Bridges over time

…and you take out the manuscript: you go towards
the railway—a train rushes
past the stones and birds’ nests,
past the letters and pages,
to the underground wells, to the celestial rivers,
out of paper you build
the bridge.

Vasyl Makhno

There have been numerous bridges in my life. The very first was a wooden suspension bridge from my childhood. It was thrown over the deep, muddy and fast-flowing Horyn River. In its middle, it dangerously tilted downwards, one edge nearly grazing the water, with its transverse black and gray planks. The planks were unreliable, poorly fitted, occasionally missing, showing glimpses of foamy water swirling just beneath your feet. Anyone who successfully crossed this bridge from one bank to the other earned great authority and respect within our group of boys. It was a form of initiation; if you crossed, you belonged with us.

This bridge stood for quite a while. I managed to capture a picture of it during my student days, just before another one was constructed in its place. The new suspension bridge was crafted from fresh, smooth boards. It was beautiful and safe, seemingly designed to dissuade future generations from engaging in the games we once enjoyed.
Another bridge from my childhood had a dam and gateways near its abutments. Sometimes the gateways would open, causing the river beneath the bridge to suddenly become shallow, revealing the sandy bottom. We’d descend the smooth abutments, clutching homemade fishing rods in one hand, perch on the dam, and catch golden gudgeon. It was the only opportunity to fish right in the heart of the stream, where the fish appeared fearless and daring, almost inviting us to catch them.

When I moved to Lviv, I naturally did not have a special connection with bridges. And I didn’t have it with the river either, after all. The unfortunate Poltva, devastated and relegated to subterranean channels, emerged as a somewhat ephemeral symbol of the city. A ghost river with ghost bridges traversing it. That’s an endless source of tourist lore and legends.

Yet, this ephemerality captivated me with a compelling force. I delved into the hydrography of Lviv, meticulously studying it, knowing precisely where the bridges once existed (exists) in our city. There was a peculiar joy in recalling that there existed (exists) a bridge amidst a bustling square.

Being a writer holds its advantages, especially because the trained imagination of an author has the capacity to embellish reality. As long as one doesn’t feel their grip on sanity slipping, they can use this skill.

Once I was lucky enough to see a completely empty Charles Bridge in Prague. It was at dawn, that time when the city had not yet decided whether to wake up or not. I was proud of capturing that exquisite moment. However, the same day, Facebook presented me with a friend’s selfie. It turned out my friend had also been on Charles Bridge that day, seemingly around the same hour but from the opposite end. He was also glad that there were not any people. Both of us rejoiced in each other’s absence, while not realizing each other’s presence.

During the war, I encountered bridges too. Many of them were ravaged, rendered, destroyed so that no one could use them anymore. One pontoon bridge lay half-submerged, remnants of cars protruding from the water. Their identities—civilian or military—were indistinguishable. We hurriedly crossed it one by one, like it was a dying Leviathan, knowing the place was heavily bombarded. The chance of staying on that bridge forever seemed ominously high.

A bridge is always allegorical—a symbol steeped in a myriad of meanings and interpretations. You cross it, hence you have overcome a certain space. Hence you have changed.

My first leave from the army is also associated with a bridge. I got into a small Sprinter, a tidy minibus shuttling between Dobropillia and Dnipro. As we started the journey, I fell into a slumber, awakening only at the checkpoint upon exiting Donetsk region.

I opened my eyes as we crossed the Dnipro River and were about to stop in the city. It was my first big city in quite a while—Dnipro on the Dnipro. I gazed out the window as if it was the first time in my life I had ever seen so much water and the cityscape above it.

It felt as though I wasn’t merely crossing from one bank to another, but rather transitioning from the realm of war back to a realm of peace. Yet, it was all illusory, of course. That day, Russian missiles struck the Dnipro. Within two weeks, I crossed that same bridge again, but in the opposite direction—heading back toward the war.

In a peculiar twist of fate, in September 2023, while serving in Kyiv, I participated in the Ukrainian-German literary festival titled “Eine Brücke aus Papier” (“A Bridge of Paper”) held in Uzhhorod. I was invited by its founder and director, Verena Nolte, whom I had met years ago in Bavaria, during a time when I felt the freedom to move across Europe, back when the world seemed to be on stronger foundations than it does now.

Together with Viktoriia Mykhailova, another literature enthusiast based in Germany, we sat sipping wine in a cozy ‘kneipe’ along the shores of Lake Starnberg and discussed topics that held significance for us: literature, two societies—the Ukrainian and the German, two book markets—the Ukrainian and the German, two writing and reading spaces… We made plans for a joint event at the Leipzig Book Fair, and the subsequent year, we successfully brought our plans to fruition.

I arrived at the festival early in the morning, and for some reason I chose a shabby Lada 2105 taxi among the fleet parked at the palace square. Perhaps it was the soldier’s logic that assumed the driver must be available (who else but a soldier would risk stepping into such a car?), and might charge a bit less.

However, I was mistaken on both counts. The taxi driver dropped me off nearly in the middle of the road as he had another order. He charged me Kyiv prices, possibly assuming so since I had just disembarked from the Kyiv train.
Laughing at the situation, I hurried to the hotel. The first event of the Paper Bridge would begin in just two hours.

Being at the Bridge of Paper festival almost transported me to a pre-war reality. In Uzhhorod, there was no curfew, and no one responded to the air raid alerts. Only our German colleague, poet, and singer Ulrike Almuth Zandig asked my help in downloading the Air Alert app from the AppStore. Fortunately, it wasn’t needed in Uzhhorod.

Ulrike’s recitation of her poems was flawless, effectively conveying the mood to the audience. It seemed as though we could have understood them even without translation, although I must admit, our translators were excellent.

The Bridge of Paper brought me back to people I hadn’t seen since before the war. I engaged in conversations with Andrii Liubka, Yurko Prokhasko, Bandy Sholtes, Oleh Kotsarev, and Hryts Semenchuk. Yet, in reality, I was listening to their voices. Each of them was scheduled to have a reading in the evening, but I was particularly interested in how they read. Because this is how they used to read in (relatively) peaceful times. It was probably my subconscious desperately wanting to make sure that my previous life was not a dream.

This time, we had a broader range of subjects for our readings and discussions. We talked about the war. And we talked about our Vika Amelina, who was killed this summer in Kramatorsk because of Russian shelling.

Kerstin Preiwuß, a poet from Leipzig, honored Vika with a poignant poem she recited on the festival’s opening day. It was a bridge too.

It was the bridge of memory enabling Vika to be present with us that night.

We walked across the bridge on our way back to the hotel. At least, my old friend Alexander Kratochvil, a translator and scholar from Munich, and I walked. I later discovered the bridge is known as the “Masaryk Bridge”. Construction on it commenced in 1930 to commemorate Masaryk’s 80th birthday when he was the president of Czechoslovakia. Despite being destroyed during World War II, the bridge was rebuilt once again.

Bridges, like the phoenixes, always rise from the ruins because people desperately need to connect shores. Just as we strive to mend the wounds at the front.

Artem Chapai, another soldier, couldn’t attend the event in Uzhhorod. Ms. Nolte asked me to read his essay one evening.

Damn, how nervous I was!.. I really like Chapai’s “The Ukraine”. To be honest, it’s among the finest works written in Ukraine in the last decade. I was anxious not to misrepresent it while reading.

However, having traveled extensively in Ukraine before and put so many “the”, that this text felt as though it were my own. I found myself hoping that the author would write much more, and everyone who was present at that festival. Even those who weren’t…

And I wish for poet Oksana Stomina, whose work was a delightful discovery for me, to write many more profound poems.

May all bridges endure.

Except, of course, the Crimean one.

RELATED: ‘Bridge of Paper’ festival in Uzhhorod: military topic in the air and German-Ukrainian relations

Chytomo spotlights:Ukrainian culture on and after frontline” project. The project is funded by the Stabilisation Fund for Culture and Education of the German Federal Foreign Office
and the Goethe-Institut. goethe.de.