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Andrii Krasnyashchikh writes from his hometown of Kharkiv, a town of literary renown, as Russian bombs fall. The added tragedy of the situation is that history is repeating itself, in a distorted form. Much of Kharkiv was reduced to rubble in World War II; now Andrii’s mother says: ‘they’re worse than the fascists.’ The other bitter irony is that Andrii is a Russian-speaking Ukrainian, a representative of the ‘Russian World’, whom Russia has supposedly come to liberate. In his sparse, tense style, Andrii documents the reality of life in a town under bombardment, everyday mundanities offset against the ever-present, terrifying backdrop of war. But hope is not yet lost, and humour is one of the coping mechanisms; Andrii's daughter finds an anecdote on the internet in which Putin returns to earth from hell, only to find that wherever he goes he is charged in the Ukrainian currency, the hryvnia; the whole world is Ukrainian now.
—Matthew Hyde
Mother Says
by Andrii Krasnyashchikh
Kharkiv, March 2022.
Mother says: they’re worse than the fascists.
She was born in 1946, she doesn’t remember the war. My father remembers, he was born in 1940. He talks about the missile which hit their house, how he and his brother fled through a field, how a bomb fell right next to them. He remembers plenty from the war.
Mother talks about her granddaughter, about when she was little, how she’d say ‘tyup’ instead of ‘soup’. Her granddaughter’s not so little now–ten years old already, she’s sure to remember this war.
Everyone else has left. All sixteen floors, three blocks. The neighbour upstairs, the son-of-a-bitch, is almost like family now; make as much noise as you like, make a racket if you want, we’re grateful, that way we feel less alone.
On the fifth day we learned how to distinguish the anti-aircraft guns, our very own Zenits. We don’t hide anymore, when they let loose. When they start thudding. The bombs from the aircraft fall with a crash. Or sometimes they thunder.
Why does all this crashing and thudding draw us to the window? To look out into the bright daylight, to see what’s happened. Has anything happened? Something will happen to you, if you don’t step back from the window. But of course no one does as they’re told.
From the window I see a long queue to the kiosk, the one that’s normally shut. I wonder what they’re selling. All sorts of stuff. Then the queue disperses.
Since the first day of war my feet have been freezing. They’ve never been so cold. I can’t seem to get them warm.
And another strange thing. When I eat, my head spins. I eat, it spins. The bodily sensations of war.
My daughter found an anecdote about Putin on the internet, she told it to me: So Putin dies, he’s up there in heaven, and then at the end the barman on Earth says: ‘Fifteen hryvnia’. I didn’t bother correcting ‘heaven’ to ‘hell’, there’s enough hell here as it is.
My friend the air heater hums away, drowning out the explosions. Go to sleep now.
Hey-ho Adorno? I can’t even read, ever since it started, I can’t read anything at all. Only the news feed.
Everyone’s helping the army, or they’re in the territorial defence. I sit with my parents, try to be supportive. I wonder how many more of us there are, territorial defenders sitting with their elders.
As a child I dreamed of going to war, becoming a hero, shooting up the fascists. Well now they’re here, the fascists, go shoot.
In wartime, everything’s scary. The bird outside the window. Even writing a few lines. What if it’s the fear talking, not you.
I’m afraid of being afraid. Fear draws danger closer.
At night the siren sounds, but I’m loath to wake my parents. Sometimes I wake them, and just stand there by their bed. As if to protect them.
I’ll shave when the war’s over. I hope I can shave soon.
Me and mother make my bed together. Although there’s no need for her to help. Mother looks after me, it keeps her mobile. Total mobilisation.
‘Cif Анти-налёт. Налёт meaning limescale, and air raid too. And it really works. After the air raid siren. I’ve cleaned every single ceiling light at my parent’s place.
A student called: the internet’s not working, he can’t get through to his old teacher. I gave him her email address.
The teacher replied: her mobile’s not working, but the internet is. She’s still alive.
Snow falls. My daughter wants to go out to build a snowman. But it’s dangerous outside. Instead, she draws snowmen, doing battle with saboteurs. Up above, a plane marked with a ‘Z’ drops a bomb.
‘Good night’ sounds different now. It’s too much, you don’t want to tempt fate.
The only thing worse than ‘good night’ is ‘good morning’. Every morning in the faculty chatroom they do a headcount: ‘Alive’, ‘Alive’, ‘Alive’.
Everyone avoids saying ‘fine’, ‘alright’. At the most: ‘OK’. More often: ‘so-so’.
My wife and our daughter are at my mother-in-law’s, hiding in the cellar. My daughter drew a picture of them, like gnomes, Nibelung, in their treasure trove of preserves, pickled vegetables.
My Russian is fading. Fast. I make mistakes, I forget how to spell some words. Is it ‘Морадёр’ or ‘мародёр’? Either way they’re marauders.
Worst of all are the sounds. Anything not immediately identifiable is perceived as a threat. A towel brushing against the basin on top of the washing machine. And yet the howl of the air raid siren on my telephone doesn’t frighten me anymore.
The 1990s are back: endless queues, deficits, ‘what’ve they got there?’, ‘when are they opening?’. I smoke half a ‘Belomor kanal’ left over from back then. Anyone still want to go back to the USSR?
I hadn’t been out for a whole two weeks. And then everything had changed: people are polite to each other, they make way in the street, address you with ‘please’ and ‘excuse me’. No crowds or commotion in the supermarket. The reaction to the brutality of war–maximum humanity.
I realised that the upstairs neighbours have stopped quarrelling, making a racket. Only their dog still barks. But even he sounds more cultured now.
I don’t have the style for war. I just can’t find it in me. And the old styles don’t work anymore. Adorno was right about that.
The seventeenth night. I wake, turn off the siren on my ‘phone, go back to sleep.
It took a war to get me exercising again.
The shopkeeper says, when a friend asks if she’s afraid to be there, in the shop every day: ‘the thudding sounds the same whether I’m here or at home.’
I wait for the chemists to open, looking up at the signs. ‘Russian billiards.’ A loud thud from somewhere nearby.
A lot of young people about. I thought they’d all left. A guy standing behind me in the queue greets a young couple. ‘Oh!’, and they hug. ‘You stayed!’. We’re not going anywhere, they say in reply.
The thuds get louder, but the queue stands its ground, doesn’t budge. I also stand firm. No one so much as cursed.
I saw the patrol. They saw me. I was of no interest to them.
The media here don’t talk about enemy Chechens, they talk about Kadyrov’s militia, they don’t talk about ‘Russkiye’, ethnic Russians, they talk about ‘Rossiyane’, Russians from Russia.
My daughter drew a picture: lunchtime. Something bright red on the plates. ‘Red caviar?’ I ask. ‘Carrot fritters.’
‘…I visit my beloved with two carrots, carrying them by their green tails’. My beloved brings me carrots, and I bring her sausage and bread.
Thuds here, thuds there, we meet for a few minutes halfway. ‘Like Stierlitz the spy,’ my wife says.
On the first day, when we moved to our parents, we took the cat and some money, the paperwork for the flat, our marriage certificate, our daughter’s birth certificate. I took the book which I still haven’t read. Passports, diplomas. I forgot the flash drive containing my writing.
My wife writes: ‘The little one’s asleep now, but earlier she woke, crying out: Putin’s here. We’ll have to stop reading the news when she’s around.’
I don’t tell my parents all the news either.
Translated from the Russian by Matthew Hyde
Consider a donation to support Ukraine via any of the non-profits listed here. More dispatches by the same author are forthcoming in Asymptote’s Spring 2022 edition, slated for release on April 21.
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