Spring of a Down - 14
Борртьбу з бридотою
"You are old, as I mentioned before, and have grown most uncommonly fat.” [1]
It was true, thought Grygoriy, he was uncommonly stout, not overweight. But, at this time last year, he was portly in a proud carefree manner in a house near Marinka, near the town of Donetsk of one the great plains where a man could be born and be buried next to his wife.
The Ukrainian flag flew atop the yellow brick high building thе was the Lviv Town Hall, almost as an act of defiance. Lviv now had thrice as many people to protect in its tiny squares. Some of them newcomers drank espresso and watched to Берегиня. But Grygoriy was far from the central city and the monuments. Once he went to the office every day and did important work, but far from here. Now, staring at the Cemetery in Lviv, it was strangely ornate in its differences. He fought that darkness as best he could, but it was a losing battle for him.
He looked into the cemetery, almost an investigation, and saw the crammed graves in granite amidst the elm tree that seemed to be huddled together for warmth. There were a few bunches of bouquets and more wilted fleurs. Grygoriy mused that the coming of spring, here in Ukraine, was the last gasp of Old man winter which had broken like an eruption of Le Sacre du Printemps. Picture of Russia in two parts, a jeu du rapt in an irregular transmutation.[2] He looked inward to the main stroad observing the traffic dance along the boulevard. To his uncouth eyes, from a town in the East, it was a noisy great crunching, snarling chords. It was, in short, abhorrence of everything a village stood for. One walked through a village. One traveled through a town. Grygoriy did not know what Lviv was, it had come out of the new. The hum of an oboe filled his ears as if to gently lead him along the roaring path. He looked down in his mind’s eye.
Then looked upon the huge mass of tracks imaging that train station in its marble façade front and its grey pinnacled dome. Of the old world. Half-seen and half-remember from when he got here. There were saplings to guide his way and asphalt square patterns to a main street. The walkway was large and patterned in obsessive grids. New again emerging from the old inside, with its chandelier’s cups upturned in faded pewter high up hung from the graceful pattern above the doors, below glass in the wall with advertisements tasteful, and glass studded with white through the ceiling. But in truth what he actually saw was the modern concrete, oak benches, and round bulbs outside the round semicircles where the trains docked. The trains which wallowed on dirty paper strewn tracks amidst the iron breath of the lungs of old steel. There were trees in cleft-angular unison.
At least the plains were still flat. He had only been once to Berlin, even though the natives had to him that Berlin was flat, they did not know what they were talking about. Flat runs the horizon, not to the corner.
Then he turned to the natural cemetery. He truly looked at the smoldering graves. He sat and thought of the faces suborned in stone of Jesus Christ. Khrystos Voskres. Voistynu Voskres. It brought him a taste of the spring sun and its quailing explosion. He laughed because he knew He was coming. Even too the rows of graves, one like the other.
Another person – an old woman – sat next to him on the bench. It was an odd thing to do because the bench drained all of the life from your legs until it reached up through your spine. One must rise to the air and worship the sun.
But he saw that the old plump woman was a stickler for manners: the man must start a conversation even if the lady wanted it. It was subaltern knowledge that the young could not understand until they were not young.
“добрий день.”[3] Good day.
She responded: “Dobryi den.” Good day. “I am Nyura Ninevna.” She stuck out her hand and waited for him to shake it. “I have not seen you at hand.”
“They called me Grygoriy Grygorovich I am a refugee, so I now know no one. The land that I left is now torn asunder.”
“Your father’s name.”
“Yes, I am so blessed. He was the solicitor in the same place. I took over his trade.”
“What did you used to do?”
It was clear she wanted to talk but her face told him there was nothing particular about him.
He waited for a truck loaded with flour to pass.[4]
“I was a solicitor.”
“That is a good profession.”
“It at least teaches you to argue both sides.”
“I can see that. Can you give me an example?”
“In my small village, it was the usual: wills and trusts and thus and so. But the most contentious issue where the divorces.”
“Only fair, since marriage is a sign to not just men and women but to God.”
“Indeed. But the lawyer must argue both sides. If the husband, he will tell you about the strain of being interrupted and, if the wife, how she does everything and gets not one word of praise. I argued on either side. Though once I should have taken a side, but the money was too good to ignore.”
“It was the man who offered more money.” Full stop.
“Yes.”
“May I ask you a more formal question?”
“Tak.” Yes.
“Did you come here with anyone?”
“My wife was obliterated by a cluster fragment.”
“Mine as well: My husband was killed by a bomb. Any others?”
“My daughter and her husband were shot with their hands behind their back.”[5]
“I am so sorry. My child died long ago.”
“The love that makes all fresh decays. There are missile strikes here.”
“No place is safe. 7 died here, yesterday in Lviv.”
He looked back. “I have not seen the bodies yet. I heard that windows of a hotel were shattered.”
Then she paused. This was her hardest of the questions: “What was love for you?”
He waited a moment. There was the vision of human beings with still faces but without a name. And he returned to the now.
"In my youth, I took to the law, and then later, argued each case with my wife.”[6]
Then he got up from the hard granite bench and moved on to this room at Hotel Nton, where he could watch the trains through gossamer budding elms. He took his only book - by Lewis Carroll, rescue from out of his smashed-down home amidst the fielding plain of his youth.
[1] Carroll, “You Are Old, Father William”
[2] Jeu du rapt is a short part of Stravinky, Sacre du Printemps.
[3] This a constant in Slavic languages.
[4] A reference to the spring traditional of celebrating the dead with a breakfast in the cemetary.
[5] Russian military style.
[6] Carroll, “You Are Old, Father William”