Seven Lost Stories - A Present Year E-Book

Simone Malacrida

• Herausgeber: Simone Malacrida
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Beschreibung

A present year, exemplifying what flows daily in each person's life, becomes the backdrop against which seven characters scattered across a Europe whose identity is vague and abstract, though totally pervasive.
A land steeped in recent doubts and age-old traditions, in rapid innovation and ancient securities, in wills denied and freedoms rediscovered is the canvas for actions, dialogues and thoughts that seem to be lost in the void of contemporaneity.

Leseprobe

Table of Contents

SIMONE MALACRIDA

“ Seven Lost Stories - A Present Year”

Simone Malacrida (1977) | Engineer and writer, has worked on research, finance, energy policy and industrial plants.

ANALYTICAL INDEX

AUTHOR'S NOTE: | In the book there are very specific historical references to facts, events and people. Such events and such characters really happened and existed. | On the other hand, the main protagonists are the result of the author's pure imagination and do not correspond to real individuals, just as their actions did not actually happen. It goes without saying that, for these characters, any reference to people or things is purely coincidental.

A present year, exemplifying what flows daily in each person's life, becomes the backdrop against which seven characters scattered across a Europe whose identity is vague and abstract, though totally pervasive. | A land steeped in recent doubts and age-old traditions, in rapid innovation and ancient securities, in wills denied and freedoms rediscovered is the canvas for actions, dialogues and thoughts that seem to be lost in the void of contemporaneity.

FREEDOM

I

II

III

WILL

IV

V

VI

TRADITION

VII

VIII

IX

INNOVATION

X

XI

XII

SAFETY

XIII

XIV

XV

DOUBT

XVI

XVII

XVIII

EARTH

XIX

XX

XXI

SIMONE MALACRIDA

“ Seven Lost Stories - A Present Year”

Simone Malacrida (1977)

Engineer and writer, has worked on research, finance, energy policy and industrial plants.

ANALYTICAL INDEX

FREEDOM

I

II

III

WILL

IV

V

VI

TRADITION

VII

VIII

IX

INNOVATION

X

XI

XII

SAFETY

XIII

XIV

XV

DOUBT

XVI

XVII

XVIII

EARTH

XIX

XX

XXI

AUTHOR'S NOTE:

In the book there are very specific historical references to facts, events and people. Such events and such characters really happened and existed.

On the other hand, the main protagonists are the result of the author's pure imagination and do not correspond to real individuals, just as their actions did not actually happen. It goes without saying that, for these characters, any reference to people or things is purely coincidental.

A present year, exemplifying what flows daily in each person's life, becomes the backdrop against which seven characters scattered across a Europe whose identity is vague and abstract, though totally pervasive.

A land steeped in recent doubts and age-old traditions, in rapid innovation and ancient securities, in wills denied and freedoms rediscovered is the canvas for actions, dialogues and thoughts that seem to be lost in the void of contemporaneity.

“Long you live and high you fly

But only if you ride the tide

Balanced on the biggest wave

You race towards an early grave”

FREEDOM

“With no lovin' in our souls

And no money in our coats

You can't say we're satisfied”

I

––––––––

Buča, January 2023

––––––––

“ The night they drove old Dixie down,

And all the bells were ringin' ”

––––––––

In the polar cold that gripped the city of Buča on the first day of the new year, Irina Kovalenko was moving as usual.

Without any difference compared to the previous day and without changing his daily route at all.

It was always a pain to pass through number 144 Jablunska Street.

The invaders had settled there until their retreat.

Invaders, without even an identifier.

The world knew them as “Russians,” but to Irina that word was now meaningless.

She was born in 1967, when Ukraine and Russia were still part of the Soviet Union.

Growing up under the Brezhnev regime, becoming an adult during Gorbachev's perestroika, Irina and her husband Mikhail Boyko had been part of that youth who had joyfully welcomed the dissolution of the Soviet Empire and the birth of the various independent states, including the 'Ukraine.

His children were born and raised under the yellow-blue flag and it should have been that way forever.

The border wasn't that far away, not even on the Belarusian side and, in that area, everyone had something in common.

The great counteroffensive that had broken the Nazi front had been launched from the Pripyat swamps, eighty years earlier and, during Irina's early youth, the Chernobyl tragedy had affected everyone.

Without exception, Russian, Ukrainian or Belarusian.

In both situations, everyone is on the same side and everyone is united.

So what had happened to arrive at what they had experienced in the last year?

The previous day, Irina had found nothing to celebrate to close a cursed 2022.

He still remembered the events between February and April.

How can we forget all this?

The arrival of Russian tanks and riflemen, assault guards and regiments.

Young boys, commanded by bloodthirsty men and mercenaries.

The 76th Guards Air Assault Division was the most feared, the one that had started the massacre.

Not at the beginning, not in the first weeks, when they thought they would conquer Kiev in a short time.

To take all of Ukraine.

Then came the worst.

When it was now clear that they had remained mired in a house-to-house clash, entangled worse than the phenomenon of rasputiza, the much feared Ukrainian mud of the thaw and autumn, the one that everyone knew well for slipping everywhere and slowing down every step of man and mechanical means.

That black, fertile and soft earth, a blessing for agriculture and crops, became a soggy and sticky dough, an elastic glue that settled on everything that dared to step on it.

It was at that moment that the Russians launched the manhunt.

Five hundred had fallen in Buča, most of them executed.

It had happened to her husband Mikhail, who was taken from the house after a search.

They almost always arrived drunk or eager for revenge.

The smell of vodka was the only thing Irina remembered from that day.

They had stolen a few things, mainly clothes and food, and then destroyed the rest.

Mikhail had been taken to the rear and executed with a shot to the head, after the Russian command learned of the enlistment of his sons, Igor and Vladimir.

The photos in the house left no doubt about their age.

It was clear that they were between twenty-five and thirty years old, exactly the age of those who were fighting almost everywhere.

They wanted to know where they were.

One, Igor, the eldest, certainly in Kiev, for the defense of the city.

The other had been sent further south, to stem the advance towards Kherson.

An invasion that lasted no more than half an hour, but which had completely turned Irina's life upside down.

Was it possible that everything was so fragile?

Was it possible that, in the space of less than two months, entire families had been devastated by the war?

Something that their parents had not experienced, as they were born between the end of the Nazi occupation and the total liberation of Soviet soil.

Someone had been sent to Afghanistan, but not them.

And then it was a distant war, not in the alleys of the cities, which now seemed inviolable.

Igor and Vladimir had grown up with a modern mentality.

Get used to traveling across borders without problems.

To go to Russia, given the short distance, but also to Western Europe.

In Poland and Germany.

In Greece and France.

As much as their economies could, there was hope given by work and improving general conditions.

Young people wanted to have fun, as their peers normally did in Hamburg or Stockholm, Athens or Madrid.

Ten years earlier the European Football Championships had taken place in Ukraine and the continental finals had been hosted in Kiev.

Everything now seemed so clear and obvious.

Nothing that foreshadowed the violent events that would unfold in 2022.

In the tragedy, Irina was luckier.

She managed to bury her husband in the small garden behind the house as soon as the Russians had left and once she called the doctor to confirm his death.

Public funerals could not be held, nor could the body be transported to the cemetery.

At the very least, Mikhail's body would not have been exposed to the elements.

Not like those of many who had accumulated on the sides of the roads.

Shedding tears with every mouthful, the widow had disturbed the soft soil to make a hole.

His children would later find out what had happened that late March morning.

When the Russians would have left and the Ukrainians would have returned, together with the large cloud of international reporters and commentators.

It was a month of interviews and investigations.

The documented massacres.

What purpose would it have served?

Those responsible were gone and would never be caught.

Covered by widespread silence and a dark military hierarchy, at times worse than the Soviet one, a time in which, and Irina remembered it well, the truth had to be kept quiet for "the supreme good" that is, the victory of real socialism over capitalism.

Crimes committed without logic and without sense.

Socialism had collapsed.

Now Russia had to withdraw.

So why the pain?

He hadn't found an answer.

Neither at the time nor now, with the newfound freedom.

Freedom to move and leave the house.

Freedom not to receive unsolicited visits and have a machine gun pointed at you.

For a year he had had to deal with forgotten problems, such as the lack of food and the difficulty in finding it.

That day he was going, as usual, to collect the ration made available by the international authorities for single people and the elderly.

She didn't feel old, but she was undoubtedly alone.

His sons still at war.

Now communications had been restored and we could talk freely on the telephone, at least with Igor, the major.

His son alternated periods at the front, during which he was not reachable by others in Kiev or in the west.

Having become an expert in anti-aircraft systems, thanks to the training received from the British, he had transposed his skills as a computer programmer for purposes other than those required before 2022.

If previously it was a question of controlling cargo loads arriving and departing from the port of Odessa, through employment in a brokerage company based in Kiev, now all his study had been diverted to the use and operation of that shield which, if effective, would have annihilated the greatest danger after the retreat of the Russian army.

The rain of missiles that fell every night did not leave room for too many thoughts of peace, but if these missiles had been intercepted, they would have caused neither damage nor victims.

A primary task, considered superior to everything else.

Defend your land.

She knew about Igor that, before the invasion, he had a girlfriend, but for almost a year Irina had no longer asked about her.

It was likely that they still lived together or not.

Vladimir, on the other hand, was almost always at the front.

He had no romantic ties and had studied less than his brother.

A laborer for a construction company, his physical size had become essential for the front line.

He could move with a certain ease for several kilometers with military equipment weighing around ten kilograms on him and, therefore, his tasks were part of the front line that was supposed to push the Russians back out of Ukraine.

Little was known about his field operations.

He could have told how the Russian commanders sent their men to die, especially young men and recruits, without any restraint or how they found the villages liberated after the occupation, but he didn't feel like bringing any more negative news to his mother, already tested by Mikhail's death.

The children had accepted their father's passing with opposite feelings.

Igor had come to terms with it and understood how all this was natural in a war, however gruesome and shameful.

Vladimir, on the other hand, had become even more furious and had put more vehemence into the attacks on the front.

If before he fought for a generic sense of patriotism, now he did it mainly to avenge his father.

Irina's gaze lifted towards the town where she had always lived.

Her life and that of her husband had taken place there, with a few exceptions, mainly linked to the capital.

Kiev was Ukraine's main attraction center in terms of business and trade.

Otherwise, they had visited Odessa and Lviv during their honeymoon.

Their economic conditions were not prosperous and did not allow for large movements, unlike what their children had been able to do.

Precisely they, projected to think on an international level, at least continental as far as Europe was concerned, now defended the soil of the homeland, a bit as it would have been done a hundred years earlier, when the fields and the mud had a much more familiar meaning. and daily.

He found that Buča remained similar to the past.

Even though the Russians had devastated it and even though, after the end of the occupation, aid had arrived for reconstruction and refurbishment, the spirit had not changed in such a short time.

Despite the deaths.

Or, perhaps, precisely in honor of the dead.

There was an increasingly entrenched belief that grew over the months.

Stay there.

Being citizens of Buča.

Irina's puff went past the scarf and burst out in a hot cloud of steam.

The air was freezing and the temperature would not rise above freezing even during the day.

Fortunately, the Russian occupation had left in time, long before winter arrived.

Everyone had been able to stock up on supplies during the summer season, thanks above all to aid from Europe and America.

Now that it was the dead of winter, we were trying to survive.

Those who were now fighting or on the front line or under occupation were very different.

How would he have lived that winter not being able to be free and not being able to draw on similar help?

A shiver ran down the woman's back.

Shivers of fear and not of cold.

It was better not to think about it.

"Thank you very much."

They were the first words of that day.

Irina always said thanks.

Everyone.

He was grateful for life, despite everything.

Leaving aside the desperation of losing her husband, she knew she had a mission.

Set an example for your children.

Show them what the Ukrainian resistance was all about.

Not weapons, but a proud and determined people who continued to live, despite everything.

A glance met other women and men who had crowded into that place.

The cold and darkness forced everyone to go out only for a few moments, under penalty of almost certain exposure to frostbite.

There were few public transports and even private ones.

Irina owned an old car, but preferred to use it only on very useful occasions.

Petrol had become a scarce and precious commodity and everything should not be thrown away.

The previous year had brought back, in everyone's family economies, the dark times of the last periods of socialism, with goods rationed and unavailable.

Only those who had already experienced something similar and had no pretentions to take everything for granted were able to identify with it.

The others had suffered the situation.

Few words accompanied that small meeting of mature resisters without weapons.

“Today I had some milk.”

“I make bread.”

The essential.

Nothing superfluous.

This was followed by some exchanges about where the sons or daughters were and what they were doing.

Many had moved to the West, where Russian missiles would not have reached or where their frequency was certainly lower.

Those who had relatives or friends or ties of any kind had exploited similar connections, especially the younger ones.

Anyone who thought they still had a life ahead of them was gone for now.

Buča remained in their hearts and they would return there once peace was made.

Yes, peace.

A word abused by the powerful, but rarely spoken by the people.

Peace was something taken for granted and indisputable.

Yet, the neighbors themselves, cousins by blood and history, had turned against him.

Few had wondered more about the motivations than the mass media had underlined.

A mixture of desire for domination and omnipotence of oligarchs.

Irina was part of that group of people who, carried away by the spirit of their children, had seen the future in Europe.

Of course she felt she was Ukrainian and Slavic, Orthodox and had similar traditions to the Russians, but that didn't stop her from thinking with her own head.

Since the fall of Soviet centralism, directed from Moscow with statist logic, the world she knew had improved.

Famine only for the first few years, then investments and greater production.

Improvements in life, previously unobtainable goods, job opportunities for young people, including expatriation.

There were many who went to Europe.

Young men and women looking for qualified and well-paid jobs, but also more mature people, especially women who were once nurses or teachers, requested by the West to care for the elderly.

They sent money and goods home.

Food and clothes.

A godsend.

All stopped and put aside after the start of the war.

Since then, the people have been asking for peace.

This obviously meant finding freedom again and this involved the call to arms and resistance.

All logical steps that should have been concluded earlier and without massacres.

Where was Europe if it couldn't stop an aggression of this kind?

Were the weapons of America still needed, of that country for decades considered the enemy and now a lifeline for those who did not want to fall under Putin's yoke?

Irina nodded and started walking home.

The Sun was low, as it usually was in winter.

A yellowish oval-shaped ball that did not heat anything, despite the light.

Better this way than storms.

When the east wind brought tiny icicles that seemed to be sharp glass and which prevented movement outside.

Or when, without wind, the clouds full of humidity dropped a blanket of snow.

It's been a while since he's been down like he used to.

Irina remembered her childhood, in the seventies, with a thick coat even more than a meter high.

Now it was a rarity.

Global warming, that's what everyone, experts and ordinary people, said around the world.

With a confident gait, despite the ice, Irina headed home.

A modest home, but at least privately owned and single.

She had never tolerated living in an apartment and had fled at the first opportunity.

She didn't like the Soviet-style apartment blocks where she grew up.

He preferred the tranquility of a small house, a sort of urban isba, with a piece of land, not much to be honest.

The same piece of land in which she had buried her husband Mikhail, who was dug up a month later and placed in a wooden coffin, buried in the city cemetery.

A fitting way to remember a man who had never hurt anyone and who had done his best all his life.

He didn't deserve an end like this.

When taking the few streets that separated her from home, the woman was always afraid of seeing a Russian appear.

One of those who lurked at crossroads or played shooting games from the windows.

He breathed a sigh of relief when he saw the classic white of his home.

A white that would soon turn gray without someone to refresh the color every three or four years, as Mikhail used to do.

There were two steps that separated the entrance from the garden.

Necessary to prevent mud, water and snow from dirtying the exterior.

A small glass door served as the first obstacle between the inside and the outside.

Once past the barrier, the first warmth could already be felt.

Irina took off her hat and scarf, unbuttoning her coat at the same time.

They were necessary operations in order not to suffer thermal shock.

He placed everything on a hanger and prepared to take off his shoes.

No matter how careful he was not to get dirty, it would have been impossible to keep them clean.

There were warm and comfortable slippers waiting for her.

She put both feet in and took her glasses in her hand, so that once she entered the house they wouldn't fog up and block her vision.

Mechanical gestures, repeated for years and now become habitual, so much so that I didn't even have to detach my mind from the thoughts that were flowing copiously.

The days repeated themselves in a very similar way, with some visits from acquaintances punctuated by the weekly calendar.

Towards evening, he would hear from Igor.

From him he would learn about Vladimir, although news of his younger son was scarce.

A winter spent away from home, in the middle of the trenches or barricaded outside the villages.

Holding the position was a priority in the winter, waiting for a new offensive.

There had been so much enthusiasm during the summer, with the surprise move that had liberated much of the northern and eastern front, leaving only the south as a theater of war.

General enthusiasm dampened by local events.

The loss of someone close and the continuous nuclear threat coming from the Zaporižžja power plant, a colossus compared to the small Chernobyl and, therefore, very dangerous.

The memories of that spring stood out clearly in Irina's mind.

Of delays and errors.

Of the men sent to die and the diseases that had occurred throughout the surrounding area.

For over twenty years, every now and then someone left this world following illnesses contracted by the damned radiation, something that was waning in recent years, but still remained present in the collective memory.

He sat down on his favorite chair, a modest piece of wooden furniture with a finely wickered cushion.

He felt his back benefit from it.

The cell phone screen lit up and the woman could see the time.

It was still early.

Masha would come to her no earlier than forty minutes.

He took the object in his hand and consulted the message that had just been delivered.

It was indeed Masha, his childhood friend.

They had attended the same schooling and were the same age, two elements that had strengthened their bond over the years.

Masha's husband was still alive, but he was not in good shape physically.

He suffered from chronic diabetes, to which high blood pressure had recently been added.

However, worse had happened to Masha.

Her son had died during the recent Russian invasion, hit by a bullet in the face.

Thus the two women found themselves united even in the tragedy and that day they would spend part of the beginning of the new year together, with the same hope.

Seeing your loved ones return home and the end of the war.

The friend informed her of her arrival at the appointed time.

There was time during which Irina could have rested.

He took the book he had started the previous week and opened it where he had left the bookmark.

Of all the possible ways to spend time, only reading interested Irina.

She had never been a good cook nor did she enjoy sewing or embroidery.

He enjoyed, every now and then, finding news on the internet both with his cell phone and with his now obsolete laptop, but for about a year he had limited this habit.

The lack of network and electricity had reduced activities to the essentials.

Thus she found herself almost a prisoner at home, without the possibility of external contact, at least for the months of the Russian occupation.

Mikhail's passion had always been to buy books of all sorts and he had crammed an innumerable quantity of them into every room, creating small closed ravines from the corners in which to stack them.

So Irina had absorbed this interest, little by little, and, since Mikhail's death, she had told herself that she should read whatever came through her door.

She was committed and started systematically.

Especially during the cold season, you had to stay indoors for a long time and so what better way to spend seemingly identical days?

He wasn't in a hurry and wanted to savor every single page.

The book he started was an edition from the early 1980s, later reprinted in Ukrainian after independence.

Brought home from a local market for a few hryvnias, it spoke of a fictionalized story of historical events that occurred between the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century in France, with the backdrop of the Belle Époque and the Dreyfus case.

The characters were clearly characterized and there was no shadow of a doubt which side the obscure and unknown author was on.

In an instant, Irina was transported back more than a century and thousands of kilometers away.

Other environments, other habits, other clothes and other food.

A way to live a second life.

Time took on a new connotation once totally immersed in the writing, as if to dilate and contract without undergoing the normal known physical laws.

At a certain point, and it happened every time Irina picked up a written text, the woman emptied her mind and projected herself elsewhere, flying above the earth and being able to enjoy full freedom.

Freedom understood in a total sense, from the world and the Universe, from God and from men.

Whether this happened after a few lines or after a few pages would have depended solely on the skill of the author and his way of being able to transpose, with words, images, sounds, smells and environments.

In this way, the minutes were lost without any continuity and the woman was surprised to hear the doorbell.

A jolt, every time.

An ancestral fear of still finding the guards of the Russian army at the door.

It was Masha and he confirmed this by seeing the squat shadow of her figure, accentuated by the heavy burden of clothes.

Unlike Irina, her friend had taken on typical Eastern features.

His physique had expanded and he had lost the momentum he once had.

There was little left of that graceful girl with deer ankles.

The facial features had become rounded and denoted the pleasures of cooking, seasoned with massive doses of fat.

Conversely, Irina had retained a certain thinness that had characterized her since she was a child.

Even with the heavy winter clothes, one could glimpse how there was a lean physique supporting the body.

It had never been generously shaped and was much closer to Western aesthetic canons than to what was present in the tradition of the great mother Russia.

Of the Soviet legacy, strongly centralized on what was present in Russian culture, he had absorbed little.

Not even the practice of the samovar had ever entered his home, preferring the infusion of tea as was usual in England.

He let Masha, who had brought her slippers in a plastic bag, into the house, as was normal in those parts.

“Come and sit down.”

Irina's hospitality had not changed.

Indeed, she liked having people around the house and gave her a sense of fulfillment.

Used to having to share her space with the men in her life, her husband and her children, she had not yet been able to have all the rooms to herself.

The furniture had not changed and still denoted a family legacy and not a single life.

“How's Boris?”

The first question, of course, was about her husband's condition.

Masha nodded in disconsolate condescension.

"As always".

There were no daily news, just a trend to be monitored.

They had an instrument for checking blood pressure, one of those supplied to doctors with the band to be placed on the arm and the pump to be filled by hand.

Twice a day, Boris, with the help of his wife, measured it and recorded the data in a notebook.

Every month, they went to the doctor to show the data and received a summary conclusion from the doctor.

They had become accustomed to a similar process, almost without resistance.

If they had survived the Russian occupation, it would not have been diabetes or blood pressure that took Boris away.

Irina understood and made a gesture of consolation, stretching her hand over her friend's.

She felt the cold still licking Masha's full fingers.

That cold that goes away only after several minutes, overwhelmed by the internal heat.

Fortunately, there were no longer problems with the gas supply, but in any case Irina also had a wood-burning stove and a little spare of it obtained both from the small personal garden and from collecting scattered pieces of various types around.

“Have you heard from your children?”

Irina hinted that she would call Igor in the evening.

Since the previous day, not much had changed except that the world had celebrated the end of 2022 and the arrival of 2023.

A calendar convention, but a way for everyone to inaugurate a new cycle.

There had been, as always, fireworks and celebrations almost everywhere, even if here in Buča every explosion referred more to the war than to the celebrations.

Futility of the contemporary world, to which Irina and Masha felt they no longer belonged.

“I'll make tea soon or would you prefer a herbal tea?”

Masha would have accepted anything, as long as it was warm.

“I brought you these.”

He took a wrapped envelope from his large coat pocket.

Irina unwrapped the package and found her friend's famous biscuits inside.

With ingredients never fully revealed, but always appetizing.

“Boris better not eat any...”

Masha tried to justify herself.

The landlady got up and took a tray to place them on and then put the water to boil, in the meantime dispensing the classic tea that was drunk in those parts.

As always, their get-togethers ended with reminiscing about times gone by.

When they were young and studying.

Of first loves and their stories.

Where had all those boys or their girlfriends gone.

Some moved to Kiev and some were no longer there.

Some went abroad and some stayed there.

The greatest intrigue concerned those whose traces had been lost.

You could fantasize about them endlessly, thinking of them as happy and still young.

The image of the past shone in contrast to what was in the present.

Wrinkles and years had left indelible marks.

The meeting between the women continued with laughter and mutual sneers.

It was a way to absent oneself from the contingent moment and to bring to the surface emotions that were dormant and buried under the blanket of life.

The first kiss and the first time they made love.

The awkward bodies of men, their lack of knowledge of the female world.

Almost everything does not concern either Mikhail or Boris.

The husbands arrived later, marking the break between youth and the adult world, between the world of possibilities and that of concreteness and reality.

Time flew by lightly, much more than it did with reading.

Two women in a modest house.

Free from everything, from constraints and from the rest of the world.

Become little girls again for an hour or so.

Without the burden of life and without ties.

Irina and Masha, simply.

On any given day, what did it matter if, for everyone, it was the first of the new year? Which then, in a year, 2023 would be gone and considered old.

What remained was the habit of one day, identically the same as that of twenty-four hours before or after.

A way of being free even from the tyranny of time.

––––––––

“ And I ain't gonna be just a face in the crowd.

You're gonna hear my voice

when I shout it out loud ”

II

Buča, January 2023

––––––––

“We'd like to know

a little bit about you for our files.

We'd like to help you learn to help yourself.”

––––––––

From the window of her house, Irina could see much of the comings and goings on the street across the street.

Not that there were many people during the winter, but a quick glance was enough to get the underlying reference clear.

There were small piles of snow piled up every now and then, residues of previous manual work by some employee or neighbor.

The small pyramids had lost much of their whiteness, having been covered in dust and mud.

They were grayish frozen mounds with a tough outer surface.

To test the white placed inside, a mechanical tool would have been needed, a shovel for example, used with a sharp blow to cut the ephemeral construction in half.

Most likely no one would touch them until they disbanded.

Children did not wander the streets alone, at least not since the Russian invasion.

And only children could have found such a game fun, a way like any other to pass the time and bring the day to a close.

Most activities had returned to normal, including school.

This attempt to remain indifferent to the still ongoing war was not a lack of detachment from reality, but a concrete way of demonstrating one's resistant spirit.

“No matter how many missiles you send against us, we will continue our life as usual.”

This was the slogan of every inhabitant.

Oppose the great maneuvers of the powerful with the small gestures of the people.

This was how it had been passed down by grandparents, by those who had seen the Nazis occupy and exterminate and, even before that, by great-grandparents, who had witnessed Stalin's purges, in particular the Holomodor, which took place between 1932 and 1933.

Six million starved to death.

Only because they are against the collectivization of land.

Each generation had had its own war and massacre, starting with the Great War.

Yet, this had not stopped it from growing and prospering.

Hope and fall in love.

Irina stared at the first pile of snow near the entrance to the short driveway, no more than five meters, separating the entrance to the house from the street.

Every day he tried to understand the differences in shape and size.

A minimal ray of light or a shadow cast differently was enough to make it unequal and not comparable, but the woman always tried.

She had finished reading the French author's book and had taken a day off.

During these breaks, she reviewed what she still lacked from the colorful and heterogeneous library she had at home.

He chose the next book almost randomly.

From the cover or spine.

By color or position.

A small detail was enough to attract him and he took out the volume, placed it on the chair, and then briefly inspected it.

When she had finished reading them all, only then would she sit contentedly wondering what she had learned.

If they were useful for daily life or simply for fun.

The day of the choice was always special.

Irina changed her routine, having more time available.

Usually, he was cleaning the house or going to do a bigger shopping.

In warmer weather, she would go out on foot for longer or take the car.

That day, in the third week of January, he had decided to return Masha's visit by going to her house.

Not being able to compete with her friend on a culinary level, she would have brought her a couple of books.

He dressed normally before facing the temperature change with the outside.

Nothing particularly fancy, not that he had a classy wardrobe.

He left the house and smelled the city.

Of the capital.

Kiev wasn't far away, in fact you could even glimpse the suburbs.

There was very little space in the car.

The little river and the small lake beyond which there was Irpin and, from here, the beginning of the city.

Before the invasion, you could travel to Kiev every day and so did almost everyone, especially those of working age.

Irina had stayed at home to raise her children and, subsequently, had no longer decided to find work.

She had trained as a secretary and knew how to keep accounts very well.

Her husband, before retiring, was employed at the post office.

A regular job without any ambition, ideal for a peaceful life.

He had only managed to enjoy a year of retirement, a twist of fate.

Then the arrival of the Russians and the execution in one of the many random patrols, more to rob than for real security reasons.

He had some money saved and now his children took care of his support.

Nonetheless, Irina did not want to feel like a burden and told herself that once the danger of the occupation was over, she should find a job.

Anything would have been fine with her.

There wasn't much, to be honest.

Not for women, unless they bend over and break their backs for manual labor that men had vacated.

So, from month to month, he had postponed the decision.

“In spring, she said to herself.”

Masha could count on her husband Boris's pension and on the fact that the woman had never stopped working, despite having been a mother herself.

She had put her skills to good use, first serving as a waitress and then as an assistant cook.

For about a couple of years he had been cooking something on commission.

Someone who didn't have the desire or time to prepare food for themselves, almost always at certain parties.

To tell the truth, all this came to an abrupt end in February 2022, with the arrival of the Russians and the war.

One of Masha's resolutions for 2023 was certainly to get her small business back on its feet to make ends meet.

Irina continued briskly.

He carried a shoulder bag, large enough to hold a couple of books.

Not that they weighed, it was more the volume they occupied that was bulky.

A normal handbag would have been unthinkable, as well as being uncomfortable and impractical.

With the shoulder strap, he could keep his hands, wrapped in old gloves lined internally with synthetic fur, inside the pockets of his coat so as not to expose the extremities to the cold.

Few rules, but very clear in the heads of those who had been used to enduring the frost and the long winter in those parts.

It was certainly not like in the south, like in Odessa or Crimea, where the proximity of the Black Sea could allow for a more decent climate.

Irina had found a different country in those places.

Different traditions and colors.

The earth itself stopped taking on its characteristic blackish color and became lighter and more uniform.

Fields suitable for wheat, not for what was grown in the area north and east of Kiev.

Apples, potatoes and vegetables during the summer season.

The woman's thoughts often wandered as the day passed, especially regarding the lives of her children.

He had raised Igor and Vladimir in complete freedom, letting them choose what was best suited to their aptitudes.

He didn't want typical Soviet dirigisme to have a hold on them, not in the way it had shaped his generation.

Although most of the Ukrainian bureaucrats and leadership boasted, especially in the last century and in the first years of the new century, a Soviet past and the mentality had been difficult to change, the couple had immediately noticed a paradigm shift.

A way to evolve towards another society.

Not that the new world, the one that came from the West, was all positive.

Crime and drugs, corruption and illicit trafficking had certainly exploded, as had great social differences.

Alongside the desolate outskirts of Kiev, and after all both Bucha and Irpin were a continuation of them, modern offices and new buildings, luxury hotels and sports or enormous cars had appeared.

Disparity within a people who yearned for equality, but not between people, but with other peoples.

Throngs of country girls had moved to the city and then flown elsewhere, attracted by generous earnings and a way of understanding the "good life", including clothes, make-up, alcohol, money and sex.

A commercialism that the Soviet regime could not tolerate and was opposed to the end.

Ultimately, however, weighing every possible negative or positive aspect, Irina was part of that group of the population who did not regret the old regime at all.

It was worse.

And we were less happy.

Here, happiness indeed.

Until the previous year, the woman would have said she was completely fulfilled in life.

Then the invasion had put everything into question.

What had happened in the space of a few weeks?

Missiles, gunshots, deaths.

Her husband Mikhail executed.

From that moment, happiness no longer dwelt in Irina's house, if anything, there remained a glow of pain's removal.

If he couldn't be happy, at least he should stop suffering.

With such conjectures, the footsteps slipped away softly.

Pay some attention to the ice scattered here and there, especially if already trampled on by others with a sort of human pressure that transformed the soft snow into dangerous slabs, a couple of intersections with traffic lights and cars, but nothing more.

The large building where Masha and Boris lived, identical to many others and indistinguishable to foreign eyes, was located right in front of Irina.

The woman made her final effort, made herself known at the central intercom and went up the stairs.

Her friend lived on the second floor and Irina had never liked elevators.

She was uncomfortable knowing that she was closed in a metal box attached to a rope that was regulated by an electric motor, subjected to keyboard commands.

Too many tricks and devices and all it took was one that didn't work properly to find yourself blocked or worse.

The warmth and light of Masha's apartment welcomed her, just as she was reaching into her shoulder bag to take out the books and hand them to her friend.

“These are for you...”

The landlady's round face lit up with a girlish smile.

“I really liked the other one.”

The woman commented.

Irina was aware of her friend's favorite literary tastes, especially her predilection for love stories.

She had never abandoned the role of the romantic teenager who saw in fiction of any kind, from books to television, a way of escaping from everyday life and seeing the transposition of existences that were not achievable in her condition.

Daydreaming, that's what Masha liked.

Irina had always been more concrete and less idealistic, even in her choice of men.

After a couple of experiences, she immediately turned to Mikhail, while Masha took several years to settle down with Boris.

Irina personally reassured herself of Boris's condition.

The man didn't seem that ill.

His outward appearance was the same as always.

With a round face and thick, grayish hair, attached to the scalp and pulled aside with a parting to the left.

Always clean-shaven, without any sign of hair on his arms or hands, fat like men past middle age who have never dedicated themselves to any sporting activity.

Of few words, very thoughtful.

Polite and calm.

A good man, internally broken by the loss of his only son.

War, damn it.

It takes away the children's generation and not that of the parents or grandparents.

A war after another curse, that of the virus pandemic from China.

Two generations affected, and in the middle theirs, that of Irina and Masha.

In theory the one least affected by everything, in practice the one who found herself mourning the death of parents and children.

Little would have been said about Boris's illness by looking at him at first sight.

It was a clinical picture that would have had its consequences over years and certainly not over a few months.

Irina and Masha went aside and started talking.

No more than their youth and their first loves, given the presence of man.

But about books and their plots.

What they expressed and how they were structured.

The usual tea with small cream pastries.

A good hour and then the return home.

A habit now for Irina, almost monotonous for those who had observed it from the outside, but so reassuring for the widow.

It was in those little things that he found the certainty of an existence put to the test by recent events.

The cell phone rang suddenly, while it was placed on the side shelf in the living room.

Irina rushed to it.

He saw his son Igor's name superimposed.

He accepted the call.

"Hey Mom how are you doing?"

His son's voice was always heartbreaking.

As she grew up, it had taken on Mikhail's tones so that Irina always had the impression that her husband was on the other end of the phone.

“Everything is fine, today I went to Masha to visit her.”

His son asked about Boris.

A few pleasantries, then Irina inquired about Vladimir.

"Your brother? Did you hear it? He hasn't shown up in two weeks..."

The tone had become plaintive.

Igor knew what it meant to be at the front.

To the south, where the Russians had not yet retreated.

It meant limiting communications so as not to be discovered and not to reveal the location.

By now the war had become a technological issue.

Through interceptions and satellites it was possible to identify enemy teams and departments.

So, no cell phones turned on, much less no phone calls or anything else.

Only in the rear was it possible to hear someone, preferably without any form of conversation but only with written messages.

“No,” Igor admitted candidly.

“But I know from command that in ten days it will be moved from where it is now and it will be possible to communicate.”

He had to, somehow, put his mother at ease.

“How about I come visit you on Saturday?”

Igor introduced a new topic, so as to take her mind off the war.

Making the journey from Kiev to his mother's house was not a major transfer, in fact it could have been done every day in normal times.

Irina was thrilled.

Having someone at home, like in the past.

Returning for a day to youth or early adulthood, with her little children running around and never stopping chasing each other.

“I won't be alone...”

Igor was keen to clarify this detail.

“We'll bring the food.”

He emphasized immediately afterwards.

He knew how his mother didn't like cooking very much and so he thought of relieving her of an unwanted task.

Obviously the woman was grateful, but in reality another question was going through her head.

Who was the other person invited?

Just one or more?

How many would there have been that Saturday?

The mother's silence made Igor understand how he should resolve that doubt.

“It's about Aneta.”

The name was not unknown to her.

Aneta was Igor's girlfriend, the one he had only glimpsed once before the war began.

The girl who lived with him.

So they were still together, Irina thought with some relief.

And what would that visit have meant?

What time?

“Very good, you are welcome.”

He shouldn't take too long to answer, otherwise there would be a certain amount of embarrassment.

“See you on Saturday then.”

Igor ended the call.

Just under two minutes, that was enough for Irina to cheer up.

He stared at the calendar.

Saturday was the day after tomorrow.

Thursday was almost over and the woman would have nothing to do that day except think about how she should fix the house.

It had to be cleaned well, it couldn't be disfigured in front of strangers.

Then the external part was tidied up, with brief strokes of the broom just to remove the earth and mud in excess or placed in a disorderly manner.

All activities that would take her entire Friday.

Finally, some flowers to give color to the interior of the house.

Few external adjustments but they could have made the difference.

Of this Aneta, he only knew that she was a girl from Kiev.

Of someone who grew up in the city and who would never have adapted to country life or even to living in a single house like Irina's.

He would have seen Buča as a failed suburb and as a departure from modernity.

A legacy of the past and the world that once was.

Beyond that, he knew little.

Neither studies nor work nor passions.

Nor projects or family.

What he had done during the last year of the war.

If she had been one of those girls who had enlisted or who had dug the trenches in the city, the same ones who had been removed once the danger of the invasion of the capital had escaped.

He would understand it soon.