UNDER THE BRIDGE
„Kyiv, I died far from you, but for you.“
Roman Ratushnyy
They say that everyone has a song that will accompany them in death – a song of transition. I don’t know if it only applies to the melody or also to the lyrics, and how this song chooses us. I return to that moment in my hometown and tears flow like the Dnipro in spring: I don’t want to return to that moment anymore, because in it my world dies.
Sometimes I feel
Like I do not have a partner
Sometimes I feel
Like my only friend
Is the city I live in
The city of angel
Lonely as I am
Together we cry
I drive on her streets
‚Cause she’s my companion
I walk through her hills
‚Cause she knows who I am
She sees my good deeds
And she kisses me windy
I never worry
Now that is a lie
I do not ever want to feel
Like I did that day
Take me to the place I love
Take me all the way
A quarter of a century ago, a midwife handed me my child and said, „So many boys are being born… It must be because of the war.“ What war was she talking about, I wondered at the time.
My war became fully felt in 2013 on the Maidan when I saw with my own eyes how easily the enemy could maim and kill my children. We didn’t talk about Russia then; we talked about „regionalists,“ but only the blind couldn’t determine their true identity. Later, we watched as all the defendants in the Maidan cases fled to Russia (as the small Russians allowed them to flee, being potential accomplices). Only the threat to what we hold most dear could breed such fear and anger.
In the winter of 2015, that boy, my eldest son, went to war, officially called ATO, but it was a war with our eternal enemy – Russia.
On the morning of February 24, 2022, the younger brother of that boy woke me up with the phrase, „Mom, wake up, they’re firing ballistic missiles over Boryspil.“
Dressed, packed, and with the water turned off in the house, I asked, „Why? I’ll just go back to sleep.“ „So that you don’t die in your sleep,“ Roma quipped. In the evening, he came in uniform, armed, trying to persuade me to leave Kyiv. „You don’t understand: the Russians will be coming and going, there will be street fights, and you’ll distract me from fighting because I’ll be worried about you!“ I said, „No.“
Roma left, and I was flooded with an animal, bestial pain: „I won’t see him again!” I screamed. “He left, Roma left forever!“
I think the entire Protasiv Yar heard me.
At the end of February, early in the morning, I was riding the elevator from the tenth floor, where my apartment was located, down to the first floor. Along with me was a pregnant young neighbor dressed in a comical home outfit – a furry panda robe over a sports suit and some fluffy slippers with cute animal faces, perhaps pandas or some other adorable creatures. Kyiv was rumbling from shelling, and outside our cozy courtyard, crowds of people lined up at the supermarket and cars at the gas station. Cold and uncertainty pervaded everything, and the sound of machine guns echoed through the streets. Most citizens had been stuck in traffic for several days, trying to leave the capital and escape a gray, unknown future.
For some reason, I was reminded of my own pregnancies and could feel the state of mind of that young pregnant neighbor in the panda slippers. When you are about to give birth in a week, there is only one thing in the world that matters: giving birth. And in that elevator with the young pregnant neighbor, I could understand with my ancient brain: „No. Why should I have to flee from my home, my land, my sacred Kyiv? Where should I flee? After all, my grandmother gave birth to my father in occupied Kyiv.“
I live near the Baikove cemetery. For a while, I contemplated what I would do during the war. This was long before 2014, and I could afford to indulge in fantasies of a civilian retreat in a romantic setting without worrying about practical details. We knew that a war was coming, and we discussed it with a certain hope of avoidance, just like we discuss the „nuclear“ stage of the war now. We thought and joked, not because we didn’t understand the seriousness of the situation or had hopes of finding some shred of humanity in our eternal enemy – Russia and Russians – but simply because when you realize that mother Santa Muerte is always on your shoulder like one of Odin’s crows, there’s nothing left to do but make dark jokes and prepare for death. While contemplating how I would arrange my accommodations in the arms of death, in her antechamber, I was inspired by legends about kitsune and stories of Tychyna, Ellan-Blakytny, and Vasylchenko, who hid in the Baikove cemetery crypt in 1919 when Denikin’s troops captured Kyiv. It’s said that during World War II, people also sought refuge there from bombing raids. I imagined myself making a little cubby in one of the crypts and practicing Chöd. But my friend, a fighter of the Donbas Battalion who survived Ilovaisk, fought in three wars, is from Avdiyivka, and is currently fighting in Kherson, shattered this romantic idea of mine. „The cemetery is the worst place you can think of during the war: they hide weapons and evidence of crimes; it’s a place for ambushes and missile strikes,“ he said. „Stay at home, or better yet, leave.“ Of course, I didn’t leave, nor did I stay at home. We roamed around Kyiv, winding our way through endless checkpoints and barricades, delivering everything we could find to the guys from the Territorial Defense Forces (food, sleeping bags, medicine, and bandages – yes, bandages, which were hard to find in closed pharmacies – hemostatics began to appear within a couple of weeks). Kyiv reminded me of the Maidan Revolution in 2014. At home, all we could do was lie in bed, hug the dog, and hope that death would come quickly, if it came at all.
If my children were very young, I might have left. But being pregnant, I doubt it. I wouldn’t have felt the prophetic tremor and wouldn’t have fled like a frightened animal.
My apartment is literally a balcony of the theater of war: a panorama of the Zhuliany airport, Amosov hospital, Baikove cemetery, and the highest point of Kyiv. It’s a sweet illusion of shelter and an illusion of connectivity-disconnectivity between realities, like a bridge under which you hide from the storm, pretending to be immune to the force of water.
The bridge between Vyshhorod and Osechyna was blown up immediately on February 24. My older son Vasyl stayed on the Desna River, almost like on an island. From the shore, it seemed that Kyiv was already destroyed. The war was perceived much more directly and apocalyptically than on the tenth floor of a building on Mykola Amosov Street. Vasyl asked me to sail by boat and hide on the ground in strategically complicated terrain, where there was no benefit for the occupiers to climb so that he could fight calmly, knowing that I was safe. Of course, I still stayed in Kyiv, as I mentioned before.
My husband and I finally got married on the street in front of the registry office on the way to our adopted Territorial Defense Forces battalion, jumping out of the car packed with dog food and body armor. We listened to the roar of the de-occupation of Kyiv and rushed there with the first and best volunteers who could provide us with passes. We found an open coffee shop and celebrated my birthday there. We just lived. We crossed dozens of bridges and crossings – in Kyiv, Irpin, and Lutezh – intact and blown up.
Our dog Thor showed no signs of fear or nervousness during this time. He tried to embrace the pregnant girl in the elevator. Everything felt like a dream, as if something unreal: after all, we talked about it so much, we’d been living in this war for eight years, and we knew it would happen. And then, when it all happened, we continued to live our everyday lives. We didn’t mourn to maintain ideas and habits, as psychologists advise, but actually continued our civil lives. Explosions of artillery and rocket attacks simply became part of everyday life. Friends started dying just hundreds of kilometers closer to your home. And the bridges were destroyed for their own salvation without any hope of return. You feel like an ocean of pain, a frozen one over which you can’t build a bridge. I wouldn’t even try to describe all of this, nor did I have any desire to do so. So I told the same thing to my friend from Avdiyivka: „What should I write about? I’m a pile of debris; people who haven’t lost their loved ones are afraid of me, like a creature from under the bridge. People fix blown-up bridges, which I’ll never walk on because I’m now under-the-bridge. Everyone who could moved on to further life, where they fix bridges, but I stayed in my cozy and romantic war-torn Kyiv, for which my children fought.“
As I sit under this bombed bridge, the philosophical question of „Who am I?“ no longer troubles me. I am a pixel in both senses, a component of the print and fighting unit, yet the significance inscribed onto the fabric of present reality remains indecipherable. These words merely echo the lyrics of a Red Hot Chili Peppers song:
Sometimes I feel
Like I do not have a partner
Sometimes I feel
Like my only friend
Is the city I live in
The city of angel
Lonely as I am
Together we cry
I drive on her streets
‚Cause she’s my companion
I walk through her hills
‚Cause she knows who I am
She sees my good deeds
And she kisses me windy
I never worry
Now that is a lie
I do not ever want to feel
Like I did that day
Take me to the place I love
Take me all the way
It’s hard to believe
That there’s nobody out there
It’s hard to believe
That I’m all alone
At least I have her love
The city she loves me
Lonely as I am
Together we cry
I do not ever want to feel
Like I did that day
Take me to the place
I love Take me all the way
Under the bridge downtown
Is where I drew some blood
Under the bridge downtown
I could not get enough
Under the bridge downtown
Forgot about my love
Under the bridge downtown
I gave my life away
Translated by Yulia Lyubka and Kate Tsurkan
