Signs of calamity
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Signs of Doom ( Belarusian Знак бяды, Russian Знак беды ) is a novel by the Belarusian writer Wassil Bykau , which was written in 1982 and translated into Russian by the author in 1984 . The text was printed in 1985 in issue 2 of the Roman newspaper, which appears twice a month in Moscow .
In 1986 Wassil Bykau received the Lenin Prize for his novel on the war of annihilation against the Soviet Union . In the same year Belarusfilm released the feature film of the same name by Michail Ptaschuk with Nina Ruslanowa as Szepanida and Gennadi Garbuk as Pjatrok.
content
- prehistory
The unmarried Szepanida had hired herself as a maid from the wealthy farmer Adolf Jachimouski away from the town of Slabadskija Wysselki in the Orscha region before the revolution and worked for six years on the Jachimouski farm. A marriage between Szepanidas and the skilful Karnila, a lazy craftsman from Wysselki, had come to nothing. The young girl had married Pyatrok Bahazka. Jachimouski had taken Pyatrok as a servant. The couple was allowed to move into the storage hut next to the Jachimouski farm. Later during the dekulakization had farmers Jachimouski, an ancient gentry family entstammend hanged. The two Bahazkas had moved into the farmhouse and had the Soviet power two desiatins get land. The barren, in places marshy soil, mostly consisting of sand and clay, produced little. When the first kolkhoz was founded in Vyselki, Szepanida had finally refused to resist and followed the call of Vyselky communist Nowik Nedesseka, who had meanwhile become a teacher in Vitebsk and then a nachalnik . The Wysselkier Iwan Hushou, on the other hand, called Hush, had spoken out against forced collectivization and had escaped deportation as a kulak by fleeing. Szepanida, although initially against collectivization, had advocated the chairman of the village Soviet Lyavon , who in her opinion was treated unfairly by the NKVD .
- action
Fifty-year-old Szepanida longs for the two children she and Pjatrok have together. The daughter Fenka is studying in Minsk . The son Fedka had served in the armored forces in Latvia before the war . Contact with the children had been lost during the war. The 60-year-old Pyatrok Bahazka actually loves his peace and quiet. This is seriously disturbed when a German construction team repairs the nearby bombed bridge over the marshy river Dzerevyanka and quartered in the homestead. Pjatrok makes a good face when the soldiers move in with the German-speaking Wysselkier teacher Świętkowski. Szepanida fears for her cow, the piglet and the chickens. It is too late to hide the animals. The couple must vacate the house for the officer of the construction crew and live in the storage hut again. The German soldiers pitch a tent in the yard and spend the night there.
When Szepanida doesn't want to milk her cow for the Germans, the sergeant beats her with the long chain on his pistol holster. The soldiers shake all the Antonovka apples - including the half-ripe ones - from the tree, shoot two of the nine chickens and trample the beds with the onions, carrots, beetroot and pickled cucumbers that have not yet been harvested. Szepanida grazes her cow and milks her on the grass. When the cow is not giving any milk a little later, the sergeant shoots the animal. It is slaughtered by the soldiers, cooked in the goulash cannon and consumed. Szepanida hides her piglets in an abandoned badger den in the nearby ravine . The deaf and mute shepherd boy Janka helps her. The following night Szepanida throws the easily accessible rifle of the German cook into the well. The Germans search house and farm in vain. The adolescent Janka is suspected of being a culprit and shot. Hush, who reappeared with the Germans in Wysselki and has long been in power as a policeman in Wysselki , is correct in his assumption: Szepanida, who he insulted as the activist , must have put the rifle aside. In a conflict of competence between the local police and the armed forces - the Bahazkas are supposed to carry out urgent work for both parties at the same time - Hush from the sergeant major slaps two ears in front of the Bahazka couple. Pyatrok gets a painful boot kick in the buttocks from the sergeant: Get to work!
Pyatrok secretly makes brandy for Hush. In the end, he does not succeed in pandering to the policeman with such favors. Hush cannot forgive Pyatrok's wife, the “Bolshevik activist” and her “Kolkhozniks, that shit pack” for letting his father perish on the Solovki Islands . When the Germans evacuated the Jachimouski court, he beats and arrests Pyatrok. Szepanida wants to get to her husband in Wysselki. She doesn't succeed. Świętkowski, who passes the police station, does not tell you the reason for arrest.
Szepanida seeks revenge. Hardly anything remains hidden in Wysselki. Szepanida knows about a dud next to the bridge that Karnila fetched and kept hidden in his property. She trades the bomb for her piglet. As I said, there is no real secret in Wysselki. After the swap, Karnila is arrested by Hush. The prisoner reveals the exchange, but keeps the exact location of the bomb to himself. Hush and Świętkowski approach the Jachimouski yard. Szepanida barricades himself and sets the old farmhouse on fire in a hopeless situation; burns himself with him. Her last thought before her clothes catch fire: I did not succeed in blowing up the hated bridge, but the police have to fear the bomb from now on.
Wysselki
Unlike Vasil Bykaus earlier prose, almost always scattered in so previously by the German advance encircled Red Army soldiers , in a partisan eneinheit regrouped, against the occupiers fight, the repression of the novel Belarusian civilians subject. Szepanida has never been beaten in his life, neither by his father nor by anyone. And the farmer's wife has to watch helplessly as her manageable property is trampled underfoot. In moments of greatest humiliation, Wassil Bykau shares the thoughts of the tortured: Szepanida's son, the tank soldier Fedka will come and punish the Soldateska . But doubts are always mixed in Szepanida's hope. Is the son still alive? Or is it already underground? The insecurity of the tortured couple dominates the text. The residents of Wysselki are portrayed as playing balls of the difficult times. Besides Szepanida, Karnila appears as a decent resident. For example, Nowik Nedesseka's brother Antos, a family man, wears the white armband of the local police who collaborate with the Germans. Antos suffers from being a member of the police, is entertained at the Jachimouski farm in Szepanida and then turns her away when she tries to get to her arrested husband in an emergency. In this sense, Wassil Bykau's novel is not a black and white painting. Rather, the behavior of the Wysselkier civilians in times of war is depicted in many layers.
German-language editions
- Wassil Bykau: sign of calamity. Novel. German by Thomas Reschke . Belarusian consultation: Sonja Heyl . Publishing house Volk und Welt. Berlin 1984 (1st edition, edition used)
Web links
- Full text
- Entry at fantlab.ru (Russian)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Russian: Роман-газета
- ↑ See also Operation Barbarossa # Planning as a War of Annihilation
- ↑ Russian: Беларусьфильм
- ↑ Russian: Михаил Николаевич Пташук (1943–2002)
- ↑ Russian: Нина Ивановна Русланова (born 1945)
- ↑ Russian: Геннадий Михайлович Гарбук (1934-2018)
- ↑ English: Entry in the IMDb
- ↑ Russian Выселки
- ↑ here: meant as a Soviet counterpart to the East German activist movement that followed years later