I recently published a collection of short stories THE DAYS OF MIRACLE AND WONDER, now available on all major E-book platforms.
This collection features famous and infamous people with historical, political, spiritual, and even sinister ties to Ukraine.
Here is another excerpt from the book (the first sneak peek is available below at www.irenezabytko.com/blog)
And please write a review! A few sentences written by you on Amazon, Kobo, Nook, or Apple will make a big difference in reaching and growing a global readership. Thank you!
Hope you’ll enjoy this story, and to read the rest of this one and the others, the book can be found on these many platforms: Books2read.com/miraclewonder and www.irenezabytko.com/new
The paperback version will be out this spring.
Thanks again, and enjoy!
“FLOAT”
From: THE DAYS OF MIRACLE AND WONDER, STORIES
By Irene Zabytko
From birth, I was primed to be a swimmer—even my left foot is webbed. Amazing, isn’t it? My mother often joked about how I had to be yanked out of her before my formal appearance on the planet. Even then I had already known that it was safer to swim in the womb than out into the world.
My parents were both Olympic swim coaches for the Soviet team. I can recall the very first time they dropped me into the shallow end of a huge regulation sized pool. I must have been barely a year old. Nobody believes me, but that is the first memory I have of myself, as a baby kicking a furious dogpaddle, bobbing my head and splashing towards my parents like a blind baby seal. They held their hands out to me and yelled out their directions, but I already knew by instinct how to hold my breath and float without their help.
During Soviet times, it was the custom for someone like me to be in training for swimming long before I even knew how to walk so as to qualify for the Olympics one day. My shoulders grew strong and wide and my calves and biceps became more powerful with each passing year. I was always taller than and almost as muscular as the boys in my classes, and in much better condition too. I swam at least six hours a day, even in the brutal winters. I didn’t care that the pool wasn’t properly heated whenever I got there so early in the mornings before the others. Shivering in the water only made me propel faster, and I generated my own heat by swimming the hard laps back and forth, back and forth. By the time the races began against my classmates, I was able to beat them without a worry.
My dedication paid off. After years of winning small local competitions, followed by larger international ones, I was at last able to land a place in the 1976 summer Olympics in Montreal. My specialty was the 200-meter butterfly. I was sleek and fast and strong. But during my last practice before the big event, I suffered a horrible leg cramp that absolutely paralyzed me. It felt as though some demon had deliberately pushed in a hundred pins deep inside my leg muscles.
I didn’t compete and was disqualified. That was the first of a series of heartbreaking bad luck that followed me throughout my life as a swimmer. Our team did badly that year too. We lost to the East Germans who grabbed all three medals. I felt I had let my team and country down. My parents tried to console me, but I could see the shattered hope in their eyes.
I tried again for the 1980 Olympic Soviet swim team, and my poor father—who was my coach—was feeling the enormous stress from it all. He suffered a heart attack, and I could not help thinking that I was the culprit, the jinx. And when it was time for me to compete, I did so poorly at the trials so that of course I wasn’t selected for the team.
I vowed I would pass the trials for the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles, America. The U.S.A. Hah! Wouldn’t you know, the Soviet Union decided to boycott that year because the Americans had boycotted ours in Moscow. Bad luck again for me. The worst of it was that my father was punished but in another way. By then he was the coach for the men’s 100 and 200 breaststroke teams, and he made an offhanded and careless joke about how stupid our government was in its decision. A colleague overheard and reported him, and my father lost his job.
What a horrible year that was for us! My parents returned to teaching physical education at secondary schools in Kyiv. That was considered quite a demotion and they lost their huge government subsidized apartment and salaries. Eventually, only my mother managed to keep us financially afloat by privately coaching children in addition to her other classes. My poor father’s heart conditioned worsened but his heart was long ago broken anyway and finally silenced from all the alcohol he drank.
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Through it all, I managed to go on to the university and become a physical education instructor like my parents. I was also married by the time I graduated and began my new career. And religiously, I kept up with my swimming practices because always in the back of my mind, I hoped for another shot at another major competition.
I suppose it was my body and not my naïve optimism that first attracted my husband. Sergei admired strong, firm bodies. He was a swimmer too, a favorite of my father’s who was also his coach. Sergei did quite well in many local swim competitions, but like me, he never made it as far as the Olympics. Actually, he was insane—too many steroids and other drugs made him that way, and he had a violent temper which the drugs never soothed.
We had a son, Petro, and soon after I was offered a job as a swimming coach for a sports school near Odesa. That promising job disappeared after the Soviet Union broke up in 1991. I no longer had any teams to coach. All the best athletes were wooed away by other countries that had far better facilities and certainly real salaries. I was left behind to rot along with the other coaches who were part of a new country, but not remembered nor rewarded for having been part of the old.
Most of all, I was upset and discouraged about losing my job because of my son’s abilities as a natural swimmer. Of course, with his pedigree, what else would he be? I thought that he of all people, would grow up to become a world class swimmer, but poor, poor boy, he also inherited my bad luck.
The economy was horrible. Our teachers’ salaries shriveled to a measly paycheck every few months or so. That was also the time when my sour marriage turned to vinegar. Sergei drank and took drugs which he always managed to find money for and became more and more physically violent towards me. I hit him back, but he was always stronger, made more so by the insanity that came to the surface over the years. And he was seeing other women—girls really—the ones he pretended to coach. By then, I had enough. I grabbed my son and finally left Sergei. It was simple. He had returned from another of his many binges and collapsed one morning on the living room rug without an explanation or apology. He never noticed how I stepped over him and slammed the door; nor did he ever try to find my son and me.
Petro and I moved into my mother’s apartment in Kyiv where I taught for a time at a new school some American Christians were running. The government wasn’t paying teachers anything—hadn’t been for a long time, and the Christians only gave me a portion of what they were able through donations from around the world. It was never enough.
Before I continue, I’d like you all to please understand the typical situation women like me were trapped in. Those of you who live here know what I mean. My mother’s apartment was barely two rooms. My job was on borrowed time. I had my son to worry about. He was an excellent swimmer too. He deserved to have a life. Naturally, I did what so many women were doing—had to do—before my looks were gone.
Let me explain. I was in my thirties. I’m not beautiful like so many of our girls, but I had to do something for my son and try to grab one more chance before my youth disappeared like soap bubbles. I may not be a beauty in my face, but my muscles are firm, and my soul is kind.
Do you like that? That’s what I had originally composed for my advertisement for the newspapers and for that lonely-hearts radio program everyone here listens to. Yes, I was advertising for a husband. I’m sure everyone has read those ads and heard the “romantic news” on the radio. That’s our most popular program because of those ridiculous announcements like: “Men and women searching for someone sympatichne—sympathetic.” Everyone wants that sympathy. But by then, I wanted more. So, I rewrote my ad to read: “Seeking a kind man who understands the swimmer’s life. Looking for a swimmer or any sympathetic man who lives near water.” That was it. I was searching for a way to both live and breathe on land and in the water.
For many months, I didn’t get any takers, but I did get one phone call from a professional matchmaking service. They invited me to meet some nice traveling American men. Those were the sort of men who were not married or had unfortunate marriages or were simply too odd and obviously didn’t have much experience with women before. I saw who they were the moment I walked into the party the matchmakers were hosting at a hotel in Kyiv. There they were—a lot of unattractive, big-gutted men who obviously wanted a “traditional” and of course sympathetic woman. No feministki for them. I suppose we Slavic women have the image as the hard working, sexy, and yet fragile type who caters to her husband’s every single need without a complaint. I’m sure all of those Amerikanchi believed that, otherwise, why didn’t they marry American women?
My first instinct was to turn around and leave all those silly mini-skirted, high-heeled, giggling young women who flirted with those ugly pot-bellied foreigners. Not one of the men looked like any of the American movie stars. Not one even looked as though they could survive a lap around the shallow end of a pool without gasping for air.
As for me, I knew that I wasn’t very glamorous looking either. I hardly wore make-up—chlorinated pools over the years had made me allergic to such things. But at least my hair was fluffed up and curly, not limp and pressed down from my swimming cap as usual. I tried to smile no matter how awful I felt.
The men looked me over. I felt their disapproving glances and their abrupt dismissal of me. They wanted someone younger and with a shorter skirt. I retreated and leaned towards a wall, edging my way to the exit when a man offered me a plastic cup of wine. He was pure American, but not as loud as the other men were. He seemed as afraid as I was, and his eyes were not as judgmental. No, his eyes were pleading with me to accept his sticky cup of bad wine that he offered in his thick hand.
“Sank you,” I said. I knew so little English then, but it was enough for him to smile his white teeth (which were false, like him), and run his hand over his thick head of black hair (also false). I don’t remember what we tried to talk about, but after many awkward attempts, he finally signaled over one of the club organizers to have her tell me that I was, as he put it in his American: “damn sure pretty.”
I learned he was visiting Ukraine on business—so many Americans were speculating on business partnerships then. For him, it was something to do with ships. He was a retired Navy nothing, a ship’s engineer he said. A glorified deckhand probably. He heard about the dating service so that he can find someone to marry again (for the fourth time I found out much later—all of his wives were foreigners like me—invisible dependent slaves).
We dated. We courted. He took me to the most expensive restaurants in Kyiv, the fancy ones which offered more than the usual borscht and cucumbers. Yes, these are the sort of things you want to know more about of course. We went to the nightclubs too, and he gave me money to buy clothes from the Western shops in Kyiv where everyday people only stare in the windows and salivate over the exotic merchandise. Yes, yes, I shopped alongside famous people—the politicians, rock stars and gangsters. And I have to admit I enjoyed it. I persuaded my shallow soul to overlook his pushy manners and flabby skin and try to like him a little.
Sooner or later it had to happen since we both had the same purpose—marriage. But, honestly, when it came down to my accepting his offer, it wasn’t because I was completely in awe of the clothes he bought me, or the restaurants he took me to, but for the simple fact that he lived in Florida in America. I knew that from our first meeting. He showed me pictures of his house in Florida which looked like a shed but had marvelous palm trees like the ones I saw in Crimea when I was a child on vacation with my parents so long ago.
And in his back garden, there it was—the swimming pool! A large one too. And even better—down the road from the house was the vast blue of the ocean. Water! Deep water! That was what I wanted. Water.
END OF SAMPLE
PRAISE FOR THE DAYS OF MIRACLE AND WONDER
“Irene Zabytko has shown that a writer can tell great stories and still have a Ukrainian point of view.” —A. J. Motyl, Author The Jew Who Was Ukrainian
“Irene Zabytko’s work is very engaging. I always look forward to her writing as it is captivating, and her characters are empowered with grace and strength.”— Laurie Kuntz, Poet, Author, The Moon Over My Mother’s House (forthcoming)
“What a breezy but compelling read. I like it a lot. The momentum builds within a social framework that is both ominous and absurd. I hear a bit of Nabokov and of course Hohol.”—Lila Dlaboha, Poet, Past Editorial Board Member The Little Magazine.
Irene Zabytko is an award-winning fiction writer. She is the author of the highly acclaimed novel about Chornobyl (Chernobyl), THE SKY UNWASHED, and the short story collection WHEN LUBA LEAVES HOME. Irene is also the author of the ultimate fiction writing guidebook: THE FICTION PRESCRIPTION: HOW TO WRITE AND IMPROVE YOUR FICTION LIKE THE GREAT LITERARY MASTERS.
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