At the Well

On Wednesday at dawn, she left her village for the neighboring one, in order to figure out when and how to escape. The village was raging with blazing fires and filled with moaning and crying sounds at two in the afternoon. German war planes appeared. Bewildered residents tossed their belongings aside and started running without even knowing where to go. She didn’t run anywhere, but instead stubbornly waited until she could return home again. There she had left behind her husband, her daughter, and three-year old grandchild. 

On Thursday morning at the crack of dawn, she took off toward home. Only yesterday she had heard a rumor that her village had been captured by Germans. All the same, she hastened home alongside familiar carriages while misfortune hurried ahead of her. She knew she no longer had a family or a home—she approached her village and no longer recognized it. Only heaps of ash remained of all the houses, and corpses were strewn everywhere. Among all the dead, a familiar beard caught her eye, as well as a flowery headscarf she had often seen. She wanted to see nothing and know nothing. She went home.

A Christian farmer stood next to a collapsed cottage. “Where are you coming from, Abramova?” he asked her. “A plague upon them, just see what they accomplished in less than a day. And now there’s no one left in the village; none of our people—or theirs.” 

She didn’t answer and continued on her way. Her lovely house with a stable and a well...