Tailor of Inverness, The (15 page)

At lunchtime, we did manage to stop at a little hut where another woman was cooking
placki
and selling bottles of beer and lemonade. We sat next to a group of students, all learning English and anticipating the job opportunities Poland’s imminent accession to the European Union would bring. We paddled on. 25K is quite a long way in a kayak, even with the current, and as 5 o’clock passed, we realised that we had
a race on our hands to make the rendezvous in time. What had started in an idyllic, languid fashion became punishing and sweaty.

The final stretch of the journey was along the Augustow canal. As the river joined the canal, we had a choice, west or east. Our destination was a couple of kilometres to the west. Not far to the east lay Belarus and to its south, Ukraine. I felt its pull, the pull of the unknown, of the low black Mercedes, of the tall, dark, swaying woman by the canal, of the new image of my young father in his Soviet uniform, of the creased and worn envelope from his old cousin Bogdan, of the
mysterious
birthplace of my father which was now so tantalisingly close. It was as if this whole trip had been a staging post, an inevitable part of my longer journey. It struck me that, without fully realising it, I had been engaged for most of my life in an investigation, to know my father and, by doing so, to know myself. As Virginia and I ploughed westward through the water against the current of my thoughts, to meet the driver who would return us to Augustow, I knew that I now had no choice. I had to go to Ukraine.

On the 29
^th
of May 2003, the day that Bogdan and Halyna sent their letter to me, the sun was shining in Edinburgh and the temperature was high. I spent most of the day getting cars fixed on the council housing estate of Lochend with Nureddin from Sudan. I had skidded my car into his, coming down steep, narrow and wet Lilyhill Terrace the night before. There was an old man cutting grass with a pair of shears in a garden beside us. He straightened up, holding his back, and groaned.

‘Keeps you fit, but gives you a sore back,’ I said. ‘It has to be done, see how long it gets? You leave it too long and then look at it.’

Was that a Polish accent?

‘Are you Polish?’ He registered the question, wary. ‘My father was Polish and you sound a bit like him.’

‘I’m from Ukraine.’

‘Which part?’

He paused, still wary. ‘Western Ukraine.’

‘Whereabouts?’ This was getting too intimate, it seemed, so
I tried to reassure him. ‘My father was from Podhajce, near Tarnopol.’

‘Pidhaitsi, yes. It’s quite flat there. I’m from the Carpathians.’

‘My father was in a Carpathian regiment.’

‘It’s flat in Pidhaitsi. I’m a Highlander.’

‘So am I, I’m from Inverness.’

He smiled. He was a Ukrainian nationalist, joined the Germans when Hitler, running short of Aryans to send to their deaths, finally agreed to the formal recruitment of Slavic
untermenschen
. He fought the Russians. He was anti-semitic too. ‘The Jews took a lot of Poland’s gold when they fled before the war. If you were rich, you could escape. Some of them are still living off it in London.’

‘But the great majority suffered a lot in the war.’

‘Not as much as the Poles and Ukrainians. Many Ukrainians were betrayed to the Russians by the Jews. When the Germans took over, Jewish women were made to wash the clothes of victims of the Russians, so that we could identify them. They were found in mass graves, they usually weren’t recognisable, although some of the graves were only a few weeks old.’

I didn’t want to challenge his anti-semitism. I wanted him to tell me more. Nureddin was examining the second-hand Toyota bumper we’d just taken from the auto salvage dump at Loanhead.

When the Germans capitulated, he and his comrades were stranded on the Austrian front and taken prisoner, fortunately for him by the British. He was a POW in Italy for two years, then a forced labourer in Britain for 18 months, receiving one shilling a day. ‘Enslaved, like you people were once’ he tells Nureddin.

Then he was a miner in Fife for nine months. He hated it and left. No one would give him a job, so back down the mines he went, for 33 years. Now he was living on his own, nearly 80, in reasonable health. Two months ago, he blacked
out, fell over and dislocated his shoulder. He’s not so strong. Nureddin told him he should get the council to cut his grass, the doctor could certify that he’s not fit enough. Nureddin has a neighbour across the road who works for the council and has fixed up grass-cutting for other elderly neighbours. Paul Batyr, the Ukrainian, was grateful for the offer. ‘Look at us. We’re all international now!’ I said. We all laughed.

I’ll carry detritus and stories from the streets of Edinburgh to Ukraine.

Slivers of stretched candy floss clouds, pink in the dawn, float by as we pass above the Humber Estuary and over the North Sea. It’s a clear, sunny morning at Warsaw Airport. The smell of aircraft fuel and exhaust fumes mix in the sunny breeze as we board the flight for Lwow: Lvov, Lemberg, now Lviv. I’m again struck by the speed with which the Poles have absorbed the free market economy. How will Ukraine compare? What is emerging from the economic chaos, the free-for-all which followed the collapse of communism? There are a few signs among my fellow passengers. Most of the Ukrainians appear to be businessmen, though few are wearing suits. They wear belted slacks, slip on shoes, black leather jackets and open shirts. They carry small, soft briefcases. There are a couple of heavily made up peroxide glamour grannies wearing completely crease-free crimplene trouser suits. These people aren’t poor. They are, after all, travelling by air, but their clothes are cheaper than those of the Poles and the sizeable minority of Americans on the flight, and they have a different style, reminiscent of the ’70s in the UK.

Material poverty is one thing. Cultural poverty is another. In Britain, we have a surfeit of culture, we can be smothered
by it, it’s hard to see the wood for the trees. And so much of it is managed forest, Sitka spruce, commercial, homogenous. Pop culture, pop videos, fame academies, celebrity. A Sitka spruce is, in itself, a beautiful tree, but standing among a hundred thousand? I wonder how far down the road of Western homogenisation Ukraine has travelled, how much the
indigenous
, the particular, the local, the regional, the national has been preserved or adapted through the extraordinary changes since independence was gained in 1991. What a very young country. Independence came on a wave of nationalism and an irresistible urge to break fully free from the crushing grip of the Soviet imperium.

August 1939. September 2003. 64 years since Mateusz left his homeland forever. And here I am, his representative, returning, for him and for me. A new relationship is beginning.

Beneath the brilliant blue and the engine with its propellor, a massive field of towering, bulbous, cumulus clouds, and beneath them, through generous sunny gaps, thin-striped field systems which suggest smallholdings, still the stronghold of the peasant farmer. South-east Poland, or are we now over Ukraine?

A smartly-dressed woman, late 40s, sits next to me. She reads printouts in Russian. I’m curious, but initially, she’s intent on her work. She relaxes after a while and we get talking. She’s a New York banker, making the trip to Lviv to meet Ukrainian financiers and government representatives to discuss her bank’s investments in Ukraine. She has her own ancestry from the region, Polish Jewish, from a town where she told me the Jews were rounded up and murdered not by the Germans, but by their Polish neighbours. This could be Jedwabne, in the Bialystok
voivod
, where the facts of the murder only came to light fully in 2000. Now her mastery of Russian and money brings her back to lubricate the new
settlement
.

The plane lands and we disembark. Before us is the airport terminal, a fine example of Austro-Hungarian neo-classical architecture. I’ve no idea what this building’s function was before it became an airport terminal, but how refreshing to have avoided a glass and steel consumer cage for once. Once more, the American banker is back to her brisk, business mode. She’s separated from the crowd of travellers and joins a couple of other VIPs who’ll be whisked through passport control ahead of us.

Into the terminal and I’m immediately reminded of Poland in the 1970s: a formless crowd rather than a queue pressing towards an under-manned passport control; dark formica and wood veneer; you learn that the thin grey forms lying loosely on a coffee table are to be filled in and there are none in English. The hall is filled with the smell of cheap tobacco, and two officials who look like a sado-masochist’s dream, pretty young women, one peroxide blonde, the other auburn-haired, both heavily made-up with dark, plum-coloured lipstick and tons of mascara and eyeliner, both in dark green uniform and knee-length high-heeled boots.

After a few minutes, I learn about the form-filling with assistance from a couple of Ukrainian English speakers. Ten minutes later I gather that passengers from Warsaw are allowed through to passport control first, before the throng of internal travellers in front of me, so I’m ushered to the head of the queue by the peroxide official, who’s friendly and smiling. She checks that my papers are in order and then the same happens at the desk. It’s so noisy in the hall I have to bend my ear and mouth to the narrow gap between the window and the counter to communicate with the passport inspector. The male customs officers, dull in appearance in comparison with the young women, wave me through and there, in the reception hall stands a woman holding a piece of paper with MATTHEW ZAJAC printed on it.

This is Lesia Kalba, the English teacher who has been translating for Bogdan and me. She’s in her mid-forties, smartly dressed with piercing eyes and a firm set to her mouth, a determined looking woman. We greet each other. She speaks clear, measured English, imperfect but impressive nonetheless. Her role today is to look after me for the few hours I have before I catch my train to Ternopil. She leads me out of the terminal to her brawny, moustachioed and smiling husband, Vasyl, and their little van. Lesia insists on sitting on a box in the back and we drive through Lviv to one of the university buildings, where Lesia’s sister is going through a viva for her doctorate.

As we drive through the city streets, I’m struck by the similarity of the architecture to that of Silesia, and by the condition of the place. Aside from the fact that there are now capitalist advertising hoardings and some modern cars, it looks like Poland did 20 years ago. The buildings, many of them fine pieces of architecture, are shabby, in need of cleaning and renovation. Stonework is broken and crumbling in places. The roads, too, are full of patches and bumps. Tramlines snake and undulate amid rippling waves of tarmac and cobbles. It seems miraculous that they actually manage to function. There’s a fair amount of traffic, but not nearly as much as a city to the west. Most of the cars are pre-capitalist, old Moskvitches and Ladas kept going by owners who can’t afford newer models.

Lesia waits in the university for her sister and I hang about outside with Vasyl, who is a PE teacher, and his brother Volodomyr, who owns a supermarket in Ternopil. We manage a conversation about our jobs, football and families. Vasyl’s sporting specialism is wrestling, which I gather is popular in Ukraine. Lesia returns. The viva has gone well and we drive to the railway station, another impressive edifice, Art Nouveau, which opened in 1904.

At the station, Lesia and I have a good meal of borscht, pork cutlets and salad. Lesia tells me that she also studied at Lviv University, in the ‘70s, reading English. ‘There were twenty students in my class, only four Ukrainians, and the rest were Russians and Jews. It was more difficult to get into university if you were Ukrainian and it hasn’t changed much since.’ I frown and pause before I respond. ‘Really?’

‘Of course! The government in Kyiv is still dominated by Russians and Jews, just like it was with the Communists.’ I’m taken aback by this open hostility, especially the anti-semitism. I’ve only known this woman for a few hours and she’s
volunteering
an opinion which shocks me, in a calm, matter-of-fact way, but I remind myself that I’ve heard this before. Throughout the former Soviet Bloc, there was, and remains a common perception that the whole Communist project was a Jewish conspiracy and that, one way or the other, the conspiracy carries on. So among millions of people, the revulsion felt at the murder of their Jewish neighbours, the mass executions into pits dug just outside their little towns, the industrial slaughter of the concentration camps, was tempered or even cancelled out by an absurd belief in this fantastical, furtive Jewish hegemony. Old prejudices die hard.

I bite my lip and accept that I am a foreigner here, and that I need to listen and learn about this new country and its culture. I have nothing to fear, Lesia is here to welcome and guide me. And I’m not Jewish. Maybe I should have told her that I was. I may not like the attitude she has just revealed, but it is clearly deeply felt and based on some kind of
experience
and the rigid social divisions of a past which remains in living memory. She is showing me kindness and consideration, here to see me safely on my way to Ternopil, and I must respect that.

I have my train ticket, supplied by Bob Sopel, the avuncular travel agent in Manchester who has specialised in travel to
Ukraine for years. Lesia sees me on to the train. Each carriage is a sleeper with its own attendant. It’s the train to Donetsk, far to the east, a day’s journey. There’s one other person in my compartment, an officer in the Ukrainian army. Having been warned of high levels of crime by Lesia, I can’t help feeling a little reassured by the officer’s presence. He appears upright and friendly, and so it proves to be. We set off.

Roman is 40, a healthy-looking man with the fair complexion and blue eyes of so many Ukrainians. He’s a
nipolkovnik
, one down from a major, with 2 stars on his epaulettes (my knowledge of army ranks is limited, I guess that’s something like a captain). He has a 38-year-old wife, Ola and a 15-
year-old
daughter, Natalia. They live in Ternopil. I get the video camera out and shoot the countryside and villages as we pass. Roman is fascinated and amused by all this. He holds the camera as I talk to it. I show him my family photos. In addition to army ranks and family information, we manage to describe our respective houses, discuss our ages and the populations of Ukraine and Scotland, Ternopil and Edinburgh, our careers in the army and the theatre, the castles of Ukraine and Scotland and the Loch Ness Monster, aided by drawing pictures and writing numbers. We travel through continuing expanses of farmland, past houses, geese, hayricks, silver birch, beech and chestnut trees yellowing into autumn.

Night falls and the train slows as we enter Ternopil. I keep the camera out and Roman kindly takes my holdall. I climb down to the platform. Weak, yellow lights and the grimy green trains on either side form a kind of corridor and, as I’m focussing on this, a small man, bald with white hair above his ears, dapper and intent, catches my attention. He has a
penetrating
stare, blue eyes set deep under dark brows. His face shows little expression. It’s Bogdan. And then I’m surrounded by people. As he takes this in, Roman says a swift and discreet goodbye.

To my right stands a tall old man in a baseball cap and tweed jacket, full of good humour and more gold teeth than I’ve ever seen in one mouth. He clutches my hand with a strong grip. This is Mykola, the ‘Nick’ mentioned in Bogdan’s first letter to me, his 82-year-old brother. Next to him, Xenia, his rotund, rosy-cheeked wife, who kisses me and holds both my hands in hers, felicitous and warm, exclaiming how much I look like my father. A great wave courses through me and I catch my breath as it almost overcomes me, steeling myself against it to maintain my self-control. The three old folk are accompanied by three grandchildren in their late teens or early twenties, smiling and watching. None of them speak English and I do my best and we stand on the busy platform as people go by, smiling at each other, pressing each other’s hands, exclaiming, laughing and nodding.

And then there are two others. ‘
Bon soir monsieur, je suis Vlada, bienvenue a Ternopil. Notre directeur attend au theatre et nous devons aller maintenant.
’ ‘Good evening sir, I am Vlada. Welcome to Ternopil. Our director is waiting at the theatre and we must go now.’

Vlada is a sophisticated middle-aged woman, an assistant to Mykhaylo Forgel, the Artistic Director of the Schevchenko Theatre. She is accompanied by a younger man who wears a suit, Yuri, an actor who speaks some English. They are rather impatient and now I feel deep regret and frustration that the Ternopil Theatre Festival is getting in the way of this family reunion. How much better for it to be at the end of my stay, not at the beginning! But I must go with them. I explain all this, although they already know it, and I assure Xenia and Mykola that I will be in touch in the morning. ‘
Jutro! Jutro!’
We part amid much hand-clasping, hugging and kissing. Bogdan sticks by me stoically as we are led away. Yuri carries my bag. ‘Welcome to Ternopil. You must be very tired! I have heard of the Loch Ness Monster!’

We cross a square towards the theatre, its façade a row of Roman columns topped by a relief depicting a group of players or Muses around a central figure, Taras Shevchenko, one of Ukraine’s national poets. A performance has recently finished and the last audience members are leaving the theatre. Bogdan and I are led round to the stage door, up stairs and through unlit corridors to the auditorium, where we’re asked to wait. After a few minutes, Yuri and Vlada reappear with Mykhaylo, another dapper, small man. He greets us in a business-like manner and assures Bogdan that I will be taken care of. Bogdan takes my hand, kisses me on both cheeks and goes. He’s done his duty.