The Blue Bus

Statues of Lenin and other heroes of the Revolution lie toppled and defaced, but the nearby palisade of radio jamming towers in downtown Lviv still stands as a reminder of darker times. This sky-high net no longer filters out signals from the decadent West. Now, I can even get MTV in my room at the hotel Dnestr. Nihilism has finally come full-circle.

I was in this western Ukrainian city on a combination of business and pleasure. My trip with Peter was supposed to be pleasure. Peter, a systems programmer in the computer department of the local Polytechnic Institute, offered to take me on an excursion to his selo, or home village. The selo was in the Carpathian mountains a few hours to the south of us. I had always wanted to see the Carpathians up close. Throughout my life in the United States I've listened to Ukrainian immigrants around me sing songs which evoked the majesty of these mountains and a longing for a return to them.

In addition to Peter's selo, we were also going to see an old woman named Parianka, who Peter claimed was some sort of shaman. I knew better than to expect anyone with a painted mask and a grass skirt. Shamans appear in many cultures over the ages, even in the Old Testament of the Bible. Stories of Moses conversing with God as a burning bush, acquiring a staff of power, and receiving a vision to lead his people out of slavery are all shamanic in nature.

According to Peter, Parianka wasn't a native of Ukraine. Nobody knew exactly where she was from, but rumors at the selo said she was Siberian. Years ago, the government had sent a number of my Ukrainian-born relatives to Siberia, so it didn't surprise me to hear of a Siberian living here.

"Yes," I thought, "this is going to be an interesting trip."

Peter drove up in his aged white Lada. His car was a slight improvement over Henry Ford's original precept: you could get one in any color you wanted, as long as it was red, orange, yellow or white. Almost everyone who drove -- locally, that's about one-in-three hundred persons -- drove these imitation Italian Fiats. I hopped in and buckled my seat belt. I looked over and noticed that Peter's seat belt lay unconnected across his lap. Although the city of Lviv has a seat belt law, most drivers followed Peter's nominal method of observing it. Most drivers, however, weren't fighting as hard to stay alive.

Peter has Hodgkins' disease, a type of lymphoma or cancer of the lymphatic system. So far, he's refused traditional medical treatment in favor of a folk approach. Parianka has been treating Peter for several years now. In a way, I didn't blame him. Certain aspects of medical practice today are not that far removed from the witch doctor.

"I didn't mention to you that Parianka wants me to try some of her mushrooms," Said Peter.

"That sounds tasty," I replied. "I grew up eating mushrooms that we had picked ourselves."

"These mushrooms are different," said Peter, looking pensive. "Parianka says that these mushrooms might show me how to fight the illness in my body."

"Oh . . . Those kinds of mushrooms," I said. "I hope you know what you're doing."

"I hope I do, too," said Peter, as he swerved to avoid hitting a flock of chickens in the road.

On the drive south from Lviv I saw senior citizens and young children tending small herds of cattle along the highway, leading them from one grazing area to another and enjoying the warmth. A high pressure front had moved in, promising sunshine and clear blue skies for this fine August day. The macadam soon turned into an unimproved dirt road, which was still heavily rutted from the last wet spell.

The selo where Peter had grown up seemed similar to others that we had passed through. White cottages sat behind painted iron fences. Everyone kept various domestic animals to supplement their diet and income. Rural life in these parts is without many of the conveniences that city dwellers take for granted. If you wanted water, you had to pump it by hand from a well. If you needed to relieve yourself, you did it in an outhouse. Horse-drawn wagons still carried fresh mowed hay in from the field.

Our car climbed into the forest almost as soon as we left the selo. Oak and beech formed a canopy over the road. I could hear rushing water somewhere down below us. The sweet woodland air made me nostalgic for the mixed hardwood and pine forests around New York's Finger Lakes region, where I grew up.

My moment of reflection ended with the sound of Peter's Lada bottoming out as we began our descent into a small valley. He slalomed down the road, trying to avoid the larger rocks that would probably have ripped out the underside of his car. When we had once again reached somewhat level ground, I spied a small dilapidated bus nestled behind some low scrub. Most of its paint had long since been displaced by rust, but I could still see a few olive-green patches which hinted of possible military origin. Peter turned here and honked his horn once.

A gaggle of hissing, honking geese swarmed toward our car and announced our arrival. Parianka, who was tending poppies in her garden, dismissed the geese with a backhand sweep. They trooped off in a new direction, ready to take on any comers.

Translated into English, Parianka's name means Pearl. She didn't look like a pearl, though. In fact, a scarecrow would have beaten Parianka in a beauty contest. Her body, which was all sinew and muscle, didn't have any of the softness that I often admired in the women of Lviv. The skin on her face was tanned from the sun. However, I could see some areas of pink under the protection afforded by her babushka. I had no idea how old she was; neither, I would guess, did she.

Strewn around the bus were piles of what -- even in this nation of want -- could easily be called junk: rusted-out basins, piles of moldering burlap and shells of ancient, corrugated appliances. As I gazed upon the junk it seemed as if it was caught in mid-motion. Like an amoeba, it was reaching out with a pseudopod and drawing itself up the nearby slope. I saw its goal: a small cottage set among the trees of the forest.

"A couple of friends and I built that for her," said Peter, gesturing at the cottage. "She had been living in that old bus for years. All of that junk used to be packed up inside of it. I guess it helped her to stay warm during the winter."

"So now the junk is following her up to her new house! I hope it gets there by winter."

Parianka came out and greeted my companion with a firm hug and a kiss on both cheeks. Her hand touched his eyes and pulled gently at the lower lids, inspecting the conjunctiva.

"How are you feeling?" she asked.

"Okay," Peter replied. "I feel like I may be beating it."

"Have you been drinking the tea I made for you?" Parianka asked.

"Only a little," replied Peter sheepishly. "I'm afraid the smell makes me retch."

"You must drink it every day," chided the old woman. Parianka turned to me and smiled. "I see you have brought a friend."

"My name is _____," I said, offering her my hand. She accepted it and embraced me. Her hand was dry and hard like the claw of a bird.

"He's from America," said Peter. "He wants to see a real life Baba Yaga."

Parianka smiled a toothy smile at Peter's jest. Most of her teeth were missing. However, unlike many other people I've seen here, Parianka's smile contained neither silver nor gold.

One thing that has most impressed me about the people from this part of the world is their hospitality. Parianka took us up to her cottage and gestured for us to sit at her table. She placed a new bottle of cognac and two glasses before us. With nimble fingers, she wrested the cap from the bottle and filled our glasses.

"Drink," she said. It was more an order than a request. Being proper guests, of course we obliged. Moldavian cognac is quite palatable. In short order, Parianka had set plates of food before us: dark bread and a salad of tomato, cucumber and onion, followed by a dish of what I think was cooked chicken livers smothered in onion. Our mealtime conversation drifted to talk about the recent political changes.

" I'm looking forward to getting some of the new money that's going to be minted for the Commonwealth of Independent States," I mentioned. "Since my last visit, the old Soviet money has disappeared almost completely."

Parianka excused herself and went rummaging in her pantry. She pulled out an old tin box and returned to our table.

"Something for our visitor," she said, handing me an old brass coin from the tin.

"Thank you," I said, handing back the coin. "But I didn't mean to imply that I was asking you for your old money."

"No, you must take it," said Parianka. "It doesn't hold any pleasant memories for me." She closed my fingers over the coin and withdrew her hand.

I thanked her again and examined the coin. One side featured the same symbols found on so many Soviet coins: the globe with a hammer and sickle across its face and surrounded by a wreath of grain. The reverse also featured the wheat motif in a style similar to that on older U.S. Lincoln cents. This one reached back from the days of the Evil Empire: it was a 1955 two-kopek piece, roughly equivalent to two U.S. cents. Today, given the rate of inflation in former Soviet republics, it's worth all of about nothing in monetary value. I wasn't sure of its value to a collector, but it was one of the first Soviet coins I'd seen that predated 1961.

Curiosity or a desire for personal enlightenment might have led me to consent to try Parianka's hallucinogenic mushrooms. Or it might have been Peter's cajoling. But I think it was the cognac.

The mushrooms that Parianka pulled from the jar were dry and leathery to the touch, yet the caps were still bright red, as if painted. White, warty protuberances covered the tops.

Parianka held one up to us and said "these are best when you find them in the earth already dried." She took my hand in hers and guided my finger to the underside of the cap. It had a peculiar velvety smoothness to it -- somewhat furry.

"When I find a mukhomor that isn't as fine as this, I make it into a powder and mix it with some milk," said Parianka. "I leave it out for the flies. They eat it and then in a short while, they die." She smiled her gap-toothed grin.

"Mukhomor," I thought to myself, "what an appropriate name."

The Ukrainian name for the Fly Agaric literally meant exterminate flies. My mind raced to think of other things that were toxic to flies but not to humans.

Parianka took a couple of the mushrooms and, separating the caps from the stems, placed the caps in her mouth. She smiled briefly and began to chew on the dried caps, wrapping her tongue around the mass to remoisten it. After a few moments, she spit the pulp into her hands and rolled it into a sausage shape. She went through this process a second time and offered the two glistening rolls to Peter and me. I glanced at Peter, looking to him for escape. I never had a fondness for someone else's spittle. When I was ten, I stubbornly refused to take Ann Hollerman's pre-chewed wad of gum as a token of friendship -- even when it cost me her friendship. Now I found myself reaching out to take something that looked like a well-used plug of red chewing tobacco.

We each took a little sausage. Peter, being chivalrous, let me take the smaller one. And with less-than-sincere bravado, we toasted each other's health -- "Na zdrovya!" -- and placed the pulpy mass into our mouths. It was an interesting blend of forest floor and old hag spittle.

"Don't chew it," coached Parianka. "Swallow it whole."

We obeyed and spent the next several minutes on idle conversation: inflation (the value of my American dollars increased almost daily), politics (how can Ukraine's sixty-some- odd political parties agree on anything, including the time of day?), and the weather (it's warm tonight, isn't it?).

I don't know why it took me so long to get sick. My mouth was producing copious amounts of saliva, which I politely kept swallowing. Suddenly and with almost no warning, I felt a strong spasm, and the contents of my stomach came flying out. The little sausage that I'd swallowed whole had come up still intact. It had grown large and gelatinous, like a giant garden slug.

Approximately an hour after eating the mushrooms, I began to feel a strange twitching and trembling in my muscles. I twiddled the two-kopek piece nervously between my fingers. The room and everything in it appeared to blur. I looked over at Peter, who seemed to be staring off into space. His eyes were glassy and his pupils enlarged. He looked like an owl.

Glancing out of the cottage window, I saw the moonlit bus sitting in the distance. The nighttime colors gave it a pale, bluish cast. An old song by the rock group The Doors played in my mind. Called "The End," it's a song filled with images of death, a favorite topic of the late Jim Morrison. It has a verse about a blue bus.

"The blue bus is calling us. Driver, where are you taking us?"

As if in answer to that question, I pictured Parianka's bus carrying a group of Ukrainian prisoners being transported by their Soviet captors. It is lurching along the same road that I had come in on. The bus stops where it sits now; smoke and steam are billowing up from under the hood. The engine block is cracked, and the old bus will never move again.

One of the guards at the front of the bus rises from his seat and turns to us. He removes the Tokarev semiautomatic pistol from its covered holster and racks the slide. Taking their cue, the other guards around us immediately draw and cock their pistols in response. Without hesitation or emotion, the lead guard walks back and aims his pistol at the side of the first prisoner's head. He fires one shot, then turns to the opposite row and executes two more prisoners in a similar manner, as if they are little more than farm animals.

A man behind me tries to bolt and is shot in the back by one of the guards in the rear of the bus. There are only a couple of us left. The lead guard steps back to the man in front of me, who is crossing himself, and shoots.

I'm now the last prisoner. I'm twiddling my lucky two-kopek piece nervously between my fingers. My ears are throbbing with the pulse of my blood. The sulfurous taste of gunpowder burns my tongue, and I can smell the blood and brains of the dead.

He is standing beside me, aiming his pistol at my temple. My consciousness, like the body of a mussel, is shriveling deep into my mind. One thought echoes:

"I'm not ready to die. I'm not ready to die."

It was daylight by the time I finally awoke. Peter and Parianka were both already up, setting out a breakfast of fresh eggs and kielbasa for us.

"So, did you sleep well?" Asked Peter. "Last time I saw you awake, you were crying your eyes out."

"Like the dead," I replied. While we ate breakfast, they listened with interest as I told them about my fantasy on the bus.

"Mukhomor can have a powerful effect on your abilities to see," said Parianka.

"What do you mean?" I asked.

"If you loved music, you might have sung for us," said Parianka. "If you loved to dance, you probably would have danced all night. But you have the power to see, and you saw for us."

"I think she means to say that your hallucination was just like a dream," said Peter. "You've taken various images from reality -- the bus and the coin -- and your mind has created a pastiche, filling in the blanks for you."

"I thought as much," I said. "Still, it's very disquieting. The experience has left me feeling depressed."

"Well, try to think no more of it," said Peter.

I looked across to Parianka, who had been silent throughout Peter's interpretation of my dream. She gazed at me with melancholy eyes.

"Come with me," said Parianka, as she rose from her seat and led us out of doors.

We walked down the gentle slope toward the bus, picking our way carefully around the strewn junk. Parianka led us through tall grass, past the bus and into the edge of the woods. In a small sunlit clearing rose a large mound of earth topped by a handmade crucifix.

"There is your dream," said Parianka. "I was the first to find the bodies in the bus. Your two-kopek coin was on one of the bodies."

The End