Krysia

by Krystyna Mihulka

I ran into my bedroom and looked at my dollhouse, with its miniature brown wooden furniture and red velvet-covered sofa. My most cherished possession, a golden painted china tea set, was displayed on a shelf above a large doll bed where my favorite doll, the one that looked like Shirley Temple, lay. I lifted her out of bed and pressed her against my face. Suddenly a Polish militiaman was there, grabbing her away from me. He threw the doll on the floor and shouted, “You do not need dolls where you are going! There everybody works for the benefit of the nation and there is no time for foolish play!”

  I didn’t want to go to a place where children were not free to behave like children. I didn’t want to know the world he was describing. Thoughts of escape leapt into my mind. I moved toward an open window. It was then that I noticed, in the dim light of the streetlamp, outlines of more soldiers with bayonets fixed on the house, surrounding us. There was no way out.

  Katia, the Russian woman living in our house with her baby and officer husband, appeared and began to help us pack. She was a kind woman, and we had always had a good relationship. She found some tin-plated mugs we used on picnics and some string, and tied the mugs together around our necks. I didn’t understand why she was doing this, but I let her.

  The officer in charge stood up. “Poshli.”

  “Time to go,” the interpreter announced.

  My mother walked into her bedroom, and we all followed. A replica of an oil painting by Flemish painter Peter Paul Rubens of Madonna and Child hung over her bed. The Madonna’s eyes were gazing steadily at us. My mother knelt down and prayed: “Oh God, please have mercy on us and save us! Do not desert us in our hour of need.”

  The militiaman laughed. “Zduriwa, zduriwa. She has gone crazy,” he said.

  I didn’t pray. Where was God, anyway? I had been taught that God loved little children, and yet He was letting these wicked men throw us out of our home. Why didn’t God come to our rescue? Did the Russians have more power than God? I blamed Him for what was happening to us. Or could I be wrong? Did my mother know something about God that I didn’t know?

  The Russian officer picked up Antek and started walking toward the door. Mila screamed, “Wy mordercy! You murderers!” but the Russians paid no attention. My mother followed the officer, and I followed her. Mila and Pani Alina came, too, carrying our bags. Katia disappeared.

  We walked through the kitchen, where the floor was covered with flour and sugar, which were flowing out of the pierced burlap bags. Then we went through the hallway, out the door, into the street and the darkness of the cold April night. It was well past midnight, so it was already Friday. Friday the 13th, 1940.

  A truck was waiting, and my mother and I climbed up into it, as instructed. The officer, still holding Antek, sat next to the driver and placed my brother on his knee. I looked at the neighboring houses and thought I saw drapes moving and obscure shadows peering out at us.

  Mila tried to climb onto the truck with us, but one of the Russian soldiers grabbed her and pushed her off. The Polish militiaman shouted, “You stupid woman! Your life is just beginning. We are getting rid of the bourgeois rich. This world now belongs to the working class.”

  I knew that Mila did not agree. She was an orphan, and now she was losing her home, her job, and the only people who cared for her.

  The truck shook and started moving away. I looked back at the house. The door was still open, and Mila and Pani Alina were visible against the light coming from the inside. Soon the view of our house merged into the dim line of dwellings and I couldn’t make it out anymore.

  We passed along the streets of Lwów that were so familiar and dear to me, but I noticed the shadows of Russian soldiers guarding trucks in front of many of the houses. I heard shrieks and cries of despair and could picture the same things that we had just been through happening in those homes.

  I could smell the fresh spring air. It made me think of the Easter processions going through the streets, of flower vendors selling violets and irises, of people laughing and ladies parading in their new spring clothes and fashionable hats. There was no laughter on these streets tonight.

  I felt trapped, like an animal being driven to the slaughterhouse. I had read about the French Revolution and remembered how the prisoners were led to the guillotines. My mother held me tight next to her, and we were silent. There were no words that could express our emotions.

  We arrived at the railway station. The black forms of cattle wagons loomed in front of us. A door opened on one of the wagons, and the silent Russian guards pushed us into the darkness on the other side. The locks clicked with a loud bang. I could feel the presence of other people and hear movements, cries, and prayers. I sat on my suitcase and wished I could disappear into some other life.

  Morning came. Rays of light penetrated the small windows high above. Faces became visible, and cries of surprise filled the air as friends and neighbors recognized each other.

  I saw two rows of bunks standing against opposite sides of the wagon. A curtain hung in the middle, covering a hole that served as a toilet.

  I heard someone calling me. “Krysiu, Krysiu, it’s Marysia. Graźyna is here, too.”

  My two friends with whom I used to walk to school every morning were sitting nearby. I tried to smile but could only nod my head in reply. My mother and Graźyna’s mother embraced each other, crying.

  The door opened with a clatter, and cold air rushed into the wagon. Three NKVD men wearing green uniforms came in. An interpreter in civilian clothing accompanied them.

  “Familia Mihulka!” one of the men called.

  My mother walked over and sat on a trunk in the middle of the wagon, facing the Russians.

  “Where is your husband?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “What was his profession?”

  “He was an accountant,” my mother lied.

  “Was he in the Polish army?”

  “No, he was not in the Polish army,” she lied again. I couldn’t believe my mother was telling all these lies, she who had always taught me to tell the truth. I knew she must have a reason; she must know something I didn’t.

  One by one, other names were called, and the interrogations continued. Why were the Russians so curious about our lives? Why did they arrest us? I didn’t understand anything that was going on.

  The NKVD left, and two soldiers brought in a bucket of cabbage soup and jugs of water. Now I understood why Katia had tied the mugs around our necks.

  “Kushayte! Eat!” one of the soldiers called as they banged the door behind them on the way out.

  “Pani Mihulka, where are you?” a voice was calling outside.

  “Mila, it’s Mila!” my mother exclaimed. She grabbed Antek and hurriedly climbed up one of the bunks to the window. She tried to push Antek out through the small opening, shouting to Mila, “Take him, take him and give him to the family!”

  We heard a guard outside chase Mila away from the train, and heard her sobbing. My mother covered her face and cried.

  The train whistle blew. The train started moving slowly, and as it gained speed, the rattling noise of the creaking wagons became louder and louder. Our journey into captivity had begun.

  PART II

  Journey into Captivity

  6

  Traveling by Cattle Car

  Space in the wagon was very limited, and access to the windows, which were by the upper bunks, difficult. Everybody agreed to take turns by the windows to get a view of the passing scenery.

  Whenever we arrived at a station, our train drove onto the middle railway tracks. There we were hidden from the platforms by trains on either side of us so that any people standing on the platforms wouldn’t see us. Guards armed with rifles paced along both sides of our train, their boots striking the pavement with a sound that warned escape was impossible.

  The cattle car was airless and dark. The intolerable crowding prevented movement. Most of the time we had to sit huddled together. During the days on the train my friends and I played
a word game. Marysia would say, “It starts with the letter b.”

  Graźyna would reply, “My name is Barbara. I come from Bulgaria, and I carry beans.” Then it would be my turn. We had no toys or books to read, and this was the only way we knew to pass the time.

  Antek made a friend, a six-year-old boy named Janek. His mother, Lala, was tall and thin. She was a concert pianist and a composer. Her long fingers were constantly moving on her lap, as though she were playing the piano, and her eyes were often closed. “She is composing,” Marysia whispered. Everybody called Lala’s mother Babcia (Granny); she was the one who mostly looked after Janek.

  There was also Pani Irena, a young and pretty woman with large blue eyes and long blonde hair, which she tied back with a bow. Her two little girls, Ewa and Danusia, were three and five years old. Her husband was an army officer and had been arrested when the Russians marched into Poland.

  Each night I tried to sleep to the constant, deafening sound of squeaking wheels and whistling wind, which penetrated the thin walls of the moving wagon. I dreamed of my lost home. I missed my father. With each stop, I was jerked awake. I heard the names of the stations we passed through: Kiev, Moscow, Omsk, Novosibirsk. I heard people talking: “We have crossed the Ural Mountains—we are in Asia.” I lost count of the days and nights. Nobody could guess where we were going. Nobody had any maps.

  One day, when we were at a station, the door opened and a Russian soldier ordered, “Four people come out to get water.” I saw people from the other wagons marching under the watchful eyes of the soldiers. Suddenly my heart leapt: I saw Ciocia Stefa and my cousins, Zosia and Nina, walking with the crowd.

  I screamed to my mother, “They’re here!”

  “Who? Who is here?” My mother managed to push her way toward the open door. And then she also recognized them.

  “Stefa! Stefa!” she cried.

  Ciocia Stefa and my cousins looked up, stunned. Then Ciocia Stefa shouted, “We will be together!” A Russian soldier pushed them to keep moving.

  I stood still, in shock, then looked at my mother. She had tears in her eyes. That quick glimpse at those we loved tore at our hearts.

  One morning, after we had just woken up, my mother announced, “Listen, everybody, today our journey is coming to an end. I had a strange dream. I was walking toward a clay hut with a flat roof and no windows. As I tried to enter I hit my head because the doorway was so low. It was dark inside, but I could see a woman dressed in white in the middle of the room. Her back was toward me, and I could tell she was mixing something in a huge kettle on the stove.”

  I could see some of the people in the wagon were laughing at her. I didn’t like anybody to laugh at my mother. I knew she was psychic and often saw things before they happened.

  A few hours later the train stopped. No station name was announced, but we could hear loud Russian voices outside. The door opened, and a soldier shouted, “Vykhodite! Come out!”

  We gathered our belongings and climbed onto trucks that were waiting outside the train. We saw Ciocia Stefa, Zosia, and Nina being pushed onto another truck. “Let us be together with my sister,” I heard Ciocia Stefa plead, pointing at us. The soldiers ignored her. We were in the middle of nowhere—there was no station; there were no trees. There was just flat land all around us. The trucks started up. The truck holding Ciocia Stefa and my cousins went in the opposite direction. We waved to them and cried. They threw kisses at us and disappeared into the distance.

  We traveled for hours on a dusty road across a tawny steppe that stretched to the horizon. No vehicles passed us. There was no sign of human life. There was only vast loneliness and solitude.

  At last we reached a village of flat-roofed dwellings with no windows. They reminded me of pictures of Arab clay huts in the desert that I had once seen in a magazine. Strange-looking people, olive-skinned, with flat faces and high cheekbones, met my eyes. The men wore round gray hats, and their beards were split in two in the center. The older women wore loose-fitting white garments and scarves wound around their heads in elaborate patterns. The younger women and the girls had uncovered heads; their hair hung in long plaits down their backs. Their long-sleeved dresses were different colors—mostly gray, mauve, and yellow—and were tied with narrow belts.

  The crowd, chattering in a strange language, surrounded the trucks. One of the men stretched his hands out toward me. I screamed and pulled back. My mother, who was behind me, said, “Don’t be afraid. He wants to help you down.” I let him take me down from the truck. We sat on our suitcases in the middle of the square, and the unfamiliar-looking people stared at us. The children, braver, came up and touched our clothing. The people seemed friendly but surprised to see us. I wondered who they could be.

  The trucks left. We had no idea what would happen next. A man with an air of authority about him came out of one of the huts and spoke to the crowd. Of course, we didn’t understand anything he said.

  In the distance, against the blue sky, I saw a huge animal with two humps. “It’s a camel,” my mother explained. A young woman with long black hair in two braids was milking the camel. When she finished, she came toward us with a bucket and a mug. She dipped the mug into the bucket and handed it to me. It smelled like rotten vegetables, and when I drank it, it tasted very sour. I didn’t like it, but I was hungry, so I drank some. The woman went around distributing the camel’s milk to everybody.

  Finally, the man who had spoken to the crowd before, whom the people called Commissar, motioned us toward one of the huts. Lala, Babcia, Janek, and Pani Irena and her two daughters followed. I was happy to see that Graźyna and Marysia, with their mothers and sisters, were ordered to come with us, too.

  Inside the hut it was dark and smelled like cow manure. Wooden bunks lined the walls. We put our suitcases on the bunks and stared around us in despair.

  “Stay here with your brother,” my mother said. “I am going to buy some food.”

  I couldn’t imagine where she would find any food or, if she did, how she would manage to buy some in this strange language. But when she came back she carried a small clay container of milk (cow’s milk, thankfully) and a thin, round, flat bread that looked like a large pancake. The bread was dry, but to me it tasted like the best cake I had ever eaten. I savored every bite.

  I had never seen a camel, nor drunk camel’s milk, until we arrived in Central Asia. © Ralko/Dreamstime.com

  Then I noticed a bump on my mother’s forehead. “What happened, Mamusiu?” I asked, pointing at the bump.

  “I walked into a low doorway and hit my head,” she told me. “A woman in a white dress was stirring milk. I traded my woolen scarf for some milk and a piece of bread. It was the same house that was in my dream.”

  I wished that the people on the train who had laughed at her this morning were here now to hear her story and see the bump on her forehead.

  The night was very cold. We huddled together on one of the bunks for warmth. I covered my face with a blanket, but by morning my whole body felt like a piece of ice.

  “Keep moving, keep moving,” my mother advised. “I will go to see what we can do next.”

  She went out, and when she came back she said, “Pack up. We’re moving. I managed to get a room in a house. The man spoke Russian and agreed to take us in. I gave him some money, but I don’t know how long we can stay.

  “There are no guards,” she continued, “and the commissar is nowhere to be seen, so we have to take this risk. We have to leave this freezing place.” Just as she had found food for us in this strange land yesterday, today she found us a better place to live. Lala, Janek, and Babcia wanted to come with us, and my mother agreed that they could.

  Collecting our few belongings, we walked toward a rectangular mud house. We entered it through a long, dark corridor, which led to a large room. In the middle was a huge iron pot built into the brick stove. It was full of milk. I could see a fire burning under the pot, its flames lighting a small area of the room. A young man appe
ared with an oil lamp in his hand and motioned us through another dark tunnel into a small room with a linen curtain instead of a door. The house smelled of sour milk, and the air was stale and stuffy, but it was warm. We had some blankets, which we put on the clay floor.

  The man reappeared, pulling open the curtain and smiling, and gestured us to follow him. He led us to a spacious room with colorful quilts hanging on the walls and soft covers on the floor. In the middle of the room was a low, round table surrounded by small cushions. An older man stood up and bowed to us. Three boys, all under the age of 10, were running around the room. An old woman sat in the corner.

  The young man spoke to us in Russian: “Sit down, please.” We squatted around the table. A young woman carrying a tray joined us. She placed the tray, which held hard-boiled eggs, more of the flat bread I had eaten the day before, and a jug of milk, in front of the old man. The old woman passed out colorful wooden bowls to everybody, and the young woman poured the milk into them. The old man peeled the eggs and cut them in half, broke the bread into small pieces with his hands, and passed the food around on the tray. We each took half an egg and a piece of bread and drank the milk, cupping our hands around the bowls. The women smiled at us in a friendly manner.

  I had a strange feeling that none of this was real, that it was a dream or something out of the Aladdin tales from the books I loved to read. I closed my eyes for a moment, but when I opened them I was still there in a strange land with unfamiliar people. Hunger made me realize how grateful I was for this meal.

  My mother broke the silence by asking the young man in her broken Russian, “What is this place called?”

  He replied, “You are in Akdendek, Kazakhstan.” His words meant nothing to me.

  The old man cut into the conversation in his own language. Apparently the young man was the only one who could speak Russian. He said, “He is my father.” Then he translated for the old man: “My grandfather had a lot of land and many goats. He was rich but now everything is gone.” Then the two men put their fingers over their mouths and looked around in fear. With what we had just gone through, I knew why they were afraid.