Free 2005 - A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian by Marina Lewycka

white hair and little half-glasses. In the brief flowering of Ukrainian independence in 1918 he was even Minister for Education for six months. After Stalin came to power and all ideas of Ukrainian autonomy were stamped out, he became the head teacher of the Ukrainian language school in Kiev, operating on voluntary subscription and under constant pressure from the authorities.
    It was at this school that my mother and father first met. They were in the same form. Nikolai was always the first boy to put his hand up, always top of the class. Ludmilla thought him an insufferable know-all.
    Nikolai Mayevskyj and Ludmilla Ocheretko were married in the register office in Luhansk in the autumn of 1936. They were twenty-four years old. There were no golden domes or bells or flowers. The ceremony was conducted by a plump female party official in a bottle-green suit and a not-very-clean white blouse. The bride was not pregnant and nobody cried, even though there was much more to cry about.
    Did they love each other?
    No, says Vera, she married him because she needed a way out.
    Yes, says my father, she was the loveliest woman I had met, and the most spirited. You should see her dark eyes when she was in a rage. On the skating rink she glided like a queen. To see her on horseback was a wonder.
    Whether they loved each other or not, they stayed together for sixty years.
    “So, Pappa, what do you remember about Ludmilla? Tell me, what was she like when you first met?” (I am attempting some reminiscence therapy. I somehow hope that filling his mind with images of my mother will blot out the interloper.) “Was it love at first sight? Was she very beautiful?”
    “Yes, indeed. Quite beautiful in every way. But of course not as beautiful as Valentina.”
    There he sits with a small secret smile on his face, wisps of silver hair straggling on to his frayed collar, his spectacles repaired with brown parcel tape balanced on the end of his nose so that I can’t quite see his eyes, his hands swollen with arthritis cradling a mug of tea. I want to grab it from him and dash it in his face. But I realise that he has no idea, no idea at all, of the effect his words might have on me.
    “Did you love her?” (I mean did he love her more .)
    “Ah, love! What thing is love! No one can understand. On this point, science must concede to poetry.”
     
    My father doesn’t invite us to the wedding, but he lets slip the date. “No need to visit now. Everything is OK. You can come after June first,” he says.
    “We’ve got four weeks to stop her,” says my sister.
    But I hesitate. I am touched by his joy, his new vitality. Also, I am mindful of Mike’s opinion.
    “Maybe it’ll be OK. Maybe she’ll look after him, and make him happy in his last years. It’s better than going into a home.”
    “For goodness’ sake, Nadia. You don’t think that kind of woman will be around when he’s old and dribbling and incontinent. She’ll take what she can, and be off.”
    “But let’s face it, neither you nor I are going to look after him in his old age, are we?” (Best to get it out into the open, even though the bluntness of it smarts.)
    “I did what I could for Mother. Towards Father I feel a sense of obligation: nothing more.”
    “He isn’t so easy to love.” I’m not trying to sound accusing, but that’s the way she takes it.
    “Love has got nothing to do with it. I’ll do my duty, Nadezhda. As I sincerely hope you will. Even if that means saving him from making an absolute idiot of himself.”
    “It’s true I couldn’t look after him full-time, Vera. We’d argue all the time. It would drive me mad. But I want him to be all right—to be happy. If Valentina makes him happy…”
    “It’s not about happiness, Nadezhda, it’s about money. Can’t you see? I suppose with your leftish ideas you would welcome anyone who wanted to come and rip off hard-working people.”
    “Leftish doesn’t come into it. It’s about what’s best