Death of a Nightingale

UKRAINE, 1935

Stomp, stomp, stomp.

Olga stared down at the frozen wheel tracks as she walked. It wasn’t all that far from the school to their old house on the outskirts of the village, certainly not anywhere near as far as it had been to Grandfather’s farm up in the hills. And yet it felt farther.

Her heart beat hard and fast under her coat, and she increased her tempo, forced herself to breathe slowly and deeply, forced herself not to run. The heavy white blanket of snow that had fallen in the night hushed all sound, but she still caught most of it. Oxana’s steady, confident steps to her right. A door that opened and closed in the house next to the cooperative shop. A quiet conversation between two men over by the sawmill. She could hear the way they stomped their feet and clapped their hands hard together to stave off the cold. Their cigarette smoke hung in the ice-cold air like a faint bluish veil.

They walked quickly. Olga because she was afraid. Oxana more likely because she was angry.

COMRADE SEMIENOVA LOVED Oxana. Leda and Jegor loved Oxana, and Mother and Kolja loved her too. But that winter it was as if everyone else had begun to hate her.

It had begun with Sergej’s stone, the day the GPU had come for Fedir and the rest of his family. And after that the hatred had grown. Although Olga caught only a sort of echo of it, as if the hostility bounced off Oxana and hit her instead, she felt it as a resistance in her body that made it difficult to move and breathe. It showed in all the little gestures, she had discovered. Men stuck their hands in their pockets and turned away. Conversations ceased. Smiles faltered and eyes were averted when Oxana and she walked by. People didn’t yell or call names anymore; the hatred was in the silence and in the air she breathed into her lungs. So it wasn’t until she was inside, at home with Oxana and Kolja and Mother, that she could breathe freely.

Uncle Grachev’s house had become a dangerous place to pass, because even though Father and he had often argued about who would provide bread and vodka for the old folk, they had had a lot in common and enjoyed drinking and playing cards in the evening. Uncle Grachev was Father’s brother. He had a huge beard and an odd, hiccupping laughter, and he used to pinch Olga and Oxana much too hard on the cheek. Olga had also seen him pinch Mother’s behind when he was really drunk and had lost both kopeks and rubles, but Mother had never paid much attention, and luckily Grachev had his own wife, who was named Vira and was big and strong as an ox and ruled over both Grachev and the three large cousins with a firm hand. Their house was also big enough that Grandfather and Grandmother Trofimenko could live there, and when Mother and Father and Olga and Oxana and Kolja had first come to Mykolayevka in the fall, Vira and Grachev had invited the whole family to celebrate the first harvest after the great hunger. They had had honey cakes and tea and had listened to Cousin Fyodor’s stories about his time in the army in Afghanistan. To think that the Afghan women were dressed in tents and were only allowed to see the world through a mesh of horsehair, while the men sat around smoking water pipes! Unimaginable wonders like that were blissful when served with tea and cake.

Olga missed Vira and Fyodor and even Grachev, in spite of the cheek-pinching, but since Father’s death their house had been closed to Olga as well as Oxana. Vira pursed her lips together when they met her in the street, and the two youngest cousins, Vitja and Pjotr, ran between the houses with Sergej and threw hard, little icy snowballs at Olga and Oxana and even at little Kolja when he came along. Once Vitja had pushed Oxana into the open gutter, so she had fallen on the layers of frozen shit from the Lihomanovs’ house.

Olga and Oxana always walked by as quickly as they could, making sure not to expose themselves unnecessarily; they were especially careful with their throats, eyes and cheeks, which they covered as best they could by bending their heads, hunching their shoulders and pulling their kerchiefs close around their faces. It was no longer a good idea to stop and warm their hands or chat with the other girls. Even Leda and Elizaveta, who, like Oxana, were eager young pioneers, steered clear of them in the open street.

The worst thing was that Olga liked Vitja and Pjotr and Fyodor and Grachev and Jana. Even now, even when they were being so awful to her. Last summer, before all the trouble with Father and the widow, she and Pjotr had gone down to the river together to fish several times. Once in a while they caught one of the fat barbel, a fish that could get so big, it required all the strength and concentration an eleven-year-old boy could muster to drag it to shore. Other times they had to make do with small fry that Mother made into fish soup with the head, tail, eyes, guts and the lot.

But that was over now too.

STOMP, STOMP.

Olga knew that she would be able to see their house now if she raised her head. Once home, she and Oxana would be responsible for building a fire in the oven, collecting water at the well if it wasn’t frozen over, or melting snow on the stove if it was. Mother wouldn’t be home until the pigs were fed for the last time that day.

She placed one felt boot in front of the other and tried to calculate how many steps were left. Probably about a hundred steps to the Petrenkos’ house and from there another twenty to their garden fence. She fought the desire to look up. And then it came anyway, the sound she had feared since Comrade Semienova had closed the school door behind them.

Running feet in the snow.

Coming from behind, from the shortcut by the shoemaker’s house.

The next second Olga felt the first hard blow against her shoulder. Little Sergej had caught up to them and now ran right behind them, buzzing like a wasp around rotten plums. Olga tried to slap him, which made Sergej laugh hilariously.

“Oxana,” he said, “you’re so good in school, you must also know that Noah had three sons. What was it they were called, Oxana?”

Now Pjotr and Vitja had arrived and were blocking their path. Olga also saw Jana’s big brother Vanja and felt a new prick of terror. Vanja was seventeen and as broad-shouldered as a grown man.

“Come on, Oxana. What were they called? Sing for us.”

Sergej yanked Oxana’s kerchief down around her shoulders so she stood with her head bared. A lock of blonde hair had been torn from the tight braid at her neck and flapped across her face. Her eyes flashed angrily at Sergej and the other boys. Her mouth was a narrow black line in her pale face.

“Leave us alone,” she said and tried to push her way past Pjotr. “Or I’ll report you to the GPU. You have no right to bother me and Olga.”

Vitja hit Oxana so hard across the mouth that her lip split and blood dripped down into the snow. Olga halted as if paralyzed.

“What were Noah’s sons called, Oxana? Answer!”

Oxana pressed her felt glove to her lip and glared furiously at Vitja. “Every idiot knows that Noah’s sons were called Sem, Kam and Jafet,” she said finally.

Sergej’s little pockmarked face contorted in a sneaky grimace that revolted Olga. If only he had died of pox or hunger typhus or something even worse. It seemed to her that cruelty almost radiated out from his small, skinny body.

“Then I must be an idiot,” yelled Sergej triumphantly. “I thought Noah’s sons were called Sem, Kam and Judas.” He hit himself across the forehead. “But you know that better than I do, Oxana. Thank you.”

Sergej’s words seemed to hit harder than Vitja’s fist, because now Oxana blushed, and for the first time, she lowered her eyes. The loose strands of wheaten hair blew in the wind. Vitja gave her a vicious shove, so that Oxana lost her balance and had to fight to remain standing.

“Leave us alone,” screamed Olga. She was afraid now. This wasn’t like the other times, when ice chunks and rocks had hit them from secret hiding places. This time they were standing in the middle of the street. Two workers from the kolkhoz walked by, and Olga knew who they were and wanted to turn to them for help, but it was as if they looked right through her. They were talking and smoking and continued on without stopping. Now she noticed cousin Fyodor and Uncle Grachev a bit farther up the road, standing with parted legs and folded arms.

“Shut up,” screamed Petjr. “Just shut your mouth.”

He brought his fist down on Olga, but she managed to turn away from him so he hit her shoulder instead of her face. Then he grabbed hold of both kerchief and hair and yanked her head back hard. She fell. Pjotr dragged her across the trampled, hard-packed snow of the road and didn’t let her go until she lay in the frozen sewage gutter with her face pressed against the ice. She could hear the sound of blows against Oxana’s body, some hushed by overcoat and mittens, others clearer as they hit her face and other exposed bits of skin, but Olga didn’t dare look up. She just stayed where she was like a coward hunched in the snow until she heard Vitja swear faintly; he was out of breath.

“Damn. We better get out of here,” he said.

Olga lifted her head in time to see little Sergej kick Oxana in the stomach one last time before he set off running down Shoemaker Alley with the others. Farther down the road she could see the reason for their sudden departure: two riders down by the sawmill wearing the easily recognizable uniforms of the GPU, rifles over their shoulders.

Olga got up. The snow had crept in under her jacket and kerchief and now ran in small, cold rivulets down her neck and chest. Oxana lay a little distance off. In her overcoat and thick felt boots, she looked like a lifeless pile of clothes in the middle of the road, but she finally moved, stuck a leg out to one side, steadied herself with her hands and raised herself into a sitting position. They hadn’t killed her.

Oxana brushed the snow off her pummeled face. One of her eyebrows was bleeding, as was her nose, and her cheeks were as red as poppies from the cold and the many blows.

“What are you staring at?” she said. “Help me up.”