by Olga Chaplin
Only at the service end did Borys and Katya step forward from the others, their white-ribboned flowers pinned to their lapels. Nadia and Ola, followed by other curious children, stood beside them, their bouquets of wildflowers trembling in their excited fingers. The shortened wedding ceremony still weighing heavily in its significance, brought tears to onlookers’ eyes as the small choir sang its blessings. The couple beamed as Father Mikolaeyev nodded for them to follow him in a tight circle around the altar, signifying the final moments before their union. At last, they kissed the priest’s cross and, bowing their respect, followed him as he addressed the congregation. All were welcome at their barracks block for the wedding festivities.
The rough timber table outside the barracks block, that served the men at casual card games on an odd Sunday afternoon, was now covered in a threadbare but pristine white cloth, as women rushed out with plates of food previously prepared, for all to share. A sweet homemade lemonade was served from a bucket, some local schnapps shared by the men. Katya, in her fine crocheted blouse borrowed from another bride, glowed with happiness, blushing as Borys scooped her to him during the toasts. Peter laughed and shook his head, as someone teased “Horko! Horko!” to the couple for their celebratory wedding kiss.
“Borys, my friend,” he jested, patting the young man’s shoulder, “the sun is still high … you will need to watch the schnapps, if you want to enjoy the moon!” Everyone laughed as the groom blushed, then mock-poured some schnapps to the ground to honour his bride.
Peter drew closer to Evdokia, protectively placing his hand on her shoulder. His eyes followed the neat braids of her hair kept in place with tortoise-shell combs, to her delicate cream silk scarf, constantly mended, both gifts from an early parcel in this Heidenau camp, which she proudly displayed. He leaned closer and whispered in her ear, watched, delighted, as she flicked her eyes at his, a smile teasing her lips. She blushed, distracting herself with the party. Peter savoured the moment, remembered their own nuptials in those difficult times, almost two decades earlier. His heart swelled with pride as he watched his children follow the nimble-fingered accordion player to the grassy field nearby for the bridal party photographs: Mykola’s trousers and jacket already too small for him, as his stature grew, and Nadia and Ola’s hair blowing about in the afternoon breeze as, bouquets held high, they stood excitedly with the bridal party.
“Nadia, Ola,” Peter later sought them out, “I need to take your flowers to the church …” He hesitated. He would wait until morning to give them the news of Elenia’s passing. “Father Mikolaeyev likes your bouquets … he wants to make his church pretty.” Now tiring, they gladly held out their bunches. “Perhaps you could take a flower or two to Katya and Borys, for them to keep?”
They ran off to the couple with their selected flowers. Peter nodded to Evdokia, knowing she understood his purpose. He walked the short distance back to the barracks block, where the accordionist and party were in full voice, and continued on to the far end of the camp to the church, the simple wooden painted cross above its door its symbol of Orthodoxy. The door was closed, but unlocked. His eyes adjusting to the dim light, blinking at the candle haze that still hung in the air, he made his way to the altar, now devoid of its ecclesiastical robing, revealing its simple timber planks of a hand-hewn table. He arranged the flowers along its length, placed the pure-white lily with its long stem at table’s end. Tomorrow, the plain plank table would touch other hand-hewn planks, of a child’s coffin, the child’s porcelain-white face would be embraced by this pure-white lily, also cut too early, before its prime.
Peter stood back, head bowed as he said a silent prayer only known to his soul, of the enduring love he held close, deep in his heart for his young lost loved ones: Hanya, Mischa, Manya.
The tears fell over the lily, slipped down to its stem, to its heart that once existed. “Charstvo Nebesno,” he whispered. “May we all be together, one day, if our God wills it.” He shuffled his feet, to stir himself from the deep moment. A clump of clay broke from his worn boot. He picked up the clod, symbolically kissed it and placed it next to the lily, remembering another clod of clay that had been left all those years ago, in his Kylapchin village cemetery. What had to be, had to be, his heart had told him. And so it was. He crossed himself once more, stepped back from the altar, closed the church door. There will be time enough for more tears in the morning. The rest of this day was still one for the celebration of life, of love, of joy. Today’s celebrations reminded him our hearts needed only to look about us, to find it so.
Chapter 35
“Herr Pospile …” the UNRRA official looked up from his documents and beckoned Peter to the chair opposite his desk. Peter nodded in respect and glanced about him. This cramped room, adjacent to the camp commandant’s office, but now with its walls stripped of paraphernalia, felt clinical, reflecting the sombre tone of the German officer. There was no hint in his demeanour for Peter to gauge which side he supported: the old Germany under Hitler, the Western Allied Occupation forces or, now, the newly developing administration that would soon emerge as the German Federal Republic.
Peter tried to take a deep breath to prepare himself, but his chest felt as if it was being crushed by a suffocating weight, the enormity of this meeting almost submerging him. All his preconceptions for this interview were suddenly swept aside. He realised in that singular moment that, except for one vital fact, honesty was his best ally. Pulled in both directions, afraid of his own ability to fully convince the UNRRA official at this sunset stage of Germany’s migration proceedings, he thought of his little family, so dependent on him, and forced himself to remain composed, convincing.
The official laid out his documents in careful order. It was more than orderly, somehow almost a method of entrapment. Peter suddenly realised that this man may well have been trained in Germany’s secret service. There was something unnerving in the way in which he scrutinised the documents, ran his eye over this one, then another, then back to yet another, looking for inconsistencies, untruths.
In spite of himself, Peter watched, intrigued, trying to gauge the officer’s thoughts. “This man is trained to watch for serious offenders,” he thought to himself. “Traitors, collaborators … people with stolen identities still trying to escape the clutches of the administrative police.” It was possible, in post-war Germany, that some of them could still be within the boundaries of this camp, unwittingly protected by others.
He drew a deep breath, and waited. Whatever the cost, he would take his chances with the one vital deviation from the truth. He could not contemplate being sent back to Stalin’s Russia. Already, Stalin’s much-altered NKVD had a new arm to its iron fist in the form of Smersh, the aptly named acronym of ‘Smert Shpionam’—‘Death to Spies’, extending its poisonous tentacles so far that even in Heidenau camp the waiting inmates froze in fear. The pretexts for Smersh’s stamp of ‘traitor’ that led straight to Stalin’s labour camps were spurious, but the consequences deadly: forcible removal by enemy forces from Russian or Ukrainian soil, even temporary, placed the interrogated under permanent suspicion.
Solzhenitsyn’s accounts of the gulags were but rumoured, still to be revealed. But the anecdotal histories of so many like him were already circulating. And no-one was removed from suspicion by the vindictive Stalin. Even the brilliant Marshal Zhukov, saviour of many battles and thus of so many Russian and Ukrainian lives, barely escaped trumped-up ‘non-patriotism’ charges, with only his supreme popularity halting Stalin from carrying out his threats. Peter knew he had no choice but to do whatever he could to protect his family, in order to escape their inevitable fate if returned to Soviet soil.
“Herr Pospile … I see your Red Cross cards issued by the Geneva office, dated 28th July, 1945, indicates you are Ukrainian, and ‘stateless’.” Peter nodded. The officer put the document to one side, picked up another. “Then these documents … in Wilhelmshaven, dated 15th October, 1945, indicate you and your wife Evdokia came from Mirohosh
tcha, Polish-Ukraine. Is that so?” He watched Peter carefully, his expression neutral, listened impassively to his explanation.
“So … your village was within the border of Poland? … But you are Orthodox, Ukrainian … And so you must be bilingual, then?” Peter affirmed, responded readily in Polish. “Hmm …” the officer paused. He turned thoughtfully to a bound reference, frowning slightly as he searched for the elusive village that may well have been obliterated along with thousands of others in the vast regions of the war.
“And so … you have not practised your veterinary surgeon skills since … your arrival in Germany … at the end of 1943?” His sharp eyes watched Peter’s reaction, ostensibly even more dispassionately. Peter felt a sting of pride testing his pent-up emotions. If this official’s demeanour was intended to unnerve the unwary applicant, he could succeed at any moment. He took a deep breath, responded in a factual manner: their Berlin temporary camp, their many months in the Wilhelmshaven camps, and now the Heidenau camp of the Hamburg region.
His heart sank as he realised that he may never have an opportunity to return to the specialist veterinary skills he had gained all those years ago. It pained him that he could now be judged only on his merits as a wood-cutter, and not on the life he had held so dear as a veterinary practitioner. He swallowed hard, bowed his head, felt the tightening of his throat like a waiting noose. As he looked up, the officer was still watching him, evaluating him. For the first time in this traumatic interview, he sensed a few moments of empathy. “O God!” he thought, unable by this time to second-guess what this meant. He wanted to bare his soul, plead with this man, to be allowed to migrate, out of danger. But he knew that would only arouse even more suspicion, cast doubt on the authenticity of every other part of his story. He could only wait. There was no knowing which way the dice of this interview would fall, for or against his and Evdokia’s fate.
“Hmm …” the officer sat impassively, still in thought. Then suddenly he pushed back his chair. It seemed as if some kind of burden had been lifted from him. “Herr Pospile … you know that Poland now allows its citizens to either return to its new borders, or to nominate to migrate … elsewhere?” Peter nodded. “So … what do you wish to do, Herr Pospile, you and your family?” He noted, calmly, Peter’s response: “Desires to migrate to a ‘friendly’ western country.”
“Ahh …!” the officer breathed easily as he signed his name and dated the document with a controlled flourish. “You understand that this testimony does not give a guarantee of migration? This will be forwarded to other … committees. It can be a long process … very long … you do understand?” Peter nodded. The interview was completed, but he waited respectfully for the officer to stand.
“You know, Herr Pospile,” the officer spoke in a softer tone as he stood to shake Peter’s hand in official manner, “the Russians these days are very ‘generous’ in sending their workers to Poland, to … ‘stabilise’ that country.” He looked quizzically at Peter, with the hint of a smile. “It could well be that the Polish government may not need its citizens to return there, as much now, as previously. But … who knows? Each day brings new developments, surprises, in Europe.”
Even in those last moments of his interview, Peter could not know which way his fate would fall. The officer’s hand was strong, purposeful. The man was taller than Peter had first imagined, his light grey hair confounding his age. “He is a disciplined man,” he thought to himself. “He would almost certainly have served somewhere in Hitler’s regime.” Yet, despite the difficulty of the interview, this official showed no malice, expressed no derision for the exhausted displaced worker in the dilapidated jacket who had sat before him. Whatever his views, Peter thought, he had conducted himself honourably: another German citizen in the Allied zone, conducting himself with dignity in such humiliating circumstances, in his own country, which he still could not claim as his own. In spite of his own personal trauma, Peter felt a surge of compassion for this man who, he felt, could possibly be inwardly as traumatised by the events of the past decade as he and so many others were.
Instinctively, noticing the officer had no watch, Peter dug down deep into his jacket for the only prized possession he had kept from the Red Cross parcels. In broken German, he shyly offered the man his gift, in honour of their meeting of ways. “Ah!” he responded and placed his hand on Peter’s outstretched gift. “There is no need to give me your watch … you may need it, some day. You have earned the right to keep it, Herr Pospile … I am … just doing as I am required, here.” He waited for Peter to put away his watch, then, uncharacteristically, as Peter looked back from the open door, the officer tipped his forehead as if in casual salute. Peter stopped and did likewise. Whatever happened, now, he could not accuse this German administrator of pre-judgment. And, in that sense, it made the potential of rejection more bearable.
Germany’s summer sun flashed in his eyes as he stepped down to the pathway to his barracks block. He half-laughed to himself at the inconsistencies, the vagaries of life, even now, in defeated and peaceful western Germany. In one single facile stroke, he could either be a truly freed man, or yet another statistic in one of Stalin’s labour camps in the growing gulags of Siberia and beyond. Now, he could only hold on to his hope, that fortune would smile on them this one last time, to give his heart the chance to feel real freedom from the anguish he had suffered all these years, freedom to allow his spirit one last chance to rise—soar—again.
Chapter 36
“Come, Dyna, Nadia …! Mykola is already there!” Peter waved his encouragement and squeezed Ola’s hand in jest and grasped abundant berry bushes with blistered fingers, his boots searching leverage in acquiescent undergrowth. His muscles burned, but he forced himself up the steep incline to the hill’s peak. As he stooped to carry Ola for the final ascent, the earthy pungency of crushed moss and autumn’s lingering wildflowers hit his nostrils, sharpening his senses. His body ached, but he felt enlivened, optimistic.
“See, it was quicker this way!” he called, drawing victorious breath. Beyond the ridge the party with its accompanying music was already in full revelry. He paused, contemplating the last tricky steps, then beckoned to Evdokia and Nadia to hurry.
Suddenly the expanding vista of the countryside that had become their world these past four long years in Heidenau opened out to him. Its pristine beauty of forests and ostensible tranquillity pricked his senses anew and revived his spirit. He breathed in its freshness and vibrancy, wondered at the unexpected, unpredictable turn of events. From this vantage point, German soldiers had stood in snowy nights and on exposed warm days, guarding their Heidenau army camp during Hitler’s war, their concrete bunkers providing scant protection from constant Allied bombings that had become a part of their daily survival in those last years of war.
Now the bunkers were overgrown with forgiving vegetation of these past four springs. Behind him, to the north-east, and beyond the Tosted forest in which they laboured, Hamburg now bustled, its growing international flavour heightened by the surprising events of the past year. Below him, the camp sprawled even beyond its original boundaries, as new refugees arrived and were dispersed to far away places, whilst others, like him and his family, still remained.
“Ah, Petro!” Borys waved and stepped up to greet him. “Here you are at last! What, it is not enough for you to work at your logs all week, that you must test your strength again on Sundays at the farm? Come, Petro, drink with us! Today we can all find reasons for celebration! Be happy for us, my friend! We may yet see you and your family in America as well!”
Borys handed him a mug with its clear elixir. The shot of vodka scorched his throat, burned deep in his chest, fired sharp sensations at his brain. He had forgotten how fast, how active this elixir was. It shot deep beneath his optimism and his logic, disengaged and relieved the pain of his anxiety and uncertainty that lurked daily, hourly, as he awaited their fate. For those few moments the countryside faded, the sun’s generous shedding of afternoo
n’s rays blurring his vision. He was transported to another hill, thousands of kilometres away, all those years ago, to his father’s hillside land, to the sweet smell of summer’s Ukraine.
Tears welled, confusing sensations competing with his composure: pain of the past, anxiety of the present, released by the vodka’s potency, surfacing and over-riding his controlled emotions. Now it was autumn, and September 1949. He was not celebrating his father’s hard work in his own Ukrainian land, but those of the German conquerors who had just gained their freedom in their new western Republic, witnessing, at this very time, a new phase of government and leadership under a true democracy. He was happy, now, for these conquering people, who had gone through much suffering, but he felt even more painfully the sense of his ‘displacement’.
He swallowed hard, drank the dregs of the tumbler’s potion, and took some home-brewed schnapps proffered him, fired his mind to Borys and Hryhori. Fortune had smiled on them, the haphazard American migration openings picking such young men and their brides at a time when so many ships were diverted to Ben Gurion’s new Israel, a priority over all other migration. He smiled generously as he listened again to their good fortune, glad for them that their wishes were met.
Yet his heart sank anew. The element of luck played a great part in this last migration. He consoled himself that his family’s chances were good, still. Four long seasons had passed since his fateful interview with the cautious German migration officer, and still no word of their prospects even though, recently, they had had inoculations under the new banner of the International Refugee Organisation, in preparation for a possible fortunate outcome. Yet there were still no promises, no guarantees. All they could do was wait, and wait. And celebrate this hillside party, and western Germany’s elections, that had been the cause of so much consternation and, now, excitement.