THE FROZEN potato rush took on a new fervor toward the end of April. This was the time when the kolhosp planted a new crop. The hungry villagers thought that now it would be easy for them to get some potatoes. One could go out and simply dig them up, and some did just that. Others worked out another system: they found the first potato, and then followed it down the row.
But in reality it wasn’t that simple or easy. The government soon stepped in to protect its kolhosp fields. It was announced that foraging in the fields was prohibited. Anyone caught stealing the planted potatoes or other vegetables would be executed.
Those villagers who disregarded the official warning and ignored the guardsmen were arrested and locked up in the county jail. Soon rumors spread that the jailers in the county prison fed the prisoners well, giving them bread and other food to eat. As a consequence, many villagers, instead of looking for potatoes looked for guardsmen to arrest them and put them in the county jails. People were exchanging their homes for prisons which were places of refuge from hunger. Thus the number of “criminals” rapidly increased.
But it didn’t work for long. Obviously the county prisons became overcrowded. Besides, the authorities surmised the true reason for the increasing number of “enemies of the people.” In order to stem the flow to the county jails, it was officially announced one day that the village “criminals” would have to stay in the village jails. Prisoners in the village jails received no food from the jailers, and their families had to feed them. Also, the prisoners who still could walk had to work. Usually, they dug graves in the cemetery, or worked on the roads, or in the kolhosp fields.
Throughout April it was cold and uncomfortable in our house. We had already burned everything that would burn in order to keep warm. The barn, pigpen, and the fence had all been torn down and burned. When the snow started melting away, we began collecting dry weeds in gardens, backyards, and along the roads for fuel. But in spite of all our hardships, we were still better off than many other villagers, since we still had some potatoes and a few small bags of grain hidden in a haystack.
And we still had our cow! Just having her assured us a better chance of survival. She would soon be giving us milk, as she was going to calf sometime at the beginning of May.
We treated our cow as our savior. Since the beginning of winter, we had been keeping her in the other half of our house, and we cared for her as best we could. We tried to give her plenty of suitable food.
But one April day, our hopes were shattered. A notice came that within twenty hours we had to deliver about 250 pounds of meat to the state in the form of livestock. This meant we had to give up our cow. We never cried so much as we did on that day. It was as if we were losing our very lives, which indeed was not far from the truth.
The Bread Procurement Commission arrived at our place toward evening. They had not even given us the promised twenty-four hours’ notice. While a few commission members kept a watchful eye on us huddled in the house, the others quickly led our cow out and left. The whole procedure was more like a holdup than a legal, orderly process.
The next day found us in a very desperate state. We had been living in constant hunger for five months already. We had not seen normal food since December, except for some of the groceries we had bought at the Torgsin. Our only hope for some substantial food had been the one we had just lost—a steady supply of milk. That had been our constant topic of conversation; our daydream. Now, being deprived of it, we had nothing left to hope for.
Meanwhile, hunger assailed us mercilessly. The pangs in my empty stomach were unbearable. I felt constant faintness, dizziness, and I was unsteady on my feet. I thought I was going mad: I couldn’t think of anything else but food, wherever I was, or whatever I was doing. I had fantasies about all kinds of food, but most of all I dreamt of bread: freshly baked, soft and warm, hot out of the oven. I smelled and inhaled the aroma; I tasted the fresh bread. I saw in front of me breads of all kinds, shapes, and colors: white and dark. If only I just had one piece! I would not want anything else in the world. I wouldn’t care for anything else!
Such daydreaming was a beneficial lull, making me forget the hunger pangs. But then I would awaken from that dreamworld, just to feel those burning, sharp hunger pangs in my stomach again; a pain that was driving me mad.
But, thank God, in spite of these sporadic hallucinations, we could think lucidly most of the time. No one with a sound mind wishes to starve to death without struggling first to save his life. We had to survive somehow, even without our cow. We held a family council, at which time we decided to act immediately. Mother urged us to go to the river and try our luck at fishing.
Immediately, Mykola and I took some bags and homemade traps, and headed for the river, about two miles from our village. Each year, beginning with Easter and until winter set in, we used to swim and play in its gently flowing warm water almost daily. Above all, we liked to fish there and to hunt for bird eggs.
Those carefree days were long past. We now turned to our beloved river with the hope that it would help us in our life and death struggle. The day was foggy and rather cold as we stepped on the sandy road we had walked thousands of times before. We knew every bush and tree along the way. However, this road now offered us some surprises.
After passing a deserted windmill, we noticed an object at some distance in front of us. Approaching closer, we saw that it was the body of a woman. We recognized her at first sight. She was our neighbor, Oksana Shevchenko.
Oksana went through the same ordeal as had many of our villagers. Two years before, her father who had been labeled a kurkul, had been arrested and taken away from the village. A few months later, Oksana’s mother died thus leaving the eighteen-year-old girl to care for her twelve-year-old sister and seven-year-old brother.
But Oksana’s real troubles had just started. One day she received a note from the village government stating that her family, being kurkuls, had to deliver a certain quota of grain and meat to the state immediately. The demand was utterly ridiculous, for everything the family possessed had already been expropriated before the arrest of her father, and for the last two years the family had been starving. That was not a valid excuse as far as the state was concerned.
The Bread Procurement Commission appeared on their doorstep the day after the note was received. They searched everywhere for meat and grain, leaving not a stone unturned, but found nothing. One would have assumed that Oksana and her charges would now be left alone, but the government officials had a different idea. Oksana was informed that, inasmuch as she was refusing to deliver the required quotas to the state, her house was to be expropriated and declared state property. Incidentally, the house had a tin roof, which was another unmistakable sign that it belonged to a kurkul.
Oksana’s tears and pleas were of no avail. Neither were the officials moved by the cries of the two small children huddled around her, holding fast to her skirt.
On the contrary, the leader of the commission tried to further terrify them with his gun. He quickly drew it, and pointing it at Oksana, warned her that he would kill her if the children didn’t stop crying. After failing to impress them into silence with his gun, he ordered the members of the commission to forcibly remove the children from the house. When they hesitated, he threatened to kill the nearest member of the commission, pointing his gun at him. This had the desired effect. The children were dragged out, kicking and screaming. Oksana fainted and was dragged out also. The Bread Procurement Commission sealed the doors and windows, and left, ignoring Oksana and the children in their pitiful plight.
After surviving that horror, Oksana and the children took refuge in her aunt’s house. A few months later, the little sister died of pneumonia. Her aunt soon followed, dying of starvation. Oksana was left alone with young Stepan.
All these tragedies had happened about a year ago. Now, she lay dead before our eyes on the sandy road. She too had apparently tried to reach the river or the woods as a last resort in her quest for something edible. But she was not destined to do it. The marks in the sand indicated that she had tried to crawl. She lay face down, her swollen hands stretched out, her teeth biting deeply into the sand as if she were trying to eat it.
It was a sad picture, but we had already seen so many that we only stared at her body for a while in silence, and then moved on. There was nothing we could do for her now.
Soon we took a shortcut through the woods to the river. It was quiet there. Walking through the woods, we had the feeling that the trees and the bushes were aware of our tragedy. There was no wind, yet it seemed that the branches of the tall, dark pine trees were mysteriously whispering something to each other. Now and then the silence would be disturbed by the cracking of twigs or the screeching of a magpie.
The fog hung low, and the tree branches were dripping wet. My brother and I had always used to follow this shortcut path when going to the river for, besides reducing the distance, it was scenic. However, this time we took it for a different reason. We wanted to explore it for something edible. We separated, and started our search. I found nothing but a few useless poisonous mushrooms. Suddenly, Mykola called me excitedly. When I approached him, he was greedily eyeing a hedgehog.
“Why are you so excited about a hedgehog?” I asked him almost angrily.
“Don’t you remember that book about Africa, and how the jungle people ate anything alive? Why couldn’t we enjoy this clean little fellow?” responded Mykola, ignoring my agitation and pointing at the hedgehog sniffing some dry mushrooms.
Mykola had a point. I looked closer at the animal.
“Hey!” I shouted excitedly. “Look at his snout! It looks like a pig’s!”
“I’ll bet it tastes like a pig, too,” Mykola remarked.
“But how are you going to skin it?” I asked.
“We’ll singe him like people used to prepare pigs before Christmas in the old days.”
Without hesitation, he skillfully bagged the animal. He had convinced me completely. If other people ate lizards, snails, and even rattlesnakes, why couldn’t we eat hedgehogs once we had singed their shaggy coats and sharp quills?
The Communist Party had not as yet passed any law against eating hedgehogs, or any other wild creatures for that matter. Amusing myself with such thoughts, I searched eagerly under the trees and bushes for more of these animals, but was unsuccessful. Mykola, however, found another one, and I could hear him happily shouting that it was much bigger than the first one. Our day was not wasted. We had caught and bagged two hedgehogs, and there was the possibility that we would be just as successful when we reached the river.
Mother had asked us to visit Prokop’s family, our distant relatives who lived on the very bank of the river. Prokop had been arrested last spring for failing to meet the grain and meat quotas. He was taken away one night to the county jail, and that was the last we had heard about him. No one ever had found out his fate. His wife continued living alone with her six-year old daughter in their little house on the river. The last time we saw them was in November, before the first snowfall.
Mother was anxious to know what had happened to them during the cold winter, so we thought a visit to Aunt’s home was a good idea since she knew her way around the river quite well. She also knew much better than we how to charm fish into traps, and we could use her boat.
It was late in the afternoon when we reached Prokop’s house, and we approached it with some trepidation. The past winter had been long and very severe. Many things could have happened to our relatives in their little house by the river. As far as we could tell, it stood safe and sound, but there were no signs of life around it. A small drift of dirty unmelted snow lay in front of the door. The front windows were curtained with some cloth.
We knocked at the door gently at first, and then louder, but no one answered. I grasped the latch and tried to open the door. It was locked. We ran to the windows in the back of the house, but they too were covered with cloth. We saw no other way than to force open the door with all our strength. As we did so, a nauseating stench assailed us. We ran to the windows and tore down the curtains for it was dark inside. The broad daylight streaming through the windows revealed a shocking sight to us. Aunt’s headless body lay on the floor; her head was a few feet away. Apparently it had been torn off her body by some force, but there was not much blood around.
We soon solved the mystery. Looking around, we noticed a rope, ending in a noose, dangling from a beam. Aunt had hanged herself. After a while, her neck had no doubt given way as the body decomposed, which explained the absence of blood.
After overcoming our initial shock, we looked around for the little daughter. We soon found her lying on a sleeping bench. She must have died before her mother. Her eyes and mouth were closed; her tiny hands were folded on her chest. She was neatly dressed in the blue dress she used to wear when she visited us, and her hair had been combed nicely too.
Otherwise, the house was empty. All the furniture had probably been burned for fuel. There was no trace of any food. It was obvious to us that having lost her husband, and having been struck by famine which also took her little daughter, Aunt like our neighbor, Solomia, saw no more sense in living and struggling. Before taking her own life, she carefully locked the door and covered the windows. Her house became their coffin.
The gruesome sight and sickening stench of the decaying human bodies and the awesome silence almost overcame us. We stood there speechless and helpless. Even after so many previous encounters, we felt the creeping horror of death. At that point, we could not stand it any longer, and suddenly had to run outside for fresh air and to regain our composure.
The idea of foraging in the river and on its banks seemed absurd after what we had just experienced, so we suddenly lost all interest in our hunting and fishing expedition, and headed back home.
When we told mother what we had seen in Prokop’s house, she at first reacted to it, as always, very calmly. But she could not completely suppress her emotions for long. After asking us a few more questions, she suddenly turned away from us and gave way to her tears.
We spent the rest of that day preparing our hedgehogs for supper. Mykola expertly dressed them, as if he had been doing it all his young life. The roasted hedgehog meat with potatoes tasted heavenly.
After we had gone to bed, I could not fall asleep for a long time. My aunt’s head staring at me from the floor with her glassy, frightened eyes was still in my mind.
Mother woke us up the next morning before sunrise to go to the house at the river to bury our dead relatives. By the time we arrived there, it was already broad daylight. It had to be a burial without coffins for we had no wood, nails, nor strength to fashion them, neither could we dig a grave. Instead, we used an abandoned potato pit for their remains. We wrapped them in their own hand-woven blankets, and slid them gently into the makeshift grave. After filling it with dirt, Mother said a little prayer, and I placed a wooden cross which I had made by tying together two sticks into the earth above them.
We could no longer cry. We had lived through so much sorrow, and had suffered so many tragic losses that we were left numb.
“Why did they have to die?” Mykola suddenly asked, interrupting the dead silence.
“I wish I knew,” Mother answered.
On the way home I was thinking about our own burial, and who would be left to bury us. I could think of no one.