My Most Precious Example

Ninety percent of modern parents are perfectly decent people, pursuing the sole objective of raising their children as healthy and happy individuals. Aware of this and proudly counting myself in that number, I am simultaneously aware of the need to set up a Party of Today’s Parents with a motto something like Parents of All Countries, Unite! Learn to Understand Your Children! Even as I write this I can see my opponents smirk and mutter in dismay. Still, everybody will agree that problems grow by the day and can all be summed up by the lack of understanding.

Until recently I was sure I had that understanding, but now I have doubts.

The crucial blow to my confidence was dealt by an old friend, a very nice woman. Somehow she failed to notice that her son Denys had grown up and was now earning much more than she and her husband put together; that they ought to have paid more attention to his casual remarks and infrequent recommendations that were more often than not quite reasonable and relevant. Somehow she did not realize that there were two grown men in the family. And then the ax fell. Their son turned up with a girl, announced that she was his wife, and that they were moving into a rented apartment. They felt sure that a family within a family made no sense. The parents on both sides received the news and nodded their agreement with a sigh. Life went on, but...

“Can you imagine?” I heard my friend’s incredulous voice on the phone. “They aren’t registering their marriage. They live common law. For heavens’ sake, what’s going on? How can they?”

“Relax. I’ve heard all about living together from my young colleagues. It’s been standard practice at all times.”

“You can’t be serious!”

“Also, a certificate of marriage isn’t what makes a man and a woman happy lifelong companions; it’s not what makes them love each other forever. Let me give you an example. It’s about my grandparents. Still hear me?”

* * *

My grandfather died two years before their golden anniversary, leaving my grandmother in a big home, once happily noisy and crowded. Little by little she returned to normal and then the chairperson of the village came running.

“Mariya, where is your certificate of marriage. There are relatives asking about the house...”

The old woman stared at her, totally confused. Together they looked through all the family papers (traditionally kept at the bottom of the chest). Nothing. Oh, God! After living 48 years with her husband Mariya realized she was a legal nonentity. No certificate meant that she was not the late Polikarp’s wife.

The chairperson wanted to help. She asked a lot of questions, trying to figure a way out, gave Mariya some recommendations, and had to go.

My grandmother sat on the bench by the porch, suddenly very tired. She looked around, remembering...

* * *

Mariya had been a pretty girl. She helped with the household chores, studied well at school, and was among the best dancers at the village club. Local fellows cast interested glances her way increasingly often.

“Daddy,” she said quietly once, “Onysym is sending the matchmakers.”

“I won’t even let them in. Everybody knows that Onysym is a gangster (there were many gangs prowling Ukrainian expanses in the early Soviet period — Author). I don’t care if he has oxen with horns of gold, you’re not marrying him. Subject closed.”

Mariya was grief-stricken, but her father’s word was law for the family.

* * *

Years passed. Once a fellow appeared at a vechornytsi evening party of the village young people. He was from another village. He invited Mariya for a dance and they spoke briefly. He would appear at other parties, silently standing to the side, now and then looking at her.

“A bit old for a fiancО,” the girl told herself on the way home and tried to forget all about him.

Winter was followed by spring, a busy summer, and then harvest time. In the spring the matchmakers appeared. After exchanging the traditional greetings, they presented the prospective fiancО. Mariya’s father accepted the proffered bread with a bow and invited them to the table.

Mariya was stunned. “Daddy, I don’t know the man,” she complained tearfully later.

“Don’t cry, daughter. He’s a reliable fellow, from a good family. You’ll be perfectly safe with him. Go now. Do as your parents say; they wish you well.”

Mariya did. After the wedding party she and her husband, and a small dowry (Mariya’s family was large and times were hard) left for the neighboring village.

* * *

The father-in-law was a strict taskmaster and his wife mostly kept to herself, but they made Mariya welcome. The family was large and friendly. Polikarp’s brothers and sisters were married. They owned a large plot and worked from dawn to dusk. There were five men in the family and they took care of everything. They refused to join the collective farm and were registered as class enemies (kurkuls or kulaks). They kept aloof from the collectivized community and the local Communists made them pay for it. One day they appeared with a writ and confiscated everything. “We were baking sugar beets for the kids, the only candy they had at the time, so they took away the beets also,” Mariya would recall years later.

“Who is such a poor peasant?” Polikarp would think aloud and answer himself, “A ne’er do well. So who is a kurkul? A smart and thrifty farmer. Who is a farmhand? A peasant hired by a kurkul. A clever farmhand will thank the kurkul for showing him how to become a kurkul.”

* * *

The family was splitting up. Mariya and Polikarp stayed with his parents and continued to work. They respected each other. Eventually, they had a son, but he died young. Later, they had two more sons. Then came 1933 and the famine. They left for Tula [Russia], for there was bread there. They found jobs, but their separation from the Ukrainian horror was not long. Polikarp’s parents longed for home; it was hard for the old people to adjust to the strange environment.

They returned in winter. Cold and hunger everywhere. They survived thanks to relatives in a nearby village. The relatives had a cow and generously shared meager daily milk yields with them. Polikarp worked as a track walker. Leaving for work every morning, he did not put on shoes or boots; his feet were swollen from chronic hunger. Mariya tended the children, helped Polikarp’s parents, anxiously waiting for her husband. After he returned home the place look safer. He was reticent but always found warm words for her.

Spring was approaching and they were horrified to see empty houses. The village was dying out, one family after the next. The first days of spring brought fresh hope. They started preparing for the sowing campaign. They believed in themselves. In the fall they had bread and other food. Now their children looked healthier. For the first time smiles could be seen on villagers’ faces.

Mariya and Polikarp were happy with their children. Good boys, both of them, always ready to lend a hand.

“There were no rude words ever spoken in the family. I never felt hurt. Other women envied me. And we never thought of registering the marriage. We were wed in church back in 1924. A long time ago, I took my husband’s surname. We shared everything we had. We never thought of dividing anything. What for?” Mariya recalled bitterly, then again was lost in thought.

* * *

They had long become collective farmers, with great effort earning their labor days (trudodni, a method of reckoning labor unequally in the collective farms such that a common farm laborer might need a couple of days to earn one while the tractor driver might earn two daily — Ed.). The boys were growing, going to school, just like others everywhere.

They had just achieved a degree of prosperity when the war broke out. Then came two years of Nazi occupation. She is pained to remember the time. Then the Soviet Army came and everybody heaved a sigh of relief. Her husband and son went to the front, except that “front” for Polikarp (almost 50 at the time) meant working in the rear, sewing clothes for soldiers. He seemed to be a jack-of-all-trades.

Then fate struck a heavy blow. Their middle son died in Polikarp’s arms at a hospital in Odesa after the war. How they felt defies description. Their life seemed to have come to an end.

Yet the ultimate philosophy of life is that even the worst tragedy gradually wears off. Mariya and Polikarp concentrated on raising the youngest son, taught him, and continued to believe in a happier future. They were always with him, always ready to help. He grew up and became a Soviet army officer. He served in Germany, sent letters home, they looked forward to his visit. Finally he visited them, slim and handsome. The fellow villagers eyed his shoulder boards with respect and enthusiastically answered his greetings. The old father and mother could not tear their eyes away from him. He left, promising to return soon...

* * *

He was killed in the line of duty, and the officers at the military registration and enlistment office back home did not know how to break the news. They visited the chairman of the village council, who nearly fainted. “God have mercy on them! What have they done to deserve such a fate? No, I’m not going there. How can I? It’s their third son!”

The people living next door thought they heard a wolf howl, and they ran over and found Polikarp lying in a dead faint and Mariya sitting beside him, rocking and howling. Three men stood silently by the wall, their faces white as ghosts.

* * *

Mariya spent long months in a hospital. Polikarp, looking much older than his actual age, bent under his grief, shuffled about the empty home, trying to cope with the chores. Mariya returned from the hospital, but she had no will to live. Now there were just the two of them and their remaining years together, more precisely, he, she, and their overwhelming grief. Polikarp tried to keep close to Mariya, both were silent most of the time. There was no other village home as painfully silent as theirs.

The chairman of the village council opened the gate and entered the yard. Polikarp and Mariya were having lunch, meaning that Polikarp was trying to talk Mariya into eating something.

“Hello,” said the chairman quietly. The two nodded without speaking.

“Mariya, it’s harvest time and we’re short of manpower. I’m sending everybody out in the field, and they need a nanny at the daycare center. Could you help them?”

“You want me to look after children? Me?” she gasped and burst out crying.

“Yes, I do. There’s nobody else. Please, Mariya, be there at six in the morning. I’ll be waiting. Polikarp, I want you to help them with cabinet work at the new school. I know I can rely on both of you...”

“We’ll help” (Dopomozhemo), replied Polikarp. He had always been laconic.

* * *

They left home early the following morning and went to work. Every villager prayed silently for the Lord to help them. Petro’s daughter- in-law managed to slip her child into Mariya’s hands on her way to the daycare center. The little boy cuddled up to the old women and held fast. She carried him the rest of the way.

The years passed, Mariya and Polikarp had long been on pension, together as always. His health was failing and Mariya never left his side, trying to cure him with medicine and words. During the night she would doze rather than sleep, listening to his breathing.

“It’s all right, Mariya, I’m fine,” he tried to reassure her.

It was leap year and Polikarp was in a very bad way. The neighbors were alarmed.

“This year the saints turn in their coffins,” Polikarp explained to everyone. “If I survive this year I’ll live long after, but if my time has come it must be this year.”

He died and joined his sons, although Mariya begged, “My beloved master, do not leave me alone!” He left her.

* * *

And now she was nobody.

“Mrs. Mariya, the chairperson said you were having some problems,” Ivan living next door broke her reverie.

“You know what, son, take me to my home village.”

He did, and she visited her parents’ graves, as though asking their blessing again. She also visited a very old friend who had attended her wedding. And then the court ruled that she was indeed the wife of the late Mr. Varchenko. Several days later the village council issued a certificate of marriage. That day she returned home a legitimate wife without a legitimate husband. She laid a table, put on her best blouse, and told this story to the portraits of her beloved husband and sons. She even thought that they smiled encouragingly at her. After all, they had always been there to protect her.

* * *

“Are you listening?” I asked my friend on the other end.

“Yes,” she sobbed.

“Even now I cannot really say what kept them together for so many years, but one thing is certain. It was not a marriage certificate.”