T
The spring night is beating down and Mother Lyuda is sitting under the lilac tree in bloom with a jar of samohon, home-brewed vodka, and a kitchen tumbler. From a nearby pond, the mating toads are calling out their deep laughter, cra-cra-cra-cra, and the sound rises up over the silence of the sleeping village.
Lyuda pours the vodka sloppily from the jar, a splashed half glassful, and then pushes the lid back on. She leans her head against the tree trunk and runs her hand over the black earth. Her hair has come loose from its pins and is tumbled over her neck in pale tangles. There is a half-fallen tear in the corner of her eye and she pushes it away, leaving a grey stain across her cheek.
“I don’t seem to mind so much tonight,” she murmurs to herself, and she glances to the other side of the garden to check that her neighbor, Kolya, is not watching over the wooden fence. It is clear. She raises her hand and knocks back the vodka and then breathes out with a little moan, her eyes closed, while the liquid draws through her body, quieting her thoughts one by one.
“I don’t seem to mind anything at all,” she says.
The spring breeze touches the tree above her and a few of the silver flowers drift down. One lands on her dress and another on the ground beside her. She picks up the flower from her lap and holds it to her face. She breathes in the sweet scent and remembers another night in the same garden, white snow falling from a sky of sorrow, and a mother holding a baby.
Why did I not die that night? she thinks, shaking her head. It would have been so easy. It would have been like breathing in and breathing out again. Just breathing in and then disappearing with that last breath, that simple movement of air.
She crushes the flower with her fingertips and drops it onto the black soil. She pours another measure of samohon and then leans the bottle against the tree trunk. She knocks back the second glass.
The liquid moves steadily through her body, dissolving her thoughts and calming the tears, which are always there, a silent waterfall behind each and every breath. The world drifts out of reach, fading into a grey cloud of forgetting and Lyuda, with her eyes closed, smiles as she enters this familiar place, as she enters one by one the long seconds in which she can breathe without effort, without restraint. A few moments of rest.
Her eyes closed, she floats up into the grey cloud.
High up above everything, she feels complete calm, suspended here not in colour but in-between colour; not in darkness but in-between darkness; not in thought but in-between thought. She sees Angela before her, sleeping, and they smile at each other, and a peace is exchanged between them. She has a faraway feeling, as if Angela would like to tell her something, but she doesn’t want to hear it. She doesn’t want to move away from this place of no thought, beyond the movement of her breathing in and breathing out.
The heat and darkness are close around her, and when at last she opens her eyes, it seems to her that she is still high above everything, not touching the earth; or as if she and the earth are high above everything and the sky is down below; or as if she and the earth and the silver-flowered tree are high above everything and the night stars are below them and above them and entirely all around them.
“That is it,” she whispers, looking in wonder at the world turning around her. “That is what it is. The stars are surrounding us.”
She pushes herself up from the ground and leans against the curved tree trunk.
“There is nothing wrong and the stars are all around us,” she says, and she bends down to pick up the bottle and the glass. Silver flowers drift into her hair.
“Angela,” she murmurs, as she goes into the house.
She closes the kitchen door and draws the metal bolt across. She opens the cupboard and pushes the jar of samohon to the back and lays the glass on the sideboard. On the table is the honey cake. She reaches up to the window to pull the curtains across. The grey net is fraying on one side and she rubs the coarse material between her fingers. They must have been white once, she thinks, and tries to recall a time when they were anything but this dirty grey, but no memories come to her. Through the drawn net, the outline of the lilac is blurred, a solitary pale shape in a dark garden.
Lyuda turns off the lights and goes into the bedroom. She pauses in the doorway to listen for the sound of her daughter’s breath rising and falling. Moving through the unlit room to Angela’s bed, she reaches out to touch her forehead, and runs her fingertips over her cheek, brushing against the soft hairs like tiny feathers. The usual darkness swells inside her as she touches her daughter; a mixture of panic and despair, muted by the glasses of vodka. Lyuda shakes her head quickly and pushes it down.
She goes over to her own bed, pulls the stained housedress up over her head and drops it over the back of a chair. She tries to bring back the feeling from beneath the lilac tree. What was it? she thinks. Stars, sky, something. She lies down and pulls the faded sheet up over her and feels the sky of stars merging with her familiar shadows. An image of the lilac tree shimmering through the net curtains comes into her head. She sleeps.
3
I am a star in the heavens and we are all light. Around us is darkness and it is we who light the darkness, and bring light to those who are in the darkness. It is we who are the other to the darkness’ totality. It is we who illuminate what is and what could be. We are the light at the beginning of all understanding.
From here we watch everything. All that has passed over the silver millennia and every thread that arises from the eternal, immaculate moment that is happening now. We see the endless flow of sparks pouring out from this moment; explosions of possibilities splintering into worlds and dreams. Single choices made; one spark chosen with which to create a reality in a single lifetime, and the Earth turns, turns on a calm axis. And all the other earths, created from nothing with a spark of splintered light, turn, turn on their axes. Single choices, fragments, strands of silver-coloured dreams.
We see the girl, whose spirit is a woven bridge reaching across these dreams. She is young enough to move wherever her will desires, but soon her mind will begin to close the doorways one by one and her own dream will narrow until there remains just one solitary tunnel, the possibilities lit by the belief of a single choice, a single strand of existence.
But for now, she is open as a wide river with all knowledge flowing through her. For now, we can pour ourselves into her and she will transfer our light to wherever it is needed. She will carry it in her body to the water, she will let it flow into the garden where it will fill every flower, every living thing, she will carry it in her shining eyes and release it to each person she touches, each person she looks upon. She carries it now, and we are filling her with it, streams of silver flowing into her gentle spirit. She is a bridge, but she has come from us, and what she carries is her own true light. Every moment before her dream begins to narrow is a gift, for every second is a chance to transfer our light into the darkness, where it is not. It is a chance to bring our knowledge to a closed place. It is a chance to flood the river.
T
I am aware that my beak is black. I can see it with darting eyes. I can see my wings are striped dark and ruddy brown and the underside is soft grey feathers and twig feet, but the rest of me I can only assume. There are many other birds here in my flock and my image of myself is as I see them – brown-striped backs and grey heads, a fanned tail. I feel this is how I am, but I will never know for sure.
When I awaken, I pull my beak from among warm feathers and look around. I poke my head out of the nest and check for danger. I smell the morning. My nest is beneath the blue-painted eaves of the house, tucked away like a few blown twigs, safe, far from cats, hidden from owls. There is no danger. Another brief night has passed. It is time to sing. I must find a mate. My nest is ready. I push out of the nest hole and stretch my wings on each side. I dart my eyes around looking for insects in the air but it is early. Later the garden will be full of them. It is a good season to feed.
I fly up from the nest and into the ea
rly garden, into the cool air. It is damp with dew. I will sing from the lilac. Perhaps it will be filled with water again and I can drink. I fly all around the garden, looking, looking, listening for the calls of the females, for the song that I will know is for me. Not yet. I land in a cluster of lilac and for a moment the smell rushes over me. Scent, white, dew, morning. I dip my head and drink and dip again into the dew. Satisfied, my feet curl around the branch through the flowers. My mate is nearby. I feel her. I sing.
T
I wake early in the morning and push my feet out of the bed onto the thin rug covering the wooden floor. It is still dark, and yet that rising dark, the promise of a grey, mystical light. Mother is breathing heavily in her sleep, and there is a bitter smell around her. At this hour everything is still quiet. I find my white dress and pull it over my head and I slip out of the bedroom and through the morning kitchen. The honey cake is on the table and I reach out a finger for a crumb as I pass by to the kitchen door. I swallow the sweet morsel, then slide back the bolt and slip my sandals onto my feet.
Outside, the garden is calm. The air is holding the folded heat close, not ready yet to release it to the flowers, to the buds, to the silent bulbs pushing through the soil. This is the moment when everything is held tightly together, everything is preparing. The world is poised in a quiet, breathing grey. This is the time that I love. I walk through the lifting air to the very bottom of the garden, past the outhouse and the rainwater bucket, past the lilac tree and through the long, wet grass down to the rough wooden fence, and there is a flat stone where I can sit, and from here I can look up into the opening morning and the waking garden, and I can know the very beginning of the day.
The blades of the grasses tremble; minute drops of dew shiver, silver, the petals of the night-closing flowers experience an unbearable urge to push out, out, out; the water seeped back into them through a waking stem. An infinitesimal change of paler light. The petals open. In my body, I feel every movement, the waking desire of life is within me, the light rising through my skin, myself transforming forever and forever with every distinct movement here, in this waking garden that will never be repeated, in this perfect and impossible combination of moments, in this one, single instant of rising grey.
A brown-striped sparrow pushes out of its nest under the eaves of the house, pauses, and then flies up into the garden and settles in the lilac branches. It is the first. It ducks its head down into the flowers to drink the lilac dew, and again, and then raises its head up and begins the first song.
The light is risen.
With my petals open and touched with birdsong, I get up from the flat stone and make my way towards the house, running my fingers through the wet grasses. The garden is filling with sound now, as more birds join the first in shrill sounds. A cockerel grates out its guttural cry. On the stone step outside the kitchen the bucket of well water is covered with a broken plate. I bend down and pick it up with the metal handle and carry it into the kitchen.
It is time to pour the water.
T
Lyuda breathes out the bitter vodka with her sleeping breath and turns her head, her mouth heavily open, her mind closed to the spring morning. She is in a far-gone place on a late summer’s afternoon, and her cheek is resting lightly against Volodiya’s shoulder, the forests and peaks of the Carpathian Mountains stretching out before them. A wind is blowing here, at the top of the hill, and Volodiya reaches his arm around the shoulder of his divchyna, his seventeen-year-old girl, and bends his head and kisses her on the neck, where the pale gold hairs rise to meet his lips.
“One day I’m going to build you a house right here,” he whispers in her ear. “I’m going to build you a bedroom where you can see all this.” He takes her right hand and holds it out to where he is pointing. He touches the gold ring that he has put on her finger, and then pulls her hand to his lips and holds it there. She feels his breath hot on her fingers, still warm on her neck, and she feels her heart beating with the excitement of being here with him, and that feeling of being both heavy and light at the same time, and the faint dizziness in her head that makes everything seem unreal. She believes his words, just as she believes everything that he says; believes in the ring she is wearing, even without a wedding; believes in the dreams he paints for her; believes in his love, his touch, his smell, his weight on top of her, his dark hair and rough skin.
“When?” she asks him. “When are you going to build me the house?” Volodiya leans forward and runs his hand down her bare leg. She feels her insides moving at his touch, a quick contracting in her stomach and the lightness again in her head. She wants him to kiss her on the mouth. She looks out at the hills stretching before them, scattered with houses, and the distant forests in endless waves of deeper and deeper green and she smells his hair as he leans over her and she imagines for a moment a room full of light where they are making love.
Volodiya moves his hand higher up her leg, up to the short skirt of her dress, and he reaches across and kisses her on the lips. He pushes her gently onto the grass and holds himself above her, looking down, and touches the golden hair spread out around her face.
“The first money I have,” he says. “The very first money, I’ll buy the land. I’ll build you a house. And then we’ll have a little girl and she’ll be beautiful like you.”
Lyuda closes her eyes, feeling his weight sinking onto her, and she pictures the house in cream and red brick, the wide steps leading up to it, rooms filled with sunshine and endless green through huge windows. She opens her eyes and looks straight up at him.
“Yes,” she says. A swallow darts into the path of her vision and she traces it across the clear sky.
“Yes,” she repeats, “I want it, Vova. That’s what I want.”
4
It is time to go to the market.
Mother is dressed and has wrapped a blue shawl around her head. She has changed out of her housedress and put on the long patterned skirt she wears for the village, and the white top that shows all her curves. She looks so beautiful and I slide my arms around her waist and I can feel her heart beating through the soft material.
“Come on, Angela. Put your shoes on,” she says, and she unfastens my arms and pulls the shawl a little further over her forehead.
She pushes open the garden gate, lifting the broken latch, and we climb the slope to the village street. A goat is tethered to a fence a few houses down, and a babulya, an old woman, in a red headscarf, sits on a wooden bench, watching it. The goat bleats as we approach and stops eating to watch us, and I dance up to it, but the old woman says, “Don’t touch, little rabbit. Don’t bother him.” I smile at her, and her eyes follow Mother along the road, and I run back to Mother and take her hand.
The market is beyond the post office, and beyond the school where I have finished my first year. We pass Sveta’s house, and I can see Taras and Petro at the bottom of their garden, and I want to call out to them, but Mother is walking fast and I have to run to catch up with her. Sveta always asks me about Mother when I play with the boys, and she tells me how beautiful Mother was at school, and how they were friends, but when I ask Mother, she turns away, and tells me to fetch something from the bedroom, or the garden, or to change my dress.
“Lyudmilla Hrihorivna!”
“Lyudichka!”
The women on the market stalls call out to Mother as we approach. They wear headscarves, open sandals and gold earrings. They have gold teeth and dark, sunburned skin. They flick at the birds darting down to pick at their wares, and they beckon Mother to their stalls and say kind words to her, and blow kisses to me.
“How are you, Lyudmilla Hrihorivna? Your little one is growing! She is her mother’s daughter.”
“A kilo of apples,” Mother says, and they weigh out a kilo and then add some more when I am looking, with a wink.
“This is for you, little swallow,” they say.
I wander around the stalls while Mother is shopping. There are piles of prunes and nut
s and dried apricots, apples and early cherries and tomatoes and small, knobbly cucumbers. There are heaps of black-skinned beetroot and carrots covered in soil, young white potatoes and big roughened ones. A stall of skinned rabbits and plucked chickens and long blocks of white, glistening salo, raw pig fat, which the men eat with vodka and garlic.
At each stall, the sellers hold something out to me – a couplet of fat cherries, a slice of apple, a dried persimmon from Kazakhstan – and I fill the pockets of my dress until there is no more room, and I say, “Dyakuyu. Thank you! Thank you!” And they wink and say, “Come again soon, little rabbit. Cheer up your mother. Beautiful girl!”
T
My feet crooked around a twig, I dart my eyes across the marketplace from the centre of bright green leaves. My glance takes in the piles of sweet fruits and nuts where my flock is feeding. I see a woman turning away and I fly down and grasp a black fruit in my beak just as her hand flashes towards me and I am up! up! in the air with my prize and I fly fast to my hidden branch, jerk my head back and swallow the fruit. Sweet black grape.
My wings are warm with sunlight. A good feeling. I have sung all morning. I am filled with food. Catching insects through the air and fat crumbs on the windowsill. The spring is here. A song is building in me. I feel my flock returning to the garden and I am drawn upwards, flapping fast in our single movement, and we fly towards the house, towards our home, the nests we have built in the trees and in the eaves of the roof, our feathers open and alive against the sunlit air.
T
We carry the bags of fruit along the dusty road back to the house.
“What was it like when you and Sveta were at school?” I ask. “Sveta says you were so beautiful. Were you always friends?”
Mother doesn’t answer at first, but then she looks down at me and says, “Yes, little one. Yes, but we were older than you. It was before your grandmother died. Before you were born. And Taras and Petro.”
The Woman Behind The Waterfall Page 2