I Will Die in a Foreign Land Read online

  Feb. 27–Mar. 18 — Masked pro-Russian troops seize the parliament of Crimea, followed by armed military troops without insignia. By Mar. 18, Crimea has been annexed to the Russian Federation, though it is unrecognized by most international states.

  Apr. 7 — Pro-Russian activists storm government buildings in the Donbass region of Ukraine, which includes Donetsk and Luhansk, an action the Ukrainian government denounces as terrorism and a Russian operation to thwart Ukraine independence.

  May 11 — Crimean filmmaker Oleg Sentsov is accused of terrorist conspiracy by the Russian government and is arrested.

  May 25 — Petro Poroshenko is elected the fifth president of Ukraine.

  May 26–27 — First Battle of Donetsk Airport.

  July 17 — Malaysian Airlines Flight 17 from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur is shot down by pro-Russian separatists while flying over Donetsk Oblast. All 283 passengers and 15 crew members are killed.

  August 10 — The last barricades and residential tents are removed by plainclothes Kyivans.

  The War in Donbass remains ongoing.

  I know that far away

  By strangers in a foreign land

  I will be laid away;

  This little pinch of native soil

  Will on my grave be placed —

  —Taras Shevchenko

  You have navigated with raging soul

  Far from the paternal home,

  Passing beyond the seas’ double rocks.

  And now you inhabit a foreign land.

  —Medea

  I Will Die in a Foreign Land

  PROLOGUE

  ENTER KOBZARI, SINGING

  Where does it begin? Ah, ah. Depends on who you ask—

  It could begin with Scythians and Cimmerians, Slavs and the Rus'. Queen Olha. Vladymyr the Great. Yaroslav the Wise.

  It could begin with Kyi. Ilya Muromets. The Kozaks, the UNR, the UPA. One thing is certain: it doesn’t just begin here, my friend. It doesn’t begin or end with Stalin. It doesn’t begin or end with Yanukovych. Or Poroshenko. Or Zelensky. It doesn’t begin or end with Putin.

  The war has always been quiet: like a pulse, it can be forgotten. Unnoticed. Like a pulse, we can feel it as long as we’re still here.

  Lean your ear onto the chest of a corpse and you’ll hear it: emptiness like an echo.

  Have you ever listened to your wristwatch when it’s stopped ticking? The sound of it—that aching hollowness. Like a dry fountain cracking in the sun.

  We’ve known thirst. We’ve known hunger, here.

  Ah, ah. My friend. You ask us where to begin—how can we? How many times have you carried your dead through your streets?

  We sing the history of Kyiv: Come, and you will see.

  THE CAPTAIN

  He wakes in his apartment: a bed, a desk, a kitchenette, a radio. The upright piano, a black polished Diederichs Frères elaborately carved in the fashion of the late nineteenth century, stands against an otherwise bare wall. The bearish piano faces him when he emerges from the bedroom, goes to the bath. When he washes his face—dry soap and cold water—he sees the ancient image of his own father, gone so many years ago.

  The young people in Kyiv have come to protest abuses of their government—he heard them, saw them gathering in the street. He doesn’t remember when exactly the thought came to him, but he remembers putting on his father’s Soviet jacket and the balaclava to cover his face, and he quite simply went. The square was filled with people singing, holding hands, holding up the Ukrainian flag: blue bar atop yellow bar. The open sky over the golden grain. The women wore flowers in their hair, the men flowers on their jackets—their hope contagious, he cut through the crowd uplifted and exhilarated with purpose.

  This feeling, he recalls, this feeling—this is how it all began.

  The street piano was where it always had been—there on Khreshchatyk, where he would play day after day. Abandoned by some unknown donor, the light oak top—board bent from weather, the epoxy chipped and worn. He wipes the seat of snow, lifts the cover to expose the white teeth. He warms his hands with his breath, his gloves black with the fingers cut. He twists the ring on his finger, his father’s silver ring.

  A crowd gathers as he begins to play.

  PART I

  МАЙДАН

  MAIDAN

  UNITY DAY: PROTESTORS

  KILLED IN KYIV, UKRAINE

  JANUARY 22, 2014

  Two activists were shot and killed and a third is in critical condition on Wednesday during non-violent demonstrations in the capital city of Ukraine. The protests began on November 21, 2013, after President Viktor Yanukovych declined to sign an association agreement with the European Union and instead considered joining the Eurasian Economic Union, building closer ties to President Vladimir Putin of Russia. Thousands of Ukrainians responded to the move by gathering in the city square, citing governmental corruption and Yanukovych’s abuses of power. Protestors also voiced resistance to Russian influence. Ukraine, which has been an independent country since 1991 following the fall of the Soviet Union, has a long, complex history with Russia, resulting in distrust, especially from younger generations of Ukrainians.

  The two deaths are the first reported at Maidan

  Nezalezhnosti, or Independence Square. The Berkut Police Force have been criticized globally for their violent response to the protests, which has included the use of stun grenades, tear gas, batons, and cutting off cell phone communications. Despite these brutal attacks, the number of protestors at Independence Square has only grown in size—many protestors camping in tents and building barricades to protect themselves against the police force.

  Journalists covering the unrest in Ukraine have also been targeted. Ukrainian journalist Ihor Lutsenko, 35, was abducted from a hospital along with protestor Yury Verbytsky, 50. Lutsenko was discovered 12 hours later, wandering the crest of a forest on the outskirts of Kyiv near Borispol Airport. Barely able to walk, Lutsenko had been beaten on the soles of his feet, had a black eye, and was missing a tooth. Lutsenko believed the 10 men who abducted him were affiliated with the Berkut Police, stating the men repeatedly asked him who had paid him to participate in the protests—presuming Lutsenko had been provided compensation from Western organizations. He had not.

  Not far from where Lutsenko was discovered, so was the body of Verbytsky. He had been bound, ribs broken and internal organs smashed. The autopsy indicated that Verbytsky had died of hypothermia.

  The deaths have caused further outrage and protests throughout the country.

  ST. MICHAEL’S GOLDEN-DOMED MONASTERY

  JANUARY 19, 2014

  MORNING

  The snow in Boston, Katya thinks, must be thick like cake. She flicks her cigarette. A black cloud of burning tires near the Maidan less than a mile away forces a cough. The air is frigid. The injured have not rested. The light outside is disappearing.

  St. Michael’s appears to be inside an apocalyptic snow globe: golden spirals, eye-blue walls, ember and ash ethereal. The bell tower stands like a soldier. Indeed, it is.

  We’re all under water here, Katya thinks. Shaken loose like silt. An undertow. A baptism. A drowning. Last spring, Boston had a bombing. Now, she was in Kyiv.

  Kyiv had been burning for months. The tactical police force—the Berkut—had started attacking thousands of peaceful protestors at the Maidan in November. St. Michael’s opened its doors, bells ringing and priests singing, and the people came from Maidan to the church. Hundreds had been injured; some were dead. Distrust of the government caused hospitals to turn up in the streets. In shoe stores, in the Hotel Ukraine. In St. Michael’s Golden-Domed Monastery.

  Here, Katya is far from home.

  The holy men of the church—men of all faiths—start to pray, to hold a vigil. They took the bodies to a makeshift morgue in the back
of the church and the people prayed.

  God is still here, they said. They said: Pray.

  Vigilance. Vigilance. Stay awake.

  Katya’s son, Isaac, would have been six years old and still cherub-faced. Ezra had sent her an email that she hadn’t yet read. Katya looks at her phone, the message from her husband.

  A priest calls out to her—

  лікар, будь ласка—

  Doctor, please—

  Katya kills the cigarette under her boot and goes.

  All empires fall. First the Mongols destroyed parts of the church. Then the Soviets. Then it was rebuilt. Gold and blue, the church is grotesquely beautiful. It looks like Byzantium. Byzantium: the word so full of promise. The new Rome. She has seen pictures of the Sistine Chapel and it must be something like this. Here, there are paintings on the walls, the ceiling, the columns. Bright sashes and wings on cherubs, gowns and crowns decorating saints. All looking, seeing. Vigilance. She felt they could see every part of her. All that raw ache.

  Inside the church among the injured, an old Soviet man is dying. He wears a military jacket with Soviet insignia sewn upside down. His skull is bleeding underneath the black balaclava he wears, covering his face. Katya takes off her winter coat. A nurse takes it from her and directs her on to the washroom. The medics here all wear white shirts with the Red Cross taped on the chest, on their helmets. Above them hundreds of saints look down, their large heavy eyes watching, their hands lifted to God. Men and women are huddled on the ground under the paintings, under the gold chalices. They are young and old. They pray, crossing themselves. A circle of older women, their heads covered in scarves, pray under a portrait of the Virgin. Katya walks past.

  The Soviet man has been moved from the floor to a makeshift operating table. He is stripped of his balaclava, his pants and shoes. His leg is soaked in blood—shrapnel thick inside the thin skin. When she removes the mask she can see he’s been blinded by a powder, his eyes closed, tears trailing down his cheeks, rinsing grime from his face. He has a traumatic brain injury and is showing signs for stroke. Katya dresses for surgery, amidst the wailing people, the watchful saints. She covers her mouth, her hands. The nurse crosses herself and says a prayer. They go to work.

  The blanket beneath the old man had become wet with blood and there is nothing she can do until he is put to sleep. The wounds isolated. The anesthesia pushed into the skin and he’s out. She takes the old man’s wrist and feels the faint beat beat beat.

  She says to him in Russian: “You are a strong man. You can make it through.”

  Once she’s removed the shrapnel, Katya and the nurse muster a tourniquet, ceasing the bleeding. His leg is raised. An IV pinched into the veins of his left arm. Alkaline, lidocaine, corneal gel applied to the eyes. Katya calls for a blanket and she’s given one by a nurse. The nurse had taken it from a dead man a few feet away. She had covered the dead man with a sheet. The nurses help her wrap the old man in the blanket and Katya understands he is soon going to die.

  She watches the old man’s chest. It rises.

  Hours later, Katya and a nurse examine the bandages, the blood pressure. The sheets, the walls, the bandages are white.

  He says, slurring, trembling from the cold: Ки́са. Kisa. It means: Kitten.

  Katya is struck by the strangeness of it: a pet name? A pet?

  Isaac would play in the snow until he shook like a bird. He sat on her lap in fleece pajamas after she had him take a warm bath. Katya wrapped the blanket around them both and breathed. They sat by the fire and Katya smelled his hair as she read to him stories.

  Today, her son would have been six years old.

  Katya pulls back her hair. She washes her hands. Above the sink, Mary holds baby Jesus and watches Katya splash water on her face. Katya looks up.

  In the Bible, Simeon says to Mary on the death of Jesus: “And a sword will pierce your own soul too.” Mary knew what she was getting into.

  What kind of fucking sacrifice is that?

  KATYA DREAMS OF HER SON

  She sees her boy’s prints in the snow—like a rabbit to be tracked. She runs.

  The prints go from the sidewalk to the street to the wood. She calls for him and the wood is silent. She hears her own heart in her ear and holds her breath to listen.

  She hears him laugh, and she sees the smoke from the hut. She opens the door.

  An old woman is at the small stove—long-nosed and crooked. Her legs are chicken legs. She turns the mortar and pestle and she cries out: Oh, you are too late, my dear. You’re too late. And the old woman points to a door.

  Inside is her son, hanging from his feet. Framed paintings of sad byzantine eyes line the wall floor to ceiling. Her son is pale, his arms crossed over his chest.

  The old woman comes in with a warm bowl and a spoon and says, Oh, my dear. Such a ripe little heart. She hands her the bowl and it begins to beat in her cupped hands.

  KATYA’S APARTMENT

  JANUARY 20, 2014

  DAWN

  Katya wakes, gasping for air, as if emerging from the sea. She turns on the bedside lamp and puts on her glasses—the black framed glasses she only wears at home—the glasses only her husband and her son would see her wear. She pulls off the covers and walks barefoot to the window, which she unlatches, and lets in the icy air. She unevenly lights a cigarette, shaking from the wind, from her own unsteady hand, and she blows the smoke into the cold.

  At Beth Israel shortly after the bombing, the injured had arrived, shrapnel from the pressure cooker bombs—nails, ball bearings—seared deep in flesh, the limbs, debris blinding the eyes. The emergency room was always an environment of chaos, but at once Katya and every living soul in Boston, a people of formidable hardiness, found themselves off-balance. It was the most terror Katya had ever experienced inside the hospital, besides the death of her son, and her survival of both had instilled such profound intrepidness within her that she was led here to Kyiv: a city on fire. A country verging on war.

  The word Ukraine means country. As if it were the only one. As if there wasn’t another place to be from. But what if there isn’t? What if it’s all one country—this whole world.

  I’m a child of the world. Not one country to belong to. Not one mother, or father.

  From her apartment window, she can see the barricades burning. She thinks of her mother when she sees the babusi handing out handmade scarves and soup. She is her adoptive mother, the mother of her whole-life memory. Her dear mother waits for Katya to return to Boston, to remedy her broken marriage.

  Katya has no picture of her birth mother, no name. She has no lead. Like many orphans, she pictures her birth mother as eternally young and beautiful. She pictures her in black-and-white, like the pictures she’s seen of her adoptive mother as a girl, except this mother will look like her. Katya emails her mother every day, however brief, to tell her she is safe.

  Katya as a child would look at herself in the mirror, long curled brown hair, dark eyes, and speak to the reflection. She would look just like me, she’d think. She’d even talk like me. And Katya would open her small mouth and say to herself, to the mother’s blood inside of her, My name is Katya. What is your name? And she’d wait expectantly for the answer, as if her blood-mother somehow possessed her as a spirit.

  I miss you, she’d say to her own reflection, eyes round with tears. And as her mother would enter her room to kiss her forehead goodnight, Katya would close her eyes and sometimes pretend—

  And feel inside her heart staggering guilt.

  Now, in Ukraine, her blood-mother could be anywhere, anyone. She pictures her alive.

  “They were troubled,” her parents told her, “that they couldn’t provide for a child.”

  “It must have been so difficult,” her mother said. “My heart is torn: the poor woman gave her child away, but she gave us you. The night before daw
n. The winter before spring.”

  Ekaterina, her mother and father named her when they took her home from the orphanage. Ekaterina the Great. Looking over Kyiv, Katya feels neither great nor pure. Her son is dead, her marriage is dead, and her birthplace is on fire.

  Katya snubs her cigarette on the balcony. A black cat emerges from a bush with a mouse in its jaws. He leaves paw prints in the snow.

  Kisa, kisa. Where have you gone?

  ST. MICHAEL’S GOLDEN-DOMED MONASTERY

  JANUARY 20, 2014

  NOON

  Amidst the chaos of a new day, the old Soviet man is stable. The nurse sees Katya standing near his bed and joins her, updating her on his progress. The nurse says, “He still exhibits paralysis in his right arm and right leg and non-fluent aphasia.”

  Katya nods and removes her gloves and coat and looks at the old man, his green eyes light as fog.

  “Have we found any identification to call his wife? His family? To tell them where he is?”

  “We haven’t reached any relatives, yet. There was a phone number in his coat. No answer. There was also a cassette tape.”

  “Where is it?”

  “I put them back in his coat so they aren’t lost.”

  “Okay,” she says. “We will keep working on it. He will need some time to recover here—it’s too soon for him to leave, but we will need to make room for other patients. Maybe someone will come looking for him, or perhaps he might come around.”

  She turns back to the old man. He is pale, his hair thinned, his scalp spotted like an egg.

  “We are going to move you into the refectory adjacent to this building. It will be quieter there.”

  He is looking off. Katya tries to see what he does: There are young men around him, covered in blankets with IVs in their wrists and arms. Grimaced faces turned, tucked into their shoulders. The church is the inside of a conch shell: each voice indistinct, the murmur constant.