Maria's Story

by Robin Barratt

“Yes, they will beat you” Olga replied. They won’t beat your face dear, as you couldn’t work with bruises and cuts to your face, but they will beat your body so badly that you might not be able to walk or breath properly for days. And if they beat you so bad that you couldn’t work, as soon as you are able, you have to make up the money and work harder and longer.” Maria couldn’t believe what she heard. Was this really happening?

  “I was once beaten because I bought an ice cream,” said the man with one leg who had heard them talking and wondered over to say hello. “I was tired and thinking about my granddaughter, I though about how she used to eat her ice cream and play in the park. I just fancied one myself, that was all. And I was beaten. They said it wasn’t my money I had spent, it was theirs and therefore I was stealing from them. So be very very careful.”

  “Who beat you?” Maria asked.

  “One of the women, just to humiliate me more. She punched me in my ribs, slapped my face, pulled my hair, and kicked me when I fell,” the old man replied.

  “Don’t you have family, friends that can help, that can rescue you?”

  “The only friends we have are here, in this room. My son was killed in Afghanistan, my wife died of cancer. They both died within six months of each other. My granddaughter went to live in the Ukraine with her mother I sold the papers to my apartment for two cases of vodka when times were bad and when I couldn’t cope with my loss. We all have a story to tell, we are all here for a reason, and we all have nowhere else to go.”

  “And me, I was sold by my stepfather,” Svetlana said. “My mother had gone to live in America with another man. She ran off. My stepfather didn’t want me around any more. After my mother left he started to drink heavily. He soon lost his job because he was always late to work and often drunk. He knew someone that knew someone. I was sold, for how much I don’t know. I have been here for six months, it isn’t too bad in the summer but the winter is bad. You get so cold.”

  Maria sat numbed as she listened to their stories.

  Olga met the gypsies when she was already on the streets. She was sleeping in a derelict building near to where she used to live, along with others who, like her, had nowhere else to go. It was autumn, the nights were getting colder and they all somehow knew they would never survive the winter; they would all be dead by the first fall of snow. Her only son had grown up and had long since moved out, making money in some business or other, she never knew what he did but the last time she saw him, almost two years ago, he turned up outside her apartment in a big new expensive looking black car which looked very out of place amongst the shabbiness of their run-down apartment block.

  She watched from the kitchen window of her third floor apartment. She liked to sit watching the world below; she had little else to do in her life. She would sip hot tea and watch as people came and went, or stood chatting to one another. In the summer she would watch as the children played in the small courtyard below and in the winter she would watch the snow fall and people scurry back and forth.

  She watched and people stopped and stared at him as he got out of his big black car and walked across the courtyard and into the entrance directly below, while his driver stood nearby smoking. She walked over to the front door and opened it, as he emerged from the elevator. He didn’t stay long, just made an excuse that he was passing and thought he would pop in to say ‘hello’ to his mother. They had nothing to say to each other really; he asked how she was, she said okay, she asked how he was, he said fine, and that was about it. Although he was her son she no longer had anything to share with him and he had nothing to say to her. After a few minutes he made his excuses and left. She went back to her kitchen window and watched as he walked back across the courtyard. The driver saw him coming, stubbed out his cigarette with his heel and opened the car door for him. He got in, not even looking up. That was the last time she saw him.

  About a year ago she had a knock on the door. As usual she had sat by the kitchen window, sipping black tea, watching the world go by. She had noticed three strange looking men in black leather jackets walk from the apartment block opposite, across the courtyard and into her apartment block, but thought nothing of it. She had noticed that one of them had a black briefcase. An hour had passed and then suddenly there was a knock on the door. She walked over the door and peered through the spy-hole. There was a man standing there smiling, knowing she was looking at him. As far as she could tell, he was on his own. He held up a badge, but she could not make it out, and so she opened the door slightly. He introduced himself as Alex from some company to do with property, but she didn’t understand. He said he had a proposition for her, which would give her a little extra money to buy some nice things for herself and perhaps something extra for the apartment, as he looked around and said it could do with a little renovation. She didn’t have much; a table and one rickety chair in the kitchen where she sat and watched the world go by, a fridge and a two ringed hob. She had a bed, blankets, she couldn’t afford sheets and often slept in her clothes, and a small sideboard where a couple of old photos were balanced. If she would sign the documents to her apartment over to him, she would be paid 2000 dollars! Yes, 2000 dollars! A huge amount of money. But don’t worry, he stressed time and time again, the apartment would still be hers and she could always live in it until she died, but when she died - and God forbid it wouldn’t be for years - he said, instead of the apartment going back to the corrupt government, it would be given to someone else, probably also elderly that needed somewhere to live. Did she have anyone who she would want to pass the apartment over to? He asked. She had nobody. Apart from her, no one was registered at her apartment and so, when she died, she knew it would indeed go back to the government, a government she now hated. The old times were the best weren’t they, she said to the man nodding. Bring back the Communists, she said, much better for everyone. He nodded, agreeing with her. He took some papers from his briefcase and asked her to sign them. Complicated legal jargon, he said, it just means that the papers to the apartment would be signed to him and that she could continue to live there. See, he said, showing her a separate piece of paper which seemed to say she can always live there. It all looked confusing to her, but with the thought of 2000 dollars, she signed and, after finding the documents to her apartment, handed them over to him. He, smiled, and very politely said he would be back in a few days with the money. They shook hands and he left.

  Her head was in the clouds. She wondered what she was going to do with all those dollars. It was almost five years pension from the government. She couldn’t believe her good fortune. She might buy a nice chair to sit on, and perhaps a television. She would love a television, but she had no idea what they cost. She would certainly buy some new blankets and sheets for the bed and a couple of nice dresses for herself. She could not remember the last time she bought anything for herself.

  She sat by the window for the next two days waiting for that kind man to turn up with her money. Two days passed and no sign of him, three days, a week, two weeks then suddenly there was a knock on the door. She looked through the spy hole to see two policemen standing at her door. Oh my goodness, she thought, something had happened to her son. She quickly opened the door. Behind the two police man were two other men.

  “Mrs. Olga Kimovich?” one of the policemen asked.

  “Yes,” she replied.

  “You must leave the property immediately, this instant. This is no longer your property and you are living here illegally. You must pack your bags now and leave.”

  She almost collapsed, and steadied herself against the door frame. She didn’t understand. She tried to explain what had happened. The policeman listened and asked for the documents to her apartment.

  She didn’t have them. “We have the documents here,” one of the men standing behind the policeman said; “this is our property.” The policeman looked at the documents and did what they were paid to do, acknowledg
e that her name was not on the documents that she had signed the documents over to the property company. She was therefore no longer the legal owner and had to leave immediately.

  “I am not leaving,” she screamed and tried to close the door. The police brushed past her and into the apartment, while the two men grabbed Olga and pulled her out into the corridor. She fell to the floor screaming and crying. The men threw what few possessions she had out of the window onto the courtyard below, smashing the table and chair and sideboard. Her clothes fell here and there. People just stood and stared.

  For a few hours she lay in the corridor, sobbing, not knowing what to do or where to go. She was frightened of the men in black leather jackets who had boarded and sealed the door to her apartment while she lay sobbing nearby. She could not go to the police either. She crawled outside to where her things lay smashed and broken. All her clothes were gone, they had been stolen while she lay in the corridor, and most of the wood from the broken furniture had also been taken. There was almost nothing left.

  She walked aimlessly for a while, until she passed the shell of building Twelve which had been empty and in ruins for years. The place stunk, windows were smashed. A notice on the half open door read ‘Do Not Enter’ but evening was approaching and she had no where else to go. The corridor was strewn with debris and litter and broken bottles, the remaining few floor tiles were smashed and the cracked walls were sprayed with graffiti. Building Twelve was once a smart local government office, but now an empty ransacked squalid shelter for the homeless, drunks and gangs of youths sniffing glue. She was scared as she gingerly made her way down the corridor, looking into the empty, stinking, filthy rooms. The third room she saw what looked like an old man huddled in a makeshift bed of newspaper and card, with an empty bottle of vodka next to him. She went into the room and huddled against the wall opposite. The first night she shook with fear and cold and thought she would die. The second day she spent rummaging through dustbins and behind the market stalls looking for anything she could eat. She drank the leftovers in cans and picked at the scraps of bread and fruit. The second night she wished she would die. She slept in the same corner in the same room with the same drunk curled up in the same opposite corner. That night a group of youths, high on glue, ran screaming and shouting throughout the building, jumping over and kicking a second man sleeping in the corridor just outside.

  The third day she didn’t move. She was so cold and so frightened. As evening drew nearer she heard the calls of a woman, asking if there was anyone inside. She summed up enough energy to shout out and a woman appeared from round the corner.

  “Oh my,” another woman followed behind, bending over Olga as she trembled with cold and fear. “Let us get you a hot bowl of soup and somewhere to stay, you can’t stay here, it isn’t safe.” They helped her up. “Come with us, we can help you.” Olga was carefully ushered outside and into a waiting car. She was driven to an apartment about an hour away and that evening she was given hot soup and an old mattress to sleep on. The next morning she was told to have a bath and was given clean clothes. Two gypsy women came to the apartment and spoke in hushed voices to the two women that had rescued Olga from near death. Cash was exchanged and she was taken away.

  “And here I am now,” Olga said. “There is nowhere for me to go.”

  The man with no arms walked over and sat in front of Maria. “We all have a story to tell. They called me Stumpy at school, although I didn’t go to school often,” he laughed. “My mother, you see, was an alcoholic and I spent most of the time trying to look after her. She started drinking as soon as I was born, as soon as I was placed into her arms. Apparently she screamed with shock at her little baby boy with stumps for arms. She wouldn’t have anything to do with me at first. The nurses looked after me, until she was eventually forced out of hospital and had to return home. She was repulsed by me. My earliest memories are of her face and disgust every time she looked my way. I don’t suppose she believed that she could give birth to such a monster. My father was worse, apparently he drank before I was born and I made him worse, he wanted nothing to do with me. When he was drunk he would trip me up, laughing as I fell, knowing I was unable to break my fall or he would tell me to do something he knew I couldn’t do, simply things like un- doing a jam jar. He detested me and hated my drunken mother. He beat me a few times, but beat my mother more, blaming her for not giving him a normal son. He eventually left us when I was about seven.

  “I had few friends. No one wanted to be friends with a cripple. I spent most of my time sitting alone on the doorstep dreaming of better things; a family that cared, a school that I enjoyed going to, friends to play with and of course I dreamed about what it would be like to have arms. I imagined myself climbing and swimming and riding a bike and playing ball, all the things normal people can do with a normal body. But I eventually learned to cope, although some of the private things were pretty hard to deal with, you know, going to the toilet and stuff, but I coped.

  “My mother lost her job because of her drinking. She would never wake up on time and I frequently had to push her out of bed and force her to work, but after a while I just couldn’t be bothered and she became later and later, and skipped more and more days until one day she turned up for work three hours late and half drunk. She was told that she no longer had a job. I was blamed of course, for not waking her up on time. She screamed and shouted and threw things at me and slapped me a good few times around the face. She wished she had a normal child.

  “One day I was in central Moscow for Victory Day and I was sitting watching the parade. I was only about 16 years old, I was on my own and had stolen the fare from my mother’s purse as she lay snoring. I tried to ware baggy shirts and things, you know, to hide the fact I had no arms, but sometimes it is almost impossible to hide, especially when I have to go onto the metro, open doors, etc. The gypsies told me later that they had spotted me on my own buying a metro ticket and keeping it in my mouth as I fed it through the turnstiles. They had followed me to the centre of Moscow and stood beside me as I watched the parade. It was great fun and I had a good day away from my drunken mother. To be honest I didn’t want the day to end. I was anonymous. Sure, some people noticed I didn’t have arms and sometimes children pointed or whispered to their mothers, but no one said anything to me and, of course, there was no drunken mother to look after. It got darker and later and I thought about going home, but I really didn’t want to. Also, I was hungry, but I had no money. I had noticed a couple of beggars on the streets and then the thought struck me; I would beg for enough money to buy myself something nice to eat. I looked about, wondered over to a metro and sat myself down just around the corner from the entrance. I rolled up the sleeves to my shirt, showing the stumps of my arms and, as people passed, asked for change. People started to put kopeks and sometimes even roubles on the floor in front of me. As I looked down and mentally counted up the change I knew it wouldn’t be long before I had enough money for some food and perhaps a can of coke. And then someone bent down and gathered up all the change in front of me. I looked up and saw two policemen. They demanded my papers. I didn’t have any papers. They said they would take me to the station where I would be put in prison. I almost burst out crying. Then two women intervened. They asked to speak to the one of the policeman and took him to one side. I heard the policeman say “a hundred dollars.” The women shrieked and argued that they were crazy and I wasn’t worth anywhere near that much. I could hear them barter and bargain. They settled on fifty dollars and the police walked away, counting their money.

  “‘You are a very lucky young man,’ one of the gypsy women said to me. ‘We have saved you from going to prison.’ I didn’t know what to say or what to do. They told me to come with them. I followed, a little scared. As we walked off I noticed a couple of men following us. We approached a car parked on a side street nearby and as we got to the car one of the men appeared from behind me rushed forward and open
ed the back door. I got in, thinking that perhaps I was going to get killed, but somehow knew I wouldn’t as then they would never get their money back. As we drove off the woman sitting next to me told me I would have to work for them for a few days until the fifty dollars they had paid the police was paid off. As we drove off I thought of my mother, she probably wouldn’t even realize I was missing. That was two years ago.”

  “But I do have somewhere to go, I have a mother and grandmother and sister. I do have somewhere to go,” Maria sobbed. “How long will I have to work for them until I have enough money for my fare home? They promised me I could go home once I have earned enough.”

  “Oh Maria,” Olga said, “You will never go home. They will keep you here as long as you are making them money. You will never be allowed to leave, not ever.”

  Maria sat shocked as she realized she was trapped and a slave to the gypsies.

  “Then I will escape and find my way home on my own,” she finally said.

  “And how are you going to get home? You have no money, no papers, if you escape there is nowhere to go. You cannot call home and you cannot write either; you are searched every day, sometimes a few times a day. If you do manage to run away, where will you go? Moscow is a big city and if you beg on another pavement in another area you will be in the same situation plus you won’t have anywhere to go back to at the end of the day. You will have to live on the streets. Maria, there is nowhere else apart from here. If you work for them and earn good money they are all right. They feed you twice a day, we have this place to stay, it isn’t much but it is a roof, and there are many without a roof, there are many that die on the streets as winter sets in and there are so many with nobody; no one to talk to day after day after day. We have each other, we are lucky.”

  Lucky? Maria thought. She knew there and then she would escape, she was not going to spend her life on the streets of Moscow begging for a meal and a roof over her head. There was more to life. She had her ambitions, her dreams, her goals: she was determined that she was not going to lead this sort of life. She would play their game for a while, until the right opportunity and then she would escape and go back to her family, to her village, to her home.