The drill was now familiar. No way would filthy Soviet hands be touching Mama’s body. Gathering myself off the shelf, I prepared to face this one last deed.
With swollen eyes and a stuffed nose, I turned once more to Oleszkiewicz for help, but he was too pre-occupied with his dying son. ‘Well, don’t look at me,’ he rasped. ‘What do you think I am – just here to take out your dead?’
‘No, I am so sorry; I should have thought.’ Choking back the words, I dragged Mama’s body to the door and jumped down.
It was Stasia who helped heave Mama’s body onto my shoulder, and arrange her until she was hanging like a shawl that I could manage without toppling over. ‘Please forgive him; Jan didn’t mean it. He can’t cope with all this death.’
‘There’s nothing to forgive. I understand.’
The platform at Penza was no longer white with snow; hundreds of shuffling feet had left great globs and trails of frozen slush, making it hard for my feet to find solid purchase. I staggered along the platform looking for somewhere to lay my mother, until what little strength I had, gave out. I felt the eyes of onlookers watching me from inside the arched windows of the station building; scrawny old biddies, swaddled in shawls, their menfolk in their trapper-style hats, scarves around their scraggy necks, but no one came out to help me. What was Mama to them – another corpse?
Unable to carry her any further, I slid her off my shoulder, and propped her body against the station steps, as if she were still alive, but resting. I rearranged her shawls and fastened her headscarves tightly beneath her chin so they wouldn’t blow away, leaving her head exposed in this weather.
An ethereal emptiness settled about me then, and I neither heard nor saw anything else. It was like I was going through the motions, but looking down at myself from above.
The setting sun had left behind the redness of a heavenly slaughter as I pushed myself to my feet. The wind moaned, whipping the untrammelled surface from the snow beyond the tracks, blowing it in our direction, smothering my mother in a white shroud. It didn’t seem right leaving her here, surrounded by this callous landscape.
After what seemed like an eternity, I said, ‘Mama, I have to leave you now.’ I kissed her goodbye, but her cheek was a slab of ice, her unseeing eyes staring straight ahead beyond my shoulder – perhaps even to heaven – if there were such a place, which I doubted, but hoped for the sake of her soul there was.
Turning, I made my way back to the wagon, my body as fragile as a shrivelled leaf which the wind threatened to blow away, buffeting me along the platform. Everything was meaningless, and the look in my mother’s eyes would stay with me forever; I hadn’t the heart to close them.
33
I sat on the bunk staring, staring, twisting my mother’s wedding ring around my middle finger until the rhythm of the pounding wheels put me out of my misery, and I fell asleep.
When I awoke, I lay still for a moment before a nauseous sensation welled up from my gut – a dawning realisation that my family was dead! I was alone. I had no food, no money and no idea where to go. Anders Army was out of the question; I was barely seventeen and had seen enough death to last me a lifetime.
Stasia urged me to cling to memories of happier times, but it was hard to invoke joy when my heart was dead. My one hope was to find Gerhard and Stefan, but where was I to look? It was akin to searching for a pine needle in a forest.
Jan and Stasia’s child died. They carried his body off the train when it stopped at some nameless station, but never returned.
I stood at the open door watching and waiting, trying to quell the mounting panic. The train pulled away, leaving me abandoned when I was relying on them to show me where to go once we’d reached Aktyubinsk. Stasia promised. She said, ‘Stick with Jan and me. Don’t worry, we will look after you; you’ll never be alone again.’
Returning to my place on the bottom shelf I drank sparingly of my water, hoping to appease my twisting gut. My body needed food, yet I had no desire to eat. Worse, a fellow passenger told me he was sure there was no army muster point at Aktyubinsk. So why was it suggested to us at Vodopad by the NKVD? Spite? I now wondered if I ought to carry on, or return – but return to what – the corpses of my family? But if neither Gerhard nor Stefan had enlisted here, then where was I to go?
The ice was now fast melting from the wagon walls, and I found it easy to remove Tatta’s hair. Inhaling his scent, I arranged it with care in the scrap of fabric I had torn from my dress to make Karol’s compresses. The fabric was dry now and I folded it over with care to ensure not one precious strand escaped. His hair, my mother’s wedding ring and her goose down pillow, together with Karol’s shearling coat, were the only personal things I had left of my family. I wished now I had cut a lock of my mother’s hair, and wondered if she was still leaning against the station steps, but felt the authorities would have removed her body.
Our transport veered east at this point. Kuybyshev Station was one of the more extended stops. I remained in my place on the top shelf, which I had occupied since the moment its occupants vacated it, listening to the buzz of strangers boarding. They were apologising for intruding on someone’s personal space, introducing their names and the places they’d come from and complaining that it wasn’t fair that the free food at the station was available only for those passengers travelling from Permilovo, thanks to someone called Alfred Powiecki.
I thought I had misheard. Alfred Powiecki? Dear God! I snatched my bag, and pushed through the crowds like someone unbalanced. Alfred was Zygmunt’s brother. No doubt the entire Powiecki clan would be with him. I longed to travel with people I knew, especially Zygmunt. He was kind and always had a soft spot for me, and it was his mother, Albina, who delivered me into the world.
Flashing my family travel document at the canteen entrance, it allowed me in. I cast about for our neighbours, refusing to believe they couldn’t be here, but they must have been and gone. My sights settled on the glass buffet, behind which was a mountain of dark brown loaves, smoked fish, and a variety of cured, dried and smoked sausages. The pungent aroma of black pepper and garlic filled my mouth with saliva and longing. I yearned to taste Kielbasa again – how long was it since I last ate Polish sausage? I had no desire to keep living – yet the sight of it made me so hungry that a stronger instinct urged me to throw in my lot and opt for survival.
Inching forwards in the queue, I took the rations as if accepting the communion host at Mass. Once out on the platform, I tore into the bread and stuffed my mouth with sausage. Oh, it was indescribably delicious, but I couldn’t eat much; my stomach couldn’t handle it. I stood as I chewed and thought I was hallucinating – the train had more than doubled with nine additional wagons added.
I stowed the rest of my food in my bag and went in search of our neighbours. As I peered into the trucks; gaunt faces gazed back at me. There was a glimpse of a half-familiar face, but it was someone I might have seen somewhere in a bread queue or maybe even from Vodopad – they weren’t friends but helpless people like me, far from home.
Damn, the Powiecki’s were impossible to find. They could have been in any of the now seventeen cattle wagons – or even left the transport altogether having eaten their fill.