Wave of Terror (11 page)

As Kulik stepped down from the stage and made his way back to his seat, a shabbily dressed man with a sparse yellow beard leapt up and rushed to the stage. Obviously outraged, he shouted, “Good day, comrades, my name is Kopitsia and I must admit I’m completely beside myself. Kulik has no understanding whatsoever of what’s at stake here. He talks about the Pinsk Marshes and how historically they are tied to Ukraine. But how can this be when at one time we weren’t even referred to as Ukrainians, but as little Russians? Through culture and language, we have always enjoyed a very close relationship with Mother Russia, and at heart we have always been a part of Russia. I take great pride in telling you we should not be called Ukrainians or Belorussians or Little Russians, or even Russians, but rather, True Russians. I’m sure our great new regime will correct this error. We must,” he cried, “protect our great new regime at all costs. There are those of you who see Russia as an imperial presence, and I call you all traitors!”

Few understood Kopitsia’s point, and no one applauded him except Dounia Avdeevna, who was half asleep. Yeliseyenko, looking very perturbed, ordered Kopitsia to sit down but Kopitsia ignored him and went on.

“And now about Kulik. His suggestion to bring in Ukrainian schools is the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard. He would rather have our children taught in a crude, uncivilized language than in the wonderful Russian tongue. Obviously he wants us to remain in the dark, which brings me to my next point. Why
Belorussian schools? This is an extremely bad idea. Belorussian is a language that is just as crude and uncivilized as Ukrainian. What we need in our marshes are Russian schools and only Russian schools. Russian is our window to the future! To the world!”

Kopitsia talked on, in circles, repeating himself.

Sergei nudged Kulik. “You see what we’re up against?”

Yeliseyenko, who had by now reached the end of his rope, rushed up to Kopitsia, grabbed his arm and pushed him off the stage. Then he turned angrily on the crowd. “This meeting’s gone far enough. I’m extremely disappointed in you all. Let me get one thing straight about Party policies: we are all equal members of the great Soviet Empire and there is no such thing as an inferior or superior language. Everyone here is free and on the same footing.” Then to Melnik apologetically, “I’m sorry Comrade Kopitsia is so ill-informed about our history and that he insulted your Belorussian language. Eventually he will come to understand that all languages in our great new empire deserve honor and respect. To freedom! To liberty! To Stalin!”

With these last words, loud applause erupted, followed by the stamping of feet. Yeliseyenko grinned broadly and it was evident that he was congratulating himself for having at the last moment set the conference back on track.

A
fter the first day of the conference, Sergei invited Kulik to call on his cousin, Marusia, an invitation Kulik readily accepted. Marusia lived with her parents in a spacious two-story house on Luninetska Street in Karalyn, a nearby suburb. The two men walked down several narrow streets and wooden gangways, and turned into a small, fenced-in yard planted with shrubs and a gnarled old chestnut tree. Rather than entering through the front door, they made for the side of the house and mounted a set of stairs leading into the kitchen. As they were about to knock on the door, they stopped short at the sound of loud voices coming from inside. Soon shouting was followed by screaming and cursing. The men exchanged glances. Sergei’s aunt and uncle were obviously in the middle of a quarrel, something, according to Sergei, they did quite often. His aunt’s voice drowned out his uncle’s and with each second grew louder and more intense.

“How can anyone live with you?” This was his aunt. “You’re impossible. I’ve asked you time and time again to fix that damn sofa. The front leg has almost completely fallen off. And you still haven’t even looked at it. Are you waiting for the whole thing to collapse? The squeaking gets on my nerves. Oh, life with you is impossible! And that beard of yours! Why don’t you shave it off? It makes you look like an old goat!”

A voice crooned back. “Talk all you want, old woman. Yes, yes, it’ll do you good to get it out of your system.”

When the visitors knocked on the door, the old couple, startled by the intrusion, abruptly stopped their argument. As they
entered, Sergei’s aunt glared at them, while his uncle, emitting a sigh of relief, greeted his nephew with open arms. “Sergei, my boy! I was just thinking about you the other day. So glad to see you! You couldn’t have come at a more opportune time. And who’s your friend?”

“Ivan Kulik, headmaster of School Number Seven. Ivan, I’d like you to meet my uncle, Valentyn Bohdanovich.”

“A pleasure, an absolute pleasure! Welcome to our home. And this is my wife, Efrosinia.” Then, with a wink, “At least that’s what it says on our marriage certificate.” He escorted his guests into the living room, and invited them to sit down. “We can talk here. Have you any news? There’s so much going on these days. There’s such upheaval everywhere.”

As the young men moved toward the sofa, Efrosinia stepped in front of them. “Don’t sit there, the whole thing will go crashing if you do. The front leg is loose.” Then swinging around, she shouted through an open door and up the staircase, “Marusia! Can you come down please! We have guests! And bring some chairs with you!”

Throwing her husband a hostile glance, she grasped Kulik’s arm, and looked him in the face as if she had something she wanted to say. “Young man, you seem level-headed enough to me. May I ask you a simple question? When something, say, a door or a window gets broken, what would you do about it? Or if a chair gets damaged, or a table becomes wobbly, or if the foot of a sofa becomes loose? What would you do?”

“Well,” Kulik shrugged awkwardly and took a step back. “I suppose I would try and fix whatever needed repair.”

“Aha!” Efrosinia clapped her hands. “There you have it! Did you hear that, old man? Did you hear what he just said?” Pushing Kulik toward her husband, she breathed deeply. “What you say makes perfect sense, young man, and I agree with you totally. If something breaks, then it ought to get fixed. It’s as simple as that. If I say to the old man ‘Fix the sofa, it’s broken,’ he always says, ‘Aha, hm, well, um …’ And then he walks off into another room and shuts
the door behind him. A hammer and a nail, a couple of bangs, and the problem would be solved!”

Valentyn, who usually paid little attention to his wife, suddenly pricked up his ears. “A hammer and nail? Hah! Old woman, you don’t know what you’re talking about. Do you think fixing a sofa is as simple as that? To do it properly takes time, you need a chisel, a drill, and some glue—and not just any ordinary glue, but good carpenter’s glue! Hammer and nail, hah!”

Efrosinia glared at him. Choice words were at the tip of her tongue and in another second, she would shower him with abuse. But by a stroke of luck, at that very moment Marusia entered the room, dragging two rather large chairs behind her. She seemed to be bored by the chore. Sergei hurried to help her. Her demeanor was cool and aloof, radiating a sort of frigid insolence. Although she greeted her cousin with real affection and even kissed him on the cheek, she seemed quite indifferent to Kulik. When she started back toward the kitchen, Sergei called out, “Marusia, don’t go! I would like to introduce you to my good friend, Ivan Kulik.”

A strained pause followed, and in an attempt to break the ice, Kulik said, “Marusia, finally I get to meet you. I’ve heard some very nice things about you.”

The girl smiled a little and blushed. “Oh, that Seryoza.” Marusia was always careful to use Sergei’s diminutive. “I don’t really deserve half the credit he gives me.”

“Well, perhaps you’re right, perhaps you don’t.” Kulik could not believe what had just come out of his mouth. Why was he being so rude and to someone he had just met? Shifting uncomfortably, for a brief moment he reproached himself for his insolence, but when he saw the haughty expression on her face, he decided to press on. “I believe the more beautiful a woman is the more dangerous she becomes.”

Marusia, though clearly annoyed at first by his words, burst suddenly into a fit of laughter, and cried, “Now I get it! Oh, now I understand you! I understand you perfectly! This is going to be great fun!”

Kulik raised his brows, puzzled. “I don’t get it. What’s so funny? Maybe you misunderstood what I said. It wasn’t meant as a joke.”

Efrosinia joined in her daughter’s laughter. She hastened to explain. “It’s not what you said, young man, that’s so funny, but how you said it. The truth of the matter is you are an aberration, a true aberration, and it’s all so unexpected. You look like a sophisticated city dweller, but when you open your mouth, you talk like a
moujik
. We all assumed you would go on in Russian, but what did you go and do? You spoke in Ukrainian.”

Then scrutinizing him more closely, she looked bewildered. “It’s strange, even though you speak in Ukrainian, somehow your words sound unusually smooth, they sound, rather, well, rather nice, even cultured. It’s almost as if you weren’t talking Ukrainian at all. Why, you could have almost been speaking Russian! You’re a very odd young man, and pardon my frankness, but a bit on the stubborn side.”

Kulik took a deep breath. He couldn’t hide his anger. “On the stubborn side?” he burst out. “Why? Because I speak Ukrainian and not Russian? Because I haven’t sold out to the occupiers the way you have? Is that what’s so funny?” Then, deliberately insulting her, “And you,
Pani
Bohdanovich, with your broken Russian, where do you come from? Moscow, perhaps?”

After he said this, he felt ashamed of himself for having lost his temper. But he did not apologize; he went on being sarcastic. “In what language do you propose I speak? German?
Sehr gut, dann können wir deutsch sprechen
.”

“You speak German?” Marusia’s eyes widened; she was completely taken aback. She had never before heard a
moujik
speak anything but Ukrainian. Now she decided this young man was worth further investigation. Who was he? And how strange that he spoke German, and so well! She tried to figure him out, but without much luck. He seemed, at least in a general way, amiable enough and well-disposed, and he wasn’t bad-looking either: she rather liked his deep-set gray eyes and his mop of thick black hair. But still there was an impudence about him that really
irritated her. She sat on the edge of the sofa and looked quizzically at him.

“I know some German myself,” she said. “Why, just last year in school we studied German literature, you know, Nietzsche, Goethe, Anzangruber … It was most absorbing and stimulating. Later we studied French. Of course, Russian is absolutely the best …”

“Enough about language already!” Sergei stamped his foot. He had no intention of letting things get out of hand again. Trying to lighten the situation, he said, “About language, I’ve got the perfect solution. Why don’t we just start communicating in sign language?”

Everybody laughed, and the atmosphere became more friendly. They chatted into the late evening hours. Kulik spoke only Ukrainian, while Marusia went on in Russian, though poorly. Efrosinia spoke predominantly Russian, throwing in Ukrainian words and phrases and sometimes even Polish ones; Valentyn for the most part kept to Ukrainian, now and then using odd Russian expressions for added emphasis; Sergei too spoke only Ukrainian, and did not mix it with Russian or Polish, in both of which he was fluent.

When Efrosinia disappeared into the kitchen to put on tea and prepare a snack, Kulik turned to the girl, resolved to set her off again.

“May I call you Marika?”

“Marika?” She leaned back. The sofa let out a screech.

“Yes, Marika is a lovely name, more appealing than Marusia, wouldn’t you agree?”

Marusia stared at him. “I don’t agree with you at all,” she said. “Marika is not a nicer name than Marusia. In fact, I find it rather plain, too commonplace.” Then with her eyes narrowing, “Uh … what did you say your name was again, Ivan was it?”

“Yes, Ivan. Ivan Kulik.”

“Ivan?” The girl rolled her eyes and grimaced.

“Yes, it’s a very ordinary name, I agree, but there’s not much I can do about it.”

Marusia wanted to even the score. “Well, actually there is. Why don’t you use your Russian diminutive? Vanya. There, that sounds much better.”

Kulik gave her a harsh look. He felt like scolding her, but held himself back, and came at her from another angle. “I would say that your newly adopted language has somehow lost its power to form diminutives, Vanya included.”

As he spoke, he found it increasingly difficult to focus on what he was saying. Her mouth had an extraordinary fullness, and there was an unexpected tenderness in her eyes that affected him deeply. Still, he felt compelled to strike back at her. “The Russians take Ivan and make Vanya out of it, that’s the same as taking Maria and forming Marusia. In Ukrainian, which you’ve clearly denounced, everything has a natural order. Maria becomes Marika, Ivan becomes Ivasik, Vasil becomes Vasilik. We don’t take Ivan and transform it into Vanya, or Vladimir into Vova.”

The girl threw back her head and laughed. She found the point he was trying to make exaggerated and unreasonable. In the end it had no effect on her at all.

Busy in the kitchen, Efrosinia strained to listen to what the young people were saying. But her daughter went on too rapidly and excitedly, and Kulik spoke so softly, she had trouble catching even the slightest word. And, save for a few monosyllables here and there, it was as if Sergei wasn’t in the room at all.

When she returned to the living room and set the tray of food on a side table by the sofa, she had lost interest in the young people’s chatter. She seemed to be distracted by something, and looked a little distressed. Her head bent and her eyes welling with tears, she settled next to Kulik, and said to him, “What do you say, young man, will I see my Lonia again? Sergei’s probably mentioned him to you.”

“That’s your son, isn’t it? I’m sure you’ll see him again, and soon.”

“Yes, soon.” She wrung her hands. “He’s my only son. So, you really think I’ll see him again?”