“The train let us off in the middle of a snowy wasteland. No shelter. They pulled the dead bodies off the cars and tossed them to the side of the tracks. They didn’t let us bury them, or even say a prayer for them.” Vasyl spoke so low Katya had to strain to hear him. She sat forward in her chair, like Kolya.
“Those still alive were forced to march for hours through the wind and snow. The weak fell down and died where they lay. Little children who had survived this far collapsed. Some mothers tried to carry them along so their tiny bodies wouldn’t be abandoned, but they, too, soon fell with the extra weight as they floundered through the deep snow. So, they had to choose. Leave their babies to die alone in the snow or stay with them.” He paused and wrung his hands. “The guards shot those who refused to give up their children and continue.”
Vasyl brushed his cheek roughly, and they sat in silence as he swayed with the remembered emotion. “I’ve never seen such a lack of humanity in my life.”
Katya listened, numb to his words. She wanted to cry along with him, to know she could still feel compassion and empathy, anything besides despair, but she couldn’t. Grief had pulled her so low that she’d never fully climbed back up from its depths. Now, melancholy was her constant companion, and it left little room for other emotions. It enveloped her, inside and out, and sat bitter on her tongue, like the taste of the dandelion greens she’d grown so familiar with.
Vasyl continued, “We stopped at the edge of a forest with no buildings in sight, and they told us that we had to build our dwellings. Although we were exhausted, the men and women began gathering branches to construct some type of crude shelter until we could build something better. We worked through the night, trying to make sure all had some type of protection, but nobody had much.
“The next day, they told us the men would be logging the wood the state was harvesting and shipping out, and the women and children would now be responsible for building the permanent shelters. And so the days went on, bleeding into each other. The only constants were the cold and hunger. People continued to die every day, but that changed nothing.”
“How did you get out?” Katya asked.
“One day, I was far out with two other men, felling a tree. A guard stationed near us came close to check on us and see what was taking so long. He screamed that we were lazy and useless. One of the men I was working with snapped. He’d lost his wife the previous day and his five children at various points throughout the train ride and march. I guess he figured he had nothing left to lose, so he jumped the guard and managed to kill him with his axe before any shots were fired. “Nobody saw the scuffle, but they would come looking for the guard eventually. We took his gun, his clothes, and his knife, and the three of us set off walking. We didn’t know where we were going, but anyplace was better than there.”
They sat silently, Vasyl’s words hanging in the air around them. That Vasyl had survived and made it all the way back was a miracle.
Kolya ran a hand down his face. “Did the two men you left with survive as well?”
Vasyl shrugged. “The man who first attacked the guard walked with us for a while, but we woke one morning, and he was gone. Wandered off in the night, I suppose. The other man made it with me to Moscow. We worked there together for a time, and then parted ways.”
Katya took Vasyl’s skeletal hand in her own. “You have suffered so much! Why come back here now? They could do the same thing to you again.”
“I came because you are my people. I came to warn you that they will not quit until we are all dead. Kulaks, peasants, everyone.”
“And after you warn us, then what?” Kolya asked.
A small smile touched Vasyl’s lips. “After I have done all I can here, I am going to try to sneak out of the country and go to America.”
“America?” The idea of the continent on the other side of the world felt so surreal to Katya, she could hardly imagine it.
“It is a land of opportunity,” Vasyl said. “With food and jobs for anyone willing to work for it.”
America. Katya rolled the idea over in her mind as her father’s voice echoed in her head. Look to the future.
Mama, lying on her bed asleep for most of the morning, spoke for the first time since Vasyl had come into their home and stopped Katya’s musings in their tracks. “Dear Vasyl! I’m so pleased to see you. Have you come to marry Kolya and Katya? It is all I wish, and they promised me it would happen soon.”
Katya froze. Kolya turned his back on everyone. His shoulders sagged as Katya shakily pulled herself to her feet, walked over to Mama, and rested a hand on her hot forehead.