Oksana Zabuzhko - The Museum of Abandoned Secrets

and now she finally will come to me—by herself, without any go-betweens: now, that I can finally understand her, now that it’s not only she who needs me, but also I who need her—need her more than my mom, more than a sister or friend, more than any other woman in the world—

I will tell her she carries no blame. That she is now free. And also will tell her the war goes on, that the war never stops—now it is our war and we haven’t yet lost it—

and will ask her: Gela, you see things better from where you are, tell me—it is a girl, isn’t it? Will she be happy?)

“You know,” Daryna says into the phone, “she was pregnant.”

“Who?” Antosha’s voice asks, startled.

“Olena Dovganivna. She was pregnant when she died.”

“For real?”

“Uhu.”

“Get out. How’d you find out?”

“From the son of the old GB man who was in charge of the raid.”

“Fuck me. Pardon the discourse. His old man told him? I thought they’d signed papers like in Afghanistan—not a peep about combat operations, if anyone asks—you brought candy for the kids…”

“No, you’re right. It is the same with the GB, but his kid dug it up on his own. As an adult already.”

“Wow. Where did you find this guy?”

“Right here in Kyiv.”

“Mind-blowing,” Antosha says. She can hear him light a cigarette; his excitement spreads through the network. “Awesome. Shit… listen, Sis, so I was right? You’re gonna finish this film? By yourself?”

“Already got incorporated. As my own—don’t laugh at me—film agency. Am now hunting for cash.”

“I knew it! I knew it. I know you, you old witch… you! I’d smother you. In my arms. Tenderly. No. Hats off. Kiss the fair lady’s hand, my respect, my total respect. Goshchynska, you sly wench, take me in, will ya?”

“I…”

“You know you’ll have to shoot more footage! You got that offspring on record yet?”

“No, he refused. It was a private conversation.”

“All the more so!” Antosha exclaims, delighted: he is comforted to hear that she hasn’t recruited a new shooter. “D’you think those twenty-four hours we shot are gonna do it? Fat chance!”

“Twenty-three forty,” Daryna corrects automatically, not yet believing her own ears.

“All the more so! Doesn’t matter. How much of that is rough, come on, turn on your brain now, how much of that will end up on the floor? And now that you’ve dug up how it all ended, with that firefight in which she died, you can’t do without that scene—with or without the dude, you’ve got to show that somehow. Never mind all the other stuff…. How are you going to patch it all together, without a cameraman, who are you kidding? Meaning without me, the magnificent; it’s basically my film as much as yours! Come on, Dara, what do you say?”

“Antuan, have you not heard me? I’ve got no money to pay you!”

“You mean, like, at all?” he sounds unapologetically sarcastic: the fact that she was able to get twenty-four hours of footage back from the channel appears to have instilled in Antosha a rock-solid faith in her omnipotence, the financial kind included. “Hon, you just think, how much do I really need? It’s not like you’re starting from scratch. I’ve got my own camera, and for editing I’ll talk to the boys at Science and Nature, they’re living on bread and water there and would make us a great deal. You do have to cover travel, to shoot on location, somehow, but that’s not much…. You’ve bought the footage out of there—that’s the thing, and you did it!”

This is precisely what she’s been missing—words of support from someone who knows how it’s done from the inside out, first-hand—professional support, the guild behind her, the brotherhood. Their company. Their community.

I’m gonna bawl, Daryna thinks. How deeply, it turns out, this got wedged inside her—the resentment from last fall, the insult of the boys all plugging their ears and covering their eyes at her departure, each of them already burrowing deeper into his own hole. Antosha, who would have guessed? Antosha—Occam’s Razor—the old wino with his eye eternally askance at any show of uncompensated enthusiasm, like a countryman looking at a political agitator—is he really with her? It’s true, they’ve always had an ambient sort of bond, of that easy, unforced kind that emerges when two people feel good working together—and laughing together. That’s not an afterthought (at meetings and on location they always sat together, exchanging comments and snickering); it’s important, it keeps you warm. Antosha—despite all the cynicism of his act—is a warm person, but for him to give up a sure meal on the table and follow her, on a whim, into the wild blue yonder, it is not enough to be warm; it’s biblical—either hot, or cold, and she feels almost as ashamed, as if he’d suddenly proclaimed his love for her: he’s broken the stereotype. So this film means something for him, too? Something more than the number of shooting hours, remunerated according to a contract?

“I can still manage the travel, Antosha.”

This, actually, was what she and Aidy decided—so that if she didn’t find a sponsor, she could finish the film by herself, out of pocket, only they didn’t count on having a cameraman. But this was before she learned about Gela. She needs a cameraman, oh yes she does, and it would make her happy beyond words to have Antosha do it; he’s a wiz at his job—one of those last Mohicans, old enough to have witnessed the glory of filmmaking in the Kyiv-school tradition….

“So there!” Antosha triumphs. “What else do you want? You know I don’t take up much room; I’m skinny and don’t eat much, as long as I’ve got enough for a drink, I’m happy…. You’ll be saving on me!”

“Will you work for food? I can feed you. Like Lukash. They say that’s how he lived in the ’70s—whenever he’d visit whichever writer-neighbor of his, they’d go, ‘Oh, Mykola, perfect timing, we were just sitting down to dinner, come eat with us…’”

“Yeah, that was their way of justifying their own fat mugs. Alright, woman, don’t fuss. I can always find a gig; there’s life in this old dog yet! One commercial can keep me on the road with you for a month, working for food alone, if that’s how skimpy your operation’s going to be.”

“I’m not skimpy. If I get a grant—and there’s hope—I’ll pay you.”

“I knew it! I knew it. Slave driver. If I don’t get you by the balls, I won’t get snow in winter out of you,” Antosha sounds cheerier: the official part is over, and now he can go to the bar. “So what’s next? When do we start?”

“I didn’t know you were such a romantic soul, Antosha!”

The deal has been struck, and Antosha knows it, so he can allow himself to get serious and drop his usual hayseed tone.

“Dara, I am fifty-three. And, like everyone, I have my breaking point. You can tell yourself all you want that it doesn’t matter who it is running behind with your camera—spit it, wipe it, and don’t give a fuck where it goes from there, the stuff you shot, ’cause, like, it’s not your problem… but what am I going to tell my son? ‘Serve, my boy, as Grandpa did, and Grandpa didn’t give a shit?’ That’s from my army days, sorry….”

“He’s in his last year, isn’t he? Will graduate this summer?”

“Yep, from the same ol’ rez. What’s out there for him? Being the escort boy for the goons? I’d rather he didn’t tell himself one day that his father had been a total cocksucker all his life. I’d rather leave something behind. Something that could make him proud of me one day.”

“Antosha,” Daryna says, feeling her throat go numb. “Antosha. We’ll make a kick-ass film, you and I. You’ll see.”