Winter Palace (16 page)

“You speak English. Great.”

“I am Ivona Aristonova. I shall act as your interpreter.” She was a prim schoolmarm sort of lady, all angles and thin features. Despite the day's dusty heat, she remained poised and collected. She wore a simple blue skirt trimmed in hand-sewn flowers. Everything about her was old, patched, and immaculate; even her battered purse shone with shoe polish. Slate-gray hair was pulled back into a neat bun. Sky-blue eyes were encircled by deep wrinkles and bruiselike smudges. Her singsong voice, however, sounded surprisingly young. “Shall we be going? We have a long way ahead and much yet to do today.”

Jeffrey stored his bag in the trunk alongside Yussef's battered bag, a hand-crocheted satchel which he assumed belonged to Ivona, a case of pepsi, a box of foodstuffs, and canister after canister of gasoline. He sat in the front seat, and felt the car sag upon springs so weary they barely kept his backside off the road.

Yussef grinned at Jeffrey's expression and spoke his off-hand guttural manner. The lady translated, “These days it is best not to draw attention with too new a car or too fresh a change of clothing. Especially with the valuables we shall be carrying.”

Jeffrey shifted around to make himself as comfortable as possible. “I can't remember ever feeling this hot before.”

“Afternoons are worse,” Yussef said through Ivona. “Clouds gather, but it does not rain. The heat is trapped to the earth. It has been like this for over two months.”

“How can you stand it?”

Yussef showed his discolored teeth. “This isn't the West. You don't find an answer to every pain here. We do what we have been taught to do by seventy years of Communism. We endure.”

Yussef rammed home the complaining gears and said through Ivona, “Welcome to the great Soviet empire.”

Chapter 17

Mostiska. Javorov. Nesterov
.

All of his memories of that time, as they drove from village to village and did their trading and drove farther still, would be tinged by nightfall. Even the brightest day, when the heat was a weight under which their little car threatened constantly to collapse and leave them stranded, the eye of his memory was tinged by unseen darkness.

Just beyond the border zone, the road disintegrated. Cracked and pitted pavement barely two lanes wide slowed traffic to a tractor's crawl. Without warning the pavement surrendered to holes of bone-jarring depth, slid into gravel and dust and rutted tracks, or gave way to ancient octagonal stones that caused their car to drum a frantic beat.

Ivona translated their buying transactions with precision, then maintained a silent distance at all other times. Yussef was content with his own company. Jeffrey found the car's silence as heavy a blanket as the heat.

After their third stop, Jeffrey swiveled around in his seat so as to face her. “Your English is excellent,” he asked. “Have you ever traveled in the West?”

Ivona kept her attention fastened on the open window. “I have never left the Ukraine since my arrival.”

“Where did you live before coming here?”

“English was my escape,” Ivona continued, ignoring his question. Her voice was her finest asset, so soft and light and musical that if Jeffrey closed his eyes he could imagine its coming from twenty-year-old lips. Her only inflection was a slight singsong lilt. She spoke his name, related the best and worst of news, and translated the most mundane of conversations all in this lilting sameness.

“It was my magic carpet to other worlds. My most special moments were the days I received a new English book. Well,
new for me. Old, tattered, pages missing, but still holding voices that called to me. They spoke of worlds where freedom was so normal the people could
criticize
the ones in power. Such stories lifted me above myself, released me from the captivity of my existence.”

Jeffrey took in the dull heat-blasted landscape, the poverty-stricken farm hovels, the concrete watchtowers. “I can imagine.”

“I love the classics especially. But I also enjoyed your modern novels. Even the trash was useful. Through their pages I watched your world hate a distant war, question God, take drugs, have free sex—make mistakes, yes, but in freedom.”

Jeffrey decided he did not understand this prim, undersized woman, with her old face and her young voice, her rigid mannerisms. “It's incredible to think that you could learn such an English from books.”

“And radio, of course, when transmissions were not jammed. BBC and Radio Liberty and RFE. All highly illegal. Which made even the British gardening programs exciting.” She snagged a wisp of gray hair and patted it back into place. “I taught English, unofficially of course; even when the student was unable to pay still I taught. That gave me hours and hours of practice. Of escape. Of imaginary freedom. For someone imprisoned as I was, such imaginings were as real as life itself.”

****

Rava-Russkaja. Cervonograd. Sokal
.

Every hour or so a tall guard tower sprouted alongside the road. When Jeffrey pointed one out, Ivona explained, “Before the fall of Communism, cars required transit papers to travel between towns or villages. All exits from main roads were blocked and guarded. Lookouts with binoculars manned the towers and timed the cars' passage. If the drivers moved too fast they were stopped and arrested for speeding. If they
moved too slowly, it was assumed that they were trading illegally, and they were stopped and strip-searched.”

The smaller villages were rows of squalid hovels lining several crumbling country lanes. Larger towns were clusters of tumble-down factories and high-rise tenements. Always there was a central square, always a squat government building with the charm of an oversized tombstone. Always a patch of parched grass proclaiming itself a park. And always a Soviet statue thrusting aggressively upward in dated fifties modernism. Jeffrey saw concrete pedestals with black iron figures ever pointing to the horizon, steel and cement rocket ships bearing proud Soviet warriors toward lofty heavens, brawny figures marching shoulder to shoulder toward a Communist future that was no more, agricultural images mocking the people's evident hunger.

From time to time the horizon sprouted factories so large they appeared as mirages dancing in the shimmering heat. The closer their car came, the vaster the buildings grew—great monoliths looming up twenty stories and more, bristling with smokestacks, but for the most part standing idle.

“There was a huge defense industry in the Ukraine,” Ivona replied to his question. “Now it is idle because Moscow no longer buys anything. Salaries are frozen at the old rate, less than ten dollars a month. People are urged to leave, but no one does because there is no other work to be found.”

Within the homes they visited, be they spartan apartments or hovels with splintered boards for walls and newspapers for floor coverings, the hospitality never failed to humble him. The poorest of shanties still offered a standard fare of vodka reserved for guests and fresh bread obtained by waiting in line since dawn. Sometimes there were tomatoes shriveled from the heat, perhaps pickles or a plate of stunted onions. But always there was vodka.

At the first stop, Jeffrey shook his head to the invitation to drink and requested water. The stumpy, middle-aged man recovered from his surprise, went to his kitchen alcove, and
returned with a battered cup filled to the brim. Through Ivona he assured Jeffrey that the water had been twice boiled. Jeffrey observed the silt making milky sworls and thanked the man solemnly. He then brought the cup to his tightly closed lips and pretended to sip.

After Jeffrey twice refused the invitation to drink, Yussef began carting in a bottle of warm pepsi at each visit. He set it down in front of Jeffrey and explained to the curious host what Ivona translated as, a vow. Jeffrey swilled the syrupy goo and did not object.

He saw no more water that first day, not even bottled. At most halts, all they had to drink was Yussef's warm pepsi, vodka, and an orange glop that children drank and Jeffrey learned to avoid after the first sip. The heat sucked so much moisture from his body that he felt a constant thirst. He took tea whenever it was offered, which was seldom, and remained bloated from pepsi.

In each village there was some antique or collectible on offer. Many were of considerable value, but a cheap trinket sometimes slipped through. Jeffrey was very concerned the first time it happened, conscious of all the warnings he had received from Gregor before traveling.

A man with a face as seamed as the fields outside his village offered all he had, a tiny pendant set with a few semiprecious stones. He croaked his plea with a voice squeaky from disuse. Jeffrey looked at the pendant dangling from a chain long stripped of all silver plating, held by hands that would never lose their own ingrained plating of grime and oil. Out of compassion, Jeffrey offered him ten dollars. He then returned to the car in shame for being taken.

But there was a new warmth to Yussef's voice, and a strange sense of Ivona being less sure of herself than before.

“Yussef has tried to filter out the useless,” Ivona said in translation. “But these people are desperate, and sometimes they make wild promises in hopes of gaining a little something once you arrive.”

“And refuse to show the product to anyone but the buyer,” Jeffrey said, understanding perfectly. “They say it is too valuable to risk displaying to anyone but the person with the money.”

Again Ivona hesitated, as though not sure with whom she spoke. Then, “That is correct. Your ten dollars translates into a fortune for one such as him.”

The next village brought yet another worthless item, this time a mercury-backed mirror in a cheap turn-of-the-century frame. The woman watched his inspection with desperate eyes, her silent plea made tragic by the trio of quiet children gathered around her chair. He decided on honesty and told the young mother as kindly as possible why he could not offer more than a few dollars. The woman accepted the money with pitiful gratitude, and Yussef showed genuine approval. As they left, Jeffrey was struck by the thought that respectful honesty from a stranger was perhaps a rare commodity.

Then, in the next village, he encountered a find that made the entire trip worthwhile. The farmer dug up a ragged bundle from the edge of his compost heap, and offered it with hands and arms stained the color of old teak. Jeffrey unfolded the wrappings and extracted a belt of almost solid silver.

The
baldric
was a sword belt worn over one shoulder, diagonally across back and chest, and connected with rope or chain or some frilly foppery to the waist. It was long considered an essential part of a gentleman officer's wardrobe. This particular one was French and dated from the Napoleonic empire. French war-eagles of solid silver rested upon fields of aquamarine. Beside them were rubies carved into stars of rank. Then began a series of silver-framed war symbols done in semiprecious stones, separated from one another by silver family shields set upon mother-of-pearl backing. Jeffrey hefted the belt, estimated its weight at fifteen pounds.

“The spoils of war,” he said.

“The French left behind more than their lives,” Yussef
agreed through Ivona, “when Mother Russia introduced them to a real winter.”

****

Vladimir-Volynskij. Luck. Rozisce
.

The people were walking lessons in endurance. Serious, heavy women wore comically colored hats against the heat—beach bonnets, undersized cotton cones, floppy straw hats with pom-poms and ribbons. Those without hats carried rusty, ragged parasols whose bright polyester colors fought valiantly against the onslaught of dust and abuse.

Old men were either bloated with layers of blubber or shrunk to skin of leather and muscles of wire cable. Everyone, even the young, had features creased by constant squints. Expressions were fixed in a variety of emotions. Anger. Suspicion. Hatred. Fear. Uncertainty. Resignation. Rage.

The children were overly small, overly quiet, overly serious. Young men, many of them strikingly handsome in a rough-cut fashion, clung grimly to seventies disco fashion—elaborate razor cuts, rayon shirts, and oversized bell-bottoms—despite the withering heat. Stunningly beautiful girls showed faces marred by permanent suspicion and hostility. By middle age, men appeared scarred and stone cold, the women faded and overweight. This rapid aging gave the young the air of hothouse flowers, brought to an early bloom that would swiftly fade.

Zdolbunov. Slavuta. Iz'aslav
.

It began with the simplest question, the smallest observation. As they left one village, Jeffrey watched a bowed farmer and his wife struggle back from the fields under hand-carried loads of hay. Their backs were bent, their faces warped in a struggle as timeless as a Baroque painting. “I wonder why life is like this here,” he murmured almost to himself.

To Jeffrey it appeared as though Ivona stirred reluctantly,
drawn into something she did not wish to face. Then she began.

“Our way and yours were divorced in the dawn of modern history. Europe was saved from the savagery of the Mongol hordes, and yet still today they talk of the threat with a thrill of fear. There was no one to save Russia. Russia lived under Mongol rule for more than two hundred and fifty years. While Europe struggled to cast off the Dark Ages and enter the enlightened Renaissance, Russia remained trapped in darkest night.”

“It sounds like a children's fairy tale,” Jeffrey said.

“It is from such beginnings, too harsh to be told as fact, that ghouls and good fairies arise,” Ivona replied. “But what you must remember is that the Russia of today, along with her sister states such as the Ukraine, still bears the Mongol mark. Look deeply into our society, and you will find roots reaching back over one thousand years. The Tartars, as they were known by the Russians, willed to the people their careless ferocity and utter disregard for the value of human life. They burned into our nation the painful lesson of centralized rule. Our first governments were based upon Genghis Khan's military authority, which permitted no question or doubt or opposition whatsoever.”