Peter stood taller, more confident, head held proudly high before the priest. He glanced quickly at Evdokia, smiled at her pensive face. “So calm,” he thought, “… so far away.” She seemed removed, almost unattainable, her emotions hidden beneath her short lace veil. He breathed in her honeyed scent complementing the delicate perfume of flowers woven in her braided hair. The wafts of summer’s blooms mingled with the reassuring hint of incense as the priest took out his precious gold-embroidered ecclesiastical ribbon and kissed it, as the nuptials began.
Peter drew a deep breath, turning his mind from the painful events of the past months and of his last visit to his imprisoned parents. This was a time for living, for new commitment, for some joy. There could be no more room in his mind for doubts or regrets; no more room in his heart for sorrow, for what could have been. Only room for a future, for healing, for affection and love to grow.
As Stasyia gently bound their hands with the fine gold ribbon in the symbolic joining of two souls in marriage, Evdokia could feel Peter’s pulsating warmth envelop her. She tilted her head slightly and smiled gently beneath her veil, her seeming remoteness broken. They moved in unison, slowly, Ivan and Fedir’s unadorned crowns of wildflowers held high above them, and Father Chernyiuk guiding them in their first steps as man and wife.
Stasyia carefully unpinned the square of lace shielding Evdokia’s face. They crossed themselves and kissed the priest’s upheld cross. “Go forward, good man and wife,” he beseeched them. “Keep to each other in this life. Live your lives according to our Lord’s ideals.” He crossed himself and held up his cross in a final blessing for the attendants to acknowledge, then carefully folded his gold ribbon and hid his precious relics deep in his cassock.
“Well, now,” he smiled, old eyes brightening, “let us have our celebratory drink, share our meal and be glad for this day!” His eyes rested on Peter. “Let us also pray for our loved ones who cannot share this day with us. Pray for their safety … for their good health. We must be strong for them.”
As their wedding dinner progressed, Hresha stepped forward and embraced his older brother. “Oi, Petro!” he called out, teasingly. “Look what I’ve brought for the celebration! This’ll keep us on our toes, once the grape wine runs out and the samohon is on the table!” He held up Peter’s old balalaika. Peter grinned and eyed him mock-threateningly, but pleased nonetheless with the promise of frivolity. It was time for celebration, not for mourning or despair. There had been enough time for those in the past; there would be time enough, again, for that in the future. Today was for living, for savouring the good moments.
He looked affectionately at Evdokia as she blushed politely and received congratulatory embraces and jovial comments from his brothers. His heart filled with pride at her composure, her courteous manner and warm response to his family who, until now, knew her so briefly. “I am truly fortunate,” he thought to himself. He realised there were no guarantees in this life but he intuitively sensed Evdokia would have in her the qualities, the strength of character, that would sustain them in the life they would share from this day. He sighed to himself. He desperately needed time to be alone with his new wife. He looked ahead to them sharing quiet moments, and to adjusting to each other’s ways. “And Vanya will be glad to be with her,” he surmised thoughtfully. “She takes her duties seriously … he will find in her a warm and caring mother.”
The simple feast-meal and grape wine raised their spirits. For so short a time, Stalinist dogma and bureaucracy were forgotten, soviet officialdom pushed aside. The samohon, clandestinely reclaimed from a hidden cellar, and the beckoning balalaika, made the men game: brought on their songs, their dancing. The ‘collective’ farmhouse families joined the wedding party. Someone brought out the pipe-flute, another expertly pumped a hand accordion. “Veprahaete xloptsi koni, a na zavtra pochevate …” the men began a spirited folk song, a reminder of their past unfettered lives, the music and laughter reverberating in the lofty ceiling of the farmhouse.
“Horko! Horko!” his friends called out, signalling to him and his new bride. Peter grinned and, taking the cue, took Evdokia’s hand, eyes flirting as they danced to a Ukrainian wedding song. He caught her eyes, shining, teasing him, as they moved in step in their traditional dance.
“Come on, Petro!” his friend Mikhaelo teased, challenging him. “Let’s see which of us is leader in the kopak!” His brothers pulled him away from his bride. The party circled them as they dared each other, and competed in their agility and sport to the ever-faster pace of the music. In these unguarded moments that seemed to have been snatched from his early freer days of the past, he threw himself into the energetic excitement of the dance. Not for a long time in these recent years had he felt such a sense of freedom and elation. For those few enraptured minutes he let go of the responsibilities and concerns he had been wearing for so long. The grape wine and samohon, the music and reverie of the bridal party, did its work on his senses: spurred him, artist and athlete as one, to leap ever higher, to the party’s cheers. Proud, exhilarated, his inhibition abandoned, he felt himself soar like a free bird, high above the mundane, to some higher plane: it was intoxicating, liberating to his senses. Evdokia watched, entranced, her heart daring to raise hopes for their happy union.
At celebration’s end, Evdokia embraced Yakim and Klavdina and honoured Stasyia and the priest, through tears of joy and sadness, and looked back one last time to the ‘collective’ farmhouse that had been her temporary home. “Don’t worry, Dyna,” Peter gently anticipated her emotions. “From now, our home will be your home … let’s make our way home.”
It was still light. He followed her, observing her careful steps as she lifted her long skirt and embroidered white linen underskirt, and as she sat composed, waiting in the buggy. “I hope I can live up to her ideals,” the thought flickered in his mind as he checked his horse and tied her bag securely at the back. The circumstances in which he married his first wife, the beloved Hanya, had been auspicious, even relatively easy, under Lenin’s more relaxed leadership of the twenties. The circumstances under which he was now to provide a home for Evdokia and Vanya were vastly changed. There was little hope his father’s farm would remain their home for long. And food was becoming more and more scarce by the week.
The cold night air, as he steered his horse in the direction of Kylapchin and his family’s farm, brought a chilling reminder of what lay ahead of them. He hoped fervently he would be able to keep the promise he made, before the priest and before his God, that he would keep his young wife safe, for all time. He held fast to the horse’s reins, held fast to the hope that their farmhouse had not yet been taken or, worse still, set upon by the local soviet-led bandits roaming their countryside in this totalitarian nightmare. Vanya waited for his new mother; Evdokia waited for her new home. He waited for a future, which was still unknown.
His horse manoeuvred the last south-westerly turn towards the farm. They were still a few kilometres away, but already he could see the red-black blaze of a huge fire in the direction of their farm. He caught his breath in disbelief. It could not be possible, surely, for fortune and misfortune to go so closely hand-in-hand for him in a single day.
He cracked the reins, unable to think beyond saving his family’s farm, unable to think of his own safety should the soviet soldiers try to stop him. The pain, anxiety and adrenalin that had been held down all these past days and months, in a finely balanced scale of emotions, suddenly shot uncontrollably in an opposite direction, throwing