A Russian Story (14 page)

Eugene Samarsky took full advantage of those decent opportunities which this university in the midst of the prairie opened up for him, and, more specifically, his marriage to Dounia. He had been working in administration for over ten years now; on the whole this quite appealed to him, because it gave him the opportunity to meet many interesting people, while someone else wrote the reports. He also has a good part-time job; he receives invitations to act as interpreter at congresses and conferences. Here too, without realising it, Dounia was a support to him. He did not want to speak Russian with her, though he was always ready to explain to her certain finer points in Russian books. However, instead of helping to improve Dounia’s command of colloquial Russian, he gradually absorbed her colloquial English, hook, line and sinker, including her sibilant Irish accent. He acquired a better command of English than was necessary in order to merely successfully adjust in the United States. And he became an excellent interpreter.

Life settled down. He now enjoyed pretty much the whole range of earthly blessings. Citizenship of a great country, a house, a job, an intelligent wife, a no less intelligent lover, Halya (the one who once beat up Lada), with whom he communicates in Ukrainian. He also has a son, who acknowledges him as his father, and with whom he also communicates in his native language. The only drawback is that he has no spice in his life. But then who has?

He has no opportunity to travel to his native city. Perhaps this is why he is so fond of the imaginary nostalgic walks around Kyiv, as he remembers it. As he wanders round Kyiv in his mind, a kind of altered state comes over him, akin to a guided dream which would suddenly be sharply and painfully wrested from his control.

Now he is roaming round a cold park by the river Dnipro in early spring or late autumn. The wet benches are devoid of any of the citizens of Kyiv, who in summer leave not a single seat free, whenever you go to that park. Now he is making his way from one park to another across a ramshackle bridge and down below, in the distance, there is a street which he has dreaded seeing ever since his mother used to take him for walks to show him Kyiv when he was a little lad. But he stops to look down, keeping his eyes fixed on the distant pavement.

Here is the stage where the symphony orchestra plays in the summer; at least it did in Soviet times. This is where his parents met. His mother had come along to listen to a concert of classical music. His father fortuitously happened to come along, because they were playing a polonaise by Ogiński, a popular melody which he took an immediate liking to. Now a pack of stray dogs with large sad eyes is lying by the broken-down benches. He watches them for a long time, then he shares with them some biscuits he has in his pocket. Then he goes to the observation platform above the precipice and behind him is the Ukrainian Parliament, and the inevitable demonstrators. He goes to the next park above the Dnipro; it reaches as far as a grey building in the style of the Stalin era. Raising his collar against the cold wind, he walks along Grushevsky Street to the Arsenal underground station. Circumventing the station building, he calls in at a milk bar, in another large grey building, where he drinks coffee leaning against a narrow stand-up table. In America the coffee is worse, in Europe it is better, but coffee like this does not exist anywhere else. As he recalls the cannon on its pedestal that can be seen from the window of the milk bar, imagining it in his mind’s eye, his tongue and palate recall that black taste.

The milk bar, where he frequently used to drink cheap but good coffee in the bad old days, is not his only association with this large grey building in the Pechersk District. Here too, the party took place where he met them all — all those people who governed his life for several years, Lada as well. It was a long time ago; the flat was sold during the first years when property sales had become possible, and even if they hadn’t sold, their group would have disbanded:
some are not here, and others are not with us
. But from the courtyard you can see that balcony and that porch. You have to go past the grocery shop and through the archway, though. There you will be surprised to see not the lush gardens of a high-class Kyiv building, but a single-storey detached house of ancient grey brick, beyond which, surprisingly, you see boundless fields with flowering herbs. At this very spot something sharply and painfully jolts him out of his drowsy state. He wonders why this break in time and space is so painful for him, since other walks round Kyiv also, sooner or later, lead him to the General’s house, a hundred kilometres from the capital.

He has not forgotten anything about what happened to him in that house, in that village. Nothing has been suppressed; he remembers it all. Sometimes he tries to repress these memories. At other times he lowers his resistance and remembers the General’s house, the village of Irivka, Olya, Tanya and Volodya. Demyanivna’s prophecy had come true. The fifteen minutes, at most, that he had spent in that woman’s house still came back to him after fifteen years. He is paying rather a high price for his involuntary crime — for fifteen years now he has been unable to travel to Kyiv, where he very much wants to go.

“You shouldn’t have any regrets about Kyiv!” says, consolingly, Halya from Chicago, who occasionally goes to Kyiv. “They are destroying the city; they’ve gone crazy — there’s hardly anything left! The historic city centre has gone! All the open spaces where you once took me for walks are crammed with stupid, inane skyscrapers. Our favourite coffee houses and our favourite bookshops are no more. Don’t go to this Kyiv! On your salary you can afford to travel to much more pleasant places! Where is your next congress?”

The congresses and conferences are actually held in the most unexpected corners of planet Earth. In addition to the well-trodden routes, he has visited Madagascar, Iceland and Indonesia. In November there is a congress in the Azores.

“I’m going with you,” says Myroslav. Neither this line from Mayakovsky’s poem:
You see, life will pass by just as the Azores passed by
, nor this line from the song by a Soviet bard:
In the city of Ponte Delgado a young girl looks through the window
means anything to him. But the lad knows the islands are in the ocean — that’s cool!

“You have to go to school.”

“Just remember I was at a Kyiv high school! Dad, be honest! I speak Ukrainian day and night, even though we are not at Harvard. I have even taught your Dounia to say
hello
in Ukrainian!”

“So I’ve noticed. Well done!”

“Well, take me to the islands then!”

“The places you’ve been to at your age. At your age I…”

“That was in the days of the Sodding Union! Life is quite different nowadays. People from our high school have been abroad much more. I am not the most-travelled by any means. I’m not even amongst the first ten! Dad, take me to the Azores. I’ve got enough pocket money for a pizza. You won’t be paying for me in the restaurants.”

“You will be served in the restaurant just as I will; that isn’t a problem. But you’ll have to buy a business-class ticket.”

“Dad, I grew up without a father to look after me; you abandoned me when I was a toddler! So now at least take me with you to the islands!” says Myroslav, playing his final trump card, and Eugene sits down at his computer and reaches the appropriate airline site. He confirms that a ticket is available for his son on the same flight, and he writes to the
Different Worlds: Contact Points Congress
to get them to book a twin room. They instantly reply that they have booked accommodation for him and his son in a suite with two televisions.

“Look at that! How are you supposed to watch two televisions at once?” commented Myroslav on the response from the organisers.

They landed at Santa Maria airport and were driven to the Terceira Hotel. Everything had been arranged so they could rest until the next day, considering the time lag. Eugene lies down in the bedroom.

“You settle down in the lounge,” he tells his son, pouring himself a sleeping draught.

“No problema,” replied Myroslav, switching on the television. “A pity I don’t know any Portuguese. Actually, here’s an English channel.”

When Eugene went to the window in the morning, even he, accustomed as he was to impressive landscapes, felt his heart miss a beat: “Oh God, how beautiful!” They might well be in for that intellectual swagger, humanitarian froth, cross-linguistic wordplay, not always witty, and the boasting about places one had been, which is the life-blood of the programmatic leitmotiv at gatherings of this ilk, but for the sake of several minutes like this by a window overlooking the bay it was worth enjoying the earthly status which permitted you to come here. As a matter of fact, even at such futile spectacles of intellectual pretentiousness, bright ideas sometimes make themselves heard, transfixing those who are capable only of listening to themselves.

The first person he met was his fellow-countryman Dmytro Udalchuk, who he probably sees at gatherings like this most often. Once, in the early days after independence, it was Udalchuk who arranged his first visit to America for him.

“So you’re interpreting? You could be a presenter at these meetings,” says Udalchuk.

“Everybody has their own destiny and their own broad pathway,” replies Eugene.

“You have to be able to alter your destiny, and to narrow down the pathway or broaden it, according to circumstances.”

“We’ll see, Mr Udalchuk, how you will broaden your pathway or narrow it down when you are sixty and they stop inviting you to these conferences. You don’t appear to have achieved the status of an Uiko Kazhych.”

“Perhaps it can be achieved if you leave this country,” replied Udalchuk, pointing out the name
Ukraine
on his conference badge and changing the subject:

“Allow me to introduce you, Eugene; this is our colleague from Japan, Yukusai,” — the Japanese bows politely — “He is in…”

“Do you think I am the last ignoramus not to know who Yukusai is?” says Eugene, as one almost always does in such situations.

Yukusai’s face glowed with pleasure, despite his Samurai composure. Eugene does not know who Yukusai is, but he is very aware of the impact of this guileless expression.

Now here is Uiko Kazhych himself, the author of sociophile bestsellers, which he writes in simple English so as not to present translators with unnecessary difficulties. This is someone of such a calibre that everybody here present will afterwards mention the fact that Kazhych was at that conference. Or, more tellingly: “I participate in conferences attended by Kazhych!”

And here is Burukova — where would they be without her? The leading anti-communist of Eastern Europe, who at all gatherings of this sort not only seeks opportunities to dazzle with her rabid, dated anti-communist rhetoric, but also is overtly on the lookout for a one-night stand.

“Hello, Samarey,” calls out Burukova. “Isn’t your wife with you?”

Burukova was at their university, teaching one of the Anticommunist Studies courses.

“I’ve brought my son with me,” replies Eugene. “Kazhych came on his own. Have you made his acquaintance yet?”

“You surprise me,” replies Burukova. “Are you still unaware of Kazhych’s proclivities? The likes of your son should be kept away from him; where is he, actually?”

Eugene does not want to introduce Myroslav to Burukova.

“My son has a proficiency in aikido. As for Kazhych, he’s an old bumpkin, to be honest. But I didn’t know he was gay. But here’s Yukusai; also on his own, apparently.”

“Oh, which one is Yukusai?” asks Burukova, changing her tone of voice and flicking a strand of hair off her forehead.

“Burukova, this isn’t like you! Such an intellectual and you don’t know of Yukusai?”

“Of course I’ve heard of him! I’ve read his work! I just meant I don’t know him personally!”

At the plenary session there is one Russian who needs simultaneous interpreting, and a Bulgarian who has submitted his text in Russian. Eugene enters the interpreters’ cabin, puts on his headset and draws the microphone towards his mouth. He is already equipped to translate all those
challenges of the day
,
cultural hierarchies
,
kitschy structures
,
cases of the subconscious mind
and much else besides. He is also equipped to handle incomplete phrases and he has learnt to pick up a thought expressed in poor English, something not everybody has the ability to do. He was gratified when he succeeded in this and he did not mind when the audience at the congress began applauding the speaker and not him. A grateful glance from the speaker was enough for him. When someone starts speaking Russian in fits and starts, he translates these fragmented phrases so that the audience can hear the idea emerging out of the swirling ungainliness. He enjoys this work, although he knows that Udalchuk is right: to boast “I saw Kazhych” is the same as if some sound technician were to boast that he set up the microphones for the Scorpions, say.

It’s a pity he did not study German to the same level. It’s a pity there are few opportunities to interpret from Ukrainian. People from Ukraine either speak Russian or they endeavour to speak English, with differing degrees of success. Incidentally, who else is there from Ukraine this time, apart from Udalchuk?

He examines the programme. Here is a list of the presentations at the plenary. The last one is by a woman from Ukraine.
Tatiana Maroukhina. The nerve of existence of small nations
. Hell’s bells, there’s a topic for you! What’s her name? There’s never been anything like that before. He reads more carefully… These Slavonic surnames transliterated into the Roman alphabet aren’t always transparent, not even to his experienced eye.
Tatiana Ma-rou…
Right, now he has to read the presentation by the Bulgarian who gave him the text in Russian but who will speak from the rostrum in Bulgarian… That item is finished now. Now other interpreters will take over, and he will read more closely who this speaker from Ukraine is…

… If all this is being filmed for some cosmic archives of events, let the sound track play Vivaldi’s
Storm
!
Tatiana Maroukhina
! I believe Mykhailo Tykhonovych from Pskov gave this surname to his daughters Tanya and Olya; he wanted to call them Marusya and Oksana, but his wife Zoya Mykolayivna, the stubborn Ukie, insisted on naming them in honour of Pushkin. It may not be her; there are countless people with this same name all over the world. But if there once was an inherited house and two sisters who were so unalike, and the fiancé of one of them, and the birthday celebrations, and a ‘duel’, then there also ought to be a gathering of the nobility where a naïve, brainless, rural girl turns up in a different guise, transubstantiated, representing one more hypostasis of the eternal recurrence, Ewige Wiederkunft, which he had read about at that time, in the house he inherited; he had read on until he reached a state of self-oblivion, physically sensing the vortices of the time strata at the site of the ancient site of the sorcerers’ sabbath.