Fragments: Guilt
I am already on the train leaving Kyiv. This evening I will be in Lviv, and from there I will make my way to Warsaw and, ultimately, back to the United States.
My emotions at this moment are not complex: I am bereaved.
Mundane life demands my presence, but it feels like a retreat; an abdication of duty. How many people here cannot “go home” from war? How many have lost their homes? How many more will? How many have found their eternal home under a mound of earth and a cross?
How many more will?
The train pulls off from the station, and I watch the people on the platform. They wave at their friends and loved ones. Some call for one last conversation. The woman in the seat next to me answers her phone. Her husband helped her put her luggage in the overhead rack and now he’s standing outside chatting to her on his phone.
He smiles.
But others are weeping and pacing, their faces blotched and pink and their lips pressed tight to hold in whatever it is they’re holding in. To whom they wave; to whom they weep, I cannot know. I do not know where they are going, or for how long. I will never know what this parting means for any of them.
But they are weeping.
There is no one to wave to me on the platform; no one to bid me farewell. I leave as I arrived: anonymous and lost, wondering what it is I could possibly accomplish here.
With no one to wave goodbye to.
What was the meaning of all of this? What is the meaning of all of this? Why are they weeping? How many others won’t survive the hours between Kyiv and Lviv?
And, as the train pulls away from Kyiv, it is as if the whole country is demanding of me: don’t go. The war is not over. How can you dare to go, when we cannot? Will you hear the sirens when you sleep in safety?
What does one answer to that?
The train passes a yard. Its fence is sprayed with graffiti: Smert’ moskali! Fuck Russia forever!
Parting words from Kyiv, I guess.
—
I took a taxi from my apartment to the Kyiv-Pasazhyrskyi vokzal. My driver was Serhii: he drove a red Subaru Forester. I almost missed my cab because I was too naive to know that taxis have to park at certain places at Maidan Nezalezhnosti and I was nowhere close to where he pulled over.
At first I grumbled under my breath that Serhii stopped so far from where I was waiting. I felt chastened when he explained why, after which he said “Vincent? Sit in my car and we’ll go together!”
Serhii was an affable and talkative sort of guy, wiry and bald at 64 and eager to use whatever English he knew. I know his age because he told me that he joined the Territorial Defense Force to defend his country last year when he was 63. But he had to leave the TDF when he turned 64. Now he drives a taxi. I think he regretted the change of profession.
Our conversation started in Ukrainian and drifted into Russian as the limits of my vocabulary were reached. But he appreciated the effort (author’s note: if you’re in Ukraine, speak as much Ukrainian as you can, even if it isn’t much. It means everything. It really does, in every circumstance).
Serhii asked where I was from, and acted excited when I told him I was from the United States. At first, it was just small talk. A cab driver being friendly, hamming it up to get good reviews on Uklon.
“Why are you in Ukraine? For work?”
“Something like that, I think. I’m here to help Ukraine, if I can.”
Serhii’s amiable demeanor suddenly changed, and his voice became impassioned: “Well, thank you. Thank you for helping. Thank you. We really need help. But you know, the main way you can help? The most important thing? Do you know? WEAPONS. Weapons! Weapons! Weapons!”
He made a swooping gesture: “F-16’s will…and ATACMS. We need them.” He made a sweeping motion.
“I know,” I said. “I understand.”
As he was weaving through traffic, he reached his right hand back to embrace mine. “I know you understand. You’re here. But we need the weapons to clear away these Russians.” He emphasized his point by making that emphatic sweeping motion with his right hand again.
He fell silent for a moment — but just for a moment: “You know my mother was Ukrainian and my dad was Russian. They’re gone now. But I have a sister. She’s in Russia. And she’s gone too. I try to talk to her on the phone and it’s like she’s really gone too: ‘You’re Nazis. You’re fascists,’ she says. But I have friends in Bucha. They don’t have houses now! No-th-ing! (“Ni. Che. Vo!”) They took everything from them. What Nazis?! What fascists?!”
Eventually, our conversation ambled down less fraught alleyways: he asked how I first came to Ukraine; about how I liked it here; and he told me that he wished he could swim in the Black Sea in Odesa again: but now, he said, is not a good time. I joked that every time I swim in the Black Sea I get stung by jellyfish: “I guess it’s their sea, not mine.”
Serhii thought that was funny.
And as we approached the station I told Serhii that I hoped the war would end soon. But he scoffed, frustrated by my naive platitudes: “It won’t end soon. It will be long. Go home and tell Biden that we need weapons! Tell him that wE have the people. But we can’t fight them without the weapons. Ukrainians will fight them with sticks if they have to. We’ll fight them with sticks! But we need real weapons to win. Because there are so many of these orcs. Of course we thank everyone and every country for everything they’ve given us. But we need more. Because there are millions of these Russians coming here, and for what? To kill and to steal. I have friends in Bucha. And have you seen pictures of Mariupol? There is nothing there now. Just rocks. And for what? To steal and to kill. And so Putin can have more power. Just more power…Just tell them we need weapons!”
Parting words from Kyiv, I guess.
—
I’ll never see Serhii and his comfortable red Subaru Forester again. And maybe Serhii will never see his sister again. And maybe those people at the train station will never see whomever it was they were weeping for again. And in the hours between Kyiv and Lviv, maybe someone will learn that they’ll never see someone else again, except, perhaps, under earth and cross. And…
—
An hour and a half out of the city, the sirens rang. I know, because every phone on the train started screaming in unison.
Proceed to the nearest shelter.
Parting words from Kyiv, I guess.
Don’t go.
I’m so sorry.
