The Silence of Trees (13 page)

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Long before I met Andriy, I met his mother. After I left the household of the German Oberst, I was re-assigned to a machinery parts factory. My hands went from healing and household chores to assembling intricate pieces of metal that we were told would be used for automotive parts. One of the girls swore that a German soldier told her we were assembling parts for weapons. The thought that I could somehow be helping the German cause was too much to handle, until I concocted my revenge. I decided that I would curse every piece of metal I touched, so the weapons would all backfire on the soldiers who held them.

As I worked, I would imagine all kinds of violent malfunctions: guns exploding, tanks firing inward, grenades detonating in hands and pockets. I invoked all the spirits of fire to help me in my vengeance. I went so far as to imagine graphic deaths for Hitler and his henchmen. Only these daydreams helped pass the time and made life bearable. Every night when I left the factory, I would try to stop thinking about the soldiers and my revenge. Baba always said that once you uttered a prayer or a curse, you must trust that God will make it so.

When I was placed in the factory, I was also transferred to an all-women’s barracks in a German work camp. The oldest woman in the barracks was Andriy Polotsky’s mama, and she took it upon herself to mother the rest of us, most of whom were half her age. Paraska Polotsky was her name, and she was the shortest woman I had ever seen in my life. I was nearly a head and a half taller than she was, and I had not yet stopped growing. Her long blonde hair was woven into a single braid that she wrapped several times around her head. When she let it down before going to sleep, it reached the floor, a single streak of silver spreading down the center. She wore tiny oval glasses–without which she could not see–and her cheeks were always flushed.

She asked us to call her Mama Paraska, because she had no daughters, and so we did. Many of the girls had lost their mothers in the war, and Mama Paraska filled that void in our lives. If we felt sick, she knew the herbs to prescribe and they always worked–when we were lucky enough to find them around the women’s barracks. When we had nightmares, Mama Paraska made us satchels stuffed with sweet grasses to chase away the demons. Often, one of the girls would cry on her shoulder at night, falling asleep in her strong arms.

I had been lucky enough to get the bed next to hers, so on nights when she had no weeping visitors, she and I would talk in the darkness. Sometimes I would watch her brush her long blond hair with its streak of gray, her cheeks flushed with exhaustion, eyes puffy and tired. Her hands would shake, knuckles swollen, fingers bruised. I was amazed at how old they looked compared with her beautiful face. Her skin was so smooth, the only deep lines settled in around her eyes and the creases of her smile. From laughter, she told me, because of the joy her son, Andriy, had brought into her life. When I asked her about her husband, she would only furrow her brow and say, “Men are worthless.” Then remembering her son, she would smile. “Except for my son. Andriy is an angel. All other men are worthless.”

Mama Paraska winked her right eye. She always did this to emphasize a point, so her right eyelid permanently drooped a little lower than her left, giving her face a soft and sleepy look.

“Nadya, the only thing certain in life is children,” she said. “Men, they come and go. Friends, they come and go. But babies–“ She took a deep breath and smiled. “–babies are your life, your future. They are the ones who will take care of you when you are old. They are the ones who will tell your stories when you are gone. Your children will keep you alive.”

She stopped and handed me her brush. I moved closer to her, smelling on her skin sweat and garlic from her kitchen duty. As I began to brush her hair, she continued, “Children hold inside themselves a piece of your soul. There is no stronger connection.”

When I brought the brush up to the crown of her head, she sighed. Her shoulders relaxed a little as the tension began to slip away. Sometimes she would hum songs from home under her breath, but this time we sat in silence.

The sound of the brush crept into my memories, tempting the past to rush into the present: my own mama’s hair, thick and brown; the dimples in her cheeks; the sweet, burnt smell of cinnamon; the circle-shaped scar on her left arm that burned white against her tanned skin; the way she tapped her foot when she was angry and clicked her tongue when I disobeyed.

Mama Paraska turned around and looked at me through the darkness.

“Now you are my daughter,” she said. She brought together her thumb and first two fingers, kissed them and then lifted them up to my cheek. “I give you a piece of my soul.”

She took back the brush, put it away and settled into her bed. I heard her breath fall into the rhythms of sleep; but for me, sleep never came that easily. Instead I lay back and stared up at the ghosts gathering around all our heads.

Sleeping around me were twenty-three broken hearts. Like mist, heartache hovered above the floor. Guilt slept in tight shoulders, clenched jaws, fists. Fear filled the room with whimpers and silent trembling.

Above hovered spirits. Slipping through cracks, they came each night. I grew to recognize those closest: Maria’s father, who smelled of the pipe and played violin over and over again–the same song each night as she wept into the wood, whispering his name. Olena’s sister, Ivanka, who ripped at her clothes, tore at her face. Tatiana’s lover, who watched from near her head and hummed a song I did not know. Even Mama Paraska’s husband came to her side. He sat on the bed beside her, his hands on his heart, tears in his blinded eyes.

All their voices began to mingle into a rich, deep hum. I kept my eyes closed tight once their chanting began to thicken. Names were whispered and repeated. Their tone grew more anxious as dawn crept close—these were the names of those hoping to breach the veil of dreams, to reach the memories of dreamers. These dead were afraid to be forgotten: Hanusia Dzyuba, Franz Foter, Vasil Zinoviev, Marusia Vishnevsky, Kolia Dombrovsky, Lyda Lukich, Anna Katz, Pavlo Romanchuk . . . so many names. They whirled and swirled until they formed a hum like a factory, a tired machine, a hum that drifted away when the sun slipped through the windows.

Never my ghosts.

Each night, I waited. I looked. I listened. Perhaps others saw my mama, heard her sing a lullaby. Perhaps others could not see their own dead either. We never spoke of it. But in the mornings, I was not the only one with tired eyes and dark shadows.

We tried to hide our fears beneath our clothes, inside our fists and tight jaws. We even took comfort in those blue identification patches that we were forced to wear, emblazoned with the “O” for Ost, for East. They united us, reminded us that we were not alone.

Some nights, when the moon was bright enough to light our beds, and the nightmares were fierce enough to combat our exhaustion, we would lie there and confide in our sisters beside us. We never sat up, never looked to claim whose story rushed by our ears, never had faces to connect with the whispered histories. On those nights it was the living, not the dead, whose voices floated thick around us. Our living voices—to keep away the crying, pleading voices of the dead. And as we spoke, it was one voice truly. One story with different names but filled with ripped blouses, swollen bellies, bloody lips, tattered hands, broken hearts and corpses. Always corpses.

But in the mornings, we needed life, not death. Laughter, not tears. In the darkness we spoke our truths, but in the light we spoke of hope, of love, of an end to the war. We looked to each other for signs of life, and we treasured Mama Paraska for her affection, her stories, her support, her vitality. She was our second mother. Twenty-three daughters in that bunkhouse would have died for her, and I was somehow blessed to be her favorite. So she took it upon herself to try and seal my fate with a happy ending.

Mama Paraska’s husband had been killed in the war after joining the Cossacks in the Austrian Alps to fight the Germans. Her son, Andriy, had left their village before the Germans came, fleeing North to join the Russian army. Mama Paraska decided that my happiness was dependent upon her son. She spent most of her time bragging about Andriy and trying to convince me that I should marry him.

“Ah, sweetie, how you would love my Andriyko. Everybody loves my son. In the army, he proved to them how smart he was with their machines. He always had a special touch with things mechanical. The big army generals will thank him generously. So by now, he must be very rich, and when he finds me, he will buy us a nice house on the Black Sea where you can have lots of babies and take care of me when I am old.”

Because there was no way for Mama Paraska to send letters during the war, she would kneel by her bed at night and pray, convinced that God would forward her messages to Andriy.

When I asked her about it, she explained, “Nadya, God and I have a good relationship. My father was a priest, as was his father before him. So God listens extra special to my prayers. That’s why he keeps my son safe, and that’s why I know I’ll see him again after the war.”

Then Mama Paraska got down on her knees beside her bed, and after crossing herself three times, she said, “Hello God, this is Bohdan Shupinski’s daughter, Paraska, praying to you, so listen carefully. I am sending this to my son, Andriy, who would have also been a priest if it were not for this war. Please send him this message in his dreams:

“Hello, my beloved Andriyko. This is your Mama. I love you very much. I have found a nice girl for you to marry. I’m looking at her now, so you will see her in your dreams.”

At this she opened her eyes, took my hand, and stared at me for a long time. Then she continued, “You see, Andriyko. She is beautiful and smart too. You will like to talk with her and dance with her. Hurry and find your Mama so I can introduce you, before somebody else steals her heart. Don’t forget to say your prayers, and be good: God watches you extra close. Time for me to sleep. I love you.

“God, that is my message. Please have the Angel Gabriel deliver it for me. Keep my son safe, and he will make us both proud. Amen and good night.”

Then she crossed herself three more times and laid down in her bed.

Those nights and days stretched on and on in a pattern of working and eating and sleeping and working and eating and sleeping and working. We barely ate, seldom slept, and always worked. Then one day, the Germans fled and the Americans arrived. The war was over.

Peace.

We were left without orders, without guidance, without purpose.

It happened so quickly. One day we had received our usual dose of ridicule, abuse, and violence. The next morning we awoke to the sound of a loud shoom: the sound of cars and tanks and trucks all fleeing without us.

We stood there until even the dust stopped swirling. We stood there in shock, uncertain what to do next. We stood there until one woman let out a loud whistle. Then we all charged the square, the center of the camp where we had so often stood for inspection. Every soldier was gone.

Many women wept, some fainted, others yelled and cheered. I hated them for their happiness, for their relief. What did peace change for me? Nothing. I lay down in the sun and took in a long, deep breath.

This peace was not mine.

“Freedom” they shouted. “God Bless the Americans!”

Freedom? I could not go home. What good was this freedom?

The American soldiers arrived that afternoon and moved us into the old Neustadt tank center. We were not the only work camp to be emptied into the maneuver field. Hordes of people came from nearby camps, combined with displaced crowds rounded up as the Allies swept through Germany. We were all brought to that dusty place where the soldiers took inventory.

Refugees. Displaced persons.

That was the first time I heard those words.

I stood holding Mama Paraska’s hand and stared out at the hundreds of people gathered there. The field was a silent still life of questions. Unspoken questions that brought breath to gray faces and skeletal bodies. They emerged everywhere, growing out from the sun-baked field, creeping out from behind yellow and blue and red patches, painting the moment with a painful, strained hope.

And fear.

Faced with the chance to find those we had lost, we were frozen with fear. Childish hopes had kept so many of us alive during bloody days and hungry nights: the thought that someone lost could someday be found. That someone believed to be dead could somehow have been spared.

But the possibility of undeniable truth was more terrifying than our nightmares. If not hope, what would we have left to hold onto in sleep, in quiet moments when the ghosts would come?

With questions ultimately came answers, as the first brave few crossed over invisible boundaries to connect with strangers–once family and friends. Some lucky ones looked around the field to find a wife, a brother, a daughter, a neighbor. The rest watched in envy.

I had no one left to look for.

The soldiers called for order, and somehow received enough of it to begin the process of registration.

After those first moments of careful questioning, after the soldiers had taken all our names and given us general assignments, something wild swept through the camp like fire. Emotions stored away during the past few years rushed to the surface and burst out as people began to run about the field. Hands outstretched, they moved through the crowds. Some found lips, sweaty palms, lonely flesh. Others found fists, clenched jaws, angry glares. As the sun set on my first night in Neustadt, everywhere there were bodies entangled in hungry embraces. Here a caress, there a punch, and everywhere moaning.