“Vasyl Petrovich Fediy,” a quiet voice answered.
Kolya opened the door wide. “Come in,” he ordered, scanning the night before he pulled the guest inside.
“Vasyl!” Katya threw her arms around her second cousin. His bones poked through his tattered clothes and dug into her as she hugged him. She flinched at the fragile feel of his body. “What are you doing here? I heard you were deported some time ago.”
“Yes, I suppose I was one of the lucky ones.” He tried to laugh but wheezed into a coughing fit instead. After he recovered, he continued. “They only deported me. Many members of the clergy were shot down where they stood.”
Ordained as a priest right before the trouble began, Vasyl had planned on moving to a neighboring village church but was deported before he could leave. Katya and Alina’s joint wedding was one the last acts he’d performed as their priest. They hadn’t seen him since then.
“Yes, how could we forget?” Katya replied. “But not you! And here you are, alive! Tell us, how did you get here? Where did they send you after you left the village? Did you see my father? I have so many questions for you!”
He closed his eyes wearily. “Please, cousin. I know you have no food to spare, but I long for a good night’s sleep, next to a warm pich. Can my story wait until tomorrow? Maybe my dear cousin will be awake to hear.” He cast a questioning glance toward Mama, asleep in the bed. “I haven’t the energy to even think of my trials tonight.”
“Of course.” Katya’s face flushed with embarrassment. “Where are my manners? Sleep now, and we will talk tomorrow.”
That night, as Katya lay in bed, apprehension kept her awake. A priest at their door so soon after her discussion of marriage with Mama? What had seemed like an empty promise to appease her mother suddenly felt quite real and made Katya sick.
Mama hadn’t roused at Vasyl’s arrival. She’d deteriorated so much in the last few days that it was possible she might not be cognizant at all while he was with them. And if Mama didn’t bring up the marriage to Vasyl, Katya could ignore it.
Guilt choked Katya at the thought. How could she wish her mother ill for any reason? But then, how could she marry Kolya? The impossibility of the situation overwhelmed her until she finally fell into a fitful sleep.
The next morning, Kolya woke before daylight to go check a snare and returned with a small hare. Katya cooked it into a stew with some cattail roots she’d gathered from the creek. Close to rotting, they tasted a bit rancid but filled their stomachs. They ate silently, like they always did now, shoveling the little bits of food into their mouth as fast as they could.
At the end of the meal, cousin Vasyl paused, the cleanly picked hare leg still in his hand, and stared at the bone in awe. “This was the first real meal I have had in… well, I can’t remember. Thank you.” His voice broke with emotion.
“It’s our pleasure to share with you,” Katya said. “I only wish we had more.”
When he finished eating, he began talking. “They came in the middle of the night for us. It was only a week or so after I officiated for your weddings, and your parents’ funerals.” He gave Kolya’s arm a pat. “After the walk to the railroad station, we were loaded onto cattle cars.”
“And I’m sure nobody had coats or blankets.” Katya pulled a thick shawl around herself and Halya and shivered.
Vasyl closed his eyes and nodded. “That was only the beginning of our ordeals, dear cousin. We spent days in those cars, crushed together, which provided some warmth, but not enough for all. Soon, we began to lose the very young and the very old to the bitter cold.”
“Did they feed you?” Kolya leaned forward in his seat, his arms resting on his legs.
“They gave each car one loaf of bread for every ten people inside, and a pail of a thin watery soup. That was all. As you can imagine, it was hard to divvy up the food into fair shares. People became crazed with hunger. A few stepped up and took charge, trying to make sure each person had their due amount.”
“Where did they take you?” Katya asked.
“Siberia.” His shoulders sagged, as if even saying the name of the place brought back misery.
Tato’s face flitted through Katya’s mind. And Sasha’s. So, Siberia was likely their fate. Had they survived, like Vasyl? Their memories didn’t cut through her like they once did. Even though each report of the dead and lost gave her a new shock, so much had happened in the two years since the state took them that the pain of those early losses felt like a lifetime ago.