Pathway to Khvylovy

The life story of Mykola Khvylovy, the writer who was the number one figure in Ukrainian literature in the period of the Executed Renaissance, is still full of mystery. The writer’s early biography (1893–1921) is especially enigmatic. If it were not for Khvylovy’s biography written by him in 1924 for a “three-man party purge panel,” if it were not for the efforts of Prof. Hryhorii Kostiuk from the USA, who collected the reminiscences of those who remembered Mykola Fitilev (this was the writer’s real name) in the time of his adolescence, we would know very little about the classic’s childhood, adolescence, and youth.

Meanwhile, the autobiographical information for the “three-man party purge panel” and memoir records, which were published at one point by the diaspora, contain a lot of precious leads for a literary historian. Actually, they urged me to make a trip to the writer’s homeland, namely: the present-day Sumy, Poltava, and Kharkiv regions.

Before that there was a suggestion from the historian Yurii Shapoval to join the preparation of Mykola Khvylovy’s dossier-form he had found in the SBU (the Security Service of Ukraine) archives. The book has recently been published in the Tempora Publishing House entitled Poliuvannia na Valdshnepa (Hunting for Woodcocks) and supplemented by the documentary Tsar i rab khytroshchiv (The Tsar and a Slave to Slyness) filmed by the director Iryna Shatokhina; the script and narration were done by Yurii Shapoval.

The publication’s literary criticism that accompanied the publication involved immersion into the epoch, the dramatic story of a person without whose works, ideas, and deeds it is impossible to imagine the cultural and sociopolitical “landscape” of Ukraine in the 1920s and the 1930s. Experience prompted that working with books and archival materials was not enough; it is necessary, according to Goethe’s advice, to go to the writer’s homeland.

Here he spent the first 11 years of his life. In 1921 he signed some of his articles by the pseudonym M. Trostianetsky — it looked even sentimental.

Wandering down the streets and outskirts of this town, one can see that old Trostianets in which the writer’s childhood passed. The two-storied building of the former volost school, where the Fitilev family, the writer’s parents, lived, was preserved. It is located in Chervonoarmiiska (Red Army) street (!). Currently it houses a school, too, and there is a modest memorial corner dedicated to the prominent countryman. In one of the stands there is a photo of the writer’s mother, Yelyzaveta Fitileva, already not young, with her eyes tired. I will mention her later in my story; for now I’ll just say that she was destined to survive her own “mutinous” son. There is also a selection of materials about Khvylovy in the Trostianets historical local lore museum located in the former Leopold Koenig’s palace. A few years ago it was restored, and now it’s one of the local tourist sights.

The parents of Mykola Fitilev (Khvylovy) — Hryhorii and Yelyzaveta Fitilev — were teachers in Trostianets. They resided in the building of the local volost school. The writer’s father was of “noble” origin. Narodniks’ dreaming led him to revolutionary groups, so he didn’t manage to complete his studies at Kharkiv University. He had to take the teacher’s position in Trostianets, where he married Yelyzaveta Tarasenko, a pretty daughter of an accountant serving for Leopold Koenig.

Hryhorii Fitilev had a reputation of an “eccentric man”: lofty manners were strangely combined in him with narodniks’ ideals. Relatives considered him a “mutinous soul” and a revolutionary. He didn’t belong to those who encumbered himself with family problems and duties. He liked hunting (this hobby passed on to his son Mykola) and dreamed eagerly.

As Mykola Khvylovy soon realized, his father was a “slapdash man.” In 1904 the family broke up: Yelyzaveta, who kept at that time five children (two sons, Mykola and Oleksandr, and three daughters — Yevhenia, Liudmyla, and Valentyna), couldn’t stand the “noble” whims of her husband, who also liked to drink, and left Trostianets. She found shelter at her sister’s, who lived in her husband’s mansion, landowner Smakovsky. There, in the village of Zubivka, 15 km from Krasnokutsk, Yelyzaveta and her five children lived for five years. Then all of them, except for Mykola, moved to the village of Demianivka, where his mother got a teacher’s position.

Thus, Zubivka and Demianivka are two extremely important “geographical” points on the map of Mykola Fitilev’s early biography.

IN THE LANDOWNER’S MANSION

Zubivka is a forest village with a dozen of houses where local citizens still dwell. The rest stand empty or are occupied by vacationers. Local old-timers remember the name of Smakovsky. One old lady, hastening a cow from pasture home, told me that her grandmother served at Smakovsky’s as a housekeeper and always had good opinion about him. She couldn’t answer the question where the Smakovsky house stood: somewhere in the forest.

There is little information about Mykola Smakovsky. I know for sure that in the time of Stolypin’s reform he headed the zemstvo in Bohodukhiv. Regarding the Zubiv mansion, obviously it was his summer “residence,” a dacha. Exactly in the mansion of Smakovsky, demolished by the severe winds of time long ago, Mykola Fitilev’s childhood and a part of adolescence passed, since 1904 and obviously until 1910.

Smakovsky’s daughter Larysa remembered a few interesting facts about her cousin. Mykola, from her words, was “quite a pickle,” “restless,” and “fidgety.” He attended primary school in the neighboring Kolontaiv. In view of the village’s proximity it means that in the morning Mykola was driven to Kolontaiv and taken back to Zubivka after classes.

The old school building still stands by the road, not far from the building of the school built later. The newer one bears a memorial board honoring the native of Kolontaiv, militia general-colonel Yurii Dahaiev: the school was reconstructed at his expense. But no board was installed to honor Mykola Khvylovy who studied a few years in Kolontaiv. And the school he attended is no longer repaired: it won’t last long. It means that there will be one less monument in what was once “one of the oldest towns of Sloboda Ukraine,” which “played an important role in 1658 and 1661 during Vyhovsky’s unrest.” The Uspensky Cathedral built in Kolontaiv in 1700 didn’t survive, let alone the old school.

Larysa Smakovska recollected that “the future writer wasn’t distinguished by a special diligence in studying.” However, he was an ardent reader. He read the Russian classics, works by Dickens, Hugo, Flaubert, Hoffmann, etc. He was a real “bibliophage” — a books devourer. “When we still lived in Zubivka, Mykola got a lot of books from the landowner Savych’s library, whose mansion was not far from Smakovsky’s mansion,” said Larysa. “Mykola read many books in this time period. He was fond of biographies of great people, in particular Nietzsche’s biography.”

Thus, since the very birth Mykola Fitilev was growing up in a very special environment: first, the school in Trostianets was his home, later — a landowner’s mansion. Speaking later in a letter to Mykola Zerov about his childhood and narodnik father, he said with irony: “I’m writing it for you to know what kind of ‘worker’ I am. I feel extremely embarrassed when some critics recommend me to the society as a worker. It looks as if I ‘boast’ of it. Sure, I was a worker: since the young years till the imperialistic war I ‘loafed about’ at factories and brickworks. But yet, am I a worker? In other time I wouldn’t reject this ‘rank’; but now, when with this rank someone wants to get another rank — I don’t feel comfortable to be called that. The only factory’s thing left in me: a proletarian (undistinguished) face, material status, and the spirit of protest. Though I don’t know what I should call the latter. In the past there was a good word ‘a common,’ now, unfortunately, I can’t use it. And I’m a fake intellectual.”

Anyway, in the circle of people close to the young Fitilev, intellectual quests were honored, and this to a large degree determined the atmosphere in his home. It was the same in Trostianets, Zubivka, and Kolontaiv.

When I was coming back from Zubivka, the Sun was setting. It was rolling to where Krasnokutsk was seen. From all other sides Zubivka was surrounded by pine forest. Leaving it one actually entered Kolontaiv.

For some reason Khvylovy didn’t mention about Kolontaiv in his information for the “three-man party purge panel.” Generally, he confused his biographers: “Having entered Okhtyrka gymnasium, I had to leave it soon: the participation in the so-called Ukrainian revolutionary group distinguished me from the rest of the fellows and my father was told to transfer me to a local gendarme apartment. I left gymnasium without even a fourth-grade certificate.”

It is not difficult to make sense of this “story with gymnasium.” I also failed to clarify it in Okhtyrka: people here didn’t know about Khvylovy’s education in the local gymnasium. You’ll hear a lot about other countrymen — Pavlo Hrabovsky, Ivan Bahriany, Borys Antonenko-Davydovych, but nothing regarding Kvylovy’s connection with Okhtyrka. Obviously he didn’t study here at all or almost didn’t study, since after his quite a short (one-two weeks) stay in Okhtyrka he went to obtain education in Bohodukhiv, where he attended the fifth grade of Bohodukhiv gymnasium.

WHERE PINES ARE RUSTLING

In Bohodukhiv the Smakovskys took care of Mykola’s education and upbringing. Mykola Smakovsky was a man of a respectful status; he was known here as the zemstvo chief. The landowner Savych, whose Zubivka library Mykola Fitilev had recently used, lived in downtown Bohodukhiv in a nice two-storied mansion near the church. In one of the documents kept in the Bohodukhiv local lore museum dated 1908 the name of the “permanent member of Bohodukhiv land surveying commission V. Savych” is mentioned — and one can hardly doubt that these are the Savychs who played a certain role in Khvylovy’s life. It is interesting to note that in the short story Iz Varynoi biohrafii (From Varia’s Biography), which contains descriptions of Bohodukhiv in 1919, some “former Savych’s house” is mentioned — in 1919 it was already a “revolutionary committee building.”

Larysa Smakovska said that her father had problems with his nephew, because “Mykola had connections with illegal political groups… Many madcaps from the camp of socialist revolutionaries were among his friends. The authorities advised Mykola Smakovsky to finally take the nephew away from gymnasium and keep him under his surveillance. So, the future writer’s education ended with the fifth grade of gymnasium. Mykola had to enter the adult world and earn his living.”

Mykola Fitilev claimed that at that time he was “16–17 years old,” which means that he was expelled from gymnasium in 1909 or 1910.

Thus, the gymnasium student Fitilev was directly engaged in the activity of illegal political groups established under the influence of Ukrainian political parties of socialistic character. The first to be mentioned is the Ukrainian party of socialist revolutionaries.

Having abandoned gymnasium, Mykola Fitilev had to get a job. And where could he go after Bohodukhiv? Sure, to Demianivka, where his mother Yelyzaveta Fitileva lived.

Demianivka is situated 15 km south of Kotelva. Like Zubivka, it’s a small forest village. It is situated on the bank of the Merla River, surrounded by pines from all sides. Here, in Demianivka, Khvylovy’s lines come unwittingly to memory:

Pines are rustling.

“Why are the pines rustling?”

“Snowstorm. Winds.”

The pines of mine — an Asiatic land!

I heard this rustling of pines. I saw that very “poor sandy territory” mentioned by Larysa Smakovska: “The Fitilevs (mother and her four children. — Author) lived in the house of the zemstvo school, and half of its yard was planted with pines. A small pine wood, as well as bushes of pines and silver willow grew here and there, everywhere on this poor sand territory.”

The zemstvo school in Demianivka where Khvylovy’s mother taught is still in the pine forest. However, it was almost entirely taken apart by local “volunteers.” The thoroughly built wooden structure remains (so far). The wall tiling bricks were removed, as well as the roof and the ceiling. A piece of brick with manufacturer’s initials is kept in my desk drawer — as a Browning in the editor Kark’s drawer, a character of Khvylovy’s short story with the same title.

Anatolii Shkrabaliuk, who showed me the former school, lives in Demianivka for over 10 years already. He witnessed the drama with destroying the monument connected with Mykola Khvylovy. The former school was plundered in the dark, and it was impossible to stop those irrepressible “invisible beings.” Though it all happened in just 15 km from Kotelva, a raion center in the Poltava region.

Khvylovy wrote in his autobiography that after being expelled from gymnasium he tried to enter the “landowner Durny’s economy,” but he didn’t manage to do it. For some time he lived in Demianivka. “‘Loitering about’ — as the local intellectuals would put it,” — he recollected. “Actually, I was doing a bit of work among the villagers which resulted in discrediting the royal family. Soon a local constable was notified about it, and I had to leave my family.”

However, Mykola Fitilev’s “loitering about” was useful for his “self.” He read a lot and strengthened his character using even such a mysterious philosopher as Friedrich Nietzsche as a “teacher.” The episode one of Fitilev’s friends keeps in mind belongs exactly to this period of

Demianivka uncertainty: “‘Eccentric Mykola planned to come from Demianivka to Rublivka on some hour, he did accomplish his intention accurately, and in a terrible heavy shower, which was pouring at exactly that time, went a few kilometers through the village, making sagacious and sedate countrymen shrug their shoulders in condescension and provoking admiration of his young friends whom he hurried to meet.”

Therefore, during those Demianivka days there was intensive work on himself, which could be called self-education. The restless, rebellious soul of Mykola Fitilev was working.

“THREE YEARS OF CALVARY”

Having left Demianivka after a conversation with the constable, it was necessary to get a job somewhere. The time of “wandering” (in Sloboda Ukraine and Donbas) and incredible worldview eclecticism began in Mykola’s life. Everything intertwined oddly: the wish to open the eyes of “the miserable and oppressed” to the unfair social order; interest in the anarchism ideas (accidental reading of Mikhail Bakunin’s brochure was enough for this!); “tramping” like young Gorky — and the constant inner need for “ideological activity” and agitation. Mykola Fitilev’s life routes of the first half of the 1910s most often lead him to factories: he had to work as an unskilled worker, loader, to convey bricks, coal, etc. It looked as if he really became a “worker from the Donbas!”

It continued until 1914, when the war broke out. On Dec. 1, 1914, Mykola Fitilev turned 21 years old. It meant that he was to be drafted. In his letter to Mykola Zerov (November 1924) he would soon write about “three years of marches, starvation, real horror, which I wouldn’t risk to describe; three years of Calvary in the remote fields of Galicia, the Carpathians, Romania, etc.”

Apparently, Fitilev was drafted in December 1914 and sent to Kharkiv. “From Vashchenko’s barracks in Kharkiv at the beginning of 1915, punishing me for indiscipline, a sergeant major sends me with the marching company to the army in the field,” recollected Mykola Khvylovy. “As a private soldier, I got to the 325th Tsarevsky regiment that took up a position in the Volhynian marshes. At that time my wandering in Galicia, Poland, Bukovyna, and Romania started. Fights, marches, lice, an infantryman’s burden — I withstood all this physically, but morally this ordeal broke me. This period of my life can be characterized as a period of full spiritual degradation. I could dream of no ideology work, because I only saw endless ‘marches’, where hunger, constant roar of canons, and a gray mass of faceless people waited for me. Only in 1916, when I was transferred to the 9th chemical detachment as a private of the ‘regular personnel,’ I chanced to meet living people, and there I suddenly remembered that I was a human being, not an automated machine.”

The war’s horror and the physical and moral trials of the private infantryman Fitilev on endless military roads were so bitter that later he very seldom mentioned them.

The February revolution of 1917 found Mykola Fitilev in Romania. For him, as for thousands of combatants, the moment of truth has come — the time of political self-determination. Bolsheviks’ appeals attracted, but the ideas about “free Ukraine” appeared more and more often as well. Revolutionary processes quickly spread to the army that had been exhausted by the war long ago. The private Fitilev was elected to the regimental council of soldiers’ deputies. He was even a deputy of the 9th army congress commanded by general Lichytsky. Since this moment the activity of Fitilev was connected with the “Ukrainian army council” that was supported by the political parties of that time. Fulfilling its orders, he was involved in cultural and educational activity. Obviously, Arkadii Lubchenko’s record, based on Khvylovy’s recollection, concerns this period: “I started publishing materials in 1917, in a newspaper. I wrote poetry all the time (and also feuilletons in military front newspapers under the penname ‘Uncle Mykola’).”

Thus, the soldier Fitilev writes poems and feuilletons. Soon, remembering the front, he called himself a “non-partisan dreamer.” But it was not quite so: Mykola Fitilev’s political sympathies were with the left-wing Ukrainian socialist revolutionaries, future “borotbysts.”

After all the hard times of the First World War, tough front weekdays, he was demobilized. It happened in fall 1917. And again the forest village of Demianivka, not far from Kotelva, appears in his life. Mykola’s mother and his sisters still lived there.

ON THE EDGE

Soon Khvylovy recollected that exactly at that time, at the end of 1917, having returned home, he “undertook organizing of the so-called unions,” which were involved in socializing land. And in April 1918 hetman Pavlo Skoropadsky came to power, supported by the German troops. According to Khvylovy, after the Germans came, he first went to Kharkiv where he worked as a loader, janitor, hospital attendant, and clerk. And then he returned home again. Social discontent was growing, since the hetman’s power was busy restoring landowner’s orders. When the Directory initiated a rebellion against Skoropadsky, Mykola Fitilev also organized a detachment of “free Cossacks,” which, as he stated later, “fought against the detachments of count Keller,” i.e., the commander-in-chief of Hetman Skoropadsky’s troops.

Fitilev’s detachment was a part of a half-anarchy insurgent anti-hetman element at the end of 1918. And in the beginning of 1919, in Christmas time, an incident happened, which finally led to Fitilev’s joining the Red Army together with his “free Cossacks.” Fitilev was at that time in the village of Velyka Rublivka. Exactly during those Christmas days there was a conflict for some reason between his detachment and the troops of the Directory. Perhaps, a pro-Bolshevik orientation of Fitilev’s soldiers was the reason for that. The order was given to disarm the detachment and arrest Fitilev. And he was arrested by warriors of Symon Petliura! The “free Cossacks” tried to defend their commander and two more detainees. During the skirmish Mykola Fitilev escaped. Since that moment the “free Cossacks” joined the Red Army, but not all of them though.

Soon Khvylovy told about it in his autobiography. Among other things, he remembers that two his friends — Medved and Chapak were shot. And he adds: “Later they were buried near volost (in Rublivka — V. P.) by the Soviet authorities.”

Certainly, I went to Rublivka. This is near Demianivka; Fitilev used to go there straight through the forest. I also wanted to make sure of his words. And I did: it was exactly so as Khvylovy wrote in his autobiography. In the center of the village one can see a memorial commemorating the countrymen, who sacrificed their life for the Soviet government (so the board reads) or freed the village from Hitler. Among the names inscribed on the memorial there are the ones of Medved and Chapak! These two were mentioned in the autobiography of Mykola Khvylovy written in 1924.

All this supports the idea that at the beginning of 1919, when the Directory couldn’t control the power it had, when the pressure of Bolsheviks increased, Fitilev experienced painful worldview “pains.” Under the pressure of hard reality the process of his shifting to the left wing took place.

Khvylovy’s life in 1918–19 is full of puzzles. Though his general logic of events is clear: he chose the Bolsheviks’ way that was supposed to bring the realm of social and national justice.

At that time important events happened in Fitilev’s personal life. When he once came to Demianivka to visit his mother, he met a young teacher, Kateryna Hashchenko. She was from the village of Polkova Mykytivka, not far from Bohodukhiv. Kateryna’s father was a “planter” — on his 5 dessiatinas (13.5 acres) he grew beets and sold them to the Koenig’s sugar refineries.

In Demianivka Hashchenko taught for only a year and then moved to Rublivka where Fitilev worked. “They both were members of ‘Prosvita,’ took part in plays and performances,” recollected Hashchenko’s sister Daria. “Katrusia possessed a nice, strong soprano and Mykola, a pleasant tenor, and they sang together the duos ‘De ty brodysh, moia dole’ (Where are you wandering, my fate) and ‘Koly rozluchaiutsia dvoie’ (When a couple parts).”

Shortly (obviously in spring 1919) Fitilev and Hashchenko got married and after a while settled in Bohodukhiv. Daria Hashchenko, later remembering her relative, wrote that he was “a young man of an average height, black-haired, a “brush-like” hair cut, wearing dark pants with white stripes, dark shirt, and unbuttoned collar.” Fitilev absolutely refused to get married in church, which provoked big discontent of Kateryna’s mother. The family’s misunderstandings were dramatic.

Daria Hashchenko recollected: “Mother induced them to secretly marry in church that was across the street, and the priest was near, but Mykola totally refused, because he was a communist already and he said that they were registered in the registry office, but for mother it was an illegal marriage.” When the couple came from Bohodukhiv to visit the family in Polkova Mykytivka, collisions of worldview “moral-class“ character occurred: “Our parents disliked that Mykola always held home ‘meetings’ about the paradise that communism would bring and about the communes where people would live as bees in our frame beehives from the flourishing garden. He was always so enthusiastic in speaking that even we, children, listened to him with great admiration, as if he were telling a fairy tale.”

In Khvylovy’s early short stories one can hear an echo of the stormy events of 1918–19. One can recognize the historical realities and landscapes the future writer could see here in Demianivka and Velyka Rublivka.

Khvylovy often came to Demianivka to visit his mother even later, being already a famous writer. In Kotelva I got acquainted with the 80-year old Oleksandra Zaiets, who as a child lived with her family in front of the school. She remembers “as in a dream” the last visit of Khvylovy. He was in a leather jacket and looked “posh.” From home talks she also remembers that Khvylovy brought some manuscripts to hide them at his father’s, Avram Loza, place. But his father allegedly refused, since he was watched by Bolsheviks himself. It is difficult to say whether this is true. Oleksandra remembers more clearly the writer’s mother Yelyzaveta, about whom she said briefly and exhaustively: “an elegant woman.” Yelyzaveta was from a noble family, dressed not in a village style, smoked, and was noted for intelligent manners. After her son’s death she went to Russia, to the city of Vladimir.

But let’s return to 1919. In the first half of this year Fitilev lived and worked in Bohodukhiv. The Bolshevik government had just established itself but its position was very unstable: in the south Denikin’s troops were on the offensive.

In April 1919 Fitilev joined the Communist Party (Bolsheviks) of Ukraine. Obviously he thought that revolution and socialism were the main things. And Ukraine… Ukraine, he believed, would revive from the revolution’s fire as Blue Savoy. “I faced Denikin’s troops with the Bohodukhiv detachment I organized together with a friend of mine, Koliadko, and a local military commissar,” remembered Khvylovy. “First, I directly participated in three battles near Krasnokutsk against Drozdov’s soldiers, then near Bohodukhiv. When our regiment was defeated, I joined one of Sumy direction detachments (Lebedynsky regiment) as a Red Army soldier and then the 13th army.”

In the Red Army he served at headquarters and later worked in the publishing department and the army’s newspaper. His front biography includes working in the political department of the Southern Front, the Second Cavalry, participation in battles with Vrangel, and so on.

In front journalism the future writer’s writing skills grew stronger.

OLEKSANDRIVKA SURPRISES

On Jan. 13, 1920, daughter Iraida was born into the family of the Fitilevs. “In 1920 the winter was dry and cold,” recollected Daria Hashchenko. “It was difficult to get fuel in Bohodukhiv; the room wasn’t suitable for the baby, and Mykola brought his family to his wife’s parents, who had a nice and spacious house” (in the village of Polkova Mykytivka — Author). He worked at that time as the chief of a network of people’s educators in Bohodukhiv. But it was already obvious that the future of Fitilev would be connected with literature.

Bohodukhiv is present in some works by Khvylovy. The short story From Varia’s Biography, where, particularly, the local monastery is mentioned, is very reminiscent of Bohodukhiv. Having come to Bohodukhiv, I found former Monastyrska Street and the former cloister. It stands empty and neglected, since the military detachment that was situated there in the Soviet times left it long ago. However, in the center one can see the Savychs’ house, which Fitilev used to visit while studying in gymnasium, and the gymnasium building itself with a memorial plaque honoring Khvylovy. It is also empty though the building still preserves its majesty. It could accommodate, without exaggeration, an entire university.

From Bohodukhiv I hurried to the village of Oleksandrivka, Zolochiv raion in the Kharkiv region. I knew that there Khvylovy’s first wife Kateryna Hashchenko worked; she died there in 1967. However, I couldn’t imagine the surprises that waited for me in this village situated almost on the Russian border.

When I entered a local shop and asked about Kateryna Hashchenko, I was suggested to address Kateryna Honchar — she worked for a long time as the school principal, so she should know. After a few minutes I was already talking to Kateryna. And here I found out that both Khvylovy’s wife and daughter taught in Oleksandrivka school. (Iraida was born in 1920 in Bohodukhiv.) And I was completely struck by the news that right now I could be connected with her over the phone.

As it turned out, Nina Holovchenko, also a former teacher from Oleksandrivka, maintains relations with her colleague who currently resides in Kharkiv, at her son Viktor’s. I listened to the wonderful human epopee full of true drama and finally took the receiver and heard from the other end the voice of Iraida Fitileva. I knew already that in Oleksandrivka she was called Iraida Kryvych by her stepfather’s surname.

So, going to Oleksandrivka I didn’t expect that I would unveil the fate of Mykola Khvylovy’s daughter about whom, I should confess, I knew nothing. No book dedicated to the writer mentioned about it. Though I knew about the family drama of 1922, after which the family of Mykola and Kateryna broke up.

In the spring of 1921 Khvylovy left Bohodukhiv for Kharkiv, Ukraine’s capital at the time. Kateryna stayed in Bohodukhiv with little Iraida. “This lasted until the spring of 1922,” remembers Daria Hashchenko. “Mother instigated her (daughter Kateryna, Khvylovy’s wife — Author) all the time to leave him as an unreliable man who cannot provide material support to his family, and they generally disliked him for those ‘meetings.’”

Once Kateryna went to him, there she met some woman, it’s not clear whether he rented her dwelling, or she was in his dwelling. Here was some jealousy — justified or not, I don’t know. However, Kateryna often cried after that, but tried to hide this (though we saw it with the middle sister) and never went to Kharkiv afterwards. He didn’t come either. This way the Fitilev family split up.”

Two years passed and Kateryna married an agronomist, Dmytro Kryvych, who had loved her for a long time. After some time Iraida Fitileva became Iraida Kryvych.

From Daria Hashchenko’s recollections I knew that Kateryna lived and worked in Oleksandrivka in the Kharkiv region and that she died there in 1967. However, as it turned out, Iraida taught there for about 30 years, too!

And here her voice sounds from the phone receiver. Iraida, who is now 89 years old, lives in Kharkiv, at her son Viktor’s. Her former colleagues from Oleksandrivka — Kateryna Honchar and Nina Holovchenko just told me the story of her life. Actually, it was Nina who connected us: as it turned out, she kept in touch with Iraida, calling her from time to time.

What could I say to the daughter of Mykola Khvylovy? That in Kyiv his dossier-form found in the SBU archives was prepared for publishing and that I prepared an article about the writer for this publication? That I have recently visited Bohodukhiv and before that other places which were connected with her father’s life? Actually, I told her all this; however, the most important thing is that despite her illness Iraida didn’t object to our meeting in Kharkiv.

I was lucky on that trip: when I was about to leave Oleksandrivka, it turned out that right now Iraida’s son Viktor visited the village. He came to do housework for a while in the house where they lived with his mother, since Oleksandrivka is not so far from Kharkiv. Consequently, before meeting Mykola Khvylovy’s daughter I had a chance to meet his grandson!

AT KHVYLOVY’S DAUGHTER’S PLACE

A week has passed and here I am — in the Rohan district of Kharkiv, in Viktor’s apartment. Iraida was disposed to memories. As it turned out, she was no longer bothered by the literary museum employees, philologists, and journalists. There was an interview in the Kharkiv newspaper Sloboda, but many years have passed after that. After all, the readers were more often interested in her front biography.

“My mother is from Polkova Mykytivka, which is near Bohodukhiv,” says Iraida. “In Bohodukhiv she graduated from gymnasium, with a golden medal. She met Khvylovy in Demianivka — she taught there for a year (1917–18 — Author). And Khvylovy’s mother also taught in Demianivka.”

Little by little I become a witness of Khvylovy’s daughter’s story, closely intertwined with the biography of the hard period. “My stepfather, Dmytro Kryvych, was an agronomist by education; he graduated from an agricultural institution in Kharkiv,” remembers Iraida. “At different times he was the director of an MTS (machines and tractors station), head of Chernihiv oblast administration, headed Ukrovtsevodtsentr (the entire sheep-breeding sector of Ukraine! — Author). Our family often moved from city to city. So I attended the first grade in Izium and then we moved to Mariupol. There I finished the second and third grades, while for the fourth and the fifth grades I was already in Kharkiv, the capital at the time. But this was not the end: there were Chernihiv, Pryluky, and Vinnytsia; I finished school in Konotop and was an excellent student, like my mother.

“My mother had a strong character; she was clever and well-read. She worked in the libraries; she said that she didn’t feel comfortable getting a school job, since we moved too often, and it was bad for students when teachers were changed often.”

I ask my interlocutor when she first heard about her real father Mykola Khvylovy. “The mother’s younger sister Dania told me about that ‘in strict confidence,’” says Iraida. “Mama thought I didn’t know anything. And I was six or seven years old then. Mother never told me about father. She died without telling this; we have never had a conversation about it. My birth certificate and passport were registered for Iraida Fitileva. But the time came when I was to join the Komsomol, stepfather adopted me, and my passport was changed. It was in 1934. During one of the party purges my stepfather was almost expelled from the party for upbringing a nationalist’s daughter.”

Iraida mentions her stepfather only in good words. “I had a very good stepfather,” she says. “We were not divided in the family. They always said that he loved the older daughter (me) even more than the younger one, Nadia, my sister by mother. He loved mother and didn’t want her to feel that Nadia for him was ‘his own’, while I was not. He was proud of us because we studied well.”

When the Kryvych family happened to be in Kharkiv and later lived there, Khvylovy asked to leave Iraida at his place for some time, but Kateryna objected. Once there was a story when Iraida was given a gift which came from her father — a piano. “Mama was shopping at that time, and when she returned, she understood at once who sent the piano. She sent it back,” says Iraida.

“So you never saw your father?”

I ask.

“I did. At his funeral in 1933. The fact is that in the middle of the year my stepfather was transferred to Chernihiv, where he worked as the head of the regional administration. I attended the fifth grade at that time. My mother, stepfather, and sister Nadia went to Chernihiv. Our apartment at Kholodna Hora was left for mother’s two sisters. Then Khvylovy shot himself. Having learnt about it, Dania and Liusia took me to downtown, to the Slovo building, where Khvylovy had lived. There were lots of people! Dania pushed me through the crowd, and we saw my grandmother — Mykola’s mother. Grandmother saw us, too, and asked Dania to bring me nearer. Khvylovy lay on the white hearse; his coffin stood in the middle of it. Granny was repeating all the time: ‘This is your father, this is your father…’ And then said: ‘Kiss him.’ I remembered him like that, lying. I kissed his cheek.

“In front of me stood a girl Liuba Umantseva. She was older than me. She was Khvylovy’s stepdaughter.”

Did Iraida Kryvych and Liuba Umantseva know each other? Iraida speaks about it in this way: “After what happened the Umantsevs moved to Russia. Liuba wrote me a letter, I answered, and our correspondence discontinued. Khvylovy loved Liuba very much. Aunt Zhenia, his sister, told me: ‘He loved you in her.’”

Having graduated from school, Iraida Kryvych entered university and was a student when the war broke out. That’s her story about her war, front biography: “At that time I started the fourth year at the chemistry department. My stepfather, a reserve officer, was drafted on the third day of the war, though he was 50 already. And sister Nadia finished the 10th grade. First, we were sent to Barvinka raion for harvesting and then taken to Kharkiv. The Germans were near, in Sumy oblast. The university was evacuated to Kzyl-Orda. All people thought at that time that the war was not for long. They said: ‘The Germans will be driven out soon.’

“Somehow I got to Ostrohorsk, to my mother. Passenger trains already were not in service at that time, and those in service were serving soldiers and evacuees.

“The Germans were approaching closer and closer. But they never entered Ostrohorsk. There was a military detachment that blew up railroads to stop the Germans. Mother asked some soldiers to take us to Stalingrad oblast. There, in Stalingrad, I finished a communications college, or a six-month course, to be more precise. Together with sister Nadia in May 1942 we joined the army.

“We reached Reichstag and signed on Reichstag: ‘Sisters Kryvych from Ukraine.’ We served in the 6th separate Red Flag Oleksandr Nevsky Communications Regiment for the entire war. There were many rifle regiments, but just one communications regiment.

“Our army fought as a part of the First Ukrainian front and seized Berlin.

“Soon after the war, when my husband died, our mother came to us to the Caucasus and took me and my son Viktor to Oleksandrivka.”

Well, the circle closed up. Iraida became a teacher in Oleksandrivka school. She taught geography. They lived together with her son Viktor in the school house. For many years she worked as a deputy principal for education work. Her former colleagues told me that Iraida was completely devoted to work. She didn’t acquire any household — all her time was absorbed by school. She retired in 1975 but continued to live in Oleksandrivka until health problems made her move to Kharkiv.

I ask Iraida when she first got works by Mykola Khvylovy. “It happened in 1927–28, when I studied in Izium,” she replies. “Dania showed me a big portrait of father. At that time I didn’t read any of his works because I was a first-grader. I read his short stories at the end of the 1980s, in some magazine. I also have a volume of Khvylovy presented by Osyp Zinkevych who came to Oleksandrivka after Professor Kostiuk published a five-volume edition of Mykola Khvylovy’s works in America.”

I remember Nina Holovchenko, a former teacher at Oleksandrivka school, telling me that a teacher of that school kept a few books by Khvylovy published during his life. “It’s true,” says Iraida. “Yosyp was amazed when he learned that I was Khvylovy’s daughter. Here I have the book Kit u chobotiakh (Puss in Boots) with his commemorative inscription: ‘For dear Iraida Fitileva-Khvylova from Yosyp Luhovy as a sign of sincere respect to Your Father. Kharkiv, June 24, 1989.’ Puss in Boots is a romantic short story about a young woman-revolutionary. He was a romantic.”

Did Khvylovy’s daughter tell anyone about her secret? She did, as it turned out. She told the Ukrainian language and literature teacher Nina Holovchenko. “But it was after they started speaking about Khvylovy,” specifies Iraida. “I had visitors from the Kharkiv Literary Museum. And I was in Kharkiv and went to the father’s grave. In 1993 I was invited to Kyiv for Khvylovy’s 100th anniversary, but I got sick at that time.

“And before that I visited aunt Zhenia and her daughter Maya in Kyiv. … When I came to aunt Zhenia, she took my hand and didn’t let me go. ‘You smell like Kolia.’ They were friends with my mother. Of all aunts I remember only Zhenia. Although Khvylovy had two more sisters, Liuda and Valia, I saw only Zhenia. Her grandchildren still live in Kyiv.

“I read that he burned his novel Iraida to prove to himself that he would be able to end his life the same way. And it seems to me all the time that he did it not to do harm to me after his death.”

This version suggested by Mykola Khvylovy’s daughter is touching: the disgraced writer, her father, burned his unfinished novel Iraida, entitled by her name, not to harm her! Since she could be regarded as “a family member of an enemy of the people!”

That’s the story revealed to me during July days as I visited Trostianets, Okhtyrka, Krasnokutsk, Zubivka, Kolontaiv, Kotelva, Demianivka, Velyka Rublivka, Bohodukhiv, and, finally, Oleksandrivka. All these places of the present-day Sumy, Poltava, and Kharkiv regions are closely connected with the name of Mykola Khvylovy. I met people who remember the mother of Mykola Khvylovy, mother of her daughter Iraida, and even Mykola himself! And meeting Khvylovy’s daughter was just fantastic.

After this trip the music of Mykola Khvylovy’s prose suddenly started to sound in a new way.