First of four essays:

CAT BENEATH A BIRDLESS SKY By Ludmila Kheronsky, Orion Magazine, July 2022

NOW IT IS THERE. Harsh sound behind the window. Thth-th-th-sss-ss-bang! The cat jumps and hides under the bed, then under the sofa. My black cat is hiding in the shadows. My body is trembling.

I shy away from the thought that this will continue. I want to stay strong. And I want to sleep too. But how do I sleep after THAT? What if we are never to sleep anymore? I try to imagine our sleepless nights, heads up.

The explosion. Russia has finally decided we are too unimportant to let live or sleep. Or have happy, unscared pets.

Later I will learn cats hear the missile three or four minutes ahead of its actual appearance. If you want to know there is a missile approaching: look at your pet. The cats begin to run back and forth in dismay, bumping against the walls. I talked to a woman from Lebanon who said her cat behaved the same way before the rocket shelling—running about the room, restlessly beating up and down the walls and windows. That was back in 2008, she said. That is what I see in 2022.

First, I listen to my body, to my chattering teeth. This chatter, animal fear, so shameful. Should I hide under the sofa, too, and lie there flat as a pancake? A cat hides under the sofa, but where can a human creature hide when home is no longer safe? How soon do I disappear?

I go to the dining room.

I try to make coffee. My first war coffee, at four o’clock in the morning, right after the explosion.

These rockets, the heavy pieces of deadly metal, how much do they weigh? Later I will know they can weigh up to four thousand kilos.

Nothing I am aware of weighs that much.

Even the cupboard, that antique piece of furniture we had restored and repaired and brought back in with the help of three strong men, does not weigh that much. Besides, no sane person would shell cupboards…

I go outside. The sky brightens, the white-and-blue sky of the first war morning—so far and so close. Every tree in the garden witnesses us. I need reliable witnesses to tell the story of the early morning rocket explosions.

The war erodes your breathing. It becomes hard and cloddy, like damaged soil. I will find it hard to breathe later on. My breathing will become bumpy, I will pant and wait to breathe out. That’s how breathing resists pain and despair. Look at other people to see how they breathe and you can tell right away how troubled or untroubled they are. Some people develop unnoticeable breathing as if they are not there anymore. Wars are unfit for breath.

The war morning: everything has become grayish. Even the bright crocuses are not as bright anymore. The flowers look ashy.

I’ve always loved making a fire in the fireplace, the smell of burning wood and the dying ember in the end, the ashes. Will I love it as much as I did before?

I can’t say what I will appreciate most as life is broken in two parts—before the war and during the war. During the war I need your citizens walking along the streets. I need to talk to taxi drivers, to bank clerks and shop assistants. While talking to people, I regain the feeling of being alive, the pleasures of staying normal. Life strives to be sane and people get up and go to work. Someone bakes bread.

Get up, take a shower, do your work.

We don’t have a basement where we could hide in bombardment. Neither do we have a place that could protect us from the missiles. Of course, a missile may hit our home directly. The chances of survival are very low then—but what if it explodes nearby? Then a window glass shatters, pieces fly everywhere around us, at us.

So my first activity this morning is to build a barricade of our books on the windowsill. These are books written by me and by my husband—extra copies at home, they now serve to protect us if our street is shelled. This is the room where we hide from missiles.

How do I prepare my house for war? What else do I need? Blankets, sheets, shawls? Will my favorite cashmere shawl do? I need an elegant covering from this nightmare.

Quick glimpses around the rooms of my home: so many beautiful things around me seem useless now. Dolls, beads, pictures, figurines, books on the shelves. I need shelter. I wrap my cashmere shawl around my shoulders.

My mom lived through World War II. She understands.

“Don’t leave your home,” she says. “Do they shell around your house?”

Sasha Matveeva/Unsplash

“I don’t know,” I say.

“Okay, then,” she says, “don’t leave.”

After the war started, we had an “evacuee” in our place, a tall silent woman with two children. The children were skinny. They were very poor. People shared some plain food with them. Nobody knew her name. We called her “Evacuee.” People who have no home lose their names.

I still have a name. My name is Ludmila. I have my home, though there are missiles flying above it. I used to wake up and talk to birds in the sky. The birds are gone now. It’s too loud for them to stay on our rooftop. I fill a windowsill with books to protect my husband and our cat from the glass shower during the air raid. I booked it. I used words for protection and safety. I think it will help.

I need to find a flashlight. And a go-bag. It should be very small, but it should have all my life in it—everything I love and value and everything I might need—family photos, books, documents, food and water, medication, cell phone, chargers, money, and my necklace, and warm clothes, and our collections of art, and my pillow, and my cashmere shawl, and my lipstick, and my husband’s glasses, and my fear, and my grief, and my anger, and my hope.

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Read the other 3 essays here.