The Scruffy One tried to get it off me, but I gritted my teeth and held it fast.
‘Let him have it,’ Father said.
I released my grip on the hen and the Scruffy One slapped it back into the cart without looking me in the face.
The NKVD Agent who arrested us handed our details to another Peaked Cap and rejoined his other two underlings. The three of them drove off somewhere – no doubt to arrest another family and murder their dog.
It occurred to me that these goings-on were not just one or two families travelling to safety. This was mass evacuation on a vast scale. Militiamen herded people like us to the backs of queues. Armed guards watched to ensure no one escaped and fired shots in the air to deter those too terrified or foolhardy to remain. Soldiers everywhere marshalled recent arrivals. When our turn came, Father gave our surname and address.
However, it wasn’t until we passed through the station building, saw our transport, and watched how the Soviets were treating the Poles – that the magnitude of our fate hit us. At that moment it was as if we saw into each other’s minds and shared each other’s fears.
‘Jesús, Maria.’ Mother clasped her hand to her cheek as Karol slipped his arm around her shoulder and gave her a protective hug.
‘Dear God, so it’s come to this.’ Father took my hand and clasped it in both of his.
Gerhard picked up Ella, placed his arm around Lodzia’s waist and drew her close. Ella gazed over his shoulder; her eyes perplexed and sucked her thumb.
It was not the train that alarmed me, but the type that awaited us. Seeing the windowless boxcars and long, metal flues protruding through the wagon roofs, I knew what they expected of us – but was trying to deny it. It wasn’t just me. This was not the train in which normal passengers travelled; not the ones I had seen leaving from here.
A freight train, suitable for the mass conveyance of livestock, waited for us in a siding beyond the main tracks as an unbroken line of faded, rust-coloured wooden trucks snaked into the distance and disappeared. Attached to the front end of it was a massive locomotive – facing east. The open doors of the wagons revealed the gaping black chasms beyond, as one by one, the Soviets forced terrified people to climb in, to the point where a tight mass of standing passengers gazed back at us.
A bearded old man raised his stick to the heavens, looked skyward and in a loud voice cursed Soviet Russia, bloody Stalin and the lot of them, calling on God to mete out divine retribution for their ill-treatment of him.
One soldier shoved him, and without the support of his stick, he slipped and fell on the crusted ice. My hand flew to my mouth. From the uproar, it looked as if he had broken his leg. Despite him screaming in pain, the soldiers dumped him onto a wooden stretcher and slid him into the wagon as if he were a lump of bread dough dispatched from a flat spade into the oven.
Within the range of a guard, I turned to my father in anger. ‘Tatta, did you see what those fools did to that old man?’
‘I did, kohanie.’
Mother dragged me closer and peered into my face with a maddening frown. ‘What is the matter with you, Marishu? Do not anger these people. Do you want a bullet in your head? Have you already forgotten what happened at home?’
Father picked up two sacks. ‘Boys, we need to take our baggage to a separate goods wagon towards the front of the train.’ There was a moment of panic while my parents separated food and bedding from the rest of our belongings.
‘Wait here for us, Anna, or we’ll never find you.’
‘Hurry, Ignacy – please hurry.’
4
‘Shift!’ The guards herded us to the end of a queue, at the front of which the dreaded NKVD were processing the columns and counting out people for each wagon as we shunted forwards. However, the menfolk, returning from the goods wagon, their faces anxious, threaded through other groups to rejoin their families, thus muddling up their figures. It was chaos.
There was no means of escape. It was now time for us to climb in. I couldn’t breathe; my bowels felt loose. It was only a train of sorts, but I felt the panic of a doomed pig facing a glinting blade.
Lodzia was fast turning mutinous and directed her fury on the soldiers. ‘Did you not hear me? I said there are seven of us – not four! We are waiting for our menfolk to return from the goods wagon.’ Her words were slow and precise, as if she were addressing a bunch of idiots.
They ignored her.
‘God, are they thick or what?’ she said through clenched teeth.
‘Jesús, Maria, they won’t know which wagon we’re in.’ Mother craned her neck towards the front of the train, and stubbornly refused to oblige, but a soldier clamped her arm and tried to steer her.
She slapped him off viciously. Her voice was suddenly deep, as if it belonged to a man. ‘Get your dirty hands off me. I am waiting for my husband and sons.’
She received a shove in the back with a rifle butt for her defiance.
Little Ella, utterly bewildered, started wailing until Lodzia scooped her up and held her tight.
Shocked by their brutality, I seized my mother’s arm. ‘Mama, come on! We have to go!’ I glanced towards the front of the train, but there was still no sign of my father or my brothers. I went first, but the wagon stood high above the ground, and the foot of the ramp was unstable. Someone grabbed my hand and helped me up. It was Zygmunt from the neighbouring farm. He and Gerhard were best friends. It was such a relief to see him; at least he was someone I knew. Once aboard, I took Ella while he assisted Lodzia.
From the loud conversation between the soldiers and my mother, she might have known arguing was pointless; yet still, she resisted and refused to board. They had no time for dawdlers; one after the other, our food hampers flew, spilling their precious contents over the filthy wagon floor.
I yearned to smack their stupid, ignorant faces, but crouched down to pick up the food, and heard my mother cry out in pain. My anger turned to relief when I spotted my father and brothers running towards us. I waved and shouted for them to hurry, and Mother and Lodzia shouted too.
The moment they arrived, the soldiers barred their way and diverted them to the next wagon. However, my brothers had already helped Mother on board and were themselves climbing in amidst the vocal displeasure of some inside who protested they were over-crowded as it was. They told them to get off – the ones shouting the loudest being the stuck-up old boy wearing the homburg in the corner, and his fat wife with the gold tooth.
‘Please allow my father on,’ I shrieked, my panic rising.
‘We stay together,’ Tatta shouted. ‘Get out of my way, my family’s in there.’
A cry from the next wagon distracted the soldiers. ‘On your knees!’ A civilian was trying to escape.
Karol and I threw out our hands and heaved our father on board. When the soldiers turned back, he had already disappeared amongst the other passengers.
Were we expected to travel cooped up like this? The boxcar resembled a stable on wheels with a massive sliding door, and two open metal grilles at roof height for ventilation. Even our horses had the luxury of being able to stretch out in comfort.
People and sleeping children already crammed the shelves at opposite ends of the wagon. We would probably have to travel overnight standing up like this. I cast about for somewhere to sit down, but there wasn’t any space on the floor either. People stood or sat huddled on their suitcases or hessian sacks around a tiny stove in the middle of the wagon which struggled to chuck out any heat. It was inhumane; we wouldn’t treat our animals this way.
I heard the sounds of slowly turning wheels, of the sliding steel doors beyond our wagon, the thuds, the bangs, the shouts and the cries. A moment later, it was the sound of the rollers running along the track of our wagon. A soldier rammed the door shut, taking with it our light and our liberty. A scraping thud, and an enormous iron bar slid into its loop. Another over-stuffed wagon was ready to roll to God knew where; we hadn’t yet been told our destination. There must have been over seventy people caged in here. I knew we were all going to suffocate. I hammered on the door and tried to force my fingers into the gap at the edge, but it held fast.