“Io Saturnalia!”
The Half Guinea steps off a short stone porch in Naberezhna Podil, his face an olive yellow, his eyes large, dark and tired. His trousers are corduroy green, and heavy hands protrude from the pockets of his three-quarter-length black leather jacket.
The courtyard is glazed in holiday ice, too thin and patchy to crack.
“We’ll slip and break our necks,” cries Steve.
“Then walk on water.”
“I can’t.”
“If you can’t walk on water, you’re probably afraid to swim. How will you ever fly? No faith, no doubt. Then at least save face or get back in that flat and wait for my return. Or do you suggest that we crawl along the curb… slither in the gutter, perhaps?”
Kowalski’s eyebrows slink into his small face, already half concealed by an oversized top hat.
“This city’s a pedestrian nightmare. I don’t have to tell you that. Watch out for that hole unfilled – a construction site with no afterthought. Here comes a driver on the sidewalk – we must look like bowling pins. Let’s pass that rambling alcoholic. No wait, he’s clearing his nose! Go around the other side and you get fumigated by black market tobacco.”
The companions exit an archway, come out to an empty, snow-swept street.
A rook caws, then appears across the road, strutting like a thug with his chest puffed out.
“Carpe Diem, Maximus!” shouts The Guinea, clearly still drunk from the night before. “Leave those pigeons alone… for the love of Saturn!”
“Where are all the Ukrainians? Why don’t they revel and cheer? A New Year is here.”
“Let’s go to the movies, Steve.”
Inside the Zhovten Cinema it’s dank and dark. The seats still smell of soot, and the screen’s scarred by fire. But The Guinea manages to get the projector running, promptly joining Steve with a large bucket of toasty popcorn.
“The annals of Rome!” blares the speaker system, black and crackling.
Rows of marching Roman soldiers appear on the screen, stern-faced, small but fierce. The camera closes in on their ranks: the glint from an infantryman’s cheek guard, his carmine colored Focale scarf, the rough-hewn ringlets of his chain mail, a large leaf-shaped blade angled back in its sheath from the hip, long leather skirt straps, steel shin plates and tightly laced caligae boots.
Now, larger than life, the soldiers pour out into the air of the empty auditorium, defiant of the proscenium arch that had hitherto framed the martial drama. The theater goes dark.
When the screen revives, we see a landscape of crucifixions, stretched out like telephone poles, with rolling Tuscan hills in the background. The camera zooms in on a naked emaciated man hanging forward from a cross. His skin is flayed, his muscles are taut, his eyes hollow.
The scene changes again to reveal chaos in an ancient temple. A large Roman soldier with a fire-red face holds a man in a toga over a fountain. He’s drowning him with bare hands and holding his own breath until death relieves him of the task. In the background, two or three others surround a terrified but still struggling woman: one soldier attempts to force her to the floor headfirst by the hair, while the other tears at her clothing from behind. The third looks on anxiously as he peels off his woolen trousers to reveal a soiled and twisted loincloth.
Moments later, Kowalski and The Half Guinea are enjoying a thoroughly overpriced Coffee Americano and Chocolate Brownies at the Coffee House on Kostyantinivska and Nizhny Val … it’s the only place open on this day.
“I’d rather die than be a slave, kill myself before being crucified, smother my wife or daughter before watching them defiled by uniformed beasts.”
“I didn’t know you were married?”
“I’m not,” says Kowalski. “I dream a dream of golden curls, sea-blue eyes and rosebud cheeks. O, fair Helga, northern queen, shun not the advances of an innocent heart, faint but full of grace. The sword hangs heavy in my hand, but my voice rings clear with vigor. My words are strong, my pen steely sharp, yet I bow before your beauty without a fight.”
“A Hun lover…”
“I renounce civilization freely, never looking back in sorrow at the toppled pillar or piles of burning books. Take me to your Viking ship, fill its sails with frosty air, harness the dragon’s head and set us forth to northern shores.”
A homeless woman, possibly drunk and almost certainly schizophrenic pauses in front of the café’s large street-front window, picking her nose and babbling to the devil knows whom. The Guinea leisurely follows her lips, occasionally cracking a smile, then shouts something in vulgar Latin, sending the woman on her way.
“Where are all the Ukrainians,” asks Kowalski, again sliding along the streets of lower Podil. The air is strangely warm, the sky a blur of gray. But he hasn’t seen a single abandoned bottle of Soviet Champagne, no cardboard remnants of a Roman candle – no trace of celebration, neither sight nor sound of a secular celebrant.
“Let’s go to church, Kowalski. Isn’t today a holy day?”
The pilgrims, the friars, the ghosts of Kyiv present, ascend the tortuous trail that is Andriyivsky Uzviz, passing the eponymously named Orthodox cathedral at the top and toward St. Alexander’s Catholic Church farther down on the other side of the city’s most prominent heights.
Kowalski goes in and finds a pew to pray: ‘Save this nation and people from enemies east and west, from soldiers and liars alike, from aggression and indifference, from pagan and atheist…’
A commotion in the back of the church distracts the poet from his prayers. A crowd of the elderly and a priest approach the scene. Kowalski follows a couple of younger Negro parishioners out through the front entrance, where a middle-aged Black Moses type is standing vigilant at the top of the stairs. A young African woman stands shame-faced below on the street, and Kowalski can just see The Guinea round the corner with his dark head pointed toward the ditch that is Khreshchatyk Street below.
January 1, 2015