The Endless Steppe

by Esther Hautzig

  I walked off the stage and sat down, grateful for something to sit on. I closed my eyes and waited for the judges to make their decision.

  A girl named Katiusha won.

  The contest was over.

  Avoiding my friends, I walked slowly back to the hut, kicking the dust with my bare toes.

  I would put Mother’s slippers back and I would never tell her about the high cost of going barefoot.

  But I was determined to get myself a pair of shoes – somehow, somewhere.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  There was a man in the village who was always receiving ‘Red Cross packages from abroad’ – clothing and food in great profusion which he was suspected of bartering or selling at exorbitant prices. We all suspected him of being an informer for the police.

  Shortly after the declamation contest, I heard that this man had received some Bally shoes from Switzerland. Shoes had become such an obsession with me that automatically, without pausing to think, I made a beeline for his house.

  Under the spell of my obsession, not bothering to be polite, I came directly to the point: I needed a pair of shoes. And I needed them badly. I talked fast and furiously and held up one dirty foot to prove my point. He looked startled. He hemmed and hawed and studied my bare feet and then told me to come the next day and he would see what he could do.

  For weeks on end, I went to his house every day. I had drawn the outline of my feet to show my shoe size on a piece of old newspaper and left it with him. ‘Maybe tomorrow I’ll find a pair …’

  Finally, to stop my daily nagging, he produced a pair of navy-blue shoes with pre-war rubber soles. I thought they were the most beautiful things I had ever seen. Never mind that they pinched just a little bit.

  The shoes worked; merely possessing them made me feel rich, elegant, and the equal of anyone in the village. As for wearing them, this I did only rarely, on very special occasions. When one owned such beautiful shoes, one could afford to go barefoot. But when I did wear them, as I walked the dusty roads I stopped every other step to wipe them with the edge of my dress. I used to come home from these walks with a dusty hem, but shining shoes.

  It would be more accurate to say that the shoes made me feel almost the equal of anyone.

  That summer Uncle Yozia had had me registered at the new school that was being built in the novostroyka for the children of the factory’s directors and workers. It would be a much better school, he said, and since he had pulled more than one string to get me in, I was reluctant to tell him that an old familiar school was better than the best new school. Besides, now that we were back in the village, I would have more than an hour’s walk each way.

  He and Aunt Zaya introduced me to the children of the ‘big wheels’ of the factory before school started and the experience was painful. These children who had come from European Russia had not known the hardship of life in Siberia and, being the children of the élite, were in fact spared much of it. Like children everywhere, they stuck together, played together, had their own slang. They were not impressed with my new shoes. With them, once again I felt as I did when we first came to Siberia, once again I was the outsider.

  The new school was a long, wooden, barracks-like building, much larger than the village school. As far as I was concerned, the most impressive thing about this building was that it was warm. School started in September and by October we had had our first snowstorm. After more than an hour’s walk through the dark village, over the windy steppe, in clothes that had never been meant for an arctic climate, the first moments inside school were always filled with the purely sensual pleasure of thawing out. In this school, we did not have to sit all day in our coats and mittens and when it was time to go home in the afternoon, it took courage to plunge into the huge, ice-cold Siberian twilight.

  It was in this school that I was to meet some truly great teachers. Almost all of them had taught in the universities in European Russia and had been forced to flee the German armies. They were generous with their knowledge and their classes were more than an adventure in learning; these men and women transported us from a remote Siberian village to the heart of Leningrad and Moscow, whetting our appetites for theatre and ballet music – and books, of course.

  I was happy to find two familiar faces among the children. Katiusha – who had won the contest – was here, and although she was the daughter of a director and lived in one of the splendid apartments and was well aware of her status, we became moderately good friends. It was considered an honour to be counted her friend. The other girl was Zina. Zina felt herself to be the honoured one if she had any friends, even one as socially inconsequential as I. She was the daughter of a Russian Jewish widow who had fled from the invading Germans and seemed still to be looking over her shoulder, still fleeing. I remember Zina as being the palest child I had ever seen. But amazingly enough, floating above her paleness was a brilliant mane of chestnut hair, gleaming with lights one rarely saw in Siberia. Zina and I never talked about how much we wanted to be accepted by the others; we pretended that we didn’t care. But our non-acceptance was our closest bond.

  The autumn winds brought Mother and me the ugly smell of starvation. Once again we were about to face winter with an empty larder. Foolishly, we had accepted Yosif Isayevich’s assurance that we need not worry about food. He still offered to help, but since his wife proved to be anything but generous, Mother – to my dismay and confusion – politely refused.

  To make matters worse, Mother was transferred from the bakery where she had been given some bread rations to a construction job in the novostroyka. There the work was hard, the pay small, and she had the long difficult walk each day.

  I had almost had my fill of knitting. But we had met a dressmaker through Uncle Yozia and Aunt Zaya, a perky little lady named Alexandra Lvovna, who made clothes for the wives of the factory directors.

  Since she lived near school, I stopped in one afternoon to offer my services. I could crochet collars and cuffs and dickies for her customers’ dresses, I told her.

  ‘And how do you expect to be paid?’ she asked, sizing me up and down.

  When I told her that she need only pay me after I proved my worth with work satisfactorily done, she agreed to try me when the opportunity arose. It was decided that Katiusha, who lived near Alexandra Lvovna, would be the messenger.

  Pleased that everything had been settled so easily, I put out my hand. ‘Goodbye, Madame Lvovna,’ I said.

  ‘Madame Lvovna?’ she asked, narrowing her eyes.

  ‘Oh, please forgive me,’ I said quickly. ‘It’s just that my mother used to call our dressmaker at home “madame” and I thought it was the thing to do –’

  ‘Madame Lvovna?’ she repeated, now cocking her head to one side.

  ‘You don’t like that?’

  ‘As a matter of fact, I do.’ She began to laugh. ‘Sounds more like a dressmaker than Comrade Lvovna, doesn’t it?’

  Oh, no, I thought, I’m not such an innocent as to be trapped into criticizing the Soviet way.

  I kept my mouth shut and shrugged.

  One Monday, Katiusha told me that Alexandra Lvovna had work for me. I went directly to her house after school and picked up some blue fabric and pink thread. I was to make a collar and cuff set and a little handkerchief by crocheting pink lace edges around the blue fabric. I was thrilled with this order and promised to bring it back on Sunday without fail.

  By Sunday they were ready.

  I told Mother that I was going to Alexandra Lvovna’s to deliver the things.

  In Siberia in the winter, before one travelled any distance at all, one studied the skies. Mother went to the window that Sunday afternoon.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘You are not to go. The sky is too dark on the horizon. I think there will be a storm.’

  I looked too but all I could see were the roubles Alexandra Lvovna was going to give me and the piece of meat I would buy that very day – and who knew? perhaps a glass of sunflower seeds too. I protested t
hat I absolutely had to go, that there was not going to be any storm, and that if there was I could outrun it easily. ‘Please, please, please …’

  Mother covered her ears against the nagging. ‘Go, go. You are so stubborn …’

  Before I left, she made me promise that if it looked dangerous when I reached Alexandra Lvovna’s, I would not leave until it was safe, absolutely safe.

  When I started down the road towards the novostroyka, I could see that behind me, way off in the distant north, there was a smudge of darkness on the horizon. And the air did seem still.

  I had an hour’s walk ahead of me and I tried to pace myself to walk as fast as possible without getting winded. Walking south, away from that dark smudge, I had more pleasant things to think of than a Siberian storm; walking alone on the steppe was the ideal time for daydreaming.

  By the time I reached Alexandra Lvovna’s, the dark smudge had in fact disappeared and the sky seemed considerably lighter.

  Alexandra Lvovna was pleased with my work and thought she would have more for me soon. I was delighted. This had been much easier than knitting sweaters and one got paid so much faster.

  Only one didn’t get paid.

  ‘Oh, no, my dear. You will only get paid when I get paid for the dress,’ Alexandra Lvovna said sweetly.

  I felt now that she was being dishonest, that she had the money to pay me now.

  ‘But, Alexandra Lvovna …’ I started to protest and then thought better of it. I wanted more work, needed it desperately, and couldn’t afford to argue.

  But I left her house in a rage. My fists were clenched and I invoked every curse I had learned – of which there were quite a few – on Alexandra Lvovna’s head.

  I walked fast, propelled by my rage, oblivious of any storm but the one boiling within me.

  I was halfway home when I saw the first signs of danger. As far as the eye could see, all around, wherever I looked, snow was lifting and spiralling from the steppe. This swirling mass of wind-driven snow is called the buran. The buran in itself, as it rises from the steppe, is dangerous enough; with its whirlpools making one totally blind, it is more dangerous than falling snow. As I stood there for a second, I felt as if the whole huge steppe was revolving under my feet. Then, as it does in Siberia in a great winter storm, the world went black. The wind blew up with a force that knocked me sideways, and now the snow was coming both from the earth and from the sky. The world was a maniacal, gyrating black funnel of noise and I was in the bottom of it. Alone. Completely alone.

  I started to fight my way through this storm. I knew that if I panicked, if I went in circles, if I stopped altogether, I would die. It was as brutally simple as that. Countless people had died this way. One minute’s rest could be fatal.

  I kept telling myself to push forward, push forward. But with the wind knocking me every which way, I had all I could do to keep on my feet. I was no longer certain that I was going forward. I had lost my sense of direction.

  I prayed. Over and over again, I asked God please to help me. I asked Him to spare me. Over and over again I said, I don’t want to die, I don’t want to die, as if in itself not wanting to die could save my life. Which of course it could.

  My prayers had been silent ones. Only once did I call out ‘Oh, God!’ Still, I was beginning to lose my breath.

  Suddenly, the wind carried a new sound, very faint: the sound of my name. ‘Esther … Esther …’ it seemed to say. I thought I was going mad. If men went mad in the desert, surely they could in such a storm …

  ‘Esther … Esther …’

  And then something else. I couldn’t make out what.

  Mad or not, I went towards this sound which kept repeating itself. Any step that took me away from it, I counted a wrong step and corrected myself.

  ‘Esther … Esther …’

  And then, ‘Sh’mah Israel …’

  With every ounce of strength I had left, I forced myself towards that sound.

  In the swirling blackness, I saw a figure.

  ‘Sh’mah Israel …’

  Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is One.

  I fell into my mother’s arms.

  There was no doubt about it. She had saved my life.

  Standing in the middle of the road, a few yards from our hut, endangering her own life, knowing that I was out there somewhere, she had turned herself into a human beam, homing me as surely as if I were a plane being homed in on an electric beam.

  Sh’mah Israel …

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  That winter when I was thirteen years old – in the European fashion, thinking of myself as fourteen – the line between Polish deportee and Siberian girl sometimes appeared dangerously close to being extinguished.

  Living with Natasha and Nikolay, I almost felt that coming back to the hut from school was coming home.

  Natasha was young and gay and seemed to enjoy having me around. She treated me as if I were a younger sister and trusted me with Katia. Still fresh from playing with rag dolls, I adored having a real live one, a plump blonde baby girl complete with gurgles and tears. There were no rules and regulations, no theories, no vitamins, no special baby foods, no bottles or pacifiers for Katia. When she cried, she was given a rag soaked in sugar water to suck on. She liked it very much. She didn’t seem to mind being swaddled as all Siberian babies were, at least the ones I saw. Natasha taught me how to place Katia in the exact centre of a large square woollen shawl and fold it around her till she was wrapped up like a little mummy. Her cradle was next to her parents’ bed, suspended from the ceiling. After a while, when our food, Mother’s and mine, was in extremely short supply, Natasha would occasionally engage me to take care of the baby in exchange for some food. Then I would sit next to the cradle, rocking it with my knees as I read or did my homework.

  And in Natasha’s kitchen, I learned how to spin. The spinning wheel was primitive, without a foot pedal; one turned the wheel by hand. The curly dirty grey wool that had come directly from the lambs’ backs, instead of being washed first, was smelly and sticky and difficult to work. The idea was to pull the wool gently off the spindle on to the wheel, making the thread as even as possible. Mine never was. But sitting in that kitchen, singing with Natasha who was spinning the wool that she would use for shawls for herself and her baby and her mother, I was happy.

  Except when the radio – which Mother and I were thrilled to find here too – brought news from the outside world. The Germans were on their dreadful bloody rampage. Terrified and horrified, I wanted to run from the kitchen, but I sat there listening. Listening, I willed Father to safety.

  As for the rest of our family – my other grandmother, my aunts and uncles, my cousins – I could tell just by looking at Mother’s haunted face that another piece of ghastly, incredible news of the continuing genocide had filtered into the village. I looked but I had learned to stop asking questions. Ourselves, we had absolutely no word at all about our family.

  Grandmother continued living with the Kaftals and although she visited us almost daily, I missed having her around. Not only did I love her dearly, but her grandmotherly link with the past was more precious than ever.

  However, the radio did not just bring war news; blessedly there was still music – the operas, the symphonies, the folk songs, and the dance music.

  After considerable nagging on my part, Alexandra Lvovna paid me, a fraction of what she should have; but there was no more work from her. Desperate, I tried to get some more knitting to do, but now there was no wool at all, not even a dirty old skirt to be ripped, and Natasha’s wool was too coarse for the ladies who could afford to have someone knit for them.

  Uncle Yozia and Aunt Zaya came to the rescue again.

  They needed extra money, they said, and so they had decided to sell some of the things they had brought from Kharkov. However, they needed someone to do this for them and that someone was me. I was to keep half of the profits. I protested that this was not necessary, that after all they had don
e for us, the least I could do …

  ‘Listen to me!’ Uncle Yozia said sternly. ‘Didn’t we agree that you were to listen to me as if I were your father? Well then listen. We need your services. Can you see me selling one of Zaya’s lipsticks? Or for that matter, Zaya selling it herself?’ He pulled himself up with mock dignity. ‘People in our position in life? Unheard of.’

  ‘But –’

  ‘But you will go to the baracholka next Sunday with Zaya’s lipstick and you will drive a hard bargain. Remember that a fine lady from Moscow, or perhaps Leningrad, who needs a lipstick in Siberia, needs it badly.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Why? How should I know? Am I a fine lady from Moscow?’

  And so I began to trade on the baracholka every Sunday. A lipstick one Sunday, a bottle of cologne another, once a pair of slacks Uncle Yozia no longer needed. I enjoyed myself thoroughly. ‘This lipstick is guaranteed to be one hundred per cent indelible …’ ‘Kindly believe me. These pants will last a lifetime …’

  But when Uncle Yozia, having duplicate copies, asked me to sell a collection of Chekhov’s short stories for him, I was not a good trader. I could not bear to part with it. I could not call out ‘… the greatest short stories ever written by a master storyteller …’ I stood there mute, just holding the book up. I was surprised, though, at how many peasants came up to inspect the book. I knew they couldn’t read one word of it – or anything else. Each one asked to hold the book, and felt the pages with frostbitten, rough fingers. I didn’t know what to make of it. Was it a sign of their reverence for learning? I found it touching. The woman who did buy it looked embarrassed when I said that I hoped she would enjoy the stories. Well, I thought, someone – a child who has learned to read – will read it aloud to her.

  I soon found out why the pages of the books were fingered.

  A few weeks later, an old man held a book in his hands a long time, rubbing his gnarled fingers over the pages.

  ‘Ah,’ he said, sighing, ‘this paper is too thin.’