May 10-11. The world of things.
The fusty air that filled the train carriage was making me sleepy. Like if the lack of air in my lungs was changing my brain chemistry in minutes, making it believe it is time to nod off. A loud group of teenage boys was keeping me awake:
“So I’ve read that Spartan warriors used to make huge feasts before the battle. They would eat, then vomit what they’d eaten, and then eat again. So I took this concept, but replaced food with alcohol. Long story short, somehow I found myself in the lake in Ternopil in the plain daylight, and scared the shit out of some kid there”
All four of them burst out in bassy laughter. They were around 17 or 18 years old, very tall and robust, short-haired and dressed in sportswear. At their feet – a few sizable bags for sports gear. The alco-trip story was, in fact, a lyrical deviation from the main conversation that went on until the train stopped and we all had to leave. They were talking about weight-lifting. That explains their size, I thought. I was worried about my suitcase under one of the seats, where the biggest teenager was sitting, sometimes jumping with excitement as the story went on. Despite their menacing size and questionable choices, the boys seemed completely harmless. They were polite to other passengers, trying to keep their bulky bodies out of everyone’s way in a narrow aisle, helped seniors with their luggage, and did not smell of sweat or anything, for that matter.
The train from Lviv to Ivano-Frankivsk takes about two hours to arrive at the destination. It is a notable property of the Ukrainian railroad: trains arrive on time, even more often than in peaceful European countries. My tiny family ended up separated by this two-hour-long trip as a result of a long series of various events. I was born and raised between Lugansk and Kharkiv, my grandmother’s hometown, but I attended school in Lugansk, and for most of my early years, I stayed there. At the beginning of January 2014, I visited Lugansk for the last time, but I didn’t realise it back then. The air was tense, and the city was full of strange whispers and foreign accents. I knew something was coming, but I brushed that feeling off. I was almost nineteen, and the revolution in Kyiv had gotten to the point of no return, so life seemed exciting and adventurous. I went back to Lviv, to my studies, to protesting, to everything I loved and cherished, leaving my little hometown behind for good.
Upon the Russian invasion of Lugansk, my mom hastily moved to Lviv. I had to find an apartment for two, and this is where she still lives today. It was a bit longer of a trip for my grandmother, though. She was the one who managed to take some of our family heirlooms out of the occupied city. Not every porcelain cup survived, a stack of old photographs got lost on the way, and of course, nobody could move my entire teenage bedroom to another city like a Lego set. Yet, somehow, she managed to bring our old home to a new home and trick my brain into thinking that I am fifteen again. And this is why we were on that train, next to the heavy, loud boys – we were going home.
Over the last ten years, the home became a rather complex and tragic concept for me, and for many other Ukrainians. It is true that not everyone feels homesick or treasures any memory from their occupied cities, but there is no doubt that most of us crave the feeling of the solid ground under our feet, both literally and figuratively. Therefore, the home becomes a basecamp, a place where you rarely go, but the sole thought of having it takes the weight of the world off your shoulders. And I came to realise that those romanticised expressions about the “healing walls of home” or “people are home, not houses” are only true to some extent. In reality, a home is a collection of things. They are not expensive things like design furniture or golden goblets, no. They are an old and dusty embroidered pillow that you have a memory of since forever. They are tableware that you have chosen together with your mom, and were very excited about. They are a little vase of blue glass with a tiny, elegant white drawing of a girl on your nightstand. They are a collection of photographs of your grandparents, your mother’s childhood pictures, the paintings you made in the art school at the age of 12 that somehow lived through the hell and that now became a source of utter embarrassment. They are fluffy old towels, and you know exactly where to find them in the house, because it is yours.
I am perfectly aware of the banality of it all, but it is what I have been starving for all these years: the banality of domestic space, the quiet loving kitsch of it, the simple passive act of owning the square meters. The apartment in Ivano-Frankivsk is mine, everything inside is mine, and I can go back there whenever I want, without asking for permission. It contains memories of the way life was before the war, and these memories are not in the walls; they are in the things. And they are activated by our presence.
All this suddenly dawned on me half an hour upon arrival, and overwhelmed my senses. We have owned this house for years, yet I have only been there twice, and the first time it was still empty. At the same time, I buried the notion of our old home deep in my consciousness, not to get hurt by it over and over, but this apartment appeared to be a simulation of the previous life that I desperately missed.
I stared at the framed photograph of my late grandfather. Grandma has chosen to exhibit two of them: here he is a young handsome man in the swimsuit, the sea expanding behind him, a slight smirk on his face. In fact, I don’t remember him smiling, I thought. Instead, the smile was replaced by this know-it-all, sarcastic grin. The second photograph was taken on their wedding day. The white of grandma’s dress matches the white of her wide, happy smile, while she looks up at the smug face of my grandfather, who looks like a Hollywood star. These are the two memories she chose to have of him.
He was not an easy man, but he was smart, very well educated, and sharp-minded. He occupied leadership positions in engineering for most of his life, and was very appreciated by his colleagues for his just and honest nature. He could tell right from wrong, but it did not stop him from being a total shithead. He had hurt the feelings of everyone he had known, and hurt them hard. He knew that, and I know he was sorry, but he never managed to squeeze an apology. Years of heavy drinking and smoking cost a total misery to our family in his final years. He had a stroke during my last year of school, and forgot most of the words. Seeing this brilliant man confuse a microwave with a washing machine was tragicomic. My grandma would tease him sometimes, and he would laugh bitterly.
Then cancer came. First, it was in his lungs, then it spread everywhere it could. It paralysed him, made him completely dependent on my poor grandmother. In the meantime, in 2014, the war began, and my grandparents moved to Kharkiv, my grandma’s hometown. The ruin and confusion of that period denied everyone dignified medical care. After sessions of chemo and radiotherapy, grandfather died in unbearable pain, because the doctors could not prescribe him morphine, for a number of reasons. My mom got him some from a friend who was a surgeon, but it was essentially illegal, so it did not last. A few months before his passing, I came to visit. I could not take a good look at him, because I did not want to embarrass him. He knew he looked bad: his head was a bit deformed, he was practically skin and bones, and almost hairless. He was confused and in a lot of pain; his laments from another room would keep me up at night. He passed in April 2016. Before the cremation, he looked healthy, he had his thick black hair back, and a young skin. He looked like a distant memory of himself. A woman I barely knew pushed me towards him, saying, “Go say goodbye to grandpa”. I was terrified, confused and tired, so I just hissed at her to fuck off.
I was staring at his photograph, wondering what he would say about all this. He always had something to say. He was good at interpreting global politics and events, so I thought it would be interesting to just bring him back for a moment and show him all this mess. What would he say? He witnessed the Revolution and the beginning of the war in a half-conscious post-stroke state, so practically, he never really got to know anything.
I am inclined to think that war is also made of things. Of broken things, of saved things, of missing things. It is made of human stories of change and loss, death and rebirth. Sometimes, just death. But it is a history of objects that goes on and on, with plot twists, with tragic and comic episodes, like a sitcom with too many seasons. And we live in it, and everyone else watches. No applause from behind the set.
My grandmother then and now (in our apartment, in her favourite spot, in her favourite pyjamas, holding her favourite mug):