Its purpose was anything but whimsical: The Rooster House was the local outpost of the many versions of Soviet state security agencies, from the All-Ukrainian Extraordinary Commission, founded in 1918, to the Committee for State Security, or KGB. ‘ remarks Belim dryly, they were ‘the secret police’.
Indeed, the locals “always joked that the Rooster House was the tallest building in the city, because even in the basement you could see all the way to Siberia,” and its menacing presence sparked such fear that Asya took detours to avoid she came by. It.
Although Belim also wants to avoid the rooster house, she can’t.
Belim’s quest to learn more about Nikodim is fraught with obstacles. What she eventually discovers is a destabilizing “mix of lies and bits of truth” that takes her “not into the light, but deeper into the darkness.” The process also brutally forces her to admit her own deliberate amnesia about her father’s death by suicide in 2011, a pain “so intense” that she “decided to forget about him.”
After her father’s death, she and his brother, Vladimir, made a pact that they wouldn’t talk about it until she was ready. Although they have fallen out over her uncle’s strong pro-Russian sympathies, the process of confronting her grief leaves Belim eager to reconnect. Their eventual reconciliation heals old wounds but causes new pain.
In the end, Belim chooses to “embrace the past in its complexity,” she writes, “just as I embraced the future in its uncertainty.” Of course, Ukraine itself faces an uncertain future, although the author remains optimistic. Reading her book, it is impossible to forget that however resilient the country may be, the pain currently inflicted will be felt for generations.