The Memory Keeper of Kyiv (80)

“Of course.” Katya’s face flushed with embarrassment. “Where are my manners? Sleep now, and we will talk tomorrow.”

That night, as Katya lay in bed, apprehension kept her awake. A priest at their door so soon after her discussion of marriage with Mama? What had seemed like an empty promise to appease her mother suddenly felt quite real and made Katya sick.

Mama hadn’t roused at Vasyl’s arrival. She’d deteriorated so much in the last few days that it was possible she might not be cognizant at all while he was with them. And if Mama didn’t bring up the marriage to Vasyl, Katya could ignore it.

Guilt choked Katya at the thought. How could she wish her mother ill for any reason? But then, how could she marry Kolya? The impossibility of the situation overwhelmed her until she finally fell into a fitful sleep.

The next morning, Kolya woke before daylight to go check a snare and returned with a small hare. Katya cooked it into a stew with some cattail roots she’d gathered from the creek. Close to rotting, they tasted a bit rancid but filled their stomachs. They ate silently, like they always did now, shoveling the little bits of food into their mouth as fast as they could.

At the end of the meal, cousin Vasyl paused, the cleanly picked hare leg still in his hand, and stared at the bone in awe. “This was the first real meal I have had in… well, I can’t remember. Thank you.” His voice broke with emotion.

“It’s our pleasure to share with you,” Katya said. “I only wish we had more.”

When he finished eating, he began talking. “They came in the middle of the night for us. It was only a week or so after I officiated for your weddings, and your parents’ funerals.” He gave Kolya’s arm a pat. “After the walk to the railroad station, we were loaded onto cattle cars.”

“And I’m sure nobody had coats or blankets.” Katya pulled a thick shawl around herself and Halya and shivered.

Vasyl closed his eyes and nodded. “That was only the beginning of our ordeals, dear cousin. We spent days in those cars, crushed together, which provided some warmth, but not enough for all. Soon, we began to lose the very young and the very old to the bitter cold.”

“Did they feed you?” Kolya leaned forward in his seat, his arms resting on his legs.

“They gave each car one loaf of bread for every ten people inside, and a pail of a thin watery soup. That was all. As you can imagine, it was hard to divvy up the food into fair shares. People became crazed with hunger. A few stepped up and took charge, trying to make sure each person had their due amount.”

“Where did they take you?” Katya asked.

“Siberia.” His shoulders sagged, as if even saying the name of the place brought back misery.

Tato’s face flitted through Katya’s mind. And Sasha’s. So, Siberia was likely their fate. Had they survived, like Vasyl? Their memories didn’t cut through her like they once did. Even though each report of the dead and lost gave her a new shock, so much had happened in the two years since the state took them that the pain of those early losses felt like a lifetime ago.

“The train let us off in the middle of a snowy wasteland. No shelter. They pulled the dead bodies off the cars and tossed them to the side of the tracks. They didn’t let us bury them, or even say a prayer for them.” Vasyl spoke so low Katya had to strain to hear him. She sat forward in her chair, like Kolya.

“Those still alive were forced to march for hours through the wind and snow. The weak fell down and died where they lay. Little children who had survived this far collapsed. Some mothers tried to carry them along so their tiny bodies wouldn’t be abandoned, but they, too, soon fell with the extra weight as they floundered through the deep snow. So, they had to choose. Leave their babies to die alone in the snow or stay with them.” He paused and wrung his hands. “The guards shot those who refused to give up their children and continue.”

Vasyl brushed his cheek roughly, and they sat in silence as he swayed with the remembered emotion. “I’ve never seen such a lack of humanity in my life.”

Katya listened, numb to his words. She wanted to cry along with him, to know she could still feel compassion and empathy, anything besides despair, but she couldn’t. Grief had pulled her so low that she’d never fully climbed back up from its depths. Now, melancholy was her constant companion, and it left little room for other emotions. It enveloped her, inside and out, and sat bitter on her tongue, like the taste of the dandelion greens she’d grown so familiar with.

Vasyl continued, “We stopped at the edge of a forest with no buildings in sight, and they told us that we had to build our dwellings. Although we were exhausted, the men and women began gathering branches to construct some type of crude shelter until we could build something better. We worked through the night, trying to make sure all had some type of protection, but nobody had much.

“The next day, they told us the men would be logging the wood the state was harvesting and shipping out, and the women and children would now be responsible for building the permanent shelters. And so the days went on, bleeding into each other. The only constants were the cold and hunger. People continued to die every day, but that changed nothing.”

“How did you get out?” Katya asked.

“One day, I was far out with two other men, felling a tree. A guard stationed near us came close to check on us and see what was taking so long. He screamed that we were lazy and useless. One of the men I was working with snapped. He’d lost his wife the previous day and his five children at various points throughout the train ride and march. I guess he figured he had nothing left to lose, so he jumped the guard and managed to kill him with his axe before any shots were fired. “Nobody saw the scuffle, but they would come looking for the guard eventually. We took his gun, his clothes, and his knife, and the three of us set off walking. We didn’t know where we were going, but anyplace was better than there.”