chapter 31
The last war
What is the real war for me? Nowadays I know what it is because of our extremely greedy northern neighbours. Still, my knowledge has been rather limited because our city is situated in the rear, thank God. So, for us, it's mostly frequent black-outs and explosions at night and in the day-time. And, afterwards, some dry impartial news briefly reporting to us what had been destroyed and how many people had been killed. Nobody pays much attention to air-raid warnings - they howl too often without any visible threat. Besides, most of us have merely a vague idea where the nearest bomb shelter is.
The real fear comes only when those damn explosions are so loud that they shake our window-panes. But it was particularly scary during one unforgettable night. I was just about to fall asleep when suddenly one by one two or three missiles passed by my window, illuminating my room with bright orange light. My son shouted from his room that it was our air-defense working and it gave me a fleeting sensation of relief as if we couldn't get killed by fragments of a Russian missile as well as by the accursed thing itself. With a sinking heart, I was waiting for the new bangs to follow the first ones, knowing that they would be loud enough, and thinking of the poor souls who would probably be killed just now. And, above all, there was the helpless realization that my family and I could be next. I confess that after finishing the previous sentence I spat thrice over my left shoulder, just in case, as if it could really help.
Anyway, in comparison with that, my mother's tales about the Great Patriotic War were much more diverse and intimidating. She was 11 when the great wave of the Second World War at last crossed the borders of the USSR. In fact, my mother could have been easily killed on that very day. At the time she was staying with some of her relatives who lived in another village on the opposite river bank. On the 22nd of June her uncle didn't tell her anything about the war starting and only announced all of a sudden that she had to go home as soon as possible. As my bewildered mother was driving with him in his shaky cart towards the car-ferry, her uncle suddenly remembered that he had forgotten something at home. For a while he hesitated, thinking of going back, but then decided to go forth without any delay.
This decision was really providential, because when after crossing the river, they reached the nearest hill and stopped to watch the ferry that was on its way to their bank again, two or three airplanes with swastika on their wings appeared out of the blue, dropping bombs like some ugly revolting eggs. “And one of them hit the ferry, can you imagine?” my mother used to finish her narration in a dramatic whisper. “People and cows flying in all directions. We could have easily been among them if my aunt's husband had chosen to return then”. For some reason this story stuck rather unpleasantly in my memory, and afterwards whenever something really unbearable happened in my life I used to think selfishly “Oh, if only my mother had been on that ferry, I wouldn't have to endure all of this now”.
Fortunately, my mother survived on that day, and many years later had a lot of stories about the last war to tell her only daughter and grandchildren. She loved the process of narration, usually savouring those details, which she found peculiar or significant. It gave us an odd feeling as if she was telling some scary stories from an old tattered book that she had found in a distant corner of a library. In our childhood and youth it didn't occur to us, of course, that all of that happened not so long ago, and what is more, could happen again in the future.
Anyway, their life under the occupants' rule was a hard experience even in comparison with the disaster of collectivization or the great famine of 1933. In fact, it's difficult to say what was worse. It's true there was no famine in Ukraine during the war. Only Stalin's regime was so ingenious that managed to organize it twice in our parts, which have always been famous for their fertile soil. But the war undoubtedly brought a lot of other trials and calamities.
To my mother's luck their village was located on the territory where German allies - the Romanians - were in charge. At least it was rumoured that Germans, who occupied the opposite river bank, were much more fierce and violent. Yet it was almost impossible to believe it, because the first thing that the Romanians did upon starting their rule was to kill all the communists whom they could find and capture all the Jews in order to send them to the camps of extermination.
In those awful days my 11-year-old mother was not at home again but staying with her favourite aunt, who lived in the neighbouring town at the distance of 10 kilometers from their village. Luckily, my young mother was a good runner. So she was quick enough when on one of those days she was sent to her village to tell some unfortunate people that their relatives were shot and were just lying dead in the street. She let them know about it just in time. Who knows how many nameless graves appeared during that war, but those people did manage to bury their kinsmen in a proper fashion thanks to a little girl, who was not afraid to run alone through the forest. My mother liked to finish this story by telling us how extremely grateful those people were to her. They even gave her a nice present. It's a pity I forgot what it was – some nice food or a pretty headscarf, perhaps. That was a proper present for a little rural girl. Years and years later, when my mother was over eighty, she still sometimes dreamt that she was running through the forest with some urgent errand. Although at that time, having serious problems with her memory, she had already forgotten, thank God, what that errand really was.
Not all their troubles during occupation were so horrible, but they were definitely very irritating. If you think about it, by that time only ten years had passed since communists destroyed the age-old way of life in the villages by forcing peasants to join the collective farms. And now they had to adapt again to their new masters. One of the signs of that new life was a gigantic bonfire that the Romanians built to burn the books from the local library. In my school days it was one of my favourite occupations to search for interesting books on the shelves of some library. No wonder that I was shocked when I learnt about that bonfire from my mother. It seemed there was something medieval about it. But Romanians hadn't done their job well and quite a few books at the very bottom of a large heap survived almost intact. They were saved by a local boy who lived nearby. Later, my mother and his other cronies had a great pleasure of reading those books in secret, savouring the poignant odour of smoke coming from their pages. I believe they could pay with their lives for that entertainment but the temptation to deceive their oppressors was too strong.
There was no industrial production on the occupied territories, of course. Part of the factories had been destroyed, some of the strategically important ones had been evacuated beforehand. Not to mention that most male workers had been recruited and left with the retreating Soviet Army, or Red Army to be precise, because that's how our army was called at the time of the Second World War. To be honest, I completely forgot about this detail. This playing with the words seems trying sometimes. Besides, I lived in the USSR for 35 years - till its loud downfall - and the word “soviet” was in wide use then. In those days I used to find it funny that western authors rarely called our country the USSR or the Soviet Union. In Agatha Christie's books, for example, even the high officials always said “Russia”, or “Russians”, or “Moscow”. Or at worst “red” or “red power” if they were in a playful mood. Obviously, I don't find it amusing any more, especially now when Russians are slowly advancing across our land, greedily biting off new pieces. Nowadays I understand clearer than ever before that western society has always perceived the USSR as the reincarnation of the Russian Empire. Yet it doesn't really matter what the nature of my former country was. I don't believe that during the Second World War our grandfathers fought for the state or for the great mustached leader with blood on his hands. They fought for their families and their land. And isn't that how any aggressive war starts? The cause of it will be covered with heaps of grand words, of course, but the real motive will be still there – just a trivial desire to grab their neighbours' land that - in their opinion - is too good for them.
I am afraid it upsets me too much when I begin to reflect on it all. So it would be better if I stopped right here and came back to my 11-year-old mother and her fellow villagers who were trying to survive at the time of the Romanian occupation. They definitely had a lot of troubles. Very soon they had to face a total deficit of such important things as salt, soap, matches and fabric. However, it was not as catastrophic for them as it could be for modern people. Those peasants, undoubtedly, knew much better how to survive without manufactured goods. They couldn't make pickles any more but at least it was possible to dry fruit or herbs in order to add some vitamins to their nourishment in winter. As for kindling a fire I'm sure there were some old people in the village who still remembered how to do it with tinder and flint. My great-grandmother Euphemia was almost certainly one of them. Moreover, the old woman clearly remembered how they used to make wood ash infusion in her youth and used it instead of soap. But Euphemia was especially brilliant when she found an old striped loom in the attic and much to her granddaughters' admiration managed to properly assemble all its parts. Later, she taught them all to spin yarn and weave fabric from the hemp thread. That damn war definitely threw them back to their ancestors' 19th century style of life. No wonder that 27 years later at the very thought that a new war was coming those who remembered the last war rushed to the shops to buy salt, matches and soap in big quantities. It may look like a funny coincidence but I was 11 then, exactly the same age my mother was in 1941, and there I stood in a long queue with old and middle-aged people, trying to understand why everybody was so scared.
But these weren't the only troubles that peasants had to endure during the Romanian occupation. I remember my mother telling me that people were irritated past endurance when they were ordered to grow corn instead of wheat and paint traditionally white walls of their huts pink. Everybody was revolted by the corn diet but my little mother suffered from it more severely than anyone else. At least a Romanian doctor confirmed their guess that her frequent nose-bleeding could be provoked by nourishment based on corn. As for the pink walls of the huts, I remember I used to find this strange whim of the Romanians completely ridiculous. But it wasn't really. The explanation was very simple. The Romanians just felt homesick and pink was a traditional colour of huts in their villages. It would have been better for them to have stayed there, because their clumsy attempts to feel at home on our land only increased the hostility of the local population. And is it really odd that people always hate occupants so much? It seems occupants can force you to do anything when they are aiming at you with their machine-guns.
To be continued...
(c) Anna Shevchenko
