Copyright © 2022 Johann Tienhaara
Under a bullet blue sky, billowing dust underfoot, he arrived in a three-piece suit and thin, broad-brimmed kalpak, carrying his worldly possessions in a briefcase.
"Hello. I am Yaromir. I telephoned earlier. You are Oksana?" He spoke in his native tongue, not mine, as he had on the phone.
He was tall, slightly stooped, thin, his yellow cheeks flushed red from the afternoon sun. His diamond blue eyes too sharp for gazing. A bee hovered at the rim of his hat.
A distant ground-to-air boom. I scanned the sky. Yaromir seemed unperturbed by the noise.
"Yes, please, come this way," I said in his language.
He followed me up the stairs at the side of the shop. I unlocked the apartment door and handed him the key. "This, here, this is where you stay." I waved him in.
"Thank you, Oksana." He broke hat and bowed slightly to me before turning and stepping through the doorway and smacking his forehead on the low doorframe.
"Oh!" I exclaimed. "You are too tall, too tall. I am sorry. I fetch ice."
He protested, holding his head, as I hurried down the steps.
In the shop, Inna gushed into her mobile. She barely glanced up at the chime. In the back office I pulled a tray of cubes from the freezer and a towel from the washroom. The shop door tinkled on my way out. From across the dusty street, Raskolnikov raised a hand in silent greeting. I hurried up the stairs.
Yaromir had settled on the love seat in the apartment, briefcase on the coffee table. He looked old and worn in the umbra, sun blazing backdrop through the window behind him.
"Here, take!" I pushed the towel-wrapped ice into his hands.
"Thank you, Oksana." He forced a smile, his face like a squeezed lemon, and put the ice to his head.
A series of distant cracks barked off the mountain, dissipating out over the sea.
"You are a good soul to take me in like this. Thank you."
"Not good," I corrected him in his language. "You pay rent. Money is good soul."
Yaromir's face softened and his eyes sparkled. A man who smiled with no smile.
"Perhaps, but still you took me in when nobody else would."
That whole summer was rude with air strikes. Inna and Hadeen fought terribly after he took his AK-47 outside to shoot impotent rage at a passing MIG. "You think this is one of your stupid games!" she screamed. "What about our life here, our home, our baby boy? How can you do this to Symon? How can you do this to me?" My son ignored her as he returned the rifle to its locker. "If I do not do this, Symon will have no home to grow up in." My grandson Symon on the floor, playing with the simple wood blocks his grandfather -- my husband -- had cut and urethaned for his own children, decades ago. My husband became a grandfather only after we'd given him our last kisses and put him in the ground.
Outside, the bees went about their work during the attacks, and mined the dry earth at night.
Yaromir stayed in his flat during the strikes. "You come downstairs, stay low, stay safe," I urged him. But he would not join us in the tobacco shop. He sat on the love seat, engrossed in his game, playing checkers against himself.
"What you do?" I asked him one day after collecting the rent. For two months, he'd paid in hryvnya notes, on time and without my prompting.
He looked up from a thick paperback, diamond blue eyes cutting. "What do I do?" He turned the book and placed it open on the coffee table. "I suppose I read and I play checkers."
"Don't make porridge!" I snapped. I poured water from the kitchen tap into a vase of kura clover.
"I'm retired, Oksana. I once led a very busy life. Now I want to live out the remains of my day finding peace."
"Peace? And you come here? To this place? You lost?"
"No, Oksana, I am not lost. Peace is not outside. And it's not easy to make, either. Peace is the sopilka of the soul that drowns out the hatred and misery of the outside world. I came here, of all places, to learn how to make peace in a burning world. My deepest regret is that I never learned how to play the sopilka of the soul when I was young and had everything to lose."
I grunted as I placed the vase on the coffee table. I wondered if Yaromir knew what it was like to lose everything.
When Raskolnikov learned that Yaromir loved checkers, he had to beat the newcomer.
They sat on plastic chairs at the unsteady metal table outside the shop, and squared off: Raskolnikov from nextdoor, with his wiry beard and toothy grin; Yaromir from above, clean-shaven, yellow under his kalpak, with his piercing blue eyes.
"I'm a chess man," Raskolnikov threatened as he prepared to defeat Yaromir at checkers.
"I'm a chess man," Raskolnikov explained later, after a moment of silence, defeated at checkers.
Hadeen left in his army fatigues, AK-47 strapped over his shoulder. A silver Mercedes, older than my son, picked him up. The car was filled with green camouflaged young men and gear, and a quiet, proud, grim air of focus. He hugged me long and whispered, "Goodbye, mother," in my ear. I held my tears against my eyes until after the Mercedes had driven off. During the whole farewell, Inna was crying and beating her chest, pulling at Hadeen's arms, tugging his backpack, pounding the hood of the Mercedes. She knelt in the dust and cried a quiet torrent as the car full of amateur soldiers drove away, a plume of dust scattering the busy bees.
I picked up my grandson Symon and headed for the shop.
"You love him very much," Yaromir said softly from the plastic chair. His eyes pricked me, and the tears loosed. I could not tell whether he meant my son or my grandson. So I said, "Yes." Raskolnikov's back was bent over the checkerboard. Yaromir's gaze followed me inside the shop.
I placed Symon on the floor and went behind the counter, into the office, into the washroom. I dabbed at my cheeks and eyes, making them redder. My great babuchka eyebrows and storm of curly black hair, pale skin blotchy, creases and folds where once there'd been hope. I pushed down the simple black dress, spread the neck V a little wider, turned to see myself in profile in the mirror. Nostalgia and immodest pride buzzed through me. Curves, still, like a bee. I should find my yellow sash.
One day, after a carload of amateur soldiers drove off with their carton of Dunhills, I stepped outside the shop to watch checkers unfold. Raskolnikov won about half the games, now, though I suspected his change in fortune was perhaps more deliberate concession than heightened skill.
"How is your grandson?" Yaromir asked as Raskolnikov hopped over two of his pieces on the board.
"Peaceful," I told him. "He too young to know of checkers."
"Ha ha!" Raskolnikov cried, "I win!"
Yaromir's eyes twinkled. He shook hands with the victor.
Raskolnikov grinned through his wiry beard at me, winked, and left us under the burning afternoon sun.
"Why you let him win?" I asked Yaromir.
He said nothing, his diamond blue eyes scratching mine.
"You think this is how you will find peace in your burning world?"
For a moment, he sat there, gazing up.
"Oksana," Yaromir said, "I came to you speaking only my own tongue, not yours. Yet you know me better than I know myself."
"Language is not only words, Yaromir. Body, too. Body speaks. Body says what lips fear to admit."
He tilted his head, then looked away. "I am one of the invaders, a foreigner. You should despise me, the way so many others here do."
"Yaromir, you were a foreign invader in your own home. You not belong anywhere." He returned his eyes to contemplate me. "You my stray animal," I said.
"L'etranger," Yaromir mused.
"You with your words, Yaromir."
He bobbed his head as he collected the checkers from the board.
For weeks, I heard nothing from Hadeen. Then, one day, a phone call:
"Hello, mother. I am fine. We run medicine to houses. No fighting yet. I love you."
I begged him to call his wife. Inna had fallen into depression; her usual flow of words had been staunched.
One day a commotion outside, but not surface-to-air missiles: Yaromir was yelling. With a chime, I left listless Inna and my grandson inside the tobacco shop.
Across the street, Yaromir struck Raskolnikov with the wood checkerboard. Raskolnikov, shovel in hand, used the shaft to parry blows.
"What you do, you crazy?" I cried and ran across the street. I seized Yaromir around the waist from behind, and swirled him away from Raskolnikov. I felt Yaromir's ribs; too thin, too light.
"He murders the bees!" Yaromir cried, and struggled in my arms
"They're pests!" Raskolnikov circled around, thick brown finger jabbing at Yaromir, his eyes full of pesticide.
I tried to keep Yaromir turned away from Raskolnikov, but the wiry-bearded man followed like the seconds hand of a clock. Yaromir deflated in my arms as Raskolnikov ranted about bee stings and his young allergic daughter.
Eventually, Raskolnikov ran out of pesticide, and in speaking tones, complained that the sharp corners of the checkerboard had cut his face.
"No cuts," I assured him. "Just scrapes."
"I am sorry, Raskolnikov," Yaromir said, head bowed in shame. "I am sorry for hurting you."
I let go of his waist, and he walked, head down, across the street to the table, began collecting the checker pieces.
Raskolnikov grumbled half-heartedly about bees, but took his shovel and went home.
That night, after locking the tobacco shop and walking home, a rap at the door as I cooked mushrooms.
Yaromir stood in his three piece suit and kalpak in the autumn dusk, sun low behind him over the Crimean Sea. Cut wildflowers held tightly in both hands. He opened his mouth but got stuck as his diamond blue eyes wandered down, then up again to pierce through mine. I touched the neck V of my dress, then the yellow sash, conscious that I'd not had a chance to check myself in the mirror, unsure of what to say. "Yaromir."
He swallowed, thin throat bobbing, and his eyes flicked down and up again.
The smell of sizzling mushrooms wafted from the kitchen.
"Oh!" I said. "Come in, please. I must --" I pointed.
His diamonds darted kitchenward as he inhaled deeply.
He followed me inside, still clutching the bouquet of wildflowers.
I lifted the pan from the element and set it aside. Then, pointing to the vase atop the high cupboards, I turned to Yaromir. His eyes had been wandering again. I laughed. "Reach?" I pulled a stool for him to stand on.
He looked up, swallowed, and mounted the stool. He plucked the vase from atop the cupboards with one hand, while I pried the flowers out of his other hand, and let my fingers linger on his for a while.
"Yaromir," I said, filling the vase at the sink, "We eat. Then you play me your sopilka of the soul." I set the vase down and stepped in front of the stool.
He turned to face me. Before he could step down, I ran my finger up the inside of his thigh, and felt him quake as his abdomen clenched automatically. He quivered and adjusted his other leg for balance. I pulled him down by both hands.
"Put my mushrooms in your mouth," I demanded, parting his lips as I pushed two glistening bulbs into his mouth. I left my fingers there for a moment, as he tasted the juices. Then I kissed the bristles of his nose. I pulled his hand to my hip, as my other hand worked its way up his bony frame to his chest.
"Your mushrooms are delicious, Oksana," he whispered.
"Taste my sauce," I urged him, plucking another dripping button from the pan, and rubbing it across his bottom lip, while his tongue darted at it. I kissed the mushroom, pushing it into his mouth, and I gently bit his tongue as it flicked out.
"Oksana, I --"
"Enough words, Yaromir. Come, follow me. Now we will speak my language for a little while."