‘Bitch!’ His lips pursed in an ominous line, and he looked as if he might strike me, but swiped his coat and jaw with a heavy uniform sleeve instead.
‘Hush, shush. It’s alright now. You should have stayed upstairs.’ Mother planted a sturdy kiss on my forehead, then grabbed me hard by the elbow and pushed me behind her for safety.
Peaked Cap stunk – and his expression showed it. Unable to conceal his disgust, he opened a sealed brown envelope. ‘Family Glenz – six of you and a child – we have orders to search your house. You are Ignacy Glenz?’
Father nodded.
‘Answer me! Ignacy Glenz aged fifty two?’
‘Yes, yes, I am he.’
‘And you are Anna Glencova, aged fifty two?’ He glanced up at Mother.
‘Why ask if you already know?’
Under duress, my father placed his arm around her waist. ‘My wife Anna, our daughter Marisha, our younger son, Karol, the elder Gerhard, his wife Lodzia and our grandchild, Ella. Satisfied?’
‘Shift.’ The swarthy militiaman lifted his rifle and with abrupt motions corralled us all into a group.
Peaked Cap prowled around in measured steps. ‘You,’ he said, ‘keep your eye on them, and you,’ he said to the scruffy one, ‘come with me.’ He turned to us. ‘No talking. After the search, you will have half an hour to pack your chattels.’ He sifted through his paperwork and read out a Decree of Deportation.
‘Dear God!’ Mother crossed herself and repeated it twice more for good measure.
A worrying sign, I feared. I didn’t understand much of it – but it was an act of expulsion that prevented us from continuing to live in Poland, though he didn’t make the reason apparent.
‘Half an hour – what are you talking about?’ Fear flickered behind my father’s eyes. ‘Where are you taking us?’
‘To safety.’
‘Don’t worry – we’re safe right here in our own home. And why the guns – we’ve done nothing wrong?’
‘You ask too many questions, Ignacy Glenz.’
‘Wouldn’t you if someone forced their way into your home in the middle of the night and terrorised your family? We’re not going anywhere.’
‘Shut up! It is not a choice. You are Polish elite – you are enemies of the people.’ His mannerisms suggested he was no longer prepared to tolerate my father’s questions. He gestured to the scruffy one, and the pair of them tramped upstairs while we waited in silence.
Returning empty-handed, they disappeared to ransack the downstairs rooms.
The swarthy one jerked his rifle and ordered us to back up against the wall. We stood there in our nightclothes while Bookiet barred his teeth and inched towards him on his belly
I could stand it no longer. ‘Will the blacksmith’s family who live on the farm near Sciapanki be leaving too?’ I saw my mother’s puckered brow urging me to shut up, but I needed to know. Wanda was my best friend, and her brother, Jusio, was my sweetheart. However, the door flew open, the other two returned, and left my question unanswered.
Peaked Cap turned to my father. ‘Sit down, Glenz. You need to make a list of what you’ll be taking. You will travel by train, so we allow you only 500kg.’ His lips twisted into a sarcastic smirk. ‘And as much money and jewellery as you Kulaks (wealthy peasants) have.’
My parents turned to each other, and Father shook his head in despair. We were ordinary, diligent farmers, as were all the Polish families around here who struggled to eke out a living. We weren’t rich.
‘Pack bedding, kitchen utensils, warm clothes and enough food for a month. We also permit axes, small saws and sewing machines.’
Father glanced sideways at him and raised a brow. ‘A lot of things for one month?’
‘What about my bicycle?’ Karol asked.
‘Not allowed.’
He was about to protest, but Mother silenced him with a scowl and a curt shake of her head.
‘Well, Glenz?’ Peaked Cap was impatient.
Father pulled out a chair and sat down. He clenched his jaw, lifted the hem of the cloth and reached into the drawer for pencil and paper. ‘Remind me again where you said you were taking us.’
‘To safety. That is all you need to know.’
2
We were all in the grip of silent panic as chaos and confusion descended.
Peaked Cap ordered my father to remain seated, and towered over him with his pistol. He glanced at his wristwatch to remind us all we were wasting precious time. He had said half an hour – he meant half an hour.
Lodzia thrust Ella into Father’s lap. With the list forgotten, whatever lay in reach was crammed into swag bags which she and Gerhard had formed out of bed sheets. They dragged eiderdowns and pillows from bedrooms and bound them with twine, while the two militia thugs trailed around after them to ensure they didn’t flee through a bedroom window.
Scurrying around, I threw back curtained screens in search of what? To my surprise, Mother had kept every misshapen, wonky wicker basket I had ever made.
She wobbled on a chair, unhooking the cured sausages that dangled from the rafters, hurling them into my wicker hampers, along with any other ingredients that came to hand from the pantry. ‘Karol, make yourself useful, son. We’ll need pots and pans.’
When she’d stripped the rafters and pantry shelves, she stood with one hand on her forehead, the other clutching her hip. ‘We need vegetables, Ignacy. This amount won’t keep the seven of us fed for a month.’
I glanced in the proving pans above the stove where Mother’s bread dough, that looked so plump and smelled so enticing last night, had collapsed. Lifting the perforated lid of the box where my chicken’s eggs incubated, I received an angry and urgent peep, peep, peep from a bundle of blonde fluff announcing it had arrived. Another little beak was also pecking its way through its shell, and I didn’t know what to do. ‘Tatta, can we take these with us?’
‘Leave them, child. The cold will kill them.’
It seemed so cruel; my chicks would die if I took them, and they would die left behind without anyone here to feed them. I replaced the lid and turned once again to my father, but he was speaking to Karol who was dashing around, his arms full.
‘Fetch a sack of potatoes, carrots, and beets from the piwnica, son.’ Father had already explained to Peaked Cap there was an outside cellar where we overwintered root vegetables.
Karol dropped the plates on the table, the pans on the floor, and turned for the door, but Peaked Cap barred him and wafted him away with his pistol. ‘No one leaves the house.’
Mother paused from her dashing around. ‘Karol! Pack your things. We haven’t much time. Take nothing we don’t need.’
With one strike, Peaked Cap had deprived us of our behaviour and doomed my chicks. I felt doomed too. I snatched some candles from the basket and reached for the picture of the Madonna and Child.
‘No frippery,’ said Peaked Cap.
I cast him a defiant glare, opened my mouth to argue, but Mother stopped me. ‘Marishu, go and pack, and bring your pillows and eiderdown.’
Striking a match, I cupped my palm around the flame and brought it to a candle. I made for the rickety stairs and scrambled up so fast that melting tallow scalded my hand, but I ignored the pain. Amid the swirl of dust motes in the attic, I grabbed Lodzia’s red pigskin holdall and upended it, not caring what dropped out.
Stalin’s henchman had trashed my tiny bedroom in the cockloft. I owned little enough as it was, but what was mine I cherished, and he defiled my personal space. I threw the bag on the bed, lit the lamp from the candle flame, and flopped onto the rumpled eiderdown. Surveying the mess, I scooped up the pile of clothes dragged from my drawers and stuffed them into the bag. What space remained I filled with my watercolours, a box of family photographs and my World Atlas, which I could read on the journey.