Philipovna

by Valentina Gal

  Eventually, the grain was ripe. The Comrades announced that the harvest was to begin on a Sunday with a special celebration. I arrived in the early morning to see what would happen. A combine, two harvesters and two trucks stood in the centre of the square. I would have been interested in the new machines at a former time but, this day, all I could do is stand dumbly at a distance like the other villagers.

  The soldiers and a group of teachers and students were already stationed at the former church and in the school where Comrade Asimov taught classes. They had been instructed not to speak to the farmers at all. They stood around one of the trucks, the students on one side and another group of city labourers on the other, with a wide berth between us. On the few occasions that they looked me directly in the eye, they did so with contempt. I wondered what I had done to have strangers look at me that way. In their stay, which lasted six to eight weeks, they never associated with the villagers and, to make sure they didn’t, the army placed guards around them.

  As on the May Day festival, some pots of boiling porridge hung over a couple of fires. Several women from the kolhosp stood over them, stirring. I noticed that there were fewer people in the square with none of them sitting or lying around like in May. Most of those had died away and only the strongest ones, those who could stomach anything, no matter how distasteful it was, were left as part of the new order. I stood waiting for Comrade Zabluda to finish his speech, staring at the steam rising from the porridge with my mouth watering like a hungry puppy. It was months since I had eaten any kind of wheat at all.

  “Remember how fortunate you are,” he said. “We are celebrating this momentous occasion in the most dignified and well-organized fashion. Never forget that you are the luckiest and happiest farmers in the world. Where else would the average farmer have such wonderful machines to do their work for them and who but Mother Russia and Father Stalin would send out workers from the city to make sure that the grain was brought from the fields so efficiently?”

  “We didn’t need workers and their efficiency before the kolhosp was forced down our throats,” Uncle Misha said over our simple supper of pickles and potatoes that evening.

  Comrade Zabluda announced that the workers from the kolhosp would receive two pounds of grain and two hot cooked meals per day for the duration of the harvest.

  What about me? I wondered. And the rest of us? Since Uncle Misha had not formally joined the kolhosp, he and his sons who were over fourteen years of age were not allowed to work on the planting or harvest like those who did. So they missed out on any reward the Party gave out. I thought that the Comrade would go on and on like at May Day, but it seemed that he was more interested in bringing in the wheat.

  When he finished, we repeated the same ritual as in May with each person receiving exactly two scoops of porridge. No one dared to ask for any before the speeches were done and no one dared tried to jump the queue. We learned our lesson from Walter on May Day. We moved forward, our heads down, not daring to look the servers in the eye and received our two scoops like the oppressed, humiliated beggars that we were.

  With no further ceremony, the combine started moving towards the field. It was followed by the trucks and harvesters. Then the city workers moved onto the fields and the horse-drawn carts and their former owners, some of whom still were licking their porridge containers, followed the military-like procession. The threshing of the grain was underway.

  The combines and harvesters roared through the ripe wheat with dizzying speed. The trucks were loaded in no time. It was then that the villagers were told that the grain was going to be taken directly to the train station for shipping to the city and not to be stored at the kolhosp as it should be. When the trucks were filled, the horse-drawn carts were ordered to follow the trucks so as not to slow down the process. To make matters worse, the city workers covered the retreating grain with red banners proclaiming that our village voluntarily was giving its grain to Father Stalin and the new order.

  “So much for happy farmers,” Uncle Misha said over tea that night. “They promised the workers from the kolhosp fair payment in beets and potatoes. We’ll see how many potatoes they send.”

  “They wouldn’t have to send us potatoes,” Michael said, “if we could just keep the ones we grew, like we used to.”

  For the rest of that week, Viktor, Mitya and I stayed close to the harvesters. We dove for any ear of grain that fell from the trucks and wagons. Since the workers were forced to work at a breakneck speed, there was much wasted wheat. But every villager who wasn’t labouring in the fields had his eye on the path which went to the station. I learned to grab the wheat mid-air as it fell to the ground and took care that I wasn’t stepped on by one of the workers or trampled on by one of the exhausted horses.

  We managed to glean a small sack of wheat over the course of that week. And so the grain was harvested and stolen from beneath our noses. We found out later that the whole harvest was poured out by the railway, covered with tarpaulin and allowed to rot. The men who tried to rescue some for their families paid with their lives as Father Stalin’s army kept watch day and night. Nevertheless, Auntie made us say extra prayers of gratitude before the icon.

  “After all,” she said, “it will carry us through for another little while.”

  The members of the kolhosp waited for their potatoes and beets but, as Uncle Misha correctly predicted, they never came. The nights cooled and our food supply dwindled. To complicate things further, the bread procurement committee with Uncle Ivan as its enthusiastic leader missed no opportunity for confiscating anything that we villagers could manage to hide away. It was uncanny how, just when a small quantity of foodstuffs was secured, he and his scavengers descended onto the unfortunate family, took all of the food and did some damage either to the house or its occupants on the way out. By the middle of October, our gardens were spent; our food was taken and we were back into full famine.

  School started again. The class was at least one third smaller than it had been in the spring. Asimov remained his miserable self. No mention was made of the missing students and no questions were asked as to their whereabouts. We all knew that they were in Heaven with their ancestors, but none of us dared to talk about it. The classes resumed with arithmetic, reading and Russian history in the morning and more propaganda in the afternoon. Every piece of paper that was sent home to share with my parents continued to be thrown into the fire.

  Viktor walked to school with me every day. He was sullen and did not say a word to anyone until Asimov forced an answer out of him. He fell asleep while he was supposed to be memorizing his lessons. He came home with welts or bruises daily. Viktor stared straight ahead when Asimov beat him, as if he couldn’t feel anything, his eyes fixed on a spot far off somewhere. When we got home and Auntie saw the results of the Snake’s work, she cried and looked like The Unravelled One used to.

  “Please, son,” she begged, “Try to stay awake and listen.”

  “Yes, Mama,” he answered.

  I could see that Viktor was trying, but there seemed to be something wrong. When he came home, he didn’t want to go anywhere with me. He had no interest in skipping stones by the river. He didn’t want to look around at bugs and spiders. It was difficult to entice him into playing his favourite game of squash— a Ukrainian game where Children would pretend to be vegetables being picked for a feast. He sat on the sunny side of the house or under the birch tree with his back leaning against the trunk and didn’t move for hours, usually not until Auntie called us into the table for our meal. You really couldn’t call it a dinner.

  “Mama,” he asked one day after school. “Can I have a piece of bread?”

  Auntie turned to him from the stove where she stirred a small pot of mash made of beets and carrots.

  “I’m sorry, son,” she said. “I’d give you all of the bread I had— if I had it.”

  “Please, Mama, I really want some bread. I’m so hungry.”

  “I know,” she said with glitte
ring, suffering eyes. “If I had any, I’d even give you my portion.”

  “Thank you, Mama,” he said. He turned and with his quiet way of late walked out to sit under the birch tree in what was left of the warm fall afternoon.

  “I guess I should go to the woods to find some mushrooms,” I said.

  “I guess you should,” Auntie said. “Take Viktor with you. He could probably use a little fresh air. God knows, it’s stifling here some days.”

  “All right,” I said. And I picked up my basket.

  When I came upon Viktor under the birch, there was no point in asking him to come mushroom picking. I could see by his lifeless open eyes that he had gone to Heaven to break bread with his twin sisters and all of the others who had gone before him. I closed his eyes gently with my finger the way I saw Xenkovna do it when the twins passed on. I went and found Uncle Misha in the shed so that I wouldn’t have to be the one to tell Auntie about Viktor.

  It was the saddest funeral I had ever seen. Auntie wouldn’t let anyone help her minister to her little son.

  “I can’t forgive myself for not caring for Maria and Marta,” she said. “There’s no way that I won’t do it for Viktor ... And don’t talk to me about my frozen hands and feet. I’ll die before I let anyone give him his last service.”

  She bathed him herself and dressed him in an embroidered shirt which was still clean from being stored in the trunk. Xenkovna helped Auntie Xena wrap Viktor in a clean sheet. Michael and Alexander carried the coffin that Uncle Misha made himself and we went to the cemetery by ourselves “with no neighbours who can tell the Comrades what we’re doing,” Uncle said. Since it was late fall and there were no flowers for picking, I cut some branches from the birch tree that still had yellow leaves on them and some pine branches. I twisted them together to put over the coffin. We buried Viktor with the usual Bible verses and no tears—we were all out of them. The boys and Uncle Misha barely had enough energy to dig the grave. Auntie threw herself onto it when they were finished. She lay on the grave, moaning and sighing.

  “Oh Blessed God,” she said, hardly breathing. “Why didn’t you take me instead? He hasn’t even had time to see anything of the world. Oh God— oh, My Blessed God!”

  It took Uncle Misha a long time to get her to stand up and walk back to the house with us. We walked home in the pungent-smelling autumn dusk with heavier hearts and one less member of the family, not knowing why we suffered or why God wouldn’t intercede on our behalf. It was clear that no one else would or could.

  The Orphan

  THE NEXT MORNING, I didn’t want to go to school.

  “What am I going to say to that awful Snake Asimov?”

  “Tell him the truth,” Uncle Misha said. “Your cousin has died and obviously won’t be a student any longer.”

  “Why do I have to tell him?”

  “Because you are the one who has to go to school. You don’t want Auntie Xena or me to have to make the unnecessary trip, do you? We certainly don’t need another visit from that despicable Asimov. I’m sure he won’t care.”

  I shrugged my shoulders and scowled.

  “Since when does a little girl question what her elders are telling her to do?” He sighed and coughed that cough that had never left him since the twins died. He looked so gaunt and pale that I did not want to argue with him. I walked to school by myself, my legs and arms dragging as if I pulled the weight of the whole world behind me.

  As soon as the Children saw me without Viktor, they turned away. I must have been wearing that look, the faraway look with the deep, dark circles around the eyes, the one that lets everyone know that there has been another death. I could feel the tension in my furrowed brow and drawn lips. We all knew what it was and we knew not to ask any questions. I leaned against a tree, without speaking to anyone, until Asimov called us in.

  I went to the back of the room to my usual spot and sat staring out of the window at the brilliant fall morning outside. It was cold, but the crisp blue sky beckoned. I wanted to go to the river, to breathe some fresh air, to talk to Mama, to ask her about the twins and the others who were in Heaven with her, to ask her if she had welcomed Viktor and to ask her if she knew when it would be my turn to join the others at the cemetery. I wished I were there, by the river this morning, instead of being stuck in this awful classroom. I was not paying attention to the Snake at all. I wasn’t aware of his speaking to me until the wrap of the metre stick on my knuckles brought me back to attention.

  “I’m talking to you,” Asimov said.

  “Yes, yes, Comrade,” I said, stammering.

  “Why isn’t your book open to the lesson?”

  “I don’t know, Comrade.”

  “Get on with it. I’ll be calling you to recite.”

  “Yes, Comrade.”

  I stared at the letters on the page. I saw the words arranged in their paragraphs, but they wouldn’t make themselves known to my brain. There was an invisible blanket that separated me from the schoolwork. The Snake seemed to know what was going on as he hounded me all morning. I stuttered and stammered through the little I could remember when it was time to recite. I did not offer any answers in the history lesson. When it was time for arithmetic where I usually executed each sum perfectly, I made mistakes in every calculation.

  “How stupid you are today!” the Snake yelled. “When did three times eight become sixteen?”

  I stared at the sum on the blackboard. 439 times 287. What was eight times three anyway? I couldn’t think. And Asimov would not let up on the pressure.

  “Do it again,” he said.

  I did it again. Sixteen I wrote. I received another blow on my knuckles with the stick and the chalk fell to the floor.

  “Write it out fifty times,” he ordered.

  I picked up the chalk and moved to the left side of the blackboard, the side that was reserved for punishing inattentive students. I wrote the sum over again. I made more mistakes. I tried to correct them. The more I corrected, the more mistakes I made.

  “Hurry up already,” Asimov said. “You’re not usually this idiotic.”

  “No, Comrade,” I answered. I resumed my writing.

  “Another mistake!” he said from over my right shoulder. Another blow, this one on the back of my hand. I screamed from the pain and the chalk fell again, breaking into pieces this time.

  “Come here,” Comrade Asimov said, directing me to the centre of the front of the room. His face was twisted with anger.

  “What’s going on with you today? Did someone put rocks into your head while you were sleeping?”

  “No, Comrade.”

  “Where’s that snivelling little cousin of yours? He should be at school today, shouldn’t he?”

  “Yes, Comrade, he should.”

  “So where is he then? Or don’t you know that either?” “He’s dead, Comrade.”

  “Dead? From what?”

  “From being hungry, Comrade.”

  “What nonsense!” Comrade Asimov exclaimed. “We’ve just brought in a bumper crop of a harvest. Isn’t it enough for you happy farmers?”

  “Yes, Comrade. but he’s dead anyway. We weren’t given any of the wheat.”

  “I guess that’s nature’s way of ensuring that the strongest survive,” he said, brushing me off breezily.

  “No, Comrade,” I said. “It wasn’t nature that killed him.”

  His face turned red.

  “What’s that? You dare to contradict me!”

  “Yes, Comrade,” I answered. I stood as straight as I could and stuck out my chin in the best of the Ukrainian spirit I had left.

  “It wasn’t nature that killed him. It was Father Stalin and his army. It was Uncle Ivan and his bread procurement committee and it was you, the worst of all; it was you and your metre stick that beat him every day till he didn’t want to live any more—till he hadn’t enough strength to get water or play with me or go to the river to catch crayfish with me or pick flowers. Now he’s in Heaven, with Mama and Ta
hto and Jesus where you or Uncle Ivan or Father Stalin will never hurt him— ever again.”

  I was screaming now. It wasn’t a little Childlike scream. It was a black roar that came from the bottom of my empty belly, that racked my bones, and made my head feel like it might explode.

  It didn’t take Asimov long to react. He smashed my face with his right hand. My nose started bleeding profusely.

  He looked surprised.

  “Go home and clean up. I don’t need your mess all over my classroom. Maybe, you’ll think before you speak the next time.”

  I found myself out in the cold morning. I sat there, on the stoop violently shaking. That was how Auntie Anna, the sister of our old schoolmaster, found me as she was crossing the square to minister to one of the Babushkas.

  “For the love of the Good Lord, Child!” she said. “What has happened to you.”

  “Comrade Asimov,” I answered through my clenched teeth. I couldn’t say any more.

  “Xena will surely go mad,” she said. She helped me to my feet and walked home with me, her arm around my waist so that I wouldn’t faint back down to the ground.

  Auntie Xena did faint when she saw me. While Xenkovna boiled water and started to clean me up, Auntie Anna tended to Auntie Xena. Tea was made. I was propped up to try to stop the bleeding. It was a long time before things settled down. My face was swollen for days and Auntie Xena was worried that I would be left with a crooked nose or some kind of breathing problem. But Uncle Misha was angry.

  “You know that this won’t be forgotten,” he said. “Those were serious accusations you made. As a matter of fact, we can expect them to do something. The question is what and when?”

  I didn’t go to school after that. While my face healed, the month of November set in. It was colder than usual. Uncle Misha and the boys tried to bring in our winter’s supply of wood. They went to the woods and carried one log in at a time.