Wary of horses, I kept my distance. Tatta’s beloved Bay, Gniady, was a brute. Sensing my fear, he never missed the chance to give chase, sending me indoors in terror. However, every one of these horses was eager, interested and alert – not as if I would ever rub their noses or get anywhere near the things; it was best to stay away from their scary teeth and their hind hooves.
The girl introduced herself as Natasha and taking her hand, Karol, his blue eyes sparkling, kissed her fingers. ‘And I am Karol Glenz.’
Sensing the chemistry and the girl’s coy body language, I thought, ‘Oh, not another one.’ My brother had left behind a host of broken hearts in Zhabinka, and already the girls here were falling for him.
‘Is it far to this forest station?’ Lodzia asked. ‘How long will it take? My husband wants to know why can’t the rest of our family come with us now?’
‘We haven’t enough sleighs, but we will be back, and you will see them tomorrow. As for how long – about 12km. Maybe six hours or more, depending on the weather; the snow is deep. Even now, some will have to walk.’
The guards were manhandling the passengers who were suffering from cramp, chucking them into sleighs. Family members were being torn apart. There was much sobbing, kissing and hugging, wondering if they would ever see their loved ones again. Everyone stood to observe the convoy as it set off east across the empty snow-covered terrain, heading for that implacable wall of forest on the horizon.
It was so cold we all scurried back to our wagons. Night fell, and with all the children gone, I found space on the top shelf. The chattering calmed, and people settled to sleep. My eiderdown offered little warmth without the additional body heat of those who had left. For a moment I forgot my hunger, thirst and misery and looked up at the sky through the iron gratings, stunned by the beauty of the mass of stars sparkling in the blackness until sleep consumed me too.
It was still dark when I awoke. Lost in the remnants of a dream, I forgot where I was for a moment until the sound of sputum-riddled lungs reminded me. I hoisted myself onto my elbows and gazed through the bars. Dawn was breaking over the forest, and the sky was changing. Blurred masses of grey were giving way to oranges and pinks, and beyond the forest the first rays of the sun thrust through the trees casting biblical rays across the snow.
My parents and Karol were on the shelf below, I leaned over the ledge. ‘Are you awake yet?’
‘We are now, thanks to you,’ Karol replied. ‘What do you want? Go away.’
‘I’m hungry.’ Anxious now to be on our way, it disappointed me when nothing happened.
My parents spent hours engaged in conversation with the Powiecki family’. Why did grown-ups find politics so interesting and never involve me? The guards delivered pails of boiling water mid-morning, but the door remained bolted until they came again with bread and soup, at which time they left it open.
‘Eat your soup, but save the bread,’ Mother urged. ‘We’ll need something to sustain us later.’
How golden were our wheatfields, I mused as I stuffed the remaining piece of bread into my pocket? None of us had ever known hunger at home. Perhaps there was more food at the forest station.
The horses and sleighs arrived to collect us in the afternoon, and there was Natasha again, heading for Karol.
‘She’s offering to take us on her sleigh.’ His eyes were bright, his voice eager. ‘I’ll fetch our things from the goods wagon. Why don’t you go back inside; it’s too cold out here.’
Unbelievable; he doesn’t lift a finger at home. I was looking forward to the sleigh ride until I realised I would have to walk; thanks to Karol’s bicycle. That, together with Tatta’s large box of shoe making paraphernalia and Mama’s sewing machine, not to mention the rest of our things, there was no space for either of us; the sleigh was hardly a large one.
I was livid. ‘Leave it behind, Karol, because I’m not walking!’
‘I’m not leaving this. It’s mine.’
‘And where do you plan to ride it? The snow’s a metre deep!’
‘It won’t always be snowing.’
‘Hey, you two stop it!’ Our father had to intervene. ‘Leave the bike here, Karol. You and Marisha can’t walk. It’s twelve kilometres to the camp. Ask a guard if you can collect it later.’
‘I am not leaving it behind; it’s all I have left. Look, other people are forming a queue; if they can walk, so can we.’
‘Oh, let him take it,’ Mother couldn’t stand arguments. ‘Just keep to the compacted track where the sleighs have been.’
Well, she would say that. Karol was her favourite, and I was my father’s.
The train left the moment all wagons were empty, and our convoy set off following the route of the previous day’s procession with nothing in sight but distant borders bounded by that thin line of trees.
An hour into our journey out of nowhere a white purga caught us mid-way between Kholmorgorki and the forest. All at once, we found ourselves amidst clouds of wind-driven snow, which spun up into the sky and returned to earth as a swirling whirlwind. The icy wind surrounded us, lashing a million razor-sharp crystals into my face. The cold penetrated through my clothes to the very marrow of my bones. I twisted every which way as I tried to shield myself from the onslaught, but so utter was my exhaustion, so grave my hunger; it was difficult to muster the will to keep going.
I veered into a snowdrift, and Karol dragged me back, yet still, the convoy pressed ahead.
The temperature plunged further still as the light faded, and the snow sucked at my long coat. Trickles of sweat stung my eyes and blurred my vision, but I ploughed on trying to keep pace with Natasha’s sleigh. It was becoming increasingly difficult to lift my knees out of the snow in places.
An hour later, the storm blew itself out and left the world becalmed. The moon, full and bright, welled up from behind the trees and illuminated our path. Driven through midnight forests, we blundered forward into the haze of our own spent breath.
A rough track hacked out of the trees drew us inside and swallowed us up, so from the outside world, it would seem as though we never existed. No one would find us.
After a few more hours, the trees began thinning. Some grew tall and fine, but occasionally the woodland became reedy.
Just as I felt I could go no further, our convoy stopped on elevated ground. Natasha turned around and pointed to a settlement camouflaged by snow. ‘Down there is Vodopad, and there you shall live.’
The horses snorted, and no one spoke as everyone contemplated their futures. Coils of smoke rose from chimneys, snagging and jerking in the wind, a frozen, alien place – our home. I tried being adult about it, but I didn’t know how I felt about living in a village when I had spent my entire life living in the middle of nowhere. Moonlight shone on what looked like water, so a stream, or a river, maybe? My first instincts were that I would hate it, and I yearned to return home.
8
We moved downhill, and the convoy gathered around a sizeable shack where Natasha got off the sleigh. ‘This is the administration block. Remember where it is. You will need to come here in the morning.’
I wondered how I could remember anything when snow blanketed the whole site. The rooftops reminded me of clusters of oyster mushrooms, which grew stalkless on the dead wood of the deciduous forests back home. The crowd became noisy and animated, but the snow muffled all the sound, and was so thick I worried the whole settlement might collapse beneath its weight.
Natasha paced about, lest her circulation froze. ‘Sorry for the delay. We’re waiting for people to come and take you to your quarters. Someone’s gone to the community centre to fetch them. They shouldn’t be too long. You are so lucky, compared with what happened to us.’