My mother's stories
chapter 22
The importance of family
(the ending)
(the ending)
I don't know why the authorities usually hid the fact
that political convicts were executed. The first thing that comes to
my mind is that they did it just because of refined cruelty, playing
cat-and-mouse game with their victims' relatives. Yet, I understand I
am wrong - there definitely were some practical reasons. It's
believed now that they merely tried to conceal the real scope of
political repressions. Perhaps, it's true. Somehow I can't imagine
communists of high rank inventing this secrecy just to save their
subordinates from the necessity of telling the truth straight to the
anguished faces of numerous people. Some information, however,
filtered even through the closed doors. Dark rumours were spreading
around the country but people didn't want to believe them. Who knows
how many poor souls continued to haunt different officials'
thresholds trying to learn something reassuring about their beloved
ones' fate?
Anyway,
due to this cruel policy my mother had been waiting for years for her
father's return, not knowing that ”ten years without the right for
correspondence” stood for a death penalty. She learnt about his
destiny only at the beginning of the 1960s,
at the time of so-called Hruschev's Thaw, when political prisoners,
who survived Stalin's camps, started to come back, cleared of all
charges. I was pretty small then but still I remember my confusion
when I saw my mother crying with some papers in her hands and saying
something about my grandfather. I don't think I understood her
explanations at that time, but later I learnt that those papers were
my grandfathers' rehabilitation documents, which declared his
innocence twenty years after his execution. They put an end to my
mother's hopes that her father was alive and lived somewhere with
another family. It seemed possible to her because political convicts
usually got ten years of deportation after their term of
imprisonment.
And indeed, one man came back to the village with a
wife and two sons twenty years or so after his conviction. He was one
of those, who fell under the heavy tread of the notorious Law of
Three Spikelets and, funny enough, got twelve years for twelve kilos
of stolen grain. His return shook all the village, though not because
he managed to survive, but because of a remarkable love-story
connected with him. There was a girl in the village, whom he promised
to marry, but infinitely delayed their wedding. Twice she tried to
marry another man and every time her light-winged lover popped up
just before the wedding to break it up, swearing eagerly that he
would marry her soon. Even after his arrest he continued to feed her
with his oaths in his reassuring letters. And what is more, he
managed to persuade her to sell her own house to take care of his
sick mother. So his unexpected return with his wife and two children
turned into a really tragic ending for that trustful devoted soul.
Suddenly, after all those years of waiting, she found herself without
a roof above her head. I remember this story seemed to me so
outrageous that I felt a great relief when upon finishing it my
mother began to tell me soothingly that the villagers didn't allow
this to happen and made that unfaithful lover buy some hut for the
poor woman in the end.
My grandfather, however, was not so lucky as that man
and in vain his daughter had been waiting for years for him. But
despite all the oppression that she had to endure as “the daughter
of the enemy of the people” my mother continued to cherish her
recollections about him. She liked to tell me in loving detail how
her father used to carry her in his arms and didn't allow her mother
to beat her. Or how he used to take her to the river bank, where he
put her down on the grass, and she was watching him swimming and
diving in deep waters of the pool named Fishers' Pit. People usually
avoided this dangerous place because two men drowned there once, but
her father was fearless. He worked at the water-mill and liked to
tell his little daughter about dangerous tasks of fixing something
high above the ground or in some deep tight hole, which nobody
volunteered to fulfill except him. No wonder her father was a real
hero in my mother's eyes. He was a remarkable man in many respects.
For example, he finished three classes of parish school. It was rare
accomplishment for villagers of his generation. He liked reading, of
course, and was always in the center of any company having a fresh
joke for any occasion. Who knows maybe those funny stories about
Stalin that he didn't fear to tell triggered the repressive machine
to persecute him? Although it's very well known that this machine
eliminated a lot of people, who didn't have even such a little fault
in store.
It would be funny if it was not so sad but my
grandfather was one of the few, who really believed in bright
communist future and was mocking his fellow-villagers' desperate
attempts to increase their wealth. It was very stupid of them in his
opinion because the time would come soon when there wouldn't be any
money and everything would belong to everybody.
So perhaps, it was my grandfather's readiness to
believe in better things that ruined him in the end. He did get a
warning. Some kind soul, risking their own life, sent him a note,
advising not to go to the hearing but flee from the region as soon as
possible. Years later I read Eugenia Ginsburg's recollections about that
awful time, and she really met some people, who managed to avoid
imprisonment just fleeing to another region. But she, as well as my
poor grandfather, thought that her innocence was too obvious to be
afraid of something. As if those ruthless investigators, who used to
invent ridiculous accusations against innocent people, needed any proof.
I remember my mother telling me with anguish in her voice how her
father put his best suit on and went to the hearing. It was a turning
point in her life but I don't think she could realize this at that
moment.
To be continued...
To be continued...
