Beyond the Shadow of Night(5)

“What stories?” Asher’s eldest sister, Keren, said.

“Please, Iryna, no,” Asher’s papa said before the question could be answered. “Not at the dinner table.”

She stared defiantly at him. “But everyone needs to know, Hirsch. My sister on the other side of the village has a friend. Her daughter was sent to fetch water from the well, but on the way there she was killed and . . . so they say . . . eaten.”

Her husband shot her a stiff glance. “Hirsch is right,” he said. “We are all eating, Iryna. Eating! Stop talking like this.”

“Yes, well . . . Yes, you’re right, I’m sorry.”

Asher’s mama picked up her spoon and pointed it at her husband. “I kept telling you. We should have gone to Warsaw with my sister.”

“Well, we can’t go now. The borders are sealed and people are shot for trying to leave the country.”

Mykhail’s papa slammed the palm of his hand down onto the table. “Damn the Russians! They stop us leaving, but when we stay they take our produce, give us so little in return, stop us buying and selling. Did you know that my cousin was arrested for trying to sell some of his hay?”

“The Russian people are suffering too,” Asher’s papa said.

“So we are told. But in Ukraine, we know. We only see a little but we all know. Whoever we talk to, the stories are the same: thousands of dead bodies lying in the cities—probably hundreds of thousands.”

“But not us. We’re surviving.”

“But for how long?” Asher’s mama said.

“Not very long if we don’t eat what we have.” Asher’s papa pointed a finger down at the table. “Now, please. Everyone. What’s happening is terrible. But let’s eat, not talk.”

They nodded, and soon they were all eating in silence.

Mykhail was first to finish, and sat with his arms folded. He coughed. Then again.

“Yes, you can leave the table,” his mama said wearily.

He jumped to the floor and ran around the table. “Papa, can I sit on the tractor?”

“Of course.” Mr. Petrenko patted his son on the head. “Perhaps one day you can show me how to use it.” He forced a laugh.

Mykhail left, and Asher started to eat more quickly, eyeing the door every so often.

“At least the tractor is free,” Mykhail’s mama said. “And the fuel too.”

“Free?” Mykhail’s papa said. “Free? Pah! Nothing under the Russians is free.”

“What do you mean?”

“He means we pay in other ways,” Asher’s papa said. “In return for the tractor we’ll have to give most of our crops to the state.”

“Oh, yes,” Mykhail’s papa said. “Also we have to produce the crops they tell us to, not what we need. And then they have the nerve to tell us it’s all for the greater good of our beloved Soviet comrades.”

Asher placed his empty bowl down on the table, making as much noise as he could.

“Oh, go on,” his mama said before he had the chance to ask to be excused from the table.

He scurried out and ran all the way to the barn where they kept the tractor, and found Mykhail sitting on the seat, making his best engine noises.

Asher clambered up, and the boys were shoulder to shoulder.

“Can’t you see?” Mykhail shouted above the imagined noise. “I’m driving.”

“I’ll drive with you,” Asher shouted back.



Ten minutes later, they were still making noises, smoothing their hands around the huge steering wheel, and leaning left and right as they imagined the tractor turning. They both stopped when their papas came into the barn.

“Papa,” Mykhail asked, “when are we going to use the tractor?”

His papa looked at Asher’s papa. “It’s your farm, Hirsch. What do you think?”

Asher’s papa took his cap off and scratched his head. “This new contraption? I’m not sure what to do with it.”

“So why have we got it?” Asher asked.

“Because we’re told we have to use it,” Mykhail’s papa said. “The Russians don’t think we can make our own decisions.”

Asher’s papa wandered over to the rear of the contraption and rubbed his chin, pondering. “It’s a worry. Our horses are underweight. Perhaps this could help. It doesn’t need feeding.”

“And the horses?” Mykhail’s papa said. “We let them die?”

But Asher’s papa was still looking at the tractor. “I still don’t understand how it works. It pulls equipment just like a horse would. But what makes it move?”

“You put gasoline in it,” Asher said.

Mykhail pointed to the filler cap. “In there.”

“Children,” Mykhail’s papa said. “What do they know?”

“More than us by the sounds of it,” Asher’s papa said. “One year at school and they can run the farm better than us.”

“Tractors,” Mykhail’s papa said. “What nonsense.”





Chapter 2

Dyovsta, Ukraine, 1936

The men’s laughter turned out to be hollow. By their teenage years, Asher and Mykhail had worked out all there was to know about running a tractor. Air filters, carburetors, oil changes—Asher and Mykhail read the sheaf of papers that constituted a manual, asked questions at school, and read more books. The men eventually gave up trying to figure out how this modern metal horse worked, and just let their boys get on with it. The boys sometimes even drove the tractor, and between them they carried out most of the basic maintenance tasks, even giving advice to other farmers who had been encouraged by the state to use this new technology.