вторник, 27 ноября 2018 г.

My mother's stories (chapter twenty five)

My mother's stories
chapter 25
The informer


       After her miraculous survival in 1947 my mother lived in the village only four more years. I don't know why but I have never before associated my mother's heart problems and nightmares during that period with the damage that she received at the time of the famine. She almost starved to death then and definitely needed a special treatment and really good nourishment. I am sure she got nothing of the sort. As far as I can remember my mother's tale, her mother did take her to see a doctor in the neighbouring town a few times. But she was not satisfied with his prescription. So, choosing the time when the doctor left his consulting room, her mother bribed a nurse asking her for some injection, which, in her opinion, would be good for her daughter's heart. But obviously it was not, because as soon as my mother got it she unexpectedly fainted. The doctor, who just came in at this moment, scolded the nurse furiously. My mother, however, flatly refused to look for help of official medicine after that incident. So she continued to suffer from nightmares, dreaming about a snake hiding inside her pillow almost every night, and inevitably attracting sympathetic stares when, extremely weak with her heart racing, she was slowly dragging herself through the village.
      It so happened that the children of my mother's generation had a big gap in their education because of the Second World War. Actually, since 1941 till 1945 they attended school only for about a year when they were under the Romanian rule. Then the Germans came to replace the Romanians and those didn't bother themselves with education on the occupied territories, having enough trouble on their front line. Thus children started studying again only in 1945 after they had been freed by the Soviet army. I think my mother was still at school at the age of 19 or even 20. Yet she never finished it. Her excellent memory suddenly began to fail and she couldn't utter a word when a teacher asked her a question.
      No wonder that seeing her people whispered behind my mother's back, foretelling her untimely death. But she survived this time too, and being encouraged by one of her teachers, left the village with firm determination not to set her foot there ever again. Nevertheless, 30 years later she had to return to the village and live there for a month taking care of her ill mother. As soon as the old woman felt better my mother hired a bus and took her to our city with all her worldly possessions. I remember even the chickens were brought to our place as we lived in a private house and had a spacious yard. And here my grandmother lived for the last two years of her life, quarreling in turn with her two daughters and changing her place of living all the time – exactly like her own old mother used to do during her time.
      A few years later my mother tried to go to her native parts one more time, moved by her elderly aunt's plea to visit her. But it was a total failure. I remember how they departed: she and my 7-year-old daughter, who was full of elation that she was accompanying her granny on this trip. My father had to see them both off to the train station. I was not really surprised when an hour or two later my father and daughter suddenly appeared saying they came back by tram but my mother had to reach home much later. As it turned out they took a taxi but half way to the station she felt really sick. So after vomiting at the edge of the road my mother couldn't force herself to board any kind of transport and said that she would come home on foot.
      When they were leaving something in my mother's countenance prepared me for such an ending. But still, although I had had a nasty feeling that something like that was going to happen, I felt infuriated. Didn't my mother know she suffered from seasickness most of all in cars? Surely they had to catch a bus! Knowing my mother's love for theatrical effects, I suspected it was just a little performance organized for me personally. Nowadays I understand it was not a pretense. In spite of her love for a bit of acting it would have been too much even for her to pretend like that.
      As for my rage because of the trip which hadn't taken place it was my usual reaction to my mother's tricks at that time. It seemed to me that all my life was punctuated by such enthusiastic beginnings which suddenly came to a failure. How often did I hear from her “Oh, I really wanted to do this or that but I felt dizzy all of a sudden. I just couldn't enter that shop, or office or whatever it was”? And that was not all. Didn't she have this nasty habit to persuade me to do something and then pour a cool bucket of discouragement on my head? I believed the roots of my lack of self-confidence lay there. And wasn't it my damn uncertainty and constant hesitation that prevented me from reaching any success in my life? However, I think it was my marriage that killed our trust in each other once and for all. I couldn't forgive my mother for her extreme hostility towards it, and what hurt my feelings even more was her stubborn refusal to respect my right to make my own mistakes.
      And only now, so many years after I split up with my husband, I began to understand my mother's desperate reluctance to visit her native land. It was not only a place of hard labour and poverty. It was the place where her mother always preferred her sister to her, where her beloved father was arrested and everybody could poke their finger at her calling her “a daughter of the enemy of the people”. I imagine what a shock it was for my mother when she learnt who had written the false information against her father. She could never have thought it was him! Who could have guessed it was their neighbour the manager – the very man who had enough grain to feed his chickens even during the famine, and whose hen once laid an egg in their yard during that hungry time?

      To be continued...
(c) Anna Shevchenko
27. The importance of family (the ending)
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четверг, 27 сентября 2018 г.

My mother's stories (chapter twenty four - the ending)


My mother's stories
chapter 24
The great famine of '47
 (the ending)


      The awfulness of the idea of starvation never occurred to me when I was a child. I liked my mother's tales about the famine and found them rather amusing. I don't understand now what was so fascinating about them for me but I am afraid I was actually laughing listening to the story about cutlets from grass and stew from sparrows that my mother's granny Euphemia cooked for them that deadly spring of 1947. At the time I didn't realize, of course, that my mother and aunt were really lucky to see the end of that year. In fact, I didn't find it odd that instead of gulping down that stew the poor girls began to cry the moment they noticed tiny birds' legs sticking out from the pan and flatly refused to eat it. Euphemia, on the contrary, seemed to me rather unfeeling when I learnt that she got angry with her granddaughters' untimely sensitivity and ate the sparrows completely by herself.
      Nowadays after having the experience of half-starvation in the wild 90s (following the noisy fall of the USSR) I know that the old woman was right. It was not rats or human flesh after all. Although some people ate the latter too, overcome by the instinct of self-preservation. And can I really blame them? Can I be entirely sure that I wouldn't have done the same in their place? Yet it's a relief for me that there were no known cases of cannibalism in my mother's village.
       And my mother, it seemed, tried to draw her own death ever nearer with that overscrupulousness of hers - like in that amazing story about an egg that I remember so well. She and her sister were really lucky to find that egg in their yard one day. It was definitely laid by their neighbour's hen, because he was one of the few who still had chickens left alive. Most of his fellow-villagers slaughtered their cattle and poultry long ago, knowing that famine was coming and that it was better to eat their animals before they started to lose their flesh. They knew that they wouldn't be able to keep them alive. But their neighbour was lucky to work as a manager of a food storehouse. No wonder he had enough grain to feed his chickens even during that hard time. However, the most incredible thing was that after finding that egg lying on the ground, my mother and aunt didn't eat it at once. Having months of starvation behind their backs, they just stood there arguing and offering that small vessel with proteins to each other. The end of the story has been variable: sometimes my mother said they gave the egg to a cat in the end, another time – that they ate it together, giving the cat its share. I don't know exactly why she was playing with details in some of her stories. Was it just her love for the art of story-telling or her usual desire to create another picture which would confirm that she was different, that in no situation she would forget about her dignity.
       And their situation was really desperate in the year of famine. It was even worse than it could have been because of her mother's unfortunate habit of lending everything to everybody in spite of the fact that she rarely got her things back. Yet, it was a really great misfortune that she lent her sister two sacks of wheat for her daughter's wedding just when the famine was about to start. If I remember correctly it was the very sister, who joked once, when answering their claims: “If I borrowed things and then gave them back I would never become rich”. Sure enough they never got their grain back. Nevertheless when at the end of winter they almost ran out of food supplies they were saved by their mother's other fault – her passion for clothes. She never had enough of them – even that money that her poor husband had saved in secret to buy them a house she wasted on garments after his arrest.
      Although I have to do my grandmother justice and mention that she bought two suits for her husband too, sincerely believing that sooner or later he was going to come back. Most of those clothes were dark-coloured or black, because, as my mother used to tell me with disgust, black was her mother's favourite colour.
      Anyway, in the year of famine my mother and her sister appreciated at last how lucky they were that their mother's trunks were full. So when it became clear that their food supplies wouldn't last them long she filled two heavy bags with those dark-coloured garments and went to Western Ukraine to swap clothes for food. By that time their granny Euphemia had already left for her elder daughter's place. The old woman always did it after having one of her numerous huge rows with their mother.
      My mother and her sister were left alone. Waiting for their mother's return, the girls tried to spare that food that she left for them as much as possible. But the day came at last when they had eaten the last crumbs and still their mother hadn't come back. So they were just staying in bed, drinking water from time to time. Lying there for three long days, my mother had some kind of hallucinations – as soon as she closed her eyes a long table began to float in front of her. It was crammed with different dishes, but mostly it was bread, freshly baked bread, nice and brown.
      I remember my mother told me once that actually there had been some people she could have asked for help. I think she meant her aunt who lived in the neighbouring town and their fortunate neighbour's young wife. That girl married the man when he was left a widower with two small children. My mother and she were almost of the same age and they immediately became friends. That young woman could definitely give them something in secret from her husband the manager.
      But here my mother's pride, her habitual shield from the outer world, played a bad trick with her. Perhaps she had some hesitation if she should go asking for help but soon she and her sister were too weak to walk anywhere. They were saved by their mother's long-expected return. Her arrival, I am afraid, was not so triumphant as she had meant it to be. As she went to the toilet at the train station two sacks with food were stolen from her. Hot-tempered as usual their mother tried to attack her companions whom she had asked to keep an eye on her things. Furious, she accused them of a secret agreement against her. But everything was in vain – she couldn't prove anything, of course. Luckily for the girls their mother had never let go of the smaller bag with cereals. So now she could act as a savior of her poor daughters, starting cooking porridge for them as soon as she came home. That small bag lasted them long enough to live till the field works started in spring and the state began to provide peasants with miserable rations of bread giving them back at last the small part of that grain which they grew with their own hands.

To be continued...
(c) Anna Shevchenko
27. The importance of family (the ending)
29. The great famine of '47
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вторник, 22 мая 2018 г.

My mother's stories (chapter twenty four)


My mother's stories
chapter 24
The great famine of '47



        Somehow listening to my mother's stories I have never understood what it was for her to live in her village marked as “a daughter of the enemy of the people”. I think she was too proud to show me that it bothered her too much. It was not really strange, of course, that she was so eager to leave the village, considering poverty and hard labour. But it couldn't explain why my mother was so determined not to set her foot there ever again. In contrast to her grudge against her mother she was fond of her grandmother and aunt, her father's sister. The latter didn't have children with her husband and they treated my mother as their own child. Moreover she really missed her beloved oak forest, where she used to spend so many happy hours wandering with her granny. So why was the very thought of coming back so hateful for her?
        For a long time I believed it was my mother's hatred towards her own mother that prevented her from visiting the village. Yet, after putting together all the details, while writing my memoirs, I began to think that the main reason was rather different. It was her fellow-villagers' enmity that hurt her feelings even more than her mother's dislike. It was them who couldn't forgive my mother her proud demeanour, her flat refusal to bear her status of “the daughter of the enemy” as a stain of shame. I imagine it was not so easy for her to stand on her dignity because of the rural custom not only to hiss accusations behind someone's back but to throw them straight to their faces. So that was the time, I think, when my mother developed a habit of using her pride as a shield against everything and everybody, a trait that cost me so many inconveniences in my childhood and irritated me so much in later years.
       I don't remember exactly if my mother had ever had any doubts as to her father's innocence. But I do recall clearly her tale about some young Komsomol activists, members of Young Communist League, who came to her house once. They explained to her that if she meant to continue her education she had to join their ranks but before that she had to sign a statement with - a renunciation of her father.
       My mother didn't think twice to say “no”, adding mockingly at the end that Komsomol could easily do without her but she couldn't do without her father. It was dangerous to joke like that at that time and my mother was really lucky to get away with it. Nevertheless, that refusal predetermined all her future life. The doors of the college were closed for her after that in spite of her good marks at school and all the hopes of a good career were now lost.
         Besides, my mother had to pay for that refusal when a great famine of 1947 broke out in the country. I remember her looking at my father with a mixture of light envy and amusement and telling me with mild indignation that during the famine he got as much bread as an adult in his orphanage, while they received half as much as ordinary citizens being “the family of an enemy of the people”. To my surprise my father reacted with good humour to her remark. He just smiled reminiscently and said that he had even more than that – there were one or two pieces of sausage floating in his soup on all red-letter days. And what a joy it was for orphans to fish those small delicious bits out of their festive broth!
        At the same time my mother had to survive on their miserable bread rations – she and the majority of the population, that is, those who didn't belong to some strictly limited privileged group. The others weren't in much better position than my mother's family. Actually, they began to receive that poor help from the state only after the field work began in spring. Before that, in autumn, that very state grabbed most of the wheat that was grown on the collective farms' fields, leaving peasants to survive with that grain that they managed to grow on their personal plots. And it was not much as it was a notorious year of great drought and bad harvest.
       They say Stalin's regime never stopped trading in grain. Even in 1933 and 1947, at the time of great famines, heavy laden trains continued to cross our borders – exactly like in that joke that was popular at the beginning of the Second World War when the USSR was still happily trading with Germany. As my father told me the narrators of the joke started with the question “Do you know what our wagon wheels say when they go abroad and then on their way back?” The answer, as for me, was simple and brilliant: going abroad the wheels rattled “rye - wheat, rye – wheat” and coming back they tapped “screws – bolts, screws – bolts”. The narrators pronounced slowly the first pair of words, giving their listeners the impression of heavy carriages full of grain. The second pair, on the contrary, was pronounced in quick succession, creating immediately the image of more than half-empty wagons with small piles of iron produce somewhere at the bottom.
         So that was the price for our industrialization. But still I can't grasp why they continued to send grain abroad when people were eating grass and swelling from starvation. I can accept a wide-spread explanation that communists organized the famine of 1933 just to suppress peasants' rebellions and force them to enter collective farms. How else could they make people work hard without getting any money for their labour? But the famine of '47 was different. It happened just after the war, when the country had been rendered lifeless with heavy death toll. It seemed mad to organize a new famine at the time like this, even if Stalin was afraid of new rebellions. But then I remembered a phrase which was ascribed to Stalin “No one is irreplaceable”. It inevitably reminded me a well-known Russian proverb “Women are still giving birth” where the same thought was put into simpler words. I can only imagine how modern feminists would react to such a statement. As for Stalin's words they say nowadays that the great moustached leader never said anything of the sort. But does it really matter? It's enough to know that it was the invariable motto of communists at the time of Stalin's rule.

      To be continued..
(c) Anna Shevchenko
27. The importance of family (the ending)
28. Why did they kill him?
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четверг, 22 марта 2018 г.

My mother's stories (chapter twenty three)

My mother's stories
chapter 23
Why did they kill him?


         It's strange how people's memory works. I have been writing my memoirs for more than three years now and my mother's mental abilities have deteriorated dramatically during this time. Only a year ago she remembered a lot about her childhood and youth and only what she was doing a minute or two ago slipped her memory completely. Nowadays she has forgotten most of her past, even her violent mother, whom she hated so persistently for so long. Nevertheless her father has recently emerged, escaping the dark hollows of her memory. So she was just sitting muttering to herself in her present-day manner “What has happened to him? I can't remember”. Giving her a clue, I reminded her that her father was executed when she was only seven. My mother looked at me perplexed and asked with sudden tears in her voice “Why did they kill him? He was so good”. Trying to distract her, I started to tell her about a great number of people, who were marked as “enemies of the people” and executed at that awful time. And she suddenly remembered “Oh, yes. I was a daughter of the enemy of the people. So how did they humiliate me?” After some struggle my mother did fish out that she had been forbidden to sit at the first row at school – her place could be only at the back of the class.
         The detail that I have forgotten. It was strange. She used to tell me that being an excellent pupil she was sitting at the first row, at least at primary school. My daughter confirmed she recalled the same. So maybe my mother was just trying to use her imagination to refill the dark holes in her memory. Or, perhaps, she was forbidden to sit in the front after the War when she refused to sign the renunciation of her father. Who knows? My mother in her state can't help me now. But never mind. I still remember a lot – all those things that she used to tell me when I was a child and she was a young strong woman with excellent memory for poems and her own past. Although even then her memory was not so good for everyday business that always seemed to her too mundane to pay too much attention to.
        Anyway, I remember that as “a daughter of the enemy of the people” she didn't get a free lunch at school. It was an important addition to the nourishment, because most of the children never got enough food at home. Yet, there were some sympathetic teachers, who used to send my mother to the kitchen to wash the dishes – so that she could receive her lunch as a payment for her work. How often could they do it? It's a pity I forgot and my children don't remember either. Nevertheless it's a great relief for me to know that if I have some doubts about my recollections I can always ask them as they used to listen to my mother's stories as often as I did at the same age.
        But I do remember clearly my mother telling me that she never saw her father again after he went to the hearing. Only a note came from him some time later. In that small piece of paper, given to them in great secrecy, her father revealed the place where he had hidden the money that he had saved to buy a house for the family. I think he knew what was waiting for him. But even then, in his desperate state, he was trying to be funny as usual and added in the end of the note that he was treated there as a Gypsy from a well-known joke. The hint was transparent enough – they knew he meant “tortured”. Many years later, reading Alexander Solzhenitsyn's book, I learnt with a feeling of deep revulsion and terror that my grandfather's case wasn't extraordinary. It was a usual practice. Actually, punitive agency got official permission for such methods of inquiry. My shock was especially profound because I was growing up watching a lot of movies about The Second World War where brutal German fascists ruthlessly tormented our selfless patriots before killing them. And our soldiers were so brave and noble. If some of them, mad with grief after getting a letter about his wife and children killed by a German bomb, tried to be violent with German captives, the others always stopped him saying “We can't behave like them”. I could never watch those touching scenes without tears in my eyes. It was such an awful irony suddenly to discover that our people could “behave like them” and even worse, because they tormented their own compatriots just to force them to sign a document with some absurd accusations brought against them. No wonder people usually admitted everything. Death was preferable if the alternative was the everyday torture.
        I remember how, thinking about Stalin's repressions, I used to feel pity for all the poor people, who were doomed to live during that terrible time. But then something changed in my perception. I think it started when Russian propaganda raised a turbid wave on TV in order to clean Stalin's reputation. I felt confused when photos of old women lovingly clutching his portraits suddenly popped up all over the Internet. Looking at them I thought at first those women were just a little bit touched in their heads. But I was knocked down completely by a photo of a plump woman who wasn't even that old. A sweet smile was playing on her lips while on the portrait she was holding the head of the great moustached leader was surrounded by the USSR National Emblem that looked like a halo of a saint.
       I don't know exactly when it happened. Perhaps, at that moment as I was watching that photograph or a bit later, when I realized the extent of Stalin's rehabilitation in Russia. Anyway, a frightful thought came to me once: that bloody regime couldn't have existed if a lot of people hadn't supported and justified it. And what is more there were plenty of those, who were ready to fulfill a horrid work of torture and shooting. I was not even sure if it was my own thought or I came across it while reading online. But it didn't matter. I just felt it was true at that moment.
        So that's why those hideous traumatic scenes from the old War movies were shown so convincingly. Movie-makers didn't have to look for German War criminals to consult. They could easily find a lot of good experts with a long practice in their own country - that is in my former country, which I was brought up to believe was the best in the world. A ruthless reality gradually undermined this stupid conviction, of course. But nothing could compare with that crashing blow that it got when the whole truth about Stalin's repressions was revealed to the people. It seemed most of my compatriots felt like that at the time. And now even my best friend has recently told me that Stalin's regime was not really that bad – there were plenty of good things too.
         I do hope that my head is more resilient and nobody will ever be able to persuade me that a mass slaughter of people can be justified by some high purposes or the future happiness of all the others. It's painful for me to admit it but it looks like people can be made to believe anything at all. The herd instinct – that is what that sly mass propaganda uses here, I think. This irresistible desire to join the majority even if they are all walking to the precipice.

     To be continued...
(c) Anna Shevchenko
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