Alexievich Vol. IV

Life-giving the milk with ginger and honey at Abdulrazak’s, a second shortly after the first. Something rather more profitable than the café for AR – one guesses that was the calculation in the stony visage when the follow-up order was made. (The other possibility was Abdulrazak’s fixation on the virgin he was pursuing in Vietnam, a very pretty gal to be sure. Abdulrazak had brought her over for an introduction during a skype a few weeks before.) Anh Nhi the waitress commented that in Vietnam the beverage was taken “for the blood” – broad smiles suggesting an aphrodisiac perhaps.

         On a cool, overcast day after a light lunch an appropriate choice reading another volume of Svetlana, the fourth now during the current calendar year. Her introduction thus far to Unwomanly Face of War explaining and defending herself, her quest and method. She was writing a history of feeling and spirit, in this case women’s during the course of WWII.

         From her journals on the book in the introduction a leader of a small Red Army unit recalls executing two German captives. After some days of familiarity with the men the younger teen members of the party could not be given the task. (Coming under fire on dangerous ground the men could not be taken along.) Another fragment from the journals delivered a young woman serving in a hospital who had been unable to grant a dying soldier’s wish to show her breast. The man had not been so long with his wife, he explained. To date the woman had never been kissed and had been unable to oblige and when she returned to the bed an hour later the man was dead.

         Honeyed milk with ginger just the thing on a march through a forest with danger threatening all round.

         A woman had survived Stalin’s Ukrainian famine eating horse dung, which many could not stomach. Dried or better still frozen was more manageable.

         Small, so-called common people often became heroes through their suffering, Alexievich suggested. Another slow reading with pencil and shortly carting on the plane to Bali.

         The day after these first pages of Unwomanly Face the Ukrainian plumber Mihail returned the earlier volume Secondhand Time that had been lent a month ago. Mick had read every word, he said, two hour sessions every morning. During a visit to his house the book had been found mounted on a reading stand with a large clip employed. Mick started his plumbing apprenticeship at fourteen. Something of a reader, his library at home ran to over fifty books, he guessed.

         The point had been made of Alexievich: like Tolstoy, the rare case of powerful language that was quite direct and straightforward.

         The night of Mihail’s visit too an impulsive mail to Zlatko, who had bought Secondhand Time on recommendation. (Zlatko the engineer is a great Slavophile, having read almost the whole of Dostojevsky and now married to a woman with a Russian heritage – some connection to royal Tzarist circles what’s more.):  

Samo da ti kazem Zlace: kad se cita ova Alekievich covjeh je ponosan s svojim Slavenima.

S punim srcom se njene paragrafe citaju.

Sad naceo Unwomanly Face of War.

Today my Ukrainian plumber Mihail, near 80, returned Secondhand Time. Borrowed a month ago and just finished, reading 2 hours mornings. Your dad met him a while back.

Just to tell you Zlace: when Alexievich is read a man is proud of one’s Slavs.

With a full heart one reads her paragraphs.

Now started on Unwomanly Face….