The train shunts along at a steady pace, snaking its way through the winter-ravaged landscape. There’s a guard just outside the doorway of our carriage but you don’t seem to mind; you sit with your nose pressed to the window, looking out at the scenery as it passes by. The piece of biscuit I gave you ten minutes before still sits in the palm of your hand, untouched, and I wonder if even the offer of a cup of hot chocolate would be enough to tear your attention away from what lies outside.
Across the carriage from us sits an old couple, wrapped up in tattered furs. The pair are wizened, brow-beaten, but there’s a coolness in the wife’s eyes and a jut to the husband’s jaw which betrays their status.
Status? I think. What is status any more? The soldiers did not care about ‘status’ when they tore me from Dmitri’s arms.
A shudder winds through me, as if the cold of the barren landscape outside has penetrated the carriage. Tightening my threadbare coat around my chest is barely enough to stave off the sudden chill, let alone ease my mind. In an effort to distract myself, I let my mind wander to the last time you and your cousins played in the courtyard, the last time you ever laughed freely.
Do you hate me, Sofia, for bringing you into this world? Do you hate me for letting them take your father? I know you are too young now to understand it all, but there will come a day when you finally know why I did not fight back, why I did not spit at the feet of the boy-soldiers who came to our town in their wretched uniforms and gave us the choice of surrender or death.
‘Mama,’ you cried, your eyes ablaze. ‘Why don’t you do something, Mama? Why don’t you stop them?’
The truth is, even if I had been able to do something, I wouldn’t have. The soldiers would have laughed in my face and shot all three of us if I had dared speak out against the state. Your father knew what would happen the moment the soldiers entered our town, knew it was all over when whispers went about that they were searching for Comrade Petrov. He knew, just as you will come to understand when you are older, that sometimes it is better to die than to fight. And sometimes… Sometimes it is better to cower at the feet of your master, like a beaten dog, than to bite the hand which so generously rations your bread.
The train draws to a halt, eventually, and the station comes into view. Packed as it is with soldiers of varying shapes, sizes and ages, it’s impossible to see the plaque on the station wall which would tell us where we have arrived. I almost don’t want to know; my one hope is that we have been taken somewhere to lend our hands to a village, rather than brought to one of the labour camps where so many ‘traitors’ live out their last days.
You turn to me then, and the look in your eyes is one of excitement. A new place, a new adventure—this is what you must be thinking. Even when they dragged your father away for interrogation, you never seemed to lose the hopeful spirit which childhood endowed you with. The thought of how brave you have been through all of this is enough to fill my heart with sorrow, and as I reach out to brush a lock of hair out of your eyes, I wonder if I’m not simply trying to draw some of your strength into me.
When our guard opens the carriage door and barks for us to get out, your face is once more pressed to the glass as you watch soldiers and civilians alike file onto the platform. A part of me wants dearly to plead with the soldier to allow you just one more minute, just a moment more of innocence, but I swallow the words and take your hand instead, leading you past the soldier with his cruel eyes and shiny black rifle.
You do not hate me now, Sofia—but perhaps when the last of your spirit has been drained from you, you will curse me for not letting us be shot that day outside our home to be left in the snow by the soldiers, nothing more than food for the wolves.
