by Ruta Sepetys
17
THE VOICES OF THE MEN in the other cars had sounded full of pride, full of confidence. Fathers, brothers, sons, husbands. Where were they all going? And where were we going, a train car full of women, children, elderly, and infirmed?
I wiped my tears with my handkerchief and allowed others to do the same. When it was handed back to me, I paused, staring at it. Unlike paper, the handkerchief could travel hand to hand without deteriorating. I would use it to draw on for Papa.
While I devised a plan, the women in the car showed constant concern for the baby, who could not seem to nurse.
Mrs. Rimas urged Ona to keep trying. “Come, come, dear.”
“What is it?” asked my mother through the darkness of the car.
“It’s Ona,” said Mrs. Rimas. “Her ducts are clogged and she’s too dehydrated. The baby won’t suckle.”
Despite Mrs. Rimas’s efforts, nothing seemed to help.
We rolled for days, stopping in the middle of nowhere. The NKVD wanted to ensure we could not be seen and had nowhere to run. We waited for our daily stops. It was the only time the door would be open to light or fresh air.
“One person! Two buckets. Any dead bodies in there?” the guards would ask.
We had agreed to rotate. That way, everyone would get a chance to get out of the car. Today was my turn. I had dreamed of seeing blue sky and feeling the sun on my face. But earlier, it had begun to rain. We had all scrambled to hold cups and containers out of the little slot to catch the rainwater.
I snapped my umbrella closed, shaking the excess rainwater onto the sidewalk. A gentleman in a suit emerged from a restaurant, stepping quickly away from the drops I was splashing about.
“Oh, sir, I’m sorry!”
“No trouble at all, miss,” he said, nodding and touching the brim of his hat.
The smell of roasted potatoes and spiced meat drifted out of the restaurant. The sun appeared, spreading a golden filter across the concrete and warming the back of my head. Wonderful—the concert in the park wouldn’t be canceled tonight. Mother had planned to pack a hamper with our dinner for a moonlight picnic on the grass.
As I rolled the umbrella and wrapped the closure, I jumped when I saw a face staring at me from the puddle at my feet. I laughed at my disorientation, smiling at myself in the pool of water. The edges of the puddle shimmered beneath the sun, creating a beautiful frame around my face. I wished I could photograph it to draw later. Suddenly, a faint shadow appeared behind my head in the puddle. I turned around. A pastel rainbow arched out of the clouds.
The train slowed. “Hurry, Lina. Do you have the buckets?” asked Mother.
“Yes.” I moved closer to the door. Once the train stopped, I waited for the sound. Boots and clanking. The door jerked open.
“One person! Two buckets. Any dead bodies in there?” the NKVD commanded.
I shook my head, eager to get out. The guard stepped aside and I jumped down. My stiff legs gave way, and I fell to the muddy ground.
“Lina, are you all right?” called Mother.
“Davai!” yelled the guard, along with a series of Russian expletives before he spit on me.
I got up and looked down the length of the train. The sky was gray. Rain fell steadily. I heard a scream and saw the limp body of a child heaved out into the mud. A woman tried to jump out after the corpse. She was smashed in the face by the butt of a rifle. I saw another body thrown out. Death had begun to gather a crop.
“Don’t delay, Lina,” said the gray-haired man from our car. “Be swift with the buckets.”
I felt as if I were dreaming with a high fever. My head seemed airy and my step unsteady. I nodded and looked up at our car. A group of heads stacked upon one another stared back at me.
Dirt and filth clung to their faces. Andrius smoked a cigarette and looked off the other way. His face was still bruised.
Urine streamed through the bottom of the train car. Ona’s baby cried from inside. I saw the wet green field. Come here, it beckoned. Run.
Maybe I should, I thought. Do it, Lina.
“What’s wrong with her?” Voices began chattering from the train car.
Run, Lina.
The buckets flew out of my hands. I saw Andrius limping away with them. I just stood there, looking at the field.
“Lina. Come back in, dear,” pleaded Mother.
I closed my eyes. Rain splashed against my skin and hair. I saw Papa’s face, peering down from the match-lit hole in his train car. I’ll know it’s you ... just like you know Munch.
“Davai!”
An NKVD officer hovered over me. His breath reeked of liquor. He grabbed my arms and threw me toward the train.
Andrius returned with buckets of water and gray animal feed. “Hope you enjoyed your bath,” he said.
“What did you see out there, girl?” demanded the bald man.
“I ... I saw the NKVD throwing dead bodies off the train into the mud. Two children.” People gasped.
The door to our car slammed shut.
“How old were the dead kids?” asked Jonas quietly.
“I don’t know. I only saw them from afar.”
Mother combed through my wet hair in the dark.
“I wanted to run,” I whispered to her.
“I can understand that,” said Mother.
“You can?”
“Lina, wanting to get away from this is perfectly understandable. But like your father said, we must all stay together. It’s very important.”
“But how can they just decide that we’re animals? They don’t even know us,” I said.
“We know us,” said Mother. “They’re wrong. And don’t ever allow them to convince you otherwise. Do you understand?”
I nodded. But I knew some people had already been convinced. I saw them cowering in front of the guards, their faces hopeless. I wanted to draw them all.
“When I looked up at our train car, everyone looked sick,” I said.
“Well, we’re not,” said Mother. “We’re not sick. We’ll soon be back in our homes. When the rest of the world finds out what the Soviets are doing, they will put an end to all of this.”
Would they?
18
WE WEREN’T SICK, but others were. Each day when the train stopped, we’d lean out of the car and try to count the number of bodies thrown. It grew every day. I noticed Jonas kept track of the children, making marks with a stone on the floorboard of the car. I looked at his marks and imagined drawing little heads atop each one—hair, eyes, a nose, and a mouth.
People estimated our path traveled south. Whoever was posted at the little window would call out when we passed markers or signs. My feet were numb from the vibration of the floorboards. My head was curdled from the stench, and I itched terribly. Lice were biting down the side of my hairline, behind my ears, and in my armpits.
We had passed through Vilnius, Minsk, Orsha, Smolensk. I wrote the path of cities on my handkerchief in ink. Each day when the door was open to light, I would add more detail and identifying clues that Papa would recognize—our birthdays, a drawing of a vilkas—a wolf. I made markings only in the center, surrounded by a circle of hands touching fingers. I scrawled the words pass along under the drawing of the hands and I drew a Lithuanian coin. When the handkerchief was folded, the writing was undetectable.
“Drawing?” whispered the gray-haired man, winding his watch.
I jumped.
“I didn’t mean to scare you,” he said. “I won’t tell.”
“I have to get word to my father,” I said, my voice low. “So he can find us. I figured I could pass this handkerchief and that eventually, it will get to him.”
“Very clever,” he said.
He had been kind on the journey. Could I trust him? “I need to give it to someone who will understand the importance and pass it along.”
“I can help you with that,” he said.
We had been rolling for eight days when the train jerked hard and began to slow.
Jonas was at the little window slot. “There’s another train. We’re coming up on a train going in the opposite direction. It’s stopped.”
Our train car dragged, bleeding off speed.
“We’re pulling up alongside it. There are men. The windows are open on their cars,” said Jonas.
“Men?” said Mother. She quickly made her way to the window, swapped places with Jonas, and yelled out in Russian. They replied. The energy in her voice lifted and she began to speak quickly, pulling for breaths in between questions.
“For God’s sake, woman,” said the bald man. “Stop your socializing and tell us what’s going on. Who are they?”
“They’re soldiers,” reported Mother, elated. “They’re going to the front. There is war between Germany and the USSR. Germany has moved into Lithuania,” she shouted. “Did you hear me? The Germans are in Lithuania!”
Morale soared. Andrius and Jonas shouted and whooped. Miss Grybas began to sing “Take Me Back to My Homeland.” People hugged one another and cheered.
Only Ona was quiet. Her baby was dead.
19
THE TRAIN WITH the Russian soldiers rolled away. The doors were opened, and Jonas jumped out with the buckets.
I looked over to Ona. She was forcing the dead child toward her breast.
“No,” she said through gritted teeth, rocking back and forth. “No. No.”
Mother moved toward her. “Oh, my dear. I’m so sorry.”
“NO!” Ona screamed, clutching her baby.
Hot tears stung my parched eyes.
“What are you crying for?” complained the bald man. “You knew it was going to happen. What was the baby going to eat, lice? You’re all imbeciles. The thing is better off. When I die, if you’re smart you’ll eat me if you all want to survive so badly.”
He prattled on, grating, infuriating. The words distorted. I heard only the timbre of his voice thumping in my ears. Blood pumped through my chest and rose up my neck.
“DAMN YOU!” Andrius screamed and lurched toward the bald man. “If you don’t shut your mouth, old man, I’ll tear out your tongue. I’ll do it. I’ll make the Soviets look kind.” No one spoke or tried to stop Andrius. Not even Mother. I felt relief, as if the words had come from my own mouth.
“You’re concerned only with yourself,” Andrius continued. “When the Germans kick the Soviets out of Lithuania, we’ll leave you here on the tracks so we don’t have to put up with you anymore.”
“Boy, you don’t understand. The Germans aren’t going to solve the problem. Hitler’s going to create more,” said the bald man. “Those damn lists,” he muttered.
“No one wants to hear from you, understand?”
“Ona, dear,” said Mother. “Give me the baby.”
“Don’t give her to them,” begged Ona. “Please.”
“We will not give her to the guards. I promise,” said Mother. She examined the baby one last time, feeling for pulse or breath. “We’ll wrap her in something beautiful.”
Ona sobbed. I moved to the open door to get some air. Jonas returned with the buckets.
“Why are you crying?” he asked, climbing up.
I shook my head.
“What’s wrong?” he pressed.
“The baby’s dead,” said Andrius.
“Our baby?” he asked softly.
Andrius nodded.
Jonas put down the buckets. He looked over toward Mother holding the bundle and then at me. He knelt down and took the small stone out of his pocket, making a mark on the floorboards next to the others. He paused for a few moments, motionless, and then began slamming the stone against the markings, harder and harder. He beat the floorboards with such force that I thought he might break his hand. I moved toward him. Andrius stopped me.
“Let him do it,” he said.
I looked at him, uncertain.
“Better that he gets used to it,” he said.
Used to what, the feeling of uncontrolled anger? Or a sadness so deep, like your very core has been hollowed out and fed back to you from a dirty bucket?
I looked at Andrius, his face still warped with bruising. He saw me staring. “Are you used to it?” I asked.
A muscle in his jaw twitched. He pulled a cigarette butt from his pocket and lit it. “Yeah,” he said, blowing a stream of smoke into the air, “I’m used to it.”
People discussed the war and how the Germans might save us. For once, the bald man said nothing. I wondered if what he said about Hitler was true. Could we be trading Stalin’s sickle for something worse? No one seemed to think so. Papa would know. He always knew those sorts of things, but he never discussed them with me. He discussed them with Mother. Sometimes at night I’d hear whispers and murmurs from their room. I knew that meant they were talking about the Soviets.
I thought about Papa. Did he know about the war? Did he know we all had lice? Did he know we were huddled together with a dead baby? Did he know how much I missed him? I clutched the handkerchief in my pocket, thinking of Papa’s smiling face.
“Hold still!” I complained.
“I had an itch,” said my father, grinning.
“You did not, you’re just trying to make this difficult,” I teased, trying to capture his bright blue eyes.
“I’m testing you. Real artists must be able to capture the moment,” he said.
“But if you don’t hold still, your eyes will be crooked,” I said, shading in the side of his face with my pencil.
“They’re crooked anyway,” he said, crossing his eyes. I laughed.
“What do you hear from your cousin Joana?” he asked.
“Nothing lately. I sent her a drawing of that cottage in
Nida she liked last summer. I didn’t even get a note back from her. Mother said she received it but is busy with her studies.”
“She is,” said Papa. “She hopes to be a doctor someday, you know.”
I knew. Joana spoke often of medicine and her hopes of being a pediatrician. She was always interrupting my drawing to tell me about the tendons in my fingers or my joints. If I so much as sneezed, she would rattle off a list of infectious diseases that would have me in the grave by nightfall.
Last summer she had met a boy while we were on vacation in Nida. I’d wait up every night to hear the details of their dates. As a seventeen-year-old, she had wisdom and experience, as well as an anatomy book that fascinated me.
“There,” I said, finishing the drawing. “What do you think?”
“What’s that?” asked my father, pointing to the paper.
“My signature.”
“Your signature? It’s a scribble. No one will recognize it’s your name.”
I shrugged. “You will,” I said.
20
WE TRAVELED FARTHER SOUTH and passed through the Ural Mountains. Miss Grybas explained that the Urals were the boundary between Europe and Asia. We had crossed into Asia, another continent. People said we were on course for southern Siberia, or possibly even China or Mongolia.
We tried for three days to sneak Ona’s baby out, but the guard stood near whenever the doors were open. The smell of rotting flesh had become unbearable in the hot car. It made me retch.
Ona finally agreed to drop the baby down the bathroom hole. She knelt over the opening, sobbing, holding the bundle.
“For God’s sake,” moaned the bald man. “Get rid of that thing. I can’t breathe.”
“Be quiet!” Mother yelled to the bald man.
“I can’t,” whimpered Ona. “She’ll be crushed on the tracks.”
Mother moved toward Ona. Before she reached her, Miss Grybas snapped the bundle from Ona and threw it down the hole. I gasped. Mrs. Rimas cried.
“There,” said Miss Grybas. “Done. It’s always easier for someone unattached.” She wiped her hands on her dress and adjusted her hair bun. Ona fell into Mother’s arms.
Jonas clung to Andrius, spending nearly every minute by his side. He seemed angry all the time and so dista
nt from his usual sweetness. Andrius had taught him a few Russian slang words I had heard the NKVD use. It made me furious. I knew I’d have to learn a bit of Russian eventually, but I hated the thought.
One night, I saw the glow of a cigarette illuminate Jonas’s face. When I complained to Mother, she told me to leave him be.
“Lina, every night I thank God he has Andrius, and you should, too,” she said.
My stomach ate itself. Pangs of hunger came at relentless intervals. Although Mother made an effort to keep us on a schedule, I lost track of time and sometimes dozed off during the day. My eyelids were drooping when I heard it.
“How could you? Have you gone mad?” A female voice shrieked through the train car.
I sat up, squinting to make out what was going on. Miss Grybas hovered over Jonas and Andrius. I tried to make my way over.
“And Dickens nonetheless. How dare you! You are becoming the animals they treat us as!”
“What’s going on?” I asked.
“Your brother and Andrius are smoking!” she bellowed.
“My mother knows,” I said.
“Books!” she said, thrusting a hard cover in my face.
“We ran out of cigarettes,” Jonas said softly, “but Andrius had tobacco.”
“Miss Grybas,” said Mother, “I’ll handle it.”
“The Soviets have arrested us because we are knowledgeable, learned people. To smoke pages of a book is just ... What were you thinking?” Miss Grybas asked. “Where did you get this book?”
Dickens. I had The Pickwick Papers in my suitcase. Grandma had given it to me the Christmas before she died. “Jonas! You took my book. How could you?”
“Lina,” began Mother.
“I took your book,” said Andrius. “Blame me.”
“I certainly do blame you,” said Miss Grybas. “Corrupting this young boy. You should be ashamed.”
Mrs. Arvydas slept on the other side of the car, completely unaware of what had transpired.
“You’re an idiot!” I screamed at Andrius.
“I’ll get you a new book,” he said.