Chapter Five

If you feel it’s wrong to do something, it’s better not to do it. Now, I know that because of our mentality to have everything in order, to be responsible and to organize our days, we have lost a very important quality: to listen to ourselves. For example, when we do not feel like eating, something in the body tells the brain, “I’m not hungry,” but we still sit down and swallow a bowl of borscht, a cutlet with potatoes, and something after for dessert, because it’s time for lunch. It’s just a must to eat when it’s lunchtime.

I was not an exception. I didn’t know how to listen to myself. So when something in the morning was telling me, “Do not do anything today. Just spend the whole day in bed doing nothing,” I didn’t listen.

Yesterday I promised Aleksei I would burn the garbage, and then he could take what was left to the waste dump. The Perestroika, the period of “restructuring” was in full spate, and such things as municipal services were not important in the big picture. So there was no trash service. Even those who were duty-bound to take care of such services did nothing. And how could they, when such global issues as “rebuilding” were being resolved, people were to think about the common goal of better tomorrows and deal with trash by themselves in their backyards.

So people got fancy, getting rid of these wastes of civilization by using their imagination. I generally put the garbage in bags, and then burned those together with dry leaves. This time I planned to do the same.

Life seemed to have finally become somewhat normal. Sure, with Aleksei we lived as in the American joke, “My wife and I sleep in different beds. I sleep in New York, she sleeps in Michigan.” We slept in different rooms. He went to work, came back home on time. We didn’t talk of what had happened. We avoided eye contact. Perhaps we shouldn’t have. Maybe, if I had looked deeply in his eyes, I would have seen something so terrifying that it would make me run as far away as possible.

Regardless all the forebodings, I got down to managing the trash. Vova was at home on school holidays, so he was helping me.

There was one more detail worth mentioning. A local priest from the village church was invited for lunch today. I met him in the courtyard of my neighbor, and wanted to ask for advice and God’s blessings. But somehow, instead of cooking a nice meal for my guest, I was working in the backyard, because I’d told Aleksei I would.

This priest was the organizer of the demolition of Lenin’s monument which, as expected, used to bristle in the center of the village in front of the village council. Everyone knew that Lenin was against religion and the church. He wrote many articles and books on the struggle against the opium of the people. By his order, a considerable number of churches, many of which were works of art, were destroyed. Father Illarion followed in the footsteps of the Leader of the Proletariat, and was trying to destroy the very idea of Lenin and Lenin himself, embodied in the granite sculpture. So he was kind of a warrior for the bright future, keeping pace with the times, fighting for the implementation of the ideas of Perestroika.

At those times the whole country eagerly took up the rebuilding idea: demolition of monuments, changing of street names, even names of entire cities. Big sums of money were spent on this, money that was taken from the salaries of teachers, doctors, and other workers.

One morning the village Chervona Sloboda woke up and all the Communist monuments were gone. Every single one. It soon became clear whose work that was and Father Illarion was arrested as a political offender. He stayed in the bullpen for three days, and was very proud to add this to his political past. People reached out to him and consequently the prestige and well being of the Chervona Sloboda church quickly went up in the world and, consequently, Father Illarion’s career.

It was August, two in the afternoon, and incredibly hot. Vova and I were both lightly dressed: shorts and T-shirts. I was happy because my son had voluntarily expressed a desire to help me, and I enthusiastically started my chore.

Since all the problems with his father started, my son had taken his side. When you are fifteen you don’t really understand what’s really going on. In addition, at this age boys are always closer to their fathers. I was so worried, I kept crying, arguing, and that was making everything even worse. Now I was quite happy that I had at least some sympathy and help from my son this afternoon.

Emptying the contents of the bag on the ground, I set it on fire. In the bag there was a lot of paper, newspapers, pieces of old wallpaper. The rubbish flamed up quickly, and the heap was getting smaller right before my eyes. My son went for a second trash bag, and I took a rake and began pushing all the burning pieces back into the heap. There were a couple of bottles and cans. One bottle was filled with some liquid and closed by a cork. The label read, olive oil. Strange! Could I really have thrown a full bottle of oil in the garbage? I should take it out of the fire, or else, God forbid, it could explode.

I walked over to get it out, and ba-bam!

I wasn’t sure I had any thoughts of after that. All I knew was I just saw a huge ball of fire, and the fact that my legs were on fire. I tried to put it out with my hands, but it didn’t help. There was a weird chemical smell and it was incredibly hard to breathe. For some reason, I suddenly had a sore throat.

Other than my throat, I didn’t feel any pain, surprisingly nothing at all. A thought came into my head: If it doesn’t hurt, maybe it’s just a dream.

So there I was, quietly ready to accept that I was doomed to be burned alive. As though this were a funky dream I saw my son running towards me. He was saying something, but I could not understand a single word. He grabbed me by the arm and dragged me into the house. We reached it quickly and then it came. Pain.

It was unbearable, unrelenting! My son called the ambulance and then tried to help me, putting wet cloths on my feet, which had pieces of burnt skin all over them. I was moaning, too ashamed to cry. The ambulance took twenty minutes to arrive, when I was close to passing out. Unfortunately, I did not lose consciousness. I walked to the ambulance by myself. Then there was another torturous walk from the ambulance to the hospital staffroom, which was up the stairs on the second floor, and only there I was given a painkiller.

The doctors for some reason thought that someone had tortured me, and I was trying to explain how everything had happened, but because of the terrible pain and drugs my consciousness refused to obey me. The last thing I thought before switching off was, Thank God, at that moment my son had left for some more trash, and wasn’t near me! Thanks be to God!