[Uhaku]

CHAPTER 1



I grew up in this handsome neighborhood of Glenview, about forty minutes away from downtown Chicago. I couldn’t imagine anywhere else in the world more harmonious than here. It was green. It was perfect… All right, I was biased. The town and facility were nice, but the package came with a set of horrible weathers at times.

There was a mansion in the middle of a ranch just ten minutes from my modest home. I never got to talk to the grumpy, ninety-year-old woman, who lived there alone. Her name was Yulia Volkova. She was a Russian-American millionaire or some sort. The mansion was a trophy of her vanity. The deserted garden and the dry fountain were the reminder of her lost love. The broken, dull windows and the barred gates locked away the times and memories, marking the territory of her lonesome world. The place was dead.

Volkova was the talk of town. Everyone knew her, but not daring enough to get close to her. She rarely came out of her shelter if not necessary. Foods, or everything she needed, would be delivered to her home. Having no job since forever, she must be filthy rich to be able to keep her life as private and privileged like that.

For twenty-five years, I never had the nerve to go near the ranch. It looked as haunted as Volkova’s mere existence. But I caught a glimpse of her a while ago when she came out and strolled in her garden. Her magnificent blue eyes and silky long blonde hair suggested a once beautiful woman. I became intrigued even more. What had transformed her into a vulgar, old soul? What had life taken away from her, leaving her a recluse now?

I gathered my courage to go to her one evening. To my surprise, the gates weren’t locked. I assumed that Volkova must have forgotten to lock it after the delivery guy left. As I glided through the garden, I observed the dead grasses underneath the patches of snow and the long vines hanging down all over the building.

A few knocks on the door and Volkova came answering the door with a frown on her deeply lined face. Nonetheless, her eyes mesmerized me; they shone so brightly I could only imagine how stunning she must be when she was a young woman.

“Umm, you forgot to lock your gates, Ma’am,” I said.

“WHAT?” she asked, cocking her head a little.

“Oh... THE GATES! YOU FORGOT TO LOCK THE GATES!”

She nodded in annoyance. “What do you want?” she asked coarsely, a cigarette between her darkened lips.

I held up a basket full of fruits I just bought from the supermarket. “I just thought I’d… I…”

“WHAT?”

“HERE, THESE ARE FOR YOU. MY NAME IS LENA MYER. I LIVE JUST TWENTY MINUTES FROM HERE, UP AT THE OLD STATION.”

Volkova paused upon hearing my name. I wasn’t famous, or infamous for any matter. I was just a regular citizen nobody gave a damn when walking in the streets. There was no reason she should have heard my name before. But the recognition on her face gave me hope a bit; it meant that she was really the one I was looking for.

Slowly, the old woman opened the door wider, gesturing me to enter.

“Put it there,” she ordered behind me, pointing to my right to where the kitchen was.

I did as instructed, and went into the large living room where Volkova was sitting on the couch. The house looked comfy and clean inside, unlike the worn look of the exterior. It worried me that a woman as old as her was living alone in this huge place. If a burglar broke in, she wouldn’t stand a chance of survival.

But little did I know. This woman survived much more than a burglar. Through out her life, she took the bullets that were meant for her father again and again, and with much pride. She made it through World War II whilst living in Germany at the time Berlin was about to fall, when the whole world crumbling apart. She had lived several decades, fighting with rage of solitude and mourning a lost promise. Yulia Volkova was one tough piece of antique. She wasn’t going to give in even though she was approaching ninety-one years of age in a few months.

“Would you like some vodka?” Volkova asked, grabbing the bottle, which was already on the table. She started drinking so early in the day.

“YES, THANK YOU,” I replied. I didn’t think I should refuse anything the woman offered me even though I didn’t like drinking during the day. I sat down opposite to her, and noticed that she glanced up at me. The position of my sitting must have hit home for her somehow. I became reluctant and wondered if I should stand up to sit somewhere else. Her stare, however, sat me back down.

“You don’t have to speak so loudly now. I’ve put on my hearing aids. So tell me what made you decide to invade my privacy today?”

“I did not invade, Ma’am. I was invited in. By you.”

Volkova smiled a little. “You must have heard many stories about me, especially from your grandfather.”

“Did you actually know him?”

“Yes, and he was one of the two, biggest jinxes of my life.”

I swallowed hard. It seemed Volkova was still too sharp in her memories for a ninety-year-old woman. The anger and regret clinging around the edge of her voice were palpable.

“Umm, what was the other jinx?” I tried to pull her attention away from my grandfather.

Volkova closed her eyes and heaved a long sigh. “It’s Lena Myer, isn’t it?”

“Yes, Ma’am.”

Volkova scoffed. “You’re the two jinxes rolled into one then.”

“Excuse me?” I was truly baffled at her remark.

“Did your grandfather send you here?”

“No—yes. Before he passed away a year ago, he asked me to find you.”

With this, Volkova’s head shot up straight, staring at me. I was sure I was sitting with the ‘Yulia’ my grandfather lamented about.

“On his death bed, he whispered your name. I wanted to pay a visit to you before this, but I just couldn’t find an excuse to knock on your door.”

“He had to taint my name even when he was about to die!” Volkova growled, gripping hard on the glass shot.

“I really had no clue what happened between you and him. I’m terribly sorry if I’ve upset you.” I stood up, praying that she wouldn’t lash out and threw the bottle at me.

“Sit down! You haven’t had your drink!” Volkova pushed the shot towards me.

I carefully sat back down and washed down the honorary drink. “My grandfather moved to Germany with his then fiancée around mid or late thirties, I think. After they broke their engagement, he came back to America and met my grandmother. He settled down in Chicago again during the mid forties.” I stared back at Volkova. “Were you the fiancée?”

“Why, it doesn’t matter now.”

“Before he died, he gave me a small, leathered book. It’s a journal, and he wanted me to return it to Yulia Volkova.”

“I don’t recall ever writing a journal my entire life. If there was really such thing, why didn’t he do it himself when he was still alive?”

“I supposed the only one who knew the reason was the fiancée.”

Volkova looked away. “I have no business with your grandfather anymore. If there’s nothing else you need to know here.”

I nodded and quietly left. I wasn’t expecting a warm welcome from Volkova anyway. Just a few days before my grandfather passed away, he moaned of the guilt over the crime he once committed, which Volkova would never forgive him. Like all of the remaining members of my family, I had yet to know the whole story my grandfather kept secret for all these years.

On my way out, I glanced at the basket sitting idly on the table inside the kitchen. The leathered book was hidden at the bottom of the basket, and I hoped that Volkova wouldn’t throw the whole thing away without seeing it first.

Right after my grandfather died, I couldn’t resist the temptation and sneaked a peek at the journal. I meant to read only the first page, but I reached one third of the whole book anyway. It was obviously not my grandfather’s handwriting. The entries were so detailed and far too intense to be him, and it obviously wasn’t Volkova either. It was a life of some stranger I was so curious to know. I would have gone on reading, but guilt stopped me and I never dared to touch it again. However, questions still remained. Why would my grandfather keep someone else’s journal? Whose was it?


>>>


It was three days later that Volkova rang me out of the blue and asked me to come visit her again. She gave the reason that she needed a hand to help her with Christmas Eve celebration. My family knew that there was no such thing as celebration in the ranch. The old woman never invited anybody. I told my family what my grandfather asked me to do before he passed away, and they supported me on my quest to unravel his past.

After I had a shower and a breakfast, I walked to Volkova’s ranch in the late morning and found that the old woman had ordered tons of foods to celebrate tonight. Not wanting to spoil the foods, she made me ring my family and asked them all to join us for dinner. She wanted to have some private time with me until dusk, and I knew what was waiting for me; the secret life of Roland Myer. But I sensed that it’d concern much more than just his life.

As expected, Volkova had seen the book, and she didn’t throw it away. She must have read it and knew whom the writer was. The old woman poured herself some bourbon and sat down on the couch. She brought the thick, brown-leather book to the small, glass-top table between us.

“Your grandfather didn’t write this,” Volkova said.

“I know. Who was it?”

She looked up and studied me. “You’ve read it, haven’t you?”

“A few pages,” I replied fast.

“I’m amazed. I read it all days and nights.”

“A few pages,” I repeated.

“I caught you lying again.”

I scratched my neck a little. “Well, umm… less than half of it. I knew it wasn’t place since my grandfather wanted only you to have it… But I was kinda—curious.”

“Hmm, who could resist her?” Volkova shrugged and flipped through the pages.

“Her? You do know who the writer was.” I knew I sound too eager.

Slowly, Volkova leaned her head back and closed her eyes. “The Irish… Everyone called her Irish. She wasn’t actually one. She just had the look of it.”

Before I knew, I was listening to the tale of three people’s lives; my grandfather, Yulia Volkova, and the mysterious Irish. I was dragged seventy years back, to the glorious days of those three, wild, young gangsters.