Philipovna

by Valentina Gal

  “I believe that they were just playing with me because I was old and helpless,” Auntie said.

  By the time they let her go, the first day had slipped away. She begged a cup of tea from a woman whose house was at the edge of the village. The woman gave her some bread and butter and let her sleep by her fire.

  “I felt guilty for eating the bread,” Auntie said, “but she was so kind. She said that I would find Doctor Bondarenko at the edge of the neighbouring town.”

  The next day, Auntie went to the market. She tried to sell her embroidery, but no one would buy it because there were many folks from all over our area selling embroidery, clothing, jewellery and household goods that they hoped to trade for any food that folks were willing to part with. There were stories about villagers being so hungry that they ate their own animals and sent Children away to relatives under the cover of night. Some of the peasants were getting sick because the animals they were eating were sick themselves and not fit for people to eat. Other people wouldn’t buy her embroidery because they were afraid that her house was full of sickness. The market was buzzing with rumours that people were dying of the plague beyond the checkpoints. Why else would the Comrades be prohibiting people from visiting places and family that they had always been able to visit freely?

  “I don’t understand it,” Auntie said with tears spilling out over her frostbitten cheeks. “All of the people in that area have enough to eat. They’re walking around, well-fed and warm, while inside our checkpoint we starve and freeze to death. How is it possible that there is no bread for my brother? We are all Ukrainians.”

  She had almost given up her mission of trading for wheat when she showed her silver spoon to a merchant who was closing up his business for the day.

  “Please,” she cried, “I can’t go home empty handed. My Children will surely die. They need a doctor!”

  The man felt sorry for her. He traded her silver spoon for as much wheat as she could carry in the sack.

  “God be with you—and with your Children,” he said, crossing himself, “and with all of us in these unpredictable times.”

  So Auntie started walking. She walked around the town the long way so that she could find the doctor and pass without going through the checkpoint again. But that took longer and it was harder to walk carrying the heavy sack of wheat. She decided to pace herself by walking for a while and then resting a few minutes. She went on in that way till she became disoriented, out in the countryside. As she tried circling back to the road that would take her to Zyladyn, she realized that it was getting late and she would not be able to make it back to the agreed upon meeting place. There were no houses in sight. She didn’t know any of the shortcuts and couldn’t risk trying to cross the countryside. She was getting stiff from the cold.

  “I was worried,” she said. “I knew that you would be waiting for me, but I knew that I wouldn’t get home. I prayed that God would send help.” She wiped tears away again and shivered. “There was nothing to do but keep on walking.”

  The gray twilight deepened into darkness. Auntie plodded on. There were no stars or moon as the clouds were blowing in. She tried to retrace her steps and hoped that she was on the right road. She walked till she lost the feeling in her feet. She wasn’t sure where she was, but she was afraid to stop moving because she didn’t want to freeze to death. The wind picked up. It was almost morning when Slavko and the doctor found her wandering on the road going in the opposite direction from Zyladyn.

  “It was just my luck that the good doctor had to deliver a baby. They asked me to come in,” Auntie said. “But I didn’t because I knew there was sickness in our house. So I stayed in the wagon, covered up by the blankets till he did his work. Besides, it would be safer for all of us if no one saw me with Slavko and the doctor.”

  They drove the wagon along the back roads that avoided the checkpoint at Zyladyn until they were as close to the place of the Unravelled One’s house as they could go. It was also their good fortune that Mitya was scouting around. Otherwise, they might have completely missed each other in the blowing weather as Auntie had fainted in the wagon. It would be years later that Auntie would tell me and Xenkovna about the piles of the bones of dead people who were frozen or starved to death that she saw lying by the road on the way home.

  As soon as there was a lull in the storm, Slavko moved towards the door.

  “We need to go while the wind is still blowing. That way the snow will fill in our tracks and no one will ever guess that we’ve been here,” he said. Mitya offered to help him with the horses which were in the barn. The doctor took one last look at the sleeping little Children and reluctantly followed.

  “I wish I could do more for you— and them,” he said to Auntie motioning toward the Children. He wrapped his thick scarf around his neck and put on his fur hat. “God be with you. You’re a brave woman.” He shook hands with Uncle Misha and then disappeared into the darkness.

  We sat around the fire till Auntie looked like she would faint again.

  “Why don’t all of you get some sleep,” Xenkovna said. “I’ve slept all afternoon so I can stay up with the little ones. If I need you, I’ll wake you.”

  I went to my feather bed. I was exhausted but I couldn’t fall asleep. The events of the day, the people coming and going all mixed themselves up in my dreams. One minute I was looking at Maria’s lilac-tinged face, the next I was looking at the doctor’s strange expression. The sound of the wind played its mournful drone in the background and then Xenkovna was crying. I shook myself awake.

  It wasn’t a dream. She was crying. Sitting in the chair with Maria in her lap and crying.

  “What’s the matter?” I asked her trying to be as quiet as I could so as not to wake the rest of the family.

  “Look,” she said, pointing to the lifeless Maria.

  I looked at my little cousin. Her face wasn’t purple any more. It was blue now. She lay like a waxen doll in Xenkovna’s lap and I could see by the peace on her face that she was not breathing at all.

  I picked Maria up gently and wrapped her in her blanket. I laid her in her bed and folded her little hands in prayer.

  “Come, my sister,” I said. “Let’s go to bed.”

  I took Xenkovna’s hand and led her to my sleeping bench. It was strange how at that moment we reversed our places. I tucked her under my feather bed and covered her up. I crawled in with her. Then we clung to each other and cried.

  We cried for my mother and father, for my little sibling I didn’t know, for The Unravelled One and for Mitya’s father, for Taras and his brother and now for little Maria. We cried because we knew that Marta was going soon, too, and we cried because we might also be called to join her. We cried because we were hungry and we cried because we didn’t know if there would ever be enough to eat again.

  We didn’t scream or sob like Xenkovna did earlier in the day. We wept silently, with broken hearts whose grief carried us forward on a current as strong as the current of the Dnipro River that rushed by our home and took everything in its way out to the Black Sea. We didn’t need to cry out loud; the wind was crying out for all of us, to God, for the Love of God and for all of the forsaken who would suffer after us. As we sobbed together, quietly in the house, the snow fell from Heaven in frozen, sorrowful tears. The wind moaned and howled out our pain in its unfettered fury until both of us had no tears left.

  May Day

  THE MORNING SUNSHINE was streaming into the eastern window when I woke up. It was so bright in the big room of the house that I blinked several times before my eyes could adjust to the dazzling light. From where I lay on the sleeping bench, I could see the blue sky with not a cloud in sight. I snuggled under my feather bed, staring at the snow-laden branches of our birch tree as they glittered in the sun. The air was cold and still. How could the world turn from the dark and scary place of last night into a beautiful fairyland in such a few hours? The house was very quiet. Could I have dreamed the terrible day that had passed before
I cried myself to sleep? But Xenkovna was still lying beside me. I was afraid to look beyond the window to where the twins and Viktor slept. I wondered if Auntie knew that Maria was gone and I didn’t want to be the one who discovered Marta — in case she had died while we were sleeping.

  A coughing fit from the bed by the hearth got everyone in the house moving. Xenkovna and I almost tripped over each other in our haste to get to Viktor. We could have spared ourselves the effort. From where I lay under the covers, I hadn’t seen that Auntie was there all along. She was silently weeping, looking from one dead twin to the other. When Xenkovna reached for Viktor, Auntie didn’t move. She tried to stroke Maria’s cheek and then Marta’s, but she had trouble making her hands do what she wanted. She buried her face in her arms and wept some more.

  Meanwhile, Xenkovna patted Viktor’s back and helped him cough up more white goo from his lungs. She got him some water and tried to make him drink.

  “He doesn’t feel so good this morning, Mama,” Xenkovna said to her mother. “Should I get him some medicine?”

  Auntie silently nodded.

  I stood there stupidly. I didn’t know what to do. Her eyes had such a dazed look, as if she was in a different world.

  “Auntie, can I do something?” I asked.

  She shook her head.

  “Good morning,” Uncle Misha said. “Get dressed and fetch some water, would you, Philipovna?”

  He took one look at his wife and rushed over to where she stood. When he realized his babies were dead, it seemed that his sobs would shake the house to its very foundation.

  I was relieved to do Uncle’s bidding. The fresh air felt sharp as I sucked it into my lungs like someone who has been deprived of air for months. The cold temperature assaulted my nose and cheeks, but somehow, it felt good— at least I was still alive. I breathed in deeply and blew out my breath in white clouds as I took my time retracing my steps from the well.

  Xenkovna had the big washing pot ready to fill with water. I made several more trips to the well and then, under Auntie’s supervision, I helped Xenkovna bathe the twins. I fought back my tears as we dressed them in their embroidered blouses and braided their hair.

  “It’s the best I can do,” Xenkovna said. “I hope it’s all right.” “Yes, daughter,” Auntie said, sighing. “I’m so blessed with your help. You’re doing a lot better than I can right now. I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

  “They look so thin,” I said to Xenkovna. But no one felt like talking.

  Auntie was inconsolable and I have no doubt the situation was made worse by the fact that her frozen feet would not allow her to stand and her frozen hands denied her the ability to do the last ministrations for her baby daughters. She never lost her limp and it would take months till her hands healed to the point where she could work again.

  At midday, Uncle Misha gathered us under the icon of the Last Supper. He read the funeral passages from the Bible—the one about the many mansions in Heaven where God was preparing a chamber just for us and the ashes to ashes one that we all know so well. I wondered what Mama’s room looked like. Did she already have a little corner ready for me? Auntie kissed Maria and Marta one last time.

  “I’m so sorry, my darlings,” she cried. “I tried to help you, but God took you anyway. Holy Mother! You know I tried.”

  She went back to her lamentations again. Xenkovna wrapped each of the twins in a clean sheet and then Uncle took them out to the shed. They would stay frozen out there without decaying until the ground thawed and they could be buried properly. When we finally could go to the cemetery in the spring, the Comrades decreed that we could no longer bury family members individually. The crosses and holy monuments were all smashed. So many of the villagers were dying that the Party forced the gravediggers to open mass graves.

  “Since our lives are being collectivized in the new order,” the Thousander said, “it should be no trouble to be part of a collective grave when we die. Besides, we need the land for growing grain, not for wasting on some insignificant peasant’s burial plot.”

  After Uncle Misha put the twins out into the shed, he turned our attention to the sack of wheat.

  “We have to find a place to hide this,” he said. “If the Comrades find it here, they’ll think of some tax we didn’t pay or some fat official who needs to eat. We can’t let Mama’s great sacrifice go to waste. If we’re careful, this wheat will feed us till the garden grows.”

  We spent the afternoon trying to find a good hiding place around the house. Although we examined every nook and cranny, we couldn’t find anywhere that hadn’t been already damaged or turned over by the Comrades.

  “I don’t think we should hide it in the house at all,” Mitya said.

  “How are we going to keep an eye on it then?” Michael asked.

  “We can’t. If we hide it on the edge of the kolhosp that is right next to the woods, no one will take it. They won’t think to look there. I’m sure that the Comrades think we are so scared that we won’t go onto their land.”

  “You’re right about that,” Alexander said.

  “The kolhosp?” Uncle Misha said in disbelief. “That’s too dangerous.”

  “I know a few hiding places that I used when Mama and I lived at our cottage,” Mitya said. “They weren’t part of any kolhosp then, but they were good hiding places. If we split up the wheat into small bundles, we can keep a little of it in the house for a couple of days’ worth of porridge and then hide the rest in several places. If it is not in the house they can’t take it away. If someone finds it out on the kolhosp, they can’t pin it on us.”

  “We could fetch one bundle at a time — and take turns so that we don’t attract attention,” Alexander said.

  “Well, if that just doesn’t beat my boots,” Uncle Misha said, scratching his head. “I didn’t realize I had such brave sons.”

  Mitya’s face reddened with pleasure.

  “And, remember, we can’t tell anyone about it, I mean anyone.”

  “Who would we tell?” Mitya asked. “The zone is sealed so no one comes to see us anymore.”

  “I don’t know,” Uncle said. “Words have a way of slipping out, especially in these crazy times.”

  Xenkovna and I cut pieces of sacking into squares and sewed them into small bags. She measured the wheat out into three-day lots and we poured it into the newly sewn sacks. It was agreed that no one other than the boys would know exactly where the wheat was hidden.

  After nightfall, the boys took it out of the house. They were gone for a very long time. I worried that they had run into some misadventure and Auntie was sure that they were dead. Xenkovna and Uncle Misha kept their heads together so that, by the time the boys got home, a small pot of porridge was simmering on the stove and tea was ready.

  Our new routine was established. We huddled in the house all day, reading the Bible and trying to conserve our physical energy and our wood for heating. None of the neighbours were engaging with one another either. They isolated themselves in their homes just as we did.

  We cooked at night, long after any propagandist might decide to drop in. Sometimes we had to wait till well into the night after one of the men’s mandatory meetings. We ate very small amounts of porridge with no salt or sugar to flavour the boiled wheat. There had been no salt or sugar in the house for months.

  “Thank Heavens we still have poppies for our tea. We can’t all of a sudden start looking well-fed,” Auntie said. “And we can’t let anyone smell the smoke from cooking food. That would be an invitation for more trouble. Dear God how we suffer!”

  “Woman,” Uncle said, laughing, “it would take much more than a few spoonfuls of this porridge to make us look well-fed. Have you seen how we look lately — compared to the fat Comrades?”

  Uncle took to spending time in his shed each morning. He never announced that he was leaving the warmth of the cottage, but after a week or so I followed him out.

  “Uncle Misha, what are you doing out here
? Is something wrong?”

  “Ah, you know that curiosity kills the cat, don’t you?” His eyes shone with an almost forgotten twinkle.

  My cheeks burned with embarrassment.

  “Well, you always say what you are doing ... but now you just turn your back and leave us.”

  “Can you keep a secret?”

  “A secret? What secret? Who from?”

  “You have to promise,” he said. “You can’t tell anyone. Promise.” “Cross my heart.”

  He beckoned me into the shed and shut the door against the wind. On the work bench in front of him sat a perfectly square board. He had carved lines in it so that there were sixty-four squares on the board, eight down and eight across.

  “This is my surprise.”

  “What is it for?” I had never seen a board like that.

  “Checkers. I’ll burn every other square so that it is black. Then, we’ll take these men ...” He dumped out two piles of round coins he had carved. One pile was the colour of the wood they were carved from and the other pile of coins was already scorched black. “The men will move on the squares that aren’t burnt ... the white squares. And we’ll all learn to play checkers. Don’t you think it will help us pass some of these long winter days? I wish I had thought of it earlier.”

  I could hardly stay still when I got into the house.

  “What’s going on with you?” Xenkovna said. “You’re as skittish as a bunny since you went out after Tahto.”