“Never a day passed,” she said, “without your mother and me praying to him.”
“And we must pray to him still,” Mama said, “until Papa is with us.”
It was the first time she had spoken about Papa. I hurried to tell her, “We met a doctor who was going to the coal-mining camps in Vorkuta. He was a good man and he promised to look for Papa, but I couldn’t tell him what camp Papa was in.” It was our only sad time that day, for the miracle of our finding one another made us believe that someday we would see Papa.
CHAPTER TWELVE
THE STRANGER
That evening we slept in beds for the first time in two months—and not only in beds, but on soft feather beds, for Ludmilla kept chickens. Nothing could have been better than the softness of the bed and Mama right there in the same room with us.
We awoke to hear Mama and Ludmilla whispering to each other. When they saw we were awake, Mama said, “We have been talking, and we have decided that we must tell anyone who asks that you are Ludmilla’s grandchildren come to stay with her because her daughter is not well.
“I must report regularly to the town’s Communist Party chairman,” she went on. “He is a hard man, and if he discovered you had run away from Leningrad, he might arrest you.”
Though Mama’s words frightened me, I soon put them aside, for Ludmilla had prepared an enormous breakfast for us. There were fresh eggs. I had two, and Georgi three. After breakfast Mama showed us about. I would feed the hens, she said, and since Georgi, like Ludmilla, was never without a rabbit in his arms, he was to feed the rabbits and clean their cages.
“I have never trusted anyone with my rabbits,” Ludmilla told Georgi, “even your mother. But I can see the little pets have taken to you.”
At the foot of the ladder there was a garden growing in tubs of precious earth, with potatoes, onions, carrots, and the largest cabbages I had ever seen. “The season is short,” Mama said, “but there is no night, so the cabbages never stop fattening.”
The little house with Mama was a paradise. We were like so many peas in a pod. The smallness of the house made everything cozy. Ludmilla had her own tiny room. Mama, Georgi, and I all slept in the other room, so we were always together. Mama taught me how to make piroshki, and each day we walked into town with our fresh batch for the bakery. After Mama collected her money, we strolled along the river watching the barges and fishing boats, thinking of the walks we had taken along the Neva in Leningrad. Georgi brought his fishing line and sat on the wharves next to tanned and wrinkled fishermen who delighted in the fierce way he fished. Sometimes they let him pull in a big fish on their own, stronger lines.
While Georgi fished and I drew pencil sketches of the fishing boats, Mama sat looking out at the harbor. I knew she was hoping against hope that Papa would step off of one of the incoming boats.
After Mama bought whatever supplies we needed with the few kopecks the piroshki earned, we started for Ludmilla’s, where we were welcomed home and urged to tell of all we had seen in the town.
The days were much the same, with only small surprises: new rabbits, a yellow-and-black butterfly, excitement in Dudinka because the salmon were coming up the river to spawn and there were as many as you wished to eat. The greatest surprise of all came on the first day of September. We stopped, as we always did, at the post office. Our visits had always been useless, but this day Mama was handed a letter. She said nothing, but her hand was trembling. Georgi and I followed her outside. We hurried to a spot along the river where we would not be noticed. Mama carefully opened the letter. She read it once and, wiping away tears, gave it to us with a trembling hand.
Dear Ekaterina Ivanovna,
It was my great pleasure to become acquainted with your daughter and son. I left them in the best of health and pray that they are now with you. I have never known two children with a better idea of where they were going.
I am writing to tell you that another member of your family is on his way.
My wife joins me in wishing your family well. Please tell your son that my boys send him their greetings.
A friend
We knew at once that the letter was from Dr. Glebov. It was a short letter, for Dr. Glebov was careful to say as little as he could. We hurried to the cottage and, scrambling up the ladder, we held the letter out to Ludmilla.
“It is your papa. He is coming.” Ludmilla threw her arms around us. “Another miracle from St. Vladimir.”
Each day we instructed the postmistress as to where we lived. “If anyone asks for Ekaterina Ivanovna, she is at old Ludmilla’s cottage.”
“Yes, yes.” The postmistress looked at us suspiciously, but we didn’t care. All we cared about was finding Papa. We met all the steamboats, but Papa was not on them.
In late September we awakened more than once to find the windows of the cottage iced over. The tender beans had long since been picked and put up, and the cabbages were in a barrel of brine, but the turnips and carrots were left in the dirt to sweeten. The rabbits had been brought inside. Since there were no trees on the tundra, Mama, Georgi, and I had met the barges carrying firewood up the river. We took the firewood home in a wagon, and now the ground beneath the stilts was nearly covered by the heaps of firewood Mama’s piroshki had paid for.
October came, and now there was always a fire in the woodstove. A crust of ice crept over the river. There were fewer barges. The long white nights were over.
One morning I opened the door of the cottage to see fresh footprints in the snow. My heart began to race. I knew that Mama and Ludmilla had not been outside. I was afraid someone might be spying on us. I knew that I must call Mama. I started to close the door when a bearded man, dirty and dressed in rags, climbed up the ladder. I cried out and tried to slam the door on him.
“Maryushka.”
It was Papa’s pet name for me.
Georgi and Mama and Ludmilla hurried to the door. We crowded around Papa until he begged us to let him breathe. At last he was settled on a chair placed next to the stove, a glass of hot tea in his hand. Mama, Georgi, and I were at his feet. Ludmilla stood close beside us, crying, a rabbit under each arm. We could not look at or touch Papa enough.
As happy as we were to have Papa with us, our hearts were broken when we saw how thin he was. His cheeks were sunken, his fingers twisted. There were bruises on his face, and he coughed until we thought he would choke. Most frightening of all was the expression in his eyes. All the laughter was gone. He was looking beyond us to something frightening and terrible.
We all took turns telling our stories. Georgi and I told Papa of our trip. We told him of Old Savoff and of the bear and the Samoyeds. Papa told his own story.
“I was no more sick than the other prisoners, but Dr. Glebov watched over me, reporting me too ill to work and ordering that I be put in the hospital. Through some miracle he found a passport for me, and though he had hardly enough for his family, he gave me money for passage on a freighter.
“After coming to me in the night to alert me, he summoned the guard at the prison hospital to help him with a sick patient. While the guard was busy, I escaped and made my way to the sea. The next morning I was on a freighter that sailed to Dudinka.”
Over and over I blessed the doctor for what he had done for Papa, and was ashamed that I had ever suspected him.
As Papa told his story, the coughing grew worse. Mama and Ludmilla made up a bed for Papa on the stove shelf, where it was warm. He managed a little broth and then fell into a deep sleep. Mama never left his side, and many times during that night Georgi and I awoke and tiptoed to the stove to be sure Papa was still there.
All Papa’s strength had been used up in finding us. He lay in bed or propped up by pillows in a chair, coughing and coughing. He hated to let Mama or Georgi or me out of his sight. When Mama took the piroshki into town, one of us would stay with Papa. All the time Mama was gone, Papa watched the path looking for her return.
He was fond of the rabbits. It pleased Ludmilla to see how he w
ould take one on his lap and pet its long silky ears. “So soft, so gentle. I had never thought to hold something so soft again, or to see something so gentle.” He would sigh, and his eyes would get a haunted look. We all knew he was thinking of the camp, but he would not speak of it.
It was in late October, when we were in town buying enough flour to last the winter, that we saw a cart drawn by four reindeer and piled high with bear and seal skins. There were Edeiko and two of the other Samoyeds. They had already sold some of their reindeer to the butcher and were now busy trading furs for supplies.
There was a rush of words as we told Edeiko that our papa was back, but very sick, and how he was coughing and coughing. Edeiko listened carefully, asking where our cottage was. He said the tribe was readying for their return trip south. I sent my love to Tadibe and made sure the reindeer that had carried me was not at the butcher shop. At last we said good-bye.
The next morning there was a knock on the door. Edeiko and the sleigh were outside. The sleigh was piled high.
“From the shaman,” Edeiko said, “and from Tadibe and the women.” There were winter boots and gloves, and for Papa a parka ingeniously made with a hood and a flap that you could pull up to cover part of your face. There was half a reindeer to feed us, cut into haunches and chops. “Not your reindeer,” Edeiko assured me. “The summer feeding has been very good. The reindeer are fat.” Edeiko smiled. “The shaman says the little globe with the snow has brought the tribe good luck.”
Ludmilla stood by, her hands raised, her mouth open in astonishment at the gifts, while a half dozen rabbits got under everyone’s feet.
When the Samoyeds left, we were so overcome with wonder at our treasures, we could hardly talk. Finally Mama and Ludmilla prepared the reindeer, cutting it into manageable pieces and hanging it outside, where it would remain frozen until it was needed.
As Georgi and I tried on our new caps and boots, Papa exclaimed over and over, “What good people, what kind people.” Tears came into his eyes. “First the doctor and now these people. I never thought to believe in human kindness again.”
I think it was the kindness that gave him the courage at last to tell us of the camp, for it was the evening of the Samoyeds that he gathered us around him.
“I didn’t want you to know such cruelty, such inhumanity existed,” he said to Georgi and me. “But I know now how much goodness you have seen. If I tell you of evil, you will have experienced good, and it will protect you from believing too badly of your fellow man.”
I knew what Papa meant, for I thought every day of those who had helped Georgi and me on our journey—the Glebovs, Old Savoff’s wife, and the Samoyeds. With all the evil around us, we had found people to trust. They had been like the shelter of pine boughs Georgi and I had built to keep us safe from the dangerous storm that raged all around us.
Mama begged. “Misha, say no more. Such memories will only trouble you.”
“No, Katya,” Papa said. “The day may come when our beloved Russia comes to her senses. When that happens, people will forget. They will want to put these terrible times behind them, but what of the families torn apart and the lives lost? If our stories are not passed on, who will remember us? How will we guard against such things happening again? No, hard as it will be to listen to, Marya and Georgi must hear the truth.
“We were taken from the Kresti Prison to the train station and thrown into boxcars,” Papa said.
I thought of the boxcars Georgi and I had seen in the station and shuddered. Papa might have been in one of them.
“After a day’s journey we felt the cars being shunted from one engine to another, and we guessed we had arrived in Moscow and were headed for Siberia. We had no food or water. When the train paused at a station, we pounded on the doors but no one came. At last, after two days, the doors were opened and we were given pails of water and loaves of stale bread. We were like animals fighting over the water. That was the worst part—how inhuman they had made us. After the trains, we were put into barges and taken on the river, which was close to the camps. We were lucky we didn’t freeze to death before we reached the camps.
“We were sent to work in a coal mine,” Papa said. “They put us in cages and sent us a mile under the ground. We worked in the dark. It was as if someone had stolen the very sun from the sky. We were covered with coal dust. It got under our nails and into our skin. We breathed it and ate it. They took away our names and gave us numbers, so there were times when we could not recall our own names. In the barracks we were packed so tightly together, you soon forgot where the other person left off and you began. Everyone was sick: typhus, pneumonia, tuberculosis. Every night was a terrible symphony of coughs. Every day someone was carried out, and every day a new prisoner arrived to take his place.
“When all the coal was taken from the large tunnels, they sent us into the small channels, only large enough for one man. You could not stand up but stayed all day crouching on your knees trying to find enough room to swing your pick. When you did manage to chip out a bit of coal, you had to dodge the sharp pieces that flew out at you. We all had cuts, and some of the men were blinded in one eye.”
Papa’s voice grew even weaker. We could hardly make out his words. Mama begged him to stop, but he would not.
“There is only one thing more to tell. It is what convinced me to leave.” He waited a moment to gather his strength. “On a day I will never forget, there was a noise, a muffled shrieking noise, like a hand placed over a screaming man’s mouth. Suddenly everything began to shake. Rocks fell on us. The world was coming apart. A section of the mine collapsed. We escaped, but there were a dozen men working in the part of the mine that was sealed off by the collapse. Some of us volunteered to go down and dig them out. It didn’t matter to us that we were risking our lives—what were our lives in that place, that we would not willingly have risked them? It was not allowed. They had set a goal—so many cars of coal were needed. The rescue would have meant taking a day or two away from our work. Instead of saving the men, they walled up the seam where the men had been working so no one could hear their cries.
“When that happened, I went to Dr. Glebov. ‘Help me escape,’ I begged. He told me I was not well enough, that I would never survive such a journey. ‘Then I will escape without your help,’ I said. He knew that would be certain death, but he saw how desperate I was. Finally he agreed to help me.”
We could hardly bear to hear Papa’s terrible story, but we suffered it, for the telling made Papa better, as if some poisonous snake that had been coiled inside him had crawled off forever. He didn’t get stronger, but he took a greater interest in things, chatting with Ludmilla about her rabbits and making plans with Mama for Christmas.
We were all shut into the cottage together against the Siberian winter. The windows were coated with frost, and a seal of ice had to be broken to open the door. On some days it was so cold that when we went out of doors, our eyelids froze together.
With no trees for shelter, the Siberian winds were like a great beast shaking and rattling our cottage. We huddled around the stove, where a pan of snow was always melting. The sun rose late and set in the afternoon, so our lives were lived by the light of candles and lanterns and by the stove’s firelight.
Still, I was happy, for everywhere I looked, Papa and Mama were there. The Siberian winter was terrible to us but nothing to Ludmilla, who always had some tale of colder winters and stronger winds. “This is nothing,” she would say when the snows came and the winds howled. And then would come the story of a stronger storm or a colder night.
Christmas arrived in a fall of snow. When I peeked outside, the world was a white blur. Mama told us of her Christmas in the tsar’s palace, of the huge tree in the palace hall decorated with candies and gilded nuts and lit with hundreds of small candles. “On Christmas Eve sleighs carried us across the snow to church. I can still hear the sleigh bells. The tsar and the empress stood at the entrance of the church while the people came to bow to the tsar
and kiss the empress’s hand. And afterward, what a feast we had!”
On Christmas morning we all knelt before the icon of St. Vladimir and said our prayers. Mama had bought me a paint set and paper. For Georgi there was a package wrapped in store paper. It was a glass globe. Inside the globe was a small cottage on which the snow fell gently.
Georgi had written the story of the bear that the shaman had told and made it into a book for Papa, who had said how much he missed his books. I had embroidered a scarf for Mama in the pattern Tadibe had taught me. For Ludmilla Mama had knitted a warm shawl, and I had made the fringes. We all said it was a perfect Christmas.
At noon we had our own feast of borscht made with cabbage, carrots, and onions; a fine roast of reindeer; and kutya, made with poppy seeds and honey. For dessert there were blini, thin pancakes spread with jam made from wild berries. Ludmilla placed a bit of straw on the table to remind us of the manger in which the Christ child was born. In the evening we all sang carols by the light of the stove.
As the winter went on, Georgi and I grew less afraid of the ice and snow. We put on the Samoyeds’ gifts and wandered out into the half-light of the day. How strange it was to discover in the snow the tracks of small creatures running about. Sometimes we saw a hawk or an owl and we felt less alone, less as though we were marooned on an ice floe. Once we saw an arctic fox, his white coat no more than a movement of white against the white snow.
March came, and then April. The days grew longer; the icicles that decorated the cottage dripped to nothing. The frost on the windows was no longer thick enough to draw pictures in. At any moment you could look up and see returning birds—hawks and gulls, lapwings and falcons and, once, perched on the roof of the cottage like a feathered ghost, a snowy owl. As it grew warmer, mysterious little pools and ponds seeped onto the surface of the tundra. Georgi tried fishing in them, but there were no fish, and in a day or two they would disappear. Papa said it was the ice melting beneath the land.