Flaws: Vedmykiv

[7] The Hare Trails

WE STRUGGLED with the awkwardness for a few more days until we tried to have sex again. Like the freezing cold, I could feel it in my bones. After the shooting, violent protests escalated quickly. The separatists toppled the local government, and when more people got shot, they closed the city. That blockage that caught me by surprise had been the first checkpoint of many. Surprising what a little rock could do. The nationalist paramilitary forces were reinforced with the resurrection of the National Guard, and the separatist militia fortified their position apparently without any help. Oxana's little town was caught in between. The Ukrainian military intelligence and the paramilitary groups Natalya was so worried about regained several buildings before they were pushed out again. Russia's involvement was still unconfirmed except for the flag flying high from the city council building's mast and the random arms that seemed to overflow into the hands of the people wanting to break up. How could they break up with those who had given so much? How could I?

I had many questions but no major incidents happened in the weeks after the guard's swift advancement and subsequent retreat. So I waited. I waited and I listened to Igor insist it was too dangerous to get in. Maybe I was a afraid. "Wait until it cools off. No story is worth your life." Maybe. Maybe not. What about hers?

Oxana had instructed her peers to keep their ears to the ground and let her know as soon as they heard anything worth the time of her famous reporter man. She still called me her man, at least in front of others. Donetsk was the largest city with a separatist presence. It was their base camp. Like her flat was mine.

"When are you going back?" my editor asked. I had to find a way to get back inside, inside the occupied territory, inside Oxana's good graces, inside Lillian's heart. All impossible tasks.

Demonstrations in Kyiv had grown tenfold. They were organized and holding on. Sometimes I wished I had stayed back in the capital. Sophisticated barricades had turned the protest's stronghold into a fortress with thousands of activists camping down and a government force that, like a medieval legion laying siege to a castle, kept failing to understand that to driven, the resolute, the ones who already sacrificed it all, little could break them apart. The demonstrators even had cavalry: People in cars circled the camp. The country's government hung by a thread. In the Donbas, it was just about the same but the other way around. Same results, opposite reasoning. Like a romance with a girl from the internet. The feeling that something was about to happen lurked unspoken in every household and in people's zealous eyes. After the Armed Forces broke into the demilitarized zone, the separatist militia could follow. Tit for tat. The town could turn into an emotional dump site. I was the sort of celebrity reporter who could explore that.

At least, that was the idea. Most mornings, while Oxana taught at the school, I sulked at the kitchen table, waiting for a conflict, waiting to hear a bomb go off, waiting to hear bad news, waiting to hear any news. Something was going to happen. It was going to be big, and I wanted to be the first to tell it. I had to take advantage of my unique situation. I imagined I would have nerve-racking days, infiltrating near the buildings where the rebels had set camp, snapping a quick photo, and getting back to the village in time for a walk in the park, camera still in hand. I would take pictures of her contagious laugh, filling up my memory cards trying to capture the magic that was supposed to happen between us. She would offer wisecracking remarks and make me feel special. "Maybe one day you will win a Pulitzer, but not with these photos of me. Go photograph an explosion or something."

But none of that happened. So I sulked.

"Soon," I typed.

After the shooting, all I sent to my editor were a couple of photos of Ukrainian women in the street getting yanked into a Mercedes-Benz by some out-of-place Eurotrash thug and a half-page article I wrote, ramblings about how silly that looked: She wore fake Chanel, and he was no grinder miner. How was that not odd?