Trafika Europe 7 - Ukrainian Prayer

Two Tales

years she told me the stories with the smallest details and particulars. I know her life by heart. Perhaps that’s why I don’t pay attention to my own. At times it seems I’m not living for myself, but just for my grandmother – so she’d have someone to tell everything to, and so that that someone would tell those stories to other people. Grandmother is quite at fault in my eyes. She deprived me of any desire to live my own stories, she didn’t give me the opportunity to become an independent individual, or anybody. And the worst of it was, that grandmother never loved anyone. Perhaps because she was hungry her entire life. But no one. At all. Not men, not her own children, not even me, though I always listened to her politely. No one. Not even herself. Now

in retrospect I think that during her childhood days the demon of hunger settled in her. I don’t know if such things exist at all, but that’s what I think. When suddenly there wasn’t anything at home to eat, grandmother would become enraged. She might even hit me. Her eyes became enraged – cruel and estranged. She could chew through someone’s neck for a piece of bread. She fastidiously brushed up the crumbs from the table and then forced me to eat them. She always cooked a great amount and with a lot of fat. The fat would float in the pot in a thick ball, so I couldn’t even look at the soup. Lard was her favorite food. She kept the lard in a cupboard in half-liter jars. There seemed to be an endless number of those jars in the cupboard.

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