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

The waft of Evdokia’s borshch hit his nostrils even before he opened the door to their half-section of the shack that was now their home in this wilderness haven. He kissed Evdokia and his little girls, retrieved his neat, brown packet and laid it out proudly. Evdokia could not resist. She put down the soup ladle and opened the packet, carefully counting each pound, the shillings and pence, then beamed with delight.

“Petro… why, this is the most they’ve paid you, so far! The overtime makes all the difference. Why,…” she hesitated, choosing her words, viewing the kitchen’s concrete floor and sparse dilapidated furniture, “we can save for our own home… one day… The Bilanenkos have written that they have just secured a block for themselves, not far from Sydney. It’s some distance from the local railway station, but they can walk to it!” She stopped, as she noted Peter’s wry smile.

He brushed at his dusty face and sighed, and took two one-shilling coins and gave them to Nadia and Ola. They hugged him as he gently tousled their hair. He turned to eat his wife’s hearty borshch: he could put generous serves of butter on his thick chunks of wholesome bread, and savour the conviviality and relative ease of his simple family life, despite the starkness of their existence in the Glen Davis valley. He rubbed at his calluses. They were healing at last; the relatively easier work of pulling the shale levers and shovelling coke was far less strenuous than his back-breaking work at the Parkes brickworks.

“Dyna, the foreman of the team… Jimmy… you know, the one with the good voice? He has offered me his winding gramophone machine… he’s just ordered a new ‘electric’ one! He knows how much we like to sing. He says he’ll give us some gramophone records… he is certain they will help us learn ‘the English’ better!” His eyes lit up as he anticipated the pleasure of music and song. Evdokia nodded briefly, calculating the cost. The harshness of their existence in this valley needed some softening, and it was preferable to entertain their divergent friends in their crude home than to see her husband drawn in further to the drinking crowd at the hotel bar. She would put aside a pound, as a deposit on this gramophone, before she made her weekly route to the town’s bank, the increasing balance in their deposit book giving her the assurance she needed that one day they would have security, a home to call their own. For this, she was prepared to struggle in this strange existence, attend to her many chickens and ducks, and tend the growing garden of vegetables that thrived, surprisingly easily, in this black volcanic and alluvial soil among the sandstone rocks and soaring cliffs.

“Look, Tato! See what our friends gave us!” Nadia opened her hand, revealing a little ‘fizzer stick’, attached to a wick. “My friend Selena and her sisters and brothers already have a dozen each! They bought them with their pocket money… and I’ll buy some too, with my shilling!” Peter puzzled at this purchase. “Oh, Tato… this is for the Bonfire Night party, next week. Our teachers told us,” she stood erect as she proudly mimicked, “we will be celebrating our Empire Day!” She shrugged her young shoulders, unable yet to understand its import. “But it must be very important… Selena showed me the big boxes of fireworks her family have hidden!”

Peter bit at his lip wondering at the wisdom of a large family living in such cramped conditions in a flimsy timber shack, higher up the rocky incline, which no fire brigade could reach. He had already seen, close-up, in this seemingly pristine valley, the devastation of a mine cave-in caused by a small ill-placed gelignite stick, of the irreparable damage to men’s fingers, limbs, even life. He shook his head, felt a sense of discomfort as the gut feeling of danger warned him. He knew his daughters daily ran up to play with these friendly near-neighbours and knew, too, how a child’s innocent prank could become disastrous. And the adults were smokers. He knew he had to act quickly. He would ask his foreman, Jimmy, what was best to do, at the next shift day. For now, he had to stand his ground with his little daughters.

“Nadia, Ola, come here,” he stood tall before them, legs astride. They knew their father’s firm voice and commanding pose meant he was to be obeyed. “You must promise me, moyi malenki, that you will stay away from your friend’s house until the Bonfire Night… until the fireworks are lit.” He dropped his voice, expression serious. “Do you understand?” They nodded their promise, returned to the family’s bedroom to dream of the bright fireworks display that their friends had described in such vivid detail.

The night was crisp and clear, the heavens scattered with its myriad of stars as he adjusted the bedroom window curtain. The nightly owl hooted its haunting call from its tree-nook nearby. All was quiet; all was peaceful with the world.

A rustling, crackling sound startled Peter from his sleep. He instinctively jumped out of bed: the reminder of the bombings and infernos of Berlin and Wilhelmshaven were too entrenched for him to forget. He ran to the kitchen, threw open the door. Not far above them, among trees and rocks, the hill was in flames, brilliant reds and gold and spurting shards of blue and green shot up into the night sky as if they were being sent into space. Already the fumes and hot ash were descending towards their shack.

“Dyna!” he rushed back to the bedroom. “Grab the children! Grab some blankets! I’ll warn Christov!” He banged the share-house back door. “Christov! Christov!” He wrenched open the weary door-handle, rushed into the adjoining neighbour’s rooms.

As Evdokia and the children huddled at a safer distance with their neighbour’s family, Peter and Christov ran with buckets towards the flames. Through the dark and the billowing black haze he could make out some figures cowering behind rocks for protection. He attempted to count the numbers, without success. Three generations of larrikin Australians lived happily and freely in that shack. He shuddered and swallowed, felt ill as he stood still at last, his buckets of water hissing uselessly back at him and Christov. The head-count of this generous, laughing Australian family, who had welcomed him and Evdokia and their children so openly upon their arrival, could not be made until dawn. He feared, with the sickening certain knowledge wrought from his own long fire-fighting experience in the Wilhelmshaven camp, that not all these souls would greet him and his family on the morrow. Empire Day had prematurely and unwittingly claimed its victims, in nature’s haven, tampered by man.

The bus sidled into a resting bay at the hub of unpretentious Market Street, its chromed grille nuzzling the long sunburnt grass as if it were chafing to free its choked-up nostrils of insects and dust. With the handrail as support, Peter swung clear of the bus steps, desperate to smell the crisp air again after a jostling twenty mile journey of gravelled road from Capertee junction.

He sauntered along the grassy pathway, regaining his composure, and breathed in the pristine air of the verdant ferns and eucalypts of the Glen Davis valley. His new white shirt, purchased at the general store which took pride of place in this street, was now flecked with yellow dust and damp with perspiration, but he grinned as he savoured those minutes of success in the solicitor’s office in Sydney the previous day. He breathed, in relief, as he re-lived those moments of a certain empowerment, which he had not experienced for so long, as he placed his signature on the document of purchase for their block of land on the city’s outskirts.