Exile: Return

TALES FOR THE BORDERLANDS A TRIPTYCH HOME: EXILE: RETURN Robert Morgan Resubmission October 2019 This research was undertaken under the auspices of the University of Wales: Trinity Saint David and was submitted in partial fulfillment for the award of a Degree of PhD by Research in the School of Cultural Studies of the University of Wales. 2 PREFACE This work represents the culmination of more than twenty five years of continuous involvement with an exiled community, a Diaspora, which the passage of time has now entirely removed from the world. It seeks to present experiences, memories, journeys, the turmoil of displacement and return. It is written as a Triptych, a structure which is readily recognised in the Borderlands of Eastern Europe. It owes much to the oral tradition, since most of us recall and return to, the past in terms of tales told one to another; as fragments, bursts, giving meaning to a continuous existence, in limited, yet intimate recollections. The influences and support which have combined to enable me to create this Triptych are many, varied and widespread. In the Borderlands, Professor SvitlanaNovoseletska, Dr. Vadim Kossolapov, Dr. Svitlana Bobyr, Dr. Peter Romchuk, PavloYevstifeyev, Olga Vakulenko, MyckolaFedchuk and ViktorShkuratyuk have given frequent insight into the history, suffering and paradoxes of a people I stumbled upon by accident. In Wales, Dr. Paul Wright, Dr. Dic Edwards, Reverend Dr. Ainsley Griffiths and Professor Menna Elfyn have provided advice, guidance and encouragement throughout. The individuals of the Diaspora, from whom much inspiration stemmed, are now all vanished, their ghosts, their Prizraki returned to the western steppes which bore them. Above all, my debt is greatest to the late Professor Josef Patsula of Rivne. For without his influence and encouragement, I wouldn’t have written a word. Robert Morgan. Note: The Borderlands of Eastern Europe have no defined borders of their own, being drawn and drawn again by conquest, and ravaged by conflict, pestilence and famine. They change eternally, along with the place names and dominant languages. The unhappy period before the outbreak of what we call the Second World War, that destructive conflict itself, and the aftermath of exile are well recorded, the prospect of return, and its achievement much less so. The events and possibilities of these tales are, like their characters, historically sound, but fictitious. 3 HOME 4 SHADOW Soviet L’vov. June 1941. “He is guilty who is not at home.” Borderlands Proverb Suddenly, as though bidden by an invisible hand, the street lamp in the wet courtyard beyond the thin trees pulsed into light. A moment before it had hung in the gloom of dusk, a great barren fruit unnoticed by the world of men as they struggled by. As the glow increased, and the halo gained strength, all the room began to change, not once but repeatedly, effortlessly, as the external rays replaced the failing power of the vanishing day. The rain on the window panes played with the light, and on the far wall waves of gold wept downwards. Then the light caught the sparse net curtains, and gossamer patterns slipped over those butter-gold waves, running towards the carpet, never to be found again. A gust of wind threw a mouthful of raindrops at the glass panes and disturbed him. It had been more than an hour since he turned the book over, and trembling, crossed his arms in thought, not thought of the novel he’d been reading, or at least making an effort to read, but of what news he had heard. Taras was terrified. He hated storms like this, sudden, unexpected violent weather. As the storm rose and fell outside, he hummed and whispered an old childhood tune of comfort, hugging himself. “By the window a maple tree .... A lost bird sings with great love .... My darling how the lost bird sings ... there is no good that comes from love.” His mother would have cradled him as she sang: “Cloudy weather, stormy weather .... It rains cats and dogs.” He’d come home early. Alone. Another power cut, another ‘act of sabotage’. The Germans not far off they said. As the dismal day wore on the young man sat near the window of his room, sipping bad tea, immersed in Turgenev’s House of Gentlefolk; he’d reached the part where Ivan Petrovich falls ill, goes blind and dies. The part where Turgenev shows his skill by killing a man in the space of a page, denying him even his soup. The lights in the distant blocks had come on again, dimly, but he didn’t stir to turn on his own lamp. The thunderclaps held him in his place. Taras heard the key turn in the stiff lock far down the hallway. Was it Misha? He was about to call out when he heard the other voice. Male, middle aged, not deep, but with a Muscovite menace in the masculine nouns. “In! Smart about it!” This was no student. 5 Misha responded timidly to the question. No. Everyone was at work or at the University. Hours before they returned. Two sets of footsteps walked along the corridor, the threadbare carpet muffled no sound. They stopped at the door next to his. “Here?” Misha answered the man’s questions tremulously, and turned the doorknob. Taras heard the two step into the next room. A cupboard squeaked open beyond the paper-thin walls. A ruffled drawer, a grunt, something was lifted and examined. He sat silent, rigid, page unturned, listening intently above the tap of raindrops. He realised he was holding his breath. The menacing voice had found what it wanted. Misha let out a sob, now he was crying. The loud man, whose words seemed to have burgeoned to fill the apartment, flung a weeping Misha onto the hallway floor. Taras was ice-cold, terrified, scarcely able to breathe, fearing that even the shallowest breath would give away his presence. The Muscovite barked an order. A second man answered and more footsteps rushed into the hallway. Misha sobbed, begged, wept, and was dragged screaming away beyond the threshold. A new voice, subtle, sinister, appeared and asked questions of the menacing man. Seniority spoke smoothly. It was satisfied. Calmly, almost graciously, the smooth voice decided Misha’s fate. “Brigydki! Take him!” Sitting in his ill-lit room, bathed in sweat, Taras was held as still as Stalin’s statue. Yet the whole building seemed suddenly serene, washed clean by the relentless rain. Brigydki. The NKVD Prison. He was tense even now, tearful more than sixty years on, as he told me of those last days in L’vov. “The Germans entered quickly, and the Soviets ran very fast indeed. Mothers came and searched the killing pits at the prison for days afterwards, they said there were so many tears they washed the blood from the stones.” “But what of Misha?” I asked him. “Misha,” said Taras, “was mislaid, uncounted. He became a victim.” Misha was murdered somewhere between victors and vanquished. Never found. Misha had been his lover. Taras’ old, arthritic hand trembled as he raised the glass to his lips in a long-practised toast. “Misha ...” 6 EXODUS Dubno. August 1941. “Wherever there are men, there is also misfortune.” Borderlands Proverb Mephody toyed with the vodka glass, and adjusted the micro-recorder to sit precisely square on the dining table between us. He was a precise man. “Just so!” he said. We sat as we always did. I sat with a pen and writing pad to jot down quickly any questions, sometimes a word of command, or a military term came into his mind, in German, even Russian, needing further explanation. He, frail and eighty two years old, sat as he always did, imprisoned within his wartime memories. “I am ready now. We will begin. Yes?” I nodded. It was the day after the heavy artillery batteries rumbled for hours through the small Galician town, raising so much dust the horses and gunners, even the houses and trees along the street were coated a deep dark red. “Men and beasts looked like they had come out of hell, which was in fact where they were going”. It was, he said, just after dawn, when the town lay still and quiet after a still, quiet night. A solitary Luftwaffe plane high in the sky glinted as it flew east into the sun. “My long, lonely shift at the Police Barracks had ended, and I wheeled my ancient bicycle, one of the few the Germans hadn’t taken, round to the wide street, and propped it against the broken fence.” Nineteen, a bored student and with the Institutes closed, some said permanently. “So, I joined the Germans newly created ‘Galician Police’, established to maintain order in the wake of the escaping Soviets and the busy Wehrmacht.” he laughed. “Well, at least it got you fed!” He paused a moment, reflecting. “I actually had a uniform, an old threadbare blue Polish police tunic, an even older peaked cap with a shining trident cockade, and a big white armband.” He demonstrated circling his upper arm “It showed I was ‘Im Dienst der General Gouvernment’. In the service of the new German order, eh?” He laughed again, his laughs were hollow and thin. “They had even given me a gun, in a big holster, an ancient ‘Reichs-Revolver’ stamped 1879, that weighed more than a kilo.” He lifted a finger. “And three bullets too.” He smiled, paused and sipped his vodka. “As usual, Viktor,” his replacement, an uninspired former student of the L’viv University Faculty of Literature, “was late for duty.” A distant hum from the high road to Ivano Frankivsk caught his attention, as a small dust cloud rapidly drew into the long street, past houses where dogs and the very old, always first to stir, were beginning their day.

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