Chapter 5 #2
“You can’t imagine it,” Yulya said. “There are bodies in the streets. They just leave them there for days. They bomb Kyiv all day and night, every few minutes. Half the buildings you’d recognize are gone or severely damaged.
But our troops aren’t giving up. Most of them are volunteers who had other jobs a few weeks ago. ”
“Papa said something about guns they got from the police. I thought he was kidding of course, knowing how he feels about guns. But it sounds like he’s serious,” Olek commented.
“He is. They’re arming the whole civilian population.”
“Thank God you’re here,” her brother said fervently, and she nodded. He could see in her eyes that she had been through hell, and was worried sick about Symon. “Sometimes I feel like I should be there,” he admitted to her.
“You shouldn’t. You’re safe here, and your family needs you,” she said seriously.
“I was thinking that if I went, I could convince Mama and Papa to come back with me.”
“You can’t. They don’t want to leave.” They were both silent then, thinking about their parents.
When they got to Olek’s neighborhood, he pulled up to his familiar house and parked in front, and they all got out of the car as Nina, Bogdan, and Tomas rushed out to greet them with their giant golden retriever, who was delighted to see Max. They had played together before and got along.
They all trooped into the house and Tatyanna’s eyes grew wide when she saw how beautiful it was.
The four kids walked around the house together and wound up back in the kitchen, where Nina had prepared sandwiches and cookies for them in case they were hungry.
They hadn’t eaten since breakfast and were ravenous.
Then Nina showed them to their rooms. Yulya had the guest room where she and Symon had stayed before.
They had set up a spare bed in the boys’ room for Pavlo, and Tatyanna was sharing a room with Daryna.
All the computers and video games and flat-screen TVs were the same as the ones Yulya’s children had left in Kyiv, so they felt right at home.
Tatyanna had never seen what she considered such luxury after growing up in the ballet school dormitory and her spartan rigorous institutional life.
There had been no frills or video games there.
Vlad would have loved visiting them too. It was a boy’s paradise.
Dinner was a lively meal that night with the four kids chatting and laughing, and the four adults talking more seriously.
Tatyanna helped clean up the kitchen, and she watched a movie with the boys after Daryna went to bed.
Yulya sat in the living room with her brother and sister-in-law.
Nina could tell that she had been traumatized by what she’d been through, but was being strong for her children, who had been remarkable, and Nina commented about what a lovely girl Tatyanna was.
“She was a ballerina at the Kyiv National Ballet, and her boyfriend and ballet partner was just killed in the war. She’s a wonderful girl and so sweet to the kids.
She has no family at all and nowhere to go now.
The Ballet Theater was bombed and destroyed.
She’ll have nowhere to go back to when the war is over. ”
“It’s hard to imagine what you’ve all been through,” Nina said sympathetically. “We’ve seen the photographs and they’re just horrendous. It’s hard to understand how a civilized country can be attacked like that, unprovoked, and virtually destroyed. The photographs make me feel sick.”
“Me too. I just hope this doesn’t damage the kids forever,” Yulya said seriously.
They all had a wonderful weekend together, filled with good meals and happy times, almost like the old days except for Symon’s absence.
On Monday, they went back to real life. Olek and Nina went to work, their boys went to school.
Yulya went to enroll her children in school.
They had to be tutored in Polish first. And Tatyanna went to the Polish National Ballet in Warsaw to explain her circumstances and ask for an audition.
She had brought her leotard and toe shoes just in case.
They wrote down everything she said, her history and her training, and the names of her teachers, and they promised to get back to her.
They told her they were in a dormant season, with no performances, but they would process her application and let her know if an audition would be possible.
She walked around afterward, looking at the monuments and the buildings in Warsaw.
She wandered in and out of some galleries.
Olek and Nina’s boys had afternoon sports and Olek picked them up on his way home.
Their lives were entirely normal, as it had been in Kyiv before the war.
They shared noisy family dinners and went to bed early on school nights.
Tatyanna mentioned at dinner that after the war she wanted to go back to Kyiv and help with the cleanup of the city.
It was going to be a monumental job, but she felt guilty having left, leaving others to suffer.
Yulya mentioned too at dinner that cell service was getting spotty in Kyiv.
She hadn’t heard from Symon for several days, and when she called him, she couldn’t always get through, which made her nervous.
She assumed that he was fine. If he wasn’t, she’d have heard about it.
Someone would have called her if he was hurt, or worse.
—
Iryna traveled the same route to Medyka that Tatyanna and Yulya and her family had taken, and she spent a couple of nights at the camp to get her refugee number.
Once she had it, she traveled on to Przemy?l in Poland, on the Ukraine border, and from there she took the train to Warsaw.
Fifty thousand refugees per day were arriving in the border towns, where they were receiving the help they needed.
Once she got to Warsaw after a four-hour train ride, she took a taxi to the airport with her meager belongings.
Anton had booked her a one-way plane ticket to Madrid, where she was meeting Danilo at his apartment after work at the hospital.
He was an intern now, and had worked hard at becoming fluent in Spanish and spoke it well.
When he arrived at the apartment after his last class of the day, he saw his mother sitting on the front steps, looking forlorn, with two modest suitcases and a shopping bag. All her worldly goods were in those three pieces, neatly packed as tightly as she could.
Anton kept a safe at the apartment and had given her five thousand euros in cash for her travels.
It was as much as he could spare, not knowing how long he’d be trapped himself in Kyiv.
So he kept a large amount for himself too.
Danilo had a bank account in Spain, which Anton regularly sent a wire to every month.
So the two of them should have enough cash in Spain to hold them for a while, until the war was over, which was comforting to Iryna to know.
Some of the refugees had arrived with literally no money.
Tatyanna had been worried about money too.
She had been concerned about the irregular situation with very little cash.
Yulya knew her brother could help her, but the moment Polish citizens heard the word “refugee,” they dug into their pockets, welcomed them into their homes, found them a place to stay, and prepared delicious meals for them.
They couldn’t have been nicer. And Tatyanna’s only complaint after settling in with Yulya’s family was that she felt useless without a job.
She hoped to hear from the Polish National Ballet in Warsaw soon, that they had a spot for her.
It was a long shot, but well worth trying.
She didn’t want to be financially dependent on Yulya and her family.
It was already incredibly generous of them to let her stay in their home, and to make her feel so welcome.
She didn’t want to abuse that by asking for more.
She had enough money to last her for a short time if she was careful, since she had no living expenses at Olek and Nina’s home.
—
Iryna’s only complaint was the size of Danilo’s tiny student apartment.
They were bumping into each other. Even rearranging the furniture didn’t help.
There was a modest living room, and a bedroom the size of the bed, a few hooks on the wall to hang clothes, which was fine for Danilo but not his mother, a bathroom just big enough for sink, toilet, and shower, and a kitchenette with a tiny refrigerator and a hot plate.
Danilo planned to sleep on the couch and give his mother the bedroom, and she kept her clothes in her two suitcases under the bed.
She hated to intrude on him, but had no choice.
She was trying not to spend any of the money they had in the bank in Madrid.
Fortunately Anton was generous with his son, and Danilo worked so hard he had no time to spend money, so he had a good amount, but Iryna didn’t want to be frivolous, since they had no idea how long they’d be stranded in Spain.
The apartment had been perfect for Danilo as a student, by himself, and it was only three blocks from the hospital where he was interning.
But it was claustrophobic for Iryna to be trapped there all day.
It inspired her to go to a café, where she ate her meals, while Danilo ate at the hospital cafeteria.
She had a roof over her head, which was more than other refugees had, except those who had relatives in Poland.