by Ella Zeiss
‘I want to go too, Papa,’ Yvo wailed in her ear.
‘Not now, darling,’ Anna said, hugging her youngest child, while Rita and Erich stood behind her, clinging to each other.
Then the door was thrown open and the work gang hastened out.
Anna stared around the now seemingly empty hut in a daze. It looked the same as it had done the day before, but now that Wilhelm and the others wouldn’t be returning home in the evening, it was a completely different world.
Women stood here and there, their faces blank, stunned as if they were unable to believe what had happened.
A girl of about ten looked around for help. Both her parents had just disappeared with the work gang. Anna looked at her sadly, but lacked the strength to take on yet another child. Fortunately another woman walked over and gently led her away. Anna gave a sigh of relief, then let go of Yvo and Friedrich and slowly rose to her feet.
‘Mama, I have to go to school,’ Erich reminded her. She turned to him with a forced smile. His shining eyes seemed unnaturally bright in his pale face, but he looked back at her bravely. He wasn’t crying.
‘Of course, my darling,’ she murmured. Life would go on. She had four children to look after now; she had to pull herself together for their sake at least.
Erich had just left with the other children when a soldier entered the half-emptied hut. ‘Comrade Scholz?’ he called out loudly.
Startled, Anna’s heart leapt in her chest. ‘That’s me,’ she said. She gently pushed the children in Maria’s direction and went up to the man.
‘Come with me. The Commander wants a word.’
Anna turned pale. ‘I’ll just fetch my coat.’
As she followed the soldier, she tried to read his face, but it showed no expression at all. Either he himself didn’t know what was up, or he had been ordered to keep her in the dark.
She felt her knees giving way and sent a silent prayer to heaven. If they were going to punish her for her forward behaviour, the children would have no one to look after them.
The soldier took her to the administration block, where the Commander was sitting at one of the desks.
‘Thank you,’ he said, looking up. ‘You can go.’
The man left the building.
‘Have a seat, Comrade Scholz.’ The Commander pointed to a chair. Anna sat down with a beating heart. ‘My wife asked me to give you this.’ He handed her a coin.
‘Thank you,’ she said, putting it away carefully.
‘If you can mend this dress as well as you did the last items, she may have a larger order for you.’ He placed a package wrapped in paper on the table.
‘I’ll do my best.’
‘I am certain of it. Good day, Comrade.’
‘Good day.’ The meeting seemed over. Anna rose and walked stiffly away. Outside she stopped to catch her breath and waited for her racing heart to calm down. She had been lucky – the Commander was not angry this time – but she would have to be more careful in the future.
Chapter 8
Over the next few days a semblance of calm returned to the small community. Slowly but surely the emptiness and loss the others had left behind started to fade. The women stopped crying. They didn’t have enough energy and life was demanding enough as it was.
Some of the wages earned by the workers in the work gang were handed out to their families and to the women looking after the deserted children. The rest was deducted to pay for the workers’ food. The women soon realised that there was not enough money to feed themselves and their children properly. More and more of them tried to find work in Luza. Some were lucky, others less so.
Anna had mended the Commander’s wife’s dress to the very best of her ability and decided to take it to the village herself, rather than attracting the attention of the Commander again. If she was lucky, she would be able to talk to the woman and perhaps gain an additional order.
The next morning she therefore asked Maria to take care of the children and set off with Erich and the other schoolchildren.
Erich liked his teacher. She was strict but fair, and when she realised that many of the new children were unable to speak Russian, she focused her efforts on teaching them the language before she expected them to learn anything else.
Anna hoped she would be able to talk to the teacher before lessons started. If not, she would just have to wait until a break in the school day. She desperately needed money. Apart from the fact that she now had four hungry mouths to feed, Friedrich had almost nothing suitable to wear. Thinking about the boy made her worry about Martha again. She had sent back less than half the amount of money earned by Wilhelm. It was obvious that the poor woman simply could not fill the quota required of her. It was not nearly enough money to buy warm clothes for her son, so Anna had to find a different solution.
The children marched determinedly through the snow. It was astonishing how rapidly they had adapted to this new situation. They laughed and joked and only their reddened faces, their coughs and their freezing hands dug down in their pockets revealed that things were not the same as back home.
Eventually the school building came into sight. The children ran noisily indoors and went to warm up by the stove. Anna followed them and peered cautiously through the door. She was relieved to see the teacher, her pregnant shape visible beneath a loose dress. It couldn’t be long now before the baby was due.
Anna greeted her confidently. The teacher looked up in surprise, but smiled when she recognised her visitor.
‘You’re not finished already, are you?’
‘I am,’ Anna smiled back. ‘It wasn’t too much to do and I wanted to bring it over myself.’
‘Thank you.’ The other woman unrolled the bundle Anna gave her and held the garment up to the light. ‘It’s as good as new. Would you like to do any more?’
‘Oh yes – very much, in fact.’
‘Excellent. I’ve got a couple of skirts that need to be let out.’ She stroked her tummy in explanation. ‘If you don’t mind, I could give them to Erich to take home after school.’
‘That would be wonderful.’
‘And by the way, my name is Nadezhda Nikolaevna,’ she said, introducing herself properly. She held out her hand.
‘It’s a pleasure,’ Anna said in response.
‘Well, goodbye then.’
‘Goodbye and thank you.’
As Anna turned to leave, she heard Nadezhda say to one of the pupils, ‘Where’s your sister today?’
‘She’s ill,’ the child answered.
Anna sighed. The locals weren’t immune to the cold either.
Erich brought home a new bundle of clothes as agreed, sniffing loudly as he handed them to his mother. Anna frowned. She was worried but she said nothing. With all the sniffing and coughing going on around them, she knew that her children were bound to catch something or other. All she could do was make sure that Erich had some hot herbal tea and warmed himself by the stove before going off to play with the other children.
The next morning two of the children in the hut had to stay in bed with a high temperature.
That night, Erich dragged Anna out of her sleep. Ignoring protests from the two girls, he poked around until he could feel his mother. ‘Mama, I don’t feel right.’
Alarmed, Anna sat up. She saw Erich standing below her bunk. In the semi-darkness she just about managed to see his legs fold beneath him as he collapsed onto the floor.
‘Erich!’ Startled, she jumped off the bed and knelt down beside him.
‘Mama?’ he said, staring back at her in a daze. His skin was burning.
‘You’ve got a fever, sweetheart,’ she explained soothingly as she tried to pull him back onto his feet. ‘Come and lie down.’ She helped him onto one of the empty bunks. Since the men had gone, they had more than enough room.
‘Will you stay with me?’ he begged, looking at her hopefully.
‘Yes, my darling.’ She stroked his burning forehead gently and kissed the top of hi
s head. Her mind was racing. What could she do? Of course he’d had a temperature before now, but this time they were foreigners in a strange land without any medicine or the possibility of calling a doctor. Anna felt totally helpless.
Somewhere a child was whining. Anna looked around. She wasn’t the only one awake.
Maria was walking up and down holding Ruth, who was crying in her arms. Further away were three more mothers sitting up with their children. Shocked, Anna covered her mouth with her hand. This was no coincidence. Ignoring the fear steadily rising within her, she patted Erich’s hand. ‘I’ll be back in a minute. Try to get some sleep in the meantime, darling.’ Then she went over to Maria. ‘Is Ruth all right?’
The young mother looked at her with eyes red from crying. ‘Her nose is blocked and she can hardly sleep because she can’t stop coughing.’
‘Is she running a fever?’
Maria nodded in despair.
‘It’s bound to be just a cold,’ Anna said in an attempt to comfort her, wishing she could believe it herself. Carefully she felt the child’s brow. The little girl whined in protest as Anna’s cold fingers touched her hot skin. ‘Erich has caught something too.’
Maria stared at her in alarm.
‘And they’re not the only ones,’ Anna added darkly.
‘Do you think – it’s not influenza, is it?’ Maria asked, sounding frightened.
‘I don’t know.’ Anna put on a brave face. ‘It could be any number of things. Let’s hope it’s just a really bad cold.’
Maria nodded and hugged her daughter.
‘Cold compresses might help,’ Anna suddenly remembered. ‘If only we had some vinegar water, but I suppose snow will do. Do you have any cloths?’
‘Yes,’ Maria nodded.
‘Good, I’ll be back in a minute.’ Anna grabbed a bucket and went outside to fill it with snow, then set it on the stove and went back to sit with Erich while she waited for the snow to melt.
Erich had fallen into a restless sleep. Caught in feverish dreams, he tossed around, turning his head this way and that and whispering to himself.
Anna spent the rest of the night swapping the damp cloths on his brow and his legs, praying for the fever to go down. When dawn started to break, her prayers still had not been heard.
Erich opened his eyes with difficulty and looked at her uncertainly. ‘Do I have to go to school today, Mama?’
‘No,’ she smiled, and gently stroked his cheek. ‘You don’t have to go anywhere today. All you have to do is rest and get better as soon as possible.’
Relieved, he dropped his head back onto the pillow.
The atmosphere in the hut was miserable this morning. Nearly half the children were feeling unwell and some of their mothers also were complaining of headaches and aching limbs. When Anna and Maria went out, they discovered that the same thing was happening in the other huts as well. Two women had just come back from the watchtower at the entrance to the settlement. They had asked for a doctor, but been told it wasn’t possible. Luza didn’t have a doctor and the next one was twenty miles away. It was too much effort for the sake of a few children with colds.
‘Never mind, we’ve managed without a doctor before!’ they heard a woman known as Grossmutter Beate saying. She patted her daughter’s hand. The young woman was in a fit of tears. ‘Leg compresses, raspberry jam and honey all work wonders, and a saline solution to unblock a nose. We’ll manage.’
‘We don’t have any raspberries, Mutti,’ her daughter answered quietly, ‘or any honey.’
‘Then go to the village and buy some,’ the old woman answered staunchly, ‘and get some lard for chest rubs.’
Anna didn’t need to listen to any more. They weren’t going to get any help, so they would have to do their best to make their children well on their own. ‘I’ll go to Luza,’ she said to Maria.
‘Think you’ll be able to find anything?’
Anna shook her head. ‘I don’t know. Not at the shop.’ She tried to find Natalya’s square face among the women. Eventually she found her back in their hut, busy filling the samovar with fresh water. Anna checked on her son before she went over to the older woman.
‘Well, how is he?’ Natalya asked, sounding concerned.
Anna shrugged. ‘I can’t say. We need to get his temperature down.’
Natalya nodded.
‘Do you have any idea where I might be able to buy some jam or honey or a boiling fowl?’
The woman chewed her lip while she was thinking. ‘I’m not sure if anyone will want to sell you anything. These are hard times, and it’s a long winter.’
‘I have to try.’
‘There’s a large farm at the other end of the village. You might be lucky there.’
‘Thank you,’ Anna said, clasping Natalya’s hands in her own.
‘Don’t mention it,’ the woman said, waving her away.
Before setting off, Anna gave her son some tea to drink and changed his compresses, then left the children in Maria’s care.
‘Can you fetch something for Ruth too?’ the young woman asked with tears in her eyes, and searched for her purse. ‘Here, take this. Take it all; just bring me back something to make her better.’ The little girl’s breathing sounded heavy and rasping.
Gently Anna pushed the money away. ‘I’ll see what I can find and we’ll share.’ She smiled reassuringly at her friend and then set off.
Every step away from the hut made her worry more about her son. She tried to convince herself that she was doing the right thing, that she was of more use to him if she could find something that would lower his temperature rather than sitting by his side doing nothing, but she couldn’t ease her aching heart. She knew she was being silly but convinced herself that all manner of things might happen to him if she wasn’t close by.
Wrapping her coat more tightly around herself, she walked faster. The sooner she made her purchases, the sooner she would be able to get back to Erich.
Luckily the farm Natalya had mentioned wasn’t difficult to find – a respectable-looking single-storey house with a wire fence on the right-hand side at the end of the main road. Anna looked around but could see no one. Cautiously she tried the handle of the gate, which opened easily. A narrow path of trodden snow led through a small front garden to the front steps. Behind the house she could make out the contours of a large garden with several sheds.
Anna kicked off the snow from her boots and climbed the wooden steps to the front door. As there was no bell rope to be seen, she knocked on the door with her fist.
It was a while before a round face appeared at the window and scrutinised her. Anna smiled and the face disappeared. A moment later, the door opened to reveal a woman of about fifty. Shivering from the cold, she wrapped her woollen shawl more tightly around herself and looked at her visitor enquiringly. ‘Can I help you?’ she asked in Russian.
‘I hope so,’ Anna replied in Russian. ‘My son is ill.’
The woman shrank back from her. ‘So many people are sick at the moment.’
‘I was told that you might be able to sell me a chicken or a jar of raspberry jam, or some honey perhaps, to boost his immune system.’
‘Sell, you say?’ the woman asked.
‘Yes,’ Anna said, taking out a coin. ‘I can pay you.’
The woman looked at her. ‘You can’t eat money,’ she muttered, sounding unsure.
‘I know.’ Anna gazed at her imploringly. ‘Please, he has a high temperature and he’s not the only one. You’ve got to help us.’ She took out another coin. It was daylight robbery to pay so much for a single chicken, but she didn’t care.
At last the woman nodded. She took one of the two coins out of Anna’s hand. ‘This is for the chicken,’ she said. Then she took the second coin. ‘And this is for honey, jam and a pot of lard to rub their chests with.’
Anna’s eyes welled up with tears of relief.
‘Now, now,’ the woman clucked when she noticed. ‘You’ll have to pluck the
chicken yourself.’
‘Thank you!’
‘It’s all right. You wait here and I’ll be back in a minute.’
Anna could feel the cold from the ground inching its way up her legs while she waited for the woman to return, and started knocking her boots together to keep warm. She looked around, irritated. How long did it take to catch a chicken and wring its neck? Surely the woman should be back by now? Had she tricked her after all – simply taken her money?
Craning her neck, she wondered if she should go around the side of the house to see what was keeping her. She was just about to go and look when the door opened and the woman handed her a package wrapped in old newspaper.
‘Here’s the chicken.’
It wasn’t as heavy as Anna would have liked, but she kept her mouth shut.
‘And here are the jars.’
Anna put them in the pockets of her coat.
‘Thank you so very much.’
‘You’re most welcome.’ The woman paused and then said, ‘You can collect pine needles and boil them up to make tea. It’s very healthy and sometimes it helps. It certainly won’t do any harm.’
‘Oh, thank you,’ Anna answered, surprised. She had never heard of pine needle tea before, but as the woman said, it was worth a go.
She hurried back home as fast as she could.
The next few days passed in a trance. When she wasn’t looking after the smaller children, she sat next to Erich’s bunk holding his hand, changing the cold compresses on his legs and brow, or trying to make him drink a spoonful of broth. And when they were all asleep at last, she would sit in a corner by the stove, close to the light, to do her needlework before falling into bed completely exhausted for a few short hours of sleep. She needed the money from Nadezhda Nikolaevna and further commissions if she was going to feed her family through the winter.
Every morning she would hurry over to her son’s bed as soon as she woke up, and every morning her hopes would be shattered when she saw that he was still not better. There was nothing she could do except spoon-feed him broth and the tea made of freshly picked pine needles. His lanky body grew thinner by the day.