The Fantastic Worlds of Yuri Vynnychuk

by Yuri Vynnychuk

  1. The Lyrical and Philosophical Imagination

  An Embroidered World

  In as much as I remember my grandmother, she was always sewing. At first I didn’t really pay attention to her embroidering, but one time I noticed that an old cherry tree that was growing near our window had disappeared after Granny had embroidered it. The cherry tree had completely dried up, and Gramps had planned on chopping it down several times, but for some reason his hands never seemed to get to it. But now it’s gone.

  At that time I began to try and recall whether anything else had disappeared, and suddenly I remembered that quite recently a wild dog that had settled in the wilderness had disappeared. He wailed so awfully during the night that the entire neighborhood cursed him to the depths of hell. No one could let their children out for a walk without someone keeping an eye on them, for fear that the dog was mad. It’s true that several times they tried to hunt him down, but he was either too quick or just as crafty, because all those attempts at hunting him down were in vain. But no one had heard him for a week already. Of course, he could have died or moved on somewhere else. I began to look through Granny’s embroideries, and on one of the pillows I saw him. Now I understood it all—everything that Granny embroiders disappears at that very moment she embroiders it. It’s not for nothing that there weren’t any people on a single one of her embroideries. The sun wasn’t there; there wasn’t anything you’d feel sorry about losing.

  I couldn’t restrain myself from sharing my discovery with my grandfather. Gramps just shrugged his shoulders:

  “Well, what of it? I know about it.”

  “Then why didn’t you ever tell me?”

  “For some reason I always forgot. It’s either this or that... I forgot.”

  Then he looked at me with a warm smile and added:

  “Well, good. I’ll tell you about what I know. Though this was right after the war... At that time they began arresting us. Every night they were carting off people to Siberia. The prisons were packed. They threw the young guys to the front without any preparation, without any training. They threw them right at the tanks... Lord, how many of them were killed then!... You know the way they looked at the Galicians… The tiniest suspicion—and you’re in the slammer. That’s how they arrested me. Your grandmother couldn’t find herself a place to escape from her grief. She walked back and forth, poor thing, near that prison and tried to look through everything to see if she could see me. Then once out of sorrow she was sitting down in the evening and began to embroider. She just couldn’t get the prison out of her head, so she began to embroider it. She embroidered the walls around it; she embroidered the guard and the dogs. She finished her sewing late in the middle of the night... And what kind of sleep does a prisoner get? We lie there and think about everything, we just can’t sleep. When once, suddenly, it was as though everything had come tumbling down. There were no walls in the room, no stone walls of the prison—we were lying in the middle of the yard. Hey, we figured this out right away, and we made our way wherever we could... Well, the prison disappeared, but those who put us in prison were left. We had to hide. The younger ones went to the woods, and the older ones—to the villages and farms. At that time we moved to the village. That’s the way it was... Although, we didn’t figure out things with Granny right away, that this was a result of her embroidering. We thought all different kinds of things. And the people spoke about the Mother of God, that she showed pity on us and saved us from captivity with a miracle... But after some time, I looked—and our cat was gone. ‘Hannusya,’ I says, ‘where did our Matsko get to, why can’t we see him?’ When I take a look—the embroidery is lying on the table and right there is our embroidered Matsko. Then something dawned in my head. ‘Well,’ I says, ‘Hannusya, wouldn’t it be nice if you’d unstitch the embroidery?’ And she answers: ‘What kind of silly thoughts are these? I was going blind working so hard over it, and you want to destroy it for me?’ Yoy, ya think I’m gonna listen to the old bat? I took the scissors and unstitched it. Just as I plucked out the last thread I heard a meow, meow! And it’s our Matsko! And he had a hungry look, because just as he saw the milk in the dish, he threw himself at it. ‘Well,’ I say, ‘Hannusya, now you have some real tsores! It turns out if you don’t embroider something, then it doesn’t disappear.’ And she doesn’t believe it, she laughs at me. Well, good... Then I ask her to embroider the scarecrow that juts out in our garden. And what do you guess? She embroiders the scarecrow, looks, and it’s gone in the blink of an eyelash! Well, now she’s finally convinced of her ability. From that time on she took care not to embroider anything she’d regret losing or that might inadvertently disappear.”

  As it turned out later, not only Gramps and I had found out about this, but also the neighbors... umm... about my grandmother’s curse. Everybody began to speculate whether they’d done anything nasty to Hannusya, what if she gets angry and embroiders it? And Dzunyo suddenly remembered that he once swiped a rooster from our chicken house. Gathering courage, he came to Granny and confessed it, and likewise brought a goose in place of that rooster. He apologized in such a manner that Granny charitably forgave him his sin. It’s true that on the next day Mrs. Buslyk ran over for that goose because it was her goose, but junior’s mood didn’t worsen at all because of it. It was most interesting that once again that very same goose returned to us. Mrs. Buslyk brought it and said:

  “Mrs. Hannusya, take the goose, but I really beg you, if you’d be so kind as to also embroider my husband. Cause that drunk will drive me to the grave.”

  And one has to say that Granny held that drunks were the worst and without even thinking it over much, took to embroidering Mr. Buslyk. And what do you guess? Not a week had passed and Mrs. Buslyk ran up with another goose to ask that her husband be returned.

  “Why are you bugging me?” Granny gestured that she go away.

  But my mother felt the goose and said:

  “What kind of filling should I give it? Buckwheat groats or rice?”

  “I’m not going to undo the embroidery,” Granny replied harshly.

  “With rice and mushrooms,” Dad advised.

  “Good Lord,” Mrs. Buslyk began to sob. “What am I now? I’m neither a widow or a maiden!”

  “It seems like you’re a widow,” my Gramps said.

  “Well, who’s going to wring its neck for me?” Momma asked, transferring her gaze from Dad to Gramps.

  “And even if a goose’d kick me in the butt, I’m not going to unstitch the embroidery!” Granny vowed.

  “Ehh, I’m gonna really fuss over it—I’ll chop off it’s head,” Dad grimaced. “Here I’ll take the ax—whack, whack, and it’s kaput.”

  In the meanwhile Grandma had straightened out the cloth on the table.

  “Well, take a gander—your husband turned out just like a painting. And, look, I even made his legs wobbly so it’d be obvious he’s drunk. And now you want me to destroy it?”

  “The ax is under the steps in the foyer,” said Gramps. “I’d wanted to sharpen it, but I forgot.”

  “I’ll sharpen it right now,” Dad wiped his hands and started off toward the foyer.

  “If you stuff that goose a la Chinese, it’ll taste so good you’ll swallow your fingers,” Momma insisted.

  “I don’t like the Chinese,” Gramps strained through his teeth.

  After Gramps had been investigated and had been locked up in the slammer again, there was a certain man there in charge they called The Chinaman. He amused himself by calling in one of the political prisoners in the middle of the night and keeping him standing at attention till dawn. Because of it, Gramps, having learned something new about the Mao boys, often used to repeat:

  “If there’s going to be a war with the Chinese, then I’m going to be the first to volunteer. I have a special interest in them.”

  The Chinese, however, were unbelievably lucky, because my Gramps died before the border conflict.

  “My husband wasn’t so bad,” Mrs.
Buslyk whined. “There were times he’d go for water... to the store for milk...”

  “Ehh,” Granny waved her hands, “you do the job and don’t get squat for it!”

  And so she undid the embroidery.

  On the next day Mr. Buslyk got drunk as a skunk, and he got under Mrs. Buslyk’s skin for losing two geese for nothing.

  My Granny stretched through the window and began to shout:

  “You sweet good-for-nothing! If you don’t stop, I’ll embroider you again right away! And then two more geese will be gone!”

  Buslyk opened his mouth to rasp out something, but, in spite of the fog in his head, he figured that it was better to keep quiet.

  Then we had lunch. Momma stuffed the goose a la Chinese, and told Gramps that it was according to an old-fashioned recipe. Gramps was delighted and praised her:

  “Eh, whatever you say, Ukrainian cuisine is the best in the world. And just for the fact that we thought up kovbasa, garlic ring sausage, we’re worthy of eternal memory. But who knows about this now?.. Here, Yurko, learn so that you’ll be wise and remind the world that it’s in great debt to us for kovbasa.”

  Well, so I learned and now I’m reminding you.

  This was the way my Granny was, may she rest in the Heavenly Kingdom, cause the last thing that she did was to embroider herself.

  The Windows of Time Frozen

  I came here and stood amid the trickily winding streets, the multitudes of people, of trees, of buildings, to conjure her name.

  I extend my hand, and proclaim three times:

  “Ilayáli! Ilayáli! Ilayáli!” And people turn into woodworms, they begin to nibble trees, and the trees fall, and they don’t know the reason why.

  Something strange is happening to me: every morning, waking up from dreams, I feel I’m the dew. The way the dew with its beauty blinds your eyes from the flowers and grass, that’s how I blind myself to all the living things and to this earth.

  Weep, because when the sun stoops over your head, the dew will disappear.

  I fear the sun. Sometimes I walk out at night into the garden and stare into the cold sky. The whole time it seems like it wants to remind me of something or to explain something. I listen ardently to the quiet of the night sky and catch separate words, sentences. Just recently I began to write them down. And suddenly I understood—it was telling me about me, telling me what I’d forgotten long ago.

  And yesterday I stepped out into the garden, listened hard and heard nothing. I crawled up onto the tallest apple tree to hear better, but the sky was silent. I sat on the branches the entire night, without taking my eyes from the sky, and the sun rose, and its rays struck my face, and I saw that I am no longer the dew, but someone just like everyone else, and maybe even ten times worse, and when someone threw a stone at me, I picked up the stone and kissed it.

  1

  In the childhood of everyone there once was a garden—one’s own or someone else’s. We had a garden that was no-one’s—no one besides us ever entered it, but we knew that if we should stop going there for a day, it would disappear, never to return again.

  This was so long ago when we were pure as angels, when we knew nothing of love, but already leaned with our lips to one another and didn’t really know what was going on, or if you happen to do it this way. And we believed that we’d come from a fairy tale and that we’d return to the fairy tale, and we took pledges of fidelity, and I said that I would always defend her, the little girl Ilayáli, from beasts of prey, from evil spirits and fierce dragons...

  2

  Ilayáli couldn’t have died. More probably it was I who have died. Countless years ago I had dissolved in the wind and from time to time in tiny specks of dust I fall onto the earth with the rain and snow. And no one in the world knows that this rain and that snow are me. Young girls wash their hair in me, children make snowmen out of me, and a part of my despair appears on the face of every snowman.

  3

  I often dream of our street that I abandoned so long ago, but I particularly remember its trees, its buildings and its windows. It was a thoroughly small street with one- and two-storied brick houses. Everything that happened behind the wall of any of them immediately became known to the whole street in great detail.

  In the summer the windows of my street turned green and bloomed in cyclamen, azaleas, primrose, asparagus, and in the winter they were stuffed with cotton and covered lightly with colored foil. On the upper part of the window puffy angels with white wings were attached, and for Christmas they put up a Christmas tree at the window. When it got dark, all the windows were shut with drapes, but the one where the Christmas tree stood was always lit and beckoned us little ones to it. The whole time we bounded along the street comparing trees to see who had the best. And the best was always at Mr. Mandryk’s who, by some miracle unknown to anyone, had managed to hold on to some pre-war toys. No one else had that kind. On Mr. Mandryk’s tree princes and princesses shone in exquisite clothes, birds of paradise with fluffy tails, sparkling round balls, and even fairy-tale candies that none of us had ever relished; we always argued whether they were real or just empty wrappers. And on the tree there were lots of elegant tiny angels and cherubim, and beneath the tree stood Saint Nicholas with a full bag of presents. He wore a blue zhupán sewn in gold, cut in half by a wide golden belt, and from beneath the zhupán jutted out red sharováry. With his long white mustache he resembled more of a Zaporozhian Cossack than a saint. We felt a boundless respect for the real Saint Nicholas, wrote him letters in which we swore to be good and listen to our parents, and at the end of the letter, as if matter-of-factly, listed the gifts we wanted to get. On the contrary, we completely ignored Father Frost, not for a moment believing in his existence. Once, when mother bought a Father Frost to put under the tree, my grandfather took off his beard, shortened his sheepskin coat, remade his felt shoes into boots and attached a red pointed beret onto his hat. Now Saint Nicholas had appeared even at our place. Having seen such a marvel, the entire street immediately rushed to learn how to do it. Even then our tree didn’t become any nicer than Mandryk’s. We continued to stand under his window anyway.

  For a long time I resisted the inclination to see the sleepy old street. I feared finding it different than I remembered—the way it appeared in my dreams. I was afraid I wouldn’t see the green plank fences because they were supposed to have been replaced with metal mesh. I was afraid that those trees on which the turtledoves always cooed were already gone. And most of all I was afraid of the asphalt that imprisoned it...

  To the very last minute I figured it was crazy to show up at Holuba Street. The road that led there was unfamiliar, not a single one of those streets that led directly to mine remained the way I remembered it. This filled me with despair. I had no hope that Holuba Street had survived, that the continually advancing level of our civilization hadn’t affected it.

  That’s why I didn’t believe my eyes when I came upon Holuba Street. It seemed to me that this was just a continuation of a dream, for in life such things never happen. My street had changed very little in 20 whole years. I could say that it hadn’t changed at all—things just grayed with age, maybe peeled off a little more, but still it remained just as quiet and daydreamy.

  On a bench several old ladies by the plank fence were chewing soft warm words, caressing me with interested glances and then coughing... If I’d ask them about Ilayáli, then I’d see only surprised faces... Here no one can know anything about Ilayáli, for it is I who bestowed this name on her.

  The coalman’s little building retained its untidiness and its unfriendliness. Wild grapevines striving to cover up everything, but they manage to do so only partially. As long ago, in the thickets of the wild grapevines, sparrows nest and spill out onto the street with their loud warbling. What can I say when I go inside? Who am I? The ticket controller of my dreams? If I remind them of me and they recognize me, they won’t utter anything. They won’t want to talk to me, so as not to stir up old wounds.
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  But if a person comes here for the first time he should at least check for the building number before going in. I opportunely stop and cock up my head. The sign on the wall can’t be seen, it’s under the grapevines. If I don’t want them to know my secret, then I should ask the old ladies where Number 7 is... Though... am I sure that it’s really seven?.. It’s better for me to ask about that building, and then I’ll simply nod my head—that’s the one I need...

  Why are you looking for this building?.. What a silly question. Silly because I hadn’t expected it. Now I have to explain that I’m from the gas company. Though, when I was little, there wasn’t any gas here and we burned wood, but now it has to be... Has to?... They could have refused to hook up the gas... But it’s too late. You are from the gas company?... Why question again... Oh that’s good, ‘cause my stove just broke and it’s been three days... Good, good, definitely what’s your building number, yes, last name, nationality, sorry, just a joke. But—Mrs. Mandryk! My Lord, is it you?! I wonder what your Christmas tree looks like now...

  The wicket gate squeaks just the way it used to. Though not exactly: some kind of strange sound seemed to emanate from it. It reminded me of something that had nothing to do with this street or my childhood. Anyway I couldn’t comprehend what and opened and closed the gate once more, without even thinking how silly it must have looked.

  The leaves cautioned quietly, you shouldn’t give yourself away, a gas company man should be filled with the joy of life, he has no nostalgia, he never remembers anything, that’s why it’s not right to listen to the music of the gate. Otherwise these old ladies will figure you out.

  Good, good, I won’t any more.