The officer spun around, raised the pistol over his head, and fired into the air, laughing. “You men—you and you and you two and of course you, Großvater,” he shouted, pointing at Ilya. “Take these shovels and dig a hole, over there, away from the tracks, for these.” He pointed at the corpses with the tip of his boot. “You, Mutti, and your brave daughter, strip them. I want all the clothes folded, shoes on top, rings and jewelry inside the shoes. Their papers you will give to me. The rest of you, fill these stinking troughs with snow. Nobody wants to see your shit.” When they hesitated, looking around for more shovels, he yelled, “What? You have hands. And five minutes.”
It was hard work. Some of the corpses were, like them, wearing several layers of clothes. Galina’s fingers trembled, fumbling with icy buttons, tugging at sleeves encasing unyielding arms. “Don’t you cry,” Ksenia mumbled. “Don’t you dare cry. Empty your mind, or say a prayer.” They worked quickly, adding to the growing pile of skirts, trousers, sweaters, coats, shirts, dresses, laying children’s clothes on top, along with caps and scarves, tossing wedding rings and earrings into a shoe. Neither said another word.
When they were finished, Ksenia walked the shaking Galina to a tree, holding her while she retched, doubled over, wiping the thin stream of greenish slime from the corner of her mouth. Just then the child moved and Galina groaned, both hands on her belly; a bit of color returned to her pallid cheeks. Thank God, Ksenia thought. At least this one is still alive.
The others scrambled, picking up snow and frigid mud with numbed hands, snow that melted as soon as it hit the reeking, steaming mess; but they kept at it until the ground within a few yards was bare and the troughs filled to overflowing, a light carapace of ice forming over the cooled surface.
The men digging the grave hacked at the frozen ground, making little headway. They were at some distance from the others, with a single guard a few feet away. “There are only six of them,” someone said quietly, “and many of us.”
“So? We have shovels. They have guns. Even if we get their weapons, where will we go?”
“Anywhere. But the women, the children . . .”
“That’s the problem. Best to wait. Something seems different, as if they’ve lost direction, or the will to fight. They could have shot us,” Ilya said, “but they didn’t.”
It proved impossible to work the frozen earth, even with a pickax; the time required was more than the transport could finally afford to take. Already, they could see people in the forward wagons returning to their places, the signal to resume the journey shouted down along the length of the train. The bodies were left in the shallow trench, covered with bare twigs and heaped with snow. Ilya, working rapidly with a bit of wire, fashioned a rough cross and laid it on top.
Back on the train, the refugees gathered up their things and arranged themselves for the rest of the trip. The transport stopped several more times in the next few days, but everyone was ordered to stay on board. Some had managed to fill whatever cup or vessel they had with snow, against the implacable thirst; there was no food. Only now, there was a little more room.
Fresh troops were waiting at Plattling, with a convoy of open-bed trucks lined up along the road leading away from the station. Two men took up positions at each wagon door; no one could disembark until given permission. Inside, the people waited, as they had for the endless hours of what should have been a short journey, through detours, rerouting, and many unexplained delays, the train standing idle in open country for hours at a time. After nearly a week on board, they were hungry, filthy, dispirited, and crazed with thirst.
The jolt of the stop woke Galina. She was wedged between Filip and Ksenia, the curve of her stomach pressed against her mother’s back, one hand resting on Ksenia’s shoulder.
“I was dreaming,” she said. “Mama, you had given me some cloth scraps—I recognized one from a dress you made for me when I was little, white with red dots. I loved that dress.” Her voice took on a dreamy storytelling cadence. “My doll Masha lay naked on the table, arms at her sides, her blue eyes closed. I was sewing her a dress with my shiny new needle, singing a little song. I was so happy.
“May there always be blue skies, may there always be sunshine. May there always be Mama, may there always be me.” She sang in a melodious whisper, raising her chin a little, oblivious to the curious glances from those who overheard.
Ksenia bowed her head. Was it possible Galina had forgotten? Had her mind erased the harrowing details of their ordeal so completely that all she was left with was this innocent child’s version? Lord have mercy. Gospodi pomiluy, she thought, reaching up to squeeze her daughter’s hand. May you never remember.
Each car was emptied with model efficiency, the local police working with the soldiers, forming men and teenaged boys into an orderly line and loading them onto the waiting trucks.
The trucks began to move. The women pulled their children closer, buzzing with consternation. Armed guards prevented them from running alongside the convoy but could not keep them from calling out to the departing husbands and brothers, fathers and friends. “Stay strong.” “Don’t despair.” Alyosha, Nikola, Andrei, Sashok.
“Send word, Ilya.” Ksenia’s voice rose above the others. “I will find you.”
They watched the last of the trucks disappear down the road, then turned as one to face the soldiers and police. “Why have you taken them? Where are they going? What happens to us?” they demanded.
“You? March. Single file. Hold your Kinder by the hand. Any child who runs will be shot.”
PART V
The Women
1
THEIR DESTINATION WAS a deserted summer camp. No military barracks, just several rustic dormitories and a roofed open-sided dining pavilion. The lavatory had a dozen sinks against one wall, several open showers, and a huge oblong bathtub against the other.
Galina could easily imagine this tub filled with squealing, happy children getting washed in batches of ten or twelve, their bodies slick with soap, their heads full of impressions from a day at the lake, the woods, or a farm visit. Soap! What a luxury that was. Would she ever be clean again? How long would it take to scrub away the grayish tint from her skin, or to lose the stale odor that, like a badge of their lowly status, they hardly even noticed on each other?
The overseer noticed, and ordered an immediate disinfection. “Strip, before you carry your lice and filth into our bedding. Put your clothes in the bathtub. Everything,” she shouted at the women reluctant to remove their undergarments.
They showered several at a time, scouring their bodies with harsh brown laundry soap that left their skin dry as sandpaper, with raw red patches in the crooks of their elbows, behind the knees, under their breasts, between their thighs. Still wet, they were led from the lavatory across the compound to the infirmary, prevented from concealing their nakedness or sheltering the youngest among them by walking single file, the February wind biting at their skin. All the camp guards, including the women, turned out to see the parade, some hooting or whistling or making crude remarks, others watching in enigmatic silence.
A thin, impassive barber shaved their heads. An emaciated woman of indeterminate age swept the falling hair into sacks; her shabby dress and weary expression suggested she was an inmate like themselves. “They say the hair is disinfected and sold to wig makers,” she told them later, her own head covered with a blue-and-white-striped rag tied at the nape of her neck. “Nothing is wasted here.”
One by one, the women were admitted into the “treatment room,” where a doctor examined them and doused them with disinfectant. Those waiting were silent. All their questions had been ignored. No one knew where the men had been taken, or why. They were still completely at their captors’ mercy. There was nothing to say.
The women came out, each one’s head yellow with a foul-smelling liquid, each clenching her teeth at the stinging pain of the cuts and scrapes on her freshly shaved scalp and pubis. Some had tear-stained faces; some looked
enraged or strangely relieved. Some were in the room longer than others.
When a girl of twelve or thirteen went in, hunched over as if trying to conceal her newly formed breasts, hands cupped in front of her groin in a touching display of modesty, a collective sigh went through the crowd, more eloquent than any words of warning or encouragement. The doctor kept her at least a quarter of an hour. When she emerged, hands at her sides, her face flushed but stony, she, like the others, said nothing. An older woman who stepped out of the line, reached for the child, and spoke her name, received a sharp reprimand and a baton blow across her back, which sent her gasping against the wall. The girl looked at her, then turned away. She went to stand with the “clean” women, waiting with them for whatever came next.
The two in the group who were clearly pregnant gravitated toward each other almost in spite of themselves, as if their nudity exposed more than they might otherwise choose to reveal.
“Galya, from Yalta,” Galina said when they found themselves next to one another.
“Marfa, Korovkino. It’s near Odessa,” the other replied. They looked at each other knowingly, nodded, and smiled.
Later, dressed in their fumigated clothing, which stank strongly of rotten eggs and harshly of ammonia, they sat together on a bench in the dining pavilion, watching the sun sink through the trees. Galina spoke first. “Did he pinch . . . ?”
“Pinch and slap,” Marfa confirmed.
“And stroke . . . ?” Galina touched her breast.
“Oh, yes.”
“That disinfectant.” Both women shuddered, each feeling again the doctor’s brush paint their stubbled heads, linger over their private parts longer than necessary, the putrid substance spreading in a stinging yellow stain over their tender skin.
“And the worst part . . .” Marfa looked away.
“‘Bend over,’” they said in unison, not daring to look at each other, as if to do so would somehow make them complicit in their own ordeal. The coarse, thickly gloved fingers probing in merciless glee for no good reason except humiliation. It was unspeakable, but they knew no woman in the camp was likely to have escaped that same violation.
“I went in after you,” Galina broke the silence that had fallen between them. “Do you know what he said? ‘Another pregnant cow.’ He looked so disgusted I didn’t know whether to laugh or spit in his face.”
“What nerve.” Marfa pulled at her sweater, which had shrunk in the disinfection, the sleeves now hugging her arms just below the elbows. “And him with those hairs in his ears, like big furry spiders, and that black caterpillar eyebrow across his face. Maybe he fell from the sky, or came out of some hole in the ground. I can’t imagine any woman giving birth to such an urod. What a freak.” They both laughed, and then talked of other things.
2
WHEN IT WAS OVER, when the hot waves had finally stopped ravaging her body, Galina had looked at the attending nurse, her eyes clouded with indelible knowledge. Is this the secret? she’d thought. This thing that only women know, this ripping for which there is no preparation, every fear of which is completely justified? Does every life claw its way toward the light this way? And why?
The German nurse had held out a squalling red-skinned bundle. “Your daughter,” she’d said, all business. “Her name?”
“Katya. Katyusha. Ekaterina for the birth certificate,” Galina had immediately replied. Out of nowhere, a scrap of song had echoed in her head. Katyusha, who walks along the riverbank, sending her message of love and remembrance to her soldier, her sweetheart; she will guard their love while he defends their country. Katyusha.
“Good.” The nurse had nodded as if her approval were needed. “Take the child, please. I must fill out the forms.”
“Give her to my mother,” Galina had sighed in profound exhaustion.
Ksenia had taken the infant and walked up to the bedside. “No. She is your child. She needs you.”
“Oh, Mama. I only want to sleep,” Galina had protested. “I am so, so tired. Put her in the basket, then. I will hold her when I wake up.” She’d started to turn on her side, away from the early spring light filtering through the filmy curtain covering the ward’s single small window.
Ksenia had been adamant. “You must feed her, or she will die. Then you can sleep.”
Galina had taken the child, winced when the prehensile mouth attached to her breast and began to suck. She’d examined the strange face with equanimity—the eyes squinted shut, the barely there nose, a fuzz of dark hair haloing the head, a thread of vein throbbing across the skull. A piglet, she’d thought. She looks like nothing if not a piglet.
She had felt a stirring of affection at the comparison. Vague scenes, impressions, really, from her early childhood floated up: a wooden three-room izba in the country, chickens roosting under the eaves, a pig in a fenced enclosure, the smell of earth, hay, manure, and flowers in bloom blending into an unforgettable rustic perfume. She’d felt overwhelmed with nostalgia for this uncomplicated happiness. Would there ever be anything as good as this remembered life, this life before famine, before city tenements, before fear?
Galina had felt her mother’s hand on her arm, looked up as Ksenia wiped away the tears she had not been aware of with a corner of the sheet. “Now the other breast,” Ksenia had said softly. “Then you both can sleep.”
Galina had switched the infant to the other side, detaching the pink mouth with an instinctive pinch of her fingers against her breast, surprising herself with her grasp of this bit of primal knowledge. “Kto t’y? Who are you?” she’d said out loud, watching the child ease into her rhythm, walnut-sized fists clenched as if ready for battle.
* * *
“Bist du . . .” The evening nurse said something Galina did not understand. Are you comfortable? Well? Warm? The nurse smiled vaguely and settled the freshly bathed, diapered, and swaddled infant in Galina’s arms. “She is hungry now, then sleep. For you, too.” That was clear enough. Again, she used the informal du form, addressing the young mother as if she were a child or a servant or a member of the family, though she herself was only a few years older.
Was it just women’s solidarity, a tacit admission into the universal club of mothers? Galina thought she’d heard an underlying hint of superiority, a touch of derision, but could not be sure. The four other women in the half-filled ward spoke easily among themselves, ignoring the Russian stranger in their midst, admiring each other’s babies, their bright laughter impermeable as a wall of stone.
She wondered where they would be going, these women, in a few days. She imagined their homes, kitchens stocked with household necessities, parlors, no matter how small, filled with furniture. Pictures on the walls, figurines on a shelf, maybe a rug on the floor. Bedrooms with blankets and pillows. Doors between rooms, to open or close. Windows giving a view onto dormant gardens ready to receive the seeds of a new harvest, waiting for spring flowers. Flowers don’t recognize war, she thought. Give them rain and sun, and they bloom.
She wanted to ask the women: Where will your baby sleep when you go home? Is there a crib, a soft embroidered coverlet, fresh diapers, little shirts and gowns and slippers? Toys? But no one looked at her, and anyway, she didn’t have the words.
Galina looked at her baby’s tiny face, its tightly shut eyes, the lips nearly translucent with the effort of sucking. Single-minded—or no, not minded at all, she realized, just surrendering with a ferocious tenacity to the instinctive act that made the difference between tentative life and certain death.
Soon Mama will come, she thought, and we can talk about what to do. Maybe she would have answers to some of the questions that continued to plague Galina, even in her sleep. Where can I live with my baby? How can I work to keep us alive? Where are Papa and Filip?
Galina rested her head on the pillow, her mind thick with drowsiness but crowded with recollections. She could still hear the clattering train packed with human cargo, its whistle stilled by wartime regulations, speeding into the abyss of a nigh
t made darker by the glow of Dresden burning behind them. The puzzling journey, marked by unexplained delays, the train stopped for hours between stations without food or water, and only the heat of their massed bodies to keep them from freezing. The persistent glimmer of hope, unredeemed by any reasonable evidence, that somehow the worst was now behind them. They had lived through internment in a succession of labor camps, endured myriad humiliations; they had wandered blindly in a hostile, unfamiliar land as vagrants and, occasionally, thieves. They had lost nearly all their pitiful possessions.
And then Plattling, in a dawn light colorless as melting snow, where they were greeted with new orders barked in hoarse voices. Why had the men been taken away? Were they alive? How could she and her mother find them?
In the women’s camp, no one had known what was happening. They could feel a gradual slackening of discipline. Not compassion for their sorry plight, no, but a loss of focus, as if their captors had lost interest in the game, no longer cared about maintaining the daily regimen of meaningless tasks and duties. One day, with no explanation, the sentries had been removed, the gates opened. Go.
Was it over? Rumors flew, colliding, multiplying, dissolving into the charged air of speculation. The Red Army, advancing from the east, bent on extracting bloody vengeance on the German nation, was to be feared; those who had fled their homeland could expect no mercy from the Soviets, no matter what the level of abuse they had already endured. Hitler was dead. No, he was in hiding, or traveling in secret to Paris, gathering his forces for one last decisive battle, still obsessed with proving the truth of his insane ideas. The women did not know what to believe.
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