The Fortune Teller(63)

*

There was an old folk saying in Russia: if you speak against the wolf, then speak against him well. Two years into the birth of the Soviet Union, a new leader emerged. He was a wolf named Stalin and no one could speak against him. His rise to power was accompanied by a storm that upended every sense of normal life.

First he stole the farms and shipped 15 million peasants to prisons across the Taiga. Their rights would not be recognized. The only record of their suffering was written in the sky by the steam from the trains as they were taken away. A famine unlike any seen before decimated the country. Compassion became unthinkable.

Galina’s daughter, Nadenka, came into the world three years after Stalin rose to power. Kezia lovingly called her granddaughter Nettie, and soon everyone else did too.

Nettie was a solemn, thoughtful girl who grew up listening to her grandmother tell the fortunes of those who quietly came to seek her counsel. With Communism, any occult or esoteric practice had become a part of the underground culture, hidden yet still alive.

Nettie would often frown when she listened to a card reading, as if Kezia had said the wrong thing. Kezia would catch the criticism in her granddaughter’s eyes and tease, “So the egg thinks it’s smarter than the chicken?”

Then they would share a secret smile. Kezia knew Nettie had the sight, perhaps even more than she did.

Kezia still studied her grandmother’s diary, and Marina had taken care to note Simza’s knowledge of the body. According to Simza, the body was a portent of the future, and Kezia became concerned about Nettie’s moles. The marks either signified great prosperity or adversity, and Kezia felt certain the two large moles on the back of Nettie’s neck implied the latter. Kezia would often examine the moles and shake her head. “These signal not one, but two misfortunes. And these…” She would turn her focus to the moles beneath Nettie’s shoulder blades. “You will have a hard life, my child, and face many disappointments.”

“I know, Grandmother” was all Nettie would say.

They had this conversation many times. Kezia felt Nettie needed to know what life had in store if she was to survive it. She was only fourteen.

Nettie didn’t tell her grandmother that she had already seen what would come to pass. The government had begun rounding up citizens and shipping them to gulags, labor camps, where every door to life was closed. Stalin’s henchmen targeted the educated: professors who taught the wrong subject, writers who wrote the wrong words, and politicians who did not clap long enough for speeches. Quotas for filling the camps were established and had to be met. As a playwright and a fashion designer, Sergei and Galina were surely sympathizers with the West. The government put them on the list. The entire family was marked. Her mother would be sent to one of the worst gulags in the Taiga Forest, far to the north in Siberia. She would labor for three years before dying of starvation. Nettie’s father would survive two years longer and be shot in a field with other prisoners. Her grandfather would die much sooner, unable to survive the initial interrogation. And her grandmother … Kezia would die first. She would pass away the day after saving a young girl from being beaten and taking the punishment herself.

Nettie would have given anything to erase the knowledge burned into her mind. She had had premonitions all her life, and they had always come true. But her worst visions still had not come to pass, and she prayed every day they never would.

*

As the months passed, Kezia felt a growing urgency and encouraged Nettie to use her cards.

“Always remember, they are only symbols on cards allowing you to see into your own mind. Divination is a mirror, reflecting what is here and here,” Kezia would tell her, pointing to Nettie’s heart and head. Nettie nodded like a solemn student.

“Whatever the cards show you, always trust the words that well inside you. The truth is waiting to be heard. Never doubt it.”

Nettie held the cards in her hands. They felt smooth and pulsed with energy.

“People want to hear about their lives. They are afraid. They want to know what is in store for them. Speak the truth as the words come. Now draw,” Kezia commanded.

Nettie drew the top card. The Hanged Man.

“What do you see? Quickly, without thinking,” Kezia demanded.

“All of life’s trappings stripped away,” Nettie answered.

“And what does it mean?” Kezia asked with impatience.

“A second war.”

“And?” Kezia sounded harsh. “What is in your mind? Say it!”

“They are going to take us away. I hope you die in your sleep before they come here.” Nettie gasped, appalled that she had said such a thing.

“But I won’t,” her grandmother said softly.

They stared at each other in a moment of deep understanding. The raids were going to happen. Soon the country would go to war—the Second World War. St. Petersburg, their beloved city, now called Leningrad, would come under a siege that would claim the lives of over a million people. But they wouldn’t be there.

Nettie wondered how much her grandmother knew. Perhaps she knew just as much.

*

The night before they came, Nettie helped her mother bathe and brush her hair dry. Galina sang along to a favorite song on the radio. Nettie could sense the change in the air: it was as though they were stealing this moment of joy. Soon they would no longer have these simple comforts. A black maw was descending on them.