We had a horse, Maika ... she was old and very gentle, and we used her to carry water. The next day this Maika was killed. We were given water with a small piece of Maika in it ... But they concealed it from us for a long time. We wouldn't have been able to eat her ... Not for anything! She was the only horse in our orphanage. We also had two hungry cats. Skeletons! Good, we thought later, it's lucky they were so skinny, we didn't have to eat them. There was nothing there to eat.
S. Alexievich, tr. R. Pevear and L. Volkhonsky, Last Witnesses [Zina Kosiak] (1985), 15
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