Obituary: Irina Ratushinskaya died on July 5th

FOR her whole life, so it seemed to Irina Ratushinskaya, people had been trying to make her something she wasn’t. They stopped her jumping around in her parents’ flat in Odessa, or sliding down the iron bannisters, in case the neighbours complained. She jumped and slid anyway, scabs all over her legs. They tried to turn her into a little Communist by making her join the Komsomol and wear a red scarf. She was disruptive all the time, her head buzzing with silly rhymes. They forced her to go to school and learn English, when she wanted to go to the beach and race around by the untamed sea, like the ownerless dogs. She yearned to fly, but they wouldn’t let her try for a pilot’s licence—a weak reflex in an ankle, they said. A lie, of course! So many lies! She flew in her dreams, though as she grew older she tended to crash disconcertingly into high white cliffs.