I was not sure about my bearings in Lviv, so on my way from the hotel to the Tsisarska Kava [Caesar’s Coffee] Cafe, where the late Ihor Bilozir had met with his friends May 8, I memorized notices on other cafes: Floyara (a Ukrainian poet friend of mine explained the word means a musical instrument known elsewhere in Ukraine as bass flute), Pizza Carraro, then a small note reading Ksero (probably the Polish for Xerox) on an official- looking door, then Polisander done in refined type, indicating a hothouse, then Biblios (apparently meaning a bookstore of sorts). After crossing a square I turned left and walked another block till I reached Shevchenko Ave.
Tsisarska Kava turned out to be a small wooden kiosk. I saw a man sweeping broken glass onto a large scoop, then noticed empty window frames and what was left of plastic chairs. An elderly woman wearing decent clothes walked past me, then turned, gave me a conspiratorial wink and said in Russian, “They ought to have burned her.” I knew who she meant. Tetiana Nikitchyn, owner of the street cafe, musician and composer who had been visited by Ihor Bilozir rather frequently. The place was vandalized on the day of the composer’s funeral, May 30 (Lviv newspaper described the pogrom as a “blind revolt of exalted grannies” and a very good local poet explained it as “an instinctive emotional outburst of the political lumpen who knew no other means of struggle”). On June 1, I went to the cafe to meet with Bohdan Hnatovsky, former journalist who had taken part in the May 8 incident. By Lesia GANZHA, The Day Kyiv—Lviv—Kyiv (See page 8)
