Chapter Twenty
Eating Hay
Mrs. Segal’s death made me even more determined to do everything I could to help the rest of her family live.
Mama made another trip to Lviv just as 1942 began. She had hoped to sell the rest of the stockings, as we had no food left. The chickens had stopped laying eggs in the cold weather, the tin of pork from Frau Schneider was long gone, and so were our precious jams and pickles. Maria and I worried about Mama, but we also waited in anticipation. Would she bring more buckwheat kasha? Maybe something better?
But when she returned two nights later, her face was black with bruises. Her coat was ripped and her pockets were empty.
“I had sold all the stockings,” she said, “and I was coming home with salt pork, biscuits and cash. But I was robbed on the train.” She slumped down into a kitchen chair.
I held a cool cloth to Mama’s face and Maria made her linden tea. We tried to comfort her, but all three of us felt defeated. That food was supposed to get us through the rest of the winter. What could we possibly do now? There was nothing else to sell and nothing we could barter for food. All we had to live on was the daily ration of one piece of bread, and water from the pump.
Auntie Polina visited a few days after that, her body so weak that she leaned heavily on a walking stick. It must have been sheer strength of will that got her to our doorstep. As we gathered close to the warmth of the wood stove, she reached into the depths of her pocket and brought out a dry wedge of cheese the size of her palm. “This is all I can spare,” she said. “It will be hard for you to get through the next few months, and for me as well.”
“Let us hope and pray that we all survive until spring,” said Mama. “Is Krasa in good health?”
“She is,” said Auntie Polina. “And Lysa is with calf as well. We just need to hold on for a few months. There will be greens and berries in the spring. And lots of milk.”
But as bad as it was for us, it was worse in the ghetto. I had seen with my own eyes how crowded the Jews were. Dolik had told me that the only way to get extra food, besides what I got to them, was to buy it from the Judenrat, and the prices were steep. Many of the Jews were far too poor to pay for a room or extra food to supplement their daily slice of bread. Many had already starved or frozen to death. I dreaded hearing the squeaking wheels of the corpse collector’s wagon, taking the dead out of town to a burial pit.
Mama cut our wedge of cheese in half, and I took one piece to the ghetto at the appointed time. It was Dolik who met me in the moonlight, and much as I was glad to see him, to know that he was still alive, my heart ached at the raspy tremor of his voice. The barbed wire had been fastened back down, so I tossed the cheese over the top of the fencing.
He caught it and slipped it into his coat pocket. “Thank you, Krystia.”
“I don’t know how we’ll make it through the winter, and I won’t be able to bring you any more food until spring.” I didn’t want to cry, but I couldn’t help it. I felt as if I carried the weight of the world on my shoulders. I was desperate to help my friends, but at this point I could barely help myself. The whole situation was utterly hopeless.
“Krystia, take this,” said Dolik, shoving a few coins through a gap in the barbed wire. “Maybe you can buy some food from the Nazis. You need to eat too.”
It made me feel guilty to take his money, but I knew he was right. “Thank you,” I said, putting the coins in my pocket. And as I did, I remembered what else I had to give him. I drew the latest forged documents out of my coat and poked them through to him. I also gave him a vial of painkillers from his mother’s box of medicines.
“This is good, Krystia,” he said. He drew a roll of undeveloped film out of his pocket and passed it to me.
I was about to leave, but Dolik said, “When you come next, can you bring sulfa from Mami’s medicine box?”
“Yes,” I said. “What does it look like?”
“It’s a powder in red tins,” he said. “Bring as much as you can carry.”
“I will.”
Just before I left, I held my hand flat against the barbed wire. He did the same. Our fingers and palms touched.
“Be safe,” I said.
“You too.”
Our entire exchange had taken less than two minutes. I hurried back across the street before the policeman finished his route. I silently darted from one building to the next on cold bare feet.
But a few steps away from our front door, a familiar voice said, “Krystia, what are you doing out?”
It was our next-door neighbour Petro Zhuk, the policeman.
“Morning chores,” I said.
His flashlight pierced the darkness for one brief moment. “Chores?” he asked, directing the light at my empty hands.
Petro was no Nazi, but still, the Commandant was his boss. His job was to look for smugglers and food hoarders. Thank goodness I was no longer carrying the cheese. But if he found the film I would be in trouble.
“I was just going inside.” I took a step towards the house.
“Krystia,” he said, “you know I can’t make an exception just because we’re neighbours. Raise your arms.”
His hands moved down the front of my coat and over my skirt, pausing when they reached the roll of film that was shoved in the pocket of my skirt. I took measured breaths and willed my heart to stop its wild pounding.
The silence between us hung in the air.
Then he said, “You can go now. But please realize that if the Nazis knew what you were doing, you would be shot. And if they thought that I was bending rules for you, I would be shot.”
I murmured, “Thank you, Petro.” Then I turned and walked to my front door as Petro continued on his beat. Once the door closed behind me, my knees turned to jelly and I collapsed.
Even if Mama hadn’t been robbed on the train, we still would have been hungry, because the police often went from door to door and ransacked houses, looking for hidden food. They found the rest of Doctor Mina’s medicines and took them away. Thank goodness this happened after I had delivered the sulfa.
They miraculously didn’t find the coins from Dolik, which I had hidden beneath a loose floorboard in the outhouse.
I helped Maria fetch the water each morning, as she was too weak to carry the bucket on her own. Neither Mama nor I could work at the Commandant’s any longer, because Frau Hermann said the sight of our gaunt faces ruined her appetite. In so many ways I was glad not to have to go there anymore, but it also meant that we couldn’t listen in on conversations.
I was so hungry that I would go up to the loft and scour through Yasna’s hay, looking for stray seeds. Mama, Maria and I slept a lot, because with such extreme hunger, it was hard to keep awake.
We would have loved to buy some food with the money that Dolik had given us, but there was no one to buy it from because the Commandant had stopped the Volksdeutche from selling to locals.
It had also become more difficult to do the document exchanges through the barbed wire because the police had increased their watch. I had to time it just perfectly.
Most days Maria and I walked Yasna just a few blocks down the street, then turned and came home and went to bed. At least in winter there were fewer chores. We couldn’t have done them anyway.
By late February, we were like walking skeletons. Mama bundled herself up in her winter jacket and took the coins with her to Lviv. “Don’t worry if I don’t come home for a day or two,” she told us.
Maria and I drank hot water and linden tea, trying to trick our stomachs into thinking we were full. And we went to the loft and chewed on hay.