After the train station and the market next to it were hit a few times, the trains stopped running. The bus station was deserted, but some daring drivers—the ones who knew detours through quiet checkpoints and country roads—were still running their routes. They began early and drove fast to make sure they made it back by nightfall. Cars loaded with mattresses, bags, and children followed the routes beaten by those bus drivers.

People fled with their children to neighbouring cities and regions or abroad. There was no prohibition on leaving or entering, but many had no clue where to go. Anybody with relatives relied on them, those who had money rented flats or stayed in hotels; those with nothing lived in children’s summer camps, which had been converted into housing for the displaced along the Kharkiv highway. They had run out of free spots a long time ago.

I tried to persuade Dad to leave. I played on fears for my own safety or his duty to remain alive—what would, after all, become of his novel if he pegged it? But it was all useless. Every time, he would explode like a bomb, shouting at me, saying I wanted to take his life’s work away from him and that I was, he would start stammering, like my mother, like Grandma, no, worse even, like . . . like . . . “And where are we supposed to go anyway?” he shouted, coughing and shaking his bony fists.

I had no answer. We were all clueless. There was no reliable source of information, no indication of what to do or what to expect. Nobody told us anything, not the government, and certainly not the “Republic.” This gave rise to all kinds of dubious rumours, speculation spread by social media and word of mouth: the chatter of one scared woman talking to another. People at turns grew angry, confused, and impassive. Ever dependent on whatever handouts were available.

But the war was different for Dad. He drew on the walls with even more inspiration. He stood at the window from morning until night, coughing, laughing, and smoking. At the sight of a new blast or fire, he would wave as if greeting it, dancing and spilling cigarette ash on the floor. He was particularly jubilant the day the psychiatric hospital caught fire. Incendiary projectiles slowly descended like stars, burning holes in the building. I stood at the door to his room and looked at his thin figure twisting against the background of a window illuminated by the glow.

He rarely left the house, and even then, it was only to gawp at the fires. He looked up some old friends in the fire service: he had once written one of his odes to them. Out of habit, they would call him up and tell him about the blazes. He dressed quickly and, groaning, carried the bike down to the yard. Just picture it: this stubborn old man riding across the city to a street which had just been shelled, greedily breathing in the smoke that carried away the ash and molten paint. He stood and waited until the entire house had burnt down and turned into ruins, and he then got back on his bike, picked up supplies from his cigarette pusher, and headed home.