I turned to her. ‘Mama, this is not your fault. My God, don’t you think I haven’t noticed you sacrificing your rations so that Ella could have more? It’s this God-forsaken-hole. They’ve got us all here, trapped like spiders beneath an upturned glass and each time one of us dies they flick away our bodies, and there are less and less of us, and yet we still have to toil in their damned forests and meet their bloody ‘norms’.’
‘I’ve never heard you swear so much.’
‘Because this place is enough to make anyone swear. How can I live my life, Mama? Stefan and I want to get married, but we can’t. Where would we live?’
‘Married!’
‘Yes, married. We love each other very much. But what’s the point, Mama? Tell me, because I am at a complete loss to understand. What right had the Soviets to rob us of our freedom? I want to be free. We’re human beings, not their slaves! What futures have we? We’ll all be dead soon; me quicker than the others. They’ve already ruined Karol’s life. No wonder he can’t stand the sight of this place.’
We returned to the room we now called home, and I lay down on my slats nursing my tears, utterly miserable. ‘I’m, sorry Mama, I’m no use to anyone, am I?’
Lodzia returned from the Banya with our washed clothes. She looked down at me wallowing in my misery and smiled. ‘Hey, it’s good that you don’t have to work, Marishu. The rest will give you time to recover. Think yourself one of the lucky ones.’ She picked up a saucepan, ‘I’m off to the soup kitchen now.’
I felt worse because I realised that Mama and Lodzia would insist on sharing their food ration with me. Mine was still available at Volosne. It was bad enough that fate had denied me the right to earn my measly eight roubles – if we met our norms – but they would now cut my bread ration to a minuscule 800 grams a day. I would receive only one plate of soup and never recover my health. Far from feeling lucky, I faced the shattering truth that I was now one of those on the downward spiral towards death. It was inevitable. The Soviets had total control over my life. No one escaped.
I looked at my soaked clothes drying on the line over the stove and asked Mother if I could borrow her thickest shawl.
‘Now where are you going?’
‘To the cantina at Volosne, to eat my soup and get my bread.’
‘Report to them here that you can no longer work. They will transfer your rations to Vodopad.’
‘No, Mama, my rations will be smaller. As long as I can walk, I shall go. At least I can bring some bread home for you.’
‘But you are ill, kohanie. You need to rest. Anyway, the boat sank.’
‘Don’t worry; I shall cross the river by the rickety bridge further upstream. I won’t even have to pass my poloska so no one will see me. It will take me longer, but I don’t care.’ I looked at my mother’s once beautiful face, now shrunken with hunger, and knew I was doing the right thing.
‘But, kohanie…’
‘Mama, I am not an invalid – yet. I can still walk. I got up for work this morning, didn’t I? And if I hadn’t jumped into that river, I would still be sawing their lousy trees.’
26
My plan worked for three days.
Although I received a larger food ration at Volosne – until they discovered my duplicity – I still had to pay for it. Without a wage at the end of the week, I would have no money left. I would have no option but to transfer my food ration to Vodopad and exist on the paltry portions of a non-worker. The other disadvantage was that I would no longer see Karol when he needed to give us money. Too bad; he would have to return to us more often. Natasha was long gone; he couldn’t grieve after her forever.
Returning home with the last portion of bread for my mother, I knew something was wrong when I passed the window to our darkened room. Perhaps we had run out of paraffin. I felt a stab of guilt for not being here to fetch more, leaving her to sit in the dark. But she was missing, and the room was cold.
Setting down the bread, I lifted the lamp, surprised to find it half full. It was so unlike her to let the fire die down, but the last log had collapsed into cigar-like ash. I had to tickle the embers back to life with twigs before it retook and I could bank it with logs.
Someone holding a lamp passed by our window, and snowflakes bounced against the light. I rushed to the door, but it wasn’t Mama returning. Everything seemed wrong; why was she even out in the dark – in this weather? I stood alone in the empty room, and I was afraid; she had always been there for me – it was something I took for granted.
Once satisfied I had rescued the fire, and the flames were coursing up the flue, I went next door to Lodzia’s room and found her asleep on the slats, her arms entwined around Ella, who was barely visible beneath her eiderdown.
Having barged in, I tiptoed out again, but too late – Lodzia awoke with a start. ‘Sorry, I must have nodded off. Is Mama back yet?’
Cold fingers of fear clutched at my heart. ‘No, what time did she go out?’
‘I have no idea. She wasn’t here when I returned with the soup at about one o’clock.’
I moved forward into the room again, ‘I’m worried, Lodziu. The fire is almost out, and the little clock’s gone.’
Lodzia rose and reached for her shawl. ‘I never noticed the clock. She glanced at her wristwatch. Where could she be?’
Mama never went anywhere when it was snowing. She didn’t own a coat, and even her thickest shawls were as nothing against the Russian winter, but she was out now.
I ran from room to room asking each of our neighbours if they had seen her, but no one had. I ran to the nearby shacks – still nothing. Most of them were still at work. With mounting alarm, I returned to our shack expecting to see her sitting on her slats, but she had still not returned.
‘Well?’
‘Nothing.’ I fought back my tears and told myself that there had to be a logical explanation. The shop, the cantina, the club, the banya, every possibility drew a blank.
‘You don’t think she may have gone in search of Tatta? She was saying only yesterday he might be dead by now and wondered why they hadn’t returned his body, but they never do, do they? What’s another corpse to the Soviets?’
My mind refused to make sense of what Lodzia was implying. Mama didn’t know the way there, and she was too frail to make such a journey. ‘But it’s madness.’
‘Yes; it is madness; even I wouldn’t be so stupid unless I wanted to end it all.’
‘End it?’ The thought hadn’t occurred to me. ‘But why would she want to do that? She adores us all, especially Ella.’
‘Because she can’t live without Tatta; they were devoted.’
Dear God. All this was my fault. Had I not been so pre-occupied with my savage lust for a bigger chunk of bread and an extra plateful of soup, I might have been here to stop her. I slid my palms down my cheeks as reality dawned; I could never forgive myself if anything happened to my darling Mama.
The lateness of the hour had turned the sky into inky blackness when Alina Zadarnowska came tearing into our room, shouting her head off that Anna Glencova had collapsed near the river on the path leading to the Kolkhoz.
She was babbling something about Mother wanting to accompany her to Kholmogorki earlier in the day, wanting to sell a clock, but she dissuaded her.
I grabbed my coat and the lamp and fled with a strength I thought had long since deserted me. Alina Zadarnowska ran after me, but I was too fast for her and it was snowing mercilessly. ‘Where is she? Where is she?’
She caught up, out of puff, barely able to catch her breath. ‘There, there,’ she pointed.