The Arrest — Chapter from the Novel "Stone" by Volodymyr Shablia
The Arrest
Stone — Book One: First Steps Toward the Light and Back — Chapter 6
by Volodymyr Shablia
August 1941. The
village of Tomakivka.
Late on an
August evening, an anxious, restless mood hung over the Shablia household: his
parents were preparing Peter for his journey.
“Your work
assignment?” his father asked for what seemed like the hundredth time, briskly
checking everything. “Your passport? Money? Your military registration
certificate? It’s wartime now—they could mobilize you at any moment. You need
to have all your documents with you.”
 |
| Peter's work assignment. |
Peter checked his papers once again. Everything was in order.
Meanwhile,
his mother brought a bundle from the pantry.
“Take some
more pork fat, just in case. It may come in handy.” The woman looked at her son
with a mixture of love, pity, and a strange sense of resignation.
She held
out the food wrapped in parchment paper, but could not hold back her tears.
Then, realizing that her tears were out of place, she became embarrassed and
forced herself to smile, hurriedly wiping her face with the back of her hand.
Peter went
over to his mother, gently drew her toward him, and kissed her, helping her
wipe her cheeks.
“Everything’s
all right, Mama. Everything will be fine,” he reassured her tenderly. “I’m
going away to work. I’ll be teaching. It’s not far, and I’ll come home from
time to time.”
His
destination was the Kamyanske-Dniprovske District of Zaporizhzhia Oblast, not
all that far away. Had the journey taken place in peaceful, tranquil times, it
would have brought nothing but joy. But there was a war on, and it was already
drawing dangerously close. The future had therefore become uncertain. And it
was precisely this uncertainty that brought a painful anxiety into the thoughts
and feelings of every member of the family.
As he
caressed and stroked his mother, Peter himself became filled with pity—for her,
for his father, for their shared fate, which for some reason seemed so
hopelessly wayward. His mother’s tears had stirred something deep within him; a
lump rose in his throat. To keep himself from crying, he gently drew away from
her and smiled.
“I’ll go
have a smoke,” the young man said quickly, struggling to contain his emotions.
He took a pack of cigarettes and went outside.
A few steps
into the darkness, and the young man stopped to listen.
The gaping,
enveloping silence of the night settled upon his shoulders, wrapped itself
around his body, and seeped into his very soul. Afraid to disturb that majestic
stillness, he carefully sat down on the porch, drew a deep breath of fresh air
that had cooled after the heat of the day, and raised his eyes to the sky.
Bright
stars shone solemnly overhead. Among the thousands of distant worlds, the Big
Dipper stood out in particular for its beauty and mystery. His thoughts swiftly
slipped away into that unknown, mysterious, infinite distance and became lost
there.
“Eternity…”
Peter murmured barely audibly. “The universe has always existed and always
will, regardless of our existence.”
Suddenly,
somewhere in a neighboring yard, a dog began barking. From the other end of the
street, another answered with a long, mournful howl, then a third. A lively
breeze rustled through the treetops. Responding to its urging, a ripe, plump
apple broke free from a branch, struck the ground with a dull thud, rolled a
little, and came to rest at Peter’s feet.
Very close
by, in the grass, crickets played their monotonous violin refrain, while in the
ash pit a piglet snuffled and stirred. As though at the signal of an invisible
conductor, the orchestra of living creatures burst into its familiar, chaotic
cacophony of existence—so sharply at odds with eternity.
“Why does
any of this exist? Dogs, trees, crickets, pigs, people? What is the meaning of
all this bustle if there is such a majestic eternity?” Peter asked himself the
question once again, but found no answer. “It must be so. It must be necessary
to the Creator of eternity. This bustle is an inseparable part of eternity,” he
concluded.
The fallen
rosy apple lay ingratiatingly close to the toe of his shoe. The young man picked
it up, hastily wiped it with his palm, and fiercely bit into its fragrant
flesh, at once sweet and tart.
Having
tasted the fruit of the earth, he plunged once again into the bustle of
existence and turned his thoughts back to his own concerns, hopes, and
plans—which, all of a sudden, had begun collapsing one after another beneath
the blows of fate.
“Well then,
the next stop is Pervomaiska Secondary School in the Kamyanske-Dniprovske
District. I’ll work there as a teacher. Given the circumstances, that’s not
such a bad option. And after that—whatever God wills,” Peter thought.
Then he lit
a cigarette and went over tomorrow’s plan of action in his mind.
Clouds of
tobacco smoke, like gray, languidly spectral bats, appeared and dissolved
before his eyes, echoing the equally gray and indistinct thoughts he had about
the future.
When he had
finished his cigarette, the young man rose resolutely, went back inside, and
packed the bundle his mother had prepared into his suitcase. Then he tucked his
documents and money into his pockets.
“It’s time
to go to bed,” the young man said to his bewildered parents, who were still
sitting at the table. “We have to get up early tomorrow.”
He went
over to his mother and father, embraced and kissed them both, then took off his
shirt and trousers.
“Go to bed.
I’ll just run outside once more,” Peter said encouragingly, and went out.
He walked
confidently along the barely visible path to the outhouse, a path he knew down
to the very last stone.
His anxious
thoughts never left him for a moment, stirring his soul with the sickly, aching
aftertaste of the unknown.
Peter
opened the door of the old, crooked wooden outhouse with a familiar motion.
At that
very instant, two men in uniform who seemed to have materialized out of nowhere
lunged at him, each seizing one of his arms and trying to wrench it behind his
back. At the same moment, a third man burst out of the outhouse and pressed a
pistol against Peter’s chest.
“Hands up!”
a fourth man standing a little farther away shouted furiously, his rifle at the
ready.
No matter
how much Peter wanted to comply, he could not obey the command: two burly men
were hanging onto his arms, trying to twist them behind his back.
Meanwhile,
a fifth NKVD officer rushed up from behind and knocked the unfortunate young
man off his feet with a series of sharp leg sweeps.
Peter
crashed face-first into the ground.
Together,
the officers managed to wrench his arms behind his back and fasten handcuffs
around his wrists.
“Get up!”
ordered the lieutenant of state security, the commander of the arrest team.
“Search him!” he continued once Peter had risen.
While four
NKVD men stood in a semicircle, keeping the prisoner covered with their
weapons, the fifth searched him, roughly rummaging through the poor man’s
underwear.
“Nothing!”
he reported to his superior when he had finished.
The
lieutenant breathed a sigh of relief.
“Citizen
Shablia, Peter Danylovych?” he asked, finally turning to the formalities.
“Yes,” the
exhausted prisoner rasped.
“You are
under arrest on suspicion of counterrevolutionary activity and espionage with
the aim of overthrowing the socialist system,” the representative of the
authorities recited the standard formula, worn smooth by repeated use. “Here
are the warrants for your arrest and the search. Come into the house. We need
to carry out investigative procedures.”
At that
very moment, the parents came running out in response to the shouting.
Terrified and stunned, they stood quietly a short distance away, dressed only
in their underwear.
“You are the
parents of the arrested man?” the lieutenant asked Danylo and Mariia. “Show us
your son’s belongings,” he demanded without waiting for an answer.
Then he
opened the door first and, waving his pistol, forced everyone inside.
His parents
obeyed.
The search
resulted in the seizure of the following: passport No. ШЗ-194301; diploma from
the pedagogical institute; work assignment dated 6/VIII-41, No. 02; referral
for employment; student identification card; seven letters.
The report
was drawn up swiftly. After it had been signed by the arresting officers and
witnesses, Peter was shoved into the black van.
“You can
inquire about the detainee’s fate at the Zaporizhzhia NKVD Directorate,” the
lieutenant of state security told the grief-stricken parents as he climbed into
the van.
The engine
roared viciously, and the ugly “Black Raven,” a vehicle that struck terror into
the entire population of the USSR, carried Peter away from his native nest for
seven long years.
Continue Exploring Stone:
Explore the novel, quotations, and the author's biography on Goodreads
Stone by Volodymyr Shablia on Facebook
Read or download the complete books in Ukrainian:
Stone — Book Two: Difficult Roads to Hell
Comments
Post a Comment