TWENTY TWENTY
It is a time when the living envied the dead. The dead found peace and an end to their suffering. The living had to carry on, with the cold and hunger. Once it was only the cold that bothered us, and we were hungry, yes we were hungry, but we could endure it as we always had. But this was a different kind of hunger.
We were promised that things would become better. We were promised that the people would be free, and we were promised that we would know the luxuries of prosperity. We were promised. But when the Soviets had won the war everything changed. The army ransacked all our food, saying they needed it for the war effort, leaving us with nothing to feed ourselves. Out of desperation, we ate our reserves, and the seeds we needed for the next harvest. When the summer came we had nothing left to grow food with.
Then came the Winter and her unforgiving cold. And with it everything started to die.
We pleaded to Moscow for relief but the war had destroyed most of the rail lines. Both messages and supplies were difficult to get through. Now we were left with nothing. We were abandoned by those who promised us something better. If this is what freedom and prosperity looked like then I gladly welcome back the chains of the Czar.
There was another funeral today, the third one this week. There were dozens of funerals every month. Seeing wagons filled with bodies carted through the streets became a common sight. Now we were burying the five-year-old son of my neighbor, Lev. He and his wife walked behind the cart carrying the boy, his body covered with a brown stained blanket. Their faces stared blankly off into the distance.
My daughter, Yelena, gripped my hand as she walked beside me. My little devushka. The thought that the Hunger taking her next filled me with fear, as it should any father. I pitied her. She was old enough to understand the concept of death, yet too young to experience it.
Her bony fingers pricked me from beneath her wool mittens. Another cramp from the pains of hunger must have surged through her bloated belly. Little plumes belched forth from her tiny mouth, like little vapors. She began to tremble. I picked her up and carried her. She buried her face into my chest hoping to soak in what little warmth my body offered.
The people of the village watched on with vacant eyes. A year ago, everyone in the village would have gathered to mourn the loss of a child. Now the sight of bodies were a regular part of daily life. They had no more tears to shed. They had become wraiths roaming the streets. I could feel some of the villagers’ eyes watching me and my daughter, like vultures, wondering when she would be next. Lev and his wife knew what was to become of their son though they would not say. We all knew. We did not discuss it but we all knew what happened to the bodies after they were buried. We all knew.
The procession carried on to the graveyard. I knew the vultures followed us from the shadows. Hunger does terrible things to men.