Thread by @komarnyckyj

1/19 A thread from the opening of "Episodic Memory" published by @KalynaPress - Liubov Holota translated from the Ukrainian by Stephen Komarnyckyj. Prose to wallow in ... want to read more? Please buy a copy :-) #Ukraine #Poetry #LiteraryFiction

2/19 Chapter 1: Corridor of Mirrors

3/19 … The old mirror was exposed to the atmosphere. Its lustre was devoured by moss, which thrived in the damp air, dried flecks of water and fungi, and it no longer gathered the images of all around onto its surface. It barely reflected a desiccated apricot branch, which bore

4/19 some wrinkled, dried fruit, their greenness blasted with the mildew that glued them in place; a leaf dried out by the wind, tattered clouds, and a fat, indifferent pigeon on the roof of an unimposing breeze-block barn, or the black shadow of a concrete post, as it stretched

5/19 and retracted, bisecting this tarnished, once brilliantly silver, surface.

6/19 The beech wardrobe, which had been fashioned by craftsmen from Chernivtsi, in Khrushchev’s day, before it was acquired by the agriculturalist with the bonus money he had received as an award for maize cultivation on the eve of the same May Day when the soviet air defences

7/19 had downed Powers, had been thrown into the yard. They had shunted the cumbersome wooden hulk along the ground with their fingers and bodies straining against it, grunting virtuously and anticipating that the timber, weakened by the depredations of woodworms, would fall

8/19 apart. Thereafter it would be used to burn the rubbish that had accumulated in the village orchard and was heaped together until that moment when the pillar of smoke and fire rose upwards in those ritual fettlings of spring and autumn days. The grey, sacrificial ash would

9/19 soon be a bed where enormous green and gold striped pumpkins would be lovingly cultivated, such is the circle of non-being for those things that have served their purpose and collapsed into fragile embers. However, the beech artefact, which had survived the jaws of more than

10/19 one generation of weevils, would not surrender meekly to humanity.

11/19 The wardrobe thudded over and lay prone without releasing the time-tarnished mirror from the niche in its middle door. The mirror did not shatter into fragments, but merely stared fearfully into the sky from which the pale, blurred, red eye of a pigeon looked back askance.

12/19 The husk of a twisted leaf fell and a long-legged spider rapidly descended, taking its own soiled reflection for a rival trespassing on his territory. The grey apparition of a concrete post formed a boundary within the pool of silvered light, exactly at that point in the

13/19 mirror where the present was divided from the future. The glass seemed to sigh or moan, and the aperture, which was as narrow and finely worked as if cut with a diamond, liberated and spilled the last ray of the past; only for it to be captured and spun into the spider’s

14/19 silk thread. The spider was afraid. His web ran dry as he flew onto the speckled smoothness on the very last of his silk. He was motionless until his delicate claws stirred then struck the glass as he scurried, confused by the outlines from countless reflections of a

15/19 familiar female face, which floated to the surface from the former mirror’s depths, encountering the air and evaporating like spirits. The suddenly empty glass released its memory forever and, barely moving, noiselessly disintegrated into glittering spikes and granules that

16/19 mingled with weevil-corroded beech, and sank into the interior of the old wardrobe, breaking a window into nowhere upon its wooden breast.

17/19 The Turivnyi family moved into their new home on the day of the Intercession of the Virgin Mary, even though the newly built house was not quite ready. The lumpy, grey, cinder-block walls, seemingly awash with the grey slag from Kryvyi Rih, did not stand properly or cool

18/19 down, and retained a warm moisture. They were stippled with flecks and the damp tear tracks left in the clay-moulded corners that had not yet been whitewashed, but were smoothed over with ore and plastered with sand and clay. Cold wafted through the uncovered ceiling in the

19/19 passageway. Drafts flew through the attic and made the doors bang shut. Oat sprouts appeared on the daubed wall between the windows and swiftly began to turn green. Daubing the walls, they generously added horse manure to the plaster for warmth and to strengthen it.