More vividly she described her life on the Soviet farm. This was a sharper and more recent experience. Most of the workers were strapping, big-bosomed, tough Russian women, and Kristina was the only Pole among them. On the second day after her arrival she was set to threshing and moving huge sacks of corn. The other women taunted her for her refinement and her weakness. They laughed at her failure to do the heavy work they managed themselves with ease. Aching from head to foot, she would cry herself to sleep at night. Food was poor and the main item was one kilo of bread a day — for her as for the other workers.
But it was not the women who eventually caused Kristina to run. The farm was controlled by a foreman, whose attentions the other women were always inviting. Kristina was frightened of him and tried always to keep out of his way. He was a big fellow, she said, tall, swarthy and powerful. He would occasionally seek out the girl and try out some heavy pleasantries, tell her how different she was from the Russian women and that she needed someone to look after her. And after he had spoken to her the Russian women would joke coarsely, remark on the skinniness of her body, warn her she had better look out for herself.
There came the day when she was told she would not accompany the other workers in the horse-drawn farm cart but would report to the foreman’s house ‘for interrogation’. His intentions were obvious from the start. He promised there would be no more heavy work for her if she were kind to him, Kristina panicked, appealed to him to let her go after the others and join them. What followed was a plain attempt at rape. She screamed, clawed at his face and frenziedly kicked out with her heavy boots. Surprised at the fury of her resistance, he relaxed his hold just long enough for her to break away and bolt blindly out and back to the women’s quarters. He called vile names after her and threatened that he had means to make her change her mind.
She waited until the light began to fade in the afternoon, expecting all the time that he would come for her, but he did not show up. When she felt that the return of the other women must be imminent, she slipped out, keeping the kolhoz buildings between her and the foreman’s house, and ran. She slept that night in reeds by a river, and after following the river along for many miles the next day, finally reached a road, and was given the first of two long lifts eastwards by drivers of big farm lorries.
‘All Russians are not bad,’ said Kristina. ‘These two were sorry for me and gave me some of their bread to eat. The second one told me to try to get to Irkutsk, but he could not take me any further.’
She looked round at us all and her eyes finally rested on Mister Smith. ‘So that is how I came to be here,’ she added.
The American dug his hands into his fufaika pockets. He spoke levelly. ‘We are not going anywhere near Irkutsk; we are heading south around the other side of the lake. What are you going to do now?’
Kristina looked surprised and taken aback. She turned an appealing gaze on the other six of us. We said nothing. We knew what we wanted but were content to let Mister Smith handle this his own way. Her lips trembled slightly. Then she jutted out her little chin. ‘I am coming with you. You can’t leave me on my own.’
The American looked over her head for some moments at the river beyond. ‘Can you swim?’
‘I swim very well,’ she said, and there was no mistaking the note of pride. ‘In school I was a very good swimmer.’
Through Mister Smith’s grey-streaked beard came the flash of a smile. We relaxed as we heard him tell her, ‘Forgive me, child, if my questions have seemed to be abrupt. We just thought you might have plans of your own. All we can offer you is a lot of hardship. Our food has run very low and we have a great distance to travel. You must consider, too, that if you are caught with us you will not get off so lightly as you would if you remained on your own. If you want to join us, however, we accept you completely.’
‘Thank you,’ replied Kristina simply. ‘The only thing I wanted was to be with you.’
The girl went away from us then into a screen of bushes and in her absence I called for a check on food. All seven sacks were opened up, the rolled-up skins set on one side and the food brought out. We were, as we feared, badly off. There remained perhaps a couple of pounds between the lot of us of barley, a little flour, some salt and a few pounds of almost black deer meat. We decided on strict rationing to one small meal a day until we could replenish our stocks. The only stores item still in plentiful supply was the gubka moss for fire-lighting. At least, we had the means of warmth.
Probably each one of us had, in addition to the communal food openly displayed, at least one piece of hard, dried bread, stuffed deep down in his long jacket pocket. I know I had one, and there was evidence later that the others also had this tiny personal cache. There was nothing dishonest or anti-social about it. To hide away bread was a prisoner reflex, a symptom of captivity. A prisoner holding one crust of bread felt that he still had a hold on life, as a man in civilized surroundings will carry round with him a lucky coin to insure that he will never be penniless. It was a measure of the great affection we developed for this waif Polish girl that later on one and another of us would dig out this last piece of bread to allay her hunger.
We ate hurriedly there that morning and decided to make an immediate river crossing. This first hour of daylight gave promise of a fine spring day and we had a common desire to make distance fast and to return as soon as possible to a straight course to the south.
For the girl this first river was a new ordeal. We persuaded her to take off her warm jacket, trousers and boots. I had a moment of great pity for her as she stood with us in the shelter of the trees in her faded purple dress. I went carefully out to the edge of the ice with the line paying out behind me, the axe stuck firmly in the back waistband of my trousers, and I made it fairly quickly across the open channel to the other side. Kolemenos crossed, holding her rolled-up clothes with some difficulty above water. Paluchowicz and Makowski came over together, the girl behind them with the bight of a length of spare line about her, the ends held by the two Poles. The other three followed, one of them bringing the girl’s boots. We ran for cover, winding in the line as we went.
Kristina was blue with cold and she could not stop her teeth chattering. Kolemenos handed her her clothes. ‘Don’t stand still, child,’ the American told her. ‘Run off from us now and take that dress off. Wring it out quickly, wipe off the water as much as you can and jump into your dry trousers and fufaika.’ She nodded and ran. We stripped off, danced around, wringing out our garments as we did so. The operation did not take long and in our wet rags we waited a few minutes for the girl to rejoin us. She came running, with her dress and underwear under her arm in a soggy bundle.
‘Did you see? I can swim, can’t I?’
Mister Smith grinned. ‘Yes. I saw.’ And, aside to me, ‘The little lady is not going to be much trouble, after all.’
We walked hard all through that day, halting for only the briefest rests, and Kristina kept up with us uncomplainingly. The midday May sun was pleasantly warm, helping, with the heat of our exertions, to dry out our clothes. We must have covered thirty miles north-east away from Lake Baikal by nightfall and we slept easier for being back among tall timber.
On the third day after leaving the lakeside, I judged we were in a position for turning south on a route which would take us down to the border, with Baikal lying some fifty miles to our right. It was guesswork, but I don’t think the estimate was far out, although it would have been impossible to maintain a truly parallel course. The country was hilly and well wooded and our progress was a series of stiffish climbs, with scrambles down into steep-sided valleys carrying small rivers and streams down to the lake. The valleys ran almost uniformly south-west. Many of the streams were fordable, although the current, swollen by the break-up of the ice, was strong. Kolemenos led the way across these, prodding ahead of him with a long sounding pole.