Free Wave of Terror by Theodore Odrach Page A

be heard calling from the other side. The voice called again, and it soon became evident it was Grandfather Cemen.
    “Paraska! Paraska!” he shouted. “Go home, Philip needs you!”
    Jumping to her feet, already halfway out the door, she turned to look at Kulik, and cried desperately, “Please, Director, I beg you, don’t dismiss me from the school. I don’t know what would become of my children. I’m all they’ve got!”

CHAPTER 5
    T hat night Kulik tossed and turned into the early morning hours and did not get a moment’s rest. When six o’clock finally struck he rolled out of bed, went to the washbasin and splattered his face with water. Immediately he felt revived. He puttered around the kitchen, put on the kettle, and sat down to a breakfast of buttered black bread and boiled eggs. To his great relief today was a special day; he did not have to hurry to his office and he was able to enjoy a second cup of coffee. Yesterday the children had been dismissed for the winter holidays and he did not have to prepare lessons and organize the day’s activities. This break in the monotony of school life was a most welcome change.
    At a quarter past nine he began unpacking his trunk and suitcases and organizing his rooms, something he had not yet found time to do since arriving in Hlaby. In the evening Paraska appeared, refilled the tile stove in the kitchen and prepared him a meal of unground buckwheat with small chunks of stewed beef. The windows were heavily covered with frost and a north wind rushing in from over the frozen fields made the panes rattle. Outside, the land was cold and desolate. The sub-zero temperature cut straight to the bone and the slightest breath froze in the air. The residents of Hlaby could not remember such a brutal winter. But in his quarters Kulik felt warm and snug, as if he were in a cocoon; his thoughts drifted. Suddenly he was startled by a loud, shrill bird-like cry coming from somewhere outside. After a few minutes it came again. Where had he heard that sound before? Then silence. He waited for the cry to start up once more but it never did and he decided that it was just the wind.
    He began to think about Pinsk. In two days’ time he would be attending a regional teachers’ conference there, along with teachers from the surrounding towns and villages. The aim of the conference was to initiate a political re-education of all those in the profession. Although he was not particularly keen on making the trip or of spending countless hours in some lecture hall listening to long, drawn-out speeches, he was interested in change and change was something Pinsk had to offer.
    He tried to focus on something more pleasant, more inspiring, and almost at once he thought of Marusia, Sergei’s cousin. Was she really as beautiful as Sergei had said? He had described her as fair-haired and lovely, with soft green eyes and a full mouth. She was well-educated, almost always good-humored, and gracious. But Sergei had gone on to say she could be arrogant and obstinate and ready to flaunt her newly acquired Russified ways. In fact, she was typical of the residents of the small provincial town where she lived, looking upon peasants with utter disdain and poking fun at old men in bast shoes. Kulik felt he understood her only too well. To scorn your own kind and embrace foreign attitudes was definitely a sign of the times, and Marusia was apparently caught up in it.
    Kulik was beginning to feel hostile to her and to all those like her. Not too long ago, under Polish occupation, the people of Pinsk had embraced the Polish language and customs. They spoke Polish in schools, in towns and villages, even in the churches. And now with the coming of the Bolsheviks, they strove to speak only in Russian. They had changed almost overnight, from one to the other, having long ago forgotten their own way of life.
    These thoughts streamed through Kulik’s mind and jangled his nerves. He tried to focus on something else,