Here the town ends, as if it has run out of itself: bright-clapboarded houses dribbling sparser into broken fences, a few unused factories gaping. The road we took, knotted and potholed, now straightened out. It cut a black line over the fields, all gray-gold their skeletal stalks. I thought it a good road. “The road to adventure!” I said as a joke. Inside I whirled and wondered.
By the Khaharlyk placard, you can see a small graveyard flapping bows. Lena (my friend’s host mother) led us down, crossing herself and bowing before she entered. The headstones are carved with likenesses of the dead. Most square and solemn, though all fringed in plastic flowers – those fleshy, stoic faces I see on these streets every day.
Beside her father’s grave, which she kissed, Lena handed us candies. Chocolate with strange gelatinous filling. Red trees lining the field, dry corn sounds.
Lena’s dogs attacked a cluster of chickens, the walk back home. There was much squawking and screaming. A man and woman with granite expressions stared from a fence. Their yard was littered in garbage. A sickening clamp of jaws from the bushes – but then the chicken escaped, waddling as fast as it could across the street!
And then somehow we were all gathered in Lena’s mother’s house, being fed (we are always being fed by someone) borscht and bread and tea. The room was full of marigolds. The food hot, thick and good, and I was growing more and more sleepy, and I didn’t know whether I wanted to stay in the bright room forever, or to walk down that dark slick of road until I forgot myself.
love
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