She lay face down on her bunk and slowly calmed down. No one said a word.
‘And why the hell am I going to Odessa? What am I going to do there?’ Lyusena said suddenly, not raising her head.
I got up and carefully opened the door. A small blue river was winding its way across the dry steppe. The white autumn sun shone brightly. Its soft, fading warmth touched my face. High up in the mists overhead, a flock of cranes was being drawn to the south and the sea, as were we in our grunting, shuddering train.
A freckled, red-haired woman got on the train in Korsun. She was on her way to her daughter’s wedding in Znamenka and was carrying a heavy chest filled with her dowry. The woman was shrill and bad-tempered. A flounce of dirty yellow lace dangled from under her skirt and brushed against her greased hob-nailed boots. She ordered the hungry, pale-faced railway guards about as though she were their ataman, shouting at them to load the chest onto the train. But no one would make room for her. The woman’s chest, her sweaty, red face and her screeching voice had turned the whole train against her.
This must have been the first time I saw a classic example of a kulak woman – greedy, spiteful, petty, mean and intent on flaunting her wealth, which wasn’t much except when viewed amid the general ruin and poverty. Ukraine was full of ruthless, arrogant kulaks in those days. Women ready to strangle their own fathers if there was a bit of profit to be had, while their ‘darling sons’ joined Makhno or Zelëny or some other ataman’s bandit gang and, without batting an eyelid, buried people alive, smashed children’s skulls with the butts of their rifles, and cut strips of skin from the backs of Jews and Red Army men to make trophies.
The woman was fussing around her chest, untying and retying the warm shawl around her shoulders, and yelling in a strained voice: ‘You’ve filled the train with hungry tramps, and now there’s no room left for us decent folk. Just look at them, holes in their trousers and not a kopeck to their names. And the women – tarts and worse! They ought to be squished like dirty bugs and not taken for a drive from Kiev to Odessa.’
A stoop-shouldered station official stood by her, not saying a word.
‘Don’t just stand there like an old goat! Why do you think I gave you that bread and lard? So every last beggar here could laugh at me? You promised to find me a seat – so do it! Or else I’ll take that bread and lard back this instant.’
The official shrugged his shoulders and walked off down the platform. He stopped at every door and asked the passengers in a soft voice so the woman wouldn’t hear: ‘For pity’s sake, make some room for her, the bitch. Her husband’s the head of the village here, a real bandit. He’ll have me beaten to death. There’s not a crumb in the house, again, and she did give me a loaf.’
But the passengers refused. Eventually, the official got the engine driver to take her in return for the bread and lard. They decided to place the chest on the buffer plate between the headlights. The chest was hauled up with difficulty and then tied in place with a heavy rope to the engine. The woman climbed on top of the chest and sat down like a broody hen, her dirty skirt spread out over it, her warm shawl wrapped around her. The train set off.
So we puffed along, past whistling and jeering village boys, with the chest on the engine and the furious woman perched on top. At each stop she opened her basket and wolfed down great quantities of food. It’s doubtful she was always hungry. She did it intentionally, out of spite, to have her revenge on the hungry passengers and gloat over them. She cut herself enormous slices of soft, pinkish lard, tore roast chickens apart with her clawlike fingers, and stuffed her mouth with hunks of fluffy white bread. Her cheeks glistened with fat. When she had finished, she let loose a loud, satisfied burp. She rarely climbed down off her chest, and even when she had to relieve herself she never took more than two or three steps away from the train. It was not only shameless, it was a sign of her utter contempt for everyone else.
The driver grunted and turned away, but he never said anything. He still hadn’t got a crumb of her bread or a single taste of her lard. She insisted she wouldn’t give him anything until he delivered her to Znamenka. All of us hated her with a passion stronger than the fear of death. A few of the passengers went so far as to pray for some gang to come along and shoot up the whole train. They were convinced the woman on her chest would be killed first since she made such a perfect target.
Somewhere past Bobrinets our dreams of vengeance were partly fulfilled. One evening our train came under fire from Makhno’s men. Several bullets hit the marriage chest. The woman was unscathed, but some of the dowry was now full of holes. After that, the woman sat on the chest as though made of stone, her lips pressed together so tightly they turned blue, her eyes burning with such rage that none of the passengers dared to go near the engine unless absolutely necessary.
We kept waiting for revenge. I remembered Mama’s famous belief in the great ‘law of retribution’. When I mentioned it, the priests became all excited and were happy to confirm that such a law existed and was still in effect, even during our civil war. Lyusena, on the other hand, was equally certain there was no such law, but simply pathetic little men who lacked the courage to throw the woman and her chest off the nearest bridge into a nice deep river. And then, finally, it happened.
The ‘Day of Retribution’ was suitably dark and overcast. Ragged, black clouds tore with unbelievable speed over the barren fields. Sheets of rain beat like hail against the peeling walls of Znamenka station. It seemed as though the Goddess of Retribution herself had unleashed these angry clouds, this pelting rain, this wet wind.
It started with the woman giving the engine driver a single pound of lard and a single loaf of bread instead of the promised four pounds and two loaves. The driver didn’t say a thing. He even thanked her and helped the fireman haul the chest down from the engine. The chest weighed a good five hundred pounds, at least. It wasn’t easy removing it from the train and setting it down on the track.
‘Two healthy bulls and they can hardly lift a single chest. Drag it over here,’ said the woman.
‘Try it yourself,’ said the driver. ‘Damned thing’s heavy. I need to go and get my crowbar.’ He climbed into the cab, but instead of grabbing his crowbar, he released two scalding blasts of steam from either side of the engine. The woman screamed and jumped out of the way. The driver then put the train in motion and drove straight into the chest. It exploded with a sharp crash into a dozen pieces, and out flew in every direction the expensive dowry – a quilted bedspread, shirts, dresses, towels, knives, spoons, rolls of fabric and even a nickel-plated samovar. With a triumphant whistle, steam billowing, the engine drove over everything on its way to the water pump. The samovar was left as flat as a pancake. But the driver hadn’t finished yet. He put the engine in reverse, coming to a stop directly over the remains of the dowry, at which point he let loose a shower of hot water mixed with engine oil.
The woman ripped off her shawl and began tearing at her hair before falling face first into a large puddle with a heart-rending wail. Her hands, which now held large clumps of hair, were shaking, and it looked almost as if she were trying to swim to the other side. Then she jumped up and threw herself at the driver. ‘I’ll tear your eyes out!’ she screamed, rolling up her sleeves.
A few men grabbed her. A small man elbowed his way through the crowd. He consisted of new galoshes and an enormous checked cloth cap, from under which stuck a long, sharp nose. The woman’s future son-in-law. He had arrived late to greet her at the station. He looked at the destroyed remains of the dowry, picked up the flattened samovar, tossed it at the woman’s feet, and said in a high, grating voice: ‘Dearest Mama, thank you ever so much for delivering the last of our things in such good condition.’