Last Witnesses Read online

  Translation copyright © 2019 by Penguin Random House LLC

  All rights reserved.

  Published in the United States by Random House, an imprint and division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.

  RANDOM HOUSE and the HOUSE colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

  Originally published in Russian as Последние свидетели: сто недетских колыбельных by Molodaya Gvardiya, Moscow, in 1985. Copyright © 1985 by Svetlana Alexievich

  This English translation is published in the United Kingdom by Penguin, London.

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

  Names: Aleksievich, Svetlana, author. | Pevear, Richard, translator. | Volokhonsky, Larissa, translator.

  Title: Last witnesses: an oral history of the children of World War II / Svetlana Alexievich; translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky.

  Other titles: Poslednie svideteli. English

  Description: First edition. | New York: Random House, [2019]

  Identifiers: LCCN 2018034984 | ISBN 9780399588754 | ISBN 9780399588778 (ebook)

  Subjects: LCSH: World War, 1939–1945—Children—Soviet Union. | World War, 1939–1945—Personal narratives, Soviet.

  Classification: LCC D810.C4 A44313 2019 | DDC 940.53/4709253—dc23

  LC record available at lccn.loc.gov/​2018034984

  Ebook ISBN 9780399588778

  randomhousebooks.com

  Book design by Barbara M. Bachman, adapted for ebook

  Cover design: Anna Bauer Carr

  Cover photograph: akg-images/picture alliance/ZB

  v5.4

  ep

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Instead of a Preface

  “He Was Afraid to Look Back…”

  “My First and Last Cigarette…”

  “Grandma Prayed…She Asked That My Soul Come Back…”

  “They Lay Pink on the Cinders…”

  “I Still Want My Mama…”

  “Such Pretty German Toys…”

  “A Handful of Salt…All That Was Left of Our House…”

  “And I Kissed All the Portraits in My Schoolbook…”

  “I Gathered Them with My Hands…They Were Very White…”

  “I Want to Live! I Want to Live!…”

  “Through a Buttonhole…”

  “All I Heard Was Mama’s Cry…”

  “We Played, and the Soldiers Wept…”

  “In the Cemetery the Dead Lay Above Ground…as If They’d Been Killed Again…”

  “I Realized—This Was My Father…My Knees Trembled…”

  “Close Your Eyes, Sonny…Don’t Look…”

  “My Little Brother Cries, Because He Wasn’t There When Papa Was There…”

  “That Girl Was the First to Come…”

  “I’m Your Mama…”

  “We Ask: Can We Lick It?…”

  “…An Extra Half-Spoon of Sugar”

  “Dear House, Don’t Burn Dear House, Don’t Burn!…”

  “She Came in a White Smock, Like Mama…”

  “Auntie, Take Me on Your Knees…”

  “…And Began to Rock Her Like a Doll”

  “They Had Already Bought Me a Primer…”

  “…Neither Suitors nor Soldiers…”

  “If Only One Son Could Be Left…”

  “He Wiped His Tears with His Sleeve…”

  “He Hung on the String Like a Baby…”

  “You’ll Be My Children Now…”

  “We Kissed Their Hands…”

  “I Looked at Them with a Little Girl’s Eyes…”

  “Our Mama Didn’t Smile…”

  “I Couldn’t Get Used to My Name…”

  “His Army Shirt Was Wet…”

  “As If She Had Saved His Own Daughter…”

  “They Carried Me to the Unit in Their Arms…I Was All One Bruise from Head to Foot…”

  “And Why Am I So Small?…”

  “They Were Drawn by the Human Scent…”

  “Why Did They Shoot Her in the Face? My Mama Was So Beautiful…”

  “You Asked Me to Finish You Off…”

  “And I Didn’t Even Have a Scarf On…”

  “No One to Play Outside With…”

  “I’ll Open the Window at Night…and Give the Pages to the Wind…”

  “Dig Here…”

  “Grandpa Was Buried Under the Window…”

  “…And They Tamped It Down with the Shovels, So It Looked Pretty.”

  “I’ll Buy Myself a Dress with a Little Bow…”

  “How Did He Die, If There Was No Shooting Today?…”

  “Because We’re Girls, and He’s a Boy…”

  “You’re No Brother of Mine If You Play with German Boys…”

  “We Even Forgot That Word…”

  “You Should Go to the Front, but You Fall in Love with My Mama…”

  “In the Last Moments They Shouted Their Names…”

  “All Four of Us Pulled That Sledge…”

  “These Two Boys Became Light as Sparrows…”

  “I Was Embarrassed to Be Wearing Girls’ Shoes…”

  “I Screamed and Screamed…I Couldn’t Stop…”

  “We All Joined Hands…”

  “We Didn’t Even Know How to Bury…but Now We Somehow Recalled It…”

  “He Gathered Them in a Basket…”

  “They Took the Kittens Out of the Cottage…”

  “Remember: 6 Park Street, Mariupol…”

  “I Heard His Heart Stop…”

  “I Ran Away to the Front Following My Sister, First Sergeant Vera Redkina…”

  “In the Direction of the Sunrise…”

  “A White Shirt Shines Far Off in the Dark…”

  “On the Clean Floor That I Had Just Washed…”

  “Did God Watch This? and What Did He Think?…”

  “The Wide World Is Wondrous…”

  “They Brought Long, Thin Candy…It Looked Like Pencils…”

  “The Little Trunk Was Just His Size…”

  “I Was Afraid of That Dream…”

  “I Wanted to Be Mama’s Only Child…So She Could Pamper Me…”

  “But, Like Rubber Balls, They Didn’t Sink…”

  “I Remember the Blue, Blue Sky…and Our Planes in That Sky…”

  “Like Ripe Pumpkins…”

  “We Ate…the Park…”

  “Whoever Cries Will Be Shot…”

  “Dear Mama and Dear Papa— Golden Words…”

  “They Brought Her Back in Pieces…”

  “The Chicks Had Just Hatched…I Was Afraid They’d Be Killed…”

  “King of Clubs…King of Diamonds…”

  “A Big Family Photograph…”

  “At Least Let Me Pour Some Little Potatoes in Your Pockets…”

  “A Is for Apple, B Is for Ball…”

  “He Gave Me an Astrakhan Hat with a Red Ribbon…”
/>   “And I Fired into the Air…”

  “My Mother Carried Me to First Grade in Her Arms…”

  “My Dear Dog, Forgive Me…My Dear Dog, Forgive Me…”

  “And She Ran Away: ‘That’s Not My Daughter! Not MI-I-ine!’ ”

  “Were We Really Children? We Were Men and Women…”

  “Don’t Give Some Stranger Papa’s Suit…”

  “At Night I Cried: Where Is My Cheerful Mama?…”

  “He Won’t Let Me Fly Away…”

  “Everybody Wanted to Kiss the Word Victory…”

  “Wearing a Shirt Made from My Father’s Army Shirt…”

  “I Decorated It with Red Carnations…”

  “I Waited a Long Time for My Father…All My Life…”

  “At That Limit…That Brink…”

  By Svetlana Alexievich

  About the Author

  About the Translators

  INSTEAD OF A PREFACE

  …ONE QUOTATION

  In the course of the Great Patriotic War (1941–1945) millions of Soviet children died: Russians, Belorussians, Ukrainians, Jews, Tatars, Latvians, Gypsies, Kazakhs, Uzbeks, Armenians, Tadjiks…

  People’s Friendship magazine, 1985, No. 5

  …AND ONE QUESTION BY A RUSSIAN CLASSIC

  Dostoevsky once posed a question: can we justify our world, our happiness, and even eternal harmony, if in its name, to strengthen its foundation, at least one little tear of an innocent child will be spilled? And he himself answered: this tear will not justify any progress, any revolution. Any war. It will always outweigh them.

  Just one little tear…

  “HE WAS AFRAID TO LOOK BACK…”

  Zhenya Belkevich

  SIX YEARS OLD. NOW A WORKER.

  June 1941…

  I remember it. I was very little, but I remember everything…

  The last thing I remember from the peaceful life was a fairy tale that mama read us at bedtime. My favorite one—about the Golden Fish. I also always asked something from the Golden Fish: “Golden Fish…Dear Golden Fish…” My sister asked, too. She asked differently: “By order of the pike, by my like…” We wanted to go to our grandmother for the summer and have papa come with us. He was so much fun.

  In the morning I woke up from fear. From some unfamiliar sounds…

  Mama and papa thought we were asleep, but I lay next to my sister pretending to sleep. I saw papa kiss mama for a long time, kiss her face and hands, and I kept wondering: he’s never kissed her like that before. They went outside, they were holding hands, I ran to the window—mama hung on my father’s neck and wouldn’t let him go. He tore free of her and ran, she caught up with him and again held him and shouted something. Then I also shouted: “Papa! Papa!”

  My little sister and brother Vasya woke up, my sister saw me crying, and she, too, shouted: “Papa!” We all ran out to the porch: “Papa!” Father saw us and, I remember it like today, covered his head with his hands and walked off, even ran. He was afraid to look back.

  The sun was shining in my face. So warm…And even now I can’t believe that my father left that morning for the war. I was very little, but I think I realized that I was seeing him for the last time. That I would never meet him again. I was very…very little…

  It became connected like that in my memory, that war is when there’s no papa…

  Then I remember: the black sky and the black plane. Our mama lies by the road with her arms spread. We ask her to get up, but she doesn’t. She doesn’t rise. The soldiers wrapped mama in a tarpaulin and buried her in the sand, right there. We shouted and begged: “Don’t put our mama in the ground. She’ll wake up and we’ll go on.” Some big beetles crawled over the sand…I couldn’t imagine how mama was going to live with them under the ground. How would we find her afterward, how would we meet her? Who would write to our papa?

  One of the soldiers asked me: “What’s your name, little girl?” But I forgot. “And what’s your last name, little girl? What’s your mother’s name?” I didn’t remember…We sat by mama’s little mound till night, till we were picked up and put on a cart. The cart was full of children. Some old man drove us, he gathered up everybody on the road. We came to a strange village and strangers took us all to different cottages.

  I didn’t speak for a long time. I only looked.

  Then I remember—summer. Bright summer. A strange woman strokes my head. I begin to cry. I begin to speak…To tell about mama and papa. How papa ran away from us and didn’t even look back…How mama lay…How the beetles crawled over the sand…

  The woman strokes my head. In those moments I realized: she looks like my mama…

  “MY FIRST AND LAST CIGARETTE…”

  Gena Yushkevich

  TWELVE YEARS OLD. NOW A JOURNALIST.

  The morning of the first day of the war…

  Sun. And unusual quiet. Incomprehensible silence.

  Our neighbor, an officer’s wife, came out to the yard all in tears. She whispered something to mama, but gestured that they had to be quiet. Everybody was afraid to say aloud what had happened, even when they already knew, since some had been informed. But they were afraid that they’d be called provocateurs. Panic-mongers. That was more frightening than the war. They were afraid…This is what I think now…And of course no one believed it. What?! Our army is at the border, our leaders are in the Kremlin! The country is securely protected, it’s invulnerable to the enemy! That was what I thought then…I was a young Pioneer.*1

  We listened to the radio. Waited for Stalin’s speech. We needed his voice. But Stalin was silent. Then Molotov*2 gave a speech. Everybody listened. Molotov said, “It’s war.” Still no one believed it yet. Where is Stalin?

  Planes flew over the city…Dozens of unfamiliar planes. With crosses. They covered the sky, covered the sun. Terrible! Bombs rained down…There were sounds of ceaseless explosions. Rattling. Everything was happening as in a dream. Not in reality. I was no longer little—I remember my feelings. My fear, which spread all over my body. All over my words. My thoughts. We ran out of the house, ran somewhere down the streets…It seemed as if the city was no longer there, only ruins. Smoke. Fire. Somebody said we must run to the cemetery, because they wouldn’t bomb a cemetery. Why bomb the dead? In our neighborhood there was a big Jewish cemetery with old trees. And everybody rushed there, thousands of people gathered there. They embraced the monuments, hid behind the tombstones.

  Mama and I sat there till nightfall. Nobody around uttered the word war. I heard another word: provocation. Everybody repeated it. People said that our troops would start advancing any moment. On Stalin’s orders. People believed it.

  But the sirens on the chimneys in the outskirts of Minsk wailed all night…

  The first dead…

  The first dead I saw was a horse…Then a dead woman…That surprised me. My idea was that only men were killed in war.

  I woke up in the morning…I wanted to leap out of bed, then I remembered—it’s war, and I closed my eyes. I didn’t want to believe it.

  There was no more shooting in the streets. Suddenly it was quiet. For several days it was quiet. And then all of a sudden there was movement…There goes, for instance, a white man, white all over, from his shoes to his hair. Covered with flour. He carries a white sack. Another is running…Tin cans fall out of his pockets, he has tin cans in his hands. Candy…Packs of tobacco…Someone carries a hat filled with sugar…A pot of sugar…Indescribable! One carries a roll of fabric, another goes all wrapped in blue calico. Red calico…It’s funny, but nobody laughs. Food warehouses had been bombed. A big store not far from our house…People rushed to take whatever was left there. At a sugar factory several men drowned in vats of sugar syrup. Terrible! The whole city cracked sunflower seeds. T
hey found a stock of sunflower seeds somewhere. Before my eyes a woman came running to a store…She had nothing with her: no sack or net bag—so she took off her slip. Her leggings. She stuffed them with buckwheat. Carried it off. All that silently for some reason. Nobody talked.

  When I called my mother, there was only mustard left, yellow jars of mustard. “Don’t take anything,” mama begged. Later she told me she was ashamed, because all her life she had taught me differently. Even when we were starving and remembering these days, we still didn’t regret anything. That’s how my mother was.

  In town…German soldiers calmly strolled in our streets. They filmed everything. Laughed. Before the war we had a favorite game—we made drawings of Germans. We drew them with big teeth. Fangs. And now they’re walking around…Young, handsome…With handsome grenades tucked into the tops of their sturdy boots. Play harmonicas. Even joke with our pretty girls.