My father squeezed out from the mass of bodies and pulled me away from the door.
I flung my arms around his waist. ‘I’ve got to get out, Tatta. I can’t breathe.’
‘Calm down and inhale. It’s alright – everything’s alright.’
But it wasn’t alright – I needed air. What had happened to us all? How could my life have changed so swiftly?
Zygmunt offered his space on the top shelf, and passengers moved out of my way as I clambered up and snatched at the iron bars like a mouse desperate to find an escape hole. The cold metal felt good against my cheek, the snowflakes and freezing air calmed me. Neither was I alone in my misery; children were crying, grown-ups banging on the walls begging to be let out; the din was unbelievable. I picked up grim snippets of conversation between my brothers and Zygmunt, but they made no sense – what a culmination to a ghastly night.
5
Amid the strangers were the dim but familiar faces of people from surrounding farms; the Tomalas and the Powiecki family – and there was Sasha Chorwat with her brother and two little boys.
My panic attack had abated and I climbed down to rejoin my family in a compact space beside a screened area. There was a vile stench coming from behind it, and it was making me retch. Impatient to discover its source, I flung back the blanket to see a passenger squat over a hole hacked out of the floorboards. It was hard to know who was more embarrassed – he or I. He clutched his dropped trousers in his fist, as he aimed for the opening – and missed.
Gagging, I let the blanket drop and turned to my mother in disgust. ‘Oh God, I could never use that hole; I’d rather die. Have you seen it, Mama? I want to get off.’
‘Hush, he can hear you. Honestly, Marishu, it serves you right for being nosey. How do you expect people to relieve themselves if the Soviets won’t allow anyone to leave the wagons?’
I slumped down onto my folded eiderdown.
‘Don’t worry. Hopefully, we’ll be there soon.’
‘Yes, Mama, but where are they taking us? Why are they taking us?’
‘To safety.’
‘Huh, so why are they treating us like prisoners if they’re so concerned about our welfare?’ The not knowing was the scariest thing. Then everything crystallised. The signs had been there since that Sunday the previous September when the Soviets invaded Eastern Poland. So, this is what those leaflets meant by, ‘The Soviet Army has come to protect the proletariat from their masters in Poland.’ Is this how they were doing it? They were protecting the White Russians and other ethnic minorities from us? We were harmless, Polish people living peacefully in our own country? What had we ever done to them, other than try to help them and bail them out when their harvest failed because most of them were lousy farmers, too fond of the cherry vodka? These people were our friends, our neighbours, our school chums, and the Soviets had to shoot Bookiet to prove – what? That they were more powerful than us? Was this some sort of Soviet joke? If so, they had a sick way of showing it and I despised them even more.
I couldn’t understand how something so cataclysmic could happen to us in an instant. Yesterday we were happy, going about our daily lives. Today we were incarcerated in a cattle truck – robbed of our freedom.
I went over and over it in my head, trying to piece together the events that had led up to this. What was I doing on that Sunday last September? Nothing special; the same as I had done every other Sunday throughout the year.
Wanda called for me on the way to Zhabinka. Summer was ending and our cornfields looked magnificent in the morning sun; their kernels were hard and dimpled, their stalks already turning brown. I remember Tatta saying he had known nothing like it; it was the best harvest we’d had since moving here. Our small granary overflowed with assorted grains ready for milling, the barn was full of straw, and in the kitchen garden Mama struggled to harvest the bumper crop of vegetables that ripened all at once, so that Tatta and Gerhard had to load the cart and transport much of it to market in Zhabinka.
I knew then that Jusio was ‘the one for me’ and Wanda had her eyes set on a boy in church, whom she yearned to see again. We larked about all the way to Zhabinka, carefree and happy – raising our faces to the sun, arms outstretched. I even performed two cartwheels, landed on my head when my elbow gave way, and we both howled with laughter when I collapsed in a heap in the dirt.
Everything changed after we left the church after Mass an hour later. Columns of enormous metal contraptions clattered over the cobblestones and headed straight at us. Someone said they were Soviet tanks, but we were no wiser never having seen one. The sight overjoyed the White Russians and they cheered them on as if they were saviours. Some even offered bread and salt in the traditional expression of Slavic hospitality, others waved leaflets that littered the street.
We shrank into an alleyway and watched lorry loads of infantrymen following – callow men who stared at us from beneath their helmets. We watched them trundle by and wondered where they were all headed.
When they were all gone, I grabbed a handful of leaflets, and we ran much of the way home to tell our parents.
Arriving breathless and holding my side with the stitch, I remembered my father trying to calm me, but I could see alarm in his eyes. When I asked what the leaflets meant; who were the proletariat and who were their masters in Poland, he said the Byelorussians were the proletariat, and the Poles were their masters. It stuck in my mind at the time because of the horrid way it made me feel. I didn’t care to think of myself as different from other members of the community into which I had been born. Those leaflets were whipping up feelings of discord.
Father told me not to worry. He screwed up the leaflets and said that sort of thing was irresponsible, but soon after the Soviets had ensconced the NKVD in villages and hamlets all around us. The local militia carried out inventories of the inhabitants of every house. Wanda moaned they had destroyed all Polish language books at school, and they now devoted their studies to Soviet propaganda. Banners of Stalin hung everywhere and they were told to spy on their parents and report any signs of revolt. Naturally, everyone was livid they were being controlled in this way and expected to conform to the new rules. On whose say so?
Oh yes, and it upset Tatta because they replaced the zloty with the rouble and equated its value. He was such a placid man, but just before Christmas they abolished the zloty altogether, and it was the first time I saw him steaming angry. He said our savings were now worthless! The Soviets had decimated the economy and the country would never recover. Then all fell silent – until last night – or so I thought. Unlike the adults, I never paid much attention since we lived in the middle of nowhere and I spent most of my days alone in the meadows with my cows. I was more interested in Jusio and Wanda.
I looked around the loaded wagon. Time dragged. Mother was talking to me, but I wasn’t listening.
Everyone was polite and civilised, but now the whole wagon roiled with exasperation. Karol glanced at his watch again. Six hours later, and we were still at Zhabinka.