried to defend himself.
— You keep talking about people, people, people… But where am I supposed to find them?
He nodded toward the window.
— I barely know the neighbors on my floor. They barely know me. No one talks while waiting in line at the store. Everyone on the subway stares at their phones. Children hardly play outside anymore, and there are fewer and fewer children anyway. Even at work, half our meetings are held online.
The cat raised her head and looked intently at her owner. He looked at the nearly empty bottle.
— So that’s how you end up alone in the evening.
Great-Grandfather was about to say something, but the Great-Grandson interrupted him.
— And no, I’m not complaining. I have an apartment. I have a job. I have the internet and a phone. I can talk to someone on the other side of the world at any moment. And yet, somehow, none of that puts more people beside me.
Silence settled over the room. Even the television seemed to lower its voice.
— So don’t think I drink because I enjoy drinking.
He set the shot glass down on the table.
— Sometimes I just want an evening like this to end a little sooner.
— 🪑 —
Then a voice came from the photograph of Father by the sea:
— You know… evenings were long in our time, too.
The Great-Grandson looked at the photograph.
— Oh, come on.
Father smiled.
— Do you think the 1990s were all jokes about the country’s leaders, gangsters, ‘New Russians’ in crimson jackets, ‘shuttle traders’ endlessly traveling to Turkey, Poland, and China, and endless television ads promising the latest financial miracle?
He shook his head.
— No. Most of the time, they were made up of ordinary evenings just like this one. They simply looked a little different. We drank too. Plenty. But we sat with the neighbors in the communal kitchen until two in the morning, arguing about life.
And before the Great-Grandson’s eyes, an old dacha appeared…
— 🪑 —
…Leningrad Region. Late August 1994.
The dacha season was slowly drawing to a close. Autumn could already be felt in the mornings. The air smelled of damp earth, smoke from outdoor fires, and apples that no one had time to pick up and eat.
A six-hundred-square-meter plot of land was allocated by the factory where Father worked. A small house clad in wooden paneling. A primitive greenhouse built from materials that had somehow managed to “find their way out” of the factory. Several not particularly straight rows of garden beds. An old shed. And a fence that Father had been arguing about with his neighbor for the third summer in a row.
👉 Six sotkas—a plot of about 600 square meters, a standard size for many Soviet dachas.
That morning, he had argued with him again, even though the man worked in a neighboring shop at the same factory. First about the fence. Then about who was supposed to replace the leaking pipe. Then about the shared outdoor faucet that had stood between their plots ever since the land—initially considered almost unusable—had first been developed.
Each man was convinced he was right. Their voices gradually grew louder. Their arguments became less and less convincing.
The neighbor stormed off, slamming the gate behind him.
— I’ll talk to you at work, and I’ll tell the shop supervisor everything!
Father continued muttering under his breath for quite a while as he straightened the leaning picket fence.
By afternoon, the argument seemed to be over. But the bad mood remained. Toward evening, the air grew cooler, and the approach of the damp northern autumn could already be felt.
The sun sank behind the pine trees. Somewhere in the distance a dog was barking. The radio carried news about prices, elections, scandals, and the country’s latest seemingly endless problems. The news changed several times a day, but the problems remained the same.
Father carried an old wooden table outside. He set down a bowl of new potatoes, tomatoes, and cucumbers straight from his own garden, homemade pickles, and sliced salo—salt-cured pork fat. Next came a one-liter decanter and a three-liter glass jar.
The clear liquid in the decanter needed neither a label nor advertising. Everyone knew what it was. The homemade moonshine was tried and tested, distilled in a still assembled by the skilled hands of an experienced factory mechanic.
The glass jar, meanwhile, held a rich red liquid—homemade vishnyovka, made from cherries freshly picked from the young fruit tree growing on the plot. It was still fermenting slightly in the jar, but already had its characteristic fruity aroma, sweetish taste, and magnificent color. For the women. For dessert. For something sweet afterward.
Arguments could last for years. Yet there was always room at the table for neighbours
Photograph inscription: “Yalta, 1978”
A few minutes later, the gate creaked open. The neighbor appeared on the plot again. The same man with whom Father had nearly come to blows that morning.
Without a word, he sat down at the table. Looked at the decanter. Then at his host.
— Well, Petrovich, are we going to keep dividing up the country, or shall we have a drink first?
Father could not help laughing. The neighbor laughed too. They drank the first shot in silence, smacking their lips with satisfaction, and followed it with fresh tomatoes and radishes.
After the second, they were already discussing the harvest and Boris Yeltsin’s prospects.
By the third, the argument over the fence had unexpectedly lost its former importance. Instead, it turned out that the neighbor’s son was planning to apply to college. That the potatoes had done better than usual that year. That the old pipe really did need replacing. And that, in any case, they would have to do it together. Even a highly skilled factory mechanic’s wages would not stretch to buying water delivered by tanker trucks.
It was getting dark. Smoke rose above the neighboring plots from charcoal grills and stoves that had already been lit against the evening chill. Somewhere a radio was playing. Someone was calling the children home. Someone else was already going to bed.
The argument had not disappeared. They would almost certainly continue it in the morning. But that evening, two friends were sitting together at the table. From time to time, their wives joined them. And that was enough.
No one was drinking alone.
— 🪑 —
The Great-Grandson remained silent for a long time. The cat jumped down from the chair and walked over to her water bowl.
— All right, suppose you’re right, — he finally said.
Great-Grandfather raised an eyebrow in surprise. Grandfather stopped smiling. Even Father seemed to become more attentive in his photograph.
— Yes, there were always people around you. A large family. A communal apartment. Neighbors. Work. The dacha.
He sighed.
— But you keep talking as if that was your choice. It wasn’t. Those were simply the circumstances of the time you lived in.
The room was silent.
— But what if you’d had the chance to live separately? Your own apartment. Your own room and kitchen. Your own shower. No coughing neighbors behind the wall. No relatives who might show up unannounced almost any day. No lines for the toilet, no arguments over space in the shared kitchen, or over the fence?
He looked at Grandfather.
— Would you have turned down a life like that?
Grandfather smiled but did not answer. The Great-Grandson shrugged.
— See? All of you wanted what I have now. And you would have gladly taken it if you’d had the chance. But along with all those comforts, you would have gotten something else as well. Every coin has two sides.
He looked at the nearly empty bottle.
— Silence. Because at some point, comfort turns into loneliness.
Grandmother was the first to break the silence.
— He’s right, you know.
The men looked at her in surprise. Even Great-Grandfather frowned.
— About what?
— About the fact that his life is different.
She folded her hands in her lap.
— A private apartment is better than a communal one. It’s ridiculous even to argue about that.
Grandfather looked as though he wanted to object but changed his mind.
— And having your own room is better than living behind a curtain. Hot running water is better than having to fetch it from an outdoor communal pump. And a private toilet is better than waiting in line at the end of the corridor.
She looked at the Great-Grandson.
— You’re right about that.
The Great-Grandson unexpectedly felt relieved. Finally, someone understood him. But Grandmother had not finished.
— That’s just not what I’m thinking about.
— Then what?
— Something else.
She nodded toward the bottle.
—Why do you tell it things you don’t tell people?
The Great-Grandson was taken aback.
— I don’t tell it anything.
—You do.
Grandmother smiled.
— Every time you feel bad, you reach for the bottle before you reach for the phone. When Grandfather felt bad, he went to a neighbor. When Father felt bad, he invited a neighbor over. They might have argued all the time, but they still ended up sitting together at the same table. Your father and grandfather drank among people. You drink among things: the television, the refrigerator, the phone, the computer.
She looked at the cat.
— And you talk to the television, the cat, or the bottle. Why, when you’re feeling sad, do you choose them instead of a person? You have a good cat. But she can’t ask you how your day was.
The Great-Grandson wanted to argue. But for some reason, he couldn’t.
— I’m not saying you’re to blame. I’m saying I feel sorry for you.
She said it so simply that the words made him more uncomfortable than all the arguments and reproaches that had come before.
Then she continued:
— Because loneliness isn’t when there’s no one around.
She nodded toward the phone.
—Loneliness is when there are people in the world, but you still have no one to call. When was the last time you invited someone over just to sit with you at the table? Not for a holiday or a birthday. Not for New Year’s. Just because.
The Great-Grandson remained silent.
— 🪑 —
The cat jumped down to the floor and slowly made her way toward her bowl. The television was still talking about something. Now it was the weather. More snow was forecast for tomorrow.
He looked at the phone. Then back at the bottle.
Grandmother said nothing more. She had never liked repeating herself.
— There’s no one to call, — he finally said.
He said it quietly. Almost in a whisper. As though he were admitting it not to the relatives in the photographs, but to himself. Then he thought for a moment.
— Maybe it’s not even that there’s no one to call. It just feels awkward.
Great-Grandfather looked at him in surprise. That was certainly not the explanation he had expected.
— Awkward?
— Well, yes.
The Great-Grandson shrugged.
— What am I supposed to say? That I’m bored? That the day was gray? That I have another dull evening ahead of me? That I simply don’t want to sit here alone?
He gave a joyless smile.
— That’s hardly a reason to call someone.
Grandmother looked at him closely.
— Why not? When our child was sick, that was a reason. When layoffs began at the factory, that was a reason. When the neighbor rebuilt his roof so that all the water ran onto our plot, that was a reason too.
She smiled.
— But do you really need a reason just to talk? People used to get in each other’s way more often, but they were also more present in each other’s lives. How many people do you have left today whom you can simply sit with at the table for no particular reason? A good drink rarely saves anyone from loneliness. But sometimes it helps you notice it before loneliness becomes a habit. Whenever your father brought out his bottle, I already knew that in ten minutes the neighbor, Kolya, would show up. How did he always know? Or his brother would drop by. Or someone would knock on the door at exactly the right moment.
She looked at the Great-Grandson.
— You try so hard not to bother anyone. Separate apartments. Your own rooms. Separate cars. Separate headphones, different screens. And then somehow it turned out that you started living separately, too.
The Great-Grandson observed:
— People say that everyone used to be more sociable.
Father smiled.
— We weren’t more sociable. It was simply harder to live alone back then.
No one answered. There was not much to argue with. Even the Great-Grandson understood that.
He looked at the nearly empty bottle. Then he picked up the phone, turned it over in his hand, and for the first time that evening looked at it not as a screen, but as a way of reaching another living person.
He found a familiar name in his contacts. For several seconds, he stared at the screen. But he did not call.
Not yet.
For the first time that evening, the phone found its way into his hand before the bottle did
And yet, for the first time that evening, the phone had reached his hand before the bottle.
— 🪑 —
Afterword
Over the course of a hundred years, much had changed in this family.
The village houses had disappeared.
The communal apartments had disappeared.
The country itself—the Soviet Union—had disappeared.
Mobile phones and the internet had appeared, along with the ability to speak to someone anywhere in the world within seconds.
But some things remained.
The old photographs on the wall, for example.
Or a can of Latvian sprats on the table.
New countries had appeared. Money, borders, flags, and city names had changed. People had moved thousands of miles from the places where they were born. But the most ordinary food can travel through the decades with them.
For the hero of this story, opening a can of sprats was simply a quick way to make dinner—a cheap and convenient accompaniment to vodka. For him, it was part of everyday life.
For me, it is also a taste of memory.
A can just like this one is sitting in front of me now, thousands of miles from where it was made—in Denver, Colorado.
Some tastes outlast distance.
Not because they belong to haute cuisine.
But because they carry memories and a connection to a former life.
Everything at this table had become American. Except for the tin of sprats and a few childhood memories
— 🪑 —
The shot glass remained on the table as well.
But each generation looked at it differently.
For Great-Grandfather, it was part of a large family table.
For Grandmother, it was part of sitting beside her husband after he came home from work.
For Father, it was a way to bring a difficult day to an end and make peace with a neighbor.
And for the Great-Grandson, it was a way to make a long and lonely evening a little shorter.
The shot glass itself had hardly changed.
The people around it had. And there were noticeably fewer of them.
Drinking with other people means drinking for the sake of conversation or the pauses between words, for laughter or shared silence. The drink itself is not even the most important thing. What matters is the presence of another person.
People have always drunk alone. But modern urban life has made it a far more widespread phenomenon.
Take away the people, and a drink loses half its meaning
Our hero might one day be able to say:
I stopped drinking alone—and suddenly realized how many people were missing from my life
Drinking alone creates no memories, adds no meaning, and brings no real pleasure. It merely smooths the edges, dulls the noise, and fills the emptiness. If no one is there beside you, perhaps it is worth asking yourself first what you are really missing that evening—a drink or someone to talk to.
Perhaps the problem is not that a person drinks alone.
The problem is that more and more often, the seat across the table is empty
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