Sliding on the Snow Stone (2 page)

Without another word, the soldier picked up the pails and marched out of our house. Once the others soldiers had finished turning our house upside down and searching our barns and outhouses, they left to search the next house.

Our cow was such a good-natured beast and we made sure she had a plentiful supply of either grass or hay. There was no meat on our bones due to lack of sustenance, but we used every last ounce of energy to make sure the cow was fed, and she gave us shooting streams of warm, frothy milk twice a day. The Soviets collected two bucketfuls every morning, and later that day Mother milked the cow again, collecting another two bucketfuls. Mother took the milk and chopped in beetroot leaves, and put in whatever seasoning she could find and made up a soup. That’s what we ate, day after day. That cow was a miracle sent from the Lord above, I have no doubt about that.

Our village, Novi Khutyry*, near the town of Vinnitsya*, was such a wonderful place to grow up. The land around us stretched out towards the horizon, with golden fields of wheat and corn all around. The light summer breeze blew on the heads of corn and the ears of wheat, forming ripples that spread across the fields in flowing curves. It was a sin that such a landscape should be tarnished by the murderous acts of the Soviets. There were soldiers dotted all around, patrolling the fields, to make sure nobody took away any of the crops. The starving population was being driven, either into the arms of the Lord, or into acts of destruction.

I remember on one occasion I was passing by a small group of houses, on my way to a friend’s house, when I stumbled across a Soviet wagon outside a small, beaten up house. It needed a lick of paint, and the thatched roof was ragged. As I got closer I could hear what was being said,

‘
You’ve taken everything! I’ve got nothing left! Nothing! My husband’s dead. My children are all dead. What else do you want? Tell me what you want!’

‘
Listen, lady, we’re just here doing our job.’ They were piling corpses onto a wagon. The bed of the wagon creaked as the pile got higher.

‘
Please! Let me fetch a priest! To get a blessing for him. You can’t just take him like this. Can’t he have a decent burial?’

‘
Lady, we’re just following orders.’

Warily, I stole a glance at her. She was pacing up and down, wringing her hands and every so often she stopped and held her head in her hands. Then, without any warning she rushed into the house and returned holding a burning rag.

‘
Well, you won’t take anything else from this house! I’ll make sure of that.’

She threw the burning rag onto the roof. The house was soon ablaze. The Soviet soldiers retreated. One of them took off his cap and scratched his head, and the two of them smiled at each other. Then, they simply carried on about their business. Some neighbours tried to console the woman. I walked on. This sort of thing was a common sight. The spirit to resist was there, but there was no way to fight the battle. Not really. All we had left was to destroy our own homes before the Soviets got their hands on them.

That’s how things were. Too many of us had shown signs of resistance, and so, the Soviets came down on us like a hammer. They wanted to take everything we’d worked so hard for, but why should we give it to them? Many in the village were resentful of the grain quota demanded by the Soviet state. It was like slavery. No one dared to speak out against them. They tried to crush us, but our spirit was too strong with that Kozak blood inside us. They may have forced us to walk with our heads bowed, just thinking about the next piece of bread, but they couldn’t stop us being who we were.

Autumn arrived and all the children over the age of seven returned to school. I was thankful for that in some ways, because Volodimir came home with a bagful of books and I’d sit and look at them, and try to read some of the words. Books were something I developed a passion for from a very young age. They gave me something to focus on rather than food.

While Volodimir was at school, I was sent out to look for firewood. It was one of my chores. I’d scour around the lanes and meadows, putting all I could find into a small sack. Before his departure into the arms of the Almighty, Bohdan would usually join me, and of course, we’d end up running along together. Bohdan was a fast runner, he usually won our races. Then we’d watch as our breath turned to steam. We’d be breathing hard. Thinking back now, we didn’t run far. We didn’t have the energy. The meadows and scrub areas were eerie and quiet. Whatever animal life that was left out there had gone deep into the ground. Otherwise, whatever it was, it would’ve been eaten.

‘
Shhh! Stefan, look!’ Bohdan was crouching down and keeping very still. He lifted a finger up to his lips. I looked across into a small wooded area, and there perched on a boulder was a sparrow. Not a fat bird, but big enough to our hungry eyes. Trying not to make any sudden moves, Bohdan reached down and picked up a rock that was lying next to his foot. Carefully, he raised his arm above his head, and with a swift motion he threw the rock at the sparrow. ‘Blast it!’ His throw was off target and the sparrow flew away. Thing is though, I’d seen him hit one before, and we’d roasted the sparrow and eaten it. This time it wasn’t meant to be, so we hurried along and gathered more wood before going home.

Our kitchen had a big, wooden table where our family sat for our evening meal, a bowl of that thin, milky broth. Father always led us in prayer before each meal. All around our house were framed icons of Bible scenes. We had at least one in every room. They were big, imposing frames, constructed of wood and coated in gold paint. The frames were carved and shaped into curves with some very fine decorative detail. I loved looking at those icons, they seemed to soothe me somehow. The colours were so bright and vivid. It was as if I could jump right into the picture and sit there inside it. The golden frames glinted in the candlelight. One of those icons was mounted above the kitchen table. It was a painting of the Last Supper. I remember, on more than one occasion, looking up at it and giving thanks to God we were still alive. On another occasion I recall a conversation between Bohdan’s father, Petro, and my own, when he’d called in one evening.

‘
These icons are beautiful, Mikola. I know I’ve been round here many times before, but I’ve never really appreciated how good they really are. They’re wonderful. They must be worth a lot.’

‘
Well, I bought them at the bazaar just after Volodimir was born. You see, I wanted to bring God into this house. To bring our children up as Christians. I got them for a good price, but you’re right, they weren’t cheap.’

‘
Don’t take this the wrong way, but maybe you could take them to the town and sell them to get bread.’

‘
No. The icons stay right here. With God here we’ll get through this.’

‘
But surely it’s worth it? To try and feed your wife and children.’

‘
The icons stay.’

Those paintings were there to remind us that maybe there could be some good in the world, because Lord knows, we were surrounded by dark forces, by those who wished to wipe us from the map. They sat in their den of power, plotting to destroy us. The leader of these devils was Stalin. He was evil. His Soviet followers and henchmen were mindless murdering scum. Many times I’ve had a vision, where a dark cloud gathers above them. All of them. And then lightning strikes them down. Havoc rains down on them, and they are annihilated. In my heart I want vengeance for what they did to us. I hope they rot in Hell.

It doesn’t sound very Christian I know, to say such things, but the scale of what was done is hard to believe. To take food away from millions of people so that they starve to death is a crime of such a proportion that it cannot be seen as anything other than evil.

It’s hard to describe. When you’re so hungry, it tightens up inside you. It’s like there are spiders crawling in your belly. So many times I felt like I could just sit down and eat, and never stop. I remember my brother Volodimir and me bursting into the house and saying to our Mother, ‘Mama! We’re hungry! Can we have something to eat?’
             

‘
My beloved children,’ she said looking down at us, and what she said next breaks my heart. It hurts me to even think about it. She said, ‘Take
me
and eat
me
.’

The famine raged on as the Soviet drive to take all our food continued right up to the winter. There were fewer people around. We were being wiped out. I remember that winter as being a very bitter one. We stamped our feet in our battered
choboti
* and pulled our woollen hats down over our ears, those of us that had them, and then it was open warfare as we ventured out into that snow-covered terrain that was our village. Volodimir would start things off by pulling off my hat and running away with it. 

‘
Hey! Give me my hat back!’ I’d shout at him. Then I’d turn around and four or five of the other boys would be lined up with snowballs in their hands. They threw them at me, spattering me. The melting ice would stream through my hair, creep under my collar and slide down my back. But I fought back. I might have been little but I was damned quick. I’d plunge my hands into the snow, make snowballs and launch into them. I’d fire the snowballs at them, and Volodimir would then take my side. He was a good thrower, everyone got ice down their backs when he got going. We loved it. Running down the road to school, it was all we needed. Sometimes we’d get hold of a big
doshka
*, maybe an old door or something like that. We’d all jump on and carve through the ice as we slid down the hills, kicking up a snow spray. We’d get to the bottom of the hill and one of us would shove a toe end into the snow causing the
doshka
to spin around. We’d all go skidding off in different directions. We loved it. A huge white playground of powdery snow. Who needs toys when you’ve got that stuff? There was a small lake near our village and, when it got really cold in the evenings, so cold you could hardly feel your fingers and toes, we’d run down there to skid around on the ice that formed on and around it. On a clear evening, the moonlight reflecting off the frozen water gave us plenty of light, and it was like being in some kind of magical kingdom. On the far side of the lake was a steep slope which led down to a wooded area, and where there was a beaten up old shack. An old man called Matviyko lived there who was well known in the village, even though he was hardly ever seen. How he survived down there all on his own I don’t know. It was rumoured that he was a bit crazy, so we boys kept away from that shack. On one occasion we were sliding down that hill which was frozen as hard as glass. Some of us slid down on our boots, waving our arms wildly to keep our balance, others managed to find a piece of wood to sit on. Well, the ground was so frozen that, once we’d reached the bottom, we all struggled to find our feet again and slipped around, grabbing each other for support and then falling over again. As we lay on the floor, we heard a rasping chuckle. We looked across at the shack and there he was! He was a stout old man with wild eyes staring out from baggy cheeks and wild grey, thinning hair sprouting in every direction. He was wrapped in a thick, grey coat with a red scarf tucked right up to his chin.

‘
Boys, boys,’ he said in a voice like a rumble from Heaven, ‘this is what happens when you come down here and slide around on the snow stone, you end up spending time with Matviyko.’ He lifted his face up to the moonlight and laughed, his breath a cloud of steam. We didn’t hang around, we scrambled up that slope almost as quickly as we’d come down, and then we walked home. Matviyko’s words puzzled me as we made our way back in the light from the moon. Then I realised that, to him, snow stone was ice. He was an odd sort of fellow and I guessed that living alone might cause someone to act strangely and use peculiar language.

When we got home, Mother sat us next to the stove to warm us up. We gazed into the fire. The flames jumped around in the stove and I let my mind wander. I thought about the Kozaks on the steppes. Now that was freedom. What a life they must have led, underneath the stars, with no one to tell them what to do. Riding into battle ready to die if need be, but with the strength and the swordsmanship to slay any army, no matter how powerful. Mother would usually interrupt my dreaming. She’d pass me a cupful of warm milk and then scold us a little for getting so drenched and dirty, but that was it, there was very little else.

Visitors to our village could’ve sensed that something wasn’t quite right. The cry of eagles overhead was no more. Village life had changed. There were never any dogs around, or cats. Anything that could be eaten had disappeared. A silence hung over us. A black gloom. Life was being drained away, day by day.

Father would come home from his work at the local nail factory. They gave him one slice of bread to feed the four of us. So we split it into four pieces. That’s all we got. A piece of bread two inches square! It was barely enough to feed a mouse. It was enough to send you mad, and people did lose their reason. These were ordinary families, ordinary people, but they were driven to do the unthinkable.

One day, a villager arrived at the local bazaar with a quantity of meat for sale. Many people rushed towards him waving money, desperate to buy some of the meat. Others stood back. Where had the meat come from? There were hardly any animals left in the area. Perhaps just those such as our own cow, which were kept purely for producing milk. He laid out the slices of red meat on several dishes. There was enough to almost fill a table. The meat looked fresh and many people, as they queued, debated about how they would cook it. Some talked about making a stew which would maybe last a few days. Others talked of mincing the meat to make sausages, which would last even longer, but those who had stood back were ones who had worked on the local councils before the Soviets took over. The elders of the village. They were compelled to speak out, ‘Wait! Wait! You must tell us where this meat has come from. Is it beef or pork? Or what is it? You must tell us before anyone can have any of this meat.’