Suzanna sensed that Olga appreciated her but that she was unable to admit or acknowledge any gratitude. That’s how brigade leaders had to be, she guessed. Tough but sensibly inclined. One morning, while Suzanna was scrubbing the barracks floor and humming a melody, Olga came inside to retrieve a hat before leaving with the other women to labor in the forest.
She stood over Suzanna. “I was once a violinist,” the Russian woman said. “I’m not as old as I look.”
Suzanna kept her focus on the floor and never stopped scrubbing as she replied. “Citizen chief,” she said to the woman, in her competent though not error-free Russian, “You do not look old, you look vigorous and strong.”
Olga Ivanovna laughed ever so slightly. When Suzanna caught a glimpse of her from the corner of her eye, she saw the older woman faintly smiling. Was the melody Chopin? Olga asked after a moment. It had been one of the mazurkas, Suzanna told her.
KASIA WHIMPERED, BRINGING SUZANNA BACK to the reality of this particular morning and its challenge, which like every trial before and after this one, she and her mother were forced to surmount with very few resources. They could sleep for a bit. Mama had retreated under her covers. Suzanna suspected she was already asleep.
“Hush, hush,” she whispered, rocking the girl in her arms, until both of them dozed off. In a hasty dream, the kind you have when you sleep very little in the early hours of morning, Suzanna found herself in the house at 10 Mennicza Street in Teschen. She knew, in the way one knows in dreams, that nothing was real. She was in her bedroom. The window was open, and the evening air chilled her, but pleasantly. Helmut stood in the doorway wagging his tail, which meant Mama was nearby. Helenka sat next to Suzanna’s bed. She was dressed in a coat and wearing gloves and a hat. Her pocketbook, a massive leather thing, stood on the floor. Helenka had been crying, but now she was telling Suzanna a story. The words were muffled by her sniffling and congestion.
Reveille sounded, waking the women in the barracks and bringing Suzanna immediately out of the dream. Some of the women groaned, others yawned. Few got out of their bunks without making sounds of some sort, from short grunts to snorts to the rubbing of palms together. All of their bellies rumbled or growled or grumbled. The women dressed quickly—they went to bed wearing pants and sweaters and coats if they had them—and were merely rearranging their clothing and pulling on valenki, the knee-high felt boots all the zeks wore. Kasia, still deep in a feverish state, twitched. Suzanna held her and blotted the sickly smelling sweat from her forehead. Mama was already climbing down from their bunk and greeting their brigade leader, Olga Ivanovna.
“Citizen chief,” her mother said, “the girl Kasia is very ill. Permission to take her to the infirmary.”
All of the women heard Mama make the request. They turned, as if they were one, to look up at Suzanna and the sick child. Their eyes fell on the girl like an accusation. Vulnerability to contagious illnesses was high in the camps. You could die from fever.
“There, there,” Suzanna whispered, rocking Kasia.
“You may take the girl to the infirmary after roll call,” Olga Ivanovna said.
If she hadn’t been a compliant person who never challenged the authority of adults, Suzanna might have sighed in disappointment. But an ill-timed sigh on a winter morning—especially one made in the presence of all the women in the barracks—would only irritate Olga Ivanovna. She was, after all, a woman responsible for the well-being and discipline of an entire brigade. Suzanna, her mother, and Kasia were part of this brigade, even if she and Mama had the privilege of their soft jobs and Kasia didn’t work. Because of their special soft-job assignments, they were guaranteed larger kettles, and because their duties took place within the camp, they were more protected from the extreme weather. But they also suffered a kind of isolation in having these coveted jobs because they were looked down upon by most of the other zeks.
Thus, Suzanna never sighed in disappointment or exasperation; she never displayed panic or fear. But in her mind, where no one could watch or listen, she could think what she wanted to, even if she couldn’t express what she thought or how she felt. Really, she thought, Kasia ought to go straightaway to see the doctor. It’s plain to see.
Not that the doctor would—or could—really help. There was little medicine at his disposal, and the infirmary beds were usually all filled. His job, and that of the one nurse who worked with him, consisted mostly of tending to the dying. But at the very least, Suzanna thought, Kasia could rest in a real bed in the much warmer infirmary building, and eat hot soup. She’d be out of the barracks, lessening the chance that others would fall ill, too.
“Thank you, citizen chief,” Josefina said.
Natalia, dressed and ready for breakfast, had made her way over to their bunk and climbed up to see the girl, who was now in a cold sweat, shivering and shaking in Suzanna’s arms.
“I’ll hold her while you dress,” she said to Suzanna.
Suzanna pulled on her coat and valenki quickly, grateful for her friend’s kindness.
“If only it were warmer,” Natalia said.
Suzanna understood without further conversation that Natalia had a bad feeling about Kasia’s illness. Almost no one survived who fell ill in winter. But right now, right now she could do something good. She reached into her rucksack. She extracted the last sugar cube and pressed it into Natalia’s hand. After roll call, Suzanna would be going off to the infirmary and then to the laundry, cleaning the rooms of the camp’s directors, and running errands for Olga Ivanovna. She’d spend her day in and out of heated rooms. Natalia would be headed into the cold and the woods to work.
IN HIS BARRACK, PETER PULLED ON LEATHER BOOTS over his valenki. As was true of every winter morning, the cold was … well, why even try to describe it? It was like a second skin and thus impossible to vanquish. All attention was pointed toward finding warmth. After buckling the boots, he donned his coat, into which the camp-issued padding was sewn in his sister’s precise, tight stitches. Peter wrapped his hands in a thin layer of rags and then pulled on the woolen gloves his mother had thought to pack the day they left Teschen.
That day seemed so very long ago. He rarely thought about home, but when he did, Peter felt a particular rage, which churned his empty belly. He hated the Nazis for forcing his family to flee their house, their town, their country. The Germans pretended to be so cultured and refined, but really, they were barbarians. Stories told by refugees made it clear the Nazi soldiers were as uncouth as any uneducated grunt in the Red Army. Peter’s parents and grandparents and aunts and uncles had a taste for German culture—the literature, the music, the food. But he had come of age in a new Poland. He learned the language, history, literature, and music of that country. He considered himself Polish.
The cold on this particular mid-February morning was unconcerned with national allegiances. Like disease and death, it crept over everyone indiscriminately. And today, the cold had tipped over an edge, perhaps even over the minus 140° F line, which meant a possible day without labor. Peter would never say this to anyone, but he was growing weary of being expected to lead his brigade in exceeding the norms. Peter thought about Alexei Grigorievich Stakhanov, that folk hero-proletariat who, not that long ago, was emulated. Was it really true that this jackhammer operator mined fourteen times the quota? And if it was true, not mere Soviet propaganda, did Stakhanov ever tire of being such a good worker?
Stakhanov’s face had appeared on the cover of Time magazine in 1935. Peter’s cousin Hedwig Auspitz, who was fluent in English, often brought used copies of the magazine to share with the children of her favorite first cousin, Julius. Peter was a boy of thirteen when that particular issue of the magazine was published. For years, he kept it in a small foot locker under his bed, which contained other artifacts of boyhood—feathers collected in the woods, stones from the river’s edge, poems written by his father during his school days, and a coin from 1914, minted with a profile of Feldmarschall Archduke Friedrich, Duke of Teschen. Th
e magazine lay among these treasures, slipped into the brown paper envelope it had come in, addressed to Hedwig who lived at the time in Vienna. Something about Stakhanov’s face spoke to Peter. The tilt of his cap. That nonsmiling smile.
Of course, exceeding the norms also meant privileges for Peter, among them better rations not only for him, but for his fellow brigade members. His hard work helped guarantee that his mother and sister would stay in their soft jobs, and by virtue of them, larger rations and a greater chance of surviving. Thus he couldn’t tire of laboring; he couldn’t tire of his brigade’s expectations. Most importantly, for the sake of his family, he had to persevere.
On this February morning, he dressed quickly. He was to accompany his brigade leader, Vladimir Antonovich, to look at the camp’s sole thermometer. This short excursion required a detour to the guard house before the morning soup. Maybe the temperature would be cold enough to keep them from working. The zeks hadn’t had a day off for some time. Maybe they’d be lucky today.
Luck was never to be counted on by prisoners. This was a lesson Peter had to learn anew each time he nursed any hope of fortune gracing his day. You were lucky to sleep unmolested by vermin. You were lucky to make it through a night with no nightmares. You were lucky if roll call wasn’t repeated. You were lucky if no one stole your meager possessions. And you were especially lucky if you had valenki and real leather boots and were, unlike in many camps, permitted to keep both.
The zeks streamed out of the barracks and made their way to the dining hall, where they stood in line, waiting for the gray-faced, stern-eyed cook to ladle the thin soup into tin bowls. Peter and his brigade leader crossed the zona without speaking, rubbing their hands together, stomping their feet on the frost-covered flat ground, and walking at a brisk pace. They arrived at the guard house, where other brigade leaders had gathered and where a small drama was unfolding, threatening to escalate from the sound of it. The thermometer was broken; shards of glass sparkled on the ground. Gathered outside were guards and various brigade leaders, who were in the process of disputing whether the instrument had burst or was vandalized. Peter didn’t dare say that the alcohol used in an outdoor thermometer wouldn’t freeze unless it was minus 173° F. And even then, it’d be unlikely that the instrument would spontaneously burst. It was very cold, but not that cold. Vladimir Antonovich instructed him to go to the stolovaya and procure his food. He would stay to see how the argument was resolved.
“You can have my morning ration,” he told Peter. It was common practice for brigade leaders to give their rations to outstanding workers from time to time.
IN FRONT OF THE STOLOVAYA, Josefina, Suzanna, and the rest of their brigade waited their turn to enter the building. Admission was permitted only if everyone in one’s brigade was present, though brigade leaders and their deputies could absent themselves and authorize another zek to collect their rations. Peter approached them, and his mother informed him that Kasia was ill and going to the infirmary after roll call. Of course, she told him, she’d have to give something to the doctor and the nurse.
Peter and his mother had grown used to speaking in the abbreviated, unembellished language of reports. No zek ever had enough time—to chat, to catch up, to think. Josefina finished by informing her son that the men of his brigade had already gone into the stolovaya and were getting their soup. Peter nodded, and she smiled faintly. He went directly to the door and negotiated his entry with the guard. He retrieved his own serving and the second one destined for Vladimir Antonovich and then sat down to eat at a crowded table. The day might have started badly, but he was lucky to have two morning rations. Peter was a tall young man, and the taller you were, the more calories you needed. Especially to work in this kind of cold.
His mother’s worry had not escaped his notice. While her reportage was delivered with little emotion, the grim set of her eyes and mouth conveyed the trouble she was already imagining. She wasn’t overreacting, either. Peter had seen strong and young men succumb to what would have been minor winter ailments if they all weren’t starving and freezing, uncared for, and overworked.
The morning soup was thin and almost entirely skimmed of fat. A fish tail floated at the surface of the bowl. A half of a potato bobbed up and down. The luxury in Peter’s bowl was a dumpling made with flour, an item reserved only for the kettles of the best brigades. The bread ration, distributed at the barracks, had also been more substantial. The day before, Peter and his brigade had felled more trees than any other of the camp’s squads.
ROLL CALL ENSUED, AS IT ALWAYS DID. There were some things zeks could count on, Suzanna thought: reveille every morning; cold in winter, heat in summer, vermin all year round; the rush to line up outside the stolovaya, only to stand and wait; the miserable breakfast that barely softened the stab of hunger; and before a long day of work, the first count of the day.
The roll call on this particular February morning seemed interminable. The guards kept skipping numbers and had to start their count from the beginning. Maybe their brains are frozen, Suzanna thought as she wiggled and flexed her toes and fingers—rubbing hands and stomping feet were not allowed during roll call. The zeks were forced to stand motionless in formation, rain or shine, snow or blazing sun, as the guards counted them.
Finally, the count was complete. Suzanna and the other pridurki had to remain standing in the zona while the gates opened. Only after the majority of the prisoners passed through the gates were they permitted to disperse to wherever their various soft-job assignments took them.
Suzanna and her mother returned to the barracks together. Kasia was drenched in sour sweat. They removed her clothing, which Mama burned in the little stove in their barrack. Suzanna bundled the girl quickly in a blanket, and she and Josefina took her to the infirmary.
THE DOCTOR CONFIRMED what Suzanna and her mother suspected and feared—Kasia had a severe case of pneumonia; when Josefina asked about medicine, the nurse laughed.
“Did you really think we’d have such things here?” the woman asked.
Because Kasia’s temperature was so high and sustained, she required frequent rubdowns with alcohol. Her sheets would need changing and laundering. She’d need to be fed, if her appetite survived the initial infection. When Suzanna volunteered to care for Kasia after her work day ended, her mother did not object. If one of them didn’t look after the girl, no one would. The nurse and the doctor were neck-deep in tending to the camp’s other desperately ill prisoners. They, too, had quotas to meet.
After an hour or so, they managed to bring down Kasia’s fever and give her water. She finally slept, her head of fever-dampened curls on a pillow, a luxury most zeks didn’t know. Suzanna and her mother left the infirmary. They headed toward their respective jobs.
“SUZANNA ILYINICHNA, YOU ARE LATE,” the supervisor of the laundry said as Suzanna made her way to one of the empty basins in the laundry building. The woman, Anna Federovna, was severe in tone and carriage, but Suzanna knew her to be kind and fair.
“I am sorry, citizen chief,” she said. “I had permission to take Kasia to the infirmary.”
“Is she very ill?” the woman asked. Kasia had charmed all the women in the laundry, even the most hardened.
Suzanna nodded. “All night long,” she said. With that, she found a bucket and went back outside, toward the water pump. It was a terrible day to do wash, too cold, but there was always something—weather, mosquitoes and gnats, the weakness of constant hunger—and what had to be done had to be done. On her way to get the water, Suzanna remembered her dream from earlier that morning. How Helenka had been sitting by her bed. The recollection of the dream gave way to a memory of real life, of Helenka telling a story, a Polish folktale she had told so often Suzanna had memorized it. “Once upon a time there was a little girl named Zosia,” it started.
In the story, Zosia was walking home from the village market with an apron full of cabbages. She lived deep in the forest, and the walk through the woods took a long, long time. After
some hours, she paused to rest by an old linden tree. As she leaned against the trunk, she was alarmed to feel something moving about in her apron. What could it be? she asked herself. Zosia was about to let the cabbages fall to the ground when she felt something tug her skirt from behind. When she looked down, she saw a large wolf standing beside her. He was a fine specimen of an animal, muscular and bushy. His fur was pure white, like milk. He looked at her with his amber eyes. Then he snarled and bared his teeth. Before Zosia could scream, a fat and fearsome rat leapt from her apron and scurried into the undergrowth. The wolf ran after it, and the two disappeared into the dark woods.
Suzanna pumped a bucket full of water and briskly walked back to the laundry. Helenka had always assured her wolves were not evil creatures, as other fairy tales made them out to be, but generous and intelligent animals. Maybe that’s why Mama liked Helenka so much, Suzanna thought now, because they both respected dogs, domesticated or wild.
In the story, the girl Zosia hurried home. When she arrived at the small cabin where she lived, her grandmother was sitting by the fire, shelling peas.
“Nana,” the girl said. “I have a strange tale to tell,” and she told her grandmother about the wolf and the rat.
“You’re lucky that wolf came when it did,” the grandmother said. “The rat was the devil in disguise, no doubt about to do you some mischief.”
Helenka always liked to pause before delivering the moral of this fable. Suzanna could hear her voice, each syllable and inflection so familiar and yet so very far away.
“You see, Suzi, sometimes a wolf may appear scary and mean, but still it helps you,” Helenka said. “So don’t ever judge someone by how they look.”
As the water heated on the laundry’s small stove, Suzanna thought about wolves. All the zeks heard the howls coming from the forest. But rarely did they ever see the animals. In late November, however, a wolf was spotted outside the tall wooden fence surrounding the camp. A guard had shot it from the watchtower, laming the animal, who limped off leaving a trail of blood. All the Polish prisoners blamed the guard for the spate of bad luck following the incident. From the mice that ate all the flour one night to the week of nonstop rain and mud to the parcels crushed in transport—all these misfortunes were caused by that stupid guard who, out of boredom or malice, had injured a wolf. Afterward, the camp’s director issued a proclamation: no wildlife was ever to be shot in sport.
Six Thousand Miles to Home Page 14
