People, animals and birds. The Battle of Kharkiv through the eyes of actor and FPV navigator Bohdan Syniavskyi

It can happen that at the moment of critical danger, your whole life flashes before your eyes. This statement is unscientific, but it is a reason to tell you about a man. So, his name was once Horatio, and he seems to have been a philosopher, a guide between the real and the other worlds. At least, that's how he sees Horatio himself, i.e. one of his former images.

By the time he turned 30, he had several names besides Horatio: Laertes, Mitya, Valery Ilyich, Gretta... Sometimes he transformed into animals: a platypus, a parrot, a groundhog, and a cow named Betty. He sang, danced, wrote poetry, loved...

Today, his call sign is Norm, and he is a navigator of the FPV unit of the second battalion of the 429th Regiment of Achilles unmanned systems. His real name is Bohdan Synyavsky. His special feature is his round glasses. In civilian life, he is an actor at Kharkiv's Theater 19.

Norm believes – and this is another unscientific statement – that a projectile flying directly at you has a different sound than if it was going to land 40-50 meters away. That's why Norm dove into the bathtub when he heard the specific sound. More precisely, into an old Jacuzzi with a dead rat at the bottom. There was no water in it. This old structure stood on the first floor of the house, where the calculation position was located at the time.

Norm's intuition was right: a 152-millimeter shell pierced the roof and destroyed two floors, but fortunately, the soldiers were not injured. The jacuzzi still played the role of additional protection. It happened last summer near the village of Liptsi near Kharkiv.

Since then, Norm has changed several positions... And another Kharkiv actor with the call sign Cousin (in civilian life, Danylo Kuznetsov) joined his crew. They have a lot in common: theater, favorite coffee shops, friends...

If you ask each of them who they are, the answer will be the same for both of them: a Kharkiv citizen. Their story is the story of creative Kharkiv at war.

The language issue

We met Norm during the basic military training course. There were several Kharkiv residents in our platoon, all very different. Each of these "different" people represented a part of the social spectrum of the big city. Norm and Bilbo were at one end of the spectrum, and Muddy (aka Slavik) was at the other.

Norm and Bilbo came prepared – they had completed military courses. It was impossible to imagine that Norm and Bilbo did not have some kind of multitool or power bank. If Norm didn't have it, Bilbo would have it, and vice versa. The guys were perfectly equipped and highly motivated.

If someone from the platoon ran out of cigarettes, coffee, or gas cans for a portable torch, some kindly people would magically send these things to Norma by New Mail. Another small but important detail: Norm and Bilbo were always in a good mood.

The opposite of them is Mutnyi. He is about the same age (about thirty plus), but looked older because he was overweight. He was a former official, a fan of Kernes and yesterday's "master of life". He believed in primitive magic, was in a broken state, complained of chafed feet, and skipped classes.

A scene from life. Slavik groans from his bed, complaining about his fate:

- A wise man once told me that life is like money: you can take it all at once, or you can stretch it out... I took too much early on, and now I don't know what will happen... I have two apartments, two cars, a dacha, a garage...

The voice on the left:

- Slavik, you're a civil servant, where did the money come from?

Muddy:

- My wife registered the company, I provided it with orders...

The voice on the right:

- This is called corruption. Tell me honestly, are you hiding from a criminal case here or have you been busified?

Muddy:

- I am a volunteer!

General laughter. During such polylogues, Norm was silent. Either he went out for a smoke or immersed himself in a book, a collection of artistic reports by Mike Johansen (a Kharkiv writer and representative of the Executed Renaissance).

Only once, at the end of the training course, Norm broke down and spat through his teeth at Mutnyi's face: "I'd rather die than live with you." Those were the harshest words I had ever heard Norm say. Their further paths diverged – Mutnyi got lost somewhere in the rear, Norm continued his service in Achilles.

One of his characteristic features is his literary Ukrainian language. Even when his commanders addressed him in Russian, he did not switch. That's why some of his comrades believed for a while that he was from the West. One day, during a conversation, they found out that he was from Kharkiv. But in the first generation: he was born in Debaltseve.

The further trajectory of life resembles a journey between worlds.

The Universe of Bohdan Synyavsky

When Bohdan Syniavskyi was five years old, the family moved to the mining town of Torez. His father worked as a miner and his mother was a teacher. Was his childhood happy?

- "Uh, yes, of course!" Norm says with a delay and adds, "But there were nuances.

Norm is a diplomatic person. He almost never speaks ill of people, except in critical cases. Although it's not just about diplomacy – in general, he seems to treat the human race well.

- There were nuances... The region is quite masculine in terms of the brains of its inhabitants. You know what I mean: "a boy's neighborhood... " The local society lived by fairly simple, understandable, but, in my opinion, strict rules. And I, as a creative person, could not feel one hundred percent relaxed and good. Thanks to the fact that I am an open and sociable person, I could basically come to an agreement. Does this mean that I had a good time and was high? No, it doesn't. Because I was negotiating with a society that I would not really want to live in.

Norm pauses, apparently wondering if he has said something bad about his childhood, and decides to add a positive note to his memories:

- In fact, I had a fantastic childhood: constant walks along some beams, climbing on terricones and quarries, jumping from rocks into the water... My parents loved me, of course, but I also got a lot of spanking.

When Norm says that he is an "open person," it is easy to believe: he is talkative, friendly, and funny. But over time, you realize that his openness is just one of his faces. He hides his inner world behind jokes and changing masks.

From random phrases, one can understand that his mother played a big role in his development. At least in terms of acting:

- When I was finishing school, I had friends who were studying to be actors, and somehow it came to my mother and me that we should try to get into acting.

And then there was Kharkiv. Since then, he has been a Kharkiv citizen, or, as he says, a Kharkivite. For him, the very words "Kharkiv, Kharkiv, Kharkiv people" (as the citizens were called before the Soviet Union and now this catoeconomy is back in use) have many meanings. Because for Norm, it's not just a city, but a huge and probably the best part of the universe. Fragile, somewhat bewildered, in need of protection and nurturing, but infinitely loved.

Norm spoke Ukrainian in Kharkiv. But not immediately. The internal transformation began with socks.

Different planets

In the whirlwind of student life, he felt like a fish out of water:

- I found myself in a cultural bubble: actors, musicians, choreographers... It's like moving from one world to another. What other world? To ours. For the first time in my life I found my own people! It's an interesting feeling. When there are a lot of creative, free people around, with whom we breathe the same air...

The atmosphere of freedom, among other things, was associated with the fashion of wearing different socks:

- We wore socks of different colors. Sometimes it happened by accident and showed that we didn't care about such trifles. And then it started to look a little bit disrespectful to wear the same ones...

Like all students, he visited his parents from time to time:

- There was an incident. At the end of my first year, my classmate Mykola Mikhalchenko (a Kharkiv actor – Ed.) and I went to visit my parents in the city of Torez. I knew where I was going, so I dressed a little more modestly than usual. Mykola looked like this: long black hair below his shoulders, piercings... He was wearing a raincoat and wide-legged boots.

Bohdan adds details with a laugh:

- Plus torn Converse sneakers with markers on them. This is how we walk through the center of my hometown. On a bench sit some older guys, my friends who graduated from school a little earlier than me. We greet each other and they ask: "What's going on here?" The appearance of a student in an ordinary youth outfit was perceived as an event. The elders thought we were having some kind of event or concert. No, there was no conflict or aggression... The guys just couldn't believe that a person dressed like that just to go for a walk.

Every Kharkiv resident has their own Kharkiv, and this is natural. Bohdan Sinyavsky's Kharkiv is a city of quiet streets, between monumental Stalinist buildings, flowing like streams from large avenues and hiding in the magical world of the local underground.

Instead of road signs, there are murals by Hamlet Zinkivsky (an artist whose street art has become one of the city's trademarks). Labyrinths of courtyards and back alleys lead to a secret door. Behind it is a staircase to the basement. Somewhere there is a hall... Somewhere in there, Bohdan Syniavskyi and Mykola Mykhalchenko first formed the band Tepli Koty, and later Dost FM. What did they sing about?

Bohdan recalls:

- "Warm Cats" is about something very good: a dream and the sun. I am a cat, you are a cat, we will be fine. And Dost FM is later, it's about finding yourself in the world around you and being somewhat disappointed in it. "Warm Cats" could no longer sing about this, so we had to create a new format.

At basement locations, they exchanged books, read poetry, and agreed to travel together. For example, hitchhiking. For example, to Lviv. Bohdan made his first such trip with the future writer Pavlo Steh, who was also a student at the time. Some time later, Pavlo Steh's travel reports would be published in the book Veni, vidi, scripsi: Why I will never leave here".

After Lviv came the whole of Ukraine. The student-actor visited Kherson, Odesa, Zaporizhzhia, and Crimea. Kyiv, Dnipro, Rivne, etc. were passing by outside the car windows... But when Bohdan talks about his travels, it seems that for him it was one boundless Kharkiv. Because Kharkiv is the starting point and the foundation.

Suddenly it turned out that the best part of the universe was under threat. It happened at the end of 2013:

- Of course, I was among the active youth who were on the Maidan in both Kharkiv and Kyiv. We went to Kyiv for a short time, more to Kharkiv... We sang together with Mykola Mykhalchenko, delivered tea and sandwiches with Pavlo Steh, and went to rallies in Donetsk with friends... I remember a historic rally when there were pro-Ukrainian people on one side of the square and pro-Russian people on the other. Then they brought out the longest flag of Ukraine... Then complex processes began. The police did not protect the protesters, the protection came from Donetsk ultras who were on the side of Ukraine.

- So you are a veteran of three Maidans: Kyiv, Kharkiv and Donetsk?

- It turns out that it is. But I don't like this wording. Because I don't feel like I've done much. A little bit... But I could have done more...

Theater 19

In 2014, during his exams, an extraordinary event happened to Bohdan Synyavsky, but he did not know that it was extraordinary. Namely, the university administration invited Ihor Ladenko, the artistic director of Kharkiv's Theater 19, to the exam (which was a performance or fragments of a performance).

The private Theater 19 is a separate page in Kharkiv's cultural life. It was founded in 2000 and almost immediately became popular among creative young people because it was very different from what Kharkiv residents had previously considered a theater.

Ukrainian theaters of the 1990s and early 2000s were mostly state-run cultural institutions with repertoire from the school curriculum. Sometimes schoolchildren were forced to attend them, and most citizens perceived them as museums, which is fine.

"Theater 19 opened Kharkiv (and not only Kharkiv) to the names of contemporary playwrights: Don Nigro, Slavomir Mrozek, Michael McKeever, and others. In 2014, it was already a cult institution, which, according to its founder and director Ihor Ladenko, needed "fresh acting blood."

The further development of the plot is easy to predict: Bohdan Syniavsky became an actor at Theater 19. By the way, not only as an actor, but also as a lighting designer, which provided additional income:

- I was lucky that I could earn money doing what I liked. And I was even luckier with the director. It was a fantastic episode in my life scenario. Now it's hard to imagine what would have happened if we hadn't met Igor Ladenko.

You can imagine "what would have been" from the story of Bohdan's friend, Danylo Kuznetsov, who joined Theatre 19 a little later and before that worked at the Kharkiv Young Spectator Theater. The actor's work in a state-run institution bordered on a feat. Danylo's story:

- It's winter, the holidays, eleven in the morning. I play the Mouse in a play about Leopold the Cat. The temperature in the hall is less than ten degrees. Children and their parents are sitting with their clothes on. The assistant director is looking at me from behind the scenes, wearing a fur coat and a UFO. And I'm lying on the stage in a T-shirt and shorts, I'm Myshenya, shouting something funny, and I'm thinking: what am I doing here for 6800 hryvnias a month? It was unrealistic to survive on this money. I worked part-time at events, weddings, clubs, as a Santa Claus... And Igor Ladenko paid us for every time we went on stage.

Speaking about Theater 19, Bohdan spares no epithets: modern, energetic, youthful... With the beginning of the full-scale invasion, this theater suspended its activities. Some of the actors joined the ranks of the Armed Forces, including Bohdan Syniavskyi, Danylo Kuznetsov, and Mykola Mykhalchenko.

Get out of the basement

When Bohdan talks about Kharkiv's creative bubble, he is not idealizing this social circle. It was extremely difficult to get the cultural community to take any specific actions (for example, to protect cultural and historical monuments). But the days came when everything changed: the underground left the basement and began to turn into the mainstream.

The date of the beginning of the radical transformation is well known: february 24, 2022. On the night of the 24th, Bohdan did not sleep. He discussed with his friends whether it would start or not. And then it started... The forces of chaos covered the city loudly, eerily, and ruthlessly. Bohdan and his wife grabbed their "emergency backpacks" and headed to the "rallying point" – the basement of a hipster coffee shop.

- "Kind people gave us the keys," he recalls. "In those days, fifteen to sixteen people with pets spent the night in the basement with us: dogs, cats, rabbits, mice. Everything was filled with cages...

on February 25, Bohdan Synyavsky and Mykola Mykhalchenko went to sign up for the Kharkiv terrorist defense:

- At that time, first of all, the TRO took ATO members, former military, then those who had served, and then hunters who knew how to shoot... And Mykola and I did not serve, did not shoot... We were put on some lists for community service.

From that day on, Bohdan would go to community service at eight in the morning: digging fortifications, putting sand in bags, covering windows with them... We gathered near the Kharkiv Regional State Administration (RSA).

- On March 1, I was warned that the start of work would be postponed to nine o'clock... At that time, between eight and nine, there were two explosions...

On the morning of March 1, 2022, two rockets hit the Kharkiv Regional State Administration, killing 44 people and injuring dozens.

- I don't like to think about what could have happened to me if I had come at eight. It happened as it happened. I ran to look for my friends... Sumy Street was an apocalyptic picture: broken glass, the smell of fire, trolleybus wires falling on the asphalt... Some unpleasant, wet snow... No cars, no people...

Bohdan is silent for a moment, recalling the atmosphere of Kharkiv in the first days of the full-scale invasion.

- For a while, the city center seemed almost deserted. If you walked through Shevchenko Park and saw a passerby, it was most likely someone from our basement. Our life was in full swing: volunteer projects were being created at an incredible rate.

He lists the names of dozens of volunteers, which are impossible to remember, and the initiatives that were born at that moment:

- The girls baked bread, and the basement turned into a distribution hub: they brought warm clothes, blankets, food, and medicine. From here, it all went to various checkpoints or to civilians who needed help.

Some of the projects from that time are still working today. One of them is the Volunteer Charitable Foundation, which was actually born in the same basement. This organization provides assistance to residents of the Kharkiv region and the military.

- My wife, Meriam, has made and continues to make every effort to develop Volunteer. Why am I telling you this in so much detail? This is an example of how creative Kharkiv turned into Volunteer Kharkiv.

Bohdan spreads his arms a little, as if to show how big the dvizh was:

- It's just incredible how Kharkiv people opened up! This is all a story about our connection with the city... Not with the city authorities, but with the city. Because the authorities, no matter how good they are, cannot do everything that is needed in the face of such a large-scale disaster. On some deeply emotional level, the creative part of the population realized that we need to act, we need to organize ourselves and clean up together, because we are all fucked alone.

"Volunteer Center raised funds and helped the defenders of the Kharkiv region. This work is still ongoing. By the way, among Volunteer's projects was support for the Achilles unmanned unit. Bohdan himself has become an Achilles' man.

Since then, his name is Norm – he is a navigator of the FPV crew. Danylo's call sign is Kuzen, and he is a loader in the same crew, in the second battalion of the 429th separate regiment of Achilles unmanned systems. But this does not mean they have stopped being actors.

In the course of the play

It is quite possible that their unit is the most fun team in the Armed Forces. From time to time, Norm jokes in a strange way: he turns into one of the characters from his past life.

"What happened, what happened? Nothing happened!" – that's what the platypus used to say on stage, in a whisper. Now the platypus gives commands to the pilot, comments on everyone's work. The audience laughs, twiddles their thumbs at their temples, and follows the platypus' commands.

Their combat work resembles a play. The setting is a dugout. The protagonists, besides Norm and Cousin, are pilots with call signs Executioner and Dude. All together, it is a kind of experimental theater, where the plot is created during the play, and the actors change roles depending on the circumstances. The performance has been going on for many months, each act is a combat duty lasting three to five days. In between, there is an intermission when the actors can take a break from each other.

Only Cousin, who played a turkey, a baboon, a bat, and a lemming in the same play (Animal Stories by Don Nigro), can fully play Norma. The jokes can be harsh and even offensive. One of the fellows once asked, "What animal do I look like?" Norm thought about it: "Something very disgusting... It would jump up on a hill, curse everyone and hide..." But the paradox is that no one is offended by the navigator. There is an explanation for this phenomenon.

During the rest, when there were no other brothers around, Norm brewed coffee, made a self-made cigarette and gave a detailed description of each of them:

- I have known my cousin for a long time: he is a very reliable person, but I did not think he was that good! He deals with ammunition, which is a very responsible and dangerous job. At first, I was a little worried, I told him: "My friend, if you hear me on the radio being rushed in terms of flights, you don't speed up, you continue to work at your own pace. Because it's my job as a senior officer to explain things to the command." Now I see that his every action is confident and cautious. I am very glad to have him in my team.

Norm pours the coffee and continues:

- Each boy's story is a part of my story. When I see someone's personal growth, it is a special moment for me. I remember how Pizhon's confidence grew. At first, he was very worried about the equipment, playing it safe. Some time passed, and I saw that he was completely calm and proactive... So, the team created normal conditions for the guy to open up...

The navigator makes another cigarette, this time dedicated to Kat:

- A 20-year-old guy... Cool, intelligent, handy, hardworking, able to figure out everything. In a couple of months, he not only got the hang of it, but also realized that he could do some things in his own way, not the way he was taught. He is gaining experience, analyzing and developing his style. It's incredible!

These characteristics, as mentioned, were not voiced in the presence of the boys. Who knows how often Norm praises his subordinates, but certainly each of them feels a real attitude towards him. That's why no one takes offense to mean jokes.

What kind of animal does Norm associate himself with? The answer is unexpected:

- Me? Some kind of active animal. Probably a squirrel.

I once asked my cousin what creature, from his creative point of view, Norm was most like in life? A squirrel?

- "No," laughs Cousin, "I think he's a dog at heart. I've seen him in different situations, I know how he really treats his friends or, say, his wife. He loves and makes friends sincerely, selflessly, like a dog. He can be a gentle spaniel, or he can turn on a bull terrier if necessary.

A similar question to Norm, but now about Cousin: who is Cousin? Norm pauses, it seems that this is a very serious question for him, not a playful one:

- To be honest, it's hard to say right away, but it definitely has wings.

Kuzen himself also thinks for a long time before giving himself an "animal" characterization:

- The closest thing to me is a bat. Because a bat can fly, but at the same time it has teeth-it's neither a beast nor a bird. There is a fairy tale about how there was once a war between animals and birds... I'm from Luhansk region, but I don't seem to be a Luhansker. A Kharkiv resident? But I wasn't born here... Although Kharkiv has dehumanized me," says Kuzen, and somehow it becomes clear that the "animal" topic is closed.

"As if someone is shouting at you from the sky"

At the end of a combat shift, the navigator writes down the results of his work in a notebook. It's a good time to talk about achievements. I ask:

- When you first hit a serious target, how did you feel?

- That he did his job.

- Did you feel any internal surprise that I was an actor and suddenly burned a tank?

Norm looks seriously into my eyes:

- An actor is a specialty like any other. I find it strange when people emphasize the profession: look, he's an artist, but he went to war. An artist is the same person as a mechanic or a salesman. The same person... Perhaps an artist has a different mindset, with its pros and cons. That's all.

- Let's say. Let's say the war ended and you, as a veteran, were invited to the nearest school to tell children about your experiences in the war. What would you say about your first combat experience?

- Nothing. I will never tell anything to children," Norm is visibly irritated. "I don't have and won't have such stories in my assortment.

- Just between us, can you tell us what the most expensive equipment was that you burned?

- The T-90M tank (also known as the "Breakthrough" tank, the latest development of the Russian defense industry – Ed.) It was, I would say, an energizing moment.

- And an hour ago, in front of my eyes, a Tiger armored vehicle was burned...

- Yes, my friend, I've had enough. Let me explain: I am not an interesting character for an interview. I will not retell some Instagram pictures. We may have two or three shifts when there are no bright moments, because we are working on some uninteresting things: shelters, boats, crossings. We fulfill our tasks. Sometimes we have to burn something specific, like the Tiger you mentioned. And sometimes, the task is to cut off the enemy's logistics, destroy a crossing, prevent them from amassing equipment...

- Now the main task is to prevent the enemy from crossing to the right bank of the Oskil River?

- Yes. If our efforts do not result in any enemy breakthrough, I will be very satisfied, even if we do not hit a single tank or self-propelled artillery system during this time. I will be incredibly satisfied. I'm honestly telling you: our work is uninteresting, difficult, but very important.

- What do you consider your greatest achievement?

- The main achievement, from my subjective point of view, is the perfect coherence of the calculation. This is when everyone knows how to do everything. So that in the event of an emergency, the work would continue and combat missions would be fulfilled...

The regulation does not define the term "emergency situation," but it is clear that this is a case when someone in the unit loses combat capability. They do not decipher it so as not to jinx it, not to bring trouble, so that if they do think about it, they do so in a hurry, without inflating their imagination.

- ...In my calculation, everyone knows how to fly an FPV. Perhaps not as skillfully as Kat, but they can fly and try to hit the target. Everyone can equip a drone and, if necessary, mine it. The guys are also learning navigational skills: they suggest the route and keep an eye on the map... From time to time we change roles. I think the regiment's command should be satisfied with the results.

There is one thing in Norm's dugout life that almost no one knows about: sometimes he writes poetry. Rather, he doesn't write them, he composes them, but they come to him. The words either fall from the sky or emerge from the depths. In Norm's case – from the depths. In the literal and figurative sense, because they are born again in a dugout. However, perhaps simultaneously – from the depths and from the sky:

As if someone was shouting at you from the sky..

I keep a close eye on the sky.

My eyes are directed to the sky.

My ear is pointed to the sky.

My body is far from heaven,

And the deeper, the better.

It's ironic.

I hide deeper,

So that I don't stay here forever.

Places of power

Every military man sometimes has a day off. If you don't plan it in advance, you run the risk of not having enough time to relax: meetings with friends and acquaintances will take up all your time. Provided, of course, that you have a lot of friends. Norm has plenty. That's why he travels a few hours to Kharkiv, where he has his personal places of power. He has several of them, and they are all magical in their own way.

I guess I can be proud that I once kept him company while walking through such places. Point one: the park, the monument to Mykola Khvylovyi.

- A few years ago, this was an abandoned parkland... I often came here with Pavlo Stech. Do you know why there is a monument to Khvylovyi here? Because this is his grave.

From Norm's story, I learn that this park was once the site of Kharkiv's most famous necropolis, the Ivan-Usiknovensky Cemetery. The playwright Mark Kropyvnytskyi, the writer Petro Hulak-Artemovskyi, the poet Vasyl Ellan-Blakytnyi (founder of the magazines Perets and Vsesvit), and many other significant figures of Ukrainian literature are buried here.

When they decided to demolish the cemetery in the early 1970s, kind people reburied the philosopher and linguist Oleksandr Potebnia, academics Dmytro Bahalii and Oleksii Beketov. But the artists and other ordinary dead remained... Playgrounds, cafes, and a cinema were built on their graves. They also built a sports complex, which gave the park its name, Molodizhnyi.

It's not entirely clear how this is possible, but it is. There are flowers near the monument to Khvylovyi, and some installations a little further away. One can feel that this is a place of cultural pilgrimage and perhaps it was even in Soviet times.

Next place: Savkin Yar. Norm drives the car, confidently turning left and right in a maze of streets amidst a huge private sector. At some point, the asphalt ends and the cobblestones begin. The car shakes a little, and "Alone in a Canoe" breaks through the noise from the speaker: "Listen to me/ Do just that/ And we'll be in history/ We'll go down in paragraphs short and boring/ Without a name... "

Savkin Yar is a deep ravine with a lake. It is surrounded by picturesque hills with one-story houses behind them. This place seems like a suburb, but in fact it is a very old district of the city. Somewhere here in the 70s, a historic house was demolished – the house of a beekeeper, where Hryhorii Skovoroda stayed and taught. It's quite possible that the cobblestones we just rode on remember the thinker's footsteps.

Here, Norm has a favorite willow tree over the water that he can sit under for hours. And now he stops under it, makes another cigarette and tells the story of his acquaintance with Savky Yar:

- One day I unexpectedly discovered this place. My friend and I were riding our bikes and stopped here. The friend, by the way, is a Kharkiv sculptor Dmytro Molochynskyi, who is also serving in our regiment." Norm takes a deep drag and continues, "I'm a little afraid that this place will be turned into a classic Kharkiv park: they will roll everything in asphalt and set up a lot of benches.

- Are benches bad?

- There must be some kind of walking area in our city where people can lay down a yoga mat on the grass, right? An ordinary park would destroy this atmosphere...

Norm, with his cigarette, gives the impression of a man who is quite happy with his life. This impression is reinforced by the fact that the word "happiness" often comes out of his mouth during a conversation.

On Theater 19: "I am happy that fate gave me a mentor and friend, Igor Ladenko."

About his comrades-in-arms: "I was lucky with my team, with Achilles, with my commander."

On his family: "I am so happy to have such a fantastic wife."

I ask carefully:

- What is the most important thing in your life?

- I asked myself this question... You know, in conditions of maximum danger, it happens that some images emerge from the subconscious... I have this image: my wife, my cat Burger, and I are sitting at home watching football. I feel good, my wife feels good, the cat feels good. Nothing is flying at us... These are the beautiful moments... This is probably the main thing that the soul gravitates towards.

Catching an elusive bird

A standard topic of conversation: "What to do after the war? ". Not long ago, Norm and his comrades were discussing this question in a dugout. A dude jokingly said that as a man with an impeccable reputation, he planned to run for president. Norm also jokingly replied that there was nothing to do in politics because it was "boring." But he did not give a serious answer at the time.

In fact, this is a complex issue:

- I haven't decided yet...

- Theater?

- You see, theater is about working with many people. I find it difficult now. I would like to do something alone...

- Poetry, an original song?

- "Maybe," Norm answers stingily, like a man who doesn't want to give away his secrets.

- Do you consider yourself a happy person?

At this moment, a flock of sparrows flies down from the willow tree. Norm looks up, follows them, and returns his gaze to the ground:

- I don't think happiness is a constant. Probably, there are some moments... How can you consider yourself a happy person during the war? No, I can't call myself happy. To be honest, I feel tired. I caught myself reading nothing for a long time... So let's talk about happiness when this whole mess is over. I hope that our generation will be happy...

As the spirit of Hryhorii Skovoroda hovers over Savky Yar, I recall a cross-cutting metaphor of his work: moments of truth are like birds. They appear, circle around you, even talk to you. One of the books about the philosopher's life is called: "Catching an Elusive Bird" (by the Kharkiv philosopher Leonid Ushkalov). Perhaps this catching is the meaning of life. Who knows?

On the way back, Norm turned on "Alone in a Canoe" again. Many, many times, Iryna Shvaidak repeated the Frankivskian line in an inspired trance:

"Maybe you'll be the one to reach the goal!"