War is Closer Than You Think: A Review of Serhiy Zhadan's The Orphanage (2021, Yale University Press)
After the first shots were fired in 2013, no one could have imagined that a real military attack would begin in Ukraine — that is, in Europe — in the 21st century. For more than seven years, Russia has attacked Ukraine daily and systematically. War is war: death, blood, pain, destroyed homes have an impact on the destinies of thousands of people in Eastern Ukraine, and the worst thing is that there is no end in sight. Ukraine has lost about 45,000 military and civilian personnel during this terrible time.
Ukrainian authors have already written dozens of different books about what is happening in the East and one can study this period of Ukrainian history by reading them alone. Serhiy Zhadan, one of the most famous Ukrainian writers, wrote The Orphanage in 2017, in which he describes the war (namely the events of 2015) through the eyes of an ordinary person. The novel, which was translated by Reilly Costigan Humes and Isaac Stackhouse Wheeler, is now available to English readers through Yale University Press.
Serhiy Zhadan is the author of a dozen books of various genres — including novels, short prose, poetry, essays, drama — but he is also a translator and musician. The writer was born in the town of Starobilsk, Voroshylovgrad oblast (current Luhansk oblast). He studied in Kharkiv and continues to live and work there. It goes without saying that this topic of war is particularly close and painful for him, having spent his entire life in Eastern Ukraine. As close to him are ordinary people, the youth who were brought up on the streets, ordinary workers, and the post-Soviet reality. In The Orphanage the main characters are not military men or soldiers, but rather a teacher of Ukrainian language and literature, Pasha, and his nephew Sasha. As the fighting heats up, Pasha must venture into occupied territory, where Sasha’s orphanage is located, and bring him home to safety. Pasha is a reflection of the greater part of Ukrainian society: he does not know which side of this war he is on, what the country should look like, which language should be dominant, or how to understand the country’s Soviet past and its connection to the present events. This is the image of people who, despite several years of war, do not know what they think of their homeland and are not sure whether it exists for them at all. But, in fact, they are not spared by war, and the day will come when they must decide what is in their hearts and minds, even if "there’s no one to feel sorry for" and "there’s no one to support." When it is no longer possible to overlook, the most difficult thing remains: to decide whether to run away and try to survive in a new environment or find a way to stay.
At the beginning of the novel, Pasha does not want to dwell too deeply on these questions. He would rather live as if nothing was happening: he didn't listen to the news, nor did he read the newspapers. It was a kind of inner escape because it's easier when you can't hear or see anything: nothing hurts. This is some sort of self-defense the protagonist uses, for there is no other choice. Even if Pasha wanted to go to war, he could not due to a physical impairment. Pasha himself would never have decided to go and bring Sasha back if his father had not insisted on it. The teacher is indecisive, reserved, not used to making decisions or being responsible for someone or something. Home – school, home – school: that is how life passed and nothing new or interesting happened: "Pasha liked their house; he’d lived here his whole life and planned to keep on living here. It was built by German POWs shortly after the war—a rather spacious duplex on the second street back from the train station. Their densely populated settlement, which was mostly home to railroad workers, was built around that station..." But then came the war. And this is perhaps the only chance for Pasha to change, but the question remains: will he accept the challenge? Is it not too difficult a mission for a timid, non-masculine man (when even the prostitutes in the novel are braver and more "manly") to come face to face with the war and try to save someone else? Interestingly, unlike Pasha, even little Sasha feels the war much more deeply, and from the very beginning, he knows which side he is on.
Sasha's rescue mission changes Pasha. He is not a blind patriot but one can see the center better from the periphery and even he, a simple man, transforms and becomes a little hero among the great horrors he witnesses, and a big hero for himself, even though his dreams and desires correspond to the former version of who he once was: "Everything’ll be different tomorrow, everything'll be just the way it always is, just like it used to be. Relaxed days at home where everyone’s busy doing their own thing, where everything’s where it’s supposed to be, where there’s nothing superfluous but you have everything you need. Mornings filled with domestic tasks, a job you’ve gotten used to like it’s one of your outfits—it’s not too constricting, it doesn’t get in the way, wear it while you can. Quiet evenings, dark nights. Actually, there’s so much joy, so much warmth in all of this. You had to wind up here, in the middle of hell, to feel how much you had and how much you’ve lost. Just have to get home as quickly as possible, finally step off the circles of others’ misfortune, get home fast, very fast."
There is absolutely no pathos and pathetic elements, there are no hymns, no flags, no viburnum and willow planting in the novel.
Zones and territories are also not defined: the reader knows where everything is happening and who the enemy is, but at the same time, this novel could just as well be "applied" to other wars. Donbas is described as a marginal topos of Ukraine, and the orphanage - as an image of this margin: abandoned, destroyed, closed. The Orphanage has also been called a road novel, because Pasha and Sasha’s journey changes them, purifies them, sacralizes them. The road is a kind of purgatory, a liminal space that leads to catharsis.
One of the strongest images of the novel is the many dogs wandering the streets. Perhaps this is again an allusion to those restless undecided people, who roam around the world (because they do not feel that Ukraine is their home) and do not know where to settle. This is a kind of a metaphor of restlessness, exile, betrayed loyalty, and homelessness. We are all homeless like stray dogs when we do not know where we are and where our home is.
Serhiy Zhadan’s The Orphanage does not teach and should not teach, and even more so, should not indicate what side to take in the war. The author, as sad as it may seem, described an ordinary Ukrainian who is marginal, detached, a stranger, the "other" in their own country. But the most amazing thing is that there are not thousands but millions of such people. Zhadan does not condemn, he simply speaks of a "point on the map" of a small man in a large country. And this war has shown even more clearly how many people like Pasha there are in Ukraine, but they are not lost or irredeemable.
At the end of the novel, Sasha convinces Pasha to let him take a small street puppy home with them, and this act of kindness symbolizes brighter days to come. Meanwhile, the war is ongoing: the spring of 2021, eight years after the firing of the first shots in Slovyansk, began with a massive buildup of Russian military troops on the border of Ukraine, leaving Ukraine and the world to wonder when this war will finally come to an end.
Reviewed by Khrystia Vengryniuk
Translated from the Ukrainian by Yulia Lyubka