2005 - A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian Read online

  “Aha. Yes. No.”

  “What do you mean, yes, no?” Irritation grates in my throat. I am trying my best to keep my voice sweet.

  “I cannot say this. I cannot say anything.”

  “Pappa, for goodness’ sake…”

  “Look, Nadezhda, we are going to get married and that is that. There is no more point to talk about it.”

  I have a feeling that something terrible is going on, but I can see that my father is alive and excited for the first time since my mother died.

  This isn’t the first time he has harboured fantasies of rescuing destitute Ukrainians. There was once a plan to track down members of the family whom he had not seen for half a century, and bring them all over to Peterborough. He wrote letters to town halls and village post offices all over Ukraine. Dozens of replies came pouring in from dodgy-sounding ‘relatives’ who wanted to take him up on his offer. Mother put her foot down.

  Now I see his energy is all redirected towards this woman and her son—they will become his substitute family. He can speak with them in his own language. Such a beautiful language that anyone can be a poet. Such a landscape—it would make anyone an artist. Blue-painted wooden houses, golden wheat fields, forests of silver birch, slow wide sliding rivers. Instead of going home to Ukraina, Ukraina will come home to him.

  I have visited Ukraine. I have seen the concrete housing blocks and the fish dead in the rivers.

  “Pappa, Ukraina isn’t like you remember it. It’s different now. The people are different. They don’t sing any more—only vodka songs. All they’re interested in is shopping. Western goods. Fashion. Electronics. American brand names.”

  “Hmm. So you say. Maybe it is so. But if I can save one lovely human being…”

  He’s off again.

  There is a problem, however. Her tourist visa expires in three weeks, my father explains.

  “And she still must get divorce papers from husband.”

  “You mean she’s married to someone else?”

  “Her husband is in Ukraina. Very intelligent type, by the way. Polytechnic director. I have been in correspondence with him—even spoken to him on telephone. He told me that Valentina will make excellent wife.” There is a smug lilt in his voice. The soon-to-be-ex-husband will fax divorce papers to the Ukrainian Embassy in London. In the meantime, my father will make arrangements for the wedding.

  “But if her visa expires in three weeks it sounds as though you’ve left it rather late.” (I hope.)

  “Well, if she has to go back, then we will be married when she returns. On this we are absolutely decided.”

  I notice that I has become ‘we’. I realise that this plan has been developing over quite a long time, and that I have been permitted to know about it only in its very latest stages. If she has to go back to Ukraine, he will write her a letter and she will come back as his fiancee.

  “But Pappa,” I say, “you read the solicitor’s letter. They may not allow her to come back Isn’t there someone else, someone a bit younger she could marry?”

  Yes, this resourceful woman has an alternative marriage plan, my father says. Through a domestic care agency she has met a young man who is totally paralysed following a road accident. He, by the way (says Pappa), is a very decent young man from good family. Used to be teacher. She has been looking after him—bathing, spoon-feeding, taking to toilet. If she is rejected as my father’s fiancee, she will arrange to be invited back as an ‘au pair’ to look after this young man. This kind of work is still permitted under immigration regulations. During the year she is permitted to stay as an au pair, he will fall in love with her and she will marry him. Thus her future in this country will be secured. But this would be a life sentence of servitude for poor Valentina, for he is totally dependent on her, twenty-four hours a day, whereas my father’s needs are small (says Pappa). My father knows this, because she has invited him to the house where she works, and has shown him the young man. “You see what he’s like?” she said to my father. “How could I marry that?” (Only of course she said it in Ukrainian.) No, my father wishes to spare her that life of slavery. He will make the sacrifice and marry her himself.

  I am riven with anxiety. I am consumed with curiosity. And so I put aside two years of bitterness and telephone my sister.

  Vera is uncompromising where I am woolly-mindedly liberal. She is decisive where I am wavering.

  “Oh my God, Nadezhda. Why didn’t you tell me before? We’ve got to stop her.”

  “But if she makes him happy…”

  “Don’t be so ridiculous. Of course she won’t make him happy. We can see what she’s after. Really, Nadezhda, why do you always take the side of the criminals…”

  “But Vera…”

  “You must meet her and warn her to back off.”

  I telephone my father.

  “Pappa, why don’t I come over and meet Valentina?”

  “No no. This is absolutely impossible.”

  “Why impossible?”

  He hesitates. He can’t think of excuses fast enough.

  “She doesn’t speak English.”

  “But I can speak Ukrainian.”

  “She is very shy.”

  “She doesn’t sound shy to me. We could discuss Schopenhauer and Nietzsche.” (Ha ha.)

  “She will be working.”

  “Well, I could meet her afterwards. After she finishes work.”

  “No, this is not the point. Nadezhda, it’s better we don’t talk about this. Goodbye.”

  He puts the phone down. He’s hiding something.

  A few days later I ring him again. I try a different tack:

  “Hi, Pappa. It’s me, Nadezhda.” (He knows it’s me, but I want to sound friendly.)

  “Aha. Yes. Yes.”

  “Pappa, Mike’s got a couple of days off this weekend. Why don’t we come over and see you.” My father adores my husband. He can talk to him about tractors and aeroplanes.

  “Hmm. Tak. That will be very nice. When will you come?”

  “On Sunday. We’ll come for lunch on Sunday, about one o’clock.”

  “OK. Good. I will tell Valentina.”

  We arrive well before one o’clock, hoping to catch her, but she has already gone out. The house looks neglected, dispirited. When my mother was here there were always fresh flowers, a clean tablecloth, the smell of good cooking. Now there are no flowers, but used cups, piles of papers, books, things that have not been put away. The table is bare dark brown formica, spread with newspaper on which some chunks of stale bread and apple peelings are waiting to be thrown away. There is an odour of stale grease.

  My father, however, is in great spirits. He has an intense, animated air. His hair, which is now quite silver and thin, has grown long and wispy at the back. His skin has colour and seems firmer, a bit freckled, as if he has been out in the garden. His eyes are bright. He offers us lunch—tinned fish, tinned tomatoes, brown bread, followed by Toshiba apples. This is his special recipe—apples gathered from the garden, peeled, chopped, packed into a pyrex dish and cooked in the microwave (a Toshiba) until they are sticky and solid. Proud of his invention, he offers us more and more and more, and some to take home with us.

  I worry—is it healthy to be eating so much out of tins? Is he getting a balanced diet? I check the contents of his fridge and larder. There is milk, cheese, cereal, bread, plenty of tins. No fresh fruit or vegetables, apart from Toshiba apples and some very speckled bananas. But he looks well. I start to make a shopping list.

  “You should eat more fresh fruit and vegetables, Pappa,” I say. He consents to cauliflower and carrots. He no longer eats frozen peas or beans—they make him cough.

  “Does Valentina cook for you?” I ask.

  “Sometimes she does.” He is evasive.

  I grab a J-cloth and start to tackle the grime. All the surfaces are covered in dust, and brown sticky patches where things have been spilt. There are books everywhere: history, biography, cosmology, some he has bought himse
lf, some from the public library. On the table in the front room I find several sheets of paper covered with his fine, crabby, spiky handwriting, with many additions and crossings-out. I have to struggle to read hand-written Ukrainian, but I can tell from the way the lines are set out that it is poetry. My father published his first poem at the age of fourteen. It was a eulogy to a new hydro-electric power station that was built on the River Dnieper in 1927. When he was training to be an engineer in Kiev, he belonged to a secret circle of Ukrainian poets, which had been outlawed as part of the drive to impose Russian as the lingua franca of the Soviet Union. I am pleased that he is still writing poetry. I am even a bit proud. I tidy the papers into a neat pile and wipe the table.

  In the next room, Mike is slumped in the armchair with his eyes half open and a glass of plum wine in his hand, valiantly maintaining a listening expression on his face, while my father’s voice drones on.

  “It is a terrible tragedy what has happened in this beautiful country. The twin evils of fascism and communism have eaten her heart.”

  On the wall above the fireplace he has hung a map of Europe. Russia and Germany are scored through with heavy lines, so violently that the paper has been torn. Crude drawings of a swastika, an imperial eagle, and a hammer and sickle are covered with angry scribbles. My father’s voice is raised and trembling as he warms to his climax.

  “If I can save just one human being—one human being—from this horror, do you not think this is the moral thing to do?”

  Mike mumbles something diplomatic.

  “You see, Mikhail,” his voice takes on a confiding, man-toman tone, “a child can have only one mother, but a man can have many lovers. This is perfectly normal. Don’t you agree?”

  I strain to hear Mike’s reply, but can catch only a vague mumble.

  “I can understand that Vera and Nadia are not happy. They have lost their mother. But they will come to accept when they see what a beautiful type is Valentina.” (Oh will we?) “Of course my first wife Ludmilla was beautiful when I first knew her in youth. I rescued her also, you know. She was under attack from some boys that wanted to steal her skates, and I intervened on her behalf. From that time we became dose friends. Yes, it is the natural instinct of man to be the protector of woman.” (Oh, please!) “Now, with this Valentina, I am presented with another beautiful woman who appeals for my help. How could I pass by on other side of the road?”

  He starts to catalogue the horrors he is saving her from. The talk in the Ukrainian community is of no food in the shops.

  The only food is what people grow in their plots—just like the old days, they say. The hrivna has fallen through the floor, and keeps falling every day. There has been an outbreak of cholera in Kharkiv. Diphtheria is sweeping through the Donbass. In Zhitomir a woman was set upon in broad daylight and her fingers chopped off for her gold rings. In Chernigov, trees from the forests around Chernobyl have been felled and turned into radioactive domestic furniture which has been sold all around the country so people are irradiated in their own homes. Fourteen miners were killed in an underground explosion at Donetsk. A man was arrested at the railway station at Odessa and found to have a lump of uranium in his suitcase. In Lviv a young woman claiming to be the second coming of Christ has convinced everybody that the world will end in six months’ time. Worse than the external collapse of law and order is the collapse of any rational or moral principles. Some people run to the old Church, but more run to the new fantasy Churches they are bringing in from the West, or to soothsayers, millenarians, out-for-a-quick-buck visionaries, self-flagellants. Nobody knows what to believe or whom to trust.

  “If I can save just one human being…”

  “Oh, for goodness’ sake!” I fling the J-cloth at him. It lands wetly in his lap. “Pappa, haven’t you tied yourself up in some ideological knots here? Valentina and her husband were party members. They were prosperous and powerful. They did all right under communism. It isn’t communism she is fleeing from but capitalism. You’re in favour of capitalism, aren’t you?”

  “Hmm.” He picks up the J-cloth and absent-mindedly wipes his forehead with it. “Hmm.”

  I realise that this thing with Valentina isn’t really about ideology.

  “So when will we get a chance to meet her?”

  “She should come here when her shift finishes, about five o’clock,” says my father. “I have something to give her.” He reaches for a fat brown envelope on the sideboard which appears to be stuffed with papers.

  “Well why don’t I just pop out and get your shopping? Then we can all have tea together when she comes back.” Cheery, sensible voice. English voice. Distances me from all the pain and madness.

  On the way back from the supermarket, I pull up outside the nursing home where Valentina works. It is the same nursing home where my mother came briefly before she died, so I know the lie of the land. I park outside on the road, and then, instead of going in through the front door, I go round the side and look in through the kitchen window. A fat middle-aged woman is stirring something on the stove. Is it her? Next to the kitchen is the dining-room, where some of the older residents are gathering for tea. A couple of bored teenagers in pinafore overalls are shoving them around in wheelchairs. There are other people with trays of food, but they are too far away to see. Now some people are coming out through the front door, and making their way to the bus stop. Are they staff, or visiting relatives? What am I looking for, anyway? I am looking for someone like my father’s description—a beautiful blonde with an enormous bust. No one like that here.

  When I get home, my father is in a state of distress. She has telephoned to say that she isn’t coming. She is going straight home. Tomorrow she travels back to Ukraine. He must see her before she goes. He must give her his gift.

  The envelope is not sealed, and from where I am sitting I can see that it contains several sheets of paper covered with the same crabbed handwriting, and some banknotes. I cannot see how many. I feel rage rise in me. Red blood swims before my eyes.

  “Pappa, why are you giving her money? You have little enough from your pension to live on.”

  “Nadezhda, this is absolutely none of you business. Why you so bothered what I am doing with my money? You thinking there will be none left for you, hah?”

  “Can’t you see she’s conning you, Pappa? I think I should go to the police.”

  He catches his breath. He is scared of the police, the local council, even the uniformed postman who comes to the front door every day. I have frightened him.

  “Nadezhda, why you are so cruel? How I have raised such a hard-hearted monster? Leave my house. I never want” (vant) “to see you again. You are not my daughter!” Suddenly he starts to cough. His pupils are dilated. There are flecks of saliva on his lips.

  “Oh, stop being so melodramatic, Pappa. You said that to me before—do you remember? When I was a student and you thought I was too left-wing.”

  “Even Lenin wrote that left-wing communism is infantile.” (Cough cough.) “Infantile Disorder.”

  “You said I was a Trotskyist. You said ‘Leave my house I never want to see you again!’ But, look, I’m still here. Still putting up with your nonsense.”

  “You were Trotskyism. All of you student revolutionaries with your foolish flags and banners. Do you know what Trotsky did? Do you know how many people he killed? And in what a manner? Do you? Trotsky was a monster, worse than Lenin. Worse than Vera.”

  “Pappa, even if I was a Trotskyist, which by the way I was not, it was still an unkind thing to say to your daughter.”

  That was more than thirty years ago and I can still remember the shock of hurt—I who had always believed until then that my parents’ love was unconditional. But it wasn’t really about politics; it was about will—his will against mine: his right to command me, as my father.

  Mike intervenes.

  “Now, Nikolai, I’m sure you didn’t mean that. Now Nadezhda, there’s no need to rake over past disputes. Sit down, b
oth of you, and let’s talk about it.”

  He’s good at that sort of thing.

  My father sits down. He is shaking, and his jaw is clenched. I remember that look from childhood, and I want to punch him, or to run away.

  “Nikolai, I think Nadezhda has a point. It’s one thing to help her to come to England, but it’s another thing if she’s asking you for money.”

  “It’s for her tickets. If she is to come back, she needs money for tickets.”

  “But if she really cares about you, she’ll come and see you before she goes, won’t she? She’ll want to say goodbye,” says Mike.

  I’m not saying anything. I’m keeping out of it. Let the old fool go to hell.

  “Hmm. This may be so.”

  My father looks upset. Good. Let him be upset.

  “I mean, it’s understandable that you should feel attracted to her, Nikolai,” says Mike. (What’s this? Understandable? We’ll talk about this later.) “But I think it’s a bit suspicious, that she won’t meet any of your family, if she’s really thinking of marrying you.”

  “Hmm.” My father doesn’t argue with Mike the way he does with me. Mike is a man and must be treated with respect.

  “What about the money she’s been earning with all her jobs? That should be enough for the tickets.”

  “She has some debts to pay. If I don’t give her money for tickets, maybe she will never come back.” There is a look of utter loss on his face. “And some poems I have written for her. I want her to read.” I realise, and Mike realises in the same moment, that he is completely in love. The stupid fool.

  “Well, where does she stay in Peterborough?” asks Mike. “Maybe we could call round at her house.” He is as worried as I am now. And maybe intrigued.

  We pile into the car, all three of us. Father has put his best jacket on, and tucked the brown envelope into the inside breast pocket, next to his heart. He directs us to a narrow street of terraced red-brick houses near the centre of the city. We pull up outside a house with a wicket gate and a crumbling tarmac path leading up to the door. My father is out of the car in a trice, and hurrying up the path, clutching the envelope in front ofhim.