The Joys of Childhood?

Ah, childhood, that carefree period remembered through the golden filter of old-age.  But in reality what we so blissfully recall probably was not all that carefree.  To various degrees, all of us went through some form of juvenile trauma, be it the fanciful boogeyman in our closet to the all too real school shooting.

Students evacuating their school

Real Life Trauma

I interjected this phase of childhood into my third novel, Banners: Our Children, Our Future with several examples.  I don't know if children a century ago were hardened against what we would consider life altering occurrences, or they just appear that way in faded back-and-white photos.  Judging from the scene shown below, youngsters were often not shielded from the horrors of the day.  In Banners, my young protagonists witnessed a such a hanging.

Bolsheviks executed by White forces

Inspired by this photo, my young characters reacted to the execution with youthful bravado. Anyone familiar with boys knows they would rather eat glass than loose face with their buddies. Maxsim, the oldest village boy and the leader of the Brati, would never allow himself to appear weak in front of his gang.  In this excerpt from Chapter Nine, Maxsim embellishes his tentative experience with death to impress his charges.

* * *

“You didn't really see a guy get killed―did you?” Stepha asked, his eyes widening.

“Yes, I did. I saw it at the cinema,” Maksim told him. “In Chelyabinsk. He got shot by a firing squad.” Maksim had assembled his subjects behind a collapsed izbah and conducted their emotions like an orchestra. Looking from right to left, he lowered his voice to almost a whisper. “The soldiers came and put this guy against a wall,” he said and mimicked bringing up a rifle up to eye. When the boys leaned closer, he shouted. “Then, POW. The smoke came from the guns and he flew backwards and his cap fell off and everything.” Maksim snapped his fingers, “Just like that, he was dead.”

* * *

During the hanging, the boys jostled for favorable positions, both to witness the event and to pose afterward for the war correspondents.

* * *

“Come on. They're taking fotografia.” Maksim grabbed Stepha's arm and together they ran toward the gallows."

* * *

I didn't have the boys suffer any effects from trauma.  The closest they came to reliving the hanging was a superstition concerning walking past the gallows' site. 

 * * *

When their path led past the gallows, Vanya hesitated. “I don't want to go there.”

“It'll be alright,” Stepha assured him. "All you have to do is hold your hand over your mouth and nose and hold your breath. Then the spirits can't enter your body.”

 * * *

Nightmares Real and Imagined

Perhaps those children from a century ago appear callous because they were subjected to a daily string of terrors, both real and imagined. Many endured lives full of sadistic school masters, drunken parents, mean-spirited relatives, brimstone hurling preachers and a string of bullies like Stepha's Kolya.

Just one of Stepha's childhood memories

As if these fears were not enough, children were subjected to imaginary terrors that caused them to  hide.in terror  In addition to the river-dwelling rusalka, child-devouring baba-yaga, ghouls beneath the privy, and legions of night demons; youngsters were bombarded with endless dire warnings from each other.  Older children cautioned their smaller siblings to hold their breath while walking past a graveyard, not to step on a crack and to beware of even the most benign creatures.

Beware the graveyard ghosts

In Chapter Thirteen of Slogans, Stepha comes face to face with one of these creatures, the flying darning needle.  While a dragonfly may not elicit terror in an adult, it can in a child. I placed Stepha in this situation to illustrate his courage to overcome fear, yet remain cautious.

Dragonfly

* * *

The story of flying darning needles stitching children's lips together might be just another of Teta Kataya's scary myths but Stepha wasn't taking the chance. Even after he passed through Old Rosina's tusked archway and was sure the stryadrakon was gone, he waited before taking his hand away from his mouth.

* * *

Including childhood terrors in an historical novel broadens the culture of the period and also provides an avenue to expand your characters.  Plus, it's fun to recall old childhood fears and discover new ones from the safety of old age.

Rusalka

I like to weave Russian folklore, myths and legends into my novels; be they the baba yagi of the Belarus swamps, Mayor Voloctic's house spirits, or Akulina's tale of the Uglish bell.  During a Russian class at the University of Dayton, our professor expanded our appreciation for the Slavic culture by introducing us to the rusalka, a myth with which I was not familiar. 

Professor Tatiana Liaugmias

Doctor Liaugmias' described the rusalka as the slimy ghost of drowned young women who tickled boys to death.  Yes, tickled.  She presented the story in such a dramatic fashion, I knew I had to include the rusalka in my novel Slogans: Our Children Our Future. I chose to write the scene from the viewpoint of three village lads.  No one believes more in belligerent spirits and enjoys telling scary stories than that age group.  Also, the riverside incident provided an excellent avenue to broaden their character.

The Rusalka

* * *

Oleg studied the river; then the sinking sun.  “We better get going.  All those splashes in the deeps will awaken the rusalka and then we'll be in big trouble.”

“There's no such thing as rusalka.” Stepha said and flung another stone.  “Master Gleb said they're just make-believe pagan stories to keep babies from the river.”

Oleg shook his head.  “Oh, they're real alright.  One of the Staroverok boys told me one time a girl from the village fell in and drowned and she became a rusalka because his cousin saw her return to the village one night.  Then this other boy saw her and said her skin looked like wet bread dough and her hair was dripping with weeds and so were her clothes and then she crept from izbah to izbah looking for a boy to tickle.”

“That's the dumbest thing I ever heard.”  Stepha was just about to cock his arm when icy fingers caressed his sides and began to tickle.
 

Stepha's shrieks echoed off the rocky hills and sailed up and downstream.  He leapt toward the water, slipped and plunged into the winter-chill.  By time Stepha righted himself, Vanya and his icy fingers were mere specks on the trail, his long-limbed legs flying back to the village.  For a moment, Stepha thought about giving chase but thought better.  Unlike rusalka, Vanya's speed was not make-believe.

* * *

In early 1900 Dvorak wrote an opera based on the rusalka tale.  The synopsis sounds an awful lot like the plot of Hans Christian Andersen's Little Mermaid, written in 1837.  I'm not saying Dvorak stole the idea, but one wonders.

Dvorak's opera Rusalka

Baba Yaga

Baba Yaga is a character from Eastern European fold lore.  She is an evil crone embodying the worst evils of the forests and marshes of Ukraine and Belarus and appears in all three of my novels, serving a different role in each. 

Ikons

In Ikons: Saint Nicholas the Wonder Worker, Baba Yaga represents the independent spirit of the Belarus inhabitants of the village of Hutava centered in the Pripet Marches.  

Baba Yaga

* * *

As each succeeding invasion washed over the Slavic lands the population of the marsh dwellers increased.  Faced with the terrifying choice of death, enslavement, or flight many Slavs chose flight into the Pripet.  The Pripet's inhospitable environment was refuge for the fugitives and death to the unwary.  Even Vikings and Mongols trembled at the thought of the baba yagi, the ravaging marsh demons that were said to rip the flesh from invading armies leaving only stacks of dried bones.

In the marsh the fugitives remained, built their villages and raised families in a place safe from all things, but nature.  Unconquered and resistive, future generations would never know the yoke of the Tatar or the Mongol, or the whip of the Pole.  In time the inhabitants believed it was they, not the baba yagi that kept the invaders at bay.  They, so the new legends would go, were the marsh demons of the Pripet. 

* * *

Banners

In my second novel Banners: For God, Tsar and Russia, Baba Yaga became the boggeyman.  Kataya used the myth of Baba Yaga to terrify her young nephews, Stepha and Vanya.  In this scene I show the effects of Teta Kataya's stories on the two boys.

Stefa's vision of Baba Yaga

* * *

Boris looked with dismay at Stepha.  His grandson had removed his head wrapping and defiantly stood between Ultia and Vanya.  Suddenly Stepha’s lip began to quiver and tears rolled down his eyes.  “I will not let Baba-Yaga eat Vanya,” cried Stepha.  “The witch cannot have him.”

 
Boris grabbed Stepha and held him.  “How dare you speak to this kind woman like that.  She is a good woman, not Baba-Yaga.  Where do you get these ideas?”  No sooner did Boris ask the question than he knew the answer.  A look of disdain came over his face and he turned toward Kataya.   

“Haven’t these little ones suffered enough without more of your stories?”

* * *

Slogans

In my third novel, Slogans" Our Children, Our Future,   Baba Yaga, serves several different roles.  In the first she characterizes the old woman to whom eight-year-old Stepha delivers cheese and butter.  His first encounter with the woman does not go well.

Baba Yaga's hut on fowl legs

* * *

Stepha parked his cart at the end of the weed-choked lane and started up the path to Rosina's hut with a milk jug and cheese box.  He could still vividly recall the first time his mother had taken him to Rosina's and how he had screamed because he was sure it would be his last day on earth.  He was positive Rosina's hut would rise up on chicken legs, chase him and eat him.  But that was when he was little and didn’t understand.  Now he knew the giant bones lining the pathway were from beasts that had died many, many years ago and were there to frighten evil men, not little boys.  Even the immense tusks forming the arch before Rosina's hut now inspired awe instead of terror. 

* **

Rosina's physical characters gave reason for Stepha to fear her.  It also gave her a cover for the dangerous tasks she would take on.

* * *

Nice is not a word usually used to describe Rosina Ashtakova.  Twenty-five years ago it was true, but now Rosina's appearance was truly that of a baba yaga.  A self-exiled crone, Rosina lived in the forest several versti outside Unkurda.  Her widow's black garb covered a dowager's hump right in keeping with the traditional image of baba yaga.  Add a nose flattened by a prison guard's baton and Rosina was every child's nightmare.  In her prime, however, she was anything but.

* * *

I also used the legend of Baba Yaga to illustrate Akulina's position in the Siberian village.  In this exchange between Akulina and Ultia, the older woman explains why the villagers fear Akulina.  Akulina goes on to explain away her gift, but later admits to experiencing unexplainable events.

* * *

Akulina set the cup down and wiped her hands on her apron.  “I am not peering into God's world, Ultia.  I'm just thinking and the leaves help me concentrate.”

Ultia approached the table and stood beside Akulina.  “Thinking?  Some sayest otherwise.  Some sayest thou art in league with the devil.  Some sayest,” Ultia bent toward Akulina's ear and whispered, “thou art baba yaga.”

“Baba yaga?”  Akulina shook her head, laughed and blessed herself.  “Nyet, Ultia Yauhoraka, I can assure you I'm no baba yaga.  If I had magical powers, do you think I’d be happy toiling here in Unkurda?  I would be living in Moscow or Petrograd selling love-potions to nobles.  No, I am what you see, a simple woman.”  Akulina pointed to the chair next her.  “Sit Ultia Yauhoraka and give me your hand.”

* * *

Later in their discourse, Akulina admits to seemingly psychic powers.

* * *

“So, thou dost see the future.”

“The future is there for everyone to see, Ultia Yauhoraka.”  Akulina choked back her tears.  “Perhaps I'm just foolish enough to look."

* * * 

Baba Yaga and Me

Anyone who has followed my dispatches from the writing front, knows there are parallels in Stepha's and my experiences.  So it is with Baba Yaga.  My Baba Yaga was an old women who lived in a second floor apartment off Jefferson street in Joliet.  Her striking feature was her nose, she had none.  Instead, there was a liver-colored gap between her eyes and two holes for nostrils.  

She would lean out her apartment window and call out to us as we passed by.  "Boys," she yelled in a pronounced nasal tone, "can you help me."  The first time we stopped, we stared at her, then each other.  "Please," she pleaded.

Overcoming our fear we stood beneath her window and nodded.  From that day on, whenever we walked by she called out and lowed a basket with a shopping list and a quarter.  Sometimes she sent us to the bakery and others to the pharmacy.  There was no money other than the quarter.  The shop owners recognized her list, gave us the goods and we returned it to her basket.  She always gave us a quarter, no matter how many of us appeared.  Then one day her window was shut, not to open again.  We never did learn the fate of our Baba Yaga.