‘I hope it’s all right,’ mumbled the woman. ‘Your mother-in-law said I could come and see you on your lunch break. I couldn’t possibly stand in the queue with all those people. My leg’s been bothering me.’
‘Of course, please come in.’ With a sigh Irina packed what was left of her lunch away, placing it in her bag. ‘What can I do for you?’
‘It’s my husband, Valery. He died from a heart attack last night.’
Irina remembered the softly spoken man who waved to her every morning as she walked past. That simple gesture had never failed to put a smile on her face, even on the days when she didn’t feel like smiling. Her heart heavy with sadness, she said, ‘I’m so sorry for your loss.’
‘Don’t be. The old bastard used to beat the life out of me. I’ve been dreaming of this day for years.’
Irina studied her neighbour. She couldn’t imagine the quiet and petite Valery raising his hand to loud and big-boned Katerina.
‘Now I’m all alone,’ the neighbour added softly, covering her eyes with her hands and bursting into tears.
‘What about your daughter?’ asked Irina, feeling sorry for the old woman and on the verge of tears herself.
‘Larisa volunteered to go to Germany for work. Valery and I took her to the train station a week ago. I don’t think he got over saying goodbye to her. He saw danger everywhere.’
‘Why didn’t you come to see me?’ Irina lowered her voice, even though the door was firmly shut. ‘I would have figured out a way to keep her in Kiev.’
‘I know you would have. You help everyone. You have a kind heart.’
‘If we don’t help each other, the Nazis might as well have won.’ Preventing able workers from travelling to Germany was Irina’s way of defying the Germans. Yes, she worked in a German organisation and because of that many friends and former colleagues looked down on her. What they didn’t realise was that she risked her life every day to help her people. It didn’t compare to what her husband did at the partisan battalion. But it was a contribution.
‘Larisa wanted to go to Germany. Because she went voluntarily, she’ll have better living conditions and more food. She’s working at a munitions factory over there.’
‘Making bullets to be used against our soldiers? She volunteered for this?’ Irina tried and failed to keep shock and disapproval from her voice.
Katerina’s lips were a thin pale line on her round face. ‘She’ll be safer there. And that’s all I care about,’ she said in a haughty voice. ‘Her safety.’
Irina opened her mouth to tell Katerina about the stream of Ukrainian workers trickling back from Germany to Kiev over the past few months. Sick, exhausted and barely able to walk, many of them came home to die. And they were the lucky ones. Not everyone made it back. She wanted to say all of that to her neighbour, but didn’t. There was little point. Katerina truly believed she did her best for Larisa by encouraging her to go to Germany. She had hope for a better future for her daughter, even if that future involved making bullets for the enemy. Who was Irina to take that hope away? She understood only too well a mother’s fear for her child’s life in the chaos of war. ‘All done. Here are your documents; you can have them back. If you ever need anything, please let me know.’
As she opened the door, Katerina turned around and asked, ‘And how is that handsome husband of yours in the partisan battalion? Is he still every German officer’s worst nightmare?’
Irina looked up from her records with a start.
‘Don’t worry. I won’t tell anyone.’ Katerina smiled. It wasn’t a kind smile. She looked triumphant, like she had just won an important battle.
Irina, who didn’t know they were fighting a battle and didn’t care for one, shuddered. How could Katerina possibly know their secret? Irina often saw the neighbour sitting on a porch outside her house with a few friends, whispering and pointing. One word from her to the Gestapo and Irina’s family would disappear, never to be seen again.
The human river outside her office soon swallowed Katerina, pushing her out of the way, but Irina remained in her chair, trembling.
It was already dark when she left work. She had fifteen minutes before the curfew to make it to the market, barter some food for dinner and walk home. Anyone found on the streets after the curfew imposed by the Nazis could be arrested and thrown in jail. A neighbour had gone missing once and returned two weeks later badly beaten, with a broken arm. He swore he was arrested before the curfew. The German officer who had stopped him had a watch that was a few minutes too fast.
Irina couldn’t afford to go to jail. Her little girl was waiting for her.
Because no one bothered to clear the snow on the street, it took her twice as long as usual to walk a few hundred metres to the market. With every step she fell through the snow up to her knees and soon her boots filled with slush. On the corner of Berezhanskaya and Lugova Streets she slipped on the ice and fell. A handsome young man helped her up, a sad smile on his face. She barely noticed, even though smiles were as rare as bread in the Ukrainian capital.
Occasional grey uniforms walked past Irina, not smiling and not even glancing in her direction. After fifteen months of occupation (how could it only be fifteen months when it seemed like a lifetime?), she still felt like she was caught in a horrible nightmare. It was baffling that the beloved streets of her childhood should belong not to her people but to the Nazi hordes.
Shivering at her thoughts as much as the cold, Irina crossed the road to the market, where villagers brought their meagre produce – wilted potatoes, carrots, beetroot, sometimes eggs, very occasionally meat of unknown origin – and exchanged them for gold and other valuables. In her pocket was her most precious possession, a pair of golden earrings her husband had given her on their wedding day. It broke her heart to part with them because just looking at them brought back so many wonderful memories. The way his eyes lit up when he saw her in her wedding dress. The way he spun her around the dance floor, whispering that she was the most beautiful woman in the world and the only one for him. The way she felt dizzy and disorientated, intoxicated with love.
She’d never imagined giving the earrings away. But then, she’d never imagined living in an occupied city, enslaved and ravaged by war. She’d never imagined what it would feel like to have no food to give to her two-year-old daughter. As she prepared to exchange her husband’s wedding present for some old potatoes and, if she was lucky, a couple of eggs, Irina told herself the memories were not in the earrings but inside her heart. They would always be with her. No one could take them away.
When Irina arrived at the square, she found nothing but a few empty stalls hidden under a pile of fresh snow. The market that only yesterday was bustling with life was abandoned. For a few moments she stood as if frozen to the spot, uncertain what to do next. She couldn’t return home empty-handed. She couldn’t bear the look of hunger and despair on her daughter’s face and the way she cried through the night for something to eat. There was another market in Podol but it would take her twenty minutes to get there. It was unlikely she would make it back before curfew. Was food for one night worth the risk?
‘Irina, wait!’ she heard as she was about to start walking in the direction of Podol, praying she didn’t stumble on a Nazi patrol.
She turned around and found herself face to face with her best friend. Tall, ballerina-thin, with her blonde hair hidden under a large hat and her eyes dark with worry, Tamara wrapped her arms around Irina. Pleased to see the familiar face of someone she had been friends with since they were little girls, Irina hugged her back tightly. For a few moments the two women stood still in an empty town square with their arms around each other.
Finally pulling away, Tamara said, ‘Were you looking for the market? It’s not here anymore.’
‘I can see that. I was about to walk to Podol.’
‘No point walking anywhere. Every market in town is gone.’
‘What do you mean, gone?’
Tamara shrugged.
‘Everyone’s been arrested. The sellers and the buyers.’
‘That’s impossible!’ exclaimed Irina. What she wanted to say was: How are we going to live now? They couldn’t survive on what the Nazis were giving them. The market was their lifeline.
‘They rounded up everyone they could get their hands on. I was just around the corner when the Nazis arrived. Another minute and I would have been arrested too.’ Her friend crossed herself, looking up at the sky as if in gratitude.
‘But why? Why now?’
‘Haven’t you heard? The partisans stopped another train bound for Germany. The Nazis are furious. This is payback.’
For Irina, living under the Nazi occupation was like wading through a minefield. No matter what direction you took, you could trigger an explosion that would rip you apart. At the same time, you couldn’t remain in one spot forever. You had to move through that field, come what may. Irina knew she could be arrested at any moment – as she was making her family’s breakfast for having a husband in the partisan battalion; as she sat at her desk at work for helping a hapless soul escape the threat of German mobilisation; as she was walking home for breaking the curfew; as she was leaving the market for trading some jewellery for a small piece of bread. She had been lucky so far, but she couldn’t help but feel that sooner or later her luck would run out. ‘We have no food left at home. Nothing at all. What am I going to do? Sonya is always hungry. And I feel so helpless.’
Tamara reached into her carry bag and handed her friend half a loaf of white bread. ‘Here, take this. For Sonya.’
Irina stared at the bread in amazement. It wasn’t the Nazi-issue bread they received on their ration cards every week – bitter, cardboard-like and difficult to chew. This bread had a golden crust, was soft on the inside and smelt delicious. Irina hadn’t seen bread like this in fifteen months. ‘Where did you get that?’
‘The German officer staying with me gave me two loaves, right before he left for the Stalingrad front. This was his parting gift.’
‘That’s kind of him.’
‘He enjoyed the meals I cooked and the laundry I did for him. What more does a man want?’
Irina shook her head with regret. ‘Thank you, but I can’t take your bread. You need it as much as I do.’
‘Nonsense. Of course you can. I’ll be fine. I don’t have a child to feed.’
Irina broke the bread in two and handed half back to Tamara. ‘Here, why don’t we share?’ When Tamara took the chunk of bread and placed it in her bag, Irina added, ‘Sonya will be so happy. How can I ever thank you?’
‘There is something you can do for me.’ Tamara seemed to hesitate, looking around cautiously. The street was deserted. But in Nazi-occupied Kiev, even the walls had ears.
A piece of paper appeared in Tamara’s hand, trembling in the wind. Irina took it. It was an order for Tamara Semenova to report to the train station for compulsory mobilisation to Germany. The two of them stood in the empty market square, snow falling between them. ‘I can’t work for them, Ira. It will be the death of me. A friend of mine just returned. They sent her home because she got sick. I didn’t even recognise her when I saw her. Where was the bubbly young girl we said goodbye to at the station? Her hair is completely white. You won’t believe the stories she told me. They don’t let you have any food or water on the job. They work you like cattle, twenty hours a day. They beat you for making eye contact with your supervisor or for moving too slowly.’ There was horror in Tamara’s eyes, as if these things were already happening to her.
Irina pressed her friend’s hand gently. ‘Don’t worry, I’ll help you. Come by my office tomorrow and bring your passport. I can stamp it to make it look like you are married.’ The Nazis weren’t taking married women yet. It was a loophole many Kievans were exploiting. Who knew how long it would last? At the rate things were going, Irina suspected not too long.
‘A fake marriage? Sounds perfect. I’ll be there for my fake wedding first thing tomorrow morning.’ Tamara beamed with relief and looked her friend up and down. ‘I’ve never seen you more beautiful. Your skin is glowing. And your hair …’
Self-consciously, Irina tucked her long dark hair under her hat. Now that she was pregnant, it was shinier and curlier than usual. As much as she wanted to, she couldn’t tell her best friend her secret. She had to tell her husband first. ‘Maxim is coming home next week. I’m happy, that’s all.’
‘How do you even get through the week without seeing him? I remember when you couldn’t last a day without each other.’
Still can’t, Irina wanted to say.
‘Remember when he walked twenty kilometres from his parents’ dacha one summer to give you a bunch of roses?’
Irina sighed. ‘Not quite what we imagined our life to be when we were young and full of hope, is it?’
‘No, not quite.’ Tamara looked up and her eyes twinkled. ‘I’m seeing someone too, you know. I think he might be the one. I’m in love, Ira!’
Irina laughed at the serious expression on her friend’s face. ‘How long have you been in love this time?’
‘Laugh all you want. It’s easy for you, married to the love of your life.’
‘I’m not laughing. I’m happy for you. Who is this man? Someone I know?’
‘I can’t tell you yet. I don’t want to jinx it. Once I know for sure that it’s serious, I’ll tell you everything.’
‘But you just said he’s “the one”. Make up your mind!’
Teasing one another, while glancing nervously at their watches, with only five minutes to spare until the curfew, the two young women walked briskly home through the quiet streets, averting their eyes from the German soldiers and Nazi flags with hated swastikas swaying from every building. When they reached Tamara’s house, Irina said, ‘Remember to bring your passport. And don’t worry about anything. We’ll fix this.’ She was glad she could help Tamara. To save her friend’s life, to deceive the Nazis, if only in this small way, made her feel more in control.
As she walked the short distance home, she savoured the metallic taste in her mouth and the queasy feeling at the back of her throat that reminded her of the wonderful change taking place inside her body. In her pocket she still had her earrings and suddenly she was glad she didn’t give them away for a few potatoes that would be gone tomorrow. For the first time since the occupation, Irina’s heart beat faster with hope.
Hope for a better life, a new beginning.
*
Home was an apartment in a dilapidated building on Kazanskaya Street overlooking Berezovyi Gai Park, shared by Irina and her daughter, her parents-in-law, Zina and Kirill, and Zina’s nephew Dmitry, who had moved in a week after the occupation had started when the Nazis had forced him out of his apartment in Podol. The place was too small to fit all of them but somehow it did, even when Maxim came to visit from the partisan battalion, which to Irina’s sadness wasn’t very often. Opening the door with her key, she called out to her daughter, her breath catching. This was what she had been waiting for since she left that morning – to see Sonya’s face light up at the sight of her mother, to hold her and feel her weight in her arms.
Her eyes on the dining-room door at the end of a long corridor, Irina placed her bag with the precious bread in the corner and removed her shoes. Any minute now a small voice would cry for Mama, little feet would pitter-patter across the floor and a tiny head would appear through the doorway. Irina took her coat off and undid her scarf. The house remained quiet. Fighting a strong feeling of unease, she called out again, imagining a knock on the door, German boots clomping through the house and the arms of a stranger reaching for her daughter. She tried her best to chase away the terrible vision but it hovered over her like a ghost.
A faint sound of static reached her from the dining room. On unsteady legs Irina followed it, fearing the worst. When she walked in, she saw Dmitry hunched over the table, a radio receiver in his lap. His glasses askew, his blond hair messy and long, he had the look of an absent-mi
nded professor about him.
Dmitry looked up from the radio and smiled. Anticipating her question, he said, ‘Zina took Sonya to play with Oxana’s little ones.’
Irina almost groaned with relief. She should have known her mother-in-law had taken her daughter to the neighbour’s apartment upstairs. Zina often did that to give herself a break and have a cup of tea with her friend. Irina’s job was getting to her, she realised. She saw darkness everywhere she looked. Not that she had to look far. ‘Any luck?’ She nodded at the radio. For the last few days Dmitry had been trying to catch news from the front.
‘Not yet, but I’m not giving up. If we know what’s going on out there, we can spread the word. We can boost morale.’
Just like her husband, Dmitry was a partisan. Unlike Maxim, however, he didn’t blow up bridges or cut telephone cables but worked closely with the local population, trying to find Ukrainians who held important positions in Nazi organisations and were willing to commit acts of sabotage. In a way, his job was more dangerous than Maxim’s. One word from his contacts, and the Gestapo would march into their little apartment and whisk him away.
The radio coughed and fell quiet, finally coming back to life with a distorted male voice. ‘Stalingrad … Heavy German losses … The Red Army is gaining … Victory.’ Irina’s hand flew to her mouth and she trembled with joy. It had been a while since they’d heard the words Red Army and victory in the same sentence. The German-controlled Ukrainian Word wanted them to believe the war had already been won by Hitler. But here was a snippet of truth in the sea of lies that changed everything. Not only had the Red Army not been destroyed, as the despicable newspaper insisted, but it was also fighting and gaining ground. This was the first piece of good news they had had since the occupation. The first piece of good news in fifteen months.
There was a loud knock and Dmitry flipped the switch on the radio. The voice died away, leaving an unfamiliar feeling behind, a hope that one day in the near future something in their lives would change. Dmitry hid the radio under a pile of clothes Irina had been ironing the day before, while she walked to the front door with a smile on her face. ‘Did Zina forget her key again?’ she wondered out loud, eager to embrace her daughter.
Daughters of the Resistance Page 3