The Fantastic Worlds of Yuri Vynnychuk

An Embroidered World

An Embroidered World

In as much as I remember my grandmother, she was always sewing. At first I didn’t really pay attention to her embroidering, but one time I noticed that an old cherry tree that was growing near our window had disappeared after Granny had embroidered it. The cherry tree had completely dried up, and Gramps had planned on chopping it down several times, but for some reason his hands never seemed to get to it. But now it’s gone.

At that time I began to try and recall whether anything else had disappeared, and suddenly I remembered that quite recently a wild dog that had settled in the wilderness had disappeared. He wailed so awfully during the night that the entire neighborhood cursed him to the depths of hell. No one could let their children out for a walk without someone keeping an eye on them, for fear that the dog was mad. It’s true that several times they tried to hunt him down, but he was either too quick or just as crafty, because all those attempts at hunting him down were in vain. But no one had heard him for a week already. Of course, he could have died or moved on somewhere else. I began to look through Granny’s embroideries, and on one of the pillows I saw him. Now I understood it all—everything that Granny embroiders disappears at that very moment she embroiders it. It’s not for nothing that there weren’t any people on a single one of her embroideries. The sun wasn’t there; there wasn’t anything you’d feel sorry about losing.

I couldn’t restrain myself from sharing my discovery with my grandfather. Gramps just shrugged his shoulders:

“Well, what of it? I know about it.”

“Then why didn’t you ever tell me?”

“For some reason I always forgot. It’s either this or that... I forgot.”

Then he looked at me with a warm smile and added:

“Well, good. I’ll tell you about what I know. Though this was right after the war... At that time they began arresting us. Every night they were carting off people to Siberia. The prisons were packed. They threw the young guys to the front without any preparation, without any training. They threw them right at the tanks... Lord, how many of them were killed then!... You know the way they looked at the Galicians… The tiniest suspicion—and you’re in the slammer. That’s how they arrested me. Your grandmother couldn’t find herself a place to escape from her grief. She walked back and forth, poor thing, near that prison and tried to look through everything to see if she could see me. Then once out of sorrow she was sitting down in the evening and began to embroider. She just couldn’t get the prison out of her head, so she began to embroider it. She embroidered the walls around it; she embroidered the guard and the dogs. She finished her sewing late in the middle of the night... And what kind of sleep does a prisoner get? We lie there and think about everything, we just can’t sleep. When once, suddenly, it was as though everything had come tumbling down. There were no walls in the room, no stone walls of the prison—we were lying in the middle of the yard. Hey, we figured this out right away, and we made our way wherever we could... Well, the prison disappeared, but those who put us in prison were left. We had to hide. The younger ones went to the woods, and the older ones—to the villages and farms. At that time we moved to the village. That’s the way it was... Although, we didn’t figure out things with Granny right away, that this was a result of her embroidering. We thought all different kinds of things. And the people spoke about the Mother of God, that she showed pity on us and saved us from captivity with a miracle... But after some time, I looked—and our cat was gone. ‘Hannusya,’ I says, ‘where did our Matsko get to, why can’t we see him?’ When I take a look—the embroidery is lying on the table and right there is our embroidered Matsko. Then something dawned in my head. ‘Well,’ I says, ‘Hannusya, wouldn’t it be nice if you’d unstitch the embroidery?’ And she answers: ‘What kind of silly thoughts are these? I was going blind working so hard over it, and you want to destroy it for me?’ Yoy, ya think I’m gonna listen to the old bat? I took the scissors and unstitched it. Just as I plucked out the last thread I heard a meow, meow! And it’s our Matsko! And he had a hungry look, because just as he saw the milk in the dish, he threw himself at it. ‘Well,’ I say, ‘Hannusya, now you have some real tsores! It turns out if you don’t embroider something, then it doesn’t disappear.’ And she doesn’t believe it, she laughs at me. Well, good... Then I ask her to embroider the scarecrow that juts out in our garden. And what do you guess? She embroiders the scarecrow, looks, and it’s gone in the blink of an eyelash! Well, now she’s finally convinced of her ability. From that time on she took care not to embroider anything she’d regret losing or that might inadvertently disappear.”

As it turned out later, not only Gramps and I had found out about this, but also the neighbors... umm... about my grandmother’s curse. Everybody began to speculate whether they’d done anything nasty to Hannusya, what if she gets angry and embroiders it? And Dzunyo suddenly remembered that he once swiped a rooster from our chicken house. Gathering courage, he came to Granny and confessed it, and likewise brought a goose in place of that rooster. He apologized in such a manner that Granny charitably forgave him his sin. It’s true that on the next day Mrs. Buslyk ran over for that goose because it was her goose, but junior’s mood didn’t worsen at all because of it. It was most interesting that once again that very same goose returned to us. Mrs. Buslyk brought it and said:

“Mrs. Hannusya, take the goose, but I really beg you, if you’d be so kind as to also embroider my husband. Cause that drunk will drive me to the grave.”

And one has to say that Granny held that drunks were the worst and without even thinking it over much, took to embroidering Mr. Buslyk. And what do you guess? Not a week had passed and Mrs. Buslyk ran up with another goose to ask that her husband be returned.

“Why are you bugging me?” Granny gestured that she go away.

But my mother felt the goose and said:

“What kind of filling should I give it? Buckwheat groats or rice?”

“I’m not going to undo the embroidery,” Granny replied harshly.

“With rice and mushrooms,” Dad advised.

“Good Lord,” Mrs. Buslyk began to sob. “What am I now? I’m neither a widow or a maiden!”

“It seems like you’re a widow,” my Gramps said.

“Well, who’s going to wring its neck for me?” Momma asked, transferring her gaze from Dad to Gramps.

“And even if a goose’d kick me in the butt, I’m not going to unstitch the embroidery!” Granny vowed.

“Ehh, I’m gonna really fuss over it—I’ll chop off it’s head,” Dad grimaced. “Here I’ll take the ax—whack, whack, and it’s kaput.”

In the meanwhile Grandma had straightened out the cloth on the table.

“Well, take a gander—your husband turned out just like a painting. And, look, I even made his legs wobbly so it’d be obvious he’s drunk. And now you want me to destroy it?”

“The ax is under the steps in the foyer,” said Gramps. “I’d wanted to sharpen it, but I forgot.”

“I’ll sharpen it right now,” Dad wiped his hands and started off toward the foyer.

“If you stuff that goose a la Chinese, it’ll taste so good you’ll swallow your fingers,” Momma insisted.

“I don’t like the Chinese,” Gramps strained through his teeth.

After Gramps had been investigated and had been locked up in the slammer again, there was a certain man there in charge they called The c******n. He amused himself by calling in one of the political prisoners in the middle of the night and keeping him standing at attention till dawn. Because of it, Gramps, having learned something new about the Mao boys, often used to repeat:

“If there’s going to be a war with the Chinese, then I’m going to be the first to volunteer. I have a special interest in them.”

The Chinese, however, were unbelievably lucky, because my Gramps died before the border conflict.

“My husband wasn’t so bad,” Mrs. Buslyk whined. “There were times he’d go for water... to the store for milk...”

“Ehh,” Granny waved her hands, “you do the job and don’t get squat for it!”

And so she undid the embroidery.

On the next day Mr. Buslyk got drunk as a skunk, and he got under Mrs. Buslyk’s skin for losing two geese for nothing.

My Granny stretched through the window and began to shout:

“You sweet good-for-nothing! If you don’t stop, I’ll embroider you again right away! And then two more geese will be gone!”

Buslyk opened his mouth to rasp out something, but, in spite of the fog in his head, he figured that it was better to keep quiet.

Then we had lunch. Momma stuffed the goose a la Chinese, and told Gramps that it was according to an old-fashioned recipe. Gramps was delighted and praised her:

“Eh, whatever you say, Ukrainian cuisine is the best in the world. And just for the fact that we thought up kovbasa, garlic ring sausage, we’re worthy of eternal memory. But who knows about this now?.. Here, Yurko, learn so that you’ll be wise and remind the world that it’s in great debt to us for kovbasa.”

Well, so I learned and now I’m reminding you.

This was the way my Granny was, may she rest in the Heavenly Kingdom, cause the last thing that she did was to embroider herself.