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
