Read Online 2005 - A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian by Marina Lewycka - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Marina Lewycka
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then rats and mice; then there was nothing left to eat but grass. Between seven and ten million people died across Ukraine during the man-made famine of 1932-3.
Sonia Ocheretko was a survivor. She made watery soup from grass and wild sorrel that they gathered from the fields. She dug for roots of horseradish, and tuberous artichokes, and found a few potatoes in the garden. When those ran out they trapped and ate the rats that lived in the thatch of their roof, then the thatch itself, and they chewed on harness leather to quell the hunger pangs. When they were too hungry to sleep, they used to sing:
There is a tall hill, and beneath it a meadow,
A green meadow, so abundant
You would think you were in paradise.
In the next village, there was a woman who had eaten her baby. She had gone mad, and wandered through the lanes crying, “But she died first. She was dead. What harm to eat? So plump! Why waste? I didn’t kill! No! No! No! She died first.”
They were saved by the remoteness of their khutor— if anyone thought about them at all, they probably thought they were already dead. In 1933 they somehow obtained a travel permit and made the long journey to Luhansk, soon to be renamed Voroshilovgrad, where Sonia’s sister Shura lived.
Shura was a doctor, six years older than Sonia. She had a dry sense of humour, dyed red hair, a taste for extravagant hats, a rattling laugh (she smoked hand-rolled cigarettes made with home-grown tobacco) and an elderly husband—a Party member and a friend of Marshal Voroshilov—who could pull strings. They lived in an old-fashioned wooden house on the edge of town, with carved eaves, blue-painted shutters, and sunflowers and tobacco plants in the garden. Shura had no children of her own, and fussed over Sonia’s. When Sonia found a teaching job and moved into a small flat in town with the two younger children, Ludmilla stayed with Aunty Shura. Aunty Shura’s husband found her a job in the locomotive factory in Luhansk, where she was to be trained as a crane operator. Ludmilla was reluctant. What did she want with cranes?
“Do it, do it,” urged Aunty Shura. “You will become a proletarian.”
At first, mastery of those mighty machines that swung and turned at her command was thrilling. Then it became routine. Then deadly boring. She dreamed once more of becoming a vet. Animals smelled of life, and were warm to the touch, more exciting to handle and subdue than a mere machine that could be operated with levers. (“What a poor thing is the crane or the tractor compared to a horse, Nadia!”) Veterinary surgeons at that time worked only with big animals—animals that had value—cows, bulls, horses. (“Just imagine, Nadia, these English people will spend one hundred pound to save the life of a cat or dog that can be pick up in street for nothing. Such foolish kind hearts!”)
She wrote to the Institute in Kiev, and was sent a bundle of forms to fill in, asking her to detail her and her parents’ and her grandparents’ occupations—their position in the class structure. Only those from the working class were to study at university now. She sent the forms off with a heavy heart, and was not surprised to hear nothing. She was twenty-three, and it seemed as though her life had reached a dead end. Then a letter came from that strange boy she had been at school with.
Weddings, like funerals, provide the perfect arena for family drama: there are the rituals, symbolic costumes, and every opportunity for snobbery in its many guises. According to Vera, my father’s family disapproved of the Ocheretkos. The girl, Ludmilla, was pretty enough, said Baba Nadia, but rather wild; and it was unfortunate, to say the least, that her father was an ‘enemy of the people’.
Baba Sonia, for her part, found my father’s family pretentious and peculiar. The Mayevskyjs were part of the small Ukrainian intelligentsia. Grandfather Mayevskyj, Nikolai’s father, was a very tall man with flowing
Sonia Ocheretko was a survivor. She made watery soup from grass and wild sorrel that they gathered from the fields. She dug for roots of horseradish, and tuberous artichokes, and found a few potatoes in the garden. When those ran out they trapped and ate the rats that lived in the thatch of their roof, then the thatch itself, and they chewed on harness leather to quell the hunger pangs. When they were too hungry to sleep, they used to sing:
There is a tall hill, and beneath it a meadow,
A green meadow, so abundant
You would think you were in paradise.
In the next village, there was a woman who had eaten her baby. She had gone mad, and wandered through the lanes crying, “But she died first. She was dead. What harm to eat? So plump! Why waste? I didn’t kill! No! No! No! She died first.”
They were saved by the remoteness of their khutor— if anyone thought about them at all, they probably thought they were already dead. In 1933 they somehow obtained a travel permit and made the long journey to Luhansk, soon to be renamed Voroshilovgrad, where Sonia’s sister Shura lived.
Shura was a doctor, six years older than Sonia. She had a dry sense of humour, dyed red hair, a taste for extravagant hats, a rattling laugh (she smoked hand-rolled cigarettes made with home-grown tobacco) and an elderly husband—a Party member and a friend of Marshal Voroshilov—who could pull strings. They lived in an old-fashioned wooden house on the edge of town, with carved eaves, blue-painted shutters, and sunflowers and tobacco plants in the garden. Shura had no children of her own, and fussed over Sonia’s. When Sonia found a teaching job and moved into a small flat in town with the two younger children, Ludmilla stayed with Aunty Shura. Aunty Shura’s husband found her a job in the locomotive factory in Luhansk, where she was to be trained as a crane operator. Ludmilla was reluctant. What did she want with cranes?
“Do it, do it,” urged Aunty Shura. “You will become a proletarian.”
At first, mastery of those mighty machines that swung and turned at her command was thrilling. Then it became routine. Then deadly boring. She dreamed once more of becoming a vet. Animals smelled of life, and were warm to the touch, more exciting to handle and subdue than a mere machine that could be operated with levers. (“What a poor thing is the crane or the tractor compared to a horse, Nadia!”) Veterinary surgeons at that time worked only with big animals—animals that had value—cows, bulls, horses. (“Just imagine, Nadia, these English people will spend one hundred pound to save the life of a cat or dog that can be pick up in street for nothing. Such foolish kind hearts!”)
She wrote to the Institute in Kiev, and was sent a bundle of forms to fill in, asking her to detail her and her parents’ and her grandparents’ occupations—their position in the class structure. Only those from the working class were to study at university now. She sent the forms off with a heavy heart, and was not surprised to hear nothing. She was twenty-three, and it seemed as though her life had reached a dead end. Then a letter came from that strange boy she had been at school with.
Weddings, like funerals, provide the perfect arena for family drama: there are the rituals, symbolic costumes, and every opportunity for snobbery in its many guises. According to Vera, my father’s family disapproved of the Ocheretkos. The girl, Ludmilla, was pretty enough, said Baba Nadia, but rather wild; and it was unfortunate, to say the least, that her father was an ‘enemy of the people’.
Baba Sonia, for her part, found my father’s family pretentious and peculiar. The Mayevskyjs were part of the small Ukrainian intelligentsia. Grandfather Mayevskyj, Nikolai’s father, was a very tall man with flowing
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