“Your produce,” she said, writing notes on her clipboard. “Where is it?”
“Harvested,” said Mama. “And stored for the winter.”
The woman tapped her clipboard with the tip of her pen. “Your produce is needed for the war effort.”
“We have only a small garden,” said Mama. “And we’ll barely have enough to get through the winter as it is. If you take our produce, we’ll starve.”
“That is no concern of mine,” said the woman. “Now please show me into your root cellar.”
“And what would happen if we don’t show it to you?” asked Mama.
“You do not want to test me on that,” said the woman.
Mama opened her mouth to say something else, but then closed it again. As we walked around to the back of the house, the woman noticed our chickens. “How many?” she asked.
“Two,” I said, gulping.
“Any cows?”
“One,” said Maria.
The woman noted that on her clipboard, then looked up, frowning. “So it’s a mother and two daughters who live here, that’s it?”
Mama nodded.
“That one can show me the root cellar,” she said, pointing to me.
I opened up the double wooden doors and stepped down the rickety ladder into the cellar, all the time trying to control my anger. Maybe this horrible woman would fall down our ladder and break her neck. But if that happened, would we be punished?
I swallowed back my anger and steadied the woman’s elbow so she wouldn’t slip. I forced myself to be calm as she checked our shelves with a flashlight and wrote the inventory on her clipboard. She kicked at the dirt floor in a number of places and knocked on the walls. I had buried the can of pork from Frau Schneider in the floor, but the woman didn’t find it.
“You can’t keep any of what’s in this cellar,” she said to Mama once she stepped out. “But since you are widowed with two daughters, I’ll let you keep your cow and chickens.”
Mama’s face went a pasty white, but she managed to say “Thank you.”
I watched in stunned silence as the woman jotted a few more things on her clipboard, then put her pen away. Was this the Hunger Plan, to take food away from us so that we died? I thought of the coming winter — how would we possibly get through it?
As the woman stood there, Volksdeutche workers with a horse-drawn wagon arrived. She directed them to our cellar and we watched helplessly as they loaded up all of our food.
The woman turned and was about to leave, but then hesitated. At first I thought she might change her mind and let us keep some of our produce, but she said to Mama, “You should send one of your girls to work in Germany.”
Mama’s mouth was set in a grim line and her knuckles were clenched white. “Why would I do that?” she asked.
“Your daughter would be fed and paid. She could send money home.”
It took Mama a moment to answer. “Thank you for the suggestion.”
When the woman left, Mama turned to us and said, “I don’t believe her. You see how badly they treat us here. Why would they treat us any better in Germany? They will not defeat us.”
I thought about Mama’s words as I walked Krasa to the pasture that evening. I was determined to be as brave as Mama. I would not let the Nazis defeat me, but I just wished they had left us with a bit more food.
At least we still had Krasa and the chickens. We could still sell some of the milk while we had it, and we could sell eggs. With the money from that, we could buy potatoes from Auntie Polina and her neighbours.
With our food gone, working for the Commandant became even more important. He didn’t pay us much, but the small amount we did get could mean the difference between living and starving.
I led Krasa to graze at Auntie Iryna’s pasture and stood on the high rock, looking into the distance. The newly widened road stretched towards Lviv. It had been so easy for the Nazi and Soviet armies to invade us even with narrow roads, but now we were wide open for destruction.
I shaded my eyes and squinted at the farms surrounding Viteretz. Soldiers were guiding teams of farmers to harvest, just like they used to under the Soviets And just like then, the produce was being loaded into trucks and driven away. They were confiscating the farmers’ produce as well?
My stomach did a sick flip. What would our farmers live on? And what would they have left to sell to us townsfolk? This was a disaster. Money can’t buy food that doesn’t exist. Everyone but the Nazis would be hungry this winter. How would we get through February and March and half of April without even milk?
When I got back with Krasa I told Mama and Maria what I’d seen.
“They will not defeat us,” said Mama, her eyes welling with tears. “We can forage for wild roots and plants.”
“Will we still be able to sell some of the milk and eggs?” I asked.
“Our neighbours will need that food from us,” said Mama. “Although we will need it too. We’ll sell some milk, but we’ll have to make more cheese than usual, so we can store it.”
Throughout this exchange, Maria sat quietly, but a big tear fell onto the table. “We’re going to starve in the spring,” she said, wiping her eye with the back of her hand. “If I were brave enough, maybe I’d go to Germany like the woman suggested. I could send money back to you and Krystia.”
“No,” said Mama. “I want my daughters here with me. Let’s just try to get by one day at a time. The rest is up to the grace of God.”
Chapter Fourteen
The Falcon’s Call
Maria had taken to walking Krasa to the pasture with me in the evenings. This was partly because Mama was now worried about me being alone at dusk, as the Nazis were showing their true faces. But also because Maria wanted to. This was a big decision for her, and I was so proud of my little sister. It was also nice to have the company.
I would hold on to Krasa’s tether and Maria would walk in front, spying out anything useful on the road or in the ditch. She would occasionally find a stray hen’s egg, but also some items that had fallen off the trucks and carts of the people coming into town. A baby’s rattle or someone’s cane didn’t interest her, but once Maria found a coil of dried sausage; another time she found a dented tin of sardines.
Along the way she’d tell me things she didn’t want to say in front of Mama, like how she hated working at the Commandant’s.
“I hate it too,” I told her. “But working there probably saves us from worse jobs. Besides, we can sometimes hear useful things.”
Once we’d get to the pasture and Krasa was grazing, we’d look for mushrooms, berries, nettles — anything that could be eaten. And it was nice to have two sets of eyes for this. We’d also play games, like seeing who could jump the farthest and who could run from one end of the pasture to the other without tripping.
One evening as Krasa munched on parched grass in our pasture, and Maria and I searched for edible shoots and roots, a shadowy figure appeared in the bushes. My heart nearly stopped beating.
“It’s okay, Krystia. It’s just me.”
“Borys?”
I ran to hug my cousin. He picked me up and twirled me around, just like he used to when we were younger. I breathed in his scent of smoke and tree sap and realized how much I missed having him around.
“It’s good to see my favourite oldest cousin,” he said, putting me back on the ground.
“What about me?” said Maria with mock indignation.
“You’re my favourite youngest cousin,” he said, pinching her cheek.
He bent his knees until we were all eye level. “Let’s have a staring contest. I know I’ll win, because girls blink more than boys do.”
This was a game we had played as children, and it was Borys who usually blinked first. The trick to winning was to squint a little bit so your eyes didn’t get dry. I put my hands on my hips, squinted just enough and stared him down. Maria had a different method — kind of cheating, but Borys always let her do it. She’d hold her ey
elids up with her fingers. For a full minute, Maria and I stared into Borys’s eyes. I counted to sixty without blinking.
Then, instead of blinking, Borys closed his eyes slowly, then opened them again.
“Why did you do that?” I asked.
“A gift to my favourite cousins,” he said, tugging on one of my braids. “I maintain my perfect losing streak from childhood.”
“You are silly,” I said, punching him lightly in the stomach. “I would have won anyway.” Maria grabbed one of his arms and tickled him in the ribs.
“Stop,” he said in mock protest. “I’m going to tell Mama that Krystia and Maria are beating me up.”
We stopped tickling him. “Is she in good health?”
“Mama is fine,” he said. “And I’m glad for her company. You’d be amazed at how quickly she’s settling in. And speaking of Mama,” he said, reaching down for a sack that we hadn’t noticed on the ground, “she asked me to bring you these.”
Maria took the sack from him and opened it up. Pidpenky — honey mushrooms. “Are you sure you can spare these?” she asked. “No one has extra food these days.”
“Things are going to get worse before they get better,” said Borys.
“Can they get much worse?” I asked.
Borys didn’t answer, but looked lost in his own thoughts. Then he said, “I need you girls to do something.”
“Anything.”
“The Segals have photographs for us.” He led us a few steps into the bushes, then crouched down beside a big rock, brushing away loose leaves and dirt to reveal a buried metal pot, lid and all.
“Someone will try to come by here about once a day,” said Borys. “Sometimes there will be a package in here for you to take back to the Segals.”
“We can do that,” said Maria. “And this is all secret, right?”
Borys nodded. “You can’t talk to anyone about this.”
He wrapped one arm loosely around my shoulder and another around Maria. “Stay safe, dear cousins. I worry about you.”
As he turned to disappear back into the brush, Maria caught his hand. “I have a favour to ask of you.”
He looked at her. “Anything,” he said.
“Take us to your encampment in the forest.”
His eyes widened slightly at the suggestion. “That’s a good idea,” he said. “There may come a time when you need to get there.”
“Why don’t we go with you now?” I asked.
Borys shook his head. “If we left now, you’d end up bringing the cow home in the dark, and that could raise suspicions. Come to the pasture early tomorrow. I’ll be waiting for you.”
* * *
We got to the pasture about an hour earlier than usual. I tied Krasa with a loose tether so she could still graze but wouldn’t wander out onto the road.
Borys stepped out of the shadows and motioned to us to follow him. He led us on a meandering route through a patchwork of pasture and farmland, hiding in the shadows of trees and large rocks. Pasture changed to woods and forest, and Borys would pause every once in a while to point out a landmark. Sometimes it would be an oddly shaped tree or a curve in a stream — always so subtle you’d miss it if you didn’t know what you were looking for.
Then Borys stopped altogether. He held up his hand to make sure that we kept still as well. He took a deep breath and made the call of the falcon: kak, kak, kak.
He stood perfectly still and waited. I grabbed Maria’s hand and we waited too. Five minutes passed.
A girl who looked to be just a few years older than me appeared from the shadows. She wore a peasant skirt and a Soviet army jacket, and had a rifle slung across her back. She nodded to Borys, then asked him, “Who are you?”
“I’m Borys Fediuk.”
“Why are you here?”
“These are my cousins, Maria and Krystia Fediuk. They’re working with us and they need to know how to get to our encampment.”
“What is the answer to the question?”
“Ukraine is not yet dead.”
The girl nodded again. “Follow me in.” She signalled to people I couldn’t see, likely to tell them to hold their fire. I thought it was smart that she’d asked Borys those questions, even though it was obvious she knew who he was. If we were enemies and he was our prisoner, he could have intentionally answered wrong and she would know, but the enemies wouldn’t catch on.
The encampment looked like uninhabited forest, and neither Maria nor I could detect any people. We followed Borys through a narrow opening in the brush. He moved aside a patch of sod to reveal an opening in the ground.
“There’s a rope ladder,” he said. “Follow me down.”
“Oh my,” said Maria, once her eyes had adjusted to the dimness. “Is this where people sleep?”
We were in a long underground room. Some natural light filtered in through overhead grates covered with branches. Along both sides of the room were narrow cots, three deep. A rough wooden table with benches on either side took up the middle. Rifles in various stages of repair were on the table.
“We’ve been stealing those weapons and stockpiling them,” said Borys.
“Is Auntie Iryna here?” I asked.
“She’s on a scouting mission, as is your uncle Ivan.”
Borys took us back out into the daylight. “All through this area we have hidden rooms like that one,” he said. “There are similar encampments all over Ukraine. We’re in some disarray now, with our leaders imprisoned, but we will never give up until we drive the invaders out.”
He made Maria and I find the way back to our pasture, but he kept us in sight to make sure we didn’t get lost. It encouraged me to know that we were doing what we could to fight back against the Nazis. But would it make a difference?
* * *
That night as I tried to get to sleep, I thought about the encampment and the secret codes that the insurgents had used. The national symbol of Ukraine was the Tryzub, which to some people resembled a trident, but to me it always looked like a falcon in flight. I guess it did to Borys and his friends, too, and that’s why they used the kak kak kak of the falcon as their code. And the phrase about Ukraine not yet being dead? That was a line of a popular song from before the war. If we had our own country, that song could be its anthem. I hoped and prayed that the sentiment of the song was true.
And I would do my part to fight back, even though right now all that meant was delivering packages and photographs between the insurgents and the Segals.
* * *
A few days went by with no photographs from the Segals, but then Mrs. Segal slipped an envelope into my skirt pocket as I handed her a bottle of milk.
When I got home, I took out the photos. I thought the Segals might have taken secret pictures of the mass execution, or of all the food being confiscated — proof of Nazi crimes against civilians to send to foreign newspapers. But instead these were boring portraits of people from around town. There was one of their son, Nathan, and another of Leah Steinburg, the dogcatcher’s widow. Most seemed to be of young men who were nearly old enough to be in the army, but none were of the Nazis. What was so special about these photos?
I put them back into the envelope and pushed them into my skirt pocket so I wouldn’t forget to take them to the drop-off spot in the pasture.
Chapter Fifteen
Three Smooth Stones
In order to make our food last longer, we started to skip the midday meal. Breakfast would be milk plus whatever we could find growing wild — grasses, crabapples, sorrel, roots.
Supper was milk or cheese, or an egg if the chickens had laid any, plus the wild things we foraged and made into a soup. After a week, I learned to ignore the pangs of constant hunger.
There were a few apple and pear trees out towards the country, but those were stripped bare by other hungry people. Auntie Iryna twice left a package of mushrooms at the hiding spot in the pasture, and once some nuts. I couldn’t imagine how hard it must be to live in the forest and sur
vive on just what you could find there. Her generosity brought me to tears.
Frau Hermann knew we were starving, but it didn’t seem to bother her, except for the fact that we might steal food from her. Her solution was to ban Slavs from working in the kitchen. Now it was just Volksdeutche, and they already had all the food they wanted, so they weren’t tempted to steal more. I still had to carry trays of food, though, and it nearly drove me mad seeing meat and cheese and buns, and smelling them all. Frau Hermann’s breath reminded me of freshly buttered bread.
One morning in early September I opened the drop-off tin in the pasture and found a folded paper packet. It wasn’t my business — I knew that — but I was curious. So as Krasa munched, I sat on a rock and opened it up.
A stack of folded Kennkarten and passports. I flipped through the identification sheets. They all seemed just like the documents that I had seen people in town carrying since the Nazis had arrived. These ones were all blue, which was the colour used to identify Ukrainians. I paused when I saw Nathan Segal’s picture staring up at me. In the spot where it should have said his name, it read Bohdan Sawchuk, one of the Ukrainians who had been tortured to death by the Soviets.
Why would Nathan need a passport with Bohdan’s name on it? And why was his paper blue instead of yellow?
Had Uncle Ivan printed these on his hidden press? Were all of the documents falsified? He and the Segals must be working together, but what were they planning? I folded Nathan’s paper back up and put all of the documents into my pocket.
When I got back into town, a crowd of people were pushing and shoving in front of the church, trying to read a notice that had been posted on the door. Valentina Zhuk extricated herself from the crush of people and met up with me. “It’s not good,” she said. “We’ve been ordered to assemble at the town square today at noon.”
The thought of assembling again was terrifying. What had the Commandant planned this time?
It felt as if the forged documents were burning a hole in my pocket, and I would have liked to walk over to the Segals’ right then. Instead I went back home and loaded up the bottles of milk on my cart as usual, and delivered them in the proper order. When I got to their house, Mr. Segal opened the door.
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