My mother threw her arms around me and cried, “Where have you been?”
“We went to buy some milk. We could see lots of lights, so it wasn’t completely dark.”
“Lots of lights? Lots of lights? What do you mean?”
“Lights that were moving toward us.”
“They were wolves!” My mother cried out. “The lights were their eyes. You could have been eaten! Oh my God! Why did you leave without my permission?”
“I’m sorry, Mamusiu. We were only going to be gone a short time, but then we had to wait at the barn.”
My mother turned toward Babcia and yelled at her. “How could you take my child and not tell me? Don’t you know there are hungry wolves looking for food?”
Babcia’s voice shook with emotion. “I’m sorry. I didn’t realize how dangerous it was to walk outside.”
I was shocked—and glad that I hadn’t known about the wolves, because I would have been even more terrified.
It was Christmas 1940, and we had no tree. The only food we had left was buckwheat and dry bread. On Christmas Eve my mother, Lila, and Pani Irena spread a white sheet on the one table that stood in the middle of the shack. Pani Rzewuska found some candles and lit them. Pani Kulakowska cooked the buckwheat soup and ladled it into tin bowls.
We all gathered around the table, and Babcia started to pray. “Thank you, God, for all the gifts that we are about to receive. Please help us in our hour of need and let us be free again.” She choked on the last few words, and tears rolled down her cheeks.
Pieces of dry bread were on a plate instead of the usual wafer—opłatek—with which Polish people traditionally exchanged greetings on Christmas Eve. Everybody took a small slice and followed the beloved custom.
“Na zdrowie. To our health,” toasted Babcia.
“May we survive this winter,” added Pani Rzewuska.
“Next year we will be free,” pronounced my mother. “America and England will save us.”
Everybody looked at her. “You are always such an optimist,” remarked Babcia.
“Hope is the only thing we have, and I have a good feeling about our future.”
“As long as it makes you happy,” said Lala.
Suddenly a howling wind rushed through the chimney and put out the fire in our stove, our only source of heat.
“We’ll freeze!” cried Lila.
“No, we won’t!” laughed my mother. “Because we are going to dance. Come on, everybody, dance!”
We formed pairs: Litka and me, Janek and Antek, my mother and Pani Rzewuska. We had to take turns because there was so little space, but we could whirl around the table.
“One, two, three polka, one, two, three polka,” sang Lila, as though we were her ballet students. Those of us who weren’t dancing clapped our hands until our turn came.
Once we had warmed up, we sang “Cicha noc” (“Silent Night”). The mood of the evening changed to somber, and the singing stopped. We were all lost in our own thoughts.
I went to sleep dreaming of Christmases past. Our huge tree in the living room, covered with decorations—candies in golden wrappers and round chocolate pieces covered in red foil. Most of all I remembered the Christmas Day feast of warm pierogi, roasted duck, and steaming kielbasa. On a separate table, by the window, were plates of gingerbreads, nut cakes, and rolls of poppy-seed loaves. My father, my mother’s four sisters, my uncles, and my cousins were all there talking and laughing. I wanted to stay in the dream, but I woke up because somebody was shaking my arm.
My mother was sitting on the edge of the bed. She smiled and said, “Wesołych Swiąt! Merry Christmas! Look under your pillow. Maybe Saint Nicholas brought you something.”
I lifted the pillow and grabbed something wrapped in silver foil. I unwrapped the paper, and, to my joy, a piece of chocolate met my eyes. My mother must have kept it from the time we received our last parcel from Poland. My brother had the same gift in his hand.
“Dziękuję bardzo, Mamusiu,” I thanked my mother. I savored every bite, eating it very slowly to make it last longer.
We were buried under the snow; a storm raged above us, the wind whistled and blew violently, and wolves walked across the village in search of food. But we felt safe from the threat of the NKVD knocking on the door. At least for now!
11
Spring and Summer Surprises
In the middle of one night in early spring 1941, the familiar banging on the door of our shack woke me, and the familiar fear flooded my body. I knew the voice and the words that would follow.
“Tovarisch Kulakowska, tovarisch Kulakowska!” Natasha shouted.
I sighed with relief. It was not my mother they wanted this time; it was Litka’s mother.
Somebody lit a candle, and Pani Kulakowska called out, “Coming, coming!”
The door opened, and a swish of cold night air entered. Pani Kulakowska rushed outside, and the door closed.
Even though I was glad it was not my mother who had to go to the office in the night again, I felt terribly sorry for Litka. I knew just what she would be going through for the next few hours, the agony and fear of not knowing if her mother would come back or if they would arrest her and take Litka away to an orphanage. I had spent many nights in this torment.
I wanted to go over to be with Litka and console her, but I was afraid of disturbing the others. Instead I pulled the blanket over my head and tried to shut away the world outside. I must have fallen back asleep, because the next thing I heard was the door opening and Pani Kulakowska walking in. In the early dawn light that was coming through the shack’s one small, high window, I saw Litka and her mother embracing, holding each other as if they would never part. Tears were running down Pani Kulakowska’s cheeks.
Then she spoke to all of us. “From now on, please do not speak about politics in front of me. I don’t want to know anything about your letters from Poland.”
I saw shock come over my mother’s face and then knowing looks pass between the other adults in the room. I didn’t understand them but knew I was not supposed to ask any questions.
That day my mother and I went for a walk. The snow was still melting after the harsh winter, but the fields were starting to bloom with early spring flowers. The air was fresh and crisp.
My mother said, “You are old enough to understand why we now have to be careful what we say in front of Litka’s mother, or even Litka herself. Pani Kulakowska has joined the Communist Party and will be forced to inform on us and get evidence against anybody who speaks against the government. She told me in secret that if she had not joined, they would have taken Litka away from her and she would not have been allowed to contact her. She had to do this for Litka.”
I couldn’t speak. I felt sorry for Litka and her mother, but I also knew that belonging to the Communist Party meant joining the enemy camp. The Soviets had taken away our homes and imprisoned us in this terrible place. Wasn’t that enough? What else did they want from us? They were torturing us emotionally, in a deceitful way that was just as harmful as physical torture.
We kept walking in silence, each of us lost in our own thoughts. I could see birds against the blue sky, returning from warmer climates where they had spent the winter. They flew from one low bush to another, looking for suitable places for their nests. I envied them. They were free. I wished I had wings and could fly back to Poland.
I must have looked very sad, because my mother said, “Let’s hope that the war will be over soon. We cannot give up and dwell in despair.”
“What are we going to do about Antek?” I asked. “How are we going to tell him to be careful what he says?” He was only six.
“Don’t worry about him. He understands more than we know.”
I knew she was right. I remembered how every time the NKVD arrived at the office, my brother and Janek would come running into the shack to warn us. If Antek was not fast enough, one of the officers would catch up and lift him up playfully. The officer would give him candy and ask hi
m questions. Antek had learned quite a lot of Russian by playing with Russian children, but he would always reply, “Ne znayu. Ne govoryu po-russkiy. I don’t know. I don’t speak Russian.” And he made sure that he took the candy, which he always shared with me.
Litka and I remained friends, but our relationship changed. I could no longer trust her and confide in her as I used to. I knew that she felt this, but we could only blame the Communists.
With the coming of spring, the snow started melting, and we had a serious problem: we couldn’t let it get into the shack, where it would melt and flood us out of the only home we had. We had shovels, and Pani Kulakowska and Lila stood by the open door and tried to push the snow away, to keep it from flying inside. The task was long and tiring, and everybody had to take turns with the shovels, except for me and the younger children, who were not strong enough.
The warm weather arrived in May, and with it the empty, silent land of the steppes came alive again with vegetation. The once-bare fields were now ablaze with purple, yellow, and pink flowers, and dotted here and there with green bushes. Litka and I took long walks, enjoying the freedom of being outside after a long winter. We were taller and thinner; months of malnutrition had taken their toll on us.
The spring quickly turned into a very hot summer. Litka and I carried straw baskets and walked on sun-scorched hills, gathering lebioda, a green similar to spinach or chard. It grew in the wild, and when we cooked it in hot water with a little buckwheat added, we had “soup.”
Often we found garlic, which looked like green onions. The cattle grazed on it, so the milk often smelled of it, and the only way to drink the milk was to pinch your nose and swallow. We were always so hungry that anything tasted good. Sometimes Antek and Janek came with us. We usually met Kazakh shepherds tending their countless flocks of sheep and goats, and they always passed us with a smile and a greeting: “Salem, salem.”
One day we met an old man dressed in shabby gray clothes and a dirty brown hat pulled over his long gray hair. He was one of the shepherds, but when we got closer to him we saw that he looked different from the Kazakhs. He was taller, his eyes were blue, and his skin was lighter. To our surprise, he spoke to us in Polish. “Nie bójcie się. Don’t be afraid. I am a priest in disguise. Do not tell anybody about me, but please ask your mothers if they have any Polish books I could borrow.”
We promised to come back. When I told my mother about the priest, tears came to her eyes. Handing me a volume of the poems of the famous 19th-century Polish poet Adam Mickiewicz, the only book that we had brought with us from Poland, she said, “Take it to him. Let him enjoy it.”
When I gave the book to the old man, his eyes lit up with happiness and gratitude. “Thank your mother for me.” He never told us his name. We saw him occasionally from afar, tending his sheep, but he did not speak to us again. He never returned the book, and we never asked him for it.
One day in late June Babcia went out to buy some food. She returned sooner than we expected, rushing into the shack, hugging and kissing us all.
“Mamusiu, have you gone crazy?” shouted Lala.
“We are free! We are free!” Babcia was shouting and jumping with joy. I had never seen an older person behave this way. “I heard in the store that Germany invaded Russia.”
We all knew that Babcia’s Russian was very poor, so nobody really believed her. Lila, who could speak Russian very well, ran to the store.
She came back, dancing one of her ballet steps. “It’s true! It’s true! Hitler is marching toward Moscow.” I wasn’t sure why everybody was so excited. How would this news make things better for us?
My mother explained, “Now that the Russians have to fight against Germany, they will have to free all their Polish prisoners so we can help them fight.”
Would we really be freed now? I was afraid to believe it. My mother had a small calendar, so I checked it to see what day it was: June 22, 1941.
Ivan knocked on the door and ordered us to the office. “An emergency meeting has been called.”
This time I went with my mother and the other people from our shack. We went into a big room with white walls. This was the place where my mother had been interrogated so many times while I waited anxiously in the dark night, in our shack, fearing she would be arrested and I would never see her again. Natasha greeted us with a smile on her face. I had never seen her smile before.
“Zdravstvuyte, comrades, our friends. Our country is at war. We are all going to fight the same enemy. We have to work hard to provide food for the army.”
What a change from her former speeches, I thought.
Unfortunately, she did not say that we were free to leave the kolkhoz, and we couldn’t go anywhere without written permission. Everybody in Russia needed udostovierenia (documents) to travel from one place to another. And where would we go? We couldn’t go home, because the Germans had already occupied Poland. Did the Russians expect us to stay here?
Even though we had been told we were “free,” we continued to live in the same shack under the same conditions—with one big difference: there was no more banging on the door in the middle of the night. The NKVD no longer bothered us, and the officials now smiled and greeted us as equals. After work in the evenings, everybody would talk about leaving, but nobody could figure out how to do so or where to go. I thought often about how wonderful it would be to go back to Poland, but I knew this was impossible. As night fell we would pray together out loud: “Please, God, deliver us from this valley of sorrow, lead us to a free country where we will be able to live in peace.” One voice, I think perhaps Babcia’s, once added, “We need a miracle.”
“Yes, yes,” other voices joined in, “we do.”
And then something that seemed miraculous did happen. Lila began talking with the manager of the store that usually had nothing to sell except toothpaste, perfume, and, occasionally, newspapers. Through him, she finally managed to obtain a newspaper that was more than a month old.
We gathered around her as she read out loud to us: “An Anglo-Soviet Treaty of Mutual Assistance was signed in Moscow on July 12, 1941. Stalin also signed an alliance with Britain’s other ally, the Polish government in exile, in London on July 30, 1941. Under the latter agreement an amnesty was to be granted for the millions of innocent Polish deportees and prisoners in the USSR, and a new Polish army was to be formed in the depths of Russia. The command was to be given to General Anders, who was released from the Lyubianka prison.”
We could hardly believe the words she read to us. Now we knew for sure that, after more than a year as political prisoners, we were free. My mother and I had just two things on our minds: finding Ciocia Stefa and my cousins Zosia and Nina, and finding a way to get out of Russia together.
PART IV
Flight to Freedom
12
Reunion and Departure
I heard loud knocking. As I ran to open the door of our shack I saw, in the shadows of the early evening, three silhouettes—thin, pale, and shabbily dressed.
“Who are you?” I gasped, jumping back.
Their sunken eyes stared back at me; their pallid lips tried to smile.
“Don’t you recognize us?” One of the figures spoke. “It’s Ciocia Stefa and your cousins Zosia and Nina.”
“Mamusiu, come, come quickly!” I called.
My mother rushed to embrace them. They all began to cry.
“How did you get here?” my mother asked.
“We walked across the hills so the NKVD wouldn’t see us. We didn’t get permission to leave our kolkhoz. We’ve been walking since the early morning, and we’re very tired.”
“Are you hungry?” Without waiting for a reply, my mother offered them some buckwheat soup and boiled potatoes. We watched them eat ravenously.
“This is a feast, a real feast,” whispered Ciocia Stefa. “In our kolkhoz we could hardly get any food. We’re happy to have survived this long.”
We made room for them on our bunks. When they thou
ght that Antek and I were asleep, they told terrible tales of their experiences. During the winter, 11 people had died of starvation in their hut, but the corpses couldn’t be removed and buried, because of the snow, the frozen ground, and the wolves roaming outside. I listened in horror, careful not to make a sound so nobody would realize I could hear them.
Then Ciocia Stefa said, “We are free at last, but we must get out of the kolkhoz and move to a city where we can learn if Władzio is alive and out of prison.”
My mother had a suggestion. “Tomorrow we will hire someone who has an ox-driven cart and go to Georgiewka. There is a government office that issues permits to move to another location. You know that in Russia nobody is allowed to travel freely.”
I sat up in bed, no longer pretending to be asleep, and interrupted. “Mamusiu, will we also be able to look for Tatuś?”
My mother looked sad. “I’m sorry,” she replied, “but we cannot. Remember that when we were taken out of Lwów, he was hiding from the Russians. Now that the Germans are occupying Poland, we have no way of contacting any of our family for news of him. I’m afraid we’ll have to wait until the end of the war to try to find him.
“All we can do,” she continued, “is pray that we all survive and can be together again one day.”
Early the next morning my mother, Ciocia Stefa, and Zosia left for Georgiewka. Nina stayed with Antek and me; she was only 17, but she knew how to take care of us. We loved Nina. She would tell us stories and sing to us. We didn’t have any books, so her stories about Little Red Riding Hood and Sleeping Beauty were great entertainment. Antek, now six years old, especially adored her.
Three days later the travelers returned. Zosia told us, “We have all the papers in order, but we had to wait in line for hours to get them. The government is so slow.” Ciocia Stefa announced, “Tomorrow we will go back to our kolkhoz, gather our belongings, and hire a cart to take us to a railway station. We’ll head for the nearest city, Semipalatynsk, find accommodations, and wait for your arrival.”
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