More Big Fat Lies

Managed to find my writing boots again today. I need the discipline of the 'posting deadline'.

Saturday 7th – Ivan and Marta Spring/Summer 1941

Ivan is feeling confused. He often feels like this these days, and feels the urge to be by himself; to run and run through the words until he feels that his heart and his breathing can’t keep up with the manic, uncontrolled motion of his body; to run until his eyes are dry and he feels the urge the laugh his head off for no reason. He’s so [unconsciously] fit, though, that when he stops running and sits down it only takes a minute or two before he has his breath again and his heart rate falls back to normal.
Sitting in the sunlit woods, with the shafts of light flickering between the illuminated planes of leaves and branches, he listens to his own breathing stilling and settling, and feels the sweat trickling down his chest and – suddenly cooler – over the smooth skin of his flat belly.
He doesn’t understand Mama and Papa any more: they’re supposed to love each other, but they don’t even talk to each other – not like people should talk to each other: even when they do speak, they use strange tones of voice that Ivan can’t understand, and they don’t let the other one finish before they put in their reply. Ivan doesn’t know why, but these strained, staccato exchanges make his neck and head ache, and his fingers tingle: he has to get out of the room – out of the house – and shout, or run.
This morning, in the brightly-lit breakfast room, Papa was dwelling over his newspaper, his breakfast finished but for his interminable cups of coffee, and Mama was mopping at the corners of her mouth with a napkin and scowling at Papa under her eyebrows. Ivan tried to avoid looking at either of them, concentrating instead on his pancakes with cold meats and jam. Papa has a deep, grumbling way of clearing his throat and coughing, which he usually follows up with sniff and sigh. It’s a habit that Ivan sometimes notices and sometimes doesn’t: it’s only really noticeable when he’s in a bad mood. Mama seems to notice it all the time, and each time papa repeats the habitual cycle she breathes out heavily through her nose , and sometimes makes a little ‘tutting’ sound with her tongue and teeth. When they get locked into this pattern of phlegmy coughing, sighing, heavy breathing and tutting, Ivan can sense the tension rising, and starts planning the rapid completion of his breakfast and his exit from the room.
Mostly, Mama and Papa don’t explicitly discuss their antipathies. Sometimes, like today, they will sublimate their enmity into what appears to be an abstract discussion, but which it’s clear – even to Ivan – is actually a mutually destructive exchange of slights and insults.
“Hah,” says Papa, jerking the newspaper for emphasis.
No response.
“Hah,” he says again.
“What is it?” says Mama, wearily and disinterestedly.
Papa looks at Mama over his glasses, patronising and disapproving, and says, “There’s something in the paper about the refugees. It’s interesting.”
Mama knows that what will follow will cast the refugees from the west in a bad light, and that Papa’s criticism is really aimed at her: her western roots – her family came to [the Baltic state] when she was a young girl – tar her with the same derogatory brush as the urban vagabonds who are heading east in growing numbers from the cities in which they are finding themselves increasingly unwelcome. Somehow, her husband manages to conflate her family history with the unrest that the refugee influx has been causing in their destination states and cities; somehow he implies that she and her family are partially responsible for all of this, and that her family are on a par with the poor, dirty, unskilled workers and their families who are flocking across the open borders and into the well-ordered and well-integrated communities of their ethnic brethren in the east.
Ivan has noticed the westerners’ numbers growing in the town: it’s hard to avoid their very visible presence. There were always plenty of people in the streets between the Old Town and the [railway marshalling yards/river?], where broken windows stayed glassless, and where drying clothes flapped on improvised lines strung between the balconies overhanging the shadowed, narrow streets. There were always whiskered old men in ragged, outdated suits, and old women with headscarves and hollowed cheeks, and there were always the bitter-faced young men without jobs, standing on the street corners in groups, with their palmed cigarettes and their identikit jackets and cloth caps. And there were always the young women talking to their peers, with their latest child hoisted on their hip. And there were always the multiple flocks of older children, some shoed, some not, racing after the buses and trams and pulling faces at the (supposedly wealthy) passengers who turned their faces away or studied the stained plaster facades of the building frontages above the childrens’ heads. [thought – perhaps this is the environment that Ivan’s canal side friend comes from??]
There had always been poverty and want in that part of the city, and the demographics had always been dominated by the Slavic population, but, since the refugees had started to arrive from the west, the population density, the levels of overcrowding and the inter-communal resentments had all risen. Many of the refugees had come east seeking extended family members: family traditions dictated that relatives in need should not be turned away if they were shelterless, and thus the tenements and multiple occupancy houses that let off the narrow lanes filled up and up.
[Family loyalties were strained by overcrowding and unfamiliarity, and the resentment of the non-Slavic denizens of the city grew, fuelled by a rise in crime and by their perception that the newcomers (and their extended families) were receiving a greater proportion of the political and economic attention than they deserved.]
Papa says – paraphrasing the newspaper article he’s skimming, “The Police [Prefecture?] has issued a warning to the eastern church authorities after it was announced that the incidence of crime has risen by nearly thirty percent in the previous six months. Thirty percent . What do you make of that, dear?”
Mama shrugs. Ivan cuts another big slice off his last pancake and crams it into his mouth, forcing it in alongside the residue of the previous chunk that he’s still chewing.
“Anything?” insists Papa.
Mama breathes out heavily through her nose, sits back, and takes off her glasses. “There are more poor people, aren’t there?” she says. “It’s just common sense that where there are more poor people there will be more crime. It’s got nothing to do with where they come from, or what colour their skin is.”
“Mm. You think so?”
“I do.”
“Mm.”
Papa goes on: “ ‘In the latest incidence of criminality, police and militia units were called to a tenement address in [Empire Street], where a serious disturbance had been reported. It emerged that the trouble started when some western refugees had tried to improvise the [traditional/ritual] slaughter of a bull to celebrate the usually peaceful and civilised festival of [??]. Other local residents complained about the live bull being tethered in the tenement yard and hoisted on ropes above the street for the slaughter, and were subjected to abuse and to threats of violence by the refugees. It is understood that much [celebratory] liquor [specific, emblematic type?] had been imbibed by the refugee celebrants. Some of the more headstrong local residents returned to the scene armed with wooden stakes and other improvised weapons, and a violent set-to ensued. Police later indicated that the fighting was rapidly quelled, and that fifteen refugees and four residents had been arrested. The slaughtered bull was confiscated, and was driven to Police headquarters on an open truck’.”
Papa stops reading and looks up at Mama.
“Well?” she says, “what do want me to say?”
“Nothing, dear, nothing. Only what you think.”
“This is pointless: you have already made up your own mind about what you think. So there’s no point in my saying anything.”
Papa is silent. Ivan can hear the last of the pancake being chewed down to slushy pulp between his teeth, and he’s – thankfully – nearly ready to leave the table.
Papa says, “You can’t think that this kind of thing is acceptable in a modern country like ours? To be butchering animals on the streets – ”
“It did not say ‘butchering’. It said ‘slaughtering’.”
“You’re quite aware how these ritual slaughters are conducted. Come on – ”
“ ‘slaughtered’, it said, not ‘butchered’. You’re only using that word to make it sound worse than it is.”
“You’re splitting hairs. The point is, I – ”
“May I get down, please?” says Ivan, and his father looks at him with annoyance, then gives a curt nod.
“ – I find it difficult to have sympathy for people who abuse the hospitality of the country in which they are guests, and which has provided them with shelter and support, with no hope of recompense. If they would accommodate themselves more completely to our way of life, there would be less trouble.”
Annoyed though she is, Ivan’s mother won’t be drawn any further. She puts her glasses back on and leaves the room. Papa smiles to himself and goes on reading his paper.