Between Shades of Gray (28 page)

“Nikolai.”

He didn’t look at me.

I stood there, silent. “Nikolai.” I reached out from under the wood. I put a hand on his shoulder. “I’m sorry,” I finally said.

We stood in the darkness, saying nothing.

I turned to leave him.

“Vilkas.”

I turned.

“I’m sorry for your mother,” he said.

I nodded. “Me, too.”

I HAD PLAYED through scenarios of how I would get back at the NKVD, how I would stomp on the Soviets if I ever had a chance. I had a chance. I could have laughed at him, thrown wood at him, spit in his face. The man threw things at me, humiliated me. I hated him, right? I should have turned and walked away. I should have felt good inside. I didn’t. The sound of his crying physically pained me. What was wrong with me?

I told no one of the incident. The next day, Kretzsky was gone.

February arrived. Janina was fighting scurvy. The man who wound his watch had dysentery. Mrs. Rimas and I tended to them as best we could. Janina spoke to her dead dolly for hours, sometimes yelling or laughing. After a few days she stopped speaking.

“What are we to do?” I said to Jonas. “Janina’s getting sicker by the minute.”

He looked at me.

“What is it?” I said.

“I have the spots again,” he said.

“Where? Let me see.”

The scurvy spots had reappeared on Jonas’s stomach. Clumps of his hair had fallen out.

“There are no tomatoes this time,” said Jonas. “Andrius isn’t here.” He started shaking his head.

I grabbed my brother by the shoulders. “Jonas, listen to me. We are going to live. Do you hear me? We’re going home. We’re not going to die. We’re going home to our house, and we’re going to sleep in our beds with the goose-down comforters. We will. All right?”

“How will we live alone, without Mother and Papa?” he asked.

“Auntie and Uncle. And Joana. They’ll help. We’ll have Auntie’s apple cakes and doughnuts with jam inside. The ones you like, okay? And Andrius will help us.”

Jonas nodded.

“Say it. Say, ‘We’re going home.’”

“We’re going home,” repeated Jonas.

I hugged him, kissing the scabbed bald spot on his head. “Here.” I took the stone from Andrius out of my pocket and held it up to Jonas. He seemed dazed and didn’t take the stone.

My stomach sank. What would I do? I had no medicine. Everyone was ill. Would I be the only one left, alone with the bald man?

We took turns going for rations. I begged at other jurtas as Mother had done on the beet farm. I walked into a jurta. Two women sat amongst four people who were covered as if sleeping. They were all dead.

“Please, don’t tell,” they pleaded. “We want to bury them once the storm ends. If the NKVD discover they’re dead, they’ll throw them out into the snow.”

“I won’t tell,” I assured them.

The storm raged. The sound of the wind echoed between my stinging ears. The wind blew so cold, like white fire. I fought my way back to our jurta. Bodies, stacked like firewood, were covered in snow outside the huts. The man who wound his watch hadn’t returned.

“I’ll go look for him,” I said to Mrs. Rimas.

“He could barely walk,” said the bald man. “He probably went to the closest jurta when the winds came. Don’t risk it.”

“We have to help one another!” I told him. But how could

I expect him, of all people, to understand?

“You need to stay here. Jonas is not well.” Mrs. Rimas looked over to Janina.

“Her mother?” I asked.

“I took her to the typhus hut,” whispered Mrs. Rimas.

I sat next to my brother. I rearranged the rags and fishing nets he was covered with.

“I’m so tired, Lina,” he said. “My gums hurt and my teeth ache.”

“I know. As soon as the storm ends, I’ll search for some food. You need fish. There’s plenty of it, barrels. I just need to steal some.”

“I’m s-so cold,” said Jonas, shivering. “And I can’t straighten my legs.”

I heated chunks of brick and put them under his feet. I took a brick to Janina. Scurvy bruisings spotted her face and neck. The tip of her tiny nose was black with frostbite.

I kept the fire going. It did little to help. I could use only a small amount of wood, to save what we had. I didn’t know how long this storm would last. I looked at the empty spot where my mother had lain, Janina’s mother, the man who wound his watch, the repeater. Large gaps had appeared on the floor of the jurta.

I lay next to Jonas, covering him with my body as we had done for Mother. I wrapped my arms around him, holding his hands in mine. The wind slapped against our disintegrating jurta. Snow blew in around us.

It couldn’t end like this. It couldn’t. What was life asking of me? How could I respond when I didn’t know the question?

“I love you,” I whispered to Jonas.

THE STORM DREW back a day later. Jonas could barely speak. My joints were locked, as if frozen.

“We have to work today,” said Mrs. Rimas. “We need rations, wood.”

“Yes,” agreed the bald man.

I knew they were right. But I wasn’t sure I had the strength. I looked over at Jonas. He lay completely still on a plank, his cheeks hollow, his mouth agape. Suddenly, his eyes opened with a void stare.

“Jonas?” I said, sitting up quickly.

A loud commotion stirred outside. I heard male voices and shouting. Jonas’s legs moved slightly. “It’s okay,” I told him, trying to warm his feet.

The door to our jurta flew open. A man leaned in. He wore civilian clothing—a fur-lined coat and a thick, full hat.

“Any sick in here?” he said in Russian.

“Yes!” said Mrs. Rimas. “We’re sick. We need help.”

The man walked in. He carried a lantern.

“Please,” I said. “My brother and this little girl have scurvy. And we can’t find one of our friends.”

The man made his way over to Jonas and Janina. He exhaled, letting out a string of Russian expletives. He yelled something. An NKVD stuck his head in the door.

“Fish!” he commanded. “Raw fish for these little ones, immediately. Who else is sick?” He looked at me.

“I’m okay,” I said.

“What’s your name?”

“Lina Vilkas.”

“How old are you?”

“Sixteen.”

He surveyed the situation. “I’m going to help you, but there are hundreds sick and dead. I need assistance. Are there any doctors or nurses in camp?”

“No, only a veterinarian. But—” I stopped. Maybe he was dead.

“A veterinarian? That’s all?” He looked down, shaking his head.

“We can help,” said Mrs. Rimas. “We can walk.”

“What about you, old man? I need teams of people to make soup and cut fish. These children need ascorbic acid.”

He had asked the wrong person. The bald man wouldn’t help anyone. Not even himself.

He raised his head. “Yes, I will help,” said the bald man.

I looked at him. He stood up.

“I will help, as long as we tend to these children first,” said the bald man, pointing to Jonas and Janina.

The doctor nodded, kneeling to Jonas.

“Will the NKVD allow you to help us?” I asked the doctor.

“They have to. I am an inspection officer. I could make a report to the tribunal. They want me to leave and report that everything is fine here, that I saw nothing out of the ordinary. That’s what they expect.”

His hand moved quickly toward me. I put up my palms, shielding myself.

“I am Dr. Samodurov.” His hand was extended, for a handshake. I stared at it, stunned by his show of respect.

We worked under his supervision. That day we each had a bowl of pea soup and half a kilo of fish. He helped us store fish for the upcoming storms and plot out a burial yard for more than a hundred bodies, including the man who wound his watch. He had frozen to death. The doctor enlisted the help of Evenks, native hunters and fishermen, who lived less than thirty kilometers away. They came on sleds with dogs and brought coats, boots, and supplies.

After ten days he said he had to move on, that there were other camps with deportees who were suffering. I gave him all the letters I had written to Andrius. He said he would mail them.

“And your father?” he asked.

“He died in prison, in Krasnoyarsk.”

“How do you know that?” he asked.

“Ivanov told my mother.”

“Ivanov did? Hmm,” said the doctor, shaking his head.

“Do you think he was lying?” I asked quickly.

“Oh, I don’t know, Lina. I’ve been to a lot of prisons and camps, none as remote as this, but there are hundreds of thousands of people. I heard a famous accordion player had been shot, only to meet him a couple of months later in a prison.”

My heart leapt. “That’s what I told my mother. Maybe Ivanov was wrong!”

“Well, I don’t know, Lina. But let’s just say I’ve met a lot of dead people.”

I nodded and smiled, unable to contain the fountain of hope he had just given me.

“Dr. Samodurov, how did you find us?” I asked him.

“Nikolai Kretzsky,” was all he said.

JONAS SLOWLY BEGAN to heal. Janina was speaking again. We buried the man who wound his watch. I clung to the story of the accordion player and visualized my drawings making their way into Papa’s hands.

I drew more and more, thinking that come spring, perhaps I might be able to send off a message somehow.

“You told me those Evenks on the sleds helped the doctor,” said Jonas. “Maybe they would help us, too. It sounds like they have a lot of supplies.”

Yes. Maybe they would help us.

I had a recurring dream. I saw a male figure coming toward me in the camp through the swirling ice and snow. I always woke before I could see his face, but once I thought I heard Papa’s voice.

I left the jurta to chop wood. I began my walk through the snow, five kilometers to the tree line. That’s when I saw it. A tiny sliver of gold appeared between shades of gray on the horizon. I stared at the amber band of sunlight, smiling. The sun had returned.

I closed my eyes. I felt Andrius moving close. “I’ll see you,” he said.

“Yes, I will see you,” I whispered. “I will.”

I reached into my pocket and squeezed the stone.

 

“What are you doing? Keep moving or we won’t finish today,” said the man. Construction vehicles roared behind him.

“I found something,” said the digger, staring into the hole. He knelt down for a closer look.

“What is it?”

“I don’t know.” The man lifted a wooden box from the ground. He pried the hinged top open and looked inside. He removed a large glass jar full of papers. He opened the jar and began to read.

“In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer.”

—
Albert Camus

 

 

I
n 1939, the Soviet Union occupied the Baltic states of Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia. Shortly thereafter, the Kremlin drafted lists of people considered anti-Soviet who would be murdered, sent to prison, or deported into slavery in Siberia. Doctors, lawyers, teachers, military servicemen, writers, business owners, musicians, artists, and even librarians were all considered anti-Soviet and were added to the growing list slated for wholesale genocide. The first deportations took place on June 14, 1941.

My father is the son of a Lithuanian military officer. Like Joana, he escaped with his parents through Germany into refugee camps. Like Lina, members of his family were deported and imprisoned. The horrors the deportees endured were ghastly. Meanwhile, the Soviets ravaged their countries, burning their libraries and destroying their churches. Caught between the Soviet and Nazi empires and forgotten by the world, the Baltic states simply disappeared from maps.

I took two trips to Lithuania to research this book. I met with family members, survivors of the deportations, survivors of the gulags, psychologists, historians, and government officials. Many of the events and situations I describe in the novel are experiences related to me by survivors and their families, experiences they said were shared by many deportees across Siberia. Although the characters in this story are fictional, Dr. Samodurov is not. He arrived in the Arctic just in time to save many lives.