Oksana Zabuzhko - The Museum of Abandoned Secrets

How could it be, Daryna thinks with quiet astonishment (if it is possible to be astonished quietly—but she can; she is adapting to their ways, to the unclouded, all-understanding serenity of those dead victors who finally won their war)—how could it be? Why didn’t anyone ever tell her that it all began so long ago, long before she was born—that one famine year when Aunt Lyusya got from Great-Aunt Gela that sack of flour that kept Daryna’s mother alive, that that’s when they had met, these two women who have now become family, only Aunt Lyusya did not speak of this to anyone until she died, she had promised not to tell—and did not?

But how do I know this, where does this certainty come from, this sealed, spellbound knowledge—was this also in the dream that night? Gela did not choose me—Gela simply followed her flour to find me. She followed the tracks of the life she once saved—in exchange for the one that had been cut short inside her.

Well then, hello. Can you hear me? Do you have any idea in there, inside me, how many people had to work—and how hard!—to call you forth from the far end of that tunnel?

You know, I’ve seen you. That’s what I now think. I clearly remember that dream having a child in it—a little girl, maybe two, no more, with Gela’s golden braids. She was smiling, laughing at me, and I told Aidy who was also there to see her: I’ll have a girl…. Why did you laugh? Were you happy to see me? A blonde little girl—like the Dovgans, their blood. Aidy’s built more like the Dovgans than the Vatamanyuks, too, only he’s not blonde… I had a dream . Grandma Tetyana, how I wish you were still here—back then, thirty years ago, I was too young to go sit at the stove with the women, tossing logs into the fire—could Mom have remembered what dream it was you had before she was born, whether it was the same as mine? You had two little boys (“lads” you called them, Grandma Tetyana, country-style, no diminutives)—the three-year-old Fed’ko, a year younger than Aunt Lyusya, and the other son, who stayed only a few hours, not living long enough for a name—both were gone in ’33, my unrealized uncles, may they rest in peace. And girls (“gals” as you called them, Grandma Tetyana)—they’re tougher, hardier—“lustier” as you used to say, Grandma Tetyana, people don’t speak like that anymore….

Well then, hello.

Daryna puts the test aside (the lines have turned beet red, but are still there) and feels her legs: ice-cold. And she didn’t even notice when she got cold. A new, unfamiliar anxiety for her own body commands her—for this vessel’s fragility, whose full extent has been revealed to her it seems, only now, for how easy it is to harm—and she starts rubbing her stiff legs energetically: Should she go put on a pair of warm socks, or would it better to just jump under a hot shower—and how hot, precisely, should it be? Lordy, myriad questions pop up from nowhere, stuff that’d never crossed her mind—it’s like landing in a foreign country where you don’t recognize anything except the McDonalds. She knows nothing, absolutely nothing; she needs to read up on this right away, at least look stuff up on the Internet before she goes to see a doctor, and by the way, where should she go? She doesn’t even know that—she’ll have to ask the girls.

The same day, around noon, while Daryna is still on the Internet (she’s had an idea for a new column in a women’s magazine—why the topic of pregnancy is so unpopular in our culture?), her cell phone rings.

“Hullo, honey.”

It’s Antosha, her former cameraman. A voice from her previous life, no longer a stab of pain but of quiet sadness that sooner or later smoothes over the anguish of any loss: that was a nice life she had….

“Hi, Antosha. Glad to hear from you.”

“You’re lyin’. What’s the joy hearin’ from an old knuckle-dragger like me? Yurko says he saw you the other day on Davydov Boulevard with some mensch—he still can’t get over it. Went off his feed.”

Kyiv—always a small town. On Davydov Boulevard—that must have been when they went to visit Ruslana, to see Vlada’s remaining paintings. Nina Ustýmivna’s lawyer came a bit later, so Yurko must have seen them when they were getting out of the car—why didn’t he call out to her? Still, it feels nice to hear Antosha’s words, nice to know she’s been seen with Aidy and the studio is now buzzing with gossip—she used to love that sophomorically careless, permanently simmering, as if on low heat, atmosphere of studio banter, jokes, flirting, “follies,” and parties people spent weeks planning and then months remembering. Kids, she thinks. Grown, sometimes aging kids whose job is a serious game of virtual reality.

“Don’t be jealous, Antosha,” she says, surprising herself with the maternal notes in her voice. “I still love you.”

“Alright, let’s say I believe you. What are you up to these days?”

“Oh, you know… odds and ends. Whatever comes my way…”

“A decent living?”

“Still better than the nation’s average. What’s new on your end?”

“Good for you. Our chickens came home to roost. Whole flocks of them.”

“Must be a chore to clean up after them?”

“You’ve no idea, Sis. Knee-deep in guano doesn’t begin to describe it. Censorship’s worse than in the Soviet days. I’ve got the same ol’ feeling of eating shit again—got twenty years younger!”

“You’re not that old yet, Antosha,” she says, realizing that Antosha has called her to vent. “Don’t write yourself off before your time.” (I should really shut down the computer and focus on the conversation, she thinks, regretfully—but make sure to bookmark this site for future moms first.)

“Heck, I’m not the one doing it; I’ve got help. But I’m getting too old for brown-nosin’, Dara. You know what ol’ Lukash, may he rest in peace, used to say, the one who wanted to go to jail in Dziuba’s place, except Dziuba then confessed, and Lukash just got fired from everywhere…”

“Of course I know who Lukash was—what do you think I am, a total idiot?”

“Well, this was back when you were still walking under tables and I was already working, and I remember how every word he spoke became urban legend…. So when people asked him how things were going, he’d say, ‘I might be flat on the floor, but I’m not kissing any boots.’”

“Nice. I’ll have to remember that.”

“Yep. I’m feeling a little like that myself—not kissing any boots; I’m not a boy anymore to be getting bent over like that. Let their new snot-crop do it, they’ve hired a bunch from the boonies—give them three hots and a cot and they’ll suck on anyone’s dick.”

“That bad, huh?”

“Worse than bad, I’m telling you. Total beck in ze Yu-Es-Es-Arr. For the news, we get instructions sent down every day: what to cover, and what words to use, and about what to pretend didn’t happen. If you’d just insert ‘our dear Comrade Brezhnev’ here and there, you could recycle your calendars…. In addition to yours, they shut down three more shows.”

He lists them and Daryna gasps—all were original programming, the kind that used to make their channel different from others, so what’s left? “Did they close Yurko’s show too?”

“They changed the format. No more live air. For anyone, wholesale, even talk shows will broadcast in recording lest someone blurt something undesirable. They’re gearing up for the elections. Instead, they bought Russian programming—cop shows, soap operas, you can imagine.”

“Are they launching the new show then? They had plans for some grand contest for young viewers— Miss New TV or something…”