Soon, I had no time for reflection. On lecture days I woke, rushed to work, left at 5 p.m., grabbed a sandwich before class, returned home at 10:30 p.m., spent half an hour with Sydney, then we went to bed. Our lives drifted further apart. We occupied separate zones in our three-bedroom house. A programmer, he spent most of his time in the basement, immersed in his world of computers. I sprawled through rooms upstairs, scattering my books across various beds. Sydney set up a server. Now, even at home, we communicated mostly through email. We developed different circles of friends. The inevitable soon occurred and we separated. I left the house the weekend Sydney moved out. I did not want to witness the final moments of our life together, the end of our marriage.
I had scoffed at the idea of self-help books. Now a pile of them towered by my bed and I found solace between the covers. When I felt unexpectedly happy at work one day a few weeks after our separation, tears suddenly welled up in my eyes. I dove under my desk and told people who entered my cubicle that I was adjusting a network cable. I remained hidden until the tears stopped. I did not know how to manage this roller-coaster of emotions. The books said the emotions would subside. I didn’t believe it but hoped the books were right.
Selling the house helped, as did old friendships. Marta had moved back to Canada. She was a professor at a university near Toronto. We moved in together. In the evenings, we slipped into the world of Kiev. Marta taught East European history and politics. She hosted literary circles at home. I would return after late-night MBA study groups, hear the sound of Ukrainian chatter in the kitchen and feel happy that I still remembered some of the language. Months passed quickly.
I graduated from the MBA program and started a new job in an investment advisory firm that had an alternative style of analysis. This job seemed a near perfect fit. It was international but based at home and involved travel. I liked my colleagues and my work.
Marta left for a sabbatical in Ukraine. I found a new apartment. Alone for the first time in many years, I felt strangely optimistic as my self-help books said the newly divorced sometimes did. I was happy to hang on to that feeling. I still had it in November 2004, when I first saw the massive street protests in Kiev on television.
“Quick, turn the TV on,” I told my mother by phone. “You can almost see my old apartment in the background.” She had visited Kiev in 1997 and quickly recognized the place, as amazed as I was by the huge number of people crammed into Independence Square, many dressed in orange.
“What’s going on?” she asked. I wondered how to explain developments in Ukrainian politics since she had visited, especially as I did not fully understand them. A journalist named Georgiy Gongadze, who criticized the regime, had disappeared in 2000 and was presumed murdered. A presidential bodyguard defected and released tapes that implicated the president, though nothing was ever fully investigated or proved. Protests built over four years. Then a rigged election triggered this huge protest. That much I could explain to my mother.
“The current president’s term limit is up. He selected a successor candidate, Victor Yanukovych, and tried to rig the election so Yanukovych would win. When that was exposed, the protest began. All those people dressed in orange say the opposition candidate, Victor Yushchenko, really won. The protesters are fed up. They say they’re not going to accept corruption and abuse of power anymore.”
“Those two Victors, their names sound a lot alike. It’s confusing,” she said. I agreed.
I missed Marta. She was still in Kiev, living in her apartment next door to my old place. We swapped messages. A network approached me to help cover the Orange Revolution. I told Marta.
“Come, you must!” she wrote back. I thought about it as I monitored newscasts at work.
“What’s going on in Kiev?” my boss asked. He waved a newspaper with two pictures of Viktor Yushchenko, one marked “before” and one “after.”
“I can’t believe this. He was such a handsome guy, but this looks like Frankenstein,” my boss said as his finger jabbed the “after” shot. “The report said someone poisoned him. I thought that only happened in the Middle Ages,” he added. “I’m surprised they didn’t just knock him off. What have you heard?”
I only knew what I read. The deputy director of the Ukrainian Security Services had invited Yushchenko for dinner. Soon after the dinner Yushchenko fell ill. His face erupted in large, blistery bumps. His body was wracked with pain, but he still campaigned, made speeches, soldiered on.
“Yes, well, sometimes Ukraine is a strange place,” I replied, feeling oddly defensive of a country I thought of as an adopted homeland. “One state television report said Yushchenko looks like that because he has herpes; another blamed sushi.”
“Sushi? You can’t be serious.” I had to nod yes, amazed, too, by such lies. Then I told him about the network coverage offer.
“How badly do you want to go?” I dithered and turned the offer down.
After work I took the subway to the west end of the city, where Ukrainian Canadians held a rally in favour of Viktor Yushchenko. I saw orange everywhere — balloons, T-shirts, flickering candle flames — and heard the soothing murmur of Ukrainian that I now heard nowhere else. A pro-Yushchenko poster hung on one of the consulate doors.
I could not concentrate at work the next day and was quiet in the car during the commute home with colleagues. Restless, I left my apartment and walked downtown, with no particular destination in mind, but my feet took me to a travel agent’s office. Since I was there, I thought that I would ask about the price of flights to Kiev.
“It’s the last day of a seat sale on Lufthansa,” the agent told me.
I handed her my credit card and booked a non-refundable flight to Kiev.
At home, I panicked. Work deadlines loomed; I had not even formally requested time off.
“I won’t miss any of my deadlines,” I promised my boss the next day. He gave me permission to go.
I could not imagine being there and not reporting. I sent an email to the foreign news editor at the Sunday edition of my old newspaper, the Independent, and felt so excited when he replied and commissioned a feature. Signed on for Orange Revolution coverage, I telephoned Marta to let her know I would be leaving the next day.
“Stay with me,” she said. No invitation could have made me happier.
Men with gold teeth slumped on chairs in the Frankfurt Airport departure lounge. Seated first on the plane, I saw them totter down the aisle, then collapse into seats behind mine; the scent of alcohol — vodka, I thought — still lingered where they had passed. They tried to order another round before the flight took off. I checked my watch. It was 9:30 a.m. Time peeled back fourteen years.
I ate every item the flight attendants offered me, asked for seconds and worried about when food would next be available. I knew this was irrational, but the feeling was too urgent to ignore. Full for now, I reclined my seat. I thought of my father. I would land in Kiev on his birthday. His death ten years earlier triggered my decision to leave Ukraine, make my way home and abandon journalism.
I thought again of advice from my friend Roma. I had confided in her that I still fought wanderlust.
“Maybe it’s an addiction,” I said.
“Stop relying on external stimulation! Find it from within,” she insisted. I recognized the truth of this. I’d made progress but worried that my trip to Kiev might be a lapse and that I would be pulled back into my old life.