The Nesting Dolls Read online

  The children complained, the children whined, the children whimpered that they were hungry and cold, that the floor was too hard to sleep on, that being held over rushing train tracks to relieve themselves was scary—what if they slipped out of their parents’ hands and fell? They’d be run over by the massive, unrelenting wheels! Daria harbored the same fears, but she insisted on pasting on a smile and setting a good example, hiking up her skirts and yanking down her tights and attempting to remain modest while teetering precariously. Edward stood in front of her to shield his wife from leering or disgusted eyes, but he could do only so much.

  And yet the children also played. Patty-cake and twenty questions and, when the adults attempted to clear a little space for them in the middle of the cattle car, goosey, goosey. One child stood at the front and chanted, “Goosey, goosey, ga, ga, ga / Are you hungry? / Yes, you are! / Then fly as you want, but don’t get your wings caught! There’s a wolf lying in wait!” That child would then turn his back. The rest would attempt to move forward before he pivoted again. Daria wondered if they weren’t all playing some kind of perverted, twisted version of the same game.

  Every day, she thanked the impulse that had prompted her to bundle them in layers. Many had come unprepared, and their hacking, bronchial coughs echoed to disturb the scant minutes of sleep the rest could catch, children curled up on parents’ laps, adults taking turns sitting, resting on each other’s shoulders, legs tucked underneath, heads bumping against raw wooden walls, precious belongings stuffed behind their backs or buttoned close to their chests to prevent the theft that was already rampant, despite what should have been dozens of witnesses. After the first accusation led to a fistfight, which led to soldiers breaking it up by flinging both men off the train and pumping several bullets into each before they’d even risen to their shaken feet, no one dared risk admitting they’d seen anything.

  “This will be over soon,” Edward assured Daria and the girls, remaining optimistic after plenty of others had given in to doomed hysterics or helplessness. While they wept or cursed or railed, Edward sang. Long passages from the Gilbert and Sullivan opera Patience, translating it from English to Russian. From Italian to Russian, he translated excerpts of Madame Butterfly, about her life of patient waiting, and the relevant verses about hope and patience from Turandot. Daria spied a theme. She endeavored to hide her annoyance. Matters were rarely as simple in life as they were onstage. But it did keep Alyssa and Anya distracted. Edward assuaged, “Once we get to our destination, I’ll speak with the person in charge, and we’ll straighten everything out. They’ll see they made a mistake. We’re not German; we don’t belong here.” That last part he whispered, lest their neighbors overhear. Edward looked at them with great sympathy. He was a compassionate person. He felt sorry they, too, wouldn’t have such an easy out.

  At long last, their train creaked into a desolate depot at literally the end of the road. There were no tracks to go any farther. “There, you see, I told you; here we are,” Edward announced, acting as if the entire journey had been nothing more than a travel mix-up, which he expected his agent to take care of now that they’d arrived. Soldiers flung open doors, shouting for everyone to rise to their feet. All did as swiftly as they could, pressuring muscles stiffened from the cramped quarters to, once again, serve their purpose. Daria’s knees buckled, and she grabbed the wall to steady herself. She raised one arm above her head and haltingly waved it up and down, restoring the blood flow to her fingers. As she did so, she realized there was more room to maneuver than there had been at the start of the journey. In addition to the two men who’d been shot, a trio of elderly women and an infant’s corpse had also been disposed of. The mother of the lost baby now needed to be pulled to her feet by her husband. She stumbled getting out of the train and didn’t even throw out her hands to break her fall. Her husband picked her up off the ground, her face now bloodied, and dragged her to line up with the rest of them.

  How many were there? Raggedy lines of men, women, and children stretched out in either direction across the otherwise plundered landscape. Daria spotted Adam getting out from a cattle car three over. His height and red hair made him difficult to miss. He glanced Daria’s way, noticed Edward, still trying to catch the attention of someone in authority, and shook his head in disgust. Daria would have thought herself capable of feeling only hungry, freezing, and exhausted. Apparently, she still had space left for furious.

  En masse, they were marched away from the trains, several kilometers over and toward a wood of pine, cedar, and spruce so dense, there was no room for sunlight between the trees. They followed what must have been a road; the frozen mud beneath their feet was more packed than the mud leading up to the entrances of the lean-tos, shacks, and makeshift cabins on either side that they passed. There were a few traditional houses, too, with glass in the windows and kerosene lamps glowing within. No residents could be seen.

  The pretense of a road ended as abruptly as the railroad tracks had. They stood in a clearing between the trees. Wooden barracks, not so different from the cattle cars they’d exited, loomed ahead. Dozens. Yet still not enough for everyone who’d been unloaded.

  “Go!” A soldier who’d met them at the station and marched them here, pointed toward the barracks. “Claim your space.” The “before someone else does” was implied.

  For a moment, no one moved, either not understanding the order or unable to believe it had been issued. Adam was the first to swing into action, pushing aside those in front of him and striding toward the nearest barracks. He flung open the door, poked his head in, then withdrew just as quickly. Daria could see why. It was already packed to the rafters.

  Adam moved deeper into the settlement. When, after examining several other options, he didn’t exit the last one, Daria grabbed both girls by the hands and pulled them in the same direction, trusting Edward to follow. She barely managed to elbow her way past others who’d come to the same idea. She threw herself down on the first available bunk, the middle of three protruding from the wall, a few meters across from the opposing trio. The room had rows and rows of wooden slats, hardly big enough for one, much less the four of them—Daria noticed Adam managed to claim a single for himself, albeit up top, beneath the rotting boards of the dripping ceiling. Other than that, there was a stove in the corner, a few faint chips of wood glowing and sputtering with every gust of wind, and a bucket that smelled worse than any outhouse Daria had ever known.

  “I’m sorry, Mama,” Daria couldn’t help thinking. “All your hard work, and I’m worse off now than we ever were, just like you warned me!” Because Daria hadn’t listened. Because she’d provoked Adam. Daria didn’t believe his denial of having been the one who turned them in. Even the fact that Adam had also been ensnared in their dragnet proved little comfort.

  The weathered faces of men, women, and disturbingly few children peered out at the new arrivals from the depths of their already occupied bunks. They didn’t look curious. They didn’t look sympathetic. They didn’t look disdainful. They didn’t look anything at all.

  “Tomorrow,” Edward promised the girls as he took off their coats and improvised nests at the foot of the bunk, while he and Daria attempted to wrap around each other at the opposite end. “Everything will be better tomorrow.”

  It wasn’t.

  Daria wasn’t even sure it was the next day when soldiers came through again, in pairs, grabbing people by the arm, the leg, the neck, and yanking them onto the ground. They wrenched off coats and shoes, stuffing them into burlap sacks, gesturing for them to strip off the rest. Daria was down to her undergarments, when she realized they meant everything. And not just her, the children, too.

  “No, please.” Daria pulled the shivering girls closer; they clung to her, faces pressed against her thighs. She rubbed their goose-pimpled shoulders with her own frigid hands. “They’re so cold.”

  In response, the guard reached across and yanked down a strap of Daria’s brassiere. One breast sprang out and
flopped against her rib cage. Edward, who’d been standing stripped beside her, his hand outstretched, clutching their open passports, looked from Daria’s nakedness, to the guard, to his wife’s stunned face. His arm collapsed, along with his hope. Daria shoved the girls for Edward to hold, freeing her palms to cover herself. But just like she’d once been unable to heed Mama’s sensible advice and refrain from baiting Adam, Daria again refused to perform as expected of her. Instead of cowering, she haughtily unhooked her brassiere and dropped the remainder of her clothes into the guard’s outstretched bag.

  Edward did the same, though a great deal more meekly. Too late, Daria remembered the jewelry hidden in their pockets. She hadn’t thought to remove and hide it . . . where? All they had was their bunk. But she hadn’t expected to have their clothes taken away. To think she’d been so proud of her resourcefulness in overdressing them, and now all the jewelry she’d brought for bribes was gone.

  Daria supposed she would have felt more embarrassed to be standing exposed, if everyone around them weren’t being equally humiliated. And if it weren’t so bitterly cold that it was all she could think about. A second guard maneuvered down the narrow aisle between bunks. His sack was filled with a hodgepodge of army surplus uniforms, prisoner garb, and clothes Daria guessed had been stripped off previous prisoners—or the dead—that no one else wanted. He reached in and distributed indiscriminately, giving Edward a pair of pants too wide at the waist and too short in the legs, while Daria was flung a jacket that barely buttoned across the chest. The girls got men’s shirts that brushed the floor. Shoe size wasn’t even a consideration.

  “Trade.” The guard shrugged. “No personal belongings here. No more bourgeois fashion. You are being granted the privilege of earning your keep. You will no longer be useless persons. Be grateful. Don’t make us regret our leniency.”

  Dressed for their new, productive lives, all the adults were marched outside, the children ordered to stay, no word on whether they’d be taken care of or fed. Alyssa and Anya clung to Daria’s legs, then, when she peeled them off, to Edward’s. He patted them both reassuringly on the heads but looked to Daria for the next step.

  She tugged Alyssa by one arm, Anya by the other, though each kept a hand still glued to Edward’s thighs.

  “There are rules here,” Daria said, “just like at school and at home. If you follow them, everything will be all right.”

  “I don’t want to follow the rules.” The frustration Anya had been keeping pent up burst out in a river of tears, with a full-out tantrum not far behind.

  Their work details were leaving. Daria glanced desperately over her shoulder, wondering how much time she had to calm Anya down before their guards returned to drag them out.

  To her surprise, Alyssa intervened, pulling Anya away from their parents, holding on to both her sister’s shoulders. “If you follow the rules,” Alyssa repeated sternly, “everything will be all right. Mama said.”

  Chapter 6

  The sun was coming up, though still unable to penetrate the forest. In addition to prisoners and guards, Daria spied men and women she guessed were from the village they’d passed. They were dressed better: sturdier shoes, stockings, hats, scarves, mittens.

  “They were once like you,” the guard droned on. “Traitors. Parasites. Enemies of the state. This is not a prison.” He gestured toward the forest. “There, on the other side, you may see what a true prison is. We are the Siberian settlement of Kyril. We have come to tame the land, to lay roads and cultivate crops, to demonstrate to the world what Soviet labor can produce. We will conquer the tundra even as others say it cannot be done. You are not prisoners. You are pioneers who will prove your worth through honest work. You will build homes to raise your children, you will build schools to educate all children, you will be heroes of the Motherland!”

  Daria’s teeth chattered. The wind sliced through her chest. Every breath felt colder coming out than going in. Her lungs tightened. The soles of her feet burned. She could no longer bend her fingers. Opening her mouth ripped her stiff cheeks. Daria stole a glance at Edward. He was staring straight ahead, afraid of taking his eyes off their speaker. He breathed in short, nervous gasps. His legs trembled, prompting him to shift his weight from foot to foot. His arms hung limply, but his fingers twitched, picking out a virtual composition. It had been Edward’s calming mechanism since childhood, his father had told Daria. How lucky for him to still have that, she thought.

  “You!” The guard zeroed in on Daria’s husband.

  Edward recoiled. He looked as if he might run, though where? The guard grabbed Edward by the shoulder and tugged him forward, twisting Edward around to face the assembled. Edward stumbled, knees buckling as his ankles rotated beneath him. He was jerked back up onto his feet.

  “Confess,” the guard ordered.

  Edward stared at him dumbly.

  “Your crimes,” the guard prompted.

  “I-I . . .” Edward stammered, looking around helplessly, eyes settling on Daria, beseeching her to explain what was expected of him. “I . . . didn’t do anything.”

  “In that case, you wouldn’t be here.” The guard shoved Edward down. Edward landed on all fours, his palms breaking through the frozen ground on impact and sinking into the mud up to his wrists, jagged ice slicing his flesh.

  The guard pointed at a woman standing next to Daria. She’d been nodding her head the entire time he was speaking. “Please demonstrate for our comrade”—the guard balanced the heel of his boot on Edward’s back, forcing Daria’s husband to arch his spine under the pressure—“how a righteous Soviet citizen engages in samokritika, self-criticism.”

  She’d been waiting for an opportunity to demonstrate her allegiance and gleefully launched into a prepared litany. “I undermined the work of the Party. I hoarded food. I conspired with foreign elements. I stole from the people. I elevated the individual above the collective. I disseminated anti-Soviet propaganda. I slowed down productivity at my place of employment.” This went on for over ten minutes. If she’d been allowed to continue, Daria felt certain the woman would confess to colluding with Leon Trotsky prior to his expulsion—despite being a schoolgirl in 1928.

  Her toneless recitation bored even the guard. He kicked her back into line, removing his boot from Edward’s back, allowing Daria’s husband to painstakingly rise.

  “Now, Comrade,” the guard repeated. “It is your turn. Confess.”

  Edward’s eyes widened, even as his lips remained all but frozen shut.

  Seeing her husband still at a loss, Daria burst forward. “He accompanied the anti-proletariat opera, Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk!”

  The guard looked at her in confusion. Clearly, he hadn’t read Pravda’s January attack on Dimitri Shostakovich’s music, which prompted Comrade Stalin to walk out of a performance at the Bolshoi and denounce the production as a bourgeois muddle that eschewed simple, accessible musical language for quacks, hoots, pants, and gasps. It was banned immediately. Edward’s father went about for days mumbling what a fool Shostakovich was to take such a risk, not just with his professional future but with his life.

  The guard, on the other hand, wasn’t about to be so foolish. Though he clearly had no idea what Daria was referring to, revealing his ignorance might well prove to be an equally deadly faux pas. How dare anyone not be aware of Comrade Stalin’s feelings on the matter? And so he deemed Daria’s confession on Edward’s behalf an adequate beginning.

  “We will now vote,” he announced. “Despite your malicious attempts to undermine him, Comrade Stalin still offers a true ruling by the people. Even here. Even for you. A show of hands, to demonstrate who found this criminal’s samokritika sufficient and sincere?”

  The newcomers shifted awkwardly, uncertain what was expected of them. Were they meant to agree that Daria’s confession on Edward’s part was adequate, since the guard seemed to initially deem it so, or were they meant to judge it insincere since neither had yet to offer remorse, merely acknowledgment?
The wrong response could get one of them pulled to the front as another example. Or worse.

  They exchanged nervous looks among themselves, unsure of what to do.

  “Come now! This is a democracy! Vote! You are Soviet citizens, you know how. Raise your hands to agree!”

  That seemed a bit clearer. A smattering of hands went up tentatively. When no punishment proved forthcoming, they were followed by a few more, then a rush not to be the last.

  “One hundred percent agreement,” the guard praised. “The people have spoken. All voices heard, respected, and honored in the true spirit of Communism.”

  After that, he lost interest in Edward and Daria and shouted for the prisoners to separate into two groups, men to the left, women to the right.

  While the clothing exchange had been a haphazard affair, with more than one item of finer quality that Daria could see disappearing not into the designated sack but into the coat pocket or boot of a guard, job assignments proved brutally efficient. Men were directed deeper into the forest. Daria tried to catch Edward’s eye, to smile or wink in spite of her frozen face. She mouthed, “Just follow the rules,” the same way she had for the girls.

  What had her husband uttered once regarding the arbitrary caprices of history, of life? “It’s like music, Papa. You have to let it flow where it wants. You can’t force it. All you can do is adjust the key and find your rightful rhythm within it.”

  Would that be enough to keep him sane here? To keep him safe?

  In the meantime, the women were led a kilometer west of the barracks, into an open and iced-over field. They were distributed shovels and seeds, directed to rows. They would be planting cucumbers, carrots, tomatoes, and cabbage. Fresh vegetables! In Siberia! Who but Comrade Stalin would be visionary enough to think up such a progressive plan? They would be self-sufficient, grow the food they needed, reduce their reliance on imports, and free up transportation resources. If there wasn’t enough to eat, they’d have no one to blame but themselves—such was the unprecedented social justice of Communism.