From the Baltic
(A Seven Part Story, based on supposition and facts)
Grodno
((Part One —1901) (part one of six))
He did not know it was a restaurant at first, he was only eight-years old, it was 1901, and his father had taken him to Grodno, a small town close to the boarder of Poland in Russia, from his family’s countryside farm. But he’d not forget walking through those doors the first time, and his father outwardly being known by all the patrons there. All saying:
“Hi, Yulie, how’s it going?” just nice old fashion greetings, that’s all it was, but they make for lasting memories. It was his first trip to Grodno, and as I mentioned, his first in the restaurant for that matter.
Most of the folks in the restaurant were having soup, a few with a bottle of vodka hidden under their coats, pouring it into their coffee. Mostly they were older men, a few business types, no children; Anatolee was the only child he could see. His Papa pulled out a cigar, and like a few of the others in the ресторан (guesthouse or restaurant) filled it up with smoke. The tables had very solid looking wood to them—hard oak, but his papa didn’t sit at the table, he pulled out a stool for himself and one for Tony, and Tony imitated his father as they both sat down, Tony putting his elbows on the long stretched out wooden bar.
“Молоко, пирог” (“Milk and pie for the kid,”) Tony’s father told the person behind the bar (in Russian), as the barkeep told the waitress down a ways from the bar, “And for me, just coffee with a shot of vodka on the side, that’ll do.”
Tony noticed the waitress pull the milk from under the counter out, it was warm milk in a bottle; it was how they drank it normally. Then she took the top off and poured it in a glass, and cut the pie in sections, giving him no more or less than the other pieces, pulling out a fork, and then delivered it to the хозяин (the owner and barkeeper), and onto the boy. Yulie had already gotten his coffee and vodka.
All of a sudden approached a short fat little man, half balled, cigar in his mouth,
“So Yulie, is this the youngest, the one you told me about, the tailor to be?”
“Sure is Ivan,” said Yulie with a smile, and then introduced his son to him properly. Anatolee was a bit taken back, he didn’t know he was going to be a портной, -ого (tailor) someday. He thought what a good surprise, ‘Papa was thinking of me.’
It was a trying time for the country, a revolutionary spirit was in the air, and work was not plentiful, and a trade was the best way to insure the boy could make a living and Anatolee (also called Tony and Anton for short) would practice at this trade in years to come.
This day would remain in Anatolee’s head all his life for some reason it had taught him if anything, that one had to look at long term goals, instead of short term gains; that is to say, one must not grab, but rather plan.
The Lithuania Connection
[Part two: 1915]
(Summer of 1915) Anatolee was born on a farm, in a cottage, in a region known as: Lithuania (part of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, after WWI, it became part of Russian and now is in depended again), whom would move forty miles east of Grodno, in what now is considered Belarus, in 1891, in what was then—more or less, the wastelands, one might say, in the Baltic area. It was the first of July of his twenty-third birthday of this year old, of his young life that is, when he leaned—nonchalantly, against the small three room wooden house on his parent’s farm, watching his father Yulie fix the roof. He was much like his father—father like son you might say, and his father was once quite handsome like his son: like to like, a hard silent worker, the old type, and was that his father was preparing the roof and then he fell, it would seem it knocked the senses out of the mind for a moment, and this is somewhat what was surmised by observation of bits and pieces of the event: Yulie had tried to secure his left foot while hammering a nail into a slack board on the roof, on the roof of his farm house, and in doing so, he slipped—slipping as quickly or quicker than the eye could register the whole event, that is what took place, happened: falling onto the ground and to his death (and Anatolee had never looked death in the face before; he was not prepared, but in the words of the warden of death itself: ‘no one knows the day or hour of his death…’ how true this was today): just like that, all of a sudden, like the blink of an eye. He didn’t, I suppose, didn’t for some reason have anything to hang onto that would withstand the pulling force of his weight, or on the other hand, his mind was on hammering, not on grabbing—who’s to say, after the fact.
If I could give you a better basis I would, but I can’t, we can’t, he couldn’t. In all, Anatolee for a moment, just a short moment at that, stood staring, gawking if you will, gazing with his mouth opened, wide-eyed and confused, in shock—in good earnest, he was in shock, disbelief (his mind was a pile of mental and shattered glass; like a broken toy left on a side-street): then pandemonium took place, the whole family: the whole nucleus, gathered around him, around the body on the ground, the broken glass, as Anton’s mind would recall it; I want to say like hornets, but in all honesty it was like limped bodies sprawled in the front of a car seat, wedged beneath one another: holding onto shock and anguish, love and tragedy.
Anatolee’s whole entire world, came crashing down on his shoulders, and he dropped to the ground screaming his father’s name, as his mother, two brothers came running out of the house, and, and his mother, the whole family now around him (no headlines to be in the paper, no obituary, it was to costly); from that moment on, likely as not, life would never be the same for Anatolee, or for the whole family—for obvious reasons. His life was short, like a mist that appeared for a little while and than vanished, as James says in the Bible in so many words: it appears for a little while and than vanishes, ‘How true, how true,’ he alerted himself. The reality is that life is a transitory, a fleeting thing, something that appears and passes like winter to spring; and this he found out this day.
For that reason, at that moment, he started walking in circles, walking in circles all that day, looking up at the roof, down on the ground where he, (he: being his father) had fallen, all day looking up, down, up, down, up: as the rest of the family seen to the duties of the funeral to be. The idea before this, before his father’s death was provocative, a good drama, but not real, just a theme—just a thing could happen; however, death did not take a vacation; it just did its duty, as it is always faithful to.
—A year later
The year was now 1916, the area was impoverished, no jobs, little to eat, and a countryside in the mist of war and revolution; Anton was the oldest brother of the three that lived on the farm. He had never been very far from home, but now his mother approached both Anatolee and his bother to advise them, and give them money for a trip. Anatolee would be the one to go to North America, and his brother, to South America.
Across the Neman River
(Part three: 1916)
Anton’s mother threw her arms around his neck, pulling him until his face was pressed tightly against her cheek (it was 1916, and WWI was in full strength, and it was winter, and the Russian Army was going from farm to farm and taking all the younger males to go off to war, leaving the oldest son at home, or the only son if there was only one: leaving them to take care of their farms, and livelihood of the family, Anton’s father had died that fall, fallen off the roof of the house while repairing it.)
“I’m afraid, Anton!” she whispered, unable to keep back her tears any longer, “I’m so afraid if you do not get out of here and down and around Grodno—I hear its occupied by Germans, and find your way to Warsaw and then America, you and your brother will be stuck here, and they will simply take you anyway, and put you in the front lines and be killed in this silly war!”
“There’s really nothing to be afraid of, mother!” he replied, rubbing her back with the palm of his hand, tenderly.
“I’m still afraid if you don’t get going, Anton. They may come back and you’ll not be able to leave, and stuck here in the Russian Army, or taken captive by the Germans, or put into the Polish Army, and God forbid that happens—find away across the Neman River, or hop a train—go to America, and have your brother go to South America.” She continued to hug him desperately. “I’m so troubled—that I’ll never see you again, Anton, but it is better for you and your brother to go. I’ll go to Warsaw as soon as the war is over, send me mail here, and let me know where you are or will be, and I’ll let you know where we’ll be in Poland.”
He kissed her, “Don’t be frightened,” he said, “Nothing will happen to me, and I’ll do as you ask, and I’m clever enough to handle these military rats.”
She hugged him even tighter, with all her strength, pressing her lips against his cheek, and then she pushed herself from him, and went to the door. Anton’s brother, waiting outside heard the door open (she had already said her goodbyes to Anton’s brother), and before she could say another word they were out of distance, she’d have to yell, and she dare not.
She stayed put, just standing there for a very long time, trying to absorb what just took place, that she had just lost two sons—to the new world to be, I mean she was saying to herself, “They really left, they are gone, they will not be home for dinner, never, ever again.”
Everything seemed so quiet in the cold winter outside, as she stood with the door open looking into nothingness. She didn’t know how long she stood there, a minute, or maybe ten-minutes, but all of a sudden standing in the arch of the open doorway, her ear picked up a sound of footsteps.
A soldier came around the corner of the house, gripping his rifle in both hands. Somewhere in the far-off distance, perhaps still in the woods, between the farm and Grodno, with heavy boots on, crouching through the snow, were here two boys, Anton, twenty-four years old, his brother, twenty-two. There were no lights to guide them, and in all directions there were soldiers, and farms and the woods, and roads.
And now Anton’s mother heard voices right behind the soldier who was gripping his rifle. She knew she’d have to give them a false story where her two boys were, and then they’d put sentries on all sides of her farm, waiting to see if they’d return, but without waiting any longer she began slowly backing away from the door, moving silently over the wooden floor, as she left the snow outside.
The Russian soldiers were pacing back and forth with a slow but heavy gait. An officer was talking to one of the soldiers, the one who had been gripping his rifle. He was mumbling something to him, in a chilled low voice, perhaps about the cold, or snow and then took out a paper, then dropping his hand with the paper on it to his side, he approached the door, and had sentries nearby, ready to be posted, and then came the knock on the door. She wondered with a sudden rapid filch—a thought: what am I going to say. And the knock came again. She could hear the officer beating his arm against his side, to keep it warm, cursing the cold. She was not certain where her boys would be by now, but they were far enough wherever—from the house. She was mad that these men came to enslave her boys, for a war they never started. If they had come as friends, she would have ran to the door to open it, nor would they be walking in the snow somewhere, to go someplace, and soon it would be dark. She knew this was just the beginning. She also knew the Germans needed to be driven out of Russia, by Russians. The officer had been glimpsing in the window, and she knew he had already seen her, and as he reached for his pistol, she opened the door, and she was glad he had put it back into his holster.
The Homespun Lie
(Part Four: 1916)
She felt no hate in her heart for these soldiers, human beings: the force in her was stronger than that, yet her Christianity compelled her to do nothing, but be allowed to be confronted, to show little, if any resistance. She knew if they saw hatred inside of her eyes, it would have sharpened his senses and prevented her boys from accomplishing what they was about to do, was actually doing, escaping the farm to got to the Americas. She knew they were moving step by step closer—and so that the young officer’s revolver was firmly planted back into its holster, she hated this war. She felt sorry for them young soldiers. They were all young men, very young men at that. She still felt she would not have had the need to lie to them if they had not come with the intention of kidnapping her two boys and destroying all that she possessed. She had a lot to live for—I say did, because no longer would they be home to work, to share the holidays with, to go hunting with their brothers in the autumn woods, or spend the long winter nights sitting back and laughing in front of the hearth—now all she’d have was lonely walks with her youngest boy, rain-drenched fields, they could not plough them alone, an this newly lit inferno blazed inside her mind.
While she gazed at the young man’s face she felt no remorse for the lie she was about to tell, but all the same she felt sorry for him—if this war had never been started by some young fancy rich aristocrat over in Serbia with Austria, Anton might still be working in the fields, or as a tailor in Grodno, instead of saying they both had died someplace in Russia or Poland, taken earlier by soldiers, Polish soldiers (as not to blame the Russians). She said their bodies were someplace in Russia or Poland, or Germany frozen in the snow—dead, so she was informed, and until spring, she’d not know exactly where, then thawing would come about, their flesh exposed, hopefully the crows will not get them: she told the young officer, and she added: that she was going to go look for them come summer and hopefully find their unmarked graves. She told the young officer all of this and more. But of course none of this did happen, and the young soldier said in return, “Yes, I understand, but since we have come, it is best we stay a few nights in case they return from the dead.”
His face painted a terrifying picture of what could be expected if indeed they (the two Siluk boys) were captured, and she proven to be a liar. And she knew what to expect, first of all her home would be burnt to the ground, their fields taken away from her, and perhaps her and her youngest son sent separately to some Siberian prison, she had read of such things in the newspapers.
The young officer searched the house carefully, but found nothing of interest, examining half a dozen jars of jam, and some fish in a frying pan ready to be cooked. He stood close to the heat of the fire in the hearth, “So where is your younger boy?” asked the Russian Officer, then he grabbed a jar of jam, and stuffed it into his pocket, didn’t wait for the second lie, and he left the house, and hurried down along side of the back of the house to eat the jam with his fingers.
The Abandoned Barn
(Part five: 1916)
When the two boys reached the clearing of the woods, they stopped and waited and looked about, it was getting dark, and the cold of the snow was seeping through their leather boots. They saw an abandoned silo, a dilapidated structure, once belonging to a farm, the farm now had been removed evidently—or blown to bits by the Germans, around the dwelling were crows, and the closer they got to the structure, rats were running to and fro—the whole silo was weather-strained.
They approached the barn cautiously, as they got to the door, finding it ajar no light or sound, just rats being disturbed, hearing their footsteps in the snow, perhaps listening to them for the last several minutes, scrabbled about, Anton stepped inside, and several rats jumped over the step to and slant of the door—reluctantly leaving, it was so dark inside, Anton could not even see the walls. He lit a match, found wood on the floor, piled it together and started a fire leaving the door ajar, and his brother now inside with him. Then they all sat down. The reception for the rats were clear and distinct, they didn’t come back. Yesko, his brother, as far as he was concerned, a little rest was fine, but was determined to get to the Neman River in the dark if need be that very night, and as fast as they could, because the Germans were destroying everything that looked suspicious: farms, and taking up the rails at night so the trains would not take the Polish-Russians to locations or villages, or farmers to safety, setting trees on fire to clear passageways, and they were building outposts from Grodno stretching outward into the other districts, pretty soon the whole area would be surrounded with the enemy. They could even hear some cannon-fire far-off in the distance, and the rumble sound of moving artillery, nothing nearby though.
Anton’s first thought was: I know there are patrols, and should they find us, we might be mistaken for traitors of one army or the other, or by the enemy the Germans, should someone spot the light that is, from the ajar door, but should they close it, and fall to sleep they’d get asphyxiated. So Yesko’s idea of rest and then get on the move to the river was sounder.
As the two brothers looked outside from the slightly opened door, against the pale sky, and smudged moon, no sound or movement around the silo, warm and now crouching, then standing beside the side of the door, “Anton!” said Yesko, Anton moved cautiously out the door back into the snow, they had stayed in the silo less than an hour, and they found their way to the main road, convinced the road would lead to Grodno, and the Neman River, and perhaps to Warsaw, and then to Prague, from there they didn’t know, it was all par for the course, they’d find out then, even if they had to fight toe to toe with the Germans in the city.
Anton stopped a small truck on the road, and asked the driver what it would cost to drive them on to Grodno, “Two hundred Roubles, or one hundred and fifty Franks,” said the solo driver of the truck (Anton had been given 1000 roubles by his mother before he left, every penny she had), feeling incapable of walking a step further that evening, they had walked fifteen miles, and it was forty miles total to Grodno, consequently, twenty-five miles more to go, and first light would be soon.
“Take a loaf of bread,” said the driver to the two brothers, “you both look so tired,” and Anton took one of many out of the basket on the floor, between the three in the seat of the small truck, and ripped a piece off for him and one for his brother and the driver who introduced himself as Mordecai.
After a half hour’s traveling it was necessary for the two boys to get out of the truck and push the truck out of a ditch, filled with ice and snow. Then once back in the truck Anton’s strength had gone, and he fell to sleep out of exhaustion.
“Where you boys from?” asked Mordecai.
“A farm some twenty miles back or more,” said Yesko, then he hesitated for a moment, unconvinced that if he should say anything more, and the driver noticed his reluctance.
“What is your work?” asked Yesko.
“A farmer and political instructor!” he replied.
“What is that?” asked Yesko.
“I’m part of the partisan task force for the Baltic region.”
“Can you help my brother and me?” asked Yesko.
“Well,” said Mordecai, “there’s a train that you can catch in Grodno that cross the Neman, it goes to Warsaw with a stop at Bialystok, and from there westward—if that’s what you mean. You’ve got to make people believe you are from the Baltic Mining Company, and you are on vacation to see your loved ones in Warsaw, if asked. I should not ask anymore questions lest I get questioned about you two myself, and have to tell the officials what I know—although I don’t much, and they have ways to make you tell, just get on that train one way or the other, and figure out what to do when you get in Warsaw, when you get to Warsaw that is.”
Then Mordecai shifted to a lower gear, as the truck climbed an embankment.
Once into the city of Grodno, Anton, his face wind burnt, yet smooth-shaven, a dark overcoat on of wool, buttoned tightly up to his chin, and a worn-out cap with fur inside, pulled over his ears, feeling the numbness completely out of his fingers, jumped out from the front seat of the truck, and looked about and there in front of him was the train station. He witnessed German patrols, and knew this would be dangerous. They both stood with their backs against the train station, and contemplated.
Asylum and the Voyage
[1916 Part Six]
(1916) On the ship, during its voyage, Anatolee would reminisce, grieve his past, the old kerosene lamps on the wooden floors in his home became lit: which lit up the pathway to the bedrooms—kitchen, and out to the out-house at night; and those rugs, those old, old, old warn out rugs kept over the wooden floors, over them to keep in the heat from the cold drafts seeping in from underneath the house through the floorboards, the winds that try to sneak through the windows, as long winters gave little mercy, along with the winds oozing over ice, and icicles everywhere, on the barn roof and overlapping the house roof, everything freeze up. He would remember his younger brother whom would inherit the farm now, and the soldiers whom would go searching from farm to farm looking for the other sons of the family to fight in the Great War in progress, he would not be there for them to take to battle, to be dragged from the farm should he refuse… (And he remembered—while crossing the Atlantic, looking out to see on the deck of the ship—the stories he father told him about the unbreakable men):
Unbreakable Men
[Kirovsk: Yulie’s Youth—l894/Part Seven]
Yulie Siluk, in his younger days, his youthful days, had worked in the black factory one-hundred miles north of the Arctic Circle before becoming a farmer.
There the average climate was five below zero; he worked in the quarry that was part of a mountain. It became eventually, Stalin’s Gulag in the coming 1920s.
But back in those far-off days, apatite: a fertilizer component was the main source of income for the small town nearby the factory. He had told his oldest son that he had hired a man with a horse and wagon to ride him up the long stretched-out road to the factory that had three building structures in somewhat of a perpendicular alignment: the planted buildings facing one another in somewhat of a horse-shoe fashion.
Thus, they climbed the snow capped mountain—with its drudgery of pushing forward snow forcefully to the sides of the road, up to ones waist it was; between the men and the horse, they cleared the path, it was his taxi and he paid a fair price for it, even though it was but a few roubles; it was a matter of survival, there was no work elsewhere, and Yulie was likened to a peasant; and now with no income, he collected bottles to sell for a living. That is what drove him inch by inch up that mountain through the arctic winds. His father was born in 1874, and his grandfather was born in around 1831, or thereabouts, he had some blood in him—and like them, he went where the work was. It was the way things were.
If anything, one thing Yulie was witnessing, as Anatolee was now only three-years old or so, was the industrialization of the world, yes, Russia included.
With His head back-flung, he leaned more of his weight on the ship’s edge overlooking the water as it swayed to and fro, his stomach a bit mucky: as he looked about the ship he saw an assortment people onboard, some Catholic, and some Russian Jews, a few Protestants, and gypsies to boot, Turkish and Greek, and Polish. Everyone going to America, he expels his breath, it is just a sign if anything, of relief.
In days to come even a worse depression would sweep over the Baltic area, and especially in Lithuania to where his family would pack up whatever they had left of value in life, and move to Warsaw, Poland with relatives; there the youngest brother would find a job. But as Anatolee stood stone-still against the ship’s staircase, gazing into the waters-still gazing into the waters—his action being silent, for silence made him more comfortable now, and the cold Atlantic filled his face; a pipe his father had given him, now filled with tobacco, he lit, the endlessly looked at the ocean, now with the lit pipe—fiddling with that pipe, a puff, a look at the pipe, the water, and trying to look beyond the water was impossible now, it was all water—henceforward, he had become a man, he would have to be sufficient or parish in the winds of the world, into the deep-blue, he would have to become unbreakable; on the other hand this was an adventure of a lifetime, his new beginnings, opportunity. Things would never be the same for sure, nor would he want them to be, for sure.
He walked back and forth on the ship’s wooden deck, just pacing, as he would in future times—just pace, it would, or seemingly would become part of his DNA-structure, part of his genetic code I do believe, as it would be for his children to pace, his daughters and sons, none born yet, and his grandsons. As he paced his voice became soft, reminiscent, lost now in a dream. America to him was kind of a postcard, a pretty postcard, a golden age postcard if you will.
In addition to his working on the farm he worked as a tailor in a city called, Grodno, he was quite young back then, but he liked working, it was part of life, as his father explained to him many times: “Get used to it; it will be your life’s journey.”
Impalpable dust, turned into daydreams, flagging Grodno into his mind for a moment, and then he retired for the late afternoon.
Voyage to: Ellis Island
(Part Eight—concluding chapter to: “From the Baltic”)
Slowly the ship plowed through the last part of its voyage, through the Atlantic waters of the ocean, to New York City’s harbor, whereupon, the youthful and somewhat willful Russian lad named Anton (also known as Anatolee, or Anton Siluk), saw for the first time, the most famous, Statue of Liberty, and nearby Ellis Island was at arms length, the two most celebrated pieces of gossip onboard the ship, it would be where he’d process through, he—likened to thousands of others coming to America.
As he would go through the processing at Ellis Island, he would take a physical first, at which time, to his surprise, he would find out he had a rash on his stomach, legs and upper portion of his arms. The authorities, were taken back a bit, and ready to return Anatolee back to the ship and back to Russia—dismayed, Anton yelled in what little English he knew, and had picked up on the ship from the Russian Jews: “No, no scik, excitied, ecited, no scik, no scik! (He insisted, screeched out, in a near panic-stricken way.)” Yet somehow he maintained a smile on his face through all this, that stretched from ear to ear, which might have been the deciding factor for the Captain, whom was the doctor in the facility. He looked suspiciously into his eyes, Anatolee almost froze when he did so, and tears filled the rim of his lower left eyelid: “Okay, O.K…hmmm,” the doctor, a bit unsure, and waved him on through to the next inspector. It was an electrifying event, moment to say the least.
[1916] and then Anton arrived in St. Paul, Minnesota by train, finding the weather much like Grodno’s. It had been an enduring two years for Anton, He had witnessed his father’s death a year prior (who had fallen off a roof on his farm)(born in 1874 died in 1915); now Anton had endured a trip across the Atlantic, to New York City’s Ellis Island, and a train ride all the way from New York City, to St. Paul, Minnesota. He would never, ever move again, and would never return to Russia again (but sent to his mother money occasionally, which now lived in Warsaw). Matter-of-fact, he would never leave Minnesota other than going back to Europe, to fight in WWI in 1917-1918, with the American Army. He would marry twice, divorce his first wife for being a drunk, and have nine children with his second, whom would die at the young age of thirty-three years old (the same age Christ and Alexander the Great died at). He’d live his days out in Minnesota (never driving a car, never leaving the state, never complaining about the hardships in America, he was so very proud to be an American). At the age of sixty-three-years old he’d help raise two grandchildren, Dennis and Mike, and die twenty-years later.
Note: Everything changes in time, Grodno, is now called: Hrodna, and it now resides in what is called the country of: Belarus (at one time it was a part of Poland, and at another time Independent, and another time, it belonged to Russia. It is considered a part of the Baltic, and at one time, a part of Lithuania). No: 612 “Across the Neman River” /No: 613 “The Homespun Lie” (May 1, 2010); Dedicated to the youngest Siluk, Cody Jr. (The story is about Anton Siluk) EC
“The Abandoned Barn,” written on 5-2-2010, No: 614. “-Grodno,” part of the five part story “From the Baltic” written, July, 2006 (reedited for publication, 9-2009); also “From the Baltic” and “Voyage to: Ellis Island” No: 301. “The Lithuania Connection,” was written in 2006, No. 299. “Asylum and the Voyage” No: 298, 2006. Part seven, “Unbreakable Men,” No: 297, written in 2006.
No comments:
Post a Comment