The Memory Keeper of Kyiv (93)

Then, she looked down the road and saw the abandoned farm, and it all came back to her like a punch in the gut. How could she ever forget, even for one moment, what she had lost? She deserved to be carrying this pain, feeling it always. She survived. They didn’t. The crack in her armor sealed over and she hardened.

She braced herself as they went inside the house, welcoming the barrage of loss that assaulted her. The house was in shambles. They weren’t the only ones searching for goods and scavenging firewood.

“People have been here.” Kolya shook his head. He pointed at the bed Pavlo had died on. “I’m going to pull apart the bedstead. Start collecting any loose wood you can. We’ll need to take as much as we can before it’s all gone.”

Katya wandered aimlessly around, her eyes seeing, but not registering anything. Her mind felt fuzzy and thick. Was that another sign of starvation? How many days had it been since she’d eaten?

A glint of light reflected off the lantern they’d brought and caught her eye. A mirror lay tucked halfway under the pillow on the other bed. Katya picked up the heavy piece, amazed that it hadn’t been taken by thieves. She peered into it, and a stranger stared back. She could look down and see the bones poking out all over her body, like a living skeleton, but she hadn’t seen her face in a very long time. Her cheekbones jutted out over pallid skin, her lips cracked and dry. Dark purple smudges sat under her eyes, which now looked huge in her face. With a gasp, she dropped the mirror on the bed.

“What’s wrong?” Kolya called.

“Nothing,” she said quickly. “Nothing that matters anymore.”

Katya smiled bitterly, and her bottom lip split open with the unnatural movement. What did her pride matter now? It should have vanished long ago. Maybe when she’d eaten the earthworms she dug up in the garden while searching for potatoes, or when she’d boiled an old piece of leather into a soup.

She gave a sigh of disgust and turned the mirror face down.

“You’re still beautiful, you know.”

Katya jumped at the sound of Kolya’s voice so close to her, then gave a hoarse laugh.

“You’re kind to say so, but none of us look our best now.”

Kolya sat down on the bed next to her. “No, we don’t, but you have an inner beauty and strength that will always shine through.”

Her face warmed under his gentle regard and she opened her mouth to respond, but before she could think of something to say, he jerked upright and walked away from her. She stared after him, unsure if she’d imagined the whole conversation, and the tangled knot in her chest constricted once again.





The first signs of spring appeared only a few weeks after Denys’s death, and it took Katya that long to be able to bring herself to write of his existence in her journal. She pressed her pencil, now so small she had to pinch it between only two fingers, lightly to preserve the lead.

Nearly full, the journal Pavlo had given her contained everything she’d witnessed, everything she’d lost. Writing soothed her in a way she couldn’t explain, and she did it religiously, as if preserving her loved ones on the paper meant they weren’t really dead.

Kolya walked up behind her and blocked the light coming in the window.

“We should go to the collective and check in.” He glanced at her journal, then snapped his head away, as if afraid to relive what she’d documented there. When she didn’t reply, he went on. “Maybe they’ll have food for us so we can gain our strength before they have us do the spring planting.”

“I don’t think they care about our strength,” Katya said. In a former life, back when everyone she loved was alive, the short walk took no time at all. In her current state, Katya doubted her ability to even make it out of the yard.

“I still think we should try. Either way, we need to get out of this house, or we will go crazy. All of the houses anywhere near us are empty. Sometimes, it seems as if we are the only people left in the world.”

“Fine,” Katya agreed. She put away her journal and pulled on her coat, tucking Halya close inside.

Katya concentrated so hard on moving one foot in front of the other as they sloshed through the muddy road that they were practically on top of Lena and Ruslan’s house before she realized it.

“We should see if they are well.” Kolya walked through their gate, but Katya couldn’t bring herself to go any further.

“I’ll wait here,” she said, as Kolya walked to the door and knocked. The booming sound shattered the still emptiness of the day.

“Lena! Ruslan!”

When no one answered, Kolya pushed the door open, but instead of going inside, he took a step back. He stole a glance at Katya as he put his elbow over his nose and entered the house. As the scent of death wafted out, Katya understood they hadn’t survived. Ruslan’s desperate, evil deeds had not saved him. Perhaps they had condemned him.

It didn’t take Kolya long to come back out, shaking his head. “They’re dead. Both of them.”

He stood a moment, waiting for her response, but Katya couldn’t muster up any feeling other than relief that she wouldn’t have to face Lena and Ruslan and their terrible secret.

“How bad was it?” Katya finally asked.

Kolya appraised her, as if judging whether to tell the whole truth or not.