Ksenia wept. For the wasted lives, the needless stupid sacrifice, the crazed suffering from which there was no return to ordinary humanity. For the damaged, the broken, the shattered, the vanished. For the son she was losing, the son she had already, she knew, lost.
He lingered a few more days. One morning Galina sat with him, holding a cup of hot rice broth she knew he would not drink. Their parents were out; Filip was with his mother.
“Look.” Maksim sat up abruptly. He pointed at the tapestry on the opposite wall. “There, do you see? There is a figure in that bush, a man, crouching. I never noticed it before.”
“What man? Which bush?” Galina got up to examine the familiar woodland scene. “This one? I see nothing there.”
“Yes, yes, you have your finger on it. But is he watching or hiding? I don’t know.” He sank back down on his cot, then turned to his sister, his eyes clear and bright. “I was hallucinating. It’s the end,” he said softly, as if some lucid corner of his brain remembered the sure signs of imminent death—the surge of energy, the visions, the momentary sharpened awareness.
“What? No,” Galina said. “You’re not hallucinating. There’s just nothing there.”
But he was no longer listening. His eyes dulled. His breath came quick and ragged, then stopped and resumed, knocking against his chest and throat like a trapped creature, and was still. “Death rattle,” she said aloud to the empty room. “Gone.”
Galina sat down carefully on the edge of the bedside chair. She sat a long time through the gathering dusk, still holding the cup, while evening fell all around her with crushing emptiness and the broth cooled in her hands.
PART IV
Germany
A New Life
1
“WHAT DO YOU DO with these doilies?” Filip stroked the latest addition Zoya had placed in her basket, this one with lacy scalloped edges and an intricate pineapple design.
She hesitated, colored slightly. “I sell them,” she finally replied. “Or trade them for things we need.”
“At the bazaar?” He couldn’t imagine his demure, diminutive mother among the aggressive sellers hawking whatever goods they had in a cacophony of voices to rival the squawking of seagulls competing for a dead fish.
“No. No one would notice me there,” she confirmed. “I just choose a street corner. Late afternoon and early evening seem to be the best times. People buy. I don’t know why, but I’m grateful.”
“Because your work is beautiful.” He smoothed the piece, aligning the edges with the ones underneath. “Mother, what shall I do?”
Zoya looked up, struck by the anguish in her son’s voice. She was not used to being so formally addressed, as if they were characters in an ancient Russian folk tale, in which the wise elders always had the answers. Filip slumped in his chair, unseeing eyes fixed on the book open on the table in front of him.
“What is it, son? You’ve become so gloomy. Has something happened?”
Yes, he wanted to say. Yes. My best friend was hanged for defending his country, and I do nothing. Day after day, I do nothing, wondering if his death was my fault. Had he ever held anything back from his mother, anything important? He didn’t think so. But he knew she would find a way to bring God or the Virgin Mary into it, might try to persuade him to pray. That, to his mind, was no solution at all. He couldn’t tell her.
“I’ve heard that young married men are to be taken to Germany now, with or without their wives. So no one will be exempt except small children and old people. The university exam has been postponed.”
“Is there no work for you here?” Zoya’s hands moved smoothly, her crochet hook darting in and out of the delicate piece taking shape under her fingers.
He had tried to find work, if only halfheartedly. And what, really, could he do? He thought the library might hire him, but in the end that opening went to someone older, with some experience. “No.”
They sat silent for a while, she at her needlework, he turning pages without reading them.
“Ksenia Semyonovna—I can’t call her ‘Mama’—has proposed we go sign up for Germany. She says those who go voluntarily get better placements and are allowed to stay together.” He spoke without looking at her.
Zoya glanced at her son, put her work down in her lap. “I have heard that, yes.”
“You know my father-in-law was detained by the city police. Something about his travel permit. It turned out they were looking for someone else, a different Ilya—Ilya Zorin. Mistaken identity. So they let him go.” He took a deep breath, held it a moment before exhaling, remembering the fear that had gripped the household; Ilya’s release had only increased the sense of imminent danger. “We all know they didn’t have to. They could have locked him up whether he was the right man or not.”
“I know,” Zoya said calmly. “Your father put a word in for him.”
Filip stared at her, stunned. How much more was there he did not know? He was not a child. Yet it seemed he had no grasp at all of the ominous things going on around him every day. He felt adrift, incompetent. Maksim had died, sacrificed, however unwittingly, to the Soviet cause. Borya’s execution was another casualty of the same struggle. Why did he, Filip, not feel part of that struggle? Where did he belong? If anything, the catastrophic events that brushed against his life filled him with ambivalence, a debilitating malaise that left him powerless to act.
Who was the enemy? It seemed clear enough that the invading forces of a foreign nation should be expelled at any cost, and yet . . . He remembered his father—was it just a few years ago?—a postal inspector with a fresh Communist Party card, refusing to talk at home about his work, even as his mother grew more secretive about her religious outings. This was in peacetime, he himself aglow in his Young Pioneer membership, until even he recoiled at the increasing pressure to tell on the activities within his home and neighborhood. Why was Stalin so afraid, the fear cascading in paranoid ripples through every aspect of everyone’s life? It was far safer to take refuge in chess and stamps and music when the nation’s leader was at war with his own people.
And now the Germans, like it or not, had brought a certain sense of order, along with their tanks and troops. There was a clarity in dealing with them. You overstepped, you died. But still, there were some rules. Or so it seemed. What he didn’t know was whether their promises could be trusted, what, exactly, they meant by “better placement.”
“Mama, I don’t know what to do.”
Zoya sighed deeply. “Your in-laws have decided on this desperate plan because Ilya Nikolaevich is being watched. His travels, his dealings with the Germans, however innocent they may be, do not sit well with the police.” She picked up her crochet hook but did not resume her work. “And they are doing it for you. You are young, neither a student nor a worker; the Germans will surely take you for forced labor, if not this week or the next, then soon. By volunteering as a family, things may go better for you.” She paused and looked at him, her gaze strong and kind. “And you must stay with your wife, son. It is your obligation, as a Christian and as a decent man.”
“I may never see you and Papa again.” He didn’t need to add, If we go with the Germans, there’s no way back. They both knew that well enough.
She put the hook down, letting the work slide off her knees and onto the floor, and took both his hands in hers. “It will be as God wills,” she said. “I will pray for you every day.”
For once, he felt no irritation at words that would have struck him as sanctimonious at any other time. The coolness of her fingers tempered the heat in his own hands, calming his mind a little but doing nothing to dispel his sadness.
They stayed together until the evening shadows began to fill the corners of the room. Filip paced, then threw himself into a chair, only to rise and stare out the window at the street below. Zoya wept from time to time, making no effort to conceal her silent tears.
When Vadim’s key turned in the lock, neither one had heard his footsteps on the landing. �
��Why do you sit here in the dark?” He strode across the room, illuminating its familiar objects with lamplight: this polished table, that sofa with its brown plaid blanket laid across the back. The chair by the window, the black fringed flowered shawl draped carelessly over the armrest, the glass-globed lamp, the cups and plates in rows on shelves, the copper samovar, the sepia wedding portrait on the wall.
“Papa,” Filip said, rising. “Oh, Papa.”
2
HOW DO YOU PACK to leave your home?
Transport regulations allowed them one suitcase each and a small trunk for household items—cooking pots, dishes, bedding. Ksenia watched Galina fold her few dresses, underclothes, and nightshirt, tucking an extra pair of shoes in the corner and a light sweater on top.
“There,” Galina said. “And I still have room for all the family pictures.”There were not so very many, but each picture was a treasure. Ksenia as a small child, with a soup-bowl haircut and a lacy old-fashioned smock; Ilya with his mother and sister, whom Galina barely knew; Ksenia unsmiling, but with the sparkle of youth and optimism in her adolescent eyes. Ksenia and Ilya’s grave postrevolutionary wedding portrait, both gazing at the camera with a look of serious purpose.
And here was Maksim, first a sandy-haired toddler holding a bunch of droopy daisies, then a schoolboy, and finally, a university student, his open face a study of eagerness and hope. Galina remembered that session, Maksim impatient, his bags packed, ready to leave for the train station right from the photo studio, Ksenia trying to suppress her anxiety but letting the pride shine through tear-filled eyes while Galina and Ilya hovered in the background like the supporting players they were.
She packed the pictures of herself last, laying each one with care into the folio lined with tissue paper. Here, she is a baby, seated on a white cotton coverlet, wearing a knitted dress and a halo of fine wispy hair. This one, a school picture: dark dress, lace collar, holding a book. And her favorite: she a gawky nine-year-old standing next to her seated father. He is wearing his white summer trousers, his arm draped casually along the back of the bench, his head thrown back, a hint of a smile lighting up his face. She lingered over that one. Will I ever be so happy again? So sheltered, so contented, so loved?
“Stop crying,” Ksenia scolded. “Why take them if you ruin them with your tears?”
Galina dried her eyes. She added her own wedding portrait, the teenaged bride and groom side by side like children playing dress-up in borrowed clothes. That went on top, along with extra copies of everyone’s official passport picture. And that was all. She closed the cardboard folio, tied its brown silk ribbon, shut the suitcase.
“You have the travel permits, Ilya? The letters of introduction?” Ksenia asked.
“Right here,” he patted his breast pocket. “And my share of the money.”
“And I have mine,” she replied. “In case we get separated.”
Filip said nothing about the bills in his pocket, a parting contribution from his father. The photographs of his own family, which Zoya had given him, were tucked safely in his suitcase under his stamp albums.
“Nu, well then,” Ksenia’s glance swept the room. Was she taking stock, noting the contents of her home, its abandoned furnishings, its familiar floors and walls and windows, never to be seen again? Or was she simply checking for forgotten necessities, making sure nothing essential had been left behind? “Let’s sit.”
They all knew the ancient custom: when all the journey preparations were done, everything packed and waiting at the door, everyone sits down and, after a moment of silence, all rise in unison and leave. No last-minute farewells, no hesitation. Sit. Stand. Go.
Ksenia, Ilya, and Galina turned toward the east corner of the room, where until an hour ago the ikona of Saint Nicholas had hung, and crossed themselves. Filip stood behind, his hands at his sides; he refused to participate in the religious part of the ritual, but made sure no one noticed.
Galina stopped on the threshold for a last glance around the rooms, at the remaining furniture and rugs. “What will happen to our things?”
Her father laid a reassuring hand on her shoulder. “Someone will use them, or sell them. Don’t trouble yourself over a few objects. We’ve had the use of them; now someone else can benefit. Is that suitcase heavy for you?”
“No, Papa. It’s not heavy.”
That wasn’t what I meant, Galina wanted to say. She had no special attachment to these particular things, many of them already old before becoming part of her childhood home. Hers was a more specific curiosity: she wanted to know the people, to touch the coats they would hang on the hooks near the door, see them sleeping in the beds, feel the vibration of their footsteps across the front room carpet, hear their talk and laughter around the kitchen table, smell the food they cooked on the old iron stove. She felt unmoored, suspended between the yawning void that was their future and the unpeopled vacuum they were leaving behind. Maybe we all feel this way, she thought. We just don’t know how to talk about it.
They passed through the courtyard and into the still-sleeping streets, the sun just rising over the distant mountains to the east. If anyone saw them leave, they gave no sign. No one called out a final greeting; no hand moved behind the curtained windows.
They took the early streetcar to the dock. The transport was to sail by barge to Odessa, they had been told, then travel by a succession of trains through Eastern Europe to its German destination. Papers checked, they sat on their luggage for hours in the open boat’s dank interior, talking little, watching other passengers walk the shaky plank and find places for themselves. Waiting.
Galina grasped the side of the boat for balance against the swaying of the antiquated vessel. It smelled of stagnant seawater and rotten fish, underlaid with something industrial, a clinging oily stench that stung the nostrils, unrelieved by the steady breeze from the sea.
“Never mind,” Ksenia said. “We are volunteers. We have good letters of introduction. Didn’t the officer who signed them promise us a farm assignment? It’s hard work, but it’s not factory labor. At least we’ll be in the country, in the fresh air.”
She rose and walked toward the prow, Ilya following a moment later. They stood looking past the harbor at the Black Sea, the gulls gliding in widening circles over its placid waters, a scroll of smoke from a passing freighter unfurling slowly in the cloudless sky. Above them, perched on the edge of its cliff, the celebrated Gull’s Nest Sanatorium kept vigil, the sea on one side and Yalta, their city, on the other. Ilya pushed his cap back, lit a cigarette. Ksenia tucked her hand under his arm. Neither spoke.
“What do I know of farm work?” Filip spat into the greenish foam lapping against the boat’s edge. I’m leaving all my hopes here, everything I love and wish for. Except . . . He looked at Galina.
She sat motionless, perched on two suitcases, her back not quite touching the damp side of the barge. Only her hands moved, the fingers weaving around each other as if of their own will, composing and delivering mysterious messages. My wife, he thought. Filip studied her face, the radiant beauty of it muted by an expression of such wistfulness, such sorrow, that he felt something shift in him, as if his heart had suddenly disclosed a previously dormant chamber, even as his mind struggled with the enormity of this moment. As though his childhood fell away then, and life, in all its ugliness and random unrelenting progress, crowded in.
All at once, he had so much to say. “Galya . . .”
“What?” she acknowledged, her stare fixed to the decaying boards at her feet.
The trip passed in a blur. Two armed German guards stood at either end of the barge, smoking and laughing together over the huddled travelers’ heads. Seasickness swept through the crowd, affecting most of the passengers; those who were not afflicted by the boat’s motion were sickened by the spectacle. Vomit was everywhere, slimy underfoot, sticking to shoes and luggage, cascading down people’s clothing in stinking patches that dried almost at once in the blazing afternoon sun.
&n
bsp; Ilya was among the few who did not succumb; Ksenia held out longer than most by sheer force of will. Rocked by the slow progress of the barge through seas more turbulent than they appeared, Filip and Galina were able to retch over the side and avoid soiling their clothes.
They reached Odessa with the sun low in the sky, waited dockside while a dozen of their fellow passengers were put to work with buckets of seawater and stiff brooms, cleaning the boat for its return voyage. “Schnell, russischen Schweine. Pigs. Clean faster,” the guards shouted, while the idle crew looked on, stony-faced, showing neither compassion nor contempt.
Then it was on to the train station, passing through the city’s broad avenues, guards riding with semiautomatic weapons trained on the marching group. Like a grotesque parade that stopped traffic to let it through, ignored by pedestrians who thronged the wide sidewalks in their early evening rush to what? Home, dinner, family?
“If this is how they treat volunteers . . . ,” Filip muttered, but no one replied or even looked at him.
And Odessa! He longed to break away from the humiliating transport march and have even one hour to explore this glittering city. There were no shortages here. The shops were full of goods. Their windows glowed and beckoned, spilling pools of yellow light into the streets filled with people. He watched their faces flicker, passing through light and shadow in a cinematic panorama, searched them in vain for the harried look everyone seemed to wear back home. Why can’t we stay here? There was bread in the bakeries, and cakes, too; meat in the butcher shops. A haberdasher displayed hats and neckties; stylish creations draped on dress shop mannequins tempted the eye. There were toys, furniture, Turkish carpets, glassware, jewelry. Why can’t we stay?
He wasn’t the only one to notice. He listened, head down to catch the remarks circulating through the shuffling crowd.
Roads Page 15