The shock of witnessing my father’s savagery toward my beloved mother was so total and so all encompassing that it silenced my screams and weighted me to my chair. I froze. For what seemed like eternity I could not move a single muscle. I could only sit, and stare, and breathe in and out, while the world inside my head spun violently out of control. And then I began to shriek. A single piercing wail of horror. My father pulled my mother’s hand out of the pot and rushing her outside, plunged her blistering, steaming hand into the snow.
I ran out and stood watching them, icy wind caught in my throat. My father was gently stroking my mother’s hair. Her face was ghostly white and her teeth were chattering uncontrollably. Then she turned to look at me and snapped them shut like a trap. I was never the same after that day.
I obeyed my father in all things.
*****
Once there were eleven of us in my family—my father, my mother, my seven sisters, my beloved twin brother Nikolai and me. We lived in a small log cabin at the edge of a forest in Russia. We had no electricity, no TV, no phones; water had to be fetched from a well; the local village store was miles away; and we had to use the outhouse even during the freezing winter months.
I didn’t know it while I was growing up but we were a strange family. We never went on holidays and we kept ourselves to ourselves. We hardly saw the other village folk. And when we did see them we were forbidden to talk to them. If ever they spoke to us we had to nod politely and move quickly away.
Growing up we had no friends. No one ever came around. I do not remember a single instance when even a doctor was called to the house. My mother said that she gave birth to all her children without even the assistance of a midwife. On one occasion when my father was not around she even had to cut the umbilical cord herself.
I have a very clear memory of when she went into labor with my youngest sister. How she was in agony for hours and how my oldest sister, Anastasia, dared to beg my father to call the doctor, and how he refused with cold anger. Only Anastasia and Sofia, my second oldest sister, were allowed in the room with Mama so the rest of us had to wait outside in abject fear.
Many horrifying hours later my father came out triumphantly holding a baby wrapped in a blanket. He showed us the baby, red from head to toe. When we were allowed to go into the room to see my mother, I was shocked by the heavy stench of blood and stale sweat. My eyes were drawn to a bundle of blood-soaked sheets pushed hurriedly into the corner of the bedroom. My mother lay on the bed ashen with pain. She was so exhausted she could barely smile at us. Her legs had been tied together roughly with rope.
‘Why are your legs bound, Mama?’ I asked in a frightened whisper.
‘The baby came out feet first,’ she murmured. Her voice was so faint I had to lean close to her lips to hear it.
Mother had had a breech birth and she was so torn and damaged internally that my father had tied her legs together to stop her moving and encourage her body to heal faster. Even as a small child I understood that he never called a doctor even though she could have died. It was agonizing to watch her in the following days, but two weeks later the ropes came off and she hobbled back to the endless chores that consumed her life.
Other than those two scary weeks I can’t remember any other time I saw my mother at rest. Ever. She was always flushed and slaving away over the open fire, cooking, baking, scrubbing, washing, ironing, canning fruit and vegetables for the winter, and in spring, summer and autumn tending to our garden.
My father did not work. He was a hunter. He often disappeared into the ghostly fir tree forest behind our home and came back with elk, faun, rabbits, chinchillas, beavers, wood grouse, geese and snow partridges. The liver and brains were always reserved for him—they were his favorite—some cheap cuts were kept for the family, and the rest of the meat and fur was sold.
When my father was at home he demanded absolute silence from us. No one cried, no one talked, no one laughed. We were like little silent robots going about our tasks. Come to think of it I never saw my sisters or brother cry. The first time I saw my oldest sister, Anastasia, cry was when I was seven years old.
My mother was holding my sister’s hands pressed within her own and whispering something to her and she was sobbing quietly.
‘What’s going on?’ I whispered.
But nobody would tell me.
Chapter 2
It was midday and I was outside with my brother, sitti
ng on a pile of wood logs watching him clean my father’s boots when I heard a car pull up outside our house. For a moment neither of us moved. A car was an unheard of thing. Then I skidded off the logs in record time and we ran out front to look. Standing at the side of the house we saw the black Volga. I was instantly afraid. In my mother’s stories black Volgas were always driven by bad men. Why was there a black Volga outside our house?
I thought of my sister crying in the kitchen.
Then like a miracle the clouds parted and golden rays of sun hit the metal of the car and gilded it with light. It had the effect of creating a halo. As if the car was a heavenly chariot. The front door of the chariot opened—a man’s shoe emerged, and touched the dusty ground. I had never seen such a shiny shoe in all my life. Made of fine leather it had silver eyeholes and black laces. I can remember that shoe now. The shape of it, the stitching that held it together.
Another shoe appeared and a man I had never seen before unfolded himself out of the shining car. A short, hefty man with dark hair. He was wearing a black shirt, blue jeans and a leather coat. A thick gold chain hung around his neck. As I watched, another man got out of the passenger seat. He was dressed almost identically, down to the thick gold chain. Neither looked like he had descended from heaven. Both had swarthy, closed faces. They did not say anything or call out. They just stood next to the car with an air of expectancy.
Then our front door opened and my father stood framed in it. He moved aside and Anastasia appeared beside him dressed in her best clothes.
He turned to her and said, ‘Come along then.’
She turned to face him. Her lips visibly trembled.
‘Neither fur, nor feather,’ my father said. It was the Russian way of saying good luck.
‘Go to the devil,’ my sister whispered tearfully. That was the acceptable Russian way of securing good luck.
‘Anastasia,’ I called, and my father turned his head and glared at me.
I froze where I stood, no further sounds passing my lips. Anastasia did not look at me; her lips were pressed firmly together. I knew that look. She was trying not to cry. She picked up a small bag—I found out later my mother had packed it for her while we were all asleep—and walked with my father toward the men. One of the men opened the back door and in the blink of an eye my sister slipped through. I remembered thinking how small and defenseless she looked once inside the car.