Editor’s note: “That time when” is a new feature by the Kyiv Post which invites its readers to share their experiences of living in Ukraine.
A heavy iron pot sits over a small wood-burning stove, filling the air with the scent of spices and meat. Vova gingerly sips at a sample of broth that he has just scooped from amid the increasingly violent bubbles. His eyes focus on some imaginary point far in the distance as he swirls the hot liquid in his mouth, and then he gives a thoughtful grimace as he dumps a few palm-fulls of pepper, salt, and minced herbs into the pot. Turning to the small company sitting not far away at a low-roofed picnic table, his expression spreads into a broad grin as he gives us all a thumbs-up.
It’s not long now.
“DJ!” his voice booms from above his broad, tanned belly and beside me Oleksander turns his attention to a small World-War-Two-era phonograph. It has fallen silent. Finding an appropriate selection, he points a wiry finger at the title, printed in Cyrillic on the yellowing and cracking paper at the disk’s center. Each also bears the proud brand of CCCP printed in large letters beneath an image of a radio broadcast tower.
Oleksander gives the handle of the phonograph a series of rapid spins, winding the mechanism, and music begins, crackling from within the ancient device. The tones rise, stretching an impassioned melody, full of pain and trial and hope, above a lightly skipping baseline.
“Life is hard, and has always been so, and will always be so,” it says, “but today…” Glasses clink and the first round of samogon fills shot glasses, sitting with crystalline sparkle amidst the dusty earth-toned roughness. And then they are lifted, and pausing, I glance around the table to confirm that the time is right to drain my glass. My eyes meet those of an ancient babushka, her features creased and hardened by years of village life. Her warm eyes glint with a smile and she gives me a decisive bottoms-up gesture and I empty my glass, and the phonograph continues to spread its aching hope, and this passion seems to rise into the heat and sweat and dust of the afternoon from another era, distant and half-forgotten.
And later, somewhere in the leaden darkness of a summer night, I am asleep on a sofa in a centuries-old farmhouse, being serenaded by a cloud of mosquitoes and the soft sounds of the countryside.
And it all feels like home.
