by Helen Burko
A Kind of Woman
Helen Burko
Saghi Productions Ltd.
A Kind of Woman / HELEN BURKO
All Rights Reserved © Copyrigh 2017 by Saghi Productions Ltd.
No part of this book may be reproduced or translated in other languages or formats without permission in writing from Saghi Productions Ltd.
Contact: [email protected]
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Table of Contents
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
From the Critics
CHAPTER ONE
When Jacob Barder woke in the ditch beside the railroad tracks, night had fallen. The train was gone. He felt as though he’d just awakened from a terrible nightmare. A deadly silence and darkness surrounded him. Far away, in the fields, fireflies glowed. The fog began to drift down like the morning dew.
How long had he been lying here like this, he wondered. What happened to him? Oh, that was it! He finally jumped! How lucky he was to be alive! It was not the first time he had saved his life by taking a dare. Warmth spread through his limbs. But she... Where was she? Had she also jumped after him? Maybe she was dead, heaven forbid.
The thought gave him shivers. That would be a great blow to him. She was the most courageous young woman he had ever met. He possessed only one wish now: to find her quickly, alive and well.
He noticed a pain in his left side, and he felt himself all over to see if he were wounded. He began to rise. The thought of her gave him strength. It was good he hadn’t been wounded seriously. This wasn’t the first time his life hung by a thread. He was all dirty. He wanted to wipe his face, but his hands were covered with mud.
Gradually his eyes became accustomed to the darkness, and he began to walk onward to meet her as they agreed. He walked cautiously. The pain in his side increased, but he ignored it. He thought only of her—and how to find her. The devil had sent the fog, which didn’t allow him to see any distance in front of him. Each telegraph pole coming out of the fog looked like her. He hurried toward each one, only to be left disappointed and anxious. The fields looked threatening, and the wind moaned.
He forgot that the KGB might be looking for them when the men noticed their absence. He forgot everything but the sound of her name in his mind: Rachel.
He stopped every few moments and listened to the noise around him: the humming of the telegraph wires and the moaning of the wind. He walked on in the darkness, searching. Maybe she was lying somewhere in a nearby ditch. He had already covered about a hundred yards and found nothing. What did it mean? If it weren’t so dark, he might have seen her from afar and noticed her already. The darkness and the fog were obscuring his vision.
If she had been killed, he tried to comfort himself, he would have found her by now, although… He became discouraged again. She might have been thrown such a distance that it would be impossible to find her in the dark. Maybe she was wounded and unconscious. Maybe she hadn’t had time to jump and they arrested her at the last moment.
Suddenly he thought, where was he now? In the section that used to be Poland, in West Ukraine, or further in Russia? Even if he found her alive and it turned out they were still in Russia, they wouldn’t be able to elude the KGB, and then all their dangerous daring would have been for nothing.
He made an effort to stop thinking about that, but thoughts continued to race through his mind.
With no other choice, he kept on walking and listening for any noise other than the wind and the hum of the telegraph wires. The wind played with the barbed wire fence that, in the fog, looked like a spiderweb. He continued to push ahead and search. The fog began to disperse, and a few stars were revealed, twinkling in the sky. He became part of the night, a lost walking shadow.
When he could no longer stand the pain, he walked down from the ridge and stretched out on the damp, grass-covered ground. In his imagination, the events of the last few days and his wonderful meeting with Rachel rolled past like a film.
*****
It all began a few days ago. Now that the war was over, the shadow people began to emerge into the light from the distant republics of Russia, from concentration camps, from bunkers and forests, and from dark hiding places. They came out to search for their ruined homes.
He, Jacob Barder, was also one of those shadow people after surviving the war.
Only because of his sturdy body and the fact he was only thirty-nine was he able to withstand all the horrors. With his dark complexion and eyes and his straight nose, he looked like an Italian or a Greek. His strong will helped him to survive. When the war ended, he boarded a cargo train and traveled through the broad Russian lands.
The train sped through the fields and forests, through scattered villages, belching smoke that fanned out behind it. He saw grazing flocks, a boy and his dog running after straying pigs, little geese trying to keep up with their elders, and a girl with a stick hurrying them home in the twilight. How ideal it all looks after all that I have been through, Jacob thought. So many years had passed since he had last seen nature in all its glory.
The train passed by a wrecked station, a reminder of the war; it remained behind like an angry curse with a shriek that went unheard.
That’s it; it’s all over, Jacob mused while in a good mood. Now we have to start all over again...
*****
Finally, his train slowed down, gave a sharp whistle, and stopped between other trains, most of which had been blown up and brought there from various fronts.
This was the station house of Kiev, which had escaped unharmed from the war, and it was packed with people. It was almost impossible to enter. Even outside, around the walls, people gathered. These were repatriates, or “returnees” as they called themselves. Russians, Poles, and Ukrainians who had been moved around by the Nazis during the war.
Many of them had gone voluntarily to work at the station house—people who wanted to see the wide world and were gulled by the fantastic promises of the Nazis. Now they had returned, disillusioned, tired, and worn out, carrying only the small amount of loot they had taken from the Germans when they fled.
There were a great many young women who used to be in the communist youth movement and who had also swallowed the Hitlerite propaganda that extolled the Nazi “paradise.” Their faces were sunburned and windburned. Their eyes expressed their fear of the unknown, of what awaited them in their homes after such a long separation. Their heads were covered with flowered kerchiefs, and they wore the gray cotton dresses they had taken with them from the Kolkhozes (communes) and the Sovkhozes (communal villages) at the time of their expulsion. They all radiated an aura of being burned out, and all their movements and their packages spoke of wandering and poverty.
Like Jacob, they reached Kiev on cargo trains, but they had to leave the carriages to make room for something more important than people. From Kiev, there were regular trains to other cities in the east, but these trains weren’t sufficient to carry the enormous stream of returnees. Because of this, people often stayed in Kiev for days and sometimes months until they could reach their homes. This was the reason they t
ried so hard to find room in the station house. When someone did leave, there were many who fought for a piece of the ground. They even huddled outside just to be near and try to obtain a place out of the rain and cold. No one noticed the sunset. The sky was covered with clouds that heralded the coming rain.
The people were all filled with anxiety and wore worried expressions. They covered themselves with blankets and tried also to cover their belongings that had already been rained upon.
Rain began to fall again, at first just a drizzle, then stronger, and finally, it poured.
The lilac trees, which grew around the station house, had just started to bloom, and they filled the air with fresh and lovely scents. The May evening was beautiful despite the rain, which wasn’t a cold rain but nevertheless angered the people.
Even though the place was full and couldn’t hold any more people, many of the wanderers, especially those without heavy baggage, began to push their way inside searching for a haven. They stepped on people who swore and cursed.
A woman who was lying on her bundles in front of the entrance screamed that someone was stepping on her leg. Another woman pried her hair, with great difficulty, from under a boot.
“Hey, you’re not at home! Why are you all spread out like pigs?” a man shouted.
Another fellow, dressed in a Ukrainian embroidered shirt and with a mass of hair on his forehead, added, “Animals, all of you! Just look how frightened you are of a little rain! I suppose you’re all used to luxury, damn your souls! Just look how they’re all sprawled out! Made of sugar, I guess!”
As he talked, he spit on the floor and kept pushing his way through the people lying there while tapping his cigarette ashes on them. The people’s fatigue was so great that they didn’t react. They were just happy to be out of the rain. The fellow succeeded in finding a place somewhere among the rest. His makhorka cigarette glowed with each puff and looked like a candle.
Jacob Barder had no packages, and he, too, began to push his way in and stepped over people while trying to find a place out of the rain. He was tired from long hours of wandering through the streets of Kiev. He felt like a lonely stranger among all the other strangers as lonely as he. Like the rest of them, he longed for his family, a warm bed, a comforting word, a shelter.
When he noticed a corner that looked a little less populated, he made his way carefully over many bodies and managed to squeeze in. Suddenly, he heard a woman’s voice complaining that he had stepped on her leg. At first he paid no attention to her and just stood as comfortably as he could in the corner, but then he heard the voice again.
“Listen, comrade, be careful! I’m warning you for the second time.”
He listened to her voice which, despite her complaint, sounded sympathetic. In the dim light of the lone, dusty light bulb, he saw the face of a young woman who was sitting on a small suitcase. He bent over her and saw two blue, penetrating eyes and blond hair that peeked out from under her beret.
“Excuse me, comrade,” Jacob said gently. “I’m really sorry if I hurt you, but in a situation like this…”
The young woman didn’t answer. Jacob tried again to start a conversation to feel less lonely and miserable.
“It doesn’t stop raining,” he whispered as if talking to himself. “Here, inside, it’s somewhat better, right, comrade?”
She remained silent.
“You don’t want to talk to me,” he said provocatively. “I understand.”
“I don’t want to do anything,” the young woman said languidly and drew back into her shell.
“I believe you,” he continued, glad she had at least answered. “At a time like this, one should forget everything. I would gladly down a glass of vodka and even lie on a bed of nails. You can’t even smoke a cigarette because of the crowding.”
Again, she didn’t react to his words.
“If you only knew, comrade, how difficult it is for me to keep standing here,” he said after a few more minutes of silence and shifting from one leg to the other. “So I hope you forgive me if my standing here bothers you.”
“It doesn’t bother me.”
“Thank you. If I had known, before I came here, that a charming young lady was sitting here on her suitcase, I wouldn’t have come here to bother her.”
“You are very polite,” she said, listlessly. “Give me a cigarette. I’m dying for a smoke.”
He put his hand in the pocket of his pants to take out his cigarettes and matches.
“Of course, it isn’t so suitable to smoke in here. The air is suffocating even now…”
“Never mind. Sit here next to me, and we’ll smoke a cigarette anyway.” She moved over to reveal an edge of the small suitcase and beckoned him with a look. He dropped down beside her and sat on the edge of the suitcase, his face almost touching hers. He could feel her warm breath and the womanly allure that radiated from her. She had something of the softness of spring.
“Thank you very much,” he said as he balanced himself on the edge of the suitcase. Even though he was more in the air than on the case, he enjoyed sitting there more than someone would sitting on a soft armchair. At that moment, the people lying there and snoring seemed to him like a carpet of poppies and the station house like a splendid salon. A feeling like that in a situation like that could only come to a person tired of wandering and thirsty for a kind word. As he sat down, he observed the young woman so close to him and gazed into her smiling eyes. In the dim light, he couldn’t see her face clearly, but what he could see were blue eyes, straight eyebrows, long eyelashes, and a lovely nose that gave her a proud look, with even a suggestion of superiority, although her behavior didn’t show it. Her hair was dark blond, and one curl fell over her left eye, which gave her an impish and soft womanly look. She was dressed in a coat on top of a fitted suit. The form of her breasts was noticeable even in the dim light. A hot wave passed over his body, and he had difficulty in extricating a match. Before he lit their cigarettes, he realized how lovely she really was.
“What a pleasure,” she said after she drew in the smoke and exhaled. “I haven’t smoked for a few days.”
“What a shame we didn’t meet before this,” he whispered.
“Right,” she muttered without removing her cigarette.
They both sat quietly for a while. The rain continued pouring down outside the high windows of the station house. He wanted to talk to her, to ask her who she was, where she came from, and where she was headed, but it was also so good to sit there quietly and feel the warmth of her body. He was willing to continue sitting like this indefinitely. He didn’t tire of inhaling her warm breath, which fevered his blood. He didn’t even wonder why this young woman allowed him to sit so near to her even though she didn’t know who he was.
She is probably eager for a little warmth, as I am, he thought. In those lost days, a person was lucky to huddle up to a rock in the field, much less a living person.
“Why don’t you sleep like the rest of them here?” he asked her as he watched their cigarette smoke drift over the heads of the sleeping mass.
“Because I don’t want to sleep,” she answered and returned to wrapping herself in a cloud of smoke.
“Do you have relatives here?” he asked, settling more comfortably on the suitcase.
“No,” she answered. “I’m here all by myself. Where do you come from?” she asked in a friendlier tone.
“From Asia.”
“Were you in the camps?”
“Yes.”
“One of the evicted?”
“Yes, one of the evicted,” he said sadly and, without waiting for further questions, began to reveal who he was, where he came from, where he was going, and all that had happened to him during the war.
“In August of 1939, just before the war broke out, I arrived here from America with my wife, Doris, and my five-year-old daughter, Lillian, to visit our relatives in Warsaw. The Nazis began a surprise attack on Poland, and we couldn’t get back to America. When the German arm
y entered Warsaw, I, my wife, and my daughter, like thousands of others, fled to the Russian border. After much struggling, we succeeded in reaching Lvov, my birthplace and our home before my parents and I immigrated to America when I was fifteen.
“The city of Lvov, which used to belong to Poland, now belongs to the Western Ukraine under the control of the Russian government, which began to put things in order. Because I have roots in the city and because I remembered a little Polish, Ukrainian, and Russian, I decided to stay in the city and wait for the opportunity to return to America, where I had left a great amount of money and property.
“I am an attorney by profession, and I live in New York. I hoped that soon we would be able to return there.
“To my sorrow, that hope never materialized,” he continued with a painful expression. “In Lvov, my wife became ill at the time of the outbreak of war between Germany and Russia. No one dreamed Germany would attack Russia, although it should have been clear from the beginning. Refugees huddled together like frightened sheep. They didn’t know what action to take: to flee further into Russia or to return to their homelands, which had been conquered by Germany. Because of this, many refused to receive the Russian passports that were compulsory for the refugees. My family and I especially didn’t want to give up our American passports, because we thought they were our last hope to return us to America soon.
“One night,” he continued his story to the unknown young woman, “as Doris was lying in bed with a high fever, we heard a knock at the door. We were sure it was the doctor whom we had called so many times and hadn’t yet appeared. Instead, it was some men from the KGB who entered and asked us all for our identity cards.
“The house was full of refugees who were in no better condition than the ones you see huddled here. When I showed the KGB my American passports, I was immediately arrested, together with all those who had refused to accept Russian passports. They left my wife and my daughter because of my wife’s condition.
“And so I parted from my wife and little daughter, and together with all the rest, I was sent deep into Russia. After going through many prisons and torturous interrogations, I was judged ‘an American spy’ and sentenced to ten years in a camp where in winter there is almost no daylight and in summer almost no night.