The Man From Talalaivka Read online

  “Hanya,” he whispered hoarsely, in vain. His aching heart could carry no more. Now, in the depth of grief, painful logic reminded him the hoped-for spiritual miracle would not eventuate. The pulsating life above, the cold below, separated them in finality. “Moya lybenka … what can I do now?” The stillness below, the silence, gave their reply. His grieving shoulders shuddered, his sobs, tears, unable to penetrate the hardened soil to stir the permanently sleeping heart.

  He raised his wet-streaked face from grave’s side, the early summer sun almost blinding him in a shimmer of life-giving energy. Despite his grief and the crushing pain, he observed in wonder as he gazed across from this hurriedly-extended section of the ancient Kylapchin cemetery. Everywhere, life and death were intertwined and vied for dominance. Nearby, from the shaded sanctuary of trees protecting the tiny chapel that delineated old and new ground, a flock of birds, impervious to the sorrow below, soared exuberantly, oblivious of his anguish and the anguish of other mourners burying their dead. The monstrous disease that was called starvation and privation, so callously meted out by Stalin and his henchmen, was already ravaging the countryside as it bit harder and harder into this part of the Sumskaya Oblast region. It cared not which victims it took in its wake, and was now fired up to fever pitch with the ‘excesses’ of the new regime.

  The starkness between the living and the dead was too evident. The immaculate beauty of morning sunlight unswervingly giving life to his beloved Ukraine was almost painful in its perfection. It was as inviting, as warm and complete above, as the depth of cold and darkness below. He bowed his head in contemplation. The permanence of death was almost incomprehensible to his tortured psyche. There was no meeting of the souls, in this world. His pleas, his willing it from every part of him, could not stir Hanya’s soul to return.

  At last, he crossed himself and prayed again for the souls of his lost loved ones. “Hospode Pomelyue,” he whispered. “We will be together again one day when our destiny tells us.” Gathering his strength, he continued. “Hanya,” he whispered as if afraid his words, like his beautiful wife, would be taken from him, “I pledged you my heart, and you have it. I pledged you I would keep you with me, always. But it was not to be. You were taken on a different path; I know not why. I could not save you. In that, I failed.”

  He paused, head bent. He searched for words of comfort that his countrymen’s heroic poet Taras Shevchenko had beseeched and whispered from his own tortured soul so long ago. “Hanya … yet if my heart breaks completely, I will not keep our joyful memories, that made our lives true, and so I too will die from the pain. I must hold my heart together, for a future to be, for your spirit to live on with me.” He kissed the clod of clay and placed it among the wilting flowers. Silently, with head still bent, and as though he were acknowledging a passing spiritual blessing, he crossed himself again, then rose, almost dazed by the light and by the vibrancy of life striving to survive around him above the morbid soil: nature, life, pulling him, forcing him back from the abyss of despair.

  From the shaded sanctuary his horse neighed the arrival of another rider. Peter squinted, saw it was his close friend Mikhaelo. He stood up and, straightening his rough linen shirt, wiped his streaked face with its sleeve.

  “Petro!” Mikhaelo called as he strode towards him to the new, dishevelled mounds, boot-high grasses whipped aside by his strides. “Petro, my friend … you won’t go any faster to heaven than the rest of us, you know, even with all your praying! Come, man! I have a message from your father. He has a visitor waiting. I promised him I’d return with you!” Mikhaelo’s younger, watchful eyes belied his jocular tone. He had not yet lost such a loved one, but he felt the grief of his life-long friend.

  “Dobre, dobre,” Peter smiled, grateful for his friend’s arrival. He turned to look one last time at the mound, beneath which lay so much spent joy, so much hoped-for future with his precious Hanya. Through Vanya, their surviving little son, her spirit, and Mischa’s, would be felt. His yearning, broken heart had somehow hung on amid inconceivable pain. He could not contemplate it now, but perhaps one day his heart might heal and learn to love again. It would be a sad, solitary mission, but it had to be.

  He placed his hand on Mikhaelo’s shoulder in acknowledgement and walked back to his trusty horse, then led it down a gentle slope to the nearby spring. The willow’s leaves, playfully dancing with the cleansing water, dropped their tears of comfort as he drank the pure elixir of life. Face still wet, tears of sorrow blending with tears of hope, he took the horse’s reins and expertly steered it from the ancient cemetery, from the memories, the riven pain, in the direction of hope and the future.

  He knew not what form it would take. He would have his beautiful Hanya’s spirit to guide him and Vanya’s life to protect and save. There were no promises, no assurances for him in this quest. Just as Taras Shevchenko had inwardly wept for his fledgling country’s soul, so he too inwardly wept for his fledgling family, now gone. Those tears of the heroic poet had added to the decay of the Tsar’s ancien regime; his tears now added to the decay caused by Stalin’s perverse cruelty.

  Chapter 4

  Peter hesitated, uncertainty edging him, as he recognised the dilapidated buggy in his father’s courtyard. Dismounting, he motioned to Mikhaelo to go into the farmhouse, forcing himself to contain his emotions as he prepared for Father Chernyiuk’s unexpected visit. He grasped at nearby grasses for the priest’s old tethered horse and leaned heavily against the crusted wall as he observed this creature of burden. The sun’s darting rays, captured in the courtyard, flashed at him, stinging his eyes. Even now, pain still blistered him. Two seasons ago, such elated joy … now, two seasons of unfathomable searing. In these few moments, in the privacy of his father’s courtyard, he held back a sob as he again felt the silent pain, yet forced himself once more to contain his emotions, to allow logic to rule his head, his being.

  He looked again at the waiting farmhouse door and the visitor’s buggy. “He has not long called on us,” he murmured to himself, “there must be some urgency.” He felt angst for the old priest, reminded himself that he was not the only one suffering silently. The priest, too, had had recent reversals: a wanderer among his flock, ministering his faith as best he could, his ancient church of Kylapchin razed to the ground in the vindictive fervour since Stalin’s rise to power. The holy messenger of Orthodoxy was now without church or home, his community scattered, his means of survival precarious. His health was failing, but he nevertheless had accepted his fate stoically, without complaint. “How does he keep going, despite all this?” Peter searched for an answer. The elderly priest’s family was long gone: only his faith gave him the courage to pray each day, to await a better life.

  Peter realised the political situation was rapidly changing in this uncertain summer of 1930, even more so than the psyches of the Ukrainian people of these regions could comprehend. Now, with the senior veterinary practitioner ailing, his own work took him even further in the area. He witnessed first hand the haphazard, iniquitous way in which collectivisation was implemented in their Oblast. The priest, like so many of his fellow countrymen, had become a pawn in the ensuing power struggle between Ukrainian farmers and Stalin’s apparatchiks.

  This power struggle was not yet over, he suspected. Already in his travels he had heard of Lenin’s moderate protégé Bukharin’s demise; replaced, in these Ukrainian Oblasts, by the ambitious Kaganovich, who was once so devoted to Lenin’s ideals, but was now Stalin’s right-hand man in these regions, and given virtual carte blanche in honing collectivisation into unworkable models of excessive production. Peter feared for his father, who had earlier resisted the authorities, and who had worked so prodigiously with his entire family to maintain his productive farm. Ironically, the rewards for this effort and output were envy and jealousy, even vindictiveness from a regime increasingly setting impossible production quotas.

  His horse nuzzled its heaving nostrils at his side, awaiting its master. He led his great,
trusting creature to the water trough and rested his eyes on its magnificent frame and gently stroked its moist quivering shoulder. At last, he took the old jug from its stand, refreshed himself, drawing in a deep breath as he collected himself, summer’s hazy warmth brushing at cold droplets on his quenched lips.

  He looked about wistfully at the countryside of his birth. To his left, at a short distance from the farm, Kylapchin lay hidden in a glen. The wispy spirals of cindered smoke from the remaining earthen ovens rising above the woods gave few signs of life. A pall hung over the once vibrant and industrious village as daily the soviet bureaucrats dispatched families to scattered kolkhozes, tearing the fabric of communal life. The village and its cemetery had almost merged, unable to withstand the onslaught of capricious officialdom and the politically engineered famine.

  He gazed at his father’s full fields, the result of so much unrelenting work, and looked beyond these to the pinnacle of the hill lined with great trees, which delineated the new boundary of fields so hard-earned collectively by the family since Lenin had instigated his new economic policies. The sun’s rays glistened, deflected from the hillside, put a soft sheen over the artist’s vibrant palette that splashed before him: of golden wheat, corn, sunflower fields; trees, hedges, crops of variant greens; and wildflowers freely scattered in their reds and gold and blues.

  Again, he breathed in its warmth and could almost taste the sweetness of summer’s early blooms, of the land’s generosity all about him. For a few suspended moments, he was transfixed by the beauty of this wondrous countryside, in awe of this idyll. Tears suddenly escaped his self-control. This was the soil on which he and his sisters and brothers were born, on which he was raised by his hard-working Yosep and Palasha, and in which his soul would one day be laid to rest. His gaze blurred: he could not dwell on this longer. Slowly, thoughtfully, he drew another deep breath, then sighed as if awaking to reality. He knew there was now no certainty in their future.

  As he opened the farmhouse door, little Vanya ran to him. “Tato, Tato! Ve doma, ve doma!” Peter knelt down to his firstborn and kissed the soft infant face, gently tousling his dark hair. “You may play now, Vanya,” he encouraged him, watching as his son ran outside for his child’s play. He smiled, nodding gratitude to his caring mother.

  “Ah, Petro,” his father’s measured tone greeted him as he stepped into the farmhouse. “Father Chernyiuk has just returned from the soviet committee. He wishes to talk with us, son.” Peter bowed in respect and received the old priest’s blessing, and joined them as they shared their grape wine and bread. He watched with heightening tension as the priest unburdened himself: the haggard, bearded face and dispirited eyes revealing the painful acceptance of his situation. “Both victim and messenger,” Peter thought, sensing the holy man’s dilemma, which confirmed his own inner fears that Stalin’s bureaucracy was now allowing officials almost total free rein in this region.

  “What am I to do?” Father Chernyiuk suddenly burst out. “Am I to be both priest and spy?” he anguished. On pain of reprisal, the old priest was forced to join the local soviet committee, ostensibly to enable dissemination of Bolshevik Party policy, but in reality coerced to report on the very people who trusted him with their lives and souls. It was an almost untenable situation for this old messenger of Orthodox faith. Powerless, he could do nothing to alter this; he had little choice but to acquiesce. If he refused to co-operate with this sulphurous soviet committee, the consequences were extreme: imprisonment, labour camps, or execution awaited him.

  Father Chernyiuk dropped his voice to a whisper, eyes widening in fear, as if an invisible enemy was already among them. Peter tensed, sensing danger. “Yosep, they are accusing you of being … a kulak! They use this false name glibly, so carelessly …” The words hurtled out as if the enemy had already thrown the hammer, about to crush them. Peter caught his breath, barely controlling his emotions, and looked at his stunned parents: Yosep and Palasha were being labelled kulaks by a local soviet committee, whose members’ only qualities lay in greed, envy and self-interest.

  His heart sank, feeling their angst. All these years of back-breaking work by his family, even almost super-humanly meeting excessive quotas set by the officials, had come to naught. If anything, it had worked against them. Without the infamous kulak label, his Yosep and Palasha could have been considered as all the other small farmers, pushed into a nearby kolkhoz, to work as best they could. But now, as supposed kulaks, they would be deemed a danger to Stalin’s new Soviet society. It was ludicrous, but it was a clever label of convenience espoused by the very people of the soviet committee who sought protection from hard work and ostracism by mouthing Stalinist slogans in order to survive. He shook his head, grappling with the consequences. Somehow, he had to remain strong: his parents were too disturbed by their faithful messenger’s news. Father Chernyiuk’s information was only rumour, but instinctively Peter knew it was close to the truth of the situation. These were now dangerous times.

  “Peta,” the old priest turned to him, speaking gently, his voice resonant with gravity: the voice of the Orthodox sage who had christened him and married him, his sad eyes determinedly meeting Peter’s. “You must prepare yourself, my son. The situation is changing very rapidly. You must plan for your little Vanya’s welfare. Peta …” he hesitated, choosing his words with care, the memory of Peter’s distraught face at Hanya’s funeral still fresh in his mind, “you must consider your duty to take a wife, my son … for your child’s sake, for your elders’ sake.”

  Peter’s mind reeled. He was caught off-balance, unprepared for this counsel and the fast turn of events. “Come, Peter,” Father Chernyiuk continued, the mantle of his Orthodox faith imbued in him. “I must give you my blessing of dispensation from the mourning period. You must do this, my son, for your Vanya’s … for everyone’s sake.” He retrieved an old gold-embroidered ecclesiastical ribbon and small cross from his black shabby cassock and placed his hand on Peter’s bowed head. Incense on holy ribbon mixed with the mustiness of heavy cassock, confusing his senses: holy reverence, harsh reality, bore down on him. For a few moments, the farmhouse and its occupants were transposed by their priest’s solicitations and liturgical verse. Peter closed his eyes, forced himself to be inwardly strong, uncertainty encircling him. At that moment he could not allow himself to think of his Hanya and Mischa. The pain of these past months was too raw, too real. “But how do I tell this heart to not bleed … to heal?” he cried silently. He knew not how he would make the transition from widower to husband.

  He stood in the old cobbled courtyard as the priest’s buggy made its way towards Kylapchin and beyond, and watched as the afternoon haze shimmered and enveloped the visitor as he disappeared behind the swaying corn and sunflower fields. He stood there for some time, pensive, capturing this remaining moment of permanence and security in his family’s farmhouse. He feared that his life, and his parents’ lives, were about to change at a faster pace than he could have envisaged. The uncertainty he faced, though precarious and unclear, was bearable, tolerable. But the uncertainties his parents faced were dangerously menacing. His skin pricked with anxiety: he sensed it would not be long before they would have their answer.

  Chapter 5

  Evdokia sat quietly, her face an enigma, shadowed in the great room of the ‘collective’ farmhouse. She smoothed her long black skirt; felt the tightness of her coiled hair. Her eyes darted to her gentle, anxious mother, Klavdina. Her heart lurched, eyes pricked with a painful memory, now carefully concealed in the half-light of the cavernous room. She knew, instinctively, that this meeting was as important to her beloved mother as it was to her.

  Her eyes followed the grain of the great oak table as she watched the closed door, averting her father Yakim’s eyes as if, incomprehensibly, by some twist of fate she might jeopardise the arranged meeting. She knew his cautious, unflinching firmness. She had been scorched before by his resolute will, his denial for her to follow her heart. She had known painful
disappointment: had had to watch her moment of opportunity pass as a loved one found happiness elsewhere, in circumstances she could not change but was forced to accept. Now, her family’s discomfort had increased immeasurably since collectivisation left them homeless, eking out the seasons in this once-grand farmhouse, vying with other families as they awaited the bureaucrats’ orders to place them in a kolkhoz, to an area yet unknown. She closed her eyes, hid away the past painful memory and her anxiety for their future; looked ahead, to the great beamed farmhouse door, to hope.

  The massive door suddenly opened, nature’s light warming the enormous room. To all around, she was neatly poised: attractive in her long embroidered petticoat shirt. Yet inwardly, like a fawn caught in bright light unable to escape, she quivered, stomach compressed sickeningly tight. Her emotions were contradictory, difficult to control: trepidation, fear of rejection; yet, still, a certain excitement. She reached for her cup and sipped the cool spring water, distracting herself from her inner turmoil.

  Stasyia, the old priest’s sister, looked kindly at her young protégé seated beside her. She patted Evdokia’s tightly clasped hands, her eyes smiling reassuringly as she rose to greet the party. Seasoned in these matters, she fully understood her role as the chosen intermediary, and knew the singular importance of this arranged meeting.

  “Dobreye dene, dobreye dene,” she enthused, embracing them. She kissed Father Chernyiuk’s proffered hand and acknowledged his blessing. “Welcome, our good people, Yosep and Palasha Pospile, and your son Petro; welcome, our dear Father.” She ushered them in to the great room, invited them to sit at table opposite Yakim and Klavdina.

  “So … you had a good journey to Yakemovitch, Peta?” she enquired, smiling warmly. “You know the way in these parts well enough, with all your travels for your work. A short distance, really, these ten or so kilometres, but such a long way in heavy winter snows!” Her soothing voice allayed the awkwardness, and prepared the two families she knew well, but who had not previously met.