Lisa Bernard
She’s empirically beautiful.
Young—but that’s relative.
That cutaway in her dress … flirtation?
Maybe she’s moving closer to something, testing her confidence. Or walking away, giving the cold shoulder.
Those pursed lips. Defiance? Hesitation? Possibly both.
“Beware,” may be her message in that elegant updo with Western style waves atop braids of flowers in her rustic Slavic roots.
It was 1981 when her gaze met mine. I was 19, an American exchange student at Leningrad State University, USSR.
Her palette set her apart - coastal, tropical hues against the greys of Kiev, a city of cement and rubble from World War II, in what was the Ukraine. This was, after all, the Soviet Period, the post-war Communist era when industrial efficiency and functionality shaped Five-Year Plans that governed the state-controlled economy. Aesthetics? No such bourgeois fat in these budgets.
The clever artisan behind this treasure winked at Russian black lacquer folk art so it could be sold in a state-run hard-currency kiosk where a foreigner like me could purchase it. Or them. Yes, plural. I bought a few from the quota, each hand painted with that captivating face so I could wear one and share – my multiplier effect. I didn’t miss an opportunity to mock Soviet spins on reality. In the USSR, propaganda hovered, but truth in art could fly. And so did these brooches, airlifted in duffle bags over the iron curtain to American friends’ lapels and into the lecture halls and dormitories of our colleges and universities where - at that time - critical thinking flourished.
I was earlier that day at Babi Yar, then an overlooked graveyard where the stench of machine gun fire defied physics and choked us four decades after 33,771 Jews were murdered there in batches over two days.
Yar in Russian translates as ravine. I saw a ditch.
The laws of war and more died in that trench, dug so deep falling corpses stacked themselves like frankfurters in a supermarket value pack. Mothers, fathers and their babies stripped of dignity and modesty … nothing between their flesh and SS bullets.
The memorial marker was unnervingly small, perfunctory for the single largest slaughter in the whole of the Holocaust. Bolsheviks embarrass easily, I learned. This gruesome episode unfolded in slow motion on their watch, a barbaric battle lost in its defense against Nazism in which the Soviet Union ultimately prevailed, and for which I am grateful. Let us give it its due. The U.S. and the USSR allied to vanquish the Nazi villain - and historical amnesia is unbecoming … and becoming commonplace.
Forty-five years to the day her eyes met mine, this colorful belle made a cameo appearance amid my jewelry. She’s again pinned over my heart, her paradoxes pertinent. Steady while in motion. Dreamy blue eyes, wide awake with wisdom, grabbing a nostalgic glance at innocence. Tight lips whisper what the civilized world hears and cheers with a roar. Haunting in her allure.
This cameo? She is Ukraine.