It was an emotional scene. Too emotional and noisy for one cool head in the party. Smith had moved apart and had been keeping an anxious watch. In Russian he called out. ‘Break it up. Are you forgetting where we are? For God’s sake let’s get under cover.’
The group quickly broke up. We moved off to find a hiding-place.
12. Kristina Joins the Party
HER NAME was Kristina Polanska. She was just seventeen. She had not eaten for two days and she was very, very hungry. We rummaged in our bags and handed her our scraps of food. She ate like a half-starved animal with absorbed concentration, now and again sniffling and rubbing her padded sleeve across her nose. She fascinated us. We squatted on our haunches and never took our eyes off her. Only Mister Smith sat back a little, watching her, too, but with a more detached air of appraisal. Then she stopped eating and told us her name.
‘I am not lost from the kolhoz,’ she volunteered. ‘I ran away. I have been running for many days.’ She paused. ‘And you are the first gentlemen I have met since I left my home.’ She put a lot of emphasis into the word gentlemen.
‘Where was your home, Kristina?’ I asked.
‘My father had a farm near Luck, in the Polish Ukraine,’ she said. ‘I last saw it in 1939. I have no home now.’
Quietly the American interposed with a question about our immediate plans. It was getting dark, he pointed out, and he thought we should make some distance along the river bank northwards to a point which looked favourable for a crossing early the next day. He suggested it would be senseless to give ourselves another soaking that night. At least we could sleep dry.
There was no argument. We walked for four or five miles along the tree-fringed river. I saw the girl several times looking at Smith. She did not speak to him. I think she sensed that in this calm and thoughtful man was the only likely opposition to her presence among us. We Poles talked to her. Smith said nothing.
It was quite dark when we found a place to rest. We built a hide against a fallen log. We laid down our food sacks for her and she curled up among us, completely trustful, and slept. Ours was a more fitful rest. Throughout the dark hours we took sentry duty in turn, according to our practice. She slept on like a tired child, oblivious of the chill of the night. She still had not awakened when, in the first hint of day, Mister Smith touched me on the shoulder and beckoned me away from the group.
He came to the point at once. ‘What are we going to do with this young woman, Slav?’ I had known it was coming and I did not know what to say. It might be a good thing, I said, to find out from her what were her plans. It was evading the question and I was well aware of it. Out of the tail of my eye I saw Makowski talking to Paluchowicz. They strolled over to us. On their heels came Kolemenos. A minute later the other two left the hide and joined us. ‘Very well,’ said the American, ‘we’ll make it a full conference.’ We talked, but we did not come to the point. Were we going to take the girl with us? That was the only question. The only result of our talk was that we would talk to Kristina and reach some decision afterwards.
We woke her gently. She yawned and stretched. She sat up and looked at us all. She smiled in real happiness to see us. We grinned back through our beards and basked in that rare smile. Busily we fussed around to rake out some food and we all quietly breakfasted together as day began to break. Paluchowicz, clearing his throat embarrassedly, asked her then how she came to be where we found her and where she was heading.
‘I was trying to get to Irkutsk,’ she said, ‘because a man who gave me a lift on a farm lorry and was sorry for me told me that if I got to the big railway junction there I might steal a ride on a train going west. He dropped me on the road a few miles away and I was trying to find a way round the town.’
Her glance rested on the American. He returned the look gravely. Her fingers fluttered to the strands of hair straying outside her cap, tucked them away in a gesture pathetically and engagingly feminine. ‘I think I should tell you about myself,’ she said. We nodded.
It was a variation of a story we all knew. The prison camps were filled with men who could tell of similar experiences. The location and the details might differ, but the horror and the leaden misery were common ingredients and stemmed from the same authorship.
After the First World War Kristina Polanska’s father had been rewarded for his war services by a grant of land in the Ukraine under the reorganization of Central European territory. He had fought against the Bolsheviks, and General Pilsudski was thus able to give a practical expression of Polish gratitude. The girl was an only child. They were a hardworking couple, these parents, and they intended that Kristina should have every advantage their industry could provide. In 1939 she was attending high school in Luck and the Polanskas were well pleased with the progress she was making.
Came September 1939. The Russians started moving in. Ahead of the Red Army ‘Liberators’ the news of their coming reached the Ukrainian farm workers. The well-organized Communist underground was ready. It needed only a few inflammatory speeches on the theme of the overthrow of foreign landowners and restoration of the land to the workers, and the Ukrainian peasants were transformed into killer mobs. The Polanskas knew their position was desperate. They knew the mob would come for them. They hid Kristina in a loft and waited. ‘Whatever happens, stay there until we come back for you,’ said her mother.
She heard the arrival of the mob, the shouts of men, the sounds of destruction as hammers and axes were swung in a wrecking orgy among the equipment in the surrounding farm buildings. She thought she recognized the voices of men from the nearest village. Outside in the yard Polanska called by name to some of the men he knew. The appeal came through clearly to the terrified child in the loft. ‘Take away what you want, but don’t destroy our home and land.’ Silence for a minute or two after this. A growling murmur followed, increasing as the men bunched together and advanced towards the house and Polanska. Kristina heard nothing from her mother, but she was sure she was there beside her father. Someone began to harangue the men. The phrases were violent and venomous. She heard her father’s voice once more, but it was drowned in a sudden uproar. Her mother screamed once and then Kristina pressed her hands over her ears and shivered and moaned to herself.
Kristina stayed in the loft for what seemed like hours but she thought perhaps it was not really very long. The men had gone. The house was very still. All the personal servants had fled the day before. Her mother and father never came for her. She thought the villagers might have taken them away. Kristina crept down through the silent house and into the yard. Polanska and his wife lay dead in the yard, close against the side of the house. She crept to them and looked upon them for the last time. They had been beaten and then strangled with barbed wire.
I watched her white face closely as she told of the horror of that bright September morning. She spoke flatly, with little change of expression, as a person does who is still under the influence of profound shock.
‘I went back into the house then,’ she said, ‘and I picked up some food and wrapped it in a cloth. I ran very hard for a long time.’
She did not remember the next few days in detail. Some compassionate people in villages she passed through gave her a night’s shelter and some food. She was obsessed with the idea of having to keep ahead of the Russians and out of their hands. Ironically they caught her in the act of crossing the border when she did not even know she was near it. The Red Army handed her over to a civilian court which swiftly sentenced her to be deported to Russia as a kolhoz worker in the Yenisei River area of Western Siberia.