Sobakin stepped up to the dying man and poked him in the ribs with the butt end of his rifle. He said roughly, “Come on, get up, Philip Semionovich. Why haven’t you been reporting to work at the Bugsy-Dnieprovsky Canal? Our records show you’re deliberately trying to thwart its construction.”
“Lieutenant Sobakin,” pleaded Paraska, “he’s not conscious anymore. He doesn’t know what’s going on around him.”
A sneering voice shot out from across the room, “Not to worry, Paraska. Your Philip will be fine. We’ve prescribed the perfect remedy for him and you should be grateful to us. We’re sending him off to a health resort. I hear there are several really good ones in Siberia. Hah! Hah! Hah!”
With a wave of his arm, Sobakin ordered the two officers to remove Philip from the sofa. One grabbed hold of his legs, while the other slipped his hands under his shoulders. The dying man stirred slightly and let out a low moan. The movement was too much for him. Blood oozed from the corners of his mouth and his eyes rolled from side to side. Six-year-old Svetlana, who had been crouching behind a chest of drawers jumped out, and with a look of terror on her face, clutched at her father’s arm. “Papa! Papa! Wake up!”
Paraska rushed to her daughter’s side, and scooping her up in her arms, kissed her face repeatedly. She cried, “He’s dead! Dear God, your father’s dead!”
Sobakin came forward, and touched his heels. He said matter-of-factly, “He’s cold, stone cold.”
The officers dragged the dead man across the floor, and threw him outside into the snow. Sobakin called after him, laughing, “Well, Philip Semionovich, you’ve gone and outsmarted us. You son-of-a bitch.”
Finished with Paraska’s house, the NKVD men, accompanied this time by Iofe Nicel Leyzarov, jumped into their black car and headed for the other side of the village, to the home of Hrisko Suchok. As they entered the gates of his yard, Hrisko, who had been splitting wood by the side of his shed, dropped his axe, and took several steps back. His heart beat wildly; he knew that something dreadful was about to happen to him. His only choice was to try to run. He turned and headed to the threshing barn. He frantically jumped over a low wattle fence, and rushed toward a grove of alders, hoping to lose himself in the thicket. The men ran after him, and, before he knew it, Suchok was surrounded. A single bullet ripped through the air and struck him in the nape of the neck. He fell to the ground dead. A red stain seeped into the snow. Sobakin stepped up to the corpse and kicking it onto its back, shouted to his comrades, “We just got ourselves another son-of-a-bitch!”
In the meantime Iofe and one of the officers stormed into Hrisko’s house, where they found his wife hiding behind the stove. She was frozen with fright, scarcely able to stand, looking like a cow about to be taken to slaughter. The officer pulled her out by the hair, and dragged her, screaming, into the Black Crow. Over and over she cried out the name of her son.
Inside the Black Crow it was dark. Sobbing and praying, it was not long before she realized she was not alone. Someone else was there, mumbling and whimpering. It was a woman in great distress, and she sounded very much like Marsessa Kunsia, who, disoriented as she was, had grasped the horror of her situation. Seeking the warmth of each other’s bodies, the women huddled together and wept.
A shroud of doom had fallen over Hlaby. The village was silent, but tense and restless. Paraska, pale and emaciated, moved like a zombie, and was no longer of any use to herself or to anyone around her.
For the next several days the villagers busied themselves washing the bodies of the dead, preparing them for eternity. Two pine boxes were quickly constructed and the dead men were laid inside. Twelve stocky young peasants with round pink faces, lifted them up on their shoulders, and slowly walked to the cemetery. The villagers trailed behind, chanting softly and weeping. Some carried long sticks with icons framed in colorfully embroidered cloths, while others clutched at crosses hidden inside their coat pockets. Once in the cemetery, standing over the freshly dug graves, one elderly villager took it upon himself to speak. He began in a low, doleful voice:
“Such is the funeral of Hrisko Suchok and Philip Braskov, the first in our village to be buried without a priest. May God bless them…. Our Father, who art …”
As the coffins were lowered into the ground, the sun appeared from behind a mass of clouds. It shone brilliantly and joyfully, and there was an unexpected warmth in its glow. A gentle breeze swept across the faces of the mourners. The hard winter was finally retreating. Spring was in the air.
CHAPTER 22
The great heaps of snow piled up on either side of the roads and on the walkways began to recede, and water dripped from the rooftops to gather in large pools. Trees and bushes had been freed of their winter covering; the ice on the Stryy River was melting along the shoreline. The village was slowly and surely showing signs of life.
With the promise of warmer weather came spring fever, and Kulik was feeling every bit of it. The long winter months had made him weary and crestfallen; he longed to get away, if only for a day. Although the horrific scenes from just a few days ago had severely dampened his spirit, something new seemed to be taking place within his young heart. Change was in the air and he was ready to embrace it with full force.
Pinsk! How long was it since he had been to Pinsk? The unknown awaited him there: all he could expect was the unexpected, since he was sure that the city had changed so radically in the past several months that it would seem like another place entirely. The puzzling and short-tempered Yeliseyenko of the People’s Commissariat of Education, was there, the enigmatic, attractive Zena, the repulsive Sobakin and, of course, the beautiful green-eyed Marusia. At the thought of Marusia his heart dropped. Had she really given herself to Sobakin, as Dounia Avdeevna had so relentlessly maintained, or did he still stand a chance with her? Perhaps love was still in the air. The prospect of seeing her again filled him with inexpressible joy, but it soon faded. No one, including Marusia, could be trusted.
Putting these negative thoughts aside, Kulik placed Ivashkevich in charge of the school, and hitching a wagon ride with a local peasant, made for Pinsk. There were several school matters for him to settle there; for example, more pencils were needed, the calligraphy workbooks had been used up, there was no more ink, and several slates needed to be replaced. He also intended to ask Yeliseyenko why a new teacher had not yet been assigned to replace Haya Fifkina.
In Pinsk, the wagon lumbered slowly through a winding residential street, then looped round a corner and entered Market Square. On the east side of the square stood the Roman Catholic Church, and on the north side was a wall of small dim shops with signs over the doors, but with their windows boarded up, barred, or covered with faded newspapers and various proclamations. There were no bakeries, the fabric shops had disappeared, the fish stores, the fruit markets … The soul of the town was gone, it was hardly a place to visit, let alone to live. Even the passersby seemed drab and dull. Although Kulik was grateful to be out of the village if only for a day, he yearned to be some place else entirely, another city, another part of the world.
Kulik thanked the driver for the lift and slipped him a few rubles. A handful of peasant carts had already collected, not in the middle of the square as they had used to do every Tuesday and Friday, but along the sides, against the church wall. He was disheartened to see how dead the place was, especially on a Friday morning. It used to be so vibrant, so full of life! The fruit and vegetable stalls, the sound of cattle, the endless barrels of pickles and salt herring — all gone, along with the troops of little children laughing and chasing each other through the square, and the townspeople haggling with peasants over prices.