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.
People wait for the bus in Kupyansk, October 13.
December 6, 2022
The name of the bus stop, North Saltivka, sounds grim, but life is already coming back here.
The owners of the apartments hire workers to patch holes in the walls with bricks, confident that war will not return. It is highly unlikely that the Ukrainian army will ever allow the enemy to get as close to Kharkiv as they did in February and March. Whatever the reason, a fatal mistake or betrayal, it will not happen again. The streets are no longer empty. Three people are standing at the bus stop, and two more are approaching.
As I ponder this, the alarm sounds.
A man looks up at the sky and curses.
“Oh, not again,” says a woman wearily.
The workers patching the holes in the walls with bricks continue their work unperturbed. Nobody cares much about the alarm.
After a while I hear the sound of an explosion in the distance. The cold wind carries it from the fields to the north.
I come across some young people, probably volunteers, trying to gently capture a stray dog. They hold up small packets of dog food and shake them. The small, white stray looks at her suspiciously.
“I can fuck myself!” is written on his face. If they showed him a bone with a piece of meat, it wouldn’t be a problem.
The volunteers are doing a great job. They provide new families for many strays from North Saltivka, probably hundreds of them. A friend of mine has already adopted such a dog. Pets should be loved and cared for. It’s not your fault that humans sometimes behave worse than the worst animals.
There is a concrete shelter near the bus stop. It looks like a shack, with reinforced concrete walls at least a foot thick. As far as I know, it weighs a hundred tons. A diesel generator rattles along and the plastic doors are shut tight, which means it must be warm inside.
I decide to go inside, not because I’m afraid of Russian shells, but because it’s six degrees below zero today and the north wind is bitingly cold. Inside it’s as warm as paradise. I recognize two rows of seats against the walls. A surveillance camera shows me on a screen – I’m quite good looking for my age. Another camera shows the bus stop shelter with people freezing on the bench.
In Corona year 2021 there was a joke that went something like this: It’s really annoying to wear face masks all the time, but if we have a pandemic with a gut virus next year, we’ll have to put on diapers every time we go out.
Back then, nobody could have guessed that 2022 would bring far worse things than diapers: bomb shelters at bus stops.
A woman with an angry face charges her mobile phone in it.
“It’s really warm in here,” I tell her.
I’ve been in a concrete shelter not far from the street where I live. Brrr. It had no doors at all, and a cold wind swept through the tube, the door holes of which were ringed with frost.
“Yes, it’s warm,” replies the woman. “But we haven’t had central heating in our apartment for five days!”
“Neither do we,” I say.
“That’s what I mean! The whole city has heating and electricity, except for North Saltivka!”
She seems to think I’m a local.
“That’s not true! We don’t have heating or electricity in the center either,” I say to her, but she doesn’t listen to me.
She tells me how the city government cheated her by persuading her to return home, promising that she would have hot water, heating and electricity there. She returned – and lo and behold! Now she has to charge her cell phone in an air raid shelter.
“It’s the electricity mafia!” she says angrily. “They do it on purpose to sell more power generators!”
She doesn’t associate the situation with the Russian missiles at all. A grumpy young girl with a silver nose piercing enters. She listens to the story about the electricity mafia and makes her “I’m annoyed with the whole world” face.
I look at one of the screens and see that the bus stop is already crowded with people. With or without heating, North Saltivka comes alive again.
To person
Sergei Gerasimov: what is the war?
Of the war diaries written after the Russian invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, 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 79th contribution of the third part.
Translated from the English by Andreas Breitenstein.