2005 - A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian

by Marina Lewycka

  “You engineer. Why you no mending car? Crap engineer.”

  My father has dismantled and reassembled engines in the garage for as long as I can remember. But he can’t get down under the car any more: his arthritis won’t let him.

  “Tell your sister she is coming by train,” my father answers back. “Train. Plane. All modern transport is better. Crap car. Of course is crap car. You wanted. Now you have.”

  And there is another problem. Crap cooker. The cooker in the kitchen, which has been there since my mother’s time, is getting old. Only two of the three rings will work, and the oven timer is gone, though the oven itself still works. On this cooker, heavenly delights of culinary art have been prepared for more than thirty years, but this will not impress Valentina’s sister. The cooker is electric, and everyone but a fool knows that electricity is not as prestigious as gas. Did not Lenin himself admit that communism was socialism plus electricity?

  My father agrees to buy a new cooker. He likes spending money, but he has no money left. The cooker will have to be bought on hire purchase. He has seen a special offer at the Co-op. Valentina puts Nikolai into crap car and drives him into town to buy prestigious cooker. Must be gas. Must be brown. Alas, the brown cooker is not included in the special offer. It costs twice as much.

  “Look, Valenka, is exactly same cooker. Same knobs. Same gas. Same everything.”

  “In former Soviet Union all cookers are white. Crap cookers.”

  “But everything in kitchen is white—washing machine white, fridge white, freezer white, cupboards white—tell me what point is to having a brown cooker?”

  “You plenty-money meanie. You want give me crap cooker.”

  “My wife is cooking on her thirty years. Better than you cooking.”

  “You wife peasant Baba. Peasant Baba, peasant cooking. For civilised person, cooker must be gas, must be brown.” She says this slowly and with emphasis, as if repeating a basic lesson to a nincompoop.

  My father signs the hire purchase agreement for a civilised person’s cooker. He has never borrowed money before in his life, and the illicit thrill makes him giddy with excitement. When Mother was alive, money was saved in a toffee tin hidden under a loose floorboard beneath the lino, and only when enough money was saved was anything purchased. Always in cash. Always at the Co-op. The Co-op stamps were stuck in a book, and this was kept under the floorboard too. In later years, when Mother discovered you could get interest if you put money in the building society, the building society deposits still started off as cash under the floorboard.

  Another problem: the house is dirty. Crap Hoover. The vintage Hoover Junior is not picking up properly. Valentina has seen an advertisement for a civilised person’s Hoover. Blue. Cylinder. See, no pushing about. Just suck, suck, suck. My father signs another hire purchase agreement.

  My father told me this, so naturally he told me his side of the story. Maybe there is another version of events that is more favourable to Valentina. If so, I don’t want to hear it. I imagine my father, bent and frail, shaking with impotent rage, and my heart fills up with righteous anger.

  “Look, Pappa, you must stand up to her. Just tell her she can’t have everything she wants.”

  “Hmm,” he says. “Tak.” He says yes, but his voice lacks conviction. He likes to grumble to a sympathetic audience, but he won’t do anything about it.

  “She has unrealistic expectations, Pappa.”

  “But for this she cannot be blamed. She believes all Western propaganda.”

  “Well she’ll just have to learn, won’t she?” Acid in my voice.

  “But still, better you not talk to Vera about this.”

  “Of course not.” (I can’t wait!)

  “You see, Nadezhda, she is not a bad person. She has some incorrect ideas. Not her fault.”

  “We’ll see.”

  “Nadezhda…”

  “What?”

  “You are not talking about this with Vera.”

  “Why not?”

  “She will laugh. She will say I have told you so.”

  “I’m sure she won’t.” (I know she will.)

  “You know this Vera, what a type she is.”

  Despite myself, I feel myself getting sucked into the drama, and back into my childhood. It has a hold of me. Just like civilised person’s Hoover. Suck, suck, suck. And I am dragged up into the dustbag of the past, full of clotted greying memories, where everything is formless, indistinct, lumpy with obscure gobs of matter shrouded in ancient dust—dust everywhere, drowning me, burying me alive, filling my lungs and my eyes until I cannot see, cannot breathe, can barely cry out, “Pappa! Why are you always so angry with Vera? What did she do?”

  “Ah, that Vera. She was always autocrat, even when baby. Clinging to Ludmilla with fists of steel. Grip tight. Suck, suck, suck. Such a temper. Crying. Screaming.”

  “Pappa, she was only a baby. She couldn’t help it.”

  “Hmm.”

  My heart cries out, “You should love us. You’re supposed to love us, no matter how bad we are! That’s what normal parents do!” But I can’t say it aloud. And anyway, he can’t help it, can he? Growing up with Baba Nadia with her thin soups and strict punishments.

  “None of us can help how we are,” I say.

  “Hmm. Of course this question of psychological” (he pronounces both consonants: p, s) “determinism is very interesting to discuss. Leibniz, for example, who by the way was a founder of the modern mathematics, believed that all was determined in the moment of creation.”

  “Pappa…”

  “Tak tak. And smoking all the time. Smoking even by Milla’s death-bed. What a powerful tyrant is a cigarette.” He realises my patience is running thin. “Did I ever tell you, Nadia, that I almost died from cigarettes?”

  Is this a crude changing-the-subject ploy? Or has he become completely unhinged?

  “I didn’t know you smoked.”

  Neither of my parents smoked. Not only that, but they had kicked up such a dreadful fuss when I started smoking at the age of fifteen that I never got completely hooked, and gave up a few years later, having made my point.

  “Ha! It was because I did not smoke that cigarettes saved my life, and for the same reason, they almost cost me my life.” He shifts his voice into an easy narrative gear. He is in control now, driving his tractor across the crumbling furrows of the past. “You see, in that German labour camp where we found ourselves at ending of war, cigarettes were a currency followed by everybody. When we worked we got paid: so much bread, so much fat, so many cigarettes. So any person who did not smoke his cigarettes could exchange them for food, clothing, even luxuries such as soap or blankets. Because of cigarettes, we always had enough to eat, were always warm. That was how we survived through war.” He fixes his eyes on a spot behind my head. “Vera, unfortunately, is now of course a smoker. Has she told you about her first encounter with cigarettes?”

  “No, she didn’t tell me anything. What do you mean?” My mind had wandered during his ramble. Now I realise I should have been paying attention. “What happened with Vera and the cigarettes?”

  There is a long silence.

  “Can’t remember.” He looks sideways out of the window and starts to cough. “Did I tell you, Nadia, about the boilers of these ships, how gigantic they were?”

  “Never mind about the boilers, Pappa. Please finish what you were saying about the cigarettes. What happened?”

  “Can’t remember. No point to remember. Too much in the past…”

  Of course he can remember, but he won’t say.

  Valentina’s sister arrives. She is met at Heathrow by a man from the village, who has been paid fifty pounds by my father to drive down to London in his Ford Fiesta and bring her back. She is not blonde, like Valentina, but dark and elaborately coiffed with a bunch of little ringlets on her nape. She wears a real fur coat and patent leather shoes, and her mouth is a small pouting scarlet bow. She casts a cool, twinkly eye over the house, the c
ooker, the Hoover, the husband, and announces that she will stay with her uncle in Selby.

  Eight

  A green satin bra

  Another crisis. This time it’s the telephone bill. It is more than seven hundred pounds, almost all of which is for phone calls to Ukraine. My father rings me.

  “Can you lend me please five hundred pounds?”

  “Pappa, this has to stop. Why should I pay for her to make telephone calls to Ukraine?”

  “Not just she. Stanislav also.”

  “Well, both of them. They can’t just ring up and chat to their friends. Tell her she must pay it herself out of her wages.”

  “Hmm. Yes.” He puts the phone down.

  He telephones my sister.

  She rings me.

  “You’ve heard about the telephone bill? Honestly! Whatever next?”

  “I told him he must get Valentina to pay. I’m not going to subsidise her.” My voice is Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells.

  “Of course that’s exactly what I said, Nadezhda.” My sister is even better at D. of T. W. than I am. “And do you know what he said? He said, she can’t pay for the telephone bill because she has to pay for the car.”

  “But I thought he bought her the car.”

  “Another car. A Lada. She’s buying it to take back to Ukraine.”

  “So she has two cars?”

  “It seems so. Of course these people—they are communists. I’m sorry, Nadezhda. I know what you’re going to say. But they’ve always had everything they wanted, every luxury, every privilege, and now they can’t rip off the system any more over there, they want to come over here and rip off our system. Well, I’m sorry…”

  “It’s not quite as simple as that, Vera.”

  “You see in this country, communists are harmless little people with beards and sandals. But once they get into power, suddenly a new vicious type of personality emerges.”

  “No, it’s the same people who are always in power, Vera. Sometimes they call themselves communists, sometimes capitalists, sometimes devoutly religious—whatever they need to be to hang on to power. The former communists in Russia are the same people who own all the industries now. They’re the real rip-off merchants. But the professional middle classes, people like Valentina’s husband, have been hardest hit.”

  “Of course I knew you would disagree with me, Nadezhda, and really I don’t want to argue about this. I know where your sympathies really lie. But I could see straightaway what kind of people they were.”

  “But you haven’t seen them yet.”

  “But I can see from your description.”

  Silly cow. No point in arguing with her. But still it irks me that she doesn’t think twice about lashing out at me, even in our new alliance.

  I telephone my father.

  “Aha,” he says. “Yes, the Lada. She bought it for her brother. You see her brother was living in Estonia, but he was expelled because he failed the Estonian Language examination. He is pure Russian, you see. Talks pure Russian. Couldn’t speak one word of Estonian. But after independence, this new Estonian Government wants to expel all Russians. So her brother must go. Now Valentina, she speaks Ukrainian and Russian. Speaks both very good. Stanislav, too. Good vocabulary. Good pronunciation.”

  “About the Lada.”

  “Aha, yes, Lada. Her brother had a Lada, you see, which was smashed up. Smashed his face up, too. In a night, he went fishing, catching fish through a hole in ice. Very cold, sitting long time on a snow, waiting for some fish. Very cold in Estonia. So to make himself warm he drinks vodka. Now alcohol of course is not a combustion fuel in the way of kerosene or gasoline that is used for tractors, but it has certain warming properties. But at some cost. Well, cost is this. He drinks too much, skids on ice. Smashes up Lada. Smashes up his face, too. But I ask myself, why should I helping a man who is not only not a Ukrainian, but is so much a Russian that he fails Estonian Language examination? Tell me this.”

  “So she bought him a new Lada?”

  “Not new. Second-hand. Not too expensive, by the way. One thousand pounds. You see in this country Lada is not considered to be chic car.” (He pronounces it the French way—“sheek’. He fancies himself as a bit of a francophone.) Too heavy body for engine size. Inefficient fuel consumption. Old-style transmission. But in Ukraina a Lada is good because plenty of spare parts. Maybe it isn’t even for her brother. Maybe she will sell and make a good profit.”

  “So she’s driving about in two cars?”

  “No. Lada sits in garage. Rover sits on drive.”

  “But she has no money to pay the phone bill.”

  “Aha. Telephone. Now here is a problem. Too much talking. Husband, brother, sister, mother, uncle, auntie, friend, cousin. Sometimes Ukrainian but mostly Russian.” As if he wouldn’t mind paying the bill if it was for talking in Ukrainian. “Not intelligent talking. Chatterbox talking.” He wouldn’t mind paying the bill if it was for talking about Nietzsche and Schopenhauer.

  “Pappa, tell her if she doesn’t pay the phone will be cut off.”

  “Hmm. Yes.” He says yes, but his tone says no.

  He can’t do it. He can’t stand up to her. Or maybe he doesn’t really want to. He just wants to complain, to have our sympathy.

  “You must be firmer with her.” I can feel his resistance down the telephone line, but I plug on. “She doesn’t understand. She believes that in the West everyone is a millionaire.”

  “Aha.”

  A few days later he rings again. The Rover has broken down again. This time it’s the hydraulic braking system. Oh, and it failed its MOT. He needs to borrow more money.

  “Only until I get my pension.”

  “You see?” I rage at Mike. “They’re both completely mad. Both of them. Why can’t I come from a normal family?”

  “Think how dull it would be.”

  “Oh, I think I could put up with a bit of dullness. I just don’t want all this—not at my time of life.”

  “Well don’t let yourself get too worked up about it, because one thing you can be certain of—it’s going to get worse.” He takes a can of cold beer from the fridge and pours it into two glasses. “You’ve got to give him a chance to have his bit of fun. You shouldn’t interfere.”

  Afterwards, I regretted that I hadn’t interfered more, and earlier.

  It’s impossible, I realise, to keep tabs on things by phone. Time for another visit. I don’t warn my father this time.

  Valentina is out when we arrive, but Stanislav is there. He is up in his room doing his homework, bent low over the page. He works hard. Good boy.

  “Stanislav,” I say, “what’s going on with this car? It seems to be causing a lot of trouble.”

  “Oh, no trouble. It’s all right now. All fixed.” He smiles his cute chipped-tooth smile.

  “But Stanislav, can’t you persuade your mother it would be better to have a smaller car that’s more reliable than this big shiny monster that costs a fortune to run? My father hasn’t got that much money, you know.”

  “Oh, it’s OK now. It’s a very nice car.”

  “But wouldn’t you have been better off with something more reliable, like a Ford Fiesta?”

  “Oh, Ford Fiesta is not a good car. You know, when we were coming here on the motorway we saw a terrible accident between a Ford Fiesta and a Jaguar, and the Ford Fiesta was quite crushed underneath the Jaguar. So you see the bigger car is much better.”

  Is he serious?

  “But Stanislav, my father can’t afford a big car.”

  “Oh, I think he can.” Sweet smile. “He has enough money. He gave Anna some money, didn’t he?” The spectacles slip down his nose. He pushes them back, and looks up at me, meeting my eyes with a cool stare. Maybe not such a good boy.

  “Yes, but…” What can I say? “…that’s up to him.”

  “Exactly so.”

  There are quick footsteps on the stairs and Valentina bursts into the bedroom. She chides Stanislav for talking to m
e. “Stop talk this bad-news peeping no-tits crow.” She has forgotten that I speak Ukrainian, or she doesn’t care.

  “No matter, Valentina,” I say. “It’s you I want to talk to. Shall we go downstairs?”

  She follows me down into the kitchen. Stanislav comes down too, but Valentina sends him into the next room where Pappa is explaining at length to Mike about the comparative safety features of different braking systems, stubbornly avoiding reference to the specific problems of the Rover, while Mike is striving against the odds to steer the conversation in this direction.

  “Why you want for talk?” Valentina positions herself opposite me and a little too dose. Her lipstick is an angry red smudge around the edges of her mouth.

  “I think you know why, Valentina.”

  “Know? Why I know?”

  I had planned a rational discussion, a cool unfolding of logical arguments which would end up in a gracious admission of guilt on her part, a smiling, rueful acceptance that things would have to change. But all I feel is a burning, blinding rage and my arguments desert me. Blood beats in my head.

  “Aren’t you ashamed of yourself?” I have slipped into the mongrel language, half-English half-Ukrainian, fluent and snappy.

  “Ah-shamed! Ah-shamed!” she snorts. “You shame. No me shame. Why you no visit you mamma grave? Why you no crying, bringing flower? Why you making trouble here?”

  The thought of my mother lying neglected in the cold ground while this usurper lords it in her kitchen drives me to a new pitch of fury.

  “Don’t dare to talk about my mother. Don’t even say her name with your filthy-talking boil-in-the-baggage mouth!”

  “You mother die. Now you father marry me. You no like. You make trouble. I understand. I no stupid.”

  She speaks the mongrel language too. We snarl at each other like mongrels.

  “Valentina, why are you driving around in two cars, when my father doesn’t have enough money to pay for the repairs on one car? Why are you talking on the telephone to Ukraina while he’s asking me for money to pay the bills? You tell me!”

  “He give you money. Now you give him money,” the big red mouth taunts.