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Gulag Teenager (6)

    The house was full. The Christmas tree hanged on the wall. On the clay floor, that is on the stage, there was a bed made of hay. On the bed there were a few children, among others, Zosia, Rysio and Jerzyk. The children would say "We don´t like it here in this foreign land. We want to go home, to Poland. We want to have Christmas in Poland. We want to go to the church for Midnight Mass." And they fell asleep. Then the dream came - it was me with my hair loose, dressed in a white dress. This is what I sung:

    Sleep sweetly Polish children,
    God will keep you safe,
    You´ll return to your home land,
    When the time will be just right.

    The green forest is awaiting,
    the bright river too,
    And the cross just by the road,
    and the house that you call yours.

    By the door the dog is waiting,
    He´s so sad alone.
    Winter´s passing, summer´s passing,
    When will children come back home?

    In the church the bells are ringing,
    calling one to prayer,
    over Polish land their sound,
    sadly stretches down.

    Later we sung Christmas carols and remembered those closest to us, husbands and fathers. Are they still alive?

    The year 1943 came. The War was still on. Cold and hunger was still making life hard. Things got a little better as Zosia was once again employed at the hospital. When a calf died it would be divided and eaten with others. Only the cat had to be driven away as it was trying to get to the meat.

    Mum was bringing up the calves. Grandma was ill. I would look after the house and help mum with the calves. Grandma once again started to talk about death. She wished so much to be buried in Poland, in blessed land. She asked Mrs Teclaw to tell her future from the cards. Mrs Teclaw would cheer grandma up, but in secret she told us that grandma will die here as the cards turned out badly.

    Easter went by and as each year we were going pasturing. There was only a week till camping. In the morning on May the 15th we were to go to pasturing, but grandma was dying. For the whole night I couldn´t fall asleep. A dog howled terrifyingly under the window. I was horrified of death. I imagined it to be a white figure with a skull and a scythe in its hand. Maybe it will make a mistake and cut my head off. When the sun came through the window, grandma was dead. She died on the 15th of May 1943. We have to leave, but we have to bury grandma. What should we do? Nobody will postpone the trip. Mum decided, in consultation with the authorities, that I and Zosia will drive the calves and she will stay to bury grandma, After saying goodbye to grandma we left.

    Mum had much trouble, she wanted to bury grandma as a human being deserves, in a coffin. But there were no boards. She looked in the calf house and found two big boards. She took them to a carpenter, an older Russian man. He made a coffin like a box, but there wasn´t enough wood for the top.

    But how to bury the body in the graveyard that was six kilometres from the farm? There was no cart. A few Polish women gathered for the funeral and begun to consult together. They will not try to carry the coffin for six kilometres as they will not manage. There is a place by the farm, some two hundred meters, where there are five old graves.

    Mum took the spade and begun digging, she was crying and remembering her mother-in-law´s life. Polish women, as it was a custom, said the rosary and sung a few funeral hymns, they covered the coffin with green grass and tied some strings, and so took the body of Paulina to her eternal resting place. When the coffin was over the open pit, a cloud appeared in the cloudless sky and a few drops fallen onto the coffin. It was God from above, blessing the body. The body of Paulina Orlowska, who lived for eighty three years lay in the grave. The next day mum came to pasturing. We were all very sad without grandma.

    This summer we were pasturing only for a few weeks, as the huge heat and drought resulted in hunger. The cows were loosing weight and gave only a glass of milk and the calves too were almost dying. So they sent us back. Zosia went to haymaking. Mum and I were given sixty four-month-old calves to pasture them on the meadows, where after the haymaking the grass was quite good. I was pasturing them together with Marysia Truszkowska and mum would look after them at night. Here the mosquitoes were a huge nuisance. They bit even through the clothes. The calves would stay outside at night as there was renovation in the calf house.

    It was a terrible summer. When staying with the calves at night, mum had to sit by a fence made of dung, as then she could lean against it. Bugs would crawl on her body and bite her. She couldn´t see them as it was dark, nor could she feel them or shake them off. Only the skin would itch terribly. Mum would say it was the moths. I would sleep at home alone, as it was only Mum and I in the house now. I was very, very scared of grandma. I couldn´t sleep at all. I would think that grandma was behind the stove and was going to dye any moment.

    I was fourteen. I often visited grandma´s grave and brought her colourful flowers, most of the time it were purple limonium.

    There was nothing to eat. Only to the pasturing would they bring bread from time to time. A few kilometres from the farm there was some self-sown millet. Mum would take my place pasturing and I would go to pick it.

    I think I was grown up by then, as I would not only work with the calves but also fetch food and fire fuel for the whole family. Almost every day Zosia would come from the haymaking to eat some millet grits.

    One day Marysia was ill with a malaria fit and I was pasturing the calves. I was so hungry, but I only had a bottle of water. And then I saw three cows pasturing. Without thinking much I poured out the water and went to milk the cow into the bottle. I had half a bottle when suddenly I heard the calves lowing. When I looked I saw four wolves walking about them. The calves gathered together and lowed loudly. A moment longer and the wolves would have begun their bloody feast. In time I run up to them with a loud cry and driven them away. The constant fear of court and prison as well as the hunger and cold left a strong mark on my psyche.

    On another occasion together with Marysia we were pasturing the calves. Then suddenly we saw a dogcart coming our way. It must have been the kolkhoz president from the headquarters - Jevtiejev. He was the only one who escaped recruitment to the army, as there was somebody needed to govern the kolkhoz. Yes, it was him. The dogcart stopped, the president climbed down and left the horse by a hay stack. He was walking towards us. He looked into our eyes and said in Russian "I came to see if you are working well, to see if you like this work." What were we to say? Together we answered "Yes!" "Are you not scared of rabbits?" he asked. "We are not even scared of the wolves" I answered quickly. He shook his head, climbed up the dogcart and left.

    One summer afternoon, mum sent me to our good friend Mrs Wiszowata, who lived on another farm. Before the war she lived with her husband near the village Obryki. They owned an estate. Her husband was imprisoned and she and her children were sent to exile. Her older daughter Alina was same age as me, then there was her son Edek and the younger daughter Danusia.

    I didn´t go to meet Alina as she wasn´t home. She was in a hospital in Pavlodar. She had dysentery. Behind the Farm No. 2 there was a small river where Edek would fish with a fishing rod. On that day all the fish Edek caught were for us. Mrs Wiszowata promised so to my mum. When I was walking there I was praying that Edek would catch many fish. We went to the river with him. The fish were biting. Edek caught big pieces. In a short time the bag was full. I said thank you and went home, finding it hard to carry the bag. It was an amazing present. There are good people in the world - I thought.

    September came. The thought that instead of being at school I was pasturing was depressing me. The Kazakhs came back from the pasturing and now our calves would stay in the calf house most of the time and only for a few hours out in the field. Marysia wasn´t helping any more. I had more time now, so I would not only collect the kiziaks together with mum, but we would go to pick origan seeds. These would lie on a stubble in heaps, left by a combine. This horrible stuff we would pestle in a churn and then boil or make cakes with it. It was difficult to swallow, but we would eat it.

    It was already October. I would freeze while pasturing as I was barefoot . I didn´t want to use up the shoes. I liked to carry the hay with the fork. They would bring it every day. I would put on as much as possible and carry it on my back. Mum would tell me to take smaller amounts, but I did as I liked. And then I was punished for my disobedience. When I put on a large amount of hay and stood the shaft against the ground in order to place it on my back something broke in my back, so much that one could hear it. For a few days I was lying in bed in pain. Everyone said I was going to be hunchbacked, but God didn´t let it be. With each day I was feeling better and after a week I left the bed.

    It was All Soul´s Day. Zosia and I went to visit grandma´s grave to pray for her soul. It is a Christian custom to pray for the departed. Among the collapsed graves there was grandma´s body resting. Who were her companions? No one knows. There weren´t any plates giving away the names. Even grandma´s grave was almost levelled with the field. It was only an ordinary pasture field. The small cross, which mum placed on the grave was knocked over and trampled by the cows. There wasn´t a fence. We kneeled on the snow, over the grave and loudly said the prayers. A strong wind was blowing and it was snowing. From time to time a bush of bent grass would roll over the graves. It was a sign of a late Siberian autumn. Nobody ever again visited the grave of my beloved grandma. Maybe only once a year a bush of bent grass would halt over her grave to say the Angelus, that is, if the wind will allow it.

    This autumn wasn´t a lucky one for me. I got dysentery. We had to go to a doctor all the way to Pavlodar. It was a long journey. Zosia took over our work from us on top of her own duties, as once again she was working at the hospital, and so mum and I went off. Half the way we went by a country wagon. There was a little snow but the sledge ride was not much good. After a night at a hostel by the road, where one had to sleep on the floor on hay and without any bedclothes, we set off again, partly by foot partly on a country wagon. With some difficulty we finally got to the town. Mum had the address of Mrs Pastuszkowa where we spent the night. At the surgery they did tests and said that the illness wasn´t dangerous, that I don´t need to stay in the hospital and that overall I am healthy. They gave me medicines and I felt better straight away. During the journey we had no food and that helped me much. I don´t know however, how I had the energy to walk and the will to live.

    Once again we spent the night at Mrs Pastuszkowa´s, who was our neighbour in Wšsosz. She lived in Pavlodar with her youngest son Stefan. After getting home I felt better each day. I didn´t go to work as I had a note from the doctor. Mum´s job also changed even though she didn´t have a note from the doctor. Once again she was a milkmaid. I would help milk the cows, but they gave so little milk that my help wasn´t needed.

    The hurt manager would tell mum that she was milking the cows the wrong way. Once when mum was milking he stood over her and looked and when she finished he begun to shout that the cow wasn´t milked properly. He then milked it himself. He did it for a long time and got maybe half a glass of milk. He then begun a long litany of insults and curses. Then he gave a patriotic speech that the war was on and that everyone is trying to help the Soviet Union win, that she is their enemy and wants to drive them to ruin, that she works dishonestly and that together with her daughter robs them. All the time I was so eager to work and now I was punished. And how mum got told off!

    He then said that he will take mum to court, that she was not to come to work the next day. Mum, crying and worried came home and told us about this whole incident. She begun to think what we were to do. I begun to imagine how mum and even I were being judged and people would shout "Lock them up! Lock them up! Make them die in prison!"

    Mum begun to pack things. We had to run away. Zosia had to stay as she didn´t have a passport. One couldn´t go anywhere without the documents as they could suspect one of spying.

    We are running away to Pavlodar, but for the time being to the other farm, to Mrs Wiszowata. And so on a December night each one of us put a bundle onto her back and we set off. Mrs Wiszowata welcomed us very warmly. Zosia only walked us there. Mrs Wiszowata felt sorry for us and she and mum talked whispering long into the night. Then the next day came. It was the day of Christmas Eve. Since the morning buran was blowing wildly. It seemed that we had to wait till it calm down. The Vigil was made up of a recollection of times before the war when, back in Poland, people would prepare twelve dishes for the occasion.

    We sung carols. If only buran would stop. It did about mid day. Now the house had to be cleared of snow. Even though it was daytime it was dark inside. Edek said that he is a man and he will do it himself. He was only twelve years old. But Alina and I insisted on helping him. Somehow we managed to get out. We cleared off some snow from the door and windows. Then we saw something funny.

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