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.
“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.