After passing a deserted windmill, we noticed an object at some distance in front of us. Approaching closer, we saw that it was the body of a woman. We recognized her at first sight. She was our neighbor, Oksana Shevchenko.
Oksana went through the same ordeal as had many of our villagers. Two years before, her father who had been labeled a kurkul, had been arrested and taken away from the village. A few months later, Oksana’s mother died thus leaving the eighteen-year-old girl to care for her twelve-year-old sister and seven-year-old brother.
But Oksana’s real troubles had just started. One day she received a note from the village government stating that her family, being kurkuls, had to deliver a certain quota of grain and meat to the state immediately. The demand was utterly ridiculous, for everything the family possessed had already been expropriated before the arrest of her father, and for the last two years the family had been starving. That was not a valid excuse as far as the state was concerned.
The Bread Procurement Commission appeared on their doorstep the day after the note was received. They searched everywhere for meat and grain, leaving not a stone unturned, but found nothing. One would have assumed that Oksana and her charges would now be left alone, but the government officials had a different idea. Oksana was informed that, inasmuch as she was refusing to deliver the required quotas to the state, her house was to be expropriated and declared state property. Incidentally, the house had a tin roof, which was another unmistakable sign that it belonged to a kurkul.
Oksana’s tears and pleas were of no avail. Neither were the officials moved by the cries of the two small children huddled around her, holding fast to her skirt.
On the contrary, the leader of the commission tried to further terrify them with his gun. He quickly drew it, and pointing it at Oksana, warned her that he would kill her if the children didn’t stop crying. After failing to impress them into silence with his gun, he ordered the members of the commission to forcibly remove the children from the house. When they hesitated, he threatened to kill the nearest member of the commission, pointing his gun at him. This had the desired effect. The children were dragged out, kicking and screaming. Oksana fainted and was dragged out also. The Bread Procurement Commission sealed the doors and windows, and left, ignoring Oksana and the children in their pitiful plight.
After surviving that horror, Oksana and the children took refuge in her aunt’s house. A few months later, the little sister died of pneumonia. Her aunt soon followed, dying of starvation. Oksana was left alone with young Stepan.
All these tragedies had happened about a year ago. Now, she lay dead before our eyes on the sandy road. She too had apparently tried to reach the river or the woods as a last resort in her quest for something edible. But she was not destined to do it. The marks in the sand indicated that she had tried to crawl. She lay face down, her swollen hands stretched out, her teeth biting deeply into the sand as if she were trying to eat it.
It was a sad picture, but we had already seen so many that we only stared at her body for a while in silence, and then moved on. There was nothing we could do for her now.
Soon we took a shortcut through the woods to the river. It was quiet there. Walking through the woods, we had the feeling that the trees and the bushes were aware of our tragedy. There was no wind, yet it seemed that the branches of the tall, dark pine trees were mysteriously whispering something to each other. Now and then the silence would be disturbed by the cracking of twigs or the screeching of a magpie.
The fog hung low, and the tree branches were dripping wet. My brother and I had always used to follow this shortcut path when going to the river for, besides reducing the distance, it was scenic. However, this time we took it for a different reason. We wanted to explore it for something edible. We separated, and started our search. I found nothing but a few useless poisonous mushrooms. Suddenly, Mykola called me excitedly. When I approached him, he was greedily eyeing a hedgehog.
“Why are you so excited about a hedgehog?” I asked him almost angrily.
“Don’t you remember that book about Africa, and how the jungle people ate anything alive? Why couldn’t we enjoy this clean little fellow?” responded Mykola, ignoring my agitation and pointing at the hedgehog sniffing some dry mushrooms.
Mykola had a point. I looked closer at the animal.
“Hey!” I shouted excitedly. “Look at his snout! It looks like a pig’s!”
“I’ll bet it tastes like a pig, too,” Mykola remarked.
“But how are you going to skin it?” I asked.
“We’ll singe him like people used to prepare pigs before Christmas in the old days.”
Without hesitation, he skillfully bagged the animal. He had convinced me completely. If other people ate lizards, snails, and even rattlesnakes, why couldn’t we eat hedgehogs once we had singed their shaggy coats and sharp quills?
The Communist Party had not as yet passed any law against eating hedgehogs, or any other wild creatures for that matter. Amusing myself with such thoughts, I searched eagerly under the trees and bushes for more of these animals, but was unsuccessful. Mykola, however, found another one, and I could hear him happily shouting that it was much bigger than the first one. Our day was not wasted. We had caught and bagged two hedgehogs, and there was the possibility that we would be just as successful when we reached the river.
Mother had asked us to visit Prokop’s family, our distant relatives who lived on the very bank of the river. Prokop had been arrested last spring for failing to meet the grain and meat quotas. He was taken away one night to the county jail, and that was the last we had heard about him. No one ever had found out his fate. His wife continued living alone with her six-year old daughter in their little house on the river. The last time we saw them was in November, before the first snowfall.
Mother was anxious to know what had happened to them during the cold winter, so we thought a visit to Aunt’s home was a good idea since she knew her way around the river quite well. She also knew much better than we how to charm fish into traps, and we could use her boat.
It was late in the afternoon when we reached Prokop’s house, and we approached it with some trepidation. The past winter had been long and very severe. Many things could have happened to our relatives in their little house by the river. As far as we could tell, it stood safe and sound, but there were no signs of life around it. A small drift of dirty unmelted snow lay in front of the door. The front windows were curtained with some cloth.
We knocked at the door gently at first, and then louder, but no one answered. I grasped the latch and tried to open the door. It was locked. We ran to the windows in the back of the house, but they too were covered with cloth. We saw no other way than to force open the door with all our strength. As we did so, a nauseating stench assailed us. We ran to the windows and tore down the curtains for it was dark inside. The broad daylight streaming through the windows revealed a shocking sight to us. Aunt’s headless body lay on the floor; her head was a few feet away. Apparently it had been torn off her body by some force, but there was not much blood around.
We soon solved the mystery. Looking around, we noticed a rope, ending in a noose, dangling from a beam. Aunt had hanged herself. After a while, her neck had no doubt given way as the body decomposed, which explained the absence of blood.
After overcoming our initial shock, we looked around for the little daughter. We soon found her lying on a sleeping bench. She must have died before her mother. Her eyes and mouth were closed; her tiny hands were folded on her chest. She was neatly dressed in the blue dress she used to wear when she visited us, and her hair had been combed nicely too.