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freefallingfox · 4 years ago

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The Painful Miracle

The Nazis came at dawn. In mere seconds, the tranquil, morning silence was ruptured by the crackle of enflamed houses and the shrieks of mutilated livestock. The men in pristine uniforms left nothing behind: no cattle, no food, no money, no hope. All of the younger women were carelessly rounded up into trucks as fuel for the Third Reich’s working camps. No resistance was offered. After all, most of the local men had long disappeared from the village in the wake of Soviet conscription’s call. Meanwhile, the remaining two, cripples really, were out in the fields, gathering wheat. Hochdeutsch cussing reigned supreme in the brittle air.

They kept searching for Jews in some gruesome, Aryan rendition of hide-and-seek. Truth be told, pogroms had stopped being an alien phenomenon in Russia decades ago, yet none of them had ever been performed with such effortless pedantry. In the German wake, no cellar remained undamaged, no barn left untouched. With baited breath, Suslovs’* hidden guests awaited their inevitable turn. Their loyal companion of the past few days, and the sole source of nutrition for all of the house’s inhabitants, dutifully kept watch. The goat’s eyes shone fiercely in the dark…

Several floors above, Anastasia was fighting a different battle altogether. Approaching the last months of her eighth pregnancy, she was bloated all over. The national matryoshka figurine come to life. Sadly, the metaphor was only too apt, as our heroine had four underage children to feed and nurture. Only a week ago, there had been five. The oldest girl, barely seventeen, had been captured by the Germans in the forest, while out gathering berries and mushrooms for her siblings. Another flower ruthlessly picked from the bleeding Russian soil… By now, Seraphima,** her angel, would probably be crossing the Polish border in the confines of a urine-soaked cattle wagon, along with other forced Slavic laborers. Never to be seen or heard from again in her demure home-village. For all we know, her parents might as well dig a new grave next to the previous two, left over from Anastasia’s unfortunate miscarriages.*

The situation was rendered only bleaker by the prolonged absence of our matryoshka’s husband: Fyodor. Having suffered an army injury during the Russian civil war among his crimson compatriots, he was deemed unfit to fight against the Third Reich and was left behind along with another invalid to man the village fields. Currently, Fyodor was likely drowning in the ripe greenery of their kolkhoz, blissfully unaware of the danger enshrouding his doorstep. For his spouse was trapped in their house in the midst of a pogrom with four kids, an on-going morning sickness, a goat and a family of Jews to boot. Clearly, the day could only go downhill from there.

And it did. Without any warning, the wooden door was thrown open and two swastika-marked soldiers rushed into the already crowded room. As if trying to compensate for the absence of their typical companions- the German shepherds- the pale henchmen snarled and pounced at the cottage corners in a grotesque caricature of sniffing out their Jewish prey. Immediately, the children froze at their mother’s swollen feet in a feeble attempt to appear invisible. The cellar’s inhabitants likewise turned to stone. Even the goat seemed to wither in light of the impending doom…

Realistically, one would expect the Nazi intruders to swiftly locate the stowed away family downstairs along with the contraband animal, which Anastasia should have voluntarily surrendered, like the rest of her cattle, during last week’s raid. After the discovery, all villagers present in the house would be shot on the spot, minus the goat. Sadly, it would only survive its owners by a couple of hours, eventually starring in the troop commander’s dinner. Meanwhile, Fyodor would return to his home at sunrise to find it barren, if not burned to ashes. From that day onwards, he would be missing both his right hand and his heart… Yes, that is what the reader might logically expect to have taken place following the Nazis’ arrival.

However, despite the generally despondent hues colouring human history, and the overall mundane nature of the universe, there remains room for miracles. Like shooting stars, they suddenly criss-cross the canvass of one’s fate, illuminating a trace of hope. These instances are often cited as proof of God’s patronage or perhaps the direct consequence of planets’ unique, horoscopic juxtaposition. Some might even describe them as pure magic. For Anastasia, her miracle chose a slightly more prosaic form. She had a fit of toothache.

You see, dear reader, prior to the cult of paracetamol and ibuprofen, ordinary citizens often had to weather bouts of pain, while accompanied solely by their own force of will. Neither do we nowadays possess a true understanding of what a tooth ache truly represents. A pulsing throb resonating in one’s mind with the torment of a twisted, dull blade. Original discomfort progressively transforming into a piercing agony, which no homemade remedy can quell. It hurts to eat. To speak. To think. This was the fate which had befallen Anastasia. Grounded by her family nest in a remote, Soviet village, she had no hopes of seeing a professional dentist even prior to the foreign occupation. With destructive searches accompanying the Nazis’ appearance, Nastya’s hope of finding some painkillers at her neighbours’ was likewise eradicated. All that was left for our heroine was to silently endure, yet even that proved eventually impossible. When the soldiers stormed her home, Anastasia had finally reached her breaking point. Blinded by the unabating pain, she screamed. The wail of a desperate, wounded creature resonated through the wooden walls. Startled, the Germans stopped in their tracks.

Now, a career in the German army has been known to incorporate many confrontations with hysterical fits from eastern European villagers. However, normally, these cries of suffering were somehow linked to the conduct of the uninvited western guests. In contrast, our current antagonists had yet to complete even the prelude to their interrogation. Consequently the Russian peasant must have been shrieking like a banshee due to some other reason. The puzzle seemed finally resolved when the Aryan on-lookers noticed the protruding, pregnant belly of the desolate woman and, voila, jumped to a seemingly logical conclusion The “Slavic slut” dared to go into labour, while having the honour of being visited by the “superior race”.

There exist many anecdotes about men losing consciousness upon witnessing their wives giving birth. Certainly, a baby’s emergence from the womb is far from a pretty sight. Add to that the indoctrinated Nazi belief, that the Soviets were no better than a deranged, if not outright monstrous, subspecies, and one can imagine, why the fighters of the Third Reich decided to spare themselves the bloody spectacle. In short, the two grown men turned on their heel and fled. Anastasia again remained alone with her children, her Jewish refugees, her goat and her continuing tooth pain. Caries had managed to save the day for once…

Eventually, the looting and the painful cries permeating the air vanished into the sunset. The soldiers returned to their camp in the neighbouring town, laden with stolen goods. The pogrom was over. Unwilling to risk another search, the shadows, inhabiting the cellar, left early the next morning, heading for the nearby river, which marked the end of the occupied territory. Contrary to the Nazis’ belief, the baby was born a month later, when the occupation had already been lifted. Now an elderly woman, she still owns a rusting garage in Elektrostal,*** despite it being years since she had lived in that town. Inside, one might stumble upon a frayed piece of cotton, residing among a heap of other forgotten items. A tablecloth. You see, as an expression of gratitude, the Jews had gifted their saviours with a memento. The only thing, really, which they had left to give. At present, a random passerby might mistake this token of thanks for a meaningless cleaning cloth that has outlived its use. But you should know better…

*Anastasia and Fyodor Suslov are the main protagonists of this cycle of stories

**Seraphima, in fact, had managed to jump out of the train and meet up with a band of local partisans, who conducted raids in the near-by forest. She continued to engage in guerrilla warfare against German occupational forces until her successful return home following the war’s end.

*** Elektrostal is a small town, located 58km east from Moscow. Famed for its production of steel and electricity during the Soviet era, it has gradually transformed into an urban non-entity.

#short fiction #short story #wwii #occupation #family #pogrom #pregnancy #miracle #history #ussr #resistance

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