My grandmother’s name is Vera, which from Russian language means, “to believe”. She is almost 90 years old. She does not really like to tell the stories of her life or where she is from, or who her parents are. All those secrets that grandma kept in silence made us, younger generation, imagine some fairy stories, like as my elder brother once said about her: “Our granny is an escaped Romanov‘s youngest princess, who doesn’t want to undercover her emperor’s roots.” Of course, we laughed, but the nickname stuck for our grandmother. I was much luckier than my siblings or cousins. Being the only granddaughter and the youngest one, I had many privileges, including countless hugs, kisses and candies. I could talk my old wise ‘princess’ into conversations to which my cousins did not have any access. Once I told her, when I was eight: “Grandma, we love you very much, but we have the right to know our past. Your past is ours. It does not matter how sad it was. We have the right! ” She smiled and she finally spoke up. That brought the sadness and sorrow into the air from the moment she closed her eyes as to bring herself back into almost a hundred year old story.
Vera was born the youngest in the family alone with one more sister Katya, who was nine years older than her and three middle brothers. The kids were born in Kazakhstan. Her family lived in an old wood house somewhere in the middle of the Kazakh desert, close to the cleanest, clearest and as they will later discover, dangerous river, named Amudarya. The neighbors’ houses were located too far from each other. It was a happy fulfilled family, where the parents loved each other endlessly and where the kids respected and obeyed the parents and their efforts to give them everything they needed.
Vera was thirteen when World War 2 started, and it did not started with the fascism bombing over the USSR or radio announcement. No! It was a neighbor who signaled the misery, murder and crime in the country, preparing the family to pay a high price.
Vera’s father was a friendly and fair person, who never refused to help anybody who deserved it. It was May of 1941, a month before the war. Vera’s father invited a male neighbor to hunt with him on horseback, who pleasurably agreed, already feeding an evil thought in his head. That morning Matrena, Vera’s mother, was cheerily humming something while preparing lunch for her husband, whom she would never see alive again. The neighbor never came to Vera’s family to explain why their father disappeared. After two days his body was found shot somewhere next to his dead horse. Nobody went after the murderer, nobody. The woman was left with five kids alone without any help around. The death afflicted the family, when a couple weeks later Vera’s youngest brother went to fish in the Amudarya River with his old horse. The horse came back that evening, leaving the slim young body drowned in its deep blue water.
The two losses made the family forget for a long while how to laugh or even smile. Vera’s mother turned to be gray-headed, and she spoke rarely. Matrena made a meal with her head down, putting food in plates along with sadness and desperation.
In several months after the World War against Germany began, two Vera’s last two brothers left for battle. Vera was alone with her mother and sister. Nobody said a joke or a silly thing that would make the family smile. They forgot how eyes could narrow from a deep laugh.
The hardest time came when there was not wheat or meat left. The harvest that year was terrible. It seemed like nature was protesting since the war began refusing to give anything to people.
It was March of 1942, when Vera with her sister and mother received a letter, informing that the older son was killed. After Matrena had read the letter, she placed it on the table. She sat for one more minute in silence, then stood up and walked to her bedroom. Where behind the door Vera could hear nothing that would usually remind a cry or sob.
In April, the same year the women got finally good news with the letter where the middle son points out a day and time, when his command in a military train would stop at the station, which his mother and sisters could reach easily by walk. They would be able to see each other for about 10 minutes again. The delight of the coming date made Vera dance on the bare wood floor and she could not stop herself. Her mother and sister looked at her silly movements and smiled followed by Matrena’s tears. Vera stopped right there, ran to her already old and tired mother, sat on her lap and hugged her so tight, that nobody could tear them apart at that moment. Her sister stood up, took a glass bowl that a year ago would contain a main dish of a table, around which Vera’s whole family would gather, and Katya put the letter gently with her bony fingers inside. She came to her mother with Vera and hugged them protectively.
That day finally came. The hungry skinny ladies put on their nicest dresses and went to the train station, where they were supposed to meet at three pm the only male left in the family; a son and a brother at the same face.
It seemed very strange for them: it was already four pm, and the station was empty. Vera tried to keep her mind busy with anything else except bad thoughts about the train. She looked at her mother, who was sitting on her right. The hiding sun behind the sandy hills lit her mother so well, that now she could see, how unbelievably old Matrena looked, even though she was only approaching her fifties. Three of them were sitting quiet. Vera then noticed an old man crossing the long train station. Her mother stood up without an effort to straighten her back, walked up to him and asked him something so quietly, like being scared to hear the answer she was asking for. The old man grabbed Matrena’s left shoulder and said the words that we already knew, but refused to believe: “The train passed earlier yesterday, my dear, take your girls and go home, there is nothing for you to wait for!”
The train station for Vera gave an impression of an Island, within the dust ocean, where the trails looked like two endless canals from the past to the future, from life to death, from happiness to misery, and from laugh to cry. She looked at the man’s back, how he was walking away from the train trails.
Her mother stood at the same spot for a minute. She did not even glance at Katya and Vera, when Matrena turned her dry body and faced the end of the “canals”, which ends, from Vera’s imagination, would face something the most miserable on this Earth. She stood at the same frozen position for a minute more, than moved from that spot, like an old weak swan, that tries to fly away from the ground. She did two steps parallel to the trails, than tried to run, but she could not. Her feet refused to obey her; she fell down, moaning, like a wounded wolf over its dead pub. Matrena then stood up again and ran, and ran. Katya was running after her. When she caught her, they fell down on the sand this time together. Katya raised her mother and the women now walked home.
Vera’s mother never recovered after what had happened. In a week she died, leaving the girls behind. In a month after Matrena’s death, Vera and Katya received another letter, where it says how the last brother died.
The girls survived. They moved to Uzbekistan, where fifty years later I was born.
At the end of the story, my “princess” told me: “My dear, you will see how short the life is; how fast the train of your destiny will take you from one end to another. Do not look at that last end, do not eager to face it, but be aware of it and not scared. Be careful whom you travel in that train with, whom you choose as a company for the whole destination. Never forget and leave those who love you behind, because one day they may choose a different train that will not bring them back to you. Color you train in the colors of happiness and humanity, that will attract kind people into your world. Moreover, when you come to the end do not be afraid, but smile, because, who knows, and another train may come to pick up your happy butt again.”
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