-- Joyce Grenfell
Soon after, elephants began appearing mysteriously and anonymously in the Perskanski neighbourhood. Not long after a gulag prisoner would be released, an elephant chalk face would appear on the Perskanski stairwell or an elephant-fronted postcard from the Crimea would arrive, unsigned. And Magda would know Papa was okay, something all the more important now that her mother was desperately trying to distance daughter from father, having divorced him and taking up with some Party twit she thought would protect the two of them and wash away the father’s stain.
Once, Magda had had the good fortune to bump into one of the men who’d known her father in the gulag and asked about his health. It was then she found out he had died. Life expectancy in the gulag was generally less than seven years, the average length of sentence given out by the Soviet courts. If you outlived the term, you were considered to have cheated the State by shirking your duties or taking up more than your fair share of resources. Seven years under gulag conditions were more than enough to be a death sentence. Magda’s father had passed away years ago, long enough that the elephants should have stopped coming. But they hadn’t. On his deathbed, the men in the barracks had promised him to keep the custom going. Every time one of them got out or had a message get through to a relative, an elephant was sent to a little girl, a teen, a grown woman, all so that she wouldn’t worry about her Dad. He was that much respected. That much loved.
That was why Magda wouldn’t give up her elephants.
Chapter one: Genesis. God was so lonely, he created stories. He was still lonely, so he created humans to tell them.
“What's your story?” Magda demanded, looking around at the washed-out colour of Snow’s walls. Where others might have seen blah, she saw walls the colour of sturgeon grilled over a wood stove.
“What’s hurt you so badly you think you need to be alone? Here, I’ll start. My father was a quarter Ukrainian.”
“Yeah? Mine was half drunk.”
Snowden Nastiuk didn’t have a history, just a geographic location. It was his way of giving himself a past, since he sure as hell couldn’t imagine having a future. He had grown up thirty kilometres from Buffalo Jump and forty miles from good-looking, alone with his father on a ranch in the Rocky Mountain foothills, dominated by his opinionated Dad’s predilections, preconceptions and prejudices. Snow’s father had been born in 1937 and began drinking shortly thereafter. He died in 1987, when it is believed he stopped. In between, he sired Snow, drove a wife to suicide and ranched.
“Your father has passed?” Magda asked. “Mine, too. I am sorry.”
“Passed? Hell, no! He was a full-on fucking failure. He sure as hell failed in raising me. I’m not sorry.”
“God you’re selfish,” Magda declaimed. “You can’t be like everyone else. No, your suffering and failure have to be something special, unique. Someday, you’ll have to face that your failures are no more special than anyone else’s.”
“We’ll see,” Snow said. “What would you know? He was my father.”
“It's better to have pain from someone who loves you than from a stranger,” said Magda, with all the logic of a true Slav. The possibility of no pain at all never seemed to cross her mind. You see, if there was one thing Magda had learned in the gulag , it was that the world doesn’t run on logic. It runs on the seven deadly sins. The sum of life was getting food into your belly. Everything else was pure luxury.
It wasn’t that Snow had had a bad relationship with his father. It was that they had had no relationship at all. As far as his dad was concerned, words were like window curtains, decorative screens to keep the neighbours out. On the ranch, they never had much use for any of them: curtains or
Soon after, elephants began appearing mysteriously and anonymously in the Perskanski neighbourhood. Not long after a gulag prisoner would be released, an elephant chalk face would appear on the Perskanski stairwell or an elephant-fronted postcard from the Crimea would arrive, unsigned. And Magda would know Papa was okay, something all the more important now that her mother was desperately trying to distance daughter from father, having divorced him and taking up with some Party twit she thought would protect the two of them and wash away the father’s stain.
Once, Magda had had the good fortune to bump into one of the men who’d known her father in the gulag and asked about his health. It was then she found out he had died. Life expectancy in the gulag was generally less than seven years, the average length of sentence given out by the Soviet courts. If you outlived the term, you were considered to have cheated the State by shirking your duties or taking up more than your fair share of resources. Seven years under gulag conditions were more than enough to be a death sentence. Magda’s father had passed away years ago, long enough that the elephants should have stopped coming. But they hadn’t. On his deathbed, the men in the barracks had promised him to keep the custom going. Every time one of them got out or had a message get through to a relative, an elephant was sent to a little girl, a teen, a grown woman, all so that she wouldn’t worry about her Dad. He was that much respected. That much loved.
That was why Magda wouldn’t give up her elephants.
Chapter one: Genesis. God was so lonely, he created stories. He was still lonely, so he created humans to tell them.
“What's your story?” Magda demanded, looking around at the washed-out colour of Snow’s walls. Where others might have seen blah, she saw walls the colour of sturgeon grilled over a wood stove.
“What’s hurt you so badly you think you need to be alone? Here, I’ll start. My father was a quarter Ukrainian.”
“Yeah? Mine was half drunk.”
Snowden Nastiuk didn’t have a history, just a geographic location. It was his way of giving himself a past, since he sure as hell couldn’t imagine having a future. He had grown up thirty kilometres from Buffalo Jump and forty miles from good-looking, alone with his father on a ranch in the Rocky Mountain foothills, dominated by his opinionated Dad’s predilections, preconceptions and prejudices. Snow’s father had been born in 1937 and began drinking shortly thereafter. He died in 1987, when it is believed he stopped. In between, he sired Snow, drove a wife to suicide and ranched.
“Your father has passed?” Magda asked. “Mine, too. I am sorry.”
“Passed? Hell, no! He was a full-on fucking failure. He sure as hell failed in raising me. I’m not sorry.”
“God you’re selfish,” Magda declaimed. “You can’t be like everyone else. No, your suffering and failure have to be something special, unique. Someday, you’ll have to face that your failures are no more special than anyone else’s.”
“We’ll see,” Snow said. “What would you know? He was my father.”
“It's better to have pain from someone who loves you than from a stranger,” said Magda, with all the logic of a true Slav. The possibility of no pain at all never seemed to cross her mind. You see, if there was one thing Magda had learned in the gulag , it was that the world doesn’t run on logic. It runs on the seven deadly sins. The sum of life was getting food into your belly. Everything else was pure luxury.
It wasn’t that Snow had had a bad relationship with his father. It was that they had had no relationship at all. As far as his dad was concerned, words were like window curtains, decorative screens to keep the neighbours out. On the ranch, they never had much use for any of them: curtains or
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