‘Well, he drove his cart into the courtyard of a large house. Women and children came out and stood around the cart. One woman was holding a dead boy in one arm and stretched out to him a broken gold watch in the other. “Are you crazy?” the man screamed at her. “Why do you need potatoes if he’s already dead? Get out of the way!” He told me later himself he didn’t know what came over him next. He clenched his teeth, and then with all his might began tearing open the sacks and letting the potatoes spill onto the ground. “Hurry!” he yelled at the women. “Give me your children. I’ll sneak them out. Just tell them not to move a muscle and be as quiet as mice. Hurry now!” The mothers quickly hid their frightened children in the sacks and the man tied them up tight. Imagine, it all happened so fast the mothers didn’t even have time to kiss their children goodbye. And they knew they’d never see them again. The whole cart was loaded with children, except for a few sacks with potatoes that he had placed around the sides. The women kissed the cart’s dirty wheels as he drove off, looking straight ahead. He yelled loudly at the horses the whole time, fearful one of the children might make a sound and give them all away, but no one did.
‘The same sentry saw him coming and called to him: “Well? Didn’t I say you were a fool? Now get the hell out of here with your stinkin’ potatoes before the lieutenant shows up.” So, he drove out of the ghetto past the sentry, cursing the beggar Jews and their damned children with all his breath. He didn’t go home but headed off down some empty country lanes through the woods in the direction of Tukums. Our partisans had gathered there, and he gave the children to them to hide in a safe place. Back at home he told his wife that the Germans had taken all the potatoes and held him prisoner for two days. After the war, he divorced her and moved away from Riga.’
The old Latvian paused here. After a while, he smiled for the first time and said: ‘Now I’m thinking it’s a good thing I didn’t lose my temper and kill him with that mighty punch of my iron fist.’
86
The Wedding Present
The train took eighteen days to get from Kiev to Odessa. I didn’t bother to count the number of hours, but I remember well how each one of them on this exhausting trip seemed to us passengers like two. This clearly had something to do with the fact that every hour contained the danger of death. Three passengers were indeed killed and a few more wounded by stray bullets, a number that we all, especially the young priests from the Catholic seminary in Zhitomir, deemed nothing short of a miracle. It could have been much worse. The priests were trying to reach Poland by a crazily roundabout route – first to Istanbul, then Thessaloniki, Belgrade and Budapest. Of course, none of us on the train believed a single one of them would make it to Poland alive.
One warm autumn dawn in Kiev, when the Whites still held the line between Orël and Kursk and we felt quite safe, we were suddenly awakened by the rattle of machine-gun fire. As always, it was impossible to know what was happening without a bit of ‘reconnaissance’. Mama was always the one to reconnoitre. As we rushed to get dressed, still half asleep, she ran out into the street and soon returned, cheerful and excited. Mama’s bravery always amazed me. It was largely due to the fact she was a convinced fatalist and believed that everyone’s life was ruled by inexorable fate. There was no escaping fate. Everything had been set down at birth.
She returned with incredible news. Soviet forces had fought their way into Kiev from the west and advanced as far as the Galitsky Market. The distance between Kiev and the closest Soviet front was considerable. It was inconceivable that Soviet troops could have crossed this territory that was controlled by the Whites. Thus, their appearance in Kiev seemed a miracle, although an undeniably physical one, as the hail of bullets slamming into the brick of our much-abused house proved. It turned out that some Soviet units, which had retreated from the south at the beginning of Denikin’s advance, had stopped in the vast and nearly impenetrable marshes around Irpen not far from Kiev. They hid there throughout the summer and autumn, and no one, neither Denikin’s men nor anyone in Kiev, had any idea. The only people who did know were the peasants living in the villages surrounding the marshes, but they didn’t tell a soul.
And now these units had suddenly burst into Kiev, occupied half the city, seized a good deal of food and ammunition, and then fought their way back out and taken off to the north to rejoin the rest of the Soviet army. The fighting had been fierce, erupting here and there in district after district and dying down only towards nightfall. The next day we learned that General Bredov, the commander of Denikin’s forces, had decided to call up every male in the city under the age of forty. It was at that moment I decided to escape to Odessa. By then, Mama’s nerves were better, and she had found herself a place to live. Galya was making good money from her artificial flowers, and the two of them had become friends of Amalia, who I knew would not desert them. I gave Mama nearly all the money I had, and we agreed that I would return to Kiev once things had quietened down. And so, I left for Odessa with an easy mind.
The first night passed safely, although the glow of burning villages flickered in the wind along the horizon. The train felt its way forward, its lights out. It stopped often and for long periods, as though listening to strange noises in the night, uncertain whether it was safe to go on. Sometimes it even reversed, backing up a bit into the shadows to hide from the light of an especially bright fire. And every time I thought I saw horsemen dressed in black crossing the rails far up ahead, unaware of our presence.
Riding together in our goods wagon were the five priests, an employee of the Russian Word named Nazarov, and a fidgety Odessan with the Ribbon of the Legion of Honour in his buttonhole. His name was Viktor Khvat. He had served in the French army during the First World War and had even fought at the famous First Battle of the Marne. Khvat joked the whole way, mostly about his Jewish ancestry. He joked mainly to calm his fear. We all knew that if we encountered one of the many gangs of bandits then swarming across most of Ukraine Khvat would be the first one shot.
In those days many new expressions for being shot appeared – ‘put up against the wall’, ‘change’, ‘liquidate’, ‘send to Dukhonin’s HQ’, ‘settle expenses’. Practically every region of the country had its own colloquialisms. Khvat’s wit was a precious commodity – a good joke could save a man from death back then. Nazarov had his own good qualities as well, which had got him out of trouble more than once. He was by nature simple-hearted, a trait that had won him the sympathy of even the cruellest of bandits, and extremely short-sighted, a physical defect that others always took as a sign that Nazarov must be both defenceless and harmless.
The priests were pale, quiet and excessively polite young men. At the first whiff of danger, they surreptitiously crossed themselves and cast worried glances our way. By the third day, thick stubble had sprouted over their smooth faces, and they had lost their elegant appearance. Just like the rest of us, they had gone days without bathing. Their cassocks were torn from frequent forays for firewood. At every stop, they jumped from the train and with intense zeal tore apart wooden fences and crossing keepers’ huts for fuel to feed the engine. Viktor Khvat acted as the foreman of their little brigade, which was considered one of the finest at its job.