BORIS KORNEV COLOURBLIND Not All Eyes Can See Enemies Novel York Publishing Services 2015 Kornev B. Colourblind: Not All Eyes Can See Enemies. ISBN Individuals suffering from mild forms of colour blind ness, learn to associate colours with certain objects and are usually able to identify these colours in everyday life, as people with normal colour perception. However, their per ception is different from the normal one. …It is impossible to stop being colourblind. (Magazine “Health”, 1983) © Boris Kornev, 2015 © Victoria Stenning: translation, 2015 INTRODUCTION Dedicated to my father’s memory… I I I In our childhood, we used to play war. Perhaps it was our most favour ite game. Who is on our side? Who is on Germans’? Those were se lected in turn because they were always hated and they always lost. Even when we told our friends some film not about the war we had just seen, we would often call its bad characters “Germans” – so strong were the impressions of the main tragedy of the 20th century. Of course, it had only passed ten years. Someone had lost a father or a brother. Some had lost all of their family… Not many people had a TV then and there were only a couple of films about the war. We surely absorbed all THAT from our parents’ stories. When my father had free time, usually at bedtime, he also told me many interesting stories about the war. Just like a bedtime story. Without going into complicated reasoning about patriotism, about the Motherland and other high concepts, he would just draw a pic ture of the first battles, retreats, captivity and escape… In my mind they were all mixed up like in a kaleidoscope. In my memory there was only one thing – the actions and events and the fact that my fa ther had been strong and brave. Another ten years passed, and it was now possible to compare all this with what was described in the books and in the movies. My fa ther once took the whole family to watch the film “The Living and the Dead”. I remember him look at us then. He knew we could under stand a lot. Over time, I became more interested in not the action, but the ans wers to more and more appearing questions. How did he do it and why could not the other people do it? What was the cause of certain actions of different people? I wondered what they had been feeling when they were doing things. Why did they shout, “For the Mother land! For Stalingrad!” when going into the assault, if the machine gun ners of the defensive squads were behind them? Why is everything shown more gently in the film “The Battalions Are Asked to Fire” ing was sharper than those sensations which are experienced today by than in the story of the epic “Exemption”? Just because the second many of us, stuck in endless traffic jams, or seeing people looking for 6 film is separated from the first one by ten years of quiet peaceful life? food waste in the rubbish bins. That is the economy. It is also compli 7 But then over time everything might wear off… cated. But this is history, the genetic memory of our people. Such things Gradually, from conversation to conversation the complete picture can be corrected only through the generations. That is if they can be of everything that had happened with my father in those tragic years corrected. Spiritual immaturity and social indifference, gradually af for the whole country was becoming clear. Or, to be precise, how and fecting today’s youth, can completely distort young people’s mind, why he had chosen his fate taking such difficult but independent de and then we will all inevitably come to an even greater tragedy than cisions in those critical moments. the one that occurred in the last century. Of course, the choice is always inevitable. This is the only way I guess everyone needs to put an effort to prevent this trouble. to change the relationship of man with himself and with the world. Everyone needs to do something – even if it is scanty – the right thing Any of those choices as a litmus test reveals the true essence of each for children, history, memory. Maybe then the new generations of boys person. War only makes it more ruthless. It seems to me that my father will get the awareness of their involvement in the complex history of was always determined by the search for his place in the great cycle of the country, and for each of them it will suddenly become clear what events and understanding the effects of making difficult decisions, the Motherland begins with… which was his personal responsibility. The novel “Colourblind” is about the most tragic period in the his Being strong, considerable and selfsufficient, my father tried to do tory of Europe and about a particular person – a small grain of sand in everything himself all his life. Before the war, in the war and after this cycle of hardship and sacrifice in a whirlpool of political lies and the war. By the make of his character he was always closer to the na hypocrisy. It is those, tens, hundreds of thousands of such selfconfi ture than to people. After retiring he lived in his village with his wife dent but not convinced, first slowed down and eventually stopped six months a year. His grandchildren used to come and stay with them the spinning trouble flywheel. It gradually, with great difficulty, be in the summer. He was needed. When his wife fell ill, he was looking gan to rotate in the opposite direction engaging more and more people after her and after her death he had been living on his own for ten in this grief whirlwind. Most often, they did it without ideological and years. He cooked his own meals, he proudly fed his sons and grand selfless heroism, not noticing changeable variety of colours of the arti children with cabbage soup when relatives came to visit him. He kept ficial and superficial. The main thing was for the dense layers of mud his wardrobes in order. Everything was always washed, ironed and and lies TO SEE THE GOOD. It was equally important TO SEE EVIL folded up nicely. under the glittering in the light, thickly smeared jam. …He had lived for ninety years. One day he said to his son, “It is But how difficult it is! After all, even seventy years after the tragic time to end this story…” events there is too much easily painted in different colours all in a row, and then for the sake of shortterm political expediency as easily re Recently there has been a broadcast of the parade in Red Square. painted again. A journalist surrounded himself with young boys and began to ques tion them on the air, “Do you know, guys, who reviewed the troops at B. Kornev Victory parade in 1945?” The boys looked at each other, searching for clues. The one who was bolder than the others, mumbled timidly, prob ably as he used to do in the classroom, making sure he could correct himself, just in case, “Mm, was it Lenin?” I can not exactly describe what I felt then. Some rare strong surprise turning into fear. That feel 8 9 PROLOGUEPROLOGUE Near the mouth of the river Lemovzha there is a high mountain. From its top you can see the snowcovered Luga break the dark blue spot of sharp tips of firs with its white strip. For a skier it is the most danger ous and beautiful place in all the way from Khotnezha to Sabsk. You need to carefully look ahead and hold fast to your legs bent in your knees. And as luck would have, the wet sharp snow flakes are flying towards you and hurting your face and covering your eyes. God for bid, if on a steep long slope between occasional pines there is pit or a root – you won’t have time to go round or keep your balance… After that there would be another fifteen miles along the Luga, then time to go home. The boy is twelve. He is a village postman and he must deliver mail every day. In winter he does it on skis and in sum mer by foot running barefoot through the woods. People treat him differently. Some are looking forward to seeing him. Others are scared and take any mail from him with a bad feeling. He will remember one of them for the rest of his life. He was said to be a painter and to have been in exile since before the revolution. The post man often delivered him several papers and magazines and the man drew steady round letters of his surname “Dokukin” with a sharp pen cil. He would always smell of paints and his sleek, brushed short and already greying hair was lightly covered with white paint. In his lounge, in the corner on a bench there were neatly stacked canvases. Some times shiny black cars pulled over near the painter’s little house. In side them there would be a whole family of some officer or highrank military man in the uniform with red stripes. Dokukin painted their portraits. “You are quite late today,” he would say instructively but with re spect to the young postman. “Why is there no “Art Almanac” or yester day’s “Pravda”?” Usually they would drink tea with small colourful candies and Dokukin would have long conversations about everything with the boy as if he was a grownup.