Between Shades of Gray(64)

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 about 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.

We had to trek farther and farther to find wood. We were nearly five kilometers from camp. At the end of the day Janina clung by my side.

“Liale showed me something,” she said.

“What’s that?” I said, stuffing twigs into my pockets for our stove and my paintbrushes.

Janina looked around. “Come here. I’ll show you.”

She took my hand and walked me down the edge of the tree line and into the snow. She reached out her mitten, pointing.

“What is it?” I asked. My eyes scanned the snow.

“Shh ...” She pulled me closer and pointed.

I saw it. A huge owl lay in the snow at the edge of the trees. Its white feathers blended so well that at first I didn’t see it. Its body looked to be nearly two feet long. The large raptor had tiny brown speckles on its head and trunk.

“Is he sleeping?” asked Janina.

“I think it’s dead,” I replied. I took a stick from my pocket and poked at the wing. The owl didn’t move. “Yes, it’s dead.”

“Do you think we should eat him?” asked Janina.

At first I was shocked. Then I imagined the plump body, roasting in our barrel, like a chicken. I poked at it again. I grabbed its wing and pulled. It was heavy, but slid across the snow.

“No! You can’t drag him. The NKVD will see. They’ll take him away from us,” said Janina. “Hide him in your coat.”

“Janina, this owl is enormous. I can’t hide him in my coat.” The thought of a dead owl in my coat made me shiver.