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Yuri Vynnychuk
so we were not surprised
when he boasted that he
even had jumped the Poltva
River, though we had not
seen that miracle-wonder. So
to be like Yas was everybody’s
dream. When his mother
locked him in the house from
time to time, so he wouldn’t
knock about and study his
lessons, then he would crawl
out through the window.
Yasko and I were hooked on
adventure books and at first
wanted to be pirates, then
cowboys and Indians, but in
the end we would turn into a
Kozak and a hussar and fought
with swords like Bohun and
Skshetusky. Our sabers were
wooden, but sometimes all
the same we’d end up with
injuries. In addition we drew
maps that indicated where
buried treasure was and hid
those maps in boxes and
tossed them in someone’s
cellar, and should anyone
find it and realize it was a
treasure map, they’ll set off
on a search. While this was
fun for us, we really wanted
to find some kind of treasure.
As for me, nothing stood out
with me, I was neither tall
nor a shrimp, neither fat nor
skinny, I inherited from my
father a long face, decorated
with a sharp eagle nose,
and blue eyes in which girls
would drowned. We liked to
walk along different secluded
nooks, narrow streets where
houses were swaddled in
drowsiness and wild grapes,
and window sills bloomed
in gillyflowers, Indian cress
and lazy cats that basked in
the sun. We liked to catch
the smells that gushed from
the kitchen windows, and to
guess what will be for themid-
day meal there today, but we
didn’t love the circus and the
zoo, even if it had come from
Warsaw itself. Once we went
and saw an eagle in a cage
who was sitting squinting and
frowning on a dry branch,