House of Pain

Until this morning I'd never heard of the House of the Word (Slovo Building) in Kharkiv, Ukraine.

Hell, until this past month I'd never heard of Kharkiv, a city of 1.4 million just across the border from Russia.

The building in question is an apartment complex built for Ukrainian intellectuals in the 1920s with Joseph Stalin's approval. At the time, Kharkiv was the Soviet capital of Ukraine.

Perhaps, as some suggest, the 66-unit building was an insidious way to keep tabs on a growing Ukrainian nationalist spirit within the literary and artistic community.

In 1933, resident actress/writer Halyna Mnevska was imprisoned for 5 years and then banished from Ukraine for life because she wouldn't denounce her husband who was executed for his "bourgeois nationalism" in 1937. Oh, and yes, despite their divorce in 1927.

Soon 33 residents of the building would be executed and 5 would be given long prison sentences. Many of the spying, terrorism, and/or conspiracy charges were made via phone taps during the purge. 

The remaining residents were moved to Kyiv in 1934 to reside in the RoLit House (Robitnyky Literatury).

But all of this is old news. Today's news resides in a more current image. 

"War is what happens when words fail." Margaret Atwood

 

An Index (10)

Dreams, dreams deferred...

Amherst College                            1745

Baylor University                         19297

Clemson University                      26406

College of Charleston                   10384

Duquesne University                      8830

Howard University                       10859

Kent State University                   26822

 

Kharkiv Polytechnic Institute         25000

Kherson State Agrarian Univ           4500

Kyiv National Economic Univ         10000

Lviv Poytechnic National U            35000

Odessa University                          7500

 

Prairie View A&M University            9248

Princeton University                       7853

Tulane University                         12293

University of Kansas                    27690

University of the South                   1800

Vanderbilt University                    13357

Winthrop University                       6000

Xavier University                           7061

 

A Wreck (F)

--So, sir, you saw the accident?

--Yessir, I sure did.

--Okay, tell me what you saw.

--I was sitting there waiting for the light to change my way. I’m taking my dog in for his shots.

‘URGENT’ MANHUNT UNDERWAY TO FIND SUSPECT IN 5 SHOOTINGS OF HOMELESS MEN IN NEW YORK CITY AND DC

--And?

--Those two trucks were making their left turns and just run smack into each other.

--Just those two, right?

--Yep. Then the big truck guy got out and pointed his pistol at the little truck.

--You mean the Ford, the blue Ford, that driver got out with a handgun?

--Yep. Then the little truck guy, he got out too and had himself some little snub nose, maybe like a .38.

SAUDI ARABIA EXECUTES 81 PEOPLE IN ITS LARGEST MASS EXECUTION

--Okay, the driver of the Frontier got out and had a gun? Who fired first, if you could tell.

--Oh, the Ford driver, he fired first—pop pop pop. Th’other driver who was on my side of his truck, he ducked, then he fired back. Once, maybe two times.

--Okay.

BOY, 3, ACCIDENTALLY SHOOTS MOTHER DEAD IN CHICAGO SUBURB CAR PARK

--Then before he could get down is when he got shot in the shoulder. He dropped down to his knees.

--Is this when you got your gun and stepped out?

--Just after, when I seen the Ford man start to ease around the crash I got out and got my shotgun. He didn’t see me, but was coming around on the man on the ground. I stepped his way about 10 steps or so and hollered to him not to shoot anymore.

SPARTANBURG WOMAN SHOT, KILLED AT APARTMENT COMPLEX, CORONER SAID

--Then what?

--He looked over at me pointing in his direction and I reckon he didn’t want to take a chance on me.

--Did he say anything to you?

--The Ford man? Nah, he didn’t say nothing. Just pulled up and waited there. Highway patrol man got here pretty quick.

--Mr. Lawson, you’re lucky he didn’t start shooting at you.

--Well maybe, but just didn’t seem right to shoot a man down on his knees like that.

PREGNANT WOMAN AND BABY DIE AFTER ATTACK ON HOSPITAL IN MARIUPOL

Lyman 2022

 

Reprise: Swords and Sheaves

(Originally posted on the blog The Dear Maria Letters, 11/22/15)

Dear Maria,

Enjoyed your quip about finding my coat, but not worrying about Max’s, as cooler weather—cold even—descends. So, yes, I will jacket up during the near-freezing mornings in the offing.

Here’s a moment for you: The other day, I pulled into the driveway and up to my usual spot nearly to the garage, and when I looked up after closing the truck door, there perched a hawk on the very corner of the roof and perhaps six feet away, a crow.

The hawk gave me “the eye” and then flew off over the neighbor’s roof and into a stand of pines about 100’ away. The crow gave me “the eye” and just hopped about on the roof. Predator disinterested, but scavenger still lurking? I’ll need to review the symbolism for those birds before hazarding a guess on my fate.

Of course, I am not immune to the uproar—at least in the media, and social media, as well—over the Paris attacks, the refugees, and the ongoing war in the Middle East. No Pax Humana to be had apparently.

As always, I need to process events piece by piece. I think about a neighbor brandishing a sword as he comes into my yard while I bundle sheaves. His demand is that I renounce my way of life and submit to his viewpoint. And surrender my land and my holdings over to him. Now I can hold my hands up and submit or I can suggest peaceful coexistence, and he can either change his mind or cut me down. Or I can flee nearly empty-handed and hope to outdistance him. Or—and here we go—I can take up the sword and it’s to the death.

Too simplistic, true enough, but what trips me up is when he asserts either my assent or my death. His chosen tool, violence. The message, submit or die. Well, another end is in play—his. So to be acted out again, the cycle in all its historical ignominy returns: forced submission at the end of a sword, gun, or IED, but forces amass and via a countering violence, the ash heap of failed authoritarian empires grows.

And so goes another hapless, mindless, violent horror. More to come, I’m afraid.

Thankfully, it is almost that time when the day dims and the flowers seem to float above the garden’s darkening mass of leaves. Then the roses fade into the shadows, and just the lantana’s yellow flowers are visible. Moments like this—well, nothing more to say about much of anything.

The holidays are soon on us, and I know your family will be gathering as will mine. Enjoy—no, savor each and every minute.

And, maybe in our lifetime, peace on earth. Peace on earth. Peace on earth.

With much love, srk

Mr. Kovalenko (F)

Mr. Kovalenko unwinds the garden hose and steps between the first of his bonsai display tables. On his left are the Trident maples, fat trunks, gnarled, short branches wired horizontally.

The morning clouds low, no neighbors stirring yet, he sweeps his rain wand back and forth over the trees.

He coughs.

On the right, the table of Japanese black pines, many among his oldest trees. The very oldest now 45 years old, the one he bought from Peter Chan in England.

He will not sell it, the only tree he will never sell. He can easily remember the day the tree arrived, how excited he was. His hands shook as he cut through the packing tape and slowly picked through the packing peanuts.

His wife Anichka teased him. “It is not the second coming, Kos-y.”

“Damn close, my wife.” They both laughed.

Again he coughs. The smell of smoke. Worse today than yesterday.

His youngest daughter Daryna promised today she would make borscht with garlic fritters. “You have garlic?” he asked her. “No, but the neighbors will share with us.”

She should have left the city, should have gone with her university friends.

He tugs on the hose. The next two tables, the birch trees. Some arranged in tiny forests of 5 or 7 trees. One customer called him yesterday to cancel an order for a 5-tree grouping. He soaks each bonsai slowly.

If he dies—when he dies—what becomes of the collection. Sold most likely, the children don’t want to trouble themselves with such time-consuming effort. The grandchildren are too young.

Daryna is bright, she will make a good engineer. After the war. Maybe elsewhere. If she will leave.

“Papa, we must go. Now!” She put a hand on his arm as he sat at the dining table.

“No. You go. You should go now.”

“Papa.”

“Now, while trains still are running.”

“You are stubborn.”

“Yes. As you.”

Back to the maples for another round of water. The wind is picking up. The air seems chillier. Slowly, the wand, back and forth, five counts for each pot.

A distant boom. He looks up. Not thunder. People say it sounds like thunder. No, not like thunder. Maybe they don’t want to think what it is. Afraid.

We are all afraid.

He shuts off the wand for a moment and takes out a Prima. He can’t find his matches, but he keeps the cigarette between his lips.

Two quick booms. From the north this time.

Quickly, he retraces his watering route over the black pines. One-two-three-four-five. One-two-three-four-five. He moves the cigarette back and forth between his lips. One-two-three-four-five.

The golden tree. One-two-three-four-five. Oh, Anichka.

Again he shuts off the wand and puts the cigarette back in the pack.

Instead of a second round for the birches, he loops around with the hose to begin with the Satsuki cuttings. The small plastic pots are on the ground, packed tightly in groups of 25. He lets the water cascade over the tiny plants.

Three years, then into training pots. And in 5 years, maybe six, into pots, ready for sale.

Three booms in the east.

Back and forth, one-two-three-four-five. One-two-three-four-five.

Lyman 2022

 #shortfiction