A woman who buried her son on the vegetable patch made a cross for him from two pine planks bound together with wire. Her son bought those planks to fix their house up in spring. But the war broke out, and for some people, spring never arrived.
Her son died instantly. The woman could barely register that.
The first two shells fell somewhere farther away. But a fragment of the third one killed her son when they were running from the summer kitchen toward the cellar. The woman collapsed next to him. She could not even scream. She only groaned, as if it was her who was wounded, and scratched the frozen ground with her nails.
When the sounds of explosions grew distant, she rose to her knees, leaning heavily on her arms. She looked at her son. Half of his head was missing. The woman crawled toward the kitchen wall and, pressing her back to it, started to bang her head, yet intact, against the bricks. She was not crying—she was only gasping and groaning. Her headscarf slipped off, and her white hair was soon dyed with blood. A neighbor who shuffled into her yard half an hour later thought she’d suffered a head injury.
The woman could bury her son only after the ground thawed. It took her a few days to dig a grave, which was not even that deep. She wrapped his body into a film her son had bought to cover the greenhouse. He was an atheist, but she made a cross for him, anyway, a thick stiff wire ripping the skin off her fingers. She used the same wire to attach a rusty metal plate to the cross where she wrote her son’s name and dates of birth and death with a piece of chalk.
The woman was spending the night in the cellar when she felt a pain in her chest. She did not walk out in the morning.
Several days later, the rain washed away the inscription on the plate. The cross was left standing nameless.
жінка, яка поховала сина на городі, поставила йому хрест із двох скріплених дротом соснових дощок. дошки купив син, щоб навесні зробити ремонт у хаті, але почалася війна і весна настала не для всіх.
син помер миттєво, жінка навіть не встигла нічого зрозуміти.
перші два снаряди лягли десь далеко. а осколок третього скосив сина, коли вони перебігали з літньої кухні в погріб. жінка впала поруч з ним. вона навіть не могла кричати, тільки стогнала, наче це її поранило, і шкребла нігтями мерзлу землу.
коли вибухи віддалились, вона, важко обіпершись на руки, встала на коліна. глянула на сина. у нього не було пів голови. жінка відповзла під стіну кухні, притулилась до неї спиною й почала билася головою, яка в неї ще була, об цеглу. вона не плакала, тільки хрипіла і стогнала. хустка сповзла і скоро її сиве волосся зафарбувалося кров’ю. сусідка, які пришкандибала через пів години, вирішила, що її поранено в голову.
поховати сина жінка змогла, коли розмерзлась земля. неглибоку яму копала кілька днів. тіло загорнула в плівку, яку син купив для парника. син був атеїстом, але вона все одно зробила йому хрест, поздиравши шкіру на пальцях товстим негнучким дротом. ним же прикрутила іржаву металеву пластину, на якій крейдою написала ім’я, прізвище, по батькові, дату народження, дату смерті.
уночі в погребі в жінки заболіло серце. на ранок вона не вийшла.
через кілька днів дощ змив напис. хрест залишився стояти безіменним.
A woman who returned to the destroyed village wept over the skeleton of a cow.
A whole lifetime ago, on one of those weary February nights when thick darkness spilled its ink over the houses, she went to sleep in her own bed in her own house. Somewhere far above the rooftops, dark clouds crowded in, and the wind tapped her window with a branch from an old walnut tree her father had planted. The woman twisted and turned under the covers, complaining about the weather that made her knees ache and about her insomnia. The cow in the barn was mooing softly. The woman went out to see why she was restless. The cow stuck her head out and looked at her with her big, wet eyes. The woman said a few soothing words and stroked her smooth, elastic side. Then she closed the barn and returned to the house. She propped up the branch of the walnut tree, which did not let her fall asleep, with a board.
It was not even dawn when the woman woke up in another reality. A loud roar could be heard outside the village, which did not sound like a thunderstorm. The woman quickly got up, pulled the curtain closed, and looked out the window — the black sky was aglow. Her cell phone vibrated on the table. Her son had never called her so early. To her hoarse, frightened ‘hello,’ he calmly replied that the war had begun. He told her she had to leave and that he had already arranged this with the neighbor. She should leave immediately because, in a few hours, it would be too late. “Leave? But where am I supposed to go? And what about the cow?” the woman gasped. Her son only cursed loudly.
With trembling hands, the woman unleashed the cow and led her to the hayloft. But when the cow heard the explosions, she jerked her head, snatched the rope from the woman’s hands, and ran towards the vegetable patch with her tail raised. The neighbor, who had already packed his wife and three terrified children into his van, yelled at her from the steering wheel, “Aunt Olia, hurry! Stop dawdling, or we’ll all fucking die with your damn cow!” The woman quickly got into the van, cringing from another explosion. The neighbor hit the gas. The woman was choking back her sobs not to frighten the children even more. Dawn was breaking, but the sky was still on fire.
She returned home when her village was liberated after six months of occupation. Her house greeted her with a collapsed wall. The barn was just a pile of bricks and boards. What was left of her cow lay next to the burned hayloft. The woman wanted to believe that the cow had not suffered too long.
жінка, яка повернулася в зруйноване село, плакала над скелетом корови.
ціле життя тому в один із лютневих втомлених вечорів, коли густа темрява чорнилом залила доми, вона лягла спати у своєму ліжку у своїй хаті. десь високо над дахами купчилися темні хмари, а вітер стукав у шибку гілкою старого, ще батьком посадженого, горіха. жінка вертілася під ковдрою, нарікаючи на погоду, від якої крутили коліна, та на власне безсоння. корова стиха підмукувала в хліві, і жінка пішла перевірити, чому хвилюються худоба. корова тягла до неї голову і дивилася великими вологими очима. жінка говорила щось заспокійливе і гладила лискучий пружний бік, а потім зачинила хлів й повернулася до хати. гілку горіха, яка заважала заснути, вона підперла дошкою.
ще до світанку жінка прокинулася в іншій реальності. десь за селом гриміло й гуркотіло щось не схоже на грозу. жінка похапцем піднялася з дивана, відсунула штору й виглянула у вікно – чорне небо палало загравою. на столі завібрував мобільник. ніколи син не дзвонив їй так рано. у відповідь на її хрипке перелякане “ало” син спокійно сказав, що почалась війна. сказав, що треба їхати, він вже домовився із сусідом. тікати негайно, бо за кілька годин буде пізно. “як тікати? куди? а корова?” – видихнула жінка. син лише голосно виматюкався.
тремтячими руками жінка відв’язала корову й хотіла вивести її до сінника. та почувши вибухи, тварина махнула головою, вирвала налигач і дременула на город, задравши хвоста. сусід, який вже завантажив у свій мікроавтобус дружину та трьох переляканих дітей, кричав з-за керма: “тьоть Оль, швидше, не жуйте соплі, блядь, бо з-за вашої корови нам тут усім пиздець!” жінка шмигнула в машину і втягнула голову в плечі від нового вибуху. сусід різко газонув. жінка давилася слізьми і намагалася не схлипувати, щоб не перелякати дітей ще дужче. світало, але небо продовжувало горіти.
вона повернулася додому, коли село звільнили через пів року окупації. хата зустріла виваленою стіною, хлів перетворився на купу цегли та дощок. те, що залишилось від корови, лежало біля вигорілого сінника. жінці хотілося вірити, що вона не дуже мучилась.
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Yuliia Iliukha is a poet, prose writer and journalist, born 1982 in Kharkivska oblast, Ukraine. She is the author of several books for adults and children. Her poems and prose stories have been translated into English, German, Italian, Bulgarian, Hungarian, Catalan, Polish, Swedish. Her works have appeared in magazines and newspapers of Ukraine, Austria, Poland, Bulgaria, Hungary, Spain, UK, Sweden, USA. Iliukha has received a number of awards, including the Oles Honchar International Ukrainian-German Literary Prize, International Literary Contest «Word Coronation 2018» Prize, and Smoloskyp Prize. Currently, she is a writer-in-residence Internationales Haus der Autor:innen in Graz, Austria.
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Hanna Leliv is a freelance translator originally from Lviv, Ukraine. She was a Fulbright fellow at the University of Iowa’s Literary Translation MFA program and mentee at the Emerging Translators Mentorship Program run by the UK National Center for Writing. Her translations of contemporary Ukrainian literature into English have appeared in Asymptote, BOMB, Washington Square Review, The Adirondack Review, Catamaran, and elsewhere. Markiyan Kamysh’s Stalking the Atomic City: Life Among the Decadent and the Depraved of Chernobyl was published in her translation by Astra House. Hanna is now a Leslie Center Faculty Fellow at Dartmouth College and will move to Princeton as a Fall 2023 translator-in-residence.
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Lex Lucius lives in the Roaring Fork Valley, tucked into the Rocky Mountains and passes by a field of polo ponies weekly, which have become his favorite muse to paint. Their small, muscled bodies and such strength and determination in their movements, yet incredibly calm animals. Even his paintings reflect sureness of movement and a stillness that speaks of this confidence. Lucius seeks to invoke the feelings he gets from these animals, but also tries to bring the stories and dreams we all carry within us when we think of horses and what horses mean to us. He is focusing on art he wants to see; art that makes him feel. His hope is these paintings bring feelings of comfort and connection to the viewer.
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