The day was almost as warm as a day in spring should be, but gray and damp, one in a long series of previous days just as uninspiring. I had to get up and go somewhere.
Near the railroad station I spotted an old peeling kiosk selling beer. Sadly I reached into my pocket for my last three hryvnias. Simple arithmetic said that if I spent 1.50 on a mug of beer I would have exactly the same left for tomorrow’s loaf of bread and forget about any other attractions of culinary civilization. There were a couple of tables and a man with gray stubble was talking over beer to several others like him. I took my mug to a nearby table and, sipping, found himself listening to him.
“We locals are often beaten by fate,” he was saying, “so we don’t always say what we really think, but this time I want to get it off my chest. I’m Ivan Chereban from Uzhhorod. People tend to keep their names to themselves, but I’ve got nothing to hide, for I’m robbed clean by fate. There was a time I went to Siberia, hoping to earn good money felling trees. I was young. In 1968, I was senior sergeant in Czechoslovakia. It was there I first put on a decent civilian suit I had bought with my own money. But my master sergeant from somewhere near Moscow didn’t understand me, he took the suit away from me, doused it with gasoline and burned it. I even cried. Our lieutenant, also from Uzhhorod, must’ve understood how I felt, for he said, ‘Go cut down trees, that’s your lucky station.’ And so I did after demobilization. Later, I went to Yakutia and worked at the diamond mines. Now I work at the gold mines in Chukotka. It’s like a labor camp. You get up, go to work, return to your barracks, play some cards, go to bed, and the next morning you’re down the pit again. And I missed home so much, I finally decided to make the trip. I left, planning to return before long, for they still owed me money. It happens that Ukrainian miners, mainly from the east, leave and never return, and Russia needs miners badly. So they bind them with money. And money we ordinary Ukrainians don’t have at home. Sad but a fact. Back home there was a lot of boozing, no denying the fact, and singing Carpathian songs, and this warmed and softened my heart. We went out into the street. The sweet air of home! We met some girls, they were quite friendly and amenable. We ended up in a bar at the railroad station and the next thing I remembered was waking up in a backyard with no leather jacket, no shoes, no money. Good thing they left me my pants. Jesus, I thought, so that’s what you made the trip home for. You could’ve gone to Khabarovsk. People are more decent there. If you get drunk they won’t rob you clean. That’s too low for them. But I was on my home turf and look what they did! My brothers and sisters!”
His story got everybody excited and they started telling their own. I kissed goodbye to the remaining 1.50, bought another beer, returned to my table and sat quiet and listening.
“The name’s Petro Matiyash. It got so hard living in Uzhhorod, a large group of us went to Portugal. In Lisbon, just as we got off the bus, an ethnic Ukrainian charged each $15 ‘for employment arrangements.’ He was a fat individual. Later, we were picked by our respective employers. The work was hard (no local would accept a job like that, we would find out later). That was the bad point. The good point was that we’d have never earned nearly as much back home. The notion made us see things like human beings, not like Carpathian wolves. Meanwhile the fat guy continued meeting fellow Ukrainians and collecting fifteen bucks per capita. Just like that. No problem, for we’re all scared forever and taught to take orders without question. And there was no end to that arrogant fraud. With time we learned from a fellow in his fourth year there that the fat one had long become a millionaire. No one did anything about it, for no one would just come up and challenge him. Well, we keep silent in Ukraine. So who would think of acting different abroad? The crook was a millionaire, even if not a local. Who were we compared to him?”
A man named Stepan Bihariy from Volovetsk district had his three fingers of vodka with the others and offered his story.
“I thought I’d spend all my life herding sheep in the valleys, picking blueberries. But to get my old-age pension, I had to register as a resident of Belgorod [Russia]. They would pay me nothing in Ukraine and in Belgorod they pay me $75 a month.”
Sipping my beer, I thought it is small wonder that our best gas workers and miners should look for and find jobs in Russia. Every Ukrainian is willing to find employment elsewhere and this is what today’s Ukraine is actually all about. H. G. Wells saw Russia as a state in darkness after the 1917 revolution. It was an apt description: workers from Zakarpattia, Donetsk, and Luhansk traveling to Russian backwater provinces, eager to take any job, because there are none at home – maybe because no one needs them here.
An intellectual-looking member of the improvised party chipped in.
“Tell me who doesn’t know the Uzhhorod artist Vitaly Lyba? Well, here I am. I discovered no one wanted my talent, so I went to Slovakia and they hauled me in for breaching the visa regime (my visa had expired without my noticing it). I spent a month in the local jail, and it was there I realized that people abroad really appreciate creative people. I had a pencil in my pocket, so I drew my prison guard’s portrait. The prison administration admired it. I was transferred to a separate cell with a couch, television, VCR, and music player. They brought my meals from a restaurant. I drew all their portraits. You see, Slovak artists can’t work as quickly and well. They weren’t as lucky to be born in Ukraine like me. When it was time to leave the whole prison saw me off. I even cried, thinking of the road ahead.”
“I’m an ordinary resident of Irshava, the name’s Mykhailo Tsepurdei, but I have relatives in France.” This from the only smiling individual at the table, I saw.
“I sent two sons there. They’re permanent residents now, and they’re so happy! One studies math at the university, he’s among the best students. The other one is preparing for a world swimming championship. Here he would swim probably only when the Borzhava spilled over the banks and he’d have to save his life. I didn’t want them to fight anyone here, so I thought they’d be better off abroad. They are, and though life is a little dull, they can stay out of trouble. Too bad there are only few others like my sons that could get to Europe. The bastards here won’t let them leave, saying there’s no money to pay for the trip... It isn’t right, but I’m saying this strictly off the record. Let others make public statements.”
Volodymyr Pulei of Tiachiv had traveled to Greece and shared the experience.
“I became quite popular with the locals, for I kept a low profile and worked hard. Unlike most Ukrainians, I was offered all kinds of jobs, and I earned a lot. I spent two years there and was about to return home to have a fresh and happy start. It was then some guys from Luhansk visited my flat in the settlement of Potideo. They brought a couple of bottles of Cantali, a good wine. We drank some. In Greece you don’t drink the way you do at home. There’s too much work to do, so you never get tipsy. But I thought I did as I watched my guests pull out guns and knives. They beat me black and blue with their hands and feet. They wanted my money and I had to show them the hiding place when there were no teeth left in my mouth, and I thought I was going to die. They took the money, got in their car, and rode off. The Greeks were very sympathetic, and I got medical treatment free, but I was too weak and my nerves too frayed to work any longer. Why do they let us work abroad? Probably so we can forget all about how things are back home.”
“Everybody in Velyka Bihan, Berehivshchyna, knows me as Fishfood. People are so poor at home! I lost my money and nobody could lend me a hundred bucks to pay my fare to Chukotka through Moscow – I herd reindeer there. I was lucky, a friend took pity on me, and sold his car, and the two of us went to Moscow. Things are much better in Chukotka, even after the Soviet Union fell apart and the ethnic minorities degraded without their previous social and cultural facilities. The Chukchi men are crazy about firewater, they get dead drunk and don’t give a damn about the deer, so the poor animals have to be looked after by visiting herders. Where do they come from? Ukraine, of course. Various regions. Well they might, for their own cows are slaughtered or killed by disease, so off they go and become reindeer herders in Chukotka. Once, chasing the local deer, the size of our large dogs, I thought that before long our Ukrainian cows surviving all those reforms in our drunkenly ruled state would have to be tended by Chinese cowboys. There are so many people living in China, and their government is looking for jobs to keep them occupied all over the world. And they’re doing just fine. As for us, no one’s going to help us except ourselves.”
The party was over. I was on my way home, looking at brightly lit cafeterias with yesterday’s graduates everywhere: physically underdeveloped boys, but the smart and arrogant girls do not seem to mind one bit. That is not the important thing for them. They must enjoy watching the gloomy miserable environs through the windows, sitting warm and comfortably.
I was headed for my cold rented room, knowing that I would get warm under two blankets bought as “humanitarian aid” from a flood- stricken wholesaler at the Uzhhorod bazaar.
True enough, I got warm under the blankets and fell asleep. And saw a dream: tundra and deer being chased by merry Ukrainians sporting embroidered shirts.
