After almost a decade of half-life in the quasi-republics, everything happening now is perceived as an entirely peaceful life: gifts, Ozon and Wildberries online stores pickup points at every step… And we monitor prices every minute, choose gifts: something necessary and, more often, unnecessary. The ability to buy things has become a bridge into some other, peaceful life. And at work we discuss recent purchases, return policies, and more advantageous delivery options. We boast about finds — bought on sale, cheap, lucky. Exactly what we wanted. Didn’t want it, but bought it…
We don’t talk about the war, that’s bad manners. We talk about holidays, plans, children. Plans are what distinguish a successful person: educating a child in a big city in russia, taking out a mortgage for housing in Rostov, and talking about something only as it is being implemented, something big and important.
A refrigerator truck with a “200” sign (a euphemism for "killed in action" – ed.) is driving toward me. There are very many of them in the city. This one is small, cozy. And the “200” sign on the windshield is framed with Christmas fairy lights… Most likely, it’s just ordinary lighting the driver managed to find, but it turned out so festive, playful, like in a Coca-Cola commercial. Just like us with these boxes from Ozon and faith in a better life against the backdrop of war — just as absurd…
A great deal of liveliness was brought by military men on business trips, who live here for a long time and more richly than many locals. Appearance, speech and money are an explosive mix. A balance on the edge of risk and a thirst for normal relationships, normal food, regular sex. A couple of my acquaintances managed to catch their last train precisely with guys like that.
One of them got a young Buryat with a sleepy, expressionless face, and she invented their entire great love story for her colleagues and acquaintances. He was exactly the one she had been waiting for all her life, had despaired of finding; and it was her he had been searching for across all of boundless russia. And then she managed to give birth for him, without even demanding marriage or building the whole life into some logical sequence. Only one thing was required of him — to exist. Off-camera, as a remark for close people, obvious things were visible: repeated attempts to build relationships with local men, disappointment, despair, an advancing age when pregnancy is already a miracle. And then he appears. Hungry for normal food and sex, young, undiscerning and lazy. With low literacy, without big claims on life. Give him that simple thing he asks for, and draw in the rest on social media — eternal and faithful love, intellectual relationships, a broad-minded view that she is much older. In all the photos, with the same unchanging face, he hugs her — unattractive, glowing with happiness — by the waist. How she positioned him and taught him for the photos, and then believed in it herself. And now she travels with her son to the front line to see him. To fulfill marital duty. A perfect picture of an ideal life. For many that is something to envy. Many, after all, never dared to do this. Once a month she posts a new photo with her child rustling autumn leaves, and the Buryat with the lazy face again hugging her by the waist. Her love will be enough for the two of them for a long life. Enough even without him — to draw an imaginary great love, convince everyone, and believe it herself.
The other friend is pregnant by a local serviceman. Her due date is imminent. And to her mother’s logical question: “Maybe you should get married?” she snaps back: “Mom, everything will be fine!”.
The military always have money, they are rarely at home, and even if something happens, wives and children are protected by large payouts. And therefore the hassle of obtaining this money often overshadows the weight of the loss. And then comes the decision of how to dispose of the fallen wealth: buy housing, visit relatives abroad, set money aside for children’s education, or buy a car? The life and death of the father has become an investment in the future of his children and wife. This deeply pregnant acquaintance of mine worked for a long time toward realizing her plan. She got a job at a military unit, began dating men there, got burned — the one she liked turned out to be married. It was a long-term and very difficult plan to implement — step by step, starting with employment and ending with the illusion of a family. From the outside it all looks very contrived. It’s convenient for him. The laundry is done. Dinner is ready. No obligations. And she looks after his home for free, having no rights to it.
How do we live? With a curfew. With empty streets in the evenings. With small dying towns where the scale of big construction has not yet reached. Astonishment at the transforming Luhansk — roads, new streetlights, new buildings growing like mushrooms, the promise of an ice rink near the Christmas tree and free skate rentals. It’s like a time machine, an era of rapid change and some kind of gigantic accelerator. Who will live in these new buildings? For whom are these residential complexes being built all over the city? We are slowly mastering the new rules: cameras on the roads, linkage to Gosuslugi government app… Every step we take is under state control. The promise to rid the city of stray animals and punishment for spontaneous burials of pets. Electronic appointments with a pediatrician. Computers on the desks of elderly women at the registration office. New benches and couches. And we are even a little timid in the face of all this newness.
But we still make plans for vacations, the coming weekends, and the long New Year holidays. Buying train tickets has become available to us, and all around new banks are being built. Russian retail chains are coming to us; there will no longer be a need to travel to the nearest russian cities for shopping. Familiar entrepreneurs are closing their simple little shops — their premises are being rented by Ozon and Wildberries pickup points, and we, like carbon copies, bustle around the city with boxes and bags, buying everything and getting a very short-lived happiness from it.
There’s a lot of the new stuff.
Programs, requirements, documents, rules. New electric meters. Roskadastr, OMS, SNILS, PVZ — like spells from Harry Potter. And along the floors of government buildings, the dead smile from beautiful, professionally made display boards. They smile proudly, with weapons, framed by mourning ribbons. And the captions say “Bilohorivka”, “Sievierodonetsk”. They posed for life, for loved ones. Not for these mourning frames. And at first we froze, counted the years they had lived, and then we got used to it, as one gets used to everything. And their faces became decorations of the corridors, a silent reproach to us, the ones who remained — from them, who departed into eternity.
By Olha Kucher, Luhansk, for OstroV