2005 - A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian

by Marina Lewycka

  “Don’t rush into anything, Pappa. There’s no hurry. Maybe this sister’s husband-to-be will turn out to be a meanie as well. After all he must provide for his wife and his private-school children. Maybe the wife will get the Jaguar, and the sister will have the Renault. Maybe Valentina will realise how lucky she is. Just wait and see.”

  “Hmm.”

  As for selling Mother’s garden—my jaw is clenched tight so that I can barely get the words out through my teeth—these things are often more complicated than they seem. The deeds would have to be redrawn. Probably most of the money would be swallowed up in solicitors’ fees. And the offer from the neighbour—well that is quite a paltry amount. If he had planning permission to build another house there, why the plot of land would fetch ten times as much. Just imagine how pleased Valentina would be. (And planning permission takes ages and ages.)

  Would he like me to ask a solicitor? Would he like me to contact the council about planning permission? Should I talk to Vera?

  “Hmm. Solicitor yes. Council yes. Vera no.”

  “But probably Vera will find out. Imagine how upset” (he knows I mean furious) “she will be.”

  Vera did find out. I told her. She was both upset and furious.

  It took her two hours to drive from Putney to Peterborough. She was still wearing her house slippers when she arrived (an unusual lack of attention to detail). She marched straight up to the neighbour’s house (it is an ugly mock-Tudor house, much larger than my parents’), banged on the door and confronted him. (“You should have seen the look on his face.”) The neighbour, a retired businessman and gardening amateur of the Leylandii-and-bedding-plants school, cowered under the onslaught.

  “I was only trying to be helpful. He said he was having financial difficulties.”

  “You’re not being helpful. You’re making things worse. Of course he’s having financial difficulties, because of that bloodsucking wife of his. You should be keeping an eye on him, not encouraging him. What sort of neighbour are you?”

  His wife has heard the row, and comes to the door, twin-setted and pearled, with a gin and tonic in her hand (it is these neighbours who witnessed the codicil to Mother’s will).

  “What’s going on, Edward?”

  Edward explains. His wife raises her eyebrows.

  “That’s the first I’ve heard of this. I thought we were saving to go on a cruise, Edward.” Then she turns to Vera. “We were worried about Mr Mayevskyj, but we didn’t like to get involved. Did we, Edward?”

  Edward nods and shakes his head at the same time. Vera needs to keep them on side, so she softens her tone.

  “I’m sure it was all a misunderstanding.”

  “Yes, a misunderstanding.”

  Edward seizes the lifeline and retreats behind his wife, who has comes forward to take her husband’s place on the doorstep.

  “She doesn’t seem a very nice sort of lady,” she says. “She sunbathes in the garden wearing…wearing…” She steals a backward glance at her husband, her voice drops to a whisper, “I’ve seen him watching out of the upstairs window. And another thing,” her tone is confidential, “I think she’s having an affair. I’ve seen a man…”—she purses her lips—“…who calls for her in a car. He parks up under the ash tree—where Mr Mayevskyj can’t see from the window—and beeps his horn and waits for her. She comes running out, all dressed up to the nines. All fur coat and no knickers, as my mother used to say.”

  “Thank you for telling me this,” says Vera. “You’ve been so helpful.”

  Valentina must have seen Vera’s car, for she is waiting for her in the doorway blocking the way, arms at her waist, ready for a fight. She looks Vera up and down. Her eyes rest momentarily on Vera’s slippered feet, and a quick smile flickers across her mouth. Vera looks down too. (“It was only then that I realised what a mistake I had made.”) Valentina is wearing a pair of stiletto shoes, which make her bare muscular calves bulge like a boxer’s biceps.

  “What you go for next-door, nose-pock?” Valentina demands.

  Vera ignores her, and pushes past into the kitchen, which is full of steam, the windows all misted up. There is a pile of washing-up in the sink, and a smell of something disgusting. Pappa is hovering by the door, wearing a pair of navy blue nylon dungarees, the straps criss-crossed over his thin crooked back.

  “I’ve spoken to the people next door, Pappa. They are no longer interested in buying Mother’s garden.”

  “Vera, why must you do this? Why can you not leave me alone?”

  “Because if I leave you alone, Pappa, this vulture will peck out your liver.”

  “Eagle. Eagle.”

  “Eagle? What are you talking about?” (“Really, Nadia, I thought he had completely flipped.”)

  “Eagle pecked out liver of Prometheus because he has brought fire.”

  “Pappa, you are not Prometheus, you are a pitiful, confused old man, who through your own idiocy have fallen prey to this she-wolf…”

  Valentina, who has been listening with a storm gathering in her face, lets out a low howl, and flexing her arms shoves Vera hard in the chest. Vera staggers back, but doesn’t fall.

  “Valya, please, no violence,” Father pleads, trying to get between them. He is way out of his depth.

  “You dog-eaten-brain old bent stick, you go in room you shut up.” Valentina gives him a shove too, and he stumbles against the frame of the door which Mike put in, and leans there crookedly. Valentina produces a key from her pocket and dangles it in front of Father’s nose.

  “I have room key ha ha I have key room!”

  Father makes a grab for it, but she holds it just above his reach.

  “Why you want with key?” she taunts. “You go in room. I lock unlock.”

  “Valya, please give key!” He makes a pathetic little jump as he attempts to grab, then falls back with a sob.

  Vera tries to make a grab, too—“How dare you!”—but Valentina pushes her away.

  “I have a microphone!” cries Vera. “I will get evidence of your criminal activities!”

  Out of her handbag she takes a small hand-held Dictaphone (you have to admire her!) and switches it on, holding it up above Valentina’s head.

  “Now, please, Valentina, give my father back the key to his room, and try to behave in a calm and civilised manner,” she says in a clear dictating voice. She is taller than Valentina, but Valentina has the advantage of heels. She grabs for the Dictaphone, and would have got it, but her attention is distracted, as at that moment Father makes a snatch at the key in her other hand. Attacked on both fronts, she shrieks and jumps into the air (“It was just like one of those Kung Fu films that Dick used to watch”) and comes down with a crash, the stiletto heel of one shoe landing on Vera’s slippered foot, the other heel catching Father’s shin just below the knee. Father and Vera both buckle. The Dictaphone falls and skids across the floor under the cooker. Vera makes a dive for the Dictaphone. Valentina pushes Father through the door of his room, wrestles the key out of his hand and locks the door. Vera falls upon Valentina, pulling, twisting—they are both on the floor now—and tries to wrest the key from her hand, but Valentina is stronger, and grips the key in a fist behind her back, pulling herself up off the floor. Defeated, Vera wields the Dictaphone:

  “I> have it all on tape! Everything you say is on tape!”

  “Good!” says Valentina, “this is what I want say you bitch vixen no-tits. You have no tits, you jealous.” She puts her hands under her breasts, pressing them obscenely up and together, and makes little pouting kisses with her mouth. “Man like tits. You Pappa like tits.”

  “Please, Valentina,” says Vera, “control yourself. There is no need for foul language.”

  But she knows she is defeated. She holds her head high, but humiliation sits heavy in her heart.

  On the other side of the locked door, Father is scratching and whimpering like a whipped dog.

  “Oh Vera! You did your best. You are magnificent. A heroine.
Have you got the tape?”

  “There was no tape in the Dictaphone. It was all a bluff. What else could I do?”

  Later on, before she went out, Valentina unlocked the door of Father’s room, but she kept the key.

  Father had soiled himself again.

  “He can’t help it. He really shouldn’t wear dungarees.”

  “Oh yes, he can help it—not the incontinence, of course, but the obsession. He clings to it against all reason—the excitement, the glamour of it. He still defends her against me, you know.”

  “I know.”

  “And do you know what else I found? Plugged in to the socket under his bed was a baby alarm.”

  “Goodness. What does he need that for?”

  “She, not he. The other one’s plugged in upstairs in her room. It’s one of those clever things that works on the mains circuit. It means she can hear everything he says in his room.”

  “But does he talk to himself?”

  “No, stupid, when he talks to us on the phone.”

  “Ah.”

  Nineteen

  The Red Plough

  I think it was the baby alarm that finally did the trick. Father has agreed to a divorce. I am charged with finding a suitable solicitor—someone who is authoritative enough to stick up to Valentina’s army of legal-aid lawyers, someone who will fight my father’s corner, not just go through the motions and collect the fees.

  “Not the youth I spoke to about the annulment. He was useless,” Mrs Divorce Expert says. “It must be a woman—she will be outraged by what has happened. Not the biggest firms, because they will pass the smaller cases on to a junior. Not the smallest firms, because they will have no expertise.”

  I wander up and down the streets of Peterborough’s legal district, looking at the names on the brass plates. What can you tell from a name? Not a lot. That’s how I find Ms Laura Carter.

  The first time I meet her, I almost get up and walk straight out of the room. I am sure I have made a mistake. She seems far too young, far too nice. How am I going to be able to talk to her about bosom-fondling, about oralsex, about squishy squashy? But I am wrong—Ms Carter is a tigress: a blonde-haired, blue-eyed, pert-nosed English rose of a tigress. As I talk, I see her pert nose twitching with anger. By the time I have finished, she is furious.

  “Your father is at risk. We must get her out of the house as soon as possible. We’ll apply for an injunction immediately, and we’ll file for divorce at the same time. The three cars are good. The note from Eric Pike is good. The episode in the hospital is excellent, because it is a public place, and there were plenty of witnesses. Yes, I think we can get something in place by the tribunal appeal in September.”

  The first time I take my father to meet Ms Carter in her office, he wears the tattered suit he wore for his wedding and the same white shirt with the black-stitched buttons. He bows so low over her outstretched hand, in the old Russian way, that he almost topples over. She is charmed.

  “Such a nice gentleman,” she murmurs to me in her English-rose voice. “Such a shame that someone would take advantage.”

  He, however, has reservations. He tells Vera on the phone, “Looks like young girl. What does she know?”

  “What do you know, Pappa?” Big Sis retorts. “If you knew anything, you wouldn’t be in this pickle.”

  Ms Carter also throws light on the mystery of the small portable photocopier and the missing medical appointments.

  “She may want to show that your father is ill—too ill to attend a tribunal. Or she may be getting evidence that he is of unsound mind—confused, doesn’t know what he’s doing.”

  “And the translated poems?”

  “That will be to demonstrate that it is a bona-fide relationship.”

  “The scheming vixen!”

  “Oh, I expect her solicitor told her to do it.”

  “Solicitors do that?”

  Ms Carter nods. “And worse.”

  It’s mid-July now, and the September tribunal hearing, having seemed an eternity away, suddenly seems very close. Ms Carter arranges for a private detective to serve the papers.

  “We’ll have to make sure the divorce petition is served on her in person. Otherwise she can claim she never received it.”

  Vera has volunteered to be there on the day, to make sure that Valentina receives it in person. Now there is to be some action, she doesn’t want to miss out. My father insists that she does not need to come, that he is after all an intelligent adult and can handle this himself; but he is overruled. The trap is set.

  At the pre-ordained time, the detective, a tall dark louche-looking man with plenty of five-o’clock shadow, turns up at the house and hammers on the door.

  “Oh, it must be the postman!” cries Vera, who has been up since six o’clock anticipating the excitement. “It could be a parcel for you, Valentina.”

  Valentina rushes to the door. She is still wearing her frilly pinafore and her yellow rubber gloves from washing up the breakfast things.

  The detective thrusts the envelope into her hands. Valentina looks confused.

  “Divorce pepper? I no want divorce.”

  “No,” says the detective, “the petitioner is Mr Nikolai Mayevskyj. He is divorcing you.”

  She stands for a moment in stunned silence. Then she explodes in a ball of fury.

  “Nikolai! Nikolai! What is this?” she screams at my father. “Nikolai, you crazy dog-eaten-brain graveyard-deadman!”

  My father has locked himself in his room and turned the radio on full volume.

  She swings round again to confront the private detective, but he is already slamming the door of his black BMW and driving away with a screech of tyres. She turns on Vera.

  “You she-cat-dog-vixen flesh-eating witch!”

  “I’m sorry, Valentina,” says Big Sis, in a voice which she later describes to me as calm and rational, “but this is no more than you deserve. You cannot come to this country and deceive and cheat people, however stupid they are.”

  “I no cheat! You cheat! I love you Pappa! I love!”

  “Don’t be silly, Valentina. Now, go and see your solicitor.”

  “Oh Vera, that’s wonderful! Did it all go so smoothly?”

  If I feel a moment’s pity for the trapped bewildered Valentina, it is only fleeting.

  “So far so good,” says Mrs Divorce Expert.

  But Valentina’s solicitor has a trick up his sleeve that Ms Carter has not foreseen. The first court hearing, at which the injunction will be served to oust Valentina from the house, has been brought forward at Ms Carter’s request. Neither my sister nor I can be there, so we only have Laura’s account of what happened. She and my father arrive early at the court. The judge arrives. Valentina and Stanislav arrive. The judge opens the proceedings. Valentina stands up. “I no understand English. I must interpreter.” There is consternation in the court. Clerks rush around, hurried phone calls are made. But no Ukrainian-speaking interpreter can be found. The judge adjourns the hearing, and a new date is set. We have lost two weeks.

  “Oh, bother!” says Ms Carter. “I should have thought of that.”

  In early August, the same group reassembles, but this time with a middle-aged woman from the Ukrainian Club in Peterborough, who has agreed to act as an interpreter. My father will pick up the tab. She must know about the story of Valentina and my father—all the Ukrainians for miles around know about it—but she is po-faced, and reveals nothing. I have taken the day off to be there too, to give Laura and Pappa moral support. It is a blazing hot day, just over a year since they were married. Valentina is wearing a navy-blue pink-lined suit—maybe the same one she wore for the immigration panel. My father is wearing his wedding suit again and the white shirt stitched with black button thread.

  Ms Carter describes the incidents with the wet tea-towel, the glass of water, and the hospital steps. Her voice is low and clear, dense with suppressed emotion, solemn at the awfulness of the things she describes. She seems alm
ost apologetic, as with her head bowed and her eyes downcast, she produces her coup de grace: a report from the psychiatrist. Valentina protests vigorously and colourfully that my father has told a malicious pack of lies, that she loves her husband, and that she has nowhere else to live with her son.

  “I am not bad woman. He has a paranoia!”

  She tosses her hair from side to side and whips the air into a lather with her hands as she appeals to her audience. The interpreter translates it all into bland third-person English.

  Now my father stands up and answers questions in a voice so faint and quavery the judge has to ask him to repeat himself several times. His English is correct and formal, engineer’s English, yet there is a clever touch of drama in the way he raises his shaking hand and points at Valentina: “I believe she wishes to murder me!” He looks small, wizened and bewildered in his crumpled suit and thick glasses; his frailty speaks volumes. The judge orders that Valentina and Stanislav must leave the house within a fortnight, taking all their possessions with them.

  That evening, my father and I open a four-year-old bottle of my mother’s purple plum wine, to celebrate. The cork bursts out and hits the ceiling with a thwack, leaving a dent in the plaster. The wine tastes like cough-medicine and goes straight to the head. My father begins to tell me about his days at the Red Plough Factory in Kiev, which, apart from today, he declares, were the happiest days of his life. Within thirty minutes we are both fast asleep, my father in his armchair, I slumped across the dining-table. Some time very late during the night, I am woken by the sounds of Stanislav and Valentina letting themselves into the house and creeping upstairs, talking in quiet voices.

  Although the psychiatrist pronounced my father all-clear, Valentina may have been closer to the truth than she realised, for only someone who has lived in a totalitarian state can appreciate the true character of paranoia. In 1937, when my father returned to Kiev from Luhansk, the whole country was bathed in a tniasma of paranoia.

  It seeped everywhere, into the most intimate crevices of people’s lives: it soured the relations between friends and colleagues, between teachers and students, between parents and children, husbands and wives. Enemies were everywhere. If you didn’t like the way someone had sold you a piglet, or looked at your girlfriend, or asked for money you owed, or given you a low mark in an exam, a quick word to the NKVD would sort them out. If you fancied someone’s wife, a word to the NKVD, a stint in Siberia, would leave the coast clear for you. However brilliant, gifted, or patriotic you might be, you were still a threat to somebody. If you were too clever you were sure to be a potential defector or saboteur; if you were too stupid, you were bound to say the wrong thing sooner or later. No one could escape the paranoia, from the lowliest to the greatest; indeed the most powerful man in the land, Stalin himself, was the most paranoid of all. The paranoia leached out from under the locked doors of the Kremlin, paralysing all human life.