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C   ‒ = In August we received the order to move out of the border zone. It did not leave any room for interpretation: we were given two weeks to disappear . If we did not, we would be forcibly resettled in an unspecified distant region, which to us meant Siberia. Our building was being confiscated and would become state property. I remember overhearing Mother telling someone later that she had received a proposition from a powerful Communist official, who said that if she would meet him in the lovers’ lane (which in Gorodok was the cemetery) the order might be rescinded. The only relative to whom we could turn for help was my mother’s father , David, who with his three sons lived far away in Zaporozhie. However , Zaporozhie was a big industrial city and it was impossible for a family of an “enemy” to obtain a police permit, called a pripiska, to live there. What were we to do? Since we did not want to move far away in case Father should return and look for us, Mother began making day trips to towns just outside the fiftykilometer border zone, hoping to get a permit to move there. I learned to cook farina porridge for Vilya, who had just been weaned, and to change his diapers. He was a cuddly little fellow and not very demanding. Finally, as the day of exile approached, Mother found a small town called Derazhnya , about forty miles (sixty kilometers) east of Gorodok, where the chief of militia took pity on her and granted the pripiska. Mother sold whatever she could; some things were left with friends, and  our most valuable possessions—Father’s two cameras and the shiny, nickelplated samovar—were dispatched to Grandfather. We bundled up whatever the two of us could carry and headed for the railroad station in a hired horse wagon that belonged to some government office, whose driver was trying to make money on the side. On her previous trip, Mother had rented a room in the house of a farmer, not far from the railroad station. The house had a thatched roof and clay floors. It consisted of only one room, which was ours, and a kitchen, where the farmer with his wife and their small son lived and slept on a wide bench behind a rough wooden table. There was no electricity, and the drinking water was kept in a bucket in a small entryway. We had a bed with a strawfilled mattress and the use of a plywood wardrobe. The walls were whitewashed , and if one accidentally leaned against them, the whitewash rubbed off onto the clothing. But it was summer, and there were cherry trees outside the window and flowers along the wooden fence. There was a swinging gate and next to it a cut-out in the fence about two feet wide and a foot and a half from the ground, with a horizontal plank, so that one could step over the low part of the fence without having to open the gate. The purpose of this contraption was to keep in the cow and piglets, but to keep out strays, which roamed around feeding on whatever was available. The farmer and his wife were about Mother’s age, around thirty. As a welcoming gift, they presented us with a pitcher of cool milk and half a loaf of delicious crusty, dark, home-baked bread.They both worked in a kolkhoz, which also provided day care for their boy. I rather liked the place and in a few days made friends with a neighborhood boy named Mitia, who was my age, and with a girl named Lena, who was a few years older. They both ran around barefoot, as did our landlords and most of the farmers. Shoes were worn only when they were needed, just as one wore gloves only when they were necessary. Not to be different, I also walked barefoot, and after a couple of weeks of discomfort, the soles of my feet became tough and I did not miss the shoes, or rather the leather slippers or sandals that I usually wore in the summer. The dirt roads were covered with fine dust, which felt pleasantly silky between the toes, as did walking on the grass. The kids showed me around the yard of the kolkhoz. The cow barns and horse stables were made of adobe with thatched roofs, and were surround- ‒  .149.252.37] Project MUSE (2024-04-23 09...

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