The Fantastic Worlds of Yuri Vynnychuk

by Yuri Vynnychuk

  “You can’t just leave in the middle of the school year!” The principal was justifiably indignant.

  “I have very serious reasons.”

  “Can I ask what they are?”

  “Illness.”

  “An illness?” The principal grew concerned. “Is it that bad?”

  “Unfortunately, the diagnosis isn’t satisfactory,” he repeated a phrase that he had heard in a movie and sighed.

  “Well, that’s to say... while you’re undergoing treatment, we’ll keep your job open....”

  “No, no, treatments are useless... the illness is incurable, understand? There’s no point.”

  “So where are you going? Do you have a new job?”

  “No. I just want to live out the rest of the days left for me to my own satisfaction. Do you understand what I’m talking about?”

  “Of course. That’s very sensible. And really, why work like a mule... but you can leave your work service record with us... so your term of service remains uninterrupted... oh, what kind of work service is there now!... but all the same, so you don’t have any problems... because if you end up at the police station, and they take an interest in your place of work... they’ll tack on vagrancy... it’s safer this way....”

  “Of course. Thank you very much for your concern.”

  “You’re welcome. And remember that our entire staff always took pride in you. And the children loved you. It will be hard for them without you.”

  After that he called a taxi and ended up on the other end of Lviv in Mayorivka.

  V

  The bazaar behind the Opera Theater was not only called Krakidaly, but God only knows why, Paris. It never lost its importance or name even during the war. Lvivians sold all sorts of things there, forming two rows, and buyers walked back and forth between them – mostly Soviet officers, rank and file soldiers, government officials, as well as their wives, who here, “in Paris,” turned into European ladies. Among the vendors you could meet theater actors too, bank directors, and distinguished professors – each one would bring out something from his or her home to sell, and each one would loudly praise his or her goods. Some needed money for food, and others collected money to bribe the liberators, to save someone assigned for deportation to Siberia. But the Krakidaly Bazaar drew people for yet one more reason – this was the place for socializing and a source of political news and rumors; here certain middlemen gadded about, who knew how to arrange for contact with the Cheka secret police and with prison workers; here you could find out the latest news from the London radio and the date and time of the next militia roundup, buy a German passport, and find someone to guide you across the border.

  At the market from morning till evening shouts echoed of “Liquor, booze, hootch,” “Bachevsky, Bachevsky, Bachevsky!,” “Booze, booze, booze!,” “Local liquor and imported stuff!,” “Saccharin pastilles! Real Wodka Wyborowa!” One cheerful man shouted out at the top of his voice: “Selling a cure for bedbugs, fleas, cockroaches, and all kinds of utter bastards. Death to fleas, death to male lice and female ones too!” Soon after that a fellow approached him and wanted to know whom he had in mind when his mention of “all kinds of utter bastards” disappeared.

  The enterprising Lviv women collected a great big heap of shining multi-colored buttons, crowns, ribbons, belts, gloves for cotillions, artificial flowers, colored hairclips and combs, décolleté night shirts and robes – and they carried out all this to sell to the greedy Soviet ladies, who had never seen such miracle-wonders. Besides what they had collected from their houses, the Lviv ladies also sold what they had made themselves, because there was not a single lady of the house who didn’t know how to bake tortes, sheet cakes, and cookies, and it wasn’t surprising that at the Krakidaly Bazaar you could see Mrs. Professor, and Mrs. Learnedbarrister, and Mrs. Haughtypants herself, who, without any complaining, peddled their goodies. Ah, how the ladies from the Soviet paradise savored them! Each year you would notice the chomping traps of the officers’ babes bespattered with cream and crumbs.

  Milya peddled her mother’s cookies and even grumbled about doing that:

  “Because of this Krakidaly Bazaar I just get fat and nothing more. ‘Cause when no one buys the cookies, and I’m bored, I eat them. And then momma complains that she doesn’t feel bad about the cookies, but she doesn’t see any money from it.”

  So it’s not strange that the Soviets, after they just arrived in Lviv, immediately got interested in how to get to the Krakidaly Bazaar, or rather, as they said it, “to Krakadily” [The Crocodiles], because here they could buy wonderful things really cheaply, and they, acquiring used European suits and coats, quick as a wink changed their clothes at the gate, and only then would walk out into the city, but that didn’t save them from crooks, who promptly figured out the ignorance of the liberators, sold them the most wide-ranging, odd, useless stuff, convincing them of its exceptional value. The four of us joined in with this profitable gesheft. Yash managed to get enema pipes and plastic covers for rubber syringes from the drugstore, which had been smashed to bits during a bombing,; all these devices had a small valve, which allowed you to open and close the flow of liquid from a vessel. As first we weren’t able to comprehend Yash’s idea, but he convinced us that the goods were first class, and had to sell, if we were going to market those pipes to the Red Army boys as an outstanding achievement of contemporary technology in the field of smoking. And it happened that we tried to convince them, explaining how such a “mouthpiece” for smoking, perfected by world science, twisted with a valve in various directions before the eyes of the bewildered solider.

  “Here’s some great technolology! If you want to – you smoke, if not – you don’t.”

  After he said that, the soldiers gleefully and with fascination smoked the newspaper roll-ups with reeking cheap tobacco jammed into the “mouthpieces,” continuously turning those little valves. After the supply of our little pipes was gone, we managed to sell more than ten printing machines as a form of technology for printing money. We did this, of course, in semidarkness, so the client wouldn’t guess he’s being duped. Afterward Yash related that at Lucia’s place he discovered a large box with broken watches and alarm clocks that were left after her watchmaker grandfather had passed away. Wolfe took an interest in that news and had a burning desire to sell the treasure.

  “But who will you sell a watch to that doesn’t work?” We asked.

  “To just about anybody,” Wolfe said. “Oddly it’s enough to break off the second-hand so it doesn’t get in our way, then you lift the watch up to the soldier boy’s ear and click your teeth. Like this: click-click-click!”

  “Well, just look out that it doesn’t click you,” Yosko started to laugh, and we agreed to keep an eye on this activity of Wolfe’s, promising to join in if the business worked well. And what do you think? It worked! And how it did work! It’s possible, maybe difficult, for someone to believe, but imagine a person who never had a watch and never heard one ticking. One should say that the Soviets were just wild about watches; true, they had a very unique notion about beauty and reckoned that a watch must be big, the bigger the better, that’s why they wore impressive onions, while some even tied up alarm clocks on their wrists by rolling up their sleeves, so others could see what a lost braggart they could be.

  One day an extraordinary event happened. Golda rushed over to us gasping and told us that a corpse was lying in their house. My mother just threw up her hands, and my granny immediately poured some kind of herb into boiling water to give frightened Golda something to drink, because she couldn’t catch her breath at all and kept waving her scarf near her face. From those fragments of phrases that she screamed out and whispered, we understood just one thing: the body belonged to an NKVD guy, who on more than one occasion had tried to court Leah, and now he tracked down when she would be alone in the house and tried to force himself on her. But Leah, defending herself, smacked him with a pan over the head, but the fact that she smacked him not with
the bottom, but the side, it cut through his temple. He lay there like a flat cake, an elongated one, with his mug covered in blood and not breathing. Golda and Yosko found him right in that unattractive position after they had returned from the store. Again everyone’s gaze was directed my way, allowing me to understand that my role as savior had not yet been consummated, and new achievements and new ordeals await me.

  “Well, what then,” I sighed. “Go there and wait for me, and I’ll run over to Mr. Knoflyk. Maybe this time he’ll be able to save us.

  At Mr. Knoflyk’s funeral establishment a red flag was flapping, and on the sign a fresh inscription could be seen: “Red Kharon.”

  “What do you think?” Mr. Knoflyk nodded in the direction of the sign. “That’s my oberih protective charm now. More than one soldier boy has peeked in here and asked in Russian: “Where can I find comrade Kharon?” I always answered in the same way: “Comrade Kharon’s at a meeting in Moscow.” And I’m left in holy peace. And in a few days some Soviet Jewish guy dragged himself over and asked in Russian: “Isn’t that Grisha Kharon, who was the director of the Zhytomyr NKVD?” I nodded. Then he says: “Say ‘hello’ to him. If you have any problems, I’m in the State Supply Office. I deal with all issues.”

  “But I’ve come to you again regarding a very delicate matter,” I quieted my voice, and Mr. Knoflyk immediately took me to his office and got ready to listen to me. “Golda Milker has got into a new mess, this time because of her daughter. When a certain NKVD guy came to visit her, Leah decided to treat him with an omelet. She took a frying pan in her hands and just as she intended to put it on the stove, the NKVD guy got a burning desire to hug her, but he slipped on a spot of cooking oil and cracked his head on the side of the frying pan. He was so unlucky that now he’s lying belly up, and his spirit is wandering somewhere over Vysoky Zamok.

  “Uf!” Mr. Knoflyk wagged his head. “Now that’s a mess! We have to bury him properly. And you’re incredibly lucky, because at the moment I have a really comfortable coffin – a deep and wide one. We prepared it for his Grace, who was at his deathbed, and was really obese, so fat, that he wouldn’t fit through this door. But he changed his mind about dying and he’s kicking, and wolfing down honey nut pastries with marzipan. And the coffin is just sitting there. You know what we’ll do? We’ll put your guest on the bottom, and on top – Mrs. Topolska. I’d guess he wouldn’t mind if he has to lie under a lassie?”

  “Of course not! He was quite a guy on the make. He couldn’t pass up a single skirt.”

  “Well, that’s super. You just bring him here to me.”

  “Wait a minute, will Mrs. Topolska’s family have a problem with this?”

  “What family? She doesn’t have a family. She was a single lassie, a spinster, but she had a lot of foresight and didn't forget to set aside money for her funeral. In her will she wrote: “I want to lie comfortably, with lots of room and on a soft bed.” All three requests will be honored. But tell me: was that guy of yours in a military uniform?”

  “Sure, and with a pistol too.”

  “Then you have to get a suit for him. Over here in a box is Mr. Tsepa’s beautiful suit. When they put it on him, it burst at the seams in the back, and the family decided to buy him another one, though I tried to convince them that for Mr. Tsepa it played no role, because no one in this world now will see his back. But they, do you know what they answered me: and how about in the other world? And I shut my trap. So take it,- and he shoved the package in my hands, but still didn’t let go of it because the thought came to him that it would be worth putting makeup on our guest – what if along the way I meet one of his buddies, so Mr. Knoflyk also gave me a red beard, a gray hairpiece, and a box with paints for his kisser.

  What can I tell you! The deceased looked better now than he did in life. His former high-cheekboned snout, covered in blood, having become lamblike, suited the image of an old uncle, calmed-down and satisfied with his former life; the black suit suited him, perfectly tailored, and a white rose stuck out of his breast pocket. His black glasses completed the picture, and when “unc” found himself in the wheelbarrow that Yosko and I were pushing straight ahead as we were whistling, all the passersby politely nodded their heads, smiled, and some even took off their hats because “unc” looked like he was alive, and it would be a sin not to give a greeting to such a pleasant type. Even Mr. Knoflyk admired him and smacked his lips with satisfaction. He helped us pull out the corpse from the wheelbarrow and put it in the coffin. Nearby Mrs. Topolska was waiting for her turn on a table. She had some meat on her and was dressed in a dark-blue dress with white lace. One could see that she had prepared it especially for such a solemn moment. Her wax-like fingers were holding a small icon, and her dry, strongly pursed lips resembled ones that had never been kissed. Just as I thought about this when suddenly all our hairs, except Mr. Bouchek’s, stood on end, and Mr. Knoflyk clutched at his heart, because our “unc” suddenly came alive and sat up in the coffin. He held onto the sides with his hands and surprisingly looked around everywhere, without comprehending where he had ended up. Then he felt over his face, took off his glasses, looked all around one more time, and muttered:

  “Where the heck am I?”

  Exchanging glances with Yosko I had already begun looking all over for some kind of good cudgel to send off “unc” back in the very same direction, in which his sinful soul was moving, but somehow the old devil had been turned back, so as to give us even more grief, but Mr. Knoflyk stopped me:

  “Wait,” and then turned to address “unc”: “We found you unconscious on the street. Do you remember who you are and where you live?”

  The NKVD guy shook his head and began to search through his pockets, though there was nothing in them.

  “Did I have documents on me?” He asked in Russian.

  “No,” we answered simultaneously. “There wasn’t anything. Maybe you got away from the hospital.

  “From which hospital?”

  “We’ve got a hospital where they keep people like you who’ve lost their memory.”

  “No, I don’t remember anything. What’s happened – have I died?” He asked in Russian.

  Here Mr. Knoflyk delightfully rubbed his hands together and dialed the number of the Kulpark Mental Hospital and informed them that they should come and pick up a crazy guy who had certainly must have scampered off from them.

  “We’ll come for him right away,” they whispered to us.

  “Can I lie down a bit more?” The “deceased” asked in Russian and again lay down in the coffin, crossing his arms over his chest. That is how the hospital attendants, who had come from the loony bin, found him. Mr. Knoflyk told them that we picked up this man when he was unconscious, thinking he was dead, but he came to life and now had lost his memory. The doctors bent over the coffin and nodded their heads:

  “We know him. That’s the dummy Hilko. He escaped from us about five years ago. Well then, get up,” they started to make whooping sounds at him.

  The NKVD guy sat up again and, dumbstruck, passed his eyes over those present:

  “Wha-a-at’s my name?” He asked in Russian.

  “Don’t play dumb, Hilko, ‘cause I’ll stick you with a needle right now that’ll make you remember the time your granny was a young maiden,” one of the attendants said. With those words they lifted him up out of the coffin, grabbed him under his arms, quickly dressed him in a straight jacket, and dragged him to a car without any windows. The NKVD guy screamed out something indistinct, but no one was paying attention to him at that point.

  “Aha,” Mr. Knoflyk concluded. “Our Mrs. Topolska has lost her boyfriend. As in life she was never underneath a guy, and so in death she won’t lie on top of him.”

 

 

 
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