Underground Soldier (7 page)

I came upon a shallow stream around mid-morning. I crouched down and scooped handfuls of the fresh, clear water and gulped it down. Sometime past midday, the forest gave way onto a huge burnt area. Charcoal shards and sharp black spikes pointed to the sky. My boots squeaked and my nose itched from the smell of old smoke. I was suddenly filled with such grief it was like a blow to the head. My knees crumpled and I fell into the charcoal.

Memories from the summer of 1941 — when the Nazis suddenly switched sides and attacked their former ally — flooded my mind. The Soviets had been running scared.

Stalin says that everything must burn in Kyiv. What won’t burn must be destroyed. When the Nazis come, they must find nothing but ashes.

Throughout July and August, ashes fall like black snow and dark clouds of smoke hang over Kyiv. NKVD police storm the government buildings, churches and synagogues. They burn birth and death records, marriage certificates, journals, tax records. Ashes of history cling to my clothing. When I try to wipe them away, a powdery smear remains.

As August turns to September we hear over the loudspeakers that the Nazis are at our gates. I am still cheering for our side, thinking that when the Nazis get here they’ll be in for a beating.

But something strange happens.

The city leaders leave: the Communist mayor and administrators, the fire department, the police. With them they take all the food that will fit into trucks and boxcars. They dismantle whole industries and take them too. And weapons. What they can’t take, they douse with gasoline.

They leave behind the sick and poor, and old people who are of no use to them anymore.

There are some who refuse to abandon Kyiv, but where have these brave souls got to? It’s as if they are ghosts.

David and I go up the hill to our famous golden-domed Pecherska Lavra. Mama once said that it had been a Ukrainian Orthodox cathedral and monastery for a thousand years before the Soviets came. It has a network of tunnels underground. Some people say that the tunnels are hundreds of kilometres long, stretching all the way to Novgorod. When invaders came, Kyivans would escape through the tunnels. Now Pecherska Lavra is a Soviet museum. David and I like going there — running up and down the steps and walking around the ancient stone buildings. It’s a great place to play soldiers.

But on this particular September day when we climb to the top level of Pecherska Lavra, he points towards my grandfather’s place. Bykivnia Forest billows with black smoke. “Why would they burn down the woods?” he asks.

As I shade my eyes with one hand, I think of Dido’s agitation the last time we saw him. My stomach churns. “Do you think Dido is okay?”

“Only one way to find out,” says David.

We scramble down the steps and run through the cobblestone streets to the edge of town. When we get to the burning forest, NKVD soldiers block our way.

One of the soldiers steps forward — Misha. He lived on my street and was a senior at Kyiv School #75 before the war. “It’s not safe here,” he says. “Go home.”

“But my grandfather lives that way,” I say, starting forward.

“I am sure he is fine,” says Misha, not looking sure at all. He nudges me with his bayonet. “Go.”

We leave, but I feel uneasy. Just days after that, the Nazis arrive. David and I watch in shock from the top of Pecherska Lavra as waves of Red Army soldiers set down their arms and surrender. Others flee. No one fights.

The Nazis remove the sandbags and the barbed wire that encircle Kyiv, then they march right in. They come with their clean uniforms, polished boots and freshly scrubbed faces. They set up offices in the same buildings that the Soviets have just abandoned. At first they seem friendly. It looks like they are trying to create order.

Now that the NKVD no longer blocks the forest, I want to get through to see Dido again. As David and I head out towards the edge of the city, we meet up with others going the same way.

In the blackest part of the burned forest we encounter a circle of people, their heads bent in grief. The sound of a woman’s muffled keening sends chills down my spine. With David right behind me, I force my way to the inner part of the circle.

Clumps of freshly dug earth cling to stacks of corpses, most with ragged red holes in their necks or bayonet wounds in their chests. They are almost all young men, and I recognize Myroslav — one of those we saw being marched out into the woods by those NKVD thugs.

A woman who stands beside me reaches down and gently pulls a bit of paper loose from a woman’s coat near the edge of the grave. As she unfolds it, I notice a spatter of blood and handwriting in a language I don’t know.

“That’s in Polish,” says the woman. Her eyes fill with tears as she reads the words:
My name is Elzbieta Slawsky and I live on Krucza Street in Warsaw. Please give me a Catholic burial if you find me dead.

Poland is so far away. Have the Soviets brought her all this way just to kill her? My fists clench.

David grips my shoulder. He says, “Luka, I am so sorry.” That’s when I recognize a distinctive brown-black-green woven belt towards the middle of the mass grave. Even without seeing the face, I know it is Dido’s corpse. I lunge to get to him, but David holds me back. “We must get out of this cursed place,” he says.

Chapter Eleven
Not Kyiv

That scene from two years ago was all too sharp in my mind. The blackened shards of this German forest brought my grief to the surface. How could I go on? I bowed my head in despair.

A wet splat on the back of my neck.

I reached back to feel for blood. It was warm, but too gritty for blood. I held my hand in front of me — it was covered with a grey smear of bird poo.

For a moment I felt like shaking my fist at the bird, but I took a deep breath and gave thanks instead. I was not in Kyiv, and it was not 1941. It was two years later and I still had a chance to survive.

As I stood up and wiped the mess off my neck, fear replaced sadness. This forest was ever changing, and this clearing I stood in was too much in the open. I ran towards the trees, my lungs aching as they filled with sooty air.

Sweat streamed down me by the time I got out of the burnt area. Now I was in a section with young fir trees no taller than my hips. Even a nearsighted Nazi would have no trouble finding me here!

I trekked down a hill through mud and brush to get close to the river and as far away from open view as I dared. The river changed as much as the forest, but here it was so wide that the other shore was not visible. The bank made for treacherous walking, and more than once I slipped, making my thigh throb. Once I stepped onto what looked like solid ground, only to have my boot sink down into mud. Just then a military barge stacked with wooden boxes passed by. I stood still, slowly sinking into the mud, and prayed that no one on the barge would notice me. When it had finally passed, I pulled myself out and crawled onto a big rock behind a bush, trembling with relief.

It had been a warm day for late November, but dusk brought a chill. I was wet with river mud and sweat, so the cool air made me shiver. My feet were sore and my leg hurt. Fir needles and leaves stuck to my mud-caked clothing, making me itchy.

I had walked beyond the young forest and was back in the midst of tall fir trees. Finally, a place that gave camouflage. I shrugged off the knapsack. It landed on the earth with a
thunk
. Next off was the filthy blouse and muddy skirt. I shook out the worst of the dried mud, and the remaining half bun tumbled out. I stowed the dirty clothing and bun in an outside pocket of the knapsack. As I stood with nothing on but underwear, filthy socks and boots, I heard a loud snap. My heart nearly stopped.

I picked up the knapsack and quietly stepped behind a fir tree. My skin prickled in the cold as I held my breath and waited for whatever had made that noise to pass by.

Nothing.

This was probably the worst possible time to remove my boots, but I was determined to get my trousers on. If I were captured, I preferred to die of something other than humiliation. Balancing on one foot, I removed the first boot and peeled off the wet sock, grimacing as a big hunk of skin from my heel came off with it. When I removed the second boot and sock, there was another broken blister, but this one wasn’t as bad.

I pulled on my trousers and shirt, a warm jacket and a dry pair of socks, my heart pounding until I got my boots back on and laced up. I leaned up against the tree and listened. The thing that had snapped the twig must have gone. The forest was eerily still.

I needed to find a secure place to rest for the night, but where? There weren’t just soldiers to worry about. Wouldn’t there be wild animals in the forest as well? But if I didn’t rest, I’d be too worn out to get to the mountains. I shrugged the knapsack onto my back and walked through the thickest part of the woods — as far away from what seemed to be the walking path as I dared. I found a thicket of low bushes and worked my way in, the sharp branches scratching my face and snagging my hair. It wasn’t the most comfortable place to sleep, but for the first time since entering the forest, I felt truly hidden.

Now that I was settled and secure, it would have made sense to find one of those boxed meals that Helmut and Margarete had given me, but I didn’t want to use them up too quickly. I took out the last muddied half of a bun. That would do. I took one bite, then shoved the rest inside my shirt for later. As I chewed, my mind filled with memories of David again.

The Nazis are so smug when they take over Kyiv in September of 1941. When they hear of the huge grave in the forest, they send a journalist. Soon after, the top layer of the grave is emptied and the bodies lined up. Kyivans are ordered to view the display. Each one of us goes, hoping that our own missing loved ones haven’t made their grave in Bykivnia.

I already know that Dido is in that pit, and the thought of seeing his corpse lined up like a Nazi display makes me ill. But Mama and I need to go. What if Tato is there? Or David’s father?

The four of us — me, Mama, David and Mrs. Kagan — go together and wait in the sad lineup of keening women and children. The corpses are lined up in front of the forest, feet pointing towards Pecherska Lavra. One of the officers whispers to another that this top layer of bodies had been very fresh — executed over the summer — but that the pit seems limitless. He estimates there are one hundred thousand dead at least, and that the pit has been used for years. My mind can hardly grasp that figure. Is it even possible? Why would Stalin kill so many of his own people?

Bykivnia Forest is surely filled with ghosts. That’s all I can think as we walk slowly from one body to the next, thankful each time that the victim isn’t Tato. The air is heavy with sorrow and the only sounds are the gasps of recognition when a body is claimed. That, and the wind sighing through the birch trees.

The next day, an article appears in the Nazi newspaper about Bykivnia, but instead of blaming Stalin and the Soviet NKVD, the reporter says it was the Jews who have done the killings.

Mama crumples the newspaper up and throws it onto the floor. “They must think we’re stupid,” she mutters. “They blame everything on the Jews.”

Mrs. Kagan looks at Mama and says, “It’s Stalin’s last cruel joke on us.”

An owl hooted and Mrs. Kagan’s image faded, but I couldn’t get that scene from long ago out of my mind. I tried to turn, but the wiry bushes poked and prickled. I felt so imprisoned with the blackness of night and the cover of shrubs that I nearly panicked. Was this what it felt like to be buried within a mass grave? I tried to push that thought out of my mind. I was hidden — and almost safe. I was alive. I concentrated on that reality. I closed my eyes, but sleep would not come.

I took a deep breath and held it in my lungs for a moment, then let it out slowly. I did that a second time and a third. By the fourth breath, my heart had slowed down and I began to feel calmer. I opened my eyes. All around me was blackness deeper than coal. The sky was mostly obscured by branches, but if I concentrated, I could see the distant stars. That calmed me too, but still I could not sleep.

I wondered if Mama was looking up at the sky right now and seeing the same stars. Mama, Tato, Lida — the people I loved most — were scattered apart but still living, united under the same sky. “Please be safe,” I prayed. I fell into a dreamless sleep.

Chapter Twelve
Friends

I dreamed I was wrapped tightly in sharp lengths of barbed wire. I opened my eyes: not barbed wire, but prickling thorns and twigs enveloped me. I struggled, but they just dug even more into my arms and legs.

If I kept on struggling, the thorns would tear my skin apart. I took a deep breath. As I slowly exhaled, I thought of Lida. Even in the worst situations, she knew how to make things bearable, by singing a lullaby or giving a reassuring smile. I took another breath. I could get through this.

Lida … Again I regretted leaving her behind. But she knew that the hospital was an evil place. Had I not escaped, they would have killed me. If I could have taken her with me, I would have. Once the war was over, I would find her. I would not have the death of another dear friend on my conscience.

As I lay there fighting my memories, I listened to the occasional hooting of an owl or the snap of a twig. Behind the forest sounds was the ever-present rumble of bombs and planes and guns. Was I safe in my hiding place? Certainly safer than David had ever been, and more secure than Lida. But the forest chill crept into my bones and I felt utterly alone.