I Will Die in a Foreign Land Page 3

  The old man, though, is looking elsewhere or everywhere at once.

  A group of holy men dressed in black gowns begin to sing a hymn. Four of them under the image of Christ. The sound fills the church like a bowl. The voices sound like one voice—low, like an organ, and high. Then, the people in the church start to sing, too. They sing the Ukrainian anthem. The sick sing, the doctors and nurses sing. Prayers and pleas harmonize the same. The music reverberates, between the walls, between the bodies, living and dead.

  It feels like a swell, Katya thinks—like we’re drowning. In grief, in ecstasy.

  Where had she heard this before? Why does it keep coming back?

  We’re all underwater, here, she thinks.

  She leaves the old man, who is unable to speak.

  Katya asks a volunteer where they have piled his things. Katya can hear the bells, the praying, the crying—a ringing headache, and she pockets a bottle of aspirin from a table. There have been beatings on Hrushevsky Street. The injured are carried in. The volunteer assisting Katya came from Kharkiv. Katya can’t remember her name.

  “Here,” the volunteer says, hands her a plastic bag of the old man’s clothes. Katya pulls out the coat. No name, but a Soviet military pin and a piece of paper on the inside pocket near the breast. An American number and address in faded ink on soft yellowed paper. Los Angeles, California. The address seems bizarre, out of place. Foreign in a foreign place. Inconceivable. She gives the volunteer back the coat, where it is lain in a neat pile as it was before.

  Katya reaches for her phone but a young woman stops her. The woman is wearing a green coat, hair dyed blond and blue. She grabs Katya’s arm.

  “Please,” she says. “He is hurt—doctor, please—”

  Her head splitting, Katya blinks. Everyone is hurt, she wants to say. Instead, putting her phone and the paper away in her pocket, she says, “Where is he?” and follows the young woman outside.

  It looks as if there has been a war here, a battle. Blood on the cobblestone. Volunteer medics, women carrying gloves and soup—everyone is shouting orders, everyone is running. Only the dead are still.

  Outside the monastery, under a tree skeletoned from winter, Katya sees the man—his head and hand bleeding. He’s older than she expected—closer to her own age, later thirties, early forties. The young woman goes to him, waves over Katya, who kneels down in the snow.

  “Dobriy dehn,” she says in Ukrainian to the man. “Could you—”

  “Go,” he says, waving at her. “I’m fine, I’m fine. Please go help the others.”

  Katya looks at the woman, who tells her, “A Berkut struck him in the head with an iron baton—tell me that isn’t serious.”

  “I had on a helmet,” he says, and yes, there it is—the painted helmet cracked in the snow.

  “Please,” the young woman says to Katya. “He’s a fucking idiot.”

  Katya looks around her, at the people hurting around her, at all the people dying.

  “Go,” he says in Ukrainian. “Go, please.”

  She looks him in the eyes. She can recognize a selfless man. A long time ago, she had recognized that quality in Ezra.

  “Let me see,” she says. He moves his hand from his head. His palms are dirty and callused. Strong.

  “I will ask you some questions, now,” Katya says. “What is your name?”

  “Misha Tkachenko.”

  “What year is it?”

  “Twenty fourteen.”

  “Who is president?”

  He looks at her—“No one.”

  “Okay, then. Where did you grow up?”

  “Pripyat—No, Dnipropetrovsk. Dnipropetrovsk.”

  Katya looks at the young woman for approval. She nods. Katya examines his skull. She holds two fingers in front of his eyes.

  “Follow my fingers,” she says. She watches his eyes as they go side to side.

  A volunteer brings her bandages, antiseptic, alcohol, aspirin, a water bottle. She takes the man’s pulse. Tha thump tha thump tha thump—healthy, steady. Katya dresses the wounds herself—one across his palm, one above the eye. She asks him questions about his vision. She makes him follow her hand with his eyes, cold blue. When he takes the aspirin, Katya takes her own.

  “You’ll want to watch for signs of a concussion. Vomiting, confusion. We can keep you here until you feel well enough.”

  “No, no,” Misha says to her. “I won’t take room away from the others.”

  The young woman thanks Katya and turns back to Misha. She says, “I’m going back.”

  He becomes serious and caps the bottle of aspirin. He says nothing to her. Feeling the weight of the silence between them, Katya gets up to leave.

  “Doctor,” he says to her. “What would you tell your sister who won’t go home during a war like this? Even when men start killing one another?”

  Katya says nothing. The woman laughs, pulls a strand of blue hair from the corner of her mouth.

  “Misha,” the woman says. “Stop.”

  Misha doesn’t look away from Katya. Katya shifts. Her feet are numb from the position.

  “What would you tell her?” Misha asks her again.

  Katya looks at her hands and the aspirin.

  “Nothing.”

  The woman stands. She thanks Katya again. Without saying a word to Misha, the woman leaves. Katya rises, Misha rises. He looks the direction where the young woman walked off—toward Maidan.

  “She’s off to battle,” he says, lighting a cigarette. He laughs. “No one can stop her.”

  “Thank you, doctor,” Misha says. He walks off, not in the same direction as the young woman, his stride as heavy as his hands.

  When Katya returns to her phone, she calls the American number from the old man’s pocket. It only rings, rings, rings.

  BELLS RING AT ST. MICHAEL’S MONASTERY FOR THE FIRST TIME IN NEARLY 800 YEARS

  SUNG BY KOBZARI

  The guelder-rose, or kalyna berry, symbolizes the blood of families, the birth of the Universe. At the center of Maidan in Kyiv is a statue of Berehynia, her arms outstretched. She stands where Lenin once stood. Where Lenin later fell.

  She is the Mother, the Slavic protector of the hearth. She holds the kalyna wreath at the center of Independence Square.

  This is where Dascha and Slava fell in love, where Misha built barricades, where Katya meets an old pianist—

  This is where protestors sang, holding hands. This is where the Berkut police force fired shots, where Molotov cocktails kissed the brick and mortar, steel and flesh, and opened holes in the earth. Opening the body, letting blood.

  Gazing at Berehynia is Archangel Michael, the city’s patron saint, holding a shield and sword. A soldier of God.

  At St. Michael’s Monastery, in December 2013, the church bells scream—a cacophony summoning the city to prepare for battle. The church has only done this once before: 800 years ago, against the Mongols.

  And so, the city comes, the Ukrainian nation comes, the Berkut comes, the military comes! Bells ringing like the sound of the kalyna and the creation of the Universe—

  Come to war, the bells say.

  Come.

  AUDIO CASSETTE RECORDING

  SIDE ONE

  When I was a young man, I went to Prague. It was 1968, and we arrived in the city in the bellies of tanks. It was our international duty. But what they didn’t tell us is that we were to be ready for war. We were given real bullets and gas masks. This was not child’s play, I knew then.

  The Czech people weren’t cheering for us, like we had imagined they would be. No, they surprised us, and I was afraid. I was a boy then. I wanted to become a good man. You may not believe it, but I still do.

  We were lost, our tank was—the people had taken down the names of the street signs so we wandered in the labyrinth of Pr
ague’s city center for days. They set fire to our vehicles and we set fire to theirs. It was hell. We couldn’t see where we were going with all the fires, the stones and bricks being thrown at us.

  It was August and it was hot. Smoke and dust everywhere, choking us. We were given orders to drive toward the Czech radio station—that we needed to shut it down. We raided the building, sending reporters out, waving our guns, all of us covered in dust.

  As we left the building, a woman on the street asked me in Russian, Brother, why? and I turned to look at her and she was beautiful. She had a red coat, short hair—she was passing by the barricades when she saw what was happening. Maybe she was going to work. Maybe she worked at the station. Whatever it was—it was fated.

  I didn’t know what to say to her. No one had told us what to say. My commander noticed and pointed his gun at her and told her to move along, and she did, but her eyes didn’t leave mine. They haven’t, still.

  One hundred people died in Prague in 1968. A Czech student lit himself on fire. There were others who followed.

  The Czech people—your people, your mother’s people—did not see us as liberators. I feared I made a mistake by coming. I dared not write home about it. I dared not speak about it. I held my gun, but I doubted. God, I doubted. It was the first time in my life. It wasn’t the last.

  I was at the top of my class—strong, tall, like my father. My father was an officer in the army, and I was recruited as an officer in the KGB.

  My father. How dearly I wanted to be like him. I wanted to be a good man. I wanted to be a good soldier. I wanted to be a good father.

  [Incoherent. A pause.]

  I remember what it was I said to her—your mother—the last time I saw her. She was leaving. I said not stop but wait. I think about this every day.

  Wait implies, stay a while. A stasis. Limbo.

  But stop—it means freeze, don’t move. It means, don’t go.

  Dear child, my daughter, my Anna—I pray you hear me. Don’t go. Please.

  Until the end, my dear. Please hear me until the end.

  MAIDAN NEZALEZHNOSTI

  JANUARY 18, 2014

  It’s never so simple. Ukraine is the Jerusalem of the Slavs: everyone wants a piece, Misha Tkachenko thinks as he crosses himself while walking through the camp at Maidan.

  The smoke from burning tires suffocates the square. Just outside Maidan, the city center, the sky is clear. Women and men go to work, to the markets. They go to restaurants and clubs, laugh and make love, but here, the smoke hovers like a fog. Ash has dirtied Misha’s forehead. He wears a heavy coat, heavy boots, and wool pants, a balaclava in his pocket.

  It’s January in Kyiv, and it’s fucking cold.

  There are supporters outside in the streets, clean-faced people who made simple meals for the protestors at Maidan. Misha has been at Maidan since November, when the college students were beaten in the street. He’s set up camp with others. As an engineer, he’s helped build barricades, structures made from shoveled snow, fence railings, staircases—whatever steel and wood they can get their hands on. He’s carried the injured and he’s protected the children who have joined their families.

  Misha once saw a father beaten right before his child’s eyes. Misha fucking hated that Berkut, the one who took down the man—not just because of the pain inflicted on the father, but because of the memory inflicted on the son. Misha saw to it that the Berkut stopped inflicting pain. He helped the father up and took the boy’s hand. The Berkut lay on the pavement, and Misha called for help.

  The man’s family still comes to Maidan. He goes to see the mother, Galyna, who has brought homemade bread and kalyna berry tea. Galyna smiles at him weakly—squeezes his hand every time she sees him. Everyone here is so goddamn tired. Everyone here knows we have to finish what we started. Even Galyna. Even Misha.

  The kalyna tea is a little bitter but the warmth feels nice. The tea makes him think of the berry crowns Slava used to wear at FEMEN protests before the organization moved to France. And the first time he met her, at a play, she was wearing a crown of kalyna berries, a crown so large she looked like an Orthodox Saint. Bright hair, large eyes, thin mouth.

  A martyr. Drama queen.

  Still, he admired her. She would go bare-breasted into the street, ribbons in her hair, locking arms with other women, chest painted the colors of the flag. The women of FEMEN were fearless, sharp, volatile. They screamed for women’s rights, painted UKRAINE IS NOT A BROTHEL on their bellies. She was often arrested. Coming home, mascara-stained and furious as the sun. He didn’t love her foolishness, but the spirit. She was idealistic and fire-eyed.

  Slava doesn’t talk about FEMEN anymore. There was significant fallout after it was discovered a man pulled the strings of the organization, but Slava did not stay disillusioned. “It wasn’t working,” she would say. “It was too vain—but the shock of it was exhilarating.”

  Now, reignited, Slava refuses to leave the streets of Maidan. It’s a bad game, he thinks. He thinks it because he knows what it’s like and he’s tried to tell her so many fucking times.

  You know life is too short, Misha. You know that. To be angry. That’s what Vera would say. What his father might say. How much energy do we waste being angry at the ones we love?

  Misha finishes his bread and takes his phone out of his pocket. He goes to one of the electronics charging tents. A few other men are there, two on their phones, one on a laptop, and Misha nods to them. They look like soldiers and no one has anything to say today after the shooting. No one wants to speak about the dead.

  Misha plugs in his phone, cups the tea, closes his eyes, and waits. He tries to remember the woman on the train when he came to Kyiv. She looked like a vintage Cleopatra—short bangs, severely cut. Serious and dour. Maybe it was Dominika. Viktoria.

  Misha had been returning on the train from Donetsk for Vera’s funeral. He shared a cabin with the woman. She looked up at him from her magazine, stretched out her leg to touch his. Their eyes locked. She slid her foot up his ankle, his calf, his thigh. Then she knelt, unhooked his belt. Misha said, Please, I don’t have any money. And she said, I’m not doing this for you. I’m doing this for my husband, who I left by getting on this train. I want this for me.

  So, she did. And when they were finished, she asked Misha if he wanted to go to a play in Kyiv. Misha, with only a duffel bag and a backpack, uneager to return to his vacant apartment, said, Okay.

  The play was at an apartment, in a bedroom. It was raining outside and all the windows were open. The balcony was kind of a stage—there were two bedrooms joined to it. The actors changed in the adjacent room and the audience watched them perform in the other.

  People were sitting in the room on the floor, on the bed, standing in the hallway. Most of the furniture was missing to make room.

  Dominika—that had to be her name—she was nice. Dominika brought them both drinks. Wine in a plastic cup. Misha sat down on top of his duffel bag. String lights illuminated and shadowed the ceiling. The play was just in front of the balcony. It was sticky-hot, wet. The place was packed.

  Misha found himself claustrophobic, trapped. Knees up to his chest. He was near the door and someone’s legs were next to his face. A woman’s—she hadn’t shaved.

  He remembers that was the first time she smiled, when she sat next to me. She had a pretty smile, Misha thinks, now, that maybe he should have treated her better. Maybe he should have said Thank you, or Goodbye.

  The lights had gone off, then. Women appeared on the balcony—helpers in the audience used flashlights as stage lights. Bra-less women painted white, all wearing wreaths of flowers. Their chests were painted and they had torn vyshyvankas on, exposing bellies, exposing breasts.

  Misha hadn’t seen a torn vyshyvanka before. They’re always so clean, pressed. He felt the woman with the legs shift her weight. Dominika didn’t drink her wine. Ev
eryone had been still.

  A few men came in, then, dressed in Soviet uniforms. They had rifles—some of them were old, some were modern. Misha remembers thinking that they were all going to be shot in the apartment, some kind of massacre. The soldiers pointed their guns at the audience, and people in the room started to shout and a few women even screamed, and then they turned their guns on the women in the vyshyvankas and crowns.

  The music started, or it was more of a sound than music. Like a pulse, or a deep bass sound. Everything started to shake—the whole place. All the flashlights went everywhere, just strobes of people’s faces in the dark, of the soldiers’ guns, bodies.

  Then the music stopped and all the lights fell on one woman wearing the kalyna berry crown, dress torn, small breasts. She had blond hair and black eye makeup streaming down her face. Slava.

  She said:

  Їсти власних дітей - це варварський вчинок!

  Eating your own children is a barbarian act!

  All the other actresses lit up before the light fell into a strobe. They started crying, bodies contorted, their arms and legs in angles, jerking. All of them, sucking in their bellies and cheeks, using their fingers to pull on their bellies like they were trying to rip themselves open.

  Slava stood still, lifted her arms slow. The soldiers stood beside her while all the other women fell onto the ground, crying, twisting. Then the soldiers lowered their guns, and there was an electric crack. The whole place went black. Everything gone quiet, except for a woman in the audience, crying.

  Misha felt like he couldn’t breathe. It reminded him of being in the mines. Everything was dark, everything black. He could feel the woman’s legs next to him, his back against the wall. It felt like the apartment had collapsed, everyone falling into one another, everyone falling—

  Misha opens his eyes and gasps for air. It’s hot in the tent, and he needs to go outside. He needs to breathe. He’s shaking, his head spinning, pulse heavy in his throat. He takes from his pocket two pills and swallows without water.