 YANA By James Mackintosh |
Deneil first met Yana when she bounced into his office, declared she”d heard all about him, and immediately began narrating a story about her American boyfriend or lover and how he had been arrested - it transpired that the only place they had found to commit the act of passion on a frosty, winter night had been in his rented car on a side street in the city centre, and just as they were reaching the crucial moment, the police had knocked loudly on the car door, opened it and roughly dragged him out and taken him off to prison.
With everything Yana said, Deneil was soon to discover, there was this casual innocence and at the same time, shocking promiscuity which was quite disturbing.
Later it transpired that Yana had visited her boyfriend in Chicago where she had made it her mission to save him from the extreme alcoholism she claimed he indulged in. As she herself was quite a heavy drinker, it seemed more likely to Deneil that her boyfriend had found a comrade in indulgence rather than a saviour from vice. She had not succeeded in curing his drinking habit, she admitted, and some months later he had died tragically. She was very vague about just how. It might have been true but more likely it was pure melodrama - “died” in the sense that their troubled relationship had come to an end. You really could not tell with Yana - not at all.
That autumn and winter, Yana became an occasional drinking partner for Deneil. On dreary, overcast Sunday afternoons they would make their way through the deserted side streets, rain-wet cobblestones gleaming darkly like iron, to the cavernous depths of the Cowboy bar. There, perched on a bar stool in the half-light, with a beer in her hand, Yana would spin improbable tales. She described her life in Kyiv in the early nineties when her family had lost all their money - everything - in the great currency crash and the economic crisis that followed. How, as a 17-year old schoolgirl, she had been sent out into the streets to poke in the rubbish bins to find bottles or bring back waste food or anything the family could use. She told him of the bewildering years of moral chaos in the middle nineties, when she was at university - her numerous sexual affairs with older men - “I suppose I just like to satisfy them,” she declared taking a drag of her cigarette. “They want something from me and I feel I can give it to them. What is wrong with that?” And she smiled her naughty school-girlish smile. What a combination, Deneil thought, seeming innocence and frank promiscuity side-by-side permeating through her whole character. She was a nice-looking girl with a good, sturdy figure, innocent blue eyes, curly blonde hair and plump, Ukrainian cheeks, but her laugh was the dirty laugh of a debauchee.
One grey, autumn Sunday afternoon, she invited Deneil to her family’s dacha in the countryside just outside Kyiv. They went by train and after 30 minutes alighted at a tiny village station unchanged by the twentieth century. Babushkas with headscarves were heaving heavy baskets of goods homewards. Little men with pinched, tough faces were arguing and tossing back shots of vodka in the small, rundown station waiting room. A horse with cart, chained to the fence, waited patiently for his master to return from the city. Geese waddled across the small, muddy lane in front of Deneil and Yana. They walked together along the banks of a stream to her dacha - more like a hut with basic provisions, a bed, two chairs, a table, a cooker and a portable gas heater. “It’s a summer place really,” Yana explained closing the door and then proposing sex as casually as another woman might propose tea and cakes.
In truth, Deneil was intrigued and liberated by Yana’s company. There was a sort of bohemian, anarchic frankness about her, which was beyond moral censure. She was, she confessed, addicted to writing poetry and he thought maybe her free behavior was a consequence of a wild, artistic temperament following in the footsteps of “silver age” Russian female poetesses such as Anna Akhmatova and Marina Svetayeva. All the same, the more he got to know Yana, the more he questioned her grip on reality. She would drop into his office with convoluted plans for starting new businesses and making a fortune. Of course her plans never came to anything and never would, but she implicitly believed in them until the next idea came along for her to cling to. She invited him to meet her mother and one evening he walked across a snowbound Kyiv, arriving red-faced and exuberant. Her mother was a kind, coarse, chain-smoking woman with raspberry-pink hair and too much lipstick, long separated from her husband who had another family. She had clearly given up on Yana”s ability to make it in the world. “She needs a nice man friend,” she appeared to be saying, looking at Deneil. “She will settle down eventually. It”s just a wild period she’s going through.” Deneil was not ready to take on wildness and out-on-control behaviour. The more he got to know Yana, the more he came to the conclusion that she was psychologically unstable. He could not help feeling that the enormous upheavals in the society she had grown up in had wrought their damage and fundamentally disturbed her delicate mental state. Superficially she appeared tough, intelligent, attractive and immoral. In reality, she was helpless.
One snowy winter day she turned up at Deneil’s office. She seemed distracted. She opened the window, stared out at the beautiful whiteness and traced her hand through the freshly fallen snow on the window ledge. Deneil waited for yet another promiscuous confession.
“You know,” she said finally, “maybe I would do better to leave this country. There are too many problems. I cannot make my way here. My dream has always been to live in France, Deneil. I hitchhiked through France a few years ago. The south of France is so beautiful - little red-tiled farmhouses nestling in the hills, peaceful, orderly - not like this chaos. Oh, Deneil. I”m tired. I need a rest.” Something about the tone of her voice suggested a sense of resolution as if a private decision had been made. Little did he know that she was about to act on her words.
***
After this conversation, Deneil lost touch with Yana for many months. Finally, slightly surprised that she had not visited him, he called her mother and to his amazement found out that Yana was now living in England. Immediately, he telephoned the number her mother had given him.
“Deneil,” Yana shrieked when she recognized his voice. “I am so happy to hear from you. Are you in England? No! Why not? Come over at once! I want to see you.”
“What are you dong in England, Yana?”
“Didn”t my mother tell you? I am married now. I married an Englishman.” She said it rather as a little girl might reveal a guilty secret.
“England’s OK,” she continued with
a sigh, “I”d much rather be living in France. I keep trying to get my husband to move to France but of course he can”t - he has his work here. My husband has no culture you know. I don”t love him but it doesn”t matter. He’s the strongest man I”ve ever met.” Deneil rang off promising to visit if and when he came to England.
A few weeks later on an impulse and out of curiosity, he called Yana again. She sounded pleased to hear from him but he could tell from the flatness of her voice that she was depressed. “I do miss Kyiv sometimes,” she confessed. “Everyone is so resigned here. There’s no will to change. People are under so much stress but they just accept their lives - its like the whole country’s sinking into the mud, or something.”
“Why don”t you come back home if you miss it?” Deneil asked, “at least for a visit.”
“Oh, I am studying here. I”ve enrolled on a course of marketing and I want to start my own business soon,” she said self-importantly. “When I”ve got my first $50,000 that’s the time to go back and launch something in Kyiv. In a year or two,” and she continued to describe her latest plans, (as improbable as ever). From the conversation, Deneil concluded she wasn”t at all serious about going back to her homeland, either now or ever.
One month later he received a call from Yana on his mobile phone. She sounded like she was in a prison.
“I want to go away,” she complained, “to France - anything to get out of here.”
“What’s wrong, Yana?”
“My husband’s wrong.”
“What’s the problem? Is he being aggressive or abusive?”
“No, no. Not at all. That’s not the problem. He keeps saying he loves me. He smothers me with his so-called love. He has no culture. He suffocates me with his lack of ... everything.”
“Yana, you chose this path.”
“I know, I know. He’s the strongest man I”ve ever met. He says he doesn”t mind when I tell him I”ll never fall in love with him - and I mean it. I never will. He says it’s enough just to be with me. Oh God, it’s like a prison. I just want to get away.”
She sounded almost frantic and Deneil sought to console her. “Don”t worry,” he replied, things will work themselves out sooner or later - they always do.”
About a week after this conversation, on a Sunday afternoon, Deneil was walking down a crowded Khreschatyk when he received a call on his mobile phone from a man who introduced himself as Yana’s husband. He sounded rough and uneducated.
“I just want to tell you mate, that Yana’s in hospital. I managed to get your number from her. Seems you were one of her friends.” This was said with a tone of almost disgust, “she thinks a lot of you apparently. Well mate, she became disturbed after your last phone call and I think for her sake, it’s better that you don”t try and contact her for a while.”
“Where is Yana now?”
“Well mate, the matter is she became mentally unhinged and we decided to send her to the psychiatric hospital near us, in Reading, for her own safety.”
“She seemed all right when I spoke to her last. Can I talk to her?”
“No, it’s better you don”t talk to her, mate. We don”t want her to have a relapse.”
“Surely her mother should come over and take care of her.”
“We”ve been in contact with her mother. We told her the same. Its better to wait for things to clear up. Believe me, mate. There’s nothing you can do. The doctors are taking care of her - she”ll be fine. She just needs to rest. Thanks a lot for understanding. Bye.” He put the phone down.
Deneil had stopped walking. The afternoon crowd flowed around him.
A few snowflakes were drifting earthwards. “So he had been right about how unstable Yana was - and now he was being warned off,” he thought.
“Instructed not to interfere - threatened almost. But then again how was he to know the real situation and why should he come between a husband and wife.” He began started to walk slowly along the noisy, cheerful street and tried to dismiss the image that had come to his mind of Yana, sad, ill and lonely, in a long, white coat, shuffling around the corridors of an English psychiatric institution.
***
Deneil had some friends living in London. He decided it was high time he saw them again and booked a flight for the long Easter weekend. Also, because he felt some strange, indefinable responsibility for Yana, he made up his mind to visit her. When he arrived at his friend’s flat they gave him a royal welcome and dragged him out on the town for a long evening’s drinking. Next day after a leisurely brunch, Deneil found out the number and address of the hospital and called to ask whether Yana was still an inmate. When told she was, he informed the supervisor on duty that he wanted to speak to Yana face to face and would be coming that afternoon during visiting hours between four and six.
“Her husband has specifically requested us not to admit visitors unless absolutely necessary,” the hospital supervisor informed him.
“Is this a prison?” Deneil asked indignantly. “Does he have any right to do that? I don”t think so. Please just ask Yana if she wants see me.” He waited on the line. The duty nurse was back a minute later.
“Yana is very excited you are here. She says she can barely wait to talk to you. On the whole the psychiatrist thinks it will beneficial for her - so yes we are expecting you during visiting hours.”
Later that afternoon he drove to Reading, located the hospital, a gloomy, red-brick Victorian mansion, climbed the steps to the imposing entrance, signed the visitors book and walked into the main lounge. Yana was waiting for him. She didn”t look very different except that she was a little fatter, her cheeks were puffy and the shine had gone from her cornflower, blue eyes.
“Hello, Deneil,” she said languidly shaking his hand. “It’s really nice of you to come to see me.”
“For God’s sake, Yana. What is this all about?”
“It’s my husband. He is persecuting me,” she said resignedly, “I started going with other men and he went mad with jealousy. He began restricting my movements and then I got crazy and started trying to hit him and he just smothered me. He seems to love me and he seems to hate me at the same time.”
“But how come you”re here?”
“I was stupid. I threatened to kill myself and I took an overdose of sleeping pills. I never meant to do it - I just got so mad with him, I wanted to scare him.”
“Jesus, what a mess, Yana! What got into you? Why hasn”t your mother come over?”
“They won”t issue her a visa. He would have to send an invitation letter and he says it’s not a good thing to do at this stage.”
“What bullshit!”
“Anyway she can”t afford the airfare.”
“Why can”t you just leave?”
“I”ve been sectioned.”
“What do you mean exactly?”
“It’s the English system. They”re allowed to send me here and keep me in here as long as they think necessary, if the application is signed by a psychiatrist and my legal guardian, my husband. They think I am in danger of taking my life.”
“Well, are you?”
“No of course not, but how I convince them of that. They say I have delusions and they give me drugs - they say it’s paranoid schizophrenia.”
“What drugs are they giving you?”
“I don”t know but I”m tired most of the time and I”m dizzy.”
“Let me speak to the psychiatrist. Oh, Yana, what is happening to you?”
“I don”t know. I don”t know,” she sobbed and held her head in her hands and for the first time since he had known her, he saw she was genuinely and profoundly distressed.
“So this is the paradise west,” she said bitterly between her tears, “this is the fulfillment of my naive dreams.”
“Go back home, Yana. Go back to your mother.”
“Go back to Kyiv? To what?” she cried. “I have no future there. “You knew my life - drifting from man to man. I didn”t sleep with most of them you know. I exaggerated. I wanted to see how shocked you would be,” and she managed to smile a bit through her tears. “No. Where would I live?
With my mother - I won”t do that any longer. What is the point?”
“Yana, you need to get out of here!”
“I can”t. He won”t let me. He won”t let go of me. He says he can”t live without me and if I stay here I can never leave him.”
“Yana, what the hell is happening? Let me speak to your doctor please. Where is he?”
Deneil was shown into the office of the resident psychiatrist, a softly spoken, youngish French doctor.
“You are a friend of Yana. Thank you for coming. I am afraid she is in a very dangerous state,” the psychiatrist confirmed. “She is suffering from delusions. She frequently describes things in detail that have never happened, according to her husband. We consider she is a danger to herself. She has to stay in the hospital for the time being.”
“Look, I have known Yana for a long time,” said Deneil. “I don”t think she is
a danger to herself. She’s weak and depressed, that’s all - and do you think it helps her, keeping here against her will and pumping her full of sedatives? She should simply spend some time with her mother, away from this man who calls himself her husband.”
“I am afraid legally that is for her husband to decide.”
“Husband!” Deneil exploded. “How do you think he met her? Do you think they were working together or something, or a mutual friend introduced them? Of course not! It was a set-up.
A marriage service through the Internet. You”ve heard of that surely? Do you think he’s ever visited her homeland?
Or met her mother or anyone from her family? Do you think he understands a single thing about her culture or background? Or wants to! No! So what right does he have to decide her future? What right does he have to keep her locked up here like a pale ghost? How can you condone that? How can you give that man the responsibility of a husband?”
“The law is the law,” replied the French psychiatrist solidly. “I am sorry but it’s your word against her husband’s and he is her legal guardian in this country.”
Deneil opened the office door and gestured to the waiting Yana.
“Yana, you must convince this doctor you are perfectly OK. You have got to get out of here. If you let me, I will do what I can to help you.”
She looked at him dreamily.
“Deneil, you always were the good one. You were always the one who understood. No one else understands me. But it is too late now - he is too strong - and I will never find anyone else as strong as him.”
Deneil realized then that Yana was seriously weakened by her stay in the mental institution. Perhaps she really was too ill for him to assist her. Was it possible that her husband and the psychiatrist were right? Was she unable to cope in the outside world? Was it something in those rough years in the early 1990’s in Kyiv, when her whole world had been turned upside down that had imploded her brain - and since then it was the same, recurring pattern - the casual sex, the make-believe world, the inability to cope with reality.
It was time for him to go. He hugged Yana and left her, a pale figure, completely isolated in this English provincial hospital. As they closed the doors she was having tantrums, struggling against the restraining arms of the nurses and screaming, “let me out of this place - I want to leave your clamned country”. The psychiatrist turned with upraised eyebrows to Deneil.
“I very much appreciate your concern for Yana,” he remarked in his soft French accent, “and between you and me I am not impressed with her husband’s attitude, but you see she is not yet ready for her freedom. You have told me something I did not know about her husband and about how they met. It explains many things for me.” He paused. “She’s a remarkable girl,” he paused, “and
a very attractive one. I believe things will soon be resolved for the best,” and he shook Deneil’s hand with a firm grip and smiled directly into his eyes.
***
On his return to Kyiv, Deneil explained the situation to Yana’s mother who was beside herself with worry. She in turn got in contact with the Ukrainian embassy in London and they promised to look into the matter immediately. Deneil offered to loan the mother the airfare for her trip to England and she agreed to call him immediately if she had any news. “What else,” he thought, “what more could he do?”
Yana’s mother phoned Deneil a few weeks later.
“Yana’s living in France, in Toulouse,” was the surprising news.
“What...How? Then she’s better?”
“Yes, I think she is recovering, though I have only spoken with her, not seen her. Actually she is staying with the French doctor who was looking after her in the hospital. From what Yana says, it seems he began to fall in love with her while he was treating her and after you told him what a fake her marriage to that Englishman was, he simply refused to sign the papers to keep her in the hospital on the grounds she was perfectly normal and healthy. Then, as his exchange programme in the hospital was finishing and he was about to return to France, he proposed that she should not go back to her husband, but come with him! He organized everything. Thank the Lord.”
A few days later Deneil received an e-mail from Yana.
“Deneil, she wrote, I cannot thank you enough for visiting me. I was truly going crazy in that awful place and you were the knight in shining armor who came and saved me. I am living in
a small village just outside Toulouse. It’s so beautiful here and so peaceful. In the mornings you can see the snow on the mountains in the distance and the air is pure and clear. I am with Olivier, the doctor you spoke with. He is the kindest man I have ever met and
I do believe together we will be happy.
I love you - Yana.”
Well, well. Deneil could not help thinking. It had been Yana’s dream to live in peace in a lovely spot in the hills of the south of France and now there she was. Perhaps there was some method in her madness after all.
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More in the section:
What's a Girl to Do?
Read also previous issue' articles:
Cows and Parachutists
Vietnam, Cobra-laced rice moonshine and those smiles
Gambling on the Slope
Manners Cost Nothing
A Roger By Any Other Name
Never Underestimate the Mark!
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