Read Online 2005 - A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian by Marina Lewycka - Free Book Online

into her bank account and she withdrew it all. And he was sending her regular payments all the time she was away.”
    “Really! It’s too much!” Big Sister’s voice hits a note of high drama. “That must have been most of his pension.”
    “And he sent money for the coach tickets for her and Stanislav from Lviv to Ramsgate. And then she told him she needed extra money for an Austrian transit visa.”
    “Of course Mother was absolutely right,” says Vera. “He has no common sense.”
    “He’ll have to stop when he runs out of money.”
    “Maybe. Maybe it’s only just beginning.”
    My father has not only rescued this beautiful destitute Ukrainian woman, but he is also in a position to foster the talents of her extraordinarily gifted son.
    Stanislav, who is fourteen, has been to see an independent psychologist, who, for a modest fee, paid by my father, has tested his IQ, and written a certificate declaring him to be a genius. On the basis of this, the boy (also a very talented musician, by the way, plays piano) has been offered a place at a prestigious private school in Peterborough. (Of course he is much too intelligent for the local comprehensive, which is only fit for the sons and daughters of farm labourers.)
    My sister, who paid good money to send her extraordinarily gifted daughters to a posh school, is outraged. I, who sent my own extraordinarily gifted daughter to the local comprehensive, am outraged too. Our rage bubbles merrily up and down the telephone lines. We have something in common at last.
    And another thing. As Romeo and Juliet found to their cost, marriage is never just about two people falling in love, it is about families. Vera and I do not want Valentina in our family.
    “Let’s face it,” says Vera. “We don’t want someone so common ” (I didn’t say it!) “to carry our name.”
    “Oh, come on, Vera. Our family is not uncommon. We’re just an ordinary family, like everybody else.”
    I have started to challenge Big Sis’s self-appointed guardianship of the family story. She doesn’t like it.
    “We come from solid bourgeois people, Nadezhda. Not arrivistes .”
    “But the Ocheretkos were—what? Wealthy peasants…”
    “Farmers.”
    “…turned horse-dealers.”
    “ Horse-breeders .”
    “Cossacks, anyway. A bit wild, you might say.”
    “Colourful.”
    “And the Mayevskyjs were teachers.”
    “Grandfather Mayevskyj was Minister of Education.”
    “But only for six months. And of a country that didn’t really exist.”
    “Of course Free Ukraine existed. Really, Nadia, why must you take such a downbeat view of everything? Do you think you are some kind of handmaid of history?”
    “No, but…” (Of course this is exactly what I think.)
    “When I was a little girl…” Her voice softens. I hear her fumbling for a cigarette. “When I was a little girl, Baba Sonia used to tell me the story of her wedding. Now that’s what a wedding should be like, not this pitiful charade that our father is being dragged through.”
    “But just look at the dates, Vera. The bride was four months pregnant.”
    “They were in love.”
    What’s this? Is Big Sis a closet romantic?
     
    Mother’s mother, Sonia Blazhko, was eighteen when she married Mitrofan Ocheretko in the gold-domed Cathedral of St Michael in Kiev. She wore a white dress and a veil, and a pretty gold locket hung around her neck. Her long brown hair was crowned with white flowers. Despite her slim build, she must have been visibly pregnant. Her oldest brother Pavel Blazhko, railway engineer, later friend of Lenin, gave her away, for her father was too frail to stand through the service. Her older sister Shura, recently qualified as a doctor, was maid of honour. Her two younger sisters, still at school, pelted her with rose petals, and burst into tears when she kissed the groom.
    The Ocheretko men strode into the church in their riding-boots, embroidered shirts and outlandish baggy trousers. The women wore wide