Miserere

Valery Petrochenkov, Margaret Wise Petrochenkov

Description

Miserere is an account of World War II that focuses on the fate of Aleksey, a boy from the Volga region, as he and his beloved friends try to survive World War II and beyond.
As the story begins, the Soviet government of the thirties has just confiscated most of the grain in the Volga region, leading to the death of around 1,000,000 people. When Aleksey’s father is arrested and his family is starving, the boy seeks his best friend, Kurt. Aleksey is captured and put into a camp. The Warden notices the boy’s bravery and character, so sends him to a special orphanage school. After graduation, he attends military school and becomes a spy. The fates of Kurt in Kazakhstan, of Ilse in Berlin, of his schoolmate Sasha in Finland, and of Lyubov, a beautiful visionary in Russia, are woven together into a rich tapestry.

Sujets

• World War
• Fiction

Informations

• Publié par: Xlibris US
• Date de parution: 16 septembre 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781669845737
• Langue: English

Extrait

MISERERE
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
VALERY PETROCHENKOV
Authorized Translation by Margaret Wise Petrochenkov
 
 
Copyright © 2022 by Valery Petrochenkov.
 

Library of Congress Control Number:
2022916471
ISBN:
Hardcover
978-1-6698-4575-1

Softcover
978-1-6698-4574-4

eBook
978-1-6698-4573-7
 
 
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.
 
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
 
The icon on the cover of this book represents the Theotokos (Mother of God) of the Lost, which invokes the salvation for each person who is discouraged or has a burden. The icon is poignant during the time of war since at that time so many people were lost, both physically and spiritually.
 
This icon is owned by the author and was photographed by his wife, Margaret Petrochenkov.
 
Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.
Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.
 
 
 
 
Rev. date: 09/13/2022
 
 
 
Xlibris
844-714-8691
www.Xlibris.com
843740
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
In Memory of L. N. B.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
“The century proceeds along its path of iron . . . ”
E. A. Baratynsky
CONTENTS
PART ONE
Twilight
Alyosha
Training Camp
Istomin
The Test
In the Baltics
Berlin
Ilse
Rudolph
Kurt
Stephanie
Seventh
Finn
The Priest
Old Petra
Beethoven
The Trap
Herr von Schramm
PART TWO
Notes by Lyubov Nikolaevna Tverskaya
Me
PART THREE
Blessing
PART ONE

Twilight
Alyosha
T h e boys were on their way home from a fishing trip. They sang loudly, whooped, and laughed, speaking in their own invented mix of Russian and German. At the fork in the road, they said goodbye and, as was their custom, waved at each other with their feet. Kurt headed up the road to the German settlement and Alyosha descended to his village.
He was still near the top of the hill when he noticed a gathering in the square near the tilting cupola of the recently shuttered church. As he drew closer, he saw something strange. Police surrounded the square. An official stood at the church entrance, screaming loudly, stamping his feet, and motioning broadly. The crowd stood bunched together as if tied. Alyosha couldn’t distinguish the men from the women.
Alyosha listened intently. He couldn’t hear the words since the outsider’s voice was carried away by the wind. Out of curiosity, he moved forward, but at that instant, the wind changed, and he heard a wave of groans from the crowd.
Swinging his string of fish, Alyosha ran to his house in a hurry.
At home, everything was in an uproar. His father wasn’t there; his mother ran from one corner of the house to another in a frenzy, first stopping at the cradle where his little sister slept, then running to Grandmother’s bed to whisper in her ear. When she saw him arrive, his mother didn’t praise him for the fish, as would be normal. She asked no questions, accepted his catch, threw it on the table, and passed him a crust of bread: “To the barn—quickly!”
Unnoticed from the loft of the barn, Alyosha saw his father, head lowered, walk into the yard with two policemen and one swarthy city man with a fat face, who was wearing a military-style hat. He did not close the gate. Alyosha couldn’t hear what they said, but when the stranger waved his gun in front of his father’s face and then struck him with it, Alyosha prepared to jump down and grab an axe to defend him, but he heard his mother hoarsely whisper from outside the house. “Run, son, to the Prokhorov’s! They’re taking away our grain!”
While running the back way, he heard women howling behind him in the settlement. A shot echoed as he approached the river.
At the Prokhorovs, everyone was in frantic motion. The father of the family and his two sons, all strong men, were loading bags of grain from the barn onto a cart. The women ran from the house to the stable and back with packages in their hands. The third son, the thin and energetic Pokhom, sat on the side of the cart ready for departure. His godmother noticed Alyosha. Although she said nothing, she pointed toward the kitchen.
“Before they reach us, we can hide it all in the ravine,” loudly whispered the Prokhorovs’ only daughter, Styosha.

Only in the morning when the men returned did they let Alyosha go home, accompanied by Pokhom.
It looked as if the village had been attacked by the cavalry. All the gates were open, the fences destroyed, and the road was crisscrossed with wheel ruts, in which chickens pecked attentively at the remainders of the grain, ground into the ruts.
In his yard he found his mother without a kerchief, her hair disheveled. Her eyelids were swollen from weeping and her face was covered by scratches. She could not focus on anything. He heard his baby sister crying in the house. Alyosha was exhausted after his sleepless night. He ran to his mother, embraced her, and asked about his father, nearly choking on the words. For the first time in his life, she didn’t respond, as if she had turned to stone and couldn’t hear him.
His father had been arrested the previous night. Alyosha never saw him again. From that day forward, the people in the village kept a low profile and avoided each other on the street. There weren’t many men in the settlement anymore, and those who remained, stayed hidden.
Their way of life changed dramatically. Mother tried to find out what had become of her husband. While she was gone, Alyosha took care of his little sister. His best friend Kurt had vanished. Grandmother spent most of her time in bed, unable to get up, and she refused to eat. They had less and less food. They ate all the chickens, then slaughtered the she-goat because they had nothing to feed her, and the day came when they had no flour at all. In late fall, Grandmother died. Pokhom helped them to bury her.
Hard times came for the Prokhorovs as well. The father and elder brothers had been arrested. Alyosha’s godmother lost her mind after being forced to stand outside and stick out her tongue at gun point for hours.
When the first snow came his mother lost her milk, so they tried to feed his little sister with a grass extract. Alyosha’s pants fell from his skinny body. His mother told him to go to the Werner’s, Kurt’s parents. “We have no way to feed ourselves anymore.”
Kurt’s house in the German settlement had been boarded up. According to neighbors, Richard the carpenter had moved to the city, but they didn’t know where. Alyosha was sure he could find them. There couldn’t be many craftsmen of such renown in the city.
When Alyosha got close to town, a policeman tried to capture him but he escaped. For 24 hours, he hid in an abandoned house where he nearly froze to death. On the second day, he was discovered by other boys, who also had left their villages when their families began starving. They all headed to the town in hopes of surviving the winter there. This hope was dashed. Police guarded all the roads. People were arrested and marched away. They heard that anyone who could not walk was shot. Local people wouldn’t or couldn’t help—they were all overwhelmed. Even in the city, food was hard to come by.
The boys formed gangs and chose a leader whose power was absolute. They became wild with hunger, stole whatever they could find, and sometimes attacked passers-by. They split all their gains evenly and fled from the police. The boys helped wounded brothers and remembered the fallen. They fought to the death with other gangs of homeless children but they all united when fleeing from police. After that, the gang wars recommenced. Each gang had its own territory. Crossing boundaries was punishable by death.
Alyosha forgot who he was. Once a clever boy, beloved by all, he became a merciless little beast, ready to fight at any moment with no concern for life. As time went on, he became respected among the boys and was chosen for the most dangerous tasks. He never betrayed anyone and put the past behind him. He thought with his stomach and spoke in a dirty jargon comprised of obscenities. Alyosha did not join in the conversations of talkative boys. When asked a question, he answered with few words. The past and the future no longer existed. Fill your stomach however you can. You need to stay alive for whatever comes tomorrow.
Many boys didn’t survive. They heard rumors that thousands of starving, skinny people crawled toward the city in the snow like black locusts. Soldiers collected corpses every day and dumped them into the ravine. Whether or not they believed these stories, the boys put such thoughts out of their minds and hunted for food as soon as night fell.
Boys weakened by starvation were more often caught toward spring. They were beaten mercilessly, sometimes to death. The runaways told stories about colo