Anatolee Silluak, born on a farm, in a farm house in a region known as: Lithuania, in Russia, in the wastelands one might say, close to the Baltic Sea. It was the first of July of his 18th year of life, of his young life that is, when he leaned—nonchalantly, against the small three room wooden house on his parent’s farm, watching his father Yulie fix the roof. He was much like his father—father like son you might say, and his father was once quite handsome like his son: like to like, so they say, I only mention that because he became a hard silent worker, again, like his father, as you can see for yourself the old man endlessly working either on the farm, the farm house, or attending to something, as it was today, as it was happening at this very moment: it happened so fast, no one quite knew what entirely took place, what happened, it would seem it knocked the senses out of the mind for a moment, and this is somewhat surmised by observation of bits and pieces of the event: Yulie tried to secure his left foot while hammering a nail into a slack board on the roof, on the roof of his farm house, and in doing so, he slipped—slipping as quickly or quicker than the eye could register the whole event, that is what took place, happened: falling onto the ground and to his death (and Anatolee had never looked death in the face before; he was not prepared, but in the words of the warden of death itself: ‘no one knows the day or hour of his death…’ how true this was today): just like that, all of a sudden, like the blink of an eye. He didn’t, I suppose he didn’t, for some reason have anything to hang on to that would withstand the pulling force of his weight, or on the other hand, his mind was on hammering, not on grabbing. If I could give you a better basis I would, but I can’t, we can’t, he couldn’t. In all, Anatolee for a moment, just a short moment at that, stood staring, gawking if you will, gazing with his mouth open—in good earnest, he was in shock, disbelief (his mind was a pile of mental and shattered glass; like a broken toy left on a side-street): then pandemonium took place, the whole family: the whole nucleus, gathered around him, around the body on the ground, the broken glass, as Anatolee’s mind called it; I want to say like hornets, but in all honesty it was like limped bodies sprawled in the front of a car seat, wedged beneath one another: holding onto shock and anguish, love and tragedy.
Anatolee’s whole world, the entire world of Anatolee came crashing down on his shoulders, and he dropped to the ground screaming his fathers name, as his mother, two brothers and sister came running out of the house, and a sibling from the back of the barn, one by the outhouse: the whole family around him now (no headlines to be in the paper); from that moment on, likely as not, life would never be the same for Anatolee, or for the whole family—for obvious reasons. His life was short, like a mist that appeared for a little while and than vanished, as James says in the Bible in so many words: it appears for a little while and vanishes, ‘How true, how true,?he alerted himself. The reality is that life is a transitory, a fleeting thing, something that appears and passes like winter to spring; and this he found out this day.
For that reason, at that moment, he started walking in circles, walking in circles all that day, looking up at the roof, down on the ground where he, (he: being his father) fell, all day looking up, down, up, down, up: as the rest of the family seen to the duties of the funeral to be?the mother telling the rest of the kids to be patient with Anatolee, a little patient because events move slowly) he was dead, and that had yet to seep into his brain. It was, and I say ‘was,?for it was not anymore after this day: it was like a conspiracy of silence, this subject, this reality called death, up to this day for Anatolee, it was now broken. The idea before this, before his fathers death was provocative, a good drama, but not real, just a theme; however, death did not take a vacation; it just did its duty.
I suspect he was, he had been thinking, or had thought in the past, as most people would think, death does not snatch a person in the sunshine of his life, how untrue that was now. It is not a sign as much as a mood he could not shake. I suppose it was that he seen death did not respect young or old, good or evil. He says, he says to himself, between thinking and saying aloud, ‘…why, now what, how could this be??Yet somehow he pulls together enough energy to help the family out, but it is late at night now, it is after dinner he helps wash the dishes, wipes them for his mother, slowly wipes them, as in a trance, a trance that allows him to swallow, but not talk; the following days to come he will change, it is just this day he is numb, out of sorts.
—The year was 1916, the area was impoverished, no jobs, little to eat, and a countryside in the mist of war and revolution; he was the youngest brother of the three that lived on the farm, although he had a kid sister. He had never been very far from home, but now his mother approached both Anatolee and his bother to advise them, and give them money for a trip; she had left them two tickets on the kitchen table, two tickets for two different ships, one to South America, the other to North America. How Anatolee would be the one to go to North America, to get that ticket, no one really knows—and he never told, but he ended up with that ticket and his brother was to go in the other direction, south—and that would be how it was.
(They were both pleasantly young, strong, and will’s of lions, they’d do well the mother thought.) She wears no stockings, and is hard faced from farm life, a smile does not come easy for her, but she does smile when the boys leave, as they kiss her on the cheek; and as they kiss her on the cheek, she holds the tears back until after they—after they have left, it is how it has been for them a hundred if not a thousand years. Tears are for the backroom, with just you and God. But once the boys are out of sight, catching a ride from the neighbor going into town, one wagon, two mules pulling them along, she finds her way to that back bedroom—the silent back bedroom, the curtains are open, she stands to the side of one. She knows the place they are running from will not be much different than where they will end up, except for the face of money, work, a job, perhaps more opportunities, and liberties, that after awhile the strangeness will ware off and it will be like home to them, again; she knows all this, yet she cries (looking at the dust the wagon runs off, behind) because it is another world to her, that she has let her boys go to; her world that will never let them come home again, possibly—she puts possible into her brain, but it is not possible, not really; and for what it is worth, she knows it is better for them not to return. Love asks nothing in return, and she gave all.
Dennis Siluk's new book: "Spell of the Andes," can be purchased at any of the book dealers on internet sites: see http://www.alibris.com or perhaps http://www.alldirect.com