Making Bombs For Hitler (18 page)

But what if Pani Zemluk was right?

Even if she was wrong, there was one thing I knew to be true. If I went with Luka now, I would never find Larissa. No place could be home without my sister.

I got up at dawn the next morning and found Luka. He had just a small cloth satchel with all his worldly goods — a prayer book that had been given to him by a priest, a notebook from his teacher and a second set of clothing. We walked together to the stone gate with its flutter prayers of paper, and waited for the Red Army truck.

We weren’t the only ones waiting there. Three older men had congregated as well — two who had been slave labourers and one who had been a prisoner of war. It was a tired and sorry looking group. Pani Zemluk also came.
Her eyes widened in astonishment when she saw me standing beside Luka.

Just then the Red Army truck appeared at the end of the road. It approached slowly, spewing up billows of dust.

“Will you come with me?” asked Luka.

Pani Zemluk stepped forward and put her hand on my shoulder. “Lida, don’t.”

I studied her face. It was filled with concern and fear. I turned to Luka. His eyes looked serious, but he was hopeful as well.

I took a deep breath. It was now or never. “I cannot go with you.”

He set his satchel down and wrapped his arms around me. “I wish you would come with me, but I understand why you can’t come right now. Stay safe, sister of my heart,” he said. “I will find a way to write to you when I meet my father in Kyiv. Maybe one day, you and your sister will join us.”

“I would like that.”

The canvas-covered truck pulled up just then and the sight of it made me panic. It looked so much like the truck that had transported me from the slave camp to my final prison. It could have been the same one, except where the swastika had been was a red star enclosing a hammer and sickle.

The truck careened to a stop in a swirl of dust and a fresh-faced Red Army officer stepped out. He took in the three older men and ticked off names on a clipboard. He approached me and Luka.

“You must be Luka Barukovich of Kyiv,” he said in perfect Ukrainian to Luka. “But who are you?” He crouched
down so his hazel eyes were level with mine. He smiled. “Are you coming home with us today?”

He seemed clean, friendly and relaxed. This soldier seemed nothing like those thugs who had taken my father. Maybe I had been wrong about all this. Maybe they had changed. How I longed to go with Luka. I dreaded being all alone, but I couldn’t go just yet.

“I need to find my sister first.”

“The Soviet Red Cross can help with that.” He poised his pencil over his clipboard. “What is your sister’s name and where were you two born?”

I opened my mouth to answer but was startled by a hand gripping my shoulder so tightly that it hurt. I looked up. Pani Zemluk’s lips smiled but her eyes were serious. “Children should be seen and not heard.”

I was about to protest, but noticed the anger that washed over the Red Army officer’s expression as he put his pencil away. With his friendly mask down for just that brief moment, I’d had a glimpse of the bully behind it.

The teacher kept a tight grip on my shoulder, almost as if she had to keep me in that place.

I looked at Luka. “Please stay here with me.”

“I must go back, Lida,” he said, a touch of impatience in his voice. “My father is waiting for me.”

With that, Luka tossed his rucksack into the back of the truck and climbed in under the canvas.

The other three joined Luka, and the officer got into the driver’s seat and sped off. I walked out onto the street with Pani Zemluk at my side and watched them go, listening to the refrains of the Soviet national anthem from the back of the truck. When they were out of
sight, Pani Zemluk loosened her grip on my shoulder.

“Never tell the Soviets who you really are.”

I pointed to the fluttering bits of paper on the convent pillar. “Each of those gives a name and where the person is from.”

Pani Zemluk nodded. “And the Soviets check those regularly.”

I had much to think about as I walked back through the gates of the refugee camp. Luka was gone and I was all alone. I prayed that he would be all right, and I hoped that I had made the right decision in staying.

I passed a group of small children who were playing tag, screaming delightedly at each other as they darted through the legs of older refugees. No one seemed to mind. The sight of happy children had been all too rare these past years. Seeing those smiles made me think of Larissa. What would she be doing right now? If that really had been her in that car outside the bomb factory, she wouldn’t be in a refugee camp. She would never put her name on a fluttering piece of paper. Wherever she was, I hoped she was safe.

I got my tin cup, spoon and bowl from my sleeping area and stood at the end of a snaking lineup of people who were waiting for breakfast. Each morning as I did this, it made me think of eating that horrible sawdust bread and coloured water for months on end. The food at this refugee camp was not tasty, but I never complained. It filled my stomach better than sawdust and turnip ever did.

In the weeks that I had been at the camp, hundreds more homeless people had poured in, yet the Americans had somehow provided food, and they scraped together
bedding and soap as best they could. As I looked at the long column of people ahead of me, I noticed the ingenious variety of clothing that people had been able to patch together for themselves. A young girl up ahead wore the red of a Nazi flag as a kerchief for her hair and the man in front of me had patched his shirt with a paper memo about typhus. The woman behind me had woven a pair of sandals out of old newspapers. Many people wore remnants of Nazi uniforms — a jacket with the sleeves cut off, or trousers rolled up. But even with the insignia ripped off, the sight of that clothing sickened me.

When it was finally my turn for breakfast, I held up my bowl to the tired looking American private with a sheen of sweat on his brow. He dipped his ladle into the giant vat and swirled it. I watched as he filled my bowl to the brim with yet another bowl of thick pea soup. People who had been at this camp for a while hated this pea soup and had nicknamed it the green horror, but I could eat it every day and not complain. Anything but turnip. I carefully balanced my bowl and looked for a quiet place to eat. I ended up going back to the barn, wishing that Luka was with me. I sat down on the ground, leaning against the barn wall. From this vantage point, I could watch the activity of the refugee camp, but I was by myself. I dipped my spoon into the hot green mush and brought the first spoonful to my lips. I savoured every drop, closing my eyes and letting the thickness of the soup cover my tongue and coat my teeth before slowly swallowing it down. It felt so good to be filling my stomach with real food.

“Lida, can that possibly be you?”

I was jolted out of my reveries and nearly dropped my
bowl. My eyes flew open. There stood a girl just a bit older than me. Her hair was blond and silky clean and her cheeks were pink with a touch of sun. The voice was familiar, and the patch of dark blue flannel on her threadbare dress meant that she had been in Barracks 7 at the work camp. All at once I realized who it was.

“Natalia?”

She nodded, grinning.

I carefully set my half-eaten bowl of soup on the ground and jumped up, wrapping my arms around her, making sure not to spill any of her soup either. We both knew how precious every drop of food was. She hugged me back and sat down beside me, our shoulders touching as we leaned against the barn and ate our breakfast in silence. Once we were finished, I asked her, “When did you get here?”

“Late last night.”

“Where from?”

“I’ve been going from camp to camp, looking for my family,” she said. “There was a group of us who arrived last night.”

“Have you found any of your family?”

She shook her head.

“What about Kataryna and Zenia?”

“We escaped the work camp together and hid in the woods for weeks,” she said. “But Kataryna was killed. She stepped on a land mine.”

Poor Kataryna. My heart ached at the thought of her dead. “And Zenia?” I was almost afraid to ask.

“She and I hid in a few places, but mostly the root cellar of a bombed-out house until the spring. We survived on old potatoes and whatever else we could scrounge. We
were picked up by the British together,” said Natalia. “The British sorted the refugees, so she was taken to a Jewish camp and I was taken to one for Poles. I visited her a week ago and she seems happy, all things considered. They’ve got her working in the kitchen and she likes that.”

I placed my hand over my crucifix and felt its warmth. Thank goodness Zenia was safe. She had lost so much already. I hoped that she would find a community in that camp.

“Have you heard anything about Luka?” asked Natalia.

“As a matter of fact, I have.” I told her how he’d been at the camp for the last few weeks, and that he had just left before breakfast to go back to Kyiv. “They say his father is alive.”

Natalia looked at me uneasily. “I hope for Luka’s sake that they’re telling him the truth.”

Chapter Twenty-Two
Lost

I was so grateful that the day Luka had left for Kyiv, Natalia arrived. She sat in class with the older children after our breakfast, then we walked through the camp together, questioning the clusters and groups that we met up with to see if anyone had heard news about a friend or loved one. After supper we went to the fluttering messages and painstakingly read each one. By the time we were finished, Natalia was in tears. “So many people, all lost,” she said. “How will the survivors ever find one another?”

“At least you found me,” I said.

She smiled at that. “Yes, and I’m glad I did.”

I told Natalia that she could share the small converted office space that I called my bedroom, so we walked to the supply area and an American issued her new blankets and a pillow. We stayed up late, talking about our lost friends and family, food we had been eating since the end of the war, food we’d love to eat again, things we would do when we finally found a home.

“Will you go back to Lviv?” I asked her.

“I haven’t decided. If I can’t find my parents, brother or sister, I will try to immigrate to Canada or the United States instead. Even if I find a relative, I hope they’d come with me rather than go back to Lviv.”

I sat up in bed and stared at her. “But why wouldn’t you want to go back to Lviv?”

“It’s part of the Soviet Union now,” said Natalia.

Her comment confused me. “But Pani Zemluk told me that I should tell the authorities I was born in Lviv. If Lviv is part of the Soviet Union now, what’s the point of lying?”

“It’s confusing,” said Natalia. “But people like me and your teacher who were born in pre-war Poland are allowed to leave if they wish. People who were born in pre-war Soviet Ukraine don’t have a choice. They’re supposed to go back.”

“So you would rather go to a country you know nothing about instead of your old home?”

“I will not live under Stalin,” said Natalia. “Four years of Hitler was bad enough.”

I lay back down on my bedroll and considered her words. Life was certainly not good under Stalin. It was bearable until my father was taken. I fell asleep, dreaming of a time when I was truly happy. When Tato was still alive, and Mama too. Larissa and me and the lilac tree …

That was all lost now.

I woke in the middle of the night to cries for help. Natalia stayed deep in sleep. I didn’t wake her, but slipped out of the little office bedroom and ran towards the shouting.

Through the darkness I saw silhouettes of refugees
down by the convent gate. I ran to them, weaving my way through the crowd. When I got to the front, Pani Zemluk was kneeling on the ground, cradling the limp body of a young man. His face and chest and arms glistened black with blood in the moonlight. Was this a refugee who had set out on his own and been attacked?

Pani Zemluk looked up and scanned the cluster of refugees, her eyes filled with urgency. “You,” she said, pointing to one of the healthier looking men. “Help me carry him inside.”

Pani Zemluk wrapped her arms around the unconscious young man’s chest and gingerly lifted him up, making sure not to let his injured head fall back. The young refugee carefully gripped him by the knees and they carried him in past me.

It was Luka.

How could this be?

I followed them to the first-aid building and watched as they gently set Luka down on a cot, then Pani Zemluk turned on the light. Blood glistened on Luka’s face. His clothing was torn, shredded at the knees, and his hands were covered with scrapes.

“Lida, get me a basin of water and some clean cloths,” said Pani Zemluk.

I was grateful to be useful. Anything to help Luka. I filled a basin with water and found bandages and cloths in one of the cupboards. I brought these over to Pani Zemluk and she gently wiped the blood away from Luka’s face.

Most of the blood had come from a single scalp wound and once that was bandaged, he looked much more like himself. But what was he doing back here? And what had
happened to him? A hundred questions swirled in my mind. Finally, thankfully, Luka opened his eyes. I could see fear and pain in them as his gaze met mine. He gripped my hand and tried to speak, but all that came out were racking sobs.