God in Izium

Out on the street, the sun is brilliantly shining. Still, I am afraid to let the spring sunshine in. There is a smell which creeps in through the open window. It is the sweet, sticky smell of rotten melons. It permeates every crevice of my house, my hair and my clothes. The windows of my apartment in the building are all shut. I hate this smell. I am afraid that tomorrow my daughters, my mom and I will smell like those melons. I check every window in the apartment. All are tightly closed.

My ears are covered with headphones. They play a musical pop collection recorded long ago. There is no internet, no choice. That is why I listen to what I have. My ears are already swollen and they hurt, but I cannot stop the musical marathon. What I fear are those other sounds... the ones coming from outside.

I take out a packet of porridge. Thank God, we have some food supplies. There is a constant subconscious habit of stocking up: tins, sacks of potatoes, and buckets of cabbage. My daughter used to laugh about it. Now, I understand. Well, there it is—a genetic instinct woven into our subconsciousness to survive wars. Every hundred years or so, a bloody human harvest sweeps across the land of Ukraine.

Our local authorities have abandoned us. We, Iziumians, curse them all. We curse in the online Telegram group of a fitness trainer—when there is internet. When there is no internet, we curse along with our neighbour, Nina, who is an old woman. Every now and then, her old flowered bathrobe flutters between the balcony frames, rotted by rain, wind and time. Her windows are also shut. Her curses, insults and promised punishments fly over the heads of the mayor, the firefighters, the janitors and the police... although they are gone, the power of her curses can be felt in our bodies. They are without sound, behind closed windows. I understand her. We elected the authorities, we relied on them, and one morning, when trouble came, the city authorities were gone. They vanished into thin air. Especially, now, when we need them so much. Me, the old woman Nina, and the people who lived across from us, in an ordinary grey building, with haphazardly glazed balconies.

Now that house is gone. Russian missiles took out the poor constructed architecture. It collapsed like a house of cards. My fingers are shaking. I try to reach for my blood pressure pills, but I cannot manage it straight away. My body trembles and I find it difficult to swallow. I know the name of my problem malady—it is malevolence. It is fear—big, cold and fierce. It exists. I swallow the pill. I tell myself that this is not happening to me. Then I go to stir the porridge.

I look at the contemptuous face of the fluffy grey cat, Mr. Vasyl Petrovych. He doesn’t look like someone who would want to eat sticky oatmeal, least of all without milk. But there is no choice. There is only porridge, nothing else.

I will not go to the shop, because there is still that sweet sticky stench of death outside. Even through the headphones, you can hear people moaning under the rubble. Almost a week has passed, and those moans are still heard.

There a living people who are buried under the concrete ruins, studded with rusty needles of rebar. They want to live and they cry out for help and scream in pain. Their endless pleas for help have been with me for a week. And now, as well there is rotten death smell. I hear the sounds, as do all the residents in our building.

There is no one to save them. There is no one to carry out rescue operations because there are no authorities. We need equipment, cranes, excavators, at least a truck. It’s not possible to do this with our bare hands.

I look at the rays of sunshine, and at the young leaves of a maple tree. I want to go for a walk. I am overcome by an intense rage. I cannot believe that this is the reality of what’s happening around me! I remember my neighbour Sashko. My hooligan classmate with whom we used to play hide-and-seek and at-the-store. He called me an eggplant when I refused to let him copy my homework. This friend with kind blue eyes who was great at barbecuing meats and changing the tires on my old yellow Peugeot. Sashko lived on the 3rd floor. Since childhood, I have known his door, upholstered in black Fabrikoid, with a cheap gold-like edging. Now, all this is gone. And Sashko is gone too. He lies there, under the rubble.

This stench of death, this requiem of whimpers, groans and unintelligible yawns reigns over him... And I am powerless to do anything about it.

Today it is raining in Gdansk. A biting cold wind is blowing again. But I walk the dachshunds on their usual route, along neat little houses surrounded by lovely little gardens with flowers and pine trees. I walk and remember how I fled. Three times. The first time was from sandy Yevpatoriia. It was an amateur race between Buryats with machine guns and red-faced Cossacks, dirty and loud. Then, in the minibus, there were the eyes of a Special Forces soldier from Petersburg, cold and empty, the eyes of a homicidal maniac. Next was Donetsk.  I defended the last dissertation on Ukrainian philology at the University of Donetsk in Donetsk. There I was already an experienced escapee, with a legend and special clothes. I jumped onto a moving train car. The train did not stop at the station in occupied Donetsk; it just moved slower. There was also the barrel of an Ossetian Special Forces soldier’s machine gun pointed at my chest. I suddenly realized the huge trouble and grief which was about to unfold. However, it is only now, that I understood all this completely, despite my constant terrible fatigue.

Now, there was Izium. I fled from Izium to Poland. There, I froze. I’m empty and terribly exhausted. I have no will to run again. The Dachshunds barked at a polite mongrel again... Fatigue is always with me; it holds my hands and lowers my arms. Exhaustion is my state of being...

But I also have a dream. I want to meet our Izium priest, Father Oleksii, and shout the truth which I discovered to his face.

I know for sure—there is no God. Surely, if there was a God he would not allow this to happen. There would be no sweet smell of rotten melon in that peaceful Ukrainian town, warmed by sunshine and the aromatic smells of the steppe’s sagebrush.