Cheers Comrade Lenin
Copyright © 2007 Lara & Chris Chapman
Smashwords Edition
Not so much about living under the Soviet
Regime; more about disregarding it altogether.
Dedicated to the memory of the family and friends of Lara Gavrishko. Without them, this book would have been a mere figment of the imagination
Cheers Comrade Lenin
Chapter 1
The First Day of Spring
Lara felt the hairs on the back of her neck bristle. The dream she was luxuriating in took on a sudden, fearful distortion. The blissful joy of wandering through buttercup filled meadows, playing hopscotch with pats of old crusted cow dung, and nothing but cries of skylarks, lapwings and the burbling of a nearby brook to keep her company, suddenly shattered. The brook’s burbling took on the proportions of a giant waterfall and a booming roar replaced the bird warbling. Within a millisecond, the thunderous rumble seized Lara’s body and she sat bolt upright in sheer terror. The deep rumble started again. It was above her head, somewhere in the heavens. It grew in volume, coming nearer. She unconsciously bit her lip in terror as she waited for the inevitable ghastly monster to engulf her in an orgy of bloodletting. A white apparition suddenly rushed past the window. She heard a spine-chilling shriek. Wooden window panes rattled, the house shook and Lara’s bladder emptied like a bursting floodgate.
‘Bloody hell,’ someone shouted, from far away.
‘Bloody hell,’ echoed Lara, after her nervous system regained a modicum of control. She pinched her thigh and concluded that she was indeed alive and kicking, although rather damp; furthermore, the winter snows were melting.
Outside the Gavrishko home, a modest stone built house in a remote farming village, set deep in the heart of Ukraine, a dripping effigy of the abominable snowman figure materialised. ‘Bloody bastard,’ it muttered, and slowly staggered through an open door into the kitchen, straight into the arms of Grandmother Gavrishko.
Grandmother Gavrishko, ‘Babushka’, to her nearest and dearest, wasn’t actually waiting in the kitchen with her arms extended for the apparition that suddenly confronted her. She was in the middle, if highly illegal, offering of thanksgiving to the Lord God Almighty, that the spring thaw was starting.
‘Oh God almighty,’ she screamed, changing her mode of appeal somewhat. ‘What the hell…?’
‘Bloody bastard,’ cried the effigy, manifesting itself into her husband by shaking half a ton of snow onto the carefully polished wooden floor.
‘Get out,’ screamed Babushka, grabbing a switch broom. She looked as if she was about to jump onto it side-saddle and attack her bedraggled husband like a dive-bomber. With her long flowing black dress showing a glimpse of her goose fat impregnated boots, all she lacked was a pointed hat.
‘Oomph,’ gasped Grandfather Gavrishko, as she jabbed him in the solar plexus with the handle. He staggered backwards and started a coughing fit. ‘Siberia,’ he croaked, ‘…bloody Siberia.’
Babushka stopped her onslaught, threw the broom down and put her hands on her hips. She stood quite still and watched the poor man regain his breath. ‘Why oh why do you always bring that up?’ she said. ‘Every time you can't take your punishment like a man you always bring that up?’
Grandfather Gavrishko slowly stood up. His deep blue eyes pierced through snow-encrusted eyebrows. The huge smoke stained walrus moustache, now resembling a dilapidated snowplough, twitched. ‘Thirteen years in Siberia does things to a man.’ He pointed a long bony finger at his wife. ‘Thirteen years out of your life, serving a sentence for that bastard Stalin, in bastard freezing snow.’
The fury in Babushka’s eyes softened, replaced by a hint of compassion.
Her husband watched her intently. ‘Seen so much snow,’ he went on, never want to see it ever again, and what happens. I go out to make a path for you…you old crow, so you won’t slip on the ice, on the way to milk the cow, and look what happened?’
‘What happened?’ asked Lara, dashing into the kitchen, her rude awakening, forgotten.
‘I've been avalanched, that’s what happened,’ said her Grandfather.
‘Oh,’ muttered Lara, as though ‘being avalanched’ was a natural phenomenon that happened every day. She started searching for her boots amongst the seemingly endless assortment of family Gavrishko footwear, which overflowed from a huge wooden box, kept by the back kitchen door.
‘Morning,’ said Vladimir Ivanovich Gavrishko, ambling into the kitchen, fastening the dozen or so fly buttons on his favourite brown corduroy trousers. The father of fifteen-year-old Lara, a school teacher and, by his own admission, unsung war hero. He was also the son of the almost, but not quite reconciled gladiators. ‘What happened?’ he asked.
‘Grandfather’s been avalanched,’ Lara told him, not in the least bit interested in family dramatics, and still trying to get to grips with the multitude of knotted laces which held her knee length boots together.
‘Has he by God,’ said her father, ‘When?’
‘Five minutes ago,’ announced his mother, ‘The roof fell on him.’
Vladimir looked out of the window and a glazed look came into his eyes. ‘Had the roof fall in on me, more than once,’ he mumbled. ‘Damn good job as well sometimes, especially when a bloody big Panzer tank rolls on top of you.’
He glanced at his father and jolted his memory forward into the present day. ‘What roof?’
‘The snow off our roof.’ said Lara, skipping past her bemused father. ‘It’s Spring,’ she shouted and ran out, through the back door into the garden.
‘…Ah,’ muttered her father, eyes widening a little. His usual care worn but utterly blissful manner took on a new dimension, but only for a second or two. Looking out through the open door, he remembered past thaws, and he remembered the mud. Thaws always brought mud.
Spring always took him back to mud. The spring mud of 1945, when as Colonel Vladimir Ivanovich Gavrishko, he was up to his waist in it, chasing German Panzer Battalions back towards Hitler’s lair. ‘Christ, that was mud,’ he said quite audibly.
‘Snow,’ said his piqued father, pointing roughly towards the roof. ‘It was bloody snow.’ He looked at his son. He wasn’t listening. Vladimir was staring at his cabinet of war medals.
A shout of ‘What's going on?’ followed by ‘Where’s Lara?’ from upstairs by Lara’s tyrannical mother Irina, broke the spell.
Vladimir rolled his eyes to the heavens and walked to the open doorway, completely ignoring the question. He surveyed the thawing landscape and held his head up high, savouring the movement of slightly scented air that caressed his face. Looking up he watched clouds, soft gentle billowing clouds, scudding across a clear blue heaven. A droplet of water tumbled down his cheek, but it was no longer icy and hard, just soft and gentle. He looked around and saw that the snow which had been cradled in the trees all winter, like over stuffed sofas, was melting. The straw thatched roofs of neighbouring houses, which yesterday were blanketed with unremitting whiteness, were, even as he watched, beginning to appear.
‘I will not ask you again.’ demanded Irina from on high. ‘Where is Lara?’
The spell broken Vladimir slowly raised an arm and pointed towards the garden. ‘She’s out there, he said, ‘Come and look.’
Mother and father Gavrishko, Grandfather and Babushka Gavrishko stood in the doorway, fighting for space and watched Lara, her nightdress soaking wet and flapping around her head performing cartwheels of delight, in the fast melting snow.
‘Bravo,’ shouted her Grandfather, forgetting the avalanche.
‘Hurrah,’ proclaimed her father forgetting the mud.
‘Wonderful,’ shouted her grandmother, forgetting the avalanche and the mud.
‘Lara come in immediately,’ screamed her mother, ‘And put some knickers on.’
****
Chapter 2
The Bunker.
Very early one morning, a few days after spring had blossomed forth; Vladimir Gavrishko stepped outside into the back garden. He was carrying a door.
His careworn eyes searched the heavens for signs of highflying insects; his twitching nose sniffed the warm spring breeze for scents of early opening violets and his frost bitten ears twitched for sounds of marital confrontation. Judging by the highflying swifts, the insects were high on the wing. This boded well for fine sunny weather. Violets were exuding aromas. Which meant the earth was warming nicely.
Vladimir hoped Irina was still asleep; although it would have been nice to know for sure. To be forewarned. He stepped gingerly between her highly cherished herb and rose beds; senses acutely attuned for the bellow of an instant summons to attend his wife’s whims, but nothing. No human sound spoilt the tranquillity. At the edge of the apple orchard Vladimir stopped, looked furtively round and seeing no sign of attack, dived complete with the door headlong into a rotting compost heap.
It was a cunning ploy; at least that was the idea when the idea blossomed.
It was early one morning last summer. The edge of sleep and wakefulness was a veritable goldmine of ideas for Vladimir. Most of the time, he forgot what the idea was as soon as he woke, but this one stuck. He would construct a private hideaway, a bolt-hole, a place where solitude and sanctuary could be sustained without arousing his wife’s suspicions. It was from her that he wanted sanctuary.
Everybody wanted sanctuary from Irina. The demon School Mistress, who brought her demonizing home, and demonized her family.
This idea was so vivid, so clear-cut in its simplicity that he got out of bed, dressed quickly and went down to the kitchen, poured himself a heart starter of mulled apricot wine, and drew up a plan before even Babushka, who was normally first to rise, surfaced.
The Babushkas’ run the homes, and they were, if not the lifeblood of the family, certainly the heart. Every home needs a housewife, if not a wife, so every home had a Babushka. As retired old ladies, they lived with their children and their children, and they lived forever.
‘I heard,’ Vladimir announced two hours later, at breakfast, when all the family had assembled around the vast, old oak kitchen table, ‘That the Imperialist West is drawing up a plan to invade us.’
‘Where from?’ said his father, haphazardly negotiating a spoon of porridge through his walrus moustache.
‘The West,’ Vladimir replied.
‘I mean where did you hear it from?’
‘The wireless.’
‘We haven’t got a wireless… Have we?’ said Babushka, having only a vague idea of what exactly a wireless was.
‘Never mind what wireless’, said Vladimir, somewhat thrown by this small defect in his planning. ‘I heard it, and it was very explicit. The Americans are going to invade us because they are very short of food, and we have plenty.’
‘We’ve only got pickles and a few apples’ said Babushka.
‘We've got a cow and a pig,’ said Grandfather Gavrishko.
‘And chickens and cheese and butter,’ added Lara, his fifteen year old daughter
‘What utter rubbish,’ said Irina, ‘they wouldn’t dare invade us.’ She looked at Vladimir’s face and started to suspect a plot. A plot hatching in her husband’s devious mind. She held her tongue and waited for developments.
‘Not us personally you fools… the country’, said an exasperated Vladimir, frightened that his plan was in danger.
Then he saw his opening.
‘Although we would of course be in the forefront of any invasion.’
‘Is all this leading anywhere?’ asked Irina.
Vladimir looked at his wife and plunged in at the deep end, ‘I'm going to build us a bunker,’ he said. ‘The Germans caught us out last time and I don’t want to go through that again’.
All the mud and misery, thought Lara.
‘All the mud and misery,’ said her father.
He looked earnestly at his wife and clasped her hand on the table. ‘I'm thinking of you my dear.’
‘Oh yes,’ said his wife sarcastically, ‘And where do you propose to build this edifice to my devotion?’
‘Underneath the compost heap, it’ll be underground. It’ll be the last place the Americans will look. They don’t like compost. You won’t know it's there my love.’
‘If you don’t know it's there,’ said Lara, after a thoughtful moment, ‘How will we find it?’
‘Don’t want to find it,’ said Babushka ‘Went into a bunker once, in the war. Full of rats and groping men.’
Grandfather looked up, ‘What groping men, you didn’t tell me?’
‘Lots I didn’t tell you,’ replied his wife, ‘I was groped more times than I care to remember… so I've forgotten.’
‘What’s groped?’ asked Lara.
‘Eat your porridge,’ ordered her mother. She looked at Vladimir; at least it would keep him out of mischief, ‘When do you intend to build this bunker?’
‘I shall start this morning,’ he said quickly, realising that he should curtail the debate before any more awkward questions developed.
During that summer, Vladimir dug and dug; he was rarely seen. So long as he had enough room for a couple of chairs, a bookcase, his precious medal cabinet and a basic support system for a returned war hero and a cunningly disguised trap door made of hessian sacking and compost. Just a hole big enough to hide a barrel or two of highly potent homemade spirit called samogon. Here he could entertain like-minded cronies in apparent concealment and gay abandon, a subterfuge, away from Irina’s eagle eye. Sanctuary was the totality of his plan. That’s all he wanted out of life.
The manner of Vladimir’s summer life style had not escaped his family. They all knew what his diversion was concealing. Furtive comings and goings throughout the day and night by the village men folk, flattened rose bushes, trodden flower borders and the sound of revelry from under the compost heap brought Irina to boiling point.
By the time the first snows heralded the onset of winter and the fact that Irina hadn’t boiled over was looked upon as a major miracle. Vladimir took this as an omen of her acceptance, although he was the only member of the family who did. The bunker stayed intact through the winter and although accessible only after a tunnel through three metres of snow was dug, it was well worth the effort. In his bunker he spent the cold months drawing up plans for extensions, plumbing and cooking facilities for the next spring.
The rest of the family knew that an explosion was looming. Although Vladimir had got away with his plans for last year, everybody was as sure as hell that Irina would blow up if he continued this spring.
Irina was a sight to behold when she detonated. The explosive rate of her detonations was always dependent on the amount of time she spent priming the fuse, that, and the length of the fuse she permitted the miscreant with, in order to blow themselves into absolute oblivion.
****
Chapter 3
Irina Detonates
Irina Semenovna Gavrishko came to Vilnek on a whim. She had once watched a film at Moscow University, while taking a degree in teaching. It was a propaganda film about an idyllic area in western Ukraine, set in a valley with a river meandering gently through the lush meadows. The village surrounded by forest covered mountains and mantled in rich fertile soil.
Coming from an area in the east of the country, where the only panorama for miles around were endless factory chimneys churning out clouds of black dust and smoke the idea of Vilnek was overpowering.
The schools in that area apparently needed teachers. She applied on the spot, and was duly appointed as chemistry teacher to Vilnek village school. Irina was eager and fired up with Leninist doctrine and voracious career ambition. It was while still overcome with the euphoria of the surroundings, she fell for the handsome recently returned war hero who also taught at the same school.
Yes, the village was surrounded by snow capped mountains. It did have a meandering river, feeding a lake. It was surrounded by forests and lush meadows. It also had one Government store which sold everything the Government allowed it to sell, a village hall and a school. And that was about it. One unmade road, dusty in summer, impossibly muddy in the rains and impassable in the snow. This narrow rutted track with houses dotted along its length was the sum total of Vilnek. Therefore, it didn't take long for the gloss to lose its shine. Coming as she did, from a family of Leninist orientated workaholics, Irina felt very put out, finding in reality, she had actually ended up in a community of work-shy uninspired alcoholics, with no sense of political persuasion, whatsoever.
The primed megaton bomb, that was Irina, ignited when she arrived in the kitchen this first morning of spring and found she couldn’t close the door between the kitchen and the hall, because it no longer existed.
The morning had started badly. She knew that her school Director, was coming for lunch and wanted to look her most alluring. Debonair Oleg Nikolayevich Kuchma, the School Director, was in fact the headmaster. He was out of place here in Vilnek, lured here by the same false promises as Irina. She felt an affinity with him.
Irina didn’t notice the gaping hole in the doorway between the kitchen and hall at first. She was more concerned, not to say highly irritated, with a ladder in a stocking that had channelled its interminable trail down to the knee from the suspender and only been stopped by a mountain of nail polish. This made her well-sculptured leg look as though a hideous crimson carbuncle on the knee had manifested itself over night.
Irina struggled into a rather tight black skirt, which just about covered her damaged knee and stomped off down stairs. The fact that the door was missing was merely the last straw. Irina walked back through into the hall, gave the door-frame a rapid inspection, and howled.
Grandfather Gavrishko rushed into the kitchen. He was grappling with the numerous fly buttons on his baggy, brown corduroy trousers and losing the battle. His favourite trousers were a legend, a phenomenon of a bygone age. There was a surfeit of material when these garments were tailored. They resembled a veritable large dirty brown sack tied in the middle with a piece of string. The gusset hung somewhere mid shin and the flies started somewhere in the vicinity of the knees and ended up chest high. Consequently, the operation of fastening the buttons was fraught with distressing circumstances if just one of the twenty-one buttons did not align with its corresponding hole. This morning, grandfather as usual, sported six or seven that were not in harmony with each other
He was still grappling with the dilemma of vest and ‘long johns’ protruding through various gaps in his clothing when he received a blow on the head by the switch broom wielding Babushka, who had also been summoned by Irina’s shriek.
‘I've told you about this before,’ shouted his wife, taking careful aim with the broom for a decisive blow on her husband’s posterior, which, as he was bent double at the time with both hands over his head, was an extremely tempting target. ‘You dirty old goat.’
Irina watched her father in law’s backside reverberate with a couple of healthy whacks with the broom handle and was even tempted to give it a kick or two herself, but intervened instead.
She held Babushka’s arm as it was about to deliver the coup de grace. ‘Not him,’ she pointed towards the door frame ‘That.’
Babushka, with a wild look in her eyes looked up. Grandfather Gavrishko, with tears in his, slowly straightened and squinted in the same direction. Neither of them grasped the meaning.
‘What?’ squealed Babushka, after a moment or two.
‘Where?’ cried Grandfather.
‘Are you both blind?’ shouted Irina, still pointing through the doorway, into the hall and onward towards the stairs.
They both scanned the vista. Grandfather Gavrishko blinking through tears and Babushka through screwed up eyelids. A significant pause ensued, broken only by the electrified aura of Irina’s anger and inability to comprehend how these two old duffers couldn’t grasp the gist of her rage.
‘The door…you fools. The door…The door.’
‘Yes,’ said Grandfather, taking a step towards it.
He reckoned he was being shown it and walked unsteadily through the doorway, without as much as a glance at the door-frame, along the hall and up the stairs.
‘Come back’ shouted Irina.
Grandfather came down the stairs slowly, still arranging his dress, but with a little more aplomb than when he ascended them. He was getting a little confidence back, and although severely battered for reasons beyond his comprehension decided to make a stand. He strode across to his daughter in law and stood erect.
She was standing at attention and still pointing at the doorframe in what appeared to Grandfather as a fair imitation of a Nazi salute. His eyes travelled down her body, starting with her bulging eyes, past her puckered lips down to her red stained knee and onward to her tapping left foot.
‘Heil Hitler,’ he said, raising his arm and clicking his heels in a wonderful acknowledgment.
Irina was nonplussed, thrown completely off her guard. She started to splutter.
‘Have you been shot?’ asked Grandfather, pointing at her knee.
‘Shot?’ gasped Babushka, ‘Have the Americans arrived?’
Irina felt that the whole affair was getting out of control. ‘Where is the door?’ she said.
Babushka took a wide berth of her husband and peered intently at the door frame. ‘It's gone,’ she pronounced.
‘It's gone,’ echoed Grandfather, following her gaze.
‘It's gone,’ repeated Irina ‘Is that all you can say, ‘it's gone?’
‘It was there last night,’ said Babushka, ‘I remember it was there last night.’
‘He's started again. Your wonderful son has taken it down to his blasted hole in the ground,’ screeched Irina, ‘Next it will be the chairs and…and tables…and bookcases.’
‘He needs some home comforts,’ said Babushka, springing to her sons defence.
‘This is his home,’ said an exasperated Irina. ‘What's left of it.’
‘That door was always jamming,’ added Grandfather. ‘Damn good job it's gone.’
‘That isn’t the point,’ barked Irina, about to boil over again. She looked around for inspiration.
Found none and screamed for Lara.
Lara, who had been lurking around the corner of the house, listening with delight at the antics of her kith and kin, ambled with as much nonchalance as she could muster into the kitchen. She was an intelligent girl and after a quizzical look at her mother, fastened her eyes onto the offending doorframe.
‘Good gracious,’ she said, ‘the door’s disappeared.’
Irina expelled a large amount of air, and stopped tapping her foot. ‘And where do you suppose it's disappeared to?’
‘Down the bunker?
‘Good girl,’ replied her mother, ‘You’ve got some semblance of observation,’ she looked at her two baffled in-laws, ‘From my side of the family obviously,’
‘Now look here,’ said Grandfather, ‘I’ll not have…’
‘Go and get him,’ demanded Irina.
Nobody moved. Lara looked at her shoes. Babushka and Grandfather looked at each other. Irina went purple.
‘Did you hear me,’ she yelled, stamping her foot and breaching the nail polish carbuncle. The ladder started its inexplicable journey again, downwards towards her foot.
‘Oh hell,’ she cried, trying unsuccessfully to block the progress with a shaking finger, and then with a piece of raw beetroot, grabbed from a saucepan, which she heard sometimes worked. It didn’t. She continued dabbing though, all the way down to her ankle, leaving a trail of repulsive red splodges. It looked, for all the world, like a machine gun burst.
Lara started to giggle and quickly turned her back, while slowly edging her way out of the back door towards the garden and freedom.
The two grandparents watched the performance with undisguised delight. Her father-in-law offered other vegetables as an alternative means of halting the out of control ladder. Potatoes, parsnips and turnips were all mentioned.
Irina threw, a now soggy beetroot, with unerring accuracy into his left eye.
Babushka leant on her broom and roared with laughter. ‘Waste of time and money, them things,’ she said, pointing at the nylons. She lifted up her voluminous tresses and pointed at her ancient leather, goose fat impregnated boots. ‘Been wearing these for nigh on sixty years. Never had a ladder in them.’
Irina, at a loss for words, looked around. ‘Where’s Lara?’ she demanded.
Grandfather jerked a thumb towards the back door. ‘Gone to get some more beetroot.’
Irina walked to the door and peered out; shielding her eyes against the sun. She tried to focus on the compost heap. There was no movement, so she started to stride towards it with not a small measure of determination etched across her face.
Vladimir Gavrishko was safe, he reckoned. For half an hour anyway. He had, as luck would have it, snagged his wife’s stocking with a screwdriver that morning as he crept out of the bedroom, on his way to unscrew the hall door. He knew that would keep her out of the way for a while. She might even be so distraught about her stocking ladder that the missing door wouldn’t be noticed until mid morning. Four hours of blessed peace and a quick sampling of ‘samogon’ would steel the nerves in the meantime.
He was wrong as usual. An early warning system of any undesirable intruder, namely his wife, sounded an alarm within half an hour. The alarm consisted of a sod of earth placed gently on top of a hole, with which the uninitiated would step on, fall through, and therefore utter a chilling and agonizing scream of pain as their ankle twisted. This morning demonstrated Vladimir’s contrivance admirably.
The scream, heard deep below ground, was enough to wake the dead, which was what Vladimir concluded he would be, if he ventured out, at this particular moment. Or any moment during the day come to that. He quickly snuffed out a paraffin lamp whose smoke, as it reached the surface through the rotting compost by way of a pipe made up of old tin cans, would have given the game away; and kept very still.
The cries of pain from the surface gave way to bellows of anger, and then, as Vladimir listened intently, to silence. He couldn’t even hear footsteps on the surface, not a sound. Very eerie, not like Irina at all. Not one little bit.
Irina stood stock still amongst the rotting compost. She balanced on one-leg, massaging her seemingly sprained ankle as tears of pain, anguish and rage welled up. But she kept her head, I'll lull him into a false sense of security, she thought…then I'll have the swine.
Vladimir ever so slowly made his way diagonally across the bunker, avoiding the chairs, table, distilling devices and numerous barrels of full, half full and empty samogon liquor left over from last year. He reached upwards in the dark and grasped a pipe, evocative of a rusty stalactite that protruded down from the ceiling. It was his second line of protection, a wonderful device that he’d concocted. A homemade periscope. He slowly brought his right eye up to the bottom and peered through. Nothing. Complete blackness, although the stink of rotting compost made his eye water rather. With nerves jangling he gently pushed the pipe upwards to get an elevated view. Still blackness.
Twisting the pipe through a hundred and eighty degrees, he pushed the tube even further upwards, encountering some resistance. Probably rotting compost, he thought and pushed a little bit more firmly.
On the surface Irina, getting some control over her pain and aggravation, felt a tingle running up her leg. Looking down, she was flabbergasted by the sight of a rusty old pipe dripping with old cabbage leaves, potato cuttings and other unmentionable matter, slowly rising between her legs. Irina fell backwards in a state of shock, ripping her skirt from hem to waist. The pipe shot up, now free of all impediments, out of the compost heap like a Soyuz rocket.
Throughout Irina’s life, she had led by example.
Her example, her God, was Lenin. His teachings and sayings were paramount to her, thought word and deed. His word was law, carved into the memory banks of Irina’s brain by political teachings both at school and home. What would he have done in these unbelievable circumstances? It's true she thought, Lenin never had to contend with a rusty old pipe rammed up the trouser leg, but what if he had? What would he have done? She gathered her thoughts, and those of Lenin, and discarding her torn skirt, ventured towards the object of her animosity, on all fours and frilly knickers.
Vladimir shook with excitement six feet below. His periscope, suddenly devoid of all resistance, was cascading with light and turning easily in its socket. He felt what it must be like to be a Submarine Commander. The periscope breaking the sea’s surface, the thought of an unsuspecting enemy of the Motherland, up there, in his sights and at his mercy.
‘Twenty degrees to port,’ he muttered, to his imaginary coxswain. ‘Fr’d tubes armed.’
Irina watched in amazement as the pipe thing swivelled round. She noticed it had a sort of ‘goose neck,’ a bend in the top, and as it turned to face her she detected a mirror fixed at an angle near the edge.
Vladimir calmly bought the periscope to bear on the enemy. It was not the loaded ammunition ship he fantasized; the apparition that now filled his sights was even more fantastic. A pair of frilly knickers with suspenders and what looked like gun shot wounds running down one of a pair of shapely legs.
Vladimir took his eye off the sight glass and rubbed his eyes. True, he thought, I've been giving the prune samogon a triple distilling lately, and might well have had one to many ‘heart starters’ this morning…but this. He went back to the periscope.
Irina, meanwhile, being of an inquisitive, not to mention highly vindictive nature approached the pipe and peered into the mirror. She saw another eye peering back.
Vladimir watched in horror as his wife’s face came into focus. Now all was clear. He yanked the periscope down, but not quickly enough.
Irina had the same idea and yanked it up. What followed was a trial of strength. It went on for a good five minutes and attracted the notice of Lara, her Grandparents and the school Director. He had come for lunch and got a front seat at the Gavrishko family variety hour instead. It was an epic battle, with only one winner of course, but worth watching. Vladimir was no match for Irina and Lenin. He felt the periscope inch-by-inch slip by his fingers, and finally admitted defeat when it lifted him of the floor and half crushed his knuckles in the hole drilled out of the corrugated iron roof that he had filched from the cow shed. He let go
On high, a triumphant Irina held the pipe aloft. She knew the elation felt by the glorious Russian soldier when he planted the Hammer and Sickle flag on the Reichstag after the battle of Berlin. ‘Hurrah,’ she shouted, oblivious to the audience and oblivious to her state of dress.
Even the School Director blushed, although he had to admit it was an awe-inspiring sight. She even looked as though she had been shot in the process, although he wasn’t at all sure what the process was. Perhaps they were enacting some sort of traditional drama.
Irina threw the periscope down and slowly became aware of her audience. She seemed rather put out by the lack of applause. Shortly afterwards she became aware of her state of dress, but had no time to consider the options as she found herself being lifted into the air by an unseen force beneath her feet.
Vladimir, with much trepidation, had decided to surface. He had no particular plan. No excuses made up, just a wish to get it over with. He pushed the concealed trapdoor upwards and felt unusual resistance. He shoved with all his might, and felt a cry of pique that could only have come from his wife as she described a parabolic curve through the air landing in part of the compost heap reserved for cow dung.
Grandfather clapped his hands, Babushka clasped hers and Lara hid her face with hers.
The School Director rushed forward and helped Irina to her feet as she landed and just as quickly retreated, as he realised what the object of his desires had landed in.
Vladimir poked his head through the trap door in the compost heap and watched with tears in his eyes knowing that retribution was sure to be cataclysmic. And even worse, his avenue of pleasure and solitude was closed.
****
Chapter 4
Mother Father and a Cow
Vladimir had to wait for the afternoon. It was a torture he knew of old, and a favourite method of persecution used by Irina. The time spent in agonies was in direct proportion to the retribution to be exacted.
Lunch had been a quiet affair. The School Director seemed dazed, but was very attentive to Irina. This was more than could be said for her ebullience towards him, unless you called mortified an enthusiasm.
Vladimir was a teacher at the same school. He taught biology. His teaching methods were somewhat liberal, including as they did the added dimension of the lesson itself which was hardly ever conducted according to the curriculum. He tended to go off in tangents, mostly about his heroic, but unsung Herculean efforts, in the war; but nobody minded. Least of all the pupils.
Now, sitting opposite Vladimir at the kitchen table Lara sat engrossed in one of Brothers Grimm Fairy Tales, a book tucked into an algebraic textbook. The algebra was an extra curriculum test set by her mother.
Irina felt it was a necessity to fill in her daughter’s non-schooling hours with extra curriculum activities, as laid down by her hero Lenin, who once said something along the lines that work, and only work, was the tool capable of creating a healthy mind and body for the coming struggle against bourgeois imperialism.
Vladimir, to take his mind off the impending conflict was busying himself with a delicate operation. Irina had ostensibly put him in charge of their daughter’s analysis of quadratic equations.
She should have known better. Vladimir was engrossed in his own equations. It involved the highly skilled process of cutting up bits of hosepipe with his wife’s best pruning knife. The hosepipe was part of the elaborate distilling system he had concocted, to be connected to his liquor stash buried in the garden around the by now defunct bunker. Vladimir was eternally optimistic.
Lara wondered, looking up, whether her mother would catch him before he cut his finger off, either way the result would be bloodshed, it was inevitable.
The inevitable happened in both senses. Father and daughter both looked up as a figure covered in feathers filled the open doorway. It was her.
Vladimir dropped the knife and let out a sigh of agony as it bit deep into his thigh before clattering noisily onto the stone floor.
'Hell woman!' he exclaimed.
‘I'll give you hell’ said Irina spitting out feathers.
‘Yes dear,’ muttered her husband. 'I was just explaining to Lara that algebra is an exact science.'
For God’s sake, thought Lara, he doesn't think she's going to be taken in by that!'
'You have to follow certain laws...'
'Shut up,’ screeched her Mother, spitting out another feather, ‘the only thing you've been teaching her is how to escape her duties!'
Vladimir set his jaw belligerently. He always set his jaw belligerently when his wife brought up the topic of duties. Their respective ideas of ‘duties’ being about as far apart as their respective teaching methods. He never went down without a fight though. Attack, at least in the preliminary skirmishes were, to his mind, a necessary prelude to the thorough trouncing that his wife would administer, in the end. It was a sort of macho thing.
‘Duties woman,’ he clenched his fists, ‘Duties...I've had my fill of duties.’ He pointed to his rows of medals, proudly displayed in a glass case hanging on the wall. ‘I didn't get those by not doing my duty!'
'After all I've been through,' Lara muttered.
'After all I've been through,' he said.
'Been through,' Irina retorted, dropping the hen onto the floor, and brushing some feathers off her blouse and plucking them out of her now dishevelled, but once carefully coiffured hair.
‘Frozen half to death in bloody Stalingrad,’ muttered Lara
'Frozen half to death in bloody Stalingrad,’ he went on, ‘fighting for...'
Irina put both hands on her hips, ‘Half the men in Russia got frozen, look at your father, even he's got a frozen bum.'
'He got that in Siberia you stupid woman. Put there by your beloved Stalin!'
'Don't you call me stupid...you old goat.’ She threw a handful of feathers at him. ‘And as for Stalin,’ she snapped,’ he’s...'
'They're all the same,’ he blew a feather off his nose, ‘Stalin, Lenin, Trotsky, Hitler…..’
‘How dare you,’ spluttered Irina. She lent forward, hands resting on the table, her bristling face two inches away from her husband’s bristling eyebrows.. ‘How dare you utter Lenin's name in the same breath as that monster'.
He raised an eyebrow and stared her out. ‘You mean Trotsky?’ he said quietly.
Vladimir was propelled out of the kitchen by Irina’s shoe; across the back yard through her carefully tended rose and herb gardens, past the entrance to his bunker until they eventually met with a jumble of wooden sheds.
Lara followed at a discreet distance, remaining just within earshot.
'There,' Irina pointed to a hole in the common wall between the cow stall and the chicken house. ‘That hole is there because you stole the wall for your blasted hole in the ground, just like you steal everything else.
Vladimir’s defences had completely crumbled ‘Yes dear,’ he muttered.
‘Well what are you going to do about it? The chickens are getting out and rampaging over my rose garden.’
'Mend it I suppose.'
'There's no suppose about it.'
'No dear...I'll go and get my things.’ He turned resignedly and walked back towards the house.
‘Lara, get on with your homework,' her mother shouted as she turned and watched her husband’s progress, or lack of it!
Her eagle eye had obviously spied Lara lurking. Lara did a great deal of lurking according to her mother.’ It was a habit', she said, caught off her father and grandfather and a trait she had noticed inherent in locals.
Vladimir was climbing out of the cellar as Lara reached the kitchen; he was carrying a hammer and a bag of nails. He was mumbling.’ Bloody chickens...bloody cow.'
The cow, the 'bloody' one, the one and only one that regulations allowed, was a man hater. Why, nobody knew. The women folk had no trouble. Babushka had no trouble with it, even Lara was immune from its devilish way; but Grandfather and Vladimir, had no chance. It bit, kicked and tried to crush into oblivion any male that came within striking distance.
'Where's that skirt,' smirked Irina to Babushka who had been busy baking the first of the mountains of bread, cakes, puddings and sweetmeats, ready for the week long Spring Festival, now only ten days away.
As if by magic Babushka held up one of her black skirts, an ankle length creation that has been universal wear for grannies in the Ukraine since time began. She knew what was coming.
Vladimir looked even more crestfallen, he also knew what was coming. Disguise. That was the only chance he had. The cow had to be fooled, and Vladimir’s only chance was to disguise him self as his mother. It was a theory, somebody had thought up years ago. The family had tried it before. It never worked.
Irina was still taking an evil pleasure in her husband’s torment.’ Here put this on,’ she ordered, passing him the skirt. 'Lara, get a scarf.'
'Bloody cow,' muttered Vladimir again as Babushka smeared a crushed garlic clove over his bare arms in an attempt to hide his male scent. 'I said I could board it up from the chicken side,’ he said, in one last forlorn attempt to escape a future too horrible to contemplate.
'You've had your chances' said Irina. She stood back to admire the handiwork.
'Let's have a look at you Dad,' said Lara, tucking his beard into the scarf.
'Never mind that,' said her mother, ‘you can admire each other when the jobs finished.'
Vladimir lifted the hem of the skirt and tottered towards the back kitchen door. Lara felt so sorry for him. Well she would have done if he hadn't looked so funny.
'This is the last time,' he muttered,’ Lara can do it next time. She's big enough now.'
'It's a man's job,' piped up Babushka.
'Go on then, ‘ordered Irina, as they reached the cow shed. ‘No use hanging round, it’ll be dark soon. Lara,' she went on, forgetting for once the dreaded homework,' pass him the tools.'
Vladimir cast one last despairing look back and bravely sort of lunged in head first through the door.
Irina, Babushka and Lara watched from the doorway.
They could hear Vladimir talking to the beast in what, they supposed, was his idea of a woman's voice, a sort of high pitched lament which wouldn't have fooled a deaf cockroach.
The cow, which up to then had been very content, chewing the cud, cast a lazy glance backwards at this visitation, and as Vladimir came level, mumbling platitudes gave him an equally lazy kick in the groin.
'Aggggh,' Vladimir shrieked, clutching the affected area.
'Moo,' said the cow.
'You idiot,' said Irina.
Lara wasn’t quite sure whether she meant the cow or her father, who was lying in a heap on the floor, doubled up in agony.
The womenfolk held their breath. Vladimir held his affected parts. He slowly struggled to his feet, pulling himself up on a rope, which was holding the cow’s head. He stood face to face with his adversary, face screwed up, red cheeks puffing in and out with exertion, anger and pain.
They watched and waited. Both participants were a bit unpredictable at this stage of the proceedings. After what seemed a lifetime of eye-to-eye confrontation, Vladimir still blowing and wheezing, slowly drew back his leg. It was a mighty kick and aimed at the cow’s hindquarter.
'Take that you bastard!' he shouted and proceeded to kick the cow on its ankle.
Vladimir was in mid air, horizontal and in great consternation when the cow took it. He was in mid air and horizontal because he hadn't taken into account the long, and tightish skirt he was wearing when he attempted his crippling blow and consternation when the cow let out an almighty bellow and took off in a headlong rush out of the shed. As it past the bemused family onlookers they couldn’t help but notice, a very short time later, a screaming Vladimir, who, having somehow managed to entangled himself with the cow’s head rope, and for reasons known only to himself, held on like grim death.
'Come back’, shouted Irina, more in hope than anger. It was one of her more silly suggestions, and if it was directed at her husband. There wasn’t a hope in hell. He couldn't hear her for a start; in fact, it was reasonable to suppose he could hear nothing at all, as his head was ploughing a furrow through the garden at the time.
The three women stood and watched for a moment or two as the cow and Vladimir continued their erratic course towards the side of the house, demolishing half a strawberry bed, a row of raspberry canes and numerous black current bushes.
He was still holding on for all he was worth when they lost sight of man and beast as they rounded the house and accelerated towards the front garden.
'Well, I'll give him ten out of ten for tenacity,' proclaimed Irina.’ We better go and see where they’ve got to.'
They could hear him before they rounded the corner of the house. There was no sign of the cow, just Vladimir waving a fist in the general direction of the village pond.
'Wait 'till I get my hands on you...you bastard!'
'Good evening,’ said a well-known voice.
Vladimir spun round. It was the school Director.
‘I do seem to come at the most inappropriate times,’ he said.
'The beast doesn't like me,' spluttered Vladimir, spitting half of his wife’s garden out on to the garden hedge.
The Director looked at his Biology teacher up and down very carefully. The skirt was hanging in shreds. The scarf, tattered and torn, hanging over one ear.
‘I’m not surprised' he said.
'No...no, 'bleated Vladimir, 'You don't understand!'
The Director turned on his heel.’ No, but don't worry, your secrets safe with me!
****
Chapter 5
Awakening
Over the next few days, the sun became hotter and hotter. The spring wouldn't last for long, it never did, and neither did autumn. Winter went straight into summer and summer straight into winter, seemingly almost over night. The air soon becomes alive with the sounds of insect’s buzzing and bird’s song, human chatter and laughter. Hibernating animals started scampering around searching for food. The men of the village scampered around searching the ground, for illicitly buried booze. Illicit because the law of the land prohibited the distillation of alcohol by individuals; so the vast range of alcoholic beverages universally concocted by individuals, countrywide, was hidden underground.
During the winter months, when snow lay metres deep, the buried barrels were accessible via a rubber tube to the surface. Unwitting visitors to the countryside villages were often nonplussed upon finding men seemingly spread-eagled on the frozen ground, making euphoric slurping noises, whilst apparently devouring old rubber tubes.
The old village grandfathers were on the move as well. They gently manoeuvred themselves into their rightful places on front porches and waited for the sun to unlock their old arthritic bones. Hour after hour they would sit stretching, and sleeping; drinking their prohibited tipples and reminiscing with old friends; fighting old battles, planning new ones, and all the time their wrinkled care worn faces would follow the sun as she swept across the skies.
For the Babushka's Spring was one of the busiest times of the year. Baking, cleaning, washing and more baking, day after day until the larders were bursting. They stopped only to berate any body that interfered and to chase children out of kitchens.
Lara's mother, being a wage earner like all adults was busier than most. She and her mother-in-law had well defined lines of demarcation as far as household chores went. Irina didn’t do any. She loved her garden. When school time allowed, Irina spent hours and hours in the garden, and now that summer school holidays had arrived, she tended her herb garden, her flower borders and beloved roses from sunrise to sunset, only venturing indoors to berate Lara or her husband, and to apply make up, in case the school Director happened to pop by. She took life and her duties very seriously. She wasn’t always so serious; she had lapses when she was young and impressionable. Once or twice she had even been whimsical.
One early evening, as the early spring blossomed, Father and daughter were ensconced in the kitchen minding their own business when a buzzing sound filled the open doorway. Vladimir looked with alarm at Lara, and she busied herself in a book of chemical formulas.
'How's it going?' said a hunched figure, shuffling through the open door. He was Uncle Anton, the Gavrishko next-door neighbour and husband of Vladimir's sister Manya.
'Hell' exclaimed Vladimir, 'You might have coughed or something I thought it was she.'
Brother-in-law Anton looked vague; he was a vague sort of person. ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘that’s why I hummed.’
'As a matter of fact', said Vladimir, not wishing to labour a point. 'It's going very well.'
The it was the mark two periscope. A tamper proof contraption, which gave 180 degrees of uninterrupted vision. Vladimir still harboured vague hopes that his bunker bolthole could be resurrected, it was a forlorn hope he knew, but just in case he realised he needed a better warning system. She would probably attack from the rear, next time.
'Brought some honey,’ said Anton, plonking a huge jar of the amber nectar onto the table. 'Where is everybody?'
'Mothers gone to the school to discuss school matters with the Director,' answered Lara. 'Babushka's gone to the shop for flour, and Grandfather…’ She looked at her father, 'Where’s grandfather?’
'Don't ask me,' he said,'...Cavorting I suppose.'
The arrival of Lara's uncle and father of Vovka her best friend and confidant was a welcome diversion for Lara. Anton was the village beekeeper, an unofficial post but well suited, Lara reflected, as she watched him buzzing about the kitchen, to his particular nature.
If ever the saying about people who dote on their pets eventually grow to look like them was true, then Uncle Anton was the living proof. Although only in his early forties, you could have added another hundred and still be non-the wiser. He was more or less bald and suffered, among other things, with poor eyesight, which necessitated the wearing of thick bottle end glasses, and only went to accentuate his already large, protruding eyes. Moreover, the resemblance to his beloved bees didn't stop there. Poor Uncle Anton's body was round and squat, with short legs but very long arms, which were kept in continual animation, like demented windmill sails; and he was certainly up to his normal speed, dementing about the kitchen, this morning.
'If I can get this working properly,' said Vladimir, trying to screw a reluctant length of pipe onto a glass tube,'
At the sight of his brother-in-laws successful marrying of the equipment Anton went into an even more feverish mode. It was a manifestation of another one of Anton’s well-known foibles, this time an impediment that, in all honesty, could have been overcome with a minor operation. Stones. His poor bladder was full of them, and consequently little room for its real function but he refused to have them removed and therefore suffered the indignity of carrying an empty bottle around with him wherever he went. When the need arose, which was every ten minutes or so, he would produce this bottle from a large, specially made pocket within a voluptuous jacket and have a little squirt. It would be only a minuscule amount at a time, but it's all his seriously congested bladder would allow! It didn't seem to pain him. Nobody had ever seen him wince or suffer or complain.
Lara watched him as he disappeared behind the hall door and waited for the sound of tinkling. She could see most of him, he really did resemble a bee, she thought. That sharply pointed bottom, which would surely upset his centre of gravity if he ever stood upright, which he didn't. He was naturally angled for take off. Lara often wondered if he was subconsciously trying to take flight and buzz around the village gardens and do his share of pollinating.
'Right,' said Vladimir to no one in particular, ‘That's that…er shall we wander out and see what's what?' He looked round towards the place where Anton had been seconds before. 'Where's he gone?' he asked Lara.
She pointed towards the hallway.
'Oh,’ said her father, ‘well, when your mother gets back, tell her I'm out'
So were the majority of the men folk of the village They’d been out for about a week, on and off. In and out of each other’s houses merrymaking; sampling every brew that had been fermenting during the winter. Anything that fermented could be used for the manufacture of highly volatile refreshment. It was an old art handed down through generations.
While the spirit of the imminent Spring Festival gained momentum. Grandfather Gavrishko was slowly losing his. Two hours in the outhouse of Toverich the blacksmith, an hour or so with Gregorich and a very pleasant interlude with Ivan in his cellar. Now, in the early evening he was sampling his friend Stephan’s wares.
‘This one I'm very proud of,’ stated Stephan, holding up a glass of indiscernible coloured liquid to the paraffin lamp that hung from a beam in Stephan’s cow shed.
‘Peach,’ said Grandfather Gavrishko trying to focus on the glass through a haze of flying insects and a forty-degree sway. ‘If I'm not mistaken?’
‘Right first time,’ said Stephan, ‘Young peaches mind you, better than last year.’
‘That was a good year for gooseberries,’ replied Grandfather, accepting the proffered glass and emptying the contents in one mighty gulp.
Stephan watched with eager anticipation as the wine hit his friend’s stomach. The assembled throng of imbibers stopped in mid gulp and gazed in awe, waiting for the master connoisseur to pass judgement
Grandfather Gavrishko became something of a connoisseur whilst ensconced in a Siberian Labour camp, courtesy of Comrade Lenin. He was imprisoned with thousands of others in one of the infamous ‘purges’ in the nineteen thirties, for fifteen years.
His crime against the state was that he had once been a landowner; in fact, his family owned half the village before Communism swept over Eastern Europe. In the frozen wastes, apart from getting a bad case of frost bite in the bum, he learnt how to make alcohol out of anything and consequently had a palate with the sensitivity of an old boot. But he didn’t realise it.
Grandfather felt the liquid hitting his stomach so hard that it continued downwards until it reached the soles of his feet. ‘Bloody marvellous, he spluttered, and swayed through an ever widening arc, finally regaining some sort of equilibrium with the help of another glass of wine being proffered by his host.
‘Redcurrant,’ beamed Stephan, well pleased with seal of approval of the last fruit.
‘…is it?’ spluttered Grandfather.
His huge moustache twitched as he turned the glass round. ‘I congratulate you on its blush.’ Then as tradition decreed, knocked it back in one swig, and swayed backwards so far in appreciation that four hands were needed to push him upright.
‘Not the best year,’ said Stephan, watching Grandfather Gavrishko’s nose bloom into luminescence, ‘…not by far.’
Grandfather Gavrishko was beyond caring what bloody year it was. They were all good years.
A choral society had started singing somewhere in the near vicinity and a deeply loved old Ukrainian folk song started to engrave its way into his sub conscious. He flung his arm out, in an extravagant prelude to dance. The gesture pointed the way, the arm’s momentum took over, and the rest of Grandfather Gavrishko followed in an appalling impression of some weird Cossack backward stepping war dance, out of the cowshed through the hastily opened door.
‘Still very good isn’t he,’ said Stephan, as he watched him go.
An oak tree stopped the momentum of the Cossack demonstration, somewhat abruptly. He blinked and deliberated, as he peered into the gloom. He couldn’t for the life of him remember an oak tree growing up inside Stephan’s cow shed.
Regaining an upright stance by means of a series of rapid leg movements; a long held expertise in overcoming the forces of gravity, and the divine intervention of the tree. Grandfather Gavrishko shook his head, screwed his eyes into a frenzy of contortions and after a second or two vaguely focused on the civilization he comprehended at the time.
Civilization resembled an ant’s nest. In fact it took a couple of vigorous shakes of the head to make the memory banks shudder back into action. He slowly realised that the ants, in the far distance, were the village women folk, scurrying backwards and forwards, making last minute embellishments to tomorrow’s start of the festivities. Grandfather Gavrishko swung one leg in front of the other, and set of in an erratic course back towards the cowshed. He could dimly hear the party, still in full swing and wondered what sort of strange occurrence had transpired to make him dance with a tree.
The doors of the shed were already open as Grandfather, after demonstrating a bewitching shoulder charge through thin air and finding no resistance resorted to an improbable variation of the jitterbug
‘A fine exhibition of the Polka,’ said Stephan.
‘When?’ said Grandfather, stopping just in time.
‘You, you old devil,’ said Stephan, handing another glass of wine to the Vilnek Pavlova. ‘You’ve still got it in you.’
Grandfather laughed, ‘…well once you’ve had it in you, you never forget it.’ Although he was not quite sure what the ‘it’ was in the first place, and if he had ever had ‘it’, what he would have done with it. Spinning round on one heel, just to emphasise the point, he went round twice before managing to stop, then attempted a devilish, conspiratorial sort of grin.
The grin manifested itself into a lewd licentious leer by the time the face muscles had reassembled themselves. The eyes re-assembled themselves somewhat later. By the time some sort of focusing had ensued, Grandfather noticed that Stephan had changed. He was smaller and wearing a white scarf and was prodding him in the stomach.
‘Bath time,’ yelled Babushka, prodding her husband twice more.
Reasoning slowly dawned ‘Hell woman’ he gasped, as another belly full of air was forcefully expelled.
‘I've been looking all over the village for you,’ she declared. ‘You’ve been damn well hiding.’
‘He's been dancing,’ shouted a helpful voice.
Stephan handed Babushka a glass of elderflower wine. ‘Here, try this.’
‘Very nice,’ she said taking a sip, and started hitting her husband in the midriff again. ‘Now come on…its bath night.’
Grandfather Gavrishko moaned. Baths were a sore point with Grandfathers; certainly the older you got, the less attractive the idea of baths became. However, this was a special night, the night before the Political speech and then a week long party.
‘Right,’ he said, ‘I shall be with you directly…my dear.’
****
Chapter 6
The Political Speech