Between Shades of Gray(31)

“That doesn’t carry a twenty-five-year sentence,” muttered the bald man.

“Tell him we will work for them and we will provide good labor, but we are not yet ready to sign,” said Mr. Lukas.

Mother translated. “He says we must sign now.”

“I am not signing a paper condemning me to twenty-five years,” said Miss Grybas.

“Nor am I,” I said.

“So what do we do?” asked Mrs. Rimas.

“We wait here quietly until we are dismissed,” said Mr. Lukas, winding his watch.

And so we waited.

“Where’s Andrius?” whispered Jonas.

“I don’t know,” I said. I had heard the bald man ask the same question.

We sat on the floor of the kolkhoz office. Every few minutes, Komorov would slap or kick someone, trying to bully them into signing. No one did. I winced with his every step. Sweat trickled across the nape of my neck and along my spine. I tried to keep my head down, afraid that Komorov would notice me. Those who fell asleep were beaten.

Hours passed. We sat obediently, like schoolchildren in front of the principal. Finally, Komorov spoke to Kretzsky.

“He’s telling the young guard to take over,” Mother translated.

Komorov marched over to Mother. He grabbed her by the arm and spit something that resembled an oyster onto her face. Then he left.

Mother quickly wiped off the slime, as if it didn’t bother her at all. It bothered me. I wanted to roll the hate up into my mouth and spit it back in his face.





37


AT SUNRISE THEY TOLD us it was time to go back to work. Tired but relieved, we dragged ourselves to our shack. Ulyushka was already gone. The hut smelled of rotten eggs. We drank some of the rainwater and ate a stub of bread Mother had saved. Despite my washing efforts, my dress was still stiff with mud. My hands looked like a small animal had chewed on them. Yellow pus leaked from the blisters.

I tried my best to clean the sores with the rainwater. It didn’t help. Mother said I needed to form calluses.

“Just do the best you can, dear,” said Mother. “Move your arm as if you’re digging, but don’t press. I’ll do the work.” We set off out of the hut, walking toward the lineup for work detail.

Mrs. Rimas walked toward us, her face covered in fear. Then I saw it, the body of a man with a stake driven through his chest into the side of the kolkhoz office. His arms and legs dangled like a limp marionette. Blood soaked through his shirt and dripped to form a stain beneath him. Buzzards feasted on his fleshy bullet wounds. One pecked at his empty eye socket.

“Who is he?” I asked.

Mother gasped, grabbed me, and tried to cover my eyes.

“He wrote a letter,” whispered Mrs. Rimas.

I moved past Mother, looking at the piece of paper tacked up, fluttering next to the dead man. I saw handwriting and a very crude diagram.

“He wrote a letter to the partisans—the Lithuanian freedom fighters. The NKVD found it,” said Mrs. Rimas.

“Who translated it for them?” whispered Mother. Mrs. Rimas shrugged.

My stomach dropped, thinking of my drawings. I felt nauseous and put my hand to my mouth.

The blond guard, Kretzsky, stared at me. He looked tired and angry. Our standoff had deprived him of sleep. He marched us out to the clearing at a faster pace than normal, yelling and pushing at us.

We arrived at the large pit we had dug the day before. Looking at it, I estimated that four men lying down could fit inside. Kretzsky instructed us to dig another pit next to the first. I couldn’t erase the image of the dead man from my mind. His diagram was nothing more than a few crude lines. I thought of my drawings, lifelike and full of pain, sitting in my suitcase. I had to hide them.

I yawned and hacked away at the dirt. Mother said the time went faster if we talked about things that made us happy. She said it gave us strength.

“I want to find that village,” I said. “Maybe we can buy food or send letters.”

“How can we go anywhere, when all we do is work?” said the grouchy woman. “And if we don’t work, we don’t eat.”

“I’ll try to ask the woman I live with,” said Mrs. Rimas.

“Be careful who you ask,” said Mother. “We don’t know who we can trust.”

I missed Papa. He would know who we could ask and who we should stay away from.

We dug and dug until the water arrived. Commander Komorov was on the truck. He walked around the holes, inspecting them. I eyed the bucket of water. My hair stuck to my face. I wanted to submerge my head and drink. Komorov barked a command. Kretzsky shifted his feet. Komorov repeated the command.

Mother’s face was suddenly the color of chalk. “He says ... we must get in the first hole,” she said, clenching her dress.

“For what?” I asked.

Komorov yelled and pulled a pistol from his belt. He pointed it at Mother. She jumped down into the first hole. The pistol moved to my head. I jumped in. He continued until all four of us were in the hole. He laughed and gave another instruction.

“We must put our hands on our heads,” said Mother.

“No, dear God,” said Mrs. Rimas, shaking.

Komorov walked around the hole, looking at us, pointing the pistol. He told us to lie down. We lay next to each other. Mother grasped my hand. I stared up. The sky was blue behind the silhouette of his large, square frame. He circled the hole again.