The idea of the pursuit of happiness…. is an elastic idea; it fits all men. It implies a certain kind of society, a certain kind of awakened spirit…. So much is contained in it: the idea of the individual, responsibility, choice, the life of the intellect, the idea of vocation and perfectibility and achievement. It is an immense human idea. It cannot be reduced to a fixed system. It cannot generate fanaticism. But it is known to exist; and because of that, other more rigid systems in the end blow away.
Long after the crimes of Kovzalo, the Village Chairman, and Leyzarov, the Representative of the District Committee of Pinsk, and even those of Sobakin of the NKVD, fade from memory, Headmaster Kulik remains vivid as a man of great sorrows, bitter tears, and unbearable uncertainties who nevertheless keeps moving, staying one step ahead of the secret police, constantly pursued but pursuing with even greater tenacity the unquenchable spirit that rises up in him at the sound of running water and the sight of the ascending sun.
The Pinsk Marshes, the setting for Wave of Terror, is Europe’s last great wetland — a vast tract of dense forest intermingled with swamps, moors, ponds and streams that cover southern Belarus and northwestern Ukraine. Its earliest settlements can be traced back at least two thousand years. In 1939, its villages were connected to Pinsk by rough roads and trails that were difficult to negotiate even in dry weather. Frequently cut off from outside visitors, the villagers were regarded as very much in need of enlightenment by the Soviet invaders. The marshes suffered greatly not only from the events Theodore Odrach recounts but also, a half century later, from the nuclear catastrophe at Chernobyl. The Zovty Prison which features prominently in the lives of Odrach’s characters is now a cancer hospital where the original bars have not yet been removed from all the windows.
T.F. RIGELHOF, MONTREAL, DECEMBER, 2007
TRANSLATOR’S NOTE
My father was an enigma to me, always in the shadows, always at a distance. He was tall, dark-haired, with deep-set eyes that were forever lost in another world. I would watch him come and go as if he wasn’t really my father but rather a stranger in the house. I would listen to his footsteps, to the sound of his typewriter, hear him talking quietly to my mother late into the night as I slept in an adjoining room. Mostly he remained in his office at the front of our house, at his typewriter, sitting there every free moment he could find. What was he doing in there for hours on end, and why was he filling pages up with words written in the Cyrillic alphabet? Sometimes with my sister I would spy on him through the front window to try and figure things out, to see what he was up to. But it was always the same; he was sitting at his desk typing away. Then one day the sound of the typewriter stopped and the house fell silent. My father was there one day and the next day he was gone. I cried and cried and thought God was playing a joke on me. But it wasn’t a joke, my father was dead.
It wasn’t until later, perhaps when I was ten or eleven, that I realized what my father had indeed been doing those long hours in the front room: he had been working on manuscripts and sending them out to publishing houses in Buenos Aires, New York, Toronto, and they were coming back in book form. There were novels, collections of short stories, and a memoir.
Growing up, my father’s books always graced the top shelf of the bookcase in our living room. What sort of writer he was or what he wrote about were all a mystery to me. Although I spoke Ukrainian, reading Ukrainian at a literary level was a completely different matter — it was virtually incomprehensible. In my teens and later in my early twenties I made several attempts to decipher his works but without much luck. Forever curious, at last, armed with a Ukrainian-English dictionary, I was determined to learn about his world no matter what it took. And slowly but surely the pages started to come to life. There were people living inside them, there were great panoramas, history was in the making, and I soon found myself completely absorbed. Then one day I picked up a pen and started to play around with words, wondering what it all might sound like in English. And before I knew it, I was on my way to becoming his translator.
My father never really completed Wave of Terror, at least not to the extent that he would have liked. He left behind countless corrections and revisions in the margins of his original manuscript and various drafts, and these were never considered for the final Ukrainian text, published posthumously in 1972. I’ve drawn on his extensive notes and alterations, and have incorporated them into the translation to provide a broader and more comprehensive representation of his work.
ERMA ODRACH, SEPTEMBER, 2007
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I’d like to express a heartfelt thanks to several people who have helped me along to the way: to Klara Odrach who acted as the voice of my father, to Tania Odrach for reading the draft of the translation and making invaluable suggestions, to Michael Mychaluk for his never-ending devotion to my father’s work, to Jane Wilson for her insightful comments regarding particular chapters, to T.F. Rigelhof for his encouragement and support, and to Anita Miller for artfully shaping my father’s work and bringing it to its final stage.
CHAPTER 1
On the edge of the village of Hlaby stood a large school surrounded by an old run-down fence and facing a road filled with puddles from a heavy rain.
Ivan Kulik, the headmaster, stood at the classroom window, gazing at a sprawling lilac bush brushing up against the pane. Hundreds of drops had collected on its branches; one drop was larger than the others. A gust of wind from the east swept the drop to the ground.
Kulik thought, “A person rises, then falls; the earth swallows him up and in time he is forgotten. Just yesterday there was a regime, and today there is another. Yesterday’s was swept away just like that drop. And today’s? Will it too fall and vanish one day?”
The rain intensified and began to hit the window like the fine seeds from a poppy. Dark autumn clouds loomed overhead, painting the sky a heavy leaden gray.
To the right of the school stood a small, shabby wooden cottage with a sloping straw roof and a fair-sized garden plot that ran parallel to the road. Grandfather Cemen, in his drab peasant overcoat buckled at the waist, paced back and forth there. A long white beard reached past his chest, and from time to time, as he stared at the sky, his eyes filled with tears.
Kulik watched from his window and muttered under his breath, “There is no more hope, old man. The weather reflects the new regime. It’s as if God has turned his back on us. There’s no place for the sun; there are only clouds — clouds in the sky, clouds over the earth, clouds in our souls.”
The old man hobbled over to the gate and stared for a long time to the east where the road shot in a straight line to Pinsk; in fact, lately all the villagers had fallen into the same habit. Everyone knew that evil came from the east. This was a time in history filled with danger and uncertainty. Too many strangers had taken an interest in Hlaby.
Suddenly a rumbling came from the road. With great determination two mangy horses were pulling a wagon filled with men toward the village center. The wheels and sideboards were splattered with mud and the floorboards were cold and soggy. After laboring past the school, the wagon wound its way behind a neighboring supply shed and disappeared.
“More trouble.” Kulik shook his head. For a brief moment he looked at the ruts in the road and thought about the new regime: “First the Red Army is sent in to intimidate the villagers, then bands of agitators follow, with their black shoulder bags, dark riding breeches and sagging leather boots. They give shrill propaganda speeches, calling themselves long-awaited liberators. Like swarms of locusts, they seep through the smallest of cracks and infest the villages and settlements. They wear forage caps, with visors that partially hide their faces. They shout out to passersby, ‘We are honest and sincere. Only a true Bolshevik can look you straight in the eye!’” Kulik stepped back from the window. “The wagon has probably made it to the Lenin Clubhouse by now. There’s going to be another meeting.”