Letter to dad

Together with Dekoder.org , in cooperation with the Foundation of S. Fisher Colta.ru continues the project "Belarus: to look into the future."

Today we publish a text that Nursa Mantsevich wrote specifically for our project. In German, you can read it on dekoder.org .

When I was born, you wrote to me this poem:

Sessi

Snezhan. Snow on the wastewater
Persches snow
On Twim, Dachushka, Creatures
Zvoi
Persha yasche you say the word
Pershi fairy tale
ale ўzho sagreta ° Zen Zimov
Hell is a grin of gross creatures С. We.

12.12.83

It is you - the person who wrote this poem to me - you hold me five -year -old with your big hands above your head and throw me with all your strength to the floor for not wanting to go outside in a dress

From your blows with a belt or a cord from a vacuum cleaner on my small body, traces remain for a long time

It’s you that you are furious torn off all the posters from the wall in my room - I don’t remember already, for what, -

And it is now you who escort me 38-year-old to the station after my mother’s birthday, a little drunk, putting my backpack on the trunk of a bicycle that you lead next to you

I say: “Dad, let's bear it myself, it’s easy for me”, but you don’t believe me. It seems to you that it is heavy because it lies in it all your pain, and wine, and love.

Now I know, dad, what you must feel.

I know how to cause pain to a loved one. Such that if you were told about this at the beginning, when you wrote that poem, you would never have believed it. I know how unbearably I want to turn time back, return everything to its place, deceive yourself, pretend that nothing happened - just not to feel this pain.

When you threw me to the floor, I could not breathe for a few more minutes - apparently, the blow when falling fell into the solar plexus, and my breath caught my breath - I cried from everything at once - surprise, pain, resentment, but most of all, from fear that I could not breathe. I did not understand what was happening, I did not know when it would stop, how much I needed to wait, if I had enough time, the volume of my children's lungs to wait for the moment when I could take a breath again.

I am now catching my breath when I decide to talk about it, covers with chilling horror, as if, voicing these things, I betray you, our family and I have no right to this. And I don’t know if my breathing is enough to continue to speak now, but I want to try, even if it will be a torn and confused story - I need you to spend it through it so that I can finish it and not die of shame and fear. I need you. Stop. Don't run away. Stop and count how long I can hold out without air. Stop and count, while I, frozen, look at you with frightened eyes, while I go and go alone in an exhausted, unbearably beautiful autumn city while I write this text.

* * *

I moved to Minsk in 2000, when I was 17 years old. In a foreign city about which I had no stories or memories with which nothing connected me. All my memory remained in Vileika, but now a place has appeared for me - I have been living in Minsk for 21 years, most of my life. The windows of my apartment overlook the bathhouse, from where Victor Gonchar and Anatoly Krasovsky came from in September 1999, and no one else has ever seen them. I remember this every time, leaving the house, heading for the subway or to the store, passing by this bath. I know where this happened, because when I entered Minsk and began to live here, dad told me the story of this place - as what I should know about. We sat in the kitchen, and he said: “You should know this ...” A year ago, on the building at 20 Street, 20, in Minsk, the inscription “We will not forget, we won’t forgive ...” Today on this place on the white wall - two neat pale beige squares. I know what's under them.

Now the whole of Minsk is for me - in these traces. I am going on a bicycle around the empty city, the wind turned the fallen leaves, boldly and confidently lifted them into the air, they dig in front of me, as if shocked by something, trying to tell me about this, I drive through a small bridge over the whistle, it is all painted in red and green, I remember how it was painted in other colors more than recently---it was painted in other colors. But now, even on this red-green bridge, it is easier for me to drive than if there were no traces left at all. I know what these traces mean. For me, they symbolize our pain. It hurts me when I am going on this bridge. And this is better than if I did not feel anything at all; How to pretend that nothing happened.

We are sitting in the kitchen in my Minsk apartment, and while the kettle boils on the stove, I first decide to ask you - why did you beat me? This is a rhetorical question, most likely, it is behind it is a need to find confirmation that you also remember this. Your answer touches me, and I believe him, you honestly answer - I do not know. Then I ask the second question: if you could rewind the time ago, would you beat me? This question also does not make sense, because turning the time is the only thing that we cannot do in life. But you answer him. You say - no. We are silent. In this pause, I feel the appearance of something living, the presence of meanings, they gradually fill in silence and emptiness and pour into the words ... You say-I was also beaten. You are my dad. I am your child. But contrary to any logic and the laws of the course of time, I testify your pain now, looking into your eyes filled with tears.

* * *

You need to learn how to wait. This is the most difficult thing-not hoping that your expectation will pay off, you need to learn humility (but not humility)-the only way there is an opportunity to communicate with something unknown-that you will never be able to examine in details, which will always slip away from you a little earlier than individual features available to the look. It is incredibly difficult for me to write this text, as if I wound through the thorny, wounding me in the blood with thick thickets; And when it seems that it is already about to see the clearance somewhere ahead, and the story begins to find timid outlines-I am scared again and freeze with horror. I do not have enough breathing to give these disparate memories the structure to collect everything in one. And then I ask for myself patience and trust - space and time.

I have two memories of our family, which come to life in my head - where we are all together, four, as if in a photograph.

In the first such photograph dated May 1986, dad runs to us “Khvunichka”. When an explosion occurred at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, I was a little less than three years old. My mother and I went very little Zhenya for the summer to grandparents, mother’s parents, to the village of Radkov of the Gomel region. And three days later, dad came for us to pick up back in Vileika. I don’t remember this story myself, but I know in details from my mother’s story - this is one of those family stories that I have heard so many times that it begins to seem that I also saw all this:

“Her for the summer, on Azdaraannna, thought - summer, Pabudzem at the Vossez - grass, air of chysts. Goradze had the poor, there was no todta eczi, but ol Voszans ° Hasyago - I s Gradak, I z. And the 26th PAVILIA, I have been the forefront of TRI DNI back. On the Pershaga of May, we are on Dweras of Nesta Zigrabali Tsizhi Sazili, Grad Mozha Rabil Tsi Smintz Palili ... Glojja - Khvyunichka Beazhyts Nuki, accurately yak Sasha. And I know, what yong tolki is the Pajah ўchora Tsi Pazachora. I think - Chago yun is jumping back? I, here, byazhny, is accurate with the coniferous ... Well, I think, it’s not possible to be, Kab Yong ... Chago Yong? Lyatz ... so arable land on our baca. Tada Padbyagae is accurate yong! Well, and Yon is jumping Kali ° Vileyka, Pavrakho Radoye Svaboda. I have ў Zhosim іnshaya gavarylі. I yong yak naslukha, at that jing of Zen Ajra il for Nam - Uzyan Adgul I Rwano, for Nam. Tada was not gate Talephon, Niyak not Papalkajesh - Khutchey himself Pryzesh. I was so confused. Are you Chago? What are you jumping? And Yong Kazha: “Zbiraitzia, Hutsenka Peduzem.” Yon is aquaticly to be, jumping, capture us. And we are not Chuli Tada. Well, I, Yon is jumping, we’ve got us. Jumping ў Minsk, I am already here - the people, the people, Vylikiye Chergi, I are steam, we are the right -handed - Shchytavidka, Azenne ... musted with train I rushed. I remember the disgusting there I Abutat Oakydali, I was the adsenne Trab. And ol of us was Narmal. Aktzabrski Run Acakya Chysty. Iago simple did not steal. And Yong Naslukha ... Yon is not a good jasche, what Aktzabrski Ryong Chysty. Tada built up - Chm Blizai, terrible. ”

The second such memorable “photography” was taken twenty years later, in March 2006. We went to the square with dad, Zhenya and Lena, the girl that I loved and whom we met then. Mom and dad arrived in Minsk to become in the doorway of the apartment and not to let my sister anywhere. But since they could not do this, as a result, the family council decided that dad would come with us, and mom would stay at home and would follow the news. I remember how, escorting us, my mother helped to put glossy magazines with Zhenya with Zhenya to soften blows from clubs. Later I found out that Lena’s friend told how, seeing us in the square then, I realized that we would part soon, because I looked at Lena as she did not look at me. Sometimes I want to have the ability to look into the future in order to make the right decisions, find out what to prepare for or how long you still need to wait; It turns out that then I could see him in the Lenin eyes (her friend was able to), but I, at least kill me, felt nothing. As if the future can be recognized only peering into the past . How I am now.

The blizzard rose. From the suddenly collapsed elements, everything seems a little unrealistic, the feeling-as if some portal has opened-and we all who are standing together in the square have got into another dimension, got the opportunity to see ourselves with others, as they could be, or what we thought, or maybe there is still somewhere . There was just nothing, just - and everything around was covered with a white veil of snow, I peer into it now and try to distinguish ... One of my children's memories associated with my dad is how we show photos together. We closed in a small kitchen in our Vileyan apartment, the magical red light filled the whole space, in the baths with reagents we lowered the empty sheets of the photo paper and began to count until we witnessed a miracle - when the image began to appear from anything on white paper ... So I peered into my memory now and I see the silhouettes gradually from the dark On the photographs strewn with small white grain ... Maybe this Zhenya sits on his dad’s shoulders, as in childhood, in order to be able to see the next of all. Maybe I am standing nearby and asking - how? Maybe she answers me: "A lot." Maybe dad begins to shout “Live Belarus!”, And I look at him, as if not recognizing or, on the contrary, amazed by a sudden recognition, I think - why don't you write poetry, dad?

* * *

In March of this year, I began to make notes in my diary, trying to understand how to overcome my dumbness, how to allow myself to speak when such terrible things happen around, how to be able to pronounce the unpronounceable. Write to write. Any word written now, when they continue to crumble people's lives around - is felt superfluous and inappropriate. It seems that my internal (internalized) overseers had a legal way to finally shut me up. Maybe that's why and right now I have to try to continue to write. During the time, while I was making notes in my diary, the pores of the year changed - I watched how spring comes and fills with life everything around and how autumn it collapses with a new reminder of the irreparable limb of everything. I well remember this connection with the pores of the year, because my diary remained in my diary ...

As of March 29, 322 people were recognized as political prisoners in Belarus.

As of August 12, 631 people were recognized as political prisoners in Belarus.

As of September 29, 702 people were recognized as political prisoners in Belarus.

As of October 28, 833 people were recognized as political prisoners in Belarus.

Now it is very beautiful golden autumn, such that it becomes a little painful from this beauty, from the inability to accommodate it all, to divide it with someone else, from the foreboding of its limb. I say “a little” not because this word can somehow explain the degree of my feeling; It is here in order to soften it, to envelop it with its careful presence. It hurts a little - you say so when you can only call for help. It is impossible to accommodate two realities at the same time - spring, which inevitably comes and fills everything around life, and the simultaneous terror in the country, when all living and humane continues to be destroyed. It is impossible to avoid this splitting, only in this way the psyche can save itself - removing parts of itself. This split is inside me: a life that sprouts from me, no matter what, is a concentration camp, from which I can’t get out of it.

* * *

Another children's memory associated with dad is how he detected the time when I dived under the water, piercing in the bathroom. It was our ritual, which made a boring process of bathing exciting and interesting. Dad took off the clock from his wrist, gave me a go -ahead, and I, having gained full chest of air, fell under the water ... I tried my best to hold out longer, I wanted to show my strength - look how long I could hold my breath, how strong and skillful, look, dad, how I can. All the chimeras, all the monsters, all the evil people disappeared while I was lying on the bottom of the foam bath in a room filled with a warm steam, and dad stood, watched, and I knew that he was waiting for me.

I seem to be lying under water now, holding my breath, sometimes it seems to me that I have almost no air left, and then I remember that you, as in childhood, are standing nearby and continue to believe - while I am lying under water at the bottom of the city flooded and grief, writing this text - I am ineptly as soon as the child, as soon as my strength and volume of my lungs are, I know that I know that I know that you You continue to count, creating time for me - to be here when I can finally emerge when I can take a breath.

31.10.2021