IT WAS MID-DECEMBER. Winter had us in its jaws. The repeater had frostbite. The tips of his fingers were puckered, jet black. Gray, bulbous lumps appeared on the end of his nose. We wrapped ourselves in every piece of clothing and rags we could find. We tied our feet in old fishing nets that had washed ashore. Everyone bickered in the jurta, getting on each other’s nerves.
Small children began dying. Mother took her ration to a starving boy. He was already dead, his tiny hand outstretched, waiting for a piece of bread. We had no doctor or nurse in camp, only a veterinarian from Estonia. We relied on him. He did his best, but the conditions were unsanitary. He had no medicine.
Ivanov and the NKVD wouldn’t step inside our jurtas. They yelled at us to leave the dead outside the door. “You’re all filthy pigs. You live in filth. It’s no wonder you’re dying.”
Dysentery, typhus, and scurvy crawled into camp. Lice feasted on our open sores. One afternoon, one of the Finns left his wood chopping to urinate. Janina found him swinging from a branch. He had hanged himself with a fishing net.
We had to trek farther and farther to find wood. We were nearly five kilometers from camp. At the end of the day Janina clung by my side.
“Liale showed me something,” she said.
“What’s that?” I said, stuffing twigs into my pockets for our stove and my paintbrushes.
Janina looked around. “Come here. I’ll show you.”
She took my hand and walked me down the edge of the tree line and into the snow. She reached out her mitten, pointing.
“What is it?” I asked. My eyes scanned the snow.
“Shh ...” She pulled me closer and pointed.
I saw it. A huge owl lay in the snow at the edge of the trees. Its white feathers blended so well that at first I didn’t see it. Its body looked to be nearly two feet long. The large raptor had tiny brown speckles on its head and trunk.
“Is he sleeping?” asked Janina.
“I think it’s dead,” I replied. I took a stick from my pocket and poked at the wing. The owl didn’t move. “Yes, it’s dead.”
“Do you think we should eat him?” asked Janina.
At first I was shocked. Then I imagined the plump body, roasting in our barrel, like a chicken. I poked at it again. I grabbed its wing and pulled. It was heavy, but slid across the snow.
“No! You can’t drag him. The NKVD will see. They’ll take him away from us,” said Janina. “Hide him in your coat.”
“Janina, this owl is enormous. I can’t hide him in my coat.” The thought of a dead owl in my coat made me shiver.
“But I’m so hungry,” cried Janina. “Please? I’ll walk in front of you. No one will see.”
I was hungry, too. So was Mother. So was Jonas. I leaned over the owl and pushed its wings against its belly. It was stiff. Its face looked sharp, menacing. I didn’t know if I could put it against my body. I looked at Janina. She nodded, her eyes wide.
I glanced around. “Unbutton my coat.” Her little hands set to work.
I lifted the dead raptor and held it against my chest. Shivers of revulsion rolled through my body. “Hurry, button me up.”
She couldn’t button the coat. The owl was too large. I could barely get my coat around its body.
“Turn him around, so his face doesn’t stick out,” said Janina. “He’ll blend in with the snow. Let’s hurry.”
Hurry? How was I supposed to walk five kilometers, pregnant with a dead owl, without the NKVD noticing? “Janina, slow down. I can’t walk fast. It’s too big.” The horned beak poked at my chest. Its dead body was creepy. But I was so hungry.
Other deportees looked at me.
“Our mamas are sick. They need food. Will you help us?” explained Janina.
People I didn’t know formed a circle around me, sheltering me from view. They escorted me safely back to our jurta, undetected. They didn’t ask for anything. They were happy to help someone, to succeed at something, even if they weren’t to benefit. We’d been trying to touch the sky from the bottom of the ocean. I realized that if we boosted one another, maybe we’d get a little closer.
Janina’s mother plucked the owl. We all crowded around the makeshift stove to smell it cook.
“It smells like a duck, don’t you think?” said Jonas. “Let’s pretend it’s duck.”
The taste of warm meat was heavenly. It didn’t matter that it was a bit tough; the experience lasted longer because we had to chew. We imagined we were at a royal banquet.
“Can’t you just taste the gooseberry marinade?” sighed Mrs. Rimas.
“This is wonderful. Thank you, Lina,” said Mother.
“Thank Janina. She found the owl,” I said.
“Liale found him,” corrected Janina.
“Thanks, Janina!” said Jonas.
Janina beamed, holding a fistful of feathers.
78
CHRISTMAS CAME. We had made it halfway through winter. That was something to be grateful for.
The weather continued, relentless. Just as one storm passed, another queued at its heels. We lived the life of penguins, freezing under layers of ice and snow. Mrs. Rimas stood outside the bakery. The smell of butter and cocoa made her cry. The NKVD made cakes and pastries in their bakery. They ate fish, drank hot coffee, and enjoyed canned meats and vegetables from America. After a meal, they’d play cards, smoke cigarettes, maybe a cigar, and drink a snifter of brandy. Then they’d light the fire in their brick barracks and cover themselves with their fur blankets.
My drawings became smaller. I didn’t have much paper. Mother didn’t have much energy. She couldn’t even sit up for the Kucios Christmas celebration. She had lain too long. Her hair was frozen to a board. She drifted in and out of sleep, waking only to blow a kiss when she felt us near.
The lice brought typhus. The repeater fell ill. He insisted on leaving our jurta.
“You’re such nice people. It’s too dangerous for you all. Dangerous,” he said.
“Yes, get out of here,” said the bald man.
He moved to a jurta where people had similar symptoms—fever, rash, some delirium. Mrs. Rimas and I helped him walk.
Four days later, I saw his naked body, eyes wide open, stacked in a heap of corpses. His frostbitten hand was missing. White foxes had eaten into his stomach, exposing his innards and staining the snow with blood.
I turned and covered my eyes.
“Lina, please take those books off the table,” said Mother.
“I can’t stand to see such ghastly images, not at breakfast.”
“But that’s what inspired Edvard Munch’s art. He saw these images not as death, but as birth,” I said.
“Off the table,” said Mother.
Papa chuckled behind his newspaper.
“But Papa, listen to what Munch said.”
Papa lowered the newspaper.
I turned to the page. “He said, ‘From my rotting body flowers shall grow, and I am in them and that is eternity.’ Isn’t that beautiful?”
Papa smiled at me. “You’re beautiful because you see it that way.”
“Lina, take the books off the table, please,” said Mother. Papa winked at me.
“We must do something!” I cried to Jonas and Mrs. Rimas.
“We can’t let people die like this.”
“We’ll do our best. That’s all we have,” said Mrs. Rimas. “And we’ll pray for a miracle.”
“No! Don’t talk like that. We will survive,” I said. “Right, Jonas?”
Jonas nodded.
“Are you feeling unwell?” I asked him.
“I’m fine,” he replied.
That night, I sat with Mother’s head in my lap. Lice marched triumphantly across her forehead. I flicked them off.
“Did you apologize?” asked Mother, gazing at me through heavy eyelids.
“To whom?”
“To Nikolai. You told him you hated him.”
“I do hate him,” I said. “He could help us. He chooses not to.”
“He helped me,” said Mother softly.
I looked down at her.
“That day when I went to meet the grouchy woman coming back from the village, it was dark. Some NKVD drove by. They began to taunt me. They lifted my dress. Nikolai came. He shooed the others off. He drove me the rest of the way. I begged him to find news of your father. We met the grouchy woman on the road in the dark. Nikolai dropped us three kilometers from camp. We walked the rest of the way. See,” she said, lifting her face to mine, “that helped me. And I think the commander found out about it. Nikolai was punished for it. I think that’s why he’s here.”