Olga Chaplin: The Man from Talalaivka: A Tale of Love, Life and Loss from Ukraine

The sun had passed its peak. The shadows drifted along the hillside as the captain, at the head of the posse, gave his order to move. The cart jerked, the gentle snow deceiving in its transparency, gradually camouflaging the family farmhouse until it had become one with the growing shadows of the hilly snows.

Evdokia could not know, as the blurred outline of their farmhouse disappeared like a mirage in the powdery mist around her, that she would never again step on that soft Ukrainian snow nor the soil of her family’s farm; would never again be permitted to re-visit the family place which had given her so much security and strength and love. Now, this long line of black-coated militia soldiers was taking them to a place unknown. The militia line had turned into a malevolent serpent, doing the bidding of the cowardly Stalin, taking them ever closer to ultimate disaster.

“Hanya, moya Hanya,” Peter moaned as he knelt on his knee in homage as his hand gently caressed the hardening clumps of clay: yearning, reaching to Hanya, to Mischa. Time stood still as he grappled with the suffering. He was almost oblivious of the sounds around him as life continued inexorably in nature’s purposefulness, obeying a higher command. But all was stillness, below.

His hand searched helplessly across the mound. So small a plot for wife and infant son; so short, so precious the time together, now separated indefinitely. Already wild grasses were claiming possession, the sweetness of the flowers at grave’s head crushed by nature’s willful servants. He rested his head on the wilting blooms and closed his eyes, blanking out the cold reality as he drew in the last of their youthful scents.

“Hanya,” he whispered hoarsely, in vain. His aching heart could carry no more. Now, in the depth of grief, painful logic reminded him the hoped-for spiritual miracle would not eventuate. The pulsating life above, the cold below, separated them in finality. “Moya lybenka… what can I do now?” The stillness below, the silence, gave their reply. His grieving shoulders shuddered, his sobs, tears, unable to penetrate the hardened soil to stir the permanently sleeping heart.

He raised his wet-streaked face from grave’s side, the early summer sun almost blinding him in a shimmer of life-giving energy. Despite his grief and the crushing pain, he observed in wonder as he gazed across from this hurriedly-extended section of the ancient Kylapchin cemetery. Everywhere, life and death were intertwined and vied for dominance. Nearby, from the shaded sanctuary of trees protecting the tiny chapel that delineated old and new ground, a flock of birds, impervious to the sorrow below, soared exuberantly, oblivious of his anguish and the anguish of other mourners burying their dead. The monstrous disease that was called starvation and privation, so callously meted out by Stalin and his henchmen, was already ravaging the countryside as it bit harder and harder into this part of the Sumskaya Oblast region. It cared not which victims it took in its wake, and was now fired up to fever pitch with the ‘excesses’ of the new regime.

The starkness between the living and the dead was too evident. The immaculate beauty of morning sunlight unswervingly giving life to his beloved Ukraine was almost painful in its perfection. It was as inviting, as warm and complete above, as the depth of cold and darkness below. He bowed his head in contemplation. The permanence of death was almost incomprehensible to his tortured psyche. There was no meeting of the souls, in this world. His pleas, his willing it from every part of him, could not stir Hanya’s soul to return.

At last, he crossed himself and prayed again for the souls of his lost loved ones. “Hospode Pomelyue,” he whispered. “We will be together again one day when our destiny tells us.” Gathering his strength, he continued. “Hanya,” he whispered as if afraid his words, like his beautiful wife, would be taken from him, “I pledged you my heart, and you have it. I pledged you I would keep you with me, always. But it was not to be. You were taken on a different path; I know not why. I could not save you. In that, I failed.”

He paused, head bent. He searched for words of comfort that his countrymen’s heroic poet Taras Shevchenko had beseeched and whispered from his own tortured soul so long ago. “Hanya… yet if my heart breaks completely, I will not keep our joyful memories, that made our lives true, and so I too will die from the pain. I must hold my heart together, for a future to be, for your spirit to live on with me.” He kissed the clod of clay and placed it among the wilting flowers. Silently, with head still bent, and as though he were acknowledging a passing spiritual blessing, he crossed himself again, then rose, almost dazed by the light and by the vibrancy of life striving to survive around him above the morbid soil: nature, life, pulling him, forcing him back from the abyss of despair.

From the shaded sanctuary his horse neighed the arrival of another rider. Peter squinted, saw it was his close friend Mikhaelo. He stood up and, straightening his rough linen shirt, wiped his streaked face with its sleeve.

“Petro!” Mikhaelo called as he strode towards him to the new, dishevelled mounds, boot-high grasses whipped aside by his strides. “Petro, my friend… you won’t go any faster to heaven than the rest of us, you know, even with all your praying! Come, man! I have a message from your father. He has a visitor waiting. I promised him I’d return with you!” Mikhaelo’s younger, watchful eyes belied his jocular tone. He had not yet lost such a loved one, but he felt the grief of his life-long friend.

“Dobre, dobre,” Peter smiled, grateful for his friend’s arrival. He turned to look one last time at the mound, beneath which lay so much spent joy, so much hoped-for future with his precious Hanya. Through Vanya, their surviving little son, her spirit, and Mischa’s, would be felt. His yearning, broken heart had somehow hung on amid inconceivable pain. He could not contemplate it now, but perhaps one day his heart might heal and learn to love again. It would be a sad, solitary mission, but it had to be.

He placed his hand on Mikhaelo’s shoulder in acknowledgement and walked back to his trusty horse, then led it down a gentle slope to the nearby spring. The willow’s leaves, playfully dancing with the cleansing water, dropped their tears of comfort as he drank the pure elixir of life. Face still wet, tears of sorrow blending with tears of hope, he took the horse’s reins and expertly steered it from the ancient cemetery, from the memories, the riven pain, in the direction of hope and the future.

He knew not what form it would take. He would have his beautiful Hanya’s spirit to guide him and Vanya’s life to protect and save. There were no promises, no assurances for him in this quest. Just as Taras Shevchenko had inwardly wept for his fledgling country’s soul, so he too inwardly wept for his fledgling family, now gone. Those tears of the heroic poet had added to the decay of the Tsar’s ancien regime; his tears now added to the decay caused by Stalin’s perverse cruelty.

Peter hesitated, uncertainty edging him, as he recognised the dilapidated buggy in his father’s courtyard. Dismounting, he motioned to Mikhaelo to go into the farmhouse, forcing himself to contain his emotions as he prepared for Father Chernyiuk’s unexpected visit. He grasped at nearby grasses for the priest’s old tethered horse and leaned heavily against the crusted wall as he observed this creature of burden. The sun’s darting rays, captured in the courtyard, flashed at him, stinging his eyes. Even now, pain still blistered him. Two seasons ago, such elated joy… now, two seasons of unfathomable searing. In these few moments, in the privacy of his father’s courtyard, he held back a sob as he again felt the silent pain, yet forced himself once more to contain his emotions, to allow logic to rule his head, his being.