Last Witnesses

by Svetlana Alexievich

  From Aktyubinsk we went to Magnitogorsk, where papa’s brother lived. Before the war they had been a big family, with many men, but when we arrived there were only women in the house. All the men had gone to the war. At the end of 1941 two death notices came—my uncle’s sons had been killed…

  Of that winter I also remember chicken pox, which everybody at school came down with. And red trousers…Mama got a length of dark red flannelette for her coupons, and she made me a pair of trousers. The children teased me: “Fancy pants, go back to France.” I was very hurt. A bit later we got galoshes for our coupons. I tied them up and ran around. They rubbed at my little bones, and I had to put something under the heels so that the heels were higher, to avoid getting blisters. The winter was so cold that my hands and feet kept freezing. The heating system at school often broke down, the water on the floor in the classroom turned to ice, and we could slide between the desks. We sat there in our coats and mittens, only we cut the tips off so that we could hold a pen. I remember that we were forbidden to offend and tease those whose papas had been killed. For that we were severely punished. We also all read a lot. As never before or after…We read all the children’s books, all the adolescent books. They started giving us adult books. The other girls were afraid…even the boys didn’t like the pages where death was written about and skipped over them. But I read them.

  Heavy snow fell. All the children ran outside and made a snowman. I was perplexed: how was it possible to make a snowman and be happy, if there was a war?

  The adults listened to the radio all the time; they couldn’t live without the radio. Neither could we. We rejoiced at every salute fired off in Moscow, we were excited over each piece of information: how are things at the front? In the underground? Among the partisans? Films were produced about the battles of Stalingrad and Moscow, and we watched them fifteen or twenty times. If they showed them three times in a row, we watched them three times in a row. The films were shown at school, there was no special movie theater, they showed them in the corridor with us sitting on the floor. We sat for two or three hours. I memorized death…Mama scolded me for that. She consulted doctors about why I was like that…Why was I interested in such an unchildlike thing as death? How to teach me to think about children’s things…

  I reread fairy tales…Children’s fairy tales…Again, what did I notice? I noticed how much killing there was in them. A great deal of blood. That was my discovery…

  At the end of 1944…I saw the first German prisoners…They walked in a wide column down the street. I was struck that people came up to them and gave them bread. I was so struck that I ran to mama at work to ask: why do our people give the Germans bread? Mama said nothing, but only wept. Then I also saw my first dead man in a German uniform. He was marching in the column and fell down. The column paused, then moved on, and next to him one of our soldiers was stationed. I ran to them…I was drawn to look at death close up, to be near it. Whenever the radio announced enemy losses, we always rejoiced…But now…I saw…The man was as if asleep…He didn’t even lie down, but sat huddled up, with his head leaning on his shoulder. I didn’t know: should I hate him or pity him? He was the enemy. Our enemy! I don’t remember if he was young or old. He was very tired. Because of that it was hard for me to hate him. I told mama about that, too. And again she wept.

  On May 9 we woke up in the morning, because by the entrance someone was shouting loudly. It was still very early. Mama went to find out, and came running back bewildered: “Victory! Can it be Victory?” This was so unexpected: the war ended, such a long war. Some wept, some laughed, some shouted…Those who had lost their loved ones wept, but still they rejoiced, because even so it was Victory! One had a handful of grain, another some potatoes, yet another some beets—it was all taken to one apartment. I’ll never forget that day. That morning…By evening it was already not the same…

  During the war everybody spoke softly for some reason, even in a whisper as it seemed to me, but now suddenly everybody began to speak loudly. We were with the grown-ups all the time, they gave us good things, caressed us, told us to go out: “Go outside. Today is a holiday.” Then they called us back. We had never been embraced and kissed so much as on that day.

  But I was a lucky one, my papa came back from the war. Papa brought beautiful children’s toys. German toys. I couldn’t understand how such beautiful toys could be German…

  I tried to talk about death with papa, too. About the bombings, when mama and I were evacuated…How our dead soldiers lay along both sides of the road. Their faces were covered with branches. Flies buzzed over them…Huge swarms of flies…About the dead German…I told him about my friend’s papa, who came back from the war and died a few days later. Of a heart attack. I couldn’t understand: how could someone die after the war, when everybody was happy?

  Papa said nothing.

  “A HANDFUL OF SALT…ALL THAT WAS LEFT OF OUR HOUSE…”

  Misha Maiorov

  FIVE YEARS OLD. NOW A DOCTOR OF AGRONOMY.

  During the war I liked dreams. I liked dreams about peaceful life, about how we lived before the war…

  First dream…

  Grandma has finished her household chores…I’ve been waiting for this moment. Now she moves the table to the window, spreads the fabric on it, puts cotton wool on top of it, covers it with another piece of fabric, and begins to quilt a blanket. I, too, have a job: on one side of the blanket grandma hammers in little nails, to each one of them ties a piece of string, rubs it with chalk, and I hold it tight on the other side. “Tighter, Mishenka,” grandma asks. I pull more tightly, grandma lets go—snap!—and there’s a chalk line on the red or blue satin. The lines crisscross forming rhombs, the black thread stitches will go along them. The next operation: grandma lays out paper patterns (they’re called stencils now) and a design appears on the quilted blanket. It’s very beautiful and interesting. My grandma is an expert at stitching shirts; she’s especially good at the collars. Her Singer sewing machine goes on working even when I’m already asleep. And grandpa is asleep, too.

  Second dream…

  Grandpa is making shoes. Here, too, I have something to do. I whittle wooden pegs. Now all soles are held by metal pins, but they rust, and the sole quickly falls off. Maybe at the time they already used metal pins, but I remember the wooden ones. A smooth, knotless log of old birch should be sawed into rounds, which are left to dry under an old rag. Then they are split into pieces about an inch thick and four inches long, and they, too, are left to dry. Eighth-inch-thick splints can easily be cut off these pieces. A shoemaker’s knife is sharp, it’s easy to cut edges off this splint on two sides: you prop it against the worktable—zhik-zhik—and the splint becomes sharp, and then you just split it into nail-shaped pins. With a shoemaker’s awl, grandpa makes a hole in the boot sole, puts the peg in, taps it with a shoemaker’s hammer—and the pin is in the sole. The pegs were inserted in double rows, which is not only pretty, but also very strong: the dry pins will swell from moisture and hold the sole in place still more fast, and it won’t fall off until it’s worn out.

  Grandpa also puts soles on felt boots, or rather a second sole, they serve longer then and you can wear them without galoshes. Or else he doubles the back of the heel with leather, so that the felt shoe doesn’t wear out inside the galosh. My task is to twist a linen thread, tar it, wax it, and thread it through a needle. But a shoemaker’s needle is very valuable, and therefore grandpa very often uses bristles, the most ordinary bristles from a wild boar’s scruff, or maybe a domestic boar, only the bristles are softer. Grandpa has a whole bunch of these bristles. They can be used to sew on a sole or a small patch in an awkward place: bristles are flexible and will get in anywhere.

  Third dream…

  Older children organized a theater in the neighbors’ big barn. The show is about border patrol and spies. A ticket costs ten kopecks. I don’t have it, they
don’t let me in, I begin to howl: I, too, want “to see the war.” I peek into the barn on the sly—the “border patrol” wore real army shirts. The show was terrific…

  Then my dreams broke off…

  Soon I saw soldiers’ army shirts in our home…Grandma gave meals to the tired and dust-covered soldiers, and they kept saying, “The Germans are barging ahead.” I started badgering grandma: “What are the Germans like?”

  We load bundles onto a cart, I’m seated on them. We go somewhere. Then we come back…There are Germans in our house! They’re like our soldiers, only in a different uniform and merry. Mama, grandma, and I now live behind the stove, and grandpa—in the barn. Grandma doesn’t quilt blankets anymore, grandpa doesn’t make shoes. Once I pushed aside the curtain: a German with earphones was sitting in the corner by the window, turning the handle of the radio set. There was music, then distinct Russian speech…The other German was spreading butter on bread at the moment. He saw me and waved the knife right in front of my nose. I hid behind the curtain and didn’t come out from behind the stove anymore.

  A man in a charred shirt is being led down the street past our house, barefoot, his hands bound with wire. The man is all black…Later I saw him hanged next to the village council building. They said he was one of our pilots. At night I dreamed about him. In my dream he was hanging in our yard…

  I remember everything in black: black tanks, black motorcycles, German soldiers in black uniforms. I’m not sure that it was really only black, but that’s how I remember it. A black-and-white film…

  …I’m wrapped in something and we hide in the swamp. All day and all night. The night is cold. Strange birds cry in frightening voices. It seems that the moon shines very, very bright. Scary! What if the German shepherds see or hear us? Occasionally their hoarse barking reaches us. In the morning we go home! I want to go home! Everybody wants to go home, to the warmth! But there is no more home, only a heap of smoking embers. A smoldering place…Like after a big bonfire…We find in the ashes a lump of salt that always lay on our hearth. We carefully collected the salt, and also the clay mixed with the salt, and poured it into a jar. That was all that was left of our house…

  Grandma was silent all the while, but at night she began to lament, “Ah, my cottage! Ah, my cottage! I was a young girl in i-i-i-it…Here the matchmakers ca-a-a-ame…Here the children were bo-o-o-orn.” She went around our black yard like a ghost.

  In the morning I opened my eyes. We slept on the ground, in our kitchen garden.

  “AND I KISSED ALL THE PORTRAITS IN MY SCHOOLBOOK…”

  Zina Shimanskaya

  ELEVEN YEARS OLD. NOW A CASHIER.

  I look back with a smile…With astonishment. Can this have happened to me?

  The day the war began we were at the circus. Our whole class. At the morning performance. We didn’t suspect a thing. Not a thing…The adults already knew, but we didn’t. We clapped our hands. Laughed. There was a big elephant there. A huge one! A monkey danced…And then…We poured out into the street gaily—and people were going around all in tears: “War!” The children all shouted: “Hurray!” We were glad. We pictured war as people in budenovki*1 on horseback. Now we’ll show ourselves, we’ll help our fighters. Become heroes. I loved war books most of all. About battles, about feats of courage. All sorts of dreams…Myself bending over a wounded soldier, carrying him out of the smoke. Out of the fire. At home the whole wall over my desk was covered with newspaper photographs of war scenes. Here was Voroshilov,*2 there Budenny…

  My girlfriend and I tried to escape to the Finnish War, and the boys we knew to the Spanish War.*3 We pictured war as the most interesting event in life. The greatest adventure. We dreamed of it, we were children of our time. Good children! My girlfriend always went around in an old budenovka. I forget where she found it, but it was her favorite hat. How did we run away to the war? I don’t even remember which one it was, probably the Spanish one. I’ll tell you in a moment…She stayed with me overnight on purpose, and at dawn we quietly left the house together. On tiptoe…Shh…We took along some food. My older brother probably watched us, because in the last few days we kept whispering and putting things in little bags. He caught up with us in the courtyard and brought us back. He scolded us and threatened to throw out all my war books. I spent the whole day crying. That’s how we were!

  But now it was real war…

  A week later German troops entered Minsk. I don’t remember the Germans themselves then, but I do remember their technology. Big cars, big motorcycles…We didn’t have and had never seen any like that. People became deaf and dumb. They all had frightened eyes…Foreign posters and leaflets appeared on the fences and posts. Foreign orders. “New rules” came. After a while the school reopened. Mama decided that war is war, but I shouldn’t interrupt my studies and had to go to school. At the first lesson the same teacher of geography who had taught us before the war began to speak against Soviet power. Against Lenin. I said to myself: I’m not going to study in such a school. No-o-o…I don’t want to! I came home and kissed all the portraits in my schoolbook…All my favorite portraits of our leaders.

  The Germans used to burst into apartments all the time, looking for someone—now for Jews, now for partisans…Mama said, “Hide your Pioneer neckerchief.” During the day I did, but at night when I went to bed I put it on. Mama was afraid: what if the Germans come knocking at night? She tried to persuade me, she wept. I waited till mama fell asleep and it was quiet at home and outside. Then I took my red tie from the wardrobe, got my Soviet books out. My friend slept in her budenovka.

  I’m still glad we were like that…

  *1 A budenovka was a distinctive woolen hat with a pointed top and earflaps, worn by Red Army soldiers during the Russian Civil War (1917–1922), named for Semyon Budenny (1883–1973), a Russian cavalry officer who became the leader of the Red Cavalry during the Civil War and was later a close ally of Stalin.

  *2 Kliment Voroshilov (1881–1969) was a prominent military figure, one of the first five Marshals of the Soviet Union, and a member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party from 1921 to 1961. He played a major role in Stalin’s Great Purge of 1937.

  *3 The Finnish War, also known as the Winter War, was fought between Finland and the Soviet Union in the winter of 1939–1940. In the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939), Soviet troops were sent ostensibly to support the Spanish Republic against the military revolt led by Francisco Franco.

  “I GATHERED THEM WITH MY HANDS…THEY WERE VERY WHITE…”

  Zhenia Selenia

  FIVE YEARS OLD. NOW A JOURNALIST.

  That Sunday…June 22…

  My brother and I went to pick mushrooms. It was the season for the best boletuses. Our wood was not big, we knew every bush in it, every clearing, and where what mushrooms grew, and what berries, and even flowers. Willow herb, Saint-John’s-wort, pink heather…We were already going home, when we heard a thundering noise. The noise came from the sky. We raised our heads: there were some twelve or fifteen planes over us…They flew high, very high; I thought our planes never flew so high. We heard the noise: rrrrr!

  Just then we saw our mama, she was running toward us—weeping, in a broken voice. This is the impression that remained from the first day of the war—mama, instead of calling us gently as usual, cries, “Children! My children!” Her eyes are big, instead of a face—just eyes…

  Some two days later a group of Red Army soldiers stopped at our farmstead. Dust-covered, sweaty, with caked lips, they greedily drank water from the well. How revived they became…How their faces brightened when four of our planes appeared in the sky. We made out distinct red stars on them. “Ours! Ours!”—we shouted along with the soldiers. But suddenly small black planes popped up from somewhere. They circled around ours, and something was rattling and booming. The strange noise reached the ground…as if someone was tearing oilcloth o
r linen fabric…So loud. I didn’t know yet that this was machine-gun fire heard from a distance or from high up. Our planes were falling and after them followed red streaks of fire and smoke. Ba-bang! The soldiers stood and wept, unashamed of their tears. For the first time I saw…for the first time…Red Army soldiers weeping…They never wept in the war films I used to go to watch in our settlement.

  After another few days…Mama’s sister, Aunt Katia, came running from the village of Kabaki. Black, ghastly-looking. She told us that the Germans had come to their village, rounded up all the activists, led them outside the village, and shot them all with machine guns. Among those shot was mama’s brother, the deputy of the village council. An old Communist.

  To this day I remember Aunt Katia’s words: “They smashed his head, and I gathered his brains with my hands. They were very white.”

  She lived with us for two days. And told about it all the time…Her hair turned white in those two days. And when my mother sat with Aunt Katia, embracing her and weeping, I stroked her hair. I was afraid.

  I was afraid that mama also would turn white…

  “I WANT TO LIVE! I WANT TO LIVE!…”

  Vasia Kharevsky

  FOUR YEARS OLD. NOW AN ARCHITECT.