Death of a Nightingale

The gun was so large that the Witch had to use both her ancient hands to hold it. Natasha shrank down with Katerina in her arms, much too close, and with only the snow, the darkness and the rose hedge for cover. She was terrified that the Witch would hear Katerina’s breathing, but it seemed as if the old woman only had eyes for Anna. The light from the gable illuminated Anna’s hair and face and made the red ski suit glow like a torch in the middle of the whirling whiteness of the blizzard. Natasha couldn’t see the Witch’s face. Only the fur and the boots with the too-high heels that sank into the packed snow with every step the old woman took, making deep, precise holes, like punctures.

An odd silence had fallen. It was as if even the snowflakes stopped in midair.

“Are you a ghost?” asked the old woman.

“No,” said Anna. She took half a step toward the old woman and held her arms out like you do when you want to embrace someone. She wasn’t planning to embrace the Witch, was she?

“Stand still.”

Anna stopped. She understands Ukrainian, thought Natasha. She doesn’t usually. But when Anna began to speak again, it was in Ukrainian.

“They thought I would die,” she said. “But I survived. And that wasn’t so good, because by then the trial was already over, and the murderers condemned.”

“I think you are a ghost,” said the Witch. “How otherwise could I have stood by your grave?”

“It wasn’t my fault. Semienova … They couldn’t admit that a mistake had been made. Semienova had me placed with a family in Galicia, with the brother of an aunt of hers. Pötsch, they were called. They were ethnic Germans. And later … later it was easier to pretend that I was German too, otherwise I would have been sent back to Stalin.”

“And so what? You were a hero, right? The people’s nightingale?” The Witch spat out the last two words as if they hurt her mouth.

Anna stood still. Her face had transformed as her language had changed. There was an expression now that Natasha had never seen on a Dane. The unmoving mouth, the eyes that slid to the side … No, you couldn’t break it into parts. It was just Ukrainian. If Anna had ever looked at Natasha with that expression, Natasha would have known right away that she wasn’t born in Bacon Land.

“A dead nightingale,” she said. “A dead hero. Who was still alive. How long do you think it would have been before they corrected that mistake? They had shot Grachev and Grandfather and Grandmother Trofimenko and … all of them. For my murder. If you have a murder trial, you also need a corpse.”

“Kolja was dead. But maybe he doesn’t count? He didn’t get a statue, you know.”

“Olga …”

The Witch laughed. A laughter without much sound, just a series of short hisses. “Olga? It has certainly been a long time. Several names ago. They are used up so quickly, it seems to me.”

She began to cock the gun with shaking but competent hands.

“Are you going to shoot me?” asked Anna.

“Why not?”

“Haven’t we lost enough? Olga, we are the only ones, the only ones who are left.”

“So perhaps that was why you thought you had the right to bleed me for money? You milked me like one milks a cow.”

“That wasn’t me. It was Pavel. I shouldn’t have told him as much as I did.”

“No, you probably shouldn’t have. Sister.”

The Witch completed her gesture. Natasha could hear the small click as yet another projectile shot forward in the gun’s chamber. Katerina stirred in her arms and made a tiny, sleepy sound.

Natasha knew that she wouldn’t have more than this one chance. She was barely able to make herself let go of Katerina. But she did it. She placed her little girl softly in the snow and silently promised that she would return very soon. As soon as she was done.

She actually didn’t much care right now if the Witch shot Anna. Because now she knew that it was Anna who had brought the Witch into their lives. All that time when she thought it was just Pavel’s stupidity, Pavel’s greed … It was Anna’s too. That much she had understood. Because she had also watched Anna become wealthier. Had seen how there was money for a new kitchen, for the newly thatched roof, not just on the main house but also in the wing where Kirsten was going to live. She crept closer to the spot where Anna had dropped her flashlight.

“Olga, don’t do it!” said Anna. It was clear she hadn’t spoken Ukrainian for a long, long time. She sounded like someone in an old film.

“It’s not a crime to shoot someone who is already dead,” said the Witch. And at that moment, Natasha struck and felt the blow hit home, in spite of the fur hat, all the way to the frail, old eggshell skull.

The Witch fell forward, almost disappearing into the snowdrift by the gable. Natasha kneeled beside her and raised the flashlight again just to make sure.

This time no Jurij came to stop her.