Anya of Ukraine
Max White
©
Copyright 2024 by Max White
|
Livadia Palace, photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons. |
After
the 2001 Twin Towers attack, people were afraid to fly, and tickets
were cheap. I decided to go to Ukraine. I particularly hankered to go
to Yalta in Crimea. Why Ukraine? Why Yalta? I had no family or
professional connections. However, I study history vis-à-vis
human rights. I spent two decades with the US section of Amnesty
International, specializing in Indonesian human rights. There were
parallels between Indonesia and Ukraine. Few people in the United
States knew much about Indonesia, the world’s fourth most
populous nation, with the largest Muslim population. Until recently,
few here knew much about Ukraine, the geographical center of Europe.
Ukraine
became independent twelve years before my trip, after the Soviet
Union collapsed. In late 2000, I had just returned from living in
East Timor (Timor-Leste), the newest nation of the
twenty-first century. East Timor won independence from Indonesia
after twenty-five years of brutal occupation.
My
son had attended Jagiellonian University in Krakow. When visiting
him, I noted how close Krakow was to city of Lviv, on the western
edge of Ukraine. Lviv was once part of Poland. National boundaries
change. I can no longer take the trip I did in the winter of
2001-2002. Russia gobbled up Crimea, and Ukraine is a war zone.
Following
WWII, Stalin hosted Roosevelt and Churchill in Russia to divide up
Europe: the Yalta Conference. Shortly after the Conference, fifty-one
countries founded the United Nations and adopted The Universal
Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), the foundational document of
Amnesty International.
To
get a Ukraine visa, one needed a “sponsor.” I found Alex
online. He said to represent myself as a member of a sports club, so
I became a one-person sports team. To get a visa, I would have to
mail my passport to the Ukrainian embassy in DC. I was not sure there
was enough time to get it back. I chose an alternative.
My
low-price air ticket took me to the Netherlands, where I visited my
son and family. He and I drove to the Ukrainian embassy in The Hague.
By mid-afternoon I retrieved my passport with a visa. The typical
visa is a boring rubber-stamped image usually stamped by a bored
official, four per page. Not the Ukraine visa. It filled a page of my
passport with a holographic seal and Cyrillic version of my name,
glued over previous visa stamps on the same page (I travelled a lot).
I still have it.
From
Netherlands I took a train to Krakow. A day later, I took a short
train ride across the border to nearby Lviv.
In
Ukraine I met Ukrainian citizens, two ex-Soviet officers, a former
agent of Soviet intelligence, a Russian oligarch, two law students in
Kyiv. And a girl with radiation illness.
I
kept a journal of my month-long winter trip from Lviv (west) to Yalta
in Crimea (south) to Kyiv (northeast) and back to Lviv.
*****
The
Cyrillic Ukrainian alphabet is mostly phonetic; a letter is usually
pronounced the same in any word. Before leaving the US, I crammed,
learning Cyrillic and some Ukrainian phrases. I continued studying on
the trans-Atlantic flight. It paid off.
Sponsor
Alex met me in Lviv in the George Hotel dining room. He was slim,
maybe five-feet-seven, well-dressed in a thick wool overcoat, gray
scarf and gray sweater. He had fine features and small hands. His
English was flawless, with a slight British accent. He explained that
his fee included service as a guide and arranger. He offered to find
me a place to stay.
Alex
asked if I wanted to visit the Chernobyl Museum. In 1986 Chernobyl
was site of the worst nuclear meltdown in history. (Yes, there is a
scale: Chernobyl, Fukushima and Three Mile Island). The Soviet Union
denied the meltdown happened until it was undeniable. Sweden and
Belarus detected strong radiation coming from Ukraine. The Soviet
government largely hid horrors suffered by Ukrainians and badly
mismanaged the disaster itself.
I
didn’t hanker to go to Chernobyl.
Comparing
me to other clients, Alex said, “Most just want to say they’ve
been to our poor country. They get their passports stamped, they buy
Ukrainian colored eggs and then on to wonderful Russia. And they
don’t come in winter, Max.”
He
suggested I stay at “the nice private house of my friend
Natalia you’ll like it Max.” Alex said it would cost $20
per day including breakfast. I did like it. I gave Natalia four
twenties. On my way back to Poland, I stayed at her house again for
two twenties. I started noticing that many things cost $20 US.
Matronly
Natalia spoke no English. We had pleasant breakfasts, me miming that
I liked the food and her smoking, smiling. One morning her college
son inteMax
White retired from high tech—programming, teaching and writing
technical manuals. For twenty years, he served as Indonesia and East
Timor Country Specialist for Amnesty International USA and as an
advisor to other human rights organizations. He lives in Portland,
Oregon.rpreted as she told me
that many of her family starved
during the famine of 1932-1933 (“the Holodomor”). She was
animated and bitter about Stalin and the USSR. Her son said his uncle
called the famine Stalin’s “Final Solution.”
Saturday
afternoon, Alex asked if I wanted a tour of Lviv the next day.
Perhaps. What would it cost? “Oh, let’s say two hours at
$10 per hour; I’ll arrange the car.” I offered to treat
Alex and his wife to the opera—the Opera House was a treasure
of Lviv.
Sunday
morning it was snowing and colder than a babushka’s butt on
stone stairs. Alex arrived at noon. He had a world-class cold, so I
suggested we do the tour another day.
“No,
I went to great trouble to arrange for the car.” OK.
We
got in the taxi, me in back with Alex riding shotgun. He started what
was obviously a spiel he’d done many times. “Here to the
left you see the orange walls? the garrison built by the Austrians in
early1900s and to the right a fragment of the old wall of the city…”
And so on. Half an hour later we stopped, Alex dismissed the
difficult-to-arrange taxi, and we went slip-sliding on foot.
Observing
Alex at Natalia’s house and with the driver, I realized Alex
shared. People must have appreciated a visit from Alex and his
customers. I liked his style; I admired his generosity.
Blizzard!
I was cold despite my Alaskan goose-down parka. Every time we went
inside, Alex hacked, blew his nose and popped a cough drop. “This
damn flu is going around everywhere even friends in Switzerland say
they are getting it. I am OK because I got these what you call cough
drops?”
He
asked if my name was short for something. I said “Max”
was short for Max. He laughed and said, “You must call me
Sasha.” (Sasha is to Alexander as Bob is to Robert.)
Lviv
has–excuse me–one helluva lot of churches. Some grand,
some bizarre (the Armenian) and some with great names: Church of the
Barefooted Carmelites, Church of Mother of God’s Unwearying
Help, and so on.
Our
most memorable stop was a Pharmacy Museum: centuries-old instruments
for making pills, big and little vessels, hand-blown glass jars and a
giant black stone mortar’n’pestle, the mortar more than a
foot in diameter.
The
best was to come. Sasha got a key to the basement. We entered a small
room through an oak door with huge brass hinges and brass handle.
Black steel straps formed an X across the top window. “It is a
replica of the original,” Alex said.
Inside
were two tiny rooms, together perhaps 5 by 7 meters. It had been the
laboratory of a “famous alchemist.” The owner had
discovered the smaller room when he removed a brick wall. Not far
overhead (in old Europe, people were shorter) were seven massive
beams, elaborate designs carved into each. On one side of the space
were two small fireplaces, on the other side a forge. Three stuffed
animals sat atop a stand in the corner (crocodile, owl and turtle)
representing three principles of alchemy. If I understood Sasha’s
interpretation: Eternity, Truth and Get-out-the-Priest-is-coming. I
asked what happened to the alchemist. Sasha said, “No one
knows.”
I
think he’s in New Jersey.
We
lunched. I had beet-thick borscht and salad (great and mediocre
respectively). Sasha ate a foul-smelling soup made of cow stomach. He
assured, “This is very good for me but I can eat only with
vodka.” He told me more than I wanted to know about Ukrainian
and Polish delicacies made from intestines. Mmm Mmm Good.
Sasha
said, “My wife and I will not be able to go to the opera. She
is not feeling well.” I imagined she looked out at the blizzard
and decided that she would not be feeling well.
Afterward,
I walked around, still cold. I found a bookstore. They had a few
books in English. I bought a surprising book to find in Ukraine, “The
Pickwick Papers.” As I paid, the owner showed me a
Ukrainian/English dictionary. Using it, he asked if I was interested.
Yes indeed! Unlike the minimalist one I cut from a book in the US,
this was a dense, real dictionary. I expected to use it the rest of
my trip. Alas, I would give it to a girl on a train.
With
bread, cheese and water—what I lived on—I headed “home.”
Monday night, on what seemed an impulse, Sasha called to invite me to
the home of a lawyer, his friend, Alexander. Sasha said, “Max,
let us go see my friend Alexander. OK?”
Drinking
orange juice and vodka, we had a lovely evening listening to music:
classical Russian and Ukrainian rap. We talked about the state of the
world. Before independence in 1991, Alexander had worked in various
parts of the world, including South America as a KGB agent. He said
he would like to visit the US. “But I don’t think you
would let me in.” I explained that it wasn’t up to me.
They laughed. Alexander said, “We are just two Ukrainian guys
having our little fun here.”
He
brought out an imposing book, six inches thick, deep-tooled black
leather covers, metal hinges with hand-lettered genealogy charts. It
had been in his family for more than a hundred years. He reverently
turned through beautiful pages. Sasha nodded and smiled.
Alexander’s
wife, in a long, black fur coat, came home (I’ve never been
anywhere with so many people wearing fur coats). She smiled, maybe
scornfully, at our little party, pecked both Alexes’ cheeks,
formally shook my hand with her ring-heavy one and went upstairs.
*****
Sasha
explained how I would get to Yalta. A train went to Simferopol, in
Crimea. Then I could take either the “longest tram in the
world” (two hours over mountains) or a once-per-day bus.
“When you get to Yalta, babushkas will have
flats
for rent. You should pay no more than $20. If that doesn’t suit
you, stay in the five-star Hotel Yalta with swimming pool.”
Which leads to, “Whatinhell Max are you doing here in winter? I
mean I’ve never had an American who didn’t want to stay
at the best hotel. Who even learned Cyrillic alphabet and Ukrainian
words.” I was flattered.
Arranger
Alex arranged my ticket to Simferopol and explained about paying for
bedding. I was hyped. At a stop a few hours after Lviv, two guys from
my compartment left. A mother and daughter came in, made up berths
and went to sleep. Early dawn I watched a fairy tale scene, a slow
horse-drawn sleigh pulled across a vast snowy field. The girl and
mother woke and smiled at me. Mother rolled over and back to sleep.
The girl asked me something. I used a valuable Ukrainian phrase: I
said I spoke English. She seemed pleased and said, "As do I. I
try to learn." Passing my Ukrainian/English dictionary back and
forth, we chatted in that clickity clackity clickity railcar salon
with light-blue walls.
Anya
told me she was headed to a sanatorium (yep, the word was in the
dictionary). She had finished secondary school. She reminded me of my
daughter in high school. The “very famous” sanatorium was
east of Simferopol. I asked why she was going there. She stiffened,
and I realized the question was rude. She thumbed through “our”
dictionary and said, “I get weak that’s all.” From
Simferopol, they would take a train east to the sanatorium in
Yeptoria.
Light
was getting brighter and mom woke. Anya talked to her in a teenage
rush. Mother smiled at me tentatively. They were a
then-and-now
photo—both slim, both with brown eyes and reddish-blond hair in
bangs, Mom’s hands and face were weathered.
I
explained how I expected to get to Yalta. Anya laughed. So much for
either the longest tram in the world or once-per-day bus. Sasha had
never been there in winter and didn’t know that neither tram
nor bus ran in winter. Anya told me she could find me a ride in a
car. She would make sure, “…the driver does not overpay
you.”
Sure
enough, when we walked into the Simferopol terminal, she left out a
back door and returned with a guy who said he had room for one more
to Yalta. It would be $20 (of course). He pointed out the door to a
newer BMW and walked to it. I handed Anya the dictionary. She
was delighted; therefore, I was delighted. We shook hands. Then it
happened.
Anya
rocked backward so slowly I didn’t realize at first that she
was leaning into the corner onto flaking industrial-green paint. She
dropped gently. Her eyes rolled upward briefly then down then back up
into sockets—up so far I saw mostly white. She slid slowly down
to a squat, then sat on the gray concrete floor, feet in front, legs
bent and knees together.
Shocked,
I leaned over to help her up when Mother pushed around and stood
wide-stance in front of Anya. Anya looked up around her mother’s
legs and said, "I am OK this happens. I am OK." Her eyes
steadied. Mother, no larger than Anya, leaned forward and whispered.
Mother's arms lifted beneath Anya’s armpits as they rose in a
smooth motion. They stood facing each other as though it was a
familiar maneuver, a gymnastic move.
Anya again started to say "I am
OK…" Mother spoke sharply, turned to the right and guided
Anya to an oak bench. Mother's face said it was definitely not OK. I
thanked them–Anya smiling but quiet, her mother stern. Carrying
my backpack, I shuffled out to catch my ride.
Several
times I hired men in newer German sedans. They had been officers in
the Soviet military. One day they were living comfortable, privileged
lives; then the USSR collapsed and pulled the rug out. One driver
blamed Gorbachev and capitalism for the collapse. At an open-air
market in Lviv, an ex-soldier sold memorabilia from the Soviet war in
Afghanistan. Sasha translated as the man complained about neglect
after he served there.
*****
Five of us
shared the car. The owner/driver said he’d make it in an hour
to Hotel Yalta. Despite snow, he nearly did. I carried my bag up wide
steps to ten foot high glass doors and windows. A bulky man in red
uniform stood in the blazing bright lobby. He wore one of those flat
bus driver hats.
I visualized this man’s life.
Not his whole, transcendent life, but his life in the minutes and
hours before. How many hours did he stand or pace? How were his legs?
I thought about varicose veins and poor people who stand and wait,
about blood a liquid that tends downward. A coroner sometimes
estimates time of death by how much blood has found its way into the
tissue underneath. On long flights, ankles get larger.
The
doorman opened the door.
Yalta
was more beautiful than I expected. It reminded me of Carmel,
California, hills covered by twisted pines and a trail along the sea.
It was colder than Carmel, although there were a few palm trees.
During a few hours walk, I met three giants
(well,
one-and one-half-size statues). They were sitting and standing atop
stone blocks. In the center of Yalta, Lenin stood, chin thrust up, a
scroll in his hand, long open coat–a poseur looking out over
the Black Sea, He saw arcades and rides of a little amusement park.
Beyond a low sea wall, brightly painted wooden boats rested on the
beach. Fishermen and women waded in the calm sea, shoulder to
shoulder, netting silver herring.
Uphill
stood Maxim Gorky, a writer alternately banished, then celebrated by
Russia. He stared down, maybe looking into Lower Depths, title of one
of his plays. Gorky held a broad-brimmed hat in his left hand, coat
thrown over his right arm with thumb hooked into a belt. Not as
formal or stiff as Lenin, but I guess all statues are stiff.
Half
a kilometer further was writer and playwright Chekhov, sitting in an
idyllic half-circle of pines and laurel. He gazed at the sea, relaxed
and bare-headed. He wore a medium length jacket, one hand draped
gracefully over his crossed legs, clasping a small book. Of the
three, this giant was so realistic he looked like he might rise,
stretch and step away. I walked an hour beyond. When I returned, he
still sat musing. The inscription on the base read, “No matter
where you go, there you are.” (OK, my translation may be
sketchy.)
These
were not those heroic Soviet statues, upraised arms holding hammers
or rifles. All three were gracefully sculpted. Of the three, only
Gorky’s dates were inscribed (died in June 1936). I felt smug
figuring out who they were (Lenin by sight of course) as I sounded
out Cyrillic. I came to a concave-front building, orange with white
trim. On plinths at opposite ends were stone busts, eye-level. One
name sounded familiar, but I couldn’t recall him. Sounding out
the other, though, my mouth watered. “Pavlov.”
Meandering
around Yalta, I found “notable houses” with plaques.
“House where A.M. Gorky lived in 1900, which was visited by
A.P. Checkhov, L.N. Andreyev, I.A. Bunin, M.N. Yerkmolova, F.I
Shalyapin [etc.] and other celebrities.” The house where,
“Lesya Ukrainka lived in 1907-08.” Checkhov’s
house, “place of first meeting of A.M. Gorky and…”
So on.
There
was a monument, with a bas-relief side profile of Lenin’s head.
The brass plaque described Lenin’s Decree, “On the use of
Crimea for the Treatment of the Working People.” “Treatment”
reminded me of the girl on the train. I had located Anya’s
hometown on a map. It was close to the border of Belarus; not so
distant from Chernobyl.
I hired a car up to the hotel. The
driver asked, “How do you find Yalta?” I resisted saying,
“Go to Simferopol and turn right.” Instead, I answered as
I do everywhere, “I like it, but I know it is different to
visit than to live here.” He looked at me in the mirror and
pointed a thumb up.
In
the hotel restaurant that evening, a man sitting with a lively group
at the next table turned toward me, smiling. “I am Bruno. I
heard you speaking in English. May I ask where are you from?”
He wore a bespoke blue-gray suit that would impress in London or on
Wall Street. Bruno (a nickname?) was nearly bald, about my height and
build (that is, average).
“I’m
from the US,” I replied.
“I
thought so!” he said in heavily accented English. “What
part?”
“Oregon,
on the West coast.”
He
said, “I’ve never been there. I hear it is attractive. I
mean, beautiful. I am here on holiday. I will like to know why you
come here, and what you think of Ukraine. Would you join us later in
my rooms to talk?”
Sponsor
Sasha said I might be approached for conversation—maybe someone
who wanted to practice their English. Chuckling, he said, “Or
maybe a spy.” I gave Bruno the number of my room and told him
to call. I decided it might be interesting, and I knew no state
secrets.
It
turned out that “us” meant Bruno and a bulky-muscled guy
I’d seen at the table. He opened the door, looked me over
without smiling or speaking. He pointed to Bruno sitting in an
adjoining room. The vibe was oligarch and bodyguard The bodyguard
stood by the door.
It
also turned out that Bruno wasn’t as interested in my views as
he was in schooling me about Russia, Ukraine and the European Union.
He resented that Crimea became part of Ukraine after the fall of the
USSR. He told me that Ukraine is not a country, propaganda even
today. I listened for a while, then excused myself, telling him I had
an appointment early the next day. It was true, always the best kind
of excuse.
I
had arranged with the concierge, Ylana, to visit Livadia Palace,
where Russian royalty used to spend summers. Ylana, who spoke English
with a New Jersey accent, moved to Yalta after the USSR fell. (My
last day in Lviv, in a crowded BMW to Krakow, I sat with three
Ukrainians returning to New Jersey.)
Livadia
is where Stalin, Roosevelt and Churchill met in 1945 for the Yalta
Conference, trying to out-fox each other while dividing up Europe.
The Palace is now a museum. The elegant white, two-story building
seemed more a mansion than a palace.
A
woman, the docent, greeted four of us—three Russian women and
me. The docent handed us cartoonish-big brown fur slippers to wear
over our shoes, a precaution to protect historic wooden floors. We
entered a large room with a long conference table. At each chair was
a folder—reproductions of the actual briefing papers for the
historic meeting. I couldn’t peek inside them. Hands off.
There
in that room, Churchill, Stalin and Roosevelt signed the Yalta
Accord, described in a multi-lingual brochure signed February 11,
1945: “The Communiqué as Unity in Organization of Peace
as well as in Making War.” A separate room displayed copies of
the San Francisco Examiner and SF Chronicle with photos of
participants: Churchill looked churlish, Stalin looked like Big
Brother; Roosevelt looked like the death to be his in two months.
Stalin’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, Molotov, was not drinking
a cocktail.
One
headline said that although the UN had been formed, “the Polish
question remains.”
We
went upstairs to a room devoted to the assassinated royal
family—photos of Romanov kids and family, paintings by the
children on easels. Bullet holes were elsewhere, in basement walls
where Bolsheviks shot the royal family—unless Anastasia really
escaped.
*****
My
last full day in Crimea, I went to the Yeptoria sanatorium. Ylana
called to make sure where it was and arranged for me to hire her
cousin, Oleg. As with the driver of the BMW from Simferopol, Oleg had
been Soviet military. I assumed enlisted–his faded red car was
a Russian Lada. He was so large it seemed he was wearing the thing.
On
the hour-plus drive through kilometers of blighted industrial lands
and abandoned heavy manufacturing plants, it came to me, it nearly
sickened me, that Anya might misinterpret my interest in her. It made
me want to cancel, to turn around. Oleg spoke passable English, but I
was stymied how to explain.
Too
late. We were there.
Oleg
parked in front of a two-block-long, one-story building fronted by
lawn and healthy pruned bushes–a contrast to industrial
surroundings. In the reception area, I sat on a couch in a long, dim
room with no decorations—no pictures on the wall, no potted
plants. Oleg spoke with the receptionist. In a few minutes, Anya came
through a door at the opposite end. Oleg smiled, shook her hand—how
small her hand was in his giant one—and talked to her as they
glanced at me. She wore sweatpants and a multi-colored sweatshirt.
She
walked to the bench holding the same dictionary and sat, half turning
toward me. She flashed a shy smile and said solemnly, "I am not
expect to see you. I do not have many time because of
exercise." Oleg
took a couple of snapshots of us with my disposable camera.
In
Yalta, I bought a Russian copy of a Minolta 35mm camera, intending to
ask Anya to send photos of her family and house. I offered her the
camera in its box and gave her rolls of film. In the dictionary, I
found “family,” “photo” and “home.”
She
nodded and said, “Yes. Thank you. I do not have my own camera."
I was going to show her how to load film, but remembered that I
stashed $20 inside the camera with a note that said it was for
printing photos. Oleg warned not to let anyone see me giving her
money. Instead, I showed her the instruction booklet. She nodded.
“Good. I see. I can know.”
I
said, “I hope you are well soon,” while screaming inside,
“Stupid! Stupid damn stupid.”
“I
come here so I get better,” she replied.
We
stood and shook hands, me smiling despite a lump in my throat. She
walked away. I stood until I knew I wouldn’t weep.
On
the drive back, I asked Oleg whether Anya really understood my visit.
I said she seemed uneasy. He said, “Do not worry. It is OK. You
did good.” At the hotel, Ylana explained that there was a
stigma about those with radiation sickness. She said, “They are
called Chernobylists.”
Max
White retired from high tech—programming, teaching and writing
technical manuals. For twenty years, he served as Indonesia and East
Timor Country Specialist for Amnesty International USA and as an
advisor to other human rights organizations. He lives in Portland,
Oregon.
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