The man had marked several places on his map. The police deduced that he intended to kill a housing estate resident. One theory held that the motive was robbery and the target, one of the bank or security company employees. The police also included Alison on their suspected victims list because of Gagik’s murder convictions.
Five homes, including Alison and Karen’s, were put under surveillance by the police. Technicians installed panic buttons. Police officers began armed patrols. They instructed residents not to open their doors if strangers knocked. I tried to imagine how Alison and her sister felt — terror at the possibility a hit man might be after them? Relief that he had come to the attention of the police and that they now had protection? Denial — perhaps the hit man wanted someone else? Zoya said that despite the scare, their daily routine remained as it had before.
At the end of April, on a Saturday, nearly a month after my arrival back in Kiev, Alison worked the night shift. Karen stayed at home. The doorbell rang. The person on the other side of the door identified himself as a pizza delivery man. Karen had not ordered pizza. She opened the door to tell him this. The man on the doorstep held a pistol. He shot Karen dead. Alison subsequently disappeared, presumably having been advised by the police to go into hiding.
I stopped eating. I had no appetite anymore. Zoya told me what little more she knew. The police believed the killer mistook Karen for Alison — they looked alike, with similar hair and glasses — and killed the wrong woman. After Zoya left, I asked a friend to fax me news coverage of the shooting and read a statement Alison had issued through the police: “I am deeply shocked and distraught by the death of my sister, Karen, who was murdered so horrifically simply because of her relationship to me.” I thought of their parents, who had lost one daughter forever and the other to police protection. I felt so tired of violence.
It was part of life here as well. Something dark hung over Ukraine. I covered stories on baby smuggling in Western Ukraine, the arrival of the international drugs trade, the drop in life expectancy and the rise of HIV. I also felt the effects of a conflict between Russia and Ukraine over energy supplies. Ukraine could no longer afford to pay for imported Russian gas.
One night in early November, I sat in my kitchen. Our building had no heat yet. I turned the oven on full blast and closed the door to trap heat inside. I held a phone bill in my hand and looked at so many zeros tacked on to the end that I wondered how long it would take me to pay. I converted $US1 into karbovanets (the Ukrainian currency) and calculated the modest number of dollars I would need to pay the bill, set the money aside and went to bed.
I got up early the next morning. As I stepped out of my building, I saw an elderly woman ahead of me. She stood erect and wore a warm coat. A small dog tugged at the end of the leash that she held. The woman approached a dumpster. Then she stopped and looked in. I averted my eyes to protect her dignity. I had seen so many pensioners foraging in garbage cans. Their pensions could not keep pace with hyperinflation. When she had finished, I gave the woman some money. Both of us embarrassed, I hurried on.
I stood in line at a money exchange kiosque next door to where I used to live. I held a pillowcase in my hand. When I reached the kiosque window, I handed over dollars. The woman inside slowy counted karbovanets. I shovelled each huge pile she made into my pillowcase. When the transaction was finally over, I knotted the pillowcase closed and walked across the square to the post office. I joined a long line. When my turn came, the woman behind the counter counted each note. Finally she stamped my bill paid. Next month I would have to hire someone for this process. It took too much time.
I liked Kiev and my friends. For all the bad, I enjoyed life here, but somehow I wondered if by staying I was wasting time. The stories that I covered did not mean that much to me — a sewage plant that collapsed out east, a U.S. presidential visit, religious disputes. Time was on my mind when I returned home in the summer for another visit. I introduced my father, usually so forward-looking and engaged by new ideas, to the Internet.
“This is for the birds,” he said when pages about golf, his favourite sport, loaded slowly over our cottage dial-up connection. I realized that my parents, although not quite old, were no longer young.
“I think I should go back, but I have no idea what I’d do,” I told my friend James.
We sat in my kitchen in Kiev waiting for his two visitors. These American journalists would join us for dinner. James, a photographer, worked with them.
“Couldn’t you report for Canadian TV or radio?” he asked.
“Maybe, but I’m not sure I want to stay in journalism. Before independence I felt that sometimes I discovered significant information no one else reported. Now stories are so routine,” I told him. The doorbell rang. James’s friends arrived. We poured wine for them. The visitors joined our conversation.
“Have you thought about international aid?” one of them asked. She told me about aid workers that she had met in Bosnia, how they brought food into Sarajevo during the siege and how they monitored prisoners’ treatment to ensure it abided by the Geneva Conventions.
I had tried to volunteer for aid work after high school. I spent a year in Europe before university. An aid organization in Paris turned me away because at seventeen, I was still considered a child under French law.
I thought about our conversation in the weeks that followed and researched international aid organizations. I had no specific plan in mind but built a roster of contact numbers. As an experiment, I called one office and then another. Soon I had a series of interviews booked in London. I telephoned Stephen and told him that I would visit. He invited me to stay. In November I flew to London for the interviews and felt encouraged by the responses.
I heard the telephone ring early in the morning on my departure day. At first I thought it was my alarm clock. I had to leave early for my Kiev flight. Then I heard Stephen answer the phone. A minute later he knocked on my door.
“It’s for you,” he said. “It’s your sister.” I took the receiver. Deborah told me that our father had died from a brain aneurism. I hung up and sat on the sofa, unable to speak.
“Is there anything I can do to help?” Stephen asked. He booked me a flight home.
Deborah and Mark met me at the airport in Ottawa. We drove home to the emptiness of a fatherless house. Winter had set in and the light had disappeared. This was a bleak time of year under any circumstances in Canada. I still could not believe that my father, a fit, vibrant man, had died and that my mother would be alone. I missed my father so much. I felt a shift in generations and that my place was now back here.
I spoke to friends who had already lost a parent. I thought of Alison as well. She had disappeared after Karen died. I wondered if she had to cope with grief by herself, separated from family and friends.
My brother and sister went back to Toronto. I stayed with my mother. We went for walks, read the paper and looked after my father’s new dog. I also phoned aid agencies in Canada to look for a job. International experience, which had been viewed as such an asset in London, was a liability here. I had no Canadian work experience. That was a big hurdle to surmount.
Back in Ukraine, those final months dragged. When my Kiev posting ended in June, I arranged for a three-month leave of absence. I spent it at the cottage with my mother. I wondered how I could return for good. In September, at the end of my leave of absence, I had no answer, so I flew back to London to work in the radio newsroom.
“Do you know any eligibles?” I asked Stephen one day. Not long afterwards he invited me for dinner with a guest from Australia named Sydney, my future husband. He was divorced, a year younger than me and an IT specialist.