Steppe, Cold and Hunger

CHRISTOPH NEVER WANTED TO relive the days of the first winter in the Russian steppe. Life had been so desperate then, that in all his later years he could never overcome his reluctance to talk about this time, fearing that recounting its harshness would freeze him in the telling. Their first few days with the three young couples ended when Martin heard of a small group of Hessian people at the Karamysh. This broad stream meandered through the tall grass of the steppe, providing moisture to the lush growth of trees and brush along its banks. Although Martin was grateful for the hospitality of the young couples, he thought, after taking a careful look at the area, that this village would grow quickly, once more immigrants made their way to the Volga. There would be fierce competition for the best land. Later he would look back upon these days and muse that his evaluation had been correct, for the small encampment of three brave young families became the cornerstone of the later city of Schilling, the supply place for all the new farms and villages around.

Another discomfort for him was the flatness of the place. Martin was deeply disturbed by the emptiness of his surroundings. His soul cried out for a change in the scenery; he needed focal points to feel secure, a deep-seated feeling he could not have expressed to others or explained to himself. He was a man of the Hessian hill country, a mild countryside in a realm where gently rolling hills and mountains were interspersed with valleys filled with fruitful fields and meadows. If he looked afar, there was always a hill on the horizon.

So when he heard of the Karamysh, non-threatening water and a focal point, he borrowed one of the two thin horses belonging to the three couples, to carry their supplies, and set out with Christoph for an area that had a few gentle hills. It was in a place where the Karamysh flowed in a half circle before joining the larger Medveditsa that, in her turn, helped swell the slow-flowing, quiet River Don. Here, among the hills, Martin found six families dug in for the winter in alarming unpreparedness and squalor. They were young couples, as young as those on the Volga bank. However, they had been robbed by Kalmyks and seemed ill prepared to last even a few months in a harsh winter.

Father and son stood amid the six couples, and Martin fell into a lively conversation of questions and answers with them. After a while Christoph became bored and wandered away. There was in him a need to take stock of this land, a need for quiet contemplation. He wandered to the top of a nearby hill and looked about. Wherever his eye roamed there was grass, tall beautiful grass, heavy in seed like a field of grain. Here and there it was interspersed with flowers in late bloom and enlivened here and there, especially on the water’s edge, with shrubs and trees.

Above all reigned a clean, light-blue sky, and a sun kissing all with sweet lips, which would, in the future, desiccate and devour their crops. Looking about, he realized that henceforth this land would be his all-consuming passion, for to give it less would mean his own death. Love this soil – or perish – that is the farmer’s lot, thought the boy.

It saddened him that from then on every waking hour of his life belonged to so hard a mistress – and yet, if cherished, a nurturing one. His eyes drank in the empty realm, beauteous in its untouched state, and he knew then that he would love and obey the soil, honor her with his sweat and his sacrifice of strength. As if his silent vow had been heard and graciously received, a slight disturbance stirred the quiet air, enveloping him, cooling his hot face and brow and then subsided.

Meanwhile Martin, having heard dire news, and having seen little but un-preparedness and crying need, set out to find Christoph. Disillusioned, discouraged, feeling old and helpless, he stood atop a rocky outcropping on one of the wooded hills and looked around. The same sun, kissing his son, felt to him devoid of warmth, and it was as if rain still fell with the same abandon upon him as in the days before. A few small hills were in his view; however, they were surrounded with endless acres of tall grass.

“At home one would have disparagingly called the hills ‘molehills’,” he thought.

“Oh dear God,” he prayed, “what have I done to my son and my family. In my hubris, my belief in my own power to direct and transform, I have come to this desolate place where even the wolves seem to lead an existence of despair. However, despite my faulty beliefs, my vanity to think that I could conquer this country, I beg Your forgiveness, and humbly ask You to help me overcome the impossible to keep my son alive, to do right by him. You gave him to me, as my responsibility, and I now ask Your help. Tell me what to do, and I will do it. Help me, and I will obey – no matter what You may ask of me.”

The moment Martin raised his head after prayer, the clouds in his mind rent as if smitten by a sharp sword. The sun burst forth, its rays bathing Martin on his hill and the surrounding steppe in golden, benevolent light. A meadowlark ascended from the ground and, flying heavenward, burst into joyous song. Martin’s eyes beheld a herd of deer pronging through the grassland below, their eyes and ears alert for danger with every leap. The leaves of the trees, already turning brown, shone golden for a moment, and suddenly he knew. It was like a command, like a voice in his head.

“You are the eldest. You must stay here with these young, inexperienced men and women who do not know how to survive. You must lead them! Teach them and be their spiritual example or they will falter. Do not worry about the couples by the river. They are tougher! They have more fortitude and spirit than these here.”

At that, Martin felt rejuvenated, recharged with a new mission. When he walked downhill, returning to the wretched huts, he told the young people that he would settle here with them.

“My son and I will get our supplies and help you prepare for winter.” Herr Reis had explained to him that the climate in the lower Volga region in no way resembled the relative mildness in temperatures that the German people, but especially the Hessians, enjoyed. He had warned Martin that the steppe was a land of extremes with hot, dry summers and extremely cold winters.

“Make sure that you have a good, warm shelter,” he had advised, “or you will not live to see spring.” All these warnings were spoken with a certain pride. Reis obviously loved Russia and its people, and derived pleasure from recounting all the wonderful and terrifying excesses of the land. Being a stubborn man, these warnings put Martin in an adversarial frame of mind. He saw it as his challenge to subdue nature and thrive despite horrific hardships.

True to their word, the Meiningers returned with their bundles, poles and the rest of their supplies to the new place on the hills of the Karamysh. They accomplished this feat with the help of a borrowed horse pulling a makeshift travois.

From an ancient, forgotten wisdom Martin derived the idea of digging deep into the soil to make a shelter. For days he roamed about the area until he found the right clay, fat and impermeable, with which to line the floor and walls of a dugout, the sort of clay with an ability to keep water from seeping into what would be their home.

Where this knowledge stemmed from he did not know, for it had not been in his ken before. He begged the other Germans to follow his example and to dig into mother earth, dig into her warmth, her comfort, and her protection from howling winds that surely must sweep the steppe. Some listened, following his example, but two couples were either unconvinced by his words or too lazy to excavate the space under their wretched, lightly built hovels. These four disdained his exhortations, while gently mocking him as a zealot and a fanatic, and focused their efforts instead on preparing soil for a garden.

Martin kept Christoph digging, moving soil every day in the miserable weather. Standing at the edge of the monstrous pit they had excavated so far, he hauled upward by rope the loads of soil his son shoveled into baskets. He then carried them away to where he envisioned a planted berm as windbreak for a garden. When Christoph tired, Martin would jump into the growing cavity, commencing to pick and pound the hardened dirt apart with a heavy iron bar.

Their efforts were frantic, because over all their activity hung the ever-present fear that winter might set in with fierce force before they were fully sheltered. Atop their excavation they had erected a three-foot structure of wood, clay and reeds, to allow air circulation and act as roof.

When the hole was about five feet deep, eight feet wide and twelve feet long, they stopped digging. They lined the bottom and the walls with the fat clay, smoothing it over every inch of soil and every chink in the branches of their roof. They’d brought grain, flour, sugar, salt, and oil from Saratov, as well as hard, dried cheese, dried meat, sunflower seeds, and salted fish. When their shelter was finished by the end of October they stored their supplies well and dry, thinking they could last until early April when the Volga could be expected to be free of ice.

Throughout their building effort, Martin conferred with the couples of their small community. They’d been here first and built shelters to their own liking. Depending on their personalities, they welcomed or rejected Martin’s kind words of advice. There was Hermann Behm, with a shock of black hair, brown eyes, and the ready wit of a bright, happy man. His wife was Cornelia, an opposite – blue-eyed, staid, fair complexioned, and quiet. Both listened to the older man’s sermons and dug below their shelter into the warmth of the earth.

Next was taciturn Peter Brunn, dark haired, dark in mood, and unresponsive. His wife was a fountain overflowing with ideas. Margaretha, fair-complexioned, sunny and sweet, managed Peter with ease. When Martin said “dig,” she agreed, and Peter dug. Another matter was Conrad Holmes. Conrad knew everything – and nothing. He was tall, with pleasant demeanor, a man easy to like, his features open like a book. His agreeable face was blessed with a prominent nose and intelligent eyes. However, he showed himself to be lax, almost lazy. His wife Rosemary was a tiny, worried-looking woman. It was as if she’d picked Conrad for protection and found out he was not very good at the task. They decided their shelter would see them through any sort of winter, and their supplies would last until the next year.

The other three couples were clannish. They had rejected the advances of the aforementioned couples and the well-meaning approaches of the Meiningers. They had emigrated from the same village, knew each other intimately, and frankly cared about no one else. They viewed Martin as a busybody and competition for good land when, next spring, they would finally be able to finalize their claims, according to the entitlements from the officials in Saratov. However, they did come each night, meeting the others for their evening prayers. It was prayer that gave all of them the strength to cope every day with new and unusually distressing tasks.

Winter came late that year. The first days of November brought driving rains and frosts at night, covering the landscape with clear, brittle ice that lingered until mid-morning when repeated rain melted it. In the never ending watery misery father and son stayed inside, busily constructing makeshift pallets for their bedding. It was important to keep bedding off the floor, they had found, because although the clay provided a barrier against seepage, it had the unpleasant property of sweating out moisture and was covered with tiny beads of water most times. A large problem was the construction of a stove for warmth. With the other couples, they had collected fallen branches and chopped fallen trees, storing the wood out of the rain in a grass covered shelter, but the stove was the problem.

Hermann Behm found a solution for them. He had carried stovepipe from Germany and gave Martin an extra piece, not very long but sufficient. They constructed a grate from scrap metal and broken tools, a grate that would withstand the heat. The rest of the stove was made from hard river rock and clay. The clay became problematic after repeated use and needed to be repaired often. When, after days of rain, they finally used the stove and ate warm food, Christoph almost cried. Not that the stove was anything to rave about. It barely heated a small space in its immediate vicinity. Yet it provided the means for something warm to drink and eat and to somewhat dry the ever-damp clothes.

Then, in mid-November, came the first of many snowstorms. They had never experienced such a howling menace before. The wind tore unchallenged across the steppe, assaulting the hills daring to stand in its path. The hapless settlers were taught many lessons by this first storm. Prime among the surprises was the unpleasant realization one morning that a huge snowdrift blocked their door, and that they could not leave their shelter after the storm subsided. In time the taciturn Peter Brunn rescued them. His exit had been constructed on the leeward side. As he was a plodding stickler for detail he had excavated gently rising stairs from his lair, which he had partially covered with a roof. For this foresight, he now was settled with the task of digging out three of his neighbors. It was a task he fulfilled with grumbling and Christian forbearance.

A horrific lesson was learned when they found it impossible to heat the stove during the storm, for the wind drove the smoke right back through the pipe, filling the room with noxious, particulate fumes. The next storm blew across the land only days later. Never in his life had Christoph suffered from such unbearable cold. Father and son wore every item of clothing they owned. Pressed against each other for warmth, they covered themselves with every piece of material they’d brought to Russia. The others fared no better. When, after three days of relentless onslaught, the storm subsided, they dug themselves out and stood shivering, stamping their feet while they looked at an endless white desert.

In December temperatures dropped to minus thirty degrees Celsius. In order to endure that which seemed impossible to bear, the people of the small commune removed their minds from their surroundings, entering a state of numbness, preserving energy like hibernating bears. Lying on his pallet in their claustrophobic hovel, Christoph experienced a most unusual phenomenon. One night the temperature dropped sharply, enveloping father and son in such a quick freezing embrace, that they reached a point where they experienced no more cold and stopped shivering. A most blissful dream wondrously removed all the pain and suffering from Christoph. He, who never yet had kissed a girl with passion, felt that a beautiful girl dressed in white had come, kissing him passionately, and by so doing removed the cold and agony from his body.

What an amazing feeling that had been; he would forever remember it. He had completely given himself over to this divine kiss, a feeling of drifting away with the white girl, when suddenly Martin shook him ferociously.

“Christoph! Christoph! Wake up! Do not go to sleep,” he shouted. “If you do, you will never awaken.” Martin had been ready to give in to the cold himself when he suddenly awoke from his frozen slumber. In the years to come he told those willing to listen, over and over again, that someone had called his name until he awoke, realizing that they were about to die.

Christoph never knew whence his father’s strength came that night. Frantically, Martin, himself numb with cold, summoned enough energy to rub his son’s face, his hands and feet, while crying, praying, and shouting. Reluctantly, oh so reluctantly Christoph had left the dream with its feeling of warmth and comfort, returning to the miserable, frozen reality of the Russian steppe.

Days later the grip of the cold eased on the land, and once more the colonists arose from their wintry graves to empty urns with body waste and make fires with a few sticks from dwindling supplies. Their busy scuttling did not last long because, as they looked for their neighbors, there were four missing.

As Christoph stood among them, half dead himself, a gruesome feeling grew in him. Where were the other four? Who was missing? It became clear that two of the clannish couples, those keeping all others at arm’s length, were not about. The men looked for shovels and axes, crushing icy crusts, digging away snow, to enter the huts of the missing. The women spurred them on, for every minute counted in the race to keep someone from dying.

When they broke into the snow-covered huts, the bright light of day revealed on their bedsteads motionless bodies with ethereal, white faces. One couple lay entwined, cheek-to-cheek; the other couple’s bodies formed a stiff crescent. The searchers rushed to their beds, touching their faces, taking their hands into their own, but detected no warmth, not a flutter of life. The women, inconsolable, could not believe that their fellows were dead. They rushed to their huts and brought back small mirrors, their most treasured possessions, holding them to bloodless, bluish lips. Yet, there was not the slightest hint of moisture, a shadow of breath, on the glass.

The bodies were already frozen solid. “They died during the night I also wanted to leave,” thought Christoph. “I would have looked just like they do now.” And then, despite the agonies of every day’s miserable life, a warm feeling of thankfulness flowed through him. He was still living! Never mind that he was in the midst of a frozen desert, never mind pain. Yes, he was still here among terrifying beauty and horrific squalor, having the one thing that had been denied those who lay there stiff and dead – he had life and hope.

He could hope for spring, for warmth, for better times, for a woman to share his life with, hope for the day when he’d see his mother again. Oh Mother! He pushed the thought of her aside, for it made him weak. Now he needed all the strength he could muster just to be able to live. He walked over to where his father stood, silent and bereaved. He could not know that his father berated himself for his failure to help the departed.

In his mind Martin repeated over and over again: “If I had not been so proud when they rejected my advances; if I had tried harder to overcome their clannishness, they would still be here. God gave me a mission, and I neglected my duty.”

Christoph slipped his cold gloved hand into his father’s. “Thank you, Papa. Thank you for saving me from the cold death. I have not thanked you properly for doing what you did, because I did not know what it really meant. At first I was annoyed. I did not want to come back into this cold world, but now I understand. It is for the hope that we must live.”

To Christoph’s surprise his father embraced him fiercely, crushing him to his chest as if he’d snatched him from certain death this minute. A few tears slid from his eyes and rolled down his cheeks. Margaretha Brunn came over and, seeing Martin’s tears, she said, “You must not blame yourself, Meister Martin. I know that you think you should have tried harder to make them listen to you.”

Martin looked up in surprise. “What would you know about that?” he asked. “I would know plenty,” answered Margaretha resolutely. “Have I not plagued myself with the same thoughts ever since we found them? Before the big freeze we managed to convince Conrad Holmes and Rosemary to come and stay in our home in the ground, and Cornelia Behm persuaded the close friends of the dead, Franz and Hedy Lehmann, to come and join them.” She paused, and then her eyes, full of meaning, locked onto his. “You see, you were right. Everyone who was above ground when the frost came died. The stick homes were not enough to withstand the cold. By joining us, urging us to go into the earth, you saved all of us. We would have died without you.”

Resolutely she turned and walked through the crunching snow back to the others. The tight and hurtful knot loosened in Martin’s breast. Margaretha’s words helped him to bear the deaths. Still clasping his son, he offered prayers, and feeling a bit lighter in his heart he joined the others. Together they decided that it would be best to let the couples rest together the way they’d found them. They’d bury each couple in one grave, just as they lay now, when the frost would leave the earth in spring. However, standing about for too long was not a good thing, and they busied themselves with the tasks of living.

During this first horrific winter the little group endured endless freezing cold and mind-numbing despair, as they lay under their covers, cold and useless. There was nothing to occupy their minds but the telling of stories, if they had the fortitude to talk. Toward the end of winter, in February and in March, gut-twisting hunger added to their list of horrors. The Meiningers supplies would have lasted them perhaps till mid-March, but father and son were unable to see their neighbors suffer so painfully. They shared their meager supplies, thus equally sharing their hunger.

When Christoph thought he could not bear the hunger any longer, and he began to daydream that it would have been a good thing to have died from the cold, a warm, gentle breeze brought new hope. Snow and ice melted, the sap rose in the trees, buds swelled. From the direction of the Volga they heard sounds like cannon shots. “The ice must be breaking,” announced Peter Brunn. He had lived by the Elbe River before coming here and knew such things. “When the ice is gone they will bring supplies from Saratov!” rejoiced the women. It was not long thereafter that the boat came and the officials searched for the survivors of this most trying winter.

The Assessor, Herr Reis, marveled that he found living bodies in both camps, because the past winter had been extraordinarily cold, cold even for the Lower Volga Region, a place noted for hardship winters. He told the amazed German colonists that God had protected His people. For winters, such as the one they had endured, brought together monstrously large packs of wolves, thirty to fifty to a pack, that could easily have invaded their flimsy holes in the ground by tearing through the grass roofs.