The Memory Keeper of Kyiv (94)

“She hung herself, and it looks as if he was stabbed.” Kolya looked back at the house. “I heard rumors about Ruslan. Did he—”

She held up her hand. “I don’t want to talk about it. It’s done.”

He clenched his jaw, then nodded. “I’m sorry, Katya. I know you were close to Lena at one time.”

“Yes. But it seems like a lifetime ago.” She should have more compassion for Lena’s death. But she didn’t. She was numb to such an insignificant loss after so many great ones.

Kolya wanted to see if they could find anyone still alive, so he knocked on the doors of the houses they passed. A few contained survivors barely hanging on, like them, but more stood empty. Some homes were rotting and dilapidated, unwillingly abandoned by their owners in the early waves of dekulakization. Other homes, still standing, served as tombs filled with dead bodies: mothers and children, old people and young people. So many dead.

One house held a woman hanging from the rafters. Her four dead children were laid out on the big bed in their best clothing. Katya knew the family. Her husband had been deported last year after the horse he used to harrow a collective field went lame and the state accused him of sabotaging government property.

Most of the people they found frozen right where they had died, their once happy homes now their final resting place. Some, who had collapsed with exhaustion, lay on the floor. Others, perceptive enough to know the end loomed near, had put on their best clothes before taking their final breath. Children lay dead in their mothers’ arms. Old couples embraced each other in their beds. Whole families lay in ruins, defeated by Stalin’s forced hunger, just as he had planned.

“How did we survive this?” Katya asked. “So many didn’t. Why us?”

“Sometimes, I think they are the lucky ones,” Kolya said, his voice hollow.

She took his hand in her own. His touch, rough and hard, had become an anchor, tethering her to this ugly life. He gripped her hand in return. They did not stop at any other houses.

As they walked on, the sun rose higher in the sky, warming them even more. Katya inhaled the smell of spring. The smell of the damp earth coming to life used to fill her with joy. It smelled of hope. It smelled of life. This year, it also smelled of rotting flesh.

The bodies of those who had died in the fields, in the streets, in their homes, had been frozen all winter, hidden beneath the heavy cloak of snow that covered the land. Now, under the warm spring sun, the corpses had finally begun their return to dust. So many bodies decaying all at once released a sickly sweet, noxious odor that filled Katya’s nose and wormed throughout her body until she thought she would never smell anything else again.

As they neared the collective headquarters, the smell worsened. Dead bodies lined the road and spotted the fields in various states of decomposition.

“Look.” Kolya stared out over a collective field. “They died in the field while they were digging for old rotten potatoes. Just fell, right there, and nobody moved them.”

Katya pulled the wraps closer around Halya to shield her from the smell and shuddered.

Like she suspected, no food waited for them at the collective headquarters, so they turned around and trudged back through the dead bodies scattered around the village. Their outing today had brought nothing but the devastating realization that most of their fellow villagers hadn’t survived.

Stalin must be proud. The activists and his OGPU had done their jobs well.





The next day, Kolya burst into the house as if the whole village was after him.

“I have meat,” he gasped, slamming the door behind him.

“Did they give out food at the collective?” Katya asked, a tremor of hope wavering in her voice. They hadn’t eaten any meat since the rat he had caught right after Denys died. “The snares have been empty for some time. Or did you catch a fish?”

“No, I have horse meat.”

“How?” Katya sat up, but Halya barely moved on the bed next to her. “They guard those horses so strictly on the farm.”

“They do. And once they are dead, they’re stacked in the pits, and covered in carbolic acid, so they are inedible.” He pulled two cloth-wrapped parcels out of the top of each boot and set them on the table. “I got to the horse before that.”

He unrolled the packages and inside, long strips of meat lay coiled in a mass, cut down and rolled narrow enough to wrap around Kolya’s ankles inside his boot. Katya’s stomach growled at the sight.

“I can’t believe we’ll be eating real meat.” Katya pulled herself up and made her way to the frying pan, her legs stinging with pain, then glanced out of the window. “It’s dark already, so the smoke won’t be noticed much. I’ll fry it up now.”

Kolya seemed jubilant and, despite his deep affection for horses, showed no sign of despair at the idea of eating parts of the animal. With little grain or hay, they were starving like everyone else. And, just like everyone else, Kolya couldn’t help them. The state thought the wave of the future lay with tractor farming, so they didn’t give the horses the respect or care they deserved.

Katya lit a small fire in the pich, her movements clumsy and heavy. The last of the dry wood they had wouldn’t create a lot of smoke, but she wanted the fire to be as short-lived as possible. The activists had taken to searching out any homes with smoke coming from their chimneys and raiding them. Nowadays, any sign of life from the villagers was a personal affront to them, and they took great care to eradicate it.