“I’m so sorry,” cried her mother. She turned her back to us, placed her hands on her own throat, and tried to strangle herself.
Mrs. Rimas slapped the woman across the face. The man who wound his watch restrained her arms.
“What’s wrong with you? If you want to kill yourself, do it in private,” said the bald man.
“It’s your fault,” I said. “You told her she’d be eaten by a fox.”
“Stop it, Lina,” said Jonas.
“Mama,” sobbed Janina.
“She already talks to her dead doll. Do we really want to hear about her dead mother?” said the bald man.
“Mama!” shrieked Janina.
“You’re going to be fine,” said Mother, stroking the woman’s filthy hair. “We’re all going to be fine. We mustn’t lose our senses. It’s going to be all right. Really.”
70
AT DAYBREAK, the NKVD shouted at us to get to work. My neck hurt from sleeping on my suitcase. Jonas and Mother had slept under a fishing boat to protect themselves from the wind. I had slept only a few hours. After everyone was asleep, I drew by moonlight. I sketched Janina’s mother, her hands squeezing tight around her daughter’s neck, Janina’s eyes bulging. I wrote a letter to Andrius, telling him we were in Trofimovsk. How would I ever mail the letter? Would Andrius think I had forgotten about him? I’ll find you, he had said. How could he ever find us here? Papa, I thought. You’re coming for us. Hurry.
The NKVD divided us into twenty-five groups, fifteen people per group. We were group number eleven. They took the men with any strength and sent them to work finishing the NKVD barracks. The boys were sent to fish in the Laptev Sea. The remainder of the women and elderly were instructed to build a jurta, a hut, for their group. We could not, however, use any of the bricks or wood near the NKVD building. Those were reserved for the NKVD barracks. After all, winter was coming and the NKVD needed warm housing, said Ivanov, the brown-toothed guard. We could use scraps or pieces of logs that might have floated ashore.
“Before we even think of building something, we’ll need supplies,” said Mrs. Rimas. “Hurry, scatter and pick up anything and everything you can find before the others take it all. Bring it back here.”
I picked up large stones, sticks, and chips of brick. Were we really going to build a house from sticks and stones? Mother and Mrs. Rimas found logs that had washed ashore. They dragged them all the way back to our site and went back for more. I saw a woman digging up moss with her hands and using it as mortar between the rocks. Janina and I ripped up pieces of moss and piled it near our supplies. My stomach churned with hunger. I couldn’t wait for Jonas to return with the fish.
He returned, wet and shivering. His hands were empty.
“Where are the fish?” I asked. My teeth chattered.
“The guards say we’re not allowed fish. All of the fish we catch is stored for the NKVD.”
“What will we eat?” I asked.
“Bread rations,” he replied.
It took us a week to collect enough logs to create a framework for our jurta. The men discussed the design. I drew the sketches.
“These logs don’t look very strong,” commented Jonas. “They’re just driftwood.”
“It’s all we have,” said the man who wound his watch. “We must hurry. We must finish before the first snow comes. If we don’t, we won’t survive.”
“Hurry. Hurry,” said the repeater.
I dug deep notches in the hard dirt with a flat stone. The ground was frozen. As I dug deeper, I had to hack at ice. Mother, Mrs. Rimas and I stood the logs vertically in the notches. We packed dirt around them.
“It doesn’t look big enough for fifteen people,” I said, looking at the framing. The wind whipped, stinging my face.
“We’ll be warmer if we’re close together,” said Mother.
Ivanov approached with Kretzsky. I understood most of the conversation.
“The slowest pigs in Trofimovsk!” said Ivanov through his rotten teeth.
“You need a roof,” said Kretzsky, motioning with his cigarette.
“Yes, I know. And heat?” I said. We had enough logs for a roof, but what would we do for heat?
“We’ll need a stove,” Mother said in Russian.
Ivanov found that particularly funny. “You’d like a stove? What else? A hot bath? A glass of cognac? Shut up and get to work.” He walked away.
Mother looked at Kretzsky.
He looked down and then walked off.
“See, he won’t help,” I said.
We worked for another week, building from scratch. It wasn’t a house. It was a dung heap, a bunch of logs covered in mud, sand, and moss. It looked like something a child would make in the dirt. And we had to live in it.
The men finished building the barracks and a bakery for the NKVD. They were proper brick buildings with stoves or fireplaces in each room. The man who wound his watch said it was well outfitted. And we were expected to endure an arctic winter in a mud hut? No, they expected us not to endure at all.
71
THE DAY AFTER we finished our jurta, Janina came running to me. “Lina, there’s a ship! There’s a ship coming!”
Within seconds, the NKVD was upon us, pointing rifles in our faces. They ordered everyone into their jurtas. They ran, screaming, frantic.
“Jonas?” Mother yelled. “Lina, where is Jonas?”
“He was sent to fish,” I said.
“Davai!” barked Ivanov, pushing me into the jurta.
“Jonas!” yelled Mother, stumbling to get away from Ivanov.
“He’s coming, Elena,” said Mr. Lukas, running toward us. “I saw him behind me.”
Jonas arrived, out of breath from running. “Mother, there’s a ship. It has an American flag.”
“The Americans have arrived. They’ve arrived!” said the repeater.
“Will the Americans fight the NKVD?” asked Janina.
“Stupid girl. The Americans are helping the NKVD,” said the bald man.
“They’re hiding us,” said Mother. “The guards don’t want the Americans to see us, to know what they’re doing to us.”
“Won’t the Americans wonder what these mud huts are?” I asked.
“They’ll think they’re some sort of military unit,” said the man who wound his watch.
“Should we run out, so the Americans can see us?” I asked.
“They’ll shoot you,” said the bald man.
“Stay put, Lina!” said Mother. “Do you understand me?”
She was right. The NKVD was hiding us from the Americans. We stayed in our jurtas for more than five hours. That’s how long it took for the American ship to be unloaded. As soon as the ship sailed, the NKVD came screaming for us to get to work. There were supplies to be moved to the bakery and NKVD barracks. I watched as the American ship drifted out of sight, pulling thoughts of rescue away with it. I wanted to run to the shore, waving my arms, screaming.
The supplies were stacked on large wooden pallets and stood as tall and wide as four homes in Kaunas. Food. It was so close. Jonas told me to keep an eye on the wood from the pallet, that we could use it to build a door for our jurta.
The man who wound his watch spoke English. He translated the markings on the containers. Canned peas, tomatoes, butter, condensed milk, powdered eggs, sugar, flour, vodka, whiskey. More than three hundred Lithuanians and Finns moved mountains of food and supplies they would never again touch. How much food was there in America that a ship could drop such an enormous supply for fewer than twenty guards? And now the Americans had sailed away. Did they know the Soviets’ gruesome secret? Were they turning the other cheek?
After the food, we moved supplies—kerosene, fishing nets, fur-lined coats, hats, thick leather gloves. The NKVD would be cozy for the winter. The wind blew through my threadbare coat. I strained to lift crate after crate with Jonas.
“Please, stop,” Mother told Mr. Lukas.
“I’m sorry,” he said, winding his watch. “It calms me.”
“That’s not what I mean. Stop translating the words on the crates. I can’t bear to know what we’re carrying anymore,” Mother said as she walked away.
“I want to know,” objected the bald man. “I want to know what might be available if the opportunity presents itself for one of you.”
“What does he mean?” asked Jonas.