The Fantastic Worlds of Yuri Vynnychuk

by Yuri Vynnychuk

  Tears spill from my eyes and, for a long time, I am unable to free myself of sorrow over the fact that I didn’t stay with Grandma and with my beloved kitten.

  Pea Soup

  Translated by Mark Andryczyk

  My aunt often cooked pea soup, which her late husband used to love to eat. Nowadays, when she finished preparing it, she would always fill up a bowl with it and place it on the windowsill. At night, her deceased husband would come and eat up the soup.

  I was always fascinated with how clean the bowl was when I saw it in the morning. Because everybody knows that it’s impossible to finish a bowl of pea soup without leaving behind a yellow film. Unless…unless of course he licked it clean.

  And although I was not especially fond of peas in general, just the fact that someone would lick the bowl clean after eating it enchanted me for some strange reason. I, too, wanted to lick up the bowl after eating the soup.

  When my aunt became aware of this, she dropped her washcloth and, for a moment, gave me a frightened stare. Maybe she had imagined that the spirit of her late husband had entered my body. But when she looked into my eyes, she saw nothing strange, just the clever eyes of a young hooligan looking up at her, and my aunt was able to calm down.

  Nonetheless, the pea soup continued to intrigue me — it dawned on me that there must be something beyond taste that would drive my deceased uncle to lick the bowl clean.

  From that day on, I began to gaze much more attentively at its murky, yellow waters, in which finely chopped carrots and onions would swim. And when my aunt would pour a handful of golden croutons into the soup, they would make it even cloudier, and a pale, yellow slime would begin rising from the bottom.

  One day I realized that strange creatures lived at the bottom of the pea soup, who, just at first glance, looked like minced dill weed — thin, branchy and akin to people, with arms, legs and something resembling a head. These tiny, green dill weeds submerge and then resurface, swimming and overtaking one another as part of some kind of race. When I gather a spoonful of the soup, the tiny dill weeds, as if they had been scalded, shoot down to the very bottom, and settle in the slime like a school of fish. But not all of them are able to rescue themselves, not all. Those that end up in my mouth struggle in despair — I can feel them bustling, tickling my palate and tongue.

  At one particular moment, I swish about the pea soup, together with all of its inhabitants, in my mouth, delighted at my absolute supremacy, tossing the despair of the poor little dill weeds against my palate with my tongue and then, finally, I swallow, feeling the pea soup stream down in a hot waterfall and hearing the screams of these strange creatures.

  Spoonful after spoonful, I pour their fatherland — all of them together with the graves of their ancestors — into me.

  Everything disappears in my mouth — all of their dreams and imagination, all of their hopes for a better life, all of their plans and intentions… It’s the death of their civilization — a civilization that hasn’t yet had the chance to fully blossom.

  Pea soup is not a suitable place to live, but the tiny dill weeds don’t understand this, and choose it time and time again.

  4. Black Humor and Satire

  The Island of Ziz

  Translated by Askold Melnyczuk

  I.

  The Island of Ziz near Arcanumia is inhabited by warbling dogs. These rare beasts sit on branches and sing like birds. They also lay eggs. They do not, however, build nests. Instead, they simply let their eggs drop from under their wooly tails to the ground. Because the eggs land in the excrement with which the dogs themselves have covered everything, they don’t break. They lie there, warming peacefully. For that matter, these eggs differ from all others because of their hairy shells. When you put one to your ear, you can hear some shred of carrion growling and frisking about.

  The entire island is in fact a mound of shit: new shit got piled on old shit and the result is this shitty island with a shitty landscape the color of shit. It’s interesting to note that even the sky above the atoll is, typically, the color of shit. And the trees, on which the dogs sit, are, to be precise, high heaps of shit out of which Mother Nature has miraculously fashioned trees.

  In the course of a thousand years even a product as absurd as shit can give birth to life. But, on the island of Ziz, we see the true apotheosis of the Renaissance of Shit. Everything, but everything, here is the color and shade of shit.

  Until recently our press eschewed profanity and the dominant color on the island of Ziz was called honey. Here, however, honey is nothing other than bee-shit.

  When I, in the company of two charming Arcanumians, arrived on the island, I was at once impressed by how various are the odors of shit. I smelled flowers and branches and small shitty butterflies. All claimed their own incomparable aroma. For the first time I sniffed shit in its primordial form, untinged by other smells. There was something celebratory and pristine about it. I came to know the essence of shit, its nature, and the great future concealed in its depths.

  We strolled the island, admiring its lovely vistas. The Arcanumians proposed we take off our shoes and I eagerly followed their lead. After all, nowhere else on earth can humans feel quite so free and open: only on Ziz is there no danger of stepping in shit since shit surrounds you everywhere and everything is made of it. Only on Ziz is the risk of being full of shit no more threatening than a sun shower.

  The Arcanumians were researchers at an academic institute. They patiently explained everything to me.

  “Lately we’ve been working on developing a major discovery called antishitification,” they explained. “The process of turning all things to shit is widely known and well established. But how to reverse it? That’s the mystery. Professor Arse proposed using a special pump to send the excrement back where it came from. By his calculations, in just a couple of hours, one’s food would well out of one’s mouth. Professor Popik pointed out that the method has one drawback: the food wouldn’t emerge as discrete items but rather as one well-masticated, solid mass, thus seriously undermining the effects of antishistification. This is now known as the Theory of Arse-Popik. Or vice versa.

  “And the research went no further?”

  “On the contrary. We already have huge antishitification plants with special machines transforming shit back into food. Thus far we’ve exported exclusively to developing nations. Yours among them.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “You see, it doesn’t meet our needs. Moreover, it’s been tough divesting it of a slight odor of shit. You mean to say you’ve never tasted it yourself? Why, we send it to you in the form of humanitarian aid.”

  “Unfortunately not. Humanitarian aid gets distributed only among the poor.”

  “To the poor we don’t begrudge even shit itself. Why, we use it in our architecture. It makes nice brick and tile when fired. It’s also used for bowls, mugs, and large pots. Shit mixed with gravel makes a perfect substitute for asphalt. Our electric power plants are driven solely by shit. Recently Professor Fartovich drew a peaceful atom out of it. Some of our craftsmen have distilled alcohol from it. In short, all areas of our lives have been touched by this shit revolution. Not for nothing did Pliny note: “In cacatus veritas”—that is: “The Truth is in shit.”

  As if to emphasize their words, the two Arcanumians abruptly sat down on the ground out of which they molded two appealing objects. The first represented the Pentagon, the other the Tower of Babel. Perhaps under other circumstances this would have offended me, but here I took it in cheerfully, enthusiastically. I confess I too longed to commemorate my visit to the island with a similar memento but didn’t dare compete against their architectural mastery.

  Wanting to know the island up close, I asked the Arcanumians to leave me alone for a week with the shit.

  I soon grasped that when shit is everywhere, then, in fact, there is no such thing as shit. And, if there is no such things as shit, then this is the most perfect place on the planet. There was no point t
o the Arcanumians telling me that the island of shit is in fact a logically created mass and that in the near future we will be able to enter into direct contact with it.

  II.

  I saw it all. The first day, Monday, the shit began bubbling. Every bubble burst, sending up a tiny cloud of shit. The warbling dogs hopped nervously from tree to tree, sneezing whenever a cloud got near their nostrils. Every once in a while they pointed at me with their paws and blinked their eyes angrily. Maybe they blamed me for this miracle.

  The second day, Tuesday, the whole island was cackling like a sizzling griddle. It smelled as though the whole thousand member Arcanumian Academy had farted, unanimously. Even the dogs covered their noses with paws and tails and tried crapping less.

  I myself found no alternative to shitting in my pants, resigned to a smell that’s now dear to my heart. Say what you will, our personal shit not only rivals its western counterpart but even, in rare cases, bests it as an evocative bouquet of inimitable aromas which inevitably, like the legendary yevshan-zillia, stirs memories of the home you left behind and, with its hazy chestnut color, immediately calls to mind the song “Again the chestnuts are in bloom…”

  Here I realized how we’ve underestimated our own country’s excrement by failing to list it alongside such indisputable cultural achievements as borscht, pork-fat, garlic sausage, and kishka. I’m not even touching on our spiritual wealth; excrement is, after all, material, though clearly it’s kin to spiritual culture. Note how it emanates an utterly original spirit or, if you wish, aura. We’ve regarded our excrement as something second-rate and useless, seeing it only as a by-product. And there have been wise-guys who complained we’d produced too much excrement and that pretty soon our wonderfully fertile country would turn into a wasteland. Some even convinced themselves the time had come to change the name of planet Earth to planet Shit.

  Our intrepid émigrés a century ago carried samples of Ukrainian excrement abroad, thereby substantially enriching foreign cultures. The process of enrichment continues to this day. I believe, however, that this is nothing other than a pillaging of the national treasure. It’s time to limit the export of shit to the levels of gold and art. Just as we insist that England returns the treasures of General Polubotko, the day will come when we’ll demand the return of our national shrines. I already foresee planes racing toward us from all corners of the earth carrying not the usual load of pitiful humanitarian aid but dividends on our own excrement. It makes one want to cry: “Ukrainian shit of the world, unite!”

  Unfortunately, the majority of our ignorant population doesn’t understand the role a pantheon consecrated to our national excrement might play in our spiritual rebirth. Frankly, it would be wise to open a museum of excrement in every town so that the people could see examples of the shit the greatest minds of our time produced. This can’t be accomplished without some modest sacrifices. It will be enough to put out a call, and the Center of Shit Studies will be flooded with jars, beakers, vials, boxes, and packages filled with this product.

  It’s a pity our Central Administration, deciding on the various global issues of our age, has offered no solution to the problem of our national excrement. There is, as a result, no way to bridge the gap between ourselves and developed nations.

  But let us return to the events of that day. That afternoon I had one more adventure. I suddenly felt a suspicious squirming inside my pants. Something in there burbled, and came alive. I hurried toward the sea but halfway there got a grip on myself: the experiment was worth seeing through to its end. The creation of new life inside my own pants was no small thing and worthy of critical examination.

  I sat on a rock and continued my scientific observations, although I did not feel at my best because my pants kept either expanding like balloons or collapsing and sticking to my legs. It was wet, but warm.

  On the third day, as though on command, out of the clouds that had sprouted from the bubbles, little humans began to emerge. These individuals, of various shapes and ages, appeared on this earth hatched from shit, and so it came as no surprise that they at once got busy acting like degenerates, pairing off wherever and with whomever happened to be at hand.

  It interested me enormously that not all the little people were born naked. There were some among them who appeared in black suits, with black hats, and carrying black briefcases.

  Some foolish force had swept them together and now they stood on a hill, eagerly rehearsing the conduct of their brethren. They finally reached a conclusion and, while one group built massive tables out of shit, others hunted down a couple of naked subjects and led them to the men behind the tables.

  The debate didn’t last long but its consequences were unmistakable: the naked subjects raced down the hill clutching in their fists the indecent parts of their sinful bodies. The neophytes went among the masses preaching the idea of sin. Pair after pair ran off scouting for burdocks, or anything with which to cover the usual, suspicious places.

  Yet everything did not go smoothly. As soon as a majority of individuals had put on something that could pass for clothing, the minority, which had failed in its mission, became even more acutely visible. This, naturally, outraged the good citizens. They shook their bald heads and at once set about arresting the transgressors.

  Judgement came swiftly. The nudists were sent to concentration camps for rehabilitation.

  III.

  On the fourth day I ran out of food. I left my lookout searching for something to eat.

  Several coconut palms grew near the beach. I cracked one open and brought it to my lips. And spat. I was ready to live in shit, walk in shit and, for the matter, to be called a shit, but I was not yet ready to eat shit.

  Hunger, however, is a harsh mistress and shit is not, surprise, poison. I gulped the next nut down in one swig. I swallowed this gift of nature and fell silent, awaiting the consequences. They weren’t long in coming. All that I’d drunk down came calmly back up into the very shell I held in my hands. Along with the previous day’s dinner. I cursed and hurled the shell with its precious fluid to the sea. And here I noticed the fish swimming lazily among the moss-covered rocks. They looked very unshitlike.

  I quickly snatched up two fat flatfish and buried them in the excrement. At a certain depth it got so hot the fish soon sizzled. The delicate odor of excrement lent them a certain piquancy.

  When I returned to my post I saw that the rehabilitated populace had been released. The resisters had been nailed to crosses.

  History repeats itself, I sighed.

  History does not tolerate intrusions, I said and with this aphorism quelled the nobler instincts urging me to give aid to the victims.

  IV.

  By the end of my week on the island of Ziz I had lost all interest in trying to enlighten this excremental civilization. It was all too clear down what road they were headed.

  Finally the Arcanumians arrived on their speedboat and took me off the island.

  “Goodbye, shit!” I cried into the fresh dawn air.

  “Bubble-bubble,” answered my pants.

  The Arcanumians laughed, stripped them off me, and set to washing them.

  It seemed that nothing memorable had come to life there.

  Max and Me

  1.

  I was, maybe, fifteen and my brother Max—six, when our old man acquired permanent ownership of a wooden villa, whose sole inconvenience was that you could only lie down in it horizontally, and that it was two meters beneath the ground. He arranged his journey into a better world this way: he fell down drunk from a footbridge into a stream, whose water was only knee high. He managed the fall so well that it’s possible he had help, though we certainly wouldn’t know anything about that.

  It’s true that on that very evening mom ordered my brother and me to lay a rope across the footbridge and to slightly saw the handrails. She didn’t say why, and I’m still wondering about that. When the corpse was found in the morning, the ropes were certainly gone.

 
Mom started wailing:

  “O woe is me! How terrible! Who have you left us to?”

  It would have been a sin to complain, cause our mother was in the not-so-bad hands of her suitors, who, even when our old man was alive, trampled the path to our house and paid decent money, paying their due to mom’s charms.

  At those times mom chased us out of the house, but we weren’t too in the know, and sneaking up to the window, watched everything with delight. I lifted my little brother on my arms so he could see how our momma was playing hoppity-hop on the bed with the guy.

  We knew all her guests by sight and always greeted them fondly. We really liked them and showed them respect, because they brought us candy and other sweets.

  There was just one windbag we couldn’t stand. He was such a fat pig that he could barely crawl into the house. So as not to hurt our momma, he didn’t mount her, but put her on top. It was like this, our poor momma got tossed and tossed till abundant sweat pours out, and he lies there like a log snorting.

  Ha, you’re such a dog! We’re going to make you bolt away. Just before his arrival we took pepper and liberally sprinkled it on the bed under the sheet. Then we lurked behind the window and waited.

  Our sweetheart arrives and right away wants to do his thang with Momma and boom—right to bed. Mom started to do her thing, and he—whether he wanted to or not—scraped his backside, and the pepper even went up there. Whichever way he was tossed up or down, our mom, like a sparrow, flew up, then quickly fell down with a bang. We began to worry that our mom would fall on the floor. But God showed mercy. Our piggo, though, after all that jumping around began to scratch his ass non-stop. Even when he was getting dressed he couldn’t stop scratching!