Marina Lewycka - A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian

“No, she didn’t tell me anything. What do you mean?” My mind had wandered during his ramble. Now I realise I should have been paying attention. “What happened with Vera and the cigarettes?”

There is a long silence.

“Can’t remember.” He looks sideways out of the window and starts to cough. “Did I tell you, Nadia, about the boilers of these ships, how gigantic they were?”

“Never mind about the boilers, Pappa. Please finish what you were saying about the cigarettes. What happened?”

“Can’t remember. No point to remember. Too much in the past…”

Of course he can remember, but he won’t say.

Valentina’s sister arrives. She is met at Heathrow by a man from the village, who has been paid fifty pounds by my father to drive down to London in his Ford Fiesta and bring her back. She is not blonde, like Valentina, but dark and elaborately coiffed with a bunch of little ringlets on her nape. She wears a real fur coat and patent leather shoes, and her mouth is a small pouting scarlet bow. She casts a cool, twinkly eye over the house, the cooker, the Hoover, the husband, and announces that she will stay with her uncle in Selby.

Another crisis. This time it’s the telephone bill. It is more than seven hundred pounds, almost all of which is for phone calls to Ukraine. My father rings me.

“Can you lend me please five hundred pounds?”

“Pappa, this has to stop. Why should I pay for her to make telephone calls to Ukraine?”

“Not just she. Stanislav also.”

“Well, both of them. They can’t just ring up and chat to their friends. Tell her she must pay it herself out of her wages.”

“Hmm. Yes.” He puts the phone down.

He telephones my sister.

She rings me.

“You’ve heard about the telephone bill? Honestly! Whatever next?”

“I told him he must get Valentina to pay. I’m not going to subsidise her.” My voice is Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells.

“Of course that’s exactly what I said, Nadezhda.” My sister is even better at D. of T. W. than I am. “And do you know what he said? He said, she can’t pay for the telephone bill because she has to pay for the car.”

“But I thought he bought her the car.”

“Another car. A Lada. She’s buying it to take back to Ukraine.”

“So she has two cars?”

“It seems so. Of course these people-they are communists. I’m sorry, Nadezhda. I know what you’re going to say. But they’ve always had everything they wanted, every luxury, every privilege, and now they can’t rip off the system any more over there, they want to come over here and rip off our system. Well, I’m sorry…”

“It’s not quite as simple as that, Vera.”

“You see in this country, communists are harmless little people with beards and sandals. But once they get into power, suddenly a new vicious type of personality emerges.”

“No, it’s the same people who are always in power, Vera. Sometimes they call themselves communists, sometimes capitalists, sometimes devoutly religious-whatever they need to be to hang on to power. The former communists in Russia are the same people who own all the industries now. They’re the real rip-off merchants. But the professional middle classes, people like Valentina’s husband, have been hardest hit.”

“Of course I knew you would disagree with me, Nadezhda, and really I don’t want to argue about this. I know where your sympathies really lie. But I could see straightaway what kind of people they were.”

“But you haven’t seen them yet.”

“But I can see from your description.”

Silly cow. No point in arguing with her. But still it irks me that she doesn’t think twice about lashing out at me, even in our new alliance.

I telephone my father.

“Aha,” he says. “Yes, the Lada. She bought it for her brother. You see her brother was living in Estonia, but he was expelled because he failed the Estonian Language examination. He is pure Russian, you see. Talks pure Russian. Couldn’t speak one word of Estonian. But after independence, this new Estonian Government wants to expel all Russians. So her brother must go. Now Valentina, she speaks Ukrainian and Russian. Speaks both very good. Stanislav, too. Good vocabulary. Good pronunciation.”

“About the Lada.”

“Aha, yes, Lada. Her brother had a Lada, you see, which was smashed up. Smashed his face up, too. In a night, he went fishing, catching fish through a hole in ice. Very cold, sitting long time on a snow, waiting for some fish. Very cold in Estonia. So to make himself warm he drinks vodka. Now alcohol of course is not a combustion fuel in the way of kerosene or gasoline that is used for tractors, but it has certain warming properties. But at some cost. Well, cost is this. He drinks too much, skids on ice. Smashes up Lada. Smashes up his face, too. But I ask myself, why should I helping a man who is not only not a Ukrainian, but is so much a Russian that he fails Estonian Language examination? Tell me this.”

“So she bought him a new Lada?”

“Not new. Second-hand. Not too expensive, by the way. One thousand pounds. You see in this country Lada is not considered to be chic car.” (He pronounces it the French way-“sheek’. He fancies himself as a bit of a francophone.) Too heavy body for engine size. Inefficient fuel consumption. Old-style transmission. But in Ukraina a Lada is good because plenty of spare parts. Maybe it isn’t even for her brother. Maybe she will sell and make a good profit.”

“So she’s driving about in two cars?”

“No. Lada sits in garage. Rover sits on drive.”

“But she has no money to pay the phone bill.”

“Aha. Telephone. Now here is a problem. Too much talking. Husband, brother, sister, mother, uncle, auntie, friend, cousin. Sometimes Ukrainian but mostly Russian.” As if he wouldn’t mind paying the bill if it was for talking in Ukrainian. “Not intelligent talking. Chatterbox talking.” He wouldn’t mind paying the bill if it was for talking about Nietzsche and Schopenhauer.

“Pappa, tell her if she doesn’t pay the phone will be cut off.”

“Hmm. Yes.” He says yes, but his tone says no.

He can’t do it. He can’t stand up to her. Or maybe he doesn’t really want to. He just wants to complain, to have our sympathy.

“You must be firmer with her.” I can feel his resistance down the telephone line, but I plug on. “She doesn’t understand. She believes that in the West everyone is a millionaire.”

“Aha.”

A few days later he rings again. The Rover has broken down again. This time it’s the hydraulic braking system. Oh, and it failed its MOT. He needs to borrow more money.

“Only until I get my pension.”

“You see?” I rage at Mike. “They’re both completely mad. Both of them. Why can’t I come from a normal family?”

“Think how dull it would be.”

“Oh, I think I could put up with a bit of dullness. I just don’t want all this-not at my time of life.”

“Well don’t let yourself get too worked up about it, because one thing you can be certain of-it’s going to get worse.” He takes a can of cold beer from the fridge and pours it into two glasses. “You’ve got to give him a chance to have his bit of fun. You shouldn’t interfere.”

Afterwards, I regretted that I hadn’t interfered more, and earlier.

It’s impossible, I realise, to keep tabs on things by phone. Time for another visit. I don’t warn my father this time.

Valentina is out when we arrive, but Stanislav is there. He is up in his room doing his homework, bent low over the page. He works hard. Good boy.

“Stanislav,” I say, “what’s going on with this car? It seems to be causing a lot of trouble.”