*Non-fiction*
ZENYA AND VICTOR: by Rosa Telegus
“That was the happiest day of my life, the day my father died,” Zenya told me.
“I cannot imagine that,” I said.
Zenya’s father, Victor had spent three years in the Gulag Archipelago, and wanted his son to be tough, like him, to survive in the world so he could work, work on the family farm.
“We’ll have many children,” Victor had told his wife, Katerina, “to help us on the farm,” this before they owned a farm, Victor working in a plywood mill, Victoria Plywood. Katerina not speaking a word of English stayed at home, cooking on a wood stove, borscht, piroshki, roast rabbit, cherry pies, in a 1920’s era house in James Bay, a part of Victoria, BC. Russian friends lived in the basement, all of them sharing their problems and their hopes from the old country. They had become friends after the Nazis had left Austria, the Russian and Ukrainians now free. The smart ones left for Canada, not going back as they had been requested to do.
Zenya, the eldest son was beaten viciously by Victor for the slightest misbehaviour, eating a bowl of ice cream in the afternoon, ice cream meant to be shared among six children, a small portion for each, measured out after supper.
Victor had few stories of the Gulag, except that the prisoners only got one bowl of watery fish soup after working all day building towns. Also – flies in the summer, he remembered, and the German Shepherds held back from attack by long chains held by the guards. “To prevent escape,” said Victor. His rages told the real story. He had been broken.
“I made up my mind not to be like him,” said Zenya. “He had told me to beat my dog. At least he put that out to me as an option. ‘You could beat her,’ he had said. That’s when I decided I would never choose violence.”
Zenya escaped at seventeen to work on deep sea freighters, boats that carried iron ore and lumber, and to drink in all the ports of the world, Nagasaki, Rio de Janeiro, Cape Town. That is until his father died. Then he found me, we married, and he kept his vow – never to choose anger.
