 'It's a matter of pedigree, you might say. Intellectual pedigree." Myroslav leaned on his cane pensively, debating with himself on the odds that I would choke on my anger and storm out of his daughter's life. He wanted me to change my name, and I was, after all, a Zhovnierczyk. Roger Zhovnierczyk. Why exchange that for an intellectual pedigree? I sighed.
Instead, we turned and started walking together up Volodymyr's Street and past the Opera House. His attempt at sympathy came almost immediately. "You do know, Roger, that if the family thought of you as unworthy, we would have never come to this point."
'Oh, lovely,' I thought. 'The mongrel American was up to snuff. It's the ancestors that are the problem. Wait until Dad hears about this.' A Zhovnierczyk back in New Jersey or further back in eastern Poland could still be as hardheaded as they come. Problem was, I no longer lived in their world. And I wasn't sure that I lived in this one yet.
I took in the sight of the aging historian walking with me while I sorted myself out. That the head of this tradition-minded clan chose to speak with me about this did mean something, at least in their version of Kyiv. The dapper man, sometimes a little too intense, trusted his daughter's instincts, and since his Olechka tolerated me enough to consider doing so permanently, he took it seriously. But passing muster and fitting in are two different things. The first was a requirement, the second a request, though I couldn't seriously ask for her hand without having both ironed out. And after hammering these details together, there would still be the formal petitioning to both parents, including a mother asking herself, "Why didn't she marry that nice Rybachenko boy?"
The negotiations had gone on for some weeks. From religion, to where we would live and why it would be Kyiv, to my prospects for the future, everything that a concerned and caring father could think of got covered. In Salem County, we test 'em differently. I'd seen Dad cleaning a 12-gauge shotgun laying across his lap and quietly asking a nervous suitor, "Are you sure?" But this is the Ukrainian-speaking Kyiv intelligentsia, an intricacy-loving people who actually enjoy protracted processes - unarmed but incredibly well-defended. And this time, the target was the name of his son-in-law. 'And his grandchildren's names,' the voice in the back of my head whispered.
The tap of his cane brought me round. We walked in silence for another minute, both of us waiting for me to be able to speak again. I finally unclenched my jaw, which made my teeth really happy, and managed to ask him something coherent and even not too brusque.
"Well, Myroslav Nazarovych, it's good to know that I'm OK as a person. But I'm already known professionally and in Kyiv in particular, by my current name. Besides, one look at me shows that I'm a foreigner, and as soon as they hear my accent, they'll know for sure. So who would we be fooling? Why do it?"
"Roger," he explained with the voice Olya says he normally reserves for his slower classes, "we're a besieged people, caught between the Scylla of a proletarian mass culture, which we've dealt with for a long time, and the Charybdis of the edifice that supports it, which we are only now learning about. You could say that we're stuck between the pop star and her manager. I think you already understand that. How the name sounds in Ukrainian and, to a degree, what class the name comes from, these are important to us. A name is one of the ways by which we identify ourselves."
Patronizing as it sounded, I could understand. The communist era had been harder to deal with, but clearer, for the Ukrainian-speaking intelligentsia, because their enemies were known entities. The newer era, when a psychology professor at a state university earned less than a janitor at a Western computer company, was a puzzlement for the older generation and a temptation for the younger. "Sometimes one gets lost in the marketplace, Roger," was how her brother Volodymyr put it to me once. Attaching importance to names was yet another way of defending themselves, of separating clans and strata, and acted as a sort of shorthand. That much I already knew.
But understanding a point of view doesn't mean that you have to accept its validity, or even when you know you will, to accept it without protest. Myroslav knew that I loved his daughter, and would act as I saw best. I had sparred in his presence over what some called the 'unmanly' washing of dishes, and I had parried with, "Any man can die for a woman; how many will wash dishes for one?" Olya later explained to me that I had been baited. "He told me about it while he and I were cleaning up after dinner. At least you passed on the level of showing respect for me. But don't be so brusque around him."
This time it wasn't so easy to brush off, and not giving in was going to create a lifetime of tension that I didn't need, especially since we were staying in Kyiv. Some people can change names without a pang of regret, I guess. Not me. Years afterward I would feel the burn in my head that came up while we were walking. I had always expected Olya to remain Olha Myroslavivna Liubych. But I got stuck with my own name, and couldn't let it go without a fight. They knew it; hence this conversation.
"Well, Myroslav Nazarovych, my family identifies itself with a particular name. We've spent our lives telling people how to pronounce it, and I grew up hearing that I wasn't a Philips or a Tomasetti. I've checked - I was the only Roger Zhovnierczyk in the United States, and I'm sure that I'm the only one here. My name is a part of me.
But for all that, I love your daughter, and you know full well that given one good reason I'd do it. Just one reason."
Myroslav stared at the opera house for a moment. "You misunderstand us, then, if you're asking for a reason. I'll speak for my Olechka and the rest of the family as much for myself when I say this. We do have family considerations, and the prospect of grandchildren with 'Rogerovych' in their names brings about aesthetic concerns. But we're not merely people with sensitive ears, we're aware of ourselves as a rather fragile group.
"See, the Soviets did a wonderful job of creating people with university degrees, though in the end those were mostly just laborers in mental fields. Look at the bribes their successors take, the favors they curry. They missed the point of an education, and the responsibility it entails.
"But our learned elite, the grandsons and great-grandsons of the educated reformers and activists from before the Soviet Revolution - we continue to advance our work as best we can and we expect a specific code of conduct from ourselves and each other.
"Many of us couldn't call 'Hassanovychs' and 'Garyovychs', with their inherently different mindsets, as our own people; we're not ready for it yet. Maybe in a generation, when we're stronger and a stable Ukraine has joined the European Union, these things will be palatable. And I do want my son and grandsons to see themselves as the European citizens that they are by birthright. But they should still be members of Ukraine's intelligentsia and I hope their names will inoculate them from, shall we say, a sort of 'Euroblandness' as well.
"I can sympathize with your identification with your name, Roger, and the individuality that you attach to it. But you're not being commanded to drop part of what makes you different. Instead, we're inviting you to join our community, as it were, and we're asking you what name you'll go by within it. Your professional life is something entirely different."
We stopped in front of the Tsarist-era apartment building that housed the Liubych family. Professors are partly actors, and Myroslav used his sense of timing with great skill.
"Consider our offer. Olechka will be down somewhat shortly" and we shared a quick smile at the word 'somewhat'. "If you have any questions, you might ask her."
One date, many questions and a dog-walk later, I finally collapsed into my chair at home. In the hallway, Jack, the subject of the dog walk, chomped happily and noisily on his dry food and kovbasa.
In a last wave of uncultured defiance, I hauled myself up, threw on The Duanes' "Blues for Barefoot Southern Gentlemen", and poured a split-fingered fastball of Jack's namesake. Then I sat back down, listening to the disk and propping my feet up on the coffee table.
The wave passed, and I lowered my feet. As always, I toasted my best friend Rob, hawking art far away in New York, and then picked up the notepad that Olya and I had been working on.
I started playing with combinations of names. The Zhovnierczyks, as the name says, had been soldiers from Peremyshl, in far-western Ukraine. So Soldatenko, literally, "soldier's grandson" made sense. Various names were attached, and then discarded. When the pieces fit, Roman Soldatenko stared at me from the page. I drained my glass.
I looked over at Jack, who, with the wisdom of a dog who's known life on the streets, had settled into his dog bed near the radiator to digest his dinner. He'd found a home, just as I'd found one in Kyiv. But I hadn't expected to be making a name for myself quite so literally. Turning back to the empty glass and the notepad, I could only think, "Who have I become?"
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