THE JAWS OF FATE
Lucky Breaks by Yevgenia Belorusets; translated by Eugene OstashevskyPushkin Press
May 2022Selected by Barbara Epler
Yevgenia Belorusets’ beautifully low-to-the-ground 2014 collection of stories about women’s daily lives in the war-stricken industrial Donbas region of Ukraine has taken on urgent and tragic new dimensions since the vicious Russian invasion. Belorusets remained in Kyiv through the brutal onset of the new war, sharing with the world her War Diary (co-published online each afternoon by isolarii and Artforum) with daily posts such as “In the Nerve Center of Catastrophe” and “The Smell of Burning Forests”. Lucky Breaks – at last available in English – carries us, via its unexpected encounters and stalwart women characters (florists, palm readers, midwives), ever deeper into the tragedy unfolding before our eyes. What was always a special book – combining the tender and the terrible, the humble and epic – has now become a prescient map for navigating a nightmare. We can only admire the resilience of Belorusets’ marvellous women – and of the author. – Barbara Epler
I have been working on a preface for this book for many months now. What I wanted, above all, was a scientific approach. I planned to concisely set forth some facts about documentality and to deliver, if not the definitive, then a suitably severe verdict against it, only to employ a certain rhetorical manoeuvre and finally – citing the spot-on remark of a woman I know – to resolve once and for all why topicality is infinitely better than documentality, but not in every respect.
I must admit that, after countless ruminations and epiphanies hazardously abutting despair, but without crossing over into despair proper, I managed to create a preface that was hard to tear your eyes away from. My hands tremble even now when I recall that specimen of significance so magnificently caparisoned.
In the roar of the predawn highway an alcoholic overhears a remote chime that people in our parts call “the snap of the jaws of fate”. Its inaccessible beauty evokes the rhythm I had constructed in that text.
Yet, if you think about it long enough, the role of a preface will turn out to be too narrow and undeservedly cramped for an utterance of such calibre. It is an utterance that ought to aim higher. It must serve as the foundation for everything else, yet it itself should not be made public by any means. (Publication is a false target!)
Nor may it be put up for sale. It may perhaps be bartered for cultural values or handed out as an encouragement for those who are at least partially full, while those who are hungry might receive it as a momentary distraction from thoughts of sustenance. Yet lately I had an occasion to test out the said preface: it did not distract me, alas, it did not distract me. In one of the coming chapters I will make sure to return to the notable experience I acquired thereby, so that it can be described in great detail.
But I cannot pass over in silence an incident that befell me not long ago – as a matter of fact, just yesterday.
Our neighbourhood is quite badly off, although from far away it appears fairly up to par – maybe even the best-off neighbourhood in Kyiv. But I can tell that its facades of well-being hide profound and sincere ill-being. Yet how can something hidden remain sincere? No doubt it cannot. Still, the earnestness of this ill-being will stun anyone who dares to discover it. And yet, even here one must be honest with oneself and recognise how rare in our society is the daring that the discovery calls for!
So it is no surprise that I felt disconcerted yesterday evening when, at the entrance to my building – where someone had screwed out and carried off the bulb that used to dimly illuminate the small area around the steps up to the doorway – I discovered first a long shadow, and then a figure that had separated from a wall awash in darkness and was menacingly extending an enormous hand in my direction.
The voice of the person who spoke to me turned out to be soft and pleasant. A high, melodic voice inhibited by a tender, impulsive intonation. A woman stood before me, trying to explain something. She had been wanting to meet me for a long while now in order to ask me a few questions.
“Maybe I can cook up some semblance of an interview from your answers,” she nervously suggested. “But it’s more likely that I will fail. I have to confess that I fail at much of what I set out to do. Practically all of my plans, desires, intentions, and goals run aground and go under. But you will kindly spare a few minutes of your time to answer my questions. Believe me, it’s not so difficult to answer, especially when the questions are already there in your hands. To formulate the questions – my responsibility completely – is the far more demanding task.” ◉
Belorusets writes that her aim is to uncover the “deep penetration of traumatic historical events into the fantasies and experiences of everyday life … by means of phantasmagoria, narrative, conversation, and the disclosure of certain situations to the viewer”. The perfect preface conjured here is an alternative record, a ghost text promising information that is much more straightforward and much less interesting.
In April 2022, after 40 days of aerial bombardment, Belorusets fled to Poland, writing: “When I started this diary … my faith in the impossibility of such a senseless war was strong. Now I travel onward, moving kilometres farther from the ongoing violence, while looking out the window of the train at another country’s sprawling landscape – and suddenly find myself fearing for this place as well.”