That was the reason that this ragged Kobzar was again seeing the light of day.
The white vessel-at-anchor lamp threw just enough light that Yarko could leaf through the book. He had no intention of reading it just now, but about two-thirds of the way through he found a makeshift place marker. Yarko looked at it closely. It was a very old, yellowed envelope. The front of it had a purplish stamp cancelled with a smudged imprint. The words read “80 Groschen, Generalgouvernement,” and a small swastika could still be made out on the stamp. The return address clearly read “19 Koronska, Lemberg, Distrikt Galizien, Generalgouvernement.”
The envelope was addressed in German and Yarko couldn’t make out the cursive writing well enough to read it. He looked inside and pulled out a small, carefully folded letter, written on what seemed like tissue paper. Yarko began deciphering the script.
April 24, 1944
Dearest Slavko,
I hope you are well. It’s hard to wish you a Happy Birthday in these circumstances. I’m sure you already know that Father died on March 29. It was not possible for any of us to attend the funeral. I don’t think we will ever learn exactly where he is buried. Fortunately the rest of the family is staying healthy. We supplement what foodstuffs we can buy with preserves from last year. This supply has almost run out. But that no longer matters.
The front lines are near Brody. We can hear the artillery every night. Pidzamche station has been bombed. Ours is the only house on the street that does not have cracked windows. The situation is such that we have decided to leave home and seek safety in the West. Mother and grandmother will be working in the Zeisswerke factory in Jena near Leipzig. Can you believe it? They will both be Ostarbeiters. But I don’t think I can work in a city. The green forest is much more to my liking.
The Gestapo has come around searching again. I think they like our house too much. Dyzio has come to visit, so he will help with the packing. I know how much you worry about it but I have managed to keep your ancient treasure well protected. Unfortunately, it is much too cumbersome to take along with us and too precious to risk getting destroyed. There are many papers and things that we must also leave behind. We can only take what we can wear or carry in our hands. Mother is packaging all these family heirlooms along with yours. Tomorrow, with Dyzio’s help, we will bury them in that place by the coal furnace in the basement. Mother doesn’t think we will ever see Lviv again. The Nimci are kaput. She says it will be our children or grandchildren that will eventually find what we are hiding. God willing.
Mother will write you from Jena. Keep healthy and safe
Take care
Koko
Yarko was not wearing a sweater, so he was shivering in the chilly air of the night. In his hands was a letter to Yarko’s late grandfather, from the youngest of his two brothers. It was written as the family was preparing to leave the country that they had so loved. Yarko could pick out one of the code words. He knew that the reference to green forest meant that Koko intended to join the Ukrainian underground, the UPA. This letter was, in fact, Koko’s last contact with his oldest brother. Koko was to disappear shortly after that. He would have no contact with any of his family until after he returned to Ukraine from the Siberian Gulag in the 1970s.
But what intrigued Yarko most was the reference in the letter to his grandfather’s precious ancient treasure. He had no idea what it could be. He had never been told of any such family treasure, yet now he sat holding the key to it in his hands. His restless brain began to dream of treasures far beyond anything that could be logically gleaned from the letter. A fantasy about treasure-hunting adventures was already playing in his mind. A side trip to Ukraine during next year’s vacation was starting to look a lot more interesting.
After quietly committing himself to actually making this trip to Ukraine, he found that those conflicting feelings of anger, resentment, and guilt that he had felt but an hour before were receding. Mixed with the developing excitement about the prospect of a visit to Ukraine was a sense of anxiety, trepidation, and foreboding. Yarko knew well that the Ukraine of President Leonid Kuchma was no Disneyland.
Part II
LVIV, UKRAINE
July–August 2003
1
THE SOUND LEVEL of the airliner’s engines had dropped by a decibel or two. Yarko opened his eyes. In his sleep, his mind had tuned into the constant rush of the powerful turbofans. The slight change in their sound was enough to wake him. He looked at his watch. Almost nine hours flying the great circle route from Canada. We’ll be starting the descent soon, he thought. Another hour and I’ll be in Lviv.
Yarko had a window seat on the left side of the plane. Through the window he could see a bright horizon lit by the rising sun’s rays. The land below was covered in dark forests, but from time to time he caught the silver reflection of light from the surface of some stream or pond. Just ahead, a large river spread among the trees and stretched far towards that glowing eastern horizon. Yarko closed his eyes.
“Polissia,” he muttered, through sleepy semi-consciousness, answering a question that his sleepy reason had yet to form. This was the great marshland on the borders of Ukraine and Belarus. Into his still fuzzy mind came a torrent of fragmented thoughts. He remembered a history lesson taught years ago, and the name of an ancient city, Iskorosten′. This was the walled city that some 1,100 years ago Princess Olha had burned to the ground in revenge for the murder of her husband, Prince Ihor. Yarko was looking in its direction, at the modern town that had been built on the ancient fort’s ruins. Squinting in the blinding light of the rising sun, Yarko thought he could see the glowing embers of the wooden fortifications of that city.
He remembered other conversations with his dad.
“Today, Ukraine is in a state of creeping revolution,” his father had said. “Without strife or bloodshed, and seemingly without conflict, this country had suddenly slipped from being a colony of the Russian Empire to national independence. As a result, this has become a land with no right or wrong. There are no truths or lies there. There are no demons and no angels. It is, in fact, a country in a state of moral anarchy. And it is this very ambivalence that is most dangerous – it is as a ship with no compass. Veterans of the Soviet Red Army are still heroes. Those who fought to conquer Finland for their masters in Muscovy are heroes. Those who invaded Afghanistan for this foreign empire are still heroes. But those who fought in the Ukrainian underground, the UPA, against German, Russian, Pole, and Communist Czechs alike have become heroes too – at least in the west of Ukraine – along with those who fought tooth and nail against them. And, as can be expected, they all claim to deserve a pension.
“The Ukrainian language is the state language, but Russian is still the unofficial ‘official language.’ The president himself had to learn Ukrainian soon after he was elected. His father died in the defence of Stalin’s empire somewhere near Leningrad, thus his loyalties have forever been to a foreign state. Both sheep and wolves live in the same flock …”
It’s like Alice in Wonderland, thought Yarko. “Everything is not quite as it seems.”
Yarko’s mother was dead set against this trip. She had once visited Ukraine, on a school trip in the seventies. But these were more dangerous times now. There had been many a long family discussion before she reluctantly agreed to let Yarko go. His father, of course, had been all for the trip – wishing to send Yarko on this journey to satisfy some patriotic fantasy. But Yarko agreed to it for the promise of adventure – for the adrenaline rush of a treasure hunt.
Adventure, that is all, thought Yarko as he continued his airborne snooze. He
