Interlude #1 - Ukrainian Lullaby

HE
had almost nodded off when the bus hit a rather largish rut, shaking him awake in time to shove his suitcase forward in the overhead compartment before it fell on his head. There were no bars or straps or any other visible means to secure baggage, and he had been forced to keep repeating this maneuver ever since Chernihiv, as the heavy bags kept crashing forward with each pothole and dip in the road, of which there was a not inconsiderable number and occurring with such frequency as to make him imagine indeed that there was more hole in the road than there was road in the road.

The bus itself was like a short version of a short bus - more of an over-sized van, really. A curtain separated him from the driver and prohibited a view of the road. He had slid the curtain over a few inches at the beginning of the trek, but the driver had reached behind himself and yanked the sheet back in place -- "and so much for that," he had thought.

Every so often, the little bus/van would pull over and pick up another villager along the side of the pock-marked dirt road. The side door had a trick handle and no one who got on could make it latch shut for anything - the driver yelling in Ukrainian, and the fresh guests yelling back. Latching of the door was finally left to the pros in the front seats - the seasoned veterans who had now successfully latched the door several times in the last hour and had mastered the trick and just the right touch.

At some point, the bus had become standing room only for new travelers, but the driver kept stopping to let them on, and taking their 50 kopeks, and yelling at them about the door, and getting yelled back at in Ukrainian, and the pros in the front seats beside the door kept latching it shut after slamming it two or three times first.

He looked away from the newest passenger - a red-haired thick-bodied Ukrainian girl wearing an old denim jacket, pink jeans, heavy eye shadow and a haughty look - in time to see his own suitcase about to land on his head again. He jumped up and caught it just in time, as just then the bus came to a complete stop. They had arrived in Pryluky - the end of the line.

He put his case down on the floor of the bus and allowed the red haired girl to go past. She gave him an icy "pahzhalaster" and passed by, glancing down at his sad frayed suitcase with the worn leather tags.

If she had been able to read English, she might have read "Harold O'Florcus" on the tag's handwritten label.

Not that it would have meant anything to her.