Spring of a Down - 6
Вечер накануне Ивана Купала
There are moments that unterrorize the visions of horror. Twisted metal burned on a living on a stroad with houses, one touch to another, in this the East of the West. Bucha was a name that few people heard of; it was a point on a map outside of Kyiv. Even the few who had heard it had heard it almost recently on charts of a faintly military hue. Gogol would be proud of the objective – all Slavs.
There were infantry troop carriers on the stroad on every side of the pitch. Bent up, twisted down, crush to perfect bent grace. Everywhere a “Z” spilled through. What is odd is that “Z” is not a figure in the Russian alphabet, instead, the letter “З” is used.[1]
Now furrows in brow creased the low rumpled cast found on Zelenskyy’s frown cast down. Oh, frabjous day but no callooh or callay. No tears either; simply reached out staring with dents on his cheeks. Poverty is not poverty till it comes to the windows ripped down and denuded maples along, knocked on the roof, and scratched the wall. Bricks shorn asunder as pavement to the clear white sky. Crack asphalt with mud. A crashed upright piano was snapped on the sidewalk.
The president. The military president now stalking the ground and lifted his head.
“Yes, I believe this to be genocide.” With guns in his entourage. A pain that he is too used to, but anything else would be living out of touch in kingdom come. The advisors had told him that this was probably done at night because everything had been done up-close and personal. Muzzle shots clench at bitter flesh their fresh blackness stood out.
An advisor leaned in through the hubba of news reporters. The advisors glared back at the reporters and gave a scowl. The pens paused in unison scratch on the notepads halted.
In a whisper: “We have some worse news for you. Borodyanka, another suburb, looks to be worse. Tall buildings. Apartments. More ripped-up cars. Many more slain and raped.”
The president showed a grim nod to the press. Inside he knew the town Borodyanka because long ago he had campaigned there with a tirelessness of someone who had no chance of winning. It was then a time of sore arms not broken legs. Dreadful, not London, was calling. The Russians were getting it on to screams that they laugh over.
They walked amidst the upturned bodies, shapes to the sun. A pawed fragment that was, once, a man’s face with arms cusped back behind his head. Bellowing out the loose brains in vomit.
The advisor moved one step back. “When do well tell them?”
“Give them 15 minutes to digest, and then call a helicopter for me to take me towards Borodyanka. They will get the rest because now they have been simmered into the nice hot juices of war.” Now it was the advisor’s turn to nod. The maw wanted conflict even as the audience feign for peace.
He whispered back: “The coming of the news is not in our control.”
The advisor stepped back to the throng of security. He watched the two men in infantry fatigues. One was a full-on grunt and therefore the advisor never had more than the flotilla of taking and giving of details. But the other one was more talkative. He was more concerned and noticed with his eyes and ears. He was Serzhant Tymur Kryvonis.[2] The wind blew his black hair to expose the growing bald mountain.[3]
“Cards are stacked against us.”[4] It is not just the military from the Serzhant.
“Why do you say so?” The advisor had a lilting float to his diction.
“The stars are not aligned for the Western powers to save us.” The Serzhant sighed. “Look at the street, blocks of nothing but fart in puddle.[5] Tanks going from one side to the other on the widest block in a morass-like sorghum. There were powers at work here.” Both looked at the tall trees cordoning boulevard with tanks, carriers, and fuel trucks littering everywhere. “There are those who believe in powers who control our aimless dance?”
“Not every horror is inflicted on us by the Russians.” The Serzhant looks the advisor straight in the face. The clouds blacken.
“You believe the stories about ‘de-Nazification’ and the rest?”
“I know the Southern flank is held by ultranationalists. They are their own.”
“We have to have all Ukrainians together.”
“Even if they want to bash others who don’t meet their standard?”
“One foe at a time. It’s better to have one God at a time maligned.”
“Why don’t the West powers take us? Why the Finns and the Swedes?”
The was no answer from the advisor until he replied: “We are still button pushers.”[6]
The Serzhant made a motion as if to push something out of the way.
Zelenskyy turned to a ruined door in a bombed-out doma. There was a polite scream for the bodyguards, but the president moved ahead. The guards worried about bombs. The president then turns to the reporters and pointed at the portal. There was a white letter “Z” in Banksy-style of spray.
“This is the destruction that the Russian troops met out.” A faint smear of sun-blasted the door from a thin beam. Splinters warmed to meet it. The scrawling continued even over the debris of once a building, as far as the wind could carry. White “Z.” White “Z.” And in unison: White “Z.”
The snow came down again. Soon, it was thick.
The President went to the stroad and took a while in thought. Then his gaze fixed on a stuffed white rabbit. A small hand was near it in the rubble. And the farther away a hand with chipped lavender-painted nails reaching. Then a tear moved down his wearied face because the President had a vision of the last moments of life their life, torn from them, as the mother said “Z” to a little girl – to rest against the riptide that came.
[1] See Footnote 3.
[2] The Ukrainian military adopted ranks to be normalized to NATO standards.
[3] There is an entire complex of meanings. Gogol started it, but the most famous of the referents is Mussorgsky’s “Night on Bald Mountain.”
[4] Ed Sheeran, “Overpass Graffiti”
[5] Literally “В лужу пьорнуть” – slang “Dived into the puddle.”
[6] Literally “кнопкодав” or Piano voting.