. The left-side driving, the excitable passengers, this self-willed caravan, the argument with Ciocia Yola, and a niggling unspecific anxiety which swirls around in his head like a mist without taking any fixed form, all have tired him out yet left him unable to relax.
He must have started to drift away at last, when he is brought back abruptly by a thunderous crash just a few feet from where he is lying. His blood freezes; his heart begins to pound. Half asleep, as if waking from a nightmare, he listens to the dreadful sound—a long crescendo, a terrible reverberation, a slow fading rumble. It is the long-drawn-out growl of the earth crying in pain. It is the roar of the coalface collapsing in the darkness below ground.
He sits up, rubs his eyes. There is nothing. Nothing but the waves pounding on the pebbles a few inches away from his feet. The tide has come in. And yet, in that moment of wakening, he relived the terror of looking into the fuming blackness of noise and dust, and knowing his father would never emerge alive.
That sound—no, he will never be able to work underground again. He cannot go back down there. In fact he had never wanted to be a miner in the first place. He would have stayed on at school and studied to be a teacher or an engineer. But when he was sixteen, his father had shoved a pick into his hands—they were long past the time of power tools—and said, “Learn, son. Learn to be a man.”
He had replied in that clever sixteen-year-old way that makes him wince now to remember, “Is a man someone who grubs about like a beast under the ground?”
And his father had said, “A man is someone who puts bread on the table, and puts his comrades’ safety before his own, and doesn’t complain.”
In Donbas, there is only one way to put bread on the table. When they said the pit was uneconomic, international solidarity couldn’t help, the mineworkers’ union couldn’t help. So they had gone back underground and helped themselves. Well, you have to live, don’t you? When the roof fell, Andriy had lived, and two others. Six had been killed. The story didn’t even make the headlines beyond Donbas.
But why him? Why did he live, when the others died? Because a voice in his head insisted, if you want to live, run—keep running. Don’t look back.
He watches a bank of grey clouds massing up on the horizon.
And why Sheffield? Because Sheffield is the place where the puddings are pink, and the girls put their tongues in your mouth when they kiss. And there was something about the blind man, the gentleness of his voice when he spoke of the welcome that awaits strangers in his city, the way he clasped your hand and seemed to look right into your heart, even though of course he wasn’t looking at all. Yes, now you remember, Vloonki was his name.
And once he gets to Sheffield? Andriy hasn’t thought that far ahead. Tomorrow he will look for Irina, and when he has found her, he will be on his way.
However long Vulk waited for me, I would wait longer.
From my leafy hiding place I watched as the sun carved its slow arc from the wooded hills in the east, up over the rolling patchwork of green and gold fields, and down to the other horizon. It was strange, because although I could see the sun moving, I felt inside me as though time was standing still. I was waiting—waiting and trying not to think about why I was waiting, because those thoughts were so horrible that if I let them creep into my mind, I might never be able to chase them out again. “ You like flower…? ”
When I get back to Kiev, I thought, I will write a story about this. It will be a thriller, following the adventures of a plucky heroine as she flees across England, pursued by a sinister but ridiculous gangster. Thinking of my story made me feel better. When you write a story, you can decide how it ends.
As the sun moved across the sky, a spume of streaky clouds that unfolded in its wake started to thicken and turn heavy.
He must have started to drift away at last, when he is brought back abruptly by a thunderous crash just a few feet from where he is lying. His blood freezes; his heart begins to pound. Half asleep, as if waking from a nightmare, he listens to the dreadful sound—a long crescendo, a terrible reverberation, a slow fading rumble. It is the long-drawn-out growl of the earth crying in pain. It is the roar of the coalface collapsing in the darkness below ground.
He sits up, rubs his eyes. There is nothing. Nothing but the waves pounding on the pebbles a few inches away from his feet. The tide has come in. And yet, in that moment of wakening, he relived the terror of looking into the fuming blackness of noise and dust, and knowing his father would never emerge alive.
That sound—no, he will never be able to work underground again. He cannot go back down there. In fact he had never wanted to be a miner in the first place. He would have stayed on at school and studied to be a teacher or an engineer. But when he was sixteen, his father had shoved a pick into his hands—they were long past the time of power tools—and said, “Learn, son. Learn to be a man.”
He had replied in that clever sixteen-year-old way that makes him wince now to remember, “Is a man someone who grubs about like a beast under the ground?”
And his father had said, “A man is someone who puts bread on the table, and puts his comrades’ safety before his own, and doesn’t complain.”
In Donbas, there is only one way to put bread on the table. When they said the pit was uneconomic, international solidarity couldn’t help, the mineworkers’ union couldn’t help. So they had gone back underground and helped themselves. Well, you have to live, don’t you? When the roof fell, Andriy had lived, and two others. Six had been killed. The story didn’t even make the headlines beyond Donbas.
But why him? Why did he live, when the others died? Because a voice in his head insisted, if you want to live, run—keep running. Don’t look back.
He watches a bank of grey clouds massing up on the horizon.
And why Sheffield? Because Sheffield is the place where the puddings are pink, and the girls put their tongues in your mouth when they kiss. And there was something about the blind man, the gentleness of his voice when he spoke of the welcome that awaits strangers in his city, the way he clasped your hand and seemed to look right into your heart, even though of course he wasn’t looking at all. Yes, now you remember, Vloonki was his name.
And once he gets to Sheffield? Andriy hasn’t thought that far ahead. Tomorrow he will look for Irina, and when he has found her, he will be on his way.
However long Vulk waited for me, I would wait longer.
From my leafy hiding place I watched as the sun carved its slow arc from the wooded hills in the east, up over the rolling patchwork of green and gold fields, and down to the other horizon. It was strange, because although I could see the sun moving, I felt inside me as though time was standing still. I was waiting—waiting and trying not to think about why I was waiting, because those thoughts were so horrible that if I let them creep into my mind, I might never be able to chase them out again. “ You like flower…? ”
When I get back to Kiev, I thought, I will write a story about this. It will be a thriller, following the adventures of a plucky heroine as she flees across England, pursued by a sinister but ridiculous gangster. Thinking of my story made me feel better. When you write a story, you can decide how it ends.
As the sun moved across the sky, a spume of streaky clouds that unfolded in its wake started to thicken and turn heavy.
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