The Museum of Abandoned Secrets

fought...for Ukraine’s independence. We have independence now, times have changed—so we should honor them. Put up monuments and such...fine. But why do you insist on digging in these...deaths? On bringing back these death lovers? Is that a good example for the young people? Why do they need to know these things?
    They need to live, Daryna Anatoliivna. Live! Not look back. You know what people say: the less you know, the better you sleep. I, for one, am very glad that Nika did not know old Boozerov while he was alive. My mom, our Grandma Dunya, may she rest in peace—she just bloomed after he died! Shed years. Lived another two decades. Raised Nika, had that joy in her old age...Nikushka loved her too. She’s always taking flowers to their graves at Lukyaniv cemetery...we all go, as a family...Memorial week, Victory Day...and the Cheka Officer’s Day, of course! I’ve given her what I could. She has what I didn’t have. My daughter grew up in normal family! Like regular people have. If it were up to me—I wouldn’t have told her anything at all, let her think she is Boozerova, like her grandparents. But my mother-in-law just had to get in there, the snake...and what would you have me do? Tell my child that her birth grandmother hung herself in prison after three men raped her during an interrogation?
    Yes, she did. Hung herself. In her cell, on her own braid.
Hic
! Used her braid to...strangle herself. I myself didn’t know untila couple years ago. I dug it out...spent twenty years digging—to find that. Was that a good idea? You tell me, was it?
    They were men from the front, my dear, men from the front.... You’ve got to understand. It was okay with German women in ’45; war wrote it all off. And the banderas—they were basically considered as good as the Nazis: the Ukrainian-German nationalists, that’s what they called them. The Germans had Ukrainian-Jewish nationalists and we had Ukrainian-German ones. That’s the lot she drew...my Jewish mom. If not Jewish during the war, then—sign here, please!—you’re German afterward. And no one told her, poor girl, not to aggravate young men who’d conquered half of Europe, went all the way to Berlin! Wrote their names on the Reichstag. You know what the biggest thing was my father—Boozerov—saw written on a Reichstag wall? Letters this big! Excuse my language, I’ll say it as it was: I FUCK YOU ALL!
    Uff
. Don’t worry, alcohol has no effect on me. Sometimes I wish it did, I think to myself—what a waste...
    What did you think was going to happen? That I’d find piece of paper for you—and you’d have it all? They don’t write things like that on those pieces of paper, my dear...
    The investigator? He was disciplined, yes. And those other two, as well. All got demoted in rank...for two months. A suicide in prison—that’s a severe breach, worse than an escape. How did she pull that off? A perfect escape. Escaped from me, too...my own mother. Like in that song: “Dearest mother of mi-ne, tell me why you aren’t sle-eping.... ” Sorry...if only I knew where she’s buried, I’d have carved these words on her tombstone.
    And you come to me to see about your relative’s grave. A grave! Where they took bodies from prisons, where they buried them—who’s going to tell you? Those who did the burying are not talking...if they’re still alive. There was this veteran, from Russia—he came out not long ago—he was on the team that processed Shukhevych’s body after the MGB killed him. A special operation; the team got extra leave afterward. They took the body out, burned it, and spread the ashes—in a forest, overlooking theZbruch river. There was no trace left to be found! Do you understand? No trace at all, and that’s how they do it now, too...in Chechnya: after they secure a place—total erasure. You won’t find anything! And I won’t find out either...where my own mother was buried. So now what? Huh? You can’t tell me...I’ll tell you! I will. When you have your own children—you’ll understand. Because a child needs to have a...a place, a memorial, a cemetery in the city, where she can go when all her friends go with their parents and then talk about it at school. It’s not like she’s from somewhere else—she’s a Kyivite. These are her roots, basically. If you have graves—you have roots. Grandfather, grandmother. Everything I didn’t have—I’ve given her. My daughter is not an orphan! When she was little, I