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Gulag Teenager (9)

    God had pity on us and there was a spark of hope. Gienek Goldowski helped us to find work and a flat. We moved to a house on Carl Marx Street. The room was small, but there were no other people. Mr and Mrs Goldowski lived near too. Zosia now moved to our flat. It wasn´t so simple though. The owners were Kazakh. They needed to know who lived in their flat. For this purpose there was a house registration book. Each lodger had to be entered and the entry correctness was confirmed each month by the registry. And each month the house owner would check the book. Luckily each family had a separate book and filled it in themselves. I was responsible for the book as I could write in Russian. I would write the surname once and then the forenames. I would write with a pencil. When I would go to the office I would rub out the name Zosia and when I returned home I would write it in again. Everything was fine but I had to go through so much fear. I remember how once in the office I would pull different strange and stupid faces so that they would pay more attention to me than to the book.

    Mum started to work at home. She was spinning wool on a spinning wheel. Half a kilo was the daily norm. Zosia did as Gienek Goldowski suggested and was to work with him at the elevator. She was to use my documents. She only had to wait till she will be a year older, as they may not accept such a young girl for such a strenuous job.

    A difficult winter begun. Christmas went by almost unnoticed. None of us had the energy or the mood to celebrate. It was a day like any other. Even the school was open. It was very cold there. This is a poem by Mrs Maria Domańska, a teacher of the Polish language. It was for the New Year.

    New Year, New Year!
    What are you bringing us?
    For the moment I am bringing you frozen ink bottles,
    For the moment I am bringing you cold stoves,
    For we are in an exclusive care.

    Out of all subjects I liked Polish the most and I liked the lady who taught it. She wasn´t young, but very talented and nice. Before the war she taught Polish at a secondary school. In my coat and with a scarf over my head, and still shivering from the cold, I would listen to Mrs Domańska´s lectures with a bated breath. When I was reading "Pan Tadeusz" in my imagination I was at these fields, painted with all kinds of grain, gold plaited with wheat, silver plated with rye.

    I would learn long poems by heart and I apparently wrote interesting essays. One day my teacher called me to the office and offered that I should write a poem. The title was to be "Yesterday and Today". The next day I brought her such a rhymed poem.

    Yesterday we were having fun,
    Today all is glum,
    Today is good tomorrow´s bad,
    In such a way the days go by,
    They appear irrelevant,
    We are far away from home!
    We are far away in exile,
    And we only have our school,
    To give us joy to make us smile!
    So we have to study well,
    And remember that a day,
    When we´ll see the Polish fields,
    Will come unmistakably.
    So don´t allow the spirit sink,
    And despite the longing,
    Lets hope that we will return,
    When the time finds its full.
    Lets try not to cry and weep,
    But instead work and love our country!
    Nothing will harm us for we are young.
    We should overcome all odds
    For our homeland is dear to our hearts!

    Mrs Domańska liked my poem, and so did the head of the school and other pupils. It was hanged on a news board in the corridor.

    The year 1945 came. We knew that the war is coming to an end and the time of our return was approaching. Zosia as the sixteen year old Jadzia (that is me) took up a job at the elevator unloading the grain. She worked with other Polish girls from Grajewo, the three sisters: Czesia, Janka and Gienia Pawlowski and another girl Wladzia Niedzwiedzka. All of them including Zosia had to carry sacks with grain on their backs. It was hard labour.

    They were surprised that a sixteen year old girl looked so grown up. It was such a joy when Zosia would bring home some wheat in her pockets. Once she brought back in her shoes some green peas and then it was an even greater joy. At school everyone got a free dumpling. It was the size of a doughnut cooked in fat and filled with meat. It was an exceptional luxury. I still remember its taste. I wished I had ten such dumplings to eat.

    It happen that some of the winter days were a bit warmer and then I would go to the market. "Siemichki, siemichki, roasted siemichki " the sellers were inviting to buy. There were so many such sellers. I would buy a siemichek but I didn´t have even a single kopeck. I only asked the price and took a few to try. Then I would go on and ask for the price taking a few to try again and again.

    Once Mrs Domańska asked me if it was true that my sister was working at the elevator. I said "Yes."

    Then she asked if I could bring her a little wheat or flour as she and her daughter had nothing to eat for the second day. She also said she will pay for it later as for the moment she had no money. When I got home I asked mum to give me some wheat to grind. We collected a few kilos by then. I was grinding and thinking what I should do. Should I tell mum? What if she will say no. I felt sorry for the teacher. What should I do? I took off a sock and filled it with flour and I took the rest home as if nothing happen. Mum didn´t suspect anything. But I had no bag to pour the flour into so I took it in the sock. How thankful she was! She returned my sock the next day. I didn´t accept the pay. Since then I would do the same from time to time.

    Mum was constantly very busy spinning the wool. She had to fill the norm. But there was some wool left behind. I begun to make gloves, socks and scarves for the whole family. I would also make them for some Polish ladies who gave me the wool and paid for the work.

    There was a typhus epidemic in Pavlodar that winter. Many Polish people got ill. I saw how on the sledge they carried whole heap of corpses across the town. There were many Poles among them, mostly Polish ladies. The corpses were buried in the snow. Each night the wolves were howling. Half way through the winter we run out of fire fuel. We had no money to buy some. I borrowed a small sledge from Mr and Mrs Goldawski and took an axe and a piece of string. Every other day when I came home from school I would go past Irtysh to get taw.

    Taw is similar to wicker but a lot thicker. Irtysh is covered with a thick layer of ice in the winter. I would cut the taw with the axe, arrange it on the sledge and tie with the string then I would pull it home.

    However there was nothing to start a fire with and the damp taw wouldn´t light up. There was a factory very close behind our house where they made safety matches. The factory was fenced with a double fence of thick railings. I thought that if I pulled one there won´t even be a gap, whereas there will be enough board for fire for the next few weeks. Otherwise we are in danger of cold and hunger.

    I came home from school and there was nothing to eat only raw flour and raw potatoes and it was incredibly cold. Mum couldn´t spin as her hands got numbed. When it got dark I walked out of the house and up to the fence. I pulled a rail with all my energy and was holding it in my hand. Then something suddenly fell on me and knocked me over. I started to scream. I realised that two tall men were pulling me by the legs. They pulled me all the way to their lodge. I didn´t understand a word they said as they spoke their own language. They were Chechens, a father and a son. They were the guardians of the match factory. Then suddenly I heard my mum´s voice. My loud cry brought her here. She came to rescue me. The Chechens now told my mum how they caught me stealing. Mum begun to talk with them, she bargained over the amount of potatoes she was to give them in return for my release. They wanted five buckets. After a long dispute they lowered it down to two. They let me out. I couldn´t calm down for a long time. A feeling left by this incident won´t leave me. I had to hew to pieces my own bed for the sleeping boards or rather and then sleep on the floor.

    I liked to go to fetch water from Irtysh. Carl Marx Street was nearest to the river. There were funnels carved by the water which one could climb down. In the winter there was always an air hole in the ice. Then on the way back one had to carry two buckets on the yoke. Water was free and that meant much in our budget. I would also wait in the queues for bread vouchers. All in all I was busy all the time. I was writing many poems which my girl friends were almost fighting for. Unfortunately I don´t remember any of them.

    There was a subject at school taught by a Russian lady, the war effort. One lesson was theory the other was a sports lesson. On theory lessons I was learning about guns and from sports I liked running the most. I was the fastest runner in my class.

    Spring came. On the 3rd of May it was the Polish National Day, a day of celebration in our school, the anniversary of the establishment of the constitution. At school there was an assembly. He school head, Mr. Jado asked me to say my poem Yesterday and Today on the stage. Thanks to Mrs Domańska he himself recited the Jankiel´s Concert.

    On the 9th of May mum told me that I will not go to school but help her plant the potatoes instead. How were we to know it was the day war ended? We didn´t have a radio.

    This year the baksha was double size. One from the elevator and the other from the artel, an institution where mum was working. The morning was warm and sunny. With the seeding potatoes on our backs we were walking through the town. The streets looked different. People walked out of their homes and shouted one to another "The bad days are gone! The bad days are gone!"

    An older Russian woman walked up to us and said it was a big feast day and we were to go back home. We were to celebrate. The bad days have passed. The war has ended!

    A shiver run through my body from my feet to my head. At last my dream will come true and we will return - I though.

    But mum behaved as if she hasn´t heard the Russian woman´s words. She didn´t answer her but walked on and said to herself "The bad days are behind you, but not behind us. The day war ended we will celebrate working." Apparently there were parades and manifestations going on for the whole day in Pavlodar, whereas mum and I were planting potatoes till late afternoon. Despite the war ending nothing changed in our life. We had to fight to survive each day like we did before.

    Spring gave me inspiration to write poems. I wrote about love. There were many boys whom I liked, although I haven´t spoken to one alone. I was sixteen. There was one thing I was worried about. At breaks my school friends would boast that they were like blooming flowers because they had periods. I still haven´t bloomed. I had to tell them as they asked constantly. Then they begun to explain and even scare me that not only was I not able to have children but I could also die. I so much wished to be a mother in the future and I was to be unable to have children? Why am I always so unlucky? My girl friends would go dancing in the Lenpark. They had to jump over the fence as they had no money for the ticket. They would meet up with boys. But I didn´t. I felt handicapped. I was ashamed.

    Apart from this the studying went well. The end of academic year was approaching. We had to change the place we lived as we didn´t have enough potatoes to pay with. We didn´t move far. The pay was just anything we had spare. We lived with two Kazakh families. One couple was childless but there was a sister there who was hunchbacked. The other couple had one daughter. She was very calm as if she wasn´t there. Only a cradle tied to the ceiling gave away that a child was in the house.

    The flat had only one room. The child was rocked and never taken out of the cradle even when it was fed. The mother would bend over it and feed the girl. At the bottom of the cradle there was a small chamber pot covered with felt which was emptied from time to time. They didn´t use any nappies. When we moved in the child had a few weeks.

    Before the end of school year there was a trip to the other side of Irtysh and then we went for a swim. Everyone was surprised how well I swam. I grew up by the river Wissa in the end. From our class no one else could swim. This time I was the best. There was also a show at the end of the year and I took part. I was a man: Tadeusz from Mickiewicz´s poem.

    I spent the summer collecting kiziaks, weeding, collecting sorrel and doing other jobs. From time to time I would visit my friend Krysia Skowrońska. We were in the same class. She was a serious and wise girl and had an artistic talent. She painted beautiful pictures. Her mum was a doctor. Sometimes Krysia and I would go to the cinema.

    There was something in Pavlodar that summer that one couldn´t see before - Russian orthodox clergy. There even were services. But these were not in the Orthodox church as these buildings were turned into factories, philharmonic halls and other shrines. My mum would go to these services as there were also prayers for the dead. After the prayers for the dead they served some food.

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