But she’d put a kerchief over her hair and was out the door and marching down the street before she finished tying the knot under her chin.
Dolik ran after her. “I’ll find a wagon.”
At first I wondered why Dolik was looking for a wagon, but all at once I winced. If my cousins were dead, we’d need to bring their bodies back for burial.
I watched him rushing down the street, looking for someone with a wagon to borrow. I was grateful for Dolik being so helpful — he’d been the same when Uncle Roman was killed — but I felt a surge of jealousy too. How I wished I were him, with both a mother and father, plenty of food to eat and even a telephone. Dolik didn’t have a care in the world.
But even as those thoughts crowded my mind, they shamed me. Dolik was trying to help, and Auntie Iryna was on her way to Velicky Selo without me. And what was I doing? Moping around, feeling sorry for myself. So much for being brave!
I dashed back into the house, set the steaming pot of berries onto the kitchen table and covered it with a cloth, then closed up the vents on the stove to starve the fire.
As I ran out the door, I nearly plowed into Maria, who was lugging a pail of water for the garden.
“You look like you’ve seen a ghost, Krystia,” she said.
I told her about the corpses at Velicky Selo and her eyes filled with tears. “I should go with Auntie,” she said. “It’s not fair that you have to do the hard things all the time.”
“But you carry all those buckets of water, every day, and hoe and weed two gardens,” I said. “We each have our strengths, Maria. I’ll go with Auntie.”
She hugged me, then held me at arm’s length to look me in the eye. “One day I hope to be as brave as you.”
I brushed away a piece of hair that had fallen in front of her face. “One day, Sister, I hope to be as strong as you.”
Maria smiled at that. “Hurry,” she said. “Look how far Auntie has already gone without you.”
I started down the street, then turned back. “When you’re done your chores, could you go help Mama at the Commandant’s? She was expecting me.”
“I’ll try,” called Maria.
I caught up with Auntie Iryna — Dolik was nowhere to be seen — and together we walked in grim silence. We were a kilometre out of town when the sound of truck tires crunched on the road behind us. The driver was the same soldier who had ladled out soup to us. He opened the window and stuck out his head.
“A boy told me that you’re going to Velicky Selo.”
Auntie Iryna looked at him blankly and nodded.
“I need to be there as well,” he said. “So why don’t I take you? There’s not enough room in the front for three, but you can ride in the back.”
The offer surprised me. Dolik must not have been able to track down the dogcatcher or Mr. Bilinski, the two people in our neighbourhood with wagons. I didn’t relish getting into a truck with a soldier, and I was certain that Auntie felt the same, but we didn’t have the time to be choosy.
“Thank you,” said Auntie Iryna.
I scrambled in first, then held Auntie’s hand as she climbed up.
We gripped on to the truck’s side as the soldier sped towards Velicky Selo, careening left and right to avoid potholes. In less than half an hour the truck reached the main square of town. Dozens of women crowded in front of the municipal building where the prison was housed.
My nose crinkled at the sickly whiff of decay. Lumpy grey tarps were lined up on the grass not far from the women.
“When the Soviets fled, they left these corpses to rot in the basement of that building,” said the soldier as he undid the tailgate and motioned for us to get out. “The locals have been viewing the bodies, but there are quite a few that they can’t identify, so they’re not from Velicky Selo. We’ve got to clear them out or there will be an outbreak of disease.”
Auntie slid out of the truck bed and strode down the street. I followed her, my feet feeling like lead.
She knelt beside the first mound and pulled back the tarp, revealing the mottled face of a young stranger, his hair darkened and stiff with blood. She crawled to the next body and I did the same.
The odour of decay wafted up and I held my breath. I stood a metre or so from where Auntie knelt. I wished I could have helped her more with this awful job, but it took all of my willpower not to break down and weep. Why had the Soviets killed these men?
I helped Auntie back to her feet after she had pulled the cloth over the last corpse in the line.
Just then Commandant Hermann stepped out through the double doors of the building. Pairs of soldiers came out behind him, carrying more bodies covered with tarps. These were lined up beside the ones we had just checked. A stronger wave of stench wafted over to us.
As Auntie Iryna and the other women rushed to the new row of corpses, I was nearly knocked to the ground. A wail rose up and a woman cried, “My son!”
One by one, many of the dead were claimed. And as the crowd thinned, I found Auntie on her knees, cradling a corpse so mutilated that the face was unrecognizable. I knelt down beside her.
“Josip, dear Josip,” she murmured.
I was about to ask her how she knew, but then I noticed his crooked baby finger.
The shock of recognition was like a punch in the gut. If it hadn’t been for his crooked baby finger, Josip’s body could have been left unclaimed. I took a few gasping breaths to calm myself, then got up and left Auntie Iryna so she could grieve her son. There were still more bodies to look at, and one more family member I dreaded finding, but it had to be done.
Auntie Iryna and I were the last to leave. We did not find Borys and I was grateful for that. The soldier who had driven us helped us load Josip into his truck, and we made the sad journey home.
When we arrived at Auntie’s house, I was enveloped in the steamy scent of cooked blackberries. The pot was still cooling on the kitchen table, the preserve jars all lined up, ready to be filled. It seemed a lifetime ago that we had been busy with the mundane chore of making jam. Had that really just been this morning? I lifted the pot off the table and set it back onto the stove, then cleared away the jars. The soldier lay Josip’s broken body onto the table and walked out the door.
Auntie Iryna wrapped her arms around her son and wept.
I stood there helplessly, wishing that there was something I could do to help. The lingering aroma of blackberries comforted me, to think that Josip’s body was now wrapped in the scent of home, rather than the stench of that prison.
I took the cloth off the pot and dipped in a wooden spoon. The jam had thickened while we were gone. I lined up the jars again and filled them one by one.
“Go, Krystia,” said Auntie Iryna. “Get your mother. She and I will prepare Josip’s body together.”
I ran to the Tarnowsky house, the largest residence in our main square. I felt out of place as I stood in front of it, barefoot and smelling of death. I rapped loudly on the door. It cracked open and Mama stared out at me. She pulled me quickly inside. “Krystia, come in, but from now on, use the servants’ entrance at the back.”
The place seemed huge on the inside. Before it had been ravaged by the Soviets, it must have looked elegant as well. A gilded chain hung from the ceiling overhead — it had probably held a chandelier. The central hallway opened up to a curved wooden staircase that looked as if it had once been covered in carpet that had been pulled off, leaving rows of bent nails and scratched wood. Pale rectangular patches covered the walls. One was the size of that old painting of Princess Tarnowska, the portrait that had been carted away by the Bronseks. The whole place had a musty, rotting smell, and bits of wood and broken china were scattered all over the floor.