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