SNEAK PEEK: AN EXCERPT FROM MY NEW SHORT STORY COLLECTION
My newest collection of short stories will be arriving very soon for the holidays–December 19th (fingers crossed)!
It’s called THE DAYS OF MIRACLE AND WONDER, and will feature mostly Ukrainian protagonists from Biblical, Czarist, Soviet, and post-Soviet times during the difficult early days of Independence.
The stories feature several famous historical figures including Yuri Gagarin, Les Kurbas, Nikolai Gogol, and even a well-known family from Bethlehem.
The stories take place in Ukraine of course, and in Siberia, Texas, Nazareth, Kazakhstan, Tuva, Florida, and Moscow.
Here is an excerpt from one of the stories in the collection about a KGB agent in 1950s Kyiv who follows a co-worker who has taken on the persona of Elvis.
I hope you enjoy this sample. And if so, please look for the book on December 19, 2020 on all E-book platforms.
I would also appreciate it very much if you would consider writing a review which would be of enormous help in getting the word out.
Thank you, and all best wishes for a miraculous and wonder-filled holiday season.
Cheers, Irene
[image error]Photo: Faisal Rahman
“Elvis Hrycenko Has Left the Building“
From: THE DAYS OF MIRACLE AND WONDER: STORIES
By Irene Zabytko
Do you remember how during the late fifties, Kyiv was a dark cloud shrouded behind its fabled golden gates, shut-off from the Western world behind the impenetrable hinges of the Iron Curtain. Do you recall? I still do. In those hard days, the Communist pride of the nation were the Komsomol members, the red-kerchiefed youth whose major duty was to strut in the May Day parades with banners hailing Sputnik and Lenin and promoting anti-capitalistic, anti-imperialistic fervor by whipping the cheering multitudes into a tightly binding obedience with their patriotic presence.
I was there watching, witnessing the masses lining the streets and how wildly they applauded and cheered the Komsomol youth marching past them alongside the floating tanks and missiles, followed by the grand Red Army orchestra and more and more troops carrying curved-butted rifles while goose-stepping their way down the Khreschatyk, the main street of Kyiv. It was glorious if a bit overdone.
I was also watching someone in particular in the crowds. His name was Ihor Ilych Hrycenko who stood waving and cheering along with the others. Perhaps not with much enthusiasm but then he was a quiet dreamy sort. You can tell from the far-away look behind his thick, black-rimmed glasses, and the distracted way he misbuttoned his thin tan overcoat that wasn’t properly protecting his lean body from the cold rain. I stood close enough to him to hear his mousy shouts of “Slava,” and “Glory to our Fatherland.”
He stifled a yawn, then moved and liberated his way out of the crowds pressing against one another on the cracked pavement, passing me, and not seeing me because I am a chameleon, a changeling, a shapeshifter whose remarkable talent—if you can call it that—is to blend and camouflage myself when I need and choose to. We may have even met but you would not remember or noticed. I might have been the clerk behind the counter handing you your change for the bread you just bought. Or the person in line behind you in that same barren store waiting for that loaf myself. You see me, but you really don’t. But I always, always see you.
I pushed my way to follow Ihor walking down an empty and quieter street, partially hidden behind the tall Lenin statue guarding the city. Lenin—always frowning on timid couples who often stole a quick kiss beneath his unforgiving gaze. Like the couple I came upon who were doing just that before they quickly disengaged their arms from each other and scattered like the startled pigeons I scurried through in my haste to follow Ihor.
He was going to his office at the Patriotic House of Translators—it’s actually my office too since I work there with a desk near his. The oblivious Ihor had no idea that I was following him. He never looked back—well, only once when he stopped after he tripped on the curb crossing a busy street after a frantic bus nearly obliterated him into a flattened tan pancake. I almost wished for his sake that he was trampled, but he was not a lucky sort.
Ihor hurried onward. He knew he was late. I checked my watch. He was exactly 25 minutes late. He will explain to our office security supervisor Valentyn Hryhorovich that he went to the parade as was his patriotic duty—and that is true, but he omitted the other things he did en route like his languid eating of a vanilla ice cream cone at one of the kiosks (ten minutes), and then stopping to watch a group of boys kick a ball around in a school yard while shouting out inane advice (fifteen minutes) which the boys wisely ignored.
A bit more about Ihor. He was an English linguist and a translator—a decadent illogical language, but necessary in those times. As his instructors used to remind him in his translation training classes: “We must be ready to yell and jeer them at them in English when they come to attack us.” “They” of course, meant the imperialists, Americans usually.
My desk is across from his, and like a cheating student during exams, he would place stacks of the chemistry textbooks he was translating in front and top of his desk as a protective barricade with only the top of his stringy hair visible and which always reminded me of unruly vines a negligent gardener forgot to cut. Sometimes he would peer over the top with his glasses fixed on something on the ceiling, sigh, and say things in an under breath such as, “What a dull job this is.” Then he would sigh louder and that is when I put down my pen and look up at him. “I wish these formulas would turn into musical notes,” he would then say to me directly. “Then I could hum along instead of wondering what in the world I was translating.” He said that often, and I never replied because he would then immediately bob and lower his head back behind those stacks of books as if in tempo to some insular rhythm only he heard.
As sometimes happens even in the dullest offices with the most mundane tasks, changes occur—glacially and with great resistance especially in our country, but they do occur. Ihor no longer had to translate those boring, useless, and outdated chemistry textbooks. This happened only because he demonstrated his profuse knowledge of colloquial English by swearing in a chain of exasperated and angry sentences for five full minutes when his barricade of books fell on the floor after he tried to balance them in pyramids instead of the usual flat horizontal stacks. The outburst could have been disastrous for Ihor but turned out to be the catalyst for his desirable and unexpected new task of translating the English language newspapers.
At first Ihor found this fascinating, but as he told me, he soon detested The Times of London, and as he put it, the smarmy stories about the Queen Mother and her toothy daughters riding in silly carriages. Soon after and only when Valentyn Hryhorovich wasn’t bothering him or staring at him in suspicion (he was naturally suspicious of anyone reading anything foreign), Ihor scowled openly and sighed as before.
Ihor was right. The British newspapers were dry and dull compared to the American ones. Even the reserved and grayish New York Times was surging with more life blood and vigor than anything the bourgeoisie imperialist Brits could reveal so it’s no wonder that Ihor became addicted to the American papers. However, in my observations, I noticed that he folded the papers in sly ways that allowed him to read the entertainment sections (I know English too and can read upside down) and all about the latest plays and films, the restaurants and art shows, and the other nonsense that was not at all newsworthy or important for our country’s security. But even so, they were more beguiling, forbidden and certainly more enticing than the front pages. I stared at them myself when he went to lunch or out for a smoke and found them just as fascinating. Who could not, really?
And then it became apparent how mesmerized Ihor was because of the one blazing item that stood out and reappeared over and over on those pages. It struck at Ihor’s encumbered soul and trapped his gaze whenever he came across an item about someone called Elvis.
END OF SAMPLE
© 2020 by Irene Zabytko, all rights reserved.
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