Tanya shouted at them to shut up with their Stalin. Because two of her uncles had been attacked as kulaks, and her father had rotted who knows where, and she and her mother had to live from hand to mouth, and with the Germans they could at least eat normally for the first time, and she’d even fallen so deep in love that she’d almost gone mad.
The Komsomol girls shouted: “Fascist whore!”
She shouted at them: “Stalinist dogs!”
They jumped on one another and started fighting. Then other girls got involved: some for Tanya, some for the Komsomols.
What a scene! Everyone all around was fighting. I wanted to get through to the wall, but I didn’t have the strength. They all began fighting in bunches, then the train started suddenly and tossed us around. Gracious! Where did all that strength come from — we hadn’t eaten in two days!
A couple of times I got slugged in the kisser, and sparks filled my eyes. People rarely fought in our village. Only in the spring, during the planting. Or at a wedding. In springtime — it was over fields. Someone would always get their head cracked open with a coupling bolt. At weddings — it was because of moonshine. They’d distill it from potatoes, set it on the table, drink — and start fighting.
My late grandpa told us stories: once there was a wedding, the guests sat down, drank, everything was calm, people were eating, the young people were kissing. But everyone was bored. One guy sat and sat, then sighed and said, “Well, someone has to start!”
He hauled back and slugged the guy sitting across from him right in the face. The guy fell head over heels, and the fight started.
Well, I don’t know what would have happened if not for that half-wit idiot. She was sitting there near her pile and dozing, but as soon as the girls started fighting — she woke up. And oh did she howl! She was probably scared out of her wits, being half asleep. She scooped up some shit from the pile — and flung it straight at one of the girls! Again! And again!
They all squealed bloody murder! But they stopped fighting.
Then we came to a halt somewhere before Kraców. We stood and stood and stood. We stood there almost the whole night. It was stifling. Some cried, while others slept. Some laughed.
The four of us made it over to a corner and sat down. It was dark, and somewhere far away outside we could hear someone playing on a harmonica. Right away I began remembering home, Mama, Grandma, and Gerka. The tears came all by themselves. But I didn’t cry out loud.
Our life hadn’t been bad: Father earned money from selling timber, and not from a workday salary like on the collective farms. Not because he wasn’t from the village — he just got lucky. One time he pulled Matvei Fedotovich, the forest warden, out of the bog. When he worked as a ranger he learned to hunt. What would you expect? After all, he spent all his time on a horse with a gun. When something jumped out —
bang
! Our forest warden loved to hunt, too. So they would go out and hunt together. Once, when they were duck hunting in the Butchinsky swamp, the forest warden stepped into quicksand and was pulled down. Father pulled him out. The old forester, Kuzma Kuzmich, had been murdered by Gypsies, so there was a job open. And the forest warden just up and appointed father! He became a forester. He got paid 620 rubles salary every month.
When you have money you can get by. Other men, as soon as winter hit — they’d be off to the city to earn money and buy something. You can’t buy anything with workday credits. They’ll give you potatoes or maybe rye. Sometimes it was oats. They’d boil and boil the oats in a cauldron all winter and eat them. Like horses.
But we ate well. We kept a horse, a cow, two pigs, geese, and chickens. We always had lard. Once in a while Mama would fry eggs in the morning on the big frying pan — they swam in lard! You’d take a piece of bread and dunk it — glorious! And afterward — buckwheat blini with cottage cheese....You’d dunk them, and wash them down with baked milk — oh it was delicious! We had honey too, we bought it at the market. Father bought me boots at the market, too, and a princess doll, and four books so I could learn to read.
The other girls only had alphabet books, but I had real books with pictures:
The Magic Horse
,
Soviet Moscow
,
The Gingerbread Man
, and
The Wolf and the Seven Kids
.
The market was amazing, wonderful! Some mornings father would say: “So, then, Varyusha, what about going to the market today?”
I would fly out ahead of mother to harness the horses! Oh how I loved to harness horses! Father taught me when I was a small child: there weren’t any grown boys in the family! And I rode horses well — what else do you expect? I was always around horses: first there was Frisky, then Zoya, who was stolen, and then Boy.
I’d take them out, brush them down, and hitch them to the cart with the painted backboard. Father would put on his calf boots, fill a new powder bag, and sit down in front. Mama and I always sat in the back. The whip went
crack
!, and off we’d go. It was thirty-six versts from our place to the market. It’s in Zhizdra. What didn’t they have there! All kinds of dishes, and rugs, and yokes. I loved the toys. One man sold little painted whistles. Another one sold toys: a peasant and a bear working in the forge. And there were all kinds of dolls. Good ones.
Everything would have been fine if father hadn’t been a drinker. Mama said that’s why there weren’t any more children...
On the other hand — why remember the past? The Germans burned the village anyway.
So I bawled quietly.
That’s right. We stood there and stood there. Then in the morning the train jerked. We moved along awhile and stopped: Kraców. Girls started standing up — we’re here! Then someone slid the door back — and there were the Germans. They were looking at us, saying something. One of them held his nose and turned away. They started laughing: the stench in our car was strong. Then a Pole came over with a bucket of water. The Germans said, “
Trinken!
”
The Pole handed us the bucket. We began drinking one at a time. We drank up one bucket, and he brought another. We drank up the second as well. He gave us a third! I wasn’t really very thirsty, but when my turn came, I started and couldn’t stop, like I was in a trance. They barely got it away from me.
Altogether, our car drank four whole buckets of water.
Then two Poles drove a cart over. It had chopped-up pieces of raw horse meat on it. And one of them began shoveling the pieces into our car. He tossed them. The German shouted: “
Essen!
”
And they closed the door again. We stood there, and then — what else could we do? We all tried to sort it out: if they’re feeding us, then that means that we’re going on farther, to Germany itself. And how far is it? No one knew. Maybe two weeks or more? Maybe a month? Europe is big. Maybe even bigger than Russia.
We were hungry. We tore that raw horse meat into smaller pieces and chewed on it.
The train kept on going. We didn’t stop for long anymore. Probably the railroads were better in Poland, so our train moved at a clip.
I chewed on the horse meat and fell asleep for a long time. I slept and slept, like a corpse. I was exhausted, of course. And it was scary. Whenever I was scared — I got sleepy. As soon as Father started beating Mother — I’d start yawning from fear. My head would hurt. I felt like lying down on the floor and not getting up, like sleeping until it was all over.
One time, Avdotia Kupriyanova and I got lost in the forest. We were sent to gather mushrooms, and she said: “Var, I know a secret mushroom glade, there are only white mushrooms growing — let’s go.” So she took me to that field. She walked on and on, and led me into such a thicket that I got scared: the trees were huge, you couldn’t see the sun, it was dark as night.
We were lost. It was terrifying! There were wolves in our parts, and in ’30 a bear ripped two cows to shreds. As soon as Avdotia saw that we were lost she began howling like a total idiot! What could I do? We went on, and I pulled her by the hand. Then I got so scared that I lay down under a bush and fell asleep. She fell asleep next to me. When I woke up — we’d been found. The road was nearby, some peasants were heading for the fields, we heard them. We shouted. They came over. Mother said it was a miracle...
I woke up when they slid the door back and shouted: “
Stehen auf! Aussteigen! Schnell! Schnell!
”
We got up little by little and crawled out of the car.
We crawled out onto an enormous public square. Not exactly a train station, but the sort of place where trains park, drive up, and drive off. I’d never seen anything like it: lots and lots of tracks, and freight trains standing idle. Whole trains with timber, and empty cars. And cisterns. There were soldiers everywhere.
They made us line up next to the train. Four people had died along the way, who knows from what. They were immediately taken away.
A German stood on a box and began speaking in Russian. He said that now we were in the great country of Germany. This was a huge honor for us. For that reason we should all work hard for the good of Greater Germany. He told us that we would go to a filtration camp where we would be given good, good clothes, and our documents for living in Germany would be processed. And then we would go to different factories and plants where we would live and work. All of us would be fine. And the most important thing for us to understand was that Germany was a cultured country, and that everyone in it lived happily. And that young people were even happier than others.
Then we were formed into columns and led off.
We walked from that place. We walked about seven versts. We arrived at a large camp with a barbed-wire fence and guard towers. Germans walked around with German shepherd dogs, and there were cars.
We were divided into barracks: girls separately, boys separately. There were bunks in our barracks. And there were other girls too — from Poland, Belorussia, and the Ukraine. But there weren’t very many of them. They told us that no one stayed here more than three days: they put us through the camp and then took us to our workplace.
We asked them — where will you send us? They said, “Different places.” No one could know for sure. And if someone got sick — they’d go to the work camp. That was the worst of all. They beat you with bricks there.
We stayed put awhile and then we were taken to the hygiene processing center.
It was an enormous bathhouse — gracious! I’d never seen anything like it. It was a huge sort of barracks — all brand new, and smelling like fresh boards. As soon as I entered and smelled that smell, I remembered our saw mill at Kordon. How I would ride behind the board when Uncle Misha’s place was being built. We built him such a beautiful house, father got the best lumber. Then Uncle Misha went and hung himself. These things happen.
First thing they did in the barracks was line us up. Then they began taking us off three at a time.
I went with two other girls. There were tables, and German women in army uniform were sitting there writing something. But one stood holding a kind of crop. And she talked in Russian: “Take your clothes off.”
We undressed. Stark naked. She looked at us front and back. Then she looked at our hair. Everybody had lice. I had lice too, what do you expect? She pointed her crop at two of the girls, and gestured toward a pile of hair: “Haircut!”
One girl began sobbing. The German lady snapped the crop across her bottom. She laughed. The girls sat down on the chairs, and women with clipping machines descended on them. She didn’t tell me to cut my hair. She pointed the crop at the door of the bath: “Go in there.”
I went in. It was sort of like a steam room. But there weren’t any basins, just iron pipes with holes in them up above. Lukewarm water sprayed out of the holes. I looked at those pipes — what was I supposed to do? I stood there awhile, then I went on. Then there was a kind of dressing room. Again there were German army ladies. And tables with different kinds of clothes. The German lady gave me a clean undershirt and a blue scarf. She nodded at the exit. I went out and found another dressing room. Our clothes were there. But they smelled funny. It turned out that this was the place where we’d undressed. The barracks were built in a kind of circle, like the carousel at the fair. The same German lady with the crop said, “Get dressed.”
I pulled on the new underclothes, then the wool stockings, and my green dress. Then a sweater. Then my padded coat. My old head scarf wasn’t there. They took it. My old undershirt wasn’t there either. I tied the new scarf around my head. And the other girls, their hair already cut, went to wash.
The German lady said, “Sit down at the table.”
I sat down. There was another German woman across from me too. She also spoke Russian: “What’s your name?”
I said, “Samsikova, Varya.”
“How old?”
“Fourteen.”
She wrote everything down. Then she said, “Stretch out your arm.”
I didn’t understand at first. She repeated, “Give me your arm!”
I stretched it out. She put a stamp on my arm —
bam
! It was a number in ink: 32-126.
Then she said, “Go over there.”
There was a door. I opened it. I was in the yard. A soldier with a machine gun pointed me to another barracks. As I approached it I started to smell food. Lord, I thought, are they really going to feed us? I thought I was walking, but my legs ran all by themselves. Behind me some more girls came out. They ran, too.
We went inside. It wasn’t a barracks, but a lean-to made of planks. Under it there were these huge cauldrons, about ten of them, and there was food cooking. There were Germans with bowls and ladles, and some of our people, who’d already come out. The Germans gave everyone an empty bowl. They gave me one, too — and we got in line. I waited my turn, and a German put a ladleful in my bowl —
plash
! It was pea soup. Thick, like porridge. But nobody had a spoon. Everyone sucked it over the rim.
I sipped it up quickly, wiped up the bowl with my hand, and licked the soup off.