Katya’s mouth watered. She could almost taste the flavors rolling over her tongue.
“I miss nalysnyky.” Her stomach growled and she pushed a fist into it. “Sweet nalysnyky with cherries. My mother makes the best I’ve ever had.”
“She does,” Kolya agreed. “But no one can hold a candle to my mother’s varenyky.” He reddened and coughed. “Could hold a candle, I mean.”
Katya put a hand on his shoulder. “Her potato ones were my favorite.”
Kolya gave her a grateful smile. “I liked the meat ones better. With onions fried in butter.”
“Lots of onions and butter,” Katya said. She grinned up at him as a warm feeling spread through her. She’d missed the camaraderie of her sister and Pavlo. Talking with Kolya like this felt good.
Kolya stopped short and made a strangled sound.
“What’s the matter?” Her eyes scanned the area, searching for hidden dangers.
“Don’t you see them?” His voice cracked.
Katya’s eyes followed his line of sight and she shuddered in horror at the scene: bulky mounds of frozen bodies littering the path to town. Apparently, many people had tried to make this trip, but their bodies didn’t have the strength to succeed. So, they sat down where they were and never got back up. At least a dozen people who had given up their fight for life right here adorned the road.
The first one lay crumpled in their path twenty feet ahead. Katya’s mouth went dry as they approached the dark mass of rough cloth that stood out starkly against the barren landscape, but she felt pulled toward the corpse, as if it called to her. Kolya pulled the fabric back from the white face to see who it was, and Katya gasped. “Ivan!”
She thought about her last words to him and his betrayal that had cost her sister’s life. A strange mixture of compassion and rage twisted through her as she stared down at his small gray face, pinched into grimace. He looked so young. So lost.
“Wasn’t he a member of the Young Pioneers?” Kolya asked.
“Yes. He thought he was one of them. He thought they would take care of him.”
Kolya gave a harsh laugh and started walking again. “They only take from us; they don’t take care of us. He learned his lesson for turning on his country.”
“He was only a boy.” Katya surprised herself. The defensive words came out of her mouth of their own volition.
“Yes, well, Alina was only my wife and only your sister, and she’s dead now, too. We could say something like that for everyone, Katya.”
She bit her tongue. She’d never told Kolya that Ivan had been the one who turned her in and put Alina’s death in motion. Telling him now would serve no purpose.
The state had misled young Ivan, like they had so many others, children and adults. Too young and foolish to know they lied to him, he remained loyal until the end. Now, he lay dead and alone on the side of the road. Katya wondered if his mother knew. But then, she was probably dead, too. Maybe that was why he’d embarked on this trip to town. Maybe he had nowhere else to go.
They stopped once more and saw Lavro’s ice-covered face staring back at them. He would never make his famous horilka again. After that, they didn’t halt to look at any more of the frozen bodies they passed along the road. They didn’t want to see their haunted faces or know who else they’d lost.
As they approached the town, they passed the railroad station where so many of their friends and relatives had been deported from. Beyond that lay the grain bins where food was stockpiled before being shipped out to the rest of the country. Normally, at this time of year, the bins would be empty. Now, they stood full. Armed guards stationed outside the grain bins patrolled their perimeter. Past the bins, three more armed guards surrounded a large pile of rotting potatoes.
“Kolya!” Katya stopped and gaped. “It’s all of our food.”
“They aren’t even using it!” Spittle flew from his mouth as he barked. “Those bins are bursting they’re so full, and it all sits there rotting while we starve!”
Despair pulled at Katya, tugging her down into its dark depths. She put a hand on his arm, both to quiet him and anchor herself to something solid. “Shh. Don’t draw attention to us.”
His jaw muscles twitched on his cheek. “This is not about getting us to produce more food,” he said, as the impossibility of survival suddenly became so painfully clear to both of them. “They want us all dead.”
They stopped in the small building next to the Torgsin to trade in their family heirlooms for a piece of paper stating their worth. Katya argued that their value was much more than they were given, but the clerk would not change his stingy appraisal. Kolya finally dragged Katya out of the store and to the end of the line to enter the Torgsin.