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Sunday journal

Paradise lost

By EDUVIGIA T. ANCAYA
Published January 16, 2005

On my drive to work, I see around me the devastation left by the three hurricanes that hit Florida last September. Metal poles corkscrew the ground along the highway. County repair trucks crowd the road's shoulders, men rush with ladders, gigantic trees tilt toward their broken branches as if lamenting over them.

My thoughts run a hundred thousand miles away revisiting my recent trip to western Ukraine. Before September 1939, that part of the world had belonged to Poland and formed its southeastern portion. I remember my father reminiscing about my parents' prewar vacations to Zaleszczyki, the farthest corner of the area. It was the warmest and the most enchanting mountain town in Poland, he told me. By 1939, after only 20 years of Poland's independence, it had grown to 6,000 inhabitants. Its high schools' students were required to study four languages. Tourists enjoyed theatrical presentations, played tennis and explored the town on horse-drawn buggies. Peaches and apricots filled orchards, and vineyards produced the best grapes in Poland. The Dniestr River wound its waters like a ribbon of turquoise sky through the Carpathian Mountains, dividing Poland from Romania.

My parents traveled to Zaleszczyki by train and stayed at one of the numerous guest houses along the river. They could hear the laughter of children playing on the beach, and music from nearby restaurants floated through their windows, as did the animated voices of tour groups boarding motorboats for excursions down the river. Basking sunbathers lined the beaches for hours of bliss.

But in August 1939, the newspapers and the radio stations suddenly reported that the Germans were going to attack Poland. Apprehension, fear and uncertainty grabbed everyone's heart. My parents hurried home to Lodz.

On my recent trip to Zaleszczyki, as the driver approached the city, my heart accelerated in anticipation. I longed to see the crystal of the river and the green and purple lush of the grapevines. Any minute I would hear the screams of splashing children. I peeked at a photograph of myself in the river with a watering can in my right hand while balancing as I stood on the flat surface of smooth stone.

We drove into the town. Silence. Deserted streets. Farther down the main artery, three dogs bit each other ferociously, fighting in a pile of garbage. We approached a desolate town square, where two gray-haired women in babushkas sat on a bench. Using a Ukrainian translator, I asked, "Where are the Dniestr River and the hotels?"

"Walk down the street," one of the women answered, with a suspicious squint.

I ran, trying to reach the river. In the distance at the end of the street, I glimpsed the rocky shore with horizontal ridges that I knew from photographs. In a few brief minutes I would see my parents' Eden, and yet an awful premonition electrified me.

I reached the narrow riverbank. In front of me the water coursed from left to right, filling the bed with a grayish-brown mass. Muddy stones lay on a muddy beach, which barely rose above the riverbed on my side - in stark contrast to the opposite, mountainous wall. Knee-tall weeds, garbage, empty plastic bottles in the grass, and one grazing cow dotted the water's edge. No sign of hotels or restaurants.

"What happened here? Was there an earthquake?" I asked no one.

"The people ransacked the buildings to the ground," said a Ukrainian man, who came out of nowhere. "This was Rosyja (Russia) for almost 50 years." He was obviously puzzled by my visit and my ignorance.

I walked under the steel approach to the bridge, covering my mouth and nose. The odor of urine and garbage suffocated me. Beyond the bridge - like an oasis - a house stood surrounded by trees and flowers.

"This was the only hotel saved. Its name was Irena; now it's a private home," said the man, who continued to linger at my side.

The sun came out from behind the clouds and gave life to piles of leaves, autumn's gold, sprinkled on the ground surrounding the house. In an opening between the trees, silver sparked the water. On an empty lot next to the house, three fruit trees, probably peaches or apricots, agonized over their decaying trunks.

"Where are the famous Zaleszczyki's vineyards?"

"All demolished."

I drove to the downtown area. In front of the modest facade of a church, a painting of Pope John II in reds and whites stood on an easel. On the same block in a photography store, I discovered old postcards of the city. I bought them all. On black-and-white glossy paper, women in old-style bathing suits swarmed the beach, sunning themselves on chaise longues and chatting. A Polish flag opened in the river breeze on the tower of a building.

Mechanically, I placed the postcards in my bag. Despite the summerlike warmth of the day, I felt a chill. Zaleszczyki is an example of Communist Russia's legacy: destroy, steal, deport. The Polish and Ukrainian people were brutally relocated deep inside Russia and in Siberia, where they would contribute to the grandeur of the country - to the system's gangrene - and eventually die of starvation, infections and consumption.

In the Communist Party's macabre vision, Russia had to protect Poland and the rest of the ransacked Eastern Bloc, with its military power, from the West. Therefore, it demanded that the Eastern Bloc countries pay for it.

Devastation and paralyzed human minds were the inherited bonuses of this system.

The traffic on the Florida highway has come to a stop. On the right side, I see a house caved in and demolished by a gigantic, centenarian live oak. Ukraine vanishes from my mind and is replaced by another devastation - our own - and I feel twice the pain, twice the sorrow of facing the inevitable. But I realize the colossal difference between natural disaster and man-made ruination. The rebirth is smooth and quick in the former.

-- Eduvigia T. Ancaya, a dermatologist and writer, lives in Valrico.

[Last modified January 13, 2005, 14:32:06]