That evening six of us sit down to dinner around the table in the bedroom-dining-room: Father, Dubov, Valentina, Stanislav, Margaritka, and I.
Valentina has rustled up five portions of boil-in-the-bag beef slices with onion gravy, which she serves with frozen peas and oven chips. She has changed out of her dressing-gown, but is wearing the same high-heeled fluffy slippers, with elasticated trousers that have loops under the heels to stretch them tight over her bottom (wait till I tell Vera!), and a tight-fitting, pastel-blue polo-neck. She is in high spirits, and smiles at all of us except Father, whose beef slices are slapped down in front of him with a little more force than is strictly necessary.
Father sits in the comer, fussily cutting everything up into little pieces and examining it closely before putting it in his mouth. The skins of the peas irritate his throat, and he starts to cough. Stanislav is next to him, eating silently with his head bowed low over the plate. I feel sorry for him after his humiliation in court, and try to open up a conversation, but he gives one-syllable answers and avoids my eyes. Lady Di and his girlfriend have, in the short space of their former mistress’s visit, unlearned all their careful training, and are prowling around the table yowling for tit-bits. Everyone obliges, especially Father, who gives them most of his dinner.
Dubov is sitting at the other end of the table, carefully cradling the tiny baby in his arms, feeding her milk from a bottle. Valen-tina’s superior breasts are evidently for display purposes only.
After supper I wash up, while Valentina and Stanislav go upstairs to continue with their packing. Father and Dubov retire into the front room, and after a few minutes I join them. I find them poring over some papers on which they are drawing something technical-a car beside a vertical post and some straight lines connecting them. They put aside the papers and Father takes out the manuscript of his master work, and settles himself into the armchair with his parcel-taped reading glasses on his nose. Dubov sits opposite him on the settee, still cradling the sleeping baby in his arms. He makes way for me to sit next to him.
Every technology which is of benefit to the human race must be used appropriately and with respect. In no instance is this more true than in the case of the tractor.
He is reading easily, in Ukrainian, pausing from time to time for dramatic effect, his left hand poised in the air like a conductor’s baton.
For the tractor, despite its early promise to free mankind from grinding toil, has also brought us to the brink of ruin, through carelessness and over-use. This has happened throughout its history, but the most striking example is in America in the 1920s.
I have said that it was the tractor which opened up the great prairies of the West. But those who followed the early pioneers were not satisfied with this. They believed that if use of tractors made the land productive, greater use of tractors would make the land more productive. Tragically it was not so.
The tractor must always be used as an aid to nature, not as a driver of nature. The tractor must work in harmony with the climate, and the fertility of the land, and the humble spirit of the farmers. Otherwise it will bring disaster, and this is what happened in the Midwest.
The new farmers of the West, they did not study the climate. True, they complained of the lack of rain, and the strong winds, but they did not heed the warning. They ploughed and they ploughed, for more ploughing, they believed, would bring more profit. Then winds came and blew away all the earth that had been ploughed.
The Dust Bowl of the 1920 s , and the extreme hardship which stemmed from it, led ultimately to the economic chaos which culminated in the collapse of the American Stock Exchange in 1929.
But it could be added, further, thatthe instability and impoverishment which spread throughout the world were also factors behind the rise of Fascism in Germany and Communism in Russia, the clash of which two ideologies almost brought the human race to its doom.
And so I leave you with this thought, dear reader. Use the technology which the engineer has developed, but use it with a humble and questioning spirit. Never allow technology to be your master, and never use it to gain mastery over others.
He stops with a flourish, and looks to his audience for approval.
“Bravo, Nikolai Alexeevich!” cries Dubov clapping his hands. “Bravo, Pappa!” I cry. “Guh guh!” cries baby Margaritka.
Then Father gathers together all the sheets of his manuscript, which are scattered over the floor, and wraps them together in a piece of brown paper which he secures with string. He hands the parcel to Dubov.
“Please, Volodya Simeonovich. Take it with you to Ukraina. Maybe someone will publish it there.”
“No, no,” says Dubov. “I cannot take it, Nikolai Alexeevich. It is your life’s work.”
“Pah!” says Father with a modest shrug. “It is finished now. Take it please. I have another book to write.”
Thirty. Two journeys
I wake up early, with a stiff neck. The choice last night was between sharing the bunk-bed with Stanislav, or sleeping on the two-seater settee, and I chose the latter. It is still not fully light outside, the sky slate-coloured and overcast.
But the house is already full of sound and movement. Father is singing in the bathroom. Valentina, Stanislav and Dubov are rushing around loading up the car. Imake a cup of tea, and stand at the window to watch.
The capacity of the Rolls-Royce is amazing.
In go two enormous bin bags of indeterminate contents, which Valentina stows in the boot with a shove. In go Stanislav’s CD collection in two cardboard boxes, and his CD player, wedged in place between two huge bales of disposable nappies beneath the back seat. In go two suitcases, and Dubov’s small green rucksack. In go a television (where did that come from?) and a deep-fat-fryer (ditto). In go a cardboard box of assorted boil-in-bags, and another of tinned mackerel. In goes the small portable photocopier. In goes the blue civilised-person’s Hoover (which, Pappa later tells me, he and Dubov have adapted to take ordinary bags), and my mother’s pressure cooker. (How dare she!)
Now the boot is full (slam!) and they start loading up the roof-rack. Out comes the baby’s painted wooden cot, which has been disassembled and tied together with string. One, two, three-up!-goes an enormous fibreglass suitcase, as big as a small wardrobe. Out comes-surely not-Stanislav and Dubov struggle under its weight as they lug it across the garden-bend your knees, Stanislav! bend your knees!-the brown not-peasant-cooking not-electric cooker. But how will they lift it on to the roof-rack?
Dubov has constructed a sort of hoist out of thick rope and some stout canvas sheeting. He has slung the rope over a strong branch of the ash tree by the road in front of the house, and pulled it so that it rests securely in a fork. He and Stanislav lower the cooker, on its side, on to the canvas cradle. Then Valentina jumps into the Lada, and Dubov directs her into position in front of the cooker, and the other end of the rope is attached to the bumper. As she inches forward-“Slowly, Valenka, slowly!”-the cooker rises into the air, swings, and hangs suspended, steadied by Dubov until he motions to her to stop. The Lada is smoking a bit, the engine running rough, but the handbrake holds. Now the Rolls-Royce is brought round-Stanislav is at the wheel!-and positioned directly underneath the cooker swinging in its cradle. Father has come out into the front garden, and is helping Dubov to give directions, waving his arms wildly-forward a bit-back a bit-stop! Dubov motions to Valentina. “Back now, Valenka. Gently! Gently! STOP!” Valentina’s clutch control is not brilliant, and the cooker lands with a bit of a bump, but the Rolls-Royce, and Dubov’s roof-rack, can take it.
Everybody cheers, including the neighbours who have come out into the street to watch. Valentina gets out of the Lada, minces over to Dubov in her high-heeled slippers (no wonder her dutch control is wanting) and gives him a peck on the cheek-“Holubchik!” Stanislav beeps the horn of the Rolls-Royce-it makes a deep sophisticated sound-and everybody cheers again.
Then the canvas is wrapped around everything on the roof-rack and secured w
ith the rope, and that’s it. They are ready to go. Valentina’s fur coat is spread across the back seat, and on it, wrapped in layers of blankets, is placed baby Margaritka. Everybody exchanges hugs and kisses, apart from Father and Valentina, who manage to avoid each other without causing a scene. Dubov takes the driver’s seat. Stanislav sits in front, next to him. Valentina sits in the back beside the baby. The engine of the Rolls-Royce purrs as contentedly as a big cat. Dubov engages gear. And they’re off. Father and I come out on to the road to wave to them, as they disappear round the corner and out of view.
Can this really be the end?
There are still some loose ends to be tied up. Fortunately Valentina left the keys to the Lada in the car, so I bring it in and put it in the garage. In the glove-compartment are the papers, and also-surprise-the papers and key for Crap car. They will not be much use to Father as his licence expired years ago, and Doctor Figges refused to sign a form authorising its renewal.
In the kitchen, Mother’s old electric cooker has been reinstalled in place of the gas one, and seems to be working, even the ring that was broken before. There is a bit of clearing up to be done, but not on the same scale as last time. In Stanislav’s room I find a very smelly pair of trainers under the bed, and nothing else. In the front bedroom there are some discarded clothes, quite a lot of wrapping paper, empty carrier bags, and make-up-smudged balls of cotton wool. One of the carrier bags is full of papers. I leaf through-they are the same papers I had once stowed in the freezer. In among them I notice the marriage certificate and wedding pictures. She won’t be needing those where she’s going. Should I throw them away? No, not yet.
“Do you feel sad, Pappa?”
“First time when Valentina left was sad. This time, not so sad. She is beautiful woman, but maybe I did not make her happy. Maybe with Dubov she will be happier. Dubov is good type. In Ukraina maybe he will now become rich.”
“Really? Why?”
“Aha! I have given him my seventeenth patent!”
He leads me into the sitting-room, and pulls out a box-file of papers. They are technical drawings, fine and precisely detailed, annotated with mathematical hieroglyphs in my father’s hand.
“Sixteen patents I have filed in my life. All useful. None made money. Last was seventeenth-no time to register.”
“What is it for?”
“Tool bar for tractor. So that one tractor may be used with different tools-plough, harrow, crop spray-everything easily interchangeable. Of course something like this was already in existence, but this design is superior. I have shown it to Dubov. He understands how it can be used. Maybe this will be rebirth of Ukrainian tractor industry.”
Genius or bonkers? I have no idea. “Let’s have some tea.”
That evening, after supper, my father spreads a map out on the table in the dining-bedroom, and pores over it, pointing with his finger.
“Look. Here,” he points, “they are already crossing from Felix-stowe to Hamburg. Next Hamburg to Berlin. Cross into Poland at Guben. Then Wroclav, Krakow, cross border at Przemysl. Ukraina. Home.”
He has gone very quiet.
I stare at the map. Criss-crossing the route he has traced with his finger, another route is marked in pencil. Hamburg to Kiel. Then from Kiel the line dips south into Bavaria. Then up again into Czechoslovakia. Brno. Ostrava. Across into Poland. Krakow. Przemysl. Ukraina.
“Pappa, what is this?”
“This is our journey. Ukraina to England.” He traces the line backwards. “Same journey, other direction.” His voice is laboured, croaky. “Look, here in south near Stuttgart is Zindelfingen. Ludmilla was working in Daimler-Benz assembly. Ludmilla and Vera stayed here nearly for one year. Nineteen forty-three.”
“What did they do there?”
“Milla’s job was to fit fuel pipe to aircraft engine. First-class engine but somewhat heavy in the air. Poor lift-drag ratio. Poor manoeuvrability, though some interesting new developments in wing design were just…”
“Yes yes,” I interrupt. “Never mind about the aircraft. Tell me what happened in the war.”
“What happened in war? People died-that is what happened.” He fixes me with that stubborn clenched-jaw look. “Those who were bravest perished first. Those who believed in something died for belief. Those who survived…” He starts to cough. “You know that more than twenty million Soviet citizens perished in this war.”
“I know.” And yet the number is so vast it is unknowable. In that measureless ocean of tears and blood, where are the landmarks, the familiar bearings? “But I don’t know the twenty million, Pappa. Tell me about you and Mother and Vera. What happened to you after that?”
His ringer moves along the pencilled line.
“Here, near Kiel, this is Drachensee. I was some time in this camp. Building boilers of ships. Ludmilla and Vera came near end of war.”
Drachensee: there it sits on the map, shameless, a black dot with red lines of roads leading from it, as though it were any other place.
“Vera said something about a correction block?”
“Aha, this was an unfortunate episode. Caused entirely by cigarettes. I have told you, I think, that I owe my life to cigarettes. Yes? But I have not told you also that I almost lost my life through cigarettes. Through Vera’s adventure with cigarettes. Lucky that war ended then. British came just in time-rescued us from Correction Block. Otherwise we surely would not have survived.”
“Why? What…? How long…?”
He coughs for a moment, avoiding my eyes.
“Lucky also that at liberation we were in British zone. Another piece of luck was Ludmilla’s birthplace, Novaya Aleksandria.”
“Why was that lucky?”
“Lucky because Galicia was formerly part of Poland, and Poles were allowed to stay in West. Under Churchill-Stalin agreement, Poles could stay in England, Ukrainians sent back. Most sent to Siberia -most perished. Lucky that Millochka still had birth certificate, showed she was born in former Poland. Lucky I had some German work papers. Said I came from Dashev. Germans changed Cyrillic to Roman script. Dashev Daszewo. Word sounds like same, but Daszewo is in Poland, Dashev is in Ukraina. Ha ha. Lucky immigration officer believed. So much luck in such a short time-enough to last a lifetime.”
In the dusky light of the forty-watt bulb, the lines and shadows of his wrinkled cheeks are as deep as scars. How old he looks. When I was young, I wanted my father to be a hero. I was ashamed of his graveyard desertion, his flight to Germany. I wanted my mother to be a romantic heroine. I wanted their story to be one of bravery and love. Now as an adult I see that they were not heroic. They survived, that’s all.
“You see, Nadezhda, to survive is to win.”
He winks, and the scar-wrinkles at the corners of his mouth and eyes crease with merriment.
After Father has gone to bed, I telephone Vera. It is late, and she is tired, but I need to talk. I start with the easy stuff.
“The baby is beautiful. It’s a girl. They called her Margaritka after Mrs Thatcher.”
“But did you find out who the father is?”
“Dubov’s the father.”
“But he can’t be…”
“No, not the biological father. But he’s the father in every way that matters.”
“But didn’t you find out who the real father is?”
“Dubov is the real father.”
“Really, Nadia. You are hopeless.”
I know what she means, but after I saw the way Dubov wielded that baby-bottle, I lost interest in the biological paternity. Instead I tell her about the pink lacy baby clothes, the elasticated loop-under-heel slacks, the last boil-in-bag supper. I describe the way they hoisted the non-electric cooker on to the roof-rack, and how everybody cheered. I reveal the secret of the seventeenth patent.
“Really!” she exclaims from time to time as I talk, and I keep wondering whether I will dare to ask her about the Correction Block.
“I can’t get over how lovely the baby is. I th
ought I would hate her.” (I had imagined that when I looked into the cot, I would know who the father was-that her corrupt progeniture would shine in her face.) “I thought she would be like a miniature version of Valentina, a thugette in nappies. But she’s just herself.”
“Babies change everything, Nadia.” There is a scuffling sound on the other end of the phone, and a slow intake of breath. Vera is lighting a cigarette. “I remember when you were born.”
I don’t know what to say, so I wait for her to follow up the remark with some reminiscences, but there is a long sigh as she exhales, then silence.
“Vera, tell me…”
“There’s nothing to tell. You were a beautiful baby. Let’s go to bed now. It’s late.”
She doesn’t tell me, but I have already worked it out.
Once, there was a War Baby and a Peacetime Baby. War Baby was born on the eve of the greatest conflict the world has known, into a country already ravaged by famine and choked in the mad grip of a paranoid dictator. She cried a lot, because her mother had little milk to give her. Her father did not know what to say to her, and didn’t say much. After a while he left. Then her mother left too. She was brought up by an elderly aunt who doted on her, and whom she grew to love. But when the war broke out, the industrial town where her aunt lived was too dangerous, so her mother came to fetch her, and took her to a village to stay with her father’s parents, where she would be safe. She never saw her aunt again.
War Baby’s paternal grandparents were an eccentric elderly couple, with strict ideas of how children should be raised.
They also had care of their daughter’s child, a chubby rollick-some little girl called Nadezhda, a couple of years older than her cousin, whose parents lived in Moscow. She had been named after her grandmother, and was the apple of her eye. War Baby was a thin, spiritless child, quiet as a mouse. She stood for hours at the gate, waiting for her mother to come back.
A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian Page 25
