Trafika Europe 7 - Ukrainian Prayer

Tango of Death

I knew my father more from photos, because my dad Oleksandr Barbaryka died on November 22, 1921 when I was four. Preserved in my memory is a still hazy recollection of someone large in a long overcoat and shaggy pointed beret who takes me in his arms, and I cry with fright and reach toward my mother, and that is all. Having experienced countless battles for the Sich Riflemen, the army of the Ukrainian National Republic, at Kruty and at the Motovilivka forest, he eventually lay down his tempestuous head near Bazar among the 360​ rebellious soldiers, whom the forces of Kotovsky shot, and who before that had savagely killed all the wounded who were lying on carts with sabers. All my life I missed my dad, and with each year more and more, and then I became a momma’s boy, a beloved little flower, a little golden

a bucket of coal, the slight clanging of pot covers in the kitchen, and in winter, when the door to my bedroom carefully opened, the oven door scraped, rustling paper or straw, matches were struck, flames joyfully covered the firewood, and the quiet soothing hum of the stove plunged me back to sleep, I suddenly became even more comfortable than before, it seemed that it wasn’t a stove, and my mom was pouring heat into the room and contentedly purred... but after that I couldn’t doze very long, because here the dairymaid already was knocking at the door and together with the latest news poured fresh milk into jars, and in a fewminutes the aroma of coffee with a bit of “Frank” chicory brewed in a white porcelain machine wafted over, and sleep then spattered, dissolved and disappeared....

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