Down Among the Fishes

Velkom to Dobratyche

VELKOM TO DOBRATYCHECome on over and visit us in Dobratyche; we’ll be really glad to see you! This is the place where the whole story — as dangerous as literature itself, it’s hard to believe that I was the one it happened to — actually took place. This is the village eulogised — well, that’s perhaps a bit of an exaggeration — by our local poet Mikhas Yarash, a guy so talented that even in Belarus one person in every twenty has heard of him, let alone in Europe. And that’s in spite of the fact that he writes in Belarusian. OK, he writes in Ukrainian as well.

Our village is situated in a glorious forest of fir trees — they call them baryaki round here (a word you won’t hear anywhere else). These trees really do remind you of people. We’ve got real sand dunes as well, although there’s no sea round here, invisible or otherwise. On the other hand there are several springs; in one of them the water is salty. These days we’re allowed to go right up to the river Buh — it doesn’t take more than fifteen minutes to reach it — but back then you couldn’t get anywhere near it. The frontier was shut fast, there was barbed wire, the ploughed-up strip of no-man’s land — don’t even think of trying to get across it — and an alarm system. Yes, indeed, we had a real problem with water in Dobratyche at the time. That explains why the little bay by the sluice gates on the drainage canal was so popular; people even came down from Brest to enjoy a day by the water.

There was also a problem with the “primeval lack of human-kind, the boundless solitude” in Dobratyche that Mikhas writes about. That goes some way to explain why, when I was a child, meeting another human being among the ancient firs and aspens was a real event. More often than not all you met were ferrets, pine martens and striped wild piglets. Then came the cancerous growth of whole estates of dachas and a station on the railway line. Almost all the animals disappeared. In their stead came the townies.

Maybe Mikhas meant that you couldn’t call them people.

He was wrong there. These folk are the cream of our society. The best of the best. The gardening clubs, that sprang up around Dobratyche, had names like War Veteran, Defender of the Fatherland and Rainbow. They were slightly dotty, these rulers of our world, but they were also dangerous, and my grandmother always put on a special respectful vo ice when she was talking to them. Granny was ninety seven. The last of the Mohicans among the original inhabitants of our village. Whenever a retired major or lieutenant-colonel — always in well-worn blue trousers that sagged at the bottom and the knees — came near our fence, she would always offer them a drink of water and bring out a metal cup that was covered in chicken s**t.

Granny was one of the poor in spirit. One of those to whom the Kingdom of Heaven belongs. If she had succumbed to the temptation to commit suicide some twenty years earlier, as she really wanted to, then she most likely would never enter that particular kingdom. As things are, there’s no problem. She will.

In the era of dachas, fences around the village houses began to make their appearance. There had been no use for them before. You simply put a twig through the latch as a sign that you weren’t at home, and that you would rather no one entered while you were out. Now there are high fences everywhere, and anything that weighs less than a ton is securely locked away… Previously it was only the gypsies that people were wary of; now they’re afraid of each other.

But I should get back to that evening in June when a young fellow with a gun opened our gate and came into the yard.