[At the start of the war the elder generation of the exiles was not conscripted. From the very first months of the war the young generation had got the right to die for the motherland, in other words for Stalin who forced them together with their parents into the Narym marshes. As for the elder, they were called to the labour army, to a timber yard somewhere near Tomsk where there life was not a bowl of cherries. I often talked with the wife of one of those labour troopers.]

The whole family is in the thrill of joy. Nyura is beaming. "Ah, Frosya! What a joy! My Vasya took an opportunity of sending a letter. He got married there. She has her own cabin, a cow, a kitchen garden... You see? Her own potato, milk!"

"Wait a bit," I interrupted, "what do you have to gloat over?"

"What do you mean? He has a full belly, doesn't he? And I needn't to gather him a hamper, to give away the shirt of children's back. I have six of them, don't I? And each gets 150 grams of bread. Is it easy to make rusks?"

"But what if he won't come back?"

She took thought for a moment.

"What do you mean 'won't come back'? He is his children's father isn't he? He does have compassion on them. Well, we'll see. But he has a full belly at least. And we, even if not quite full won't die..."

I was going home in a brown study. As a mother she is right. But is she as a woman?