The Suitcase. Klarissa-Larissa Mayorova

The Suitcase

      Klarissa-Larissa Mayorova

      Translated from the Russian Daria Kozlova

      Beta reader Tanya Tank

      © Klarissa-Larissa Mayorova, 2020

      ISBN 978-5-0051-7076-7

      Created with Ridero smart publishing system

      Chapter 1

      1942

      Vera ran with the dog to a dug-out shelter. A dozen steps were left. A huge suitcase just slightly higher than her own weight made it impossible to move faster, but the woman grasped the handle tightly. Her strength was lacking. At last, she dragged it to the trench and dumped it in. Then she gripped on the dog’s fur and tumbled down after. The woman raised her head – a German plane circled over the village. It was like a howling death sweeping through the sky that was about to crash upon her. Blast! The second one. The third. Vera had covered her ears with the hands and, with all her might, pressed herself into the ground. She wished she could squeeze into its tiny gaps, and the earth itself shuddered and wailed helplessly. It seemed like this hell would never have an end.

      She heard a piercing cry splitting the air. It was a child’s cry. Vera stood up on the wooden debris lying around and stuck her head out of the shelter. A five-year-old girl was standing on the porch of a house.

      ‘Sit!’ Vera cried to her dog and climbed out of the pit.

      She was running as hard as she could. The plane made a circle and came back. Blast! The woman fell down.

      Amnesia

      Vera opened her eyes, and the bright sunlight dazzled her. She touched her head and felt the dried blood down her nape. She turned and looked around: pieces of rusty iron sheets, wooden boards, debris, broken glass were scattered everywhere…

      From around the corner of the half-ruined house ran the dog. The clods of dirt swayed on its white fur, and ribs protruded out of its exhausted body. It sat beside the woman and started licking her hands.

      ‘Go away!’ Vera removed her hands away in fright and struggled to her feet.

      Wagging its tail, the dog trotted around the woman, sat in front of her and started licking her face with a long rough tongue from chin to forehead.

      ‘Phooey,’ Vera spat, ‘phooey.’ The tongue got nearly into her mouth. ‘Seems like you know me,’ she thought.

      She frowned and tried to remember how she had got here. It had been to no avail. Vera leaned upon the earth, blanketed with ashes, and tried to stand up. The wave of nausea began to cramp her throat. She got up. Then gradually, the blackness blurred before her eyes, and like the theatre curtains, dispersed, opening a new scenery.

      ‘Oh, God,’ Vera’s whisper was constrained by terror. She slowly turned around.

      Debris of destroyed wooden houses surrounded her and only the chimneys of bare Russian stoves rose above the ruins here and there. The thick layer of dark-grey ashes covered it all. The wagon lay upside down. Flies were buzzing over the dead bodies with the sickening sound. The heart moaned, the breathing got faster, and suddenly she found herself shaking and her teeth chattering.

      ‘Where am I?’ Vera kept asking herself, looking all around. Her thoughts tossed in a frenzy, she clutched at her head and suddenly heard people’s voices and crying. She took off running towards the source of the noise. The dog raced off after.

      The group of people, mostly women, were hauling corpses and gathering them in the pit. On the side of the road, lay the wounded with the two old ladies fussing around them. Vera ran over there and started examining the wounds.

      ‘I need the medical instruments!’ she cried out unhesitatingly.

      ‘My child,’ the old lady shook her head, ‘What instruments? In the whole village we could barely find a shovel.’

      ‘Needles, thread, knife, scissors, bandages, rags, water, matches!’ ‘Bring all that you have!’ not listening, insisted the woman.

                                          * * *

      After she had a thread and a needle, Vera stitched the wound of a teenage girl. Led by muscle memory, her hands were working faster than she was thinking, as her thoughts merely tried to catch up with them. She had no idea why and how did she get these skills but every action performed by her hand was confident and professional. Vera deftly operated with a limited number of the simplest tools, giving the injured medical help.

      ‘That’s it, I did the best I could. They need a hospital now,’ the woman said, seating herself on the ground. She rested her hands in her lap and was gazing down, thinking.

      Then all of a sudden, she smelled the tobacco smoke. Vera raised her head and saw an old man standing smoking. ‘Curious to know if I do,’ wondered the woman. She reached her hand into the trousers pocket and groped something that shaped like the pack of cigarettes. She lighted one. The women who were conversing together in low tones stopped talking and looked with judgment at the smoking woman with an unnatural colour of blonde.

      ‘Child, you saved us again. Yesterday you saved my little grandkids from starvation having fed them. Today God has sent you again to help the wounded people.’ ‘God bless you,’ she crossed herself and motherly added, ‘You’re a good soul, but you shouldn’t smoke. By the way, where’s your suitcase?’

      It felt like a punch to the face.

      ‘Suitcase!’ cried Vera, and jumped to her feet, without even realizing that she got her memory back. ‘Rudy, follow me!’ she commanded to her dog and ran back to the place where she had awoken.

                                              * * *

      ‘Come on, where are you?!’ throwing aside the destroyed house’s rubble, Vera kept asking anxiously.

      Abruptly she stopped stiffened at a loss. Though she retrieved her memory back, some of its details erased. ‘Where had I left my suitcase? I’ve never even let it out of my hands,’ Vera was desperate to remember.

      Near the wagon bustled a hungry dog nosing and sniffing the corpses.

      ‘Phooey,’ screamed Vera shooing the dog away, ‘Come to me!’

      Wagging its tail cheerfully, Rudy came up to the woman. She patted the dog and commanded, ‘Seek!’ The hound brought her to the dug-out.

      ‘Thank God, it’s here!’ Vera felt relief. She descended into the pit and attempted to push the suitcase out. Her feet rammed down, and her arms and body pressing it to the earthen wall Vera tried to move the weight up with her knee.

      ‘Please, come on!’ her strength was ebbing fast, and the suitcase only slowly slid down. ‘Let’s put the wood boards under the feet,’ decided Vera. She poked her head out of the shelter, and an image of the girl on the porch flashed in her mind. A suffocating knot jammed right in her throat, and the gush of tears was breaking through. Vera dropped down on her knees and began to cry bitterly.

                                              * * *

      Vera slowly walked down the unpaved road, hauling the heavy suitcase that strained her arm. The dog trotted somewhere ahead. At once, they got overtaken by a wagon with the injured people.

      ‘Whoah,’ drawled the reins an old man, ‘I’d drive you, but my cart is full.’

      The woman noticed the guilty tone the old man’s voice and replied soothingly —

      ‘It’s okay. Never mind. Go. I’ll reach the station slowly. Am I on the right road to the railroad station?’

      The old man sighed. He pointed with his hand in the direction of black with the smoke western part of the horizon.

      ‘Go straight and turn left on a crossroad. Germans bombed it yesterday. Barely there’s much left of it. Chugunka’s damaged. They say the hospital train stopped there.