It’s three in the morning and the cold knocks Sergei Sergeič, the beekeeper, out of bed because the stove has gone out. Grumbling he gets up, puts on his trousers, slips his feet into slippers made from a pair of valenki, throws his sheepskin coat over his shoulders and leaves. He goes to the shed to get coal, not an easy task with all the snow there. He goes back into the house and lights a candle that smells of honey, the alarm clock ticks and this comforts him. He goes out again, a cannon shot echoes from the east in the distance and after thirty seconds he hears another one coming from the other side. On the road parallel to his, a car passes and stops, Sergej knows who lives there, it is his childhood enemy Paška Chemelenko, retired early, his age, a friend of the Russians. In the village of Malaja Starogradovka, in the Donbass region, only two inhabitants remain, the others have left due to the conflict between the Ukrainian army and the separatists. For three years, two of them have been living in that town in the gray area, in no man’s land, without services, without electricity, without anything. Sergej lives on the Ukrainian side in Lenin Street, father of the Soviet Union, while Paška on the Russian side in Taras Ševčenko Street, a great Ukrainian man of letters. Rather than the fear of dying, the war has generated in Sergei an indifference towards everything around him, his feelings are as if asleep, except for one. His sense of responsibility towards his bees keeps him alive and attentive. Now during the wintering period you have to worry about whether the hives hold up and that the walls are sturdy and thick. Even if they are in the shed, some stray bullet could hit them and cause death among the bees. This carnage would be inconceivable for Sergei…
Gray bees by Andrei Kurkov is a novel that the author didn’t think of writing, but when he saw people from Donbass arriving in Kiev he decided. First came the rich, who had already purchased houses previously, then the poorest with dilapidated cars, like that of the protagonist Sergej. One day Kurkov speaking with a young man who had opened a small bar outside the center of Kiev, he learns that once a month he returns to Donbass to a village near the front line. Seven families still live there, while all the others have left. They live there with nothing left, there are no shops or electricity, there is no post office or doctor. You then understand that he is talking about the gray area, we are at the end of 2016, beginning of 2017. Unlike the many books published on war that talk about soldiers, enemies and battles, Gray bees tells the story of people who live in that period and who accidentally found themselves in the middle. The area where Sergei Sergeič and Paška Chemelenko live offered work to many people, a peaceful and passive population, often exploited, in factories or mines owned by the oligarchs. Beekeeping is very important in Donbass and Ukraine, beekeepers are considered wise and peaceful men, even by those with different political opinions. They are men who know nature and the remedies it provides and then honey has the same taste for everyone. Sergej Sergeič is one of these, he uses honey as a bargaining chip to buy food, to pass separatist checkpoints, thanks to honey he survives, it’s like having a traveling factory, which travels with him. He is a little nostalgic for Soviet life and is sure that bees are the only ones who have created a perfect communist society. In fact, they are a collective, they work a lot, they produce honey and they don’t ask for a salary. Since his wife Vitalina and his daughter left him, he has remained alone with the bees and almost becomes a bee too, a big one, responsible for all the others. Contrasted with the gray and dangerous reality are the many dreams that Sergej has and that is where he hides. This book may be a philosophical fable because it talks about the Donbass war, but it is valid for any war. There are always enemies and poorly controlled territories and people who get caught between two powers. The dualism between Sergej and Paška is revealed right from the location of their homes. Segiej lives in front of the Ukrainian army and is also visited by a curious and kind soldier who informs him about the events happening in Ukraine. Paška lives opposite the separatist army and has friendly relations and a small business with them. An important theme of the book is surveillance, like the episode that happened in Crimea to the family of his Muslim Tatar friend Artem, which symbolizes the total subservience of the Russian people to the leader, as in the time of the Tsar. In Ukraine this novel was little accepted by activists who see propaganda in literature, for this reason Gray bees it was classified as “unpatriotic”. It may be easy, for those who don’t live in a country at war and have the opportunity to make comparisons, to compare the two characters Sergej and Paška to Beckettian characters or Ionesco, but if you are at war everything disappears. This novel is a bridge between the past war and the one that has arrived, Kurkov in fact was convinced that there would be an escalation, politics influences literature. The author does a lot of research for his novels, it is the most important part of his work and for Gray bees he went to a very well known beekeeper in Lithuania who lives in a small village. Gray bees it won the 2022 National Book Critics Circle Award – for best translation – in the United States and the Prix Medicis étranger in France, and was also selected for the Prix du Meilleur Livre étranger and the Prix Femina étranger, confirming itself as one of the of Kurkov’s most important and successful works both in terms of critics and readers.
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