“I lost several babies. Some before they were born. Two after. And then another lost in the war. I’ll have a warm welcome in heaven, I think.”
“Yes, but not anytime soon.”
Elena shook her head. “Life here brings me no joy. Why would I wish to stay?”
Nadia thought of Elena’s words that night as the prisoners settled down to sleep. Life as a former person contained no joy, but she wasn’t ready to give up. Not when Filip was out there, perhaps only a few miles away. She missed him so much. Had he given up on her? Or was he still searching? Nadia prayed, pleading for something to keep not only her body but also her hope alive.
Tanya shifted her shoulders on the hard dirt next to Nadia. “Under the tsar, anyone could escape Siberia. All it took was will. I escaped twice. This . . .” She gestured to the guards and the locked door of the barn. “These Bolsheviks are worse.”
Nadia scrutinized Tanya. “You were exiled? What did you do?” She didn’t have the hardened look of a criminal.
“I am an anarchist.”
“I thought the Bolsheviks and the anarchists got along with each other.”
Tanya huffed. “Only when we had a common enemy. Now that the Bolsheviks are in charge, they won’t share power. We both wanted the tsar gone. But not so he could be replaced with a Marxist elite. There was supposed to be no royalty, no classes, no state. The Bolsheviks seem to have missed the mark. Plenty of state with them.”
“You really escaped twice?”
“Yes.”
Nadia lowered her voice and tried to control the hope that was blossoming into excitement. “Could you escape again?”
“Things are different now.” Tanya glanced at her hands. The nails were broken and dirty, much like Nadia’s. “I’m a political prisoner. The tsar let political prisoners read and study. I wonder what my associates in Europe would say if they knew the truth, that the Bolsheviks are imprisoning anarchists and treating them worse than the tsar did.” Tanya looked away from Nadia’s gaze. “No. We can’t escape here.”
***
Elena lasted another week. Nadia held her hand as she died and allowed herself a few tears.
“I’m surprised she lasted as long as she did.” Tanya’s words were blunt but spoken with sympathy. “I’m sorry you lost a friend.”
Nadia nodded. “I imagine she’s happier now.”
Tanya scoffed. “In heaven? Surely you don’t believe that.”
“I do.”
“If God were real, He wouldn’t allow a mess like this. Come on. We’ve got work to do.”
Nadia followed Tanya. She didn’t agree with her—mess or no mess, God was real. But it was hard to believe He cared anything for the poor souls of the work battalions.
They were farther from the front lines now, building a network of roads to keep the Red Army supplied. As they began work, a cough tickled Nadia’s throat and escaped in a muffled burst.
Tanya raised an eyebrow.
“It’s nothing.” But Nadia didn’t believe that. She’d seen too many prisoners die. It started with a little cough, a bit less energy. Then stronger coughs, sometimes a fever. As the prisoner grew weaker and did less work, the guards fed them less, and then their decline accelerated. “How am I going to survive a fifteen-year sentence?”
“What did you do to earn that?”
“I was born an aristocrat.”
Tanya grunted. Perhaps she agreed with Nadia’s sentence. Anarchists weren’t fond of aristocrats. “What will you do if you survive?”
“I’ll try to find my husband. He’s with the Czechoslovak Legion, though I don’t suppose they’ll be in Russia that long.” He’d told her enough about his grandfather’s shop that she could find it. But how would she get to Prague? And would Filip wait that long for her? “But if the White Army wins, they’ll commute our sentences, won’t they?” She didn’t have to survive fifteen years of forced labor. She just had to survive until the Red Army lost the war.
Tanya let the rock she was prying up slip back into the ground. “Your husband is with the Czechoslovak Legion?”
“Yes.”
“So if you reached the legion, they’d help you and anyone traveling with you?”
“I think so.” Nadia bent to move another rock. “Can you get us to their lines? You’ve escaped before.”
Tanya didn’t answer, not right away. “Like I said, under the tsar, anyone could escape exile in Siberia. But this isn’t exile. It’s forced labor. Quite a different thing.” Tanya stretched her back. “How were you separated from your husband?”
Nadia glanced around to make sure none of the guards were nearby. One in particular didn’t approve of his prisoners chatting. “I was abducted by bandits, held for a week. I escaped, but then I ran into a Cheka agent.”
“I don’t suppose the bandits treated you kindly.”
Her hands started to shake. “No. They were worse than the Cheka.” Nadia didn’t want to talk about how they’d forced her, used her, broken her.
“Did they hurt you?”
“Yes.” Nadia’s answer was barely a whisper. “And I lost the baby I was carrying.” She’d lost more than that, but to lose Filip’s baby was the part that cut the deepest.
“And you think your husband will want you back after that?”
“Why wouldn’t he? It’s not as though I went with the men voluntarily. I fought them as best I could.”
A frown wove its way across Tanya’s face. “Sometimes men are strange about things like that. Honor and pride aren’t always rational.”
“Filip loves me. He won’t blame me for something I couldn’t control.”
“If you say so.” Something in Tanya’s voice suggested uncertainty, but she didn’t know Filip.
That night, Nadia shivered as she tried to fall asleep. Spring and summer had brought a respite from the harsh Siberian winter, but the air had a chill in it tonight. When she’d shared a bed with Filip, he had often crawled under the covers on her side of the bed so it would be warm for her when she joined him. There wasn’t much she wouldn’t give to be snuggled up next to him again, to feel his kisses and caresses.
Tanya was wrong. Filip would still love her. Of course he would.
But doubt wiggled its way in and lodged inside her heart. She’d been used and damaged. Did that also make her unworthy?
***
Weeks passed. Midsummer turned clearings in the taiga to gorgeous arrays of feather grass and cornflower, fescue and white hollyhock. But even though the land they worked grew beautiful, their days were still full of toil, and now, for Nadia, they were also full of doubt. Even if the White Army overran the camp and she was freed, could she and Filip really return to what they’d had so briefly?
Her mother had told her that God was always there, even when it was too dark to see Him. But what if life in a work camp was so dark that He couldn’t see her? Couldn’t comfort her? Couldn’t help her? Mama had said that phrase often before the war. Only once or twice after Alexander had died. Not at all after Nikolai had died. Had Mama, too, felt that the darkness was too thick, too powerful for God to see through?
Tanya didn’t speak of escape, not anymore. Nadia had thought the legion’s proximity would tempt her, but there were still the guards to get past. And each day, the prisoners grew more and more worn down. How could they escape when they were barely hanging on to life?
Autumn changed the taiga again, painting it with shades of russet and gold. New prisoners joined them—captured tsarist officers who’d been fighting with the White Army.
“I’m surprised they didn’t shoot them,” Tanya said.
Based on the expressions the men made when they learned their work would support the Red Army, she wondered if they might have preferred that.
A few days later, Nadia was startled by a shout. “Watch out!”
Nadia looked up, but the warning hadn’t been directed at her. A crooked pine with a long stretch of bare trunk crashed away from the road. A startled cry emerged from the wreckage, and Nadia hurried over.