Last Witnesses Page 6

  Even now I…All my life I’ve cried in the happiest moments of my life. Drowning in tears. All my life…My husband…We’ve lived in love for many years. When he proposed to me: “I love you. Let’s get married”—I burst into tears. He was frightened: “Did I upset you?” “No! No! I’m happy!” But I can never be completely happy. Totally happy. It somehow doesn’t come out. I’m afraid of happiness. It always seems that it’s just about to end. This “just about” always lives in me. That childhood fear…

  “WE ASK: CAN WE LICK IT?…”

  Vera Tashkina

  TEN YEARS OLD. NOW AN UNSKILLED WORKER.

  Before the war I cried a lot…

  My father died. Mama was left with seven children on her hands. It was a poor life. Hard. But later, during the war, that peaceful life seemed happy.

  Grown-ups wept, but we weren’t afraid. We often played “war,” and the word was very familiar to us. I wondered why mama wept all night. Went around with red eyes. Only later did I understand…

  We ate…water…Dinnertime came, mama put on the table a pot of hot water. We poured it into bowls. It’s evening. Suppertime. A pot of hot water on the table. Colorless hot water, there was nothing to put in for color in winter. Not even grass.

  My brother was so hungry he ate a corner of the stove. He gnawed away at it every day until we noticed there was a little dent in it. Then mama took our last things, went to the market, and exchanged them for potatoes or corn. She would cook some cornmeal, divide it among us, and we would look at the pot and ask, “Can we lick it?” We took turns licking it. And after us our cat also licked it, she was hungry, too. I don’t know whether there was anything left there for her. We didn’t leave even a drop. There wasn’t even any smell left. We licked up the smell.

  We kept waiting for our troops…

  When our planes started bombing, I didn’t run to hide, but dashed out to look at our bombs. I found a piece of shrapnel…

  “Where on earth have you been?” Frightened mama met me at home. “What’re you hiding there?”

  “I’m not hiding anything. I brought a piece of shrapnel.”

  “You’ll be killed, that’ll teach you.”

  “Why, mama? It’s shrapnel from one of our bombs. How could it kill me?”

  I kept it for a long time…

  “…AN EXTRA HALF-SPOON OF SUGAR”

  Emma Levina

  THIRTEEN YEARS OLD. NOW A PRINTER.

  That day I was a month shy of fourteen years old…

  “No! We won’t go anywhere. What an idea—war! Before we get out of town, it’ll be over. We won’t go! We wo-o-on’t!” So said my father, a party member since 1905. He had been in czarist prisons more than once, had taken part in the October Revolution.

  But even so we had to leave. We gave the plants on windowsills a good watering (we had many of them), locked the windows and doors, only leaving a vent open so that the cat could go out when he wanted. We took the most necessary things. Papa persuaded everybody that we’d be back in a few days. Yet Minsk was burning.

  Only my second sister didn’t go with us, she was three years older than me. For a long time we didn’t know anything about her. We worried. We were already in evacuation…In Ukraine…We received a letter from my sister from the front, then another and another. Later came a letter of appreciation from the commanders of the unit where she served as a medical assistant. My mother showed this letter to everybody! She was proud. In honor of the event the chairman of the kolkhoz issued us two pounds of forage flour. My mother treated everybody to tasty flatcakes.

  We did all kinds of village work, though we were all true-blue city people. We worked well. My oldest sister, who had been a judge before the war, now learned to drive a tractor. But soon the bombing of Kharkov began, and we went farther on.

  On our way we learned that we were being taken to Kazakhstan. Some ten families traveled in the same car with us. In one family the daughter was pregnant. The train was bombed, the planes came all of a sudden, no one had time to get out of the car. Then we heard a cry: the pregnant woman’s foot was blown off. This horror is still lodged in my memory. The woman went into labor…And her own father began to assist in the delivery. All that in front of everybody. Noise. Blood, dirt. A baby being born…

  We left Kharkov in the summer, and we reached our final destination in winter. We came to the Kazakh steppes. For a long time I couldn’t get used to not being bombed and shelled. We had one more enemy—lice! Huge, middle-sized, small. Black! Gray! All sorts. But all equally merciless, leaving us no peace day or night. No, not so! When the train moved, they didn’t bite as badly. They behaved more or less quietly. But as soon as we were in a house…my God, what they did…My God! My whole back and arms were bitten and covered with ulcers. It got better when I took my blouse off, but I had nothing else to put on. In any case I had to burn this blouse, it was so infested, and I covered myself with a newspaper, and wore this newspaper in the guise of a blouse. The mistress of the house we stayed in washed me with such hot water that, if I were to wash with such water now, my skin would peel off. But then…It was such happiness—warm water. Hot!

  Our mother was an excellent housewife, an excellent cook. Only she could prepare a gopher so that it became good to eat, though gopher meat isn’t considered edible. A gopher on the table…It stinks for a mile around, an unspeakably disgusting smell. But there’s no other meat, and we have nothing else. So we eat these gophers…

  A very nice, kind woman lived next to us. She saw our sufferings and said to mama, “Let your daughter help me in the house.” I was very weak. She went to the field, and left me with her grandson, showed me where everything was, so that I could feed him and eat myself. I went to the table, looked at the food, but was afraid to take it. It seemed to me that if I took something, it would all disappear, that it was a dream. Not only did I not eat, I was even afraid to touch it with my finger—for fear it would cease to exist. I preferred to look at it, to look at it for a long time. I came from the side, or from the back. Afraid to close my eyes. I didn’t put anything in my mouth during the whole day. This woman had a cow, sheep, chickens. And she left me butter, eggs…

  She came home in the evening and asked, “Did you eat?”

  “Yes…”

  “Go home then. And take this to your mama.” And she gave me some bread. “And come back tomorrow.”

  I went home, and this woman came running after me. I got frightened: what if something’s missing? But she kissed me and wept.

  “Why didn’t you eat anything, silly fool? Why is everything just where it was?” And she caressed me and stroked my head.

  Winters in Kazakhstan are severe. We had nothing to burn in the stove. We were saved by cow dung. You get up early in the morning and wait till the cows come out, and you put the bucket under them. You run from one cow to another. I wasn’t alone, all the evacuated people were there. You fill the bucket, dump it out by your house, and hurry back. Afterward it’s all mixed with straw, dried, and the result is those black cakes. Kiziaks. We used them for heating.

  Papa died. His heart probably broke from pity for us. He’d had a bad heart for a long time.

  I was accepted to a technical school. They issued me a uniform: a coat, shoes, and—bread coupons. I used to have cropped hair, but now it grew back and I could braid it. They gave me a Komsomol card. Took a picture for a newspaper. I carried the card in my hands, not in my pocket. Such a treasure…I was afraid to put it in my pocket—what if I should lose it? My heart pounded: tock-tock-tock. How happy papa would have been if he could have seen me.

  Now I think: “What a terrible time, but what extraordinary people.” I am amazed at how we were then! How we believed! I don’t want to forget it…I long ago lost my faith in Stalin, in communist ideas. I would like to forget that part of my life, but I keep tho
se feelings in my heart. That loftiness. I don’t want to forget those feelings. They’re precious…

  That evening at home mama made real tea, with tea leaves. Of course, it was such a feast! And I—as the cause of it—received an extra half-spoon of sugar…

  “DEAR HOUSE, DON’T BURN DEAR HOUSE, DON’T BURN!…”

  Nina Rachitskaya

  SEVEN YEARS OLD. NOW A WORKER.

  Sometimes it’s very vivid…Everything comes back.

  How the Germans arrived on motorcycles…Each had a bucket, and their buckets clanked. We hid…I had two little brothers—four and two years old. We hid under the bed and stayed there the whole day.

  I was very surprised that the young fascist officer who moved in with us wore glasses. My idea was that only teachers wore glasses. He and his orderly lived in one half of the house, and we in the other. My youngest brother caught a cold and had a bad cough. He had a high fever, was all burning, and wept during the night. In the morning, the officer came to our half and told mama that if the kinder cries and keeps him from sleeping at night, he’ll go puf-puf, and he pointed to his pistol. At night, as soon as my brother began to cough or cry, mother grabbed him with his blanket, ran outside, and rocked him there till he fell asleep or calmed down. Puf-puf…

  They took everything from us, we were starving. They wouldn’t let us into the kitchen, and they cooked only for themselves. My little brothers smelled the food and crawled to the kitchen to this smell. They cooked pea soup every day, and it had a very strong smell. Five minutes later we heard my brother’s cry, a terrible shriek. They splashed boiling water on him in the kitchen because he asked to eat. He was so hungry that he said to mama, “Let’s cook my duckling.” This duckling was his favorite toy, he had never let anyone touch it. He slept with it.

  Our children’s conversations…

  We sat and debated: if we catch a mouse (there were many of them during the war, both in the house and in the fields), could we eat it? Can we eat chickadees? Magpies? Why doesn’t mama make a soup out of fat beetles?

  We wouldn’t let potatoes grow, we felt around in the ground with our hands to see if they were big or still small. And somehow everything grew so slowly: the corn, the sunflowers…

  On the last day…Before their retreat the Germans set fire to our house. Mama stood looking at the fire, and there weren’t any tears on her face. The three of us ran around crying, “Dear house, don’t burn! Dear house, don’t burn!” We had no time to take anything out, I only snatched my primer. I saved it through the whole war, I cherished it. I slept with it, it was always under my pillow. I wanted to study very much. When in 1944 I started first grade, my primer was the only one for thirteen pupils. For the whole class.

  I remember the first after-war concert at school. How they sang, danced…My palms hurt, I clapped so much. I was happy until some boy came onstage and began to read a poem. He read loudly, the poem was long, but I heard one word—war. I looked around: everybody sat calmly. But I was scared—the war had just ended, and there’s war again? I couldn’t hear this word. I tore from my seat and ran home. I came and found mama cooking something in the kitchen, meaning there wasn’t any war. I went back to school. To the concert. Applauded again.

  Our papa didn’t come back from the war. Mama received a notice that he was missing in action. Mama would go to work, and the three of us together wept that papa wasn’t with us. We turned the house over looking for the notice about papa. We thought it wasn’t written that papa had been killed, it said he was missing. We would tear this notice up, and news would come about where our papa was. But we didn’t find the notice. When mama came home from work, she couldn’t understand why the house was in such disorder. She asked me, “What have you been doing here?” My younger brother answered for me: “Looking for papa…”

  Before the war I liked it when papa told us fairy tales. He knew many fairy tales and told them well. After the war I no longer wanted to read fairy tales…

  “SHE CAME IN A WHITE SMOCK, LIKE MAMA…”

  Sasha Suetin

  FOUR YEARS OLD. NOW A LOCKSMITH.

  I remember only mama…

  First picture…

  Mama always wore a white smock…Father was an officer, mama worked in a hospital. My older brother told me that afterward. All I remember is mama’s white smock. Not even her face, only the white smock…And also the white cap, which always stood on a little table. Precisely stood, not lay, because it was stiffly starched.

  Second picture…

  Mama didn’t come home…I was used to papa often not coming home, but mama always came home. My brother and I stayed alone in the apartment for several days without going anywhere: what if mama suddenly shows up? Some strange people knock, dress us, and take us somewhere.

  I cry, “Mama! Where’s my mama?”

  “Don’t cry, mama will find us,” my brother, who is three years older, comforts me.

  We wind up in some sort of long house or barn, on a bunk. We’re hungry all the time, and I suck on my shirt buttons, they’re like the fruit drops father used to bring from his business trips. I’m waiting for mama.

  Third picture…

  Some man shoves me and my brother into the corner of the bunk, covers us with a blanket, throws some rags over us. I begin to cry, he strokes my head. I calm down.

  This happens every day. Once I get tired of sitting under the blanket for so long. I begin to cry, first softly, then loudly. Someone pulls the rags, then the blanket off me and my brother. I open my eyes—next to us stands a woman in a white smock.

  “Mama!” I crawl to her.

  She also caresses me. First my head…then my arm…Then she takes something out of a metal box. But I pay no attention to that, I only see the white smock and white hat.

  Suddenly!—a sharp pain in my arm. There’s a needle under my skin. Before I finish shouting, I faint. I come to my senses. The man who had been hiding us sits over me. Next to me lies my brother.

  “Don’t be frightened,” says the man. “He’s not dead, he’s asleep.”

  “That wasn’t mama?”

  “No…”

  “She came in a white smock, like mama…” I repeat again and again.

  “I’ve made a toy for you.” The man hands me a rag ball.

  I take the toy and stop crying.

  I don’t remember anything after that: who saved us in the German concentration camp and how? They took blood from the children for the wounded German soldiers. All the children died. How did my brother and I wind up in an orphanage? And how, at the end of the war, did we receive notice that our parents were dead? Something happened to my memory. I don’t remember the faces, I don’t remember the words…

  The war was over. I went to first grade. Other children would read a poem two or three times and memorize it. And I would read it ten times and not memorize it. But for some reason the teachers didn’t give me bad grades. The others got bad grades, but I didn’t.

  That’s my story…

  “AUNTIE, TAKE ME ON YOUR KNEES…”

  Marina Karyanova

  FOUR YEARS OLD. NOW WORKS IN CINEMA.

  I don’t like to remember…I don’t. In a word—I don’t like it…

  If everybody was asked, “What is childhood?” they would each say something of their own. For me childhood is mama and papa and candies. All my childhood I wanted mama and papa and candies. During the war I not only didn’t taste any candies—I didn’t even see any. I ate my first candy a few years after the war…About three years after…I was already a big girl. Ten years old.

  I could never understand how anybody could not want chocolate candy. How? It’s impossible.

  I never found my mama and papa. I don’t even know my real last name. They picked me up in Moscow at the Severny train station.

 
“What’s your name?” they asked me in the orphanage.

  “Marinochka.”

  “And your last name?”

  “I don’t remember my last name…”

  They wrote down Marina Severnaya.

  I wanted to eat all the time. But still more I wanted someone to hug me, to caress me. There was little tenderness then, there was war all around, everybody was in grief. I go down the street…Ahead of me a woman walks with her children. She’d take one in her arms, carry him, put him down, take another. They sat on a bench, and she took the youngest on her knees. I kept standing there. Kept looking. I went up to her: “Auntie, take me on your knees.” She was surprised.

  I asked her again, “Auntie, please…”

  “…AND BEGAN TO ROCK HER LIKE A DOLL”

  Dima Sufrankov

  FIVE YEARS OLD. NOW A MECHANICAL ENGINEER.

  Till then I had only been afraid of mice. But all at once there were so many fears! A thousand fears…

  My child’s conscience wasn’t so much struck by the word war as frightened by the word airplanes. “Airplanes!”—and our mother grabs us all off the stove. We were afraid to get off the stove, afraid to leave the cottage, so while she takes one off, the other climbs back. There were five of us. And also our beloved cat.

  The planes strafed us…

  Mama tied the younger ones to her with towels, and we older ones ran by ourselves. When you’re little…you live in a different world, you don’t see what’s high up, you live close to the ground. There the planes are still more frightening, the bombs are still more frightening. I remember being envious of the bugs: they were so small that they always could hide somewhere, crawl into the ground…I imagined that when I died I’d become some animal, run away to the forest.