The Length of Days: An Urban Ballad 9780674291232

Citation preview

The Length of Days

Ukrainian Research Institute Harvard University Harvard Library of Ukrainian Literature 6

HURI Editorial Board Michael S. Flier Oleh Kotsyuba, Manager of Publications Serhii Plokhy, Chairman

Cambridge, Massachusetts

Volodymyr Rafeyenko

The Length of Days An Urban Ballad Translated by Sibelan Forrester Afterword and interview with the author by Marci Shore

Distributed by Harvard University Press for the Ukrainian Research Institute Harvard University

The Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute was established in 1973 as an integral part of Harvard University. It supports research associates and visiting scholars who are engaged in projects concerned with all aspects of Ukrainian studies. The Institute also works in close cooperation with the Committee on Ukrainian Studies, which supervises and coordinates the teaching of Ukrainian history, language, and literature at Harvard University.

© 2023 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College An excerpt of this work appeared earlier as Vladimir Rafeyenko, “Seven Dillweeds,” trans. by Marci Shore, Eurozine (August 21, 2017), https://www.eurozine.com/seven-dillweeds/. All rights reserved Printed in the U.S. on acid-free paper

ISBN 9780674291201 (hardcover), 9780674291218 (paperback), 9780674291225 (epub), 9780674291232 (PDF) Library of Congress Control Number: 2022947248 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022947248

Cover image by Wilhelm Neusser, “Fruitlands/Moon” (#1944), 2019 Cover design by Mykola Leonovych, https://smalta.pro Book design by Andrii Kravchuk

Publication of this book has been made possible by the generous support of publications in Ukrainian studies at Harvard University by the following benefactors: Ostap and Ursula Balaban

Irena Lubchak

Jaroslaw and Olha Duzey

Dr. Evhen Omelsky

Vladimir Jurkowsky

Eugene and Nila Steckiw

Myroslav and Irene Koltunik

Dr. Omeljan and

Damian Korduba Family

Iryna Wolynec

Peter and Emily Kulyk

Wasyl and Natalia Yerega

You can support our work of publishing academic books and translations of Ukrainian literature and documents by making a tax-deductible donation in any amount, or by including HURI in your estate planning. To find out more, please visit https://huri.harvard.edu/give.

Contents

The Length Of Days: An Urban Legend Glossary of Terms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 Characters with Alternate Names. . . 5 Part 1. The Bathhouse. . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 The Tales Of Veresaiev Klara’s Cat. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70 Beer and Cigarettes . . . . . . . . . 80 Seven Dillweeds. . . . . . . . . . . . . 89

Part 2. Liza’s Dolls . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99 The Tales Of Veresaiev That Which Is Not . . . . . . . . . . 145 On the Eve of Peter and Paul . . 150

Part 3. The Sacrifice . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159 The Tales Of Veresaiev Someone Else’s Apartment. . . . 218 The Natures Mortes of War. . . . . 227

Part 4. The Migrants. . . . . . . . . . . . . 239 Epilogue. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 293 In the City of Z, a Bathhouse Where What Happened Can Unhappen: An Afterword to The Length of Days

Marci Shore. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 295

On Truth, Dignity, and Being Human above All: Volodymyr Rafeyenko in Correspondence with Marci Shore . . . 305 Notes. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 339

Glossary of Terms

Terms are marked in the text with an asterisk (*). With the exception of words and names well known in an English-language form, transliteration follows the Library of Congress standard for Russian and Ukrainian, including for Russified names. Audio vocem de mirabilia futuro: a translation into Latin of the popular song “Prekrasnoe daleko” (The Beautiful Faraway), which featured in the Soviet-era film Gost´ia iz budushchego (Guest from the Future) in 1985 beetles: slang for pro-Russian separatists or members of the Russian military. The orange-and-black striped ribbons of Saint George are said to resemble the Colorado potato beetle Belka and Strelka: dogs used by the Soviet space program to test suborbital and orbital travel Channel One: a Russian state-owned television channel, broadcasting also in Ukraine and other post-Soviet states, known for its pro-Kremlin propaganda Colorado beetle. See beetles.

2

Volodymyr Rafeyenko

Dill, dillweed, or Ukro: from ukrop “dill,” a pejorative term in Russian for Ukrainians Divine Head: in the original Russian, Prekrasnyi Kho­ziain, abbreviated to P. Kh. These are the initials of the slogan Putin khuilo, interpreted as “Putin, fuck off!” but literally, “Putin [is a] dick, or dickhead.” With this impossible translation task, an attempt was made here to suggest the same relationship between Divine Head and Dick Head. ganapataya namah: the incantation suggests namakhaty “to fuck over” haidamak: the term for militiamen who fought against the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the eighteenth century, today largely referring to patriotic Ukrainians; the national poet Taras Shevchenko wrote an epic poem The Haidamaks (1841) Hohol, Mykola: in transliteration from Russian, Nikolai Gogol, a writer of Ukrainian origin who became one of the founders of modern Russian literature KamAZ: a Russian truck, sometimes armored, used for troop transport khokhol: a pejorative term used by Russians for Ukrainians Konashevych-Sahaidachnyi, Petro (ca. 1582–1622): military leader and statesman (hetman) credited with giving proto-national status to the Ukrainian people within the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Liza recognizes him from his representations, including a large equestrian monument on Kontraktova Square in Kyiv by the sculptor Valerii Shvetsov and the architects Mykola Zharikov and Ruslan Kukharenko

The Length Of Days: An Urban Ballad

3

Lookoil company: in the original, Lukavyi oil (devilish oil), a clear reference to the Russian firm Lukoil Malachite Room: the reception room of the Russian empress in the Winter Palace Mamai the Kozak: a widely popular folk depiction of a Ukrainian Kozak (Cossack) playing bandura, a traditional Ukrainian string instrument of the lute class Newruscists: novorossy “New Russians,” pro-Russian separatists, here identified with the Russian imperialist concept of Novorossiia “New Russia,” the annexation of southern Ukraine by Russia; the neologism ruscist, rashist, or rascist is formed from “Russian” and “fascist” orange president: reference to Viktor Yushchenko, president of Ukraine following the pro-democracy Orange Revolution (2004–2005) in Ukraine Piter: Saint Petersburg Red Hards: khunveibiny, from Hóng Wèibīng, the Red Guards, the student-led paramilitaries who spearheaded the Cultural Revolution in China; like all terms beginning with khu-, the term suggests the Russian and Ukrainian word for “dick”: khui Right Sector: a Ukrainian nationalist paramilitary group that arose during the EuroMaidan Revolution in Kyiv (2013–14) to defend protesters; a favorite bogeyman of the Russian media Sahaidachnyi. See Konashevych-Sahaidachnyi. Saint George beetle. See beetles. Shoigu, Sergei: Russian Federation minister of defense, appointed in 2012

4

Volodymyr Rafeyenko

Sloviansk: in 2014, the city was occupied by Russian and pro-Russian forces under the command of the Russian colonel Igor Girkin (Strelkov). In the summer of 2014, the Ukrainian army pushed Girkin’s forces out of the city. They abandoned the city and escaped southward to Donetsk. splendid (collection of men): the gathering at Kulchytsi, the home of Hetman Konashevych-Sahaidachnyi, features a guest list from a thousand years of the multiethnic history and culture native to Ukrainian lands, as well as some international luminaries Strelkov, Igor: alias of Igor Girkin, the Russian army officer who led pro-Russian separatists in 2014 Taras Hryhorovych: the first name and patronymic of nineteenth-century Ukrainian national poet Taras Hryhorovych Shevchenko (1814–1861) Trubetskoy’s Lapis: Lyapis Trubetskoy is a Belarusian band, who took their name from a character in The Twelve Chairs by Ilf and Petrov vatnik, and vata: literally, a quilted jacket and the padding (cotton) it’s filled with; a pejorative term used by Ukrainians for people who follow pro-Kremlin propaganda and support the pro-Russian militias and governments; also used for those who serve in the Russian military or the pro-Russian militias in the Donbas Vovaland de Mordecai: in the original, Vovland, an elision of Vova, a diminutive for Vladimir (referring to Vladimir Putin), and Voland, the Devil character in the works of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Mikhail Bulgakov

Characters with Alternate Names Main Characters Barych, Arsenii, or Senka, Senya: a photographer Gredis, Sokrat Ivanovich, or Ivanych: the manager of the bathhouse “Fifth Rome,” a former philosophy professor Hirkavyi, Vasilii Yakovlevich, or Vasya: the minister of health and transport Ivanov, Ivan Ivanovich, or Vanya: a Russian army soldier from Siberia Liza, or Lizka, Lizaveta, Yelizaveta, Yelizaveta Eleonora von de Nachtigal: the adopted daughter of Anna, Gredis’s daughter Marshak, Aleksei Yevgeniievich, or Yevgeniievich, or Lyosha: a journalist Silin, Mikhail: ex-lover of Yelena Sushkin, Khoma: a taxi driver; Gredis’s nephew and the brother of Anna, Liza’s adoptive mother Veresaiev, Nikolai Nikolaievich, or Kolya, Kolyenka: a massage therapist at the “Fifth Rome” Yelena, or Lena, Lenka: resident of Z

6

Volodymyr Rafeyenko

Other Characters Clytemnestra Georgiievna, or Clyta: Zoya’s mother Fedor, or Fedya, Fedka: Ivan Ivanovich’s comrade in the Russian army, also from Siberia Havroshka, or Havrik: Matvei Stepanovich’s son Ilya (not Kornev, Ilya): son of Lala and Shurik Ivanov, Yegor Ivanovich: grandfather of Ivanov, Ivan Ivanovich (Vanya) Karolina, or Auntie: wife of Gredis; “auntie” to Liza Khvoshch, Maria Stepanovna, or Stepanovna: neighbor of Nina Ivanovna Kornev, Ilya, or Ilyusha: former manager of the Fifth Rome; graduate student of Gredis Lyoshka: Matvei Stepanovich’s son Marina Arkadiievna, or Marya Raven, or Raven: a professor of philology, neighbor of Liza and Gredis Marya Stepanovna (not Khvoshch, Maria Stepanovna): a bedridden, elderly woman living with her husband in Z Matvei Stepanovich, or Matyusha: a bell ringer Orest Ipatiievych, or Blogger: a brass automaton Pavel, or Pashka: son of Nina Ivanovna and stepson of Matvei Ivanovich Sashka, or Shurik: Lala’s husband Skopets, Viktor Sergeievich, or Gelding (skopets translates as “eunuch”) Valentin, or Chinaman: an officer in the Russian Army

…And Thy grace shall follow me all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord for the length of days. —Psalm 22 The wind rises! …one must attempt to live! The massive air opens and shuts my book, The wave dares shake the cliffs to powder— Fly away, you pages all blinded! Break, waves! Break from the rejoicing waters This tranquil roof, where the jibs have pecked! —Paul Valéry No one wishes for evil. —Socrates

Part 1

The Bathhouse

You drink the first shot—you perk up, You drink the second—you come to your senses, You drink the third—your eyes begin to shine, One thought chases after the other. —Taras Shevchenko Nationality becomes not a matter of inheritance, but rather a question of free choice. —Tomas Venclova

Sokrat Ivanovich Gredis is a Lithuanian who has never been to Lithuania. Balding, tall, sinewy, he mops the floor with pleasure, sets out the basins, gathers oak and birch leaves from the floor with a brush. He sweeps the long twists of wormwood, their aroma exhausted, out of the corners. On bath days, people who believe in the healing power of aromas lay it out on the shelves. Who knows whether there is such a power. Still, in the steam room, full of steam as hot as stars, the odor of steppe wormwood helps a soul to breathe.

10

Volodymyr Rafeyenko

The tap is full open. Whitish mist hisses, spits, splatters and smacks. Liza knows that somewhere there, in the depths beneath the shelves, sits the insatiable beast Steam. It chews up and devours the cold fresh water that comes in here from the deepest bowels of the earth. “Of Mother Earth,” says the bathhouse manager. Why it is that earth is a mother, the young woman can’t say. It seems to her that earth is more like an aunt. An auntie-pillow, an old Froggie. You put it on a person’s face, and they die. They turn to dust and decay. The little worms eat them. Yummy-yum. It’s nice to make a drawing here with colored pencils. A multitude of multicolored earthworms eat up an old, repulsive, diseased body, cut up by insects into a thousand uneven pieces. The body disappears, is transformed into steam. It flies, flickering, turning into a cloud— probably a Magellanic one. Sorrowful, drunken astronomers observe this cloud. They take notes and suddenly notice that huge assholes are flying through it towards the earth, and no one shall be saved. Now it’s time to set aside her sketchpad and take a look around. The beast named Steam is growling at full power. Hot, heavy, it burns the skin. It dries out the damp boards. The door is flung wide open, so Liza is not afraid to sit beside the growling beast. “That’s it, enough,” says Sokrat, brushing sweat from his forehead. All wet, red, scalded. “Let’s go have lunch and drink tea.” They sit down not in the manager’s closet—narrow as a pencil case and damp—but right in the hall, where visitors coming for a steam on normal days leave their underwear and socks. Boots, pea coats, glasses, a cell

The Length Of Days: An Urban Ballad

11

phone in the pocket, fastened with a button, jeans. A wallet. Condoms. A Kalashnikov, two or three grenades. Two bottles of vodka in a backpack. Tea in a thermos. Rows of cubbies for clothes hang vertically on the wall. Handy benches, sinks and mirrors. Electronic scales. Hair dryers in special holders under the mirrors. A big square clock up above the door doles out time. Ice water in the cooler. The long rectangular windows that run along under the ceiling have opened their smooth lazy mouths, due to the early spring. Wind and the smell of young pale-green grass penetrate the hall as it slowly dries after washing. The grass pushes tenderly and furiously through the carpet of dun, caked leaves lying up against the bathhouse walls. Clouds and birds fly into the bathhouse through the wide-open transoms, and the sounds of artillery laboring day after day. Shadows of new deaths fly into the sky, crossing the thick clouds in damp, blue lines. Liza was drawing them yesterday, sitting on the couch that once belonged to her late Aunt Karolina, who of course was never an aunt to her. That woman, alien to her, was put to death a few months ago by gigantic insects. Untamed, wild, cursed caballeros. They tore apart her soft menopausal flesh with their long, clawed appendages. Alas and alack. A few weeks before that Liza had depicted the whole scene with watercolors on soft pink paper. The idea of presenting the drawing to her aunt at breakfast came to her in the early morning. With a feeling of dark sorrowful ecstasy, the young woman silently laid the watercolor on the table between the sugar bowl and a bottle of milk,

12

Volodymyr Rafeyenko

and, smiling archly, she left the kitchen. She rolled her bicycle out of the shed. With the rattle of the pedals and chain, the jingling of the bell, and the ring of the bizarre spokes, she set off downhill. They lived on the ground floor, which was exceptionally convenient from the point of view of bicycle trips through the occupied territories.

*** “Sokrat! Take a look,” Karolina said with trembling lips. “Look what that crazy girl drew!” “Well, what is that?” Sokrat squinted, put on his glasses, and examined the drawing. “Just look! Look here!” shrieked Auntie. “Don’t you see?! It’s me she’s drawn! Me!” Sokrat couldn’t make out a thing, besides some expressive but content-free colored spots and lines, laid down on the soft surface of the page with watercolor paints. They had bled a little at the edges. But on the whole, it all looked nice, though a bit uncomposed. “Are you joking?” Gredis wrinkled his forehead, feeling himself fill with the deadly weariness that had inevitably accompanied any communication with his wife for the past year or year and a half. The same nightmare has settled in her poor head, he would sometimes think, as in the late lamented city “Z.” “I swear, you must be blind!” Karolina bellowed, immediately turning ugly and pathetic. “Look here! This is me, and these are the monsters. And here they are, cutting and shredding me!” “L-l-l-listen, all I can make out here is a lot of colored blots, arranged symmetrically,” Sokrat straightened his

The Length Of Days: An Urban Ballad

13

glasses with his index finger. “I’m not going to argue, the girl has a splendidly developed imagination, a sense of color, of line. But I’ve told you a thousand times, her drawings are all abstract. Why, r-r-really, do you keep picking on the girl?” “Abstract?” Karolina snorted. “Are you crazy? How is it you don’t see! Look. Here are the monsters to the right and left. And this is me here. Or rather, what’s left of me. Here, my head’s lying there and looking at you! It’s looking at you! At you, you old fool! And stop stuttering, you know how it bothers me!” “You’re imagining things, Karolina,” Sokrat said gently. He drank up with bitter enjoyment half a cup of yesterday’s cold leftover tea, filtered out of an old porcelain teapot the shape of an elephant sitting enthroned on a dog, and lit up. “Stop it, I swear. It’s not even funny…” “It’s not funny to me either! Me either!” She furiously shook her head, sighed heavily, took one more quick glance at the drawing, and crumpled it up and sent it flying into the trash bucket. “You say she’s an ordinary girl? But notice that the only things in her life are the bicycle, the pencils, and paints. And how old is the young lady? Twenty, twenty-five?” Karolina fell silent, chewing her lips in concentration. “I’ll tell you honestly, my sense is she’s a monster! That’s why she has no age! Sometimes she’s ten, but other times she’s eighty, and yellow sand comes drifting out from under her bed! Eighty!” Karolina repeated with horror. “And these drawings! It’s not for nothing your Christian God spoke about sacrifice. I think she’d be well suited. She’s just the one who should be tossed into the pit at the “Good Shubin” Mine, to put an end to this fratricide!”

14

Volodymyr Rafeyenko

“Stop s-s-speaking nonsense!” Sokrat sighed heavily and jerked his head. He didn’t like his stuttering either, but he couldn’t help it when he was upset. “What should I stop?!” Karolina nervously flicked her lighter and lit a cigarette. “Leave God in peace!” he exhaled. “And she still doesn’t get a normal menstrual period. No, I understand, psychiatric deviations. I understand, medications. But she should have started being interested in men ages ago!” “And what?!” Gredis smiled listlessly. “The girl’s using her imagination, developing! Everything in its own time. I, for one, am glad that she didn’t close in on herself after Anna’s death. She communicates with us, she draws. She helps me in the bathhouse, by the way. Once a week she mops out three floors, that’s no joke! And the drawings—what are drawings? You never know what she might draw there…” “They come true!” Karolina shouted, turning crimson. “You know it yourself! She drew Anna hit by a car, a year before the accident, and then later it happened!” “Rubbish!” Sokrat shook his head with disgust. “I took a look at that pencil sketch and I didn’t see anything like that! Maybe you’re losing your mind. You’ve been having some kind of peculiar ideas lately. You say horrible things…” “Anya took a witch from the orphanage!” Karolina interrupted him, with a greedy drag on her cigarette. “After all those years in Moscow she couldn’t find anything better! Couldn’t make money, find a husband, and feed her parents in their old age! Then she was killed like a fool, and we have to suffer! I told her, after all, don’t take

The Length Of Days: An Urban Ballad

15

a stranger’s child, psychologically abnormal, and Jewish to boot! Don’t take a Yid!” “Quiet, dummy,” Sokrat waved his hands, “what are you babbling?! The girl will hear you!” He closed the window, smiled drily at Yelizaveta. She was standing beside her bicycle and bending her head, attentively examining the windows of the apartment where she lived. “Let her!” Karolina shouted. “Let her know what I think of her!” Liza couldn’t hear precisely what it was her auntie was saying to Sokrat. But it was all the same to her. Karolina was no one to her. Just a stranger, a stupid broad whose death she could draw and feel nothing about but relief. She’ll soon leave this novel, and no one will remember her here again.

*** Exactly three days after this scene, humanitarian aid from Russia arrived in Z. It was met at the regional market with joyful anticipation. The two white vans—heralds of separation, part of the convoy that had reached the city, looked very promising. It was frosty and bright despite the thick clouds. Wind whipped at the banner on the market administration building: There are no citizens more free / than the citizens of enclave Z! Karolina was on the spot along with other Z-aunties early in the morning. Twenty minutes or so before the event, some journalists from the Russian TV station High as Kites pulled up. After that, militants numbering eight persons drove up in two battered black jeeps. A bus

16

Volodymyr Rafeyenko

brought hungover Cossacks who poured out of the vehicle, stood off to one side, got to smoking cheap cigarettes, but then arranged neat little tables alongside the trucks. The tables were for laying out sugar and grain to be handed out afterward in sight of the cameras. A line formed by itself. The Z-citizens had a look that was at once dreary and animated. Vasilii Hirkavyi—a person of authority, short in stature, muscular, but lately not entirely convinced of the positive general course of things—was at this festival, representing the city administration and the ministry of transportation and health of the Republic of Z. Looking gloomily at the journalists from High as Kites, he stood smoking next to his scratched Grand Cherokee. Red Japanese earphones stuck out of his ears, and the voice of the late Amy Winehouse was spinning inside his head. At last, the lights were adjusted and the cameras turned on. “The coordinator of the arrangement”— the nimble Muscovite Misha, on a visit from the golden-domed city especially for the occasion—nodded to Hirkavyi. The latter walked up on the dais, cleared his throat, and raced through his prepared speech in eight minutes forty-seven seconds. It was getting frostier. The sun rose slowly over the market. Vasilii finished, got back down, and lit up again, with no particular desire for a cigarette. Likable children climbed up onto the low platform in front of the vehicles and started reciting doggerel: For the republic’s citizens we forgive all sins, Pour new happiness—into new wineskins, We eat sugar and groats at the start of day, Glory to the aid convoy, glory and hooray!

The Length Of Days: An Urban Ballad

17

“What sort of Lermontov is this, seriously?” Hirkavyi wrinkled his brow, looking over the representatives of High as Kites with reproachful curiosity. “Was it you fine lads who penned this epic?” “Aw screw it,” the journalist—Aleksei Marshak, as his nametag indicated—shrugged and spat on his cigarette butt; it hissed and went dark. “Misha Garev and I don’t sculpt shit. We’re postmodernists, old man,” he chortled with self-satisfaction, “Red Ha-a-ards.* And therefore, just so you know, we specialize exclusively in large-scale social projects…” He went quiet, studying Hirkavyi’s uncomprehending eyes with a smile. “I’m certain that it is your new writers’ union cranking this stuff out…. And, by the way, you have some incredible people gathered there.” “Are you serious?” Vasilii hadn’t understood all of what Marshak had said up to then, and he seized on the last thing he understood. “For sure!” Aleksei nodded. “Yesterday I happened to drop by a reading on the boulevard named for the poet Pushkin…” “And so?” “So! Twenty minutes in I was pissed off, honest.” “They’re writing badly? Without feeling?” Hirkavyi turned severe. “Quite the opposite. With all kinds of feeling,” Marshak shrugged. “It was just scary to listen to them. Even we don’t allow that kind of crap…” “Well yes,” Vasilii made a sarcastic face and looked at his watch. “You shit objectively. That’s the kind of work you do, you shoot and run. But perhaps our union has gathered the young writers of our young republic here.

18

Volodymyr Rafeyenko

The spiritual muscle of Z, full of feeling, so to speak, expressing the will of the people.” “Yeah,” Aleksei nodded. “That’s just what they express. They even got on my case,” he shook his head. “But it’s been a hundred years, by the way, since I felt the pangs of conscience.” “You’re some kind of odd dude!” Hirkavyi spoke up disapprovingly. “Are you guys really from High as Kites?” “I should say!” Marshak nodded. He wanted to add something, but right then the immense old speakers, unloaded from the microbus onto the street, lit up loudly and hoarsely to stimulate enthusiasm. First Arise, Enormous Country and Swarthy Moldovan Maiden. Then, as the distribution got going, Amur Waves, Dark Night, The Blue Globe Spins and Twirls and Candies and Bagels. The air was redolent with the world wars, Russian revolutions, and the Gulag. A hungover and therefore extremely sensitive Kolya Veresaiev, massage therapist of the bathhouse where Sokrat Ivanovich worked, couldn’t hold out against the music and started to cry. He had been standing in line for humanitarian aid since early morning, but after ten minutes of trial by songs of wars and revolutions he shrugged, bought a bottle of cheap vodka in the store across the way, and slowly plodded home across the street for some hair of the dog. If you think about it, he didn’t really need all that—to hell with the lot of it. He wasn’t earning badly in the bathhouse. And he’d come to the market only to talk a bit with people, to be, as they say, amid the folk. There were never any people in his lair. Yesterday Sokrat handed over his wages. Veresaiev immediately got seven

The Length Of Days: An Urban Ballad

19

hundred-gram bottles and two liters of beer. Well, naturally he was feeling dreary on that penetrating Sunday morning. The pipes were burning, his heart was beating, tense and trembling. And then that music, as if on purpose… The folk reached for the handouts. The aid that the first vehicle had brought ran out in a second. A few old men who’d gotten hungry without pensions were crying, shoving groats into their bags with trembling hands. They thanked Russia and her Divine Head* in person. The cameraman was recording furiously. Aleksei confidently chose Karolina, who was shouting “Glory to Russia!” louder than anyone else, out of the crowd for a short emotional interview, and he worked with her briskly and effectively. He glanced at his watch, touched Garev’s elbow, nodded to his people. With military swiftness the camera group loaded into the minivan; it raced from the spot at top speed and disappeared in a flash around the corner of the old school. At that very moment the militants opened the second vehicle. And that’s where everything started. No sooner had the doors of the truck flown open than four Colorado beetles* sprang out, each the size of two and a half Hounds of the Baskervilles. Jutting forward with their muscular midsections, waving the blades of their double-sharp side legs like sabers, in less than five minutes they had chopped up fifteen or so people from among the Z-citizens who were guilty of nothing. Blood mixed with the buckwheat, wheat, rice and rock salt. The representative of the mayor’s office, Minister of Transportation and Health Vasya Hirkavyi lay under his jeep, praying, and thinking about how the reporters from High as

20

Volodymyr Rafeyenko

Kites had made a clean getaway by the time the beetles had appeared. It seems the guys had guessed what the white Moscow swan—that humanitarian-aid-Orthodox KamAZ truck*—had brought to the icy market square. “If I’m still alive, I’m definitely going to have a chat with Marshak!” Hirkavyi promised himself. Meanwhile, the militants were furiously and accurately firing at the bloodthirsty monsters. After mowing down two dozen hungover Cossacks in passing and tossing their remains all over the market square, the militants suddenly calmed down, slowed, languidly unfurled their wings, and rose vertically upward in formation. Anyone who’s seen the way those American Harrier attack planes take off and land vertically would surely find a similar grace and beauty in the beetles. Shocked by what had happened, people lost their sense of reality. Someone was screaming, someone was sobbing, and someone, falling to their knees, was praying. One person was flailing about in death throes. Machine guns were chirring like cicadas. The beetles hovered above the market for twenty or thirty seconds, as if pondering which way to go on this cold morning, then leaned synchronously to the right and departed, heading southeast, gleaming a thick slumberous amber in the rays of the cold January sun. And at that very—literally!—that very moment, the spectral figure of the late Amy Winehouse appeared over the bloodied pavement as a herald of the harmony achieved. Barefoot, dressed all in black, she walked over the snow and sang “Back to Black.” Karolina Gredis, dead as a samovar, looked with her severed head at Ms. Winehouse and thought about how many things in life had passed her by. The living citizens

The Length Of Days: An Urban Ballad

21

of Z had run off in all directions. Those who were killed but who had by some miracle held onto their legs and heads, rose with difficulty, embraced and congratulated one another on the end of the war, put together smiles on their disfigured faces splotched with blood, and circled in a black-and-white dance. Strips of yellow and blue snow fell on them from the sky. Patriots’ dances, thought Vasya Hirkavyi. But what on earth is Amy doing here? And he passed out. For several minutes Veresaiev observed this performance from the opposite side of the avenue, having by chance occupied an ideal seat in the audience. But at a certain moment he sensed that he might faint from horror and a hangover. He crossed himself with shaking, sweaty fingers, gathered a handful of snow covered by a crust of ice from the bench, crunched it, and shoved it into his mouth, scraping his lips till they bled. He grabbed some more and rubbed it on his face and neck, scratching his skin. When he saw the dead people dancing, he croaked, “Lord have mercy!”—and rushed off at a trot toward Sokrat Ivanovich’s house, feeling a deadly nausea that rushed up to his very heart.

*** Sokrat Gredis was actually a professor, a PhD, who until the end of April the year before had taught philosophy at the university. With the start of the turbulent events, however, he had gone on leave and remained on leave right up to the moment when columns of militants, armed to the teeth, most of them never before seen in Z, had entered the city. They asserted that they were defenders of the

22

Volodymyr Rafeyenko

city, although everything that was happening spoke with confidence of an occupation. And, in fact, it was nothing other than that. Gredis looked closely at what was going on at the rallies by the regional administration building and at how the local powers and security forces were behaving, and after a few days he applied for retirement. He couldn’t, and didn’t want to, work as a philosopher with gangsters. He loved Ukraine, albeit somewhat cautiously. But he sincerely dreaded the Russian World [russkii mir], like any person who isn’t stupid, and moreover as the son of a man who had perished in Stalin’s purges. Besides that, something whispered to him that philosophers in Z would no longer be paid as regularly as before. And that a completely different type of philosophy was going to be favored here. At the same time, Gredis had absolutely nowhere to go if he left Z. He hadn’t managed to save up enough money for a move. There were some savings, of course. But he had Liza to support, a strange unhealthy creature, the legacy of his late daughter Anna. Ten or so years before her tragic death, Anna had adopted the girl, already grown up, from a special orphanage. Then, when Anna decided, after twenty years of life in Moscow, to come back to her homeland in Z, she was killed. A strange stupid story. She was hit by a car on Leningrad Prospect in Moscow, right across from the former Intourist Hotel, on her way to the airport. The car smashed her little round head, covered in light thin hair. Someone named Marshak called Sokrat that day and conveyed the tragic news. Gredis grabbed his chest. “I’m coming on the first flight!”—his heart hurt, as if from an open wound.

The Length Of Days: An Urban Ballad

23

“You must not go anywhere!” “What do you mean?” Gredis was surprised. “The body has already been sent to Z with a traveler!” Aleksei said it that way—with a traveler—and for some reason that made Sokrat’s hair stand on end. “In a closed coffin, because disfiguring injuries, you understand. And the girl, your granddaughter, little Lizzie, we’ve put on a plane. Expect her toward evening! Flight such-andsuch, ETA in Moscow time. She’s an independent young lady, she’ll make it. And you meet her there. But then, she should remember the way herself, if anything happens. They often visited you in the summer, right?” Gredis had a series of questions, but the connection was cut. And what else could he do then? He got ready and headed to meet the Moscow flight. The airport was still functioning, although characters from the Russian World had already tried several times to seize it. While he was waiting for the flight, he drank up a bottle of whiskey. Liza recognized him and, it seemed, was glad. The coffin arrived separately at night. Liza didn’t go to Anna’s funeral. She cried and made drawings. Made drawings and cried… Well, Liza was a separate story, but, after the occupation, his wife, Karolina, also had noticeably given in. Of course, there was lawlessness in the city. Who could argue! But at least Sokrat had an apartment here. And perhaps all a philosopher needs in wartime is a roof over his head. For a long time Gredis was tormented by the question of how and where he should go on living, but suddenly everything was resolved by itself. Ilya Kornev got in touch—Sokrat Ivanovich’s former graduate student, who

24

Volodymyr Rafeyenko

had in his time abandoned a scholarly career and become a successful businessman. Now he was ready to flee the city seized by Russian inferno. The only enterprise that still brought him any real income, a three-story bathhouse called the Fifth Rome, was located on the outskirts of the city, where shelling was rare. Ilyusha needed a manager. Gredis, for his part, was a philosopher and a person who could be trusted, and besides that, he resided only two blocks or so from the bathhouse. The deal had to be struck quickly, so that’s how they struck it. In two days Kornev handed over the authorizations, seals, safes, connections, and a bit of funding to start off, and at the conclusion of that business he set out a bottle of Armenian cognac. Once everything concerning the business was negotiated, Gredis started getting ready to go home. Seeing him out and already at the bus stop, Ilya got up the nerve to say something that had been oppressing him all evening. “Here’s the thing, Sokrat Ivanovich,” Kornev smiled tensely. “In the office you’ll find something exceedingly important on the computer in the folder ‘My Documents.’ You’ll read it yourself.” “What else can there be?” Sokrat raised his eyebrows. “It seems I’ve already taken on everything.” “How can I tell you,” Kornev hesitated, turning red. “All in all, the Fifth Rome, see, isn’t just a bathhouse. In that sense, of course, this is a bait-and-switch.” He laughed abruptly, broke off at once. “But forgive me. We had no other way out.” “I don’t get it!” Gredis gave a quick smile. “What are you on about now?” “How can I put it,” Kornev hesitated again. “This place, our bathhouse, is more of a church, see? While, of course,

The Length Of Days: An Urban Ballad

25

not a church…” He went quiet, thought a bit, and confided, “Actually, I never bought it…” “How—never bought it?” Gredis couldn’t make sense of what he was saying and smiled uncertainly. “What, Ilyusha, are you drunk off one bottle?!” “It was passed along to me the same way I’m giving it to you now,” Kornev spoke up rapidly, licking his dry lips. “They passed it on to me—even gave me money for repairs. That’s when we made it all three stories. All in all, I’m giving you the bathhouse, Sokrat Ivanovich. I’m passing it on, so to speak, free of charge! From now on consider yourself its fully titled owner.” “Wait, wait, wait!” Sokrat looked at his former student, dumbfounded. “Are you serious or something? Have you gone nuts?” “Not yet, but I could!” Kornev laughed stiffly. “Nevertheless, it’s yours now! Here’s the folder. I didn’t want to show you before. You’ll see it all yourself. According to the documents, of course, I’m still the cofounder, but that’s just—” he laughed again, “—more for the guys. So there won’t be any questions for you, Sokrat Ivanovich. But, in essence, you’re now its sole owner! All the corresponding papers are here in this blue folder. It’s all filled out properly, no scum will try to interfere.” “You’re joking, right?” Gredis smiled uncertainly. “What joking, Sokrat Ivanovich?” Kornev shook his head. “You don’t understand now, but you’ll get it soon. The Fifth Rome is not just the heart of this province. It’s the heart, see, of many…” He reached into his pocket for cigarettes. “However, I can’t make much sense of it. The main thing is, you’re responsible for it now. That’s the thing.” Ilya lit up and furiously exhaled smoke from his

26

Volodymyr Rafeyenko

lungs, tipping his head back for some reason. “I was never a good protector of the place. I don’t have the right head, I’m short on courage. Again, you need at least some kind of religiosity for this,” he laughed. “Whereas I, as luck would have it, have nobody but atheists in my family. It’s nothing but torment for an atheist to run this bathhouse.” Kornev spread his hands. “No, I did the best I could. Especially as long as it wasn’t complicated. Those were peaceful times. But now everything has changed. More and more the Fifth Rome is running itself, just as was predicted.” “Predicted where?” asked Gredis, although he really wanted to ask by whom. “In the folder, in the folder, Sokrat Ivanovich,” Ilya nodded with conviction, “you’ll find everything you need there.” “Is this some kind of prank?” asked Gredis. “In the past it would rarely happen,” Kornev whispered heatedly, “but now everything has changed. Just awful! Five cases in the past month. I think it’s only the beginning. I can’t handle it.” “What sort of cases?” Sokrat shook his head. “What are we talking about anyway?” “Okay,” Kornev suddenly got quiet, “really, what am I saying? You will understand over time, Sokrat Ivanovich. Where’s the hurry? And if anything doesn’t make sense, then you look into this blue folder with the ribbons. There’s some stuff there from the previous owner. Enough instructions for the first while, then you yourself decide. It’s life. You can’t write it out as notes. And, besides that, there’s the telephone!” He gave the professor a careful slap on the shoulder. “And anything you can’t say

The Length Of Days: An Urban Ballad

27

on the phone, you’ll write in an email. I just warn you: you can only abandon the bathhouse if you find someone to take it on. That clear?” “Seriously?!” “More than serious!” Kornev nodded. “It’s a hard rule. Although, true, it doesn’t apply to dead people.” “I still don’t understand,” Sokrat shook his head, smiling uncertainly. “Is this like responsibility for a business? Before the guys and all that?” “Listen, Sokrat Ivanovich,” said Kornev, who had used up the reserves of frankness in his body. “Should we call you a taxi? You’ll fly home in one minute! Don’t worry about the money, it’s my treat!” “Don’t waste your money!” Gredis slapped his disciple on the shoulder in response. At that moment the bus pulled up. They hugged each other convulsively. Kornev gave the professor a push through the door. He turned away and, without looking back, walked off. Sokrat Ivanovich pondered Ilya’s strange words half the way home, but then dozed off. Waking up for his stop, he jumped out into the cool twilight, feeling maybe joy, maybe certainty that everything was working out just the way it was supposed to work out.

*** Sokrat took on the duties of director, janitor, and specialist in birch bundles, knitted caps, and gloves. He bore on his shoulders responsibility for the wormwood and the coneflowers, for steam and its consequences. As a masseur, he hired his old acquaintance Kolya Veresaiev. As bookkeeper and cashier, they counted among

28

Volodymyr Rafeyenko

their number the lame but very nice thirty-year-old little girl Slava Kiseva. Her bandit cousin Hirkavyi, a man of authority—thrice a minister—would protect them now, which significantly increased the chances that the enterprise feeding them all would survive. The entire bathhouse, thus, consisted of three people. They had good relations with the workers in the boiler room, but there were no trusties. Who knows whom you can trust at such a time? With whom in the occupied territories would you share your most intimate thoughts? Every morning of the workday in the Fifth Rome began with an unharmonious but enthusiastic performance of the Ukrainian anthem. The director, the bookkeeper, and the masseur would stand at the windows on the second floor, facing northwest, and sing about how Ukrainian power and glory had not yet died—although, to be honest, in Z these words immediately brought tears to the eyes even of Gredis. He wiped them away furtively and every time scolded himself strongly afterwards for his weakness. The professor didn’t speak about this performance, even to his own pro-Russian wife. “And why the hell do we do this?” Nikolai would ask every time, as the coworkers finished singing, while Slava Kiseva, wiping away her teensy tears with a corner of a little white handkerchief and limping a bit, went downstairs to her cubicle on the first floor with the transparent window, the metallic cash register, and the enormous safe. “Kolya, this is civil resistance, just so you know,” Sokrat answered. “Consider that the given unsophisticated ballad, when we perform it in our bathhouse, becomes a real weapon. A terrifying weapon, Kolya. If you must know, we are introducing a ruinous, irreparable

The Length Of Days: An Urban Ballad

29

astral imbalance into the work of the mechanisms of the Russian inferno!” “O-o-okay?!” Veresaiev, who had been a chemical engineer in the past, though now a specialist in massaging human bodies, answered distrustfully. “I tell you true,” Sokrat nodded. “We are not just rendering a hymn—that is, a genre of religious lyric, a song of praise, or a doxology united by the identity of the praised object. We are also asserting, Kolya, that we have not lost either our will, or our glory, or our honor, or our conscience. You understand?” “Umm, more or less,” he nodded. “For you and me, located in Z, Ukraine is not so much a country, a poor young state that the Russian jackals, along with local jackals, are tearing to pieces. Ukraine isn’t a territory at all! That’s precisely the reason why, Kolya, it will never be overcome by hordes of alcoholics, national-idiots, Buryat tank drivers, and spiritual degenerates. Ukraine is, in essence, our fatherland in heaven. Almost the same thing as life after death! Do you grasp what I’m on about?” “It’s a bit challenging!” Nikolai admitted. “How can I explain…” Gredis sat down on a bench and lit up, observing the streams of smoke that rose up, obeying the drafts. “Here, Kolya, let’s say you started thinking about where you’ll wind up after your hairy heart stops. That minute is not so far away, after all!” “So why think about it? It’s all God’s will. You, professor, are getting awful hifalutin’!” Veresaiev wrinkled his brow. “Can you say it a bit more simply?” “More simply, Kolya, a man has no paradise besides the country of his own heart. And no other hell threatens

30

Volodymyr Rafeyenko

him either. Understand it as if you were building five-star apartments for all time with your own hands, with a view of the navel of the universe. Besides that, even in this life you can earn a Ukraine eternal and splendid, or you can get an eternal pro-Russian Z.” “An eternal Z?” Veresaev guffawed. “Like a life sentence in a casket lined with spikes?” “Wha–?” Gredis frowned. “Well, death after death?!” “That’s it, something like that!” Sokrat livened up. “And real life comes only after death. We’re not likely, my friend, to be considered worthy of seeing the heavenly Ukraine any sooner. However, the ballad we perform sort of confirms its existence here and now, and by so doing it yanks the ontological stool out from under the feet of our enemies.” “It’s a debatable approach, but I like it!” Nikolai would agree, after a bit of thought, only to ask the very same questions the following morning.

*** The January morning when Karolina went out to meet the humanitarian aid convoy turned out to be amazingly calm. The bathhouse hadn’t been open for several days due to a lack of water. Sokrat knew by now that the Fifth Rome didn’t depend on the city water supply. However, if the bathhouse were open now, the employees of the Fifth Rome would most likely all be tortured to death in the cellars of counter-espionage. Where was the water in their pipes coming from when there’s no water anywhere else? the courteous populists and Russophiles would ask.

The Length Of Days: An Urban Ballad

31

Where’s the steam going to come from if the boiler isn’t working? And what would Sokrat answer? Even without that, the respective authorities had a lot of questions piled up already for Gredis. And therefore, hoping for the best, the professor was unhurriedly rereading Virgil and drinking scalding-hot coffee—the only product whose supply in the house hadn’t run out. Liza, who had spent all night drawing her doodlings, was asleep. The cat, Herda, was sitting by the window, examining the icebound world outside. Looking away from the text for a second to pet her, the professor suddenly realized that he and the cat were hungry. As he put together a quick breakfast he softly sang, “The potato’s flowering, the onion’s growing green. The Colorado beetle goes striding in between. He still has no idea that his future’s very grim, for the Lviv agronomist is going to capture him.” The doorbell rang. Gredis opened it. On the threshold, trembling, moaning and softly whimpering, stood Veresaiev. He was clutching a bottle of vodka to his chest, and nothing he said made any sense. “What’s the matter, Kolyenka?” Veresaiev gave a sob and pressed his trembling head to Sokrat’s chest, just as if the Cyclops had decided to have a cry about his hard life on Odysseus’s shoulder. The masseur, heedless of his nerves, was twice the size of the professor. “Things are bad!” Gredis made the diagnosis and pulled Kolya into the apartment. “Are you alive?” “I don’t know, Ivanych! I don’t know anything!” “Why do you drink in such quantities, Nikolai Nikolaievich?! Soon you’ll be unable to carry out your

32

Volodymyr Rafeyenko

responsibilities! You’ll have no strength left!” the professor shook his head. “I’m a chemist!” Veresaiev pronounced firmly, holding the bottle out to the professor. “And a chemist is supposed to drink!” “All right!” Gredis nodded. “But only small bottles! Keep in mind, at any moment my better half might suddenly show up. And then it’ll be bad tidings for you and me both.” Seating Veresaiev on a chair, the professor put two shot glasses on the table, opened the bottle, and as he arranged fried eggs on two plates, he mechanically finished his song: “He’ll put the beetle in a jar, pull off the little legs. The little bug will die when he cuts off the little head. All the beetle babies cry, the beetle wife will mourn. That whole beetle family, with the father gone.” Kolya’s eyes got big and round, and he asked in an unexpectedly firm voice, “How can you? After all this! How can you make a joke like that?” “What do you mean?!” the professor was surprised. “About the beetles!?” said Nikolai and started crying. “It’s horrible, Sokrat Ivanovich! A fricking nightmare! They cut them all up, knocked them down! The beetles! My God! Never, never! I never thought I’d live to see it! The apocalypse, large as life! They’re really supposed to feed on potatoes. How, how is it possible?! Oh, fudge! Such a horror! Pour some, professor, for shit comes to pass in the world and we, by the way, won’t survive it!” “Hang on, who cut up whom?” Sokrat frowned, puffed into two shot glasses, and poured some vodka. “Who should feed, and on what potato? What are you talking about, my dear man?”

The Length Of Days: An Urban Ballad

33

“At the market!” Kolya firmly stated, took his glass, splashed its contents into his throat, and put it back on the professor’s plate. “Pour!” “Eh, no, good sir!” the professor shook his head. “You eat your egg, and then tell me what happened!” He leaned closer and looked fixedly into Kolya’s eyes. “Or, in fact, nothing happened,” Gredis flashed penetratingly with the lenses of his glasses. “Instead, it’s all only a matter of delirium tremens—and that alone?” Nikolai Nikolaievich made terrible eyes, rose from the chair with an unusual effort, went over to the small pot-bellied television that stood beside the microwave, and turned it on. The screen showed parts of mutilated human bodies. Meanwhile the announcer was saying, “Just as the distribution of humanitarian aid was beginning, terrible explosions were heard, carrying away the lives of completely innocent people. Twenty people dead, twelve wounded. This is the result of the mortar attack carried out by the Ukrainian armed forces…” At that moment the picture moved to parts of the torso and head of Karolina, who lay on the ground. Gredis heard nothing else. Although the camera slid over the dead face and scattered parts of his wife’s body for only a few seconds, he managed to get an excellent look at all the most essential things. The professor had a photographic memory. And he knew that until the end of his life he would never be able to forget either that face, or those eyes, or the human innards on the snow wet with blood. “What is th-th-that?!” Sokrat went dark in an instant, as if he had wilted, and tiredly lowered himself onto the chair. “Karolina! I f-f-foresaw it!” He wiped away the

34

Volodymyr Rafeyenko

thick perspiration that had sprung up on his forehead. “I didn’t want to let her go. A mortar attack, you say? Very strange! Why is it that I didn’t hear anything?! And, I beg your pardon, where were the Ukrainian armed forces supposed to be firing from? The market’s nearby, two steps from here! And I didn’t hear anything at all! Not the least thing! Well, of course,” he shook his head dejectedly and started quietly muttering, taking off his glasses and wiping the lenses, not noticing the tears that ran down from his nearsighted eyes, “Liza was still asleep. I was reading. Recently, you see, I get so absorbed in reading that I hear and see nothing at all. It must be old age…” “No mortars at all!” Veresaiev shouted, chopping at the table with his hand. “In other cases, I won’t argue. Our artillery—those bastards!—are merciless. If only they killed at least one militant, by the way. Actually, they did happen to wound one. I saw it with my own eyes a month ago. But there weren’t any mortars now, Sokrat, nothing of the sort!” He sat up straighter on the chair, but then settled back down. “It’s all lies and provocation! Total fuckery, for fuck’s sake, a TASS in the ass! Fucking bitches! Something completely different took place!” “And what, in your opinion, Kolya, was to have taken place?!” Gredis wrinkled his forehead dejectedly, and tears appeared again in the corners of his eyes. “What happened there?” “Beetles!” the masseur hit the table with his fist once more. “The beetles, dammit!” “What b-b-beetles?!” the professor frowned squeamishly. “Kolya, what on earth sort of beetles?” “The Colorado ones!” Veresaiev got up from the chair, holding his arms out to each side, and circled around the

The Length Of Days: An Urban Ballad

35

room with his knees bent. “Four fucked-up monsters! They got out of a white KamAZ truck, like black and yellow death. Wings—like this! Legs—like this! Sokrat Ivanovich, imagine, each creature was the size of a calf, with only one difference: that calves don’t fly and don’t tear people into pieces! You see, their side legs are like sabers—crooked and sharp. How they tore into the market square, how they started circling and thrashing! My God, Sokrat Ivanovich! Oh my God!” Kolya grabbed his head with his hands. “Beetles, dammit! Beetles! There were living people standing there just then, but now it’s only hamburger. I already sleep badly, as you know. At night the Slavophiles, the assholes, keep shooting in the park by my place. And now this too… My God, Sokrat Ivanovich, my God!” “You’re unwell, Kolya,” Gredis stated confidently and started putting on his sweater and boots. “It’s delirium, judging by everything, which is regrettable but uninteresting….” The professor wiped away his tears, looked perplexedly at the moisture on his fingers, rubbed his temples. “So, you sit here for now. Or you can lie down and sleep a bit. And I, actually, w-w-will go. Karolina has received her death. What d-d-do I need to do?!” He stopped in confusion in the middle of the kitchen with a scarf in his hands. “Who could tell me, too, what exactly? Where can I look for her now? At the a-a-actual market square? But I can’t, can I, just like that? Can’t just go and collect what’s left of my love in a bag?! Pieces of her body are there, mixed up with rice. Like some sort of p-p-pilaf, Lord forgive me!” “The cursed insects cut the woman up into a hundred pieces!” Nikolai confirmed. “Go there, of course! But

36

Volodymyr Rafeyenko

I think the bodies, or what’s left of them, will have been taken away to the morgue already. So, take your ID just in case. Hers as well as yours. You’ll get there, you’ll say, this is what it is, I need to pick up the deceased. And don’t be afraid there! I’m doing better already. I’ll just heat up some tea and sit by the television!” Kolya drank the remainder of the vodka right out of the bottle and regretfully put the empty down by the table leg… A wintry mix of rain and snow was drizzling as they buried Karolina in a closed coffin of fresh linden wood, which had been indecently expensive. Besides the two of them and Liza, four sober, bad-tempered, weary gravediggers crowded in, and a half-drunk homeless man, who was waiting patiently to one side for the professor to leave a handful of hard candies and a quarter bottle of lousy vodka at the grave of his prematurely departed wife. “War, dammit, it’s real live war!” said Kolya, wrapping up in his raincoat. “It’s war, Kolya, you can’t get away from it,” Sokrat agreed. “Just a strange one.” “That’s correct,” Kolya nodded. “Yesterday I saw with my own eyes a dillweed haze floating up from the south, exactly the way the militants in the beer joint were saying. All of a sudden, something green looms on the horizon, and then the entire neighborhood gets fucked! This fustercluck is green in color, it makes your ears ring, and it smells of dill.* Soldiers go nuts from it to the point of insanity. Surprisingly, it even happens in government-controlled territories. Sometimes it floats up to Z like so, and follows around the edge of the city… There’s something off going on, eh?” Nikolai peered into Sokrat’s face with

The Length Of Days: An Urban Ballad

37

alarm. “What do you think? I’ve also heard there’s a small, abandoned village not far from here, right between Z and Lutunyno. In Soviet times there was an animal farm there that was doing well. So what do you think?” Nikolai snorted and ducked with his nose. “Now the Colorado beetles have settled in it. Their nest is there. They catch militia men at night and tear them in pieces. The media in Kyiv write that the beetles are, like, partisans. What the fuck kind of partisans?!” He laughed a short nervous laugh. “If you see a partisan like that, you’ll start stuttering after you die!” He shook his head. “And here’s what’s interesting. See, when the militants went in an APC to tear out that nest, see, one of those beetles landed on the armor and started ripping it like a dog with meat. Nothing was left of the armored car but the wheels, dammit. Can you imagine the likes of that?” “What nonsense are you talking, Kolya?!” Sokrat frowned. “I’m in shock myself, Sokrat Ivanovich!” Nikolai waved his hands. “After all, you’d think they would hunt representatives of the opposite warring side. Well, that is, if things are logical, right? But, see, they’re cutting up the militants. How can a person understand that? Has the Saint George beetle started fighting for the other side, eh? George the Beetle has a nose for which side is right, motha-fucka! It wasn’t a humanitarian mission, you know, that Saint George sent him here on!” “I’m going to have you committed for treatment!” the professor promised gloomily. “You need to go cold turkey on the drinking, Veresaiev! And I beg you, don’t go telling anyone that insects came from Rostov in a white KamAZ truck and ran riot at the market. They’ll lock you in the

38

Volodymyr Rafeyenko

looney bin, never mind that it’s wartime. Or they’ll put you up against the wall, those fucking hippocrateses. You have to understand, I can’t manage the bathhouse without you. My health’s bad, and you know yourself what kind of visitors we’re getting these days. A partner always comes in handy.” “But I’ll say it once more,” Nikolai spat to one side in a businesslike way, “there happened to be insects the size of a calf. They sliced the citizens up into cabbage, rose up into the air, hovered a bit and flew off who knows where. Although now, in principle, we do know. And if you don’t believe it, professor, we can go take a look together some time. My little Opel still runs…” “He’s telling the truth,” Liza put her word in, looking aslant at the professor. “There are beetles. I drew them, you saw!” “True, you drew them,” Sokrat nodded. “It would be better, child, if you drew Eden.”

*** The war moved quite close to Z, and the city’s life changed along with it. The outskirts fell into ruin, and the peaceful population was perishing. It’s horrible and chilling, citizens! As if history has repeated itself, bent into a circle. The start of the previous century has met the start of the present one, and they coincided! The carousel of time runs in a circle, my dear fellow countrymen! The waltz melody jingles, the toy horses, zebras, elephants, and crocodiles leap. An operetta! European military holidays! Traitors and thieves in Kyiv; idiot timeservers, madmen and war criminals in Moscow. The longer it goes on, the

The Length Of Days: An Urban Ballad

39

hungrier and more hopeless it is. On a Sunday an echo flies from one end to the other in the deserted Z-streets. Wind and sun! Penetrating emptiness. And only the public utility employees, like stage workers, tirelessly patch the city—the constantly destroyed scenery for a play that no one has the power to stop. The search for food and drink, the lack of employment and security. Militants on the city streets, Russian mass media in their brains. There’s no one you can have a talk with. And better not to talk with anyone. A solitary person is all right in war, but it’s more comfortable all the same in tried-and-true company. You know at least that they won’t turn you in for pro-Ukrainian sympathies. They won’t curse you. Or start looking at you funny. You can tell your fortunes together by the sounds of the morning and evening bombardments. The savage inferno tunes Z to its own key. And there’s no end to it. But vilest of all, of course, is an accidental death. Especially if you weren’t even thinking of making war but had simply, say, decided to go out to the store for bread. But then bang!—God knows what flies towards you from God knows where, knocks down part of your apartment and part of your neighbor’s. And you sit there right on your bed, you look through the missing wall at the fine winter sleet and think that at least you have some bread and a bottle of vodka, while your neighbor there is a lot less lucky. He was in his apartment when that gift flew in on the wind. And now he won’t see the dawn again; he shaved today for the last time. You’re cold, but you sit there and wonder what kind of life there will be in this city after the war. And you believe sacredly that “after the war” will someday come to pass.

40

Volodymyr Rafeyenko

A bit of sleet—that’s the fashion this February. You smoke, keeping a melancholy eye on the weather, and you think: how come? Why did that thing happen to fly right into your home? You understand that the commander of the artillery crew, a nice fellow from outside Chernihiv, personally had no issues with you or your late neighbor. You aren’t rebels. Your neighbor at least worked in security for the supermarket, but you—you’re just a simple chemist and masseur, an inveterate prosaist. The fellow didn’t intend to kill you when he sent his missile this way, planting a thick cross on your old life. But that doesn’t make you feel much better. Better, but not much better. To say nothing of your neighbor. It got easier for him after he died, of course, but was he glad about it? So that’s basically the situation. In short, Veresaiev got cold as a dog, looking through the hole in his wall at the military étude in dark tones. He drank vodka straight from the bottle, chased it down with half the loaf of bread, and then went to see Gredis with all the things he could fit into a suitcase. Until night fell, they were moving everything they could get out from under the rubble into the professor’s apartment. And once they were done moving, well then, of course, they sat down at the table. Candles were burning, and it smelled of black bread, fatback, and fried onion. The professor’s apartment floated in a bitter February smoke. Yelizaveta was twirling a goblet of wine in her hands, looking into the night, listening in on the conversation. The building was jolted by explosions on waves of wartime. Kiseva spooned hot rice, smelling of raisins and chicken, onto their plates. “Go on,” said Veresaiev, drunk and bad-tempered. “Ask how things in the world are done in practice! Just go

The Length Of Days: An Urban Ballad

41

and ask! Civilians are supposed to perish because of both sides in the war. In essence, it’s a necessary condition of contemporary military operations. There’s no other way.” Nikolai ran his sad eyes over his interlocutors. “Am I fated to die at the hands of Ukrainian artillery men? All right, I tell you, that means it’s my fate! I’m not much to look at. I’ve lived my life stupidly. And, apparently, I’m meant to die in a ridiculous way. Those same kids whose arrival we hasten every day with our praiseful anthems will shut me up without even suspecting that once there lived a pro-Ukrainian chemist of human souls, who drank vodka, loved women, and was fond of reading psalms in the bathhouse…” “It would be better, Kolya, if you didn’t spread that around about the psalms,” the professor winced, involuntarily looking around. “When we’re in our own kitchen?” Kolya raised his eyebrows. “You, and me, and we two? Slavka and Liza are our girls, they know what’s up already!” “I would still request that of you, Nikolai!” Gredis said severely. “Fine,” Veresaiev sighed compliantly, “as you say, director. You’d best explain something else to me. You tell me this. Why shouldn’t, given all this, you know, why shouldn’t our Supreme Leader, the Protector of the Constitution, go out to the podium, purse his important lips, and shout out for the whole world to hear: how are you doing there, folks? How are you doing in your fucking Z? How are you there, Nikolai Nikolaievich Veresaiev? How are you there, Sokrat Ivanovich Gredis? Slava and Liza, what’s up with you, girls? Hang in there, people, we haven’t forgotten about you!” Wiping away a hot tear, Kolya

42

Volodymyr Rafeyenko

poured and drank. “Children, women, old men and old women, hang in there! Men over forty, who have nowhere to take their clueless extended families, you too—don’t lose heart! And you, tradespeople who have businesses in Z, houses, land, and debts—don’t you despair either. We remember you!” Nikolai squinted and looked into Sokrat’s eyes. “What would he lose, tell me, if he insolently said that right on the blue TV screen?” Kolya fell silent, collecting his thoughts. “No, I’m not an infant! I understand that no words can bring back the ones who have perished innocently. Those words won’t make the ruined cities and streets what they once were. Broken lives won’t be fixed. But at least all of us who are living here would know that Ukraine hasn’t abandoned us! That it’s fighting not for territory, but for people’s hearts! So, tell me, professor, why should he, the sole guarantor of the occupied territories, not do that?” “I don’t know why,” Sokrat answered gloomily. “Maybe he’s just not informed that Ukrainians live here too? That they love chocolate, by the way. They drink vodka with fried dumplings. Sing songs about how the Dnipro or someone’s uneasy conscience sobs and moans? Maybe he just isn’t informed?” “Maybe he isn’t informed!” the professor shrugged. “And what’s the point of talking about this? There are no answers to your questions anyway, Kolya…” “By the way,” Veresaiev unexpectedly grinned, “Ladies and gentlemen, do you know that I’ve started writing stories about the war in the city of Z?! After the war I’ll publish them for sure.” “You… stories?!” Gredis marveled. “Who else if not me?” Nikolai shrugged.

The Length Of Days: An Urban Ballad

43

“Maybe there really is nobody else,” the professor smiled crookedly. “So then,” Veresaiev continued, “the fundamental message of the texts that flow from my quill is the following. You, human being, are being killed by both your own people and strangers. But you, poor thing, have to live! It’s your war one way or the other! Want it or not! It’s yours, because it’s come for your soul and your home! And if you hear bombardment early in the morning or, say, in the deep dumb night, don’t, God help you, ask for whom the artillery tolls every day. Fuck, it’s war groping around for you! It wants your life! Run if you can. Live if you can manage. And at every moment of your life make the choice you won’t be ashamed of. That’s it, approximately. Nothing else is left. There’s just nothing else.” “Why, you’re a poet, Kolya!” The professor lit a cigarette, walked over to the window and, looking out, thought about how Z was alive by faith alone. The one on the side of the occupiers tries not to notice the lawlessness of the Russian inferno. People who consider themselves Ukrainians try to pluck up their courage at the sight of residential buildings destroyed and women and children killed by the artillery. It was hardest of all to bear the complete abandonment, the rhetoric from Kyiv, which had renounced the Z-citizens, and the falsehood of the official media. The professor’s heart ached when he read what some, essentially good, people thought: for god’s sake, have they forgotten that they live in Ukraine and not beyond good and evil? Or the things said about Z-people by a few angry, tired boys who were defending the country’s independence with weapons in their hands.

44

Volodymyr Rafeyenko

Well, what are they left with, Gredis would explain it to himself. Either kill or die. They’re soldiers. It’s not their job to understand. That’s why they don’t understand why a person doesn’t want to leave his little home with the well and apricots beside the hut. Not understanding comes easier. After all, if we’re strangers, then never mind us; by all means, return fire. But if the people here are your brothers, then where the heck are you shooting, my sweet commander of the battery? After the February downpours and the frosts that followed, the city resembled a colorful ice decoration prepared for a dress rehearsal of the Last Judgment. The rules for survival were being worked out little by little. Walk right past the militants. Don’t start collaborating with the authorities, don’t get into debates. Trust no one, don’t ask for anything, but take what they give you. Hope. Feel joy with your last strength. Economize on money and food. Don’t appear on the streets after six in the evening, and you’d better not turn on the lights in your house after nine. Light will sometimes draw vampires with weapons and fake IDs in their hands. Robbers of a new type. By day they’re defenders of the Russian World, but by night, they are marauders without fear and reproach. Two of these went to visit Slava Kiseva. She was used to being under the protection of her authoritative cousin, so she opened the door to the “representatives of the military procuratorate.” And, well, she came to regret it greatly. They cleaned her out to the last dime, but all right, they took nothing but the money. Her cousin promised to find them and sort things out, but for some reason this inspired no particular confidence in Slava. Such a multitude of bandit detachments, subgroups, and semi-military subdivisions had infested the city that searching for

The Length Of Days: An Urban Ballad

45

any concrete individuals represented an almost hopeless business. “Who doesn’t like electric light? You think vampires don’t like electric light?” shouted the drunken Veresaiev at Liza’s big sad eyes, as she listened to him, not without a certain delight. “That, ladies and gentlemen, is all Kremlin propaganda! They just adore it! It’s the only light they want to be seen in.” “And why is that?” she asked, looking at Kolya in surprise. “It’s very easy to explain why! Whose lightbulb is it, eh? Ilyich’s. And who is Ilyich, in your opinion?” “Who?!” Slava Kiseva was surprised. “Just make a quick trip to Moscow, my dear, a quick trip! Go to the Mausoleum and see who and what he is!” Kolya answered triumphantly. “Electric light is a horrible thing, Lenin-style, although it’s attractive. An up-to-date bloodsucker can’t go anywhere without it! That, by the way, is why we live by candlelight here! The professor is a professor, after all! He knows what kind of light’s good for people these days…” Life was changing. Hopes for a quick conclusion to the war were slipping away into the past. The past absorbed old habits and prejudices. The Fifth Rome closed ranks. Kolya occupied the professor’s bedroom. Sokrat moved into his office. Even Sasha, after the robbery, started sometimes staying to spend the night in Liza’s room. Life was horrible but nevertheless miraculous. At dinner Gredis and Veresaiev would set to analyzing and generalizing. Sitting in armchairs, looking at each other through the flame of the candle and the smoke of cheap cigarettes, they told tales recklessly, feeling the ecstasy and

46

Volodymyr Rafeyenko

liberty of the drunken word. Liza would draw, periodically jumping at a nearby explosion. She listened to the gabfest attentively, as if it really did contain some higher meaning. Gredis would speak about the world, about people, about history. He meditated aloud for hours, recited poetry, tried to make music on his old piano. He wove into the stories whatever he considered necessary, declared that something that had been was, in fact, not, and exaggerated or underplayed to his heart’s content. He spoke as if he were creating history anew. To the extent of his powers Veresaiev also took part in creating a new image of the world. He debated desperately and he elaborated, sometimes drawing Sokrat along with him. During the second spring Liza rode her bicycle a lot, whenever the weather allowed. She pushed the pedals, gazing into the space that opened before her. She would cry with joy, whispering lines of her favorite poems. The clouds sail off to rest at close of sultry day. The last impetuous flock of birds has flown away. I gaze at the slag heaps and the slag heaps gaze at me. And long we gaze at one another, never bored with being. She helped Sokrat in the bathhouse. She drew a great deal. Early on, it would be symmetrical abstractions, recalling Rorschach tests. But, recently, the professor, to his unpleasant surprise, had begun to notice in her drawings a profusion of dill and the appearance of beetles, clearly of the Colorado type. He was unpleasantly disturbed by that fact, which forced him to recall the conversation just before Karolina’s death and Veresaiev’s assertions, which went against sound judgment. But even without taking that into account, Gredis could make no sense of how the elegant, exquisitely

The Length Of Days: An Urban Ballad

47

mystical Anéthum had taken up residence in Liza’s imagination with Liptinotarsa decemlineata, devourers of nightshade and tobacco, peppers, potatoes and tomatoes. No matter how you spun it, they were exceptionally distinct entities. The only thing they had in common was the domain Eukaryotes. One is native to Asia Minor, the Himalayas, North Africa, and Iran. The other—a horseless caballero who originally made it to the States and then set off to meet the decadence of eternally doomed Europe in a cargo of rotten potatoes, bad whiskey, and whale blubber… After drawing through the night until morning, the young woman, in a half-sleepy trance, looked to the side, out the window, at the early spring that was starting up with difficulty. She saw the city, a bit of the steppe, the blue ponds and the ringing sky that trembled, shimmering with a deathly-burgundy note of war. Veresaiev and Gredis, hung over, looked into her room for a minute to make sure she was awake, but felt shy. Let her be! they thought, and ran off, closing the door firmly behind them. They clattered with pots and pans in the kitchen. They made smoke with cigarettes, opening the window a bit, looking at the clock, listening to the faraway cannonade. Tuesday, early morning. They had to head for the bathhouse.

*** Holiday Tuesdays are especially nice in the Fifth Rome. There are no visitors that day. The late Auntie Karolina, that old pro-Russian bitch, sticks her hand—a poplar twig—into one of the wide-open transoms.

48

Volodymyr Rafeyenko

“Enough sitting idle!” she shouts with a mouth torn up by the Colorado beetles, gathers a cloud full of angels, snow, and indigo from the sky with her long branches, and throws it into Liza’s face. Liza snorts, smiles, and shifts her shoulders. Auntie knits her brow, puffs out of pursed lips, hisses in an undertone, and curses. All the sinks are high except one low one. Liza, smiling, draws with her finger on the sweating glass of the mirror that hangs over the low sink. The sketchpad opens up and it becomes clear that the low sink is needed because special people sometimes come into the bathhouse. Men and women, they come to the bathhouse by twilight. They are Nibelungs, children of the mist, who live in the mining works deep underground. They need to wash their hands somewhere. First, they approach one of the high sinks. But no matter how much they jump, they can’t reach the edge. They jump and jump, then calm down. They stand a bit sadly, look at the objective state of things, and move off to the little sink for little people. And here they wash their hands, which have not stolen; their long ears, which have not listened; and also their weary hearts, which have never loved anyone. And they go off to sleep in the attic. It’s quieter for them in the attic. The low sink is needed for them. There’s no one in the bathhouse on Tuesday. Silence. On Tuesday it’s clean and cozy here. Quiet and peaceful. You can relax and forget yourself on Tuesday. The bathhouse protects you from military concerns, from hatred and loss. The unceasing song of the water and steam sink you into a calm better than anywhere. The dissolving echo erases the border between reality and daydream. Offenses subside. Bad deeds disappear, as if

The Length Of Days: An Urban Ballad

49

they had never happened. You’ve stolen, killed, punched your mother? You shat all over Crimea and Donbas? You drew a picture of your aunt’s death? You’re a Nazi, an occupier, a goblin? A separatist with acid for blood? Angel Obama, Baraka Merkel, Putin-Project? Frickin’ chicken? First to get forked? Forget it. None of that exists. Only the whistling of the wind, only the hum of the steam, only the dripping of the water. Listen. Open your heart! Take notice! God and the echo of the bathhouse will make something that happened unhappen. Your conscience will doze off. It will fold its tired black wings and lower its beak—normally used for tearing raw meat—into the oaken washbasin. Let it soak there. Everyone will be judged, of course. But only here, where the embryos of all worlds tremble like green grapes in a pearly spiderweb, will you be able, at last, to get rest… And the whole enormous day lies ahead! After a drink with Kolya, Sokrat will light up on the porch, and then all four of them will slowly wander home. Their building is catercorner across the road, behind the closest highrises, so whether a guy is drunk or sober makes no difference. Whether there’s a mortar attack or not, it’s not far to go. And besides, what are five or seven hundred grams of vodka drunk in wartime to the sounds of a distant cannonade? Veresaiev, following after the professor, will not keep quiet; they’ll start talking without ceasing. For they have something to say. For only the word genuinely protects and heals. For only in the word do you acquire the home you’ve lost for all eternity. There’s no more calm in urban quiet, now it’s all just riot. And should quiet reign in Z for an hour or two, it’s

50

Volodymyr Rafeyenko

more frightening than an artillery duel. A cease-fire has been a bad sign ever since some in this land started killing others. Well, how does that happen? A little person with little arms and legs awakes in the sketchpad. He picks up a funny little machine gun and starts firing. The bullets hang on the page of drawing paper in a long thick row of dashes. And another person is standing on the other side. He’s exactly the same. He also has a little machine gun in his hands. But he’s a loser. He starts firing his weapon a second and a half after the first person. Why? When you’re hungover that sort of thing happens. After love or narcotics. From tiredness. Or when, just at the wrong moment, you remember Jesus, who insisted that you mustn’t kill people, even if they are clumsily drawn. You didn’t make it in time. You are quickly crossed out with thick dashes. At first, they turn you into a blot, inside of which your little figure becomes indistinguishable. Then into a tangle of furious lines, spreading in various directions from the center. And then after that, finally, into a blown-up balloon. Bouncing on the breezes in the bathhouse, it flies away out of this world, from the bathhouse, from the country, from the continent where there is war. Balloon, my sad one, poor one. Black perfection. The winners get the prize. The ones who can’t kill get sainthood. Liza clears a window on the sweating mirror with her finger. Someone dark is looking at her from there. Gredis livens up, seeing Veresaiev in the doorway. Sober, since morning he’s been quiet and shy. The Lord has sent them bread and cheese, tomatoes, fried chicken, and a bottle of booze for Tuesday lunch. The chemist, sitting, puts his feet in fifth position. You can stand in that pose, but

The Length Of Days: An Urban Ballad

51

how he contrives to sit that way is unclear. His arms and legs are muscular, hairy. At first he only smiles and keeps quiet. In a tradition that has developed, during the first minutes of Tuesday lunch Sokrat has a drink with Kolya but converses with Liza. “Where do these indicators point, child?” Gredis smiles gently at the vodka gleaming silver in the glasses as if it’s his good comrade. “Perhaps to the USSR, the land of happiness and the Red Hards. What do you think?” He laughs. An arrow of green onion sticks out of the corner of his mouth, and on his wrinkled chin are breadcrumbs. Liza raises her eyebrows and looks at Sokrat skeptically. There are bright scarlet arrows glued to the walls by the exit from the hall, to the cupboards, and even to the floor. They lead left, then right, down in a curve into the mezzanine, then back up and back to the right. But the young woman knows that the USSR has nothing to do with this. An enormous arch appears in the sketchpad, twined with ivy. On both sides are ancient Greek statues in astrakhan hats with red stars, and Lenin’s mummy-troll. The Kremlin, rockets, prisons, birch trees, graveyards. The Eternal Pootintate, he is the Divine Head too, dressed in a white raincoat and trousers on the occasion of bathhouse day. He removes his hat, takes a bow, and, laughing, shows the respected audience an extremely long middle finger. Trickster-Pierrot. Pierrot the colonel. A clown, in essence, but a scary figure. No one knows where he is, what he’s like, and (the main thing) how many of him there are. “One of the bathhouse’s former owners initiated this remodeling two years or so before the war,” Sokrat was

52

Volodymyr Rafeyenko

saying in the meantime. “Earlier the clients would enter the big steam room through the old washing room. The workmen took up the old brickwork and found the well and the lower galleries. At first the owner thought he could handle it. I read his notes; Ilya left them for me. The oddball thought it would take two weeks to make everything shipshape. But the remodeling came to a halt. After three people disappeared, the workers ran off. A new brigade worked for less than a month. It’s understandable. After the first tour of duty they went grey. They took to their heels without even asking for their pay. “When Kornev took over running things, he invited a priest to sanctify the well. Only it didn’t help. The father had just begun to swing the censer when there, see, the Nibelungs put in an appearance. True, the reverend father turned out to be a brave one. He carried it through to the end. Maybe he thought he was just seeing things? But the Nibelungs are also fine fellows; they stood until the end, and then they said to him very politely, Thank you, servant of Christ. Odin is pleased, Shubin sends his regards, every cone leads to Chronos. Maybe you’d like a tour of the labyrinths, Father sir?” “I can imagine,” Kolya laughs. “But you’ve told us this five times already…” “Okay,” Sokrat sighs yieldingly. “Fine.” He pours some for himself and the masseur. “But today you, Veresaiev, look like a Tatar-Mongol who’s relaxing after battle with the princes of Rus´!” “Wha?” Veresaiev raises his thin eyebrows and smiles indecisively. “Don’t be silly! I’m a paramedic of the people of the bathhouse, a masseur by vocation, a chemist by nationality, and in mindset a writer of prose.”

The Length Of Days: An Urban Ballad

53

“A chemist, you say?” Gredis grinned. “You’re a general, gilded by sunlight, ready at any moment to dance The Rite of Spring and guzzle vodka!” Kolya watches, unconcerned. He’s used to the professor’s gnomic koans. He most probably even likes them. Sokrat drinks a bit, smiles at Liza. “So see, the old washroom has been closed to visitors for several years already. That’s why the arrows were needed—so our new clients wouldn’t get lost like babes in the woods. You understand, child?” Liza understands so much of it and it gets her so tense that she immediately becomes ten years younger, bounces in place, and runs right after the arrows. One door. A second. A turn. The third arrow. Steps down. She flings open the door into the steam room. Through the wafting steam she sees from a tremendous height the haze of the winter steppe, checkpoints, tanks, armed personnel carriers, artillery weapons, trench mortars, the funny little figures of armed people, lakes gleaming with clouds, filled with blue and black water, ice-covered trees. She slams the door and quickly goes back, to see the face of Sokrat Ivanovich, smooth and softened by vodka, in the doorway. “It’s war there,” she reports. “Yes, child, war,” Gredis agrees, and it seems to Liza that his voice is coming from afar, booming and drawn out, as though through a long, long gramophone trumpet. Sokrat stands up, pours himself and Nikolai some tea, cuts generous slices of lemon, and tosses a few thick, juicy slices into each cup. The air smells of vodka, ham, lemon, caraway, and bread. “That’s enough running, sit down, have something to eat!”

54

Volodymyr Rafeyenko

Liza bites into fresh white bread with yellow butter. It has egg yolk crumbled on top and a little piece of chicken, cut into smooth bits. She is fleetingly sorry that other Z-girls don’t have such an uncle, such a bathhouse, such a breakfast. Liza washes her pity down with hot sweet milk and swings her feet. She squints with pleasure and flings open her sketchbook. Her uncle, still holding the teapot in his hand, goes upstairs. His feet tear away from the floor and slowly float up toward the ceiling. Sokrat doesn’t notice it. The stream of tea continues to pour into the teacup, although it costs him some effort. Veresaiev watches with polite interest as the philosopher and bathhouse manager floats upside-down in the air. The breezes chill the man’s heels, hanging in the air, and stir the trouser legs, which have slipped upward. The farther you run along the arrows, the stronger the smell of water. Steam comes out to meet you and beckons. Come on right away, it says, along the red arrows drawn on rectangular pieces of cardboard. Sometimes in the evening steam circles over the bathhouse as a barely visible grey bird. It gazes fixedly at Z like a falcon seeking out prey. “On the whole,” says Sokrat, “I hung these signs especially for people who are coming to this bathhouse for the first time. Well, you understand.” “I understand you perfectly, professor!” Kolya nods seriously and slowly livens up. “I understand perfectly! What would you tell counterespionage if not for these red arrows?” “It feels as if they never bathed in their Rostov, their Piter,* their Moscow, Cheliabinsk, or Petropavlovsk-Kam­ chatskii,” Sokrat continues thoughtfully. “And here they

The Length Of Days: An Urban Ballad

55

suddenly decide to have a wash. What do you think—why would they decide to take that step precisely with us, here in Ukraine?” “I have no idea. A strange caprice,” Veresaiev raises his eyebrows and empties his shot glass. “What I mean is,” Gredis agrees, “after all sometimes the water and the lights go out in Z. You’ve just soaped up, and you’re lucky if you can rinse off.” “That’s what!” Veresaiev confirms. “We have things even worse than that.” Liza looks at Sokrat, then at Nikolai and snickers into her hand. Obedient to the threats of the Magellanic Clouds, the Fifth Rome sometimes falls quiet as if it were dying. It transforms precipitously into a cold mechanical puppet that looks at the world with the opaque black eyes of its screened windows. The steam seeps a thousand parsecs into the deep heart of a green mechanism. At that time the straight paths that lie before those who are steaming on its shelves are cut off forever. Whoever doesn’t manage to return to the washroom before the green wheel stops remains inside a green grape as ancient as the world. After that, you can seek for an eternity and never find the way back. Sokrat had thought up the bright red arrows especially for people from Russia and other countries of the world who had come to Z to fight a bit in the war. Now they didn’t have to think where to go in order not to get lost accidentally in the endless labyrinths of bathhouse eternity. Gredis had drawn those arrows long and diligently, putting a lot of strength and heart into it. And now each mercenary had a chance to make it back after washing.

56

Volodymyr Rafeyenko

But Liza was informed that all these arrows were up your ass. No matter what you drew, not every person who went would come back. Even strictly following the arrows, you could wind up in a room that didn’t exist. Any person who came to Z with a weapon risked losing their way on these roads. Young or old, Russian or not very, they went off to the steam room and went missing there forever. Ivan Ivanovich went to have a wash, whistling cheerfully, with a bundle of birch twigs in his hands and a knitted cap on his head. He was thinking about all kinds of things. For example, about how he had imagined this war differently when he was watching Channel One.* About how it wouldn’t be easy to get back home. About how they’d given him only a third of the promised money. About one dark-eyed bimbo from the student dormitory. About the problem of dialogicity in Dostoevsky. About the cathedrality of the Russian World. About the bright scarlet mushroom rising over the Ukrainian steppe. And he disappeared, along with these thoughts. Have a nice steam, Ivan Ivanovich! Many were led away there, right after taking a shower. Liza hadn’t seen it, but she was certain of it. The mercenaries would abandon this world, along with the junk left behind in the cubbies. With pea coat and grenades, with the Kalashnikovs that had seen some sights, their butts bearing a multitude of notches, with three mobile phones, two packs of condoms, several hundred dollars, a pair of joints packed with weed from the Chui Valley, and a little packet of cocaine, adulterated before sale with calcium gluconate. For a certain time, the fact that people were disappearing along with their things helped Sokrat justify himself

The Length Of Days: An Urban Ballad

57

in the eyes of the occupation administration. The corresponding organs of the Z-republic adopted a version of events that the warriors were simply deserting right after washing—perhaps instead of washing, by the way. And so? It’s a region on the edge of town. There are no checkpoints here. They’re all farther away, repositioned beyond the ravine, some fifteen kilometers away. It’s very simple to get on one of the buses, private vans, or automobiles that regularly run from here into the blue distance of the territories that no one keeps track of and that are therefore unknown, and to fall off anyone’s radar. Could that happen? Easily. A combatant has a steam—and clears out clean back to where he came from. To Moscow, Cheliabinsk or, say, to his beloved Petropavlovsk-Kamchatskii, where, as everyone knows, it’s always midnight. Try to track someone down in a city like that. Various people would show up periodically at the bathhouse in order to argue again over the loss of personnel. They would shout, threaten, and search the place. It sometimes happened that they would talk politely, but more often they were impossibly rude. And then Sokrat would get his ass kicked. They did all kinds of things to him. Punched him in the face. Rifle butts to the chest. Felt boots to the head, with lead bearings in them. Four times Sokrat was beaten with the first volume of the collected works of Plato, which always lay on the table in his office. Edited by Losev, Asmus and Takho-Godi. Translated from the ancient Greek by two Solovyovs, Sheinman-Topshtein and other colleagues. Such encounters with Plato, of course, did nothing to benefit Gredis’s health.

58

Volodymyr Rafeyenko

But the result was always one and the same—the professor would get to his feet with difficulty and smile politely. He would rub his swollen eyes, smearing the blood, spread his arms wide, and magnanimously ask the gentlemen from the republic to understand his position. He was a simple bathhouse manager, and the bathhouse wasn’t even all that big—only two stories. True, there were also spaces in the basement. But it wasn’t a problem to search them all, right? Once they took Gredis away to the basements of the former district recruiting station, where they held him for three days that would remain fixed in his memory forever. They gave him such a going-over that for six weeks afterward he couldn’t sleep, he pissed blood and lost consciousness in the most unexpected places. “But, basically, what can I say?” He shrugged and smiled at his colleagues, who had been out of their minds with anxiety. “I was lucky! They could’ve killed me, but then they didn’t.” In essence, Sokrat was saved by the fact that he truly didn’t know what had happened to all those people who set off to wash in the bathhouse and never came back. Each time, performing in the spirit of I am not my occupier’s keeper as he was interrogated, he did not speak against his convictions. Sokrat Ivanovich was not a watchman. He was a professor of philosophy and a bathhouse manager. That was the deal. But, of course, everything could have wound up very bad that one time. Suddenly a trio of armed insurgents quite unexpectedly interrupted the Tuesday idyll. The moment he noticed them, Sokrat figured out that he hadn’t closed the entry door after Slava’s arrival. He looked with regret at the bottle, not yet finished. He slowly rose from the

The Length Of Days: An Urban Ballad

59

bench, automatically wiping his hands on a grey towel. Taking a quick look at the new arrivals, he understood that his visitors were not Cossacks from Rostov, not the local recidivists and alcoholics and not Buryat gentlemen seeking nirvana in Ukraine. They were professionals in a businesslike mood.

*** “Guys,” said Gredis quietly, “the bathhouse is closed on Tuesdays, for what it’s worth!” “You want a bullet in yer mug?” asked the skinny, tall leader of the trio with a very bad, frighteningly good-natured face. “Maybe we should drown you in a washbasin?” asked the second, whose pocket read Kuka. “They say workers in the bathhouse are afraid of water, right?” he chortled briefly. “I knew one locomotive driver, and he was scared of trains, right? And turned out it wasn’t for nothing. Once he ran over and killed eight people in the course of six months. And every time it wasn’t his fault. Can you imagine? We killed a year on that business. Tested the theory of meta-causal regularities—in part, those connected with violent deaths.” “Meta-causal?” Gredis repeated. “That’s not the funniest thing!” Kuka laughed infectiously. “The eight who died were all close relatives. And every time, the accident happened at the very same crossing by the river—but you say the bathhouse.” Kuka fell silent, looking with interest at the washroom. “And you know what, it’s nice here! What do you suggest, should we drown you, old man, or hang you?”

60

Volodymyr Rafeyenko

“You can drown me!” Gredis agreed, and his face gradually started to turn a dark pink, almost brown color. “Only, as I see it, there’s no point in doing that. Our papers are all in order. We pay our so-called taxes to the right people…” “And that’s right, there’s no point!” the third one put in, a short man with crooked teeth. “We’re cultured people, for sure! We’re exclusively for mutual understanding and general forgiveness, isn’t that right, commander?! We forgive the lads of the republic all sins, new happiness into new wineskins! That’s what you sing here, isn’t it?” “I don’t even know, Mazai, what to say to you,” the tall one shook his head, took a seat on the bench beside Sokrat Ivanovich, and snatched a chicken leg off Nikolai’s plate. He looked at it critically. “This reminds me of childhood!” He started chewing with cheerful melancholy, not even removing a bit of greasy newspaper from the pimply pink skin. Everyone was quiet as he ate. They could hear the dripping in the washroom. The pipes were humming slightly. The wind burst into the wide-open transoms. It smelled of early spring. “My name’s Valentin! Code name ‘Chinaman.’ I’m an officer in the ‘Lotos’ special unit of the main directorate of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation. Want to see my documents?!” The thin one unhurriedly wiped his greasy fingers on the professor’s towel, got a certificate out of his pocket and opened it. It was hard to make sense of anything in that little booklet with its five seals, birds with multiple heads, and signatures as ornate as street obscenities. “My man, a senior

The Length Of Days: An Urban Ballad

61

lieutenant, set off for here yesterday to get washed and so far he hasn’t been seen anywhere! We’ve established that yesterday two other fighters also disappeared here, presumably. And besides that, it turns out it’s not the first case with you here. A person sets off to get a wash—and he’s gone.” Chinaman fell silent, pulled a cigarette out of Gredis’s pack and lit up. “That’s why we’re sure that you will definitely help us! And we’ll be grateful to you for that!” “In what way can we help?” Gredis smiled, perplexed, squinting his near-sighted eyes against the sunlight falling through the window. “For instance, confess to murder!” Chinaman nodded curtly. “Which, of course, isn’t very likely. Or, for a different variation, tell us about the partisan band that works with you here. The main thing is don’t restrain yourself, for god’s sake, speak sincerely! As if you’re at confession. We’re sure you know what’s going on, but we believe that you yourself aren’t directly at fault. You made a misstep, and we’ll help you to come back onto the righteous path. Am I telling the truth?” “You’re out of your mind!” Gredis shook his head. “Yesterday,” Chinaman started looking thoughtfully at the blade of his bayonet knife, “my man set off for this bathhouse to have a steam and disappeared completely. I need coherent explanations.” “Don’t try to pull a fast one!” Kuкa said fastidiously. “If we cut off that one’s right testicle,”—he pointed to Veresaiev—”stick it in his mouth, and let him chew on it, the other one will look at that and tell us what he knows! A little bit of operative surgery, Chinaman, and we’re in spades.”

62

Volodymyr Rafeyenko

Someone below slammed the entry door. People came running up the stairs. “Who’s that?!” Chinaman tensed, nodded to his two fighters, who immediately occupied positions behind the cubbies. “How should I know!” Gredis shrugged. “Maybe it’s your senior lieutenant?” “No way!” Chinaman shook his head. Into the hall ran five of the local militants, plus the minister of health and transport, Hirkavyi. Taking a quick look at Chinaman, he took the only correct tone. “Brethren,” he said severely, “you must leave this building!” “And why is that?” Kuka asked from around the corner in a lazy and bad-tempered voice. “There’s been enough going rogue!” Hirkavyi suddenly bellowed so that the transoms rang. “There’s been enough, dammit, doing who knows what! Enough! We’ve had enough of you, mister officers, with your experiments! As a representative of the mayor’s office of the city and of the government of the republic, I don’t want to see hide or hair of you here! Keep in mind what was negotiated with the top about you. We don’t like what you’re doing in Z!” “Listen, friend,” Chinaman was clearly not prepared for escalation. “You know how important our mission is…” “Damn it straight to hell, your mission!” Hirkavyi bellowed again, but here he got a hold on himself. “And now quickly,” he spoke through his teeth. “Out, comrade officers, leave the bathhouse! It’s not open today!” “We have to put the twist on the manager,” Chinaman advised. “He clearly knows something…”

The Length Of Days: An Urban Ballad

63

“You’ve already twisted him!” Hirkavyi bared his teeth. “Anyone else would already have bit the dust! He’s one of us! Don’t even doubt him! And the bathhouse is ours too. It belongs to the republic!” “And what, by the way, does the Fifth Rome mean?” asked Chinaman, hiding his bayonet knife in its scabbard. “Why not the fourth then?” “Because there is to be no fourth,” Gredis explained. “And you here, as I see, are shrewd lads,” the secret police man shook his head. “That’s right! What else do you need?!” Vasilii sneered. “We’re out of here!” Kuka announced, stepping out from his hiding place and tossing the machine gun with its short butt behind his back. “Where is he, manager?!” Chinaman looked at Sokrat as if he really did expect Gredis now to lay out for him what had happened yesterday in the Fifth Rome to one young senior lieutenant, a special agent, an unmarried hero of the Russian Federation, and two mercenaries a bit older. “That’s enough from you, Major!” Hirkavyi frowned. “Why don’t you tell us instead, is it true that you drove jeeps back and forth to see the beetles at the farm? And, they say, for your trouble, those beetles chased you off, all the way into the city and almost did you in. Or are people spreading slander?” Mazai and Kuka looked at each other glumly. “All right,” Chinaman nodded after thinking it over for a second. “Let it be so, we’ll go. But keep in mind, Vasilii Ya­ kovlevich, that this won’t be the end of the conversation!” Hirkavyi waited until the steps of the “Lotos” fighters had gone quiet on the stairs, waved to his own guys

64

Volodymyr Rafeyenko

so they too would leave the hall, and said without looking at Gredis, “Should we go, philosopher, and have a conversation?!” “Let’s go, Vasilii Yakovlevich!” Sokrat sighed meekly. “Is there anything to drink?” “We’ll find some!” Sokrat grabbed a couple of plastic glasses and some snacks. He never ran short of vodka in his safe. Lately, the regulars would often ask him to sell them some at any price and would be dissatisfied if it turned out there was none for sale. The room, narrow as a pencil-box, smelled sharply of oak-switch bundles. The screens on the windows and the opaque high windows created a slumberous twilight. Hirkavyi settled down in Gredis’s armchair and watched attentively as the bathhouse manager stood beside the table to lay out the food, pushing books and documents aside. Vasilii Yakovlevich sometimes felt a bit awkward in his position of minister of health and second deputy mayor of the city. Having traveled the rocky road from paramedic to male nurse at the city morgue, then to student in the physical education institute, racketeer and grifter, and up to the heavenly heights of ministerial offices, Vasilii still couldn’t find the right tone for a conversation with Sokrat. He was bemused by the professor’s intellect and the benevolent skepticism in his interlocutor’s eyes. He drank a hundred and fifty grams in one gulp, lit a cigarette, first looking out the window, and then studied Gredis’s physiognomy. “You aren’t a partisan?” the minister was suddenly curious. “Tell me, professor, like a brother! You really aren’t a dillweed saboteur? Swear by your mother, really!”

The Length Of Days: An Urban Ballad

65

“M-m-my God,” Gredis uttered, his cheek nervously twitching. “What kind of saboteur would I make? What on earth are you saying, Vasilii Yakovlevich… By what mother?!” “By your own!” “Fine, I’ll swear!” the professor nodded wearily. “Well, that’s already something, at least,” Vasilii said after a minute of silence, drumming his fingers energetically on the table, but then frowning. “In the city, understand, Sokrat Ivanovich, there are enough problems even without the Fifth Rome! Beetles, dillweeds, phantoms, the haze, wandering buildings, Queen Mackerel…” He stopped the series of revelations that were begging to be shared with a visible effort, and shook his head. “Here’s what, professor… Put a security camera over the entrance, so you can see in real time who comes in, and who leaves and when. Get the idea?” “A camera?!” Sokrat shrugged. “Expensive and silly! Someone will shoot it straight to hell on the first bathhouse day, Vasilii Yakovlevich. Think for yourself, the main guy comes here with women. Some of your guys too. Drunk. Stoned. The Moscow guests like to rub each other’s back here. You know better than I do how they’ve gotten used to steaming here. Go put up a camera, you can imagine it yourself.” “In the past eight months thirty-eight men have gone missing at the Fifth Rome, professor,” Hirkavyi lit a cigarette, got to his feet, and walked over to the window. “That means four point seven-five fighters lost per month due to a love of cleanliness. And you know, it’s not the worst people going, but professionals, with experience of military action. You’re lucky there’s no proof of your

66

Volodymyr Rafeyenko

involvement. Maybe they really are deserting, eh? What do you say? A stranger’s soul is a dark place, of course, but look, professor…” “I am looking, Vasilii Yakovlevich…” Sokrat shrugged wearily. “May I smoke?” “Have one of mine!” Hirkavyi tossed a pack of Marlboros onto the table. “So see, something isn’t going right in the city!” He waved a hand. “On the whole, everything is wrong, to be honest. We have concrete devilry, which can’t be named! That…how can I say it to you…” “Establishment of the republic?” Gredis suggested helpfully. “It’s nothing, it’s still young, in progress. Moscow too wasn’t built in a day…” “Don’t worry my brain, professor!” Hirkavyi yelled. “I know your real attitude to it!” “Loyal!” Sokrat pursed his lips. “And do you know that Z has become a place that no one can get out of?” “In the sense that Ukraine has blockaded it? Well, I think those are temporary measures, in the future…” “It’s more and more serious!” Vasilii interrupted. “And more frightening! Yes indeed,” he nodded, “I’m frightened, Sokrat Ivanovich, for real! And I don’t understand anything! I’m not competent, as my friend in the trade Misha Cheremsha used to say! The farther we get, the darker things are. What to do?! Something has to be done, right? But what? Who will tell me?” “Maybe the leadership has plans of some kind?” Gredis suggested uncertainly. “Maybe the Top Man is keeping track…” “I beg your pardon! You’ve seen him! He can’t keep track of his own dick! I’ll tell you something else. All those

The Length Of Days: An Urban Ballad

67

bastards strolling around here, with very few exceptions, only know how to get sloshed and shoot people. There are two or three military men, but the rest of them are simply brainless!” “There’s nobody capable at all?!” “One fellow did come through,” Hirkavyi nodded, poured some vodka, tossed it back, and sniffed his cigarette. “I’m thinking I’ll drop in to see him in the hotel today. I should have had a chat with him a long time ago, but he disappeared somewhere. Now they say he’s back. Maybe he’ll explain things?” Vasilii tossed his peacoat on his shoulders. “And you, professor, here’s what. I beg you with all my heart, do your best not to let anyone disappear without a trace here, eh? Especially from the army. They’ll shake your soul out.” “Does that really depend on me?!” Gredis shrugged, but he didn’t try to look the minister in the eye. “I don’t know what depends, or on who!” Vasilii sighed. “Everything’s going more or less to hell, and I don’t even have anyone to talk about it with!” “How about counterespionage? What’s that lovely man’s name who interrogated me last fall?” Gredis wrinkled his forehead. “Gelding, if I’m not mistaken, Viktor Sergeevich? He seemed to me to be a person with common sense…” Sokrat poured himself a little vodka, too, then drank it and chased it with a piece of black bread. “From Moscow—cultured, graduated from two academies. Maybe that’s why he didn’t put me up against the wall, because he didn’t see the point. And that, Vasya, is a sign of reflection.” “Gelding is scared!” Hirkavyi frowned. “He gets off topic. How many times have I tried about this, and about

68

Volodymyr Rafeyenko

that. But he’s like a horse—he senses the precipice! He’ll get to a certain point—and won’t go past it for anything. He neighs and bites the bit. Strong fear is a thing you can’t control.” “Seriously?!” “You can’t imagine! He spins like a dick in a frying pan!” “What does he have to be scared of?” Gredis grinned. “The beetles, maybe?” “That’s not what I’m talking about!” “By the way,” Sokrat asked with a grin, “how about you? Do you believe in the beetles? Seriously?” “And you don’t?” “I don’t even know,” Gredis shrugged skeptically. “Somehow, not much, to be honest. By the way, my Kolya says it too: he saw them with his own eyes at the market…” “Well I was at the market too!” Vasilii shuddered, poured half a glass and drained it. “That’s the thing, dammit! I gave a speech that day before they gave out the humanitarian aid. And I saw all those beautiful things right in front of me, the way I see you now!” “Incredible,” Gredis said thoughtfully, in an undertone. “The mind can’t comprehend it. Mass hallucinations or something. But why all the same ones? Suggested by the television? But for some reason I have the sense that it’s not only a matter of stress and propaganda…” He glanced into Hirkavyi’s eyes. “I’m not a physician, I can’t make a diagnosis, but you—and Kolya, too, by the way— should be drinking less!” “Don’t go making me out to be an alcoholic! I’m so healthy that I should be drinking denatured alcohol

The Length Of Days: An Urban Ballad

69

instead of water. No, professor,” he shook his head in disgust. “I saw what I saw. Besides that, the bugs headed off in the direction where those creatures have settled. People say different things. The ones who made it back, I mean. At the front, by the way, the beetles have been sighted more than once, when they were flying by, like. They thought immediately: NATO drones. But then they looked closer—and it was the Saint George beetles.” Vasilii was silent for a moment. “What can I tell you, my friend, the population is growing! There were four at first. But now they fly with a dozen critters, no less. Four big ones and eight or so that are about the size of a medium dog. They’re breeding, that means. Really, we’re lucky the critters chose outside town as their areas of compact settlement. The question is how fast they start multiplying and how soon they decide it’s time to occupy Z.” “What exceptional raving,” Sokrat spoke up thoughtfully. “But wouldn’t you like a cup of tea, Vasilii Yakovlevich?” “I’ll have half a cup, and then I’ll be going! I have a conversation scheduled for today, see…” Hirkavyi leaned his cheek on his hand in a sorrowful way and got all sad. He couldn’t restrain himself from watching Sokrat make tea in a cup, and confided, “Z has slammed shut, professor!” “You mean?!” Sokrat raised his eyebrows. “There’s no way out, I say!” “You mean the checkpoints and all of that?” Hirkavyi looked into Sokrat’s eyes drearily and mockingly, wanted to add something, but didn’t. He took the cup, warmed his hands, scalding himself, took sips, and looked out the window.

70

Volodymyr Rafeyenko

“Here, by the way, is the money for this past month,” Gredis put a puffy envelope on the corner of the table. “Unfortunately, our income is falling…” “I’m not out for profit! You have falling income; others have nothing at all!” Vasilii stuffed the money into his pants pocket without counting it. “Okay, I’ll be going. Yes, and you can say thanks to Slava.” “You mean?” “If she hadn’t called me on my cell phone, who knows who you’d be spending your time with now, Sokrat Ivanovich. And the main thing is where.”

The Tales Of Veresaiev Klara’s Cat To get out of the city or not to get out? Some days it got clear that you needed to flee. In the middle of March, Dmytro Cherniavskyi, a Ukrainian patriot and still just a boy, was killed at a rally downtown. Less and less hope, more and more fighters. They were supported by the local police and the Ukrainian Security Service. Most of the separatists emerged from the criminal element, as Maxim Gorky had done from the simple people. Moreover, there were advisors, personnel officers from the Russian intelligence agencies, professional mercenaries, and people with romantic ideas about the process. Khoma pitied the last group terribly, which further intensified the ambivalence he felt as a true member of the intelligentsia. Maybe they’re right, he would think wistfully. Maybe the West is to blame for everything. Maybe it is to blame.

The Length Of Days: An Urban Ballad

71

But for some reason the West has stayed in the west, as before. While here, more and more people are coming from the east. Bandits and village idiots claiming their rights. There’s shooting and marauding by night, and slogans, rallies and signs by day. Sushkin looked with fear at the armed people. They turned insolent from the boost they felt from weapons and power. They felt like heroes because they had taken an enormous city without a fight. Khoma was anxious about Europe, which stood at the threshold of a great war. But looking at the drunk tourists from Rostov, he thought about how the inferno had recognized its own. And that was what scared him most about everything that was happening.

*** All spring and in the beginning of the summer, the sky, pregnant with a horrible future, was emptying itself out on the land below. It wept with rain. It poured out ruthlessly. So many slugs were crawling in the park beside Khoma’s home that it was getting creepy. Snails and night crawlers were swarming in swarms. Large, insolent grey mice kept running across the paths. It was the first time Sushkin had observed something like that in forty-five years of living in this city. Fruit trees and non-fruit trees drove all their flowers out at the same time, paying no attention at all to the dates assigned by nature. Linden and cherry, bird-cherry and apple, chestnut and lilac, rowan and apricot. It was so rambunctious and unceasing that you wanted to cry. Nature was bidding farewell to the lives of those who were doomed to lie down in the earth in the months ahead. The compensatory mechanisms of existence.

72

Volodymyr Rafeyenko

Khoma drew no closer to the fans of the Russian World. He couldn’t get used to their reality. They looked at him with eyes like those of aquarium fish. They swam by through the waves of Lethe, touching the streets and avenues, buildings, and trees with their fins, testing the brains of passersby with their soft lips. They deposited black and red caviar on the walls of existence, on the lindens and chestnuts that stood there in flower. They waved their nerves, stretched tense as steel cables, they sang songs, talked nonsense, in which a few entirely sensible ideas sometimes slipped through. “Down with the bastards!” Sushkin read once on a dirty sign by the regional administration building. He, touched, thought it would in fact be good to down them. The question is how feasible that would be under conditions of occupation. But on the square—stentorian voices. A sunny evening. The scent of flowering lindens. A megaphone’s hoarse echo. The rumble of enormous loudspeakers. Verses of Soviet poets and songs from the war years. Sushkin sensed a strange recognition and after not too long a time realized what was going on. There was an empire and it vanished. Its sunset had coincided with his childhood and youth. You could feel a little grief sometimes, gazing into the bright-colored pictures of the slideshow known as memory. There are mama and papa. The beach on the strand, summer on the sand, berry juice smeared on your hand. Milk in tetrapacks. Fermented milk in glass bottles. The Politbureau. Plastilene woodpeckers from stop-action Soviet cartoons. The tale about how thirty douchebags found their happiness. But a little person doesn’t need to be afraid. Sleep, my sonny, lucky-fucky, you’re mama’s handsome

The Length Of Days: An Urban Ballad

73

little bucky. The fighters who had come to the city this spring looked more frightening. At the rallies this spring you could sense a familiar aroma. Sharp déja vu. What was noticeable now in the air of the city of Z could be immediately defined with the warm and simple word “crap.” It made you remember the red neckerchiefs, the Pioneer straightedges, the energetic slogans. We’re all great kids here, Lenin’s own Pioneers. A nightmare but, in essence, slipping by like wind by your forehead. It hardly impacts the brains of children. After all, for a child the main thing is that enormous childhood, not the regrettable fact that Zionists met up with American militarism. Yes, that was it. Impenetrable, insolent, so Soviet. It was totally impossible not to recognize it. It had always remained here. In the time it had taken the Soviet Union to sink into the sand like spilled blood, that crap hadn’t gone anywhere. In the nineties, when communism was slowly finishing rotting away in shallow rainbow puddles, Z had been hit by a criminal revolution. The inferno had fully entered the city, like a black penis into a white codpiece. It fell on the region like a pulsating net. It bonded with the Soviet crap, and turned into some third thing. On television screens they talked about Ukraine’s independence. Meanwhile, in Z the dependence got ever stronger. It was weighty, almost narcotic. People were knocked off; the surviving but badly ruffled businessmen and patriots abandoned the region. The folk didn’t give up so simply. But hush, kiddoes, hush. Hang in there, fellow citizens, everything ought to be wonderful, the country’s latest president would say from the television screens. While residents of Z were simply

74

Volodymyr Rafeyenko

vanishing. They were buried in neglected cemeteries. People were shot point-blank on the boulevards, illuminated with un-vesperal light. They were rolled up in cement, drowned in ponds, hanged on trees in the old Soviet groves. They were sucked in by a black whirlwind that spun over the city. And it took them away to marvelous distances, about which Khoma had only the vaguest idea. The inferno stepped into the city of Z, and the sunsets were splendid. And time flowed, as it always does, but now it wasn’t the law that stood at the head corner, but poniatiia—or the prison code, simply put. And only the cupolas of the churches. Early services, but also late ones. The ringing of bells, the alarm bell, Shabbat, and the month of Ramadan. Only the prayers of the righteous, such as the Lord still has, maintained the sky of Z above the city and the steppe, imbued with bitter wormwood sweetness, the sound of the wind in the grass and the soft singing of springs.

*** Sushkin calmed Lyusya down, stroked her hair, kissed her mossy little forehead that smelled of mint and whispered into it. Everything will pass, all this has to come to an end. It’s a carnival here. Fuck carnivals like this, Lyu­ sya said. She looked with eyes as big and black as nights above annexed Crimea. Nothing would come back any longer, and nothing more would ever be here. Remember Slavik and Klara? Three guys with machine guns showed up at their place at night. They warned them, if they wrote anything else unflattering about the Russian idea on their site, they’d each get

The Length Of Days: An Urban Ballad

75

a bullet in the belly. And what? Sushkin sat down on the couch and started clicking his lighter. And so? Lyu­ sya shrugged. They packed their things, in the morning they left. I talked with Klara on the phone while you were sleeping. She left her keys with her coworkers. She asked me to take her cat and to water the plants. And to pick up some kind of documents from the safe in her office. What kind of documents? She said important ones, Lyusya shrugged. So fine, Sushkin darkened. Your girlfriends, just like always. And they were lucky, Lyusya added. They could’ve thrown them into the cellars at the former Ukrainian Security Services building. Aren’t a lot of people there already? And then what would have happened with their children? Khoma sighed, looking at the spots of sunlight running over the wall. A carousel outside the window was creaking loudly and merrily. A dog barked. Lyusya waited for Khoma to say something, but he didn’t. She got up and went out. For five minutes or so, Sushkin listened to the water dripping in the bathroom. A warm wind filled the sails of the curtains. Children shouted and laughed on the playground. His eyes hurt, and he thought about how for a few nights he hadn’t been able to sleep properly. There was shooting downtown at night. If only he knew who and why, and the main thing—where? But maybe it’s better not to know, he suddenly thought. The defenders of the Russian World were stealing too much. Banks, stores, private businesses. Though not all of them. It was selective somehow. And that made it even more frightening. You no longer know this city. You have no idea how to live in it and what to expect from it.

76

Volodymyr Rafeyenko

Public transit goes out along its routes. City employees plant flowers, clean the streets, pick up trash. People who haven’t abandoned Z go to work. There’s a surprising amount of order, even though no one is concerned with it. People remain people. And the city, full as a chalice, babbling with brooks, ponds, streams, rustling with bright green trees, smelling deafeningly of flowers, remains a city. Although it reminds you more and more of a stage set. Government forces are approaching the outskirts of Z, and soon there will be fighting here. War is coming this way. People have been perishing around us for a long time now, while there are fountains and flowers here. Life in the eye of a typhoon. A dark-blue unblinking eye, the ultimate silence. The smell of flowers is too concentrated. It interferes with breathing and living. The thick aroma speeds up your heart rate. Perspiration and stuffiness. The most ordinary foods—bread and beer—have started to taste stronger. Sugar is excessively sweet, salt is overly salty. Your frontal lobes ache from the piercing blue of the sky, your eyes twitch and you want to drink. Sounds and feelings turn extraordinary, isolated, like extended pain. Sexual acts are intolerable. Conversations, smiles, music, the wind. A splendid world in the absence of harmony. Lyusya came back and sat down on the couch, looking out the open balcony door. Something’s broken, said Sushkin. And no one can restore it. Neither the hamlets, nor the ophelias, nor the OSCE. It would be good to go to Copenhagen now, said Lyusya. To sit on a bench in Tivoli Park and light a cigarette. I want so much to live, Sushkin! Well, so we’re

The Length Of Days: An Urban Ballad

77

living. We aren’t living, we’re surviving. And it’s just going to get worse. We’re just at the beginning. Trust my intuition. Lyusya’s right, thought Khoma. But it’s easier for her to leave Z. Besides Sushkin, she has no one here. Whereas Sushkin has a great uncle and the little girl Liza, his dead sister’s adopted daughter. They won’t be going anywhere. Stay or flee? That’s the question. If only we could know, Sushkin spoke up, smiling guiltily, what is a dream in all this and where the reality in it begins. Lyusya shrugged, exhausted, lit a cigarette, wrapped herself in smoke. When will you make up your mind? Don’t you understand that we can’t stay in the city?! I’ll talk to my uncle tomorrow. Trying not to look into Lyusya’s plum-colored eyes, Khoma started getting dressed.

*** All day long he didn’t find time to call. He got back at twilight. The sounds of his steps rang out with an echo in the empty yard. The apartment windows were dark. He went up, made some coffee, dialed the number. No response. He drank three cups of coffee, ate a piece of bread and butter. Sat down at the coffee table in the hall, lit a cigarette and called twenty-four times in a row. He went out onto the balcony, took some deep breaths, and made three calls, more productive, to other people. Then he called a taxi. A slightly crumpled little Zhiguli showed up. He jumped into the front seat and said the address. And what’d you call me for? The driver spat out the window with annoyance and scowled at Sushkin. It’s two blocks away. Faster to walk it! It’s urgent! Urgent!

78

Volodymyr Rafeyenko

Khoma shouted. His voice broke into a counter-tenor and he started coughing. May I light a cigarette? In brief, the driver unhurriedly got a lighter from the glove box and gave him a light. You’ll pay me fifty or we aren’t driving anywhere. All right, you’ll get it, Sushkin agreed at once. Somewhere far away—by the sound it was out past the central city ponds—volleys of machine-gun fire started to hit, one after another. Outside the windshield a tipsy couple passed, swaying slightly in the warm light of a streetlamp. The woman was guffawing, tossing her head back. She held a cigarette with two fingers. Sparks scattered on the wind. It’s understandable, of course, the driver nodded. As he reversed to turn around, he glanced at the rear-view mirror. Times have come that you don’t want to take a walk downtown in the evening. But you have to understand me too. I do understand. In Sushkin’s mouth tobacco was mixing with saliva that had too much caffeine in it. His heart was beating mercilessly. A sweet-and-sour hint of Brazil. He desperately wanted some cognac. If you… The driver tossed a bent cigarette into his mouth, grown over with a red beard. If it’s not for long… So, toss in a twenty and I’ll wait by the office. It’s an office building? Yes, it’s an office, Khoma nodded with relief. An office, of course, an office. So okay? The cabby smiled with unexpected warmth. Okay, Sushkin grinned palely, okay! But you see, he started speaking feverishly, my girl’s gone missing. She went to see her girlfriend at work. They saw her in the building an hour ago, but she’s still not home. I call her but she doesn’t answer! Sushkin fell silent, took a couple of quick drags, tossed the butt out the window. And there’s simply nowhere else for her to be. You see, she

The Length Of Days: An Urban Ballad

79

doesn’t have anyone but me in this city… He cut himself off, noticing that the driver was listening with half an ear. However, he couldn’t stop himself. He ended weakly, without enthusiasm, feeling keenly his pointlessness. I call again and there’s no answer. And again, and again… You think all kinds of things, of course. We’re here! The driver looked at him patiently, but mockingly. Are you getting out or what? Yes, of course. Khoma put his damp palm on the door handle and looked around. Go on, go on, the cabby nodded, I’ll wait. Just make it quick, really. I’ll give you ten minutes, no more. What floor? —The third, said Sushkin. There’s a light on the third floor. The cabby nodded, looking up. Anyway, go. But in and out, quickly. It turned out there was nobody at the porter’s booth. The corridor was as empty as Murakami’s prose. Singing wind through shattered glass. Every step resounds like brass. The bathroom door was open. Someone had left the faucet running, water pouring in a thin intermittent trickle. For some reason Sushkin carefully turned it off, turned out the light, and closed the door. He wanted to take the stairs, but he pushed the elevator button. The door to room three hundred five was open A stripe of light fell into the dark corridor. It was dark and empty and led off into infinity. It hummed with the syncopes of a full-spectrum lamp. Lyusya, Sushkin called, Lyusya. He took three steps straight ahead and went through the door. They had killed her with an axe or something very like one. She was lying by the window, arms spread out to each side, an office bird that had tried to fly away. Her blood had turned into a black mirror, beside her a red

80

Volodymyr Rafeyenko

handbag. Her jeans were smeared with blood, but her blouse gleamed with a blinding whiteness. Sushkin pressed his back to the wall. He slowly slid downward, feeling the cold, rough surface through his sweatshirt. He covered his head with his hands, took a deep breath, and only then screamed. Somewhere far away a factory siren started wailing in harmony with him. Under the table a cat with green eyes looked dispassionately at the screaming Sushkin. It sniffed the blood and walked off to one side and stared at the window, in which a yellow rusk of moon crawled slowly.

Beer and Cigarettes …the volunteers will help you getting out. I said I won’t go! Understand, we worry about you! I worry, Silin clarified. Go ahead and have a nice calm worry. Lena shifted the telephone from one hand to the other. Even her ear had started to hurt from this conversation. You’re an egoist, Silin informed her. You only think about yourself! That’s right, Yelena opened the next bottle of beer. She took a long swallow, letting a certain portion of the text go by. She pressed the phone back to her ear. …the last Thursday of the month. You understand, I hope! And how, she affirmed. But this is my city. Why am I supposed to leave? But you could be killed any day! They’re bombarding the downtown, and you live right in the center, you fricking fool! No, Silin, not fricking for a long time now. It’s more and more tricky with our patriots, but I don’t let the separatists have any… Stop it! All right. She laughed softly. They won’t kill me, Silin, so long as one can buy beer and

The Length Of Days: An Urban Ballad

81

cigarettes in Z. I’m not going to your Crimea! You can go you-know-where with it. I know, I know, Mikhail spoke up quickly, we have different convictions. But we’re not talking about that now. Stay Ukrainian a hundred times over, Lord bless you! We’re talking about the territory of survival! We’re talking, Silin, about the fact that you left me for my friend, Yelena coughed, and then went off to Crimea with her. Eight years totally wasted. And I loved you, Silin. Whereas you turned out to be a worthless pathetic bitch. She shook her head as if she had only just realized this fact… Don’t get started! For god’s sake… You’re the one calling me, wasting money. If you don’t like it, don’t call. And if I break up with Svetka, will you come here?—If you do what? Lena put the bottle on the table. She picked the slowly smoldering cigarette up out of the ashtray and took a drag. I’ll dump Svetka! That is, we’ve already practically separated. Silin started talking faster and more indistinctly. She’s leaving tomorrow for her family in Rostov. I’m staying here alone. I found work at a newspaper. I’m renting a room from this sweet old lady with a view of the sea. Imagine, muslin curtains floating. A breeze. Fishing boats on the horizon. The sea out the window, like the back of your hand. Lebanese cedar, pine, and laurel. You’re the only thing missing. You keep lying, Silin. Yelena took such a deep drag that half the cigarette collapsed in on itself. The sea is out of the question, and the laurel, too. No, I’m not lying. Long hours but not much pay. And prices are frightening, just frightening! He started laughing. But it’s all right, we’ll survive, Lenka! The main thing is, call. A man

82

Volodymyr Rafeyenko

is waiting; tell him you agree. Don’t worry about the money, I’ll cover everything. Well, you can go f* yourself! She finished the bottle, put it down neatly by the radiator. She got up sharply from the couch. Her head started to spin. She leaned her shoulder on the wall. She felt its cold and the beat of her pulse under her shoulder blade. Early morning. Bright sun behind the tightly closed blinds. The phone in her hand buzzes with the familiar hateful voice. She goes out on the balcony. Right away something booms. They’re hitting the central avenues. Thick smoke, black and acrid, rises from the City Garden. The business center to the left is on fire. They’re knocking down the city thoughtfully and methodically. Lena doesn’t know for certain who was doing it, but it seems to her that she knows. Bitches, Yelena whispered. She sat down on the driedout old chair and put the phone to her ear again. …I don’t hear your breathing. The last five minutes, Silin was saying, you probably weren’t listening to me. And maybe you aren’t listening now. But it’s all the same. I love you, Lenka! I love you more than I’ve ever loved anyone! Yes, of course, I’m to blame. But you yourself introduced us. And afterward, what was it? In essence, a silly little intrigue. It happened and it ended. But with us here, Lena noted, lighting up again, things are only just beginning. And you can sit on it, Silin, with your love. Don’t hang up. I’m not hanging up. She shrugged. I have nobody here to talk with for days at a time. So, any dick in a storm. And what do you do all day—after all, you don’t have a job. I drink beer, Silin. Actually, I already told you about that. I drink beer, I read, I watch movies. Last night I watched a retrospective of

The Length Of Days: An Urban Ballad

83

Terry Gilliam’s work. Do you like The Fisher King? —You know I don’t like it. —That’s why you’re an asshole, Silin. She shook her head sorrowfully. I think, she added after a certain pause, after this war I’ll need to get treated for alcoholism. If I survive, of course. She looked down. An old man was walking along the other side of the street. He was walking slowly, for some reason touching the wall of the building with his hand, and crying. Tears ran down his wrinkled chin. In his other hand he held a red string bag with a package of yellow macaroni, sunflower oil in a plastic bottle, and what looked like a package of cookies. Listen, Silin, gotta go, Yelena said into the phone. There’s a little old man going by, looks like he’s lost. He’s walking along crying. Really old. If you want, call me in the evening. She hung up. Took the keys from the table, opened the door. Went down the echoing staircase. It smelled of the dust and sun that burst into the shattered windows on the landings. The wind turned out to be unexpectedly strong, it started grabbing at the hem of her skirt, pulling her in various directions, tipping her sideways and shoving her in the back. A protracted whistle. A loud explosion two blocks away. She ducked mechanically, covering her head with her arms. Tears came to her eyes, and her right eye started twitching. But she had to stand up. The old man made no move to crouch down. He kept on walking, defining his location in space and time by touch. Granddad, what’s the matter, Lena touched his sleeve. Lost your way? —I need building number seven on this street, he said, smiling trustfully. His face, wet with tears, was full of hope. Number seven! It’s somewhere around

84

Volodymyr Rafeyenko

here. I live there with my old woman. —Then you’ve already passed it, said Yelena, looking at his wet trousers. He had just urinated and, judging by everything, not for the first time that day. A sweetish, cloyingly heavy scent. She struggled against the spasms that suddenly rose into her throat. Good thing she hadn’t eaten anything but chips for a long time. They went through the archway. Went into the courtyard. The old man looked around. He noticed the familiar children’s playground and a huge flowerbed, full of petunias. A little old fountain, dried up a hundred years ago, was full of sand, clay, and bits of broken brick. The door to the apartment wasn’t locked. Yelena went through into a room with the window flung wide open, with a persuasive layer of dust on the floor. Leftover food on a plate. Lazy flies circling a dried-up piece of liver sausage. Rusks in a string bag, hanging on a nail. On the wall, a carpet featuring faded brown deer, from the era of the twentieth congress of the Communist Party. Beside a low love seat is a table with a big cup of murky water and medicines. A duck is peering out from under it. Beside it, almost-new fluffy slippers. Evidently, the old woman sometimes gets up, but she can hardly walk without someone’s help. Wizened, sharp-nosed, she had a naughty smile. The black buttons of her eyes gleam. Hello, I’ve brought your husband home. The devil knows what the old man won’t do just to cut the rug with a young ’un, the old woman laughed. The old man also started snorting, baring teeth of striking crookedness and red-layered gums. As he laughed, he sparingly moved his wrinkled neck, covered with dark-brown spots of pigment. His uncheerful eyes

The Length Of Days: An Urban Ballad

85

teared up as he did. Their corners were frozen with pus or, perhaps, with sleep. That’s good. See, ever since Sashenka, our son, was killed in the bombardment last month he’s started forgetting like that. —Your son was killed? Yes, the old woman didn’t cease smiling. He could have gone away to Kyiv with his company, but he stayed here to keep an eye on us. And he was killed when he went to the store.—Who killed him? After asking the idiotic question, Yelena felt disgusted at herself and sat down on the facing chair. Why, god knows who. Must be the fascists. The old woman laughed. On TV they keep talking about fascists. I keep thinking, how could the Germans have come back here? They don’t seem to be fools, they ought to understand that there’s nothing to hunt here. She thought a bit. I met the occupation as a little girl. We had just gone to hide, eight children and mama, in the cellar when they bombed our house. In the morning we climbed out; there were two walls left. The fence was still burning, and the raspberries were standing there all black. Wind, smoke, and the Germans, twenty or so of them, were smoking by the old church, laughing and looking up at the sky. And it snowed on the Feast of the Intercession, halfway through October. That’s how we lived. The old man gave a heavy sigh, took the shopping into the kitchen. The sound of running water came from there. Lena looked out the window. Columns of smoke were rising beyond the city ponds. It started to smell of vegetable oil, poured into a heated skillet. The old woman sighed. I can’t understand where the fascists could be coming from. Stalin died. Khrushchev died. Brezhnev

86

Volodymyr Rafeyenko

died. Mao Tse-Tung. They say even Fidel Castro isn’t feeling very well… He died too, Lena said, only nobody knows about it. Well, that’s what I’m saying. They all died. But the fascists, you see, stayed around. Just look at them! True enough, no matter how much the old man goes out, he hasn’t met a single one of them on the street. The old woman got thoughtful and started to stroke the worn spine of a book lying beside her with a trembling hand. So how do you live? Yelena swallowed dry saliva that scratched her throat. Well, this is how we live. The old woman laughed again. We still have a bit of funeral money left. And the old man gets humanitarian aid. But he forgets the way home? Things are as they are! The old woman looked thoughtfully out the window. We’re old. So, he forgets. Then how does he go about? That is, how does he make it back? So, you see, the old woman chewed her lips, the address is written on the lining of his jacket—such-and such street, building 7. I wrote it there for him in ink. And good people always turn up! Three days ago, he rambled around till evening. I thought that was the end. But no! Three armed men brought him here in the evening. Decisive ones. Newruscists?* Who knows, said the old woman. They all look the same. Maybe new Ruscists, or maybe not so new. Uncheerful they were. They brought the old man, then they went into the kitchen, drank vodka, fried potatoes, and sang songs until the morning. I even sang along a bit, so as not to be bored. They rode quietly in the quiet of night, the old woman informed her drily and chewed her lips. On the broad Ukrainian steppe. And in the morning they left. And good that they left, because they shouted a great

The Length Of Days: An Urban Ballad

87

deal and cursed, and I don’t like either of those things. One was just a boy. He came in to talk to me in the night, got down on his knees and cried and cried. Tears just pouring. I say to him, what is it, dear. And he answers, it’s scary, granny. It’s scary to live, he says, and to die. All right, I’ll be going. Yelena got the feeling that she couldn’t get enough air. She rose decisively from her place. Pavlovich, the old woman called in an unexpectedly ringing young voice, my duck! The old man came into the room, not at all bashfully, and set up the duck for the old woman. She, still laughing, loudly let out a fart. The old man started laughing. You’re just a cannon here, Marya Stepanovna! A real howitzer! The smells of food being prepared mixed with the others, creating a deadly mix. Holding onto the wall, Yelena left the apartment and set off down the stairs. She threw up right by the entrance. She caught her breath and wiped off her mouth with leaves from the birdcherry growing abundantly in the courtyard. She felt a bit of money in her pocket. She went through yards to the kiosk on the corner of Mayakovsky Street. Shurka, sitting in the kiosk, looked at her glumly, said hello, took the money, handed over four bottles of dark beer past its expiration date and two packs of cigarettes. You’ve gotten really thin, Lenka. Is that good? How can it be good, you’re skin and bones! Do you eat anything besides beer? Cigarettes. That’s it. Here, take this. She held out a package. Well, take it when I tell you to. It’s chicken cutlets and bread. I got it for myself, but I’ve had heartburn enough this morning to last me all day. I’ll get hungry by evening. And you take it. Thank you, said Lena, knowing that Shurka had no problems at all with

88

Volodymyr Rafeyenko

heartburn. But she desperately wanted to eat something. She took the dark little package, pressed it to her chest, and, looking fixedly ahead of her, headed home along the avenue. The bombardment got heavier in the twilight. Dark emptiness flickered in the windows of the buildings. Silin called at twelve at night, when the fear and longing got especially strong. So have mercy, Lenka, he said in a pitiful drunken voice. What am I supposed to do now? Come to get you myself? It’s stupid, Lenka, stupid! They’ll kill me—and it would serve me right. But what are you doing to me, you damn slut?! All right, Yelena lit up, and slowly let the smoke out of her nostrils. Tell your volunteer that I’m coming. Only on one condition. What? Silin livened up. Two old folks are coming with me. What kind? Drunken Silin was imagining with difficulty, snuffling in puzzlement. Lena’s heart ached from that snuffling. I don’t understand anything. My old folks. Old old folks, Silin. Very old and sick old folks. He can walk, she’s bedridden. Either they come with me or I don’t need anything from you! And, I’ll be a bitch, she promised quietly, I’ll toss this shitty cell phone out the window right now. All right, Silin shouted, all right! Let the two old folks come! Even four! From the telephone came the smell of Lebanon cedar. Screw them all! That night the beer in her body was transformed unendingly into tears as pure as spring water. And they poured and poured, until the cigarettes in the house ran out and dawn came again.

The Length Of Days: An Urban Ballad

89

*** Three days later, five kilometers from the exit from Z, between two fields, one of which was planted with beets, and the second with no one knows what because the harvest was already done, a microbus carrying twelve people and a driver was shelled by an artillery mortar. The driver was thrown out through the windshield, the conductor managed to jump out at the last moment, shouting something and cursing. But the passengers were killed by one shared mortar shell, produced in the USSR. A minute or so later some bored sniper took out the volunteer. The driver sat for another forty minutes amid the beet greens mixed with mud and cried, wiping red tears over his beet cheeks. He had a bad concussion. It seemed to him as if someone were calling his name, and crying, and trying to say something.

Seven Dillweeds Pavel had always loved his stepfather. He always considered him his father. Matvei Ivanovich was a strong man, substantial. Everything that needed to be done around the house he did himself. He came into Nina Ivanovna’s family like God’s own blessing. She could not, of course, have raised a son alone. After the death of her own father, Pashka’s grandfather, who had always helped them with money and food, she was in despair for a while. She worked two jobs, but still there wasn’t enough money. Meanwhile Pashka was growing up sickly, and he needed nourishment. Matvei appeared out of the dark of a miner’s night and cherished the lad, and managed to win his heart.

90

Volodymyr Rafeyenko

Matvei Ivanovich had come here at a mature age on a “work permit,” and as he himself admitted, it wasn’t that he didn’t like Ukraine… Rather, he didn’t understand. That’s what he would say to his stepson. “I don’t understand, sonny, Ukrainian speech, and also all those complications with Stepan Bandera. I don’t like the Westies, see? They’re sort of wild. Just wild people. And they only socialize with one another. We had a few men in the mine. So they only spoke with their own people and only in their own way. They even got beat up for that a few times. But it did no good, in my opinion. They only got more bad-tempered. And, I figure, if they’re that kinda people, then what can you take from them?” He drank up the next glass and sniffed at a bread crust. “Although, in essence, who is that Bandera? Well, just an agronomist really. And I’m an agronomist, too, in my first training. I graduated from an institute, too. And what, are they going to raise a monument to me? Now, the Russian language, say, is richer and more beautiful, that’s a fact. And I’ll explain to you why. First of all, that’s what my grandmother spoke, Nastasya Alexandrovna. A geology teacher, by the way. They sent her to rot in Kolyma in forty-two. And second of all, just smart people. Gagarin, for example, Hohol.* You know, Pashka—Hohol?! Dead Souls, Pasha! Have you read such a novel?” “No,” the lad shrugged and turned red from the strain. “And that’s no good! No good!” Matvei Ivanovich shook his head. “Although, to be honest, I didn’t overcome it either. Have you seen the movie? Watch it! It’s an excellent old movie! True to life, that’s the main thing… But that’s not what we were talking about!” He gathered

The Length Of Days: An Urban Ballad

91

his thoughts, lit a cigarette. “Why don’t you tell me what we should do now, if they have an agronomist like that? Forget our language?” He shook his head. “I consider that stupid. But they say forget it!” Matvei lowered his head in a funny way, spread out his arms, poured himself some more vodka, picked up a lightly pickled cucumber. “They say: Now the whole country will start to speak Ukrainian. Well, kids,” Matvei Ivanovich spread his arms, “that’s ridiculous! You understand? They have their language, we have ours. It’s been like that our whole lives. These ones that are in Kyiv, they ought to think with their heads. We aren’t against anything in the mine. Even joining Europe. If you reason it out, you won’t frighten a miner with homosexuality. All these perversions are even pleasant for us to remember, joking during our shift.” “But first of all, don’t touch production! And second of all, let a man speak his own way! You can pay him no money, but don’t insult his word, for it’s a living thing, and salty! They don’t understand that! They think that if they’ve driven three and a half bandits off the top bunks to the lower ones, that’s already a revolution of dignity?! But you and I are smart people, lad! Life has taught you and me to distinguish the seed from the chaff. And if someone in Kyiv, pardon my French, Maidaned things up, then let them clean up there first, put things in order, you understand, arrange life for people, and then I’ll have a conversation with them! Am I right?! No?! Well, you judge for yourself. If I decided to remodel the house but instead of that made such a shithole that you can’t get your head around it, then what kind of homeowner am I, after that? None at all! Can you take me seriously? You can’t! That’s what I’m talking about!”

92

Volodymyr Rafeyenko

When they started shooting in the city, Matvei Ivanovich took to studying the situation. He had already called it quits at work, because he had a solid pension, and the mine had stopped paying entirely. So he had time to spend studying the situation of the world. He walked around, talked with people. He would come back towards evening, tired, anxious, but, on the whole, satisfied. “Here’s what’s going on, Pashka,” he would say, chasing his vodka down with herring and potatoes with their skins on. “A powerful power is moving at us from the west! People are saying that the Right Sector* tanks are making their way with direct fire. They say they’re going to come crush us here like some louse. They want, see, to stir up and disarray our whole Z-life. And they want to put some rabbit up top, who’s running everything there now! But a rabbit, Pashka—it’s just a rabbit. He’ll start using our women from every side, guzzling dollars so you won’t be able to find any in the exchange booths later, and beating the drums of war with his clawed paws. You understand what I mean?” “Sort of,” Pashka said shyly, understanding almost nothing of what he heard. He knew only that Matvei Ivanovich was the best stepfather in the world, counted as his own blood father, and that for him he would tear out anybody’s throat with his teeth. By the way, it emerged from Matvei Ivanovich’s stories that separatism in Z was firmly supported only by the workers of the Ukrainian Security Services, criminals, and the local police. The civilians preferred to stay off to one side. They walked the long way around rallies with crooked smiles. And they got into conversations exclusively when they had been drinking a bit, so as to have a conversation.

The Length Of Days: An Urban Ballad

93

The general opinion was that the “new” and “old” ones would come to an understanding. Therefore, it was better to keep quiet and not land in a fistfight. This strategy had always been justified around here. The people couldn’t figure out what was going on and, due to a pessimism characteristic of the place, didn’t trust anybody. One power will always find a common language with another, they thought here. There had already been one orange president* who had become the best friend of his enemies after a couple of months. So, if the “Kyiv” people wanted, it would be Ukraine here. If they didn’t want, then what would be would be. But who had ever asked a simple person here anything, and when? By that time there were already a lot of strange new folk in the city, transported in from the Russian regions closest to the border. Pashka had never before seen these homeless-looking men and their insolent dirty women, who stood at all the pro-Russian rallies. The smell of homebrew and their thievish and insolent smiles testified that they didn’t care what kind of rally they were attending. Where and what there was in the city, they didn’t know. They hung around with the police. They spoke Russian with a characteristic non-local accent and loudly praised the honest “khokhol” beer.*

*** At the beginning of June, after he had received his pension and back pay, they found Matvei Ivanovich dead in the city park. He was lying by the water with a sorrowful smile and a deep cut in the right side of his neck. Nina sobbed terribly at the funeral. She jumped into the hole

94

Volodymyr Rafeyenko

as they were lowering the coffin. She tried to stab herself in the heart with a knife. But after a week she found work as a porter in a student dormitory downtown and came back to life a bit in the new place. Every day Pashka saw his stepfather in his dreams. He would smile and tell him something that had no beginning or end. About coal, about Alexander Nevsky, about Belka and Strelka* and the battle on the Kalka. To be honest, Pashka was able to catch only the general tone, distinguishing the details hazily, as if through dirty glass. Well, in the end, he enlisted in the war against the Right Sector and, consequently, for Hohol, Gagarin, and most of all—for Matvei Ivanovich, who had been an agronomist in his first training. They issued the lad a Kalashnikov and two cartridge horns and sent him off to make war with three dozen others such as he. In the fight, unfortunately, they found themselves not alone, but facing an opponent. And it quickly became clear that in war people get killed. But, to tell the truth, Pashka didn’t have time to get a proper look at anything. They were only just lying down on the edge of the field by a small creek, which made almost a right angle turn toward the city, when a Ukrainian battalion started attacking. A terrible firefight kicked up, but the fight came out short and chaotic. Pashka’s commander turned out to be a bastard and, moreover, not sober. He threw down his jammed machine gun and ran off at a gallop. There he went slinking off through the ravines to the nearest dacha settlement, and that was that. Meanwhile by the small stream, for a whole twenty minutes more, young souls were flying away on a one-way voyage over the great heavenly ocean.

The Length Of Days: An Urban Ballad

95

*** Nina Ivanovna got home from work late. She made some tea, started making dinner. She knew Pashka wouldn’t be home today, so she wasn’t worried. After eating a bit, she got out a bottle of port wine, opened it and poured half a glass. Drank it. Here her neighbor, Khvoshch Maria Stepanovna,* appeared. She told her Pashka had been sent into battle and killed there. Her husband, who was making a living as a driver for the new authorities, had trustworthy information about it. “They mowed them all down in the field by Mykhailiv,” Maria lifted a glass of port wine and drank it without flinching. She tossed a piece of candy into her mouth. “Right there just past the stream. On the right is the track, and on the left the Kalmius flows in. They’re lying there. But it’s far to go, and you won’t be able to find a car!” Maria wiped her hands in satisfaction and stood up. “And why is that?” “Why, because the dillweeds are there! No one from the city will drive in that direction, don’t even think!” “So what am I supposed to do, abandon my child there?!” Nina Ivanovna spoke thoughtfully. “That’s inhumane. And then,” she added shyly, “it’s not far, if you go through the fields.” “Watch yourself, Nina Ivanovna!” Stepanovna shrugged. “You’re an independent woman. But I wouldn’t go such a distance, moreover with evening coming on! It’s outside the city! And war all around, by the way.” “You’ve forgotten that our city ends beyond the garden?!” Nina Ivanovna rose decisively from her seat.

96

Volodymyr Rafeyenko

“In general, yes,” Maria agreed, after thinking a bit. “It’s already steppe there, you could consider. A kilometer to the right to Lutunyno, seven to the left to Shutovo.” “And the Kalmius is a small stream there,” Nina Ivanovna waved her hand. “A couple of kilometers, well maybe five at most, to Mykhailiv. Past that I’ll start looking for him.” Nina Ivanovna put the unfinished bottle of port in her bag. She tossed in a bread crust, took what money she could find, and went outside.

*** She got to the place after midnight. She searched for Pashka until morning. And when she found him she didn’t recognize him at once. In death he had become handsome, calm, but even through death, mighty tired. Before dying he had managed to crawl to the nearest tree and leaned back against it. When Maria found him, for the first second she thought the lad was alive, just exhausted and sleeping. But he wasn’t sleeping. Pashka could no longer either sleep or wake. He was looking into the high Ukrainian sky and saw there his father, who was actually a stepfather to him. But the problem lay in something else. Nina couldn’t heave him up on her back. She thought a bit, took off her old, long jacket, spread it on the ground, and rolled the corpse onto it. She tied the sleeves under her arms and pulled him off along the furrow. The birds were singing at full blast when she and Pashka finally wound up on the broad country road that led homeward. It was a bit easier to drag him along the

The Length Of Days: An Urban Ballad

97

road, but very soon the jacket wore through. Pashka, arms spread wide, lay splayed out in the bushes of goosefoot. Nina realized that things wouldn’t work this way, and she lay down in the grass beside him. It was around nine in the morning, and she was terribly thirsty. She got the port wine and bread out of her bag, sat up, had a drink, ate, and started to cry, looking at her son’s face. The further they went, the more it melted in this heat. His upper lip turned up, while his chin, on the contrary, hung down. At noon, a ZIL one-thirty-one troop transport appeared on the road. Half a dozen Ukrainian soldiers with volunteer battalion patches sewn on were riding in it. The vehicle drove by at first, then stopped after a couple of meters. The fighters had just been looking over the field with the stream, the place of the fight, and the corpses, scattered picturesquely from one edge of the planting to the very boundary, the scorching zenith of the sun. Then a grey-haired man, whom the fighters respectfully called “Grey,” asked the mother where she was from. Nina Ivanovna explained, finding words with difficulty. Her heart was beating hard, but for some reason without fear. She was tormented only by misery and thirst. The lads consulted, then pulled Pashka into the cab. They helped her get in too, to sit on an empty diesel canister at her son’s feet. They drove for forty minutes the long way around. They made the detour so as not to run into any militants. They took the corpse out a hundred meters or so from the turn into the settlement. “We can’t go farther, forgive us!” said Grey. “Mother, do you have at least one other son left?” “No,” Nina answered and, finally, started crying.

98

Volodymyr Rafeyenko

“Or a daughter?” “No daughter either,” she sobbed out. “That’s bad,” he nodded, shrugged, turned away, and jumped into the seat beside the driver. When the vehicle, rocking, started to turn and back up towards the country road, Grey waved at Nina. She thought a bit and softly waved back at him. The funeral took place а day later. “And our guys shot up the truck that dropped Pashka off here for you, by the way, on their way back!” Maria Stepanovna said when she came to remember Pashka on the ninth day, drank a shot of vodka, and crunched a cucumber with pleasure. “There were seven dillweeds there, right?” “Seven people,” Nina Ivanovna repeated, feeling a fine thick shiver run over her skin. “That’s what I’m saying, seven! They turned out to be a death squad,” she nodded with conviction, “from the Right Sector. Can you imagine? A death squad! No, my friend, you were just terribly, terribly lucky! Just terribly, by god! Just terribly!”

Part 2

Liza’s Dolls

I’ll be happy if the benevolent men to come, striving to penetrate the roots of events, find here something to entertain the mind, on which to hold their gaze, —and will not turn away with scorn. —Gan Bao There a mustached cat Wanders through the yard, While a little horny goat Follows it that far; With its little paw the cat Pomades its tiny mouth; While the little goat’s Grey beard quivers about. —V. Zhukovskii

100

Volodymyr Rafeyenko

Liza opened her eyes and fixed them on the darkness of the high ceiling. “So-so,” she whispered, feeling in the space around her with her hands. “The smooth and soft thing—that’s the pillow. And the smooth and heavy thing there—it’s the blanket. Blanket-blanket danced all night in a fit of fearful fright.” It was heavy weapons hitting the city. At the other end of Z, people were dying. Through her drowsiness Liza felt how souls were leaving their bodies, felt the fear and pain of the dying—and could do nothing. Nothing. And she couldn’t help anyone. Yesterday for the nth time, after a brief ceasefire, the militants had struck heavy blows at the residential neighborhoods of Z corresponding to the positions of the government troops. Their weapons worked, taking turns, provoking a response. It was not slow to come. Ukraine was grinding down the city, processing it during the extended early spring. Wittingly or unwittingly, they were killing their own citizens—hostages of the Russian World who in this war wanted simply to survive. Lying in bed, on the border of sleep and reality, Liza thought about how it was precisely in the last few months that many who had previously left for the mainland had returned to Z. They hadn’t found a place in the splendid distance from the zone of military action. And now these people had the hardest time of all. You had to step into this river gradually. Otherwise, your emotions could kill you. And they weren’t used to it. By the way, the majority couldn’t spare a thought for emotions. They just wanted to take care of their relatives and loved ones. They wanted not to let their crying children see how frightened they

The Length Of Days: An Urban Ballad

101

were themselves, how much they already didn’t feel like living. But it was worst of all for the ones who didn’t have anyone. After coming back to Z, they had not in fact come back. They were stuck somewhere between worlds. Who would bring them back now? Yesterday Liza had a conversation with Marina Ar­ kadiievna, a professor of philology, Gredis’s former colleague at the university, who lived one floor down. This slender, eternally young-looking lady had left Z forever five months ago. And she had suddenly come back at the very renewal of military action. Even Veresaiev, who didn’t know her well, was upset. Of course, neither he nor Gredis said anything on this topic. Catching sight of the skinny, greying professor on the bench beside the entrance early in the morning, they asked whether she might not need some help. Hearing her answer, they went about their own business. The employees of the Fifth Rome were aware that in Z there were some questions it was better not to ask people. But Liza wanted nothing to do with that. Marya Raven, as the professor was called among her own people, followed Veresaiev’s heavy-laden Opel with her eyes and winked at the young woman who was looking at her out the window. She took a look around, made sure that no one else was near, reached for a little bottle of cognac in her elegant Jacques Esterel purse, took a swallow and started to smoke a cigarette. Smiling wistfully but brightly, she looked at the sky above her head, at the trees, the pigeons, the sparrows and tomtits. She thought about how they hadn’t flown off to Kyiv either, although they could. The feathered separatists of the occupied territories.

102

Volodymyr Rafeyenko

Liza drank a glass of tea and went downstairs. She looked at the professor inquisitively and sat down beside her on the bench. “What did you come back for?” she asked severely. “Why didn’t you stay in Ukraine?” “There’s no Ukraine anywhere,” pale Marina, skinny as a sardine, smiled readily and offered Liza a cigarette. “There’s no such Ukraine where you can go at your own wish.” “I don’t understand,” Yelizaveta frowned. “What about Kyiv, Lviv, Ivano-Frankivsk? The Carpathians, finally, beyond the Carpathians?” “The problem, my friend,” the Raven answered, “is that Ukraine is not a territory. Understand?” “I don’t understand!” “But understand, you’re not a little girl any longer!” the Raven was suddenly peeved. “You need to think with your head, even if you aren’t friends with it.” “And what is there to think?” Liza twisted her lips. “A territory may be settled with whomever. And, in general, it doesn’t matter with whom…” “But a country can’t be?” “But a country—it’s the people. People, child! Not the railroad ties, not the train tracks, not the smell of creosote, not the little trees flashing by in the starless, eternally virgin Ukrainian night. Not the conductor’s Surzhyk, not the gangway that smells of god knows what. Not the insomnia that deprives the brain of the last vestiges of sense. Not the distance on the map. Not the milestones. Not the train signals and not the traffic signals. Not the taverns beside ponds covered in mud. Not the witches in those establishments, who smell of honeybrew and kvass.

The Length Of Days: An Urban Ballad

103

And not even the devil, who drives his wagon from village to village, although in fact that’s already closer to what I have in mind.” “With what goal does the devil drive from village to village?” Liza lifted her eyebrows. “Why with any old goal!” Marina Arkadievna started laughing. “What kind of goal can a devil have? Clearly, it’s not trade, although in Soviet Ukraine the devil always served as something of a junkman. I saw some like that when I was a child. And who here hasn’t met them? They were especially numerous after the second world war.” “You saw a devil?” “I think so,” the Raven smiled. “And more than once.” “And what did he look like?” “A bald horndog. Shortish, powerful, but not fatty. A muscular satyr in a chlamys down to his ankles. Looked like Mamai the Kozak.* By the way, we don’t know exactly what a chlamys is. If you proceed from linguistic intuitions, and we can only count on them,” the professor looked at Liza severely, “it’s a thing that has a relationship with chlamydia and clamoring. Something intimately, painfully old that is subject to utilization. Similar in a way to sin, taking pleasure, secret passion, rooted in the striving to rule and live by the past that accumulates in people’s brains and in the objects of everyday life…” “In old things?” “In old ideas, actions, in empires that are not suited to life, in contour maps with the boundaries indicated on them, in signs of distinction, letters and photographs…” the Raven clicked her lighter and inhaled greedily. “All right, but you started out about devils and junkmen!”

104

Volodymyr Rafeyenko

“Yes, that’s correct,” the Raven grinned at the slight breeze that blew from the river. “For hundreds of years the junkmen rode around these lands on their filthy horses, but then in no more than an hour they all vanished somewhere. Where and how—that’s a separate story, and not the least significant, considering the role the KGB played in it. But we’re not talking about that here.” “The junkmen traded good things for trash, rags. For sacks full of holes and duvet covers, sheets, shirts, torn britches, cloth shoes gnawed up by rats, moth-eaten draperies, papa’s dressing gown, mama’s coat, granny’s jacket, granddad’s striped underpants. Outer wear and underwear. The objects of material everyday life. All that remained from the past. There was nothing to preserve, no reason to tremble over it. It ought to be taken out and thrown away…” “But you preserve!” Liza noted, frowning. “You suffer over that past, you’re tormented by it, but all the same you keep preserving it!” “Good girl! That’s right! That’s the whole point!” the Raven nodded. “You know—all that should be thrown out! Don’t remember! Don’t know! Don’t allow the past to guide your thoughts and actions. But you can’t do anything…” “You’re weighed down,” Liza added again, “and attracted, let’s say, by the Soviet Union…” “Maybe that,” Marina agreed. “It could be the Ottoman Empire, Byzantium, Rome, the era of the free Cossacks, whose memory seethes in your blood. You’re stifled by those wide trousers, sabers, bells, herds over your shoulder, by the screams of your Ukrainian fellow-tribeswomen, sold into slavery in the slave markets

The Length Of Days: An Urban Ballad

105

of the Mediterranean, by the stench and moans rising from the murdered Turks, Tatars, Gypsies, Jews and Poles. After all they’ve kept following you from dream to dream for the past three centuries. And here someone comes in a creaking tarantass and shouts in an unexpectedly youthful and lively voice: Trash! Old rags! We buy old rags! Rag-and-bone! Bo-o-ones!” “The devil shouts in a lively voice? Isn’t he old?” “He’s eternal,” the Ravel said, smiling. “Therefore, young and lively! He shouts his bones, and all your innards turn over!” “How?” “You understand,” Marina Arkadiievna chewed thoughtfully on the filter of her extinguished cigarette, “this word looks simple and ordinary only when it’s written. In actual fact, the inexpressibly splendid rag-andbone rings, drawn-out and sung over the whole region. It’s fresh and ringing, like a May morning, like the petals of the wild apple and cherry trees that flutter down onto the railroad tracks of life, which stretches out ahead of itself! Rag-an-bo-o-one! Childhood, youth, happy ignorance of what will happen later. Your parents are young and healthy. The paths among the apple trees are fresh and neat.” “But what does that look like?” “Very simple. The wagon slowly moves down the street between the houses. As you lay the trash of the past out on it, sometimes you can rescue some trifle. However, a lived life brings horrifyingly little money,” the Raven pursed her lips. “Therefore, they most often exchanged it for new things that hadn’t yet known life. For children’s toys, for soft, splendid prophylactics…”

106

Volodymyr Rafeyenko

“Prophylactics?” Liza raised her eyebrows in surprise. “Yes, precisely,” the Raven confirmed, “the Ukrainian devil always had foreign prophylactics in his wagon, and that, absolutely, led to the downfall of the Soviet Union more than the whole dissident movement taken together. First the condom, and then, later on, Solzhenitsyn. But it’s not a matter of that, either. What else was on that wagon? All kinds of things. Black loose tea, Queen Margo, church tapers, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, leather Italian shoes—size forty-two, The Three Musketeers, Moldovan Kagor dessert wine, fishing line produced in the DDR, French cognac, Zhiguli beer—four bottles, weighty though clumsily made bronze candelabras, presses-papiers, fountain pens, clothespins, Hungarian rubber, glue, red gouache. Sugar, salt, matches in burlap sacks. “People willingly exchanged old things for new brooms, to sweep the house with them. The brooms were cold and yellow, whereas the things left to the junkman were pitiful, often eaten up by moths and by incessant quantum shifts. But the junkman wasn’t troubled at all by that circumstance. He gathered the past in sacks, not disgusted by anything. Servant of death, stagehand of the Theater of Half-collapse, a philosopher and trader.” “You’re saying horrible things,” Liza noted. “More like sorrowful,” the Raven objected. “But let’s recollect a bit more. What was it lying in the junkman’s wagon in various years?” “What, the selection would change?” “Yes, from month to month, from epoch to epoch. It would be good to describe in detail the sorts of citizens who approached the wagon, what precisely they left on it and what they carried off to their residences, smiling

The Length Of Days: An Urban Ballad

107

the smiles of people who had made a successful acquisition. It would be worth it for someone among those who haven’t known disillusionments and losses to sum all that up. To glance back, look dignified, but begin the sadness on the spot. To spit out a stream of hungover saliva into the grubby, melting snow, light a cigarette, and suddenly start crying. Someone should create a list of the things worthy of recollection and count them in the proper order, which in and of itself would, like a list of ships, open the curtain on what is unidentified. We need to rip apart the canvas of death and water it with the yellow watercolor of memory eternal, with the light that flows from gleaming emptiness into our essentially unhappy lives…” “You’ve digressed,” said Liza, after thinking a bit. “Tell me, what did the devil look like?” “An old man, I’m saying, but more likely a man in the prime of life,” the Raven admitted. “Our noisy, abundantly loving countrywomen adored him. A satyr, although more likely a centaur, he and his wagon would often stop with them overnight.” “So, it was specifically a matter of sex?” “None other!” shrugged the Raven. “His favorite position was from behind. Crudely speaking, he had them doggy style.” “Whom did he have doggy style?” Liza blushed. “Why all of them.” The professor got thoughtful. “Actually, there’s more likely something equine in that. In love he’s a centaur, powerful, rude, and impossibly tender. A boor, a boor! A horse with balls. The most exquisite man. A mustang. Basically, a wild creature.” “What did that look like from the outside?”

108

Volodymyr Rafeyenko

“Exceedingly tempting, by the way. He was a virtuoso of his kind and could persuade almost any woman among those who smiled at him, bringing out and laying out the past, the present, the future on his wagon, their outer garments, but especially their underclothes. He would creep up on some of them when they were cooking.” “What, right in the kitchen?” Liza was surprised. “Well, of course,” the Raven took a small sip, “in the summer kitchen, illuminated with light from the open stove, with smells wafting about of what was being boiled, fried, steamed and baked. A goose with rice and raisins, a leg of mutton with wine sauce, aspic, chicken with apples and dried apricots, pies with the flesh of pike and walleye, sweet corn porridge served with apricot vodka and hand pies with onion. Roasted pork in sweet-and-sour sauce with cold anise vodka and marinated snowball berry. Pickled cabbage in honey, duck with walnuts and dried plums. The scents of herbs—dill, basil, parsley, lemon balm, mint. Cilantro and cardamom, ground black pepper, ginger, squeezed lemon, cinnamon. A day lit up by madly flying petals from cherries, plums, apples, bushes of lilac and bird-cherry. Depending on which yard the devil had driven his neat nifty wagon into up to the throat.” “But how did that start?” Liza asked, blushing slightly. “The fact is, for now I don’t have that much corresponding experience. It is, undoubtedly, already accumulating. However, the lion’s share in this sphere remains, so to speak, more theoretical. I would like to enliven somehow the schemes and formulae, tractates, folios, diagrams, oral instructions from the lovers of antiquity. Couldn’t you share some details—if, of course, they’re fresh in your memory?”

The Length Of Days: An Urban Ballad

109

“Glad to, my friend! Why not freshen them up?” the Raven nodded and, straightening her wings, folded them again and started unhurriedly cleaning feather after feather with her gleaming black beak, while continuing to speak. “At first the junkman would tell some jolly story that had no direct relationship to the art of love. The housewife was stuffing а fish. A light breeze was blowing, as the sun was sinking toward the west. At a certain moment he would put his broad powerful hand on the woman’s waist, pull her close with his other hand and start stroking her shoulders and her little belly, pressing that place that he could not hide and did not wish to hide ever closer to the female buttocks.” “Could not and did not wish to?” “Correct!” the Raven confirmed. “He talked and rubbed, laughed and pressed close, and nibbled their earlobes and the back of their neck that smelled of sweet sweat. He would lick the peach fuzz on their backs with a long rough tongue—not for nothing were the sarafans women wore in past times loose as the robes of the Ku Klux Klan. He skillfully touched the woman’s breast with long knotty crimson fingers, kneaded her nipples slightly, like unroasted coffee beans, with his thumb and forefinger. He pressed close again and stroked, inhaled and licked around. The woman felt his hands, his rough little beard, the loud breathing, the indiscriminate sweet nothings, and barely understood what this witty satyr was saying to her for she was bedeviled by an unceasing tide of black blood in her ears, a noise in her head, and an amorous tremor, a shiver and premonition, which are sometimes sweeter than all the rest.” “And so, you just gave yourselves to him?”

110

Volodymyr Rafeyenko

“No, why that,” Marina Arkadievna’s shoulders twitched. “The woman would try to resist but, in essence, had no power to understand what the given philosopher was tending toward. And when, at last, understanding came, the thing that is impossible to hide was pressed tightly against her buttocks. They, in turn, were bared and half spread, like the halves of a seashell, a mollusk, perhaps a pearl oyster, which, undeniably, promised unhindered access to everything that flowed, trembled and craved battle.” “But how did the rambunctious satyr manage to carry it out so craftily that afterwards the woman couldn’t even remember how her own skirt wound up on top of her head? How did the junkman enter her?” “We won’t hide this either,” the Raven nodded. “In spasms, elastically, powerfully, but gently. She compliantly moves her legs apart and lays her swollen throbbing breasts on the cutting table. Her cheek rubs this way and that against the table: first she looks at a plucked rooster with its dead scandalized half-open eye, then a bouquet of dewy mallow that the junkman picked early in the morning on the outskirts of the settlement.” “But how did such a thing become possible?” Liza threw up her hands. “They were unacquainted, right?” “That’s a question, and not a small one,” Marina Arkadievna nodded. “But another marvel is worthy of attention. How did he manage to toss their legs over his shoulders?” “You mean?” “The odd plump woman,” the Raven took a small swallow, “would never have thought that she would turn out capable of such a somersault. After all, she’s not some

The Length Of Days: An Urban Ballad

111

sporty gymnast, one of the ones who attract not only the weak, but even the powerful of this world. But there, you just take a look! The woman’s feet are swaying in the air, occasionally touching the back of the ancient satyr’s head, though it’s possible that he was only a centaur. The back of his head was grown over with rough curly greyish hair, as if covered by Isabella and Chardonnay grapevines. Every time her heels touch the grapes, the woman cries out and moans. Look into the senseless cloudy film that covers her eyes, see how a thread of transparent saliva flows from the corner of her mouth, how she gutturally wheezes, shifts her bosom, how her belly and her guts burn and how, once calmed back down, the devil smiles blindingly as he lights up after love, looking at the kind setting sun.” “And after that?” “Then he would become tender. He asked to repeat it. But the girl, changing her mind, would turn the tables. She would make him do various entertaining things. The devil would be puzzled, and sometimes he would fall in love! It even happened that he gave up his trade and wound up tied to her apron strings like a fool! She would give him love, and he would help get rid of the unneeded past.” Marina Arkadiievna smiled. “There’s a country for you! And you tell me—a territory. A love affair with the devil—that’s Ukraine! Love with metaphysics, with Being, with death. And not borders at all, drawn by who knows who and with goals nobody understands.” “You’re somehow telling me with a great deal of detail,” Liza wiped away perspiration. “And I’ve somehow lost the connection to the previous conversation. You were saying that you can’t get to Ukraine…”

112

Volodymyr Rafeyenko

“Quiet. Let me finish about this,” the Raven waved her hand. “From these indiscriminate though, of course, on the whole elective connections, lively, swarthy children with impudent eyes were born. Every single one crafty, knowing the answers to any questions at all. For instance, who can eat up a person’s guts quicker, a wolf or a fox. Is the number of stars in the sky even or odd? Who rules the world? Who is the master of names? Which one’s better— Smith or Wesson? My God!” Marina Arkadiievna even got teary-eyed. “Ten point seven-seven caliber, the drum holds six bullets, barrel eight inches in length, centerfire cartridge, accelerated reloading.” “They had abundant Polish, Greek, and Jewish blood. They spoke Arabic better than their native Lithuanian or Belarusian. They knew the language of the birds. They lived as long as they wanted to. On the horizontal bars beside evening school number fifty-two they swung around the world with only one hand holding the bar. Off hunting with the deputy chief of the regional police, they could hit a coin at fifty meters while three sheets to the wind. When they got tired of life, they’d drink two liters of homebrew, chasing it down with a saffron milk cap, fatback, or smoked fish. They said all sorts of things about the Ukrainians who lived in these territories. For example, that they never get sick and none of them will ever die…” Somewhere beyond the ponds a terrible explosion rang out. There was a sensation as if the earth had settled a little underneath them, the buildings had jolted a bit, and there was even palpably less air in the space. The professor looked at Liza with fear and, as if coming to, fell silent.

The Length Of Days: An Urban Ballad

113

“Listen,” Liza reminded her, “you started to say that you can’t get to Ukraine. Come on, explain what you’re talking about. I guess that it’s your own story? I really really want to hear it.” Marina Arkadiievna clicked her lighter, sat quiet for a bit, looked over the game of light and shadow on the linden leaves. “I’ve been trying to spell it out to people for a hundred years,” Marina Arkadiievna shrugged. “Ukraine is not the borders, not the customs officials, not the religious ambiance. Not the maps of linguistic preferences. Not the watersheds and not the tectonic plates. It’s the people, dammit! People, and once again the people! It’s they who are the culture! That one and the same junkman came to their ancestors from one century to the next! And they were always protected by one and the same God! There you have the whole identity.” “Well, all right,” Liza nodded, “so it’s people. And now I can’t go to Lviv any longer?” “How can I say it…” the Raven grunted. “But I think that I can!” Liza spoke up dreamily. “I just need to get a bit of money from Sokrat, put on a dark blue dress with poppies, buy a bottle of mineral water and some of the prophylactics that were mentioned previously… They say that people in Galicia are just crazy to have sex with people who’ve come from the eastern regions. They won’t love you, of course, but they’ll bed you. Is that so, Marina Arkadiievna?” “I had one lover from there when I was young,” the Raven sighed. “Either a deacon, or maybe a sexton. Doesn’t that happen to be one and the same thing? I couldn’t ever make sense of it. And we met only a few times, when I’d

114

Volodymyr Rafeyenko

go to Lviv for scholarly conferences. And so, he revealed for me the difference between the Orthodox and Greek Catholics. Do you want to know what it amounts to?” “What to?!” “The Orthodox suffer from a passion for food and drink, they love money, they’re louts and tend to be avid…” “Avid—vatnik,”* Liza half-rhymed, like an echo. “That’s what I say, a bit avid,” Arkadievna nodded. “Our bishop has to be driven to church for services in a Maibach, and the archpriest’s pot belly is like a blast furnace. Meanwhile the people live in poverty…” “And the Greek Catholics?” “They have a lot of passion!” Marina nodded convincedly. “It ruins them! They’re too hot-headed. Incredible lovers. But at the same time, they love only themselves, no matter what they say. They’re incredibly talented, extremely egoistic, village types. Smart, terribly superstitious and vengeful. They love power. They live in a gramophone trumpet, through which God looks at the East. They don’t hurry to come out into the light. They’re sly, stubborn, they have a hard time dying, and they burn out fast, but they leave a long trail behind them.” “So what follows from that?” Liza frowned. “You can’t just get on the train and go to Ukraine?” “You want to know what you can count on?” the Raven shook her head. “I’ll tell you what. You can get hold of a train ticket to the territories that are free from occupation. But the fact is that Ukraine and the territories that are free from the occupation are two big differences.” Marina Arkadiievna hid the pack of cigarettes, which Liza had not even reached for, in her purse.

The Length Of Days: An Urban Ballad

115

“So it comes out,” Liza frowned, “that in your opinion it’s impossible in principle to get to Ukraine?” “Well, why?” Marina shrugged. “My two young colleagues, Anna and Zina, were lucky. Ukraine gave them food and drink, gave them clothes, hope, and set them up with work.” “But you?” “But I was first robbed at the Ukrainian checkpoint on the way to the train. Well, so,” she shrugged, “money is dust. But later at the train station in Kyiv some jerk snagged my purse with my documents. I’m an absent-minded cow,” Marina Arkadiievna smiled sadly. “So I was left without my diploma, passport, everything.” “And so?!” “And nothing,” the Raven smiled. “You can’t rent a place to live properly, or find a job. I didn’t even understand at first how serious it was! So I didn’t give in.” Marina Arkadievna laughed hoarsely. “I lived in flophouses, made the rounds of government offices, agitated my brains, crawled around sobbing, wanted to get the inferno to take pity. I’m a daft old biddy, never mind that I’ve lived long enough to have grey hair. I spent all my money, sold my things. And as a result I nevertheless came back to Z!” She got a chocolate candy out of her purse and held it out to the girl. “Since cigarettes are not your thing, Yelizaveta, please help yourself, let it be so! This is the sacred Roshen, I still have a bit left. Two candies are equivalent to a cup of cocaine.” “Thank you!” said Liza. “Instead of Ukraine,” Marina Arkadievna continued, “what I found in Kyiv were Soviet scumbags. And they have sucking reflexes. They want Ukrainian blood, they sneer at any other kind. They don’t care what language

116

Volodymyr Rafeyenko

you speak, just give them the red stuff. They know how to orient themselves!” the Raven snapped her beak. “They know the nation’s not a language, but the heart. They feel such envy for what’s real that they suck its blood. They lick it, they snort, they wrinkle up with pleasure. Amusing beasts. Every single one, by the way, favors war up to a victorious end and is at the same time a pacifist.” “And so what now?” Liza frowned. “So what now?” the Raven repeated, looking tiredly at the sun. “We can’t restore anything in this life. Besides that, the territories here are occupied. I sit in the sunshine, smoke cigarettes, developing my alcoholism.” “That means, you had no luck?” “How does it mean that?” Marina looked at Liza skeptically. “What happened has no relationship at all to good luck or bad luck! Remember: when we think with precision, it’s Putin playing with us! But the road to Ukraine is open to us!” “I don’t understand. How did your colleagues make it there?” “If you really do want to know, I’ll tell you.” The Raven moved closer. “But let it remain between us. Can I rely on you as far as that’s concerned?” “Goes without saying!” Liza nodded. “I have a diagnosis. People like me aren’t believed!” “That is indeed an argument,” Marina Arkadievna nodded. “Okay, listen. What happened, child, is that Anna and Zina, that is, French Romanticism and Germany in the Enlightenment Era, were killed.” “How were they killed?!” Liza tossed her head. “You heard that the militants shot up a train with artillery fire, three months ago or so?”

The Length Of Days: An Urban Ballad

117

“Something like that,” Liza nodded uncertainly. “They were in that train, going from Z to Kyiv.” “Then how can you say that they’re working and all that?” “And it’s precisely this,” the Raven looked around and slid closer to her interlocutor. “That is this war’s greatest secret. You can get from Z to Ukraine only if you receive death at the hands of the militants! At the hands of the khaki-colored matryoshkas!” “You accept death, in order to reach Ukraine?!” Liza bit her lip. “How is that?” “However!” Marina Arkadievna eagerly specified and cawed several times, sharply and plangently. “They can shoot you, blow you up, poison you, burn you up, nail you into the cellars of the former Ukrainian Security Service. You can croak on your own from hunger, though it’s not as hard here as it seems from Kyiv. Death, which guarantees the desired outcome, results from a violent hanging, or when the heart stops during an interrogation, and plenty…” “I don’t understand,” Liza frowned. “Wait up, well, let’s say you’ve died, what then?” “Then,” the Raven once again started shouting victoriously, hopped a bit on her rough black legs and, spreading her wings wide, flew a circle over Liza’s head, “you immediately turn up next to the ancient linden tree by the very foundation of the Church of the Tithes. This linden remembers Marco Polo! And it will welcome you with joy. Or you show up atop Mount Shchekavytsia. Just like me here, sipping cognac, free as a bird and smoking cigarettes. Certain people find themselves on the corner of Khreshchatyk and Prorizna Streets. You stand there,”

118

Volodymyr Rafeyenko

Marina Arkadiievna laughed happily, “ice cream in one hand, a beer in the other. The sun is shining. To your right—a rally against the confectioner. To your left—a rally in support of him, the sweetie. The people are all there, no matter what they think, they realize there’s no alternative. The blue-and-yellow capital, pluralism and a wealth of opinions. A drunk cop pisses on the paving stones by the stairs down to the metro, and right beside him is a lad performing on the bagpipes. And it’s all so right, so marvelous! But the main thing is that you’re an arm’s length from the Kupidon Kneipe-Club, where in one hour Zhadan will start reading his poems about Maria.” “That is, you’ve died, but at the same time Khre­shcha­ tyk , Zhadan, and the bagpipe on the corner of Prorizna and Khreshchatyk… And you’re standing there alive?” “No, I wonder, and how else would you stand there?” the Raven cawed, settling on a bird-cherry branch right above Lizaveta’s head. “Alive, of course! You’re alive, and so is Zhadan, and the confectioner, may raisins and walnuts lodge in his liver, may he be sweet for a thousand years. And this will never again end.” “It’s true, at the same time you don’t remember how you made it to Kyiv, and it’s very unclear what happened before that, and, most important, why. In general, the last weeks before death will remain in memory very contingently. No details at all. Everything in a greyish-red fog. As if it’s screened by a haze. But you remember in general that you were getting ready to go to Ukraine, that your loved ones were trying to talk you out of it, because in Kyiv there’s Nazism and chocolate-walnut obscurantism.” “That’s frightening!” Liza observed.

The Length Of Days: An Urban Ballad

119

“Very frightening,” the bird tipped her head to one side, “but then, if you made it to Kyiv, to Lviv or, say, to Stanislav right after dying, then no matter where you go Ukraine will meet you everywhere. You get it? No matter where you are headed, here it is!” All at once the Raven sniffled, gave a long and sad caw, started crying big transparent tears. “But only after you die!” “Don’t cry, Marina Arkadiievna,” Liza shook her head reproachfully. “These are drunken tears.” “If they were sober tears, would I really be cawing for you here?” The Raven flapped her wings heavily, turned into an unsober Romance-Germanic philologist, shrugged, took another couple of swallows and furiously stubbed out her cigarette. “Well then, but I stayed alive. I got to Kyiv alive, therefore Kyiv wasn’t Kyiv to me, and I met with assholes. Therefore, child, it’s a complicated question who was lucky, me or them. Most likely—nobody. It’s just that everyone has their own fate.” “You said that everything was good with Anna and Zina,” Liza asked, examining the candy, “they have work, and hope, and clothing?” “Everything is wonderful! They’re working as servers at McDonalds and aren’t even thinking of any other career.” “Well how can be it be at the same time that they were both killed and that everything is so wonderful?” “Are you a fool?” Arkadiievna sighed and rose heavily from the bench. “That’s the only way in life. Someone dead is making burgers for the residents of Kyiv. While someone else, like us here, is supposedly alive but is no longer a human being.” “What are they then?” “An instrument of blackmail, a statistical error.”

120

Volodymyr Rafeyenko

*** The matryoshkas of Russia? How many of them are there? An infinite number. At first glance he seems like an ordinary guy through and through. You look a bit deeper, and a citizen boss shines through. You look more thoughtfully, and there’s a Gulag prisoner with three terms behind him. You don’t have time to gasp before the zek turns into a soldier, terribly weary from the wars over the past couple of centuries. And only later do you notice that inside the soldier, as if in a trunk, sleeps a village boy who’s lost his memory. They drove his great-grandmother from Ukraine to the Urals in 1940, but he doesn’t want to know anything about that. And inside that boy, under his ribs on the left side, you can make out a lilac dream. A woodpecker knocks, an oriole sings, a nightingale goes “topetope,” the moon over the lake tips sideways. And inside it, as if in a yellow boat, a dark-blue tomkitten is riding. He smooths his whiskers with his paw and has a laugh at the stars. For hundreds of years, these souls spring up every single morning on Russia’s hung-over face, with nothing in their souls but bitterness, emptiness and a hangover. They have no homeland either, in essence. It was taken away from them an eternity ago, when they were sent off to the latest war. In its place they were issued a certificate. It says in black and white: “This knight is on leave forever. He is no one’s citizen, but an individual person.” And the signature: “Marshal So-and-So.” But they came back. They always come back from these wars. They come out from under the ground, from the field hospitals, from the prisons, from the transit-yards.

The Length Of Days: An Urban Ballad

121

Wearing worn vatniks, not seeing anything, they lie down to sleep. When they wake, they don’t remember their deaths in the succession of crimson military roads. And therefore in the morning they ask in indistinct malice and longing: “What is this? Screw it! Where am I? What is to be done and who is to blame?” and it comes all at once, like an illumination: “Ukraine!” Ukraine—now that’s what is to be done and who is to blame, and what is this, screw it! Ukraine—it’s everything that hurts in you with an inextinguishable pain. Like your life, like your own soul, which you left in Ekaterinburg, Petropavlovsk-Kamchatskii, Saint Petersburg, Nizhnii Novgorod or Moscow, when you headed off to your first war. Ukraine, as the forgiveness of sins, the promise of a speedy death and eternal life. You could fuck up your whole life. Shit all over it. Jam the pie-hole of your own conscience. Smother it with port wine, homebrew and Federal Channel One. But then you suddenly wake up on a grey Ural morning and see with such clarity, in the window of your gouged-out five-story building, the grey frozen emptiness of your own fate. A gloomy wife, frightening as a pale horse, is cooking dumplings, limply shifting her croup. The horrible vampires that her children have turned into look at you limply and threateningly at the same time. As if they’ve decided that they’re going to suck out every drop of your blood, but they don’t yet feel enough energy for a family meal. They’re afraid they couldn’t overcome you. You’re a real tough one, Vanya. On Channel One, as if on purpose, they’re showing Kyiv again, saying it needs to be rescued. And once again you understand: this is what the most important thing

122

Volodymyr Rafeyenko

is! It’s too late for you to be rescued. That’s as clear as the “Our Father.” And really, in essence, the hell with you. But it turns out that Ukraine can be rescued! And you say to yourself: there it is! The meaning that was lost has been found. And the main thing, you heard, your friends were saying, is the recruitment’s being done by your own people. Reserve Colonel Gribov from the Council of Veterans is registering people who have experience. You and this Gribov have gone around the hot spots to your hearts’ content. So you know him, and he knows you too. After that everything’s simple. They take care of the grub once you get there, your outfit, they get you into the collective, and again—an allowance. No, you aren’t earning any money. But you never did give a shit about money. Shit, fuck it, on that money, fuck it! You never had money and you never will; you understand that very clearly. You are Ivan Ivanovich fucking Ivanov! You’re a Russian Siberian man. You can extract oil with your bare hooves, right through the frozen crust. And drink it in the morning to ease your hangover. With your fists, and especially with your head, you used to beat stars of the first magnitude out of the Ural Mountains, especially in the years of your first youth. Fuck it if you couldn’t do that, good head that you had. And you get your brother Fedka and bring him along. Fedka doesn’t give a damn where he goes. He’s unemployed, his wife left him, and on top of that he has to pay alimony, which of course he doesn’t pay. At the border this turns out to be a problem. It seems they don’t let people through who are paying alimony, because you’re crossing the border quite officially. But afterward it turns

The Length Of Days: An Urban Ballad

123

out it’s no big deal. They have an order. If you piss in their eyes, they’ll put folk headdresses on top of their caps and say in unison: thank you, Mother Homeland, we bow low to you. They haven’t noticed anything here for two years. Neither any artillery shelling from the direction of the Mother Homeland. Nor any of the heavy military technology constantly crossing the border. They’re no longer border guards, no longer officers—they’re switchmen, screw it. And then you arrive in Z. You settle into one of the dormitories on the university campus. Militants live here, as well as local residents whose homes have been destroyed in the course of military actions. There are ten thousand of them, no less. The dorms are enormous, fourteen stories high. Previously, students from various countries of the world lived here, but now it’s matryoshkas like you and Fedya, Don Cossacks, and folks who’ve been disadvantaged by this Russo-hybrid war. You and your sidekick are surprised at the cleanliness of Z. He keeps repeating: “So, the Ukes lived not bad here! You look, if it’s this clean under us, then what was it like here without us?” All sorts of things happen on the front lines, but what’s the point of talking about that? You don’t talk about the war. When you make it into the city, sort of ending your shift, you just drink for the first several hours. Dumbly, furiously, almost without conversations. And then you go through the dormitory. You grab whichever female you run into, and you do everything with her that your pure and simple Ural soul desires. “And what would the Kyiv death squads do to you? Have you thought with your own head, you chicken?”

124

Volodymyr Rafeyenko

Fedor says tiredly, climbing off a young woman who is crying and at the same time stuttering with terror. “They found pits, by the way, not far from here. Three hundred women who were raped by the dillweeds were buried alive there,” you, Ivan Ivanovich, say and smile crookedly. “Plus two hundred infants and a hundred old folks. Those had been drawn and quartered. You hear? They tied them to an armored personnel carrier and pulled them to pieces. They tore them up with personnel carriers just because the people wanted to speak their native language. And pray to their own gods. You understand, don’t you? That’s what the Ukrainian fascists are about!” “Yup,” Fedor nods, “watch the television, they show that film footage there! Just like Battleship Potemkin! It tears your soul apart! They squirted construction foam into their vaginas…” “Not the old men, the women, naturally…” you clarify and suddenly go quiet. How much foam did it take? you think. And time? And force? And how did they manage to tie babies to infantry transports? And the main thing, what gods were they praying to? You distinctly remember the phrase from the news report: “People just wanted to speak their native language and pray to their own gods.” It follows that you didn’t make it up. But it sort of spoiled your mood. You drink a glass of vodka, you light up a cigarette, you sit down in an armchair and look out the window. Out the window poplar fluff is flying. The sky is dark-dark blue. It’s nice. Meanwhile the Mother-Homeland, your wife and the vampire children are somewhere far away. And suddenly something happens to your vision, or maybe to you, to the way you are. Your legs cramp, your

The Length Of Days: An Urban Ballad

125

arms ache, something is pressing on your ribcage with a crunch, shoving you forward. And you don’t just fly out of the window. You fly out of yourself. And you’re soaring. You see the same sky as a minute ago. The same buildings below. The same poplar fluff is flying around you, above you, along with you. You’re headed the same way. But you’re no longer you, or not only you. Or maybe it’s now that you are only and precisely you? But there’s no time to think about that, since you hear the shout of your brother Fedya somewhere nearby. The same thing has happened to him, by the way, as to you. But what happened to you? Well, it’s all simple. You’re flying over the city of Z. You’re flying, Ivan, over the city of Z. You’re flying, Vanya, Flying with Fedya over the city of Z. You’re flying forward. Poplar fluff. But you and your bro, You’re flying forward Over the city of Z. And there’s the river, And the steppe beyond it. You’re flying, Ivan, And Fedor shouts and sobs bitterly. But you’re okay, Nothing at all, Ivan, You’re a Russian man, gloria in excelsis, Over the city of Z.

126

Volodymyr Rafeyenko And there’s the river, And the steppe beyond it. That steppe, Ivan, Where there’s salt and wormwood. Where three hundred women, And a hundred old folks, And two hundred infants, gloria in excelsis, Are already waiting for you. And a hundred old folks, Ivan! A hundred old folks! Three hundred women, two hundred infants. What were you drinking for? But there is the stream bank Where the willow trees stand, Here there’s a rapid round dance, Sorrowful and naked, Looking at you. Three hundred women, Ivan. And a hundred old people, And two hundred infants, gloria in excelsis, Are dancing to jazz, The Yid-Bandera jazz.

“You and I just played a bit at love, little dummy,” Fedor says reproachfully, paying no attention to his brother, who is snoring on the bed with bulging inflamed eyes. He pulls on his pants, tosses a few crumpled bills on the bed. “Here, take them, dummy, buy some candy. And don’t fucking try pushing pity...” You, Ivan Ivanovich, turn up in this dirty room just as suddenly as you left it. The wind rushes in the window.

The Length Of Days: An Urban Ballad

127

“What w-was that?” you say, stuttering a bit for the first time in your life. You get up and look at Fedya with crazy eyes. “What’s with you?!” he laughs. “Seeing pink elephants?! But I warned you, it’s serious paste! You can’t take it on top of vodka! But you didn’t listen! Well, all right. Let’s go to our place. We still have a bit of beer. The beer will loosen you up a bit! Let’s go, let’s go. Cold beer is the primary thing when things line up like this.” Two weeks go by like that. The dorm moans and prays, gets used to living simultaneously under bombardment and under the Russian World, splendid and merciless. It eats chocolate candies. To the point of disease. The dorm thinks a lot. For example, about its relationship to the poets of the Silver Age, about Dostoevsky and Tolstoy, about the White Guard, dammit, and seventeen moments of Moscow. It’s impossible to compile an exact count of these thoughts, like the list of ships that has thoroughly bored everyone. By the way, all these thoughts are about something elevated. The dorm has time to define its spiritual priorities. However, it still doesn’t make it to everyone. Some young wives start running to you and Fedya in secret from their husbands, who’ve been beaten down by life. And why not come running, if you don’t blow foam in, of course, don’t lash them to a personnel carrier, don’t draw and quarter old folks and infants; if you criminally and, the main thing, senselessly squander the republic’s stores of fuel, and after love and vodka you heartily sing Those Were the Days, Prison House? Why, you’re proper Alain fucking Delons. Charles frigging Aznavours.

128

Volodymyr Rafeyenko

Time goes by, and it all repeats over again. You load into the vehicles and drive into the Ukrainian steppe. Trenches, bombardment, hail, hurricanes, paradise for field commanders and marauders. Of those who arrived along with you, the better part have already run away home or have been killed. You often think about the ones who are gone, and not a single gram of you believes that the Mother-Homeland permitted them to return. Most recently, Vanya, you often recall your grandfather, Captain Yegor Ivanov, a military signalman. He perished at home, in his own village, lying on the stove. A grand village. Starye Reshety, haven’t you heard of it? Founded by order of the tsar in the middle of the eighteenth century. The main street is named for Pushkin, just like in Z. It’s part of an old highway that’s now called the Old Moscow Tract. Recently there’s been a lot of talk about how the settlement has real promise. True, it’s not clear exactly what kind. The ring road around Ekaterinburg is three kilometers from Starye Reshety, and at night you can hear the measured thumping of wheels. Listening to that, your grandfather lay on the stove and gradually died from the effects of radiation sickness. He got medical treatment for a long time, ten years probably, before he kicked it. Bald, white as a pale spirochete, even exuding light, he would smile with his naked gums, he glowed with a bluish light, he could expose photo film, in everyday life he exhibited qualities of both waves and particles, confirming quantum field theory with his own life. But death overtook him all the same. After he was demobilized he had no spousal relations with his spouse. Good that they had at least managed by that time to produce your dad.

The Length Of Days: An Urban Ballad

129

At night your grandmother, Klavdiia Ivanova, would run to grandfather’s best friend—Maksim Garanin. It wasn’t far to run. Push open the gate in the garden—and there it was, a little wooden house, and Maksim Lukich lived there, a remarkable person and the best chess player in the village. At first your granddad cried with jealousy, but later he cheered up. He would play chess with Garanin every evening right up to his death. And your grandma would make them pancakes and look tenderly under her brows at her men. An idyll, what can you say. And it was made possible only because on September 14, 1954, on the Totskii military training ground in the Privolzhsko-Uralskii military district, forty kilometers from the city of Buzuluk, Captain Yegor Ivanov wound up in a training exercise carried out by Marshal Georgii Zhukov. They dropped a nuclear bomb equivalent to 38 kilotons of TNT from a Tu-4 airplane. At nine hours and thirty-four minutes, a nuclear explosion was created at a height of three hundred and fifty meters above the earth. After waiting three hours to carry out dosimetric measurements and to admire the work of human hands, they sent six hundred tanks, six hundred personnel carriers, and three hundred twenty airplanes into the epicenter of the explosion. Three hundred and twenty, Ivan! Forty-five thousand men were supposed to “take” the epicenter of the explosion. And another fifteen thousand men were ordered to “defend” it. No medical examination of the personnel was carried out after the exercises ended. The marshal himself did not appear on the grounds on the day of the exercises. Obviously, so as not

130

Volodymyr Rafeyenko

to create unnecessary fuss. Igor Strelkov* is nothing in comparison. Trying to figure out the point of the exercises under the code name “Snowfall,” one can presume that the Saint George beetle had lost its mind. But no, it achieved what it wanted. The experiment established what happens to military technology, servicemen and individual civilians who are exposed to the direct influence of radiation. A lot is classified, but to you, Ivan Ivanovich, it was always clear that the main point of the experiment consisted in something else. Those motherfuckers in Moscow were terribly interested to know whether the wife of Signal Captain Yegor Ivanov would get pregnant a second time. Half the generals, the restrained pessimists, made bets “against.” The second half, unrestrained Rabelaisians, bet “for.” Dmitrii Fedorovich Ustinov, the minister of defense, abstained. The optimistic party got sharply larger when Klava Ivanova started running next door. However, after a year the bets had balanced out. The woman just wouldn’t get pregnant, despite all Maksim Capablanca’s ardor. When grandfather died, and José Garanin was suddenly paralyzed, someone’s decisive hand wrote in the main Kremlin notebook of observations: “The exercises on the Totskii Range showed that after such-and-such a dose of radiation the wives of irradiated captains do not get pregnant.” Well, that was it. Now everything was clear. The general staff sighed with relief. “We did it!” said Ustinov and awarded twenty generals the Order of Military Bullshit, First Class. And why not? The guys hadn’t sent so much radiation on the wind for nothing.

The Length Of Days: An Urban Ballad

131

It’s surprising that not many people in the country knew about the events at Totskii. But, by the way, that’s also because the greater part of the warriors who were crippled by Zhukov, these sixty thousand irradiated young men, later disappeared. They dissolved, as if they had departed to nowhere, along with their personnel transports, tanks, and airplanes. Maybe that’s what actually happened. Your grandfather—a living witness to what happened—never spoke about those days in detail. “Why, the thing was,” was all Yegor Ivanovich would say, if his wife let him drink a glass, “they assigned us the task of supporting communications for a motorized infantry regiment. Well, we fulfilled it. That’s how the thing was,” then he would be quiet and shyly add, “And to speak honestly, I don’t remember much—black, white, and crimson. And beetles flying out of the stem of the mushroom cloud, hundreds of them,” he bared his white gums in a toothless smile. “Beetles, grandson! Colorado beetles!” When he got to those special words, the communications specialist would fall silent and have a second drink. And even if you begged him to talk in more detail, he would just keep repeating about the black, white, and crimson and sometimes about the beetles, who flew off in various directions. Black, white, and crimson—for you, Ivan Ivanovich, it’s something like a mantra. But you didn’t believe in the beetles then. You ascribed them to your grandfather’s confused mind, as he flickered for whole days on his stove… The first stars are appearing in the sky. Nightingales are trilling in the grove past the checkpoint.

132

Volodymyr Rafeyenko

“I’ve called Shurik and Timoshka three times already, I’ve dialed Aleksei, Kostya,” Fedor informs you, busily smoking a nameless little pipe stuffed with grass. “No one is answering. And no one’s answering at Timoshka’s. Weird.” “Y’never know,” you answer, Ivan Ivanovich. You two don’t know that Shurka and Timoshka are rotting away after landing outside Luhansk. Kostya’s body was incinerated in a mobile crematorium yesterday, right at the border. Only Aleksei, an officer in the special forces, jumped clear. Although not in the direction he would have wanted. He was here as a kind of advisor, taking care of planning in the work of a special group. He brought in the Ural men a couple of times. Not a bad guy. Things went a bit hard for him as a POW. They showed him not long ago on Ukrainian television. Of course, it wasn’t easy to recognize him. Let’s say that there’s more wisdom in his eyes now. It’s in character that his wife and motherin-law rejected him, in exchange for a two-room downtown. They said literally the following to the journalists who came from Moscow: “We don’t know anything! We buried our Aleksei last year! We can show you the gravestone too. And this one on TV is a fake dillweed snout!” What can you say? A good trade is a good trade, even in Ekaterinburg. Above your head and Fedor’s a meteor flashes brightly, piercing the Ukrainian sky. And here for the first time, Ivan Ivanovich, the thought steals into your head that Ukraine can, most likely, still be rescued. But you and Fedya, independent of the results of the campaign, will be saved only by a preventive nuclear strike. You, Ivan Ivanovich, smile sadly. You put your machine gun aside. You

The Length Of Days: An Urban Ballad

133

smoke inside your cupped hand. You look perplexedly at the enormous starry sky; at the same time, as if in reverse perspective, you see the life you’ve lived. And you, Ivan Ivanovich Ivanov, want like crazy to hear thunder and to rise to meet the stratosphere along with the bright-crimson mushroom, sensing cold, indifference, and utter silence. “Don’t grieve,” says Fedka, who always senses your mood acutely. “Tomorrow we go on leave—and straight to the bathhouse!” “As if there is one here?” You raise your eyebrows. “I asked around! It’s called the Fifth Rome. They say there’s no outfit more decent!”

*** Keeping her eyes closed, listening to the deafening cannonade, Liza recalled the day before. Gredis and Veresaiev took some food, purchased with money from the Fifth Rome, to the children’s home. Hungover but joyful, they loaded Nikolai’s Opel up to the very roof. They didn’t take her along because there wasn’t room. But Liza didn’t remain uninvolved with good Z-deeds. After talking it over with the Raven, she cooked up some porridge with tinned meat. And then she rode around the district on her bicycle until evening with the container and a bunch of plastic bowls and spoons, feeding animals and old folks. Hungry, unfortunate, sometimes they don’t ask for anything. Sometimes they just lie or sit in the sun— good thing it’s spring—waiting for death. They understand: people don’t have time for them. People have no money, no intelligence, no conscience. People need help

134

Volodymyr Rafeyenko

themselves or at least need shells not to fall on residential parts of the city. Z demands peace. Understanding. Some simple kind words. The old folks smile, accepting the kasha. One old woman always makes the sign of the cross over her. She says: “God protect you!” She takes the plastic cup with kasha and first feeds the cat lying in her lap, who’s as old as she is herself. Looking at that, Liza cries inside herself. The tears flow into her throat and wash her heart with black burning blood. But, on the whole, she smiles until her cheekbones creak. The dogs recognize her too, come to meet her. They wag their tails, try to fight over the kasha, for which Liza scolds them severely and waves her arms. All day a big black dog runs along with the bicycle. Guarding her. However, the occasional passersby are quiet and timid. They hurry about their business. They have no time to pester an unceasingly smiling, slightly squinting, crazy young woman. No time to glance into her pupils, dilated from the splendid antipsychotics sent over from the mainland by Kornev at huge expense. They don’t care about a stranger’s pain. Though the fact that Liza is pain is visible at once. Hands smeared with kasha and paint, an old dress, faded, torn on the sides. If Ka­ rolina were there, she wouldn’t let her wear old dresses, but Gredis pays no attention to that. Her face is pretty with an unhealthy beauty. A nervous tic, red tangled hair. A horrible blue and yellow ribbon is braided into her hair. They could kill you for that ribbon alone, here. They’re even supposed to. But more likely the peaceful Z-citizens would than the militants. How can you explain that?

The Length Of Days: An Urban Ballad

135

Here, they’re tired of waiting for death, while death, of course, comes from Ukraine. It’s simpler to think that way, in any case. Because otherwise, then how can they live from now on under the Red Hards who have come from the East? Buryats, Slavophiles, the irreplaceable Cossacks, criminals with spiritual bonds in the place of a brain gloomily look over the bright ribbon, fluttering in the wind. They study the girl’s smile, her bare legs, covered up to the knees in dust and some kind of coarse rash, look into her face, lacerated by eternity, and they turn away. They spit at her back, make obscene jokes, sometimes throw stones after her, but they don’t lay a hand on her. Insanity is honored now. Even the Z-maniac is shy. Before the war he would inevitably have a plausible pretext to lead a girl like that to his place in an outbuilding, to take advantage of her. But not now—he won’t even start talking with one like that. He won’t even look in her direction. All the more since there’s the blue and yellow ribbon fluttering in the wind, and the stray Italian mastiff, skinny and grown much craftier since his owners abandoned him, is quiet, quick as mercury, and meek as death. Drunk Russian mercenaries have tried twice to shoot him, because he, of course, has his own opinion with regard to the occupation of the region, the uncertain stance of the European Union, and the caution of the Euro-Atlantic bloc. “Plato”—it says on a metal bezel fastened to his collar, beside his left ear. “Plato!” Liza says to the dog, and the mastiff wags his tail, looks with intelligent eyes, while at the same time managing to glance to both sides. He answers for this

136

Volodymyr Rafeyenko

nutcase; he has to be on the alert. He spends the night by the entry. For that, he gets his ration first. Gredis calls him Teacher… Grey dawn glimmers in the window. The bombardment winds down to nothing. Liza opens her eyes. Outside the windows the deaths of innocent people are indicated by dark blue flash-lines. Early spring. In the grey haze the fading explosions sound long and hollow, as if they’re coming from the other world. A sharp feeling of guilt for the fact that someone has died, while you’ve remained alive. And relief. And shame from that too. Life is so unbearable that your belly burns with fire. And, as always, three or four drops of blood instead of your period. Doctor Parastas says it will all pass, but he doesn’t reduce the dosage. Liza sits up in bed. Looks into the raw half-darkness out the window. The silhouettes of the buildings barely marked. You can guess at the park by the hospital only thanks to the tall pyramid-shaped poplars. The room is dark and cool. In the corner by the door something stirs and starts moaning. She gets goose bumps. It squeaks, snaps. Liza tosses back her shoulders and wonders whether she should scream. But on such a raw morning it’s impossible to shout. The fog might crawl into your throat, and along with it—the heavy dreams of the Nibelungs or the bitterness of Eseninesque souls. And once again a chirr from somewhere, grumbling, snaps. Moans. A drawn-out muttering, rumble, hum. Quiet, though, almost reproachful. And, it seems, rather familiar. Lowering her feet from the bed, Liza furiously rubs her face with her palms, decisively chasing sleep away, and feels for her slippers.

The Length Of Days: An Urban Ballad

137

“I see you,” she speaks up firmly, “and I’m coming right over.” “Uff,” says the thing that was tossing and turning in the corner. “Brrddrrdd, bzits! Shvift,” it adds and goes quiet. “It’s mean to frighten girls,” Liza announces confidently. “But I’m coming over to you, no matter who you are! I’ll take a look at you, and then you’ll feel bad, ashamed and gloomy. All the more since we all know, it seems, who you are!” On trembling legs. Clenching cold fists. Liza takes precisely four steps forward and hits the light switch. The bright light of the chandelier floods the room. And so it is. A square brass face with pretentions to noble masculinity. A large heavy back. Powerful shoulders. Somewhere inside, the mechanisms of life are working furiously, but almost soundlessly. Disproportionately long mechanical appendages gleaming with metal slide helplessly over the floor. In place of eyes— two asymmetrical onyx beads, the same size, crudely but firmly fixed in the brazen eyeholes. Strained sounds tear loose from somewhere behind the uneven, tragically split lips. The mannikin is wearing wide blue trousers with a chic yellow bobbin, a folk-style embroidered shirt. The geometrical decoration, embroidered with white threads mixed with a bit of red and black, is done with tiny stitches, like pearl embroidery. The brass Cossack has a typical kabardinka on his head—an elegant fur cap, made in the form of a hemisphere, with a narrow edge and a cloth lining pressed firmly against its head. The disproportionately massive mechanical feet are shod in boots of red leather. Too bad all this splendor covers

138

Volodymyr Rafeyenko

only a piece of living metal, a toy, found last spring on a country road. All day Liza was riding the bicycle her uncle had given her. She was coming home by twilight after a horrible, terrible downpour. Right on the road by the checkpoint, where four sozzled Red Hards were playing Go, she caught sight of a little figure standing right in the middle of her path. Liza already had Karl. She had fat greedy Grusha, and Obam, black as soot, slept in the corner under the bed in a wooden box—a cheery wooden boy her uncle had brought from a trip to Africa back before the war. Liza loved to talk with the teapot shaped like an elephant. But she had never yet had a toy like this. “Who are you?” she asked, dismounting and squatting to see the doll’s shimmering red face. “Orest Ipatiievych Blogger!” answered the brass fellow in purest Ukrainian. “A volunteer! I’ve come from beyond the Dnipro to defend the Ukrainian land!” “Against the Muscovite Red Hards!” “Against them!” Orest nodded proudly. “I’m just afraid that I won’t overcome them. I need helpers! Five or six people.” “You’ll get helpers!” Liza promised. “Karl Petrovich, Grusha, and Obam Obamych are living in my room— outstanding individuals, though repellent at times. There used to be Queen Mackerel too, but she disappeared somewhere, I can’t make sense of it. But you won’t be bored with us, even without her.” “But are they Ukrainians?” Blogger clarified. “In spirit, no doubt,” Liza nodded. “By blood, I fear, no. They simply have no blood at all, Orest Ipatiievych. They never did have. But they do have lots of other things.”

The Length Of Days: An Urban Ballad

139

“But do they sing our songs?” the Cossack asked. “Naturally,” Liza nodded. “And who would you yourself be?” “Liza Eleonora von de Nachtigal, the-girl-on-the-bike, as they call me in the occupied territories.” “A good name,” the bronze Cossack approved, “not Russian.” At that moment two sozzled Red Hards suddenly decided that they needed female company. Liza went racing away, they ran after her. And, of course, they caught up. They threw her onto the ground, which was wet with passion. One held her by the arms, the other, unable to restrain his lust, started tearing off her snow-white underwear. At that moment Orest Ipatievich drew his saber from its scabbard and struck several backhand blows. The would-be rapists’ heads flew off into the bushes, rolling their eyes. Their round hats of rice straw caught fire and burned up. Trembling in death throes, the male bodies went quiet. Liza jumped to her feet, grabbed her bicycle, looking in horror at the bloodied bronze doll, which was rolling his own enormous eyes with a squeak. “Forgive me,” Blogger spoke up abashed, hiding his saber deep in the scabbard. “I didn’t want to frighten you. But for me, as a Ukrainian intellectual, what they wanted to do to you was conceptually unacceptable.” He stamped in place for another couple of seconds. Looked at her pleadingly. Pressed his nose to her knees and asked her to pick him up. Liza sat the doll on the bicycle frame. And they raced off in headlong bicycle flight. Blogger turned out to be more talkative than all Liza’s other dolls. Besides that, he was brave and educated. But, due precisely to that, pathologically suspicious. He would

140

Volodymyr Rafeyenko

spend whole days reading books from the US Library of Congress, visited sites, “liked,” trolled, and banned. In the evening he would watch Z-television, which would upset him wildly, especially the morning of the following day. The news from Russia would provoke a dreadful hangover, and then no one could calm his heart save Liza Eleonora. “What’s the matter with you, Orest Ipatiievych? What’s the matter, little Cossack?” she squatted beside him and touched the monster’s head with her fingers. He went still, staring at the young woman’s face with unblinking black eyes. “Did someone frighten you?! Who was it, Orest Ipatiievych?” “Brrddrrdd, bzitz! Shvift,” the Cossack informed her and suddenly gave a thin and sorrowful whistle. “And what was I telling you? They have troops, misery, misery! Misery is an eagle that soars in the skies, amid the mountains and above the reaches of the lagoon.” “What troops, Blogger? Did you dream something?” “No! I mean, yes.” The gargoyle stopped helplessly waving his mechanical appendages, rolled onto his belly, and slowly got to his long feet. He made a quiet, neat circle around Liza. He stopped, buzzed a bit, made one more circle and out of habit pressed his hat against the young woman’s right knee. “I’m frightened, lonely, frightened, frightened,” he announced. “I’m so sad! They’ll come here. They’re already here. Shoigu, moigu, boigu.* Horror, horror! Naryshkin, Skuratov, Shuvalov, Zyuganov, Tsar Ivan the Terrible and Tsarevich Peter. By the way, that last one lived only two years,” Orest Ipati­ ievych announced sorrowfully and something clicked inside his metallic chest. “Stepan Lopukhin got so merry at his funeral that he and his whole family were exiled to

The Length Of Days: An Urban Ballad

141

Siberia. But that has nothing to do with this,” he sobbed and began lamenting again. “Horror, horror, Liza! Three hundred ninety-five rocket systems. Fifty-eight heavy ‘Satan’ type rockets, modifications one, two, three, four, five—once I caught a fish alive. Seventy ‘Stiletto’ rockets, there’s a tasty lunch for NATO. One hundred seventy-one mobile ‘Poplar’ systems, ‘Yars’ and ‘Poplar-M’ systems, hello to them and all their pistons. And that’s not counting the strategic rocket-launchers, capable of carrying—O Sirgit!—hundreds of nuclear warheads. And then the bombers with long-range rockets and other horrifying details.” The gargoyle once again pressed his cold copper forehead to her leg. “And all that, of course, for peace on earth! When the Russian warriors have bad dreams, do they want to? What sort of dreams do you have in the sleep of the dead? Pick me up! Pick up, eh?” Blogger jumped awkwardly and fell on his back. “Dummy,” said Liza, shaking her head. “You almost frightened me. And you’re a Cossack! You’re the one who’s supposed to defend me, not I you!” “Fool, Blogger, fool!” said Obam Obamych under the bead, the dark-blue beads of his eyes merrily flashing. “Fool yourself,” observed the sensible, polite, and grubby benevolent girl Grusha. “Don’t be afraid, Orest Ipatiievych! We won’t let them harm you! All the dolls of Ukraine—together we’re a powerful power! Isn’t that right, Liza Eleonora?” “But they have shoigu, boigu, moigu!” lamented Blogger and sniffled. “Shoigu can’t annoy you! You’re strong! You’re wearing the national costume! Right, Liza Eleonora? Isn’t he a fine fellow?”

142

Volodymyr Rafeyenko

“Orest Ipatiievych is a hero!” Liza nodded. “Except that he clatters at night, makes it hard to sleep, but otherwise he’s a total haidamak.”*

*** Winter turned to spring and then tried to turn to summer. Riding around the checkpoints through ravines overgrown with weeds, Liza saw dry, burned-out spaces around her. Corn and barley were supposed to be growing here, wheat or rye, but nothing was growing except fields of mines. Groves. Military technology on the roads. People with weapons and without, in military uniforms, in khaki clothes. War, just war. Tanks, personnel carriers, fortified areas. Bombing, nocturnal shootings, artillery fire. Strangers and our own people, who are worse than the strangers. You can’t trust anyone, but then no one does trust anyone. Only Gredis and Nikolai, and Slava Kiseva, because she’s a Kitty, a cat, meow-meow. Ah, how many cats there are in the world, you and I will never count them all. The occupation, Putin, a headdress and dreaming of the Kremlin star. You can trust your own dolls. They know you’re crazy. You know they’re crazy. You know everything about one another. Socializing like that is pleasant, because it’s predictable. You could trust Mama Anna, who now lives somewhere in Ukraine too—after all, she was killed in Moscow. Liza doesn’t know for sure whether that’s true or not. But if Mama Anna isn’t alive, that means Eleonora von de Nachtigal is simply a crazy girl, a simpleton. She can’t tell the difference about what is.

The Length Of Days: An Urban Ballad

143

By the way, what is can’t be counted. And she’s never had a real menstrual period. Crazy women have that happen all the time. Especially after taking helpful medications. There are cramps, but there’s no blood. It all goes to your heart. Liza found an acquaintance in Kyiv for chatting— a historian by profession—so as to not entirely hand herself over to the horrors of war. So as to talk about woman things, about breakups, the blahs, hairbands, and hats. About the past of the Third Reich. About the future of the Fifth Rome. So, so much the same, a girlfriend with light skin. Just the sweetiest-sweetie, you know. She lives online under the alias “Girl Patriot.” Complained that the doctor will only prescribe typical antipsychotics for her, like paliperidone, clozapine, flupentixol, and then perphenazine. Whereas she would prefer atypical ones; they say the atypical ones are more fun. And way, way more pleasant. Anyway, taking flupentixol gives poor Girl Patriot miserable sleep problems, plus an incredibly strong, passionate akathisia, whatever that word means. “I was just twist and roll!” wrote Girl Patriot. “A total pinwheel! But luckily since I stopped taking flupentixol I’ve been super quiet. But back when I was taking clozapine—oh, just total fits of dizziness! I walk along—boom, I fall down, boom—I fall down. Just imagine, I’m walking around all bruised. Dark blue as a bruise. Hematoma girl! So it’d be hard for a normal guy to fall in love with me. And I’m already ... years old, Liza, my dear, von de Nachtigal.” “What a nightmare, Girl Patriot,” Eleonora answered her, “and here we have the war. The Red Hards

144

Volodymyr Rafeyenko

are defending the Russian World in Z. Can you imagine? In Z, Girl Patriot, Red Hards!” “And how is it?” “Cool,” Liza Eleonora wrote after a bit of thought. “I just want to get them with my bare hands, like Slava Kiseva, no not Slava, Slava has nothing to do with it. Just the way the Kiseva offspring, tiny kitties, are drowned, to put each one in a basin with acid and read them poems by their own foreign minister. Let them dissolve in art.” “My dream is to take an atypical antipsychotic,” Girl Patriot answered, “but I heard somewhere that Abilify provokes akathisia, Seroquel hypothyroidism, and Ristoplet some sort of hormonal problems. I don’t even know what to do. Maybe slit my wrists?” “I have a new friend now,” Liza wrote, “but truth is more precious. Black-haired, quiet, strong. Unfortunately, he’s a dog. By the way, what’s your attitude to interspecies intercourse?” She thought a bit and added: “I wear a blue and yellow bow in my hair, the symbol of the spring sky and desperate dandelions.” “Blue and yellow? Like with meaning?” “The thing is that there are only three colors in nature. Yellow, blue and red. But red is the color of blood, and there’s a lot being spilled in Z. We’re weary of the Byzantine sunset, garbed in crimson. Whereas I am like the bird Gamayun. Gamayun von Nachtigal.” “What garbed?” Girl Patriot clarified. “And what does the bird have to do with it?” “On the smooth face of endless waters she makes her prophecies and sings, garbed in the crimson glow of sunsets, too weak to lift her muddled wings,” Liza explained. “Predicting rule by evil Tatars, a stretch of bloody

The Length Of Days: An Urban Ballad

145

executions, villains in power, death of the righteous, and cowardice, famine, conflagrations. Wild, in brief.” “Got it,” her confidante answered a minute later, “it’s crap in Z. I heard something to that effect.” “Whereas yellow is the color of joy, calm, fulfilment,” Eleonora continued. “A most noble color! Yellow is the cheek of the lover whose loved one does not love her. For all diseases one can endure, the color saffron is the cure. The yellow Uzbek pilaf on a platter has an herbacious aroma.” “I also felt drawn to olanzapine, but after I took it I slept for weeks, and they canceled the prescription,” Girl Patriot wrote. “Blue—that’s for ineffable secrets,” Liza answered. “Basil is blue, azurite is blue. Blogger is bronze. Blue vitriol. Berlin azure, lapis, perhaps even Trubetskoy’s Lapis.* A little blue skirt fluttering, a ribbon in her hair. Who doesn’t know our Lizochka? Everyone knows her there.” “You’re kind of out of your mind,” Girl Patriot wrote and left the chat.

The Tales Of Veresaiev That Which Is Not She dreams of the outskirts of a Ukrainian city surrounded by the steppe. At one point there was a rich mine here. Now everything here is abandoned. If you drink some vodka and climb up on the closest slag heap, you can see two dozen buildings slowly falling to pieces. Grass and trees are breaking up what’s left of the asphalt. A lush growth of wild lilac.

146

Volodymyr Rafeyenko

Anyway, it’s Ukraine, her homeland, after all. Therefore, in spring here it’s impossible to breathe from happiness. You get intoxicated, and you want to sob your heart out. The buildings mostly have two stories. But the House of Culture there has three stories. Four columns at the central entrance. Above them a plaster worker and a peasant woman, essentially two of a kind, they’re holding hands, looking at the sunset in anxious heavy pensiveness. The young worker has a banner pole in his right hand. The banner itself has been gone for a long time. It turned to dust, subjected to the influence of sand and wind, sun and rain. The rusted-out skeleton of a flag sticks out of the pole. The peasant woman has a jay’s nest between her torso and her left arm. Time has not spared them, but nevertheless, this couple looks expressive and lively. Erosion and obvious physical defects have given them, finally, the persuasiveness they lacked in the days of their Soviet youth. A metaphysical breeze blows from the figures, cheers and spins your head. This pair looks as if, having passed through the years, as it were, they have finally become what they were meant to become.

*** Ever since childhood she liked the tales of Hans Christian Andersen. She always walked around with a little book of his tales. The fool! boys and girls would yell at her. And there was hardly any truth in their words. The fact was that only the girl’s mama was a fool, and moreover not her birth mother, and her dad was named Sokrat. And he was, most likely, a Livonian knight. Anya, most

The Length Of Days: An Urban Ballad

147

likely, was the most genuine Ukrainian girl. And the Dane Andersen, of course, could not have had anything to do with this. However, that didn’t bother the kids in school a bit. They called her a Prussian and a cockroach-girl—because of her Lithuanian papa and the tiny mustaches that grew out of two black moles on her face, symmetrical over the corners of her lips. They would try to pull them, to shove, to hit. Children of a certain age are horrible xenophobes, repellent little fascists, everyone knows that. Horrible assholes. Ectoplasm endowed with embryonic knowledge. They’ve only just appeared in this world out of horrible nonbeing, where they’d kept busy with various vile deeds, possible quantum ones. So they can’t calm down, can’t get the hang of being people at all. Splendid, splendid… Anya gave up her home, her city, her life, and came here. And she can’t at all remember how she did it. All she remembers is some automobile and for some reason blood on the windshield. But nothing else. Strange. Strange too that she doesn’t write and doesn’t call her relatives, as if she’d said farewell to them forever, as if there was nothing more frightening than a simple phone call home. As if it were physically impossible. And so, month by month time goes by. Most likely she ought to see a psychiatrist some time. Over the entryway where she rents an apartment there’s a flyer that says: “Free psychological help for migrants, people who have lost their families, their dear ones, their homes, jobs, money!” The moment she even thinks about dialing one of the Ukrainian numbers on her mobile phone, she’s seized from head to toe by a horror as pure as silver.

148

Volodymyr Rafeyenko

*** The alarm clock rings. She jumps and opens her eyes. The delusion falls away. There’s no steppe, no children, no childhood. Only a peaceful alien city from one end to the other. Clouds sail by, blue, white, pink, and red. The black eyeholes of rectangular windows, people, stores. Across from her building is the metro. Out the window to the right and to the left—more buildings. A school, a daycare center, a big modern hospital three hundred yards away. There’s a park laid out around the hospital. It’s nice go walk there in the evenings. Anna looks at her watch. Eight-thirty in the evening. Crazy. He promised to come right at nine. That same one. In her childhood he had caused her so much pain that it would have been enough for a hundred princesses weaving shirts of nettles. He’d wound up here for the same reasons she had. Their city no longer existed. Nor the life that they had lived not so long ago—and that would never be again. Most likely, childhood too, the same one in which so many tears were shed, doesn’t exist. And who knows whether it ever was, that same little Z-city, in which she was born? It’s already been eight months that Liza, in order to survive, has been compelled every morning to tell herself her whole story from the beginning. Once upon a time there was a little girl…

*** He shows up with champagne. Looks exactly like his Facebook page. Talks about his successes. Mentions in

The Length Of Days: An Urban Ballad

149

passing a failed marriage. Quietly swallowing the icy champagne, Anna realizes that she’s bored, that her eyes are closing, that this man she doesn’t know is that very same worker who’s been standing for a thousand years with his peasant woman at the House of Ukrainian Culture. In his torso, in the place where the sensory organs most important for a human being should be, he has a family of jays living, or maybe of rooks, but mostly likely of grey crows. Those same crows who reside in the local parks in unimaginable multitudes. So no love story takes shape. She feels an unutterable relief when he finally leaves the small apartment that she rents along with another klutz just like herself. Her name is Lyusya Friedman, and every night she dreams she’s being killed by a gigantic axe with a perfect full moon in a window flung wide open in the background.

*** “Well, and what are you missing?” her roommate asks the next day as they are pensively smoking, looking out the kitchen window at the sky pregnant with snow. “That which doesn’t exist!” Anna answers after a minute’s silence and looks inquisitively at Lyusya. “Understand? A little river, an abandoned mine, Andersen, the fields, the slag heaps, that life is what I miss. But he feels great here now, judging by everything, and that doesn’t suit me.” “You’re nuts!” “The heart is supposed to ache,” Anna says with conviction, lights a cigarette, and looks fixedly at the window.

150

Volodymyr Rafeyenko

On the Eve of Peter and Paul He’s a big, smiling, good-natured, very likable Christian. Though he’s the bell ringer of the diocese by vocation, he was always the exemplar of a person with merchant tendencies. He had several stores and a little factory where he made evaporated milk for sale. He gave away his bell-ringing pay on the church porch, was always unusually hospitable and generous. He drove a nice jeep. Liked to have a drink. Had two sons, Lyoshka and Havroshka. Lyoshka is way too small for this work. However, at the early Sunday service Matvei Stepanovich put his son at the Mother of God bell. Of course, seven-year-old Lyosh­ka couldn’t swing its fifty-kilogram tongue with his hands. And he couldn’t reach the pulls since he was too little. Matvei threw a cable over the block and made a loop in it below, so his son could put his foot in it and, by grabbing the rope with his hands and putting his whole body into it, ring the bell that way. Lyoshka was afraid of that bell, and of the bell tower. His eyes widened in horror from the mere sound of the nine-ton tolling. Hiding his tears, he grabbed the rope and stuck his foot into the loop fastened below. Twenty-year-old Havroshka, smiling, took the rope of the first bell and at his father’s signal started ringing. Two other ringers stood for the polyeleic group and the small bells. Matvei crossed himself and took the ropes of the smallest bells in his hands. The ringing floated out over the buildings of Z, over the boulevard and the wide central avenue. It widened and grew, like a living being, and after two or three

The Length Of Days: An Urban Ballad

151

minutes it was already starting to live a life of its own. All the bell ringers, with the exception of Lyoshka maybe, felt the groups of bells working into one another, how the gears of sound interlocked and went rolling like a golden wheel along celestial roads. Platon, standing on the polyeleic bells, quietly put in a strong dose of piercing syncope, giving the chime a light jazzy taste of April drops falling out of time. Herman, working on the small bells with both hands, beginning somewhere around the third minute, also started weaving colored patterns. Matvei poured thick golden trills into the sounding fabric. The ringing went forth such that the parishioners hurrying to service stopped by the cathedral entrance, tipping their heads back and looking with respect and delight at the tiny figure of the senior bell ringer, barely visible from the porch. The pealing hadn’t yet fallen silent when streams of armed people started to spread from the right and the left along the streets that lay below. They were coming in columns from the east. One part arrived downtown in trucks and buses, one part came marching in from the faraway outskirts of the city. For a long time, they went behind the second row of buildings. You couldn’t see them from the bell tower until the moment they suddenly appeared on the cloverleaf of the two central streets. Even from here, tiny machine guns were distinctly visible in the militants’ hands. The new arrivals displayed no aggression. Their movements hither and thither, to the right and to the left, in vehicles and on foot, were lazy and unhurried. The sun was shining brightly, God’s

152

Volodymyr Rafeyenko

morning had turned out amazingly, like a folktale, warm and particularly beneficent. It had to be on just such a morning that armed people came into the city, intending to stay here forever. “Our guys are here,” Platon observed with a smile, as they were climbing down the wide metal ladder, “did you see?” “Since when do you count bandits as your guys?” Herman was curious. “Since then,” Platon answered drily. The rest of the way they climbed down in silence. After the service Matvei Stepanovich was supposed to take the children home and then run errands. Herman said goodbye to everyone and headed down the marble staircase, but the senior bell ringer touched his sleeve. “Listen, Herman, can we talk?” “We can talk,” the other shrugged. “But what about your kids?” he nodded towards Lyoshka and Havroshka, who were already in their father’s car. “It’s all right, they’ll wait!” the older bell ringer waved a hand. “Let’s sit down on the bench, I have a conversation of five minutes or so, no more.” “Well, if it’s for five, have at it!” Herman smiled. “Listen, what do you think about all this?” Matvei asked without hedging. “Honestly?” “Well, you and I are here in Christ; of course, honestly!” “I think the bandits have come, it’s time to run!” Herman shook his head. “I haven’t decided yet how and when, but I’ll leave soon.” “With your family?” “How else?”

The Length Of Days: An Urban Ballad

153

“You have somewhere to go?” “If only,” Herman laughed, “I’d have left a long time ago already.” “But now, it comes out, you’ve found something?” “No, nothing!” Herman grinned. “I’ll head for Ukraine, I don’t know where concretely. As God grants, so let it be. Most likely in Kyiv.” “And it’s all right that there are fascists there?” “Whether there are fascists in Kyiv or not,” Herman raised his eyebrows, “that I do not know. Maybe there are. But they’re at home there. Whereas these mercenaries— there they are! You can walk right up and touch them!” “You’re wrong. These people have come to protect us. Aren’t you informed what’s going on in the country?!” the older man asked, not quite mocking, not quite sorrowful. “Listen,” Herman sighed. “I don’t believe the television. The Muscovites lie, and the ones in Kyiv bullshit. Let’s think for ourselves. Look. Who have these guys, who I’ve never seen before in my life, come to protect me from?” “They say…” “Well, they say a lot of things! Now tell me also, what did they do in Sloviansk?!* They raked things up there and rolled over here? And they haven’t come to protect us, Matyusha—but to hide behind us! Behind the city, the civilian population.” “And the fact that they’re Orthodox means nothing?” Matvei asked, looking gloomily at the light clouds running by. “They’re defending our language and our faith.” “Until this moment,” Herman shrugged, “no one in my country has forbidden me to believe or to speak! And then,” he took Matvei by the sleeve, “as long as I remember myself, we prayed in this church for Ukraine, for its powers

154

Volodymyr Rafeyenko

and its army. But now what? You’re telling me to pray for them? No-o-o,” he shook his head with a smile, “tricks like that aren’t for me! Sorry! The Lord knows who they are and why they came, but I don’t even want to know!” “That means you’ll leave?” “How else?! My heart aches, but I have the feeling I’ve already sat here six months too long. But, on the other hand, it’s never too late to take the right path. Isn’t that so? You could leave, too, Matvei. Take your family and leave, really. What do you say?!” “I can’t go anywhere,” the older bell ringer got up. “My business is here, my relatives, and my bells. Who could I leave them to?!” He shook his head. “I started building a house not long ago, borrowed some money…” He was quiet a moment, searching for the words. “And then, I personally know a few guys, former soldiers, since military school, by the way. Good guys. They’re ready to go fight for the faith, for the Russian language. So they aren’t all bandits…” “Well yes,” Herman repeated patiently, “they aren’t all…” He had no desire to debate. He thought about how he would have to walk down the boulevard past armed men to get home, felt a sort of sour repellent taste in his mouth. “If you’d like we can give you a ride?” Matvei suddenly offered. “But is there room?” “Of course! We’ll move Havroshka back next to Lyoshka, and off we go!” They drove through the downtown, looking over the militants who for some reason were standing in twos and

The Length Of Days: An Urban Ballad

155

threes at each intersection, smiling, chatting, looking around attentively, getting used to the new place in an unhurried way. “Havroshka, did you pass your finals?” Herman asked, looking at the face of Matvei’s older son with his intelligent, expressive eyes, almost a bit sad. “He’s taking the last exams!” Matvei answered for his son. “He doesn’t want to study at all. He’s more and more involved with martial arts. He’s gotten so stubborn! Not long ago I was driving here with him… sat him at the wheel, he already drives pretty well… so, can you believe it, some idiot passes him and gives him the finger, understand? And what do you think?! My son passes him and then cuts him off! I thought they’d come to fisticuffs! Did I give him a scolding afterwards, a scolding! I kept saying, well you’re a Christian. So they cut you off, why the hell respond by cutting them off?! You can’t fight fire with fire! Isn’t that so, Havrik?” Havroshka, tall and well built, smiled shyly, rubbed his enormous fists and looked out the window, tensing his jaw so that his cheekbones went pale. Clearly what was going on outside the windows of the car interested him mightily.

*** Herman left two weeks later. He left badly, suddenly, pulled out by the roots, leaving his things and his family behind. As if he were tearing himself away from his own city, his childhood and youth. Only his mature years followed him to the train station and then whipped the windows of the train with the black branches of nighttime

156

Volodymyr Rafeyenko

rain. And it was so tormenting that he cried the whole time in the train until morning. It took him a long time to come to himself once he reached the new place, as if he were recovering after a serious illness. But he still didn’t recover completely. He couldn’t recover his spiritual balance, even after his family came to join him. And one time in the heat before evening, when the clouds had gathered to pour out a July thunderstorm, Matvei called. “Ten days or so after you left,” he announced without a greeting and clearing his throat, “unknown people shot up the car Havrosha was driving with machine guns right within the city limits. They cut him off,” Matvei lost his thread and was quiet for a second. “Understand? Right within the city limits…” “Who?!” “Who knows! They cut them off, forced them to stop, got out of the car and shot them with three machine guns. They shot them full of holes, completely! My brother and my nephew were riding with Havrosha. Killed them too. They counted thirty-nine wounds on my son’s body.” “How many?!” “Thirty-nine! As many as I am years old,” Matvei added for some reason after a minute of silence. “You, send a note over to the Monastery there and all that, for prayers, well, you know…” “Got it… But the reason, listen, what was it? Why did they, that is, you know?!” Herman couldn’t calm down, he could see Havrosha’s shy though manly face before his eyes. “Well for nothing! No one knows what for!” Matvei was quiet again. “I’ve already gone to every office. They

The Length Of Days: An Urban Ballad

157

promised they’d look into it. They say, some kind of unknown people. Drop-ins, like. If they find them, they’ll punish them with full severity, see…” “I see,” Herman closed his eyes, spasmodically, until they hurt, pressing the receiver into his ear. “You know, it was right on the holiday of Peter and Paul,” Matvei laughed quietly. “I have to drive to the morgue, and there’s no one to ring the bells! You know yourself the kind of helpers I have. But no one canceled the service! Well, so what do I do. First I go to the morgue, after all, and from there right to the bell tower. I climb up and instead of the holiday pealing I ring the funeral bells… You remember how that goes? From the small to the big bells, the way life goes. And then all at once— bang!—all the bells strike! As if it’s the end of everything! Remember how we used to ring?!” “I remember,” Herman answered, not even trying to wipe away his tears. “And no one did a thing to me!” Matvei added proudly. “The metropolitan himself was running the service! And no one did anything… Apparently someone told him that the bellringer’s son had been killed. They shot them full of holes, see, on the very eve of Saints Peter and Paul…”

Part 3

The Sacrifice

Regardless of all my hatred for newspapers, I would like to rise from my grave every ten years, go up to a kiosk and buy several papers. —Luis Buñuel Russians say everything Russian is Slavic, so as to say later that everything Slavic is Russian. —Karel Havliček-Borovský Everything moves, everything goes by—and there’s no end in sight. —Taras Shevchenko

“It’s just an open house,” said Veresaiev, once the doors had closed behind Hirkavyi. “Some Tuesday for you.” “Don’t even tell me,” Sokrat nodded, looking out the window at Hirkavyi’s departing jeep. “What did he want?” Nikolai asked. “No more disappearing mercenaries. Should we have some vodka?”

160

Volodymyr Rafeyenko

“The ones down below have started up a racket!” Liza announced in a dreary voice, peering cautiously around the door frame. “Making noise in the well?” Gredis asked and sat down hard on the bench. “They’re walking on top,” Eleonora nodded. “They’re sad, they want to go home to Russia.” “And what’s so bad about being here?” Veresaiev wondered and shook his head. “Here’s what, Liza Eleonora, sing them ‘Over the enclave the sky is blue, between the birches slanting rains.’ Let them get distracted. You can do ‘The Frozen Maple’ too, ‘Fog, Fog.’ Why not? They’re good songs. They were written for that.” “Exactly, sing for them,” Sokrat grinned drily, dispassionately looking over his trembling fingers. “Kolya and I have had enough stresses for today. Really. They like it when you sing. You have a remarkable voice.” “And an excellent ear,” Kolya added. “There are some good songs by Yuli Kim, for example.” “That’s the stuff,” Sokrat agreed. “The ‘Poet’ Prize, all that. A famous personality in the Russian World. Sing at least that one, I don’t know, about the drumming drums.” “So, here,” Liza spoke up in a businesslike way. “Today from seven o’clock p.m. until five o’clock a.m. twelve female citizens of the republic will go to give birth in the city’s maternity hospitals. After bombardment in the area there are to be eight operations at five-thirty. Four of them are difficult, but there’s a chance, if, of course, the networks don’t lose power. Moreover, one from yesterday swears that his original profession is electrician. He promised he’d get to the Lutunyno power station if we didn’t pass on word to his mother. Another begs us

The Length Of Days: An Urban Ballad

161

to listen to him attentively. He says he has something important to convey, that he loathes this kind of bathhouse. He wants to go home to the Urals. He has a wife and children there.” “A wife, you say?” Sokrat raised his eyebrows. “A Houyhnhnm woman and vampire children.” Liza Eleonora shrugged. “Just like everyone. But he loves them, by the way. And our Small Magellanic clusterfuck doesn’t tempt him at all.” “No, what assholes!” Veresaiev shook his head. “Excuse me, daughter, I didn’t mean to say that.” “I’m no daughter of yours,” Liza Eleonora specified. “Whatever you say,” said Kolya with an easygoing grin. “But that’s not what I mean. Have you noticed? Our local militants are regular people. They make war a bit, suffer a bit, and go off where they’re sent. Into eternity, as if to slaughter! But the moment a Russian citizen winds up there, then it all starts: we’ll turn off the gas, burn up the oil, cut through the electric wires, drink up the water, rape all the bears, shake the squirrels’ teeth loose. The world goes to rot and radioactive ash. We want this, we want that, dammit. An eyeless saberfish, honestly…” “So what, are you two coming?” “How about I sing a few couplets?” Versaiev squinted. “I met a gentleman today, he took me up a mound / a phallus, girls, is just a dick, but his did not astound.” “Kolya, I beg you!” Sokrat frowned. “They want to speak with Sokrat Gredis,” Liza shrugged, “caretaker of the Fifth Rome. They walk along the very surface, shout and cry like little ones. If only they don’t head up along the pipes to the boiler room. They’ll cause an accident. You’ll go down, eh? Otherwise,

162

Volodymyr Rafeyenko

an electrician-commando could really cause a humanitarian catastrophe. They have nothing to lose. There’s no law written for fools. They came here of their own free will. And clearly it wasn’t for money! Think about it yourself, would a normal person come here for nothing? That means they have no brains, and you can expect anything from them. So shouldn’t you lift your posteriors, Sokrat Ivanovich and Nikolai Nikolaievich? Shouldn’t you get busy with the work for which you are placed here?” Liza Eleonora twisted her lips scornfully, looking first at Sokrat, then at Nikolai. “Let’s go, all right?” Gredis glanced at Veresaiev. “And we’ll have a drink later.” “Or,” Kolya licked his lips, “maybe you can go down together today, and I’ll make a quick trip to the store?” “No, Veresaiev,” the professor shook his head. “You have to come. It’s our human, and in a certain sense also inhuman, duty.” “I understand it all, but I’m wiped out. And it’s our day off!” “Our duty, Veresaiev, is to help the souls that get stuck in the Fifth Rome, with consolation and God’s word.” “They don’t give a fuck about that!” Nikolai shook his head. “Give them a show tune.” “The people there below cannot find peace!” Sokrat stated reproachfully, walked to his booth, and came back with an icon and a worn Psalter. “Up you get, my friend. We must!” “One time,” said Veresaiev, “and then we’re out of there?” “We read a bit, then I talk with them a bit, and we go drink vodka!”

The Length Of Days: An Urban Ballad

163

“Fine,” Nikolai lowered his head. “Let me just take a shower. I’m ashamed when I’m hung over.” After an ice-cold shower, they got dressed and headed to the basement. The Fifth Rome had two different entrances to the basement premises. One was off the street, the other from the direction of the old washroom. It was in character that they led to two entirely different spaces. Veresaiev considered that, since the slope of the way down inside was much steeper than the one on the street, the basement consisted of two levels that weren’t connected to each other. Liza Eleonora was sure that there was just one basement, simply with different measurements. Sokrat held to the point of view that one shouldn’t go too far in pursuing questions of this kind. Gredis walked in front. Behind him—Liza Eleonora, loudly singing the gospel hymn “On the Road to Canaan.” Nikolai trudged along in back, leafing through the Psalter and muttering something under his breath. The ceilings in the basement were high. To the right and left of the entrance were lamps, hidden in the broad opaque ceilings. In the center of the space was a well, no less than three meters in diameter. The perfectly round mouth was covered by a bronze lid, which thanks to a differential gate slid into grooves, smoothed over in the course of thousands of years. Inside the well, dark, almost black water splashed, viscous and freezing, every now and then flaring up with green flashes. Even when it boiled up, it stayed cold. Just like now. As long as the lid of the well was in place, you could hear only an unceasing hum. But the moment Gredis moved

164

Volodymyr Rafeyenko

it aside, right at the surface appeared faces flung wide in a shriek, dark bodies that looked not quite like people, not quite like flickering snakes with human heads. Liza stepped off into the corner. Sokrat put on his glasses. Veresaiev stood beside him, pale. The professor opened the Book. “The Psalms of the King and Prophet David,” Gredis spoke clearly, as if announcing the next piece in a concert. “Kathisma 17, Psalm 118.” “Hallelujah!” Veresaiev shouted hysterically, and his answer was a horrible shout of the souls boiling in the cold fire of the well. “A bit more dispassionate, Kolya!” said Sokrat. “Without hysteria!” And they started reading the Psalter, as was their custom, one verse each. “Blessed are the undefiled in the way, who walk in the law of the Lord,” Gredis began, unhurriedly. “Blessed are they that keep his testimonies, and that seek Him with their whole heart,” Nikolai picked up. “…do no iniquity: they walk in His ways,” Liza Eleonora completed the second verse, having learned the seventeenth kathisma by heart over the past year. They read for a whole eternity. Finally, they finished. After the Psalms the water got calmer. Gredis and Veresaiev stood beside the well, wet with sweat. Liza had already been sitting for a long time in the corner, on the used ammunition boxes that they used to hold drinking water, the Bible, a blessed wooden cross, a two-volume edition of Descartes and two collections of popular songs (For Feasting and the Soul and Let’s Sing, Friends!), arranged with chords for guitar.

The Length Of Days: An Urban Ballad

165

Veresaiev shook his head, staggered towards the wall, slowly slid down beside it, and came to rest right on the cement floor, not looking away from Sokrat. Gredis inhaled and exhaled several times, crossed himself, and slowly recited the 90th Psalm in a musical manner. After that he crossed himself once more, sighed, and put his hand on the edge of the well. “So,” Gredis asked, taking a look into the green flashes, “Is there anyone who wishes to have a talk?” “Who are you?!” the face of a citizen of Russia howled, springing up suddenly from the dark cold water, the young specialist from special unit “Lotos,” that same electrician who had threatened to cut off the lights. His black-brown mouth would dissolve into a varicolored oily splotch, showing stripes of blue and green, then would gather back into one. “Professor Gredis,” Sokrat answered calmly, “first third of the twenty-first century after the Birth of Christ.” “Where am I?” the mouth bellowed. “Where am I, lump-eye, whom I? Bout whom ye? O, where we? Mammms, mamuuus, mmmamè, mamee telllll, tell mama,” the mouth suddenly spoke, and the mother-ofpearl eyes, glimmering above it, filled with despair and entreaty. “Tell mama in the Sverdlovsk region that I died!” “We’ll tell her everything, dear, don’t worry! Can you tell it in more detail?!” Liza got interested sympathetically behind Sokrat’s shoulder. “A serviceman from Russia? What is your name, sweetheart? At least tell your address. Where should we write to your mom?! How did you wind up here?” “Uskuss, on eeeel, leave,” the face spoke up, “Lieutenant Ptrssssski skiiii!”—and dissolved into the depths.

166

Volodymyr Rafeyenko

A minute later an officer’s certificate swam up out of the well on a spray of cold but furious bubbles. Gredis carefully took it from the surface of the water, took a quick look at it, and handed it out to Nikolai. “Let me introduce Lieutenant Petrovskii, GRO Operational Intelligence Directorate, on vacation.” “This one’s on vacation too,” Veresaiev spoke up. “What on earth is going on! Why wouldn’t they go check out Crimea, on vacation? Since they sliced it off after all? Why not Yalta, Alupka, Simeiz, Sevastopol, finally? I don’t get it. Hey, Petrovskii, what was here for you—the land of milk and honey?” “Stop it,” Gredis pulled him up. “Have a conscience! They’re people after all!” “What’s that now?” “People, I tell you!” Gredis repeated angrily. “Even if he is Russian Special Forces, he’s still in God’s image! Quiet, we need to listen.” “What is it?” Nikolai raised his eyebrows. “I think that’s not all.” “In what sense?!” Nikolai frowned. “For me, for example, that’s plenty for the whole rest of the evening.” At that moment a new face swam up to the well’s surface. They could read in its eyes concentration and willingness to go all the way. “My name is Ivan,” Ivan Ivanovich introduced himself, feeling a terrible lack of breath, which every couple of minutes would force him to swim up to the surface, “I know how to stop the war! Listen, bros, I know how to do it!” The water clouded, several heavy waves splashed against the stone rim. Ivan Ivanovich’s face disappeared.

The Length Of Days: An Urban Ballad

167

Sokrat wiped sweat off his forehead with the back of his hand and looked briefly at Veresaiev: “Did you hear what he said?” “He said he knows how to stop the war! Did you hear it too, daughter?” “I’ve told you a hundred times, Kolya, don’t call me daughter.” Gathering all his strength, Ivan Ivanovich once again reached the surface of the well. It seemed that if you just held out your hand—that very moment you’d wind up on the other side of the heavy living mirror. But Ivan didn’t want to test it. He had been reading poems in Kyiv for three years already. Therefore, no experiments. Only action! The war must be stopped! The serpent must be burned. But how can you persuade the khokhols that you’re speaking the truth? “And chocolate, let them buy me some chocolate,” a pitiful childish thought came to him. “Kyiv, I say!” Ivan Ivanovich shouted with his last strength. “The pig serpent has to be burned! Stop him! The sauna beside Saint Nicholas’s Church on Podil! There’s a black cross hanging on the wall! Pray to it! Only the pig serpent is the real deal! It’s to blame for everything!” Ivan saw, flickering, iridescing in all the colors of the rainbow, the face of the bathhouse manager, of his assistant, whom he remembered vaguely, and of a young woman he hadn’t ever seen before. Distinguishing them with difficulty, Ivan perceived himself, too, just as blurredly, as if through dirty glass. And those words he was shouting out into the thick blinding darkness. “Does anyone hear me or not, dammit?!” At that moment Ivan was distinctly and powerfully lifted upward. He immediately sensed the stench of his unwashed

168

Volodymyr Rafeyenko

body, and the desire to commit suicide seized him with new force. The horror of returning lashed him like an icy noose. He shouted more powerfully and furiously, “Somebody, dammit! Come to Kyiv! To Kyiv, I tell you! Somebody, I beg you!” “Don’t you shout like that. We hear you just fine,” Gredis spoke up thoughtfully. “Are you the one who came here with your brother to drink vodka and have a steam? From the Urals, it seems, volunteers? Right? You steamed a little, and then took a liter for each member of the population?” “Yes, my brother Fedya and I! No, not yesterday, three years ago! No, it doesn’t matter,” the greenish-blue mouth shouted again. “The Chocolate Bunny! A kitten, a chocolate kitten, motherfucker! Buy a cat, dammit, at Kontraktova Square. Give me some chocolate! I crave promotional chocolate! A kilogram! Two! Eight, eight, I say, buy it! Bitches, fuckers, khokhols, damn fascists! Mama, forgive me, mommy! Forgive me, Taras Hryhorovych!”* “And what do you need chocolate for?” asked Sokrat, looking distrustfully at the emerald eyes of the sufferer of Kyiv, which kept flashing with incredibly beautiful meteor showers and cascades of particles unknown to science. “When you bring it to Kontraktova Square, then the war will end! At once and forever! A kitten, I say, a chocolate one! An archangel Michael with raisins and cinnamon! On Khoryva Street or, if not there, on Verkhnii Val! Buy a chocolate angel, dammit, you bitches, I hate you all! Candy for a beggar! Buy some besoms from us, I say! Oak besoms will sell well…” “A crest, a cat, a bunny, besoms. There’s something I’m not grasping.” Sokrat was dog-tired. Leaning his hand on

The Length Of Days: An Urban Ballad

169

the edge of the well, he looked at the image that flickered just at the water’s surface. “How, dear sir, did you wind up in Kyiv? Just yesterday you were steaming with us here and not thinking of a trip? Here’s why I’m asking. Usually, the ones like you wind up in completely different places…” Ivan Ivanovich finally managed to spread himself against the very surface of the mirror and speak, saving up his breath. Feeling the way the icy Dnipro water was fettering his heart. “I don’t know, it was a long time ago.” “You try to remember.” “We went to the steam room for the next session, following the arrows…” “That’s after you’d already drunk the vodka?” “Obviously,” Ivanov dissolved into green bubbles. “So we followed the arrows. Fedya joked that we’d never have been able to find the steam room without them. We had a good dose. So, we steamed and steamed, and then some furry asshole showed up, and then, in a room that doesn’t exist…” “The Malachite one?”* Sokrat asked. “Sort of, yes! That’s not the point. The Nibelungs, that’s the point!” Ivan remembered and shouted furiously. “Little furry assholes, for fuck’s sake. They speak excellent Russian, by the way. When they feel like it. But only Ukrainian with us. Why the hell, you wonder?! Who were they trying to fool?” “I got it,” Gredis explained to Veresaiev, “they asked them riddles, to determine their future fate, and they couldn’t understand anything.” “In Ukrainian?” Nikolai was surprised. “With the other ones they spoke their languages, didn’t they? Even with

170

Volodymyr Rafeyenko

the Buryats, I think I remember, they communicated in Buryat.” “These two are fighters for an idea!” Gredis clarified. “Eh, man, what did you come here for?” “To save Ukraine!” Ivan Ivanovich answered the pure truth. “What difference does it make, what for?! I’ve been carrying my cross for three years! I can’t anymore, come here! You have to exterminate the pig serpent. The serpent’s to blame for everything. Chocolate, chocolate! A bunny, a little Puss in Boots, bears with pistachios, fairytale tastes! Buy it and eat it up! With whole hazelnuts! Extra-black! White, white! With dairy cream! Almond praline! The fricking Nibelungs! Toasted sugar— it’s the soldier’s delight! An archangel on a stick! Oh, Archangel Michael, pray for us sinners!” “There you see,” Gredis spoke instructively, turning to Veresaiev. “He came to save Ukraine. Therefore, the Nibelungs spoke to him in our tongue. If these two losers had known the language, they’d already be drinking sherry in Paradise with Abraham. But they got Kyiv. By the way, that’s really odd… Hey, friend, I don’t understand, what is it you’re doing in Kyiv?” the bathhouse manager shouted at the slowly dissolving image of Ivan Ivanovich. “What do you do on Podil, I say? How can we find you, lad?” At that moment something boomed beside the bathhouse. The earth shook under their feet. Bits sprinkled down from the ceiling. The lid of the well started closing by itself, slowly slipping into its threads. Veresaiev tried to stop the slightly squeaking gate, but he couldn’t. A new explosion threw them to the floor. After that, for the next fifteen minutes the hits came one by one. And each time seemed like the last one.

The Length Of Days: An Urban Ballad

171

When the bombardment stopped and they could get to their feet, the lid of the well turned out to be completely closed. No matter how Gredis tried to open it even slightly, it didn’t work. “Is it broken or something?” Veresaiev asked, frightened. “Don’t be a dolt, Kolya.” Sokrat, pale as chalk, looked at his watch. “There’s nothing here that can break. If anyone’s going to get out of order, it’s you or me. The gate closed, that’s all. It happens. There’s something about that in Kornev’s folder. The well doesn’t care about a bombardment. I don’t think there’s any connection…” He fell into thought. “And when will it open?” “Who knows?! Let’s go home. We’re done for the day. We’ll have a drink, in fact, of vodka. Liza, my girl,” he shook his head judgmentally, “how many times have I told you, you mustn’t draw in the Psalter?”

*** The INC-Corporation Hotel, formerly the Hotel Ukraïna, was about the only one in Z whose quality of service hadn’t declined since the start of the occupation. Hirkavyi drove up to the service entrance with his bodyguard. He dialed the cell phone of the administrator on duty that day in the lobby. “What’s up in there?” “Marshak’s in his room, hasn’t come down.” “Good. Stay in place. In a minute log onto the security cameras.” “We’ve been recording since the moment he drove in.”

172

Volodymyr Rafeyenko

“Has anyone been to see him from the First?” “No.” “From the Restoration Center?” “Not from there, either.” “From the brigades?” “It’s been quiet since last night. He even ordered room service for breakfast!” “Good,” Hirkavyi hung up. “So, in general, Karas,” he turned to his deputy, who was, simultaneously, the head of his personal bodyguard, a gloomy short man who actually had the physiognomy of a dead fish. “If the sound or the image disappears, break the door down on the spot.” “And then?” “How should I know? At your discretion.” “Got it,” the other nodded. “You got a piece on you?” “For what?” Hirkavyi shrugged. “Nothing,” Karas agreed and moved his lips pensively. “It’s a rotten affair, Vasilii Yakovlevich. He’s a muddy one, that Marshak. According to my sources, they’re a bit afraid of him even in Moscow. Some believe that he’s undead. One of those who’s neither ours nor yours. A political figure, in short. Could be he even has access to the Kremlin.” “Don’t scare me, for god’s sake,” Vasilii slapped his pockets, making sure he hadn’t forgotten his cigarettes. “That’s all, I’ll be going, Karas. And you keep those tales to yourself. After all, we have tons of stool pigeons.” “Screw them all to the max!” “Right enough, but God looks out for the man who looks out for himself!” “That’s what I’m saying, look out for yourself, Vasilii Yakovlevich!”

The Length Of Days: An Urban Ballad

173

“I’ll do my best! But you, if there’s anything, wipe that fucker out at once!” “Don’t doubt for one second!” Elegant revolving doors. A grey-haired man at reception with attentive grey eyes. In the elevator—a sweetish smell of perfumes, mixed with the smell of fumes. Vasya took a quick look in the mirror and frowned. That last glass at the Fifth Rome had been too much. His face was taking on a reddish tinge. His mood rapidly got worse. He had to either add some or shoot someone. Recently, these mental scissors were driving Vasya nuts. Number five-oh-five. Hirkavyi looked at his watch: four twenty-eight. He knocked briefly but energetically. Silence. He knocked again, a bit harder. “Come in, Vasilii Yakovlevich!” called a loud fresh voice. “I’ve been waiting for you all day!” Hirkavyi clenched his jaw and went into the room. Marshak was sitting at the table in white trousers and a dazzlingly white shirt. His laptop screen shone across from him. To his right stood a glass of orange juice and a hundred and fifty grams of whisky in a tubby snifter. A mountain of butts rose in an ashtray to his left. Judging by everything, the journalist was exceedingly warmed up. This evened the situation. Turning on his chair towards Hirkavyi, Aleksei smiled. “Whisky?” “Let’s have some!” Hirkavyi nodded, quickly looking over the room. He sat down in an armchair, trying to figure out what he could see on the laptop screen, but it immediately went into sleep mode.

174

Volodymyr Rafeyenko

“Well,” Marshak spoke up, arranging a holder of ice, a glass and an ashtray on the table. “Questions?! Ask away, I’m ready!” “How’d you know I’d be coming?” Hirkavyi sniffed the contents of the glass not without suspicion, drank off half, and only then tossed in a couple of pieces of ice. “How! I recall an unforgettable encounter,” Marshak laughed. “Distribution of groats to the population in a dank February wind. It brings people together. You simply had to display a certain interest in my humble person. It’s just too bad my buddy Garev and I were forced, so to speak, to leave the Z-zone by that time. And just a day after those events we couldn’t have been found here by any means at all…” “But why such haste?!” Hirkavyi twisted his lips irritably. The whisky turned out to be splendid, single malt, restrained. His mood improved. However, the temptation to close his fingers around the throat of the mass media employee only grew stronger. “That’s how they shot us, by mistake.” Marshak cast a quick glance at Hirkavyi. “A day later we stupidly got stuck at a checkpoint. On our way out of the city, naturally,” he clarified, crossed his legs, and fixed his slightly bulging eyes on Hirkavyi. “I don’t understand,” Hirkavyi said. “What you mean by ‘shot’?” “It means just that,” Marshak smiled limply, put his glass on the table, flicked his lighter, greedily breathed in the smoke. “It’s just silly, God knows. I had the wrong certificate in my pocket, completely by accident! The one saying I’m a Ukrainian journalist and all that. Anyway, they tortured me all night. Then at five-thirty in the

The Length Of Days: An Urban Ballad

175

morning they put me up against the wall. That, Vasilii Yakovlevich, was how the cookie crumbled. But I knew in advance that you and I would have to have a talk. That’s what I was leading to in the whole matter, by the way!” Marshak gave a worldly smile. “You think it was chance that we wound up next to each other on the eve of the appearance, so to speak, of the insects on the front lines of the Third World War? Of course not. We need your help, Vasilii Yakovlevich. That’s why we showed our cards, so to speak, although they turned out a bit strange even for us…” “Hang on, hang on,” Hirkavyi lifted a hand. “Don’t rush! What does ‘up against the wall’ mean? I don’t understand…” “What could it mean, Vasilii Yakovlevich?” the journalist smiled affectionately. “They arrested me, stood me up beside a half-destroyed pissed-on brick wall, and let me have it from both barrels. But to be honest, I hold no grudges. I could hardly wait!” Marshak shook his head. “Say what you like, our militia has no culture of interrogation! No, the fighters on the other side are no sisters of mercy either. I know it firsthand. But at least there it’s something somehow! In the battalions, of course, it’s a short conversation. But we have nothing but a bunch of Doctor Whos, dammit!” “I don’t get it?!” Hirkavyi frowned. “Who’re you, they shout,” Marshak grinned, “and a bayonet knife right into your ribs. Well what kind of conversation can there be if they’re tearing me to pieces alive?” Aleksei laughed quietly. “It was even harder on Misha. They cut off his leg above the knee with an angle grinder. And he didn’t die until afterwards.”

176

Volodymyr Rafeyenko

“What’d they cut it off for?” Hirkavyi asked the stupid question and then bit his lip in annoyance. “Ask these idiots!” Marshak flung his hands wide, picturesquely. “Garev, of course, is made of steel! But he laid out everything he knew in the first five minutes of the interrogation,” Marshak laughed. “But that’s the whole deal, that our truth is such that it looks least of all like truth. To be honest, it looks like whatever you want, just not the truth. That’s why they usually torture me and Misha to death,” Marshak stubbed out one cigarette and immediately lit another. “It was the second instance in all the military actions I’ve seen that I’ve lived to be shot. Usually, I die in the cell after the morning interrogation. That’s not so bad,” Marshak added dreamily. “Early morning is dawning in the window, life deserts you, the sun’s rays fall on your lacerated chest… But that is, of course, if you’re not lying in a dark damp basement with no windows. And there are semi-basement premises too, the ones with narrow grated windows, you know?” “I know,” said Hirkavyi, clenching his jaw. “Dying there is best of all! You see the sun for the last time before you meet your maker, and you have a chance to breathe fresh air.” “Are you playing the fool?!” asked Hirkavyi, walked over to the bar, picked up the open bottle of whisky and sat back down in his armchair. “Think I’m an idiot?” “God forbid!” Aleksei Yevgeniievich threw up his hands. “I’ve never seen a smarter person!” “I’ll crush your throat with two fingers,” Hirkavyi announced and poured himself a full glass of whisky, adding a few pieces of ice. “So, you talk with me in a more

The Length Of Days: An Urban Ballad

177

understandable way, cool? In a way so I can understand what you’re saying.” “Always prepared,” Marshak nodded, straightening the glasses on his nose with an index finger. “So, what’s not right about what has already been communicated?” “I can’t tell,” Hirkavyi shook his head. “Are you really asking me to hurt you somehow, or do you just have a fancy-pants way of talking?” “Well, here we go again!” Aleksei looked genuinely aggrieved. “Of course, I wouldn’t want you to break any part of me. First of all, it hurts, whatever you break. I know that well. Second, if you crush my throat, then our meeting will once again be deferred for a protracted period of time. And that would be a great pity.” “What sort of bullshit were you talking about, getting shot?!” The more Vasilii tried to speak calmly, the more the veins on his throat bulged. “Listen, Vasilii Yakovlevich,” Marshak smiled carefully. “Based on everything, I see that you and I truly are located, so to speak, in different discourses. For clarity I’ll note that you, it seems, are still not informed about certain sensitive details of our current military campaign. One of these consists in the fact that one can cross the border of the Z-enclave only after accepting death. Yet for a long time there’s been nothing secret in either death itself or the crossing. They are ordinary, so to speak, aspects of the work.” “What are you, dammit…” Hirkavyi got wound up once again. “Mobs of people are strolling across the border with Russia! What are you telling me here?” “Just a minute! Listen to me, Vasilii!” Marshak put his hands together on his chest pleadingly. “Why are you so

178

Volodymyr Rafeyenko

like a child, I swear! I beg of you, don’t interrupt! Yes, our people cross the border in a completely ordinary way. In vehicles, trains, on foot, in tanks and automotive personnel carriers, in KamAZ trucks, buses, and ordinary cars. But the point is this,” he flashed the lenses of his glasses insinuatingly. “You can only get back to Russia by accepting death! Not many new recruits, as a rule, have heard about that. Frankly speaking, almost no one.” Marshak got up from the armchair and started pacing around the room. “For the masses, it’s better for them not to know it at all. Right?! What’s the point?! For with much wisdom comes much sorrow. And in practical terms—so much hassle!” “Only the rare Aryans who have gone through special preparation are capable of preserving the memory of what happened to them on the eve of the transition. An ordinary person, after crossing the boundary, is afraid to think about it. He subconsciously erects an impenetrable wall between his old self and himself now. And if you break the barrier between the two streams of consciousness, between the two, in essence, autonomous personalities—he’ll die right away or go crazy, which under these conditions is equivalent…” Marshak shook his head, preoccupied. “Very particular efforts are needed to produce in someone who has ‘crossed over’ the correct self-identification, the comparison and coincidence of the memory of before and after. Yes, indeed, death is not the problem! Not at all. There is no death, said Master Yoda, and here, finally, we can confirm that with completely documentary evidence. But the thing is that dying in Z and winding up where you wanted to get, in Kyiv, say, or in Moscow, you become a somewhat different person.

The Length Of Days: An Urban Ballad

179

To tell the truth,” Marshak grew pensive, “you undergo a cardinal change. That is, you’re the same externally, but inside—it’s as if it’s not you. So for ordinary paratrooper Sidorov, who dies in Luhansk and immediately opens his eyes in his own Vologda, Kineshma, Orenburg, or Saratov, nothing horrible has happened. He simply doesn’t remember what was going on before that.” “How’s that?!” “Like this. Sidorov is standing at some beer stand. The guys are telling some story beside him. And he doesn’t remember how he wound up with them. That’s how the actualization begins. The guy looks at the splendid world with his own blue eyes. He sees a bottle of vodka in his hands. While all around him, familiar guys from his neighborhood are enjoying life. And he starts smiling too. “But how did I wind up here, he thinks. Well like this, the meadows and fields answer. You’ve come here on leave. On vacation, the trooper thinks confidently. Exactly. They promised me a leave. He remembers something in general outlines. But the outlines are foggy and blurred, like the face of the mother Sidorov lost when he was five. “He lived with his dad. He rode through his whole childhood with him on the tractor. His dad loved him a lot. Didn’t send him off to live with his grandma. Raised him himself. Taught him the strict rules of social existence… That’s it, the old poplar by the beer stand nods approvingly. But how can it be, the trooper thinks, I was just in the field. Just this minute, it seems. What’s it called? Mar’ïnka, Ilovaisk, Shyrokyne, Shchastia? Debaltseve? What was it called? We were attacking, it seems. Or we were coming back from there?” “You’re on leave, Sidorov, on leave, the oriole cries. Relax, drink some beer and vodka. Yes, the old hazel rustles,

180

Volodymyr Rafeyenko

drink some vodka, lad. Everything will pass, cry the Siberian cranes, flying toward the swampy flats of India and northern Iran, everything goes by. The trooper has just started to think about a blowjob when the voices start up again. There was no such thing as Ukraine. There wasn’t. The red hare in the bushes whispers it. There wasn’t and there isn’t. You dreamed it, lad, you dreamed it, hum the dry autumn grasses. Vodka and beer, a sparrow with tiny stars on its wings chirps into his very ear. Sidorov nods. Trusting, like a child, he smiles. With one movement he opens the cap, tips his head back and drinks…” Marshak poured some more into Hirkavyi’s glass. Poured some for himself. Brought it to his lips. Lit a cigarette. “It’s another thing, Vasilii Yakovlevich, if for some business you need a person capable of overcoming, so to speak, the conceptual space of death multiple times…” “What sort of bullshit are you spinning, brother?” A thin thread of pain was pulsing in Hirkavyi’s right temple. “You want me to, what? Believe in this garbage? In the idea that I can only get to Moscow if I kick the bucket?” “But you know it without me! Isn’t that so, Vasilii Yakovlevich?” Marshak smiled affectionately, shifting to the informal “you.” “You have one crossing behind you already! You’ve just crowded it out of your consciousness, forgotten it, decided not to remember it. And rightly so. Schizophrenia has never done anyone any good. And now you’ll remember how things were. I popped a little tablet into your whisky. Don’t be afraid, it’s harmless. It’ll help you remember. You just need to relax…” “Whoa!” Hirkavyi suddenly got to his feet. “What kind of little tablet?”

The Length Of Days: An Urban Ballad

181

But easier said than done. And Vasilii saw before him the wall of the inner courtyard of the former building of the military prefecture. Pale Karas with a machine gun in his hands. He heard his own words, addressed to Karas. And a short machine-gun burst… Vasilii covered his face with his hands, stood there for a second or two. He slowly lowered his hands, stuck them in his pants pockets, shifted from toes to heels, looking over Marshak’s face, in which he could read sincere curiosity mixed, by the way, with a certain concern. “So it turns out like that?” Vasilii took a long swallow right out of the bottle. “Precisely!” Marshak smiled carefully. Silence reigned in the room. They could hear the artillery working far away. Vasilii recalled with complete distinctness that he had given Karas the order himself. Karas would never have done it, of course, but he knew Hirkavyi’s character. If something is ordered, break yourself in two, but do it. While Vasilii, in turn, couldn’t tell Karas what the First had initiated him into the day before. Getting to Moscow on time was super-important. Their shared loot could sail away if Vasilii didn’t get involved urgently. His true friend Karas started crying, but he pulled the trigger. The minister of health staggered, as he had three months ago, feeling the mortal blow in his chest. Marshak, concerned, took his arm and helped him take a seat in the armchair. “And really, it turns out, I did know it all,” said Hirkavyi. “I knew it was a bad lot. And not just bad, but somehow especially nasty. What the hell is it, Lyosha?” he spread his hands pitifully. “Why does this happen to us? Are we on the side of Orthodoxy, or what? Or am I failing to understand something?”

182

Volodymyr Rafeyenko

“In a certain sense…” Marshak hesitated. “I’m an atheist, of course, because it’s that sort of work. But on the whole, I support Christian ideas, absolutely. A man shall cleave to his wife—it’s stated not at all badly. And the commandments of blessedness too. Death on the cross, of course, is a heavy thing. But then you have Easter. Isn’t that right?” “Then what the heck are the beetles doing in our Z, if we’re Orthodox here?” Vasilii held the pause and took a drink. “If we’re in the right, and all the others are wrong, then why do we have to die in order to get to Moscow, and not them? I believe the people from some Washington just get on a plane to Moscow?! Isn’t that so?!” “Well yes,” Marshak sighed. “So what the hell, Lyosha?!” Hirkavyi repeated and lit up. He was already clearly under the influence but, as before, he maintained a high level of coherence. “And what means of travel is this, so drastic?” He gave a hysterical chuckle. “Where does it come from, Aleksei?! Who thought it up? Surely not the Divine Head?! I don’t believe it. He’s a tricky one, of course, no one would deny it. But he couldn’t do all this alone. So what’s the deal? What’s going on?” Vasilii grabbed his head. “Let’s use reason. We simply wanted to speak in our own, dammit, language. To bow to our own, dammit, gods. That’s an interesting question: what kind of gods? But I agree,” Vasilii lifted a hand, “that’s for later. This is not the time and the place. The main thing is, Russia supported us in our striving for our own unique character. And I understand that we aren’t the main thing here”—Hirkavyi shrugged—“Z is an isolated pregnant pawn on the geopolitical cannon-chessboard…”

The Length Of Days: An Urban Ballad

183

“You’re exaggerating! And why pregnant all of a sudden?!” “No, hang on!” Hirkavyi raised a hand. “Better tell me: what does the Patriarch, for example, think on this score? The Holy Synod? The Ministry of Culture and Health? Of Education, Science and Natural Resources of the Russian Federation?! Or whoever answers for all of this?! The Ministry of Mass Communication? Maybe of Transportation?!” Hirkavyi giggled. “The border guards, finally! Who?! It’s a right bordello! That you can only cross the border of the Russian Federation on condition of death! Dammit,” he was suddenly upset, “the monsters have wrecked the country! You can’t drive into Mother Russia in a normal way!” “The given problem doesn’t concern the Russian Federation alone,” Marshak shrugged his shoulders. “That is, this rule, unfortunately, is in effect in both directions. That’s the whole point! I, actually,” he hesitated, “wanted to talk with you precisely in this connection…” “No, hang on,” Hirkavyi raised his hand. “What sort of thing is going on? People die, then live again, but don’t remember anything. Like me, for instance. If you hadn’t suggested it, I wouldn’t have remembered! But it really happened!” Hirkavyi hit the table with his fist, and the table gave a drawn-out hum. “It happened, I remember! And the First, what kind of asshole?!” Hirkavyi clenches his teeth. “He didn’t say anything! Well, that’s all right. It’s our own people, we’ll work it out. So tell me this, Marshak, like a brother. What have you all cooked up here, eh?! Goddamn bitches! This is my hometown! Can you explain?!” Hirkavyi pressed his fist to his chest. “Not one bastard wants to have a heart-to-heart conversation!

184

Volodymyr Rafeyenko

Even the First, whose loot I saved at the cost of my own life, or more like—my own death, he has his head up his ass too, when I ask him the ultimate questions.” Vasilii Yakovlevich suddenly hiccuped and fell silent, then gestured for Aleksei to pour him some juice. He drank up the juice and sat a bit, looking out the window. “So, Marshak, you need something from me? I know there’s something! You wouldn’t have started up all this show for nothing. So, maybe you’ll open my eyes? Any reason why you started this up? And, the main thing, what is it you’ve started up here? Can you explain what we’re dealing with?” “Well,” Marshak hesitated, “there’s a correct explanation, and there’s a politically correct one. Which one do you want, Vasilii Yakovlevich?” “You’re wearing me out, bro,” Hirkavyi observed, feeling that his mood had started to go bad again.

*** “What can I say,” Marshak shrugged. “We had to stop Ukraine from drifting towards the West. It was unrealistic to do it by force. Even the Buddhists of the General Staff understood that you have more passionarians than we do. And besides, in Ukraine it’s passionarians, whereas what we have in Russia is pure delirium. So we can totally screw things up here and there, but military victory over Ukraine is a hopeless cause. After all, we all remember Afghanistan and a few other bits of small change. Thank god, we have that experience. However, watching the system of European security fall into ruins, we couldn’t permit ourselves...”

The Length Of Days: An Urban Ballad

185

“Listen, don’t frick with my brain, eh?” Hirkavyi asked. “Don’t do it. You can play boss at the U.N. Security Council. Last week the beetles shredded a tank column that had come to reinforce the Separate Motorized Rifle Corps of the special Z-battalion ‘First Fuckup.’ Rosa’s ghost appears periodically right at the intersection of Rosa Luxemburg Avenue and Komsomol Prospect. It chats with the residents of the city and tries to persuade them of the error of the course Russian political leaders have chosen. How are we to understand that?” “Unusual, yup,” Aleksei agreed. “All last month across from the student dormitories these words of Rosa’s were burning in the air with a red flame…” Hirkavyi dug in the pockets of his jacket, found a grubby notebook there, spat on his finger, and leafed through it. “Aha, here! Listen.” He showed a note, made in neat handwriting, and then read it aloud: Without free elections, without unlimited freedom of the press and of association, without free struggle the opinions of life die out in all social institutions, they become only the likeness of life, in which only bureaucracy remains an active element…

“Great, right?!” he waved the notebook. “Pretty good,” the journalist grew pensive. “There’s more!” Several dozen energetic and experienced party leaders rule and govern. Among them the real leaders are only a dozen of the most outstanding people, and only a select part of the working class gathers from time to time at meetings

186

Volodymyr Rafeyenko in order to applaud the leaders’ speeches and unanimously approve the resolutions presented. In this way it is the dictatorship of a clique, an indubitable dictatorship, not of the proletariat, but rather of a handful of politicos.

“By the way, Rosa Luxemburg wrote that a hundred years ago! And how fresh does it sound?!” “Very up to date, say what you like,” Marshak agreed. “I wonder, is it still possible to read these texts?! That is, I don’t mean Rosalia Luxemburg’s books. Have the fiery writings in the air gone away?” “Fortunately, they dissolved,” Hirkavyi nodded. “But lots of people had time to read them. Besides, Rosa took three or four of the most gifted university students along with her to Hades. Or wherever; you know better.” “To communist Paradise.” “And what’s up with the Fifth Rome? There are dozens going missing. But what am I saying. I bet you know no less than I do! What’s going on with us, Lyosha?” “That’s just what I’m saying,” Marshak nodded patiently. “Running up against the impossibility of an outright occupation, we moved into Operation ‘Background.’ Don’t ask about the technical details, I’ll tell you the main points. After putting the latest mystico-informational technologies into effect, we planned on uniting Z with the very heart of the Slavic world, no matter what that meant. And some things came out for us. Hence the particular qualities of local time, of social, political, Lobachevsky and Riemann space.” “I don’t get it!” “Well, look, the USSR’s long gone.”

The Length Of Days: An Urban Ballad

187

“Right,” the minister of health agreed. “There! But we’ve united you with it!” Marshak slapped his hands on his knees and laughed infectiously. “Consequently, in part it’s as if you, too, do not exist, like the USSR. Got it? In part, it’s as if you were here, in any case, on the map of Europe. But, in general, any person would say that you don’t exist.” “How’s that?!” Hirkavyi frowned. “More detail from this spot.” “You don’t exist, Vasya!” Aleksei sighed, exhausted, drank up his half glass of whisky, and chased it down with orange juice. “What other details do you want?! I’ll tell you honestly, we ourselves hadn’t counted on that kind of effect. The plan was to join Z to Russia! But, as it is said, man supposes, but the stringed universe disposes. On the whole, we needed your mining region exclusively in the form of a zone of controlled instability. However, as things worked out, we have a meta-zone in which a series of physical laws do not work correctly. That’s how it goes.” “Marshak, you’re an utter bastard,” Hirkavyi admitted after a minute’s silence. “Tell me simply, why do I have to die to get to Kyiv?” “Because, Vasilii, you don’t exist anywhere!” the journalist bellowed. “And none of you living here do! Because instead of joining Russia, at least in the sense of spiritual ties, you joined the Soviet Union, dammit, just as you wanted to your whole crazy life! So go ahead and live there now!” He shook his head. “There?” “Here. Right here. Who knows where!” Aleksei jerked his head and, panting, tore open the collar of his shirt.

188

Volodymyr Rafeyenko

“Why’re you shouting, dimwit?!” Hirkavyi smirked. “You want one in the mug?” “No one understands any of it, Vasya!” Marshak bent forward and spoke feverishly. “They pursue technology, or people, they pump out loot. But the point?! The point, Yakovlevich?! You can see what’s going on.” “No, hang on, but what’s the point of the beetles? Why the hell did you send them over here? Genetic experiments?! A new type of weapon?!” “What are you talking about?!” Marshak waved his hands, opened a can of cold beer and drank it in one swallow. “Want some beer? No? Well, as you like… So here—we didn’t bring any beetles here! In the Orthodox KamAZ truck, among the crates with the humanitarian aid, if you want to know, there were four American-made mines on tripwires.” “And the point?!” Vasilii frowned. “Obvious! Russia ships humanitarian aid to Z, while the Americans undermine it, along with the unfortunate civilians, by the hands of the dillweeds! They get it on camera, collect the fragments of the explosive devices. Maybe not material for a military tribunal, but it’s perfect for the evening news show High as Kites!” “All right, but then where did the beetles come from?” Vasilii Yakovlevich frowned. “How many times do I have to tell you!” Marshak wheezed. “No one knows where from! From a runcible spoon! We’re in shock ourselves!” “They started breeding because of the damp in the KamAZ trucks?” “Listen,” said Marshak after a silence. “Let’s eat, eh? We’ve already sucked up a liter of whisky. The real

The Length Of Days: An Urban Ballad

189

conversation still lies ahead, and I’m already feeling like some beer.” “Finish about the beetles, and then we’ll go down to the restaurant,” Hirkavyi promised. “They do a mutton that’s not bad.” “Vasilii Yakovlevich,” Aleksei intoned, opening the next can of Budweiser, “the laws of physics do not operate in Z. Or rather, they don’t operate the way we’re used to. You ship a horse here, he turns into a cello. A tank turns into a toy rattle. A dead man into a melody. An Orthodox tank driver into a Buryat. Where do you think the humanitarian aid we send here winds up?” “I know where,” Vasilii said gloomily, “all on the openair market or in the local trading chains.” “Only a certain portion!” Marshak pressed his hand to his chest. “I assure you! The greater part runs off into the woods!” “In the form of cellos?!” “Now, why are you talking like that…” Marshak pulled a face. “Say you heard, let’s say, that Russian troopers went missing…” “I’m going to hit you, Lyosha!” “I swear by my mama!” Marshak pressed both hands to his chest. “Pskov stewed meat from the strategic reserves takes on human form. It picks up weapons and fights for the Russian idea! And it turns out that here Russia has nothing to do with it!” Aleksei shrugged bitterly, suddenly sighed, dropped his head onto his chest, fell back in the armchair, and let out a thin snore. “That’s what it is!” said Vasilii and looked at his watch. “He’s worn out, the fool. Well, it’s all right, we’ll finish talking tomorrow. We have nowhere to hurry to.” He took

190

Volodymyr Rafeyenko

off his jacket and shirt, put the sidepiece he found in the journalist’s coat under a little leather cushion, and fell face down onto the couch. He got his cell phone and gave Karas the all-clear. “Sleep!” he said softly, closing his eyes. “Sleep! No matter what, sleep. In Z only dreams turn into themselves.”

*** Ivan hadn’t felt like steaming at all that day. But Fedka insisted. A hangover, of course, makes you want to go to the steam room. Especially if you have a couple of flasks of ice-cold vodka and leftover grilled meat from yesterday. The Fifth Rome welcomed them with emptiness and a strange, lingering echo. “And why aren’t there any people here?” Fedor asked the modest, limping woman who sat at the cashier’s booth at the entrance next to an enormous safe. Besoms hung to the right and the left of her, and all sorts of bathhouse gear lay on the shelves. Moving from shelf to shelf with visible difficulty, she chose four splendid besoms for them and a few other little things. “People usually come here later on,” she explained, taking their money and giving them two chits. “Go on up to the second floor.” The wind was tearing into the open transoms. The cubbies turned out to be neat and capacious. The floors were perfectly washed and polished to a gleam by the wind. Cold water was waiting in the basins that hung below the ceiling. The oak besoms smelled of cleanliness. In the steam room they met one more lover of the steam—a

The Length Of Days: An Urban Ballad

191

dour athletically built man, a special ops officer, judging by his scant replies. Anyway, he has his own bath, while you two have your own, Ivan Ivanovich. The steam is dry, light. It drives out any thoughts in a moment. And words die in the steam, without having time to be born. There’s nothing to talk about, and no reason to. The time for talk was earlier. Now you have to breathe through your mouth, pulling in the heat, neatly taking the sweat off with a rough dry towel, lowering your eyelids, and listening to the steam singing in the pipes. There are no stones here, but it’s wonderful without stones too. The main thing in a steam room is well-adjusted ventilation. If there’s nothing to breathe, you don’t feel the same joy. You can get clean in a stuffy place too, of course. But it’s a limp clean, without the proper energy. Fedka got a bottle out of his backpack after the first pass, but you shook your head. If you’re going to steam, then do it right. Your brother took the bottles into the booth with the bathhouse manager—a sinewy, balding little man with passionless brown eyes. He had a refrigerator, of course, where the vodka could wait while you were taking on the flight of thought. You sat a bit, had a breather, and went in again, but now already with the besoms. You closed your eyes with pleasure, flogging the first, the second, and even the third world war out of yourself. Three wives to the devil’s dogs. And the fourth one too, with her vampires, of whom you distantly recalled only those born in odd-numbered years. You flogged out pain, fear, hatred. Conscience. That’s the hardest thing of all to drive out. In steam it just comes to life. But depending, it’s true, on what kind of steam. If

192

Volodymyr Rafeyenko

you open the vent completely, its voice starts to weaken in the thick scalding whitish mist. After five minutes or so it will sigh tiredly, fold its wings, lower its crooked black beak into a basin of water and close its eyes. After the fifth round you drank up the first bottle with the cold meat you had brought along. The bathhouse manager, glancing at you indifferently, melancholically wiped the floor. After the sixth round you drank with the special ops lieutenant. You never did commit his name to memory. No big deal. Then he left for the steam chamber. However, when you two showed up there with two bottles of cold beer, the heated premises turned out to be empty. “And where is that big cheese?!” asked Fedya, taking a seat on the lowest shelf. “Who were we bringing the beer to?” “What do you care?” Ivan shrugged, adjusted the vent slightly, lay down on the shelf, and closed his eyes. The steam had calmed a bit and stopped burning. Drunkenness became mixed with a cleanliness achieved not for long, lending existence a certain languor. And right then you, Ivan Ivanovich, opened your eyes and suddenly saw beside you Master Yoda from Star Wars—the only movie you could watch at any time of the day or night. The fuzzy dwarf with the melancholy drooping ears was sitting so you could see him in profile and drumming on his greenish knees with his six-fingered hands. Fedya was lying on the floor right under the ventilation opening, curled up and softly snoring. The pipes hummed. The thermometer on the wall showed fifty-five degrees Celsius. Your sweat was getting cold. Your buzz

The Length Of Days: An Urban Ballad

193

crumpled up and flowed upwards out of your head in a thin trickle of mercury. “Take one I will, if mind you don’t?!” Yoda spoke interrogatively, pointing to the two quickly warming bottles standing at Fedya’s feet. Without waiting for an answer, he grabbed one, popped the top and set to. After taking a significant swallow, he handed the bottle to you, Vanya, and you didn’t dare refuse. Tipping your head back, you poured into yourself the remnants of the bitterish swill, desperately hoping that the phantom would disappear with the final swallow. But it didn’t disappear. “Do what then will we, Ivan?” the master asked, turning his head toward you, and you were stupefied, looking into his elongated lilac eyes that lacked even a hint of a pupil. “I don’t know,” your head answered honestly. “Bad it is, Ivan, tell you I will.” Yoda shook his head and took the second bottle. He took a swallow and handed it to you. And you drank it to the dregs, distinctly feeling the slippery, cool glass of the neck, the bitterish taste of the beer, the humming of the pipes, and the sweat running over your belly, shoulders, chest, and sides. With the second swallow the drunkenness flowed decisively out of you. Along with the heat. It got cold and dreary. Setting the empty container at your feet, you carefully looked right and left and glimpsed no longer the green six-fingered dwarf, but your own grandfather—Signal Captain Yegor Ivanov. He was sitting in a worn prewar suit jacket, smiling, narrowing his little whitish eyes, stretching out his pale lips and, as was typical of him just before death, flickering insinuatingly.

194

Volodymyr Rafeyenko

“Hello there, grandson.” The dead man’s voice was young and sonorous. “So we meet again. I’m so glad to see you! But you, I see, are surprised?! That’s understandable: a dead man, and from long ago, is no great joy. But I won’t be long. Here’s a couple of questions for you. First question.” The signalman thought over how to formulate it. “What are you doing in Ukraine, you bastard? What, you scum—wasn’t there room enough for you in your homeland?! Or is there no one to make war with there?!” Granddad waited out a minute, cheerfully looking over the wet body of his grandson, who was shaking from an excess of feeling. “Why aren’t you talking, you freak?! Say something, or you’ll have to sit here a long time. Because of death, I have become patient beyond all measure. Besides that, I’m right curious: do you have any brains left in your head or only digitized Kremlin slops? Well then, you son of a gun, are you glad to see your own grandfather, or what?!” “I’m glad, of course,” you cleared your throat, Ivan Ivanovich. “It’s just all somehow,” you had trouble choosing the right word, “unusual.” “Well noted!” the signalman laughed. “Having a steam with a dead person—it’s an extra attraction. But don’t take it into your head. I’m actually your grandfather only to a certain extent. I hope you understand that? It’s already time for you to understand, because we’re about to sum things up.” “And what will happen to Fedya?” “With him, you mean?” Yegor Ivanovich glanced squeamishly at the body lying below. “Nothing. His time for guzzling vodka and screwing broads has run out. He’ll start on something useful.”

The Length Of Days: An Urban Ballad

195

“Such as?” You glanced sideways at Granddad. “Fedya will become a beaver in the central zone of Russia,” Yegor Ivanovich spoke confidently. “He’ll build lodges on steep and precipitous banks. He’ll start erecting dams on minor streams and creeks, toppling trees after gnawing them through at the base, biting off the branches, and dividing the trunks into parts. He’ll eat strictly aspen or birch. On fast days—poplar or willow. And for dessert now he won’t have marijuana with tea, but water-lily, iris, and cattail. In general, he’ll plunge into the forest life of sacred Rus´. He’ll forget about his bad addictions for about eight hundred years. So everything’s clear with him. But what are we to do with you, fine lad? It’s a riddle. For now, they’re going to drag you into the Malachite Room, but there you won’t know, of course, how to answer a single question. Therefore, a lot depends on what you say now.” “What is there to say?” You shrugged your shoulders and suddenly realized that you were kneeling by a coffin. In the coffin is a boy about eighteen years old. People are crowding around. The grave is dug out awkwardly, at the very edge of an old cemetery, by the fence. It’s terribly hot, and the wind is picking up dry dust. The searing sun beats the standing people chest-deep into the ground. The deceased, though, is cold and passionless. He isn’t swollen at all. He’s fresh and wonderful and smells of incense. It seems that all the sun in the world matters nothing to him. You look around, Ivan Ivanovich, rise from your knees, and bend over the coffin. The dead little soldier opens his eyes, sits up, and smiles at you. And only at that moment do you realize that you’re the one who killed him. Precisely you—and none other.

196

Volodymyr Rafeyenko

“Well, and why are you here?” he asks. “You were surely not invited.” “I don’t know myself,” you, Ivan Ivanovich, say. “I don’t understand.” “Maybe you want to talk a bit about what you killed me for? That’s a good thing to do. The main point is it’s never too late.” “It’s war,” you swallow your viscous, beery saliva. You think, beside the point, that in fact you’re still sitting in the steam chamber, that all this seems to you to be mere delirium. And you’re sweating terribly precisely because of that. And the thirst in you is precisely from that. And you also feel that your heart won’t hold out if you don’t get under an icy shower right now. “You say, war? And what were you doing in that war?” the boy asks, and smiles without judgment. And that torments you most of all. There’s no hate in his eyes. “Well, you know,” you shrug. “I was defending Russians…” “Well, I’m a Russian, myself,” the lad says, smiling even more broadly, he looks around. “There’s my mom, smiling. Her name is Evgeniia Konstantinovna, a schoolteacher from Kramatorsk, by the way. She’s Russian. And there’s my dad, he’s already getting on. Born in Belarus. I think a month from now he won’t be able to bear the grief; he’ll sign up for a volunteer battalion. And on a hot day just like this at the end of July he’ll be killed by a Russian sniper, a young woman from outside Tomsk. Mother will outlive dad by exactly a year. So you’ve ruined our whole family with your shot, Vanya. A whole family. What do you think?” “I don’t want to know it!”

The Length Of Days: An Urban Ballad

197

“Want to or not, you already know. So better answer me, what were you doing, Ivan Ivanovich, in this war?” “So are we, dammit, going to discuss politics?!” You get anxious, and not for nothing, because at this very moment you suddenly understand distinctly that there is no politics. And there’s no geopolitics, either. And definitely no spiritual bonds. Russia doesn’t and can’t have real interests anywhere except in Russia itself. And the main concentration of fascists in Eurasia is found precisely between Vladivostok and Kaliningrad. Realizing this in a fraction of a second, you understand that there was no need to save Ukraine. It wasn’t necessary—and that’s it, Ivan. In general, the sole person in your life who needed to be rescued was you yourself, Ivan Ivanovich Ivanov. “I was defending Russians, Russian people!” you shout. “From the Banderites, from the West, from America!” “Well, judging by me, with complete success,” the little soldier says. He smiles and slaps you on the shoulder. “Attaboy!” Shaking his shot-through head, he lies back in his coffin. You’re thrown to one side, upward, downward. Before you is an unfamiliar village, hills, a stream flowing below. On a high hillock there’s a cemetery. Not the kind you’re used to, but a bit different. And the crosses standing there are a different kind. And the priest is reading the prayer in Ukrainian. The villagers are crying, seeing off on his last voyage a man no longer young, in the past a professional military man. The mine you laid down, Vanya, killed him. He’s lying in a closed coffin because it’s better not to look at the remains. But at the same time, which doesn’t surprise you at all, the killed man is

198

Volodymyr Rafeyenko

sitting on the edge of his own grave, gnawing on a twig. He’s waiting for the end of the service and the beginning of his long road into eternity. You go over and sit down beside him. “Got a smoke?” he asks, glancing at you with a kind of strange smile, as if you were dead and this were your funeral, not his. “Have one.” You get a pack out of your pocket, and you light up along with him. You think about how this is the worst day in your life. Will it end at some point or not? “Why’d you come here?!” the deceased greedily draws in the delicious, slightly sweetish smoke. “I didn’t come on my own! They made me,” you, Ivan Ivanovich, answer, and you attempt to smile. But it comes out trashy, because the old women, gathered around the coffin, start to sing psalms and verses in creaky voices. You don’t know these church songs. And in general— you’re a convinced atheist. As such you’ll lie down in your grave and come to God. But their voices move you so much that it seems they cut you to the quick. “Well, what is this! Why am I getting this?!” you say quietly. “You’re a good guy, Vanya,” the dead man observes, “but a fool. They keep asking you about one and the same thing, but you don’t want to answer. Whereas, say, do you have any questions for yourself, by any chance?! They would help the matter a great deal.” “I have one question!” you say angrily. “Why the hell did I go to this steam room today, dammit! Fucking Fedor! Fucking Fifth Rome! Damn it all!” They don’t let you finish your smoke. One after another you see the people you’ve killed. Young and old, of

The Length Of Days: An Urban Ballad

199

all possible nationalities, religious and political convictions. You never thought that you’d managed to rub out so many. And these young kids here you shot with your own hands by the South checkpoint. They lay down together, and now they’re lying together. One’s a Georgian, the other the son of a Romanian. They didn’t even have time to make war. Both were shot in the dark, after you made them stand on the hillside. Down below—beautiful Z! A wooded steppe with hills. Beneath the hill that slopes away precipitously for a good hundred meters, for decades the local inhabitants would dig out white clay. There in the darkness a stream rustles; there’s a breath of quiet and calm from there. That’s where the two Ukrainian friends flew off—one Romanian, one Georgian. They don’t want to talk with you. They just look. There’s no judgment in their eyes, but no question either. You attempt to utter something. You moo. You moan. You need a justification, and you finally find it. “Under different circumstances,” you say, “you could have killed me just the same way! You were walking along with weapons! You were fighters too! And you shouldn’t look at me that way…” “Yes,” answers the kid who’s a bit younger, “we were making war, brother. But we were making war in our own land!” What can you answer to that? Maybe you’ll say, Ivan Ivanovich, that it’s your land as well? That you’re brothers by blood, that spiritual bond? That you came to liberate them from themselves? Say what you think, honestly. Explain to them that they didn’t understand anything in life, that they didn’t have the right to live as they wished.

200

Volodymyr Rafeyenko

And that only you, Ivan Ivanovich, plus your brother Fedya, well, and maybe your Divine Head too knew how people should live in their land. All the more since it’s not even a country at all. Rather, a republic of the former USSR… In the end, you wind up in the room that doesn’t exist. You see the Nibelungs. They speak to you in the language of this country. And you, of course, don’t understand anything at all. But your grandfather had warned you that would happen, so you don’t get too upset. You stand, looking at the pulsing infinity gaping beneath your feet, and you prepare yourself for the fate of a beaver or, at worst, of a rat. Yes, a rat would suit you exactly. Fairly dirty work, but simple and without sentimentality. However, you’re quietly thinking about how it would be not bad to turn into a swamp bird after death. To fly around in the thick mists, low above the ground, somewhere not far from Pskov. To inhale the bitterness and sweetness of its vapors. To have time to think everything over really well. You really do have things to think over. You would like to see your own land the way you just saw someone else’s. Would like to settle on the grave crosses after short flights and sing long drawn-out songs to the soldiers who perished. To fly as a crane over the bottomless earth, over its endless grief, to cry out long and resoundingly, not anxious about what has departed, not attached to what is living. Yes, Ivan Ivanovich, you were born to be a bird. Possibly even a Chekhovian seagull. Or maybe a jackdaw in the garden at Tsarskoe Selo. After all you are, in essence, not a bad person. Honest, smart, nice in your way. But now you know clearly that you are not to be a bird.

The Length Of Days: An Urban Ballad

201

“For a start, to Kyiv,” you hear the judgment distinctly, “a little poetry never did anyone any harm.”

*** “My god,” asked Marshak, glancing at Hirkavyi’s severe face, “what were we drinking yesterday?” “I am the Lord thy God; thou shalt have no other gods before Me,” Vasilii answered, looking over the rain that was sprinkling outside the window. “Whisky, orange juice, dry wine, gin-and-tonic. Get up, they’ve brought breakfast.” They spoke back and forth quietly, taking some hair of the dog that bit them, eating, looking out the broad window onto Pushkin Boulevard. “In general, as you’ve already guessed,” said Marshak, “I represent a party opposed to the war. We know how to put a stop to this madness.” “No kidding?!” Hirkavyi smirked sarcastically. “They don’t know in Kyiv, in Brussels they can’t guess, but you’re good to go?” “In Kyiv they know which way the wind is blowing, and Brussels, if it wanted, could put an end to this. It’s another matter that, when they reason about the end of the war, political figures have completely different things in mind. That’s the root of all misfortunes. And Lenin already advised that you have to agree on the terms when you approach a task.” “Interesting,” Vasilii raised his eyebrows, “and what do you have in mind in this case?” “First of all—reestablishing the time-space continuum,” Marshak told him eagerly.

202

Volodymyr Rafeyenko

“You’re back to your own ideas?” Hirkavyi’s eyebrows formed a little house. “Let’s reason soberly, Vasilii,” Aleksei sighed. “All the other vectors of effort are condemned to failure. This problem has no solutions on either the political, or the military, or the economic plane. And even if the Divine Head (henceforth—DH), pride of the Russian land, kicks the bucket, nothing essential will change.” “Do you mean he isn’t really the top guy?” “Unfortunately! No matter what DH himself might think on this score,” Marshak declared and squeezed juice from half a lemon onto an oyster. “I’ll tell you more, we consider that he’s an enemy agent of influence. We think they hooked the guy back in the time of his KGB service. By the way, what’s the big deal in that? Who hasn’t had it happen? Russia has lived through even better lads. The real problem consists in the fact that for some time now DH has been, to put it mildly, in a psychologically conflicted condition. That’s exactly what keeps the situation from being resolved in either one direction or the other.” “That is?!” “Look. On the one hand, DH feels like an enemy agent, like 007, understand?” “As in, James Bond?” “That’s it! He distinctly knows that according to his assignment from the worldwide Zionist leadership he’s supposed to destroy Russia as the last bastion of the Miraculous Truth on the earth. And the main thing is,” Marshak lifted his hand with the shrimp, “he’s already practically succeeded at this assignment.” “On the other hand, it’s clear now even to his masters across the ocean that through the years he spent fulfilling

The Length Of Days: An Urban Ballad

203

the complex task placed on his shoulders the Divine has managed to lose his mind. The whales of Russian national character—complacency, self-abasement, and self-laceration—have awakened in his confused consciousness and are splashing their tails.” “Where would those come from?!” “That’s what, in general, is left over from autocracy, Orthodoxy and nationality. There, on one hand, DH takes Crimea and starts the campaign in the Donbas. Naturally, he does this exclusively in order to ruin Russia, according to the points of the secret plan. But, on the other hand, he sincerely, like a teething child, rejoices at Crimea, the Donbas, and the smallest spiritual bond that cuts through the gum. Let it be even the most inconsequential one, weak, barely breathing, and meaningless for the Yanks. DH is delighted by it! Delighted—and there you are. Just imagine, he’s proud of his work, no joke!” “That’s enough!” “I’m speaking truly! And he won’t permit anyone to doubt that what he has done is done exclusively for the benefit of the Ecumenical Slavonic Universum. But, on the third hand, the moment he feels sincere enthusiasm or he senses joy from his most recent victory, the moment the spiritual bonds begin bonding victoriously to the main mast of Pan-Slavism, he recalls on the spot that this is not what the Zionists sent him here for. Not for that, dammit—his Zionist nature shouts in him! And on the spot,” Aleksei furiously pierced a piece of cheese with his fork and stuffed it into his mouth, “DH starts some grown-up crapping on Russia. Cheese, you say?! Into the dirt with your cheese! Peaches?! Into the clay, along with the tomatoes and shrimp, into the swamps!

204

Volodymyr Rafeyenko

Whisky?! Whisky to the pigs, let them drink up like Churchill! Panties with lace?! Real Russian women don’t wear them anyway, and all the gays should be kicked out of Moscow! Let that biker Zaldostanov dance ballet, that’s why he has that kind of name. And let Lavrov write poetry. Pour coffee grounds in a saucer, read the fortune of who burned the bridges. Guess where the bridges are for the émigrés from the last war to return?” Marshak shook his head. “It’s deep! The minister of foreign affairs digs very deep and organically. But what if, in actual fact, my dears, this horrible third wave becomes the last one? He’s a person of great talents. But it’s not about him. It’s about how the Divine Head and Vovaland de Mordecai,* roughly speaking, are battling within a certain boy from Saint Petersburg.” “How’s that?!” “Like this!” Aleksei took a bottle out of the ice and splashed some more into a goblet. “And why aren’t you drinking?” “I’m not much for wine.” “As you like! So here. DH feels Orthodoxy with every fiber of his soul. He likes animals, adores children, stands like a mountain for Mother Russia. But ever since the KGB times, long ago now as epic songs, there’s been a Vovaland de Mordecai living in him, almost like an alter-ego—a little Saint Pete’s Zionist who hates everything Russian with the very same fibers mentioned above.” “Yes, but where did this Zionist come from in the boy who loves Orthodoxy?” “That’s the whole thing,” Marshak flung up his hands, “that there’s one in every boy, especially in one from Saint Pete’s, especially in one who loves Orthodoxy!” Marshak

The Length Of Days: An Urban Ballad

205

said triumphantly. “No boy and no Orthodoxy would ever have existed without that. You have to understand this! However, most Russian people manage to achieve a compromise between these two sides of the same coin.” “How do they do that?” “Vodka, of course,” Marshak shrugged. “What did you think? No way to manage without it in these conditions. And in the case of DH, of course, his healthful lifestyle plays an evil trick on him. His inner Mordecai gets stronger, the call of Zion—of reason, that is—conquers the arguments of the heart. As a result, Russia perishes. He’s just chopping it off at the root!” “Don’t make me laugh!” Vasilii smiled distrustfully. “DH an Israeli spy, too?! I can’t believe it!” “Not Israeli, but Zionist. I beg of you not to confuse them!” “I don’t see any difference!” “Well, that’s your problem,” Aleksei shrugged. “The point is that this person has been at the wheel for a whole epoch. And what are the results? Industry—in the ass. The countryside is dying. Nature is perishing. The opponents of the Russian World will rape bears right on the Siberian highways and put the video on the World Wide Web. Loot gets spent who knows where—how much does one Olympics cost? Now Russia and corruption are twin brothers! Kill one and the other will collapse right to hell. Because there’s no other mechanism for redistributing the streams of money. Just as there are no other ways for the practical interaction of the classes within one realm. After modernizing our society, in twenty-five or thirty years, DH could have set up a post-industrial feudalism—well, at least in some form where it would

206

Volodymyr Rafeyenko

be possible to live. At least like in Aleksei German’s film, remember? One could breathe freely in a liberated Arkanar. But, instead of that, the Divine has infinitely deepened the chasm between the classes. Now, Bolotnaia Square and the Kremlin are afraid of only one thing in this life—their own population! What does that tell you? That there’s already nothing to discuss, Vasya! Just nothing! Well, and with this hybrid war, finally,” Marshak splashed more icy dry white into his goblet and took a long gulp, “DH has bent the country over so much that now it’s getting fucked front, back, and sideways. I’m not saying anything about how he’s shat on the brains of his own citizens so much that now they can only be cured by a nuclear war. What sanctions? What conscience? They don’t have enough inner resources left for a conscience. That, you know, is how it is. The hard drive has the program you need, but the RAM you need to run it—you’ve got jack shit! You see?” “More or less.” “But Z, of course, is an open wound. An absurdity that’s become a fact of being. If not for the obligation to humanity I’d never set foot here.” “So, to humanity?” Hirkavyi smirked. “To humanity,” Marshak nodded seriously. “If not for it, I would sit at home and read the Constitution. Of all the mercenaries we are sending here, I understand only the Buddhists. At least they are heading for Nirvana.” “For Nirvana and following the smell of Shoigu,” Vasilii nodded. “Add to this the constant metamorphoses inside Z— and a horrifying picture emerges! What Obama? What

The Length Of Days: An Urban Ballad

207

Merkel? No one will resolve anything until it resolves itself here! But it will never resolve itself here!” “You sure?” “Absolutely! So, my dear sir, returning to the beginning of our conversation—it’s not a matter of external circumstances! Not of DH, not of geopolitics thought up by enterprising Poles, not of the price of a barrel of oil. I’ll say this. The Colorado beetles aren’t going anywhere, even if NATO brings its troops to Ukraine! If Z enters the EU now, Amy Winehouse, Rosa Luxemburg, Vladimir Lenin, Pavlik Morozov, Sacco and Vanzetti, Na­ dezhda Krupskaia, and suchlike phantoms of the past will not cease to trouble the streets of this city. Driving here there’ll be no problems! Driving out—that’s the question! And for now, a limited contingent of people is figuring this out—it’s all fixable with a little blood. But when the problem grows to a worldwide level, it’ll be too late to drink sparkling water. You know yourself, when the big bosses get involved in the business you can expect a disaster!” “And what should be done, in your opinion?!” “A sacrifice is needed,” Marshak spoke, not without a certain awkwardness. “Not a big one—on the scale of the city—but, of course, exceedingly painful.” “Tell me, don’t wear me out, what’s the cost of the question?!” Hirkavyi shouted so loud that the veins on his neck swelled. “Now stop that,” Marshak gave a pale smile. “You know it yourself—the Fifth Rome, of course, the Fifth Rome.” “Really?” Hirkavyi shook his head and after a minute’s pause asked, “And what is it about the Fifth Rome? Why them?”

208

Volodymyr Rafeyenko

“First of all, they’re good people!” Aleksei answered seriously, washing down some cheese with short sips of ice-cold wine. “That, you understand yourself, is not the least important question. Second, they’re Ukrainian patriots…” “They’re our own people!” Hirkavyi said firmly. “So I’ll ask you…” “Enough bullshitting, Vasya!” Marshak sneered. “Ukrainian patriots, I tell you. All as one. They have no kind of life here, and soon there won’t be any kind of life. Besides that, they’ve been asking for it. You yourself know how many times they’ve wanted to put that Lithuanian of yours up against the wall.” “That has nothing to do…” “It certainly does have! The Fifth Rome—brother, it’s not merely a bathhouse!” Marshak started to laugh an entirely Mephistophelian laugh. “It’s a place of power! The navel, at a minimum, of all Eurasia! Eh, you, minister of culture, you motha-fucka! You’ve had no idea what you’re dealing with.” “With what?!” “Here old man Shubin is the master of the ball! Attila and the Nibelungs, Odette and Odile, Ole-Luk-Oie and Quetzalcoatl, Little Red Riding Hood, Goodwin, Pinocchio, the tree Yggdrasil. That fellow Ódin has been hanging on an ash tree here for several thousand years already, smoking a Marlboro. The ovaries of all worlds tremble in the sacred depths and fill with sap. In Soviet times military scientists set up a load of experiments in the Fifth Rome, a good dozen classified monographs have been written! The downside of these works was their erroneous interpretation. The Soviet scholars were atheists!

The Length Of Days: An Urban Ballad

209

However, they did work to solve some purely practical problems.” “What?” Vasilii even rose slightly from his chair. “Experiments in the Fifth Rome?!” “And you think Gredis hasn’t been up against the wall until now only because he’s a philosopher? Or because you’re such an awesome minister of health and transport?” Marshak started laughing, looking at Hirkavyi’s lengthened physiognomy. “Why they’ve been under surveillance from the very beginning of the conflict! I’ll tell you more. We’ve been keeping a finger on the pulse of the Fifth Rome for the whole past fifteen years. It’s an old story. Starting in the early nineteen-thirties a classified scientific research sharashka was working in Z in the guise of a community bathhouse. The whole time the process was overseen by the secret police; later the Academy of Sciences, so to speak, got involved. And, in general, I dare say, our scientists were able to manage the national question on the territories from the Baltic Sea to the Kola Peninsula. To some extent the USSR didn’t fall apart, back in the nineteen-fifties, exclusively thanks to the Fifth Rome.” “And how does that work?” “Who can say!” Marshak smiled cheerfully. “At the start of the nineties, when the empire fell, the archive of the institute that was curating the Fifth Rome was barbarically destroyed. Unique designs, methods, collections of factual material, were lost. It went the way, as they say, of all flesh. By the way, when Yeltsin signed the document about dividing up the pie, people in the know weren’t concerned about anything as much as the Fifth Rome. But a strange thing happened. The bathhouse was just a bathhouse, and

210

Volodymyr Rafeyenko

in the years of independence, so to speak, there were no otherworldly effects observed. Perhaps it would just act up from time to time, but no more than that. But the moment…” Marshak spread his hands, “everything flew off the rails, the Fifth Rome started to wake up. It became clear that it was essential to control it.” “Hang on, you don’t mean to say that all this war…” “You finally get it!” Marshak nodded, fetching a bottle of Glenlivet from the bar. “Better late than never. The Fifth Rome is our main target. Now you know the axial point of this war.” “Unwashed Russia goes to war for a bathhouse,” Hirkavyi spoke thoughtfully. “Well, it’s all logical. The limit of all wishes is to get washed and drink vodka.” “That’s not the point!” Marshak frowned, pouring the drink into a goblet. “The problem is that Z joined the USSR instead of Russia. All the while, just so you understand, the population of Z has been visualizing something that is purely ideal. It has no relationship to what there was in objective reality. So the result was, they joined an imaginary object. And, to be precise, the kind of USSR that never existed anywhere. And could not have existed. They’d have done better joining the USA, god knows!” Aleksei said with irritation. “You could at least negotiate with them. But you can’t negotiate with an imaginary USSR! It doesn’t exist. And at the same time for Z there is no country more real. A paradox, no matter how you twist it. By the way, no matter what you seize on here you can’t get it into your head.” “And what are you proposing? That is, what does it have to do with the Fifth Rome?”

The Length Of Days: An Urban Ballad

211

“We see only one possibility. It’s essential to create a powerful counterweighted egregore with the help of the Fifth Rome. If we unite the pagan and the poetic in the monotheistic discourse of Ukrainian culture, we’ll provoke the crowding out of traditional Soviet pseudo-Christian Z-qualities. They are precisely what lay, albeit in perverted form, at the foundation of the Soviet citizen’s worldview. All these codices of the builders of communism, in essence, were a lousy rephrasing of the catechism. We see in this synthesis a hope for Z to return to the bosom of our usual net of physical laws. And for the ending of the war in the broadest sense of that word.” “I don’t understand anything! What synthesis are you talking about?” “In the given case—of Ganesh and The Kobzar.” “Ganesh—who’s that?” Hirkavyi frowned. “Ganesh is an elephant!” Marshak rubbed his palms excitedly. “You know, Lyosha,” Hirkavyi spoke, feeling yesterday’s fury reawakening in his chest. “If I don’t understand something, usually it doesn’t make things better for anyone…” “I’m explaining quickly!” Aleksei raised a hand. “We’ve been doing a lot of experiments recently. We were trying to discover the laws of transformation of one group of things into others by way of crossing the border with Z. And we clarified one curious thing. If we want to achieve a particular effect, let’s say, of bringing a ton of sour cream from Rostov into Z, we have to not simply load up an Orthodox KamAZ truck with sour cream, but balance that product with some other that’s cognate in consistency. They balance each other and will reach the addressee

212

Volodymyr Rafeyenko

in their original quality with greater probability. At one point a commonality like that of the Soviet people was formed similarly, by means of analogous technologies that are now nearly lost…” “Hang on, but what did you use to balance the sour cream?! You know I can’t eat Russian food products.” “Well, maybe whitewash,” he shrugged. “But what can you do? These materials have been proven to have a distinct equivalent weight. We load the whitewash into the Orthodox KamAZ truck, we load up the sour cream, we get it all blessed in the presence of the archbishop. As a result, upon crossing the border of Z we get only real sour cream. Even if it’s a little similar to whitewash in taste. By the way, you know yourself that it’s entirely nourishing. The people eat it and don’t complain. Understand?” “And what does the one have to do with the other?” “We send Gredis and his team to Kyiv. From there they’re supposed to bring two sacral things of extraordinary power back to Z. The first is a statuette of Ganesh that’s activated in a special way. The second is the little volume of Kobzar, which belongs to a beggar from Kontraktova Square. He’s the only one like that there, you can’t mix him up. On one side of his chest he has the tattoo “DMB666,” on the other—Putin in profile. He kneels there for days on end and reads Taras Shevchenko aloud.” “A madman, you mean?” “What other kind would there be?” “And what, they’re supposed to take away a sick man’s only comfort?” “They’ll have to,” Marshak spread his hands, “for the sake of the cause! For the sake of peace on earth! Yes,

The Length Of Days: An Urban Ballad

213

it’s important for Gredis, Veresaiev, and that crazy girl, what’s her name?” “Liza?!” “Yes, Liza Eleonora! So, right, it’s important for them to go there as a group and to come back the same way. Only in that way will they comprise the necessary quantity of energy to hold the transformation of the Bard and the divine elephant in a single field.” “Are you aware of what you’re saying?” Hirkavyi sighed heavily, took a look at the Glenlivet, and took a long gulp right out of the bottle. “Fine, a beggar, you can come to terms with him. But where will they get a statue of an elephant in Kyiv? It’s not some Bangladesh!” “They have all kinds!” Marshak shrugged. “I’ll throw in some addresses, so they don’t waste time for nothing.” He dug into his wallet and pulled out a business card, put it down on the table. “Here you have, if you please, ‘Shiva-Vyshivata’—a splendid shop right downtown. In Kyiv in general, I have to admit, there are lots of places where everything’s according to feng-shui. But in ‘Shiva’ there are loads of elephants decorated with Ukrainian ornaments. Real patriotic elephants. Oak leaves, grape vines, hops and, of course, periwinkles down the trunk and the back. If you want there’s an elephant on a rat, if you want—on a shrew, and if you want—on a dog. If you want it with four hands—be my guest! Or if not, the selection includes little elephants for just thirty-two hryvnias. In short, to suit any taste.” “The central object, of course, is an elephant in an embroidered shirt. He symbolizes neopaganism and the animal forces of the nation. To work with him correctly it’s essential to observe simple rules. The talisman’s active

214

Volodymyr Rafeyenko

work will begin only after one of your folks scratches the bally or the right palm of the purchased Ganesh. Besides that, of course, it would be good to offer him a couple of dollars, a chocolate hazelnut candy or, in the extreme case, a bit of homemade fatback. The Ukrainian elephant likes people to curry favor with him. Well, and just before the move back the talisman has to be activated with certain mantras. The first is ‘Omm uhmm— glory to Ukraine—ganapataya namah.’* In principle this is a splendid mantra, and the Kyiv Ganesh is bound to look on it with favor. The second is ‘Omm shri—glory to the nation—ganeshaya namah.’ The third is ‘Ganesh above all’—to confirm the result achieved, as it were, when they show up back in Z.” “And what’ll happen after they come back to the city?” “We think that the Kyivan national elephant will break Z’s link with the USSR.” “And then what?” “Well,” Aleksei hesitated for a second, “that should be the end of everything. Z will open up to the world. Possibly it will turn Ukrainian again. But maybe it will be nobody’s. Though I can’t imagine how that would be possible in the practical sense of the word. In any case, physical laws will be reestablished here in all their fullness, and it will be possible to work with this territory somehow. Besides that, war will become impossible due to these or those reasons, about which it’s impossible to say anything definite now. Ganesh will not tolerate alien armies on his territory. We think everything will go just like that.” “You think, like?”

The Length Of Days: An Urban Ballad

215

“Well, there’s a seventy-five percent chance that the situation straightens out,” Marshak lowered his eyes. “And if it doesn’t straighten out? Then what?” “No one knows that, Vasya!” Aleksei spread his hands. “There are no guarantees. But at least we’ll have a chance. Even if it’s not a big one.” “All right, let’s suppose. But how will they, in your opinion, get there and back?” “You aren’t an infant, Vasilii Yakovlevich,” Marshak shrugged. “You understand everything yourself. We plant the corpse of some idiot or other. We catch them red-handed. We say: Aha, aha, here’s where our fighters were disappearing all this time! Just as we thought. We arrange a short Russian trial and execution. Rat-a-tat-a-tat! In the belly and in the heart. We tear them up mercilessly. Blood spurts. They fall over. The next moment they’ll already be standing on Khreshchatyk.” “All right, let’s suppose that makes sense. But how do they get back?” “There are various answers,” Aleksei said pensively. “But in any case, we have some of our people in Kyiv. They’re always ready to help with the transfer. What’s more, they’re already waiting! The moment Gredis and company acquire the elephant according to feng-shui and the volume of The Kobzar on Podil, Operation ‘Return’ will begin automatically. And in the space of twenty-four hours our migrants will return to their domestic Penates.” “How so?” “What, you want details?” Marshak smiled crookedly. “Let’s suppose!”

216

Volodymyr Rafeyenko

“Why just the same way, Vasilii!” Aleksei sighed, drank up his wine in one gulp, and poured whisky into the glass. “A righteous Ukrainian tribunal. Rat-a-tat-a-tat! In the belly and the heart. They tear them apart mercilessly. Blood spurts. They fall over. The next moment they come to on the intersection of Komsomol Prospect and the Boulevard named in honor of the poet Pushkin.” “But what will happen to them afterwards? I hope they won’t be shot a second time here in Z.” “And what then would be the point for us of sending them back off to Khreshchatyk?” Aleksei laughed. “They’ll get along without it. To the bathhouse of monsters! Let them work. How many, you say, of our guys have gone missing there in the last few months?” “A hell of a lot,” Hirkavyi smiled gloomily. “So we close the Fifth Rome as a societal institution. What good are losses like that? And we start studying it. At first, the experience of Gredis and his team will come in handy. And later, as they say in Odesa, we will see.” “Got it,” said Vasilii thoughtfully. “And when do you plan to begin?” “Mishka Garev will pull up in the next day or two. And when he appears, then we’ll start right away. So, will you support us?” “Why do we need Garev?” “The fact is,” Marshak hesitated, “that he’s sort of the main curator and ideologue of the project. A major scholar and all that. Besides that, he’s equipped with authorizations.” “And you’re not equipped?”

The Length Of Days: An Urban Ballad

217

“I’m equipped too, but no longer sober!” Marshak laughed. “Don’t you fret! We’ll wait a couple of days, nothing will happen.” “Uh-huh,” Hirkavyi got thoughtful, “But why send Liza there? I think Gredis and Veresaiev will manage, right? Besides that, she’s a bit abnormal. That is, even very sick, if I understand everything correctly.” “She was chosen by us for these purposes three years ago,” Marshak grinned. “I personally handled her transfer to Z.” “Are you serious?” Vasilii raised his eyebrows. “She’s sick, no question,” grunted Aleksei. “But she’s the only one of that trio who’ll be capable of remembering what they concretely need in Kyiv when they get there. Understand? Look at how you didn’t even remember the fact that you got transferred. Without help on the side, Gredis and Veresaiev will be just like that, after two years they won’t have worked out who they are, how and for what they wound up in Kyiv. But Liza Eleonora will remember everything! Crazy broads are the best broads in the world! Besides that, make a mental note and tell them: after dying, a person changes a lot. Not necessarily for the better.” “That is?!” “Well, Veresaiev, if he doesn’t manage the task quickly, will go mad based on his love for the ladies.” “And Gredis?” “That one will definitely turn into a drunk and lose his memory. He’ll lose his wits, and one blizzardy night he’ll decisively lose his human form. Life is shit, kiddoes.” “Then what’s the point of sending them together?!”

218

Volodymyr Rafeyenko

“I’ll tell you one more time, they have to be three! For reliability. Lizka is a strong girl, but she won’t manage alone. And it’s a good number.” “In what sense?” “Well, like this,” Marshak straightened his glasses. “The Third Rome. The Third International, Third Reich, the Hitler coalition, the anti-Hitler coalition, the Third Security Department, the NKVD Troikas. The three partitions of Poland, the Triumvirate, the countries of Benelux. Three is the second simple figure. The fourth Fibonacci number. The null Fermi number. The second number of Mersenne and Marie-Sophie Germain. And it’s just easier to think with three, don’t you find?” “But how much time will they have before those transformations? Will it be enough?” “Don’t worry about that. There’ll be enough time, and the task isn’t complicated. The Kobzar and Ganesh. Who the hell wouldn’t find them in Kyiv?”

The Tales Of Veresaiev Someone Else’s Apartment Lala opened the door of someone else’s apartment with the key her friend Zhenya had given her. It was the apartment Zhenya shared with her husband. They had lived here, right downtown in Z, for years. Lala had always envied them a bit. Such a tight-knit family, such a splendid apartment. And also right downtown. Pushkin Boulevard was right here, and the yards were so clean, cultured, not like where her family lived, in a mining settlement.

The Length Of Days: An Urban Ballad

219

And now she had unlocked this door and walked in, as if it were her own. The entryway smelled of something sour. The owners’ things were hanging on a coat tree, left behind (Lala thought forever and was horrified that she’d had precisely that thought). Though it was noon, half-darkness reigned in the room. The owners had left after the bombardments of residential areas started. Therefore, before they left, Zhenya had stuck impenetrable plastic film on all the windows in the apartment. The bright August light now seemed strongly muted, yellowish, as if in a dream. Lala took off her shoes, went to the bathroom, and turned on the water, as Zhenya had shown her. One handle for the toilet, one for the kitchen and the bath. “The pipes are old,” she noted automatically to herself, “they could burst soon.” Zhenya had mentioned that too. But here it was the pipes that could burst, whereas there, where she and her husband and son had decided to leave today, in the area where she had grown up, a shell could turn the building upside down at any moment. The defenders of the Russian World had placed some kind of cannon, god knows what kind, fifty meters from their multi-story apartment building. Maybe it wasn’t a cannon at all but a mortar. And for the last few days they had been regularly aiming at the government troops’ positions. Lala turned on the tea kettle and got dinner together. Her husband and son were supposed to arrive in twenty or thirty minutes with the truck full of their things. They had to be fed. And it would do her no harm to eat something either. She had already forgotten eating and sleeping normally. The tea kettle gave a whistle. Lala

220

Volodymyr Rafeyenko

jumped up and brewed herself some tea. She sat down at the table, remembering how she had seen her friend off a week ago. “Well, as soon as we set off,” Zhenya had said, feverishly checking whether she had everything she wanted, “you all move right in. Understand? Move in right away! There’s no point waiting any longer!” “Well, we might still live there for a while! Maybe this will end, after all?!” Lala said, watching Zhenya’s preparations with a kind of physical pain whose causes she couldn’t quite make sense of. “We’ll try living there a bit longer…” “Don’t be dumb, girlfriend!” Zhenya put one knee on a suitcase to close it. The locks clicked. Silence arose, interrupted only by the sound of water dripping from the tap in the kitchen. That meant the faucet needed to be fixed, the pipes are lousy, but try doing battle by yourself… “What are you talking about!” Lala waved her arms. “Every day at home I put bedding on the floor in the hall, I can’t sleep it’s so frightening! They’re shooting every day! Every night! Yesterday and the day before—machine guns right under our windows. It was a real battle. I can’t say who was fighting with whom. And it’s all the same to me, to be honest. But I’ve had my fill of suffering! I just went to the store, bought everything we needed, and started heading home…” She sighed. “And it’s scary that for now only these ones have been firing in that direction. Things have only come flying back a couple of times. But they say there’ll be a real counterattack. Several houses in the administrative settlement are already smashed. On Petrivka, you know yourself. And what will happen to us then?! Our house is fifty meters from the slag heap!”

The Length Of Days: An Urban Ballad

221

“So don’t play the fool!” Zhenya jerked her head. “Move here and live!” “No, well how can we…” Lala shook her head, bewildered, thinking. “We’ll all set up in one room, okay?! We’ll lie down here on the floor, and we’re set. We won’t even unfold the couch!” “Do you have a brain?!” Zhenya clicked her lighter, greedily breathing in smoke. “Let’s go drink some beer, it’s so hot! Let’s go, or the taxi will be here in half an hour. There, today I’ve moved out, so you all have to be here tomorrow! Move in tomorrow and live normally, make use of everything there is! What’s the point, girlfriend? Tell me, what’s the point of you all staying there, or moving in here and all crowding into one little room?” “The point is that the apartment belongs to you and your husband…” “It was ours, now it’s yours!” Zhenya spoke cheerfully, but there was no particular cheer visible in her eyes. “Move in and live, that’s it! Don’t throw our things out yet, we might need them… Maybe we’ll have to come get them, or you can mail them to us.” “You’re out of your mind!” Lala waved her arms. “Throw them out, as if! We won’t touch anything here at all! I’ll give my family strict, strict instructions!”

*** The pipes burst in late autumn, of course, flooded two rooms and the neighbors a bit. Good that Shurik, Lala’s husband, managed to turn the water off quickly. A puny, alcoholic-looking asshole came from the apartment

222

Volodymyr Rafeyenko

below and threatened to appeal to the “new powers,” if they didn’t “solve the problems.” “My brother works in the security services,” he shouted so the whole building could hear. “We’ll drown you all here in boiling water, like puppies! The others were shitty intelligentsia, but at least old residents. But who are you? We’ll throw you out of the apartment and take it for ourselves, if you can’t keep it in order.” Lala phoned Zhenya, complaining. She said that everything was expensive, that they couldn’t take on a real remodeling, that she had finally brought in their cat Vitold, who had stayed a long time at the old apartment. “Good that you brought him,” said Zhenya. “They’re doing awful things over there. Moving back and forth is hard.” “Uh-huh,” Lala sighed. “My husband and I stopped by last Thursday, and we were stuck there until Saturday. We couldn’t go out. Fighting all around, shells, mines, lines of machine guns. And then on top of everything they turned the water off. In short, we had a time of it.” “I keep telling you, you should all be living in our place! Live with the cat, what can you do now? Don’t go there anymore, I beg you!” “But how don’t go there; it’s our own apartment!” Lala fought back tears. “It was built for the mine. We built it all together! Everything there is our own…” “Don’t play the fool, girlfriend,” said Zhenya drily. “Get used to the new walls. Nobody knows when peaceful life will return to your settlement.”

The Length Of Days: An Urban Ballad

223

*** At the end of November Zhenya remembered that there were some supplies left on the balcony, including several jars of honey. She called and ordered them not to be shy but to eat everything they found in the wooden cupboards. Then she remembered that they had left behind a stock of oak besoms that her husband had made himself for Friday visits to the bathhouse. Then Lala sent the first parcels of the owners’ things to Kyiv. There were several more parcels in the winter, and three or four in the spring. They had left, intending to spend a couple of months, until the army took the city. But now it turned out it would be for a long time. In May, Zhenya said once, after their latest evening telephone conversation, “You know, I’ve started to forget what I have there, and where. A true sign that nothing of mine is left there…” “What are you saying!” Lala flung up her hands. “The whole place here is full of your things!” “No,” her friend objected, “I recall it, you know, like it’s someone else’s apartment, like it’s not mine.” “What are you…” “And how are things at your place, in the settlement?” “No one’s living in the settlement anymore. Well, maybe a couple of people per entryway. True, militants have settled into the building next door. They each chose an apartment they liked, and they started living there.” “Well, they have power now…” “Yes, whoever has a machine gun has power now.” Lala looked out the window. Snow was slowly falling there, covering the city exhausted by war with the whitest paint. On the playground half covered with snow stood a little

224

Volodymyr Rafeyenko

boy with his mama. The boy had a yellow shovel in his hands, he was serious, he studied the flying flakes with concentrated focus. His mama was young, distracted, smiling sadly at the low snowy sky, involuntarily jumping every time there was a dull rumble, again and again, first far away and then close. Now close, then again far away. “And how’s your Sashka?” “After the second heart attack he’s gotten sluggish. He doesn’t want to do anything…” “So will you come here, to the mainland?” “I tell you, he doesn’t need anything. He lies around for days at a time or goes walking somewhere. He sits on the benches, sometimes drinks with his friends. He knows everyone in the whole city. But more and more he just keeps quiet at home.”

*** Sashka, Lala’s husband, never knew his parents. He grew up in an orphanage. For him the building built by his own mineworks had been the first and only home that was his own. Therefore, he decided to himself not to leave it, no matter what happened. Earlier he had justified his visits to the settlement by saying he had to give Vitold food and water. Now, as the second wartime spring was beginning, he would pop in there without any explanations. He’d go into the empty building. He’d climb up the stairs scattered with trash, to the sixth floor. Open the apartment. Fling the windows open and smoke, wrapped up in his old jacket, grinning at something. He felt just the way he’d felt as a child, when he’d run away for a few days from the orphanage that reeked of sour rotten cabbage,

The Length Of Days: An Urban Ballad

225

to the locksmiths’ workshops by the train station. His father, whom he didn’t remember, had once worked there. They always greeted him there and gave him something to eat. He loved to sit on the embankment and listen to the movement of the trains around the world. The world was as round as Sashka’s head, and there were as many trains as thoughts in that head. Too bad he’d never be able to say what kind exactly. But Sashka never especially tried to understand the flickering of these thoughts. It brought him pleasure simply to be, to feel a bitter affinity with the universe that smelled of creosote. There was no heat in the apartment. Frozen, abandoned, preserving its window glass by some miracle, it was an orphan, just like Sashka, abandoned by people but not by God. From the window you could see a stray artillery detachment of New Ruscists, his own mine that had been battered until it was totally unrecognizable, narrow-gauge rails leading away to the north, faraway clouds, marvelous distances. Sometimes Sashka would bring a bottle along. Then he would drink in small swallows, drawing out the high. After each sip he smoked a cigarette. He would think about something. About what? He couldn’t have answered if anyone had asked him about it. The clueless universe crowded into his weary grey head. Sashka thought about Ukraine, where he had always lived and which he loved in his own way but didn’t understand of late. He thought with pity and bitterness about the Donbas, aware that it was gone, that it would never be the way it had once been. He thought about those Ukrainian fellows who had smashed his settlement and the mine with shells. He thought about his wife, to whom

226

Volodymyr Rafeyenko

he had become attached over the years of his life the way you could only be attached to a mother or a father. He thought about his son, who worked in public services in the same unfortunate city. He was sorry for his son as much as for this whole big, meek region. Every day the lad patched holes in the streets along with a brigade of dummies just like him, repaired ruined buildings—if they could be repaired, of course. Restored the heating mains. Glazed the windows. Replaced pipes. In general, he did everything so the war wouldn’t be visible. So there would be as little war as possible, at first glance. Well, if you couldn’t stop it, Sashka thought, if that doesn’t depend on us, then mustn’t we do what does depend on us? There, my Ilya is doing everything he can! He’s a good boy. A shell falls, it damages the highway, so we patch it. Another falls, and we patch again. The corner of a building falls off—we fix what we can. That’s all correct. Why on earth do we live here? The Lord didn’t simply leave us here. Apparently, people like us are needed. So that the destruction wouldn’t be as visible from on high, when above us the angels start carrying the real Ukrainians to Paradise. After drinking a fair amount, at some moment Sashka would lose any sense that his life was going in the right direction. He’d get to running pointlessly through the rooms as if he were looking for something. But there was absolutely nothing to look for. They had moved everything they could to the other apartment, where they were living now. There, where there were lots of books, and the furniture was old, bad, and the pipes, clearly, were absolute crap.

The Length Of Days: An Urban Ballad

227

*** At the beginning of the summer the family went to the settlement all together. It was early morning, a deafening, unusual quiet. From the first glance they understood that after yesterday’s shelling the building could not be restored, even if someone sick in the head suddenly decided to restore it now. In the courtyard they found their former neighbors. For an hour and a half or two they made small talk, negotiated, composed a plan of action. Although, what plans could there be? People who had lived next door their whole lives simply felt terrible about parting. Their home, while it was still in one piece, had supported them, promised a future life, maybe not the brightest and nicest, but a future of some kind. A comprehensible one. Like the one that had gone by. Now it was clear to everyone, Sashka, Ilya—even to her, Lala—that their former life would never return. They would never be able to see their slag heap and their old mine out of their own window. They returned to someone else’s apartment and sat down to lunch. A fly buzzed and beat around the chandelier. Sashka, sober as glass, was looking somewhere inside himself. Their son seemed calm, but she saw how much he was suffering. Lala herself kept feeling driven to cry, but she stubbornly kept smiling. It may have been okay for everyone else in the house, but for her crying was no longer an option.

The Natures Mortes of War What is a nature morte? A still life. Who needs that in Kyiv, and, moreover, in wartime? Of course, Senka Barych had,

228

Volodymyr Rafeyenko

besides natures mortes, a whole portfolio of advertising work. He was a photographer after all, and a maker, and a designer, and a typesetter. He was whatever you need. But precisely whatever everyone needed was a dime a dozen that summer in Kyiv. Wherever he tried to set himself up in that clueless and splendid city, nothing worked out. Barych had killed a bunch of time and all his savings to become a Kyivan. The moment came when they asked him to move out of his apartment. Where could he go now? And what did he have in his life? A fair amount of everything, by the way. A tripod, a dozen cameras of various kinds, most of which he had put together himself, crossbreeding marvelous pre-war German lenses with modern cameras of middling quality. Professional lighting, which on its own weighed a ton. Two professional laptops. A collection of pipes for smoking. Unpretentious belongings. The collection of minerals was the last thing he would have parted with in this life. With great regret he sold one of the cameras. Got money for the trip home and a fairly decent sum for the next little while. What would come next, he tried not to think. And what was there to think about? Yes, Z was occupied. Yes, going back there would mean heading into a ghetto, into the outer darkness, where there were defenders of the Russian World and the gnashing of teeth. Into a strange world—spectral, dangerous, only distantly recalling pre-war Z. But Barych had some kind of apartment there, acquaintances who would give him work, and dead hopes. In Z, however you look at it, his whole life had gone by—fifty years and change. To be honest, he feared the “defenders” of the Russian World, and not by hearsay. Before leaving he’d had time

The Length Of Days: An Urban Ballad

229

to see all kinds of things. Senya hadn’t missed a single pro-Ukrainian rally in the year leading up to the occupation. He saw the police protecting the pro-Russian militants and stomping the patriots down into the mud. They shot up a big and wealthy region to please traitors and scoundrels. He saw bank branches blown up, set on fire, robbed. Business quickly leaving the city. Friends moving away one after another. Barych couldn’t put two words together in Ukrainian, but his convictions were simple and logical. Ukraine was light, the old Soviet ways were darkness. In this situation, Russia was precisely the old Soviet ways, and in its worst hypostasis at that—the “old Soviet aggressor.” He had an attitude of wariness and scorn for the people who had come into his city with weapons. For himself—an attitude of humor. For the future—the fatalism of a person who had a worthy answer for any unpleasant things in life: cold wine and pipe tobacco. With that last item, of course, things were hard in Z. And the prices had jumped skyhigh; therefore, in Kyiv, he bought up Cornell & Diehl’s “Bayou Morning.” “Ribbon Cut” style. One two-ounce pack and one eight-ounce. A good everyday pipe tobacco. Pleasant, though a bit heavy, but, on the other hand, “Virginia” and the Louisiana “Perique”—what else did a person need that was about to go through the Looking Glass? Feeling like Alice choosing the day for her departure to the Great Land of Schizophrenia, he meticulously quarreled with his lover, a successful lady who worked in real estate in Kyiv. Her name was Zoya, and she was gorgeous and quarrelsome. Like a natural setting about to disappear, she demanded from men actions and money. Both one and the other had long ago run out for Barych.

230

Volodymyr Rafeyenko

Besides that, he already bore responsibility for Zoya’s mother, an eighty-year-old Jehovah’s Witness, or perhaps a Baptist or a Mormon—Senya didn’t remember exactly—who had stubbornly remained in Z in order to bring the light of truth and spiritual revelation to her straying brethren. She continued living in the same apartment downtown where they had all three lived together for almost a year before the occupation. That was a splendid time. Barych would periodically run back to his own place whenever Zoya stopped understanding what she wanted more—to kill Arsenii or to marry him. However, once he returned to his own residence, all it took was for him to uncork a bottle and pack a pipe: then Zoya would immediately call and demand that the subject of her enormous country return. The country was called Menopause, and fortune in it was exceedingly changeable. “Check in on Clytemnestra, don’t forget,” Zoya said for the tenth time, seeing Barych off at the train station, looked drily at him, twisted her lips scornfully. “Although you don’t owe me anything. You can decide not to do it.” “It’s all right, the old lady won’t feel lonely,” Barych promised and looked at the sumptuous, splendid woman who was pained not by suffering for her abandoned mother, but by grief over her own fading beauty. Zoya suffered sharply and constantly from her own fading. It seemed to her that everyone was noticing how much uglier she had become in the last few years and how, darn it, she had gotten fatter. “She never picks up the phone when I call her!” Zoya said, noticing Barych glancing at his watch and picking up his backpack. “The old fool! She only thinks that everyone else owes her, but she doesn’t owe anyone!”

The Length Of Days: An Urban Ballad

231

“Some people have that as a family trait,” Senya spoke and dragged his household goods onto the platform.

*** The city met him with bombardments, occupiers, the musty smell of his apartment. Barych called up all his former customers, figuring out who among them was in town and whom he could count on. It turned out there was no one. He took a walk to the nearest supermarket, bought some groceries. He planned out the money so that it would last at least a couple of months. In the evening he set off to visit Clytemnestra. He knew that the old woman always came home from the prayer house at eight o’clock to drink coffee. He didn’t know whether she had any coffee, so he bought a jar of instant and a pack of cookies. It wasn’t that he liked Clytemnestra Georgiievna—he respected her. In the apartment where Barych was headed now, and where the three of them had lived almost a whole year, there were no doors. That is, there were doorframes, but without doors in them. Zoyka didn’t have the money for fancy ones, and she refused to install any others. She wasn’t the sort of person who would use just any kind of doors. As long as they were two girls living together, it didn’t bother anyone. But the moment Senya started showing up, the problem stood out in full urgency. The very first time it looked like this. They came back from a restaurant exceedingly intoxicated. The apartment was empty. Zoya glanced at the clock and announced that they still had an hour, and that she would introduce him

232

Volodymyr Rafeyenko

to her mother a little later. And here Barych had just entered that zone of excitement that comes right before the exit into the cosmos and unmediated contact with the mysteries of the universe. Their breathing got faster. Zoya dialed up the amplitude. Oh, these women past forty! Autumn moths on the border of light and shadow. A moment remained until achievement of the purpose of life. And right then a black outline appeared in the door frame (later it became clear that this was indeed Clytemnestra), and that figure shrieked in a thunderous voice, “Do you not know that your bodies are the limbs of Christ? Hence, shall I take the limbs of Christ in order to make of them the limbs of a harlot? Let it not be so! Or do you not know that he who has intercourse with a harlot becomes one flesh with her? For it is said: let them be one flesh! So think, think with your empty heads! For your body is the temple of God!” Having shouted this text, the old woman retreated to her bedroom with a dry smile. To say that this made a heavy impression on Barych would be to say nothing. He was dumbstruck and remained in that state for another two hours. At dinner, however, it turned out that Clytemnestra was quite all right. Glancing at Senya with merry wild eyes, she asked coquettishly, “What, were you scared, dummy?” “I was scared,” Senya admitted honestly, and started laughing with relief. However, there was actually nothing to be happy about. At the most intimate moments of Barych’s communing with Zoya, Clytemnestra would keep standing in the doorframe with a volume of the Gospels and

The Length Of Days: An Urban Ballad

233

shouting things like, “Do not keep company with libertines! And most of all with one who, calling himself a brother, remains a fornicator! With such a one even taking nourishment together is not to be recommended!” “It’s not even permitted to eat a meal with you two,” Clytemnestra announced with a laugh, tucking into the grilled chicken Senya had bought, “but I’m eating! And I sin with you too, you scoundrels!” Zoya scolded her mother, but her mother was stronger. On the side of Clyta, as the old woman sometimes called herself, were wisdom, stubbornness, and unshakable optimism. She believed in God’s Providence and that His mercy toward his lost sheep was no less than her own optimism. Clytemnestra completely refused to leave Z. “My brethren and sisters are here, there are people here who are in need of God’s Word. Of help, of teaching. But you, of course, off you go to your Kyiv, go on,” she nodded, looking Barych and Zoya over meaningfully as they sat on the couch, waiting for their taxi, “but I say to you, publicans and harlots will enter the Kingdom of God ahead of you!” “Just calm down with your harlots!” Zoya exploded and started crying. “Clytemnestra Georgiievna,” Barych spoke up reproachfully, “can’t you see that she’s all on edge!” “Yes, yes, be good to each other, compassionate, forgive each other, just as God in Christ has forgiven you,” the old woman nodded. “Therefore, I forgive you too. And I foretell that you will return to the city you have abandoned, but terrible angels will meet you and let you no farther than the threshold!”

234

Volodymyr Rafeyenko

“What do you mean, Clyta?! Are you talking about the occupiers?” Barych clarified. “The end of the world? Heaven and Hell? Senya and Zoya?” “I am talking about fiery Gehenna, my son,” Clytemnestra smiled politely. Catching sight of the checkered taxi, she sighed. “Let us love one another,” she said triumphantly, “for love is from God, and each one who loves is born of God and knows God. He who loves not has not come to know God, for God is love. But he who sins little is forgiven little. Your hope in particular lies in that, my dear adolescents. And in nothing else, essentially.” “Amen!” Barych answered and began helping the driver stow suitcases in the trunk.

*** “And they give out groats too,” Clytemnestra told him, sipping coffee, “so I have more of these groats than you’ve ever seen! Enough to take out to market. What do you think, maybe send some to Zoyka in Kyiv? I bet everything’s expensive in the capital?” “We are not going to send groceries to Zoya in Kyiv!” Barych spoke with conviction and puffed his pipe. Clytemnestra was veiled in a cloud of smoke and sneezed with pleasure. “Just you look at what the devil thought up. It seems to be tobacco, but it’s pleasant to breathe it!” “Yes, it’s a paradox,” Senya agreed. “I’ll make up a bag of groats for you,” Clytemnestra continued her planning, “so you won’t go hungry at least at first. And always, if you need, come over. I’ll give you the key.”

The Length Of Days: An Urban Ballad

235

“You don’t need to, really...” “I do need to, Senya,” the old woman winked at him. “You’re a lonely photographer, and I have an empty room…” “And so?” Senya was taken aback. “It’ll be scary for you there alone, so come over! Zoyka’s couch is still standing there, just like before. I don’t go into that room at all anymore. So consider it yours.” “We’ll read the Gospels?” Barych smiled. “No,” Clyta shrugged, “you won’t listen to the Gospels. We’ll drink coffee, when it gets cold I’ll knit you socks.” “I’m going to be working,” Barych said, smiling gloomily, and looked out the window. “And when I finish, then I’ll show up. Here are my phone numbers,” he put his business card on the table, “call me if you ever need anything.” Of course, there were never any socks, she hadn’t ever known how to knit. In rainy February a shell landed in her apartment. Clyta didn’t even have time to understand what had actually happened. Literally the next day, after calling Zoya (who immediately went into a scream), looking over the corner of the shattered five-story building, Barych thought about how he was the one who was supposed to be in that room, not Clytemnestra. It was Barych who was to blame that everything happened that way, and not some other. It was he who never loved the right way, never forgave the right way. And who hadn’t done anything in his life the way you should. And that was precisely why there was a war going on. That was precisely why an old woman perished who was, perhaps, the sole being who knew a thing or two about forgiveness and love.

236

Volodymyr Rafeyenko

*** For many years, Arsenii had created and photographed natures mortes. Not banal jugs, dead game, flowers and fruits. He would bring into the canvases he created various mechanisms and their parts, precious and semi-precious stones, sand and water, fabrics, dead insects, grass and wood, stuffed birds and animals, paper and wheat. Fallen branches and the dried head of a mackerel, an old violin and the inner workings of a washing machine— they could all wind up in a photograph by Barych, it all had a right to harmony. But the main thing was not the color and the texture, and not even what it signified as such, but precisely the harmony, achieved by combining incompatible objects. Arsenii began to understand this distinctly during this last summer. In his authorial works he never applied Photoshop, added no drawing, and photographed only what and only how he managed to “arrange” in real time, in real space, united in real, albeit imagined, perspective. It was unusually complicated to juxtapose objects in one space that were imbued with a mutual finding of harmony. And the work, again, consisted not only in color and lighting. Most complicated of all was finding the point of balance, the invisible axis, which united precisely these objects, and not some others, even before Barych became aware of them. He thought up a new cycle, so as not to lose his mind. Outside the windows of the apartment the rumbling was first stronger, then quieter. He cooked up some rice, ate it first with some vegetable oil, then sprinkled with sugar.

The Length Of Days: An Urban Ballad

237

He washed it down with cheap black tea. He smoked only a little, saving tobacco. For the first time stones became the heart of the work. Breaking the light, adding a tone to everything, they developed and focused the objects’ lines of mutual directedness. Arranged in the sphere of the future photograph, they created planetary systems. The space of the shot worked precisely in them. The cycle bore a distinctly cosmogonic character. Various planets, various objects, some recognizable and some not very. The relationships among them. Turning in his hands a glass sphere, a cartridge from a machine gun, a mother-of-pearl button from Clyta’s coat, found by the entrance to her building, a tiny bronze coffee grinder or, perhaps, the feather of a raven, he thought. And there one early, surprisingly quiet morning Barych suddenly realized: it was not just the fate of this cycle that depended on how much he could be precise, but his own life and death. The fate of the city of Z, the people residing here, the fate of Ukraine, of Europe, and perhaps of the whole world. Simply “laying out” the objects for the first rehearsal of one shot could take a week. Senya stopped leaving the building. He forgot about sleep, and when the groats Clyta had given him ran out he forgot about food too. Only the rumble outside the apartment windows reminded him that the war in Z had not gone anywhere. Barych thought about how the point of equilibrium, which he sought in every one of his works, was something like an ultimate honesty. Like a particular universal truth. And the more exactly he rooted it in his works, the greater

238

Volodymyr Rafeyenko

the chance that the war outside his windows would come to an end. And then, he thought, the people he had once loved would return to Z. His friends, and women. The ones who had abandoned him, and the ones he had at some time abandoned. All the dried swallowtail butterflies, cranes and swifts, geese and white swans, ravens and wild ducks. The children’s bicycles, the scooters, the plastic ducklings and bunnies with their awkward drums would arrive. The first teacher, the first woman, the first cigarette, the first kiss, first photograph of the sky. The blackand-white film would roll in the opposite direction and choose itself a new plot. His weary father would come home from work. Mother would meet him at the stove. Barych would wake up in the late morning, and the bedroom would be full of the smell of pancakes. He’d smile, stick his nose out from under the blankets, as snow fell outside the window. A blue ray would tremble in the frosted window. There would be a huge life ahead of him, and no war. There never would have been, and there never would be again.

Part 4

The Migrants

My sons, my rebel haidamaks!

Without a mother who sincerely

The wide world, freedom—

Welcomes you to the world?

Go my sons, and take a walk,

My sons! my eagles!

Seek out your destiny.

Fly to Ukraine—

My little sons,

Even if disaster escalates,

Unthinking children,

So not in a foreign land. —Taras Shevchenko

It’s curious that for a European neither race nor language nor habits have any significance, while the important things are aspirations and latitude of will… —Dmytro Dontsov Listen, little girl, answer me true: What is it burns with eternal fire? What will grow up without thunder or rain? What yearns eternally, cries without tears? —Tumbalalaika

240

Volodymyr Rafeyenko

The employees of the Fifth Rome discovered Marshak’s corpse in the washroom when they got to the bathhouse early in the morning. Judging by everything, he had been killed by an axe taken from the fire shield that had hung since time immemorial between the floors. The head of the representative of the party of peace was not quite severed. Who knows, perhaps that’s precisely why it was smiling? “What the hell?!” bellowed Veresaiev, the first to step into the washroom. He was dreaming only of taking a shower and getting up on a bench as quickly as possible. But here was a disfigured corpse whose sarcastically smiling head was attached by a shred of skin. Liza immediately drew police officers, a prison, crime, and punishment in her sketchpad. Gredis hadn’t yet managed to look the dead man over properly when a shriek of brakes rang out under the windows. “They’ve come for us, boys,” said Liza. “I thought so.” “You could do a bit less thinking,” Sokrat advised. The men who entered acted decisively but didn’t beat them. They were even relatively polite. They slapped handcuffs on them, but they put all three in the same cell where Gredis had already had occasion to spend time. Two-story bunks. A narrow grated window. Damp and cold. They smiled at one another. In a kind of shock, trying to come to terms with their new circumstances. Veresaiev, like a parrot, kept repeating, “And what now? What now?” Ten minutes later Hirkavyi stepped into the cell. “Vas-s-silii Yakovlevich!” Sokrat jumped up from the bunk and pressed his hands to his heart. “We had nothing to do with it!”

The Length Of Days: An Urban Ballad

241

“We’re innocent,” Veresaiev announced in a soulful voice, overcoming with difficulty the urge to fall to his knees. “I’m aware,” Vasilii smiled crookedly. “I’m the one who put the corpse there.” “What for?!” Sokrat was surprised. “So that no questions would arise,” Vasilii explained. “Because today you are facing a transfer into the other world. You have to agree, a fresh corpse is an excellent pretext for that.” “And you mean?” “Sokrat Ivanovich,” Hirkavyi scratched his chin, “I don’t know how to explain…. In general, the political situation has taken shape in such a way that you can only make it to Kyiv after undergoing a violent death. And all of you, unfortunately, really have to get there now. Get it? You’ll have to become, how can I put it more gently…” “Migrants,” Liza Eleonora suggested. “That’s right, migrants!” Vasilii rejoiced. “Good girl!” “Admit it honestly, Vasya, was it the beetles who whispered to you about a violent death?” Gredis asked. “Kyiv?” Veresaiev raised his eyebrows in turn. “I don’t think we were planning to go there.” “There were thoughts of that kind,” Sokrat stated, looking suggestively at Liza and Nikolai. “That’s not the point. I can’t figure out why it is we have to be killed. What kind of new paranoia is this?” “It’s a long story. And you won’t believe it anyway,” Vasilii frowned. “It’s easier to understand, so to speak, based on experience.” “Insanity,” Gredis looked at the cement ceiling miserably. “Absolute raving! But let the girl go free, eh?! You

242

Volodymyr Rafeyenko

know she’s a special person and can’t be mixed up in anything like this…” “It’s all true, Sokrat Ivanovich,” Liza Eleonora smiled, turning pale. “Vasilii Yakovlevich is telling the truth about travel to Kyiv. It’s like that. Until you die you can’t get there. And if you do get there, then it’s not for long. And you don’t know where. The Raven told me about this secret…” “The old slut,” Gredis noted. “So maybe she is. Whether a person’s a slut or not a slut—that’s not the main thing about them. The main thing is that she came back solely because she got to some place that looked like Kyiv, but not to Kyiv. Therefore she came back. That’s why she beats her wings, pecks with her beak, shouts curses, sits in oak trees and lindens. She drinks cognac in the morning. She has sorrow,” Liza got pensive for a second. “So I support the idea of dying. Too bad I didn’t grab any condoms and didn’t have time to put on the dress with the poppies.” “So what now, Vasya?” Veresaiev asked, feeling his pulse thump in his temples. “Nothing.” Hirkavyi looked at his watch. “In a couple of minutes the firing squad. Believe me, it will be better for everyone if we get this done quickly. Before the investigators from the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the prosecutors, not to mention the Ministry of State Security, find out that the secret of the Fifth Rome has been exposed.” “And what kind of secret is this?” Veresaiev twisted his lips. “The kind,” Hirkavyi sighed, “where you three have been regularly killing our people…” “The three of us?” Veresaiev clarified. “You mean Kiseva has nothing to do with it?”

The Length Of Days: An Urban Ballad

243

“She’s not in town,” Vasilii nodded calmly. “Besides which, for the last six months she has hardly shown up in the bathhouse. Due to illness. And what, is anyone opposed?” “How could we be,” Veresaiev looked at the ceiling. “Let God’s dandelion live.” “So then, my dandelions,” the minister continued after a second’s pause. “How it all happened, just so you know. You chopped up the corpses with an axe and burned them in the furnace. It’s true, your furnace room turns out to be, putting it mildly, not well suited to those purposes, but who’s going to check? By the way, the thermotechnics have already been shot. All four shifts. I hope that they will enjoy a long and splendid life in, say, Chernivtsi or Kamianets-Podilskyi. But who knows, as one remarkable person sings,” he smiled sadly. “So at least out of respect for their deaths please believe that everyone will benefit. Simply believe. You know, Sokrat, what a passionate interrogation means and what awaits you all, if you fall into the hands of Major-General Gelding?” “I still don’t understand the point,” Sokrat smiled guiltily and wiped sweat from his forehead. “You don’t understand? I’ll explain. Only don’t get upset. Liza, by the way, pay attention. After you wind up in place, you alone will be able to recall the essence of the business. We can’t count much on them.” “But c-c-c-can’t you leave Liza unt-t-t-touched?” “We can’t, Sokrat Ivanovich,” Hirkavyi spread his hands. “Forgive me! I’m telling you, you and Veresaiev will forget everything when you wind up in Ukraine. At first you’ll feel like blockheads. And that wouldn’t be

244

Volodymyr Rafeyenko

a problem, except you don’t have weeks. Actually not a day to spare. True, the death of Marshak…” “Samuil Yakovlevich?” Veresaiev clarified. “No, the other. The one whose body you discovered today. So, this death gives us and you a certain edge. Although it’s not clear exactly what kind…” Hirkavyi lowered his face into his hands and froze like that. “My head hurts so bad! It’s just some kind of punishment. It hurts and hurts for a whole day,” he looked sideways at Liza. “But the task is simple. Here at this address,” he handed her a piece of paper, “remember it, in Kyiv you’ll find the shop ‘Shiva-Vyshivata.’ You’ll buy a statuette of Ganesh there…” “Remind us, who is that?” Veresaiev frowned in a businesslike way. “An elephant in an embroidered shirt,” said Vasilii Yakovlevich, looking demandingly at the young woman. “Have you memorized the address?” “Have no doubt,” Liza smiled unpleasantly, “I never forget anything. It’s a special trait of my body.” “Then excellent,” Hirkavyi nodded. “The second ingredient for victory is a little volume of The Kobzar. But not just any one you find. The only one you need you’ll ask for or take by force from a beggar on Kontraktova Square. There’s one like that there. He kneels and reads Shevchenko’s poetry for days on end. He has some noticeable tattoos on his chest.” Vasilii thought a bit. “But I can’t even remotely imagine a situation in which you’d examine his chest. So just take note, Liza. The man is practically in the center of Kyiv, kneeling, reading Shevchenko. I think he’s the only one there like that. Things are different in Lviv, but Kyiv has nothing to brag about in that sense.” “Yes, it’s a dark city,” Gredis nodded.

The Length Of Days: An Urban Ballad

245

“All right, let’s say,” Veresaiev spoke up thoughtfully. “An elephant in an embroidered shirt and The Kobzar—it’s not a complicated business. The main thing here is not to go completely crazy. But after that?” “It’s very important to get the job done quickly, because you and the professor, unlike Liza, will start to change in the sense of personality. And these changes will be pernicious for you. You don’t need to fear this, but you also shouldn’t joke around with it. What awaits you after that is the transfer back to Z. Don’t worry about it,” Hirkavyi drummed his fingers on the edge of the bunk. “They’ll get you in good form. Yes, I almost forgot. For everything to fit together, after you buy Ganesh, scratch his tummy.” “What tummy?” Gredis was astonished. “Ganesh is an elephant who sits on a dog,” Vasilii said wearily. “That is, if I were you I’d choose the one with the dog. He has a stomach, naturally, a belly, in other words. Well, a trunk, arms, legs. He’s an elephant, fuck it! What is there not to understand?!” “And then what?” Veresaiev nodded. “Then you have to treat the elephant to sacred chocolate. You understand what kind. Besides that, here, I wrote down three mantras. Liza, memorize these! They have to be read to the elephant at least a couple of times, before you return to Z. What else?” he paused to think. “I think it wouldn’t be out of place to read the texts of Taras Hryhorovych. In essence, a great European poet. And it’s not for nothing that you’ll bring the elephant and The Kobzar together.” “And what about that?” Sokrat was grimly curious. “You’ll acquaint one with the opus of the other!” Hirkavyi thought for a second. “Liza, I’m afraid this too will fall

246

Volodymyr Rafeyenko

upon your frail shoulders. There. Well again, getting back to your transfer home to Z. In essence it will resemble the one that happens to you now.” Hirkavyi shrugged his shoulders. “So be mentally prepared. If, of course, a person can be prepared for this…” “You aren’t well,” Sokrat shook his head. “Do you yourself hear what you’re blathering, Vasilii? You’re an intelligent person! You have two degrees! You’re an athlete and a medic. How can you even say a thing like this?! Death is something final! Wake up, Vasilii Yakovlevich! It’s a delusion, darkness, a nightmare! The sleep of reason gives birth to Colorado beetles and flying transfers across the border. Beetles, living dead men, phantoms at the intersections, emerald haze and the dillweed boy—it’s a psychiatric ward, insanity that’s touching people on both sides of the front! First you started believing in them, and now you’re convinced that you’ll do us a favor by killing us. But it’s a psychiatric ward, Vasilii Yakovlevich!” Sokrat laughed dully. “Scratch Ganesh on the tummy?! Read him The Haidamaks? Or maybe, for a start, the Gospel according to Luke? Or here’s what, Vasya,” the professor gave a short, hysterical laugh. “Maybe Andrukhovych’s novels will turn out to be mentally closer to our elephant? If we’re already setting out to enlighten the pagan gods, let’s act thoughtfully, so to speak, rationally…” “The psychiatric ward, Sokrat Ivanovich,” Hirkavyi interrupted him, lit up, offered his pack of cigarettes to his interlocutors, “is Z, joined to the USSR. To a country that doesn’t exist and never did. The psychiatric ward is the Russian World that has destroyed all that was previously called Z-land. The psychiatric ward is the grey people with their mousy fussing, the drunk Cossacks,

The Length Of Days: An Urban Ballad

247

mercenaries, lawless people of all kinds, Russian advisors with protruding eyes. It’s the cellars where people who aren’t guilty of anything are tortured. Portraits of Stalin in the middle of town. Armored personnel carriers that drive along city avenues at full speed and regularly crush people to death. Making money on humanitarian aid. Irresponsible republic leaders with elementary-school educations. Everywhere and in every direction—monstrous lies. A world with no future,” Hirkavyi sighed heavily. “I’ll tell you true, Sokrat Ivanovich, unlike you, I didn’t accept the Maidan. From here, in Z, it looked like crap. All those torchlight marches, guys from the interior troops set on fire, all that folksy rhetoric, shuck your mother—it sounded lousy. And please note, the political leaders of the Maidan didn’t get anything done then, and they’ve done nothing now. So far it’s just crap, Sokrat. And, what’s more, Soviet crap in its essence. Maybe there’s something I don’t understand, but the nationalists in the volunteer battalions look more honest. At least they don’t try to persuade people to choose Europe.” He was quiet for a minute. “By the way, all that has nothing to do with me. Is it our concern? Let them keep on thinking themselves.” Hirkavyi exhaled smoke through his nostrils, looking at Gredis under his brows. “All the more since now we have no room for life in Z.” Vasilii smiled sadly. “If I could still choose, I would choose Kyiv. Now I would even go to do battle for it. But it’s too late to choose sides.” He laughed. “The Dills are bastards, of course. Fascists to the marrow of their bones. But at the same time, note, they’re making war for Ukraine. While on our side, bastards on vacation fire on their own people or on the enemy without a twinge of conscience,” he waved a hand. “And they

248

Volodymyr Rafeyenko

take it out on everyone. Older brothers, their mother!” Hirkavyi waved again. “Here’s what I’ve realized. Russia, Sokrat Ivanovich, was never our older brother, but a sickly younger sister. In the medical sense, actually. She’s insane, Russia. That’s probably why she’s holy. But what do I do now?! What should we all do?! Everything’s polluted, deceived, dumped out into the mud. Z, in essence, has been raped. And it wasn’t the Right Sector that robbed our enterprises. It wasn’t the Ukroes who looted our suburbs. They weren’t the ones who ruined the girls here.” He waved a hand. “Just don’t you think! I don’t have a gram of illusions. I know the Ukroes have definitely done all those things somewhere there, in other places. And the rational universe will never forget all that for us. But here, in my city, it was the Russian World that caused the lawlessness! And I’ve fixed that in memory forever. I won’t go over to the other side,” he smiled sadly, “but I’ll never be able to live here. My soul is in pain, Sokrat Ivanovich. These marvels have turned me inside out. Stood me on my head. And I realized that it’s not a matter of who you’re for, but of what kind of person you are. And if you’re an honest fella then, at the least, you won’t let your little homeland be raped. And if that’s how it came out, you do all you can to fix things. If you want to know, Sokrat, you’re my last hope! The last one. And it pains me to kill you, but I also can’t permit you to survive. Understand? So what if you’re a Dill in the depths of your soul…” “Vasilii Yakovlevich…” “Don’t interrupt me, bathhouse man! And your friend the latent Dill. You infected Slava with this infection too. But what’s to be done, you’re a righteous person and you read thick books. You’re good people. Therefore, you have

The Length Of Days: An Urban Ballad

249

to be put to death. We absolutely must deprive you of life so Z will have a chance. Understand, for god’s sake, I can’t allow myself to be merciful.” “It’s the ruthless Russian Z,” Veresaiev chanted, “no other kind can possibly be.” “Possibly,” Hirkavyi agreed, “it does look strange. But I do this in the name of the future. Precisely so that a different kind of Z will arise from the foam of nonbeing. Not a Russian one, not Soviet, some kind of separate one, mine…” “Ukrainian, maybe?” Veresaiev grinned. “And why are you baring your teeth,” Hirkavyi shrugged gloomily, “maybe Ukrainian, too. But then so Ukraine becomes different.” “Free, powerful, democratic?” Veresaiev clarified mockingly. “In any case, without the Cossack trousers, the endless choirs and folk-dance collectives,” Vasilii wanted to add something but, glancing at his watch, lost interest in the conversation. “In short, boys and girls, are you ready for a forced transfer into a world that is different and Ukrainian?” “Hang on a second,” Gredis jumped up from his place. “Let’s suppose that we do everything necessary and then, contrary to common sense, we return to Z. What then, Vasilii Yakovlevich?! Console me, tell me there’s a plan.” “Uh-huh,” Veresaiev nodded. “That’s the most important thing. What are we meant to do once we arrive with The Kobzar and Ganesh? What to feed, what to scratch? Maybe it’s simpler to smoke something? Where are we to stash the elephant in the embroidered shirt, so that everyone in Ukraine has it easier?”

250

Volodymyr Rafeyenko

“Hell knows, Sokrat Ivanovich.” Hirkavyi also rose from his place and knocked briefly at the door. “I have no useful thoughts on this score. All right, rabbits, it’s time! Time to serve the well-being of enlightened fucking humanity.” “He who serves the wind will be paid in smoke,” Liza Eleonora said softly. “What I wonder,” grumbled Veresaiev, “will humanity ever do us a service?” The lock jingled and the door flew open. Karas and his men led the three captives along a long winding corridor. Vasilii walked in the back, rubbing the crown of his head, not conscious of the fact that for the last five minutes he had been moaning barely audibly. “I’m frightened,” Liza Eleonora laughed, when they lined them up against the red brick wall. “My legs are even buckling.” “It’s nothing, girl,” Sokrat tousled her hair. “You heard Vasilii Yakovlevich. He’s promised us nothing less than an entertaining adventure.” “There is no death,” said Veresaiev. “How can we, honored workers of the public bathhouses, not know that?” “An elementary transfer from being to nonbeing should not provoke fear in a mature personality,” Sokrat said pensively. “Yet, nonetheless, it does provoke,” Hirkavyi grinned. “Right, professor?” “No,” Gredis smiled, “I’m not afraid of death. I’m afraid of transformations. After all it’s not for nothing they say: Not all of us will die, but we’ll all change.” It was June, July, December, January, September, and August. In general, it looked like not bad weather.

The Length Of Days: An Urban Ballad

251

Warm clouds sailed above the execution yard. The wind bore spiderwebs and the sounds of a gramophone tango. A dozen ravens, occupying the best places on the old elm’s branches, saw the public service workers on their way, going off into night for the sake of the light. Hirkavyi allowed them each one cigarette. They smoked without looking at one another. Liza Eleonora laughed a bit at something, but tears were flowing down her cheeks. Puffs of smoke flew here and there. The smells of the earth and leaves made their heads spin. Then the shots rang out. Rat-a-tat-a-tat. Tibby-doktibby-dak. Sokrat fell first. Veresaiev lay down second. But then Liza Eleonora, of course, escaped that lot. Fate is well-disposed to good girls. An enormous black dog leapt as if from underground, pulled her onto its back, and jumped through a wide-open window into one of the dark, echoing corridors of the prison. “We can’t go there!” Liza shouted. “Don’t be afraid,” Plato smiled. “Bronze Blogger will stand with his sword until death, and all your dolls with him. All the pills are flushed down the toilet. All the drawings are painted black. All the drops of blood are merely drops of rain.” “But there are stone cages in there, where they kill people!” “Don’t fear, our path is into the depths of Z. Nothing is a barrier for us. Hold on tight! Don’t be afraid of the miners. Bow to the Nibelungs. Send all the rest, Lizka, to doggy hell.” The stone walls, creaking tensely, parted before them. Liza Eleonora saw marvelous unseen ancient cities,

252

Volodymyr Rafeyenko

muddled labyrinths, the larvae of miners and their industrial womb, rotating within an enormous crystal pyramid, the pulsating balls of the Nibelungs, underground oceans of the purest water and burning rivers of molten elements from Mendeleev’s periodic table. Before her opened ancient Hades with its deserted wide avenues, old posters, signs, newspapers, theatrical performances. The skeletons of abandoned palaces, museums, collective farms, concert halls, houses of folk culture. Devil-junkmen were playing poker, smoking hookahs. Their stone horses stood not far away, soaking up the warmth. Plunged into flight, the young woman began to fall asleep, but suddenly light hit her eyes. Liza tossed her head and laughed. Ice cream was melting in her right hand. Her left hand was chilled by a bottle of beer. And right in front of her, swaying slightly, stood Sokrat and Nikolai, hugging each other.

*** The dragon walks along Bankova Street. A column of fire blazes from its ears and nose. His chocolate balls drag along the cobblestones, wrapped in silver foil. The tail travels separately, arranged on the chassis of a Mercedes S-600. By the dragon’s right wing stands a blue bunny in a jacket, with a carrot, a cracked English pince-nez and a mayonnaise jar of cocaine. He’s bad-tempered, a neurasthenic, but not without a tendency to repentance. By the dragon’s left wing is a melancholy pastor with the head of an owl. In one claw is a cross, in the other—a sniper’s rifle. Behind the dragon, at some distance, a white wolf strides proudly but distrustfully, with a red swastika on its chest. Sinister brass music sounds. No

The Length Of Days: An Urban Ballad

253

fewer than a thousand invisible musicians are enlivening the anxious, although fabulous, narrative. Raspberry flashes burst above the monastery. The horrifyingly loud music suddenly passes into a moan. Then a thunderous but at the same time confiding voice announces that the heroes—the Philosopher, the Alchemist, and the Halfwit Girl, invisible in the darkness—must find and kill the bad pig serpent with the four hundred and fifty heads. The pig serpent lives under a certain building on Hrushevskyi Street. It comes out into daylight for only two weeks after the Birthday of Christ in the form of a children’s carousel. Every year at the end of December it appears, no one knows from where, on Sophia Square. The little carousel is lively, smartly fitted out, it spins and twirls. If a child gets on it, that child immediately becomes a corrupt official and pedophile (not to be confused with gays). To stop the fatal carousel, you have to kill the old man caretaker, and also commit to flames the wooden horses, the funny little decorated steamships, the amusing zebras and bears, the pedophile giraffes, wolves and hippopotamus with protruding eyes and businesses in Moscow. Speaking honestly, all this musical tabernacle, playing all kinds of trash to Ukrainian children, should long ago have been burned to the devil’s grandmother. The caretaker is by the carousel. If he’s killed correctly, death will fall onto all the other heads. Simplest of all to do it with a “Bounty” chocolate bar, which translates to “heavenly pleasure.” But it’s still not clear how to force the caretaker to gobble down that shit. So it’s most correct first to douse the marquee, horsies and other wooden assholes, which hide the other guises of the pig serpent under themselves, with gasoline from the evil Lookoil

254

Volodymyr Rafeyenko

company.* Then get a 1933 Zippo lighter. Light up a Marlboro cigarette. Take a few puffs, glance at the sky and, finally, set the spinning monster on fire. In medieval descriptions of the Eleusinian mysteries, the part concerning the rites of Telesterion, it says that the lighter need not be tossed into the fire, although that does look effective. Best of all to quietly put the Zippo into your pocket and calmly finish smoking the cigarette. People with the nerve to burn up the pig serpent’s carousel aren’t allowed to survive. So better to save the collectible item for a future life. The moment the pig serpent dies, the bunny will become affectionate, the owl an atheist, the dragon will become honest, and the noble, sorrowful Naziwolf will repent of the minor but horrifying crimes it has committed and help the heroes to bring back to Z the heart of the province that does not beat without it: a golden borsht, platinum pierogi, sad silvery Sosiura, Prokofiev of the Emerald City, or naked diamond Khanzhonkov. One or the other mystical artifact should be buried at a depth of five meters under golden Solovianenko, erected on Theater Square. However, insuperable difficulties arise on the heroes’ path. One by one they are obliged to give their lives for the sake of fulfilling their metaphysical duty. First to perish is the Philosopher. At the time of vesperal lustration, the chandelier of the Kyiv Opera falls on him with its whole damp, foul-smelling carcass. It takes him into itself, smacking, belching, and moaning a bit. The Alchemist gives his life covering Ganesh—a lilliput with a penis long as a trunk, decorated in the colors of the state flag— with his chest. Only the heroine remains alive. She feels her strength running out. Her heart pounds laceratingly.

The Length Of Days: An Urban Ballad

255

Victory seems right at hand. She’s already home, on the threshold of Z. Just a tiny bit more and the war will end, people will cease to perish, the USSR will sink into the gloom of nonbeing, greedy and rapacious Russia, the brainless jellyfish of hell, will twitch and spring back from the borders of Ukraine. European values will prevail. Well, or at least common sense and the laws of physics. But here, out of the darkness appears the silhouette of a dillweed lad. His brow is pale, his eyes black and red, bottomless, his movements are insinuating. His Cossack trousers swing in time with his steps, his Cossack forelock is black and shows up strangely against his green skull. “Hullo-hullo, you little liberal bitch,” he says to Liza Eleonora in the purest Ukrainian and gets a sickle out of his pants, leaving the hammer untouched for now. “Let’s see whether your heart is Ukrainian. Let’s find out where the real root of treason is in Ukraine. Let’s have a talk about principles, about liberties and rights.” “And what’s wrong?” the heroine breaks out in perspiration. “Everything’s wrong,” the green fella shrugs his shoulders. “So tell me first: did our lads perish, so that you could bury our splendid silver Sosiura in the cursed Z-soil? Then explain why the word ‘Jew’ and the word ‘Europe’ are so similar. Look, it’s ‘Jew’ and ‘Eu-,’ you’ve noticed that before, right? And they say a dillweed guy has no idea about culture,” he laughs softly. “Perhaps I haven’t read Thomas Aquinas, to hell with him, that Muscovite. But this cursed ‘Eu-’, the ancient debate of the Slavs among themselves, rubs my soul raw. Is that pure coincidence, what do you think?” “What precisely?!” Liza asks, convulsively twitching her shoulders.

256

Volodymyr Rafeyenko

“This, young woman,” he strokes his forelock with his fingers. “Doesn’t all that ‘Eu-’ mean that the Jews founded Europe? Or maybe, hang on,” he lifts an index finger, “on the contrary, Europe bore the Jews in order to send them to us in the form of humanism, pacifism, cosmopolitism, gay parades, leftists, and certain, dammit, political figures? Let’s touch on this problem, baby. And then we’ll move on to literature. We’ll discuss, for example, the poetics of Andrukhovych from the point of view of self-consciousness and postmodernist cynicism. We’ll talk, fricking bitch, about genital literature. And to help you think more easily, now I’ll tell you how this sickle works…” “Oh Lord!” Liza woke up, breathing hard, sat up in bed. She looked woozily out the window. Three p.m. From the kitchen came the voices of Gredis and Veresaiev. This dream again. Every time she fell asleep after lunch in Kyiv, Liza Eleonora had the same horrible dream. Gredis considered it prophetic. Veresaiev thought it was stupid. Damp from sleep, she flip-flopped to the bathroom. She stood a long time under the water, which smelled thoroughly of chlorine and bad pipes. If not for the orange shampoo, she couldn’t have tolerated this smell. The mayor of the capital talked about how you could drink the water in Kyiv right out of the tap. Liza wanted just once to give him a nice filling drink of it. Right out of his boxer’s gloves. But Liza Eleonora is small and defenseless, whereas the mayor is big and talented. You can’t get away with forcing him to drink water straight from the tap. So for now it works out to be the exact opposite. “Lizka, it’s time to go!” Gredis tapped on the door. “Eleonora, we’re tired of your sloppiness,” Veresaiev bleated in a goat voice, making fun of himself. “You’re

The Length Of Days: An Urban Ballad

257

a lousy broad. I seem to remember that when you were crazy you were a lot more modest, more orderly. But now somehow it’s all wrong.” As Hirkavyi had warned, Sokrat and Nikolai were changing greatly, both externally and internally. And, unfortunately, these changes left a lot to be desired. Veresaiev was becoming a goat and a cynic, with insanity certainly peeking out behind his cynicism. Sokrat was drying up, drinking too much, turning into an old lizard that disbelieved not only in Z, but even in his own existence. Liza thought about how the time allotted to them was running out. Soon, soon Veresaiev would turn into a goat, while Gredis would be a powerless old man, a Komodo lizard that didn’t remember its own name. “Every day we go searching for the fricking elephant!” Veresaiev continued grouching at the door. “And you yourself snooze until noon! What good does that do? I would understand if it were a noble demand that spoke in you, conditioned by love or, at worst, by physiology…” “Kolya, shut up,” Gredis frowned. “Lizka! Are we going to look for the elephant today or not? Kolya’s right, by the way. Your habit of napping after noon doesn’t improve our chances.” Eleonora turned off the water, wrapped herself in a towel. Spent a minute looking in the mirror. After living through death, she had gotten prettier. Her gaze had acquired an unprecedented meaningfulness. Her bust had grown, her hips had rounded, a waist had appeared, while her stomach had shrunk. Striking changes. It turned out that in Kyiv she didn’t need the pills. And now she had not menstruation, but the nocturnes of Frederic Chopin.

258

Volodymyr Rafeyenko

“Death does young women good,” Liza Eleonora uttered instructively. They came out of the entryway and set off for the stop where a bus would take them to the metro. Just like dozens of times before this. A trio of migrants in search of Ganesh. Hirkavyi, it seems, had given them the wrong address. There was no little shop called “Shiva-Vyshivata” on such-and-such street in Kyiv. And where it was, no one knew. And Liza did not know how to solve this problem. On the street, as always, she felt her head spinning. Kyiv had a narcotic effect on her. On its avenues she would lose her sense of reality, which was already exceedingly shaky. Actually, none of the migrants they were meeting could boast of particular sanity. They all felt as if they were living a life that wasn’t their own. Every time, after coming out of the building and making sure that he was, that’s right, in Kyiv, Veresaiev would attempt to speak about his feelings. “You understand, Liza,” he reasoned on the way to the bus stop, “there’s a feeling as if the train of my life before the war has departed. Just like that. And in a way that the devil knows where it’s headed—it’s a completely different train, to which for some reason they’ve gone and attached my car.” “More or less a freight train,” said Gredis. “You understand?” Nikolai wrinkled his forehead. “And now I’m riding along like this somehow. Somehow never in the direction I was headed in before…” “So, maybe it’s not that bad?” “Who knows,” he shrugged. “I don’t know where I was headed, Lizka! And even less—where I’m headed now. So, maybe it’s not bad, but it’s hard.” He was quiet for a bit,

The Length Of Days: An Urban Ballad

259

looking at her curves. “So here’s what I mean. Would you take pity on me in a female way, eh? Think yourself, if we’ve already died, all the same, what difference does it make? And I’ll come to terms with Sokrat. He can go out on a walk for a few minutes.” “Idiot,” said Liza Eleonora and, tipping her head back, looked at the high Kyiv sky. “You don’t understand my soul, Lizka!” Veresaiev announced and lit a cigarette. “And what is there to understand?” Gredis growled. “Don’t mix vodka with port wine, Kolya, and your train will head where it’s meant to.” “Don’t act as if everything’s in order that way with you,” Nikolai sneered. “Could be, the right hemisphere and the left have headed off in different directions? Don’t hide it, professor! Be a man, look the bitter truth in the eye!” “Well,” Sokrat shrugged, “since the beginning of the occupation I’ve had a most uncomfortable sense of the world’s megavariativity. I thought it was something like a psychological disturbance. But in Kyiv that sense has gotten a hundred times stronger. So I can allow that Z at some moment shifted into some specific invariant of reality.” “That is?” “Instead of becoming the industrial nucleus of a single, free, independent Ukraine, we smoothly, but at the same time suddenly, wound up screwed. I think the doom of the Wild Fields revealed itself that way. That is, our own fate, to which we were always condemned. By the way, these rationalizations hardly have any practical sense. You’ll find a lot of sensible people who would raise an objection to me on the spot…” “What precisely?”

260

Volodymyr Rafeyenko

“They’ll say that the Z-residents themselves, and consequently you and I, summoned the war, the Colorado beetles, the dillweed boys, the phantoms of Rosa Luxemburg, the twenty-six commissars of Baku, Sacco and Vanzetti, and all the other filth into their home. The saddest thing is that I don’t know how to answer without insulting them.” “But, in my opinion, it does make sense,” Veresaiev sighed. “Something in this vein happened to me a hundred years ago. Imagine, I was hurrying to my first wedding. A long-distance train. A compartment with rugs and curtains. A vestibule stinking of smoke. A dining car. Soviet cognac. I raced through time and space like a meteor, thinking about life. I would take stock, I would run out onto the platform to have a smoke. I spoke with the people of my country. You won’t believe, in those years I was handsome as a young Apollo. Many young women eagerly spent the best moments of their intimate lives with me, about which, of course, this is not the time or place. In general, a bachelor’s tour-future. Bras and panties, I swear to you, were lying all over the whole train car. To be honest, a frenzy in late rococo style…” “Like Apollo, that is?” Gredis clarified. “Exactly!” Kolya nodded. “And then one time I wake up, I look—the sun is sliding past noon out the window. The train car is dozing at some kind of dead end. I go out, I look around—nobody. Brimstone butterflies are fluttering over the tracks. Long shadows from the forest. The smell of creosote and heated ties. Far away the cry of the evening commuter train. Empty and nice. Beautiful. The strangest thing is—my little suitcase was still with me. And no one had stolen my wallet. In some

The Length Of Days: An Urban Ballad

261

incomprehensible way the car in which your humble servant was sleeping had gotten uncoupled from the train. And everything vanished, like a dream. The whole trip. I barely made it back home.” “So you didn’t make it to the wedding?” asked Sokrat, closely watching the numbers of the buses that ceaselessly arrived and departed from the stop. “Why? I got there, of course, just not that time and not with that woman. By the way, do you remember how long we’ve been living here and where?” “Where is clear. Donetska Street, near Sevastopol Square, Kyiv. Apparently, we’re renting the apartment. But from whom and on what money—that truly is a riddle… I’d like a bit of vodka,” Sokrat added beside the point and licked his cracked lips. Liza sighed heavily. “It’s all because we keep living one single day,” Veresaiev nodded, convinced. “And it’s not as if nothing changed. Each day is not similar to another.” “Yes,” Gredis agreed, “except that these distinctions don’t bring much joy. The days, formally speaking, are various. You never know what’s waiting out the window.” “Exactly!” Veresaiv grinned. “Today is Monday, but tomorrow is right away Friday.” “Or Thursday,” said Liza. “Or Thursday,” Sokrat agreed. “Kyiv time isn’t suited to life, and you can throw the Gregorian calendar right to hell.” “I sleep after lunch because here day and night come when they see fit,” Liza admitted. “I get horribly exhaus­ ted from that. Sometimes three evening pass in a row without a break: say, Wednesday, Friday and Sunday

262

Volodymyr Rafeyenko

evenings, and then they line up at noon. And then night won’t come for a whole week.” The bus that flung its doors open before them turned out to be empty. They rode the whole way to the metro in silence. At times it seemed to Liza that the outlines of Z came through in a fog in the ditch to the right and left of the road. Then it got to be truly dreary and frightening. And she felt like jumping out of the bus, to run back to Z, to the familiar streets and alleys. To that time before the war was there. When all our people were alive, and old lady Khatkina celebrated every autumn. It was hard to convince yourself that there was no such thing in the world and never would be again. The fabric of reality was tearing. Kyiv and Z seemed about to wind up in one unimaginable space. And then there would be no one to save. They had to hurry. But how could you hurry if the days, months, and seasons of the year in that city switched off in a chance way, in random order? Looking out the window, Liza sensed that their quest for Ganesh was doomed to failure. Of course, they still couldn’t give up. In the end, she had preserved her memory, and that obligated her. Besides that, Gredis and Veresaiev, though in reduced form, were still with her for now. And that meant there was a chance. They had to wander around Kyiv to the point of tears and trembling hands. To kiss its streets, trees, churches, icons, stars, and the windows of the buildings. To look into the wind, to catch eaves and spiderwebs with their lips, to get lost in countless little shops and holes-in-the-wall. Drink tea with antique booksellers and habitués of flea markets. To know by heart the souvenirs of the Andriivskyi Descent. To memorize every

The Length Of Days: An Urban Ballad

263

turn, dead end, passage and step. To listen to the echo of other people’s entryways, to sleep, with hands folded behind their heads, on the steep slopes of old roofs. To wager life itself on the search for the elephant in the embroidered shirt, without which this war would never end. At the same time, the allotted times were coming to an end. With each day the invisible but implacable pig serpent crept closer to them. Its messengers were always elbowing next to them, and the air smelled more and more distinctly of fatback. The woman on the corner selling individual cigarettes. The cyclist on a stylish bicycle. The photographer on the boulevard. The bartender in a pub. An accidental fellow-traveler in the metro. Any of them could look at you with the eyes of the ancient serpent. Every day could become the last in the series of Kyivan days. Sokrat and Veresaiev didn’t believe in Ganesh and The Kobzar. And it was only because Gredis couldn’t explain how he had wound up in Kyiv and Veresaiev had one night remembered the little Z-courtyard for executions, surrounded by lindens, they didn’t doubt Liza’s metaphysical authority. For now, the young woman wasn’t thinking at all about the beggar reading The Kobzar on his knees, since she considered that he would appear by himself when his hour came.

*** Sunday morning dawned right after a dank December Tuesday. There weren’t many people on Khreshchatyk. Music came from all around. Traffic was blocked. Three hundred meters or so from the metro, children not dressed for the weather were playing active games.

264

Volodymyr Rafeyenko

A public of flâneurs. You could see your breath. Booths of the political parties. Cafés, little restaurants. Flags. New police cars. Behind a low fence twenty-five people or so are rolling a sad man in an elegant fur coat, a suit and tie, around in a dumpster. A fur hat lies some distance away. Beats bang on the trash can, incomprehensible slogans are shouted. The poster—“Lustration is not castration. Go through it once and you’re free”—exhaustively explains the essence of what is going on. “Lord!” Veresaiev slapped Gredis on the shoulder. “What a beauty, this Kyiv of ours. So what, Sokrat Ivanovich, will we ogle the babes or go right to the sauna?” “I don’t even know,” Gredis smiled weakly, “and have we been walking for a long time?” “Look for yourself what time it is!” Veresaiev showed the face of his watch. “First clients in two hours. Maybe they’ll come with babes, what do you think? Last time they were super cute. Especially that one with legs like Ganesh’s…” “The clients are a holy thing,” the professor agreed. “Only I can’t remember anything at all. It’s just a disaster. You say we’ve been in Kyiv for a long time?” “Right now you don’t need to remember anything,” Liza spoke up energetically. “We’re heading toward Podil, to the sauna. The benches are unwashed, the steam room’s unheated. You both reek like skunks.” “You’re right,” sighed Gredis. “We have to hurry, because they’ll say that migrants don’t want to work.” “God’s own truth,” Veresiev sighed. “Guilty of all Ukrainian misfortunes. Alcoholics, spongers, sex addicts...” “Vatniks,” Sokrat joined in.

The Length Of Days: An Urban Ballad

265

“There’s no vata* worse to see / than people who have fled from Z,” Nikolai declaimed. “With rituals and wild dances, they summoned the DH-adversary from the depths of hell. We speak in the tongue of the enemy, that is, of Skovoroda, Shevchenko, Hohol.” “Russian is a great tongue,” Gredis nodded. “But gloomy. Devilishly attractive. An abyss that has no bottom. Don’t trust it. It will deceive, seduce, give hope, then in the end tear it from your hands. It will set you up as an idiot, an evildoer, an outlander. And in the end, it will inevitably say: get out, scoundrel, you’re unworthy of me.” “Between us,” Veresaiev pressed his hand to his heart, “if we’re speaking about tongues, then personally I prefer calf tongue…” “No, hang on, Kolya,” Gredis interrupted him. “All the same it’s a surprising thing. You know I have a persistent feeling that I’m not a vatnik. Rather, to express it in a more cultured way…” “A patriot?” “That’s right, something of that kind,” Sokrat nodded. “Of course, not in the sense that’s accepted…” “I understand, Sokrat Ivanovich.” “I don’t really know why,” Gredis massaged the back of his head a bit. “But it seems to me that merely by standing here alive I’ve done something good for the country! I understand, it’s funny, but my heart rejoices. And partly even sort of feels pride in the fact of its own being. You’ll say, senile idiotism?! So what, maybe that too!” the professor massaged his temples with his fingers. “I, Sokrat Ivanovich,” Veresaiev took him by the arm, “have just the same feelings! And why are you lost in thought, Liza?”

266

Volodymyr Rafeyenko

“Move your buns,” the young woman advised. Several tough guys with pig ears and tiny eyes were observing them from a dark blue minivan with tinted windows. A plump cultured lady in glasses, sitting in the Chocolate Café, was not studying the page of War and Peace that lay open before her so much as Gredis and Veresaiev. All Liza had to do was narrow her eyes and the lady started to resemble a pig in ruffles. The young woman felt her pulse start beating in her neck. Liza Eleonora loved Lev Tolstoy terribly, but at the same time felt that today the pig serpent was especially dissatisfied with the migrants who had wound up in the very center of its domain. Any of the passersby could turn out to be one of its heads. And then… What then? Liza thought, wiping off perspiration. Death? But, I fear, death is no longer for us. So, life? Swinish life by swinish laws? Can they really force us to that? But if not, what makes me feel that this day is the last? After all, we’ve done nothing at all! We haven’t found anyone, haven’t rescued, haven’t read, haven’t scratched the tummy! We’ve only managed to feel like helpless children and to lose faith in our own powers. “We’re turning left!” she shouted, and the men obeyed her. “Here’s what I think,” Veresaiev continued after turning the corner. “Kolya is a chemist, a writer, a person. Kolya, by the way, is fifty-five, and he lives in this country. What am I supposed to prove, and to whom? To be alive and genuine, Sokrat, that’s what comprises the only work of a human being! To become a homo, pardon me, sapiens, in the concrete place where God put you—that’s the work of a whole life. Though not as simple as it seems to the Ministry of Culture. To be able to speak at least some language, to create. To love broads, finally…”

The Length Of Days: An Urban Ballad

267

“Kolya, we’re getting fed up with your talk of the bro­ ads,” Gredis shook his head. “Or at least to love drinking and poetry,” Veresaiev corrected. “To look at the stars. In the end, is a person for the state or is the state for a person? For what is that to us, excuse me, the state? We can make war even without any kind of state, build, write poems, love broads, forgive me, Sokrat, but without them life’s no life. There’s a sensation that Ukrainians need a modern realm exclusively so they can say to other peoples: Look, dammit, we built one too! And you thought we wouldn’t build it?! Go fuck yourselves!” “Hand on my heart, Sokrat, our people are making war now, birthing and feeding themselves not thanks to the state, but in spite of it. No, I’m not saying anything!” Veresaiev raised his hand and would certainly have tumbled into traffic if Liza hadn’t held him back. “If that’s the accepted way in international practice, for that same state to be, then let it be. The hell with it! But what’s the point of its interests here? What kind of fricking interests can it have? A state, in my view, is something like a vacuum cleaner. Its business is to work, not to have interests. It’s a mechanism, dammit! A mechanism, I say to you as a chemist and a masseur. But here this mixer, see, acts as if it is the Lord—forgive me—God. Understand, finally, I’m not obligated to love a juicer! And no normal people are obligated to. People—they’re the main and only value! People! Well, and women of course,” Nikolai added, smiling shyly. “For sure, for sure,” Gredis grinned sarcastically. “And a nation—what is that, too?” Nikolai got heated again. “You, for instance, are Lithuanian. And I, let’s say, am a chemist. And we’re both citizens of Ukraine. I see

268

Volodymyr Rafeyenko

no contradiction in that. To each his own, as the ancient Greeks would say…” “The Romans, if we’ve come that far.” “I couldn’t care less if it were the Egyptians, professor! The nation was a good thing in Napoleonic times, but what is it now? To my mind, now the people are important!” He lifted up a long finger, yellow from tobacco. “And a people—what is that? It’s all of us, for instance, without discriminating. That is, such awkward, ridiculous, silly children of Ukraine, each loving her in their own way. And what is our country itself? Not the Rada, not the president’s administration, not the territory. And, of course, not a political party, or a blood type. And least of all a family tree! We aren’t dogs, after all, Sokrat Ivanovich, are we?! Aren’t we some sort of people?” “You’re talking banalities, Kolya,” Gredis frowned. “No, hang on! How was it you said it there? Life after death! That’s what Ukraine is. It’s our souls! It’s Paradise, which as everyone knows is either in you or not in you. An unfading light!” “Well, and broads, of course,” Sokrat added, grinning. “And I, for example, am offended.” Veresaiev missed the sarcasm. “They say: ethnic Ukrainians, ethnic Ukrainians. Simply some kind of white man’s burden, dammit. But there is, for example, a mass of Jews who love Ukraine.” “Really?” Sokrat lifted his eyebrows. “That’s news to me. I never would have thought.” “Well, you’re wrong,” Veresaiev shrugged. “They love it! They sing the anthem when it’s appropriate and when it isn’t. Sometimes they risk their lives. They’re tormented for this country, and they suffer and even cry at times.”

The Length Of Days: An Urban Ballad

269

“Don’t you dare start weeping here, right here on Volodymyrska,” Gredis nodded. “They haven’t seen a circus like that in Kyiv for a long time.” “I’m not going to weep. But listen here, they say nation, language. But you take a look even at the Russian World…” “I don’t want to look at it,” Sokrat frowned. “I had my fill of looking. But here’s what I’ll say to you. You, Kolya, are a skirt-chaser and a rootless cosmopolitan. By the way, I myself sometimes feel a desire to wash my hands.” Sokrat made a face. “People who throw grenades in downtown Kyiv, who announce that it’s genetic trash inhabiting the east of the country—that’s too much even for me. That’s why I’m professional philosopher.” “Hard times,” Veresaiev sighed. “People have post-traumatic shock and lack a sense of humor.” “Stop moaning, girls!” Liza spoke up. “We’re crossing the road!” “What would we do without you?” Veresaiev spoke affectionately and tried to pinch Liza on the buttock. “Veresaiev, you’re going to get one in the mug!” Eleonora promised. “Kolya, really, don’t let yourself go,” Sokrat commented. “It’s not for you the berry grows.” “Well, this berry of yours has ripened, I’m afraid it’ll drop!” After half an hour, when they turned the corner onto Kontraktova not far from the Pyrohoshcha Dormition of the Mother of God Church, they noticed a ragged little man, kneeling, with a piece of cardboard spread under him. Glancing from time to time at the sky, he read under his breath:

270

Volodymyr Rafeyenko It’s hard, so hard to live Like a motherless child. With no one to turn to As if waiting to drown. Better that than endless moping When you’re so far from home. For some the cup is always full For me it’s always missing. Everyone knows you if you’re rich, While I’m not even noticed.**

His voice was hoarse. He read quietly and without expression, not counting at all on anyone hearing him. Not for any purpose, but because. Sokrat and Nikolai were moved by the figure, on his knees without fear or reproach. They stopped, began listening to the verses. Liza, of course, understood that this was that very same person Hirkavyi had told them about. And The Kobzar in his hands was that same Kobzar without which Z would come to an end. But what to do? If she ripped the greasy little book out of that beggar’s hands, Gredis and Veresaiev would be the first to turn her over to the police. “What poetry!” Veresaiev swept a tear from his cheek and put a bit of money in the beggar’s hat. “It’s hard, so hard to live / Like a motherless child. So you and I, Sokrat Ivanovich, are Z-orphans! Migrants! We could drown ourselves, but bathhouse workers can’t drown.”

** Editor’s note: An excerpt from Taras Shevchenko’s “Dumka” (A Song), 1838. Translation courtesy of George G. Grabowicz.

The Length Of Days: An Urban Ballad

271

“What’s your name, dear man?” Sokrat asked, bending down into the very face of the beggar. “Ivan, yes.” “And have you been reading long?” “I think five years or a bit longer than that,” the beggar spoke up cautiously. “That means, you’re not a migrant,” Veresaiev concluded, “but you look a lot like one.” “We’re all migrants here,” the beggar observed and continued reading. “And what are you reading for?” The beggar lost interest in the conversation. He stared at the book, diligently pronouncing the simple precise words. “Let’s go, Kolya, it’s time already!” Sokrat pulled him away. “I’m coming, I’m coming!” Veresaiev put everything he could dig out of his pockets into the beggar’s hat. “Thank you, my dear man.” “And to you the protection of the Most Holy Mother of God.” You, Ivan Ivanovich, answered softly, pondering whether these were really the people who were supposed to liberate you from your difficult work. Or wait for others? That night, on the eve of Epiphany, when you were conversing with the sagebrush on the Dnipro, you had actually come to the bank in order to hang yourself on a birch tree. So what? A Russian tree, and you’re a Russian man, Ivan Ivanovich, although you wound up in a complicated life situation. At that time, you hadn’t yet overcome your Ural pride. It turned out that it doesn’t go away after death but torments you a hundredfold more harshly. And there’s nothing left to be proud of, but you’re

272

Volodymyr Rafeyenko

still proud! And you’re higher than everyone, Vanya. And you’re smarter than everyone. And suddenly, Ivan Ivanovich, you understood, finally, what comprised the Russian national Zen. You can put a Russian down, beat him up, expel him, kill him, send him by otherworldly post to Kyiv. But he’ll be proud of any of that bullshit. With excrement in his soul and scars on his heart, with hematomas on his honest, Chukhonian mug. And the more excrement and pain, the stronger his certainty that the Russian people are chosen. The grandeur every time is directly proportional to the humiliation the Russian World is bathing in this time around. The first time you knelt down and started reading The Haidamaks (they were the first thing your eyes fell on), you, Ivan Ivanovich, thought about how you had sinned terribly, like your whole great people. But the penance given to you is metaphysically awkward, it humiliates not just you, but all of holy Rus´. It’s unbearable. But then you thought how, dammit, splendid it was. O gods! Simply magnificent! Even kneeling before Father Kyiv, the mother of Russian cities, you felt that your kneeling was the greatest repentance of all those that had ever been carried out in the sublunar world. The defeat became a great breakthrough. A victory that could not be out-vanquished. Mixed with pride, death became a step forward. It was revealed to you that the Russian sense of life lay in the rejection of measure. The Russian World knows no measure at all. And this is its sole standard. The point is the scorn for boundaries. If there’s literature, then it’s the greatest. If there’s a revolution, then it’s the most terrible. First and foremost, for yourselves, by the way. And that provides the main condition.

The Length Of Days: An Urban Ballad

273

Everyone on their knees! But you go into the mud too, to the bottom, into a fuckup that freezes the soul. But if a Russian comes to desire nobility, then those around him better hang themselves. The soul’s splendid impulses will immediately reach the offering of sacrifices. And the Russian will lay himself on the first convenient altar to hand. He’ll turn his soul inside out. Shatter into citations and shards. And all just to present an example of eternal Russian repentant postmodernism. But if the visà-vis before whom the mystery of repentance is carried out, say a Ukrainian, gets weepy and kneels alongside in order to become blood brothers forever, the Russian will take a table knife and up and cut his throat. And not out of evil, but merely from shame and hurt at his own self. As if on purpose, the knife will turn out to be dull. But when have knives in Voronezh or Saratov been sharp? The Russian will cut the Ukrainian’s throat and think about all kinds of nonsense. About the price of carrots, about the most recent scandal in the Duma. About how next year it would be great to vacation in Thailand. About the special traits of Fet’s poetry and about Sergius of Radonezh. He’ll manage to think a bit about Pushkin before turning himself in to the authorities. And, sitting in his cell, he’ll start talking about the stupidity of the khokhol who trusted him. But the following Easter he’ll remember the one who perished blamelessly and undoubtedly get weepy. The old-fashioned Russian amusement—overcoming measure—is as a rule accompanied by a vileness of such grandeur and significance that all the vegetarians of the world may rest calmly. The universum has invented nothing more monstrous than the Russian World, in that sense. All Russians are geniuses, and therefore nobility

274

Volodymyr Rafeyenko

and extreme baseness coexist in them splendidly. Literally to the tune of a mazurka. Today, a Russian listens to DH with tears in his eyes. Tomorrow, when he wakes in the morning, he’ll go set fire to the Kremlin. And if he gets het up enough, he’ll hang his own mother, who voted last month for the party in power. A Russian does not know property. All the things in the world—territories, cultural artifacts, ideas—either belong to him already by sacred right of the holiness of the Russian Land or have accidentally wound up in the wrong hands. There’s no third option. All other cultures are secondary, and only Holy Rus´ alone is primary. Everything that came before it was in actual fact afterwards. And, therefore, you can take someone else’s things and declare them your own, be it Crimea, be it Z, or be it Sodom and Gomorrah, where you risked it and won. You, Ivan Ivanovich, were peeved at the Nibelungs for a long time, but reading poetry calmed your spirit. Finally, you started listening and got into it. So much that you even forgot yourself. For a long time, hope sprang up that you would at some point become a bird. Later that was gone too, and only the city and the text remained. Years have passed since that time. The horrible first year—endless rainy cold evenings. As if there were three hundred days in November, given to you for humility of spirit. You knelt in the water and read the blurring letters in a language that you, Ivan Ivanovich, didn’t know. You read solely because any other action caused you pain. To read precisely this book, precisely while kneeling, precisely under the rain was to an equal extent bitter and healing. The second year turned out harsh. People as similar to you as two peas in a pod beat you up almost every

The Length Of Days: An Urban Ballad

275

day for reading The Kobzar. Similar to that you who had come to Ukraine in order to defend the Russian World. They beat you in a merciless fight precisely because of Shevchenko, not hesitating to inform you of that every time. And sometimes you didn’t manage to crawl back to the cellar where you spent the nights. Then you would go still, rolled up in a ball under the big stars of Kyiv, would fall asleep for a few hours, in order to begin it all over again in the morning. The whole third year you were terribly sick. Worst of all, by that time you had fallen in love with the language, the singing and the nightingale-like tongue. As much as with the poetry of Taras Hryhorovych. For which, of course, you could never forgive yourself. And there, having had your fill of torment with the love awakened for Ukraine, you decided to hang yourself on a birch tree. You came by night to the Dnipro. You decided to wash yourself before death, to pray on your knees, so it would all be right. You started washing your face, and here you were drawn into the very depth. You fell into icy dark water, with no hope of swimming out again. And you unexpectedly saw light. You spoke with someone. But with whom and about what? That you didn’t remember clearly. It seems you called the ones who were fated to free you. They were light, inspired, pure, they read psalms, sang songs. Or they didn’t sing? But in any case, these ones who had passed you just now were grey-haired and smelled bad. Of course, you don’t smell of Chanel No. 5 either. Migrants. And by the way, you remembered suddenly and livened up, didn’t they sort of promise to bring chocolate?

276

Volodymyr Rafeyenko

In the last years of your life—and you really did live in Kyiv for no less than five years, according to your own personal time—you got terribly fond of chocolate. And all because hard liquor wouldn’t go into your throat. The Nibelungs didn’t allow it. All you had to do was buy a bottle of the clear stuff for one of them to appear and reproachfully wave a mossy green finger before your craggy face. And you broke the bottle right away against the stone of the pavement, without even wanting to yourself. Oh, the unbearable Nibelungs. The nights were full of nightmares. Even by day, when you were awake, people you had killed appeared to you. In order not to see their faces, not to feel pain, you had to read The Kobzar. After the first lines of The Haidamaks, the phantoms of the war years would disappear. Even Kyiv would turn flickering, faded, thin, like parchment. And then it seemed to you that in actual fact you were not in Kyiv, but in Jerusalem, in the Old City, two blocks away from the Tomb of Christ. Squatting on your haunches with eyes closed, between the stands selling halvah and the antique shop, listening to the hubbub of the crowd. So you would read for days on end, and you had, one might say, one joy left in life. And you had only asked for a little chocolate. A bunny and a kitty. But perhaps they forgot, if it is them. “But no, it’s them for sure!” suddenly Ivan Ivanovich was certain. “They’re the ones I saw in the wormwood. They’re exactly the ones I spoke with. So there, that means, an end soon to my obedience.” You’ve read your share, Ivan Ivanovich, your share in the hated city of Kyiv, in a language you hated...

The Length Of Days: An Urban Ballad

277

The two grey-haired and hungover men moved away, were lost in the crowd. You opened Shevchenko again and started reading, watering your soul with the sap of the viscous black and red words. Sensing a Magellanic rumble in the clouds of your veins. Rejoicing at the Kyiv frost, which quietly froze your heart, promising a quick and easy death. Three fine lads jumped out of a jeep, grabbed you by the arms and dragged you toward the square. At first you tried to struggle away silently. Then you realized that it was all in vain, that this was the end, and there would be nothing else in your life.

*** The Sauna on Podil was mighty different from the Fifth Rome. Here everything happened in a different way. Snow fell and water flowed differently. It turned into steam in an entirely special way. And the drip sounded different. But, quickly putting themselves and the establishment in order, the three migrants stood decorously at the windows that faced an unknown direction of the world. Lizka looked over her men, cleared her throat and began singing: Audio vocem de mirabilia futuro, Matutinam vocem, rore humidam, Audio vocem, et pericula ventura Turbant mentem, sicut puero cuidam.

And Sokrat and Veresaiev joined in, their voices growing stronger:

278

Volodymyr Rafeyenko Mirabile futurum, ne esto mihi durum, Ne esto mihi durum, ne esto durum. Origine ex pura ad optimum futurum, Ad optimum futurum iam nunc egressus sum.*

After singing the chorus a final time, they fell silent. Sokrat observed, “Lingua latina non penis canis est!” “Not a dog’s dick,” Veresaiev supported him. “And perhaps the anthem, for our souls? ‘Ukraine Has Not Yet…,’ Sokrat, what do you say?!” “We’ll have a drink and sing it at home on Donetska Street. It’s awkward somehow here,” Gredis waved his hand annoyingly. “Think about it yourself, who needs our performance? Who believes in it here? In Kyiv, I’ll tell you, it doesn’t take a lot of smarts to sing this ballad. And you and I have distinctive voices. Why should we start showing off? To enrage the spirits of water and fire? Are you and I not some kind of patriots, Kolya?” “Of course not,” Veresaiev spread his hands. “We’re vatnik cavalry and about us…” “That’s what I’m saying! But when we make it home, we’ll sit down at the table, and we’ll sing it nice and softly. That will be in our own style. Honestly and with feeling. ‘Ukraine Has Not Yet Perished,’ ‘Gaudeamus igitur,’ ‘When I Received the Card,’ ‘Lili Marlene,’ ‘Hey, Falcons,’ ‘Tumbalalaika,’ ‘There Far Away,’ ‘Yesterday,’ ‘We Drink, We Drink for Two or Three, for Three Days’ and various other primordial national hits. I can’t open up as a performer surrounded by these blue-and-yellow tiles, see? It makes me feel queasy. Makes me wanna kill somebody. Or drink some vodka at least.”

The Length Of Days: An Urban Ballad

279

“Are the tiles in Z incomparably better?” Liza Eleonora wondered. “Don’t butt into men’s conversations,” Gredis requested. “Great! You welcome the clients yourselves, and I’ll be right back,” Liza waved a hand and jumped out through the door. In the dressing room she breathed on the icy glass, then at once drew New Year’s and a decorated tree. A Christmas star swung over the square, and the carousel that they should have burned long ago started spinning. The star flickered with a bit of rainbow, sailed along the damp firmament, vanished in the distance. A cow mooed, licked Jesus’s little red face. Joseph grabbed his family and hastily took them to a spa. A tiny Herod started killing infants. The three wise men brought gifts. A new era began. “So it is!” Liza thought. “We’ll meet the holiday today!” With a single movement she smeared the pictures that were moving across the glass. It pricked her palm. Tears came to her eyes. Existence doesn’t like to disappear. She slammed the doors, ran out onto the street into the beginning snow. It was getting precipitously darker. November had turned into December. Only a few hours remained until Christmas. “Wait a bit, little one!” Sokrat shouted out the window, but the maidenly silhouette had already disappeared in the snowy mist. “Just you look, where is she headed?” “Could be anywhere,” Veresaiev gazed out the narrow, grated window, in which flashes and reflections of departing time were dancing. It seemed to him he could hear a woman’s voice in them, calling him by name so tenderly that he had no strength to resist. You’ll never

280

Volodymyr Rafeyenko

find a woman able to call him that way in all Ukraine, and that means it was death. Kolya realized that towards evening he would lose his mind, would go out into the night, and set off after that voice, and there would be no more salvation. Her name was Aurora-Henrietta-Da­nielaEvangeline-Geneviève-Zlata-Irma-Concordia-LolitaMonica-Patricia-Rimma-Sarra-Ulyana-Faina-CzesławaCharlotte-Esther-Judith-Jadwiga, or something like that. She had gigantic eyes, a red mouth, an unbelievable temperament, an excellent sense of the word. German, or rather Jewish. An Austrian, Hungarian, Romanian, French woman. A splendid Ukrainian poet. A Polish philologist. A sharp woman from Wrocław. A barmaid from Košice. A widow from Przemyśl. A skinny actress from Brno. A solitary life and death. The alpha and omega of all aspirations. Her heart was splendid, while her hands smelled of gasoline. Who if not this girl should decide when a man was to step onto the road that leads to the Magellanic Clouds? Nikolai’s lips were trembling. He smiled, trying not to enrage fate with tears. Thought about how his heart was filled full of love, like a candle with fire. Soon flesh and soul would become a single whole. And he would no longer have to distinguish a woman and love. Past and future. Life and death. Home and Ukraine. Sokrat pulled a 150-ml bottle from a box with shaking hands and lifted it to his lips. “Just don’t you tell Lizka!” he requested, and suddenly felt an unprecedented joy from a gulp of ordinary vodka. “Oh, what a holiday!” He smiled with his whole mouth. “What a holiday, Kolya, the devil take it! My heart senses that there will be no clients today.”

The Length Of Days: An Urban Ballad

281

“Why is that?” “It’s time for us to go on. Only what about Liza?!” he fell into thought. “On the other hand, what about Liza? She’s her own person. And then,” he smiled, “the girl will certainly make sense of everything without you and me. So I’m going to drink up now. We’ll take hands and go out to Sophia Square. But first of all, Nikolai, we need to get some gasoline!” “What are you talking about, professor?!” Kolya asked in surprise. “What’s going on, Gredis?’ “It seems,” Sokrat smiled languidly, “that the time for hemlock has come!” “And how shall we drink it?” “However that works out, we’ll drink it to the dregs!” the philosopher answered, took a swallow and smiled blissfully. At the same time, Liza returned to the Church of the Dormition with a sinking heart. Needless to say, the beggar had disappeared. Cold grey air, a bit of grubby snow, hurrying people—there was all that in plenty, but the trail of the madman with The Kobzar had gone cold. More out of despair than in hopes of finding him, Liza started asking the people who were relaxing in the square opposite. “So he’s set up in the little shop by Skovoroda,” explained the same smiling lady who had been reading War and Peace on Khreshchatyk not long before. “Some guys took him off to the side. Maybe they wanted to treat him to kvass? Everyone here treats him to kvass.” “To kvass?!” Liza was surprised. “I was surprised myself,” the lady spread her arms. “What, kvass in December? But he wouldn’t ever drink

282

Volodymyr Rafeyenko

vodka. In any case, as long as he was reading The Kobzar on the square.” Liza’s heart started aching. She didn’t walk—she ran off to Skovoroda. Hryhorii Savych glanced at her sadly and spoke: “However a person, who is the beginning and the end of everything, of every thought and philosophizing, is not at all a physical or in general an empirical person, but an internal person, eternal, deathless and godlike, so do not hope for much in your seeking.” And here she realized that the one who had been reading The Kobzar was dead. She went closer, saw the body of the beggar. For a long time, she couldn’t tear her eyes away from the smile that had frozen on his haggard face. “I greet you, who gaze into The Kobzar!” she said. “May your path be bright and your lot easy.” “And may you not cough either.” “How did they kill you?” “Fatback to the heart.” “The pig serpent?” “The very same.” “What brutality!” “Nonsense, don’t be upset.” Liza started crying and wanted to go. But here she noticed the little volume of The Kobzar lying under the counter. Surprising good luck! Either the people who killed the beggar hadn’t seen the book, or they did not understand all its cultural and metaphysical value. “Glory to thee, our God!” she whispered, grabbed the little volume of verses, stuck it in her side pocket and ran off.

The Length Of Days: An Urban Ballad

283

“A man’s been killed!” someone’s hysterical voice rang out behind her back. “A man’s been killed! That there skinny devil! Stop her!” “That’s right! I saw it myself!” the admirer of Lev Tolstoy took up the cry. “She jabbed him with a little knife! A little knife to the heart! Police! Call the police! What’s going on, citizens, what is Poroshenko looking at?” “Catch the bitch!” cried a multilingual choir, in which Ukrainian and Russian speech interwove in a most surprising harmony. A noisy Kyiv chase set off after Liza. I can’t stop! she thought, although she wanted most strongly of all to fall into the snow, mixed with water, to glance at the sky with eyes senseless from horror and to start wailing. And to accept her lot, whatever it might be. But Liza had no right to that. Too much depended only on her now. But what to do?! I can’t run all the way to the sauna. And even if I make it, what next? flashed in her head. Gredis and Veresaiev don’t remember anything, and if they do remember anything it would be better to forget. If they don’t trample me with their feet, they’ll hand me over to the authorities.And a whole mass of pig-heads work there. They’ll declare us agents of the Kremlin. The truth will come out, sooner or later, but the mission will fail. Sokrat and Veresaiev will go crazy, and I’ll have to go into a monastery or be some asshole oligarch’s press secretary… Her thoughts milled around. Her little heart was thumping. She heard merry provocative shouts, vulgar curses and interjections behind her. The Kyiv rabble, incited by the pig serpent, chased after the girl, feeling frisky in their limbs, explainable both by the cold weather and by cheap vodka, and by the proximity of a major religious holiday.

284

Volodymyr Rafeyenko

The ancient fucking serpent bent its wrinkled bald head over Podil, waving it right and left, its brown eyes looking over the confused little figure that stubbornly did not want to accept defeat. In any case, the deal was done. The old chess master had calculated everything and was certain of the future. In exactly one minute Liza would be hit by a speeding ambulance, driven off to the hospital, then stuck in a traffic jam, and the girl wouldn’t live to see the morning. And the serpent would continue to rule over Kyiv. To suck Ukrainian blood, to fuck the ox, to write filthy things on the walls in entryways, to take bribes, to piss beside the toilet bowl, to pull fast ones, to trust Russia, to listen to prison songs, to practice domestic violence, to hate Russians, to believe sincerely in fascism, to bully gays, to read Ishtar TASS, to raise the language problem and look at child pornography. In short, to rule these fabulous hills in calm and contentment. “Sssssplendid,” hissed papa serpent, and a gust of wind destroyed the roof in part of Drahomanov University. “Miraculoussssss, now we can take a quick nap.” He rolled up in rings, farted, and fell asleep. Meanwhile, Liza sensed that she was doomed, and right in mid-run she started to fall asleep from horror. Her legs refused to move. Her heart threatened to stop, her lungs—to explode. Such a noise arose in her head that it would have done for writing a symphony. Podil fell over onto her and landed in her soul. And Liza stopped caring whether they caught her or not. “Jump on the horse, maiden,” a thunderous voice suddenly rang out somewhere above her, “you can’t escape by yourself!” Liza even ducked slightly from the unexpectedness.

The Length Of Days: An Urban Ballad

285

“Give me your hand! Have no fear! The serpent mob won’t reach you here. In our time we made even better ones outside Moscow!” Liza Eleonora lifted her head and saw that the speaker was none other than Petro Konashevych-Sahaidachnyi,* the Christian Orthodox gentleman from the coat of arms Pobóg of the Przemyśl land, hetman of the Zapo­rizh­ zhian Host, ataman of the Zaporizhzhian Sich, sculpture by Shvetsov, architects Zharikov and Kukharenko. Liza smiled at him trustfully, held out her hands. The next moment she flew up onto the horse, and the high sky rushed up to meet her. She and the hetman flew off under the very heavens. And now not only Kontraktova Square and splendid though dirty Podil lay before her, but all of Kyiv, enormous and unprecedented. They flew high above Ukraine. And pierogies made of stars poured into Lizka’s mouth, which she had to eat with lunar sour cream. A blue kitten was swinging in the Big Dipper, smoking grass, cheering Lizka up and singing little songs exclusively in the Galician dialect. Shevchenko in a Western suit and an Italian straw hat bowed to Yelizaveta from the Magellanic Clouds themselves. Pot-bellied oily Hohol drank an old-fashioned silver charka of vodka to her health, shyly followed it with a pickled mushroom and a cabbage pastry. They landed on an old homestead outside Kulchytsi, close to Sambir itself. The hetman dismounted, led Liza into a low but spacious farmhouse. And she saw a collection of men as manly as they were splendid.* And here were Ivan Boretskyi and Oleksandr Vertynskyi, Andrei Sheptytskyi and Symon Petliura, Taras Shevchenko and Paul Celan, Volodymyr the Great and Lesia Ukraïnka, Ilya

286

Volodymyr Rafeyenko

Repin and Oleh Lysheha. Hryhorii Savych Skovoroda, already seen that day, waved to her in greeting. Mykola Hohol, King Danylo of Galicia (minus horse), works of the sculptors Yarych and Romanovych and the architect Churylo, and Bohdan Silvestrovych Stupka in the role of Orest the Bellringer were playing throwaway at a separate table and drinking homebrew. Serhii Nigoyan was listening to Petro Mohyla’s commentaries on the Gospel according to Luke. Here they ate, drank, laughed, spoke, debated, sang songs, read the poems of Yaroslav the Wise, Sirko, Kozhedub, Konovalets, Dovzhenko, Makhno, Solomea Krushelnytska and Vasyl Stus, Maria Prymachenko and Mykhailo Hrushevskyi. Khmelnytskyi, Kotliarevskyi, Orlyk, Kotsiubynskyi, Mazepa, Sviatoslav Ihorevych and Pavlo Petrovych, Les Kurbas and Oles Honchar, Anna of Kyiv and Golda Meir, Hürrem Haseki Sultan and Anatolii Solovianenko, Volodymyr Dal and Mykhailo Verbytskyi, William Shakespeare and Albert Einstein—all of them were merry and drunk. A thousand guests had gathered in that low little village farmhouse. Some by right of birth, some by right of death. Some had been brought here by blood, and some—by fate. And some had seen the light in the window and dropped in because they were fond of a drink. “Attention, ladies and gentlemen!” Dovzhenko clapped his hands, stepping into the center. “As director of the holiday I declare the night before Christmas open!” Deafening applause rang out. An invisible choir started singing “Many years.” And they sang so loudly that Lizka’s brain almost started leaking out her ears. “Be patient! And don’t look anyone in the eyes,” the hetman advised, leaning down to her very ear. “No matter

The Length Of Days: An Urban Ballad

287

what they say to you, answer Fine, gentle sir. And not a word more. Got it?” “Yes, gentle sir general!” Lizka answered, stunned. “But what is that person saying? Is it really the night before Christmas? Could a whole month have passed since we flew from Kyiv?” “One would think you were opposed?” “What do you mean!” Yelizaveta was embarrassed. “It’s just that I have business in Kyiv. And it has to be done this very night.” “What kind of business could that be?” Lord Konashevych twisted his mustaches and winked at Mazepa. “Mayhap you want to set fire to the carousel that is spinning on Sophia Square?” “How did you know?” she was surprised. “It’s not a big secret! All of us who are gathered here would like to do the same thing, don’t even doubt it!” “But how can I make it there in time if the night has already started? And besides that, I need an elephant in an embroidered shirt! His name is Ganesh.” “Don’t fret!” Sahaidachnyi grinned. “There’s no more time, so there’s nowhere to hurry to. Drink up, have a bite to eat, get rested. Don’t fear anything. You’re a grown-up girl, self-reliant. We’ll get the elephant for you. And then, I’ll tell you in confidence, happiness is not in elephants.” “By the way,” Mazepa nodded to her, “Ukraine has always been famous for its elephants and soccer.” “Ukraine is glorified in the ages,” Stepan Bandera nodded, “for elephants and agronomists!” “They’re joking, Russian girl,” affectionately said an unknown soldier, on whose stripes a golden lion stood on

288

Volodymyr Rafeyenko

its hind legs and three golden coronets floated on a lightblue field. “Pay no attention!” “Actually,” Liza flushed and stood up from the table, forgetting Sahaidachnyi’s advice, “I’m Ukrainian. I can stand out on the street. Lord hetman promised to help. That’s the only reason why I’m here. Lord Sahaidachnyi, what did you bring me here for? To make idiotic jokes?” Everything went quiet around her. “Well then,” the hetman said angrily, though it was clear from his appearance that the words said had touched his heart. “You’ve spoiled the whole holiday!” He tossed a napkin onto the table. “Why did you have to hurry with the questions? We could have sat a bit, had a drink, eaten something, we could have sung some songs. And now, consider the night down the drain! We gather once a year like civilized people, and here a broad has interrupted all the joy!” “Yes, it came out badly,” Golda Meir shook her head. “Only you, girl, are no Ukrainian at all. You’re a Jew, a typical Yid-Banderovite. That’s why you’re sitting here. And I, too, am here solely for that reason.” “Why, what do you mean Yid-Banderovite?” Liza raised her eyebrows. “Why, because,” said Bohdan Khmelnytskyi, turned red and laughed nervously. Here the invisible children somewhere started a flood of laughing. The toccata and fugue in D minor for the organ began playing. Reb Nachmann came up to the young woman, smiled and held out a tiny elephant in an embroidered shirt, with a trident in its heart and a Star of David on its forehead. “Take the sacred toy, child, and have no fear of anything.”

The Length Of Days: An Urban Ballad

289

“And what, this little elephant and the old book will stop the war?” Liza suddenly started crying, unexpectedly even for herself. “I’m grown up, you know, I know that it’s stupid to believe in fairytales. But, Reb, I have nothing else to believe in.” “It is better to be a fool,” said the old man, gradually disappearing, “who trusts everything in the world, than a shlimazel who doesn’t trust anything.” The moment he dissolved in the light of the candles, all the guests began talking at once. Sahaidachnyi stroked her head and disappeared. The house melted away in the fog. Stars big as soup bowls hung before her eyes. The melancholic little tomcat yawned, climbed down from the Big Dipper, sat down in Liza’s lap and said, “You’re asleep. And everything is going its own way. But the dream will end in literally one minute. You’ll wake up in an ambulance, stuck in a traffic jam right across from the thricedamned carousel on Sophia Square.” “And what am I doing in the ambulance?” Liza frowned. “What do you mean what?” the little tomcat was surprised and stretched luxuriously. “You’re dying, of course. But you can’t die right now by any means. So you’ll wake up, you’ll get out of the vehicle and you’ll find your crazy men right on the square by the carousel, standing with two canisters. Here’s a Zippo lighter from the year 1933, Liza. Be brave, girl, and do what you must do!” Feeling the cold steel of the lighter in her hand, Yelizaveta immediately felt a sharp pain in her belly. She opened her eyes. Holding back a moan, she looked around. The ambulance really was trapped between two cars. The driver and the doctor were smoking at the bumper, the young

290

Volodymyr Rafeyenko

paramedic had fallen asleep on a side seat. Liza pulled the IV needle out of her vein, squeezing the lighter in her fist, got out of the vehicle and immediately disappeared into the crowd. Right beside the carousel, which people had only just finished assembling, she really did see Sokrat and Veresaiev. During the hours when they hadn’t seen one another, her friends had aged twenty years. And it was painfully clear that they would not survive this night. “Well then,” she asked, “we ride until dawn?” “You found the elephant?” Sokrat nodded. “With a star of David on its forehead,” she shrugged. “Thanks even for that,” Veresaiev grabbed the canister, clambered up onto the carousel. “And why are you all covered in blood?” “I was jaywalking. So what, should we play burners?” “For sure,” Sokrat nodded. “Those coming to the games would steal wives for themselves. It’s a bit out of season, but Kyiv causes troubles with time anyway.” “Hey, what are you doing!” came a shout from various directions. “The carousel isn’t open!” “That’s all right,” Sokrat spoke up, “it’ll open up now.” “Call the police, the police!” Faces distorted with hate began to approach the carousel through the strolling crowd from various directions. They were easy to recognize as well-known public figures, prosecutors, members of the parliament, jud­ ges, owners of newspapers, cars, steamships, national leaders, representatives of political parties who fought among themselves. Ne­ver in their lives had this audience gathered in one place, but now it could not fail to happen. Each one separately and all of them together were terribly afraid that this children’s carousel would get turned to

The Length Of Days: An Urban Ballad

291

ash. The serpent, whose time had run out, passionately wanted to live, but it could no longer live here. Sokrat and Nikolai poured gas on the rats, bears, wolves, hippopotami, beavers, ostriches, hares, rams, and apes. The wooden beasts grabbed them by the arms and legs, tore the living flesh with their fangs. Gredis and Veresaiev screamed with fear and pain but poured the gasoline as long as there was so much as a drop in the canisters. And then a shot rang out. One more, and more. Liza was struck in the chest. She fell to her knees, pressed her hand to her chest, saw blood. Gredis and Veresaiev had fallen asleep in puddles of gasoline. Liza was left alone. “Too bad I’m not wearing trousers and the long dress with the poppies!” Liza Eleonora smiled and clicked the lighter, and the carousel caught fire.

Epilogue

Early dawn had risen over Z when above the slagheaps an enormous elephant appeared, wearing an embroidered shirt and with a star of David on its forehead. In the front Liza was enthroned in an armchair, wearing white trousers and a dark-blue dress with scarlet poppies. Behind in a wooden palanquin, swaying in time with the elephant’s steps, two philosophers were looking at the East as it turned pink. “What do you think, Sokrat?” asked one. “Will he make it to Kazan?” “No way,” answered Gredis. “But we don’t need to go there either.” “So where do we need to go?” “Into the length of days,” said Liza Eleonora, “and let the elephant decide it all.”

In the City of Z, a Bathhouse Where What Happened Can Unhappen An Afterword to The Length of Days Marci Shore “How horrible, fantastic, incredible it is that we should be digging trenches and trying on gas masks here because of a quarrel in a far-away country between people of whom we know nothing.” This was British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain’s response to Adolf Hitler’s demand, in September 1938, to annex Czechoslovakia’s Sudetenland. In the spring of 2014, Vladimir Putin sent Russian soldiers in unmarked uniforms to annex Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula. Meanwhile, a motley crew of Kremlin-instigated separatists in the eastern Ukrainian mining region of the Donbas began storming buildings, taking prisoners, and appointing themselves leaders of breakaway republics. For most of us outside of Ukraine, this was very much a quarrel in a far-away country between people of whom we knew nothing. Volodymyr Rafeyenko, then in his mid-forties, had lived his whole life in this post-industrial pocket of

296

Volodymyr Rafeyenko

Europe that few have visited. When in 2014 the war in the Donbas arrived in his city of Donetsk, he and his wife were forced to flee, leaving everything behind. Volodymyr wrote The Length of Days in dark times, as a refugee in his own country. The novel’s English translation came into being in times still darker. On 24 February 2022, the Kremlin launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine; a convoy of Russian armor some forty miles long headed towards the Ukrainian capital. Volodymyr and his wife, then living in a summer cottage settlement near the now-infamous Bucha, just miles from the city limits of Kyiv, quickly found themselves under Russian occupation. Communications were cut; there was no internet connection; massacres of civilians took place around them. For a month it was unclear whether they could, or would, survive. Then in late March 2022, aided by friends of friends who were willing to risk their own lives, they escaped into Ukrainian-controlled territory.

*** Ukraine is a country that has been producing fantastic literature in multiple languages for a very long time. Among the pleasures of being a historian of a part of the world not my own is playing the role of cultural mediator, helping to bring writing from elsewhere to my own country, and to speakers of my own language. I would have felt gratified by the opportunity to write about Volodymyr Rafeyenko’s work under any circumstances. Yet these are not any circumstances. I am writing in October 2022, when questions of the relationship between literature and imperialism are framed by unmediated

The Length Of Days: An Urban Legend

297

violence, carried out by a sadistic colonizing power. Ukraine is fighting for its survival in the most literal sense, and Ukrainian literature has been invoked as evidence for the nationhood of a nation worth saving from extermination. In this situation, it feels important to begin by saying this: Ukraine has produced great literature, and Ukraine is entitled to its survival—but the latter is not contingent upon the former. Children should never have to prove their kinship with Nobel Prize-winning poets in order to claim the privilege of not being buried alive under rubble. It is not the purpose of literature to bestow upon members of the author’s culture a right to human dignity. That right is a priori and non-contingent; it precedes literature. The purpose of literature is something else: literature is an aide à l’imagination, a bridge to the Other enabling an imaginative crossing into a world not our own. Literature is a stimulus to thinking. And if totalitarianism has reappeared in a postmodern form in the twentieth century, the necessary condition of possibility for that reappearance has been a massive failure to think. What Hannah Arendt noticed about Adolf Eichmann during his 1961 trial in Jerusalem remains just as on point today: “The longer one listened to him, the more obvious it became that his inability to speak was closely connected with an inability to think, namely, to think from the standpoint of somebody else.”1 (In early April of this year, in a village outside of Kyiv, the home of Ukrainian journalist Nataliya Gumenyuk’s best friend was ransacked by Russian soldiers. The soldiers stole a PlayStation—which perhaps was to be expected. They also tore up—which perhaps was not to be expected—a copy of Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on

298

Volodymyr Rafeyenko

the Banality of Evil. When I saw Nataliya’s photograph of Arendt’s torn book, I imagined that someday a great novel about this sickening war would open with this not-atall-banal anecdote.) What awakens thinking? Shaking. The disconcerting encounter. The disrupting of habituation. The familiar made strange. The object ceasing to perform its usual function. Martin Heidegger insisted that we only saw the hammer when it broke; this is the moment when Zuhandenheit (“readiness-to-hand”) becomes Vorhandenheit (“presence-at-hand”), when what is unthinkingly used is truly seen. The scenes in this novel take place among things scratched, spoiled, squeaking, somehow disfigured. And even those objects not explicitly broken are often rendered vorhanden in a vaguely repulsive, subtly-yet-distinctly-thought-provoking sort of way: The mercenaries would abandon this world, along with the junk left behind in the cubbies. With pea coat and grenades, with the Kalashnikovs that had seen some sights, their butts bearing a multitude of notches, with three mobile phones, two packs of condoms, several hundred dollars, a pair of joints packed with weed from the Chui Valley, and a little packet of cocaine, adulterated before sale with calcium gluconate (56). Viktor Shklovsky called this ostranenie—estrangement from the familiar—and considered it the purpose of poetic language and the necessary condition for truly seeing. For Henri Bergson, the corrective to mechanistic automatism was laughter. For Max Ernst and the surrealists,

The Length Of Days: An Urban Legend

299

this shaking could be brought about by “the coupling of two realities which apparently cannot be coupled on a plane which apparently is not appropriate to them.”2 All of this is splendidly present in The Length of Days: poetic language, laughter, and surrealism. Dazzling evocations of literary theory mingle amidst a salmagundi of characters. In addition to native inhabitants of the Donbas and imported Russian soldiers, Amy Winehouse makes a cameo appearance—as do Rosa Luxemburg and Golda Meir. The author is a deeply-rooted local, with intimate knowledge of his city and its people; their kitchens filled with fried potatoes, cigarette smoke and vodka; the beer-selling kiosks on the streets; the cats staring in windowpanes. Yet beneath the local specificity there is also a radical cosmopolitanism. Rafeyenko’s writing has something of Anton Chekhov’s pithy brevity, Aleksander Wat’s existential inversions, and Jorge Luis Borges’s magical realism. Suggestive traces of literatures of times past are fused in a new way. In the city that the author calls “Z,” Franz Kafka’s expressionist Metamorphosis encounters Karel Čapek’s dystopian War with the Newts, as separatist militants transmogrify into gigantic beetles: At that very moment the militants opened the second vehicle. And that’s where everything started. No sooner had the doors of the truck flown open than four Colorado beetles sprang out, each the size of two and a half Hounds of the Baskervilles. Jutting forward with their muscular midsections, waving the blades of their double-sharp side legs like sabers, in less than five minutes they had chopped up fifteen or so people from among the

300

Volodymyr Rafeyenko

Z-citizens who were guilty of nothing. Blood mixed with the buckwheat, wheat, rice, and rock salt (19). Within a certain gritty naturalism a space opens for the unearthly. Like the Carpathian Ialivets in Taras Prokhasko’s The UnSimple, and the soccer field in Serhiy Zhadan’s Voroshilovgrad, the bathhouse in Z becomes a passageway from the mundane to a realm free of some constraints bound up with human mortality. In this context, “Ukraine” takes on other-worldly being: “Listen,” Liza reminded her, “you started to say that you can’t get to Ukraine.” ... “But I think that I can!” ... “I just need to get a bit of money from Sokrat, put on a dark blue dress with poppies, buy a bottle of mineral water and some of the prophylactics that were mentioned previously” (113). In response, an older woman discloses to Liza the war’s greatest secret: “You can get from Z to Ukraine only if you receive death at the hands of the militants! At the hands of the khaki-colored matryoshkas!” For both women, Kyiv is like a Promised Land—only it is not. It is impossible to get there without dying. Death is the precondition for entry into the magical passage through which factuality can be overcome. Inside the bathhouse, “[b]ad deeds disappear, as if they had never happened. You’ve stolen, killed, punched your mother? ... God and the echo of the bathhouse will make something that happened unhappen” (48–49). This—enabling what had happened to unhappen— was the fantasy of Lev Shestov, one of Kyiv’s great

The Length Of Days: An Urban Legend

301

philosophers. In Athens and Jerusalem, completed the year before his death in 1938, Shestov returned time and again to the miserable fact of Socrates’s poisoning: by what right did empirical, contingent truths claim ontological necessity and eternal validity? If everything that had a beginning had an end, why did this truth—a factual truth, a truth a posteriori—last forever? The hero of Rafeyenko’s novel is named after the Greek philosopher who was made to swallow hemlock, and whose death Shestov found unbearable even over two millennia later. Sokrat Ivanovich Gredis is a philosophy professor-turned-bathhouse-supervisor when the establishment’s owner takes flight from Z. Sokrat took on management of the bathhouse because he “couldn’t, and didn’t want to, work as a philosopher with gangsters” (22).

*** Coarseness notwithstanding, the gangsters are full participants in literary surrealism. This is true all the more given that raw physicality has ceased to provide any grounding. Since the war began, “the laws of physics do not operate in Z. Or rather, they don’t operate the way we’re used to. You ship a horse here, he turns into a cello. A tank turns into a toy rattle. A dead man into a melody. An Orthodox tank driver into a Buryat” (189). In February 2015, Russian journalist Elena Kostyuchenko was in the Donbas, reporting on the Russian soldiers there who officially did not exist. One day she made her way into a hospital in Donetsk, where she found a tank driver named Dorzhi Batomunkuev, an ethnic Buryat from Russia’s distant and impoverished

302

Volodymyr Rafeyenko

east. Dorzhi, twenty years old, had just been gruesomely injured in a tank battle in Lohvynove. When Elena found him, his burnt face and ears were wrapped in translucent bandages; the skin was coming off his hands. Every time he smiled, blood dripped out of his mouth. Yes, he told Elena, he had known he was being sent to Ukraine. His unit of Russian soldiers had disguised themselves, removing their identification. Once in Ukraine, they lived and slept in their tanks, and were ordered to avoid contact with civilians. Dorzhi was told that there were Polish mercenaries in the Donbas who were killing peaceful civilians. Did you see them? Elena asked him. No, he said, but he was told they were there. He did not doubt it. Elena: You left for training? Dorzhi: They told us it was for training, but we knew where we were going. We all knew where we were going. I was already prepared, mentally and psychically, for having to go to Ukraine... . We’d already painted the tanks back in Ulan-Ude, right on the train set. We painted the numbers, too, someone had a guard’s badge on the tanks. Ribbons, stripes—we took those off here, when we got to the site. Took off everything... to mask ourselves. Elena: So, no one—not the deputy commander, not the commandants—talked to you about Ukraine? Dorzhi: No, because we understood everything anyway. Elena: You realized that you were crossing the border? Dorzhi: We all realized we were crossing the border. What to do about it?

The Length Of Days: An Urban Legend

303

Elena: When did you find out that you were advancing to Donetsk? Dorzhi: When did we find out? When we read the sign that said Donetsk. It’s there when you enter the city... There’s a sign— “DNR.” Oh, we’re in Ukraine! It was dark, we got there at night. I leaned out the hatch to take a look at the city. Beautiful city, I liked it. To the right, to the left— it’s all beautiful... . Of course, I’m not proud of what I did. That I was destroying and killing. Obviously, you can’t be proud of that. But on the other hand, I calm myself down with the fact that it’s all for the sake of peace, for peaceful citizens, you look at them—kids, old people, women, men.3 In The Length of Days, the city of Z, where an Orthodox tank driver turns into a Buryat, “has joined the USSR instead of Russia.” In general, the city now exists in a way bearing “no relationship to what there was in objective reality” (210). And yet there it is, and for those like Sokrat who have not left, Z is both a domestic hearth and a purgatory, neither evil nor redemptive. Violence is pervasive; still more pervasive is the senselessness of it all. This “absurdity that’s become a fact of being” penetrates all interactions; it penetrates all characters who are trying to make sense of what is nonsensical. “Your son was killed?” asks a character named Elena, whose lover has left for Crimea and who now lives alone: Yes, the old woman didn’t cease smiling. He could have gone away to Kyiv with his company, but he stayed here to keep an eye on us. And he was killed

304

Volodymyr Rafeyenko

when he went to the store.—Who killed him? After asking the idiotic question, Elena felt disgusted at herself and sat down on the facing chair. Why, God knows who. Must be the fascists. The old woman laughed. On TV they keep talking about fascists. I keep thinking, how could the Germans have come back here? (85) No one knows why; no one knows for what.

*** Sokrat, the novel’s earnest hero, “loved Ukraine, albeit somewhat cautiously”—somewhat cautiously, because that Ukraine would reciprocate this love was not assured. Kyiv, city of salvation and object of desire, could also abandon those who sought it. It was a beckoning Promised Land that could prove fickle. And yet it was a Promised Land worth trying to reach. And here is the crack in the novel’s absurdist nihilism. The absence of all values is an ever-present possibility, but not a necessary fate. We can endeavor to live in truth. We can make a choice between good and evil, here and now. “And at every moment of your life make the choice you won’t be ashamed of,” Kolya Veresaiev, chemical engineer-turned-bathhouse masseur, tells Sokrat. “That’s it, approximately. Nothing else is left. There’s just nothing else” (43). This is true for Sokrat and his fellow Z-dwellers, those people in a faraway country about whom we know nothing—or knew nothing, for by the novel’s end we know quite a bit more. We know, too, that Kolya might, with equal justness, advise the same to the rest of us.

On Truth, Dignity, and Being Human above All Volodymyr Rafeyenko in Correspondence with Marci Shore Marci In lectures and conversations, you’ve often returned, as if a literary refrain, to the idea, “Here and now. Here and now it’s necessary to be a human being.” What does that mean for you today? Volodymyr The present context of my life is clear: Russia’s war against Ukraine, a war that Russia unleashed eight years ago, which entered an infernal phase on February 24 , 2022. And right now, being a human being means, above all, being with my own people. Doing what I can for the common victory.

306

Volodymyr Rafeyenko

Marci On February 25, the day following the invasion, you wrote to me in a message, “War. A real war.” Where were you then? Volodymyr When the war began, my wife and I found ourselves in an area occupied by Russian soldiers. We were forced to remain there for over a month, and only last week were we miraculously gotten out by volunteers. Marci How did the Russian soldiers behave? Did you and your wife talk with them at all? Volodymyr No, we didn’t talk with them. What could there have been a conversation about? I am certain it wouldn’t have ended in anything good, all the more so given that, from the first days of the occupation, news reached us about Russians killing civilian inhabitants of the nearby villages. A person whom I fully trust told me of the execution of an entire family, children as well as adults, by Kadyrovites in a village not far from us. They were guilty only of having refused to feed the Russian soldiers. With time, the behavior of the Russians did chan­ge—from moderate fascism to a fascism that

The Length Of Days: An Urban Legend

307

was unbounded. In the beginning, when they’d hoped to take Kyiv quickly, they did not systematically hunt down civilians. But, as our forces put up fierce resistance, and as the Kremlin’s original goals became more phantasmal, the Russians’ behavior became more abominable. At the checkpoints that the volunteers brought me and my wife through a few weeks ago, the Kadyrovites—before they left Kyiv oblast—would periodically amuse themselves by firing at local cars displaying white flags and signs saying “CHILDREN.” It was said that some people they would let through and some they wouldn’t. And who would manage to get through was impossible to guess. Close to us, on Zhytomyr highway, the Russians set up a tank ambush, only they were targeting not our military, but our civilian vehicles. They destroyed dozens of vehicles there with peaceful civilians in them. Dozens of children were killed, and I am not sure whether we’ve included these deaths in the numbers officially released to the world of Ukrainian children killed by the Russians. I am sure that Russian atrocities are a widespread phenomenon in this war. Marci How were you able to get out? Volodymyr We’d been trying to get out from the very first day of the war. But, on that morning of February 24, it

308

Volodymyr Rafeyenko

was already impossible. There were Russian tanks between our location and Kyiv, and fierce battles going on. When the water, electricity, and internet connection were shut off and the shops closed, when it became clear that our situation was very bad but would get still worse, because there was nowhere to get food, I tried to figure out a way to leave. But the humanitarian corridors didn’t extend to where we were, and we didn’t have our own transportation, which would have at least allowed us to get to those places from where people were being transported to Kyiv. People who had cars started to abandon the village. But we were forced to stay. And when there was no longer any hope, my friend Liubomyr Deresh found volunteers—daredevils who agreed to try to cross the Russian checkpoints, collect us, and bring us out by the same route.1 The first time it didn’t work, and we were despondent, but several days later they did come for us. It was our second evacuation in eight years and, like the first time, we left all of our things behind. But we were enormously happy when we found ourselves on Ukrainian territory. In the past days, now being in relative safety, I’ve been trying to write articles and essays for the Western media, clarifying the essence of what is happening in my country. With the help of the Ukrainian PEN and on the initiative of the Polish magazine Nova Polshcha, I’m planning very soon to begin work on a book project that will integrate observations of dozens of Ukrainian writers about this war.

The Length Of Days: An Urban Legend

309

It will be a book-diary, with documentary evidence, reflections, and literary texts about the war.  I’m also planning to write a novel about the events that I’ve witnessed. About the horror of war, the Russian occupation, about hope and about salvation as something that always comes as a gift. Marci I’m thinking of Anna Akhmatova’s preface to “Requiem”: In the terrible years of Yezhovshchina, I spent seventeen months in the waiting lines of the Leningrad prisons. Once, somehow, someone “recognized” me. Then the woman with blue lips standing behind me who, of course, had never in her life heard my name, awakened from the stupor peculiar to all of us there, and asked me, speaking into my ear (all of us there spoke in a whisper): –Can you describe this? And I said: –I can. Akhmatova’s “I can” affirms a certain kind of epistemological optimism. Is it possible to capture in words this kind of “boundary experience,” what the German philosopher Karl Jaspers described with the word Grenzsituation?

310

Volodymyr Rafeyenko

Volodymyr All during the time my wife and I spent in a house rocked night and day by the explosions of Russian artillery, I kept a diary. It was nearly impossible to write in the sense of literary texts, but recording events, states of being, that vital material in the epicenter of which I found myself was for me not only a possibility—it was a necessity. It diverted my attention from the ceaseless air and artillery duels to the right, the left, in front of and behind the tiny dacha settlement where my wife and I had been living for the past several years after we were forced to leave our own city, Donetsk. We abandoned our home there for the same reason we abandoned the house sheltering us now— our life was destroyed by Russia. But work on literary texts, of course, requires somewhat different conditions and at least a minimum of comfort. For the past month we’ve had neither light nor water nor a phone connection nor internet. Moreover, following some warm weeks in February, there were unexpectedly strong frosts in March. Among our central, daily fears was not even that a shell would hit our house, but rather that the gas pipeline would be destroyed. And there was no way to leave. It was only possible to believe, to hope and to wait. Marci With respect to vital material: war must be a moment when the concrete and the sensory is most vivid. Yet,

The Length Of Days: An Urban Legend

311

at the same time, as if paradoxically, the metaphysical is also most vivid: where does evil come from? As if the usual relationship between the empirical and the metaphysical had somehow broken… Volodymyr The question of where evil comes from fails to interest me very much now. What difference does it make? What matters is the ability to distinguish good from evil. And there, under constant bombardments day and night, there was no thought about the cause of evil. Yes, there was an astonishing sharpness of perception, fear, even terror, and panic one had to struggle against. And the empirical was more vivid and terrifying than ever before in my life. And yet, the metaphysical did approach very closely, gaze at me, and touch me with its hand. I saw the face of God a footstep away, and I knew that to die was not terrible, what was terrible was to die a shameful death. And I asked God—if my wife and I were to be condemned to perish among these dachas—to bring us a quick death. Marci For the philosopher Lev Shestov, a Jew from tsarist Kyiv, reason was a very good thing, but reason had its limits: But, despite everything, it is not given to rationalism, with all its “arguments deduced

312

Volodymyr Rafeyenko

from consequences” and its threats of confinement to the madhouse, to choke in the heart of men the obscure feeling persisting that the final truth, the truth which our ancestors sought unsuccessfully in Paradise, is found epkeina noû kai noêseôs, beyond reason and what can be conceived by reason, and that it is impossible to discover it in the immobile and dead universe which is the only one over which rationalism can rule as sovereign.2 Above all, for Shestov, reason was unable to reach regions of extremity, boundary experiences like those ensconcing Ukrainians now: We must have the courage to say it firmly: the middle zones of human and universal life do not at all resemble the polar and equatorial zones. The difference is so great that, if one concludes from what one sees in the zone and applies it to what exists in the extreme zones, not only does he not approach the truth but flees from it. The constant error of rationalism derives from its faith in the limitless power of reason, die Schrankenlosigkeit der objektiven Vernunft. Reason has done much, therefore it can do everything. But “much” does not mean “everything”: “much” is separated from “everything” toto caelo; “much” and “everything” belong to two different, irreconcilable categories.3

The Length Of Days: An Urban Legend

313

Volodymyr It seems to me that rationalism, in the classical sense of the word, recognizes the region where it’s applicable. In many respects, rationalism is occupied with maintaining the border between what can and cannot be known. Rationality is the gentility of the intellect, which knows the difference between human actuality and the reality of the Universe, which far exceeds any given historical or human perspective. Marci Time–temporality–takes on a different form in boundary situations. How are you experiencing time now? Volodymyr Time does not exist now. That is, it’s very difficult to measure it. Time changed its course already in the occupation zone and in no way has it now righted itself. But there were years enclosed in a day, and here a day passes like a single hour. Marci Together with time, space must also take on different meanings. During a recent Zoom discussion, the philosopher Volodymyr Yermolenko in Kyiv explained how the meaning of a window, and the

314

Volodymyr Rafeyenko

meaning of light, have changed. In what way has space changed for you? Volodymyr You know, it’s now been so long since I’ve lived in a regular apartment, in a city, even if not a very large one, among people and civilization, that space is now entirely festive. But after everything that’s happened, I’m now sheltering in an apartment—which, by the way, is Oleh Kotsyuba’s place, who’s allowed us to live here, for which I am terribly grateful—and will be grateful for the rest of my life. When the air raid siren isn’t going off, it’s quiet and comfortable here. I hate dirt, and so I keep everything in a state of ideal cleanliness, which helps me in the struggle against panic and longing, against the loneliness that sometimes begins to choke me. Long before the curfew, I shut the windows tightly and turn on the lamp—it’s a way of creating an illusion that you’ve controlled your space. Marci I feel as if I’d found myself in 1939, but with internet: everything is visible, everything is laid bare. We’re watching people be killed in real time.

The Length Of Days: An Urban Legend

315

Volodymyr There’s a war going on here, a war aimed at the annihilation of the Ukrainian people. The Russians have come to annihilate us as a nation, as a people who have dared to choose their own path of development, one not coinciding with the Kremlin’s imperial ambitions, with the revanchist desires of the mass of the Russian people. The terrible truth is this: a decisive majority of Russians support the annihilation of the Ukrainian people. On the battlefield, the Russians are merciless, but in the occupied territories they carry out sheer atrocities. Even the fascists during the Second World War didn’t behave this way. They pillage and rape, they kill women and children without mercy. In Mariupol and Kharkiv. In Chernihiv and Sumy. If they realize that they’re unable to subjugate a given place, they burn it to the ground. Of course they will not take Mariupol. Mariupol cannot be taken. There is only a heap of stones now to take. Mariupol exists in eternity. It has transcended everything that those beasts can do to us and to our cities. Mariupol is now a name that they cannot kill. Marci Evil and cruelty are not new things. But the kind of extreme visibility that the internet enables is something new; it’s the first time in history that this kind of transparency is possible.

316

Volodymyr Rafeyenko

Volodymyr Yes, what is exceptional in what is happening now lies, among other things, in this transparency, in the events’ accessibility. And this is meaningful in the sense that it’s impossible not to clarify your relationship to what is happening. It’s no longer possible to bury your head in the sand and not see. If you don’t see the Russian atrocities, if you don’t see Russia as an anthropological catastrophe, you are consciously not seeing that. And, in this way, you are also making a choice between good and evil. Marci Some three years ago, Vladimir Surkov, Putin’s spin doctor, wrote “Putin’s Lasting State,” a kind of “laying bare of the device”: “It only appears that we have a choice”… these words became the first axiom of the new Russian statehood, upon which all theories and practices of actual politics were constructed. The illusion of choice is the most important of all illusions, the crown hoax of the Western way of life in general and Western democracy in particular. Once “chimeras imported” from the West had been rejected—Surkov explained—the way was open for “the art of the possible”:

The Length Of Days: An Urban Legend

317

Our system, as in general everything of ours, naturally does not appear more elegant, but in return is more honest. And, although it is far from everyone for whom “more honest” is synonymous with “better,” “more honest” is not without its attractiveness. Our state is not divided into the deep and the superficial; it forms a whole, with all its components and symptoms on the surface. The most brutal structures of its power scaffolding run straight along the façade, not concealed by any architectural excesses.4 We’re looking now at the “most brutal structures of its power scaffolding. . .not concealed by any of architectural excesses.” Volodymyr As I see it, Surkov’s text and the philosophy he offers us are homegrown and brainless sophistry, the main goal of which is to excuse the entirely unprincipled and, in its essence, unbelievably cynical behavior of certain persons and politicians and so on, and certain societies and peoples. In this case, a regime of criminals headed by Putin is being justified and validated. In order to justify this regime, Surkov wants to present the matter as if there were no such thing as a perspective from values, as if there were not and could not be such a thing as truth, as if conscience were a fiction. And as if the state as a foundational instrument for supporting what in man and in

318

Volodymyr Rafeyenko

the human citizen exists on the level of values were a stupid notion not worth talking about. But he is lying. Marci During Donald Trump’s presidency, we in the United States experienced a state that was brazenly unprincipled and made no attempt to uphold moral values. With each day, Americans experienced ever more the absence of the rule of law, the increasing absence of limitations on power. I understood rather quickly that Trump, as a person with no conscience, with no moral sensibility, attracted many people precisely through this absence, this demonstration of freedom from the superego. He offered people liberation from repression—that is, liberation from moral constraints. As we know from Freud, liberation from repression is real liberation—for which we pay the “small price” of the destruction of civilization. Volodymyr It seems to me that the “absence of law,” which you’re talking about, and the absolute impossibility of law, which characterizes not only the Russian state, but also the Russian mindset as a whole, are incredibly different things. Trump, of course, enticed people with his disdain for conscience and morality. Yet even so, the greater part of society, it seems to me, preserved its internal attachment to a way of life based in values. What took place in America was

The Length Of Days: An Urban Legend

319

not a chronic absence of law in society as such, but a catastrophe of unprincipled populism. It seems to me that these are, after all, very different things. Marci Here I see a connection between post-truth and Surkov’s laying bare of the device. The absence of secrets does not mean that truth is visible. Several years ago, during a discussion in Kyiv about Peter Pomerantsev’s book, Nothing is True and Everything is Possible, the translator and psychoanalyst Yurko Prokhasko described truth as a boundary.5 When there are no boundaries, everything is possible—as Dostoevsky’s Ivan Karamazov said, then “everything is permitted.” Arendt describes this state of being without truth as Bodenlosigkeit, groundlessness. Shestov describes truth as “truth that coerces,” and writes that “submission to the truth that coerces is the source of all human virtues.” Volodymyr Immanuel Kant, in his discussion of moral law, spoke about this much more clearly. There exists, of course, a wholly invisible and all-meaningful Truth, which is perceived by the inner man as a law he is obliged to fulfill. This law, which could be called the Law of Invisible Perspectives, and which promises neither reward nor punishment, constitutes, forms, and defines all of human life in its empiricism.

320

Volodymyr Rafeyenko

Marci About Kant: I agree. Further, Kant’s relationship to conscience is provocative in that, for Kant, what counts are intentions. We should act in accordance with our moral obligations. But, of course, we don’t know—we cannot know with any certainty—what the consequences of our actions will be. Contingency plays too great a role in life. The best we can do is to act with good intentions… Volodymyr Very often people are unable to grasp that it is not the intention, which can be good, which gives meaning to our actions. Actions acquire their true meaning only in the world of Others. For that reason, it is said in one good book: “You shall know them by their deeds.” Marci Can truth save us? Volodymyr I’m certain that a person’s very effort to remain in the realm of truth is salvation being realized. Marci How can we understand what this realm of truth is?

The Length Of Days: An Urban Legend

321

Volodymyr Truth is never given in a pre-prepared form. Truth—as Marcel Proust said—cannot be received by mail. Truth can only be embodied by us, by ourselves, by our own exertions on the border of our empirical life and its metaphysics. We—meaning we, human beings—must realize the fact of co-creation. Truth desires that we be its creators. This is its summons to us. Marci Proust was right. For several years now, I’ve been writing, albeit a bit slowly, a book about encounters between writers and thinkers connected to the history of phenomenology in East and Central Europe—from Edmund Husserl, Gustav Shpet, and Lev Shestov through Roman Ingarden, Edith Stein, Tadeusz Kroński and Irena Krońska, to Jan Patočka and Leszek Kołakowski. And for Patočka and Kołakowski, both of whom experienced both Nazism and Stalinism, truth was something that had to be constantly searched for, even though—as you say— it is never there to be taken in a pre-made form. There is no object as such. But that does not mean that there is no such thing as truth and that we can give up on it. The move that Patočka and Kołakowski’s student Krzysztof Michalski and other dissident East European philosophers then made through the 1970s and 1980s was to insist that subjectivity does not mean relative truth, subjectivity grounds truth.

322

Volodymyr Rafeyenko

That we are co-creators of that truth makes our responsibility not lesser, but greater. Volodymyr Truth is not a “what.” Truth is a “who.” It is born each time at the moment of our endeavor, consummating itself on the border of our subjectivity and the thing-in-itself. It is never yesterday, never tomorrow. It is always now, at this moment. And each time it must be re-created by us anew. And each time we, together with it, create ourselves anew. Marci I’m thinking about Chekhov’s zoologist in The Duel, who says to the Russian Orthodox deacon much younger than himself, a fellow boarder in a village by the Black Sea: “​​ You are so corrupted by your seminary philosophy that you want to see nothing but fog in everything. The abstract studies with which your youthful head is stuffed are called abstract just because they abstract your minds from what is obvious. Look the devil straight in the eye, and if he’s the devil, tell him he’s the devil, and don’t go calling to Kant or Hegel for explanations.”6 Volodymyr Chekhov’s zoologist always lies. Just like the philologist. In the story, Von Koren, the zoologist, and Laevsky, the minor bureaucrat who has run off to

The Length Of Days: An Urban Legend

323

the seaside town, in essence serve to express a very Chekhovian problem, one that haunted all his work: faith without deeds, and deeds without faith. Von Koren, of course, is deeds without faith, deeds driven by cynical, egotistical impulses, with disdain for the world of values. Laevsky is faith without deeds: starry-eyed idealism, erudition, spiritual attachment to all that is elevated—literature, philosophy, art—yet an attachment that in the end offers only empty rhetoric that deceives under the guise of clever reasoning. Faith without deeds and deeds without faith—this perspective discloses the utter majority of human problems and delusions. Not to no purpose did the Apostle James speak about this in his epistle. Marci When in the United States Trump appeared on the scene, it seemed to me that I grasped more quickly than many of my colleagues what was happening precisely because I had been watching what was happening in Ukraine and Russia. I wrote then about Russian words that would help Americans understand our present reality: proizvol (arbitrariness tinged with tyranny); obnazhenie (laying bare, exposing openly); and prodazhnost´ (“saleability”).7 Volodymyr And cynicism.

324

Volodymyr Rafeyenko

Marci Yes, although that word we do have in English—in contrast to the word prodazhnost´, which we don’t have in English (the closest would be “venality,” but the register of this word is a bit different). Prodazhnost´ is something more than corruption; it’s a way of being in the world, akin to an existential state in which anything—and more particularly, anyone—can be bought or sold. Trump, like Putin, lives in a world where there are no values. There are only prices. Every relationship is instrumental, transactional. Volodymyr There is likely such a state of being in which a person loses their humanity, and no return is possible. This applies to whole communities that have taken their own ego as the measure of all things, disdaining everyone and everything other than themselves. Marci Now again I’m thinking of Kant: “What has a price can be replaced by something else as its equivalent; on the other hand, whatever is above all price, and therefore admits of no equivalent, has a dignity.”8 A person does not have a price. A person cannot be replaced or exchanged. A person has dignity. From that follows Kant’s categorical imperative: always treat a person as an end, never as a means.

The Length Of Days: An Urban Legend

325

Volodymyr There you have it: an absolutely apt quotation. These people, these communities are not capable of perceiving the Other as an end. They perceive Others only as a means. And this is made possible by the fact that such people have lost any foundation of nonmaterial values. Dignity cannot be contained in the world or equated with the body. Dignity is that nonmaterial nature of Man, what constitutes him as a human being. Marci In the spring of 2018, I watched as the American presidential administration introduced this policy: as refugees crossed the border, the border guards took away the children, tearing the terrified children from the arms of their mothers and fathers, locking them in cages, and sending them on to detention centers sometimes hundreds of miles from the border. The children were often without food, clean clothing, water. Volodymyr This is what the Russian military is doing now with Ukrainian children. More than 100,000 children have been taken, and deported from Ukraine into Russian territory. Civilians are forcibly deported with their families into Russian territory, where adults and children, men and women are separated,

326

Volodymyr Rafeyenko

their passports are taken away, and they’re sent to settlements in distant regions of Russia, where they’re forced to work in certain industries. This is what fascist Germany did. It turns out that it’s possible to carry out all of these practices right now, in the center of Europe. Marci Watching those children taken away on the border, I was not alone in feeling like I was losing my mind. I understood from the beginning that it would be senseless for anyone to speak to the president, because there was no one with whom to speak. A person without a conscience is no longer a person. Volodymyr Yes, that’s so. For a conversation, for communication and mutual understanding both persons must be located within a framework of values—regardless of what they’re speaking about. Otherwise, no understanding of one another is possible. Marci Now we’re looking at pure evil. I’m thinking of the Polish poet Stanisław Jerzy Lec, born in Habsburg Lemberg, the city that is now Ukrainian Lviv, who wrote, “I found myself at the very bottom—and then I heard knocking from below.”9 I think in Russian that aphorism has long been abbreviated to

The Length Of Days: An Urban Legend

327

“knocking from below.” Mariupol—it’s moral blackmail. Bucha—there are no longer words. Volodymyr These are not people. Even wild beasts do not behave like this. Marci How can a writer address a person with no conscience? Is there even a person there? Another sharp aphorism by Lec describes such a person as having “sumienie czyste, bo nieużywane”—clean conscience, never having been used. Volodymyr The main thing, of course, when encountering such beings from the underworld—and it is precisely beings of this kind who are destroying Mariupol—is not to become like they are. Marci In March, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyi told the Russian soldiers: “If you surrender to our forces, we will treat you as people should be treated—that is, with dignity. The way you are not treated in your army.” For me, this was a very important moment: not only the offer of a deal, but also the affirmation of a moral principle: we will not

328

Volodymyr Rafeyenko

become like you. But it’s not easy to resist becoming monsters in such a situation. It requires much more strength than most people have. Volodymyr The West needs to understand that in the war it is not Putin who is guilty. He did not create the Russians. The Russians created Putin. He is their instrument, their alter ego. He is the flesh of the flesh of Russian culture as it is, without illusions or sentimentality. And this beast must be stopped. Marci In what does the pathology of Russian culture lie? It cannot be that all 144 million people in Russia are sadists. Volodymyr From my point of view, the fundamental system error of Russian culture is this: it has consciously placed itself outside of and above general human values. As Fedor Tiutchev wrote, Who would grasp Russia with the mind? For her no yardstick was created: Her soul is of a special kind, By faith alone appreciated. (trans. John Dewey)

The Length Of Days: An Urban Legend

329

This became the universal formulation of Russian self-consciousness. Russians believe that they cannot and should not be judged according to laws and standards common to all people. And, in this sense, everything is permitted. “Moscow—the Third Rome,” they’re used to thinking of themselves. Yet quite suddenly it’s turned out that this is not the Third Rome, but the Fourth Reich. Marci The question of the Russian soldiers’ behavior recalls the 1961 Adolf Eichmann trial in Jerusalem. Eichmann failed to think. For Hannah Arendt, who famously covered the trial for The New Yorker, this did not make Eichmann better than other criminals, on the contrary: it made him worse. To fail to think was for her the greatest sin. Volodymyr To think is the great privilege of Man. Precisely in this effort he becomes something more than an animal. A refusal of this privilege is nearly always conscious. And unforgivable. Marci Do you believe there is a way to reach the Russians now?

330

Volodymyr Rafeyenko

Volodymyr I think that only a crushing defeat—a terrible and unprecedented defeat—and bitter repentance, can sober the Russians and bring them into reality. If they are capable of that. And only then—after repentance and conscious self-humanization, including humanization of their fascistic culture—would it be possible for me to think of some sort of engaging with them. Before that happens, before repentance, before redemption, there is no common foundation of values between me and them, no common foundation on which to begin a dialogue. Marci Some eight years ago I read “Farewell to Russia,” an essay addressed to Russians by the Russophone Ukrainian writer and journalist Vitalii Portnikov. I was in Vienna then, and I remember that my political scientist friend, Tetiana Zhurzhenko from Kharkiv, responded very strongly to it. Tania felt that Portnikov had expressed her own feelings as well: It was a Jewish custom to read a memorial prayer for relatives who converted to other faiths. We read such a prayer for you [Russians] today, because you have converted to the faith of hatred toward those whom so recently you called brothers. Now you can come to Crimea and take photographs of yourselves on the streets with

The Length Of Days: An Urban Legend

the ancestors of the people you brought there decades ago, to undertake the difficult labor of removing the traces of that other crime of your homeland: the expulsion of the indigenous nations of the peninsula. But the seeming love of these local Russians, their faith in the handouts that soon you will not be able to afford, will not replace our former attachment to you. You have won Crimea and you have lost Ukraine. You have lost Ukraine forever. Farewell. Don’t kill us. You have lost us. We have gained in return a whole world of sympathetic people who support us in our fight for freedom – not only our freedom, but your freedom as well, because you need freedom, too, and, if you have not yet realized this, you will soon enough. We have understood who was really our friend and our brother this whole time, and who simply pretended to be in the hope of sooner or later placing the double-eagled yoke over our neck. From time to time, we will miss you. From time to time, we will miss those moments when you seemed to be the same sort of people as we are. From time to time, we will remember that many of us speak the same language as you do. From time to time, we will read your writers and now we will say—like the rest of the world does already—imagine that, their writers are such humanists, and

331

332

Volodymyr Rafeyenko

they are unchained animals. But this will not often happen. Forgive us. We have a lot of work to do. We will be busy building a new land, in place of the old one, destroyed with your help. We have to monitor our own government so that it does not become a refuge for crooks, the sort of people who until recently ruled us and still rule you. We have to find a way to build a strong army, which will protect us from possible aggressors. We now know that we are not surrounded only by friends, and that such an army will be necessary. In a word: much to do, no time for Russia. When you awaken from the nightmare in which you live, we will be genuinely happy for you, and happy that we no longer have to be afraid. But we will not forget, not for a very long time, that our women now live in fear, and our young people are raised amidst hatred. You will have to work long and hard to win our trust and to show that you have become normal people. You will have to convince us that you no longer think that the only source of pride in this world is a Kalashnikov. We will be happy if you are able to do all of this, since it is better to be free than to be a slave, and better to live in peace with neighbors than in fear and hatred. But this is for later, much later.10

The Length Of Days: An Urban Legend

333

Volodymyr This is precisely what I’ve just written: neither forgetting nor forgiving is possible now. Russians must undergo a fundamental transformation before a dialogue with them becomes possible. Marci In relating to Russians, there is also a question of intimacy. I’m thinking about the 1941 massacre in the small Polish town of Jedwabne: Jews slaughtered by their Polish neighbors, by people they called by the most familiar, diminutive versions of their names.11 You have readers in Russia, the people who are coming to kill you speak in your own language. In such a situation, what is it possible to say to them? When language no longer works… is there really no bridge at all? Volodymyr At the beginning of the century, I positioned myself as a Ukrainian writer who, of course, also functions in the Russian cultural and linguistic sphere. It never entered my mind to write in Ukrainian. After 2014, I learned Ukrainian and wrote a novel in Ukrainian, so as to show Russians and anyone else that, for a Ukrainian, even a Russophone Ukrainian, learning Ukrainian is not a problem, and learning it not only well enough to speak it, but also well enough to write literary texts. And I said more than

334

Volodymyr Rafeyenko

once in interviews that from now on I would write books in both languages—one novel in Russian, one in Ukrainian. I very much wanted it to be clear to everyone that the problem of defending the Russophone population in Ukraine has never existed— nor does it now—and in 2014 it was precisely with this slogan of defending the Russian-speaking population that Russian militants “liberated” me and my family from our own country. We were forced to leave for Kyiv. But we knew, of course, that the Russians would not stop there. And so it happened. Marci How did you know? I didn’t know. I definitely didn’t know that this war would come, even though I have always known that anything was possible. Yevhenii Monastyrskyi from Luhansk, now a graduate student here, said to me yesterday, “We’ve been preparing for war for eight years now. . .” Volodymyr I saw the Russians who came to my city. I saw the unscrupulousness and cruelty of these people. I saw how it began, and it began back in the early 2000s. It was perfectly clear that they did not care about the people of the Donbas, that they were after territory and resources and wanted not just a part of the country, but all of it. After February 24, 2022, I made a firm decision to never again publish a single text in Russian.

The Length Of Days: An Urban Legend

335

I don’t want to be understood by those beasts who are murdering Ukrainian children. I have nothing to say to them. A language has not been invented in which it’s possible to talk with someone who’s come to your house to murder you, to murder your wife and your child, to destroy your home and scorch your land. And I have no desire to contribute any longer, even if indirectly, to Ukrainian literature in the Russian language. If it does continue, then let it continue without my participation. Marci This, too, feels terribly sad to me: Putin does not deserve this language. The Russian language ought to belong much more to you than to him. He could never do with this language what you do with it. He could never understand Chekhov the way you understand Chekhov. Why should you give up your language to him… Volodymyr I’m simply unable to write in Russian any longer. The very thought that someone would consider me a Russian writer because I write in Russian is unbearable. It’s unbearable to any longer be with them in the same cultural and linguistic sphere. Repulsive, vile, disgusting. After Bucha, Hostomel, Ma­ riupol, after all of the horror Russians have brought us, I’ll no longer be able to write in a language common to both of us.

336

Volodymyr Rafeyenko

Marci Perhaps I’m thinking this way because I’m only able to write in one language. The fate of an American— I grew up monolingual. When I was in graduate school, I began to write a bit in Polish, the language I was immersed in for my research, but eventually I understood that I would never have the same intensity of intuition. Volodymyr It will be difficult for me to write in Ukrainian, but this is a difficulty I must overcome. I see no other option for myself. For now, in any case. Marci Eight years ago, when I was working on a book about the Maidan, I listened to Putin’s Crimea speech. I thought it was appalling, and full of lies, but I was able to listen. A year and a half later, when Trump appeared on the scene, I tried to listen, and I couldn’t. It wasn’t that I thought he was worse than Putin, per se. It was that I couldn’t stand—as if physically couldn’t stand—his voice. It was my native language, I had no distance from it. I felt each word too intensely. When Trump was in Warsaw in 2017, an editor at The New York Times asked me to write about the speech he gave there. I declined because I just didn’t feel able to listen and take notes.

The Length Of Days: An Urban Legend

337

Volodymyr Yes, this is exactly what I’m talking about as well. It’s impossible for me to work in the sphere of my native language, and still more impossible to produce literary texts. I must fully transition to Ukrainian. The trauma from what Russians have done to my country, and to my life, is so deep that it may not ever heal. Marci As the bombs fell over his city of Kharkiv in March, the Russophone Ukrainian writer Andrei Krasnia­ shchikh recalled Theodor Adorno’s assertion that, “To write poetry after Auschwitz is barbarism.”12 Adorno, it seems, changed his mind after reading Paul Celan who survived the Holocaust and went on to write extraordinary poetry in German. When I was pregnant with our daughter, my husband wanted to name her “Sulamith” after the Sulamith in Celan’s “Todesfuge” (“Death Fugue”): “​​dein goldenes Haar Margarete/ dein aschenes Haar Sulamith” (“your golden hair Margarete/ your ashen hair Sulamith”). And I both wanted to and didn’t want to—the name is beautiful, but sad, just like that astounding poem. Celan was from Chernivtsi, which today is part of Ukraine. And I find myself imagining that one day a Ukrainian poet will save Russian poetry the way Celan saved German poetry…

338

Volodymyr Rafeyenko

Volodymyr I think that Russian poetry, as a cultural medium, is threatened by nothing other than itself. It needs to be saved only from itself, and no one is able to do that apart from Russians themselves. If they ever awaken to reality. Marci Soon after the Russian invasion, I was exchanging messages with Yurko Prokhasko in Lviv, a Germanist who knows Paul Celan’s work very well. At one point, I asked Yurko: what more can I do for you? And he answered: Believe. Where does belief, faith come from now? Volodymyr From the human heart. From the sun that rises over those who are good and those who are evil. From the writings of Shakespeare and the smiles of children. From the smiles of your friends and the embraces of your child. From the warm rain of the coming spring and from the dark blue sky over our heads. Translated by Marci Shore and Thomas Schaffner Ternopil—New Haven, Conn. March 30–April 19, 2022, via Signal messaging app and by email

Notes In the City of Z, a Bathhouse Where What Happened Can Unhappen: An Afterword to The Length of Days Eichmann in Jerusalem (United Kingdom: Penguin Publishing Group, 2006), 49. 2 Max Ernst, Beyond Painting, trans. Dorothea Tanning [New York: Wittenborn, Schultz, 1948], 13. 3 Elena Kostiuchenko, “My vse znali, na chto idem i chto mozhet byt´,” Novaia Gazeta, 2 March 2015, https://www.novayagazeta. ru/articles/2015/03/02/63264-171-my-vse-znali-na-chto-idem-ichto-mozhet-byt-187. The translation is by Marci Shore. 1

On Truth, Dignity, and Being Human above All: Volodymyr Rafeyenko in Correspondence with Marci Shore An abridged version of this exchange was published previously as “Writing off Russia: Volodymyr Rafeyenko Interviewed by Marci Shore,” Project Syndicate (1 July 2022), https://www.projectsyndicate.org/onpoint/ukraine-war-impact-on-russian-writerby-volodymyr-rafeyenko-and-marci-shore-2022-06

340

Volodymyr Rafeyenko

Lyubko Deresh, “In the Presence of a Miracle,” trans. Dmytro Kyyan, Apofenie (30 September 2022), https://www.apofenie.com/letters-and-essays/2022/9/30/ in-the-presence-of-a-miracle?rq=Deresh. 2 Lev Shestov, Potestas clavium, trans. Bernard Martin (Athens: Ohio University Press, 1968), 359. 3 Lev Shestov, Potestas clavium, trans. Bernard Martin (Athens: Ohio University Press, 1968), 348. 4 Vladislav Surkov, “Dolgoe gosudarstvo Putina,” Nezavisimaia gazeta, February 11, 2019, https://www.ng.ru/ideas/2019-02-11/5_7503_surkov.html. 5 Yurko Prokhasko, “Veritable Truth,” trans. Kate Younger, Krytyka XIX: 9–10 (215–216) (January 2016): 36-39. 6 Anton Chekhov, The Duel and Other Stories, trans. Constance Garnett (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2013), 133. 7 Marci Shore, “Ukrainian Corruption Is Trump’s Native Language,” Foreign Policy (12 October 2019); https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/10/12/ ukrainian-word-corruption-trump-prodazhnist-language 8 Immanuel Kant, Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals, trans. Lewis White Beck (New York: Macmillan, 1987), 53. 9 Stanisław Jerzy Lec, Myśli neuczesane (Kraków: Wydawnictwo Literackie, 1957). 10 Vitalii Portnikov, “A Farewell to Russia,” translated by Tetiana Zhurzhenko and Timothy Snyder, Eurozine (7 March 2014), https://www.eurozine.com/a-farewell-to-russia/. 11 Jan T. Gross, Neighbors: The Destruction of the Jewish Community in Jedwabne, Poland (New York: Penguin, 2002). 12 Andrei Krasniashchikh, “Khar´kov pod bombami, den´ 18-i. Zapiski khar´kovchanina.” Ukraïnska pravda (13 March 2022), https://www.pravda.com.ua/rus/columns/2022/03/13/7331041/. 1

Recent Titles in the Series Harvard Library of Ukrainian Literature In Isolation: Dispatches from Occupied Donbas Stanislav Aseyev Translated by Lidia Wolanskyj

In this exceptional collection of dispatches from occupied Donbas, writer and journalist Stanislav Aseyev details the internal and external changes observed in the cities of Makiïvka and Donetsk in eastern Ukraine.

2022 320 pp., 42 photos, 2 maps ISBN 9780674268784 (hardcover) $39.95 9780674268791 (paperback) $19.95 9780674268814 (epub) 9780674268807 (PDF)

Read the book online

Harvard Library of Ukrainian Literature, vol. 1

Mondegreen: Songs about Death and Love Volodymyr Rafeyenko Translated and introduced by Mark Andryczyk

Volodymyr Rafeyenko’s novel Mondegreen: Songs about Death and Love explores the ways that memory and language construct our identity, and how we hold on to it no matter what. The novel tells the story of Haba Habinsky, a refugee from Ukraine’s Donbas region, who has escaped to the capital city of Kyiv at the onset of the Ukrainian-Russian war. 2022 204 pp. ISBN 9780674275577 (hardcover) 9780674271708 (paperback) 9780674271746 (epub) 9780674271760 (PDF)

$39.95 $19.95

Harvard Library of Ukrainian Literature, vol. 2

Read the book online

The Voices of Babyn Yar Marianna Kiyanovska Translated by Oksana Maksymchuk and Max Rosochinsky Introduced by Polina Barskova

With this collection of stirring poems, the award-winning Ukrainian poet honors the victims of the Holocaust by writing their stories of horror, death, and survival in their own imagined voices. 2022 192 pp. ISBN 9780674268760 (hardcover) 9780674268869 (paperback) 9780674268876 (epub) 9780674268883 (PDF)

$39.95 $16.00

Read the book online

Harvard Library of Ukrainian Literature, vol. 3

Babyn Yar: Ukrainian Poets Respond Edited with introduction by Ostap Kin Translated by John Hennessy and Ostap Kin

In 2021, the world commemorated the 80th anniversary of the massacres of Jews at Babyn Yar. The present collection brings together for the first time the responses to the tragic events of September 1941 by Ukrainian Jewish and nonJewish poets of the Soviet and post-Soviet periods, presented here in the original and in English translation by Ostap Kin and John Hennessy. 2023 282 pp. ISBN 9780674275591 (hardcover) 9780674271692 (paperback) 9780674271722 (epub) 9780674271739 (PDF)

$39.95 $16.00

Harvard Library of Ukrainian Literature, vol. 4

Read the book online

A Harvest Truce: A Play Serhiy Zhadan Translated by Nina Murray

Brothers Anton and Tolik reunite at their family home to bury their recently deceased mother. An otherwise natural ritual unfolds under extraordinary circumstances: their house is on the front line of a war ignited by Russian-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine.

Spring 2023 ISBN 9780674291997 (hardcover) 9780674292017 (paperback) 9780674292024 (epub) 9780674292031 (PDF)

$29.95 $19.95

Read the book online

Harvard Library of Ukrainian Literature

Ukraine, War, Love: A Donetsk Diary Olena Stiazhkina Translated by Anne O. Fisher

In this war-time diary, Olena Stiazhkina depicts day-to-day developments in and around her beloved hometown during Russia’s 2014 invasion and occupation of the Ukrainian city of Donetsk.

Summer 2023 ISBN 9780674291690 (hardcover) 9780674291706 (paperback) 9780674291713 (epub) 9780674291768 (PDF)

$39.95 $19.95

Harvard Library of Ukrainian Literature

Read the book online

Recent Titles in the Harvard Series in Ukrainian Studies The Moscow Factor: US Policy toward Sovereign Ukraine and the Kremlin Eugene M. Fishel This unique study that examines four key Ukrainerelated policy decisions across two Republican and two Democratic U.S. administrations. Fishel asks whether, how, and under what circumstances Washington has considered Ukraine’s status as a sovereign nation in its decision-making regarding relations with Moscow. 2022 324 pp., 2 figs. ISBN 9780674279179 (hardcover) 9780674279186 (paperback) 9780674279421 (epub) 9780674279193 (PDF)

$59.95 $29.95

Read the book online

Harvard Series in Ukrainian Studies, vol. 82

The Frontline: Essays on Ukraine’s Past and Present Serhii Plokhy The Frontline presents a selection of essays drawn together for the first time to form a companion volume to Serhii Plokhy’s The Gates of Europe and Chernobyl. Here he expands upon his analysis in earlier works of key events in Ukrainian history.

2021 (HC) / 2023 (PB) 416 pp. / 420 pp. 10 color photos, 9 color maps ISBN 9780674268821 (hardcover) $64.00 9780674268838 (paperback) $19.95 9780674268845 (epub) 9780674268852 (PDF) Harvard Series in Ukrainian Studies, vol. 81

Read the book online