The children complained, the children whined, the children whimpered that they were hungry and cold, that the floor was too hard to sleep on, that being held over rushing train tracks to relieve themselves was scary—what if they slipped out of their parents’ hands and fell? They’d be run over by the massive, unrelenting wheels! Daria harbored the same fears, but she insisted on pasting on a smile and setting a good example, hiking up her skirts and yanking down her tights and attempting to remain modest while teetering precariously. Edward stood in front of her to shield his wife from leering or disgusted eyes, but he could do only so much.
And yet the children also played. Patty-cake and twenty questions and, when the adults attempted to clear a little space for them in the middle of the cattle car, goosey, goosey. One child stood at the front and chanted, “Goosey, goosey, ga, ga, ga / Are you hungry? / Yes, you are! / Then fly as you want, but don’t get your wings caught! There’s a wolf lying in wait!” That child would then turn his back. The rest would attempt to move forward before he pivoted again. Daria wondered if they weren’t all playing some kind of perverted, twisted version of the same game.
Every day, she thanked the impulse that had prompted her to bundle them in layers. Many had come unprepared, and their hacking, bronchial coughs echoed to disturb the scant minutes of sleep the rest could catch, children curled up on parents’ laps, adults taking turns sitting, resting on each other’s shoulders, legs tucked underneath, heads bumping against raw wooden walls, precious belongings stuffed behind their backs or buttoned close to their chests to prevent the theft that was already rampant, despite what should have been dozens of witnesses. After the first accusation led to a fistfight, which led to soldiers breaking it up by flinging both men off the train and pumping several bullets into each before they’d even risen to their shaken feet, no one dared risk admitting they’d seen anything.
“This will be over soon,” Edward assured Daria and the girls, remaining optimistic after plenty of others had given in to doomed hysterics or helplessness. While they wept or cursed or railed, Edward sang. Long passages from the Gilbert and Sullivan opera Patience, translating it from English to Russian. From Italian to Russian, he translated excerpts of Madame Butterfly, about her life of patient waiting, and the relevant verses about hope and patience from Turandot. Daria spied a theme. She endeavored to hide her annoyance. Matters were rarely as simple in life as they were onstage. But it did keep Alyssa and Anya distracted. Edward assuaged, “Once we get to our destination, I’ll speak with the person in charge, and we’ll straighten everything out. They’ll see they made a mistake. We’re not German; we don’t belong here.” That last part he whispered, lest their neighbors overhear. Edward looked at them with great sympathy. He was a compassionate person. He felt sorry they, too, wouldn’t have such an easy out.
At long last, their train creaked into a desolate depot at literally the end of the road. There were no tracks to go any farther. “There, you see, I told you; here we are,” Edward announced, acting as if the entire journey had been nothing more than a travel mix-up, which he expected his agent to take care of now that they’d arrived. Soldiers flung open doors, shouting for everyone to rise to their feet. All did as swiftly as they could, pressuring muscles stiffened from the cramped quarters to, once again, serve their purpose. Daria’s knees buckled, and she grabbed the wall to steady herself. She raised one arm above her head and haltingly waved it up and down, restoring the blood flow to her fingers. As she did so, she realized there was more room to maneuver than there had been at the start of the journey. In addition to the two men who’d been shot, a trio of elderly women and an infant’s corpse had also been disposed of. The mother of the lost baby now needed to be pulled to her feet by her husband. She stumbled getting out of the train and didn’t even throw out her hands to break her fall. Her husband picked her up off the ground, her face now bloodied, and dragged her to line up with the rest of them.
How many were there? Raggedy lines of men, women, and children stretched out in either direction across the otherwise plundered landscape. Daria spotted Adam getting out from a cattle car three over. His height and red hair made him difficult to miss. He glanced Daria’s way, noticed Edward, still trying to catch the attention of someone in authority, and shook his head in disgust. Daria would have thought herself capable of feeling only hungry, freezing, and exhausted. Apparently, she still had space left for furious.
En masse, they were marched away from the trains, several kilometers over and toward a wood of pine, cedar, and spruce so dense, there was no room for sunlight between the trees. They followed what must have been a road; the frozen mud beneath their feet was more packed than the mud leading up to the entrances of the lean-tos, shacks, and makeshift cabins on either side that they passed. There were a few traditional houses, too, with glass in the windows and kerosene lamps glowing within. No residents could be seen.
The pretense of a road ended as abruptly as the railroad tracks had. They stood in a clearing between the trees. Wooden barracks, not so different from the cattle cars they’d exited, loomed ahead. Dozens. Yet still not enough for everyone who’d been unloaded.
“Go!” A soldier who’d met them at the station and marched them here, pointed toward the barracks. “Claim your space.” The “before someone else does” was implied.
For a moment, no one moved, either not understanding the order or unable to believe it had been issued. Adam was the first to swing into action, pushing aside those in front of him and striding toward the nearest barracks. He flung open the door, poked his head in, then withdrew just as quickly. Daria could see why. It was already packed to the rafters.
Adam moved deeper into the settlement. When, after examining several other options, he didn’t exit the last one, Daria grabbed both girls by the hands and pulled them in the same direction, trusting Edward to follow. She barely managed to elbow her way past others who’d come to the same idea. She threw herself down on the first available bunk, the middle of three protruding from the wall, a few meters across from the opposing trio. The room had rows and rows of wooden slats, hardly big enough for one, much less the four of them—Daria noticed Adam managed to claim a single for himself, albeit up top, beneath the rotting boards of the dripping ceiling. Other than that, there was a stove in the corner, a few faint chips of wood glowing and sputtering with every gust of wind, and a bucket that smelled worse than any outhouse Daria had ever known.
“I’m sorry, Mama,” Daria couldn’t help thinking. “All your hard work, and I’m worse off now than we ever were, just like you warned me!” Because Daria hadn’t listened. Because she’d provoked Adam. Daria didn’t believe his denial of having been the one who turned them in. Even the fact that Adam had also been ensnared in their dragnet proved little comfort.
The weathered faces of men, women, and disturbingly few children peered out at the new arrivals from the depths of their already occupied bunks. They didn’t look curious. They didn’t look sympathetic. They didn’t look disdainful. They didn’t look anything at all.
“Tomorrow,” Edward promised the girls as he took off their coats and improvised nests at the foot of the bunk, while he and Daria attempted to wrap around each other at the opposite end. “Everything will be better tomorrow.”