Salty Water

by Emil Draitser

Table of Contents parts: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

part 1

When the war with Germany broke out, Stalin took special care of Soviet Jews. Swiftly and safely, he delivered them from the advancing Nazi troops to the faraway cities of Central Asia. — an American myth

The women’s screaming — piercing, as if they were in labor — swept over the whole small settlement of Shurab, a kishlak, nestled on the slopes of the Turkestani ridge.

“The children! Where are the children? The kids have disappeared!”

The women had just come from their shifts, some from the local mine where they wielded hacks, scraping out brown coal, some from the factory where they cast huge, oversized galoshes for Red Army soldiers’ felt boots. Having barely shaken off the mud from their rubber boots at the entrance of the barracks — it was the season of spring downpours — the women were ready to embrace their children but couldn’t find them anywhere, no matter where they looked.

This was too much. They had protected their children throughout the entire war. They’d rescued them first from German bombs, then, from famine and illness here, in Northern Tajikistan only to lose them now, in a single day?

Just yesterday, early in the morning, the radio had announced at last what they had been waiting for so long, with great patience and great hope: “Attention! This is Radio Moscow! All radio stations of the Soviet Union are at work,” resounded the familiar voice of the famous news anchor, Yuri Levitan. His tone was solemn and majestic, with terrible, chilling pauses.

“Don’t keep us hanging!” they felt like shouting to Levitan through the black plate of the loudspeaker hanging at the entrance to their barracks. “Hurry!”

“Today... in Berlin” — Levitan took his time — “representatives of the German command... have signed the act of... Germany’s unconditional surrender!”

Everyone in the settlement went mad with happiness. Hugged each other. Kissed. What great news! Finally! They’d been waiting for it for three whole years, ten months, and thirteen days. Victory! The damned war had finally ended! Ended! From their barracks compartments, they moved their little tables into the corridor, lined them up, and put on them whatever they had been saving for a special occasion, and threw a lavish refugees’ feast.

They guzzled everything they could get their hands on, be it the aftershave cologne “Shipr,” denatured alcohol used to kindle their kerosene stoves, or purified brake liquid. They sang as many songs as they remembered from the old days, one after another, jumping from the verse of one to the couplet of another:

There are many cities in the world,
And every one of them is known, at least for something.
But, believe me, you can’t find anywhere
One like my beautiful Odessa.
Ah, Odessa, a pearl of the sea!
Ah, Odessa, you’ve known so much grief!

The choice of songs wasn’t haphazard. Most refugees in Shurab were evacuees from the famous Black Sea city. And the first idea to seize every one of them when the news broke about the victory was the same: let’s go home! Back to our Odessa!

Here, in the mountains, they had stumbled upon limestone. This meant that once, perhaps, back in some Mesozoic era, there had been a sea here too. The name of the kishlak — Shurab, in Tadjik — means “Salty Water.”

But how could they even think of pronouncing the words “Shurab” and “Odessa” in the same breath! Far away, beyond the mountain ridges, beyond the inland seas, the deserts, and the rivers, there was their hometown, warm, its arms open to embrace the sea.

“Home!” the call resounded among the refugees. “Back home, to our native ruins!” They knew the Germans had bombed Odessa on the first days of the invasion. They knew that all that awaited them back in Odessa was the wreckage of their dwellings. But what of it? They would be home! Home, where the air would not be strange; they hadn’t been able to get used to the air in Shurab for three and a half years. In the summer, it was full of smoke from bonfires of clay and straw; in the winter, fresh snow poured down from the mountaintops, and then it was damp.

Back in Odessa, it was humid, smelling of the sea, saturated with iodine of seaweed, and tinged with the bitter smell of wormwood, which overgrew the coastal cliffs. They recalled their homes as if they were fairy-tale castles, not ordinary Odessan multiple-dwelling houses, with grapevines spreading over the walls, and long wooden balconies facing the courtyards.

With these images warming their thoughts, the women had returned from their shifts in the mine and the factory back to the barracks, still intoxicated with the greatest of all news. Victory! Even the pale faces of the German POWs who worked next to them had stretched out in the semblance of a smile. Perhaps they too had dreamed about their homes again.

And that was when they discovered the children had vanished.

As it always happens when misfortune strikes, they exaggerated the calamity. Not all the children had disappeared from the barracks, but only five, all boys, ages six to eight. Just yesterday, they had been running around the barracks with the other kids. They, too, shouted at the top of their lungs out of joy, echoing the adults. They hopped onto the plank beds and jumped up on them, something that their moms had always forbidden. But how was it possible not to jump up and down from the happiness that overtook every living soul in the kishlak! Even dogs, encouraged by the strange racket going on around them, lost their heads and howled.

Only that morning, as usual, the mothers had left them to play at the barracks, having fed them with sandwiches and tea before going to work. And now the boys were gone.

The women ran all around the settlement. They peered into every nook of its little alleys. They ransacked the whole town of Shurab. Then they scrambled out to the hill on its outskirts. Maybe, as it had happened in the past, the boys had wandered there, along the railroad branch line, picking up bits of coal shaken off the moving flatcars?

But not one of the five missing boys was to be found anywhere. Where could they have disappeared? The settlement was small... Maybe, God forbid, a snake had bitten them? Or a scorpion? But that made no sense; it wouldn’t attack all five of them at once...

Then a terrible thought flashed through the women’s frantic minds: They’ve been kidnapped! About a year ago, some strangers from the mountains had tried to steal one boy and had been repulsed only with great difficulty.

Then the evening began leaning on the settlement. From the side of the mountain ridge, the fragrant smell of wild grasses, quickly sprouting in spring, reached the settlers. But the boys were still missing. An enormous cloud condensed over the nearest mountaintop. It was the time of spring cyclones. If the boys were caught by one of them somewhere out in the open, far from shelter, they could be in serious trouble.

The mothers threw themselves upon the director of the mine. They shook his wooden hut of an office in their rage, threatening to take it apart. The man picked up the phone and contacted the army general, the director of the galosh factory.

Meanwhile, the boys were floating between heaven and earth, their hearts aching with longing: they soon would see their fathers. Now that the war was over, the fathers would return from that damned Germany and take them back home. But Germany was somewhere far, far away, beyond the mountaintops. When they had asked where their daddies were fighting, their mamas always pointed toward the setting sun falling below the horizon. Over there!

Over there was so far away. Their fathers would have to tramp for many kilometers to get to them. It would be good to meet them halfway. Therefore, the boys conspired to lunge forward from the settlement to get to their fathers at the first opportunity.

But how? The oldest of them, eight-year old Fima Ingerman, came up with an idea of how to make it happen. The day before, a caravan of nine camels had pulled into the kishlak and stopped for the night at the local teahouse, chaikhana. On the square in front of the teahouse, tucking their long legs under themselves, the camels had sunk onto the ground, one by one. They shook their heads, and their giant lips, moving from side to side, produced strange guttural growls.

Early in the morning, as soon as their mamas left for work, the boys seized the moment and ran to the courtyard. Inside the teahouse, their wadded dressing gowns unbuttoned on their chests, the camel drivers had their breakfast: they bit into pieces of sausage with their big sharp teeth, chewed for a long time, and washed it all down with green tea, sipping it from small decorated bowls. The fugitives crawled up to the camels and climbed into the capacious saddlebags called khurdzhums, choosing those that had pita bread and flasks of water, something to fortify them during the journey.

It’s springtime. The weather in the mountains changes frequently. Now the sun scorches as if it’s summer already. Now bitter southern winds gush in. Now the rain is pouring down in torrents.

The caravan moves along the canyon. Hidden in the saddlebags, not to give themselves away, the boys are afraid to move, even to breathe. It shouldn’t be long now. As soon as the caravan crosses over the mountain ridge on the horizon, they will reunite with their fathers...

In an hour, the camels have slowed down, the caravan begins ascending to the mountain pass, the chilly wind gives a sharp gust. The snowcaps on the peaks have started melting already. The ringleader Fima cuddles up to the camel’s warm side. He thinks about one thing only: how he will meet his father. What will he tell him about first, and what will he save for later on?

He is drowsy. All night before the escape, he slept poorly, excited by anticipating the forthcoming meeting. So many thoughts had collected in his head that they got entangled. The main thing that he’ll tell his father was that he has carried out his order.

When they had parted, his father lifted Fima, held him out at arm’s length, and said to him, “Well, sonny, you behave yourself! Don’t let me down! Be a man!” Then he put him back on the floor of their apartment and left, never looking back. The neighbors whispered among themselves, “Here’s how bad things are nowadays! Now they’re dragging even the feebleminded to the front!”

Thinking back on it, Fima was surprised: what were they talking about? Yes, before the war broke out, there was trouble: his father, working as a joiner on a construction site, had fallen by accident from the second-floor rafters. He’d stayed in the hospital for a long time. When the war had broken out, Mama kept telling everyone that they wouldn’t draft him into the army because he had a brain concussion. But from the day he returned from the hospital, he had been no different at all, except that he spoke little, saying only “yes” or “no,” only that.

Father always came home from work with a smile, even though he was tired. Without words, he offered to Mama a little bouquet of chamomiles, which he picked along the road on his way home. Her eyes would brighten; she’d blush with pleasure, and begin bustling about, running in and out of the corridor where their old smoking kerosene stove stood, to set the table. They were a happy family.

Fima sees what will happen when he meets his father. Catching sight of him from afar, Fima will make a running start towards him, and his father will catch him on the run, and throw him up in the air, and, as on high swings, Fima’s breath will cut off. Then they will sit down in some place, and Fima will tell him about everything in sequence, everything that happened to him while his father was at war; he won’t hide anything. He’ll need many days. Well, that’s all right. Now they will take as much time as their hearts desire. The war ended with our victory. Of course! How else could it have turned out!

The camel moves along at a measured pace. No matter how Fima tries to stay awake, his eyes close by themselves, and he dreams his recurring boyish dreams in which you don’t walk, but push yourself up off the ground and fly as far and as long as you wish.

First, he plans to tell his father how he and Mama traveled from Odessa to Shurab. Many things that happened to them on the road are worth telling about. True, sometimes it was scary for him. Perhaps he won’t tell Dad about that — his father may shame him for it. What kinda man was he if he got scared?

Fima recalled how, in a movie, the characters sang the famous song:

You’re an Odessa boy, Mishka, and that means
That neither misfortune nor grief frightens you.
You’re a seaman, Mishka! A seaman doesn’t cry
Or ever lose heart.

He will grow up and become a seaman too, just like that Odessan Mishka in the song. Long ago, he had decided to develop courage in himself. Yes, it was scary many times, he admits to himself, but it was interesting all the same!

In his mind, Fima scrolls through everything he intends to tell about his father. He sees it in front of his eyes as clearly as if it’s a movie on the linen sheet tacked up on the barracks wall. Once a month, on summer evenings, a traveling projectionist had come to Shurab, and those days were holidays...

He screened the films about the war: Wait for Me; The Hearts of the Four; The Sky’s Slow Rover. He screened Two Soldiers also, a movie about two Odessans, more than once: there were many Odessans in Shurab. Fima never longed for his father more than when he heard the song Mark Bernes sang in that film: “Dark is the night. Only bullets are whistling in the steppe. Only the wind is humming in the wires, and the stars flicker...”

This song excited him especially, perhaps, because he remembered a night in the steppes in his own life. A few days after his father had left for the front, he and Mama hurried along a steppe road for days and nights in a crowd of other people. He didn’t know where they were heading. “Let’s go to Lustdorf,” someone in the crowd said.

“Lustdorf is nothing,” another replied. “Too close. We must make it to Kherson, at the very least.”

“The Germans will get to Kherson in a flash,” said an old man with a long beard and a knapsack on his back. “We have to head for the Crimea. They won’t get there any time soon.”

Of all these places, Fima knew of Lustdorf only. It was the name of the beach where, on summer Sundays before the war, he and his parents used to go to ride a streetcar. The ride was long, but it was always worth it. There was a lot of fine sand on that beach, and there wasn’t a single stone to stumble over, which made it so much more fun than the city beach in Arcadia. If he dug in the sand long enough, Fima could make a pit, in which he could lie down, and cover himself with sand. Only his head and hands stuck out; many people stopped and marveled at his achievement.

They walked over and walked over the endless steppes. Mama held a pillow and a frying pan under her arm. The stuff didn’t fit into their suitcase, which she dragged in her other hand. Fima trotted next to her with sandals on his bare feet. By the end of the day, the little buckle on one of them was torn off, and, time and again, the sandal kept coming off. Mama wore her best dress, which she saved to go with his father to the theater. She sighed, “You give me such grief!” and tore away a bluish scrap from the hem of her dress to tie his sandal up.

Their first day on the road, huge planes with black-and-white crosses on their wings swept low over them, humming. Each time they appeared, someone would cry out, “Hit the ground!” And all dropped face down wherever they were.

Then, one day, the planes stopped flying. A cloud of dust hung over the road, clogging everyone’s throat. The sun beat down right on the back of Fima’s head. He could hardly endure the heat and hunched his shoulders because the sweat streamed down under the collar of his shirt, stinging the skin on his back. The collar soon stiffened and began chafing his neck. Mama stopped again, ripped off a sleeve of her dress, made a kerchief out of it, and tied it around his head. He whined and tried to yank the bandana off his head: what was he, a girl? But Mama made him keep it on, and it helped a little.

Proceed to part 2

Copyright © 2022 by Emil Draitser
The work is translated from the Russian by the author.