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Podil was also a place called Borych’s Threshing Floor ( " Т ік " ) . Since the publication of my book, I had been eager to explore this area, to visit Kiev again with the particular purpose this time of satisfying myself that I had made no obviously foolish errors of place. This time I wanted to see it with eyes informed with the past. I wanted to enter, if I could, that medieval world so vivid to me, to walk in person as I had in imagination those streets and lanes. I wanted especially to find Kyselivka Hill, where Princess Olha had once secluded herself. In July of 1977 I was able to indulge my wish, for during an extensive tour of Ukraine with a group, I visited Kiev for several days. Very early on the morning after our arrival, I left my hotel with a companion and took a cab to St. Andriy’s Cathedral, the starting point of my very private excursion. The cab driver at once told us that St. Andriy’s is no longer ’’working” and that if we ’’needed” a church, he could take us to one that was. ’’For I know Kiev like the palm of my hand.” ’’Never mind,” I said, "I’m making another kind of pilgrimage. But do you know where Kyselivka Hill is?” No, he did not. Perhaps it was in some other city, but certainly not in Kiev. Soon we reached St. Andriy’s and got out. I glanced up at the church, which stands upon an eminence on the edge of the bluff overlooking the broad reaches of the Dnieper. Upon that same site once stood the earliest citadel of Kiev. Across the way, behind the present-day Historical Museum, is the site of Prince Volodymyr’s Tithe Church, built in the tenth century, its final ruins razed by the Russians in the nineteenth. Between these two, St. Andriy’s and the Museum, begins Andriy's Descent — or, Borych’s Wagon Road. Nowadays few Kievans venture down its cobbled paving. But once upon a time it was a busy thoroughfare. In the footsteps of the unknown humanity that has trod this road from the earliest times, we started down it, toward a hidden, all but forgotten corner of centuries gone by. The air that early summer morning was still, so that I could easily hear the sounds of the past. ’’The road was alive with carts and wagons creaking past them in both directions. Those going down were for the most part rattling empty. But those going up were filled with timbers, with fish, or barrels of salt. One cart was loaded with a pile of tanned cowhides, evidently being brought up from the tanners’ quarter below. A steady stream of people, some mounted, but most on foot, was also moving along the road.” And we along with them. In my head sounded the shouts of the carters, snatches of talk, and occasional laughter, too. Here and there, like myself, were strangers from afar, judging by their alien dress and visage — Normans and Arabs, Armenians and Jews and Bulgars — all looking about them as avidly as I. Stray dogs darted their way through the forest of legs. And then: on the cobbles near the side of the road lay a cat. Unconcerned by the traffic in my mind’s eye, she was sunning and giving herself a thorough wash. Of course. Instantly I knew her again. "Bern watched [the cat] come striding across the yard toward the kiln hut. To his contentment it came through the door as bold as if it lived there. Kiev 1977. Tanners Lane. Київ-Поділ-Провулок К о ж у м 'я к и Kiev 1977. Kiev-M ohyla Academ y in P odil on Skovoroda St. Колишня Києво-Могилянська Академія на пл. Сковороди. 22 НАШЕ ЖИТТЯ, ЧЕРВЕНЬ 1980 Київ-Подіп. Гончарський привупок Kiev - 1977. Tanners Lane. Видання C оюзу Українок A мерики - перевидано в електронному форматі в 2012 році . A рхів C У A - Ню Йорк , Н . Й . C Ш A.
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