Just before Nina left for work, she looked at me for a second as if there was something on her mind, something she wanted to ask me; then apparently she thought better of it and merely asked me when Mother would come home.
Left alone, Grandmother and I did some exploring. There wasn’t much to see on Nina and Nikita’s place: a cow, a pig, and some chickens made up their livestock and the kitchen garden had been almost completely harvested, except for a cabbage or two, and was beginning to freeze.
Like a pair of puppies breaking tether, we went farther afield. We came upon a creek, and, seeing some wooden planks bridging it, we walked them. But all we got to was the other side, so we returned. I was to become very familiar with this creek. Not only would I wash clothes in it, but I would go down to it with two pails strung across my shoulders and a third pail in my hand and return with them filled. And when the creek froze, Father took his turn at breaking the ice, not only a strenuous task but a dangerous one – a misstep and one could drown in the icy waters.
We went past the baracholka, which was very quiet that day, and came to what was unquestionably the most elegant part of the village, where raised boardwalks served as a street for those who were lucky enough to live alongside them in larger wooden houses with whitewashed shutters. Walking these boards, we went past the bank, a small building which we identified as the library, and a substantial white building which might once have been a church and which now was the local cinema.
Walking beside my grandmother through this stark village, I walked in an unreal world – unfurnished and unpeopled.
That evening, when Mother came home from the bakery, Nina, who had already eaten, was plainly impatient for her to finish her bread. Having only one table and two chairs, we ate in shifts; but with our austere menu, speed was no problem.
‘Can you milk a cow?’ Nina asked Mother.
Mother, whose face was greenish from fatigue, said she couldn’t but that she was willing to try. Nina good-naturedly refused this offer; Mother might be willing, but not the cow. In fact, the cow would be sure to kick such a beginner. But wouldn’t Mother like to keep her company in the barn?
Mother, who knew that Nina had more on her mind than company, went out with her.
When Nina and Nikita were in bed and Nikita’s snores drowned our whispering, Mother told us what it was all about. Nina longed for a cross and since crosses were not exactly plentiful in Soviet society, the longing had become unbearable. Mother must please give Nina her cross. But we don’t wear crosses, Mother told her. Nina thought it was because we feared the police and promised not to tell. When Mother told her that we were Jews, Nina stubbornly insisted that that was impossible since all Jews had crooked noses and the men wore long beards. No matter how hard Mother tried, Nina remained unconvinced and even somewhat suspicious: what were these people up to, pretending that they were Jews when anyone could see that they weren’t?
All in all, life at Nina and Nikita’s was not dull. There were their violent quarrels and their passionate reconciliations. There was the wheel of fortune – who was to be the lucky winner? the one to get the occasional bowl of real soup or a slab of meat from Nina? (Grandmother and I, being the oldest and the youngest, were the luckiest.) And there was a rather odd social custom: it consisted of nit picking and it was usually done after a nice cup of hot tea.
The first time I witnessed it, I was invited to participate and I politely accepted. A friend visited Nina one afternoon when I was alone with her. They had their cup of tea and their gossip and then Nina’s friend, a pleasant lady around Nina’s age, placed her head in Nina’s lap and had it deloused. The instrument was a knife, and Nina, being a tidy housekeeper, parted her friend’s heavy head of hair so that the knife was used on every inch of scalp. When Nina was finished, her friend returned the compliment: Nina put her head on her friend’s lap. My turn was last and I laid my head on Nina’s lap. It was all very cosy, and a nice change.
And there was the matter of the missing bread.
We kept what food we had under the nari that Father and Nikita had built – one for us and one for the Kaftals. One day Grandmother unwrapped our lunch ration of bread. ‘I thought your mama brought us a much bigger piece of bread than this.’ I studied the piece of black bread resting on Father’s handkerchief and agreed that it seemed to have shrunk considerably overnight. Could it be mice or rats that had got at it? we asked each other, knowing that they could not have untied and retied the kerchief.
‘Who could have stolen some?’ I asked.
Grandmother said we weren’t to think such thoughts, that funny things happened to people when they were hungry and probably it was all our imagination. But I saw her eyes stray to Nina’s bed. That would be too terrible, I thought. With all the food they had compared to us – milk, vegetables, meat, tea! Nevertheless, I was pleased to see Grandmother tuck the supper ration away with extra care.
The next day or two nothing seemed to be missing, but one day when our appetites had been appallingly stimulated by the smell of a juicy stew on the stove, there was no mistaking it: a big slice of bread was missing. ‘Shouldn’t we go to the police?’ I asked Grandmother.
‘God forbid!’ she retorted.
But she was very much upset and that night in bed there was much whispering with Mother and Father. As a devotee of mysteries, I fancied myself an expert and wanted to say my piece, but I was told that this was not a matter for little girls and that I was to go to sleep. Little girl indeed! Since Mother had to work at the bakery, I was doing all sorts of grown-up things like cleaning, cooking, and going to the baracholka. I was outraged.
In the morning, we were diverted. The first snow had come to the Siberian steppes. I was enchanted. Siberia or no Siberia, snow was snow and in our family we loved it. Mother and Father were great skiers and were always going off to Zakopane, a skiing resort in Poland. And Miss Rachel used to take Musik and me sledding, the two of us dressed in our sealskin-lined coats and our black sealskin hats, mine a little round one tied under my chin with white wool ribbons and Musik’s a little peaked cap with ear muffs. (All the furs, Mother’s coats and Father’s fur-lined coat, had been inaccessibly stored away that June day.) Vilna with its trees and parks and red-tiled roofs was particularly ravishing in the snow.
Peering out of the window of the hut, I saw that the muddy roads had disappeared and that Rubtsovsk had been made beautiful by the snow.
‘But it’s only October,’ Grandmother complained, implying that in Siberia they just couldn’t do anything right.
This time, Mother didn’t find the snow enchanting either. ‘Esther has no boots. What will she wear?’ None of us had boots. ‘And her coat isn’t warm enough.’ There was a note of panic in her voice and for once Father looked deeply worried too.
Even Nina looked guilty as she pulled on her pimy boots, the knee-length felt boots that were to become our most desperate need. ‘It’s only a light snow,’ she said. ‘This is nothing –’
Tact was not one of her virtues.
Mrs Kaftal wondered why we could not have been told to prepare ourselves for Siberia, everyone would have been much more comfortable, wouldn’t they? with their nice fur coats? and their good boots? what harm would it have done anyone? Karl, who rarely spoke, told his mother to shut up so sharply that we all felt the sting.
My shoes seemed exceptionally tight and flimsy that morning. But as soon as Mother and Father had gone, I went outside. The snow might be light, but it had completely covered the steppe. Now, at last, this was Siberia.
It was at this moment that I fell in love with space, endless space. And since Siberia was space, I had to include it – just a little and with great guilt – in this love.
I picked up some snow and rubbed it on my face, tasted it with my tongue. Vilna! Miss Rachel! Musik! My cousins! I was only eleven years old and it was all too much for me. I ran back into the hut.
The night before Mother was to take me to school, I was the centre of at
tention: Anya omitted one of her beauty steps in order to brush my hair long and hard, fruitlessly trying to bring back some of its life; Grandmother cut my nails and pushed my cuticles back; and Mother borrowed an iron from Nina, heated it on the stove, and pressed my blouse and skirt. And Nikita good-naturedly reminded us that oil and wicks ought not to be wasted on an eleven-year-old girl, but saved for when she was sixteen and in need of a husband.
‘Speak Russian to me, Mama,’ I asked, cuddling up to her in bed.
‘Once upon a time …’ she began in Russian, ‘there was a little girl who …’
I waited. ‘Who what?’ I asked impatiently in Polish.
‘Speak Russian …’ Mother muttered and fell sound asleep. Her day at the bakery didn’t leave her with any energy for the children’s hour.
But I did not sleep. What child going to any new school does? And if the school is in the wilds of Siberia? And if the child is a deportee, some kind of a capitalist where no kind is good, what then? And much as I had always loved school, there was the business of not knowing Russian well, of not making friends easily, of not having cousins to fall back on – no Musik to protect me, no Musik who always used to let me win at hopscotch. The night was bringing more worries than I cared for.
I thought morning would never come, and when it came I thought it would never end. Mother was to be given an extra hour for lunch to take me to school for my interview. Waiting for her, I practised Russian: ‘Zdrastvuytie, my name is Esther Rudomin, what is yours? I am eleven years old. How old are you? What is your favourite subject? Who is your favourite film star? …’ Fortunately, I didn’t know the Russian for ‘None of your business, Miss Busybody.’
The school was a surprise. In the midst of the drab clutch of buildings that was Rubtsovsk in 1941, here was something worthy of a picture postcard. Sparkling white clapboard; crystal-clear windows; gingerbread carved under the eaves; and, as befitted the pride of Rubtsovsk, its prize jewel, a white picket fence to set it apart.
‘Oh, it’s so beautiful –’ I sighed as if I were about to enter an enchanted castle. ‘What should we do with our shoes?’ I looked down at our wet and mud-encrusted shoes. It would be too awful to dirty this marvel of beauty and cleanliness; even worse to be scolded for it. In the hut, we all took off our shoes before entering and placed them on the stove to dry, the custom of the land in private homes.
Mother thought about it. Then she spotted a broom and we swept each other’s shoes clean.
Inside, the building looked much the same as the schoolhouse in which we had lived at the mine. The wide empty corridor with the portraits of Lenin, Stalin, Marx, and Engels. And off it, the classrooms with doors open to catch whatever little heat came from a centrally placed stove. And there the resemblance ended. Instead of a barracks strewn with bags and bundles and baskets, it was a schoolhouse. The rooms were crowded with desks at which children sat wearing their coats and hats and, in some cases, their mittens. Physically, the building was certainly cold, but to me, starving not only for food but for school and children my age, this place was like a blaze inviting me to come close. Suddenly I began to feel a little warmth in this ice-cold Siberia.
Tiptoeing down the empty corridor in search of the principal’s office, I caught a phrase of a lesson in maths and I became anxious. Maths was difficult enough for me in Polish; what would it be like in Russian?
The principal was an elderly woman with rough grey hair pulled back from a melancholy face. Her sad eyes sized us up and came to rest for a second on our shabby wet shoes. She rose to greet us with a little smile – of sympathy? Perhaps. In any case, we were being treated like human beings. We shook hands and I teetered on the edge of the curtsy we used in Vilna; uncertain about its appropriateness in Siberia, it ended up more like a nervous wiggle.
Mother gave the principal the vital statistics about me and I watched the principal’s face to see where these statistics were going to land me.
‘She will go into the fifth grade,’ the principal said.
I was much relieved. That was my proper grade; I was not to be left back, that Siberia of all Siberias to children.
‘Has she studied foreign languages in Poland?’
Mother told her that we did not learn any at school but that my governess had taught me German and that I had also learned Yiddish.
‘Here she will have a choice of German, French, or English.’
Mother raised an eyebrow. ‘A foreign language in the fifth grade in a …’
‘Little school in Siberia?’ the principal finished Mother’s sentence. ‘Yes, it is our simple ambition to educate our children, all of them.’
Mother expressed her admiration and it was decided that I would continue with my German. Since this was the language I had spoken so often with Miss Rachel, I had mixed feelings about it – traitorous, too? – but I kept them to myself.
Then the principal said that since supplies were running very low at the school, she could give me only one notebook for the time being. ‘Later, she will have to get her own. How she will do this I do not know, but somehow it must be done.’ She and mother shook their heads in mutual dismay. (Later, I was to use old newspapers, writing between the lines.) ‘And …’ the principal continued, ‘I must also tell you that there are no more textbooks left. She will have to do her studying with another child. It is this terrible war –’
‘Please don’t apologize,’ Mother said. ‘It will be good for her to share the books of another child. It will help her to make friends.’
Many times in Siberia, I would wake up not knowing where I was, sometimes not certain I was truly awake, sometimes not even certain I knew who I was.
The morning I was to go to school for the first time, I woke up in a blackness that was as mysterious as the heart of a dark forest and as if the sounds close by were its strange beat. But the howl of a wolf way out on the steppe gave me my bearings. The strange beat was the breathing of my parents, my grandmother, the Kaftals, and Nina and Nikita. They breathed, they sighed, they snored, they caught their breath suddenly through their noses with comical gurgles. Sometimes they talked or called out. ‘Solomon!’ my grandmother would cry. It was noisy in the hut at night.
I leaned over and ran my fingers over my notebook and the stub of pencil that Karl Kaftal had contributed. How long would they last? How small could I write?
I crept out of bed, got into my underclothes which had been kept warm in the comforter, and throwing my coat on, went shivering to the outhouse. I had never been out this early. The moon and the stars were still bright and clear and the steppe was bewitched. I looked up at the moon and I prayed for some friends at school; for fear that I was being greedy, I amended the plural – just one girl, please, to play with. Or, if Musik would forgive me, one boy would do almost as well.
That morning, in honour of the occasion, Nina gave me a glass of warm milk.
I dressed as warmly as I could, although deep winter had not yet arrived, with a pullover sweater (which was to become like a second skin in the next years) over my blouse, my one and only coat, and the black leather shoes which were not only pinching but which were beginning to crack from the wet and the mud and the stove. Would we be able to sell something and buy ourselves some pimy boots? Would there be any to buy? The question was becoming more and more serious. We had begun to recognize the signs of frostbite – the scarred faces, the shuffle of feet minus some toes.
Mother had to be at the bakery and, clutching my notebook and pencil, I went to school alone. It never occurred to me that for a child to walk down a Siberian road, in every possible way the outsider – from the tips of her inappropriate shoes to her tongue stumbling over the language – required some courage. I was too busy trying to review the Russian alphabet.
On the way, I was distracted by a pattern in the snow; it looked something like hopscotch and I hopped through it in the hopscotch way.
Though I arrived very early, some other children had beaten me to it. I saw th
em in the classrooms gossiping and teasing each other. With my Russian suddenly become more broken than usual, I asked a boy I met in the hall where classroom number five was. In a very loud voice, he asked me if I was a new girl. Although I had understood the question perfectly, I shrugged. ‘You don’t know?’ he asked with understandable surprise. I blushed and hastened towards the room he pointed to.
In room number five, a few children in caps and coats were seated at their desks watching the teacher write on the blackboard. She turned when I came in and looked at me so severely my heart sank. In addition, her close-cropped hair and short, stocky figure gave a strong impression of sullen stubbornness.
‘You are Esther Rudomin. From Poland. Your Russian is poor.’ It was as if she were reading from a dossier that would determine my punishment. ‘It will be my task to see that you improve it. My name is Raisa Nikitovna. Go to the last desk of the third row and sit down.’
‘Thank you.’
Last desk of the third row … one … two … three . . In my anxiety not to make a mistake, I almost went to the fourth row, but caught myself in time.
I placed the notebook and the pencil on the centre of the desk and waited. The other children began to file in and take their places, eyeing me with frank curiosity as they did so. I was not quite so frank; I kept my eyes lowered, but not so much that I could not do some sizing up myself. I recognized one or two children from the baracholka, and on the whole they looked like a red-cheeked, cheerful group, sturdy survivors of the hard Siberian life.
When the bell rang, everyone stood up, bowed to Raisa Nikitovna, and called, ‘Good morning, Raisa Nikitovna,’ in unison.
The Endless Steppe Page 8
