Marina Lewycka: Two Caravans

“Tell me, Vitaly, how has life turned you into a cynic at such a young age?”

Vitaly shrugs. “Maybe I was not born to be a loser, like you, Tomek.”

“Maybe there is still time enough for you.”

How can he explain to this impatient young man what it has taken him forty-five years to learn-that loss is an essential part of the human condition? That even as we are moving on down that long lonesome road, destination unknown, there is always something we are leaving behind us. He has been trying all morning to compose a song about it.

Putting down the binoculars, he reaches for his guitar, and begins to strum, tapping his feet in time to the rhythm.

There once was a man, who roamed the world o’er .

Was he seeking for riches, or glory, or power?

Was he seeking for meaning, or truth or &hellip ;

This is where he gets stuck. What else is that wretched man seeking?

Vitaly gives him a pitying look.

“Obviously he is looking for someone to fuck.”

He picks up the binoculars, turns the knob for focus and gives a soft whistle between his teeth.

“Hey, black man,” he calls to Emanuel in English, “come and see. Look, it’s just like the little panties thatjordan is wearing in my poster. Or maybe…”-he adjusts the binoculars again-“…maybe it is one of those string nets they use to package salami.”

Emanuel is sitting at the table, chewing a pencil for inspiration as he composes a letter.

“Leave him, leave him,” says Tomasz. “Emanuel is not like you. He is…” He strums a couple of chords on his guitar as he searches for the right phrase. “In this box of fibreglass, he is searching for a gem.”

“Another loser,” snorts Vitaly.

Dear sister,

Thank you for the money you sent for with its help I have now journeyed from Zomba to Lilongwe and so on via Nairobi into England. I hope these words will receive you for when I came to the address you gave in London a different name was written at the door and nobody knew of your wherebeing. So being needful of money I came into the way of strawberry-picking and I am staying in a caravan with three mzungus here in Kent. I am striving with all my might to improve my English but this English tongue is like a coilsome and slippery serpent and I am always trying to remember the lessons of Sister Benedicta and her harsh staff of chastisement. So I write hopefully that you will come there and find these letters and unleash your corrections upon them dear sister. And so I will inform you regulally of my adventures within this rainstruck land.

From your beloving brother Emanuel!

The women’s caravan is already in sunshine, but the sun hasn’t yet reached the bottom of the field, where Andriy is standing at the kitchen end of the men’s caravan, trying to light the gas to make some tea. The coarse banter from the sleeping room irritates him, and he doesn’t want the other three to notice the agitation that has come over him since yesterday. He lights another match. It flares and burns his fingers before the gas will catch. Devil’s bum! That girl, that new Ukrainian girl-when their eyes met, did she smile at him in a particular way?

He replays the scene like a movie in his head. It is this time yesterday. Farmer Leapish arrives as usual in his Land Rover with the breakfast food, the trays of empty punnets for the strawberries and the key to the prefab. Then someone steps out of the passenger door of the Land Rover, a pretty girl with a long plait of dark hair down her back, and brown eyes full of sparkle. And that smile. She steps into the field, looking around this way and that. He is there standing by the gate, and she turns his way and smiles. But is it for him, that smile? That’s what he wants to know.

He made a point of sitting next to her at dinner.

“Hi. Ukrainka?”

“Of course.”

“Me too.”

“I can see.”

“What’s your name?”

“Irina.”

He waited for her to ask-“And yours?”-but she didn’t.

“Andriy.”

He waited for her to say something, but she didn’t.

“From Kiev?” he continued.

“Of course.”

“ Donetsk.”

“Ah, Donetsk. Coalminers.”

Did he detect a hint of condescension in her voice?

“You been to Donetsk?”

“Never.”

“I came to Kiev.”

“Oh yes?”

“In December. When demonstrations were going on.”

“You came for demonstrations?” A definite condescending lilt.

“I came to demonstrate against demonstrations.”

“Ah. Of course.”

“Maybe I saw you then. You were there?”

“Of course. In Maidan Square.”

“In demonstration?”

“Of course. It was our Orange Freedom Revolution.”

“I was with the other side. White and blue.”

“The losing side.”

She smiled again. A flash of white teeth, that’s all there was to it. He tries to picture the face, but he can’t get it into focus. No, there was more to it than teeth; there was a crinkling round the nose and eyes, a little lift of the eyebrows and two infuriating dimples winking below the cheeks. Those dimples-he can’t get them out of his mind. Was it just a smile, or did it mean something?

And if it means something, does it mean I’ve got a good possibility here? A good possibility of a man-woman possibility? Should I take things further? Or should I just play cool? A girl like that-she’s too used to men running after her. Wait for her to show the first card. But what if she’s shy-what if she needs bit of help with that first card? Sometimes a man must act to bring about a possibility.

But then again, isn’t this wrong time and place, Andriy Palenko, to be involving yourself with another Ukrainian girl? What about the blond-haired Angliska rosa you came all this way to England for, the pretty blue-eyed girl who is waiting for you, though she doesn’t know it yet herself, packed with high-spec features: skin like smetana, pink-tipped Angliski breasts, golden underarm hair like duckling down, etc. And a rich Pappa, who at first may not be too happy about his daughter’s choice, because he wants her to marry a banker in a bowler hat like Mr Brown-what father would not?-but when he gets to know you will soften his heart and welcome you into his luxurious en-suite-bathroom house. For sure, he will find a little nice job for his Ukrainian son-in-law. Maybe even a nice car…Mercedes. Porsche. Ferrari. Etc.

Yes, this new Ukrainian girl has some positive features: nice looking, nice smile, nice dimples, nice figure, nicely rounded, plenty to get hold of, not too thin, like those stylish city girls who starve themselves into Western-type matchsticks. But she’s only another Ukrainian girl-plenty of those where you came from. And besides, she’s a bit snobbish. She thinks she’s better than you. She thinks she’s a high-culture type with a superior mentality, and you’re a low-culture type. (And so what if you are? Is that something to be ashamed of?) You can tell by the way she talks, being so stingy with her words, as if it’s money she’s counting out. And the ridiculous plait, like that crow Julia Timoshenko, fake-traditional-Ukrainian. Tied with an orange ribbon. She thinks she’s better than you because she’s from Kiev and you’re from Donbas. She thinks she’s better than you because your dad’s a miner-a dead miner, at that.

Poor Dad. Not the life for a dog let alone a man. Underground. Down below the mushrooms. Down with the legions of ghost-miners, all huddled up in the dark, singing their eerie dead-men’s songs. No, he can’t go down there any more, even if it’s the only way he knows how to live, how to put bread on the table. He’ll have to find another way. What would his father have wanted him to do? It’s hard enough living up to your parents’ expectations when you know what they expect. But all Andriy’s father ever said to him was, “Be a man.” What is that supposed to mean?