Underground Soldier (8 page)

I dug into my shirt and broke off another piece of the bun. I held it to my face and breathed in the faint scent of cherry. I was thankful for all that Helmut and Margarete had given me. Their kindness was proof that everyone was capable of goodness.

I put it into my mouth, but it sat on my tongue like sawdust. I chewed and swallowed, determined not to waste a crumb. I thought of David and my heart ached with sorrow. I thought of Lida, a prisoner still, trying to survive on watery soup. How she would have savoured just one small bite of a cherry bun.

My eyes slid shut …

Snow flutters down, blanketing my body with a damp chill. Snow on my feet — they are like giant balls of ice.

Lida sits before me, her badge that says
OST
glowing in the darkness. She holds a thread and needle in one hand and a badge for me in another. I watch as she places it onto the front of my flannel shirt and begins to sew. But her needle plunges into my skin, drawing blood.

I was jolted from my half-dream by the odd sensation of pinpricks on my stomach. I reached inside my shirt … and got a handful of fur. Just then a squirrel, its teeth firmly sunk into the stale remains of the bun, darted out of my shirt. I grabbed the bun and the squirrel tugged, ripping away a big chunk. With a twitch of its tail, the squirrel raced off with its prize.

It was daylight. Had I really slept through the entire night in a prickly bush, unaware of everything, even a squirrel gnawing inside my shirt? I had been lucky. If I were to survive out in the open, I had to be more careful. It wouldn’t do to depend only on luck.

* * *

Now that I had survived my first night, the forest seemed a friendlier place. I was hungry and thirsty, but didn’t want to take the time to stop and root around in my knapsack, so I ate the last of the bun and kept on walking. The leaves were covered with dew and didn’t crunch as I stepped on them. I found no more streams. I wanted to get down to the river and drink my fill of water, but the bank was high and steep and the water too fast. Instead I chewed on dewy blades of grass and tried not to think about how dry my throat was.

I spied a few puffball mushrooms. Some varieties could be poisonous, but these weren’t, and since dried puffballs were good at stanching blood, I gathered them up and put them in my knapsack.

I made good progress that day and oddly ran into no one. That night I dug down deep into a thicket and fell into an uneasy sleep.

Sometime in the middle of the night, I was jolted awake when the ground shook from a distant bomb. Memories of that time after Bykivnia rushed back to my mind.

A few days after the Nazis display the corpses in the woods, I wake up to the ground shaking. A piece of plaster falls from the ceiling and crashes down inches from my head. “What is happening?” I yelp, jumping out of bed.

“Come on,” says David, slipping his feet into a pair of shoes.

When we get out to the street, a billow of smoke drifts beyond Pecherska Lavra. Many people mill about, startled awake like us.

“The Soviets planted a bomb in the arsenal before they left,” says a man, breathlessly running down the street in his pyjamas.

“It wasn’t the Soviets,” says an old woman with swollen ankles sitting on the steps of a crumbling building. “It’s probably the Jews again.”

“How can you say such a thing?” I ask her.

“It talks about a similar incident right here,” she says, pointing to an article in the Nazi paper. “And they’ve arrested some of the culprits.”

The only Jews who are left in the city are the sick and elderly, women and children — not any different than the people left behind who aren’t Jewish. Everyone who was important has been evacuated to safety. And we all know now that the young leaders of the city who were opposed to Stalin have been murdered at Bykivnia.

On September 24 we are ordered to register at the makeshift German government office in the old hotel on Svertlov Street. Thousands wait patiently in line as the new city clerks try their best to fill out the German forms.

When it is finally my turn, I notice that the clerks have three columns of names.

“Why do you have three lists?” I ask.

“Our Nazi leaders have more respect for your beliefs than the Soviets ever did,” he says. “We’re listing how many Jews, Russians, Ukrainians live here. That way the Nazis can reopen the right number of churches and synagogues.”

I turn and leave, wondering about his comment. Does that mean that they will turn Pecherska Lavra back into a monastery? An interesting idea.

I am a hundred metres away from the registration building when there is a loud, rumbling roar. Suddenly I fly through the air, pieces of concrete raining on my back. I land on my hands in the cobblestone road, scraping my face, the wind knocked out of me. The upper floor of the toy store beside the registration building flies off in the explosion and lands on top of dozens of people waiting in line.

My face is wet with blood and the back of my shirt in shreds. A frail man comes out from one of the houses and mops my face with his handkerchief. Just then, a second explosion rocks the street. The registration building is engulfed in smoke and rubble.

“Another gift from Stalin,” the man grumbles, folding up his bloodied handkerchief. “I guess we can expect another announcement that the Jews did it.”

For the next two days, buildings explode every few minutes from bombs planted by the NKVD before they escaped. Soviet undercover agents throw Molotov cocktails, igniting buildings. Because the fire department has abandoned the city, a massive fire burns for a week and a huge cloud of ash hangs yet again over Kyiv.

We do all that we can to get the fires out, but the flames rage on. In retaliation, the Nazis shoot anyone who lives in a building beside one that burned — for not trying hard enough to put the fire out, they claim, though David says that they are just looking for excuses to kill us.

At dusk on the last Sunday in September, I stand on the roof of our communal flat, David beside me. All around, Kyiv burns.

“What is to become of us?” I ask.

David shrugs, then points to a soldier who is nailing a notice to a post down the street. “Let’s go see what it says.”

A small crowd gathers on the street in front of the sign, blocking our view. Someone at the front says, “They’re ordering all the Jews to assemble near the cemetery on Monday at eight o’clock in the morning. They’re to pack for travel.”

As we walk back home, David says, “Where do you think they’re going to take us?”

I think of Dido and all of the others in the graves, the explosions and fires, the clouds of black smoke hanging above. Deep down, I want David to stay, but I know that is selfish. If he and his mother can get to safety, they have to take the chance.

“Do you think anyplace could possibly be worse than here?” I ask him.

“They will probably send us to a work camp,” says David.

Mama helps Mrs. Kagan sort through her meagre possessions. Each traveller is only allowed a single suitcase.

“Photographs,” says Mrs. Kagan, slowly turning the pages in a worn family album and stopping somewhere around the middle. “These are more precious than food.” She takes one out and turns it for us to see — a formal wedding shot of a hopeful-looking woman with serious eyes. Behind her stands Mr. Kagan — not looking much different than the last time I saw him, just younger.

She takes out a picture of David that makes me smile. He must have been about two, with curly hair like a girl.

“Of all the photographs you’ve got of me, you’re keeping that one?” David asks, his face pink.

“You were a beautiful child,” says his mother. “So innocent. Quit complaining.”

Mama sorts through our shared pantry and divides out what little we have left — cracker bread, some apples, a few onions. “Take these,” she says. “Who knows when you’ll be fed.”

The next morning Mama and I walk with David and Mrs. Kagan to the train station. “I don’t understand why the Soviets set off all those explosions,” Mama says. “Surely they knew that the Nazis would blame the Jews.”

“No matter what happens, we are always blamed,” replies Mrs. Kagan bitterly.

It makes me angry to hear her say that, but it’s true. The Soviets did this, and now the Nazis. Some things never change.

David wears his winter coat over his best suit, as well as three pairs of socks and two shirts. His mother also wears her heaviest coat, plus a sweater, three skirts, two scarves and fur-lined boots that belonged to Mr. Kagan
.

The street fills with people — some pushing wheelbarrows, others carrying awkward boxes on their backs. Two men carry a stretcher that holds an elderly rabbi. It isn’t just Jews who come out. Friends and non-Jewish family walk alongside.

“I don’t know why the Jews are the only ones to get evacuated,” says a squat woman with a cane as she hobbles
beside us. “Why are they so special? I’m going to see if they’ll let me on the train as well — I don’t know how much more I can take, breathing in this smoke.”

We walk down Melnikov Street with crowds of other people, watching the soldiers lining the road. Some hold clubs; others rifles. A few hold back fierce-looking dogs. “We’re doing as they asked,” says David. “I don’t see why they have to be out in such force.”

I do a double take when I see, close to the end of the row of soldiers, a face that is etched in my mind. Sasha, the Soviet NKVD who took Tato away — now in a Nazi uniform. Beside him stands Misha, yet another former NKVD thug. I tug on Mama’s sleeve and motion with my eyes.

She nods. “Bullies are all the same, no matter what uniform they wear,” she says. “I recognize a few former Soviets who relished tormenting us then, and now they just do it in another uniform.”

Suddenly a block of German soldiers stands in our way. “Papers,” says one, reaching out his free hand. The other restrains a German shepherd. Behind the soldiers, a line of trucks idles, stacked high with suitcases, boxes and bags.

All four of us hold out our identification papers. “You two,” he says to David and Mrs. Kagan. “Put your luggage on one of the trucks, then go through.”

He turns to me and Mama. “No farther. Go home now.”

I hold my hand out to David and give it a firm shake. “Good luck,” I say.

David’s eyes look sad but he pastes a brave smile onto his face. “Don’t forget me, Luka,” he replies. Then he and his mother walk through the cordon of soldiers.

I never saw him again.

Two days later, we found out that there had been no train. The Nazis had murdered the Jews of Kyiv. Their bullet-riddled bodies now filled the ravine of Babyn Yar.

Chapter Thirteen
Fighting Back

I could still almost hear David’s voice, saying, “Don’t forget me, Luka.”

An overwhelming weariness washed over me.

I vowed to survive this horrible war, so I could tell others about what the Nazis had done and how David had been killed. David would have loved Lida. Had he lived, they could have been the greatest of friends.

I untangled myself from the branches and started back on my journey.

The woods seemed oddly empty. Surely I wasn’t the only one in them. I walked until the midday sun broke through the branches overhead and didn’t see a single soul. Once, a deer darted by in the distance, and another time I nearly stepped on a snake, but the birds were oddly silent and I saw no trace of other humans.

I walked as close to the edge of the river as I dared, waiting for a spot where I would be able to climb down and get a drink, but long stretches of the bank were too soft and crumbly for climbing. In places the bank plunged right down to deep churning water. Finally I came upon a stretch that overlooked a pebbled beach and a patch of river that rippled but didn’t churn. Perhaps it was shallower.

Using the roots of trees as a ladder, I climbed down to water level. I stayed hidden behind some bushes and watched for a few minutes to make sure no one else was around. I stepped over mucky stones until I reached a dry, flat rock, then shrugged the knapsack off my shoulders and sat down. It was so silent and still, and watching the river ripple over smooth rocks had a soothing effect. I could almost forget that I was a fugitive in the midst of a war.

I set my knapsack on the rock and picked my way from one rock to another until the river looked knee deep. I knew I was taking a risk, but there wasn’t a single boat in sight and the opposite bank was deserted.

I knelt down and took huge gulps of water, then splashed my face and hair. It felt so good to finally not be thirsty. I used the stepping stones to get back to the flat rock and stretched out. It was chilly, but I was relieved to be out of the woods. My stomach grumbled. This was as good a time as any to open up one of those American army rations and see what they contained. I reached for my knapsack.

It was open.

Had I left it that way? I couldn’t remember. I took everything out of it, placing the extra clothing Margarete had packed over to one side. There was also a first-aid kit. Thank you, Margarete and Helmut! A stiff piece of fabric was folded tightly and tucked along the back of the knapsack. I pulled it out and unfolded it — a huge lightweight rain poncho with a camouflage pattern — very useful. But then I counted and stacked the ration boxes and there were only nine. I was sure there were supposed to be ten.

Perhaps one had dropped out of the knapsack? Or maybe there were only nine to begin with. In any case, I’d had my fill of water and that would have to do for now. I packed everything back up and slipped on the knapsack. I was halfway up the riverbank when the scent of roasting meat drifted towards me. My stomach growled with hunger.