Marina Lewycka - A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian

“Cheers!” Mike lifts his glass. “To…” He hesitates. What is the appropriate toast for such a diverse group of people with such conflicting desires and needs? “To the triumph of the human spirit!”

We all raise our glasses.

“The triumph of the human spirit?” Vera snorts. “My dear, that is charming but quite naive! Let me tell you, the human spirit is mean and selfish; the only impulse is to preserve itself. Everything else is pure sentimentality.”

“That’s what you always say, Vera. But what if the human spirit is noble and generous-and creative, empathic, imaginative, spiritual-all those things we try to be-and sometimes it’s just not strong enough to withstand all the meanness and selfishness in the world?”

“Spiritual! Really, Nadia! Where do you think the meanness and selfishness come from, if not from the human spirit? Do you really believe there is an evil force stalking the world? No, the evil comes from the human heart. You see, I know what people are like deep down.”

“And I don’t know?”

“You are fortunate that you have always lived in the world of illusion and sentiment. Some things it is better not to know.”

“We’ll just have to agree to disagree.” I feel my energy draining away. “Anyway, she’s disappeared again. That was what I was ringing to tell you.”

“But did you try the other house-the house in Norwell Street with the deaf asylum seeker?”

“We called in there on the way home, but there was no one. It was all dark.”

Tiredness settles over me like a damp blanket. We have been talking for almost an hour, and I haven’t the energy to argue any more. “Vera, I’d better go to bed now. Good-night.”

“Good-night, Nadia. Don’t worry too much about what I said.”

“I won’t.”

And yet this dark knowledge of Vera’s troubles me. What if she is right?

Despite being rivals in love, Pappa and Dubov get on like a house on fire, and under strong invitation from my father Dubov moves out of his cell in the hall of residence at Leicester University and makes himself at home in what was formerly my parents’ bedroom, then Valentina’s room. His belongings are carried in a small green rucksack, which he stows at the foot of the bed.

Three days a week, he catches the train to Leicester and comes back late in the evening. He explains to my father the latest developments in superconductivity, drawing neat diagrams in pencil, which are labelled with mysterious symbols. My father waves his hands in the air and declares that it is all as he predicted back in 1938.

Dubov is a practical man. He wakes early, and makes tea for my father. He cleans the kitchen and puts things away after every meal. He gathers up the apples in the garden, and my father teaches him the Toshiba method. Dubov declares that he has never tasted anything so delicious in all his life. They spend the evenings talking about Ukraine, philosophy, poetry and engineering. At weekends they play chess. Dubov listens raptly as my father reads him long chapters from the Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian . He even asks intelligent questions. In fact, he could be the perfect wife.

Like my father, Dubov is an engineer, though he is an electrical engineer. While he has been hanging around the garden looking out for Valentina, he has had plenty of opportunity to study the two derelict cars, and he is smitten with the Rolls-Royce. Unlike my father, however, he can actually get down under the chassis. His diagnosis is that her sickness is not too serious: she is leaking oil from the sump because the plug is loose. As for the suspension sag, the most likely problem, he believes, is a broken spring bracket. The reason she does not run is probably an electrical fault, maybe the generator or the alternator. This he will look at. Of course if Valentina and the key cannot be found, she will also need new ignition.

Over the next week my father and Dubov decide to strip down the engine, clean all the parts, and spread them out on the ground on old blankets. Mike’s help is enlisted. He spends two evenings on the internet and on the telephone trying to track down scrap dealers who might have a similar Rolls-Royce in their yard, and finally locates one near Leeds, two hours’ drive away.

“Really, Mike, you don’t have to drive all the way up there, you know. The car’s probably a write-off anyway.”

He says nothing, and looks at me with a dreamy stubborn expression I have sometimes seen on my father’s face. I can see he has been smitten too.

Eric Pike volunteers to mend the spring bracket. He arrives on Sunday in his blue Volvo with a welding torch and a mask.

How dashing he looks with his sweeping moustache and big leather gauntlets, bravely gripping the red-hot metal in a pair of huge pincers and bashing it with a hammer! The others stand in a semicircle a good distance away, and gasp in admiration. When he has finished, he flourishes the glowing bracket in the air to allow it to cool, and accidentally leaves the torch propped up against the toolbox still turned on, laying waste to the pyracantha hedge in the process. Then, fortunately, it rains, and all four of them huddle in the kitchen poring over technical manuals that Mike has downloaded from the internet. It’s all much too masculine for my liking.

“I’m off to Peterborough,” I say. “I’ll get something for supper. What would anybody like?”

“Get some beer in,” says Mike.

Of course the shopping is just a front. I am really going to look for Valentina. I am certain Bald Ed was not lying when he said she was gone; but where could she go? For a while I drive around aimlessly, peering between the swishing windscreen wipers, up and down the empty Sunday streets still littered with Saturday-night debris. I have worked out a circuit: Eric Pike’s house, Ukrainian Club, Imperial Hotel, Norwell Street. On the way I call at the supermarket and load up a trolley with the sorts of things I think that my father and Dubov might like: lots of sweet and fatty cakes, meat pies that can be reheated in the oven, frozen vegetables that are already prepared, bread, cheese, fruit, salad that can be shaken out of bags, soup in tins, even a frozen pizza-I draw the line at boil-in-the-bag-plus a few six-packs of beer. I load the shopping into the boot and drive round the circuit once more. As I am heading up past the Imperial Hotel on my second loop, a green car parked half on the pavement catches my eye. It is a Lada-in fact it looks like Valentina’s Lada.

It can’t be.

It is.

Valentina and Bald Ed are sitting opposite each other at a round table in one corner of the lounge. The door is of panelled glass, and I can see her quite plainly. She is fatter than ever. Her hair is a mess. Her eye make-up is smudged. Then I see that it is more than smudged, it is running down her cheeks: she is crying. As Bald Ed raises his head, I see that he is crying too.

“Oh, for goodness’ sake,” I want to yell, but I stand back and say nothing, watching them holding hands across the table and snivelling shamelessly. Their tears make me suddenly unaccountably incensed: what do they have to weep about?

Then someone pushes past me into the lounge, and they both look up and see me standing there. Valentina jumps to her feet with a cry, and as she does so, her coat slips off her shoulders, and I clearly see what I should have seen before-what I did see before but did not recognise: Valentina is pregnant.

We stand facing each other for a few moments. Both of us are speechless. Then Bald Ed lumbers to his feet.

“Can’t you see we’re talking? Can’t you leave us alone?”

I ignore him.

“Valentina, I have some important news for you. Your husband has arrived from Ukraina. He is staying with my father. He would like to see you. And Stanislav. He has something he wants to tell you in person.”