The Endless Steppe

by Esther Hautzig

  The seven of us jammed into one of the rooms. This room was just barely large enough for two nari and not another stick of furniture. We lived on those two beds – ate, slept, rested, engaged in conversation, quarrelled, and when I went back to school I would have to study there too. But we had a major preoccupation in that room – fighting bedbugs. Bedbugs crawled the beds, the walls, the ceiling, and the floor of that room, and no amount of kerosene seemed to help. True, the Siberian hut is noted for breeding bedbugs – possibly the manure has something to do with it – but that particular hut must surely have been an extreme case.

  All things considered, including the combined smell of kerosene and manure, a trip to the other room to use the stove was a treat, even though our landladies made it clear that they wished this were not necessary. They also made it clear that they did not want the little boy to have anything to do with me. The only person who extracted a good morning or a good evening from them was Father and even he gave up after a while.

  But one evening Father did not return from work.

  ‘Perhaps the books did not balance,’ Mother said, ‘and he is looking for the mistake.’

  I went outside and peered down the darkening road. There were no street lights; one depended on the lights in the huts or the moon, when it was up, to light the streets. But there was not one shadow moving through that murkiness. It was bitter cold and I returned to the hut.

  After a while, Grandmother said: ‘Such a big mistake, Raya?’

  ‘A little mistake can take a long time,’ Mother answered shortly.

  Then, much to my relief, Mother decided to take Father some food. Who knew how long he might have to stay there working?

  She came back with the food. Her voice was trembling, in spite of her effort to keep calm: the place was deserted!

  ‘Mama …’

  She put her finger to her lips and indicated that we were not to add to Grandmother’s alarm. ‘Raya … Raya …’ Grandmother began.

  ‘Perhaps a friend took him home for a bowl of good soup …’

  I was finding Mother’s unusual optimism more alarming than reassuring.

  Even Anya didn’t primp that night; instead, she told me my hair was a sight and she would brush it. But I was too restless and kept running to the door to look out.

  The hours went by. The stars came out. And a full moon. But no Tata. That night I didn’t pray; I issued an order.

  Finally, we all undressed and crept under our covers. We played a game. We pretended that no, Father hadn’t gone home with a friend, he had been called away on business, very important business. We called goodnight to each other and everyone pretended to be asleep.

  I was awake most of the night listening and I imagine that the sounds I willed to be Father’s footfall on the road were in reality the pounding of my heart.

  The morning came and Father had not returned. Mother went to the bakery to say that she was sick and would have to see a doctor. She was given leave for the day and a pass to the doctor. She came straight home to join us in our vigil.

  All day we waited, taking turns looking out of the window. What are we waiting for? I wanted to ask. Why don’t we do something? But there was something about Mother’s stony face that made me keep my questions, and my tears, to myself.

  The bleak northern afternoon was fading when I spotted a stooped figure approaching our hut. I nudged Mother. Neither one of us really wanted to look; this would be someone bringing bad news. The door opened and it was Tata. Barely recognizable. His eyes had sunken into a face as white as the Siberian snow, his hands were trembling violently.

  ‘Tata –’ I started to throw myself at him. ‘What happened?’

  Mother grabbed me. ‘What difference does it make what happened? Tata is here, that’s all that matters.’

  ‘Sugar …?’ Father asked faintly.

  Yes, we had some. We hoarded sugar for emergencies, for the times when extreme fatigue or despair or the weakness of illness required energy.

  Father took a teaspoon of sugar and a glass of water, his trembling hand spilling it. Then he lay down and closed his eyes.

  ‘Everything is all right,’ he murmured. ‘I will tell you later –’

  He fell asleep and slept for many hours, while we all huddled on the Kaftals’ bed. That night, by silent consent, we did not use the sisters’ stove; no one wanted to face their dour faces or the possibility of their questions (until now they had remained as taciturn as usual, saying nothing, asking nothing); besides, for once we were not hungry. We kept the lamp low, burning our precious oil, and watched over Father.

  At last Father woke up and Mother gave him another teaspoon of sugar and some bread. His hands still trembled.

  Then he began to talk. An N.K.V.D. agent, a member of the dreaded secret police, had come for him in the morning and taken him to their office. Did we know that they had separate offices, not at all connected with the local police? No, we didn’t know it, but in asking the question, Father seemed to imply that this separateness added to the power and terror of their secretiveness.

  ‘The lights …’ he shielded his eyes with his fluttering fingers, ‘such lights … they sat me in front of them … and they talked … and they talked … questions … questions … hours and hours … they took turns … they never stopped … I never dreamed the human voice could be such a weapon … on and on … twenty-four hours? … I don’t know … maybe more … I lost time … I lost …’ His voice trailed off.

  ‘What?’ Mother asked. ‘What did they want?’

  ‘You won’t believe it.’ He shook his head as if he too could not believe it. ‘They wanted me to be a spy –’

  ‘A spy …?’

  Falling from our lips the word was like a hiss.

  ‘They wanted me to spy on all the Polish people in the village and report on their activities. “What activities?” I asked. “What do you think we do besides try to keep body and soul together? Our activities? Are you mad?” ’

  ‘You said that, Samuel?’ Mother asked, horrified.

  ‘I said that. I told them that our activities are to feed our families, to keep warm, to keep from being caught in the storms outside. I talked that way, Raya. Me. I could hardly believe my own ears, that I had the courage to talk this way to secret police. I still can’t believe that they didn’t shoot me, that I am here –’

  ‘Yes, yes, you are here, Tata, you are here –’

  ‘I will take your word for it, lalinka –’

  We waited for him to continue. At last he said: ‘I also cried. Like a baby. For the first time in years. It was after all the threats – deportation, God knows what. It was when they were bribing me. Food. A better house. Cigarettes. I put my head down on the table and I begged them to stop. No, I told them, I would not spy on my friends, I told them they could shoot me –’

  I put my arms around Father. I was proud, very proud of my father. And I was still very frightened for him. Would they come back for Tata?

  CHAPTER TEN

  A question like that in a place like that becomes a perpetual shadow.

  But a breeze or two reminiscent of spring on its way, however agonizingly slowly, began to come up from the south and I was allowed to go back to school.

  The children gathered round me: even in Siberia there was nothing like a broken limb or a prolonged illness to make a momentary hero or heroine of the most ignored child. What had I been sick with? Typhus? Flu? Pneumonia? Scarlet fever? they asked cheerfully and were quite disappointed that it had been only bronchitis, although they did seem moderately pleased that I had survived. Only Svetlana continued to act as if a fatal illness would have suited her better and she was most impatient with my inability to catch up with the work I had missed.

  I was beginning to feel less of an outsider, almost – not quite – as if I belonged. I enjoyed the irony of the little capitalist joining the little comrades as we sang the ‘Internationale’ in assembly ‘… arise ye prisoners of starvation,
arise ye humble of the earth …’ I sang as loudly and lustily as the rest … ‘’tis the final conflict … for the international Soviet shall be the human race …’ and up went my fist along with the rest. There was a great deal of choral singing in the assembly, most of it unfortunately political rather than classical. But singing along with the others helped the feeling of belonging. However, among ourselves, away from assembly, we sang the songs that pleased us most, great favourites being Russian folk songs.

  The news that an American film was coming to Rubtsovsk sent the school into a dither. The Russian films (including some of the great ones) were all right, but nothing was as exciting as an American film. Everyone wanted to go. It was the topic: Are you going? Aren’t you going? When are you going? Who are you going with?

  Two girls invited me to go with them.

  I was beside myself. An invitation in itself was something I longed to accept – any invitation would do – and I also longed to see a film. And how much does it cost? I asked. Four roubles, I was told.

  ‘Four roubles!’ Mother exclaimed. ‘That’s a lot of money.’

  My heart sank and I could feel an enormous wail coming up in me. I held it back and merely looked tragic. A family council was called. ‘Man cannot live by bread alone,’ my fun-loving grandmother said.

  ‘That’s the whole point,’ Mother agreed acidly. ‘Four roubles towards a piece of meat …?’

  ‘You call that meat?’ Grandmother was getting cross.

  Father, the great peacemaker, intervened. ‘The child must go to the film.’

  ‘Must?’ Mother asked, and even Grandmother looked surprised.

  ‘Must,’ Father repeated, and refused to amplify, leaving the strong impression that the fate of all Polish deportees was at stake. Behind their backs he winked at me.

  The cinema, which I now decided was a very pretty little white building, was behind the marketplace and close to a small park which, for some reason, was ignored by the children of Rubtsovsk. Possibly because it was the gathering place for the grown-ups. But tonight many children were streaking across it on their way to the film.

  The auditorium was jammed with squealing children; no teachers here, only ordinary grown-ups whose admonitions to quieten down didn’t count.

  The light dimmed (there was electricity here, of course, the first I had seen since I left Vilna) and everyone quietened down and waited attentively.

  The film was Charlie’s Aunt with Jack Benny – with Russian subtitles – and we screamed with laughter. It was strange though to be sitting in this bare hall in Siberia watching an English classic that had been made in Hollywood. Walking home in the dark, surrounded by the huge steppe now broken by patterns in the slightly melting snow, it was Jack Benny, cavorting around in his ridiculous wig, who was most present, the scenes of Oxford that were most real.

  The film lasted us a long time; we hashed and rehashed it until there was scarcely a reel that went unremarked. And it brought me just a bit closer to belonging, a condition I was beginning to hold more blissful than a full belly. A day that I was invited to play a game of dominoes or hopscotch I counted a big one, one that sent me home bursting to tell my grandmother about it.

  But I had no best friend, no one to tell secrets to, no one to play games with. By all the rules and regulations, it should have been Svetlana who was my best friend. Svetlana did not see it that way.

  At first, I thought it was because she was a snob. Her father was the director of the dairy farm and therefore a member of the managerial class. They lived in a clean little white house with curtains at the window and they had milk every day and eggs frequently. I went to her house to get my books, but I never was invited to stay. I had noticed that the children of the ‘big shots’ tended to stick together and I thought that Svetlana was afraid to have a miserable little deportee as her best friend, that it would dethrone her as the queen bee.

  But little by little, I saw that she was not a snob, that she was friendly enough with other children much less fortunate than herself. Why not me?

  The answer to that was whispered into my ear as a secret I was to keep if I wished to live. The informer, another girl in my class, whispered that it was Svetlana who envied me – not my ‘fairy-tale’ past but, of all things, my braids, my less than shining-clean long braids. Since I did wish to live, I used all the will power I had to keep from telling Svetlana that to keep long braids even reasonably clean was a great chore. We almost never had soap, and hot water was a problem when so many people had to use the stove and when cinders were scarce too.

  I kept the secret but I began my campaign to have my braids cut off. The direct approach didn’t work.

  ‘Please cut my braids off,’ I asked Mother.

  Mother responded with a firm ‘No!’ the kind from which there was no appeal.

  Exactly what my braids represented to my mother then, I don’t know. I continued to nag; she continued to stand firm. I scratched my head ostentatiously; I bit on my braids; I pretended that their odour was enormously offensive to me.

  ‘You have always had long hair,’ Mother said.

  ‘Everyone else has short hair.’

  ‘As good a reason as I have ever heard for having long hair.’

  ‘But –’

  ‘But you are you and they are they.’

  ‘I don’t want to be me, I want to be them. You don’t understand.’

  Perhaps she didn’t. But it must have hurt to contemplate even the possibility that her child might discard her own rich heritage for a toehold in this land of exile, this thoroughly alien land.

  ‘Esther!’ There was both pain and shock in the exclamation.

  I covered my ears. The battle between the generations was on.

  ‘I’ll cut it myself,’ I threatened, unusually rebellious for me. ‘And it will be a great mess –’

  I burst into tears, tears of confusion and frustration as much as anything else. Didn’t anyone care that I needed to belong, needed a best friend?

  ‘We’ll talk about it tomorrow,’ my mother said slowly.

  The next evening Mother told me curtly that she was going to cut my hair, but it was because there was no soap and for no other reason, certainly not because I wanted to look like everyone else. Did I understand? Oh, yes, I assured Mother, beside myself with joy and secretly blessing the lack of soap.

  Anya provided the scissors and everyone some advice. Not too short … a little shorter … watch her ear …

  ‘So …’ Mother put the scissors down. She looked as if she were about to weep as she gathered the shorn braids together.

  ‘Let me see –’

  Anya held the mirror up and my heart sank. I looked like something the cat dragged in.

  ‘A little hot water and some brushing …’ Grandmother said none too optimistically.

  In the end it was my father who almost convinced me that I looked absolutely marvellous and I couldn’t wait to go to school the next morning. The final judgement would be made by my classmates, in particular Svetlana.

  It worked. I had performed the initiation rite. For better or worse, I had become one of them.

  ‘Hey, stupid …’ a boy called out as I missed a ball he threw my way.

  I was beginning to be happy. One day I might even be lucky enough, when my clothes were completely in tatters, to wear clothes like theirs. One day if I was very lucky, I might even get a green quilted jacket, a fufaika.

  On the way to Svetlana’s house, I told her of this secret wish. For the first time, she asked me to stay. We ate sunflower seeds, spitting the shells out till our chins were bearded with them.

  Now I had a best friend.

  I thought I would die of happiness.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  The spring came, the rather thin spring of the Siberian steppe.

  But it is impossible to have any thoughts of the thin Siberian spring without first recalling the thick mud. What with the spring rains and the thaw, the steppe became an ocean of
mud and to walk through it was like walking through knee-deep molasses. If one was not lucky enough to own a pair of sapogy, the handsome knee-high leather boots that the well-to-do wore, if one had nothing but the same old pair of school shoes or even pimy boots, along with the energy needed to pull a foot up from the bottom of this mud, one also more often than not had to stop to hunt for the shoe left behind. Whatever one wore, the object developed a crust of mud that had to be broken off after each excursion. While I may have found some of this fun, my mother did not; her trips to and from the bakery in the mud required more energy than she had. She said that time and again, exhausted, she would stand still, with both legs buried in the mud, thinking that only a derrick would be able to hoist her out.

  Mud or no mud, Siberia notwithstanding, with the spring I was gay. I had a friend to whisper and gossip with; I played tag and hopscotch – which a less muddy patch in the schoolyard permitted – and along with the other girls, I watched the boys’ preoccupation with their pigeons. Raising pigeons was one of their favourite pastimes, and luring the birds away from each other apparently its major objective.

  Svetlana and I studied together and complemented each other: she helped me with ideas for themes. Although I always enjoyed school, going to school in Siberia became for me a daily trip to paradise. The return trip to the hut was not. The last day of school for me was a sad day.

  As soon as the school was over, we began to work on our potato crop for the coming winter.

  The government had allotted individual plots of land on the outskirts of the village, and one bought tiny potatoes to sow with the expectation that they would produce a new crop.

  This was not a foregone conclusion with that unyielding earth. Very early in the morning, we would go out with shovels and sacks of potatoes to fight, cajole, and work this land. Whatever was produced here would belong to us, which was worth remembering as our backs ached and our skin blistered in the sun. And what was produced, what little, did belong to us. There was no pilfering in the unprotected, unguarded potato plots. Considering the empty bellies, this degree of honesty was astonishing.