The Burning Edge

by Chichester, Arthur

  FIVE

  The next morning I walked to the bus station which was situated out on the edge of the town where the grey concrete ended and the yellow fields began. It was still early but the sun was already beating down on the land making distant buildings appear to wobble in the heat-haze as I headed along the road clutching my backpack and nursing a hangover. In the station waiting room I bought a ticket at the small cashier’s window from a plump 50-something woman who had smeared purple lipstick across her mouth with the finesse of a toddler using crayons for the first time, before boarding a small yellow bus along with a handful of elderly passengers dressed in bright headscarves all heading in the direction of Loyev, a town that lay at the confluence of the Sozh and Dnieper rivers somewhere on the meandering Ukrainian border. I had no definite route mapped out for my travels in the country preferring instead to see where the winds took me, boarding pretty much whichever bus was leaving next as long as it was heading roughly north.

  Some distance out of Hoiniki, passing by the circular windows of the old Czechoslovakian built bus as we trundled through the flat featureless landscape of the Polesia region, there appeared small housing estates consisting solely of white bricked single-storied dwellings, planted it seemed to my eyes at least, randomly in the middle of nowhere and from what I could make out, far from factories or any places where the inhabitants could find work. They looked alien and out of place in the surrounding landscape of ancient forest and wooden villages that had been built hundreds of years before. These were, I was told by the elderly man sitting next to me who spat sunflower seed shells into his hand throughout the journey, the estates of the internal refugees. With the villages in the far south of the country having been evacuated and buried soon after the Chernobyl disaster, the Soviet government had hastily built these small lonely communities outside of the official exclusion-zone in which to house the new arrivals who had been evacuated north away from the deadliest levels of radiation that had poisoned the lower part of the country. But despite the years that had passed, the estates with their still treeless parks and bare back gardens looked temporary, as though the residents were just passing time there until they could return to their villages. But there were no villages to return to. Relocation had been a one way ticket.

  The only other features on the flat monotonous landscape of rolling fields and forest that we passed through that bright morning were graveyards overflowing with welded blue-steel crosses. Perched on top of small rises in the land and more often than not sheltered by a copse of trees, they were always surrounded by a low wooden picket fence painted light blue. What I did not know then as I began my journey was that this distinctive light blue colour, the colour of the summer skies above, would accompany me everywhere throughout the countryside: churches, schools, cottage furniture, outhouses, bus stops, everything in fact would be painted this certain shade of colour that I would label Belarusian-blue, so ubiquitous was it to be throughout the hinterland. There had to be some deeper cultural significance to the omnipresent colour but I never found out what it was. Nobody I asked could ever explain it. Perhaps I was merely reading too much into it and the real reason was more prosaic. A surplus of supply at the paint factory perhaps.

  Our bus continued through the featureless landscape dropping elderly passengers at remote bus stops named after the Soviet nomenclature, all the while pumping black diesel fumes into the hazy blue sky behind us, until eventually at midday we chugged into the low-slung riverside town of Loyev.

  Once a part of the Polish realm before eventually being absorbed into the expanding Russian Empire with the shifting balance of powers and borders, Loyev had been destroyed by the German army on its harried retreat across the Dnieper leaving not much of the city’s five-hundred year history intact. What wooden structures had survived the Fascists had been bulldozed and re-built in concrete by the Soviets in the name of progress leaving a city of low level box like grey buildings that revealed only occasional hints of Loyev’s historical past.

  I disembarked the bus onto the warm asphalt of the main street and entered a nearby shop which boasted an interior unchanged since Soviet times, where the shelves were stocked with the same grandmotherly fashions I recognised from the bus journey, along with home furnishings such as modern sofas that cost the equivalent of at least six months pension in this the poorest region of the nation. It was hard to imagine who would be able to furnish their homes with such expensive items and yet despite the high cost of furnishings and foodstuffs there was a queue of elderly people patiently waiting for their bills to be tallied on an abacus by a young shop worker who sat inside a glass cubicle by the entrance, speedily flicking the wooden beads from side to side in a formula I didn’t understand.

  Afterwards I took a place on a bench under the ubiquitous Lenin statue to eat a packet of crab sticks and watched as bare chested fisherman drifted lazily in the shallows of the river in small rubber dinghies. Life seemed to have stood still in Loyev; no cars passed and the only noise that broke the silence of the provincial afternoon was the occasional passing rattle of a babushka’s shopping cart on the cobbles. Even the nation’s ever present policemen didn’t bother showing their faces in Loyev in the heat of the afternoon. A large perspiring drinks vendor attired in a neat blue apron stood idle waiting for passing customers under a parasol but nobody appeared from the paths to buy anything. It reminded me of what the ice cream seller in Hoiniki had said when I had asked her what it was like living in a small provincial town in Belarus: ‘Incredibly boring,’ she had replied after a little thought.

  On the banks of the river I chanced upon the recently renovated war museum but it was closed. Through the locked gates I could see a neatly polished T-34 tank which is to the Soviets what the Spitfire is to the British. Instead, I headed to the town’s hotel in search of a meal but its restaurant was shut too. Through the window I could see tables collecting dust in the gloom of a large dining hall.

  Finding nothing else to occupy myself with and having seen all Loyev seemingly had to offer a traveller I headed back to the river bank in search of a boatman who would be willing to take me to the far bank from where I hoped to find a lift to Gomel. Down by the water’s edge I came across a bear like man fixing a boat’s motor that lay in a hundred pieces on an oily blanket. His bare back bore a magnificent tattoo of a Russian church complete with twisted Oriental spires created in the familiar blurred blue ink of the prison artist.

  ‘A memento from Siberia,’ he said, revealing a row of silver teeth that dazzled in the sunshine.

  We agreed on a price of fifteen roubles and I climbed into a metal dinghy that he pushed out of the sandy shallows and into deeper water before jumping in and pulling a rope that spluttered an ancient motor bolted onto the back of the boat into life, immediately sending a cloud of black smoke out across the surface of the grey coloured water in our wake. Soon we made it out into the middle of the fast flowing channel where spray that had flowed south from Russia splashed over the bow as the boat rose and sank in the swell, drenching us in sweet tasting water. I gripped the plank on which I was seated and leaned my bodyweight into to the bow every time the boat rose steeply over a wave, afraid that the hulking frame of the captain behind me may have capsized us. Falling into the rough waters would in most likelihood have resulted in a frantic gasping death. But the captain knew the waters well and guided us out of the rough surf and into the flat flowing channel of the far side where schools of small fish swam amongst the submerged river grasses.

  Able to relax as we puttered north along the far bank towards a small wooden jetty rising from the bullrushes in the distance I mentioned the price of goods I had seen in the shop in Loyev, asking how people managed to survive in the region where there was such a large discrepancy between costs and wages.

  ‘There is an anecdote,’ he began. ‘The three presidents are having a meeting and Putin says, for every hundred dollars Russians make I take twenty in tax. Poroshenko then says for every hundred doll
ars Ukrainians make I take seventy-five in tax. Lukashenko laughs and says, for every hundred dollars Belarusians make I take one hundred and twenty in tax. The two presidents turn to him and ask how is it possible that the Belarusian people pay more than they make? I have no idea, replied Lukashenko, but somehow they always find a way. Well, that’s how we live in Belarus,’ the boatman said, ‘Somehow we always find a way.’

  We pulled up on the far side of the river, the engine’s propeller jarring as it hit the sandy bottom. I paid with some damp banknotes and clambered out unsteadily onto the wooden jetty before climbing up a steep grassy bank, pulling on exposed roots for support. Without a wave the boatman turned the bow back in the direction of Loyev and headed out into the fast flowing channel once again. Alone, I joined a sandy track that headed into the darkness of the forest and followed it for a couple of hours without seeing anyone, all the while being harassed by squadrons of mosquitoes until, as the sun began to drop, I emerged from the trees passing a graveyard of Belarusian-blue crosses and soon after entered the sleepy tin-roofed hamlet of Abakumi.

  SIX

  I shouted a greeting over a garden fence on top of which were placed upturned cooking pots before opening the heavy wooden gate and entering the tidy cottage yard. If the sight of a stranger walking up the garden path surprised the stoutly built babushka who sat peeling potatoes over a bucket she did not show it. Introducing myself and explaining where I had come from she immediately offered me a place on her porch for the night and whilst babushka Valya headed inside to prepare tea I doused myself in the cool water from her garden well, washing the blood from my forest attackers from my body.

  A middle-aged man I took to be her son was sat on his haunches tinkering with a child’s bicycle in the yard. He stopped what he was doing as I washed myself and stood close, too close, staring at me mutely before the babushka came out of the house to shoo him away, tapping her temple to indicate he was mentally not all there.

  ‘Don’t give him money, he drinks too much as it is,’ she said, ‘and he’ll keep pestering you for more.’

  With that he righted his bicycle that was far too small for him and comically cycled off towards the village.

  I dressed and went for a walk finding a derelict building which had once served as the village club house back in Soviet times. Anything of value had been stripped from the building leaving empty rooms devoid of even window frames and floor boards. It smelt of pig shit. The Soviets had used old buildings as pig sheds and now their buildings in turn were used for the same purpose. The circle of history was complete.

  Afterwards I returned to the cottage where babushka Valya invited me into her dark kitchen to drink the tea that she had boiled on a wood fired stove decorated with pretty glazed tiles depicting simple pastoral scenes. The room in which we sat was watched over by a row of icons and dusty black and white photos that hung from nails banged crookedly into the yellowed plaster wall. A shrine to past times.

  One of the photos, that of a smartly dressed man holding a young child stood apart from the others. I asked who the people were and babushka Valya stood and removed the frame from the wall before sitting and gazing at the fading picture of the man and child lost in her thoughts.

  ‘Alexander was my son, he had opened a shop selling imported clothes from Poland, started making money, bought a Japanese car, an apartment, and married. But It wasn’t long of course before people started to visit him and demand money. That’s how it was back then, he wasn’t naive, he knew they would come at some point. He started paying but then that was not enough, and they demanded more, and then more. He sold his Japanese car and bought a Soviet one. Eventually they demanded more than he could pay and then the threats started. Let them do as they will he said. Well, they did. His wife visited him in hospital after he was beaten and phoned me. Don’t come she said, your heart won’t be able to take it. Soon after he sent his wife and son to Minsk to stay with her relatives, he was only ever worried about them, never about himself. Well they demanded he hand over his shop, but he was stubborn and refused.’ She trailed off as though vocalising what had finally happened to her son out loud was a pain she could not bare. She dabbed her eyes with the corner of her apron before continuing.

  ‘I went to Gomel and saw him in the morgue, his face was blue from the beating they’d given him. Of course I went to the police, told them everything. Then I returned home and started making preparations for the funeral when I received a call. 'Speak to the police again and you’ll be next' they said.

  I didn’t ask the ending of the story but the fact that she was alive told me she had chosen silence.

  ‘Thank God we don’t live in those times anymore, we have Batska to thank for that,’ she said, before replacing the photo to its hallowed place on the wall.

  Batska which translates as father, is the way in which almost every Belarusian refers to their president. In fact in all my time in the country it was only the State media I heard call him by his title, everyone else called him Batska. The reason for this folksy moniker is that despite the alleged dodgy elections and changes to the constitution that have helped keep Lukashenko in power, even his staunchest opponents have a grudging respect for the man who before becoming the president of Belarus worked on a state-farm in the provinces, in other words not a merely a man of the bureaucracy but one of the people too. Someone who understood them.

  Since becoming the nation’s first elected president he has dragged the country out of the dark days of Bandit Capitalism when the cities of the newly independent Republic were controlled by track-suited thugs with hard faces and harder hands, and who has with an iron grip turned Belarus into a well run and orderly nation of law and order that, despite its reputation in the West, is the envy of citizens in many of the former Soviet Republics. Ask a taxi driver in Bishkek or Yerevan what they think of Belarus, and they immediately say ‘Batska’ and give a thumbs up. The reason for this lies in the fact that what Russians and Belarusians with their tumultuous history of revolution and pogrom seek more than anything else is civil order and stability. That their savings will not be wiped out overnight and that the leather jacketed thugs from the 90s will not return to the street corners of their towns, menacing anyone weaker than themselves. And hence, despite leaders like Putin and Lukashenko bending constitutions to suit them, the people, especially the older generation, feel it is a price worth paying to have a strong man in charge who ensures that despite what goes on behind the doors of power, things on the streets at least are kept ‘in order’.

  What also plays well to large parts of the Belarusian population is Lukashenko’s refusal to bow to Western pressure and allow non-Slavic values to penetrate the conservatively religious country. So for example, when Lukashenko was asked by journalists if he would allow a gay-pride parade to take place in Minsk he replied that he would not block the idea, but on one condition: the parade had to take place on the second of August. This caused much hilarity amongst the Belarusian people because August second is national Airborne Troops day, a day when the blue berets get drunk and run the streets of the nation’s cities and most definitely not a day for a guy to be walking up Lenin Avenue in a pink dress and a rainbow flag.

  Another thing is that the Belarusian people for the most part believe that Lukashenko, despite how he sometimes goes about things, is at least sincere in his desire to improve the life of Belarusians. And in that regard he has shown time and time again that he is not afraid to stand up to Russia. When asked at the time of the Ukraine crises what he would do if Putin ever tried invading Belarus, Lukashenko said that should Russian tanks ever appear on the Belarusian border he would personally go there himself and fight the Russian president to the death. And so the people of Belarus, many of whom are struggling to make ends meet in jobs that pay little or feel that they want a political re-structuring of some sort, still have a certain level of respect for Lukashenko, or as everyone calls him, Batska.

  News of my arrival soon spread through the
small hamlet. Neighbours came to gaze over the garden fence, discussing me amongst themselves as I sat on the porch reading under a dim yellow bulb that buzzed with insects, everyone wanting to see the foreigner who had appeared from the forest which was no doubt the first thing of interest to happen in the hamlet for a long time. By chance the once weekly bus service to Gomel would be leaving early the next day. And so, content that I’d be able to continue my journey quickly, as the stars appeared above the cottages and the sound of the rushing river rumbled somewhere out in the darkness, I put my book away and lay down on the old sofa on babushka Valya’s porch. Her son who had returned on his little bike sat on a wooden bench in the garden watching me silently, until eventually unable to keep my eyelids open, I fell asleep under his benign gaze.

  SEVEN

  The crow of the village cockerels woke me as the first rays of the morning sun glimmered off of the tin roofs of Abakumi. A fresh breeze swept along the muddy central avenue on which Valya’s cottage stood, slamming window shutters along the street and rustling the trees that sheltered the cemetery at the far end of the road. Perched on top of a small rise in the land that afforded a view of the river below, it seemed an idyllic place to have one’s bones laid to rest.

  I followed a path that ran behind the back of the abandoned Soviet club house and led down to a sandy river bank where I stripped and entered the cold flowing water of the Sozh, washing the aches from a contorted night spent on the small balcony-sofa from my body. An early riser from the village stood in rubber waders blowing cigarette smoke into the morning air a hundred yards upstream, his fishing line already in the water. He waved in my direction when he saw me and then returned to scanning the water for signs of his evening’s supper.