Authors: Slavomir Rawicz
The new arrangement was pleasant. We slept warm during the heat of the day and had the light of the moon to guide us through the cool of night.
It was in bright moonlight that hunger forced us for the first and only time to raid a village. The scattered lights of houses about a mile and a half away stopped us on the crest of a rise.
Clear to us came a single, thin squeal of a pig.
Zaro made a sucking noise through his lips. ‘My mother used to make beautiful pea soup with a pig’s tail in it.’
Kolemenos touched my shoulder. ‘Let’s go and find that pig.’
We weighed the risks. We had to eat. Smith offered the strongest opposition, then gave in. The pig-hunting party was selected – Kolemenos, with the axe, I with the knife, and the
Lithuanian Marchinkovas. The others were to skirt the village off to the right from where we stood and make for a clump of trees showing up sharp on the skyline about a mile away, there to await
us. It was understood that if they heard any commotion in the village which might indicate we were in trouble, they were to get away from the neighbourhood as quickly as possible.
The big Latvian and I set off, Marchinkovas following us a few yards behind. We made a beeline in the direction from which we thought the squeal had come and came to an orchard of young trees on
the fringe of the village. Grass grew thickly among the trees.
At the edge of the orchard we left Marchinkovas on sentry duty and started a hands-and-knees crawl towards a small, barn-like wooden building at the other end. Kolemenos whispered close to my
ear, ‘I smell pig.’ We came up off our knees in the shadow of a pile of cut logs. ‘Don’t touch them,’ urged the big man, ‘or they’ll all roll down with a
hell of a clatter.’ We looked up to the roof of the building to make sure it was not after all a human dwelling place. We were reassured. There was no chimney.
I crept forward and flattened myself against the side of the building with my ear pressed against the wood. I could hear the pig moving around in rustling straw. He had scented me, too, and was
snuffling at me inches away on the other side. Kolemenos ran from behind the wood-pile and joined me. We felt along for a door. There was none. ‘It must be around the other side,’ I
hissed at him. The other side was the side of the village and its few lighted windows.
I found the door on the other side. It opened by a simple latch and creaked and groaned for lack of oil as I sweated to inch it open. Kolemenos squeezed in after me into the blackness. I moved
over to the far side where I had heard from outside the pig moving about. By feel I discovered a small gate leading to a penned-off corner. I jumped as the pig grunted a foot away from me and
brought its snout against my leg. Kolemenos came from behind me, slipped his powerful arms gently around the animal and gave a tentative heave to test the weight. ‘Too heavy to carry,’
he said.
There was only one alternative. We had to persuade the pig to come with us. ‘Make friends with it,’ I whispered. ‘Tickle its belly. Then get behind it and be ready to give it
an occasional push.’ Kolemenos got to work and I got to work. The pig grunted with pleasure. I took it by the ear and started towards the door. Kolemenos encouraged it from behind. There were
breath-taking seconds of indecision before it moved. We went out, shutting the door after us, got into and through the orchard, crouching low and murmuring endearments to keep the animal in the
right frame of mind to stay willingly with us. A white-faced Marchinkovas met us at the top of the orchard and fell in behind us to cover our retreat.
With the luck of desperate men we made it. About a hundred yards from the rendezvous with the others, Kolemenos dispatched the pig with one swift axe blow. It died soundlessly. I felt a sharp
pang of regret. It had been a very trustful pig. We worked fast, gutting the carcase in the moonlight and crudely cutting it up into pieces that could be carried by the seven men. The others had
seen us and now came up. There were congratulations all round. It had been a nerve-racking hour or more for those who waited.
The killing had taken place only about three-quarters of a mile from the village and the signs could easily be found in the morning. There was an extreme urgency about putting as much distance
as possible behind us before daylight. We were jogging along most of the hours before the sun began vaguely to show in the east. We climbed a rock-strewn hill and when we had almost despaired of
finding a hide-out stumbled finally on a dank cave with a narrow opening well screened by dwarf trees.
As the sun came up we had a clear view across a plain to a long ridge a couple of miles away in the direction from which we had come. There were no signs of life, but we took great care not to
expose ourselves. The meat-heavy sacks were dropped well inside the cave. Anxiously we deliberated what to do with the pork. In this June warmth it would not long remain eatable and we knew it must
be cooked quickly. The solution again must be to gorge as much meat as we could while it was fresh-cooked. There was no alternative to the risk of lighting a fire.
The fire was set going with the driest wood we could find well back inside the cave. Kristina turned the long stake on which the joints of pork were spitted. The fire spluttered and hissed as
the sizzling fat dropped on the burning wood. A delicious smell of roast pork and wood smoke filled the cave. Meanwhile Zaro and Marchinkovas were away with the metal mug searching for water. They
were away for so long that we became worried. When they returned Zaro explained that they had walked about half-a-mile before they found a thin trickle of water among the rocks and then had had to
sit patiently waiting while the mug filled.
Throughout that day we cooked and ate and slept, maintaining one man on sentry duty in approximately two-hour shifts. By mid-afternoon I was in the throes of the most racking stomachache. Smith,
Paluchowicz and Makowski were also rocking in agony, holding their clasped hands across their stomachs. All of us suffered in greater or lesser degree from the effects of loading our digestions,
idle for days, on the rich fattiness of half-cooked pig-meat. Towards evening the cramping pains eased and we drove ourselves to eat more.
Someone, I have forgotten who, put up the suggestion that we should try to smoke the meat we were to carry with us so as to preserve it. Dusk was falling as we piled on the bright flames green
juniper boughs. The smoke billowed up causing an epidemic of coughing and streaming eyes. For a couple of hours we smoked the lumps of meat until it turned a patchy brown. Then we packed it in our
sacks and set off on the night march. As we left the cave I was doubled up by another spasm of pain and felt I should have to retch. The trouble persisted at intervals for many hours.
At this stage of the journey I knew we must be within a week’s travel of the border. The knowledge made us edgy, silent and exaggeratedly watchful. We spent up to an hour scouting the
position ahead before crossing a stretch of open ground or one of the many shallow streams across our route, despite the fact that the chance of discovery at night must have been remote. I had the
feeling that we were moving among hostile people and that the odds were that we must at some time run into some of them. More imminently than the frontier I feared the crossing of the
Trans-Siberian Railway. Already we were near enough to have heard in the far distance the passing of trains. Mister Smith shared my fears.
‘The railway will be heavily patrolled,’ he said anxiously.
‘We will cross at night,’ I replied.
It was difficult to sleep during the day. There was no need to post sentries. Everybody was alert. Only Kristina seemed to enjoy peace of mind. Her trust in us was absolute. She slept while we
worried and, knowing that the trail must become progressively more arduous, I was glad to see it. She was vastly entertained one early morning to see in the distance a train of camels, loaded with
cotton, moving slowly on their way less than two miles away from our hiding-place on a scrub-covered ridge. She had never seen camels before Commented Zaro, ‘From reindeer to camels –
now I have seen everything.’
From high ground we saw the Trans-Siberian Railway through the clear air of a June morning five miles distant from us. Lying near the track and separated by four or five miles were two small
villages; on the outskirts of each, hard against the side of the tracks, was a signalman’s or maintenance man’s stone house. On our side of the railway, the northern side, was a
protective belt of trees, beyond which could be seen some kind of fence, both obviously having the common purpose of preventing snow from drifting and piling up on the line. All day long we
watched. Several long trains passed in both directions. About midday a Red Cross train steamed west. An hour or so later a heavy freight train chugged from the east and we nudged each other at the
sight of the heavy guns it was carrying on low-slung bogies. Some of the others dozed off from time to time during the day but the American, like me, was too restless and nervous to rest.
The advance towards the railway was made immediately after dark, with Paluchowicz and Makowski out on each flank as a special security patrol. The girl stayed close beside Smith while Kolemenos,
Marchinkovas, Zaro and I fanned out a few yards ahead. It took us about an hour and a half to reach the screen of trees and we waited squatting on our haunches there for the two Poles on the flanks
to edge their way in to us. They had seen nothing suspicious, they reported.
‘Right,’ I said. ‘Marchinkovas will come ahead with me to the railway. The rest of you will follow on to the edge of the trees where you can see us and wait until we signal you
on.’
The fence offered no difficulties. At the foot of the embankment there was a ditch. We climbed into and out of it. We crawled slowly up on to the tracks and lay there listening. I put my ear to
the nearest metal rail. There was no sound. I stood up for a second, faced the trees and flapped my arms. I lay down again beside the Lithuanian and spent palpitating minutes awaiting the arrival
of the rest of the party. Straining my ears for any warning sounds along the line, I heard every move of the approach of the others. I thought sickeningly they were making enough noise to be heard
a mile away. It was the girl who came and crouched beside me. ‘All right?’ I whispered. ‘Yes.’ I looked round. Everybody was there. I looked across the shining steel rails
and listened for a few more seconds.
‘Come on,’ I jerked my arm, jumped to my feet and leapt forward, taking Kristina with me by the elbow. There was an agitated scramble down the embankment on the far side and then we
were running like crazy fools. We had covered about a hundred yards when someone shouted, his voice sharp with panic, ‘Down, down!’ I glanced over my shoulder and saw the lights of a
passenger train. I dropped, pulling the girl down with me. We all went down and hugged the ground as the train thundered by. It had been a near thing. If anyone on the train had seen us I am quite
sure we should have been ruthlessly hunted down.
The morning found us after hours of hard travel basking in sunshine on the secluded bank of a clear-water river. It teemed with fish, but we might as well have been onlookers at an aquarium
because we knew no way of catching them. We lay about for a while and then Smith said he thought it better if we got over the other side as soon as possible. Unlike the rivers of the Baikal Range,
the waters of this one moved slowly and were warm. The swim across was pleasantly refreshing.
The country on the south side of the river was fairly flat and gave us good cover. It was criss-crossed by shallow streams and it was at one of these a couple of mornings later that Kristina
suddenly said, ‘I would like to wash my clothes.’ We all agreed it was an excellent idea. Kristina walked away from us down the stream carrying her shoes and splashing her feet in the
water until she disappeared from sight. We stripped off and started our laundering. All of us were infested with lice and I derived a savage pleasure from holding my clothes under the rippling
stream in the hope I could reduce the army of parasites which had lived on me for all these months. We beat our clothes with stones and then trod some of the filth out of them. A couple of hours
passed while the sun dried our clothes as we washed ourselves and stretched out naked in the long grass. With a shock we heard the girl call a warning of her approach and dived for our trousers and
just managed to scramble into them as she appeared.
Kristina looked as though she had been scrubbing herself. Her face was shining. She had been doing something to her hair, too. The chestnut tints glinted in the sun. She had contrived to
persuade it into some kind of order and had carefully plaited the long ends. Keeping a straight face and holding herself erect like a dowager at a tea-party she greeted us. ‘Good afternoon,
gentlemen. Were you expecting me?’ We all laughed at that and completed our dressing. And Mister Smith went away and picked a small posy of some pink flowers and gravely handed them to her.
‘You look beautiful, my child,’ he told her. Kristina smiled radiantly. It must have been one of her happiest days.
We were very near the border when we ran into the two Buryat Mongols. There was no avoiding the meeting. We saw one another at the same moment at a distance of not more than fifty yards and
there was nothing to do but continue towards the pair. One was middle-aged, if one can judge the ages of these people, the other was definitely a young man. They could have been father and son.
They stopped and waited for us to come up to them and grinned widely and nodded their heads. They bowed together as we came to a halt.
The conversation was embroidered and ornamented with politenesses and I took the pattern from them. They spoke slowly in Russian. They inquired solicitously whether our feet carried us well in
our travels. I assured them our feet had carried us well and returned the inquiry. The older man was naively curious to know about us.
‘Where do you come from?’
‘From the North – Yakutsk.’
‘And where do you travel to?’