Archive of published stories (2009-2019) about the life of common people in RUssia by Polina Eremenko

Originally published in Esquire magazine (Russian edition), October, 2015
https://www.pravilamag.ru/archive/7327-myagozero/

The last inhabitant of the Myagozero village (Saint Petersburg region) explains why in order to survive in the countryside she speaks to the dead.

«When my son Kolya died 12 years ago, I didn’t know what to do with myself. My husband
cried, but I didn’t cry. My husband said I must not be grieving since I wasn’t crying. After the funeral I took a bottle, a rope, a nail and went to the shed. I hammered the nail and prepared the rope. I sat there for a while looking at the rope. I couldn’t do it. I took off the rope, tore out the nail and threw out the bottle. I went to the boat – decided to drown myself. But I didn’t achieve anything there either. Then I went back to the grave and only there did I manage to pull myself together. So I went there the next day too. And then the next day. It’s hard to believe it’s already been 12 years since I spent each day at the graveyard talking to my son.

Every day I have a reason to wake up. I get out of bed, wash my face and go visit my son. I
go there because I need to talk. There’s no one else I could talk to around here – everyone
else is either dead or left for Saint-Petersburg, it’s about 300 km away from here. I’m the
only one left in my Myagozero village. It takes me about 30 minutes to get to the graveyard
on a summer day. If it’s a blizzardy day – about an hour. I have these homemade skis I use
to get through snowbanks: I tie a piece of wood to each shoe, get a long branch for each
hand and go.

I’ve spent my whole life in Myagozero. I was born in 1939 in a village 19 kilometers away. I
moved here in 1961 when I got married and started working at the “Road to Communism”
state farm. First I was the herd manager, then I got promoted to foreman. I kept all the
records. There was a big herd back then and you had to know all the cows by their names
and check how fat they were every month. I had so much work that I would even have to
spend the night at the farm now and then. Kolya saw that I was really busy and he did all he
could to help – as soon as he went to school he started doing his own laundry, in the
summer he would reap the fields, making winter preparations. And he mopped the floors – he would always mop the floors. It’s been a while since Kolya died, yet I can still sometimes
hear him mopping the floors. But when I go to the kitchen no one’s there.

Kolya died when he was 40 and a half years old. He lived with his wife in a village close by.
When he got back from the army there was no work left in our village – all the farms had
closed down. He couldn’t do hard work in the forest – he came back from the army with a
bad heart. Afghanistan had made him jittery. He saw his friends get killed there. When he
first got back I would sleep next to him. Sometimes he would jump up in the middle of the
night and scream in his sleep: “Give me the gun!” Kolya never told me anything about
Afghanistan and I never asked.

He didn’t want to go to university. My younger son left for Saint Petersburg, but Kolya
decided to stay. He got a job as a driver in a neighboring village. He liked walking around
and making pictures after work. That’s how he lived his life for 17 years. They didn’t have
kids. Kolya would visit me every evening. That Saturday before he died, he came over to
saw some wood. He didn’t get a lot done – the saw broke. He lay down for a nap – he said
his heart hurt. He asked me to sit with him. I spent the whole night by his side. I didn’t dare to sleep myself. Sunday morning, I accompanied him home. And on Monday he died.
Five years ago my husband died too. But he was old and I was tired of him. He would hardly
get out of bed. And when he would, there was always some kind of trouble. His memory
didn’t work anymore – he would go outside, say that he was going to visit Kolya, but he
would miss the graveyard each time and get lost. Then I would have to spend the night
looking for him. But since he died, I have no one left. I had my cat Vanya, but then a fox
made away with him this winter.

There was a time when every house in Myagozero had 10 people in it. Now it’s just me. Our
graveyard is really big – the whole village has already gathered there except me. Sometimes
people come in the summer, but that’s just for a few weeks. Sometimes they come over for
Pentecost to visit their relatives at the graveyard. I’m always glad to see people and drag
them home for tea and maybe even for a bottle. Two times a week the shop on wheels
comes over. I never miss the shop on wheels. I always buy all they have – bread, butter,
sunflower oil, candy, cookies, sausages – although it is quite expensive. Mobile phones don’t work here, so I can’t call anybody. The social club got closed down years ago, but that makes sense – who would socialize there anyway? I don’t have any books left, I don’t have anything left. To be honest, that’s why I go and talk to my son.

Sometimes interesting things happen to me on the way. You don’t meet any people
anymore, but there are still plenty of animals. Bunnies hopping all over – I talk with them too. Moose wander around – I give them some bread, but don’t get too close – they kick. On a
summer day I gather some field flowers for Kolya. In the spring, wolves walk with me. I don’t
talk to them, because I am afraid to talk to them, although they have never done anything
bad to me. They follow me to the graveyard and wait outside, but they never enter.

I sit down at Kolya’s grave and we have breakfast together. I bring some tea for myself and
cookies for him, and sometimes I boil him some potatoes. I tell him all about what’s going on:
which animals I saw today, how much wood I split, what was on TV. When it’s Kolya’s
birthday I bring cake and a bottle. The birds eat the cake and I pour the vodka into shots
standing beside each grave.

I don’t know if I’ll get to see Kolya when I die. I don’t believe in God. Though it seems like
nowadays everyone believes in him. You see all these people on TV going to church and
crossing themselves. They built a chapel in our village some years ago in place of the one
they demolished in the Soviet years. I don’t see much sense in it. It’s closed all the time
anyway. One time I bumped into a bear right near the chapel. Face to face. I dropped my
basket and I wanted to scream, but then I recalled reading in a paper that you shouldn’t
scream in front of a bear, you should stay calm. There was nothing else I could really do –
the chapel was locked, so I couldn’t hide, and there was no other place to hide either. So I
stood silently in front of the bear, pretending I wasn’t scared, even though I was frightened to death, I was so frightened I could feel the veins in my eyeballs popping. The fooled bear lost interest in me and left.

Kolya always stays quiet no matter what I say. I’ve gotten used to that. I can say whatever I
want – it’s not like he can say something back. Some days I don’t feel like talking, I get mad, I scream: “How could you leave me here all alone!” Sometimes my younger son comes over
from Saint Petersburg. He keeps telling me I should move to his place. But how could I leave
Kolya? I can skip a day, like maybe when the store on wheels comes over, but to leave
Kolya for good? So I tell my younger one: “No, I won’t leave for your Saint Petersburg. I don’t like cities – they are so loud and I’d be surrounded by strangers.” Here at least the walls are my own.

I say goodbye to Kolya before the sun goes down. Nobody sits at a village cemetery in the
dark – they say the spooks can get you. The first year when Kolya died I wanted to celebrate
New Year’s Eve with him, but a few hours before midnight I started feeling unwell and left for
home, and I didn’t do that anymore.

If it’s summer, I just stroll home, take my time, and recall memories of how one-year-old
Kolya and I would walk these forests together gathering berries. If it’s winter – all I think
about is how to get home through all these snowbanks. I get home and split some wood and
get everything ready for the next day’s picnic. And then it’s already TV time. That is, if the
electricity is there, of course. If it’s not, I just light up a candle and listen to the wind,
remembering my day, remembering my life.»