SULTANA SONKA

Since time immemorial it has been believed that only men can have harems. Meanwhile, an ordinary female Volyn villager (perhaps the only such woman in Ukraine) has spent a number of years living with two husbands, with a third one joining off and on.

This extraordinary family lives in one of the border villages in Volyn oblast, near the Buh River, just across from Polish territory. At present, her harem (precisely how the fellow villagers refer to the family) has only two husbands. The third left not so long ago, either moving to live with his parents in the neighboring district or after finding a sweetheart in a neighboring village. No one is sure, just as no one thinks it proper to ask the sultana.

To arrange our interview with her, the village council worked out a real military operation. First, the chairperson, also a woman, sent a scout, a female relative of the village council’s secretary (living next door to the sultana), who agreed after long persuading.

She returned smirking, “She said to tell you she’d throw you out of the yard, all of you, correspondents included.”

“I’m afraid there’ll be a lot of foul language. She has a big and dirty mouth,” the chairperson looked and sounded worried. Then to the secretary, “Olha, you’ll have to come with us, I’m not taking reporters to her place alone.”

We decided to take the risk, let her curse all she wants as long as she did not assault us. Also, the chairperson admitted that the sultana liked her. Off we went along an empty village street which instantly filled with people appearing out of nowhere. Most likely because in the village the tongues of little old ladies work faster than satellite communications. People were coming out from every home, positioning themselves by the gate, following us with sympathetic eyes, as though wondering how and when we would be sent flying from Sonka’s yard.

It had been drizzling from early morning, felt not at all like spring, and the sky looked like a little old lady’s gray scarf with both ends hanging limply, touching the wet chernozem, which was another factor telling badly on our collective courage.

“See, just like I told you,” the chairperson pointed out as we approached Sonka’s house, “the footpath with fresh sand to keep it tidy.”

Fresh sand was not only on the footpath, but all over the courtyard. A neat porch and a tidy flower bed, weeded despite unsteady spring weather, a square of an old rug as a doormat. Sonka did keep the place tidy, putting family help to good use. And then she appeared on the porch, shutting the door tight behind her, standing menacingly, brandishing a broom made of birch twigs.

* * *

Before becoming sultana, Sonka never showed any dubious conduct. She and her husband worked on the local collective farm, she tending the calves, he driving a horse-drawn cart. They had four children and when the administration subsidized a housing construction project they received a decent brick home.

No one in the village ever noticed Sonka take to the bottle or put the moves on other women’s husbands. Yes, she loved company, but was also a no-nonsense woman, tough, witty, with a razor-sharp tongue.

“She’s fifty, but she takes good care of herself, keeps her hair made and dyed. And one day she appeared in the street wearing a pair of jeans and jacket. It’s from a humanitarian aid shipment. Watching her like that, we almost dropped out our windows,” said one of the local womenfolk.

In a word, Sonka was a model wife and mother when her first husband walked out on her. 16 years ago he left looking for a seasonal job and never returned, having settled with another woman, they said.

Eventually, another man appeared in Sonka’s home. Mykhailo by name.

* * *

In the Ukrainian countryside, everybody has a nickname. Her first husband Dmytro’s was Budulai (a Soviet soap opera hero — Ed.). He was tall, dark, with thick hair. Mykhailo proved a lamentable contrast. Small, shabby, and a booze hound.

“Mykhailo’s wife was known as Canary in our village. Small, quick, black hair, dark complexion. And she drank heavily. That was before I became chairperson. God knows how I found myself at their place. She was drunk, and the little children were around a stool with a pile of cookies on top,” she recalled. “Mykhailo and Canary were deprived of parental rights. She left for her native Carpathian Mountains, and it was then he found his way to Sonka’s home. She kept her place clean, there was enough food. What more could a man ask for?

“And then Sonka surprised the village a second time. The first time was when she started living with a man, being a married woman. The second time was when she bore that other man a girl, so that her last name is Budulai’s and patronymic her real father’s.

“That’s why I hate all those Latin American soap operas. Their stories are so primitive compared to what happens here in our backwater Volyn. Budulai returned eight years later to his native village and to his wife.

“I was shopping at the local store when heard that Budulai was back, living at Sonka’s. Actually, both men were living with Sonka, women were saying.

“Another eight years passed. Sonka’s and Budulai’s children got married and the youngest girl is finishing school. The village had got used to the harem. And last year the sultana pulled off another stunt, bringing a third man, fifteen years her junior, named Ivan. They herded sheep together in the no man’s land near the Buh, and she went home with him.”

* * *

How does she manage the three of them? This is the first question on the mind of anyone hears the story about Sonka’s harem the first time. They mean, of course, bedtime apart from house chores and who wears the pants in the family.

Of course, no one knows for sure. Word has it that Sonka is the true master of the house. She assigns her men their duties on the farm and herding sheep. When one of the men needs a pair of boots or a shirt, she buys it for him. She does the cooking and washing, as these are considered purely women’s chores, but if either of the men misbehaves he will have to cook and serve the meals.

“That he will, and I’ll be sitting at the table, enjoying the service,” is how she describes the scene to the women next door during idle conversation, nor does she make a secret of her men taking turns sleeping with her — or of her choosing the one she wants for the night.

What kind of woman is this? A sex machine? Why should she keep three men? Surely not just to have them herd the sheep! Or maybe she is kind-hearted in her own way. And smart. When she got hold of other women’s husbands she won respect in the village. (See? Sonka can take good care of three men and you can’t control your one husband!) She made Mykhailo quit the bottle and has no problems making all three work like a good team. And there have been no spats over other women, although there may have been cause.

There she stood with her broom, nothing special, no sex bomb, just an ordinary village woman, worn by daily chores, this showing despite her dyed hair and jeans. But here was character: everybody could sense it. She opened the door, letting out a man younger than she (we supposed it must have been Ivan), carrying a bucket of food for the pigs, returning home, looking out the door, saying the water for the varenyky was boiling...

“Add some salt and put in the dumplings,” she instructed.

She kept us in front of the door for half an hour. She did not invite us in, but agreed to talk.

“What’s so strange? I’m no sultana. I have three men, so what? I may well take a fourth and fifth.”

* * *

Those who hear about this Volyn soap opera are divided, some admiring the woman’s temperament, believing she must be very special to attract men like that; others say she and her men should seek medical advise. Last summer the village was again astir; a respectable family man suddenly fell for Sonka. It got so that he was about to divorce his wife, but then he drank vodka with champagne at Sonka’s farewell party (she was quitting the farm, entitled to early pension as a mother of many children). His blood pressure jumped, he had a stroke and wound up paralyzed.

At first his wife did not want her afflicted husband back, not after she had put up with that other woman. She was perfectly content to live with her children, thank you. But he was no good to Sonka either.

Finally, the status quo was restored. The paralyzed man stayed with his wife and Sonka with her harem, doing just fine.

End of story.

Ivannychivsky district, Volyn oblast

— P.S. : The names of the characters in this case of polyandry were deliberately changed as was that of the village, not only for reasons of ethics, but also as an attempt to protect people from encroachments by journalists in pursuit of stories for other publications. Moreover, the chairperson called to say that Sonka promises to welcome any more reporters not with a broom but a pole.