A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian Part 12

"She's certainly succeeded there."

There is a silence. In the background I can hear jazz playing on the radio. The music ends. There is a round of applause. Then Vera says in her Big Sis voice, "Sometimes I wonder, Nadia, whether there is not such a thing as a victim mentality-you know, as in the natural kingdom there is a hierarchy of dominance in every species." (There she goes again.) "Maybe it is in his nature to be bullied."

"You mean it's the victim's fault?"

"Well, yes, in a way."

"But when d.i.c.k got nasty-that wasn't your fault."

"Of course that was different. In relation to a man, a woman is always the victim."

"That sounds dangerously feminist, Vera."

"Feminist? Oh dear. I just thought it was common sense. But when a man allows himself to be beaten by a woman, you must admit, there's something wrong."

"You mean it's OK if the husband beats the wife? That's just what Valentina said." I can't help myself. I still wind her up. If I'm not careful, this conversation will end, as in the old days, with one of us slamming the phone down. "Of course, you could have a point, Vera. But it might just be a matter of size and strength, rather than personality or gender," I appease.

There is a pause. She clears her throat.

"This is all getting very confusing, Nadia. Maybe it's not a victim mentality, then. Maybe it's just Pappa who attracts violence. Did Mother never tell you the story of what happened when they first met?"

"No. Tell me."

One Sunday in February 1926, my father set out across the city with his ice skates slung around his neck and a hardboiled egg and a slab of bread in his pocket. The sun was out, and a fresh fall of snow lay light on the ornate balconies and carved caryatids of the fin-de-siecle houses on Melnikov Avenue, m.u.f.fled the Sunday bells that rang out from the golden domes, and settled as innocent as a baby's pillow on the slopes of Babi Yar.

He had just crossed Melnikov Bridge and was heading towards the sports stadium when a s...o...b..ll lobbed from the other side of the street whistled past his ear. As he turned to see where it had come from, another hit him full in the face. Nikolai gasped for breath and scrabbled in the snow for his cap. "Hey hey Nikolashka! Nikolashka cleverd.i.c.k! Who do you fancy, Nikolashka? Who do you think of when you w.a.n.k?"

His tormentors were two brothers called Sovinko, who had left school a couple of years before. They must have been about thirteen or fourteen-the same age as my father. They were big shaven-headed lads who lived with their mother and three sisters in two rooms behind the railway station. Their father had died in a forestry accident near Gomel. Mrs Sovinko eked out a living doing people's laundry, and the boys wore cast-offs that their mother rescued from the laundry-bags of her clients.

"Hey brain-a.r.s.e! D'yer fancy Lyalya? D'yer fancy Ludmilla? Bet you fancy Katya. Have you showed her your d.i.c.k?"

The bigger boy lobbed another s...o...b..ll.

"I don't fancy anybody," said my father. "I am interested in languages and mathematics."

The boys pointed their red-cold fingers and bayed derision.

"Hey, he dun't fancy girls: D'yer fancy the boys, then?"

"Just because I don't fancy the girls, it does not follow logically that I must fancy boys."

"D'yer hear that? Dun't follow logically! D'yer hear that? He's got a logical d.i.c.k! Hey hey Nikolashka, show us your logical d.i.c.k."

They had crossed the road, and were following him along the pavement, getting closer.

"Let's cool his d.i.c.k down a bit!"

They broke into a careful run. The younger brother sneaked up and shoved a handful of snow down the back of his trousers. Nikolai tried to get away, but the pavement was treacherous. He fell on his face. The two boys pinned him down and straddled him shoving handfuls of snow into his face, down his neck, down his trousers. They started to pull his trousers down. The bigger brother grabbed his skates and began to tug. Nikolai, terrified, screamed and flailed about in the snow.

Just at that moment, three figures appeared at the top of the street. From where he was lying, face down in the snow, he made out a tall girl holding two smaller children by the hand. "Help me! Help me!" cried Nikolai.

The three hesitated when they saw the fracas. Should they run away or should they intervene? Then the small boy dashed forward.

"Geroff him!" he yelled, hurling himself at the legs of the smaller of the two brothers. The tall girl pitched in, and started to pull the bigger boy's hair. "You geroff, you fat bully! Leave him alone!"

He shrugged off her a.s.sault and seized her wrists with both hands, allowing Nikolai to wriggle free.

"Is he yer boyfriend, then? D'yer fancy him?"

"Geroff or I'll call my Dad, and he'll slice your fingers off with his sabre and stuff 'em up your nose." Her eyes blazed.

The small girl rubbed handfuls of snow into their ears.

"Stuff'em up your nose! Stuff'em up your nose!" she shrilled.

The brothers squirmed and thrashed about, grinning and grabbing at the girls. There was nothing they liked more than a good fight, and they didn't feel the cold. The sky above them was blue as a robin's egg and the sun sparkled on the snow. Then adults appeared on the scene. There was shouting and sticks were waved. The Sovinkos pulled their caps over their ears and darted away, fast and agile as snow hares, before anyone could catch them.

"Are you all right?" asked the tall girl. It was his cla.s.smate Ludmilla Ocheretko, with her younger sister and brother. They had their skates slung round their necks too. (Of course the Sovinkos were too poor to have skates of their own.) In winter, the sports stadium in Kiev was sprayed with water which froze instantly into an outdoor ice rink, and all the young people in Kiev got their skates on. They whizzed about, showed off, fell, pushed, glided and tumbled into each other's arms. It didn't matter what was happening in Moscow or on the many b.l.o.o.d.y fronts of the Civil War: people still met, skated a couple of laps together, and fell in love. So Nikolai and Ludmilla grasped each other's mittened hands and spun around and around on their skates-the sky and the clouds and the golden domes spun with them-faster and faster, laughing like kids (they were still only kids) till they fell in a dizzy heap on the ice.

Fourteen.

A small portable photocopier Next time I visit my father it is mid-week, mid-morning, and I come without Mike. It is a mild luminous spring day, with tulips bursting out in front gardens and new growth greening the tips of trees. In Mother's garden, the peonies are already out, thrusting up their crimson fists through the rampant weeds in the flower-beds.

As I pull up outside the house, I notice a police panda car parked there. I walk into the kitchen to find Valentina and the village policeman sharing a joke over a cup of coffee. After the freshness of the spring air, it is unbearably hot indoors, with the gas boiler belting away and all the windows closed. The two look up at me resentfully, as though I have disturbed a private tryst. Valentina, wearing a lycra denim mini-skirt and a fluffy baby-pink jumper with a white satin heart for the pocket, is perched on a high stool, with her legs crossed and her peep-toe mules casually dangling on her bare toes. (s.l.u.t!) The policeman lounges on a chair against the wall with his legs spread. (Slob!) They fall silent as I come in. When I introduce myself, the policeman pulls himself up and shakes my hand. It is the village constable, the same man I spoke to on the telephone about the wet tea-towel incident.

"Just dropped by to check on your Dad," he says.

"Where is he?" I ask.

Valentina gestures towards the makes.h.i.+ft door which Mike put up, separating the kitchen from the dining-room, which is now his bedroom. My father has locked himself into his room, and is refusing to come out.

"Pappa," I coax, "It's me, Nadia. You can unlock the door now. It's OK. I'm here."

After a long while, there is a rattling of the bolt being pulled, and my father peeps round the door. I am shocked by what I see. He is terribly thin-emaciated-and his eyes have sunk back into their sockets so that his head looks almost like a death's head. His white hair is long and straggles down his nape. He is wearing no clothes below the waist. I take in the terrible shrunken nakedness of his shanks and knees, livid white.

Just at that moment, I catch the policeman and Valentina exchanging glances. Valentina's glance says: See what I mean? The policeman's glance says: Blimey!

"Pappa," I whisper, "where are your trousers? Please put on your trousers."

He indicates a pile of clothes on the floor, and he doesn't need to say anything else, for I can already smell what has happened.

"He s.h.i.+t himself," says Valentina.

The policeman tries to conceal an involuntary smirk.

"What happened, Pappa?"

"She..." He points at Valentina. "She..."

Valentina raises her eyebrows, re-crosses her legs, and says nothing.

"What did she do? Pappa, tell me what happened."

"She throw water at me."

"He was shout at me," pouts Valentina. "Shout bad thing. Bad language speaking. I say shut up. He no shut up. I throw water. Is only water. Water no hurt."

The policeman turns towards me.

"Seems like it's six of one and half a dozen of the other," he says. "Usually the case in domestics. Can't take sides."

"Surely you can see what's going on?" I say.

"As far as I'm aware, no crime has been committed."

"But isn't your job to protect the vulnerable? Just look-use your eyes. If you can't see anything else, you can see that there's a difference in size and strength. They're not exactly evenly matched, are they?" I notice once more how much weight Valentina has put on, but despite this, or maybe because of it, there is a kind of magnetism about her.

"You can't arrest someone because of their size." The policeman can hardly take his eyes off her. "Of course I'll continue to keep an eye, if your dad would like me to." He looks from Valentina to me to my father.

"You are no different to Stalin's police," my father suddenly bursts out in a high quavery voice. "Whole system of state apparatus is only to defend powerful against weak."

"I'm sorry if you think that, Mr Mayevskyj," the policeman says politely. "But we live in a free country and you are free to express your opinion."

Valentina swings herself down heavily from the stool.

"I time go working now," she says. "You clean up you Pappa s.h.i.+t."

The policeman, too, makes his goodbyes and leaves.

My father sinks down in his chair, but I do not let him rest.

"Pappa, please put on some trousers," I say. There is something so horrifying about his corpse-like nakedness that I cannot bear to look at him. I cannot bear the look in his eyes-at once defeated and dogged. I cannot bear the stench coming from his room. I have no doubt that Valentina cannot bear it either, but I have hardened my heart: it was her choice.

While my father is cleaning himself up, I search the house again. Somewhere there must be letters from her solicitor, information about her immigration appeal. Where does she keep her correspondence? We need to know what she is planning to do, how long she will be here. To my surprise, I find in the sitting-room, on the table amid the rotting apples, a small portable photocopier. I had overlooked it before, thinking it was some part of a computer, maybe belonging to Stanislav.

"Pappa, what's this?"

"Oh, this is Valentina's new toy. She uses it to copy letters."

"What letters?"

"It is her latest craze, you know. Copying this, copying that."

"She copies your letters?"

"Her letters. My letters. Probably she thinks it is very modern. All letters she copies."

"But why?"

He shrugs. "Maybe she thinks to have photocopier is more prestigious than writing by hand."

"Prestigious? How stupid. That can't be the reason."

"Do you know the theory of panopticon? English philosopher Jeremy Bentham. Is design for the perfect prison. Jailer sees everything, from every angle, and yet himself remains invisible. So Valentina knows everything about me, and I know nothing about her."

"What are you talking about, Pappa? Where are all the letters and copies?"

"Maybe in her room."

"No, I've looked. Not in Stanislav's room either."

"I don't know. Maybe in car. I see she takes everything to car."

c.r.a.p car is sitting on the driveway. But where are the keys? .

"No need for keys," says my father. "Lock is broken. She locked keys inside boot. I break lock with screwdriver."

I notice that the car also has no tax disc. Maybe she had second thoughts about driving off in it while the policeman was here. In the boot I find a cardboard box, bursting with papers, files and photocopies. This is what I have been looking for. I bring them into the sitting-room, and sit down to read.

There is so much paper here that I am overwhelmed. I have gone from having no information at all, to suddenly having far too much. As far as I can tell, the letters are not ordered or sorted in any way, not by date or correspondent or content. I start to pull them out at random. Near the front of the box, a letter from the Immigration Service catches my eye. It is the letter setting out their reasons for refusing to grant her leave to remain after her appeal-there is no reference to my father's statement under duress, but there is a paragraph explaining her rights to a further appeal to a tribunal. My heart sinks. So the last appeal was not the end of the road. How many more appeals and hearings will there be? I make a copy of the letter on the small portable photocopier, so that I can show it to Vera.

Now here are some copies of my father's poems and letters to her, including the letter setting out the details of his savings and pensions-both the original Ukrainian texts and the translations have been photocopied and stapled together. Why? For whom? Here is a letter to my father from the consultant psychiatrist at the Peterborough District Hospital, offering him an appointment. The appointment is for tomorrow. My father has not said anything about this. Did he receive the letter? She has copied the letter (why?) but she has not returned the original.

There are some letters from Ukraine, presumably from her husband, but I can only read Ukrainian character by character, and I haven't got time to read them now.

There is more of my father's correspondence-here is the letter from the trainee solicitor about the difficulty of obtaining an annulment. Here is a letter he has written to whom it may concern at the Home Office declaring his love for her, and insisting that the marriage is genuine. It is dated 10 April-shortly before the appeal panel in Nottingham. Was it also written under duress? Here is a letter from his GP, Doctor Figges, advising him that he needs to call in for a new prescription.

In a brown envelope I find some copies of the wedding pictures-Valentina smiling to camera, bent low towards my father so that her fabulous cleavage is revealed, and my father wide-eyed, grinning like a dog with two tails. In the same envelope are a copy of the marriage certificate and an information sheet from the Home Office regarding naturalisation.

Now here at last is the letter I have been looking for-it is a letter from Valentina's solicitor, dated only a week ago, agreeing to act for her in relation to her Immigration Tribunal, hearing in London on 9 September and advising her to apply for legal aid. September! My father will never be able to hold out so long. The letter ends with a caution: You are advised that you should avoid at all costs giving your husband grounds for divorce, as this could seriously jeopardise your case You are advised that you should avoid at all costs giving your husband grounds for divorce, as this could seriously jeopardise your case...

I am so deeply engrossed that I almost miss the sound of the back door opening. Someone is in the kitchen, I realise. Quickly, I bundle together all the letters and papers, shove them back into the box and look for somewhere to put them. In the corner of the room is the big chest freezer where my mother kept all her vegetables and herbs, and where Valentina now keeps her boil-in-the-bag dinners. I stick them in there. The door opens.

"Oh, you here still," says Valentina.

"I'm just doing a bit of tidying up." My voice is placatory (no point in upsetting her-I will be gone soon, and then she will be left with my father) but she takes this as a slight.

"I too much working. No time house working."