Or over a year at liberty
After The Day’s story (No. 36, September 28,1999) about Stepan Kovalchuk from Monchyntsi, a godforsaken village in Khmelnytsky oblast, it was picked up by the world’s leading news agencies. For a long time afterward the village was visited by reporters from London, Washington, Tokyo, Warsaw, and elsewhere. “The last to visit was a journalist from Copenhagen,” recalls Stepan Kovalchuk, who spent 57 years hiding in the garret of his mother’s home, then climbed down and appeared in the village to announce that he had never left Monchyntsi and had lived all those years upstairs. That happened in the fall of 1999. What has his life been like after serving his long term of self-imprisonment?
He was a sensation of the twentieth century and he still wears the same clothes in which he was immortalized by television and photo cameras, except that the coat and pants sewn by his sister Melanka a very long time ago hasbecome even more threadbare. He took one of his old chairs and placed it in the yard for Borys Petruk, chairman of the village council. It soon transpired that shortly after he had made headlines worldwide he had been instructed not to receive any visitors unless accompanied by a local official. Stepan Kovalchuk is a law-abiding citizen and has a passport, issued him for the first time in October 1999. “The times are uncertain and we must take good care of Kovalchuk. But for his action, no one would’ve ever heard about Monchyntsi,” Borys Petruk explains his security arrangements.
He is speaking up for Kovalchuk to hear. Unfortunately, the old man’s hearing is affected, as is his eyesight, both consequences of his voluntary incarceration. “People in the neighborhood come to visit, so I have to ask who they are,” the old man, master, and only resident of the old house joins in. People are friendly and willing to help, he adds. “Olena Mykhailiuk living next door looks after me, she drops in regularly and asks if I’m still alive. And when Oleksandr Babak, another neighbor, passed away, God rest his soul, they took me to the cemetery in a car and then brought me back and invited me to the funeral repast.”
It was when burying Oleksandr Babak that Kovalchuk saw his sister Melanka’s grave for the first time. Quite possibly, she had never married because she wanted to keep the family secret, her brother’s hiding place. Her passing in September 1999 had made Stepan leave his shelter and return to the village. He stood by the grave for a long a time, passionately praying for his sister’s soul. He could visualize their meeting in the afterlife. “It won’t be long before we do,” he said. And the man looks forward to the meeting, although he will do nothing to shorten his time in this world until he is summoned by the Lord. “I got a gas stove at home, but I won’t touch it myself lest something bad happen.”
So much for his life since climbing down from the attic. A gas stove and a dim light bulb hanging from the ceiling. He turns on the light seldom. “It’s too expensive,” he explains. He is on pension. “I didn’t deserve it, but they assigned it anyway. How much? It depends, sometimes the mail carrier brings a larger sum, other times less... I’ve bought 10 hryvnias 17 kopiykas worth of bread in all the time I’ve been out. And I keep books and records. All the Khmelnytsky eparchy accounts are in my hand.” The old man refers to his bookkeeping while hiding in the attic. His sister was illiterate, so he kept the books of the local congregation for her. He cannot stop wondering why no one ever called Melanka’s bluff at the eparchy, which would have led to his exposure.
He agrees that the expenses are miserable. “The parish priest sends bread to Melanka’s brother from every funeral repast.” The sad fact remains that Monchyntsi, numbering some 200 homes, is dying out, so that the parish priest uses the sad occasion to send bread to Melanka’s brother practically every week, nothing from christening parties because there are none. Anyway, the old man’s thoughts are all about eternity, and bread is about all he really needs. “I am a wrongdoer and I must do penance for my grave sins while still in this world.” Actually, it is hard to understand what the old man had done to sentence himself to such a long terms in solitary confinement, to all those long torturous years in the attic when all he could see of the surrounding world was from a small window. On dark nights the small window glimmered with candlelight and people living next door whispered to each other that Melanka was devil- worshipping. But what is his guilt? Did he do anything against the Nazis during the occupation and then hid lest they catch him and send him to Germany for slave labor? Did he do anything against the Red Army after liberation, when everybody that stayed behind the rear lines was sent to the front? Or was it something bad he did to the village? Perhaps he is tormented by the realization that he failed to build a family?
In any case, the man seems to have recovered a bit. The worst is past, after he took his crucial step ten days after poor Melanka’s death. People in Monchyntsi helped him adapt to the new lifestyle. “They brought me some timber, God bless them, so I chopped it and put away enough firewood for the winter.”
He looks at his vegetable garden which was tended last year and hopes people will help him with it this summer. “They manage their vegetable gardens well, so maybe they will lend me a hand.” He looks far above the horizon, yet he does not neglect earthly matters. “What is the main thing now? Prophesy. Whenever my eyes clear a bit I take a notebook and write.” He shows a neatly bound manuscript. The title reads, “Prophecies of Father Serafym, the Miracle-Maker of Saratov.” He says he wrote all this when at liberty. Then he produces the manuscripts composed in the attic. “See? I printed, not wrote, every single character, like in a book. And the lines are straight. Not like I write now.” The difference is obvious and the old man is convinced that the years spent in the attic were more fruitful than when he left his shelter.
Stepan Kovalchuk recounts stories about miraculous events allegedly experienced by people, all of them believers. Although he does not think that what has happened to him is out of the ordinary. Little has changed in the lifestyle of this man, born August 24, 1923. After all, what special changes could have taken place living in an attic? He climbed up the ladder and hid as a young and strong man then climbed down an old an ailing one. His last contact with the outside world ended with the departure of the journalist from Copenhagen. And contact is hardly the word, for the journalist asked his questions through an interpreter, and Kovalchuk answered them as best he could.
Those foreigners are so strange. What interested them most in Kovalchuk’s life story was how he had managed without sex in the first place. He told them frankly it had never bothered him. Out of sight, out of mind. Or maybe because he had lived on bread and water. And then, growing older, he had forgotten all about sex. All those 57 years were like one endless night, with his mother and sister the only contacts with the outside world, then his mother died, and only his sister was left.
The foreign visitors also wanted to know about his bowel movements, personal hygiene, and how he had managed without leaving the attic. Patiently he had explained that yes, it hadn’t been easy, but that Melanka had helped. As for personal hygiene, he had managed like everybody else in the village. There are no public baths in Monchyntsi and water is drawn from drinking wells. Everybody waits for summer when they can bathe in the pond. After leaving the attic, Kovalchuk often thinks back to his life there. He had hidden out of fear and now he is not sure whether he would want his life to have taken a different course. He had watched other people and their life as though from the bushes, sitting quiet, afraid to move. He had trembled with fear whenever Melanka was visited by the village trendsetter with a new dress or blouse, listening to their chat, trying to picture life outside. He is still very much isolated from the big world. “There is no radio or television at home. And I don’t need them.” He can’t hear or see well enough.
Village council chairman Borys Petruk describes him as a war victim, adding that there are just three war veterans left in the self-governed territory. How many were there originally? Hard to tell, but more died in the war than returned. Some of the survivors had settled in the same land where Stepan Kovalchuk would later be visited by foreign media people. Each of us, it seems, has a destiny, our own road in life.
