June 12-13, 2014
Dear Sean,
I arrived at the Ukrainian border town just after one in the morning, with stormclouds and lightning in the distance. If this were a novel, that would be fraught with symbolism or foreshdowing. As it is, I can only hope that the only thing it portends is rain. Wouldn’t mind it. Budapest was hot, and my cabin on the train didn’t have a window that opened, or a fan. Quite sweltering. It’s been over a day since I’ve showered and I’m feeling rather sticky. My hair doesn’t even bear thinking about. I wonder how I will appear to my future employers, wandering up to them with my huge pack on my back, 2 days dirty and smelling like a gymsock. (My actual socks also do not bear thinking about, or smelling. They are, what one might call… overripe.)
I was glad when the sun set. I couldn’t see the scenery for more than an hour so after the dusk, but the lightning was pretty. Can’t compare to even an medium Oklahoma storm, though. Still, it smells of proper rain here. Cardiff, though it rained all the time, never smelled like rain, only damp. Probably the nicest smell in the world (rain, not damp, obviously). That and Petrichor, petrichor, petrichor.
Got through a book on the train, one I’ve been looking forward to for some time. When Mr Dog Bites. I’ll lend it to you if you like, when I’m back.
I’ve only got one eye in, so my depth perception is rather poor, which makes reading more of Tibor Dery’s short stories rather tough going, tougher than usual. A Greek friend had one eye permanently slower than the other, so when the dominant eye got to a word, his other eye was still lagging behind in the sentence. I can’t imagine how difficult it is for him to read. I would just use an eye-patch, like Sir. That reminds me, I didn’t say goodbye to Alexandros before I left. Come to think on it, I don’t think I said goodbye to anyone outside my course. Whoops. Wait, no. I said bye to the receptionist of my building. She’s always been so lovely.
I had a compartment to myself for most of the trip (a lady did join me later, which I admit, was disappointing), and after the sun set and I was done with Mr Dog, and had done a little bit of tip-tapping on the story that shall not be named, I played my harmonica. Either the people in neighbouring compartments couldn’t hear it, or they didn’t care enough to complain. I made up a new song to go with the lightning—A variation on a theme of John Adams’s Gnarly Buttons. Do you remember that CD I lent you? I still don’t think I’ve ever heard such perfectly peripatetic music.
I need a new harmonica, though. Two of the notes drag on the in-breath. I think some of the inner metal is warped.
Let me tell you more about my train compartment. Right next to the window was a little writing desk, It was perfect really. Like the old school desks, and when you lift the top, you could push it all the way back so that it sticks to the wall and beneath is a little basin with running (non-potable) water. I wish I’d spent more time at the desk typing away, but I had to finish Mr Dog. Still, I made use of it. There was a large wide upholstered seat. Though I suppose it’s not really upholstered because you can take it off and underneath is the same red faux velvet as the bunk above. The train employee gave me a hand towel and some sheets (pillows were on my bunk above) but I didn’t use them. I did lie down for a moment but it was really too hot to be comfortable. So I sat up with Mr Dog and my Alphasmart. Above the desk was a cupboard that opened up, revealing a light that comes on automatically, a mirror, an outlet, and what looked like bottle holders, I took photos before the lady came, I’ll attach them. Pictures may be worth a thousand words, but it certainly does feel like cheating a bit., sort of removes the challenge of description. Jane Austen didn’t have that luxury when she wrote to her sister, Cassandra. P.S. Since I couldn’t be bothered to describe the tea at Mrs. Fairfax’s, nor our niece’s embroidery, I’ve enclosed a sketch… (Cassandra had the sense to burn all of Jane’s interesting letters, so only the boring ones remain. Pity for us, but well done on Cassandra’s part.)
Like I said, I arrived at the station in Chop just after one one the 13th. Quite an unwelcoming sounding name. Again, quite glad real life’s occurrences don’t have to be steeped with ulterior meaning. Did I mention that it was a full moon? It was yellow and had a large halo, though I’m not sure if that wasn’t just because my window was dirty. But it was lovely all the same, to sit in the dark and see it peeping through the clouds. I confess, I spent much of my night journey just staring out the window. I seem to spend much of my time staring out of windows, whether it’s on a train or not.
The train ride, at 6 hours, was still too short. I wished it had gone on, straight on till morning. Trains are their own sort of Never neverland. But now I’m just being silly and ridiculous.
I’ll stop here for a bit. I thought of something to add to a story. And I’ve run out of rambles.
June 16th, 2014
We did the hard hay work this morning, and M. and L. (the couple that run the farm) left to go to Odessa for a few days, so I have several free hours together to write to you.
I suppose I could have written Sunday, because we don’t work Sundays— not because they are religious but because it would offend the VERY pious villagers.
And we don’t want to be offensive, so…
B. (the other worker here) and I went down to the orthodox church to hear the singing. We didn’t go in, only sat in the street outside. I didn’t have my head covered and she had bare legs. It bothered me, but only a bit. To hear the orthodox chanting, it sounded like followers of a cult, especially knowing that they would dislike us, judge us, for doing work that needed to be done or for being dressed the way we were. After several minutes staring at the grape vines that the villagers use create shade in front of their houses, I got used to the singing.
It wasn’t my idea to go, but B. wanted to. She is 40 and East German. So, unlike me, she never had religion pressed onto her at an age where one too young to both understand or protest. Having grown up with atheist communism, church services and religious ceremonies are interesting things, tourist attractions. She said as much. I wish I could enjoy them as she does.
My fingernails are perpetually dirty. Mother would be ashamed. And Sir would chide me for the shape of my hair already. (He was unimpressed when I came home for Christmas from Cardiff, which is first world-land with running water and everything.) I’ve got so many tangles but I can’t be bothered to get them out. I’ve showered once since coming. And calling it a shower is excessively generous, I think, because really it’s just filling up a bucket and taking it outside behind a tarp. One uses a cup to pour water over oneself. I can’t use my normal shampoo and conditioner, because those chemicals go right into the earth again.
I thank the gods, old and new, for the patchy wifi. We have WIFI! And electricity! Granted, not in my room, or indeed, in several of the rooms, but it means internet, and the charging of devices that give us music.
Usually they cook on the firewood stove, but as it’s high summer, that would be entirely too hot. So they’ve bought a little camp stove, like that green one our father has for longer camping trips. It’s hooked up to a tank of gas (that B. never remembers to shut off after cooking.) It’s the exact same set-up as the galley on so many of the yachts I’ve sailed. I would say that it makes me nostalgic, but nostalgia implies longing, which I don’t feel. Primitive toilets, infrequent bathing… the situations have their similarities, but there’s a lot more work involved on a farm, but oddly, a lot more sleep as well.
Oh! I’ve been sleeping! Out like a light just after sunset, and up again after sunrise! It’s rather a miracle, but then again, I suppose not. I’ve read that camping resets one’s circadian rhythm. (Does the adjective circadian describe any noun other than rhythm? Or is that an exclusive collocation? Circadian demand? Circadian impetus? Circadian suggestion? Circadian business hours? I’m sure I don’t know.)
I also haven’t written a word on my portfolio since Budapest. I enjoy the work, in a painful sort of way. But I’m usually so content after a hard spate of hay lifting or some such that when I’m done I’m all too content to just sit and enjoy the not working. Sometimes I read but even that has somehow lost it’s relaxing quality. I can usually get in about 20 minutes of reading once I’ve tucked myself in bed, but I fall asleep so quickly after that. I’ve been reading he same book for the last 4 days without finishing it. This is what normal working people must feel like. How appalling.
I’ve been listening to a Handmaid’s Tale when I’m doing work that allows it. Usually wandering around the few miles looking for the horses in the evening to bring them back into the paddock for the night. That can take some time. Also, I listened to it while peeling and chopping vegetables for the mediocre dinner I prepared yesterday.
Strange that, actually, that I was cooking dinner at all. I’ll tell you the tale of it.
V. P__ovich, he’s the one who technically owns this farm house and lands. He lets the people who run it stay here for free, on account of the butchering of buffalo some years ago that he feels, if not guilty about, at least would like everyone to pretend it never happened. I suppose he feels it’s awkward more than anything. He owns a lot of the village, and knows people, apparently. The Ukrainian version of the Godfather. He tells people to do things, treats them like they’re his to do with as he likes. In our case, since we are staying here for free, it’s awkward to refuse him.
I first met P____ovich day before yesterday as M. and I were coming back from collecting hay from someone across the village, who had it growing in his back yard and didn’t want it, so he gave it to us for free, if we’d come and collect it. We spent the cool morning hours (and the hotter late morning hours) loading the hay via pitchfork into the horsewagon, pulled by the sturdy and powerful Tibor—a stallion who knocked me down the first time we met, as I was holding onto him, looking off into another direction when he spotted a mare (Leyla) and took off after her. (this little altercation cost me a gashed open knee and hand.) Poor thing, she was tied up and tried to run but got caught in the rope and nearly took a tumble, which would have been bad news because, she’s got a nasty wound in her belly.
(The first time I tried to type out wound my fingers put would instead. I only now notice there’s only one letter difference between would and wound… like laughter and slaughter. Something quite unpleasant in the realisation.)
Anyway, that was the first time I met P____ovich. M. told me that every meeting with the man is like a performance, you have your lines to read and you must laugh on cue at his jokes and basically pander to his grand ideas of himself. He tried to make conversation with me, but I didn’t really care that his granddaughter’s name was the same as mine (or near enough, Katya). I just wanted to get out of the sun and get the hay in the stables. P___ovich was eventually satisfied with his peasants and let us continue on our way, but a few minutes later some men in a car pull up beside are cart and ask M. very rudely something in Ukrainian. I only understood one word, and that was P___ovich’s name.
“Who was that?” I asked, once M. had pointed them men vaguely in some direction, with a non-committal shrug.
“Someone from the bank or the police,” he replies. “P____ovich is in trouble with them, and they are always trying to find him.”
“Oh.” What else can one say to that?
The next day, M. comes up to me and says, almost awkwardly, that P__ovich has just called and said that he’d come over within the hour, and that I was to go over there and help him do some work. “Okay,” I said. I know nothing about running farms, I just do as I’m told.
M. told me that I didn’t have to go, that he doesn’t own me and I don’t have to do anything I don’t want, and then I understood. Ew. I asked him what he thought was best. He said that they weren’t in a position to refuse him any favours, but that he didn’t like that he acted liked he owned any of us. The other three were talking in the kitchen for a time then B. knocked on my door.
“I think it’s best if you stay here. That way you can start dinner and bring in the horses while we are away.” Actually, that’s a summary. She went on and on about the logic of her plan, which might have been necessary if she were trying to convince me to do the harder work, but she was trying to explain why I should stay in the house and peel vegetables (that mediocre dinner I mentioned). I was happy not to go, but she needn’t have been so delicate about it.
They weren’t gone very long, but something odd did happen while I was on my own. I was working on the supper when I heard the front door open. I thought it would be one of the workers but it was a stranger. He stepped into the kitchen, were I was struggling with some vegetables.
Lucky I had been peeling; the knife was already in my hand. It was like a magic wand, I just had to point it away from the potato and toward the stranger and presto! He disappeared. When the others came back (not too long after they had left, indeed several hours before horses needed to come in or indeed before dinner, making B.’s logic a bit faulty, but I’m not going to complain) I told M. about the man who’d come into the house.
“He had eyes like this,” I said, putting my hands in front of my face and pointing in opposite directions.
M. and L. were both kind and concerned and asked if he touched me.
“Nope!” I answered cheerfully, and told them about my magic trick.
“If he ever comes up to you again, just hit him, punch him, or kick him. He’ll do anything he can get away with.” I understand that this man had bothered many of the female workers in the past, even L. herself.
“Absolutely will do.”
I haven’t seen him since, though. I like to think the crazy knife lady has scared him off. Who knows, though.
Now I must pause in this letter, to go fetch some drinking water from the well.
I would rather go to the well twice a day with the bucket rather than once every other day with the tub. The thing is too unwieldy to carry and I end up with a fifth of the contents splashed down my leg.
My old iPod (the large black one I got in Japan… 7(?) years ago, yikes) isn’t working any more. Perhaps because I dropped it. Anyway, I’m sad, because it was the only place that most of my music is stored. I particularly wanted to listen to Schubert’s Wintereisse this afternoon at tea (I plan out the music I listen to when I intened to have a luxurious tea, be it in duration or preparation, and today I wanted Gute Nacht especially). In any case, my plans have been thwarted by my faulty iPod. Ah well. First world problem. Still, it’s a pity that all that wonderful music is lost to me. It’s also where some of my old audiobooks are, were, stored. Le sigh.
Let it go. It’s only stuff.
Wait, is it stuff? If I can’t even hold it, see it, like a song or an audiobook, which are more feelings, aural art (set to music or word) than they are items. Because it’s not the iPod itself I regret, which obviously is an object. I mourn the information, the opera (pl. of opus, not the musical genre, but lots of opera music has been lost, come to that), which are unsaved anywhere else, irretrievable. (It now occurs to me what a lonely, woeful word irretrievable is—lost forever.)
I’m afraid that the letters from the next three months will just be about hay and horses, with a few buffalo thrown in (gratis). 
He just came up to me and started licking my leg, brazen bovine.
Maybe an update on sunburns (currently none, or perhaps one very minor on my nose.)
This letter is already over 3,000 words long. If writing my portfolio were as easy as writing to you, dear brother, I should have already finished by now. Ah well.
Give my regards to Ali and Ali’s sister.
Best wishes and all that,
~Katya
P.S. As a special treat to myself I’ve added a dollop of honey to my spot of fog. What shall we call it? Honeysuckle spog? Think on’t.
(On the other side of those mountains is Romania. I would walk there if I chose. Might ride one of the horses there one of these days.)