Sergei Gerasimov is holding out in Kharkiv. In his war diary, the Ukrainian writer reports on the horrific and absurd everyday life in a city that is still being shelled.
Kyiv without electricity and without lights, November 29.
November 15, 2022, afternoon
I hear the sound of a distant explosion. It takes longer than usual, maybe a few seconds.
“Jesus, not again!” I think and save my work on the computer. But the light doesn’t go out. It must have just been a rocket hitting nowhere. Once again, the Russians flushed a few million dollars down the drain.
But ten minutes later, the light really goes out. Lena is at this moment holding a lesson with a little girl.
“When did they do that?” Lena asks a rhetorical question.
“They could have done that during the dictation,” the little girl replies eagerly.
When the girl’s mother shows up, she tells us the news. The «Orcs» rockets hit a power plant. She doesn’t know which one it was and how bad the damage is because the internet isn’t working anymore. But she knows that this is a large-scale technical catastrophe, because there is no light in the whole of Ukraine. There were numerous rocket hits in Kyiv and across the country.
Yes, indeed, the much-vaunted American anti-aircraft systems were submerged while crossing the Atlantic. Because it seems that not even the capital Kyiv has them.
Then another mother drops off her young son for an English lesson. Lena’s laptop has a good battery, so she can teach without lights and without the internet. The woman says that all city transport has stopped. It’s the time when many people try to drive home from work, but they can’t now. That’s why there are so many cars on the streets. However, the traffic lights do not work.
“It’s a taxi driver’s paradise,” she says. “Maybe I should change my job and drive a taxi.”
It’s getting colder. Today the ground outside is covered with frost for the first time this autumn, but the central heating is not working.
We don’t have running water and the mobile phone connection is down too. One of the last messages we read on the smartphone says that a Russian plane armed with missiles has just taken off somewhere in the Caspian Sea and we must expect a massive attack. That is indeed a shame. A single Russian plane can leave the whole country without electricity and other achievements of civilization, and nothing in the huge amount of weapons that we have received from all over the world can help us. But maybe it wasn’t just an airplane.
It’s already dark and we have nothing to do but look out the window. We recognize the dark panorama of the city and see brief flashes of light that appear in windows and disappear again. That probably means that people go to the window with their flashlights in the vain hope of seeing something outside that is hopeful, but there is nothing there and they leave discouraged.
It’s already night. The internet and cellphone still don’t work. It’s unnerving that there’s no news. We know the Russian missile attack was probably the biggest since the war began, but we have no idea what else is happening. World War III may have begun, or Putin may already have deployed an atomic bomb. Or, why not, his friends could have poisoned him with Novichok. We just don’t know.
And of course we are not prepared. The weather forecast says minus twenty-one in two weeks, but nobody has firewood at home in case the Russians destroy Ukraine’s infrastructure any more.
They’ll analyze the damage they’ve done and then fire their missiles again to damage us even more. They’re going to try to freeze us to death.
But we know how to make a fire in a room. I think that’s good life advice for everyone. Especially now that, who knows, World War III may be about to begin or has already begun.
It’s actually quite simple if you’re not afraid of dying from carbon monoxide poisoning. You put three bricks on the floor and then put a big old metal basin on top. In there you put three more bricks and place another basin on top. Some gravel is poured into the upper basin to be heated and a fire is made in the lower basin. This is a great way to heat a small room or a corner of a small room when it’s really cold. It is to be hoped, of course, that there is good ventilation.
To person
Sergei Gerasimov – What is the war?
Of the war diaries written after the February 24 Russian invasion of Ukraine, those of Sergei Vladimirovich Gerasimov are among the most disturbing and touching. They combine the power of observation and knowledge of human nature, empathy and imagination, a sense of the absurd and inquiring intelligence. Gerasimov was born in Kharkiv in 1964. He studied psychology and later wrote a psychology textbook for schools and scientific articles on cognitive activity. His literary ambitions have so far been science fiction and poetry. Gerasimov and his wife live in the center of Kharkiv in an apartment on the third floor of a high-rise building. The NZZ published 71 “Notes from the War” in the spring and 69 in the summer. The first part is now available as a book on DTV under the title «Feuerpanorama». Of course, the author does not run out of material. – Here is the 58th contribution of the third part.
Translated from the English by Andreas Breitenstein.