Zosya Sukhavei shares her reader's impressions about the book about real events and metaphysical spells.

Plots

Never jumped with a parachute.

And here I had to.

Quite unexpectedly.

Suddenly.

And not willingly.

Despite the fact that she was forced to do this not on some airfield adapted for such entertainment, or at least on a spacious field or a vast floodplain.

No, no and no.

They pushed me out of the flight over the sedge-covered swamp and over the old trees of the wild garden, into the slumbering spruce bowels and into the muddy rivers, onto patches of forest glades the size of a span and into the depths of neglected burial vaults.

She jumped thirty-four times.

She survived.

I got dizzy.

She saw that nearby strong men were strangling grandmother Dominka from death.

And after a wave, together with the crying girl, she went to the prison to free her mother and father from their captors.

And then in another place she leaned against a holy tree.

A pear that evil people uprooted three times and it grew again three times.

In an instant, she found herself in Białowieża Pushcha next to Czeslaw Milosz...

Both my risky flights and the kaleidoscope of almost simultaneous trips to unknown places with unknown people are the fault of Anna Kondratsyuk.

More precisely, her new book "In the shelter of the old forest."

Stories of people from Białowieża Pushcha", which was recently published in Białystok.

No opening remarks, zero preparatory words.

A push — and he finds himself in the center of someone else's fate.

Five-ten-twenty book pages absorb the whole life of a person, his whole family and homeland.

Each story stuns from the first line.

The uniqueness of the plot, the unique author's style, the colorful language of the writer's compatriots, and her often unexpected, or even simply paradoxical, conclusions about the regularity of life and death.

Style

"Someone runs into the house, plucks a rainbow from the bed.

The door slams, the radio point on the wall blares.

I run barefoot outside and fly into the middle of the scream.

There is a swarm of people, a commotion.

I squeeze between other people's legs and arms like a kitten to see.

Dominka is lying on the grass, without breathing or hearing, curled up in a rag, like the shadow of a little man"...

This is how the first story of the book begins.

And this is how the last one ends:

"They appear every day at dawn and dusk.

Always under the cover of night, when in half-darkness it is easy to pretend to be a bush, a tree... They walk blindly towards the wall, which up close is no longer a strip of fog, but a hard barrier, against which you can only crack your skull.

In front, a mother is grinding carefully, behind her is a young daughter.

Sometimes she kicks in a childish way, her youthful impetuosity spreads.

But her mother does not allow her to get out of the sharingan, she has all the sensitivity and responsibility in her head.

Keeps order in the herd, although it has long been destroyed, shot.

A few minutes later, under the same cover of night, they will be scratching back into the forest from whence they came.

Crouched, without previous sensitivity and confidence.

The daughter will jump to the side, run her way.

Her mother will rush after her, although she does not have the strength to restrain the silly prankster.

Under the forest are towers with hunters with guns.

Shots are heard from there in the morning and in the evening.

Then I faint from fear...

Every morning I look out the window with the hope that I will see them again."

Just two quotes.

From the beginning and from the end of the book.

Comments here are superfluous - it is simply necessary to read.

SEE ALSO: Leta, a writer from Podlasie: "I take a prayer book and a map on my travels"

Language

In Podlasie now there are creators who write "in their own way".

Locally.

The local way.

Anna Kondratsyuk writes in Belarusian.

But the language of her books is devoid of literary sterile chastity and dictionary normality.

All her works are thickly sprinkled with gold coins from the bottomless linguistic piggy bank of White Towers.

Separated from the world by impenetrable swamps and forest walls, the inhabitants of the forest have preserved many names of plants and trees, tools and actions, holidays and phenomena known to them from time immemorial.

"Zhemyarva", "Zhaniachka", "kastragi", "hobanina", "shchypyoriny", "prey", "degenerate", "booth", "boil", "alker", "astrokol", "bahur", "crowner" ", "merlins", "plagia", "scare", "get stuck", "cats"

My language is now enriched by a couple of hundred words.

Maybe, after reading this book, yours will take even more Podlaskie zlotyna.

SEE ALSO: Reader Kondratyuk: I'm no longer looking for heroes and anti-heroes in books - they're nearby

Everyday life

The book begins with the story "How Dominka was raised from the dead."

It tells about a true incident in the author's native village.

The men put the unconscious old woman on a self-woven rug, took hold of the four horns, lifted her up and began to rock her harder and harder until she regained consciousness.

And then, as if nothing had happened, she lived another thirty years.

All (or almost all) characters in the book are real people.

The author has known some of them since she was a child, heard stories about others from relatives and countrymen, got to know some of them during her tireless travels in the Pushcha region.

And all of them, like Dominka's grandmother, yearn for life and resurrect from the most seemingly lifeless situations.

Like the original from the story "They cried, that was heard in the sky!".

In 1942, she and other villagers were driven to be shot by the executioners.

When she had to fall into the ditch with the child in her, she gave birth.

Because a miracle happened - Luftwaffe Major Albert Emil Herbs just flew over the place of the punitive action and, upon landing, ordered its cancellation.

And then he also gave the surviving villagers an icon of the Mother of God, which, as he explained, appeared to him in the sky when he flew over that deadly ditch.

"Everyone wants to live.

And not from day to day, but from spring to spring.

Nastusya lives from the Annunciation to the Savior.

All other days and months are waiting for her.

Waiting for storks to fly again.

If you break the silence with a vigorous kneeling, your mind and body will wake up from a numb sleep."

This is how the author begins the story about the almost hundred-year-old Nastusya, who still lives in the white world only because the primrose outside her window is not empty from spring to autumn.

Irena, Nastusi's 75-year-old daughter, sums up her and her mother's wisdom:

"Half of our lives we lived in the city, half of our lives were spent in hustle and bustle to live like people.

And when they earned what they needed, they all ran away from that inhabited nest.

Everything seems to be a joke.

To bring everything down to the morning clucking of storks in recent years.

No, we can't live without storks."

SEE ALSO: Litanketa Svoboda: Anna Kondratsiuk

Everyday death

The wind blows through the old attics - this, according to my reader's impression, is the leitmotif of the book.

Talking to her, mostly very old, heroes, the author hears memories of her past life.

In it, they are all still young and their parents and grandfathers are alive.

But together with aged children and grandchildren, not only people are leaving for eternity - the unique everyday culture of White Towers is leaving forever.

Apparently, that's why this book was born.

The writer, perhaps subconsciously, tries to stop the moment.

And not only through the verbal sincerity of the natives, but also through their photographs.

Calm pastoral landscapes, interiors of houses and churches, portraits of their interlocutors...

Pictures often speak louder than words.

Without them, this book would be a hopeless requiem for dying.

And with them it became a hymn to life.

Pushcha will not go anywhere.

She is reserved.

And she needs people who are in love with her to oblivion.

Like the young heroine of the book, the translator Kasia Vapa, who wants to become transparent in the flowery Pushchan depths, to dissolve in the healing greenery, to dream, to daydream.

Or immortal friends, like Nobel Laureate Czeslaw Milosz.

SEE ALSO: Lyavon Barshcheuski: "Milos ordered us to seek freedom"

Friend of Białowieża Forest

"Already at the age of thirteen I was an environmentalist.

He drew his maps of imaginary countries, whose outlines resembled the Białowieża Forest.

The only means of communication in such a country had to be boats floating on the rivers.

Access and entrance to the forest would be one for nature enthusiasts.

Today's meeting is proof that our childhood dreams sometimes come true."

The author of the book listened to these confessions of Czeslaw Milosz together with many other relatives on August 6, 1998.

The Nobel laureate came to them at the invitation of the Białowieża Forest Protection Society.

For numerous works in defense of the pro-Kavaite forest, the Society awarded the poet the honorary title of Friend of the Forest.

At the end of that meeting in Białowieża, the choristers of the local House of Culture sang the visitors "Mighty God", "Oh, when that evening" and "Many summers".

The poet did not react to the singing.

Those present were lost in speculation: didn't like the repertoire?

Was it a bad performance?

Oh, and this is the most terrible thing, he doesn't like Belarusian music?

On the same day, the friend of the forest was taken to Hainauka, where he wanted to see the Belarusian museum.

The guest looked at the exhibits for a long time, questioned the employees, said that he had seen some similar objects in his Vilna region, and some he was seeing for the first time.

To say goodbye, he left a note in the museum chronicle:

"I am so glad that the Belarusian museum in Hajnaivka has been established and that its fund is gradually developing and enriching.

My best wishes for continued successful work for many years.

Czeslaw Milosz".

Much later in the book "The defiant portrait of Czeslaw Milosz.

Conversations with Alexander Fiut" Anna Kondratsyuk read the writer's mention of his work in Vilnius on the Polish Radio, from which he and his friend Byrski were fired for the fact that they often put on the air the singing of Belarusian choirs.

"As for Belarusians, their presence in Vilnius was extremely weak.

Perhaps, to a large extent, the reason that Belarusians were greatly oppressed under Polish rule.

The emancipation of Belarusian youth of rural origin meant an automatic orientation towards Minsk, where ostentatious Belarusianness was exhibited and they immediately became communists.

For this reason, the Polish authorities persecuted them and the Belarusian gymnasium was closed for them for a long time.

Strictly speaking, the Belarusian choir was the only solid institution for them, as we well know.

Folklore or folk music is the last national support.

Byrski and I really supported that music, because that folklore was very beautiful, unusually beautiful."

In this reference, there is a guess as to why in his old age Czesław Milosz did not express any emotions at the Belarusian singing in Białowieża and why he was delighted by the Belarusian museum in Hajnawiec.

Apparently, the poet was very hurt to hear that, as sixty years ago, the only support for Belarusians remained folk music.

And he was very amused that he also discovered a rich treasury of folk art.

All is not lost.

The opinions expressed in the blogs represent the views of the authors themselves and do not necessarily reflect the position of the editors.

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