Yaroslaw's Treasure. Myroslav Petriw
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us. The sun’s rays will be in their eyes and the shadows will be long.”
He said all this while gathering speed down the slope. Twisting between trees and bushes, he made sure they couldn’t be followed. All this was a natural reaction, for as with most young men, this certainly wasn’t his first time evading cops.
In just a couple of minutes they found themselves out of the park on Smerekova Street. It was only then that he could soberly review what had just happened. Why did they have to flee from the cops? Yarko could not understand.
“I didn’t think that was a ‘no trespassing’ zone,” said Yarko when they stopped at a traffic light. “I thought it was just a regular park, a public place.”
“Not in the exact place that we were,” said Dzvinka, having switched to accented English. “There was a radio tower; we aren’t allowed there. You understand; we could have been terrorists or something. It is military installation, you know. I take you there on purpose because nobody go there. There is many bushes, trees. Is quiet – understand? We would have been there alone. And now look what happened.” Dzvinka blushed and lowered her long eyelashes, shielding tears.
Yarko asked no more questions. And yet he still couldn’t understand the adventure that had just happened on Vysokiy Zamok. There weren’t any No Trespassing signs, no warning signs in any language. Why run from the police? Were the voices actually those of police? The terrorist threat angle didn’t feel right either. He had seen the radio tower. They were far from it. There certainly were a lot of things that he didn’t understand about this strange country. Or maybe it was just Dzvinka that he didn’t understand.
After this wild escape, all remnants of a romantic mood had evaporated. They rode home in silence. It was getting dark. He said his goodbyes on Krakivska Street, promising to meet again at Pid Levom, the same as today. He rode to his hotel alone.
* * *
Early the next morning, just as the sun was rising, Yarko was awakened by the ringing of his telephone.
“Shlyak by trafyv” – may one have a stroke – he swore, using the old Lviv expression still favoured by many in the Ukrainian diaspora.
He lifted the receiver and looked at his watch. It was six in the morning. It was Dzvinka waking her sleepy friend.
“Listen, Yarko,” she babbled excitedly, “do you know what day this is?”
“Sunday. So what?” he answered, annoyed at this early wake-up call.
“And do you know that on Sunday people go to church?”
“Gee, I had no idea! I’m so glad that you woke me at six in the fucking morning to inform me of this. Otherwise I would have slept for hours without this bit of deep wisdom.” Yarko was definitely not a morning person.
“You’re funny, Yarchyk,” said Dzvinka. “Listen, if we get lucky, then the people who live in that house on Koronska will all go to church for Liturgy. The building will be empty. Then we’ll go in and check it out. We’ll figure out where your treasure is hidden. Now get dressed. I’ll be there in half an hour. We have to get there in time to see when the occupants leave for church. Can’t you figure anything out for yourself, Yarko?”
Yarko was irritated both by the early wake-up and by the fact that Dzvinka had thought things through for him. “Thanks for spending all night doing the thinking for us both, but tell me, if the door is locked, how will we get in? Maybe, since it’s Sunday, the Holy Ghost will let us in.”
“Don’t worry. I’ve got a friend who opens doors without a key,” she explained with a giggle. “He’ll lend me his tools. It’s high quality equipment – German, you know. So don’t worry, I’ll handle the door. And you just hurry up and don’t think too much. Leave that to me. Now put your pants on because you’re probably standing there in nothing but your gachi. Half an hour – no longer. Bye-bye.”
“Bye,” said Yarko. God, how he hated it when women ordered him around.
He was standing by the phone in his gachi.
There was no water in the washroom.
Forty minutes later he was on his bike riding along Krakivska, following Dzvinka. She had totally changed her appearance from the day before. Her clothing was now much more workmanlike and practical: navy jeans, a loose black sweater with sleeves, and a black cap that somehow managed to hide most of her hair, which had been tightly wound in a French roll. She could now pass for a boy.
Without yesterday’s anatomical distractions, and little traffic to worry about on this Sunday morning, Yarko was able to study the details of the route to Zamarstyniv much better. Every church and every building hid a morsel of history behind its façade. Street names spoke of specific pages of this history, but only to those who already possessed its knowledge. The street named Detko reminded Yarko that the mid-fourteenth-century warlord of that name was the last Ukrainian ruler in this city until the sporadic flashes of independence in the twentieth century. Foreign rule had left its mark on the street names, the architecture, and the ethnic makeup of Lviv. The horrors of the Second World War and the horrors of Bolshevik rule had changed that ethnic makeup once again. The Jewish and Polish components were but shadows of their former glory. Their emptied residences had been filled by the Russian invaders.
It was truly remarkable, then, that over time the historical Ukrainian character of Lviv had gained the upper hand, transforming it into the Piedmont of Ukrainian rebirth. Equally remarkable was that the essential spirit which had been characteristic of a Lviviak a century ago had infused itself into today’s mostly non-native inhabitants. This spirit, this attitude, this cachet, was an odd mix of the soul of a philosopher, the taste of an aesthete, the class of an aristocrat, and the street smarts of a pickpocket. A Lviviak had edge. It was quite understandable that the writers Leopold von Sacher-Masoch and Ivan Franko, as well as economist Ludwig von Mises, all came from Lviv.
Dzvinka, however, did not strike Yarko as a Lviviak. She had not been sufficiently infused in Lviv’s spirit. A Lviviak was subtle. Dzvinka was brash. He realized that he had been seduced into telling her everything about himself and his family, while she had revealed absolutely nothing. Now, while riding these streets, he found himself planning the recovery of the treasure very much on his own. He was feeling very uneasy about the fact that he had brought her into his scheme.
Having crossed Tatarska Street and a set of railway tracks, he followed Dzvinka as she turned to the right into a dilapidated section of town. The houses here bore the scars of a half-century of neglect, and yards were strewn with garbage. Far beyond them, against the background of the tree-covered High Castle Hill, stood two windowless structures, one painted a garish pink, the other an equally garish lime green. Judging by their position in relationship to the railway tracks that ran a block or two behind the houses, these structures appeared to be storage silos of some sort.
Dzvinka turned left onto the unpaved Koronska Street. Yarko followed her. Yellow pools of rainwater marked the deeper portions of the ruts in the hard-packed soil. Dzvinka stopped, resting her bike against the remnants of a wrought-iron fence. Yarko did likewise.
There were just a few houses on this side street. Between some of them were empty squares of scarred land, looking like missing teeth in the haggard smile of some old babushka. Amongst traces of pre-war foundations and piles of broken bricks someone had attempted to plant a vegetable garden. He had not paid much attention to it yesterday. Today, he noted with satisfaction that a raspberry bush clinging to the remains of a stone foundation wall would provide cover for them and a place to keep their bikes while they watched for the residents of the old family bunker.
They hid their bikes behind this wall and waited. Dzvinka’s deduction proved right. First one, then another, and finally a third family left the dwelling. A father, mother and a son; a father, mother, and a daughter; then the parents and grandparent of a pair of young girls exited the house walking single file. The well-pressed suits, tidy fashionable dresses, and flashes of polished leather shoes belied the humble appearance of the home that they had just left. Yarko and Dzvinka waited another minute or two.
“Maybe