We Escaped Through A Mouse Hole In The Iron Curtain — Part 3

Editor’s Note: In March of 1946, Radmila —”Mila”— Mitrovich and her family risked their lives to escape Yugoslavia shortly after Stalin’s Iron Curtain enshrouded Josep Tito’s Socialist Federal Republic. In these four weekly installments, The American Landscape is proud to present here Part 3 of Mila’s first-hand account of her family’s heroic efforts to escape tyranny

The voices were coming closer.

Loud and friendly talks seemed to develop in front of the house door and heavy soldiers' feet started entering the house. There were five of them. I realized that we would be seen if any one of them opened this door. They went first up the wooden stairs to the attic, then came down again all the time accompanied by the old woman's voice: “Look here — look here,” and by the corresponding opening and slamming of the door. Then suddenly the voices became indistinct. Everybody seemed to be sitting in the main room, drinking whiskey and listening to the radio. When they were ready to leave, the woman's voice was first to be heard again telling them, “I know you do your job, but you'll never find here one of those who look for something better than their own country.” She accompanied them to the front door with too many friendly words, which must have cost her a great deal of nervous tension.

On her way back, she opened our door and invited us in the kitchen, telling me that now everything would be quiet — for some time at least. Probably because she saw my frightened expression, she repeated that at any moment now her son would be back from the city where I left my husband. She offered then to give us some of her supper and lighted a petrol lamp. A big old wood stove occupied nearly half of the kitchen, on which an enormous pan full of beans was cooking, I asked her if she could make some scrambled eggs for the boys. The older boy was very quiet and pale, still asking nothing and unable as yet to recover from the fear which my trembling generated in him.

The woman went out and came back with four eggs and a spoonful of lard and started preparing them. Everything in the kitchen was so black and dirty, and foreign to me, that I had a hard time keeping myself from crying. I knew that the end of our ordeal was not near and that I must continue to be strong. Two little lives were depending on me. They were not responsible for the grave situation in which we were. I had placed them in it, myself, by the decision to escape.

The older boy's pale face worried me very much. He was eating silently and I felt that his childhood years of unconcern were over. He was feeling already that there was danger around us. It took him more than two hours to regain his normal color. The many members of this household started coming in for supper and we had to go out. One of them was in uniform. He was one of the five in the patrol which had visited the house a few hours ago. If at least this woman had told me what the actual situation was, she would have spared my shivering and my fears during the patrol inspection. But our relation to each other was entirely on a business basis, where there was no room for human feelings. After some whispering with the man in uniform, the woman told me that the other connection from the city informed her that no movement was possible for tonight; that we would have to stay there until further instructions. My feeling had already been strained to the utmost and I was acting now more as a helpless automaton.

She took us to the small room where we had spent the dreadful hours of the patrol’s inspection, and after removing all the knapsacks from the bed, she said, “This is where you have to spend the night. You will have to sleep in your clothes, so that we can take you to the attic in case another patrol comes.” Maybe that also was only a pretext, because she had no other bed to offer. But at that time, I was unable to reason and the word ‘patrol’ haunted me all night.

I lay stiff with the hope that at least the boys would be able to sleep. They didn't ask anything anymore, didn't want to leave my hands and had no desire for play. I was very thankful that they didn't ask for any explanations. The whole night they were frightened and remained quiet.