I Became Stalin?!

Chapter 213

“Wow…”

The train station to my hometown had changed. The quiet station at the foot of a gentle hill was now a busy place with hundreds of people coming and going.

“Over here! Load it up!”

“No, not there, over there!”

The workers were loading and unloading cargo, mostly grains, onto and off the freight trains. 

Heavy machines were moving and lifting tons of cargo.

Nikolai, who couldn’t imagine such a scene, opened his mouth wide and looked around blankly.

“Hey, where are you from, bumpkin?”

“Huh? I’m from here…”

A worker with muscular arms slapped Nikolai’s back and joked. Nikolai, startled, answered without thinking.

“Did you come from the Tsar’s era… No? Nikolai?”

“Huh? Uncle Ivan?”

“Hey, you b*****d, you’re not dead! I thought you died since you never came back! Hahahaha!!”

Nikolai recognized him after a moment of vague memory. 

He had met so many people that he had forgotten the faces of his old hometown friends. 

It took him some time to remember.

“Wow! You finally came back! Your parents have been waiting for you so much!”

“Hahaha… It just happened that way.”

He had written letters mostly to Katia, and only told his parents that he was alive. He felt sorry for his parents and scratched the back of his head.

“Anyway, let’s go! I’m done here. I’ll give you a ride home.”

“Huh?”

“What are you so surprised about?”

Uncle Ivan put his arm around Nikolai’s shoulder and laughed heartily. He dragged Nikolai to the truck parked near the station and got in.

“How did you get this truck, uncle?”

“How did I get it? The party gave me a few.”

Nikolai was shocked. Uncle Ivan started the truck with a familiar gesture. It was clearly a brand new American 2.5-ton truck. Why was it in this village?

“Didn’t you know? They brought them in for military supplies or what do you call it… license production? The party distributed them to the collective farms in large quantities. There’s no farm without one of these these days.”

“Is… is that so…”

The dusty dirt road he had left with a draft notice had turned into a paved asphalt road. Uncle Ivan turned the steering wheel smoothly and pointed out the window with his finger.

“Do you see those round cylinders?”

“Huh? Yes! Yes…”

“Those are what do you call it… silos, where they store grains. Now you just have to take them there, right?”

Nikolai barely understood the concept of silos, having received only elementary education as a farmer. But he had a rough idea of what they were. A kind of intermediate storage warehouse, right? As a former battalion commander who connected the lower and upper units, he knew why they were needed.

The landscape of his hometown had changed. The train station had grown huge, and there were roads and facilities he had never seen before.

“That’s the new barn over there… and this is the construction site for the khrushchyovka…”

There were quite a few trucks on the road. Nikolai wondered if there were so many vehicles in our country.

Of course, there might have been. He had seen the endless wave of tanks, so there must have been a lot. But so many trucks in this backwater village!

Uncle Ivan laughed again when he saw Nikolai’s stunned expression.

“Hey! Didn’t you go to war and play in the big water? You look like you came back more of a bumpkin! Hahahaha!”

“Hahaha, I guess so…”

He felt that way too.

He couldn’t adapt to the world that had suddenly grown and widened. He wanted to go back to his small and old hometown, which seemed to be the same forever. He thought he could find a suitable job for him in his hometown.

But the hometown he longed for was not his hometown. The people looked well-fed, with plump faces and clothes and houses that were not shabby and falling apart like before.

But his hometown was not like this in his memory.

“Here we are. Your parents are… maybe in 326?”

“Ah… yes, thank you.”

The entrance to the farm was similar to before, but the inside was different. 

Nikolai gasped when he saw the newly built white-painted khrushchyovka apartments.

“These days, they’ve built so many of these… they’re much warmer and nicer than before.”

“Is that so…”

“Hey! Nikolai is back! Pyotr Vasilyevich’s son!”

“Huh? Nikolai?”

Finally, he saw some familiar faces.

“Misha! Sasha! Sofia!”

“Hahaha! You finally came back?”

“Nikolai! How long has it been?”

His old friends, who had aged and worn a bit, but were still the same as in his memory, were there. 

Mikhail and Alexander, who had gone to the army with him on the same train, and Sofia, who had cried and sent them off, were in their hometown.

“Why were you so late? The war ended last year, didn’t it?”

“Did you go to the Far East?”

“Haha, no, that’s not it…”

Most of the soldiers had returned home, but the officers had to stay in the army for downsizing, reassignment, and reorganization. Nikolai had received a high performance rating thanks to his medal and was forcibly transferred to the former German front, where ‘competent officers were needed’.

“Anyway, it’s good. Do you know where Mr. Pyodor lives? Come on, let’s go!”

“Huh? Oh, okay…”

“Nikolai, you b*****d. How come you haven’t changed at all? Hahahaha!”

The friends laughed loudly as they saw him hesitating at the sight of the changed neighborhood. Nikolai smiled bitterly to himself.

‘That’s right. There are things I wish hadn’t changed…’

His heart pounded with every step he took on his way home.

The house he had missed so much, the house he had thought of repairing many times when he returned, was now a neat new apartment. How could this place, with the smell of fresh paint, be our home? It felt strangely new.

“Who is it…?”

“Mom!”

“Nikolai?”

When he knocked on the door of his hometown house, the door opened with a creak. His mother peeked out her head.

His mother’s face had more wrinkles than before. Nikolai felt like tears would spill out, and he flung open the door and ran into the house.

“Is this… you came early, but you’re only coming now? Did you eat well? Hey, why are you folding your collar like that… Your father will be home around dinner time. I don’t know why his back is so bad these days.”

His mother nagged as usual. Nikolai was so moved that he couldn’t say anything.

His mother looked at him with a pitying eye and spat out.

“You should have written more often.”

***

“Hey, son. You’re here?”

“Dad!”

His father casually remarked as he saw the unfamiliar boots when he opened the door. 

He threw off his muddy boots and walked briskly toward his son, whom he hadn’t seen in years.

“Let me see…”

Mr. Pyodor, whose hands were full of calluses and bent at every joint, examined his son’s face and hands. He burst out laughing.

“You’re not a moron, are you? Good for you. That’s all that matters!”

“Dad too… No, then would I have come back as a moron?”

Nikolai knew as he chatted.

Not everyone who left with him had returned. 

There were occasional stories in the letters that the farm manager sent. Someone’s death notice had arrived. I hope you all come back healthy. Nikolai shivered whenever he saw a postscript attached. Who died this time? 

He wondered. 

There was no postscript since he received officer training.

“Let’s eat!”

His mother put down a large pot on the table. 

She had cooked his favorite food, since he had come back after a long time. The delicious smell tickled his nose.

“Yeah. Let’s talk while we eat.”

“Yes, dad.”

The first meal at home was his favorite food.

“Wow! Do you still eat army stew here?”

“Of course, of course. This is the cheapest these days… Isn’t it greasy and salty?”

His mother scooped a spoonful of the ‘army stew’, which was full of spicy seasoning, American spam, homemade sausage, and various meats, and poured it into Nikolai’s bowl.

“Eat a lot, my baby.”

“Yes!”

His mother and father told him stories about their lives. Someone got married, someone had a baby, and someone else was doing something these days…

Of course, they avoided talking about the dead and injured. 

There wasn’t enough time to tell only happy stories in his hometown, which he had returned to after a long time. 

His father casually remarked that people were getting fat because of the new barn and imported goods, which made milk and meat abundant. 

His mother cut him off.

“By the way, who is that girl?”

“Uh, cough, cough…”

“Right? Who is that girl? What does she do?”

“Uh, how do you know about Katia, dad and mom?”

Was her name Katia? His mother asked with a smirk.

“She likes you, doesn’t she? No, you don’t even write to us, but she somehow knew and wrote to us? You don’t write to us, but only to your girlfriend? How… We heard from her, not you, what you’re doing.”

“Cough, cough…”

Nikolai coughed incessantly, as if the soft spam was stuck in his throat. Katia had asked him for his home address!

“Hey, they said you got a medal… So that’s why they gave you money for being a decorated veteran? You must have done something there? Hahahaha!”

“What does she do, then? She’s not a weird person, is she?”

“No, mom! Why do you say that to people?”

Nikolai was flustered by his mother’s sudden question and snapped. But his mother calmly said with a blank face.

“What? If she likes someone like you, there must be something wrong with her, right? Maybe her eyes are bad…”

“Hey, honey! He looks just like me when I was young. How come the girls don’t like him? Then what are you?”

“I was a moron…”

His mother sighed deeply and muttered as if confessing. His father, who was babbling and speechless, was the same as always.

“Hahahahahaha!”

Nikolai was able to laugh happily for the first time in a long time.