Underground Soldier (19 page)

“Andrij,” I whispered. “I’m surprised you’re going back. Do you have family there?”

“This wasn’t my decision. They picked me up and threw me into the truck,” he whispered. “I have to get out of here.”

More Soviet soldiers streamed in, swaggering and joking with Yurij. One wearing a grey NKVD uniform and carrying a clipboard seemed to be in charge.

“If I read your name, step forward,” he said. “Kost Chornij, Taras Melankovich, Stefan Marunchak …”

The six stepped forward one by one. They were all forty years or older. Five men and one woman.

“You are all traitors to the Motherland,” the NKVD policeman said in a low, controlled voice. “You will suffer for your transgressions.”

Still staring at the men, the policeman raised one hand and snapped his fingers. Yurij and the other soldiers, on cue, fell upon the six: punching them in the face, tearing out hair, kicking them in the groin. The lone woman was dragged by her hair and kicked in the ribs. I watched in horror as a boot landed on Kost’s face.

“Too messy,” said the NKVD boss in a bored voice. “Finish this outside.”

Soldiers collared the prisoners and dragged them out the door opposite the one we had come through — out to the Soviet side.

Six shots rang out.

I was in utter shock. The beating was one thing, but this … What had I got myself into? Andrij edged closer to me, but I was frozen to the spot, still gasping for breath.

The door on the Soviet side opened, and the soldiers came back in, without their prisoners. Each wore a smirk of satisfaction on his face.

One of the girls screamed.

“Go ahead — all of you — and scream if you want,” said the NKVD boss, pacing in front of us. “You’re in the Soviet Zone now. The Americans might hear you, but they can’t come to your rescue.”

The group of soldiers crossed the room and waded into our group. A punch to the head dropped me to the ground. Heavy boots kicked my ribs and someone tore my satchel out of my hands. Someone else pulled off my boots. “You won’t need these where you’re going,” I heard through the shouts and screams.

All around me, women, children and men cried out as they were kicked and hit. Suddenly everything went black.

* * *

I woke to a rhythmic chugging and the smell of many people cramped together. I tried to sit up, but my head swirled. “Where am I?”

“On a train to Siberia,” said a woman’s voice.

I opened my eyes. As they got used to the shadows, I saw stark wooden walls and the other captives who’d been beaten with me. A woman with a swollen eye sat in the corner singing to a weeping child. Several men stood together in a cluster, talking in animated tones. Andrij sat close to me on the floor, holding his forearm at an awkward angle.

I propped myself up and said to Andrij, “Is your arm broken?”

“Maybe,” he said in a strained voice.

I felt his arm above the wrist and found a fracture in the ulna. The bone had not broken through the skin, and the second bone, the radius, felt intact. This was very good. But the broken edges of the ulna were at an awkward angle and if they were not aligned, Andrij’s arm could not mend properly. Without warning, I swiftly pulled on Andrij’s arm and realigned the broken ends. He screamed.

“Does anyone have a stick?” I asked the others.

The men stopped talking. The woman stopped singing. The child kept on weeping.

“They took everything from us,” said the woman. “Where would we get a stick?”

“I need something to splint Andrij’s arm with.”

One of the men reached into his shirt and pulled out a sheaf of handwritten letters. He flipped through them one last time and his eyes filled with tears. Then he took a deep breath and rolled them into a tight tube. As he passed the papers to me, he said, “I’m Mykola. Here’s your splint.”

I could only imagine who the letters were from. His wife? His children? “Thank you,” I said. “I’ll also need a strip of cloth.”

The woman in the corner tore a narrow strip from her skirt and handed it to Mykola. I positioned the tube along Andrij’s forearm as a splint, then secured it with the strip of cloth. Andrij’s face was etched with pain, but he nodded his thanks.

A man reached down and pulled me to a standing position. “That was kind of you to help that boy and I give you my sincere thanks. But we’ve got urgent business right now and we’d like you to have a say in it.”

The other men nodded.

“I am going to escape,” said Mykola, pointing to a spot close to the floor on one of the walls. “There’s an opening right there that’s been nailed shut. We’re going to pry it open.”

I walked over to the spot and looked closely. Sure enough, the outline of what used to be an opening was clear, but now it was covered with wood and tightly nailed shut.

“When we were being taken in,” Mykola said. “I noticed that on the outside, that spot is covered with barbed wire. Not such a problem for us to break through. Near that is a bumper beam and a coupler that attaches to the next boxcar. If we can reach it, we could jump when the train slows down a bit.”

“But what about our families back home?” I said. “I’d be willing to go to Siberia for a little while if it meant that I could reunite with my family at some point.”

Mykola’s eyes suddenly looked like a light had been extinguished from them. “You don’t remember what they told you about your father?”

“My fath—?”

“You must have still been partly unconscious. My family, your father … They’re dead. It was just bait to get us back for punishment.”

His words took a moment to sink in. And then I did remember, even if the memory of it was still hazy.

How could I have been so stupid? I had abandoned Lida and also the chance of finding my own mother. And for what? To chase the dream that my father was still alive? The reality of it all hit me in the gut. I could never go home.

I had nothing.

But at least I had nothing to lose.

The plan sounded dangerous, but so was Siberia. And I had to get back to Lida.

“You can’t go without boots,” said Andrij. “Take mine.”

“I can’t take your boots, Andrij. Aren’t you coming with us?”

He held up his arm. “Do you really think I could make it with a broken arm? I would just hold the rest of you up. I’ll have to take my chances with the Soviets.”

He unlaced his boots with his one good hand and gave them to me. “Take them,” he said. “You saved my life twice. This is the least I can do.”

I had very mixed feelings about it, but in the end, I did take his boots. “Who else will be escaping?” I asked.

Mykola raised his hand. A few others.

It didn’t take long to break through the wood and nails. Half a dozen prisoners slid Mykola feet first out the opening. I offered to help, but they told me to save my strength. I watched as he clung on, his arms and shoulders on our side and everything else outside. He slowly manoeuvred himself outside. Soon, only his fingers showed, then nothing at all.

The train’s chugging was too loud to let us know what Mykola’s fate was on the other side. They slid me out next. When most of my body was outside and I could feel the wind whipping around me, I looked at everyone in the boxcar one last time. “Thank you,” I said. “God be with you all.” And then I pulled my head outside the boxcar.

It was daylight. Mykola stood on the bumper, his hands clutching the side of the boxcar. I manouvred myself over to him, with one foot on the coupler and the other on the bumper. With one hand I grabbed onto a metal bar.

The ground below us fell away at a dizzying speed. How could we ever jump? But Mykola crouched down and concentrated. “Good luck,” he said. Then jumped.

A smacking sound. A scream. I cleared my mind and concentrated on what I had to do.

I stepped over to where Mykola had stood and bent forward to see if I could get a view beyond the train car. Up ahead was a bridge underpass. Not a good time to jump. After we went through it, the train slowed as it climbed a hill.

I jumped.

My knees buckled and I fell as my feet hit the ground. I hugged my arms around my chest and rolled — careening down an embankment at a dizzying speed. I was barely able to stop myself just before crashing into a tree. I stood up, but nearly fell over again because I was so dizzy. My arms were a network of scratches and when I brushed my cheek, my hand came away bloody, but I hadn’t broken any bones.

I brushed away the twigs and stones, then began walking back, keeping hidden behind the brush, my eyes peeled for Mykola. He must have been injured, but I couldn’t be sure how badly.

And then I saw him — splayed out like a broken doll on a jutting rock, his skull crushed to a pulp. He had been so close to freedom and now he was dead. The person whose letters he’d cherished would never know of his death.

I dragged his body off the rock and hid it amidst some bushes. I couldn’t give him a proper burial, but I covered his body with some stones, then grabbed a handful of dirt and sprinkled it over him. I knelt down beside him and kissed his hand, then in a low, whispering voice, I sang the Vichnaya Pamyat — Eternal Memory.

I would never forget Mykola.

I began the long walk back to the train depot with one thought: I had to get back to Lida. I was still woozy from my fall and from being beaten, but Andrij’s boots saved my life. I still felt guilty though. How could he get by in a Soviet prison camp without boots?

NKVD agents patrolled the tracks, so I had to stay hidden and time my movements to theirs. When I finally reached the train depot, I was nearly dead from fatigue.

As I hid nearby, I waited for a time to cross. It finally came when another group of prisoners was beaten, then loaded onto a train. After that train left, the soldiers got so drunk they passed out. I walked across the tracks and sneaked into the American sector.

I was dizzy with exhaustion but forced myself to stay awake and keep on moving until the depot was out of sight. What kept me going were thoughts of Lida. I accepted that my father was dead. I had no choice. My mother? I would keep on looking. But of all the people in the world, there was only one that I could not live without: Lida.

I collapsed onto the road. An American military truck stopped and loaded me into the back. “We’ll take you to the hospital,” said a soldier.

“No,” I said. “I need to get back to my camp.”

Chapter Twenty-Seven
Back to Lida

The next hours were a blur. I didn’t remember the trip. I must have lost consciousness, because when I did come to, I was in what looked like a hospital room. My ragged clothing was gone and in its place was a hospital gown. Clean gauze covered my arms and legs. At first I was devastated. They hadn’t listened to me. They’d taken me to a hospital instead of back to Lida.

But then I felt a cool sponge on my forehead and I heard Lida’s familiar voice. “You’re safe, dear Luka.”

I looked up. Lida’s face hovered over me, her eyes swollen and red. I tried to sit up, but I was so woozy that I fell back down. “Lida, can you ever forgive me for leaving you?”

She brushed my cheek with her fingertips. “There is nothing to forgive, Luka.”

“My father … he’s dead. The whole thing was a trick. You were right all along. I am so glad that you didn’t try to come back with me.”

Her eyes filled with tears. She took one of my hands in hers and kissed it. “I am so sorry about your father.”

Neither of us said anything for quite some time. My body ached from the bruises and scrapes and my heart was filled with sorrow for the loss of my father, but lying here with Lida’s hands wrapped around my own was like a salve for the soul. Lida was not angry with me. She understood.

“Don’t ever leave me, Lida,” I said.

She didn’t say anything for a full minute, and during that time I wondered what she was thinking. Then her lips trembled into a smile. “I am here. I will not leave you.”

Those words brought me up short. Of course she was right. It had always been me, chasing after my past when my future was right here in front of me — with Lida.

“I’ll never leave you again, Lida. That is a promise.” Her hands were still wrapped around mine, and it took all the strength I had to raise one of her hands to my lips. I kissed her fingertips.

“I love you Lida. And I always will.”

“I love you too,” she said. “You are the other half of me.”

She gently laid her head upon my bruised shoulder, and the weight of it hurt, but I didn’t care. I wrapped one arm around her back as best I could and kissed her on the top of her head. “You are my life, my home, my soul.”

* * *

I barely had time to heal before I knew it was time to leave. The Soviets might find me again.

Pani Zemluk agreed. “They will be back for you, Luka,” she said. “Of that I have no doubt.”

Lida and I fled to the British zone. Hiding in plain sight with many others who were just like us, we walked for weeks and weeks. We scanned thousands of fluttering notes, looking for information about Lida’s sister and my mother, but we never found anything. My deepest fear was that both of them were dead. But Lida and I had each other and I was grateful for that. We carved out happiness where we could in our vagabond existence. As I looked around at the hordes of refugees, lost and ragged, searching for loved ones, searching for home, I felt lucky. No matter what, I had Lida. And as long as we were together, life was worth living.

Epilogue

We each had skills, so we eked out an existence in the British DP camp. Lida developed a never-ending list of customers vying for her stitch work. There were many displaced persons, all needing a country to emigrate to, and all wanting to look presentable for their interviews. Lida helped them do that.

Mr. Schaefter, a German pharmacist, hired me as an apprentice. I didn’t earn as much as Lida did with her sewing, but Hans kindly taught me all he knew. He was also interested in my family’s traditional remedies, as well as the ones I had learned on my own while on the run and in the Underground.

Five years later, by the time I turned eighteen and Lida was sixteen, our lives had not changed. We were forever poised for a future that never seemed to happen. We could not find my mother or Larissa. And it seemed that no country wanted us.