A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian

Five. A short history of tractors in Ukrainian

What do I know about my mother? Ludmilla (Milla, Millochka) Mitrofanova was born in 1912 in Novaya Aleksandria, a small garrison town in what is now Poland, but was then on the western flank of the Russian Empire. Her father, Mitrofan Ocheretko, was a cavalry officer, a war hero, and an outlaw. Her mother Sonia was nineteen years old when Ludmilla was born, a trainee schoolteacher, a survivor.

The Ocheretkos were not gentry but wealthy peasants from the Poltava region of Ukraine, who lived on the edge of a khutor (settlement) and farmed some thirty hectares on the eastern bank of the Sula River. They were hard-working, hard-drinking Cossacks who had somehow amassed enough wealth to pay the necessary bribe to win a lucrative contract to supply horses to the Tsar’s army. This in rum allowed them to save up enough to pay the considerably greater sum needed to secure for their eldest son, Mitrofan, a place in the military academy.

Mitrofan Ocheretko seems to have been a brilliant soldier: fearless and prudent, he loved life but respected death. Unlike officers drawn from the nobility, who hardly considered the peasants to be human, Ocheretko was mindful of the troops and careful with their lives, only taking risks when there was something to be gained. From the mud and slaughter of the Great War, he emerged covered in glory. His great moment came in 1916, on the Eastern Front, when he took a bullet in his thigh at Lake Naroch crawling through a bog to rescue the Tsar’s cousin, who had become trapped as the spring thaw turned the shores of the lake into miles of churned-up mud. Ocheretko dragged the young aristocrat to safety and carried him in his arms through a hail of artillery fire.

For his bravery he was awarded the St George’s Cross. The Tsar himself pinned it to his chest, and the Tsarina patted little Ludmilla on the head. Two years later, the Tsar and Tsarina were dead, and Ocheretko was an outlaw on the run.

After the revolution of 1917, Ocheretko joined neither the Russian White Army nor the Soviet Red Army. Instead, he took Sonia and the three children-my mother Ludmilla now had a younger sister and brother-back to Poltava and left them there in a tumbledown wooden cottage on the khutor while he went off to fight with the rebel Ukrainian National Republican Army. It was a moment to be seized: now while Russia was tearing herself apart, this might be the occasion for Ukraine to slip free of the imperial yoke.

Ludmilla hardly saw her father during those years. Sometimes he would arrive in the middle of the night, exhausted and hungry, and be gone again by the morning. “Don’t tell anyone Pappa was here,” her mother would whisper to the children.

The Civil War was waged through a succession of bloody massacres and reprisals so gruesome that it seemed as if the human soul itself had died. No town, not even the smallest village, no household was left untouched. The history books tell of ingenious new ways of inflicting painful lingering death. The gift of imagination, perverted by blood-lust, invented tortures undreamt of before, and former neighbours became enemies for whom mere shooting was too merciful. But my parents never talked to me about these horrors: I was their precious peacetime baby.

When Mother described her early childhood it was always as an idyll-long summers when the sun was hot and they ran barefoot in the fields and skinny-dipped in the Sula River, or took their cow off to the distant pastures and stayed outdoors from dawn to dusk. No shoes, no pants, no one to tell them what to do. And grass tall enough to hide in, such a merry green, sprinkled with red and yellow flowers. And the sky blue-blue, and cornfields like a sheet of gold stretching as far as eye could see. Sometimes, in the distance, they could hear shooting, and see curls of smoke rising from a burning house.

My father has positioned himself in front of the map of Ukraine, and is delivering an intense two-hour lecture to his captive one-man (Mike) audience about the history, politics, culture, economics, agriculture and aviation industry of Ukraine. His student is settled comfortably in the armchair facing the map, but his eyes are focused on a spot beyond the lecturer’s head. His cheeks are very pink. In his hand he cradles a glass of Mother’s home-made plum wine.

“It is often forgotten that the Civil War was more than a simple matter of whites against reds. No fewer than four foreign armies were in battle for control over Ukraina: Red Army of Soviets, White Russian Imperial Army, Polish army mounting opportunistic invasion, and German army propping up puppet regime of Skoropadski.”

I am in the kitchen cutting up vegetables for soup, listening with half an ear.

“The Ukrainians were led by former Cossack atmans, or grouped under the anarchist banner of Makhno. Their aim, at once both simple and impossible, was to free Ukraina of all occupying forces.”

The secret of my mother’s fabulous soup was plenty of salt (they both suffered from high blood pressure), a big knob of butter (they didn’t worry about cholesterol), and vegetables, garlic and herbs fresh from the garden. I cannot make soup like this.

“Nadezhda’s grandfather, Mitrofan Ocheretko, joined a band under the leadership of Atman Tiutiunik, to whom he became second-in-command. They were fighting in a loose alliance with the ‘Ukrainian Directoire’ of Simon Petlura. Ocheretko, by the way, was a very remarkable type with sweeping moustaches and eyes black like coal. I have seen his picture, though of course I have never met him.”

Into the soup, when it was simmering, she dolloped teaspoons of ‘halushki’- a paste of raw egg and semolina, beaten together with salt and herbs-which fluffed up into dumplings that crumbled on your tongue.

“At end of the Civil War this Ocheretko fled to Turkey. Now Sonia’s brother Pavel-he by the way was a very remarkable type, railway engineer who built first rail line from Kiev to Odessa -he was friend of Lenin. Because of this, some letters were written and Mitrofan Ocheretko was rehabilitated under amnesty, and obtained a job teaching sword-fencing in the military academy in Kiev. And it was here in Kiev that Ludmilla and I first met.”

His voice has gone all croaky.

“Come on, Pappa, Mike, lunch is ready!”

The time between Valentina’s return to Ukraine and her re-entry into England was a time of great personal growth and intellectual activity for my father. He started pouring out poems again, which he left lying around the house on scraps of paper, all written in the same crabbed Cyrillic hand. I deciphered the word ‘love’ once or twice, but I couldn’t bring myself to read them.

Every week he wrote to Valentina in Ukraine and in between letters he telephoned and talked, sometimes to her, sometimes to her intelligent-type husband. I know the phone calls were long because I saw the phone bill.

However, with my sister and me he was very cagey. He didn’t want us telling him what to do. He had already made his mind up.

Vera went to visit him in September. She described her visit;

“The house is filthy. He eats off newspaper. He eats nothing but apples. I tried to persuade him to go into a sheltered housing scheme, but he says you dissuaded him. I can’t imagine what you think you can gain from this, Nadezhda. I suppose you’re worried that if he sells the house you won’t be able to inherit your share. Really! Your obsession is going too far. The house is much too big for him now. I tried to get a home help, but he refuses. As for this other sordid business-I tried to find out what’s going on with this tart, but he won’t talk about it at all. He just changes the subject. I don’t know what the matter with him is. He was behaving most oddly. We really should see the doctor about having him certified, don’t you agree? He seems to be living in a world of his own.”

I held the phone away from my ear and let her rabbit on.

The next day he phoned me to describe Big Sister’s visit.

“When I saw the car pulling into driveway and I saw her getting out and walking towards the house, can you imagine, Nadezhda, I performed involuntary excretion in my trousers.” He said it as though his bowels were not part of him but a discrete force of nature. “You see, this Vera, she is terrible autocrat. Tyrant. Like Stalin. She is always pestering me. Must do this, must do that. Why must I always do as I’m told? Can I not make up my mind about something? Now she says I must have sheltered housing. I cannot afford sheltered housing. Too expensive for me. Better I stay here. Live here. Die here. You tell her I said so. Tell her I want her to visit me no more. You and Michael can visit.”

When Mike and I next visit, we find the house and garden much as my sister described. A thin veil of dust has greyed all the white paintwork and clings to cobwebs on the ceiling. The sitting-room is full of windfall apples collected from the ground and laid out in shallow boxes and cartons on the table, chairs, sideboard and even on top of the wardrobe, filling the house with their fruity over-ripe smell. Fruit-flies hover over the Grieves and Beauty of Bath apples which, being softer, have already started to turn brown and bubble up in specks of mould that my father is too short-sighted to notice. He sits at one end of the table with his little knife, peeling, slicing and sorting them into Toshiba-sized piles. I notice how much better he himself is looking.

“Hallo! Hallo!” he greets us warmly. “Well, nothing new to report. Excellent apples! Look!” He offers us a dish of the sticky Toshiba-cooked mixture. “Today we must go to library. I have ordered some books. I am becoming very interested in this business of an engineering Weltanschauung as in ideology incorporated into design of new machines.”

Mike looks impressed. I raise my eyes to the ceiling. My father ploughs on, furrowing up trails of gleaming brown ideas.

“You see as Marx said himself, the relations of production are embedded in the machinery of production. Take for example the tractor. In nineteenth century, early tractors were made by the individual craftsman in his workshop. Now they are produced on assembly lines, and at the end of assembly line stands man with stopwatch. He measures the process.” (The accent is on the second syllable-“pro-cm’.) To make more efficiency the worker must work harder. Now look at a man who ploughs in the field. He sits alone in cab. He moves levers and the tractor ploughs. He follows the gradient of terrain, he takes account of soil and weather. He believes he is master of the process. But at the end of the field stands another man with stopwatch. He observes the tractor driver, makes note of his lines and turns. So certain time is allotted for the ploughing of a field, and man’s wages fixed accordingly. Now, you see, in this era of computerised numerical control, even the man with stopwatch will be redundant, and stopwatch itself will be incorporated into dashboard equipment.”

He flourishes the little knife with manic energy. Curls of apple peel slide off the table on to the carpet, where they are trodden into a fragrant mush.

“It’s the testosterone surge,” says Mike as we follow my father through the busy Saturday morning streets of Peterborough. “Look, his back’s straightened up, his arthritis is better. We can hardly keep up with him.”

It is true. My father is racing ahead of us, darting and dodging through the crowd with single-minded intent. He is heading for the public library to pick up his books. He walks in a kind of rapid shuffle, bending forward from the hips, hands at his sides, head stretched out in front, jaw set, peering straight ahead.

“Oh, you men are all the same. You think sex is the cure for everything.”

“It cures quite a lot of things.”

“It’s funny, but when I talk about this business of my father and Valentina with my women friends, they’re absolutely appalled. They see a vulnerable old man who’s being exploited. Yet all the men I talk to-without any exception, Mike” (I wag my finger) “they respond with these wry knowing smiles, these little admiring chuckles. Oh, what a lad he is. What an achievement, pulling this much younger bird. Best of luck to him. Let him have his bit of fun.”

“You must admit, it’s done him good.”

“I don’t admit anything.”

(It’s much less satisfying arguing with Mike than with Vera or Pappa. He’s always so irritatingly reasonable.)

“Are you sure you’re not just being a bit puritanical?”

“Of course I’m not!” (So what if I am?) “It’s because he’s my father-I just want him to be grown up.”

“He is being grown up, in his way.”

“No he’s not, he’s being a lad. An eighty-four-year-old lad. You’re all being lads together. Wink wink. Nudge nudge. What a great pair of knockers. For goodness’ sake!” My voice has risen to a shriek.

“But you can see it’s doing him good, this new relationship. It’s breathed new life into him. Just goes to show that you’re never too old for love.”

“You mean for sex.”

“Well, maybe that as well. Your Dad is just hoping to fulfil every man’s dream-to lie in the arms of a beautiful younger woman.”

“Every man’s dream?”

That night Mike and I sleep in separate beds.

My father has ordered from the library several biographies of nineteenth-century engineers: John Fowler, David Greig, Charles Burrell, the Fisken brothers. Encouraged by Valentina’s husband, the intelligent-type polytechnic director, he has started to research and write his great work: A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian.

The first tractor was invented by a certain John Fowler, a Quaker, an intelligent and abstemious type. No vodka, beer, wine, not even tea crossed his lips, and for this reason his brain was extraordinarily clear. Some people may describe him as a genius.

Fowler was a good man, who saw in the tractor a means to emancipate the labouring masses from their life of mindless toil, and bring them to an appreciation of the spiritual life. He worked night and day to perfect his plans.

He writes in Ukrainian then translates it painstakingly into English (he studied English and German at high school) for Mike’s benefit. I am surprised how good his written English is, though sometimes I have to help him with the translation.

The first tractor, which Fowler invented, was not strictly speaking a tractor at all, since it did not drag a plough. Nevertheless, it was an engine of amazing ingenuity. Fowler’s tractor consisted of two engines positioned on opposite sides of the field, and connected by a looped cable, and to the cable were fixed the blades of a plough. As the engines turned, so the cable pulled the plough up and down the field, up and down. Up and down.

My father’s voice drones up and down like a contented harvest bumble-bee. The room is warm and full of harvest smells. Outside the window, a purplish twilight is settling over the fields. A tractor is moving slowly up and down, already turning the burned-off stubble into the ground.