1.

            “Sasha, and where is your Mama?” Sasha’s father just came home and is quite surprised. 

            “She left ...in a car ...the white one, beautiful, with a red stripe ...with a big dziadzia* doctor. ...Dad, she acted in such away: oh! oh!” – and my three-year brother spectacularly wipes his forehead with his whole arm and falls on the sofa.

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*dziadzia – uncle; common children’s addressing to a man.

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            There is no me yet. I’m just entering this wonderful, strange, discrepant, incomprehensible World.

            My little older brother doesn’t know yet, in which way children appear to the world: he will be told that his eagerly wanted little sister, after the interminable collecting money, is eventually bought at the store.

            My mother involuntarily continued the tradition of my grandmother who had a habit of giving birth to her children while working. My mother was born directly onto an oat field, “when we were finishing reaping oat”, as my grandma has always said. She doesn’t remember the date: at that time, celebrating of birthdays wasn’t done. In my mom’s birth certificate, “the first half of August” is written. My grandma simply tied the umbilical cord and went reaping further: it was “in the heat harvesting time”. Mom’s four surprised siblings were told that their sister had been found in the forest...

            My mother felt the first pain of her labour when she was preparing for a big load of laundry. She just had soaked the washing. Thinking that if she was absent from home for several days, the clothes would got spoiled, so she hurried to finish with it before an ambulance came. No words, one had no idea about a washing machine then. There was neither hot or even cold water. Water was carried from a well and heated on a stove. At times, she fell on the sofa, moaning, then rushed again to the wash-tub, impressing my little brother, whose later telling of it and, especially, performance will amuse the whole family.

            My parents with their little son live in Minsk now, where they moved one year ago. My brother was born there, in their native land, in Cherveń, where my parents had met and got married.

 

 

            2.

            Cherveń is a small, near to Minsk, town, whose surrounding area is famous solely for its backwoods, wild forests and dense marshes, which abound with mushrooms and berries. People go picking them in the closest forests, simply behind their backyards, like to their gardens. Different kinds of mushrooms are prepared for the long winter, being pickled in barrels or dried and tied into huge bundles. As well as berry jam is kept in pails. Marsh light-blueberries are ‘picked with blankets’ there: bushes are simply shaken above spread blankets and then berries are poured into pails. The light-blueberry hasn’t stood, however, highly and picked only when there is lack of the hard-picked others: human hardly values anything being in plethora…

            Cherveń is not the town’s original name. The ancient town was renamed with the name of the month (June), in which “it had been freed from the Polish occupants” at the war in the early 20’s. My relatives will prefer not to remember that: I’ll hear of it only once. And only after decades, I will learn about the Slutsak People’s Uprising against the Soviet Power in this area in the 1920’s. As for my parents, they already know nothing about it.

            The ancient town’s name had been Ihoumen (ihoumen – ‘abbot’ - Bel.). One can hardly find the person, who remembers the gray-haired legend about the monastery, which had really existed there, and its Prior. ...And moreover, there is no person there, who can say something about the courageous and adroit partisan detachment that acted successfully in the local forests at the time of the countrywide rebellion against Russian Empire in the 1863-64. Overcome, eventually, by innumerable Russian Army, the rebels, mostly noble people, in order to avoid repressions, were forced to wander all around the forests and then become drivers, smiths or blue-color workers. Nobody remembers now that there was no noble home, at which they didn’t mourn at least one of theirs, fell, executed or lost.

            ”We live, not feeling our country beneath our feet”.

            The wild backwoods.

            Matured, I will try to find out from my relatives about the lineage of my mother’s beautiful maiden name, seeming so strange ancient-noble as to be peasant’s one - Kacherski. Secondly, everyone, whom I will meet in my life with the same name, will turn out to be my pretty close relative. So, I will hear back more questions than answers. Yes, they still remember it after all: our great-great-grandfather Kacherski settled down in the most out-of-the-way small village Zelenki and acquired a home and family. But where he had came from? Why? …Only one thing, I will realize: when. It was in the second half of the XIX century... Perhaps, he was among the thousands of those, wandering with lit candles in their hands along the dark forests, in order to find one another, scattered after the regular battle, and gather together to prepare to the next one...

             All the candles burned out.

             And after only a hundred years, I am coming into this fine, unbearable World in the weird, hopelessly frost-bitten Oblivionland.

 

 

            3.

    Who went in advance didn’t care for great roots:

    He dried fertile soil and tore down the gold flowers.

    He considered that he extirpated the weeds,

    But he extirpated all the things people had grew for the ages.

 

            My mother Shura (Aliaxandra) was born in that same Zelenki-village, but soon, the family moved to her mother’s fatherland – the big (about hundred houses) village of Roudnia. My grandmother’s father Mikola Boury had owned a mill, so he had been a firm wealthy peasant. No wonder, a Miss from a ruined noble family had agreed to married him. She was well educated and progressive: spoke and wrote in Polish, Russian and Belarusan and “walked with her parasol along the village”. Only she did not agree, when her daughter (my grandmother) forced her older daughter (my aunt) Nina, an active member of the Komsomol, to marry an old rich man. (A trivial story: Nina ran away right from her wedding to be with a village teacher, a Komsomol Secretary. Suddenly, the World War II began (1941), and she was gulping up all the marshes of the “partisan war” together with him and their little son. Actually, they will have lived together 45 years, raising up 2 children, grandchildren and grand-grandchildren and forgetting to get married. They will get married in the last month of his life when he will be in a hospital.)   

            So. My great-grandfather was a good efficient farmer. That is why, at the beginning of 30-ths, he was supposed to be dispossessed as a ‘kulak’ and banished to Siberia, but since he had become an old desperate drunkard by that time, so he was, perhaps, welcomed to the club by the Poor’s Committee. The mill was taken away, though, and then, successfully completely ruined. In additional, his older son Antoś who was an honest, straightforward and, unfortunately, stubborn person took over to teach the Soviet Power in the Chairman of the collective farm, whose family had always been famous as exclusive good-for-nothings, at which of her sides, as for her, a mare was harnessed. So he was rewarded for his effort with, “You - what? Don’t you like the Soviet Power?!” and, after all, sent to Siberia’s camps for 10 years. When his term nearly expired, the WW II began. And he was drafted into the penalty pontoon-bridge battalion, which was wiped out several times during the war while he was the only survivor of it. He came back, however, safe and sound with a complete set of the Order of Soldier Glory, which is equal to the title of the Hero of USSR, and I’ll hear sometimes from this atheists, my mom and aunts, in the kitchen by drink: “There is God on the earth, after all…” Dzed* Antoś will well over live his offenders and die in 85 in the same day, when my son Anton will be born.

*Dzed – grandfather or any old man.    

 

4. 

When you don’t know

what you should do and where to go –

remember you your early years

and that forgotten melody…

But fade the sounds of lullaby

in straggle, brutal, insensate…

   

              My grandmother Nadzeya (Antoś’ sister) is the only one of my grandparents, whom I will know in my life. Not so long, though: she will die when I am 12. The others didn’t wait even for my birth.

              My earliest memories will be bonded with grandmother’s hata*, the last in the village, my cradle beside the stove, with the big red caw, widely famous for her exceptional restive manners, the little goat that I’ll nave a friendship with... With the big wheel, remains of some pulled down mill, by the scenic river, where we’ll swim and fish. …Whit the German helmets from grandmother’s garden that practical Belarusan hand will adjust to be comfortable chamber pots for my brother and me. …With the country-track running right from grandma’s hata* and diving straight away into the bowel of this huge dark-green monster. Perhaps, namely in such away, must felt the German soldiers about such dangerous for them, abounding with partisans, our forests. But I will never be afraid of forest. From our first years on this land, my brother and I will be schooled in our lovely, wonderful, supplier and defender by our mother and grandmother.  

               Babulia** Nadzia speaks Belarusan, and every summer, she will meet us with: “Oh, my honeys, so, I see, now you have learned how to speak in the city-like way***!” And every fall, our Minsk’ teachers will “rectify” our speech: “Children must learn how to speak and write perfectly in the proper language!” ...Our parent’s language is already rectified: mama will tell me how she cried at nights, being teased and punished for her ‘village’ pronunciation by the Russian teachers at her college.

*Hata (Bel.) – a village wood house.

**Babulia (Bel.) – grandma.

***She meant in Russian.

              Babulia Nadzia is able to read and write, so she will read me stories and tales. She will be the first one from whom I will hear about Jesus. Making already a “ready to fight for the Communist Party’s business” Young Pioneer, I will politely listen to only for her and think compassionately that my grandma is so old fashioned that she believes in such kind of fairy-tales.

 

              5.

              My grandfather Barys Kacherski (her husband) died in the wartime. No, he didn’t fight. He was sick of asthma that he had developed after the gas attacks during World War I. Then he fought in the Civil War with the Red Army and was promoted to the Red Commander’s School. He could have had a good career as a military officer, but he had hurried home – his dream, for which he had been fought, was coming true: the promised land was handed out to peasants. Dzed Barys was a good-tempered, intelligent and sober-minded person. My Mama never heard him swear, even when his wife did. She saw him drunk only once, when she was four: the evening before, he and his two brothers-in-law argued long and loudly; in the morning, he led his horse somewhere and came back without it. Then he got drunk… His “promised land”, on which he had worked hard and honestly, followed the horse and his father-in-law’s mill...

              So, he was drafted neither into the army nor the partisans during World War II. The family did, however, lots of work for partisans: baked bread and made homemade vodka (for sterilization and anesthesia of the wounded also). The partisans took away all food at nights (besides the Germen took away their “taxes” at days).

Once they came at house at night and said:

“Ded, skidai válenki!” *

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*Ded, skidai válenki! (Russ.) – Dzed, throw down (take off) your valionki!

Valiónki (Bel) – winter felt wool boots.

      

              These were the last for the whole big family. Dzed was just sitting by the stove, wearing them.

              “You stay at house and don’t need them!” they said.

               Here, my ‘bad-tempered’ grandma intervened,

               “You see he is sick?! You see how many my children are on the stove bed there?! Will you bring and cut wood for them?..”

               “You – what, old? Don’t you like the Soviet Power?!”

               Now my patient grandfather burst out after all:

               “I fought for this Power! I gave away my health for it! But you gave it away to the Germen!”

               They simply punched him, knocked him down from the stool, striped off the valionki and left. At the same time, they took their 17-year son Mikalai with them. (The rest of his life, since I will have seen him, he will always, when he will be drunk, but he will be drunk always, remember his partisan warfare and the further assault on Konigsberg.)                                           

               Once a Germen’s detachment stayed overnight in the village. Someone of local wags reported to Cherveń’ Commandant Office that partisans were staying in Roudnia-village. ...The night battle between the Germans and the Germans, settling on both river shores, lasted four hours. At the end of their stupid mistake, they gathered all the men of the village, flogged them with ramrods and then burned the village out. Luckily, without the people, unlike did they to the neighbor one. After that flogging my Dzed Barys never rose...

 

               6.        

               My father was luckier. He was born in a small such remote village called Bradok - only 6 houses hidden among the dense forests - that the Germen didn’t dare to butt in. My mother chaffs him: “Did you ever see the Germans at all?”

               I will visit Bradok only once in my life, but it will remain vivid in my memory. It will be soon, when I become a big girl, so big that I’m able to overcome afoot the distance from the village Zamiatoŭka, where my father’s relatives live now. My brother and I will love to spend our barefoot school vacations there, together with our cousins, nieces and nephews, doing all the peasant children’s works and activities and spoiling our “proper language” by acquiring the native witty phrases, proverbs. 

              My grandfather Dzed Sidar Verabei died when he was 72. He was crushed by a tree while felling trees alone in the forest. So, he left a pretty young widow, his third wife (the others had died), with her four children. One of them, the oldest, was his stepdaughter: my grandmother Darya had been “deceived by the young pan”, a local rich landowner. So, she, a disgraceful woman with a natural child, hadn’t been supposed to get married anymore. But when her girl had been 10, Darya’s brothers “gave her away to a marriage” to the old widower who had already been married two times and had eleven children. With him, she had given birth to three more children. The middle one was my father Piotar.             

              One can’t say she had many troubles with her stepchildren: they were quite grown-ups. Some of them had matured and some left the Cherveń region and even Belarus for education. My father doesn’t know some so well enough. One, Yevgenij Vorobiov (why did the Russian suffixes and spelling appeared here? – likely for the sake of his career), rose to a rank of a general during the World War II.

              The quiet, patient and hard-working woman Darya died shortly before my birth, never learning that her granddaughter (and then her daughter as well) would be planed be named Darya...

 

 

               7.

              The matter of my birth was, actually, really questioned.

              Not that my parents didn’t love children or didn’t want them. Mama really wanted to have a girl. Dad wanted them, many and various.

              In ruined to the bottom by the last war thousand-year old Minsk, there are still not enough dwellings. (It will be never enough, though; I can’t understand why.) So my parents rent a 7 m²-room in a small house, sharing kitchen with landlords, in the north outskirts of the city. Having one more child was out of the question.

             But shortly, possibility of getting their own apartment became a glimmer of hope. (“Own” is quite symbolic: in a soviet state, there can’t be any own apartments, but only those state’s ones, which the state deigns to share with you.) My father has been working for the Agricultural Publishing House, and at that time, the Institute of Soil Science began to build two townhouses for their employers. There wasn’t a big chance for the plain journalist, but still. My decisive mother sent him packing to the Local Union Committee to implore his right to get into the line for “enhancing living conditions”.

             The second child would have become a real forcible argument in preceding the line …and also made their little son’s dream true.

 

 

             8.

             Holding his breath, Sasha is gazing at an odd swaddled doll, just brought home, lying across the bed and named “your little sister”. He doesn’t go to dinner; he turns down cookies or candies…

             Now, my lips move and make a smacking sound. I open my eyes and stare at him, “Nice to meet you, brother.”

             Sasha gasps, opens his eyes wide, starting shivering:

             “Mama! Mama! She is alive! Look at her! She is alive!” The shock is so strong, that he shakes his hands and stamps his feet.

             He perceived, for the first time, the Great Eternal Secret – the Wonder of Life.

       

             As for me, I will be much more earthly-minded at the same age: my day-care-mate’s father will come to my mother, a teacher of the day care, complaining about her daughter who explains to her mates that children come from their mother’s stomachs.

             Maybe, it will happen because I face the Truth of Life, the Cold of its Reality in the first days of my life?

             This winter is very cold. Extremely. Like never before. The frost, as low as -40°C, came suddenly in the end of the October and has never been relived.

             Nevertheless, even in such frost, a human must be clean, moreover after giving a birth, decides my Mama. She has always been reckless till imprudence: she contrives to swim in May and September and to tell bosses what she, really, thinks. My brother and I can’t prevent her from going to a sauna. How can we? And our Dad is at work…

             At night she gets a fever. Dad doesn’t notice that: in the early, dark morning, he quietly slips out for work. And so do the landlords. We remain alone in the quickly cooling house: it is heated by wood stove, and there is no one to keep the fire going. Sasha gets into Mama’s bed under the blanket. I’m getting hungry and freezing in my wet nappies, feeling terribly forlorn. So I am crying! Loudly, exigently! …My Mama doesn’t hear me: she is delirious.

            How long has it been gone? I’m getting tired, hoarse …frozen. Eventually, the landlord’s young daughter comes into the room (she has remained home: children don’t go to school due to the frost.), “Tsiotsia* Shura, it’s very cold. Shall we kindle the stove?” Now she discovers us, hopeless; she pulls my Mama about, brings her to her senses. She asks the girl to bring the peat or wood from the shed. “I can’t unlock the door! It’s frozen,” she cries. Mama stands up and makes hardly her way to the shed…

            Finally, we are saved. Happily, everything is getting okay. Soon, Dad will come home and call in a doctor for Mama and me. Happily, I haven’t even got sick. But this adventure, we will remember for the rest of our lives.

*Tsiotsia – aunt; children’s addressing to a woman.

 

 

9.

Let’s drag out time, because we don’t have

any reason to live in an urgent way.

…Let’s drag out time in order not to leave

this worn-out world,

in order to have time to come to love each other

among the feast paid off by plague.

 

               My parents don’t dare to baptize me.

               No matter that my father is a member of the Communist Party, and my mother was a member of the Komsomol, and they both are atheists – my brother has been baptized. There, where he was born - in Cherveń.

               But now, they are afraid. No, not of the frost. The event, due to which they appeared in Minsk, is too fresh in their memory.

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               …It was the first “Radaŭnitsa” after my father’s mother Darya’ death. “Radaŭnitsa” is the biggest Commemoration Day in the culture of my people. My father only came to the Darya’s grave and stood silently for a while.

               Next few days he was fired from his job. (He worked for the Cherveń’ only newspaper.) And his exclusion from the Party was just a matter of time.

               He obtained an appointment with the Secretary of the Minsk’ Provincial Committee of the Party. In the reception-room, while waiting for the appointment, he met his best friend in school and university.                    “What are you doing here? …You lost your job? …Well. …Come to my place! I will talk to my boss. I think they can hire you.” Surely, they went out from there and got a drink…

              I don’t know how my father stooped to beg in front the Secretary (he says that one was nice), but he wasn’t excluded.

             So, shortly after, my parents had to move to still hard rising from ash and ruins Minsk where my father was employed by the Agricultural Publishing House.  

             Mama can never get used to the big foreign city, although, it is closer to her University where she is studying. She left her beloved job (she worked at an orphan home for the “war children”), and she misses her sister Nina’s family in whose house she lived for ten years and whom our whole family visits every weekend now. They love to get drunk and then sing their favorite songs together.  Afterwards, Mama will come to love Minsk, which will become fine, one of the most beautiful cities - young, spacious, modern – unique.  Where she will get her another beloved job at the State University and make a number of her great friends. But she will visit her sister in Cherveń through her whole life to sing songs with her.

…Eventually, they will die on the same day.