“Oh, what can I remember from then. I was just five or six then
in ’33” she laughs nervously and reaches for a cup. She loves cacao and I made
her one. That was the only way I could distract her from watching political
talk shows.

 “I don’t even remember how they tasted,” she says and giggles
on a memory. “Who?” I ask. “Sparrows,” she says. “I remember us catching
sparrows…”

 There was a special method. First you had to leave the barn’s
door open for a couple of hours, and some sparrows got in. So when you closes the door the only thing left to do was to get sparrows tired, so they start
flying lower and that’s where you catch them. “But when you take all the feathers off
there is almost nothing left to eat, and we were rarely getting more than two
at once,” gran says.

Those days with sparrows were lucky days. All the cats and dogs
in the village were caught for food very quickly.  All the cattle were taken away in the first
days as well as anything that could get people food, like fishing tackle.

Spring days were easier. “We were gathering weeds, drying them
and triturating. Mom was baking something with them. Hardly a bread, but
something we could eat,” she says and looks up at me. “You don’t understand how
it tasted, do you,” she smiles. I hardly could know.

“It was nothing like our tasty bread. It was bitter,” she says
and sips her cacao as if it could make a bitter memory sweeter. It never helps
though.

“Did they eat people in your village?” I ask, my voice
trembling. I really hoped they didn’t. My grandma was born in Salne village of Chernihiv Oblast. Her sister’s family still lives there.

“Oh, they did,” she whispers, looking down.

Once, she says, people in the village smelled a sweet smell
that was coming from a neighbor’s place. A widowed woman with a child, a girl,
lived there. Everyone rushed to her house. The woman was cooking. When she took
out a pot from the stove, there was a child’s hand in it.

“That’s how burning people smell – sweet,” granny says and
looks at my recorder. “Does it still work,” she asks. I nod. I might be looking
very frustrated. “Don’t think those people eating their children were just hungry.
They lost their minds. Didn’t make it through,” she says quietly. “May they
rest in peace.”

I have heard cannibalism stories many times, read them in a
dozen books, watched them in documentaries. It is different this time
though. I know where these people from Salne rest. I have been there. Their
graves are more like an old village landfill now. Abandoned. Trashed.
Forgotten.

The house where a woman ate her child might also be there. Also
abandoned like many houses in Salne.

“How many people died in the village then?” I ask finally after
we sit in silence for a couple of minutes. “Many,” she says. “Families were
disappearing, whole families,” she sighs and closes her eyes.

I know she is tired. It is past midnight after all. “Hey, let’s
go to sleep,” I say and turn off the recorder.

“I know they wanted to wipe out Ukraine, those Russian
communists, I just don’t know why… I’ll watch that to the end,” she says in
response and points at the TV.

She is still attentively watching the talk show when I walk out
after kissing her good night. “Hey, don’t forget to light up a candle tomorrow
at four, won’t you?” she shouts after me. I won’t, gran. It is no longer
abstract. “I’ll light up a prayer candle here, may they rest in peace,” she
murmurs. 

Kyiv Post staff writer Daryna Shevchenko can be reached at [email protected]