“What did they say?” I asked Marta.
“They’re begging the riot police not to harm anyone in the crowd.” Orange balloons bobbed above the police barrier, held in place with shiny ribbon. Candles, flames flickering, stood on the pavement in front.
We strolled past tents pitched by the sidewalk and saw empty oil drums with fires inside that kept people warm. The Writer’s Union across the road, an elegant yellow low-rise with a soup truck parked in front, was another headquarters for the Orange Revolution. Marta and I walked inside. Protesters in orange packed the ground-floor hallway. We followed a sign for the medical centre. Doctors wore plastic name tags. Garbage bags ringed the perimeter of the room. Donated clothes tumbled from the overstuffed bags.
“Do you need anything?” Marta asked one of the doctors.
“We have all this,” the doctor said as he pointed at the bags of clothes, “but our medical supplies are low.” Marta pulled out her notebook. The doctor dictated the names of drugs to buy — antibiotics, eye drops and many more things that I could not identify with my limited vocabulary.
We left the Writer’s Union and walked down the road to a pharmacy. Its shelves spilled over with products. I read labels as Marta ordered stock. For thirty dollars we emerged with a bulging bag of medicine. I found it odd that nothing, not even antibiotics, required a prescription.
We returned to the medical centre at the Writer’s Union and gave a doctor our bag of medicine. As we left, we passed by a staircase. People wrapped in blankets slept across every step — overflow from the designated first-floor rest area. When I looked in that room, I saw a sea of slumberers and no unoccupied chair. Sleeping bags and pillows blanketed the stage. Those who found no space on the stage lay on the floor.
We continued our walk. We took a back route, down a hill, to the top of Vulytsia Horodets’koho, crossed through a small park at the end of the street and climbed the footpath that led toward the president’s office. At the top of the path, we encountered more riot police, grim-faced, clutching truncheons, in no mood to talk. Admitting defeat — we would not get closer to the building than this — we hovered for a few minutes, then went back down the path. We stopped briefly, riveted by a news broadcast on a small television. Several large-screen TVs, professionally installed, stood at strategic points in the city centre to keep protesters well informed of the news. This small black and white TV was not one of them. It balanced precariously on a metal structure. Wet snow fell. I felt amazed that no one had been electrocuted changing channels.
Yushchenko’s rival and the man backed by the regime, Viktor Yanukovych, appeared now on TV. The program showed clips from a big meeting of his supporters in southeastern Ukraine, who threatened secession from Ukraine. One of the announcers said Yanukovych’s wife, Ludmila, had addressed a rally of anti–Orange Revolution people outside. She said that Yushchenko supporters in the square in Kiev were so happy because they had eaten oranges imported from the U.S. laced with hallucinatory drugs.
People who stood near us gossiped about Mr. and Mrs. Yanukovych. I heard that Yanukovych had been jailed twice, for assault and then theft; Ludmila used to drive a trolleybus and Yanukovych, in the 1970s, drove racing cars in Monte Carlo; on their first date, a brick fell on Ludmila’s head, Yanukovych rushed her to hospital and then proposed. I had no idea if any of this was true. All I knew was that they managed to stay married all those years. I had not.
In the evenings, I met with friends and caught up on their news. So many of my female friends were either thinking about divorce, in the middle of divorce, already divorced or single. I tried to tease wisdom from this observation but did not get far. We all loved to travel and had all worked as journalists, but the similarities in our circumstances ended there. I noticed some gender divide. Stephen, Yaroslav and James all remained married. I discussed this with Marta. Then, as always, with so much going on, our conversation drifted back to politics. The phone rang.
“It’s for you,” Marta said and handed me the receiver.
“Hi, it’s me,” Yaroslav said. “What are you doing for dinner?”
“Marta’s busy, but I’m free,” I told him. We arranged to meet at Yaroslav’s hotel. A few minutes later Stephen telephoned. I invited him along.
I felt that I was walking into my past as I climbed the hill to meet Yaroslav. He was staying in an old Communist Party hotel where we had often eaten in 1990. Few other restaurants existed then in Kiev. I wondered how Yaroslav felt lodged in this hotel, like a visitor in his own home city. His life was so different from when he left.
I reached the hotel around 9 p.m. and rode up in the elevator with a man in his late thirties or early forties, who wore a bright orange down jacket. Heavy stubble covered his cheeks and chin. He had a scruffy air of authority.
Stephen arrived not long after me. We waited in Yaroslav’s room while he filed his story. He spoke with his editor. I remembered this work rhythm so well and that sense of satisfaction with a story filed, the work day finished and dinner deserved. Much as I enjoyed reporting, I did not feel tempted to make this my life again. I still thought of my office in Toronto, worked on assignments for it and found time for writing to family, colleagues and friends back home.
When Yaroslav had finished, we took the elevator down to the hotel restaurant. This cavernous room was mostly empty. People crowded around one long table at the far end. I recognized Volodymyr Filenko, a Member of Parliament and behind-the-scenes organizer for the Orange Revolution. The man with the orange jacket and a heavy-set male companion occupied another table. We sat at a table next to them. A few minutes later Stephen said, “Look, it’s Yulia.”
This woman, Yulia Tymoshenko, fascinated me. She and Yushchenko operated as a team. Yushchenko was the statesman. Yulia had drive and popular appeal, even though some people hated her and pointed to her questionable past in the gas industry. It had made her very rich. Slender Yulia was also beautiful. She rose to power as a deputy prime minister and was then briefly held in jail on charges of forging documents and smuggling gas but was released and cleared of the charges.
Yushchenko, the statesman, and Yulia were temperamentally so different that I could not understand how they even got along. But they were as good as married in the public eye as they fought together for new presidential elections.
I watched Yulia stride through the restaurant in a snug orange sweater. Her hair was tightly braided and wrapped around her head in her trademark halo hairdo. She exuded such energy. I imagined lightning might flash from Yulia at any moment. Fascinated, I stared as she visited the men at other tables. Then she sat with the man in the orange jacket at the table next to us. We all tried to eavesdrop. Yaroslav had the best spot for that.
When a crackdown had seemed imminent, Yulia helped inspire more protest. It had happened a few nights earlier. Marta and I returned home from a late dinner, astonished when we saw no people in the square. Our friend Nadezhda crossed it in the distance. We shouted out to her and met up in the centre.
“Yushchenko and Yulia told everyone to block the presidential administration and the Council of Ministers, so they all left,” Nadezhda said.
Marta went home. Nadezhda and I investigated. We went on a midnight stroll to the presidential administration.
“Do you think Yulia’s braid is real?” I asked Nadezhda as we walked up the hill.