The Unwomanly Face of War

by Svetlana Alexievich

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  —A rumor went around that the Germans had brought our prisoners to a hamlet, and those who recognized their own could take them. Our women got up and ran! In the evening some brought back their own, others brought strangers, and what they told us was beyond belief: people were rotting alive, starving to death, ate all the leaves off trees…Ate grass…Dug roots from the ground…I ran there the next day, didn’t find mine, and thought I might save someone else’s son. I took a fancy to a swarthy one, his name was Sashko, like my little grandson. He was probably about eighteen years old. I gave the German some lard, eggs: “My brother.” Crossed my heart. We came back home. He couldn’t eat a whole egg, he was so weak. Before the month was out, a bastard turned up. He lived like all of us, married, two children…He went to the commandant’s office and reported that we had taken in strangers. The next day the Germans came on their motorcycles. We begged and fell on our knees, but they deceived us by saying they would take them closer to their homes. I gave Sashko my grandfather’s suit…I thought he would live…

  But they were driven out of the village…All mowed down with machine guns…All of them. To a man…They were so young, young and good! And we decided, those who had taken them in—nine of us—to bury them. Five of us dragged them out of the pit, the other four looked around so the Germans wouldn’t fall on us. We couldn’t use our hands; it was very hot, and they had been lying there for four days…We were afraid of cutting them with our shovels…We put them on tablecloths and pulled…We drank water and covered our noses. So as not to faint…We dug a grave in the woods, and laid them down side by side. Covered their heads with sheets…Their feet…

  For a year we never stopped mourning them. And each of us thought: Where is my husband or son? Are they alive? Because men do come back from war, but from under the sand—never…Aie, aie, aie…

  —

  —My husband was nice, kind. We only lived together for a year and a half. When he was leaving, I bore our baby in my bosom. But he didn’t get to see our daughter, I gave birth to her without him. He left in the summer, and I gave birth to her in the fall.

  I was still giving her the breast; she was less than a year old. I was sitting on the bed nursing her…A knock on the window: “Lena, a notice has come…About your husband…” (The women didn’t let the postman come, they came to tell me themselves.) As I stood there holding my little girl to my breast, the milk spurted straight on the floor. My girl cried out, she got scared. She never took my breast again. It was precisely on the eve of Palm Sunday that I was told. In April…The sun was shining…I read in the notice that my Ivan had been killed in Poland. His grave is near the city of Gdansk. He died on March 17, 1945…Such a small, thin scrap of paper…We were already expecting the Victory, our men were about to come home. The gardens were in bloom…

  After this scare my girl was sick for a long time, till she went to school. A hard knock on the door or a shout—and she got sick. Cried during the night. I suffered over her for a long time, maybe for seven years I didn’t see the sun, it didn’t shine for me. Everything was dark in my eyes.

  Victory!—they said. The men began to come home. But fewer returned than we sent out. Less than half. My brother Yusik came back first. Crippled, though. And he had a daughter just like mine. Four years old, or five…My daughter used to go to their house, but one day she came back crying: “I won’t go anymore.” “Why are you crying?” I asked. “Her daddy takes Olechka on his knees” (their daughter was called Olechka) “and comforts her. But I don’t have a daddy. I only have a mommy.” We hugged each other…

  And so it went for two or three years. She would run home from outside: “Can I play at home? Or else daddy will come, and I’ll be outside with the other kids. He won’t recognize me. He’s never seen me…” I couldn’t chase her out of the house to the other kids. She sat at home for days. Waiting for daddy. But daddy never returned…

  —

  —Mine, as he was leaving for the war, cried so hard about leaving his little children. He was sorry. The children were so young they didn’t know they had a father. Above all, they were all boys. I was carrying the smallest of them in my arms. He took him and pressed him to himself. I ran after him. They were already shouting “Fall in!” But he couldn’t let go of him, he stood in the column with him…The commander yelled at him, and he was flooding the baby with tears. All the swaddling clothes got wet. We ran out of the village with the children; we ran for another three miles. Other women also ran along. My children were falling down, and I was barely able to carry the little one. And Volodya, that’s my husband, turned to look, and I kept running. I was the last…The children stayed behind on the road. I was running with the little one…

  A year later a notice came: your husband Vladimir Grigorovich was killed in Germany, near Berlin. I’ve never even seen his grave. One of our neighbors came home perfectly healthy, another came home missing a leg. I grieved so much: let mine come back, even without legs, but alive. I’d have carried him in my arms…

  —

  ––I was left with three little sons. I carried sheaves on my back, and wood from the forest, and potatoes and hay…All alone…I pulled the plow by myself, on my back, dragged the harrow. So what? In every second cottage of our village there was a widow or a soldier’s wife. We were left without men. Without horses. The horses were also taken to the war. So I…I even received two awards as “best worker,” and was once given ten yards of cotton. I was so happy! I sewed shirts for my boys, all three of them.

  —

  —After the war…The sons of those who had been killed were just becoming adolescents. Growing up. The boys were thirteen or fourteen years old, but they thought they were already adults. Wanted to marry. There weren’t any men, but the women were all young…

  If I had been told: give up your cow and there won’t be any war, I’d have given it up! So that my children wouldn’t have to endure what I have. Day and night I feel my sorrow…

  —

  —I look out the window, it’s as if he’s sitting there…Sometimes in the evening something seems to be there…I’m already old, but I always see him young. The way he was when he left. If I dream of him, he’s also young. And I’m young, too…

  The women all got death notices, but I got a scrap of paper—“Missing in action.” Written in blue ink. For the first ten years I waited for him every day. I wait for him even now. As long as we live we can hope for anything…

  —

  —And how can a woman live alone? A man came, helped me or didn’t. It’s bad either way. Anyone can say what he likes…People talk, dogs bark…But if only Ivan had seen his five grandsons. Every once in a while I stand by his portrait and show him their photographs. I talk to him…

  —

  —Aie, aie, aie…Dear God…Merciful one…

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  —Just after the war I had a dream: I go out into the yard, and my husband is walking there…In a uniform…And he calls me, he keeps calling me. I leaped from under the blanket, opened the window…All’s quiet. Even the birds aren’t singing. They’re asleep. Wind passes over the leaves…Whistling softly…

  In the morning I took a dozen eggs and went to the Gypsy woman. “He’s no more,” she laid out the cards. “Don’t wait in vain. It’s his soul walking near the house.” There had been love between us. Great love…

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  —A Gypsy woman taught me: “When everybody falls asleep, put on a black shawl and sit down by a big mirror. He’ll appear in it…You shouldn’t touch either him or his clothes. Just talk to him…” I sat up all night…Before morning he came…He said nothing, and his tears flowed. He appeared like that three times. I called him and he came. He wept. I stopped calling him. I felt sorry…

  —

  —And I’m waiting to meet mine…I’ll tell him things day and night. I need nothing from him, only—let him listen. He’s probably also grown old there. Like me.

  —

 
—It’s my native soil…I dig up potatoes, beetroots…He’s there somewhere, and I’ll come to him soon…My sister tells me: “Don’t look in the ground, look at the sky. Upward. They’re there.” That’s my cottage…Nearby…Stay with us. If you stay overnight you’ll learn more. Blood isn’t water, it’s a pity to spill it, but it keeps flowing. I see it on television…every day…

  You don’t have to write about us…Better to remember…How you and I talked together. Wept. When you take leave of us, turn to look at us and our cottages. Not once, like a stranger, but twice, like our own. No need for anything more. Turn to look…

  * * *

  OF LITTLE LIFE AND A BIG IDEA

  * * *

  Thecla Fedorovna Struy

  PARTISAN

  I always believed…I believed Stalin…I believed the Communists. I myself was a Communist. I believed in Communism…I lived for that, I stayed alive for that. After Khrushchev’s report at the Twentieth Congress, when he told about Stalin’s errors, I became ill, I took to my bed. I couldn’t believe it was true. During the war I also shouted, “For the Motherland! For Stalin!” Nobody made me do it…I believed…It’s my life…

  Here it is…

  I fought with the partisans for two years…In my last battle, I was wounded in the legs, lost consciousness. It was freezing cold. When I came to, I felt my hands were frostbitten. Now they’re alive, good hands, but then they were black…My feet, of course, were also frostbitten. If it weren’t for the frost, it would have been possible to save my legs, but they were bloody and I lay there for a long time. When they found me, they put me with the other wounded; many of us were brought to one place, and the Germans encircled us again. Our unit escaped…Broke through…They stacked us onto sledges like firewood. There was no time for looking, for pitying; we were driven deeper into the forest. To hide. They drove and drove, and then reported to Moscow about my injury. You see, I was a deputy of the Supreme Soviet. A big person; they were proud of me. I was from the lowest, from a simple peasant family. I joined the Party very early…

  My legs were gone…They amputated them…They did the surgery right there in the forest. The conditions were the most primitive. They put me on a table to operate, and there was no iodine; they sawed my legs off with a simple saw, both legs…They drove for four miles to get iodine from another village, while I lay on the table. Without anesthesia. Without…Instead of anesthesia—a bottle of moonshine. There was nothing but an ordinary saw…A carpenter’s saw…

  They contacted Moscow to request a plane. The plane flew over three times, circled and circled, but couldn’t land. There was shooting all around. The fourth time, it landed, but both my legs were already amputated. Later, in Ivanovo and Tashkent, they performed four re-amputations; four times the gangrene came back. They cut away bit by bit, and it ended very high up. At first I wept…I sobbed…I imagined how I’d go crawling on the ground. I wouldn’t be able to walk again, only crawl. I myself don’t know what helped me, what held me back from…How I persuaded myself. Of course, I met good people. Many good people. We had a surgeon, also with no legs. He said this about me, the other doctors told me: “I admire her. I’ve operated on so many men, but I haven’t seen anyone like her. She never made a sound.” I controlled myself…I was used to being strong in front of people…

  Then I went back to Disna. My native town. I came back on crutches.

  Now I walk poorly, because I’m old, but back then I ran around town and went everywhere on foot. I ran around on my wooden legs; I traveled to the kolkhozes. They gave me the post of vice chairman of the district party committee. A big job. I never stayed in my office. I went around to the villages, the fields. I would get offended if I sensed some indulgence. There were few competent kolkhoz chairmen at the time, and if there was some responsible work, they sent representatives from the district committee. And so, every Monday we were summoned to the committee and dispatched here and there. I’d sit there in the morning, looking out the window; people kept coming to the committee, but I wasn’t called. And it somehow pained me; I wanted to be like everybody else.

  And at last the phone rings, the first secretary calls, “Thecla Fedorovna, report.” How happy I was then, though it was very very hard for me to go from village to village. They would send me fifteen or twenty miles away, and sometimes I rode, sometimes I walked. I’d go somewhere through the forest, fall down, and be unable to get up. I’d steady myself against my bag, or cling to a tree, get up, and go on. And I received a pension, I could have lived for myself, for myself alone. But I wanted to live for others. I’m a Communist…

  I have nothing of my own. Only orders, medals, and certificates of honor. My house was built by the state. It’s a big house, because there are no children in it, so it seems quite big…And the ceilings are quite high…I live with my sister. She’s my sister, my mama, my nurse. I’m old now…In the morning I can’t get up by myself…

  We live together, live by our past. We have a beautiful past. It was a hard life, but beautiful and honest, and I have no grudges. On account of my life…I lived honestly…

  Sofya Mironovna Vereshchak

  UNDERGROUND FIGHTER

  Our time made us the way we were. We proved ourselves. There won’t be another time like that. It won’t be repeated. Our idea was young then, and we were young. Lenin had died recently. Stalin lived…How proud I was to wear a Pioneer neckerchief. A Komsomol badge…

  And then—the war. And we were like that…Of course, we quickly organized an underground group in Zhitomir. I joined it at once, there was no discussion: to go or not to go, be afraid or not afraid. It wasn’t even discussed…

  After a few months our underground group was tracked down. It had been betrayed. I was seized by the Gestapo…Of course I was afraid. For me it was even more frightening than to die. I was afraid of torture…What if I couldn’t stand it? We all thought that way…Alone…Since childhood, for instance, I had borne physical pain poorly. But we didn’t know ourselves, we didn’t know how strong we were…

  At my last interrogation, after which for the third time I was put on the list to be shot…Here’s what happened with my third interrogator, who told me he was a historian by education…This fascist wanted to understand why we were such people, why our ideas were so important to us. “Life is above any ideas,” he said. I, of course, disagreed with that. He shouted, he beat me. “What? What makes you be this way? To calmly accept death? Why do Communists believe that Communism should conquer the whole world?” he asked. He spoke excellent Russian. So I decided to speak everything out, since I knew they’d kill me anyway—at least it would not be for nothing, and let him know that we were strong. For about four hours he questioned, and I answered, what I knew, what I had managed to learn in courses of Marxism-Leninism at school and at the university. Oh, what it did to him! He clutched his head, he ran around the room, stopped as if rooted to the spot and looked at me, but for once he didn’t beat me…

  I stood facing him…Half my hair had been torn out; I used to have two thick braids. Starving…At first I dreamed of a little, tiny piece of bread, then—at least of a crust, and later—of finding at least a few crumbs…So I stood facing him like that…With burning eyes…He listened to me for a long time. Listened and didn’t beat me…No, he was not afraid yet, it was only 1943. But he already felt something…some kind of danger. He wanted to know—what kind? I answered him. But when I left, he put me on the list to be shot…

  On the night before the execution, I looked back over my life, my short life…

  The happiest day of my life was when my father and mother, after driving away from home under bombardment for several dozen miles, decided to come back. Not to leave. To stay home. I knew then that we would fight. It seemed to us that the victory would come so soon. Absolutely! The first thing we did was find and rescue the wounded. They were in the fields, in the grass, in the ditches, or had crept into someone’s barn. I stepped out one morning to dig some potatoes and fou
nd one in our kitchen garden. He was dying…A young officer, he didn’t even have enough strength to tell me his name. He whispered some words…I couldn’t make them out…I remember my despair. But I think I’ve never been so happy as during those days. I acquired my parents for a second time. I used to think my father was not concerned with politics. He turned out to be a non-Party Bolshevik. My mother—an uneducated peasant, she believed in God. She prayed all through the war. But how? She fell on her knees before an icon: “Save the people! Save Stalin! Save the Communist Party from that monster Hitler.” Every day while I was being interrogated by the Gestapo, I expected the door to open and my parents to come in. Papa and mama…I knew where I had come to, and I’m happy that I didn’t betray anyone. We were more afraid to betray than to die. When I was arrested, I understood that the time of suffering had come. I knew my spirit was strong, but what about my body?

  I don’t remember my first interrogation. I didn’t lose consciousness…I only lost consciousness once, when they twisted my arms with some sort of wheel. I don’t think I screamed, though they had shown me earlier how others screamed. During the following interrogations, I lost the sense of pain, my body became numb. Made of plywood. There was only one thought: no! I won’t die in front of them. No! Only after it was over and they dragged me back to my cell, then I began to feel pain, I turned into a wound. I was a wound all over…My whole body…But I had to hold out. To hold out! So that my mother would know I died a human being, I betrayed no one. Mama!

  They beat me, they hung me up. Always completely undressed. They photographed me. I could only cover my breasts with my hands…I saw people go mad. I saw how little Kolenka, he wasn’t even a year old, we were teaching him to say “mama,” when they were taking him from his mother, he understood in some supernatural way that he was losing her forever and shouted for the first time in his life, “Mama!” It wasn’t a word, or wasn’t only a word…I want to tell you…Tell you everything…Oh, such people I met there! They died in the basements of the Gestapo, and their courage was known only to the walls. And now, forty years later, I mentally kneel to them. “Dying is easiest of all,” they used to say. But to live…How we wanted to live! We believed victory would come, we were only doubtful about one thing—would we survive until that great day?