The Woman Behind The Waterfall

by Meriel,Leonora

  “Thank you, sonechko, my sunshine,” Lyuda says, and Maria smiles at her. Lyuda reaches out to touch the girl’s black hair, and just catches the ends of it with her fingers as Maria leaves the room.

  “You know,” she says, and she looks up at her friend. “It sounds strange, but I sometimes wonder, what if she was my daughter, not yours, you know? I mean, what if she was my daughter, and she lived with me, and you had Taras and Petro, but she was mine. Is that strange? You know, I feel this love for her...”

  The two women are looking into each other’s eyes as Lyuda speaks, and although she cannot stop saying the words, she sees Sveta’s eyes change, and change again. Sveta is shaking her head. She pushes her hair back from her face.

  “Lyudichka, you’re upset about the clinic. You’re going to be fine. Anyway, it’s a ton of work with three of them. You have no idea. Look at me! And look at you! How much did that dress cost anyway? More than all of mine put together.”

  She rubs her hand over her forehead, and the door opens and Maria comes up to the table and puts her small hands on it.

  “What is it, Maria?” Sveta asks. Her voice is a little sharp.

  Maria is looking around the table. “Did I leave my drawing here?”

  Sveta looks impatient and frowns at her. “Maria, run along now. Mama is talking to Lyuda.”

  “I just thought I left it on the table.” She is looking down at the table, and then she looks up at Lyuda, and Lyuda suddenly goes red. She puts her hand into her pocket and brings out the folded drawing. Sveta is staring at her.

  “Marychka, it was such a pretty drawing, I wanted to take it home. I hope you don’t mind, I thought it was finished.”

  “I was going to colour it,” Maria answers sweetly, “but you can have it if you like.”

  “Finish colouring it,” says Sveta. “Here!” She reaches out her hand and takes the drawing from Lyuda and hands it to her daughter. “Off you go and finish it.”

  Maria looks from her mother to Lyuda, and she can see that something is wrong. “Okay,” she says. She is holding the creased drawing and she turns and goes out of the room.

  Sveta watches her go and then turns back to Lyuda.

  “What was that about? You took her drawing? What’s wrong with you?”

  Lyuda goes red again. She shakes her head, and then she puts her hands over her face.

  “Sveta, I’m so sorry. I don’t know what’s going on. You know I love Marychka. It was just...” She puts her hands into her hair, pushing back her fringe. “She drew the tree in the garden.” She stops. She sees Sveta looking at her and she knows she should stop, but she doesn’t.

  “It’s what I told you before. I like to imagine she’s my daughter.”

  She pauses. Neither of the women is moving. The cake sits on the table. Two plates, two forks, white paper napkins.

  “If I had a daughter, I mean, if I could have a daughter, I’d want her to be just like Maria. I’ve always loved her. You know that.”

  Sveta coughs. There is a sound of a shoe by the door, as if someone is moving away from it. Lyuda picks up her cup and drinks the last drops of the sweet lemon tea, imagining Maria pouring it from the teapot. She pictures the drawing again, of the lilac tree and the bird.

  “Look,” she says. “I’m sorry. I’m having an awful day. I came round to talk and I’ve made a fool of myself. I’ll come again tomorrow and bring some strawberry jam and we’ll get Zhenia to drive us up to the house so you can come and see what Volodiya has built for himself. I’m sorry, Sveta.”

  She pushes her chair back and gets up. Sveta gets up, too. She licks her lips and smiles.

  “Come here,” she says, holding out her arms.

  The two friends hug each other and Lyuda reaches to take her hands, but Sveta moves away from her and picks up her apron from the back of the chair. “Back to work,” she says.

  “I’ll see you soon,” says Lyuda. “You’ll still come to the party at the new house?”

  “Yes, yes. I’ll come. Lyuda, don’t worry about all these things. Everything will be fine. You’ve got everything you need. Really, you have.”

  “Thanks, dorohenka. Thank you. I’ll see you soon.”

  The afternoon is fading as Lyuda walks up the path through the garden, and the sunflowers are turning their heads back down, towards the earth. She pushes open the blue gate, and it feels as if there is something final to her movement. Something momentous. She shakes herself. She thinks of the drawing again, and she slips her hand inside her pocket where it had been, as if it might still be there.

  On the village street, in the fading light, she can already see the car waiting outside her house with the engine running, ready to take her to Volodiya, and her new home.

  22

  Father Yuvenaly takes a bottle of holy oil from his bag, and a gold incense shaker and a box of incense, and he puts them onto the glass-topped table in the middle of the kitchen. In the centre of the table is the karavai, a wide loaf of dark rye bread, set onto an embroidered tablecloth. Next, the priest takes out a thin silver paintbrush, a short horsehair brush, a large silver cross, a prayer book and a bottle of holy water and he sets them on the table next to the incense holder. Last of all, he takes out three thin yellow candles and he sticks them into the middle of the karavai.

  He turns to Volodiya and Lyuda, who are standing next to the table watching him.

  “Volodimir Volodimirovich,” he says. “I will get dressed and then we will start the blessing.”

  He leaves the room, and Volodiya slides his arm around Lyuda’s waist and leads her out onto the wide front steps of the house, from where they can see the hills and forests of Bukovina stretching out around them. Volodiya turns and kisses her cheek. He holds his mouth to her ear.

  “Didn’t I build you the best house in Ukraine?” he whispers. Lyuda turns her face to him, smiling. “Vova, it’s perfect. You did. You built it.”

  “Volodimir Volodimirovich, I am ready to start.”

  Father Yuvenaly is standing in the doorway, dressed in a simple black cassock with a gold cross hanging from a chain, and a tall square hat on his head.

  “Then let’s go,” says Volodiya.

  They follow the priest back into the kitchen, where he lights the three candles in the karavai, and then takes four small pictures of the cross.

  “We start with the east,” he says, and they go along the hallway and into the main room: a vast, open chamber with high ceilings, entirely flooded with light.

  Lyuda starts to laugh as they walk through the doorway. “Oh, Vova! It’s bigger than our entire house. Just this one room.”

  The two outward-facing walls have huge windows, which are flung open, and sunshine is streaming through. Lyuda goes over to one of them and shades her hand against the bright sun, and the view of Bukovina stretches out before her. Green hillsides reaching towards the mountains in the distance, dark and wooded. Glimpses of villages and houses scattered over the hills and nestled into the valleys, twisting roads and wide fields of black earth and golden corn beneath a bright blue sky.

  Father Yuvenaly fixes the picture of the cross on the centre of the wall, and then goes through the house placing a cross to face each direction: east, west, north, south. He returns to the kitchen to pour some of the holy water into a bowl, and he takes the horsehair brush and splatters the walls of each room with the water, as Volodiya and Lyuda follow behind him. When all the walls are wet, he takes the long, silver paintbrush and the bottle of holy oil and, singing in a deep voice, he returns to the main room.

  He reaches up to the wall with the silver paintbrush and draws over the sign of the cross with the holy oil. Then he turns to Lyuda and draws the sign of the cross on her forehead with his fingertips. The oil and the priest’s fingers are warm on her skin. A wild hope unexpectedly enters her heart. What if something could help her? What if something could change her impossible situation?

  “Help me! Help me!” she wants to cry out. Suddenly, sh
e wants to tell Volodiya everything that has happened. She wants to change everything. She wants to live in this beautiful house and have a daughter and have children with the man she loves. She wants her mother to be there. She wants to do everything differently. She wants, she wants, she wants.

  All the decisions in her life seem momentarily to float before her. Wisps of dreams and desires; some chosen, some released to drift away into remembrance. And it seems as if she could reach out and choose again, select another path for her life, and she sees a moment, a choice, when a child was there inside her womb, and she stretches towards it, choosing again, choosing differently, choosing the path that she believes will lead to all happiness.

  “Lyuda!”

  A voice calls her back. It is Volodiya.

  “Lyuda, I’m just stepping outside. The men are coming for the party.”

  There is the sound of a car driving up the narrow road, and then doors opening and the grunts and clinks of crates being unloaded onto the patio.

  A tear drops from her eye and she wipes it from her face. No. She shakes her head in anger. This is her reality. This is the choice she has made. This is all there will ever be. She breathes in deeply and fights to close her heart to the wild longing that is echoing there.

  She hears the car driving away and Volodiya comes back into the house. Father Yuvenaly has finished the blessing, and he ushers them both outside.

  “Now I have some prayers for you,” he says. “Come and stand together, just here.”

  They stand next to each other at the bottom of the steps, on the cream-coloured paving stones, and Volodiya puts his arm around his wife. The priest holds his hands above their heads and recites a low prayer.

  “Now, join with me,” he says, and he starts to sing. “Mnohaya lita, mnohaya lita. Many years, many years, for Ukraine, for honour and glory, for the people. Mnohaya, mnohaya lita.”

  They sing the familiar song with him, Lyuda’s voice rising sweetly up above the two deeper voices, the countryside spread out all around them beneath a cloudless sky.

  “May this house bring you love, kindness, and many children,” he says, and he makes the sign of the cross over them a final time.

  T

  Lyuda calls from the bedroom, “Vova, are you ready? You want to see?”

  “Come on in,” he says, and Lyuda steps through the bedroom door into the kitchen, where Volodiya is sitting with his feet up on a chair, a bowl of sunflower seeds in front of him.

  She is wearing the long, red dress, which covers her slender form from low neck to ankles like flowing water. On her feet are the high-heeled gold sandals and around her throat is a heavy necklace of amber beads, with hanging amber earrings. Her golden hair falls loose down her back, stopping just above her waist, and her light-brown eyes are almost covered by a fringe of gold.

  “Twirl around,” Volodiya says, and Lyuda can hear the pleasure in his voice as she goes to the middle of the room and turns around so that he can see her body moving in the dress, and see her hair and how beautiful she looks.

  “Now, come here,” he says, and she goes over to where he is sitting, and he pulls her up onto his lap, and moves his hands over her breasts and then down to rest on her flat stomach.

  “You won’t be able to wear that dress for much longer,” he says, pushing back her golden hair and kissing her neck.

  T

  The car stops just outside the house and Volodiya gets out and then reaches down to help Lyuda. She can only walk slowly in her dress, and she has smoothed her hair down again, after the bedroom. Volodiya is dressed in jeans and a black shirt, his dark hair combed back and his shirt open at the neck.

  On the cream-coloured paving stones, long tables are set out, covered in plates of food and bottles of alcohol. Volodiya pours a glass of red Crimean champagne for Lyuda and opens a beer for himself, and they stand on the porch steps waiting for the first guests to arrive, the waiters hovering below them near the vodka crates.

  The setting sun is lighting up the surrounding countryside in a vermillion glow, and it gives the distant woods the appearance of a fire burning through them. Lyuda can feel her body aching inside after making love, and she looks at the woods and imagines wolves moving through the trees. She imagines them running in the burning red light. She imagines herself standing on these steps, pregnant with a child, with a daughter who would grow up knowing the beauty of the woods, of the wild countryside.

  “It’s going to be like another wedding,” Volodiya is saying. “It’s going to be like the big wedding we never had. I’ve invited everyone.”

  Lyuda sees again the day of their wedding, a summer day like this one. She had bought a new dress. So cheap, she thinks now. But I thought it was stunning. And we went out to the restaurant in the evening with Sveta and Vasya and Mama and drank sweet red champagne and ate pancakes with caviar. And Mama died a few months later and Vova was wonderful, comforting me, holding me when I needed to cry. I was so in love with him then.

  She looks up at him, his black hair brushed back from his face, his dark eyes full of satisfaction, his hand resting lightly around her waist. Just as I love him now, she thinks, and for some reason, Sveta’s laughter comes back into her mind. “For every two Ukrainians...”

  She turns to face him. “Vova, you’ve built the best house in Bukovina. And I’ve got the best husband in all of Ukraine.”

  Volodiya nods at her, and his smile is the smile of a man who has everything. “Look,” he says. “They’re coming.”

  T

  By the time the moon has risen, Lyuda can barely hear herself think. The Bukovina musicians Volodiya has hired are playing wild country songs on the accordion, violin and drums, and it seems like there are a thousand guests in and around the house; dancing, laughing, talking, knocking back shot after shot of vodka, shouting toasts at the top of their voices. Lyuda’s school friends are all here, and she has seen the surprise and jealousy on their faces as they explore the huge house, talk to Volodiya, look at her expensive dress and jewellery. There are children running around among the adults, and Lyuda looks for Maria but can’t see her anywhere. She hasn’t seen Sveta or Vasya tonight either.

  The thought of Maria brings her back to the hospital visit, and she suddenly feels desperately alone. The moon is high now, and she can see Volodiya in the middle of a group of friends, his shot glass raised for a toast. She walks around the side of the house away from him, pushing through the drunken crowd, and stops to slip off her gold sandals. She reaches under the table to take a bottle of vodka from one of the crates and walks unsteadily to the back of the house, and then further up the hill towards the dark woods.

  When she is high enough up the slope, she sits on the dry grass and breaks the seal on the vodka. She raises the bottle to her lips and takes a long mouthful, shuddering as it burns into her throat. Below, the house is lit up against the countryside with bright lights and music.

  She knows what is waiting for her there, in the huge house – the emptiness – and a wave of despair goes through her as she thinks of the tenderness of her own childhood, the safety and joy of her mother’s body, the fighting as she got older, and at last, before she died, when Lyuda was a married woman, the sharing, when for just a few months they didn’t fight but helped each other, loved each other, took pleasure in being women together.

  “I wanted a daughter so much,” she whispers. “I wanted to be able to give her what I have, to show her what I know.”

  She looks down again at the house and she can feel the years ahead of her, echoing back their loneliness and regret. “I have stopped the river,” she says again.

  Lyuda puts her head in her hands and leans forward against her knees. From down below there is a bang, and fireworks explode into the sky. Lyuda watches them rise and fade, and she imagines a daughter, Maria, sitting beside her, watching them. “Look!” she would say. “Look how beautiful they are. My favourites are the gold ones.” And Maria would say, “Mama, I love the red ones!”
Or the silver ones, or the ones that make green fire dragons. Or perhaps she would like the white sparklers. She would draw the letters of her name in the air, one by one. M, A, R, I, A.

  Lyuda wipes away a tear with her fingertip and then lifts the bottle and takes another long sip of the vodka. She shudders. She turns to the place where she had imagined her daughter sitting, and she smiles. “I still love you,” she whispers to the space. “Even if you are not really here.”

  She pushes herself up from the grass and carefully wipes her eyes and cheeks where tears have fallen. She picks up the vodka and starts off down the hill. The musicians are striking up again after the fireworks and she can make out Volodiya. He is looking around, perhaps for her, and he is laughing. He looks so handsome in his black shirt and his black hair and her heart jumps a little, watching him. She wipes her eyes again as she comes round the side of the house, and she finds her sandals under the table and slips them on.

  She moves through the crowd to where Volodiya is standing, and she lays her hand on his arm. He turns towards her and kisses her on the lips and smiles, looking into her eyes. “Isn’t she beautiful?” he says to his friends. “You’re drunk, Vova,” one of them replies. “She’s not beautiful, she’s stunning!”

  “Ha! You’re right,” shouts Volodiya, pushing his friend in the chest playfully. He wraps his arm round Lyuda’s waist, and she leans her head against his shoulder, and takes the shot glass being held out to her.

  It is enough, she thinks. It is enough.

  23

  Lyuda, in a simple summer dress, walks down the village street and turns into the woods leading to the river. It is early morning, and the silver birch grove is quiet and luminous. Her sandals on the path make a soft padding sound, and a solitary bird is singing in one of the trees. The tiny leaves of the silver birch are unfolded and bright green around her. The air feels heavy for the early morning, as if she is walking through a mist, pushing her face and body further and further in. She comes through the silver birch copse and out onto the riverbank to the low-hanging willows.