Daria hurried to dress her girls in as many layers as she could, the same way she and Mama had first come to Odessa, so they wouldn’t have as much to carry. Underpants and undershirts, woolen tights, then their thickest trousers. A long-sleeved turtleneck sweater, warm dresses over that, followed by winter coats she could barely button. She told the children to hold them closed with both hands. Daria pulled heavy socks on over their tights, then stuffed their feet into boots, happy that, on the one day kids’ shoes became available in Odessa, she’d been able to get her hands only on pairs two sizes too big. She’d intended for them to grow into the footwear, but this was even better. Alyssa and Anya complained, crying that they were hot, that their toes were squished, that they couldn’t move.
“Papa and I will carry you,” Daria dismissed, then proceeded to dress herself in the same manner.
Edward stood in the center of the room, looking from her to the girls to his sobbing father, who’d come out to watch them, unsure of what he should be doing to either help or stop the frenzy.
“Here.” Daria shoved long underwear, pants, a shirt, a sweater, and a coat at him, along with two pairs of socks and gloves. “Hurry!”
“We should bring money,” Edward said as if his metabolism had stalled and it was taking all his concentration just to form a thought, then turn it into words. “Money for bribes. That’s always helpful when I travel.”
Daria decided now was not the time to advise him that they weren’t going traveling. She doubted the accommodations would be up to his usual standards. Why frighten either him or the girls before she had to? Daria could agonize enough for the both of them. And prepare, too.
“Jewelry is better.” She went back into the box that once held their passports, grabbing the pearl necklace that had been her late mother-in-law’s, the ruby pin in the shape of a rose Edward had brought back from his trip to France the year they were married, and the golden hoop earrings he said made her look like an exotic Gypsy. Whenever Daria wore them, Edward rushed to the piano to sing a rousing chorus of “Ochi Chernye,” or “Dark Eyes.” There were also their wedding rings, their watches. “Jewelry is easier to barter.”
Daria looked around, mindful of the ticking clock, trying to think of what else might come in handy wherever they were going, for however long. Medicine? Food? Water? A toy to keep the children entertained? Daria glanced at Edward, hoping he, with his broader experience, might have ideas. She followed his gaze to the object he was staring at with the greatest reluctance to leave.
They were not bringing the piano.
“Let’s go,” she ordered, lest they exceed their fifteen-minute allotment. Who knew what penalties that could bring? “Goodbye, Isaak Israelevitch. We’ll be back as soon as we can. Say goodbye to your grandfather, girls. Say dosvedanya.” Until our next meeting.
“Dosvedanya, Deda,” they sang, sleepy and befuddled, but also excited by the unexpected adventure.
“Proschai,” her father-in-law replied, peering at his granddaughters, at Daria, and finally at Edward. Proschai meant farewell. And forgive. It was what people said at funerals.
They were the sole family taken out of their building that night. No one else was seen, although Daria knew their neighbors were all awake. None would dare turn on a light and be caught looking. She wondered which ones would attempt to claim their best belongings first, and whether Isaak would have the strength—or if he would feel too cowed—to keep them from robbing him. As a relative of the enemies of the people, anything Isaak owned, by definition, became contraband, and thus fair game for looting.
They were not, however, the sole ones being rounded up as darkness turned into dawn. Which explained the lack of car and the forced march toward the railway station. As they drew closer to their destination, soldiers walking on either side like a perverse honor guard, Daria spied other men, women, and children huddled in uneven groups, whether for warmth, protection, or familiarity. Some German was, in fact, being spoken, but it was mostly Russian, along with a spattering of Yiddish.
Moments after they arrived, the family huddles were broken up, some by a pair of hands and a barked command, others by the long, narrow barrels of rifles wielded by soldiers stationed at key spots along the station to keep the prisoners from escaping. Daria wondered where they thought any runaways could go. The same passports that listed their nationalities as Jewish—though a lot of help that had been—also included Edward and Daria’s stamp of marriage and their legally approved residence. Attempting to settle in a different part of town or leave Odessa and blend in elsewhere would lead to criminal charges of relocation without permission.
Lined up side by side, they were ordered to kneel beside the tracks, hands behind their heads, bent at the waist, chins down. Daria was so busy trying to help the overdressed, hard-to-configure Alyssa and Anya into the required positions between her and Edward that she didn’t notice the shadowy figure on the other side of her husband, until a quick sweep of a flashlight illuminated his face.
Adam.
“What are you . . .” she blurted out, starting in her normal voice, dropping to a whisper at Adam’s murderous expression. This made no sense. “You’re the one who turned us in!” Who else had the means and the motive?
“I was turned in,” Adam corrected, “for not turning you in. How could there be German nationals living under my own nose, and I not be aware of it?”
Between them, Edward, emboldened by Adam’s confirmation that they were here under false pretenses, straightened up and, once again, attempted to get a guard’s attention. “Excuse me, Comrade, I believe a mistake has been made—”
Adam’s arm swung down from his head like dead weight as he rammed his fist into Edward’s stomach. Daria’s husband doubled over, gagging. She caught him with both hands beneath his chest before Edward’s face hit the ground, struggling to keep him on his knees.
A split second later, a guard came down their row, oscillating the narrow barrel of his Mosin rifle to ensure everyone’s head was at the same level. If Adam hadn’t knocked Edward down, Daria’s husband would have been struck. Instead, the weapon passed over Adam, over Edward, over Daria and the girls, and smashed the skull of a man a few spaces down. Blood streamed from the spot where his eye had been, pooling around his head as it cracked open atop the railroad track. When the rest of them were ordered to stand and commence marching in an orderly fashion toward the waiting cattle cars, he didn’t budge. They made a point of pretending not to notice, gingerly stepping over his twitching form, as if he were an inconvenient puddle.
Adam jerked Edward to his feet by the back of his coat and shoved him in the appropriate direction, followed by Daria.
“The wheat that grows tallest,” Adam advised them, “gets cut first.”
Chapter 5
The children played. As their multiday—multiweek? With so little light, it was impossible to keep track of time passing—journey from the shores of the Black Sea into the depths of Siberia faded into a single, jostling, nauseating ache, the one fact that never failed to startle Daria anew was that the children had played.
There were a handful of them in their cattle car, in addition to Alyssa and Anya. Twenty-five families or more packed in, jostling for a space to sit or, at least, to lean against a wall farthest from the hole cut in the floor that was to serve as a latrine. Frigid air, as well as a sliver of sunlight scraped its way in through slits at the top. Edward, standing on his toes, was able to strain and scrape off a few handfuls of snow that they melted in their hands, then gave to Alyssa and Anya when the girls’ polite requests for a drink of water turned into tears. Other parents made do by breaking off the icicles that formed inside and offering them to their children to suck. When the cries of thirst turned to hunger, Daria slipped off Edward’s leather belt, soaked it for as long as she could by filling one of her shoes with water, and told Alyssa and Anya to suck on it, along with the ration of bread every passenger received once a day.