•
…[with] a bearded peasant who
was walking
along . His feet were covered with sacking. We started talking. He spoke in Ukrainian Russian. I
gave him
[a] lump of bread and of cheese.
“You could
not buy that anywhere for 20 roubles. There just is no
food.”
We walked
along and talked; “Before the
war this was all gold. We had horses and cows and pigs and chickens. Now we are ruined.
[We are] ПОГИБЛИ (the living dead). You see that field. It was all gold, but now look at the weeds. The weeds were peeping up over the
snow.”
“Before the war we could have boots and meat and butter. We
were the
richest…