Dreams, Themes and Tractors in Vladimir Lorchenkov's "The Good Life Elsewhere"

Photo by Maria Lupan on Unsplash

In the novel “The Good Life Elsewhere” by Vladimir Lorchenkov we see the heartbreak of dreaming about something your whole life only to have it slip from your hands time after time.

I absolutely love picking up a book, examining the cover...observing the title, images, feel of the book. It's like it gives you a sense of what the author has in store for you as the reader. When I read the front cover, I was very much intrigued by the title because who doesn’t want a good life? Right? We all do. However, I should have known from the beginning that titles rarely have the meanings one might guess.

In the opening pages of the novel, we join a crew of about 45 Moldovan citizens who are interested in migrating to Italy to find work and escape from the difficulties of surviving in their homeland. It appears that the Moldovans, all residents of one village (Larga) are well on their way to Italy. Larga was a Moldovan city no more than two miles long with a population of only 523 people.

The migrants were dropped off by smugglers in "Italy" and through the ingenuity of one traveler, Serafim Botezatu, the novel’s protagonist, they find themselves concealed by darkness and waiting in the hills above Rome before planning to descend in the morning for a new life – a good life.

 

Can I just say, the author Lorchenkov draws the reader in masterfully? As I read, I was all in. I hid with the Largan villagers in the dark, looking down at the city below imagining a new life. I could hear water gently lapping nearby. It could be nothing else other than the Tiber – the only river that flows through Rome. I found myself waiting in heightened anticipation for the sun to rise. Waiting for the opportunity to descend into a new destiny. To escape poverty. To enter Rome, a city that until now only existed in fleeting dreams and the pages of books for the Largans.

The villagers had been offered passage to Italy for 4,000 euros with a promise for transport and a job upon arrival by a group of representatives from a "tourism agency". The passage fee was no small matter for the villagers, many had to for lack of a better phrase, "beg, borrow and steal" to secure the money. The immigrants had traveled by night for four days and their dream was near realized. 

Lorchenkov paints Italy as a type of promised land for the villagers, the answer to all of their prayers. A new start, a new beginning, an easy life.

The author introduces the idea of a promised land, forgiveness of sins and redemption early on. In the Largans' eyes, all of these things could only be found in Italy. At one point Lorchenkov even writes, “For the villagers, once they reached Italy, their past sins would be redeemed and they’d gain possession of a new life.”

This language brings to mind the Biblical ideal of a new life in Christ. When a sinner's sins are washed away, they come up a new creature in Christ. It's almost as if Lorchenkov is equating passage to Italy in this light.

As the sun rises and the villagers begin their descent from their hiding place in the hills with Serafim in the lead, the anticipation builds.

"“Buongiorno,” muttered Serafim, in relatively passable Italian. “Respected Citizen of Italy, descendant of the Roman Caesars and the courageous Bersaglierie, buongiorno!""

Serafim greets a passing workman as the weary migrants seek direction to the nearest church to take refuge upon their illegal entry into Italy. They needed food, work and assistance getting set up in their new country – their new life. When the worker tries to escape and then finally stops and responds to the Largans, perceived “foreigners”, warning bells start sounding for me as the reader. Lorchenkov had been dropping hints along the way of course but I had yet to catch on.  

For instance, Serafim never catches a clear view of key markers of Rome. Well known landmarks like the Coliseum or Saint Peter’s Basilica.

I was also puzzled by the fact that on one page, those who promised passage to Italy were described as representatives from the travelers' agency. However, just one page over, all of a sudden they are called “slave traders”. As a reader, I started to recognize that everything wasn’t as it appeared. Nothing in this book is or would be clear-cut. 

Lorchenkov indeed takes readers on a wild ride from the absurd to the more absurd – a dark comedy of errors of sort. 

Turns out, the Largans have not actually made it to Rome. In fact, they didn’t even get across the Moldovan border. 

When Serafim sees a banner that reads, “WELCOME TO CHISINAU!!” 

Complete HEARTBREAK! I just about fell over as Serafim passed out. 

It turns out, the travelers never even left their homeland. Each one had scraped, borrowed, begged and stolen to scrape together the fee for the trip only to reach the capital city of Moldova, a mere 160 miles away from their home. Lorchenkov manages to write in such a way that you feel the complete humiliation and dejection the villagers feel. We get further glimpses of the pain experienced from this trickery as the story develops. 

Before you have a chance to catch your breath, things go from bad to worse.

Serafim for instance who has been dreaming of Italy for 20 years returns to Larga completely dejected. Maria, another villager and the wife of Serafim’s friend Vasily, had convinced her husband to sell his one and only beloved tractor to raise a portion of the 4,000 euros. As a sort of penance, Maria hangs herself on an acacia tree thinking her husband or one of her watching neighbors at the very least will come to her rescue and save her but she would have made a grand gesture of apology to her husband. Unfortunately, they don’t. No one does. Not her husband or her neighbors. Absurdity.

When Maria’s husband Vasily leaves her hanging for a full week. Then three. I found myself asking, “Will they ever find a good life?”

This leads me to mention as a side note, I have to wonder about Lorchenkov's view of women. Most of the women introduced in the book seem to have some characteristic of adultery, mischievousness, deceitfulness or greed. Not very flattering.

Which leads us to the town's religious leader, Father Paisii whose wife Elizaveta who had moved to Italy and sent money home to her family each month. And then she stopped. And then we find out that she actually has a lover in Italy and will not return. Paisii's reaction to this heartbreak leads him to "curse" Italy as a country of depravity equating the city with Babylon – a city of Biblical times. But this will not be the last that we hear of Paisii. In fact, Lorchenkov leads us to believe that Paisii will now work to save up 4,000 euros to gain his passage to Italy.

Throughout “The Good Life Elsewhere”, navigating from one vignette to another capturing the lives and dreams of the villagers, Lorchenkov does a phenomenal job of building up to climatic highs before dropping you off a cliff of disappointment. 

In chapter four, we find out a little more of what drives Serafim. We actually discover a key driver for Serafim's constant desire to go to Italy. Not only did he love the idea of the country, but Lorchenkov shares a key nugget of wisdom that Serafim's dad shared with him before he passed. Of Moldova, Serafim's dad said, ""Never give your all to this land. Think about how to get yourself out of here.""

Ohhh!!! This explains why Serafim spends so much of the book thinking up one plan after the other to make it to Italy.

We also find out that Serafim was once married but his wife left him. Even in this, Lorchenkov describes Serafim's wife Marchika as "licentious" – promiscuous and unprincipled.

The absurdity of Lorchenkov’s writing is revealed in the most surprising ways. In fact, at one point we are introduced to a group of Largan citizens headed up by Nikta Tkach, an acquaintance of Serafim. Tkach recruits a group a villagers and they decide to form a curling team. Athletes are one of a few groups that are able to secure passage into Italy without too much scrutiny. They figure as curling champions, Italy will have no choice but to let them into the country to compete. Imagine forming a curling team with no ice to practice on.

When Serafim and his neighbor Old Man Tudor, a father figure of sorts to Serafim, stumble upon the first gathering of the curling team, Lorchenkov writes such a vivid description of the surprise that Serafim and Tudor experience that I even had to reread the passage three or four times. “Two skylarks weaving a nest flew into the gaping mouths of Serafim and Old Man Tudor and deposited their young. Leaving the chicks to chirp, the birds flew off to the field for sustenance.” It's embarrassing to say, but I even took a moment to look up the size of skylarks. The imagery was so real and so surprising, it took a moment for me personally to process this statement. When I accepted the text as imagery only, it became a little easier as a reader to accept Lorchenkov's storyline. 

However, instances like this sometimes made it challenging for me, a reader, to follow along with the plot.

About 45 pages into the novel, we are introduced to the village's #1 stovemaker – Eremei. Eremei was married and had a daughter. He is described as being a crafty and master craftsman. As the village's top stovemaker, he has also accumulated quite a stash of cash – unlike most of the Largan villagers. When he reveals his savings to his wife, the next day his daughter, Evgenia, comes to him to ask for 4,000 euros. I had to laugh. The 4,000 euros of course being to go Italy where she says she wants to work.

Let me pause to make mention, Eremei had been a very vocal opponent to Italy – the villager's paradise. Everyone knew he believed Italy did not exist. He believed the idea that Italy would solve all of the Moldovans' problems was a farce, "an elaborate scheme." So when his daughter leaves for Italy, Eremei has a bit of a credibility problem. His work begins to slip and he can't concentrate. When Zhenya returns home for a visit and confesses that she has been selling herself, her parents are absolutely heartbroken.

A few thoughts before we continue, yes, Eremei's daughter has a new name. Could that be another sly ploy by Lorchenkov to distinguish a new life although I don't think this would be Biblical. Here again we get a picture of the negative view in which Lorchenkov seems to portray the majority of women characters in "The Good Life Elsewhere".

In their heartbreak, Lida, Eremei's wife, has professed that she will drown herself in the river although Eremei doesn't believe her because he knows that she is a strong swimmer. Another unflattering image of a woman. And on the part of Eremei, he sneaks into Zhenya's room, strangles her and burns her body in a stove no less. When Lida questions him, he says Zhenya has left on her own. His image is restored in the eyes of the villagers and because no one sees Zhenya, Eremei can once again claim Italy as a complete hoax. His workmanship improves once again. Absurdity.

I won't even go into the details of Jan Sandutsa who concocts an elaborate scheme to sell his kidneys to earn money when "Israeli doctors" come to Larga to recruit a crop of bodies to harvest organs. They convince at least 14 villagers to submit to the knife. It's never quite clear how much the villagers are promised but Jan earns 2,000 euros. We find Jan's health quickly deteriorates after going under the knife. So he comes up with a plan to grow new kidneys in a pig. When Jan slaughters his pig Sunrise, placing the kidneys on ice for later, his wife not knowing his plan prepares them for dinner. At Jan's death, he has both kidneys, no gallbladder, half a liver, one lung and two missing heart ventricles. Absurdity.

Remember Vasily who at first seems reluctant about the good life being found in Italy? Well Vasily (Maria's husband and Serafim's friend) is eventually persuaded in a wild scheme by Serafim to try and reach Italy. When lured with the opportunity to work for Fiat in Italy, Vasily is willing to try anything with his friend Serafim. Vasily was an expert mechanic. A genius of sorts with machinery. He loved all things mechanical and had been destroyed after selling his beloved tractor to pay for passage for his wife's ill-fated journey to Italy. So Serafim and Vaily hatch a plot to steal back the tractor that Vasily had sold for Maria's passage to Italy and build a plane. A flying TRACTOR! Needless to say, this was a futile attempt.

I think an important part of understanding the constant desire of most Largan residents to escape their village is shared in the idea of the sheer poverty and hopelessness they faced. As a former member of the U.S.S.R., the residents were barely making it. They no longer had the communist regime providing for them. The land refused to yield a harvest for them. Life was hard. 

Throughout the book there were allusions to heaven, God and a promised land. The inaccurate and exaggerated spiritual overtures were sometimes over the top in equating spiritual things to this physical world.

What I think the essential idea of the novel boils down to is contentment, or should I say, the lack of contentment. I’m not sure if this is what Lorchenkov was getting out, but I think the idea of happiness always being elsewhere reveals this lack of contentment. 

In fact, I think Old Man Tudor was likely the smartest man in the village – other than his denial of God and heaven that is. Near the end of the book, he says something so poignant. 

“Understand, you wretched of the earth, we should strive to improve what we can. Here. Right here, in Moldova. We can clean our own houses; fix our own roads. We can trim our own shrubs and work the fields. We can stop gossiping, drinking and loafing. We can become kinder, more patient, more tender with each other. We can stop ripping pages out of library books and spitting on a cleanly swept floor. Quit deceiving. Start living honest lives, Italy—the real Italy—is in us ourselves!”

Needless to say, this wisdom, this insight into where and how the good life is found was not received by the villagers well. But what Old Man Tudor so vividly expressed was the thought that in this life, we don't have to go searching for happiness in places, people and things. Instead, it is within us. Contentment is a choice.

Still, near the end of his life, Serafim comes to an understanding of his lifelong desire for a better life, his dream. A life that he believed could only be found in Italy. Lorchenkov writes, “At the same time, Serafim understood clearly, he could never have not yearned for Italy because here, in his homeland, all that awaited him was poverty, darkness and despair.” 

I may have completely missed it, you’ll have to read “The Good Life Elsewhere” for yourself. But, without giving too much away, I still was left wondering. 

“Did they make it? Did their dreams come true? Did they finally find the good life?”