published in Eastern Economist #378-9, May 7, 2001
“I’ll be back…”
“I’ll be back…”
In the VR cafeteria just before the May Day break and still deciding whether or not I would dig potatoes this year and bypass V-Day altogether, I was just reaching over to stab a choice piece of oseledets – pickled herring to the uninitiated – when word came that the government had been overthrown. The shabby-looking nationalist next to me in the line gulped a little, swiped at his bushy-browed eye, and asked Natalka of the dainty white apron for a bowl of post-Lenten borshch. As she tossed in a celebratory dollop of sour cream the size of a 5-kopiyka piece, he sighed and said, “Maybe they’ll start giving us more smetana again.” When I failed to respond, he mumbled, “You gotta look on the bright side of things, you know.”
I added a plate of zrazy to my tray and some compote and moved towards the cashier.
“Maybe they’ll even start serving beer in the cafeteria again,” he whined, dogging my heels. Maybe he was hoping I’d spring for him as well. The trouble with these nationalists is that they don’t have any games on the side and they never have two hryvnia to rub together when it comes to paying for anything. Not that I have any special sources of revenue either, other than a little moonlighting for the odd weekly.
There was a sudden stir in the room and someone shouted, “Yushchenko’s out, but he’s not leaving politics!” Everyone stopped stabbing and poking at food and looked at the bewhiskered bloke who had just run in, waving a transistor radio in his hand.
“Does that mean we have to vote for him now?” asked my neighbor.
There was some crackling and then the voice of the premier could be heard through the tinny speaker. “This country has witnessed the downfall of democracy,” he said amid the shirring and hissing of bad reception.
“I guess not,” I replied, pulling out my wallet to pay for lunch.
Love is forever
Slavs are nothing if not believers in an amazing gamut of superstitions, rituals and traditions. For instance, you don’t want to bring your Ukrainian sweetie anything but an odd-numbered bouquet of flowers (so much for the English love of dozens) – unless you think she’s been two-timing you, in which case four or six would amply convey your death wish towards her. So it is, when a company really wants to see the tail end of some redundant or obstreperous long-term employee, it presents a timepiece. This, it is believed, brings separation and guarantees that it is forever. Don’t ask why. Logic would seem to say that a timepiece gives the parting party the means to keep track of the minutes and seconds until they can return to their beloved place of work, but it seems instead intended to help them count the hours until they meet their Maker – or at least their first pension payment. Given the Musical Chairs style of the president’s appointments, where a short list of favorites is regularly dismissed from some significant post only to take up another one released by a different favorite similarly shuffled (witness Mssrs. Kushniariov and Diomin), it was a bit surprising that on April 28 Mr. Kuchma presented 12 ministers and two vice premiers with special-ordered wristwatches from a Kyiv watch factory, all engraved From the President of Ukraine. The short list just got a lot shorter.
Curiously, Mr. Yushchenko did not get a watch from the president. He was privileged with a rare book, The 33 Dreams of Mikhail Bulgakov, signed, “In memory of fruitful joint work, from Leonid Kuchma.” One could certainly say that this fruitful work will now become little more than a pleasant memory in the minds of paid-up pensioners and teachers. But political pundit Mykola Tomenko put it best when he suggested that Mr. Kuchma be nominated for an Oscar: “Our Lonnie has a remarkable ability to both act and direct in dramas he has scripted himself.”
Uncramping our style
It’s taken a couple of months, but the president finally made it a reality. Those drivers on Ukrainian roads who were unable to buy special permits that gave them carte-blanche to drive on the wrong side of the road at 180 kph fully inebriated and then blame the sucker in the Lada they demolished for being in their way – the rest of us, as the saying goes – have some respite. Now, even if you’re not in a black-windowed Mercedes S600 with VIP plates on the way to Koncha Zaspa, the cops can’t just pull you over on whim and claim you’ve been drinking when all you are doing is chewing Airwaves Nº10 strength because you had pampushky for dinner and don’t want your girlfriend to refuse you a few kisses because you smell of garlic. Nor can they take away your plates because you decided to park on the little asphalted corner next door to O’Briens where everyone and his Blazer has been parking since time immemorial – and break the frame to boot. And even if your driver did drive up on the VR lawn in your Jeep Cherokee with the yellow plates, they can’t threaten to take away his permit just like that. As to extorting fines, well, this driver can vouch that the boys in blue generally did their job. They mostly only stop me when I really did something wrong – and half the time they let me talk my way out of it. The other half, they always gave a receipt for the fine tendered (rarely more than Hr 10 or under $2) even without asking. •
–from the notebooks of Pan O
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