Death of a Nightingale

UKRAINE, 1934

“No, no.”

The protest was so faint, it could barely be called a protest. More like a kind of moan. Nonetheless, the young, beautiful GPU police officer immediately hit Marchenko across the mouth so the blood began to seep from his lips and gums. Marchenko bent forward and let it drip on the newly fallen snow. For some reason that was where Olga’s eyes focused.

The red color against the blindingly white virgin snow was so vivid that it seemed almost supernatural in the midst of the grubby chaos. Behind Marchenko, most of his family’s former belongings were bundled together in a tall, ungainly load on what had previously been his cart. There were a butter churn and pickling troughs and blankets and clothing and sacks. At the back of the cart sat a few sheaves of straw and the bucket from the farm’s well. All of it had been tied to the cart by a couple of men from the kolkhoz. The three horses hitched to it stomped their hooves impatiently in the frozen wheel tracks and whinnied so the steam enveloped their muzzles.

Olga stood so close, she would have been able to stroke one of the horses’ flanks if she stuck out her hand. But she didn’t. The horse didn’t look nice, she thought. The lower lip hung down so you could see the long yellow teeth, and its coat was bristly, mud caking its flank. She was closer than she wanted to be and also close to the scarlet blood spot in the snow in front of the cart.

Olga didn’t quite know why she kept standing there instead of going home. Marchenko was the idiot Fedir’s father and a kulak, and everyone knew that he had been behind with his grain deliveries for a long time. He had said that he didn’t have any, and the village soviet had until now chosen to ignore his negligence. But today Jana had reported at school that the GPU had ransacked the Marchenkos’ property and found grain as well as potatoes stowed away in a dugout under the house’s foundation. It was the fault of him and the likes of him that everyone was starving, Olga knew that well, but somehow none of them looked quite like the fat kulaks on the poster outside the village soviet’s office—especially not Fedir’s little sister, who hung on her mother’s arm. Her face was narrow and her eyes large. She wasn’t much older than Kolja, and every so often she opened her mouth and cried out, a long, thin scream like a hare in the claws of an eagle. The family had been sitting outside in the cold all day, waiting for their judgment, and the child was blue with cold and exhaustion.

The cries made Olga feel sick deep down in her stomach, but still she couldn’t tear herself away.

“There are at least one hundred twenty funt,” said Oxana, pointing at the six sacks of grain that were just then being carried out and placed on a separate cart. “Just think how many mouths that can feed.”

Olga nodded. She couldn’t remember ever seeing so much grain at once—and not just any grain, but wheat, supposedly. She had heard that from the talk among the gathered villagers. Most of them had come to say goodbye. Marchenko’s brother was there, and several of his neighbors, noted Olga. The men were smoking and talking quietly while the women had pulled their shawls close around their shoulders and were glancing nervously at the four armed GPU officers.

A GPU officer shouted something, and now the driver from the collective climbed, huffing, onto the load. He swung the whip over the sharp backs of the horses. The animals leaned forward heavily in their harnesses, but for a long moment seemed stuck in place until the wheels finally scrunched along in the slippery tracks and the cart began to move.

For a moment Marchenko looked as if he was planning to follow it, but he remained standing next to the four bundles that the family had been allowed to keep. What he had now was an idiotic son, a wife and a small daughter, thought Olga. Because Fedir was definitely an idiot. Even though he was fourteen, he stood sobbing as loudly as his little sister, and it was almost unbearable to keep watching. And yet she couldn’t stop.

One of the remaining GPUs apparently felt the same way, because now he poked Fedir in the side with his rifle and told him to start walking.

“Where to?” Fedir stared at him with his wild, cross-eyed gaze, and the GPUs laughed almost kindly.

“To the station in Sorokivka. You’re going on a trip, comrade.”

Fedir smiled back in confusion, hoisted two of the family’s bundles on his back and, neck bent, began to make his way through the crowd of gathered neighbors. One woman tried to sneak him a piece of bread, but he saw it too late and dropped it awkwardly on the road. When he straightened up, he saw Olga and Oxana and froze in his tracks.

“Oxana,” he said. A special light slid across his face. “I’ll come visit you when I get back.”

Oxana lowered her eyes and nodded briefly, and just then Olga noticed the silence around them. As if all sound had been sucked out of the world. For the longest time, people stood mutely, staring at Fedir and Oxana. Then Oxana pulled her scarf closer around her face, turned her back on Fedir and began to walk away. Olga hesitated.

The young, smiling GPU officer poked Fedir again and drove him in the opposite direction down the main street of the village along with the rest of the family. Marchenko was silent now and walked with heavy, stooped shoulders while behind him, his wife struggled to keep the child in her arms. Only Fedir turned back one more time and raised his arm in a farewell that was impatiently swatted down by the boyish GPU officer.

Oxana marched with quick steps toward the stream, and Olga began to run to catch up with her. At the same moment, she felt a sharp stab of pain in her shoulder blade. Something hard and pointy had hit her, but when she looked over her shoulder, she couldn’t see anything but the frozen ground and the fine dusting of new snow behind her. She increased her speed but stumbled and fell in the stupid bark shoes on the stupid cloddy ground. “Oxana, wait.”

Oxana turned. She backtracked two steps and offered her hand to Olga, who got to her feet, swaying, just as she was hit by an even harder smack. This time it was on her forehead, and she felt a warm trickle of blood run down over her cheekbone. She didn’t understand at all, but apparently Oxana did. Oxana raised a fist toward the Marchenkos’ house just as another stone whistled toward them.

Oxana’s eyes threw off sparks. “Act like it’s nothing,” she said breathlessly, pulling Olga along toward the stream. ‘It’s just Sergej, that idiot.”

Olga tried to walk as fast as Oxana but stumbled and fell again. She couldn’t help looking back.

No more stones came.