This came to me from Georges Carillet. Georges is President at Commonwealth International University, a Bible and language college in Simferopol, Crimea (Ukraine). It is being republished with permission.
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| Sasha Zmeyev |
[Date: Sun, Oct 2, 2011 at 9:34 PM]
Stephen Crane and Sasha the Boy (Zmeyev) Some people are devotees of Stephen Crane's writings and worldview. I am not. But most of us had to at least skim his Red Badge of Courage.
From time to time we run across a few of his famous quotes, like I did tonight. This prompted me to google him where I found these sad words: "Plagued by financial difficulties and ill health, Crane died of tuberculosis in a Black Forest sanatorium at the age of 28."
Sasha was not yet 28 when tuberculosis claimed his life two days ago.
When my cell phone rang and rang, silently vibrating my left thigh, I was too busy to even look at it. It was the last day for the Southeast Christian Church team to be with us, and they were giving us their morning to paint our office reception room and kitchenette. I was racing about trying to keep eight people occupied with paint, paint brushes, rollers, and damp cloths to clean up dripped latex paint. It was apparent that the paint would not cover what the container said it would, and we would run out.
The idea of eight people standing around with rollers and brushes and no paint was an assault on my organizational abilities. I should have followed my instincts the day before and bought more paint. I felt embarrassment coming on, but there still was time to
avoid it.
Speeding to Gala where I knew I could find the same kind of paint, I reached into my pocket to see who had been so insistent on trying to reach me. I really hate to look at my phone when I am driving. All the missed calls were from "Sasha the Boy" -- that is how I named him in my phone. There was even a text message from him that I would read later. I figured the call was pretty serious, but ... well, Sasha and I have a long history, going back to when we lived in the Kuibysheva apartment our first eight years here.
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| Georges & "Sasha the boy" |
I knew Sasha when he was maybe in the 9th or 10th grade. I taught him how to wash cars, starting with our 1987 Opal Senator. I taught him the basics of driving. He taught me not to trust him with the keys -- he said he needed them so he could vacuum the trunk. But after that he slipped away to show off to some of his buddies, driving around the nearby school sports field. I knew that the pocket change from washing my car was important to him, especially given the low wages his mother earned. I gave him three month's probation - no washing my car, no pay.
I explained why. I hoped he would learn a lesson about trust, trust violated and trust regained. Sasha never knew his father, though his mother knew who it was. I thought I could be fatherly to him. He dreamed of going to culinary school when he graduated. I thought we could help him afford it.
It never happened. While still a teenager, things really fell apart when his mother died. His mother's friend took him in and rented out his apartment. It would be his to rent out or live in, when he was old enough to sign contracts.
Both apartments were in the same building where we lived. Sasha expected to get some percentage of the rent, but his guardian denied it to him. We heard her yell at him one day: "You killed your mother. She is dead because of you." Sasha may not have been a model son and student, and though on the mischievous side, he was not a bad boy. No father, no mother, and an exploiting guardian did not bode well for Sasha.
He thought he would take justice in his own hands: he stole some of the guardian's jewelry. He was going to sell it. He was going to take control of something in his life. I do not know if you can say that he violated trust again, for his guardian did not trust him with anything. He certainly loss any chance for trust and became branded: thief -- biting the hand that fed him .... albeit fed him with rent money from his own apartment.
If he trusted anyone, it was me. But it was not enough to change the trajectory of his life. Maybe it was not trust at all. His guardian had what she wanted: his rental income. What did she need him for, but trouble? She called the police. Arrested and tried and sentenced, presumably bound for juvenile prison, a final decision consigned him to adult prison.
A few years later, we moved to our current flat. Sasha surprised us. Knocking at our door was a ghost from the past, materializing in our doorway, completing it in our foyer. He got out of prison early, on good behavior. Somehow he found us.
He was smiling his winsome boyish smile. But the tale he told us was not boyish at all. He glorified his prison experience, admiring the brotherhood of those who defied the laws to which others were subservient.
Not so glorious was the resistant strain of tuberculosis that he caught and is so common in Ukrainian prisons. He had been in a TB sanitarium outside of Simferopol but was sent to Simferopol to get some needed medicines. It was not uncommon not too many years ago for a doctor to tell a patient's family what was needed and they were expected to find it in the pharmacies, markets, or wherever.
According to Sasha, the police stopped him and wanted to know where some former prison mate was now. If he knew, he would not tell. He had a code to live by, such as it was among thieves. No snitching, whatever else you do. They hauled him into the police station that was not a full block from where we - and he - used to live.
They repeatedly put a plastic bag over his head till he would pass out, then wake him with cold water. They tied him to a stool, then repeatedly knocked the stool off its legs. They beat his back and legs black and blue with a hose.
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| Sasha's bruises |
He was smiling in the telling as if proud of what he had endured without yielding an address. I asked to see the marks. They were there, in bold but fading ink, mostly black, with some yellowing. He had been held for three days. They let him heal some days before releasing him.
They threatened to blame him for any one of many unsolved murders, send him to prison for a long time, and take over his apartment. We know someone who lost his apartment to the police. This was no idle threat. He was told that something could happen to him and no one would miss him.
No one cared.
They gave him some days to tell them what they wanted to know. The story of police threats continues, with police waiting for him to return to his apartment. We returned him to the TB hospital instead. But before he left, I gave him a photocopy of my ID that said I was a member of the UN Human Rights organization. I told him he could tell the police that someone cares and someone would miss him and that it was me.
The next time he was taken to the police station, he was told that they already knew about his American friend. (Sergei Korniyenko tried to get legal help for Sasha, but it was too late for a doctor to verify how he got the marks on his body. Authorities came to know, though, that Sasha had friends. That was July 2005.)
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| Sasha delivering flowers |
After release from the hospital, allegedly cured, he found various kinds of work, mostly labor. Most employers did not legally employ him and some exploited him as an ex-prisoner. Some of my colleagues helped him get the documents that everyone is supposed to have, but which were lost or misplaced by his guardian while he was in prison.
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| Sasha and Olya |
Andrei Taran and Sergei Korniyenko helped Sasha and me with many a missions of mercy. Sasha's story took various twists and turns over the following years. He had a girlfriend, got her pregnant. Andrei, Sergei and I helped him and his partner so that they could keep the baby. LaVerne and I visited Olya in the hospital.
Andrei drove them to Olya's mother's cottage where they were living. It did not take long to discover that there was no harmony in that home; Sasha was tolerated as the father of the daughter's daughter. But not for long. The odds were against him on the one hand; on the other hand, Sasha the Boy needed to play the man.
We helped (thanks to benevolence funds from Southeast Christian Church) with several tons of coal to keep the family warm through the winter, mostly for the sake of the baby which Sergei persuaded them that they should keep rather than abort. We tried to help Sasha take responsibility. Each of the three of us guys talked to him from time to time about his responsibilities as a father and 'husband.'
In less than 18 months, Sasha deserted his 'wife' and daughter, eventually living with another woman and fathering another child. Sasha paid child support, but did not keep in touch with his ex and first daughter.
The next time I got a call from Sasha, he wanted to give me a free car wash at a private single-bay car wash that helped him put food on the table. By now he was renting out his mother's apartment, but not nearly for what it was worth. I guess that paid the rent of his one-room apartment near the car wash. He wondered if I would be interested in buying the apartment; with no documents to prove clear ownership, I would not even think about it.
Not long after that meeting he called to ask for some money to chase down his (second) 'wife' -- she had taken the baby and returned to her mother's home some hours north of Simferopol. I refused. I told him that he needed to be responsible for his life -- he would need to find another way to deal with his family issues.
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When I saw that the call was from Sasha the Boy, I knew I did not have time and little will to talk to him. I had a team to supply with paint. First things first. Anyway, he would just want me to bail him out of some kind of trouble that he brought on himself. The calls were so persistent, I thought I should at least hear what was up.
My Russian language skills are such that I usually understand what Sasha is saying but am at a loss of Russian words to clearly respond. Besides, Andrei is a no-nonsense sort of person who will tell him to grow up and take responsibility and leave me alone. So I called Andrei to return the call for me. I was off to the college with another ten liters of white paint.
Come 12:30, we would have a going away and appreciation party for the Southeast team. I knew that my staff would be celebrating my birthday as well. When Andrei called me back, I learned that the call had been from Natasha, not Sasha the Boy. Turned out that the text message was from her, too, identifying herself and asking me to answer the phone. Natasha used Sasha's cell phone to call me -- my number was in it.
Sasha was in the hospital, and Natasha did not know what to do. She told Andrei that Sasha always talked about "Georges" and how he helped him out. Not knowing what else to do, she called "Georges." (I used to think that maybe he told his friends that he had an American in his pocket because I had bailed him out several times and helped him with loans and gifts. I wondered if the trust I was trying to build was from his perspective an object of exploitation.)
Sasha had been sick with TB for two months but would not go see a doctor. He started drinking. A month ago he got worse, but he only drank more. Then he got so bad that his heart was hurting and Natasha called an ambulance. The doctor said that one lung was not working and only 25% of the other lung functioned.
He was dying. His organs and brain were not getting enough oxygen. The doc told Andrei that Sasha had maybe one month. The next day Andrei called to say Sasha was dead. Sasha the Boy was gone for good. He never grew up.
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I gave Stephen Crane another look. I thought about some of his famous quotes in light of his death and Sasha's death, both in their 20s, both from TB.
I understood that the quotes speak for the two of them, but not for me, not for the one who knows in Whom his trust is secure, and has reason to seek to live a trustworthy life, becoming the recipient of trust, even by the desperate. In that there is hope.
“In the desert I saw a creature, naked, bestial, Who, squatting upon the ground, Held his heart in his hands, And ate of it. I said: "Is it good, friend?" "It is bitter-bitter," he answered; "But I like it Because it is bitter, And because it is my heart.”
“A man said to the universe: "Sir, I exist!" "However," replied the universe,
“The fact has not created in me a sense of obligation”
“He wishes that he, too, had a wound, a red badge of courage.”
“He saw that it was an ironical thing for him to be running thus toward that which he had been at such pains to avoid.”
Postscript-
Today, October 4, 2011, Sasha the Boy had his final earthly send off. We were there. Andrei, LaVerne and I. Sasha's two 'wives' were there, too. Natasha's parents and someone from Olya's family were there. And that was it - Sasha's family and friends. We were there at the morgue where the Orthodox priest gave a sermon of hope in the resurrection and eternal life, but I had no reason to believe that Sasha had put his hope in anyone, not even in God. (But only God knows.)
The priest then performed an ancient ritual with scripture, smoke and chants. It was both beautiful and ... well, I wondered if it was a farce, or at best a façade -- a pretense that all was well and would be well. I did not feel well.
We drove through town and out of town, following the rust-colored van that carried Sasha to the cemetery. We drove through the large hillside covered with graves until we reached the edge of a plowed field. There were freshly dug graves waiting for their new residents, bordering hundreds of fresh burials adorned with bright wreaths and flowers.
There was one for Sasha, too.
The casket was lowered. The bulldozer buried Sasha in two moves. The gravedigger shaped the dirt into what looked like a casket. The cross with Sasha's name and dates was pushed into place. The wreaths and flowers were not enough to cover much of the dirt, but there they were.
It was done. Sasha was in the ground.
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| Sasha's gravesite |
The few people who cared at all drifted away toward the vans. I lingered. I too left. Sorry Sasha.
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Tuesday, October 4, 2011
The [above] is from a letter that I wrote Joel and Tiffany. They knew about Sasha, and maybe they had met him during a visit years and years ago.
The letter got long and took on the character of a story. I realized that this story might be of interest to others. I shared it with a few who work with people, including someone who work with orphans in Ukraine.
I thought it might be a story to share with other orphans and those who work with orphans, about a series of bad choices and their consequences, and how the story could have been different if the choices made were different.
I did not write it for that purpose, but looking at what I wrote, I can see different analogies and strands that run through the story. I cannot expect our experience to be your experience. You will not read this in the way that I wrote it, but maybe there is something that will resonate with you. At the least, it is a glimpse into our lives in Simferopol, a glimpse into something that does not make it into our newsletters.
Blessings,
Georges and LaVerne Carillet
