“Another labor camp,” Galina sniffed. She tucked Katyusha’s smooth warm head under the bodice of her dress to finish feeding. “Haven’t we had enough of those?”
They sat quietly for a while, rain falling through the newly leafed trees, sheeting down the sides of their tent, carving rivulets around the fledgling grass. The babies suckled, making throaty little noises, sighs and barely audible moans, skin to skin with their mothers, each radiating and absorbing the other’s warmth. Even Ksenia was still, caught in the contentment of the moment, sharing in the miracle.
“It will be better,” she said. “We are not prisoners. Our side won the war.” She watched each mother take a clean square of cloth from inside her dress and, laying the infant on her lap, quickly change the diaper and return the child to the shelter of the shawl tied across her body. How fast we learn, she thought. How much we know. Stepping outside, she draped the soiled diapers over a bush, where the rain would wash them clean.
“It will be better,” she repeated, settled back inside the cramped dampness of the tent. “They want to help us settle. But first we have to cross the river.” She said it casually, as if it was as simple as taking a trolley to town to do the shopping.
Galina’s mouth fell open. She glanced at Marfa, who, still busy with Tolik, did not see. “Cross the river? The Danube? Mama, why? The bridge…”
“It was bombed, yes. But it still stands. And it leads to the American sector. Here, on this side, we are at the mercy of England and France.”
“What does it matter? We can’t go home.” Marfa’s voice was expressionless.
Ksenia explained: “The French cannot be trusted. Everyone knows they collaborated with the Fascists, some say eagerly. The British have their own country to rebuild after the bombing they endured. The last thing they need is more refugees, especially women and children. And Comrade Stalin wants us back. All is forgiven! Your motherland needs you!
“But we can’t go back. Like it or not, we worked for the enemy. Returning is certain death, or Siberian hard labor.” She paused to survey her audience as if measuring the effect of her words. “Only the Americans are strong enough to stand up for us,” she finished. “Their cities are not scarred by bombs. Now that the war is over, they don’t need Stalin’s goodwill.” She raised a hand to stop Galina’s protest. “We can’t wait for clear weather. We go tonight.”
It was true. The bridge had been bombed but remained standing, as it had since Roman times. Word of the exodus spread rapidly along the shore; well over a hundred women milled about, forming into groups. They sorted their remaining things and tied them into bundles they could carry more easily in the wind and rain.
Ksenia, Galina, and Marfa joined a circle that had gathered around two German women, nurses returning home from their shift at the hospital. “The Strudel are very strong, with so much rain,” one of them was saying. “Very dangerous.”
Strudel? What Strudel? Galina thought. What’s so dangerous about pastry?
Sensing the confusion, the woman explained. “Strong currents that go around, like this,” she made a stirring motion with one hand. “Some very deep. Bad for boats and people. Our Danube is famous for this.”
“Whirlpools,” a voice in the crowd said, and the word traveled from mouth to ear like a flame through dry brush. From their position at the foot of the bridge, some peered toward the river, hoping to see this phenomenon, but by now a nearly impenetrable darkness had obscured the boundaries between water and sky.
“We’re not planning to swim across,” someone shouted. “Let’s go.” They surged toward the bridge, to be stopped almost immediately by a pair of British soldiers.
This bridge was for military vehicles only. Their crowd was too large. “Go back and wait,” one guard suggested. “Your camp will be ready when the rain lets up.”
The refugees fell back, angry, disappointed, feeling helpless once again in the face of authoritarian commands spoken in a language not their own. Ksenia raised her face to the rain. “So we just stay here and do nothing, wait to be sent back to die? No. We are not under anyone’s rule just now! There must be another way.”
“There is another bridge two or three kilometers from here,” the German nurse said. “But it is damaged, no good for trucks. It would be risky.”
They set off, walking in small groups to avoid looking like a mob. Some, especially those with small children, decided to stay and wait for better weather. Inevitably, more women left the ranks as the marching became difficult, choosing to take their chances with whatever nation was to determine their fates rather than stake their future on an uncertain venture that had begun to seem risky and perhaps unnecessarily desperate.
But a small column, with Ksenia in the lead, persevered. They marched, driven by her tireless energy, plodding step by painful step along the washed-out road, their feet sinking into ankle-deep mud that sucked at their shoes and clung to their legs like a clammy second skin.
And still it rained.
High above, in a sinister sky, a full moon shone dimly through breaks in sooty clouds, then disappeared, drawing a celestial curtain on the scene below, as if ashamed of its part in the human misery.
They reached the second bridge well after midnight. Unlike the stone bridge, which rose majestically high above the water, this one was narrow, the wooden bed spanning the Danube where the river ran straight for several kilometers, with no visible obstacle to its fluid progress.
The women stopped, their heavy breathing after the exertion of the last five hours’ walking drowned out by the noise of the rushing river. They looked at the bridge, its span curving slightly upward toward the center before falling away into the murky distance of the far shore. Numbingly cold waves lapped at their feet in an ominous parody of playfulness.
Galina stepped onto the walkway. She felt the wood shift under her tread; a sudden gust of wind pushed at her skirt, forcing her to grasp the handrail for balance. “Mama. Tell me again why we need to get to the other side. Tonight.”
“For our protection. For our children. How do you think Katyusha will do in a Siberian labor camp, or a Soviet orphanage? We must reach the American sector because they believe in liberty. Svoboda.” She pronounced the word softly, then repeated it with greater emphasis. “Svoboda. Tonight because tomorrow, when the sky clears, it may be too late.”
The rain-swollen river ran dark only a handsbreadth beneath the slippery planks, its notorious swirls and eddies outlined with black iridescent foam, the bubbles bursting only to form new clusters downstream. The bridge swayed perceptibly, the wooden slats and handrails creaking against slender steel girders, reminding them that somewhere in the gloom, beyond the visible distance, there was bomb damage whose extent they would not know until they reached it.
Some lightened their loads yet again, leaving abandoned belongings on the shore: blankets, a square pillow, a small rolled rug, a broken doll. Ignoring Katyusha’s frightened wailing, Ksenia wrapped the child in her own shawl and tied her to Galina’s back, knotting the crossed ends securely across her daughter’s chest. She turned to Marfa to do the same with Tolik.
“No.” Marfa clutched her child and took a step back, her feet sinking in riverbank mud.
“He’ll be safer that way,” Ksenia explained. “You’ll need your hands free for the crossing.”