Most contemporary war novels are based on historical material, recreating conflicts that have long been resolved. It’s rare to encounter a narrative like Andrey Kurkov’s Grey Bees, set in the middle of an ongoing — and intensifying — military assault. Published in 2018 in Ukraine in Russian, this book begins in the neutral “grey” zone between Ukraine and pro-Russian-separatists-occupied Donbas territory, reminding us that Putin launched his assault on Ukraine in 2014.
To a reader and reviewer of Boris Dralyuk’s pitch-perfect English translation, published just two months after Russia renewed its onslaught on February 24, 2022, the timing presents a challenge: I am struggling to acquire the distance from the news to read the book on its own terms, instead of looking in it for solace and a reason to hope that Ukraine will triumph over the aggressor. In many ways, this is a hopeful book, and it does provide some solace — as well as pithy observations about what life in the war is like: “Fear is an invisible thing, subtle and variable, like a virus or bacterium. It can be inhaled with a breath of air, or accidentally imbibed with a sip of water and vodka, or come in through your ears …” Reading the novel solely through the lens of current events, however, may obscure some of its central preoccupations, notably its exploration of relationships between men and, in particular, the growing closeness between its protagonist, Sergey Sergeyich, and his “frenemy” Pasha.
Sergey Sergeyich and Pashka are the two remaining citizens of a small village in the middle of the active war zone. Former youthful classmates, each is now 49 years old, retired with mild disabilities:
“You might think that after forty years Sergeyich would have learned to forgive and forget. Forgive? Maybe. But how could he forget? There were seven girls in their class and only two boys — himself and Pashka — and that meant Sergeyich had never had a friend in school, only an enemy. ‘Enemy’ was too harsh a word, of course. In Ukrainian one could say ‘vrazhenyatko’ — what you might call a ‘frenemy.’ That was more like it. Pashka was a harmless little enemy, the kind no-one fears.”
Sergeyich is divorced, his wife and daughter having left for western Ukraine some time before the war had begun. Pashka, too, is a loner. The men might seem destined to become companions during war time, but they cannot stand each other. It doesn’t help that they have different political leanings. Sergeyich lives on the street located closer to the Ukrainian frontline, and occasionally entertains a Ukrainian soldier who comes to check up on him; Pashka befriends a Russian man, Vladlen, originally from Siberia, who fights for the DNR (the self-proclaimed, pro-Russian Donetsk National Republic). Sergeyich distrusts Pashka to such an extent that at one point he suspects him of being a sniper, of fighting against Ukrainians.
Instead of seeking ties to another person, Sergeyich nurtures a relationship with the bees — in his retirement, he’s become a bee-keeper with six hives in his charge. He feels a sense of responsibility to his bees; they are the ones that he purportedly lives for, and if he ever dreams of leaving the war zone, it is for the sake of the bees — he worries about the harm caused to them by the constant boom of shelling.
The episode that draws the two men closer begins with Sergeyich’s discovery of a body on a snowy field outside of his house. The dead man was apparently delivering candy to the kids who live in a village several kilometers away. He had been shot by a DNR sniper, and later Sergeyich discovers the sniper’s lair in his neighbor’s yard. He shows the location to Petro, his Ukrainian solider friend, and a few days later the sniper is killed by the mine planted under his position.
Both Sergeyich and Pashka are then forced by the DNR men to pick up the pieces of the blown-apart body that, turns out, had been Vladlen’s — Pashka’s friend. And even though Pashka must surely suspect Sergeyich as having something to do with this death, he chooses not to seek revenge, but instead offers to bring some food to Sergeyich. This is a strange and a tender turn in the story; one senses that Sergeyich has a hard time facing the affection he begins to feel for Pashka. He chooses to cook his last two eggs for Pashka and himself — and then decides on the spot that he’s leaving, that he will take his bees to the more peaceful part of Ukraine.
As the weather turns to spring, Sergeyich loads up his hives into a trailer of his car and — thanks to the war’s temporary lull — drives through several checkpoints to get to Ukrainian territory. He spends several weeks in a peaceful village near Melitopol where he befriends a local woman named Galya. She hopes for a relationship with him, but he’s eventually pushed out from the village by young men who think his absence from the “grey zone” means that he’s “one of them,” harboring pro-Russian sentiments.
Sergeyich then heads to Crimea, where he once had a friend, Akhtem, a fellow bee-keeper. He drives through another set of checkpoints to arrive at the Russian-occupied region and finds his friend’s family. He discovers that Akhtem had been made to disappear by the Russians and that his family, ethnic Crimean Tatars and Muslim by faith, are oppressed by the Russians. Sergeyich intervenes, trying to help the family and learn about Akhtem’s fate — but his friend is dead, and moreover, in part as a result of Sergeyich meddling, the Russians arrest and imprison Akhtem’s son.
Toward the end of the novel, Sergeyich leaves Crimea and drives back to Ukraine with a decision to make. He could choose one of three directions to follow: West, to his ex-wife and daughter; to the village near Melitopol where Galya is still hoping to build a life with him (“When they last spoke on the telephone, she had invited him to stay with her, not just to stay over”); or back East to the “grey zone,” to the village where he grew up. It’s abundantly clear that if he makes the choice to go back into the war zone, it is mainly because Pashka is there, waiting for him.
As behooves a novel written by a seasoned master of the genre, Grey Bees may inspire a variety of reactions. We could consider Sergeyich’s complex morality as a participant of war, and the palette of ethical decisions that he has to make in the course of this book; we could read the novel while considering Kurkov’s impressive career, beginning with his first novel — an international bestseller, Death and the Penguin — and the way his characters’ entanglements with the natural world bring out their humanity. To me, this book is about love — love in its most practical sense as a means toward living side-by-side with somebody, to support each other no matter the most serious disagreements.
Reading this book somewhat against the grain, I want to push this thought a little. Homosexual feelings are not explicitly mentioned in the novel, but it does seem important to me to admit the possibility of homosexual desire into our reading. After all, we never learn why Pashka — back in school — is so inexplicably mean to Sergeyich; neither do we know exactly why Pashka stayed in the abandoned village.
Conceptualization of homosexuality provides an important socio-political backdrop to the novel. In its attempt to take over Ukraine, Russia has billed itself as a defender of “traditional values” which includes prosecution of LGBTQ+ people. In its propaganda, Russia insists that Kyiv’s Pride Parades represent a threat to Slavic civilization. This novel, in its attention to a burgeoning male friendship, presents an antidote to this toxic propaganda.
One more word about naming. The nicknames given by Russians to one another carry a lot of emotional resonance, and Pashka has a very special nickname for our protagonist — a childish name, clearly a remnant of their schoolboy past. It’s a tender, playful name that Boris Dralyuk has rendered in English as Greyich — an inspired choice that also carries over the word “grey” from the Russian original.
“Grey can be plenty bright!” Sergeyich insists in conversation with soldier Petro. “What do you know about it? I can discern twenty shades of it. If I had a better education, I’d come up with a name for each shade, like they were all separate colors.”
[Published by Deep Vellum on April 19, 2022, 321 pages, $15.95 paperback]