Between Shades of Gray

by Ruta Sepetys

  “Hurry, give me your mittens.” His teeth chattered.

  I walked on, silent.

  “Just give me your damn mittens and I’ll tell you why you were deported!”

  I stopped and stared at him.

  He snatched the mittens off my hands. “Well, don’t just stand there. Keep walking or we’ll freeze to death. Put your hands in your pockets.”

  We walked.

  “So?”

  “You know a Petras Vilkas?” he asked.

  Petras Vilkas. My father’s brother. Joana’s father. “Yes,” I said. “He’s my uncle. Joana’s my best friend.”

  “Who’s Joana, his daughter?”

  I nodded.

  “Well, that’s why you’re deported,” he said, rubbing the mittens together. “Your mother knows. She just hasn’t told you. So there you have it.”

  “What do you mean, that’s why we’re deported? How do you know?” I asked.

  “What does it matter how I know? Your uncle escaped from Lithuania before you were deported.”

  “You’re lying.”

  “Am I? Your aunt’s maiden name was German. So your uncle’s family escaped, probably repatriated through Germany. Your father helped them. He was part of it. So your family was then put on the list. So your father’s in prison, you’ll die here in arctic hell, and your best friend is probably living it up in America by now.”

  What was he saying? Joana escaped and went to America? How could that be possible?

  “Repatriate, if they can get away with it,” said my father, stopping abruptly when he saw me in the doorway.

  Dear Lina,

  Now that the Christmas holiday is passed, life seems on a more serious course. Father has boxed up most of his books, saying they take up too much space.

  I thought of my last birthday. Papa was late coming to the restaurant.

  I told him I had received nothing from Joana. I noticed that he stiffened at the mention of my cousin. “She’s probably just busy,” he had said.

  “Sweden is preferable,” said Mother.

  “It’s not possible,” said Papa. “Germany is their only choice.”

  “Who’s going to Germany?” I yelled from the dining room.

  Silence.

  “I thought all of Auntie’s family was in Germany,” I said.

  “Apparently she has a relative in America. She gets letters from him. He’s in Pennsylvania.”

  It was possible.

  Joana’s freedom had cost me mine.

  “I’d give anything for a cigarette,” said the bald man.

  74

  “BUT WHY DIDN’T you tell me?”

  “We were trying to protect your uncle. They were going to help us,” said Mother.

  “Help us what?” asked Jonas.

  “Escape,” whispered Mother.

  There was no need to lower our voices. Everyone pretended to occupy themselves with their fingernails or clothing, but they could hear every word. Only Janina watched intently. She sat on her knees next to Jonas, swatting lice off her eyebrows.

  “When they got to Germany, they were going to process papers for us to try to repatriate as well.”

  “What’s repatriate?” asked Janina.

  “To go back to where your family is originally from,” I told her.

  “Are you German?” she asked Mother.

  “No, dear. But my sister-in-law’s family was born in Germany,” said Mother. “We thought we could get papers through them.”

  “And Papa helped them? So he was an accessory?” I asked.

  “Accessory? He committed no crime, Lina. He helped them. They’re family,” she said.

  “So is Joana in Germany?” I asked.

  “Most likely,” said Mother. “It all went horribly wrong. After they left, your father received reports in April that the NKVD had entered and searched their house. Someone must have informed the Soviets.”

  “Who would do such a thing?” asked Jonas.

  “Lithuanians who work with the Soviets. They give information about other people in order to protect themselves.”

  Someone hacked and coughed in the hut.

  “I can’t believe Joana didn’t tell me,” I said.

  “Joana didn’t know! Surely her parents didn’t tell her. They feared she might tell someone. She thought they were going to visit a family friend,” said Mother.

  “Andrius said they thought his father had international contacts. Now the Soviets think Papa has communication with someone outside Lithuania,” said Jonas quietly. “That means he’s in danger.”

  Mother nodded. Janina got up and lay down next to her mother.

  Thoughts swam through my brain. I couldn’t process one before another stepped over it. We were being punished while Joana’s family lived comfortably in Germany. We had given up our lives for theirs. Mother was angry that the bald man had told me. She had trusted him with the secret. He had given it up for five minutes of mittens. Hadn’t Mother and Papa thought to trust us? Did they consider the consequences before they helped them escape? I scratched at the back of my head. Lice were biting a trail down the nape of my neck.

  “How selfish! How could they do this to us?” I said.

  “They had to give up things, too,” said Jonas.

  My mouth fell open. “What do you mean?” I asked. “They gave up nothing! We gave it all for them.”

  “They gave up their home, Uncle gave up his store, Joana gave up her studies.”

  Her studies. Joana wanted to be a doctor as much as I wanted to be an artist. Although I could still draw, she could not pursue medicine with a war raging in Germany. Where was she? Did she know what had happened to us? Had the Soviets managed to keep the deportations a secret from the world? If so, how long would that last? I thought of the American supply ship, sailing away. Would anyone think to look for us in the Siberian Arctic? If Stalin had his way, we’d be entombed in the ice and snow.

  I got my paper. I sat near the firelight of the stove. Anger sizzled within me. It was so unfair. But I couldn’t hate Joana. It wasn’t her fault. Whose fault was it? I drew two hands clutching on to each other, yet pulling apart. I drew a swastika on her palm and the hammer and sickle on top of my hand, the Lithuanian flag shredded and falling in between.

  I heard a scraping sound. The man who wound his watch carved a small piece of wood with his knife. The logs popped, spitting ashes out of the barrel.

  “It looks scratched,” said Jonas. He sat cross-legged on my bed, looking at one of the Munch prints I had received from Oslo.

  “It is. He used his palette knife to scrape texture into the canvas,” I said.

  “It makes her look ... confused,” said Jonas. “If it weren’t scratched, she would look sad. But the scratches make confusion.”

  “Exactly,” I said, using long strokes to comb through my warm, clean hair. “But to Munch, that made the painting feel alive. He was a confused man. He didn’t care about proportion, he wanted it to feel real.”

  Jonas flipped to the next print. “Does this feel real to you?” he said, his eyes wide.

  “Definitely,” I told him. “That’s called Ashes.”

  “I don’t know about real. Maybe real scary,” said Jonas as he got up to leave. “You know, Lina, I like your paintings better than these. These are too weird. Good night.”

  “Good night,” I said. I took the papers and flopped down on my bed, sinking into my puffy goose-down duvet. A comment in the margin from an art critic read, “Munch is primarily a lyric poet in color. He feels colors, but does not see them. Instead, he sees sorrow, crying, and withering.”

  Sorrow, crying, and withering. I saw that in Ashes, too. I thought it was brilliant.

  Ashes. I had an idea. I grabbed a stick from next to the stove. I peeled back the outer skin to reveal the pulp. I separated the fibers, forming bristles. I grabbed a handful of snow from outside the door and carefully mixed in ashes from the barrel. The color was uneven, but made a nice gray wat
ercolor.

  75

  NOVEMBER CAME. Mother’s eyes lacked their wink and sparkle. We had to work harder for her smile. It came only when her chin rested on the heel of her hand or when Jonas mentioned Papa in our evening prayers. Then she would lift her face, the corners of her mouth turned up with hope. I worried for her.

  At night, I closed my eyes and thought of Andrius. I saw his fingers raking through his disheveled brown hair, his nose tracing a line down my cheek the night before we left. I remembered his wide smile when he teased me in the ration line. I saw his tentative eyes, handing me Dombey and Son, and his reassurance as the truck pulled away. He said he’d find me. Did he know where they had taken us? That they laughed and wagered upon our deaths? Find me, I whispered.

  The man who wound his watch looked at the sky. He said a storm was coming. I believed him, not because of the pale gray of the sky, but because of the bustle of the NKVD. They shouted at us. Their “davais” pushed with an urgency. Even Ivanov was upon us. Normally, he shouted orders from afar. Today, he hastened to and from the barrack, coordinating every effort.

  Mrs. Rimas tried to negotiate advance rations for the impending storm.

  Ivanov laughed. “If there’s a storm, you won’t work. Why should you get a ration?”

  “But how will we survive without bread?” asked Mrs. Rimas.

  “I don’t know. How will you?” said Ivanov.

  I pilfered wood from the NKVD barracks. There was no other way. We would need a lot for the storm. I went back for more. Snow began to fall.

  That’s when I saw it.

  Mother stood, talking to Ivanov and Kretzsky behind the NKVD barracks. What was she doing? I stepped out of sight and squinted to see. Ivanov spit on the ground. He then leaned close in to Mother’s face. My heart began to pound. Suddenly, he lifted his gloved hand to his temple, mocking a gun firing. Mother flinched. Ivanov threw his head back and laughed. He walked into the NKVD barracks.

  Mother and Kretzsky stood motionless, snow falling all around them. Kretzsky reached out and put a hand on her shoulder. I saw his lips moving. Mother’s knees buckled. He caught her by the waist. Her face contorted and fell against his chest. She pounded his shoulder with her fist.

  “MOTHER!” I screamed, running toward her. I tripped over the firewood tumbling from under my coat.

  I grabbed her from Kretzsky, pulling her to me. “Mother.” We fell to our knees.

  “Kostas,” she sobbed.

  I stroked her hair, hugging her to me. Kretzsky’s boots shifted. I looked up at him.

  “Shot. In Krasnoyarsk prison,” he said.

  The air crushed in around me, pushing my body deep into the snow. “No, you’re wrong,” I said, my eyes searching Kretzsky’s. “He’s coming to get us. He’s on his way. He’s wrong, Mother! They think he’s dead because he has left. He got my drawings. He’s coming for us!”

  “No.” Kretzsky shook his head.

  I stared at him. No?

  Mother wept, her body chugging into mine.

  “Papa?” The word barely escaped my lips.

  Kretzky took a step closer, reaching to help Mother. Loathing purged from my mouth. “Get away from her! Stay away. I hate you. Do you hear me? I HATE YOU!”

  Kretzsky stared at Mother. “Me, too,” he said. He walked away, leaving me on the ground with Mother.

  We sank deeper, snow blanketing us, the wind sharp against our faces like needles. “Come, Mother. A storm is coming.” Her legs couldn’t carry her. Her chest heaved with every step, throwing us off balance. Snow whirled around us, limiting my sight.

  “HELP ME!” I screamed. “Somebody, PLEASE!” I heard nothing but the wail of the winds. “Mother, match my steps. Walk with me. We must get back. There’s a storm.”

  Mother didn’t walk. She just repeated my father’s name into the falling snow.

  “HELP!”

  “Elena?”

  It was Mrs. Rimas.

  “Yes! We’re here. Help us!” I cried.

  Two figures emerged through the wall of wind and snow.

  “Lina?”

  “Jonas! Please!”

  My brother and Mrs. Rimas came through the snow, their arms extended.

  “Oh dear God, Elena!” said Mrs. Rimas.

  We dragged Mother into our jurta. She lay facedown on a wood plank, Mrs. Rimas at her side, Janina peering over her.

  “Lina, what is it?” said Jonas, terrified.

  I stared blankly.

  “Lina?”

  I turned to my brother. “Papa.”

  “Papa?” His face fell.

  I nodded slowly. I couldn’t speak. A sound came out of my mouth, a twisted, pitiful moan. This wasn’t happening. This couldn’t be happening. Not Papa. I had sent the drawings.

  I saw Jonas’s face rewind before me. He suddenly looked his age, vulnerable. Not like a young man fighting for his family, smoking books, but like the little schoolboy who ran into my bedroom the night we were taken. He looked at me, then at Mother. He walked over to her, lay down, and carefully put his arms around her. Snow blew through a crack in the mud, falling on their hair.

  Janina wrapped her arms around my legs. She hummed softly.

  “I’m sorry. So sorry,” said the repeater.

  76

  I COULDN’T SLEEP. I couldn’t speak. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw Papa’s face, battered, peering down from the bathroom hole on the train. Courage, Lina, he said to me. Exhaustion and grief inched heavily into every fiber of my body, yet I was wide awake. My mind flickered as if on short circuit, spitting never-ending images of anguish, anxiety, and sorrow at me.

  How did Kretzsky know? There was a mistake. It was another man, not Papa. It was possible, right? I thought of Andrius, searching the train cars for his father. He thought it was possible, too. I wanted to tell Andrius what had happened. I put my hand in my pocket and clutched the stone.

  My drawings had failed. I had failed.

  I tried to sketch but couldn’t. When I started to draw, the pencil moved by itself, propelled by something hideous that lived inside of me. Papa’s face contorted. His mouth pulled in agony. His eyes radiated fear. I drew myself, screaming at Kretzsky. My lips twisted. Three black snakes with fangs spurted out of my open mouth. I hid the drawings in Dombey and Son.

  Papa was strong. He was a patriot. Did he fight? Or was he unaware? Did they leave him in the dirt like Ona? I wondered if Jonas had the same questions. We didn’t discuss it. I wrote a letter to Andrius, but it became smudged with tears.

  The storm raged. The wind and icy snow created a deafening roar of white noise. We dug a path out the door to collect our rations. Two Finns, lost in the blizzard, couldn’t find their jurta. They squeezed into ours. One had dysentery. The stench made me gag. My scalp was crawling with lice.

  On the second day, Mother got up and insisted on shoveling the door. She looked drawn, like a part of her soul had escaped.

  “Mother, you should rest,” said Jonas. “I can dig through the snow.”

  “It does no good to lie here,” said Mother. “There is work to be done. I must do my part.”

  On the third day of the storm the man who wound his watch directed the two Finns back to their jurta.

  “Take that bucket outside. Wash it out in the snow,” the bald man told me.

  “Why me?” I asked.

  “We’ll take turns,” said Mother. “We’ll all have to do it.”

  I took the bucket out into the darkness. The winds had retreated. Suddenly, I couldn’t breathe. The moisture in my nostrils had frozen. This was only November. The polar night would last until the beginning of March. The weather would get worse. How could we withstand it? We had to make it through the first winter. I hurried with my bucket duty and returned to the jurta. I felt like Janina, whispering to Papa at night like she whispered to her dead doll.

  November 20. Andrius’s birthday. I had counted the days carefully. I wished him a happy birthday when I woke and thought ab
out him while hauling logs during the day. At night, I sat by the light of the stove, reading Dombey and Son. Krasivaya. I still hadn’t found the word. Maybe I’d find it if I jumped ahead. I flipped through some of the pages. A marking caught my eye. I leafed backward. Something was written in pencil in the margin on page 278.

  Hello, Lina. You’ve gotten to page 278. That’s pretty good!

  I gasped, then pretended I was engrossed in the book. I looked at Andrius’s handwriting. I ran my finger over his elongated letters in my name. Were there more? I knew I should read onward. I couldn’t wait. I turned through the pages carefully, scanning the margins.

  Page 300:

  Are you really on page 300 or are you skipping ahead now?

  I had to stifle my laughter.

  Page 322:

  Dombey and Son is boring. Admit it.

  Page 364:

  I’m thinking of you.

  Page 412:

  Are you maybe thinking of me?

  I closed my eyes.

  Yes, I’m thinking of you. Happy birthday, Andrius.

  77

  IT WAS MID-DECEMBER. Winter had us in its jaws. The repeater had frostbite. The tips of his fingers were puckered, jet black. Gray, bulbous lumps appeared on the end of his nose. We wrapped ourselves in every piece of clothing and rags we could find. We tied our feet in old fishing nets that had washed ashore. Everyone bickered in the jurta, getting on each other’s nerves.

  Small children began dying. Mother took her ration to a starving boy. He was already dead, his tiny hand outstretched, waiting for a piece of bread. We had no doctor or nurse in camp, only a veterinarian from Estonia. We relied on him. He did his best, but the conditions were unsanitary. He had no medicine.

  Ivanov and the NKVD wouldn’t step inside our jurtas. They yelled at us to leave the dead outside the door. “You’re all filthy pigs. You live in filth. It’s no wonder you’re dying.”

  Dysentery, typhus, and scurvy crawled into camp. Lice feasted on our open sores. One afternoon, one of the Finns left his wood chopping to urinate. Janina found him swinging from a branch. He had hanged himself with a fishing net.