I don’t know where the bodies went or who took them as there were no wagons that hauled away the dead like in our village. This was a healthy town where things like this were not supposed to happen, I found out later. I wondered how long it would be before all of us would die and there would be none left.
Occasionally, one or two Children would wander in on their own asking for a piece of bread or be pushed through the door by a relative, usually a woman as desperate as Auntie had been when she left me here. It was like a never-ending procession to the grave, but rather than having the music of a choir to sing the Children’s last rights, they were accompanied by a whispering dirge of coughing, crying and moaning. There was no parent to mourn their passing and no priest to bless their journey as they returned to the bosom of their ancestors. There was certainly no hymn of Memory Eternal either.
Whenever I was left to wrap a dead Child on my own, particularly if I was sure that no one could see me, I would fold his hands in prayer the way I had folded little Maria’s in our cottage so long ago. I wondered if God could see us suffering Children. Some days I was even angry that he had “chosen” me as Godfather had said. Why should I be the chosen one? Why did I have to suffer?
I no longer attended any of the classes that were held in the big room.
“I’m supposed to teach every one of these orphans,” Comrade Professor said to Ivanovna on one particularly dreary January afternoon. “She’s on the roster. When the Thousander comes to check, I’ll have to answer for her lack of progress. Besides, she’s probably the most intelligent one of the lot and stubborn, too. Remember even a good paddling with the porridge spoon didn’t get her family name out of her. Someone has been doing a good job with her studies.”
“Tell the Thousander to send me a good nurse so that you can have her back,” Ivanovna said. “I can hardly do my job with not enough medicine or blankets never mind that they don’t send a decent nurse. My term out in this uncivilized wasteland can’t be finished soon enough. Besides, why should you put yourself out for her? You know that once she’s been in an orphanage, she’s marked for life. She’ll never be accepted as a complete person. She’ll be put in one place like this or another so she might as well get the practice she’ll need to survive. You know they’re called Father Stalin’s bastards in real society.”
“Well, just maybe, this is one of the poor wretches who has the brains to make it out, and she’s very, very pretty.” He lingered over the last sentence and looked me up and down the way Uncle Ivan had when I last saw him.
I winced.
“Why don’t you take that sour one over there? She’s much bigger and much stronger.” Comrade Professor motioned toward Larysa. “She’s as dumb as a post and as miserable as an old witch. If she catches something from the others it really would be no loss.”
“If she’s a poor student, what kind of nurse do you think she’d be?”
So my chance for relief was only at mealtime, if one could call a meagre spoonful of porridge a meal. I continued to wait till close to the end of the line for my daily serving. I could choose my place as none of the healthy Children wanted to be near me. I would see them exchange knowing looks or turn their noses up when I got too close to them. Whether I smelled badly or whether they were afraid that they would get sick from me, I never knew.
I sat or stood, rubbing my feet which were often numb from the cold. I had nothing to say to my fellows. I didn’t want to think about most of what I had to witness each day. I kept my ears open for Ivanovna’s next command hoping that it wouldn’t come when I was trying to eat. I did her bidding like some automaton, looking straight ahead, not thinking or feeling lest some unseen monster would pounce on me and rip me to shreds. But the monster was real and right there in front of me. It wasn’t a person or an animal. Yet, the spirit of poverty and deprivation was a force that beat on my soul worse than any metre stick or fist of Asimov’s.
One evening, as I waited for the others to get their spoonful of porridge, there was the customary knock. This knock was barely audible, not like the usual sharp “let me in so that I can drop my precious burden and run away” knock that relatives often used.
“Let the wretch in, Philipovna,” Ivanovna said from the stove. “My hands are full. Marina Nikolaiovna, see to the new street urchin. What else could it be on such a cold and nasty night?” She pushed past me with her tray of potions as she went on to her usual duties in the sick room.
I opened the door. A small woman wrapped in a beet red shawl and carrying a bundle was blown in by a blast of the winter wind.
“Close that door,” Nikolaiovna said. “We’ll all freeze at this rate.” She motioned for Gregory to help me.
He lifted the limp woman while I disengaged the bundle from her stiff fingers. I didn’t have to look to know that beneath the layers of blanket there was a Child. I unwound the platok that the poor mother wrapped around the Child’s head. I noticed that it was made of very fine wool and hand printed with an exceptionally beautiful flower design. Auntie Lena showed me and Xenkovna one very much like it that she brought from Kiev when she and Auntie Liza had gone there.
“Where did these two come from?” I said.
“Who knows?” Nikolaiovna said. “You should be asking where we’re going to get more porridge to feed them. Bring the baby to the fire. The sooner it warms up, the better.”
“No,” I said. “Look at its cheeks. They’re white. Doesn’t that mean they’re frost bitten? Shouldn’t I let it warm up a little bit at a time?”
“How did you know that?” Ivanovna asked, going back to the stove with her empty tray.
“A doctor told us once — once when Auntie went ... well it doesn’t matter where she went. The twins died anyway.” How could I have almost blurted out such a thing? My stomach twisted as all eyes in the room focused on me. How could I almost let our family’s biggest secret slip out so easily? I held the bundled baby against me and slid down to sit on the floor. My face must have given something away because Gregory took the woman’s red shawl and awkwardly put it over my shoulders.
“Ho,” Larysa shouted. “That’s not hers. Why does she get to wear something nice like that? I’m the one who has to go out in the cold for water. I need it more than she does.”
She bounded across the room with her hand positioned to grab the shawl.
Gregory stuck his foot out just as her fingers touched its edge.
Larysa tripped and fell face first to the floor knocking Ivanovna’s replenished tray from her hands as she was making her way back to the sick room.
“What do you two think you’re doing?” the enraged Comrade demanded. “You’ve spilled the whole tray of medicine! I don’t have enough of it as it is. I’ll teach you uncivilized animals how to behave.”
I hugged the bundle in my arms and rolled out of the way into the sick room as Ivanovna’s quick hands found the broom and administered a vicious beating to both Larysa and Gregory while the others numbly stared. Larysa fought back howling and crying like a wounded wolf, but Gregory stood there, like Mitya had in the school room with Asimov, staring into space without making a sound or shedding a tear. I wanted to cry myself, but my chest was so tight that I couldn’t breathe and I wanted to vomit even though there was nothing in my belly to bring up.
When the dust settled, I was allowed to keep the shawl as it was clear that its owner was dead. Ivanovna ordered Nikolaiovna to take some of the dead woman’s clothing so that it could be used for one of the orphans. This was not a surprise to me as I had seen her take off usable clothing from other dead Children in the sick room. It was usually done out of our sight and the recipient never knew where the clothes he or she was given came from. Sometimes, the Child hadn’t even quit breathing before the Comrade was salvaging a shirt or pair of pants for another of her living charges. There was never a pair of stockings because all of our feet were wrapped in rags ripped from sheets or blankets that were wearing out or torn. It reminded me of the night Aunt
ie tried to put the Unravelled One’s shawl around me. At least this one was red, not black like a Baba Yaga’s shawl, there were no insects in it, and I was too cold to care.
The baby woke up and started to cry. I took my first good look at it. She turned out to be a little girl about the age of Maria and Marta when they died. Her cheeks were hollow with circles under her big eyes. I could see that she was once a beautiful Child. Then she looked right at me. I had to turn away. Those hazel eyes! Which one of the twins was she? I could swear that it was Marta or Maria coming back from Heaven. I scrunched my eyes shut and shook my head. I looked again.
She cried some more. Her face changed. She was not one of the twins any longer. I sighed in relief. I tried to give the baby to Ivanovna.
“What do you expect me to do with it?” the Comrade said. “Can’t you see my hands are full?” They were. Ivanovna had retrieved her tray and was mixing, measuring and pouring as usual. She motioned to Larysa.
Larysa hissed something at me down her swelling nose and cleaned up the supper bowls. I turned towards Nikolaiovna.
“I have to get the little ones to bed,” she said with a sympathetic smile. “I’ll thin out a little porridge and you can feed her.”
I stiffened in horror. Xenkovna did such things. What did I know about feeding babies?
“It’s not that difficult. Take very small spoonfuls. Put a little into her mouth at one time. I’m sure she’ll eat it because she’s probably very hungry. You’ll be a little mother in no time.”
Truer words were never uttered. Since the Comrades were always busy, the care of the new arrival fell to me whether I wanted it or not. It was determined that, though the Child was tiny, she must be about two and a half years old. Once she got warmed up and accustomed to the orphanage, she ran about like other toddlers her age.
The surprising thing was that she attached herself to me. Whether it was the recognition of her mother’s shawl from her point of view or those hazel eyes that looked so much like those of my dead twin cousins from my perspective, I never really knew. But we became inseparable. Since we didn’t know her name, I called her Malenka, meaning Little One. In turn, especially when one of the Comrades was irritated with me, I was called Little Mama. Nevertheless, I slept, ate and worked with my new charge attached to me as if she were another appendage.
At first, I resented Malenka, but she always brought back the memories of the twins. I never let her cry for long. I remembered all of the times I refused to play with Marta and Maria, the afternoons I lingered in the woods with Mitya, instead of caring for them while Auntie and Xenkovna were busy with supper preparations, and the times I ignored the twins’ tears if they fell down. Perhaps God sent this little Malenka just for me.
“Please, God,” I said. “I can show you and Mama that I can be really nice to little Children.” I doted on every smile, every little giggle and every new word Malenka learned. She was the little sister I should have known, the doll I never had. The Comrades didn’t mind when I took a few minutes out of my work to play with her. Caring for her gave me more energy and made the otherwise endless days move a little faster.
Soon after Malenka came, I was wiping her face and neck after feeding her porridge. I almost cried out in surprise when I discovered a little gold cross on a fine gold chain tucked beneath her under clothes. I was glad that no one was paying attention to us. This little girl must have come from a well-off family as her mother’s shawl was soft and warm. But what if she didn’t? Maybe, the cross was passed down through the generations like the cross Mitya had in his wooden box that was recovered from the Unravelled One’s cottage. Either way, it was Malenka’s inheritance like the beautiful platok and red shawl that I wore.
I knew that I should save them for her, if I could. But it was so cold that any article of clothing that was put down anywhere was immediately picked up by someone else. The cross was someone’s promise to God—a promise to take care of this Child in the parents’ stead. I knew all about that from the day I stood on my mother’s sewing machine on the last day in my father’s home. Maybe this was God’s reason for keeping me alive. Maybe, I should be her Godmother since she had no one else to take care of her. I decided to do the best that I could.
“Don’t worry,” I said to her sleeping angel face. “I won’t let anything happen to you—just like Auntie never let anything happen to me.”
I would hold the little cross between my fingers as we fell asleep each night. I silently prayed for my living family and for the protection and guidance of my dead ancestors. I prayed that I would find my way out of this terrible place and that, some day, I would bring Malenka home to Auntie and Xenkovna so we could drink tea and eat freshly baked bread. I wouldn’t let myself think of the smell of it when I prayed.
The memory of that smell haunted me many nights as it was. I dreamed of the day when I could show Malenka off to Uncle Misha and the big boy cousins. I cried when I realized that she would never play with Viktor and the twins. I dreamed about how Mitya and I would take her to the river to pick mushrooms and how we would lift her up into the cherry trees. That would be the very best— to see her little hands and face dripping in sweet red cherry juice and to know that we would never be hungry again.
But dreams are dreams, fleeting moments of imagined desire that draw the sufferer into a future that is dark and vast, like the carrot that pulls the hopeful horse forward when his legs can no longer lift themselves to put one hoof in front of the other.
The day came when the diphtherial croup took hold in the orphanage. Ivanovna blamed it on a little boy who wandered in by himself several weeks after Malenka arrived, but the truth was that we never really knew who got it first. One morning, as I was stretching my cold legs, I heard it.
“Bark, bark.” A sound you never forget. It came from one of the littlest Children.
“That sounds like the cough from the croup,” I said without thinking.
Ivanovna’s look could have struck me down dead.
“We don’t have such things in our homes,” she said. “That only goes on in your villages and farms because Ukrainians don’t know how to care for sick people. Their doctors aren’t as well educated as us Russians.”
“It sounds like the croup.”
“What would a little snipe like you know about the croup anyway? You think that you’re some kind of doctor.”
“No, Ivanovna. I don’t know a lot about the croup, only that Children die from it. My Auntie — she’s the one who’s the healer. People come from all over for help and she knows about herbs and ...”
“These herbs and potions you people use are from the dark ages. They’re old wives’ tales and have nothing to do with science. Do you know how many years I studied before I could call myself a doctor?” She scowled at me.
“No, Ivanovna.”
My tongue ached from holding it still and not shouting back at her. I knew that she was wrong. There were many folks who had come through Auntie’s door for healing. Auntie was well known for making them recover from all kinds of illnesses without having stepped one foot into any Russian school. My bones already shivered from the thought of how we were going to suffer and die. Yet, I stared glumly ahead and continued to do what I was told. What else could I do?
Meanwhile, the days dragged on. At first it was the little boy who barked with the cough. But gradually, those who slept around him or who played with him also began coughing. Ivanovna’s demeanour changed too. The furrows on her brow deepened. She said less and frowned more. Finally, there were so many sick Children that Larysa was ordered to help us in the sick room while other girls were put to work in the rest of the house.
“Can’t you keep these urchins quiet?” Comrade Professor said one afternoon. “How do you expect me to conduct my lessons with this racket going on?”
It had been a difficult morning indeed. Due to the spreading illness, we could all feel the growing tension in the house. The smaller Children cried at any word from Comrade Pr
ofessor. His impatience with their tears brought on the metre stick and things seem to disintegrate from there. One of the older boys coughed so hard that Comrade Professor ordered me to take the “spluttering brat” away. And none of the other students could do the recitations without forgetting or stumbling. His usual tactics lost their hold.
“They’re sick!” Nikolaiovna said. “What would you have me do with them?”
The little girl that she was holding began to cough and choke. A cloud of phlegm spewed from her gasping mouth and showered Comrade Professor’s jacket.
“Get that dirty pig away from me!” His jowls quivered in purple rage. He wiped his chin with one hand and slapped at the Child’s puffy face with the other. Nikolaiovna dodged his hand, enough to save the Child, but not enough to avoid a sound crack across her own cheek.
“You filthy tub of lard!” she screamed. She dropped the little one and charged at the man with nails aimed at his eyes. But he was too quick. He grabbed Nikolaiovna by her braided bun. He punched her with a full fist. Each time a blow landed I could hear the Comrade gasp and I cringed with each thud. I could not do anything as I already had my hands full with the hysterical Child that Nikolaiovna had dropped.
Ivanovna came rushing from the sick room. She started pulling at Comrade Professor’s arms and kicking him to try to break it up.
“Stop, stop! What are you doing? You’re going to kill her!”
But the man didn’t stop. Some of the blows landed on Ivanovna as well. The Children all began screaming. The door burst open and Gregory flew in. His armful of wood scattered in the doorway. He grabbed Comrade Professor’s metre stick and smashed a resounding whack onto his head. In his surprise, Comrade Professor let Nikolaiovna go. She fell into a heap on the floor. Ivanovna knelt to help her.
“You spawn of the devil,” the madman roared. He tried to grab the metre stick out of Gregory’s hands but the boy was quick and snapped it in half. He threw it across the room. Comrade Professor, shockingly agile for his size grabbed Gregory and slammed him against the wood stove. He held the boy there until I could smell burning cloth and cooking flesh. Then, some unknown force took over my body. I passed the crying little girl to Larysa.
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