No Relief
TWO MORE DREADFUL YEARS cost the settlers dearly. They were always living on the brink of the abyss. Starvation had been avoided, but only barely; everyone in the village owed money to the coffers of the state in Saratov. Their Russian neighbors had fared no better. The settlers had gotten to know the Russians a little better by now – poverty insured that they mingle.
The Russians supplemented their meager farm yields by drying and selling fish that they caught in the Volga. They came through Norka and other towns with wagons that often held their entire family. They used their fish sales as an outing, looking the Germans over like an interesting species in the zoo. A starving horse in the traces, baskets of dried fish in the back – that’s how they came.
In turn, the Germans drove through the Russian villages selling eggs. Why the Russians did not collect the eggs laid by their own squawking, scrawny fowl was a mystery. Perhaps the reason could be found in the serfs’ inability to purchase material and construct coops. They had few proper henhouses, making egg collection difficult.