IN A STATE OF SIEGE
Sometimes strange moments occur that have been treated many times in literature, during which a person takes part in some kind of important or even groundbreaking event while simultaneously looking at themselves from the side or from somewhere above. Joyce’s autobiographical protagonist Stephen Dedalus, for example, experiences such an out-of-body experience when he’s on a first date. Something similar happened to me on the Maidan on the night of December 11. And, actually, I was also on a first date then—with a member of the Berkut riot police. But there was no close physical contact then.
And so I stood there, gazing at myself with a stranger’s eyes, looking over the borrowed tanker’s helmet on my own head with amazement and thinking about Albert Camus. Honest to God. I stood there and thought about Albert Camus, fully comprehending how absurd, in an existentialist meaning of that word, the situation was—standing on the Maidan and thinking about Albert Camus. Not about Cossack glory, not about our numbskull “enemies” or about “dew on the sun” [1] and not even about Faulkner and Salinger, whom I think about most often when the subject of Ukraine comes up. No, I stood there and thought about Albert Camus, about his novel The Plague, and about the novel’s protagonist, Dr. Rieux.
Because it’s quite clear what it is we think about these days. And we ask one another: “Listen, be honest, do you really believe in our victory?” To be more precise—personally, I don’t ask. And I try not to answer. Not because I don’t believe in this particular victory, but because, after a certain age, “a belief in victory” begins to sound too cruel. A belief in victory? Wonderful. If you’re an athlete or a military academy cadet, then you have to believe in victory. Because how else could you endure your whole life spread out before you, one that is destined to pass by in wasted anticipation of that vital moment that will never come anyway? But if you’ve lived on this earth for a while and have observed it for a bit, then in place of your belief comes a realization: people are not destined to be victorious. Well, forget about being victorious—people are not destined to compete. They’re destined to walk out onto the battlefield of life and to wander over it, wander in order to become aware of their helplessness, their insanity, their despair. Well, at least that’s how one of Faulkner’s protagonists saw it.
And one—the most famous—of Salinger’s protagonists surmised, while still a young man, that it’s not worth playing someone else’s game according to their rules. Especially if it seems that there aren’t any “hot-shots” (that’s the term he used) on your side. However, if you look at it simply and sincerely, Salinger’s most famous protagonist, to put it bluntly, did not experience misfortune. Because in his America there are at least some rules and the outcome of the game depends on the quantity and quality of the hot-shot players. Conversely, in our parts, the results are determined by degraded scumbags, all those yanykovychs and azarovs, all those kliuievs and zakharchenkos, the dobkins and the kolesnichenkos; [2] the mere fact of co-existing with them on one common territory and in one common period of time becomes unbearable. What kind of game and what kinds of rules can we even talk about here? And what kind of belief in victory can there be? A belief in God (if, for some reason you still have it)—it’s not a sin to lose that too when you look at all those degenerates and at their loyal voters.
To make a long story short, lately any time the idea of our chances for a better future pops up, I immediately recall The Sound and the Fury and Catcher in the Rye. But that night on the Maidan, in search of some kind of inner support, I thought of Dr. Rieux from Camus’ The Plague. Although one would be hard pressed, of course, to consider either him, or Camus himself, to be an optimist. But that’s just whom I needed then, because in the company of optimists I feel even more hopeless than I do in the company of pessimists.
So then, Dr. Rieux. Unlike his naïve-optimistic or just simply far-removed-from-medicine fellow citizens, he recognizes the plague at a stage long before it becomes a full epidemic. And he fights it with all his might. He realizes that the disease is stronger than he and that it is capable of wiping out almost half of the population. He knows that the serum is not working yet and that the plague will not subside until it attains the peak of its power, at which time, maybe, it will begin to choke on its own excessiveness. Yes, Rieux does not believe in victory. Or, more precisely, he doesn’t at all clutter his head with such nonsense. But he continues to fight. If only because he would lose his sense of existence if he didn’t. And also because, in one’s world view, there are axioms that are self-evident. Including: regardless who ends up winning in the end, a person, if he or she wants to remain a human being, cannot, in any circumstances, take the side of the plague.
These are approximately the thoughts with which I cheered myself up, and then I suddenly noticed that the sky above Instytutska Street had become red. There were more and more of us, more and more often I saw the faces of acquaintances and friends. And later, dawn arrived on the Maidan. The bacilli, following orders, retreated to their epidemic hearths. Victory, as is always the case, was very far away. But that night, we definitely did not lose.
Notes
[1] This is in reference to the Ukrainian national anthem line “Our enemies will perish, like dew on the sun.”
[2] Mykola Azarov, Andrii Kliuiev, Vitalii Zakharchenko, Mykhailo Dobkin, and Vadym Kolesnichenko were all leaders in Viktor Yanukovych’s regime, which was ousted from power in Ukraine by the 2014 EuroMaidan Revolution.
Translated by Mark Andryczyk