“Why don’t you come with me to get wood from my parents’ house? We can dismantle what’s left of the furniture for firewood.” Kolya’s voice broke through the shroud of her sadness. “It might be good to get out of the house.”
She looked up at him, at the dark shadows smudged under his eyes and shoulders heavy with exhaustion, and forced herself to nod. Relief flashed across his weary face before he turned away.
She thought about the moment they’d shared while he’d dug Denys’s grave, and a strange feeling constricted her chest. A knot of uncertainty, twisting and pulling her mind in different directions. For one terrifying moment, she couldn’t recall Pavlo’s face. Only Kolya’s. A strangled cry escaped her mouth before she choked down her grief, making it hard to breathe.
Stop this, Katya admonished herself. Just do what needs to be done.
She dragged herself out of bed and dressed, then fashioned a cloth into a sling around her shoulders and tucked Halya into the warm pocket where she could rest snug against Katya’s body. She pulled her coat over the bundled baby and made sure Halya could breathe before going outside. The little girl, warm and secure, rested her tiny hand against Katya’s chest and sighed.
Her legs ached as they moved. Thick and swollen, they stung like dozens of needles were stabbing into her with each step. Odd that they swelled while the rest of her dwindled away. They hadn’t begun to crack or ooze with fluid like her mother’s or the lady she’d met at the Torgsin, so she supposed she was lucky. Being lucky had taken on much lower standards of late.
The moonlit snow brightened the world, the stars twinkled, and for a moment, as she stood suspended in that beautiful night, a tiny glimmer of a feeling she barely recognized squeezed into a crack in her broken soul. Wonder. Under the illuminated sky, Katya could almost forget the horror they lived in. She could almost imagine life as it was before Stalin sent his men to break them.
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.