CHAPTER ONE FROM THE BUTCHER'S DOG
On the West Coast of Canada an old man sits in his favorite, overstuffed chair rocking him self to sleep. Once he murmurs nikolozhka to himself and smiles. He has a daughter who is herself no longer young and a grand-daughter almost middle aged and a great granddaughter, ten. To his dismay none of them speak the language of the old country. Still, the patriarch looks at the youngest girl with great joy. Is she not free he asks himself, is she not Canadian?
He feels both proud and sad. She is beautiful and life will always be easy for her but living in this paradise she may never know the joy of striving for what she wants. Here everything is simple. Without some kind of effort how can she ever understand the real meaning of true contentment? To be excitedly, breathlessly, deliriously happy? When a young man has looked longingly though a window at everything he ever dreamed of, to finally find it, incredibly in his arms...the recollection made tears collect on the rim of his eyes.
In Canada the old man was called Michael, in Russia, Mikhail.
At ten years old or so, he could not recall, but about the same age as the little girl, his parents disappeared and since there was no one close to him he headed down the open road, away from everything familiar. It seemed as though all the people in Russia were poor, although rumor said some were richer than the Czarina herself. Mikhail never met them; his daily en-counters were with rebellion and death. Orphaned, confused with the fighting and too young and uneducated to understand politics, there was only one thing to think about, how to get a meal into his stomach once in a while. It was September when he left his destroyed village, knowing he must find somewhere to stay before the winter turned serious or he would die.
The land sat waiting, ravaged, bloodstained and in a state of disorder. Time was controlled by chaos and civil war took away Russia’s identity making the country unrecognizable. Everybody needed food; no one was interested in the dilemma of one starving child. He marched with an army of ragged, living dead. They were armless, sometimes legless, on wagons without horses...already eaten or stolen; blue-footed children without clothes or words, old women with staring eyes, run-away soldiers who never slept or ate and not one of these drifting phantoms knowing or caring where this chimerical parade would eventually lead them. At intervals, one or more would fall quietly down an embankment into the drifts to finally die, the others stripping what clothing there was before the last breath left the corpse’s lungs.
An early snowstorm surprised the group one morning taking away the memory of yesterday’s sun. The boy struggled along with the death battalion into the north wind. No one spoke. If they had they may have said, today is a bad day to die. The snow, like grains of hard rice, stung cheeks and eyes, forcing the foragers to keep their heads low. If this does not stop soon, Mikhail thought, the frozen fingers holding my coat together may never open.
Blue fields with low swirling drifts lay ahead and a limitless, soundless stillness hung like a shroud, waiting to drop at any time. Only mad women and orphans would walk today. Roots of trees disappeared. Shapes familiar on a drowsy, summer afternoon hovered and crowded in. Paths worn from years of regular use by local farmers had become covered in the night and were gone. Movement in any direction was despairingly difficult.
If only Mikhail could find a barn or corner from the blizzard he would rest. He dared not think of sleep. There were stories his grandfather told him about men being lost in the snow and happily falling into a blissful state, never to see another day. He was very tired, but wanted to be tough, to live long enough to grow into a soldier and fight for his life.
There was no memory of sitting down, until being woken by a falling body. A woman in a dress of frozen lace lay across his lap. Her face was opaque like cream and her lips blue. He was terrified when she pushed them forward for a kiss.
“Petrovitch, you came back, I thought you were dead but here you are.”
The dialect was not like Mikhail’s. She was dying, the cold bringing on hallucinations, forced out into the snow by a savage group of marauders from a birthday party in her home with her lover and friends. Her new dress and satin shoes, the joy of the celebration were now useless against the cold. He could not get her off him. Although thin and small she was still too heavy to lift. He felt panic. And even if her body brought a moment of needed protection against the chill, it would hold him until he died too unless he could move her.
Rely on greed a woman once said. Love is not the most powerful emotion, greed is. Almost certainly a new mother will dive into a fast running river to save her drowning child: one life. Too much greed in the wrong person has been responsible for the death of millions, several times. Mikhail watched with terror as the outcasts swarmed around the still breathing woman. Their dirty, starving fingers snatching the necklace her birthday present? and her broken pink dance slippers. What could these people want with these things? They couldn’t eat them. Maybe they could be bartered for food, but where to find any? He should not care; their fighting freed him to move again.
He began to think it was the ones in the group itself who were responsible for his suffering and if he stayed with them, he too would die like the woman freezing at his feet, an angel in the snow. When he saw the shape of buildings over his shoulder he made up his mind, abandoned the others, and furtively headed for what looked like a cluster of houses.
Most of the time the marchers stayed clear of farms, knowing the owners would protect themselves with hayforks. He had to lift his legs high over the untrodden drifts to try to reach the hedgerows where it was lower. When walking with the column he chose to remain at the back, dragging himself along the beaten-down track, finding protection from the wind in the backs of the people in front. He had no idea how despairingly impossible it was to be in the lead breaking the path first. His poor little body, knees wobbling starved and screaming for relief finally gave out. Like a snowball growing bigger with each turn he rolled down a slope, over the edge of an embankment and onto the back of a wagon sheltering under the overhang.
Who can tell about fate?
He could easily have rolled a few feet to the left, crashed through the thin ice at the fringe of the river and drowned. The swirling snow turned to large soft flakes bringing a warmer mood to the landscape and as the day moved towards evening a clear moon filled the sky with a mysterious light. Mikhail lay smothered by a pile of sacks, alive and blissfully asleep. Throughout the night whiteness covered him until he became unrecognizable as a person. He could easily have been a parcel. As morning arrived the wagon owners started their journey towards home, now that the storm was over, unaware of the added passenger. It was a long trip; along invisible paths only the horse seemed to know, through forest and partially cleared farm areas. A wonderfully bright, crisp sun shone all day, melting off some of the drifts and making the world seem good again. At intervals, hedge sparrows hopped under bushes where bits of earth showed through, looking for ground insects. When the wagon stopped for a while to give the horse a rest, the woman pointed out an eagle enjoying a slow glide over the taller trees on the side of a small mountain.
Apart from this one comment the couple spoke very little. Once or twice, as Mikhail drifted in and out of a comatose state, he heard her rummaging through a basket. He dreamed he was home, in the kitchen with his mother, at the table a favourite comb in her hair, pulling a handful of crust from a just-from-the-oven loaf of bread. He could almost smell the drip cheese she always made on Sundays. During the whole journey the man’s response hardly varied from a few sounds in the back of his throat.
Towards evening they reached a farm cottage. Out of habit the woman climbed down first and went to the back to unload her parcels, expecting the man to deal with the horse. She brushed some of the crusty snow aside and found Mikhail’s small body. Her cry of alarm woke him.
“What is it?” A man’s voice came from the front of the wagon. The scared boy stared into the woman’s eyes. His life was in her hands; he could not go back to the others he would rather die here, wherever he was, than with those walking corpses.
“What’s there?” The man left off dealing with the buckles on the harness. He moved to towards them. Mikhail thought he saw tenderness in the woman’s eyes.
“Out!” The man stood near the wagon’s backboard.
Beads of melted and refrozen snow hung from his eyebrows, beard and shaggy fur coat. He had cheeks as red as apples but looking almost raw at their sharpest point, and a drop of liquid hung from the end of his nose. He was tall, greasy and fat. He clutched the boy by an arm and dragged him from the cart. Another scavenger, the land was covered with them, stealing his food.
“Out! You think I give free trips?” He pushed the child away. Mikhail took two or three steps and dropped, face forward, unconscious in the snow.
The next time he opened his eyes he thought he was in heaven. Strange, sweet smells were on the air and an almost forgotten warmth around him. A lovely face leaned in like an angel. Well, if this is death it was all right, things seemingly were very comfortable in heaven.
“Are you awake?” The angel spoke. He stared back without answering; a bit surprised he could understand her. He wasn’t sure whether or not angels communicated in a special language. This one spoke the same dialect as the woman who put her arms around him and died. Terror hit, replacing the first feeling of complacency. He shuffled his heels along the boards trying to back away.
“Don’t be scared, you’re safe now, here drink this.” She put a large bowl on the bed between his legs. He was too weak to stop her pushing a spoon into his mouth.
“When did you last eat?”
He could not remember. Days had come and gone without being counted, it made the question seem strange. After four or five spoonfuls she took the soup away. “That’s enough, your starving, it’ll kill you if you eat too fast. Where are you from?”
He looked around the room for the man. He was sitting at a table facing a stove.
“You may stay here awhile, we have talked it over. I am Anna and this is my husband, Ivan.” Mikhail heard no more, with soup in his stomach and warmth moving through each bone and muscle, he felt safe. It may not be heaven, after all, he was still not sure, but it would do and although he had slept for most of the previous day, he could not keep his eyes open. His last glimpse of this angel, before he fell asleep again, was her wonderful smile convincing him nothing bad was ever going to happen again.
When Mikhail awoke it was morning his first responses were of confusion; there were no immediate recollections. He thought his mother should be there. But it was not like home. He stared at the unfamiliar ceiling of heavy hand-cut planks trying to recall, until a movement by the fire made him turn his head.
Anna stood there; dressed in the same coarse clothes she had worn the day before: A dark blouse, high around the throat, held tightly by the bands of a lighter coloured apron. Her skirt curved over an underlayer of gaudy pet-ticoats, whose edges peeping below the hem around her ankles made a swishing sound as she moved. As Mikhail watched, lying completely still, she leaned forward to poke the fire and her striped stockings showed above leather clogs. She turned, sensing a change.
“Good morning.”
He did not answer. There was a lightness in his body he could not understand. He still was not sure whether he was dead or alive. He lay there watching as she lifted a large pot, decorated the same as the bowl from the day before. She poured two cups of clear tea and brought one over to where he lay. She waited for him to sit up. He was surprised at how much effort it took. He was still wearing his clothes, only his boots were removed and a large feather bolster thrown over him. It smelled of chickens and sweat and was too warm making the insides of his thighs moist and itchy. He used his toes to push the cover down a bit before taking the tea. Anna drank hers and waited for him to finish before carrying the empty glasses back to the table.
“More?”
He nodded. He was suddenly very thirsty. With the refill warming his hands he watched her moving around the room. She lifted lids from jars and cut bread on a circular wooden board. His hunger was enormous and the smell of food painfully overwhelming. Another sound in the room startled him. Until now he assumed he and Anna were alone.
He watched as she pulled back the curtains of an alcove at the side of the fireplace and was surprised by the hands and face of an old woman. A bed nestled behind the arras, built into the wall. A cheerful red and white flowery design on the quilt was repeated as a painted motif on the drawers below. Anna stroked the other woman’s face and smoothed her white hair with gentle movements of her hands. She talked constantly, her voice gliding from one word to another without waiting for any response.
“Good morning, Mamma, had a good sleep did you? The sun is nice and bright today. Maybe it will take away some of the snow. As if we needed it so soon. Ready for your tea?”
She poured amber colored liquid and added honey from a pot on the table. With a lot of effort she managed to prop the old lady into a sitting position, placing a cloth under her chin over the pancake-colored nightgown. She held the glass for her while she drank. When the tea was finished and the mug removed, Anna took a flat pan from under the bed and with great difficulty managed to sit the old lady on it. She pulled the curtains closed for a little privacy.
“Mamma cannot do things for herself any more. She knows what’s going on but she can’t say anything” Her back was to Mikhail as she spoke. There was a great deal of work to get through each day but the old lady had to be taken care of first. Anna pulled a chair from out of the corner. It moved easily on its large spindle wheels.
“Papa made this for mamma one Christmas, when she became sick he put these wheels on it for her, see. They came off my dogcart. “Papa made that too, for me when I was little. Poor old thing died...papa too. A long time ago now.”
Clusters of cheerful flowers were stenciled on the back panel in bright reds and yellows. A lot of loving care had gone into the painting and placing of fabric on the arms for more comfort. Anna brought out clean clothes from the left drawer and laid them on a stool. She then emptied the pot outside and cleaned it in the snow first before washing it under the pump in the sink. Carefully she washed the old lady’s face, changed the robe for the clean one and finally lifted her from the bed into the waiting chair. The elderly woman allowed her daughter to push her towards the brightly burning morning fire but became very agitated when Anna left her with her back towards Mikhail.
Anna laughed, “ Mamma hasn’t had visitors for a while.” she turned the chair around again. “You must forgive her staring, you’ll get used to it after a while. Do you think you can sit up for something to eat?”
The boy got out of his bed to stand. He was tired of being under the hot bolster. As he tried to fasten the straps to his boots he found his hands shaking a little. It would be nice to sit to the table with this woman.
The air in the room was quite cool once he was away from the linen box where he had spent the night. With the lid down it made a solid but rather hard bed for the young boy but he was used to sleeping on the ground by now. In a house as small as this one, there was very little space to spare and not much in the way of extravagance, such as an extra room with an extra bed for visitors. Everyone kept as close as they could to keep warm. Anna placed an afghan around the old lady’s shoulders to keep the cold out.
The young boy needed to relieve himself but was too polite to say so. He made awkwardly for the door afraid he would fall before getting there.
Anna guessed what he wanted, “It’s more sheltered round to the left, ”she told him as she helped him down the step. The door was closed quickly to keep in the heat.
Mikhail stood for a moment to recover from the shock of the icy outside air. He found bushes bordering the house and stood there to pee. A small, strange feeling crept through his body surprising him.
It was joy. He had succeeded. He was saved.
Getting away from that column of death was the right thing to do. Not one of them was destined to survive; it was a march into nothingness, going on until the last one fell. Yellow liquid spurted higher to knock a ball of snow from a clump of leaves. Anna had saved his life. He turned to look at the house as he pulled his trousers back into place.
There was evidence of hot summer days in the bleaching of the walls. Browned twigs and leaves, long dead from lack of moisture, still clung beneath the roof’s thatching, even after the strong winds of autumn. He walked slowly towards the entrance. There was not much he could see of the front yard because of snow. Another building and some hedges almost created a square. He could smell horses and possibly chickens. That meant fresh eggs. His stomach lurched with hunger pains. A trail from wagon wheels disappeared through the large gateway into the forest, obviously made by Anna and Ivan last night. He did not want to linger on that thought. Anticipating food he leaned against the large doorway to the house. Two steps into the room Ivan’s thundering voice brought him up sharp.
“Clean your boots, don’t bring muck in here.”
Mikhail looked down at his feet as though he could wish the problem away. Fear engulfed him. In his newly found comfort he had completely forgotten the tartarous man.
“Well, don’t just stand idle. DO IT!” Get outside and clean them off. Don’t bring muck and snow in here.” He gestured with an arm bristling with hairs towards the doorway.
“And close the damned door, keep the cold out.” The voice followed him into the snow. Anna crossed the room to help, their fingers meeting on the latch and comfort in her smile.
“There’s a boot scraper. Hang your coat behind the door when you come in and wash yourself under the pump.”
Mikhail’s happiness began to dissipate as he stood on the worn step trying to do a more than thorough job of cleaning his boots. Hunger and the crisp morning air forced him back into the room quite quickly. Ivan was sitting at the table eating hot gruel and bread with his back to the fire. His arms curved around the bowl as though protecting it. He did not speak but rolled his eyelids back to see the boy’s face. Butter and milk drooled down his beard. He used his sleeve to wipe it clean. The action made Mikhail feel faint. He stood near the table waiting for one of them to tell him what to do next.
Anna spoke, “there’s a cloth by the pump, wipe your face and hands dry.” She used a wooden spoon to scrape around the sides of a pot on the fire.
“This used to be papa’s,” she turned to put a colourful bowl in front of him. It held a small portion of porridge. He remembered her words about not eating too much until his body was used to food again. He was in agony with hunger.
“Well, eat.” Anna started her own meal now that mamma and Ivan and the boy were served.
He tried to eat slowly but could only gulp the food down, scalding his lips and swallowing every spoonful without attempting to chew anything or taste it. He was still hungry and wanted more. Ivan watched in disgust. He hated this scruffy orphan eating the food his hard labor had produced. But what Anna said was true, they needed extra help, although he could hardly see the scrawny thing being much of any value. He would make sure he got his worth out of him. Nobody took advantage of Ivan; this straw rat would have to earn every crust of bread he ate under this roof.
He stopped eating to smile. Tormenting the wasteling might be fun. When Mikhail dropped his spoon on the side of his bowl with a clatter Ivan roared like a bull with laughter, bringing a look of terror to the boy’s eyes. He leaned forward and called him a mouse. As he reached for the pot of honey the movement caused Mikhail to back away in fright. He was sure the man was going to hit him. Ivan laughed again. He repeated the gesture over and over, each time amused at the child’s fear. Eventually, the game became boring and he stood, belching, from the table to leave. He almost always overate and getting into his coat was a struggle. He turned at the door with one last glower before going laughing into the snow.
Mikhail had two lumps in his stomach: one from fear of Ivan and one from gorging his food too quickly. Anna was right in telling him not to eat too much too soon. She rose to clear the dishes to take them to the sink for washing, starting her singsong to the old woman again.
“So, time to wash up, mamma, you know it looks as though the day will be a good one.” The roughly woven curtains were pushed aside to let sunbeams spill into the room.
“There’s enough blue to make a plowman a pair of trousers, it’s going to be bright, maybe we can do your sheets today...we’ll see.” The kettle was lifted from the stove to pour hot water into the sink.
Mikhail stood shyly by the side of the table watching the process.
“I can do that.” He took a towel from her hands to dry the dishes. It was the first sentence he had spoken since Anna found him.
“Oh!” She feigned surprise, “quite the little man we have here, mamma.” She pointed to the painted shelves for him to put the bowls away.
“Now what shall I do?” The earlier feeling of happiness was coming back.
She pulled a tin tub from under the sink. “You can help me with the water, I’ll wash mamma’s sheets. If I can get them in the sun early enough they might dry. At least it will take some of the wet out, they can finish off round the fire.”
Mikhail followed her through another door at the side of the fireplace.
They were in a nice smelling small room. Jars of jam and bottles of pickles lined the shelves while strings of garlic and onions hung from white-washed ceiling beams. No one would suffer the agonies of a cold while they hung there. This room bragged the luxury of a stone floor. Most other women’s had only soil and rushes. Anna was very proud of her little house. “The flags keep the prusaks away.” She told Mikhail.
“Earwigs,” she laughed at his astonished look.
To him Prusaks were foreign soldiers, he didn’t know the word meant earwigs as well. He was a city boy; this country language took some getting used to. She continued to talk as she lit the boiler.
“In some of the houses the floors are so covered with dead earwigs they look like fruit in a pudding.”
His face relaxed into laughter. “Have you always lived here?” He was still shy.
“Born in the bed mamma’s in now. Mamma’s room used to be upstairs where Ivan and I sleep...before papa died.”
She shaved soap and wax into the water before sending the boy back to the pump for more. It took a few trips before the boiler was full to the top. As Anna sorted soiled clothes and waited for it to boil the boy sat in the cor-ner and looked around the room. Scattered about were the kind of things a child might collect on visits to a world Mikhail had never seen. Anna caught his glances.
“They’re from the fair, at Shrovetide, in the village. I’ve had them since I was a little girl. I thought it all so wonderful...like being in heaven. I could hardly wait from one year to the next for Papa to take me. We always had such a good time and when I got home I spent all day pretending I could dance like the ladies in the pictures.” She poked the clothes into the water with a well boiled-out stick.
“Where are your parents?”
“Dead,” he picked up a Japanese puppet and began playing with it while he talked.
“The soldiers killed them.” There was no feeling in his voice. He had not cried for their death.
“Isn’t there anyone else? No sisters or grandparents?”
“All dead,” He danced the legs of the little doll. His Old World disap-peared without any warning and the new one was full of terror.
“How did you get here, where are you from?” She leaned over to stoke the fire, showing her stockings as she had done when he arrived. Today they were a different color.
“Moscow, I came on the train with the soldiers. They gave me food out of their bags, we traveled everywhere, Vorshava—Warsaw, but when they left to go to the front I couldn’t go with them. A General came and put us all off the train, the people who weren’t soldiers. We would have been shot if we didn’t go.” He turned his head away from her; the idea of being killed by these men was a bit of a surprise. It seemed to Mikhail that there were several different armies.
“I would have been a soldier but they wouldn’t let me, I wasn’t old enough.” It came out fiercely, suddenly.
“Well, I expect you will be one day, although I can’t see the sense in fighting.” The only sound in the room for a while was the air in the chimney flue.
“Maybe you could stay here for a while...we could use another pair of hands. Since papa died it has been very hard. Ivan works well but he can’t do everything.” There was no reply from the boy.
“Would you like that, to stay here?” She looked into his face.
“Oh, yes.” It came out a bit too quickly. Desperation and starving were things quite unknown when he was in the arms of his mother.
“What about...?” He could not say the name.
“Ivan?” She took the doll from his hands. It was a favorite treasure and ab-sentminded fingers might damage it.
“I talked to him last night. He knows we need more help but you will have to work hard or he will get cross with you. Now you just watch that water and shout me when it boils while I put mamma another cover on her bed.” She left the room and Mikhail could hear her singing as she worked:
“Over the dark sea my lover and I
Sailed by the stars in the western sky.
What lay ahead we neither could see.
But I will be true,
Said my lover to me
Under the night stars we laid us to rest.
My love promised Eden, his head on my breast.
And true to his promise
Until morning light,
In waters enchanted we anchored that night.
When the last star paled with the day,
My love raised the anchor and sailed on his way.
And to all that bright water where glossy stars burn
I and my lover will never return.
It was going to be a happy day.
Anna brushed the wisps of hair from her eyes and went on humming.