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Gulag Teenager (2)

    The house was filled with loud crying. It was a house full of goods, as my parents were hard working and enterprising people. They run a food-meat store. Dad was a good butcher and mum a good sales woman. They also owned a few hectares of soil and few more they rented. They had a horse, a cow and many pigs. They also run a chicken farm and a dairy. They produced butter which they sold wholesale. Two people were employed full-time to do all manual chores and there was also a young boy who was learning to be a butcher. Besides, during the long winter evenings, my mum would make flowers from colourful tissue paper. She then arranged them into tall bouquets and she also made Easter palms and trinkets for the Christmas tree. All for sale. Out of the Christmas trinkets I like ballerinas the most. They looked as if they were alive and each one had a different colour dress full of frills.

    The war put an end to everything. Draws full of money were left behind...

    And now we were to leave our house, stock and equipment, our village and homeland? And we have to go to forced exile to Siberia? Perhaps we will never return. "We are only fulfilling Stalin´s orders" the soldiers said. "Your tears will not help you, if you will not go willingly, we will tie you together like animals and throw you onto the cart. You have to go anyhow."

    One of them was talking little less harshly to calm us down and told us to pack, as in the place we were going there were people living and we will live too and all things necessary to get by will become useful. He helped to pack bedclothes, clothes, underclothes and food. I didn´t know what to do and trembled all the time. I didn´t even take my school bag with the books. It seemed to be the end of my life.

    Outside the house there were already two carts waiting. One for people and the other for luggage. The morning was cool and cloudy and small flakes of snow were going down, as if the whole of nature was weeping over our fate. Soldiers with their weapons were going with us as if we were some kind of criminals. People stood outside their homes and bid farewell with their sad eyes, shaking their heads in a compassionate manner. We were travelling to the train station in Grajewo. There mum turned to higher officials to let my grandma stay in Poland. But grandma didn´t want to hear a thing of it. "I will go wherever you go. Without my daughter-in-law I will die." she said.

    They packed us into a goods wagon. There were a dozen or so families. There was one Jewish family and a fiancé who didn´t want to part with his beloved girl. My throat was tight, sad eyes were wet and sorrow filled the heart. Grandma repeated the words she used to say even before the war "Such times will come when those alive will envy the dead. The latter rest in their homeland, whereas what will be with us?"

    By that time, mum did not grief her oldest son, Stas, who died four years earlier, at the age of fifteen. "How lucky he is" she would say. By late afternoon a lengthy whistle of the steam engine pierced the air. The wagon rocked - it happened.

    Loud weeping came out of all the chests and then a hymn sounded: "Dear Mother, the protectress of people, let the orphans´ tears awake you to pity. The exiles of Eve, we turn to you. Pity us, pity us, may we cease to wander without a home..."

    In the wagon everyone became as if one family. Distress unites people is such a way. Everyone shared the food. Later in the middle of the wagon a little fire was made of small scraps of wood in order to cook something, as some passengers had flour and grit. The smoke was terrible and we had to lie down on the floor in order to breathe. The smoke would go up and out of the wagon window.

    Day by day people cheered up and sometimes would even joke. The most cheerful was a young boy called Dominic (he died in Kazakhstan during a snow storm). He constantly flirted with a Jewish girl named Sara.

    During the stops on the Soviet Union territories, Russian people would come by the wagons´ windows to exchange food for underclothes and bedclothes. This saved us, as we´ve run out of food and the portion of bread that we were given was very small. A whole month of travel is not a short time.

    One very hot summer night a terrible tragedy took place on our Farm No. 3. An older Polish woman, Mrs Ryczanowska, was murdered. She was very rich, had plenty of gold jewellery and other expensive things. She and her grown up daughter lived in the granary for very short time. Three Russian brothers: Lonka, Stipka and Sashka took them into their home. They were young and not married and were tempted by the wealth.

    The daughter of Mrs Ryczanowska and two of the brothers left for the haymaking and only Lonka, who was a blacksmith, remained. Mrs Ryczanowska was as good to them as a mother. In the evening the dogs were howling terribly. The next morning Lonka didn´t come to work and the two other brothers disappeared from the haymaking. There was a search for them. Their house was locked and the curtains drawn. The door was forced open. Mrs Ryczanowska was found dead on the floor; rolled up in a quilt and tied with strings. It appeared that she tried to defend herself as the clay floor had bumps everywhere. The view was awful, she had a blue and swollen face.

    The police was called. They brought a dog which was given the criminal´s shoes to sniff. He smelt them carefully and jumped out through a masked hole in the wall. He run for a few meters and then started to turn in different directions as he lost the trail. It was said that they masked it with tobacco. The brothers hid behind the cowsheds, in the silo burrows.

    The murderers were not found, the police left and Mrs Ryczanowska was buried. Terrible days and especially nights came. All Polish people could almost hear the murderers coming, breaking the windows, storming the houses in order to strangle and rob everyone. I can remember how I couldn´t sleep for whole nights and the slightest sound would drive me crazy. I wanted to live so much! I wanted to live and to return to my beloved homeland.

    After two weeks the situation changed. The murderers were caught and locked in prison. By that time they only had a part of the stolen goods, which were returned to Mrs Ryczanowska‘s daughter. There are different people in the world and different are their lives. This terrible, first summer in Kazakhstan was very hot and dry. It only rained once. The grain was ripening - wheat and millet, but due to the drought it was very poor. Harvest time came and mum was employed as a cook. Six kilometres behind the farm there was the so called Kyzyl Koduk (the Red Well). There was only one house there and during harvest combine operators lived in it. Mum worked there.

    It was a difficult job as there was nothing to cook or use as fuel for the fire. Mum would collect dry branches and used them to make the fire. There were no kiziaks, as there was no cattle in the area but only cultivable fields. She would make tea, it was just clear boiling water, the so called kipiatok. Sometimes some bread was delivered and the combine operators would bring grain. Mum would roast the wheat in a kettle. She would beat the millet in a large iron mortar and cook soup from the flour. She constantly thought how to smuggle some wheat home, onto the farm. She was very scared. If she got caught she would be liable to a few years in prison. But to keep oneself and one´s family alive, one has to take risks.

    One night mum was carrying about a pood of wheat home. She was trembling with fear as the night was dark. She was afraid not to get lost and not to get caught by the wolves. She kept thinking terrible things, like that she is walking through a thick wood full of wild animals. In reality she was walking through a grave yard full of tombs, which were like tall houses without roofs and with walls in the shape of a half-moon. There were noises of wild birds and something suddenly shimmered like the eyes of wolves. But all ended well. Mum hid the wheat in the stove. The next morning she was at her work place making the kipatok.

    After the harvest mum returned home. She did not however even have a day rest, but was called to work repairing the cowsheds (called the base). Mum would plaster and smooth the holes in the walls using her hands, both out and inside. Earlier Zosia did the same, before she was called to the haymaking. Mum also knew how to build a stove from clay. It was quite a job, as there were no bricks and no stove counters. She knew how to make everything out of clay. She would get hired to do this job privately, for extra money.

    At that time I would collect ears everyday at the Kyzyl-Koduk. I would get back with a whole sack, then thresh them, beating the sack with a thick stick. Then I would winnow it on the wind and grind it into flour. Zosia was working at the haymaking for a long time now, even though she was only fifteen. Her hands got used to the fork now as she didn´t have any new corns. She would spend the whole day making haystacks. These were gathered into larger stacks with the use of a valakusha harnessed with a couple of oxen. Zosia´s face and shoulders were sunburned and her nose was especially swollen and the skin was sticking off. The sun was merciless and burned unbelievably. Thirst was torturing, but there was no drinking water, as there were no containers for water available. The river Tintek, an Irtysh tributary, was a few kilometres away. However, there were marshes on the meadows. People would take water from there, or more accurately it was a thick black liquid full of all kinds of maggots, gather it into a rag and then suck it.

    The only food was bread, the half a kilo per day, and tea, that is water with some milk. Therefore Zosia would often, almost every day, come home before the sunset to eat some of the lean soup. Then she would return and sleep in the shed, as work would begin at dawn. The shed was a shack made of branches and covered with hay. I don´t know how she found the energy to perform such a hard job. She couldn´t rebel. The foreman would say that is one rebelled and refused to work, one would be imprisoned at once. A few Polish girls worked with Zosia. Sometimes they were given a longer lunch break. Then the girls would run to the Tintek for a swim. It was the only fun they had. Zosia could swim well as she grew up by the river Wissa. Once, when swimming in the Tintek, she swam too far and was taken by a whirl. She survived by a miracle.

    Tintek is a beautiful river. By the bank there are trees and one descends to the river by steps carved by its waves. I also swam in Tintek when I visited Zosia taking her some food. "The most beautiful rivers are in my homeland" I thought and longed for my river Wissa. August was coming to an end and the drought was unbearable. The grass on the steppe dried totally.

    One night we were woken by the howling dogs. What is this? Did someone got murdered again? But it was enough to look through the window to see what was happening. On the horizon there was a fire glow. Dry grass on the steppe was burning. The glow was coming closer as wind was blowing towards the farm. Everyone stood outside their homes and begun to panic. We had to escape to the meadows to save ourselves. It was dawn. The glow was getting closer. The farm manager gave all Polish people a single cart with a couple of oxen. People begun to pack everything. There was so much that the oxen couldn´t move. I was most sad about the kiziaks. I collected so many, worked so hard just to let the fire take it. A wide line was ploughed through the field and the fire was put out.

    The first of September came. The beginning of a school year. I didn´t go to school as there wasn´t one. I didn´t even have books to read. I only had my grandma´s prayer book which I´ve read millions of times. The other book I had was a borrowed volume of Wladyslaw Syrokomla´s poems. I was learning them by heart.

    Autumn was in its full. I was helping mum to dig out the potatoes. Our own ones. Mum planted a whole basket of potatoes. The seeding potatoes were the size of acorns, but the potatoes were a little bit bigger. I collected champignon mushrooms which grew up in places where dung was because some rain fell down. I also caught bushes of bent grass, tied them with a string and dragged them home to use to make fire. I was getting used to this hard life. When the Kazakhs returned from the pasturing Poles had to leave the houses and a few families moved into a single room. My family was exceptionally lucky as we were given our own flat, although very small and in terrible condition. It was a long room with one window, a stove and a common hall. Zosia returned from the haymaking, but grandma begun to get ill and constantly had to lie behind the stove.

    A Russian woman named Tatiana Szorovatova, who returned from the pasturing, became our friend. She was a widow and had two sons, Mitka and Szurka. The older was my age. She often came with her sons to visit us. The boys would tell me Russian folktales. Tatiana worked with baby calves. On Farm No.3 calves were brought up until they were four months old. When a calf was born it was parted from its mother and taken to a calf house where it was fed with a dummy.

    The woman who watered the animals would also deliver the newly born calves, up to twenty five pieces. It was called a new recruitment. Each calf had its name and was registered.

    There were a few hundred cows. There were three so called hurts, each one about eighty animals. A hurt gaffer was responsible for the hurt. Tatiana told mum to take up a job as a watering maid. She put a good word for mum with the animal breeding specialist, who was Tatiana´s lover and so mum and Zosia were employed. Mum would deliver the new recruitment and give the calves Polish names. These were names of flowers and animals. Zosia worked at the hospital with ill calves.

    The winter came. It was cold, frosty and full of snow. Mum and Zosia would leave for work at dawn and return in the evening. The calves had to be looked after - fed and watered. The dung had to be cleared. All the farm dogs fed of the calves dung. Hay and litter had to be delivered The litter was thick grass - kamysh. I would stay at home with grandma. She was laying down all the time. After all, she was eighty.

    This is how my winter day would look: at first I had breakfast, the "Lent" soup that is, I would also serve some to grandma. Breakfast was always prepared by mum, who would get up really early. Then I would take a bucket and go to the well. The well was quite a wide uncovered hole. It was about four meters deep. The water was drawn with a bucket on a string. One had to have ones own bucket and string. I would bring the water and then climb the roof in order to block the chimney with a rolled up rug. To climb the small house and the flat roof was not difficult. It was necessary to block the chimney to keep the warmth inside.

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