June 22, 1941
Talsi, Latvia
The mansion was too quiet. Rachel walked from the marble entrance gallery through the hallway, dark but for the filigreed fans of light cast upon the walls by the Lalique sconces. Where her father had hung his least favorite paintings, French landscapes by Pissarro and Monet, there were now only outlines of their frames, but Rachel couldn’t help seeing the paintings themselves as she went into the ballroom-sized sitting room. It remained the same room her mother had grown up with, modeled after the grand interiors of old St. Petersburg, with damask-lined walls and richly embroidered stuffed chairs. Facing the fireplace was an over-scale, goose-down sofa, covered, like the chairs, with floral-patterned Italian chintz. Missing were the lavish oil paintings of flowers and mythological figures; so too were the German expressionist works by Munch and Nolde that her father had hung in place of the paintings her grandparents had loved. The Russians had let them keep their furniture; but they had stripped the mansion of its art.
She went into the adjacent room where her grandfather once had a billiard table and played chess for hours on end. His chessboard was still in its place; standing near it now, Rachel could hear the voices of the players, the sound of chess pieces moving across it, and smell the odor of old men gathered apart from the women. She ran her fingertips lightly over the surface, then retreated back into the hall. She walked through the dining room and stared at the great cedar table with its hand-carved chairs. Behind the table was the buffet, now empty, that had contained her grandmother’s Viennese glass collection. Next to the buffet was the table with her mother’s candlesticks and samovar. As a child she would watch Elizabeth fill it with coals which would glow through the grate at the bottom, and she would stand before it, entranced; how pleasurable the sound of the water heating up had been. As she reached out to touch it she heard her mother’s voice: “No Rachel! You’ll burn yourself.” But now the surface was cool and she pressed her palm against it and then touched her cheek.
She went into the library and sat behind the desk. This had been her father’s domain. Its walls had been denuded of an early Kandinsky, a kaleidoscopic montage depicting a knight on a horse riding forth from a castle, along with one of her favorites, a lyrical portrait of a young girl by the German expressionist, Paula Modersohn-Becker. When the Russians had looted their home, her imagination had somehow nullified the loss. Knowing that she would be leaving Russia and going on to a new life with Michael, she had forced herself to let go of the past and look to the future. But tonight, that too had been taken from her.
She glanced at her engagement ring, a simple gold band with a white diamond encircled by sapphires. Michael was to have picked up their false travel permits in Riga and come to Talsi that morning; but he had never arrived. All evening she had tried to call him in Riga, but she hadn’t been able to get through. Then the line had gone dead. When they heard the rumbling that sounded like distant thunder except that it never ceased, they knew: the invasion had begun.
Three hours ago Lily had taken the car to pick up her father at the studio. Rachel had put on a blue linen and silk Chanel that she had bought in Paris and a pair of rope-soled Italian shoes that would be good for walking. After packing one bag she had brushed her hair and come back downstairs.
She stared at the empty place where Modersohn-Becker’s young girl had looked out with whimsical innocence upon their world. Once she had hoped to be able to take the painting with her, perhaps to give it to her daughter. She had resigned herself to carrying its image in her memory; but now anger and despair came rushing up into her consciousness. Michael was lost. There would be no escape. She would have to stay in Russia, possibly for years.
She heard the whine of a car engine and tires crunching the gravel, doors opening and voices. Had Lily picked up others? She went to the door of the library and looked up and down the long empty hall. Walking back to the entrance gallery she called upstairs to Elizabeth. “Mother! Are you there?” No answer.
Rachel looked about. She saw that the French doors leading from the sun room to the porch had been left open a crack. She heard boots moving toward the front and around the side. Soldiers. Of course: Mother waited for her outside. She opened the door and ran across the porch into the darkness of the garden. Voices shouted “STOP!” in German and shots rang out. She ducked behind the greenhouse and then darted into the thick foliage beyond.
Had Mother seen her? No matter; she would know to meet her at the gate in the wall.
She saw the cellar doors open; but it wasn’t a soldier who emerged. She groaned when she saw her mother’s slender blond figure climb out. She must have gone down to the basement hoping they would leave the side of the mansion unguarded. Rachel’s heart sank; a soldier stood less than ten yards away from her. The cellar door creaked as Elizabeth lowered it and the soldier whirled around and looked directly at her without seeing her. Then he realized she stood there.
“Halt!”
Her mother obeyed. Other troopers surrounded her and they brought her back toward the garden. A man in a business suit, shining a flashlight, came out of the French doors with Kalnin, the dairy farmer from whom they bought their milk.
“Judas!” her mother hissed. Like her, Elizabeth had dressed casually for traveling. Her green eyes full of disdain, she faced her captors without flinching.
Kalnin, a stocky man who had once shown Rachel how to milk a cow, pretended not to hear. A trooper came forward. He spoke to the business-suited one with his back to her hiding place. But she saw her mother smile and the others looked in her direction. From their faces she knew they saw nothing except an impenetrable mass of dark greenery. Something to thank the Russians for, Rachel thought. They had “liberated” the gardeners along with the rest of the house staff; as a result the garden had turned into a thick tangle of untrimmed hedges, trees whose leaf-filled branches embraced one another in a riotous sprawl, and flower beds and paths overrun by weeds.
The man in the suit spoke to Kalnin, then faced the greenhouse. “We have your mother, Rachel. Come out and you’ll both be safe.”
“No Rachel!” Elizabeth cried. “Don’t—”
The trooper put his hand over her mother’s mouth. Rachel saw her head move and the soldier pulled back, crying out. “If you love me, run!” The officer cursed and struck her with the butt of his pistol. Spitting out broken teeth and blood, Elizabeth thrashed about, screaming “Run! Run!”
Rachel wrapped both arms around an elm and dug her fingers into the bark. Kicking and clawing, Elizabeth grabbed the pistol and pulled it free. She pushed the barrel into the trooper’s gut and Rachel heard a sharp report. The man fell and her mother stood alone, glaring, triumphant.
A second shot flung her to the ground. “Rachel go!” Two more shots and she lay still.
Rachel crushed her lips against the tree.
The leader spoke to the others in German. She couldn’t make out the words, but she saw them nod as though in agreement. Kalnin followed the leader back inside. The others moved in the shadows. If they expected her to run to her mother’s body they were wrong. She remembered Elizabeth’s face when she emerged from her grandfather’s room minutes after his death. Rachel had hesitated, unsure of whether or not to go in. “There’s nothing to see,” Elizabeth said. “When you’re dead, you’re dead.”
She slipped back through the trees, circled what had been the servant’s house, then cut through the cherry orchard to the wall that surrounded the estate. She had no trouble moving silently, having taken the same route during hundreds of games of hide and seek with Stephen and Lily. She moved along the wall to the iron-speared gate that opened onto the road leading into the village. The key was in its niche. You could go out through the gate but not return; the key had to remain. Until now.
Rachel looked back at the pagoda roof of the greenhouse. No time for grief. Lily might have reached her father and taken him to the village to wait for her. She turned the key and edged the gate open just enough to squeeze through.
Once outside, she pressed back against the ivy covered wall. The stones felt cool and familiar through her dress. The road was dark and empty. She pushed herself away and ran until she had to stop to catch her breath. She again looked back, her glance skirting the wall and the now invisible gate, the trees and the top of the mansion. She tossed the key into the darkness.
She ran to the edge of the village. As she approached it, the voices of the invading army, relaxed and confident, frightened her more than the outline of their tanks occupying the town square. But the crowd that had gathered there gave her confidence. She wouldn’t stand out among them and Lily might be waiting in their ranks.
The crowd’s attention was fixed on the post office wall. As she drew even with the onlookers, now formed into a circle with their backs to her, she saw German soldiers loading bodies into the back of a lorry. They worked in mechanical silence; the bitter smell of cordite made clear what had just taken place.
The victims were Communist Party officials, many of whom had sat for her. Someday she would do a final portrait of them all. A thought arrested her: Father might also be considered a Party functionary.
She went to the back of the crowd, then moved through the ranks to the front, where she studied the faces of the corpses piled like clothing dummies on the open flatbed. She didn’t see her father’s face; she recognized his hands.
She moved closer. His eyes opened to nothing. She had never thought of him as mere flesh and bone—couldn’t think of him that way now. His body was a lie.
She let the crowd absorb her. Her father wouldn’t care if they buried him in a ditch—his sculptures were his memorial. She pictured him facing the guns. What thoughts had gone through his mind?
Without turning around she moved back toward the street, her head bowed. The Russians would abuse her, but the Germans would kill her. She sprung clear and walked at an even pace towards the edge of the village. Just another dressed up town-girl heading back home to tell her friends and family what she had seen.
A man wearing a farmer’s cap pulled down over his face stepped out of a doorway and grasped her jauntily around the waist. Rachel saw that a woman’s hand gripped her. “Lily,” she whispered, not looking up.
“You sentimental idiot,” Lily Kroger muttered. “You could have been killed back there.”
“I had to see.”
“What? Whether the great artist got what he deserved?”
Rachel recoiled. Yet she understood Lily’s rage. Had it not been for Father’s selfishness—and her own pride—Lily and Stephen would have been in Sweden now.
“It was only for your mother’s sake that I volunteered to go and get him,” Lily added. “Not his.”
They had left the village and now walked rapidly on the open road between two dark walls of pine. Clouds lay thick and grey above the trees.
Rachel stopped and looked at the taller woman’s face. Even with her long black hair pulled back and hidden beneath her cap, Lily’s features were striking. Hers was a dramatic, sensual beauty, centered upon her full lush lips and almond shaped violet blue eyes.
“Mother’s dead. The Germans shot her.”
Lily’s expression softened. “I loved her.”
“She loved you too, Lily.”
“I’ll never forgive him for what he did to her. And to you.”
“He’s dead. It’s pointless.”
“No,” Lily said. “It’s no more pointless than loving someone who’s gone.”
“Did you see it?” Rachel asked.
“Yes.”
“Tell me. I have to know.”
“I found the studio in ruins so I drove part way back, then left the car in a field and walked. I was afraid of attracting too much attention. I got back just as the Germans were setting up the guns. The way the soldiers leered at me, I knew I would be raped if I didn’t change my clothes. The lock of Mr. Lifsitz’s store had been broken and people were inside, taking whatever they needed. I joined them. That’s where I got these clothes and shoes.” She dropped her hand down along her cotton twill pants. Rachel glanced at her thick, rubber-soled half-boots.
“I stayed in the doorway of the store,” Lily continued. “From there I saw the car drive up—the one with your father. He got out. They must have grabbed him right from the studio because he still had his smock on. They treated him like the others.” She stopped. “Are you sure you want me to go on?”
“More,” Rachel urged. She wanted to know what had happened to him, right up until the last moment of his life. She wanted the images in her head.
“They made him wait in line. It was all so mundane.” Lily’s voice rose and she trembled. “They put them up against the wall in groups. Five or ten. The guns went off. Just for a second or two. The next group had to first carry the bodies to the truck. They made them hurry. Some of the Russians begged for mercy. It was . . . demeaning. But not your father. If he was afraid, it didn’t show.” Lily gasped, her breath short, wiping tears from her cheeks.
“Finally it came his turn. He was stronger than the others so he carried more of the bodies away. There was blood on the ground and in his smock he looked like a butcher. But he stood against the wall, looking straight at them. He was the only one who could. The rest covered their eyes with their hands or faced the wall.
“I saw his lips move. I stepped forward and crossed the street. I had to know what he was saying! From close-up I could smell . . . the blood. Sweet, sickening, like a charnel house. His boots were soaked in it, but he stood like he was a foot off the ground.
“I could read his lips. It was the prayer of atonement. From Yom Kippur. `Our Father, Our King.’ He said your name. And Elizabeth’s. And Stephen’s too. Then the guns rattled. He fell. It was over.”
Rachel felt herself totter and she convulsed from head to toe. Lily seized her, held her and they swayed. “He knew it was his fault that none of you got out,” Lily added. “But I thought . . . I thought . . . he was a fraud . . . that he was nothing but a bag of self-pity, that his remorse was a lie. Now I don’t know what he meant.”
The need to grieve rippled like an intoxicant through Rachel’s blood. She fought against it, shouting “No! No!” She pulled back and focused on Lily. “You loved and hated him. We all did.”
“I knew the hate,” Lily said. “But the love—I don’t know where that came from. Never knew I had it until now.”
They walked all night without incident, meeting other Latvians in flight to the east. Though they exchanged curious glances, a deep and welcome silence prevailed.
Despite the humidity, Rachel walked easily, considering herself lucky to have chosen the linen and silk dress, her shoes light on her feet. She felt protected by the low cloud cover. But she couldn’t protect herself from the voice inside her head. Her father’s guilt, his acceptance of his own responsibility for the catastrophe that had engulfed them, didn’t absolve her. Why couldn’t Lily see that she had been given a choice, and that no one—her father included—had forced her to stay in Latvia? She chose to stay, arguing bitterly with Stephen and defying her mother’s wishes. And she had put Michael’s love second. “It would be wrong,” she had told him when he urged her to leave.
There must have been a judge among my ancestors, Rachel thought. Someone who liked to make moral pronouncements. For hers had been one of the great ones. Because of it, Michael had remained in Latvia another year, refusing to abandon her, only to disappear on the eve of the invasion. She wondered if he would hate her if they ever saw each other again. “I’ll make it up to you,” she would tell him, “I’ll go into a convent.” He would smile, but he wouldn’t laugh.
The sunrise revealed that the low cloud cover had moved west, out over the Baltic Sea, leaving a pellucid sky. With it came the end of the silence. When they reached the main road to Pskov, the railroad junction for all trains to Moscow or Leningrad, a cacophony arose from the thousands of evacuees moving on foot or in makeshift carts in a line that ended at the eastern horizon.
They paused and studied the spectacle. Rachel scanned the flat, sun-baked terrain of fields and forest for signs of war: miles away small dust plumes ascended from the land, but there was no other evidence of fighting, and she found surreal the sight of such a large population fleeing an invisible enemy.
Linking arms, they joined the eastward progression. They fell in beside two women.
“I was at work in the factory when the bombs started failing,” the younger explained. “We ran out in the street—I went home and got Mother and we fled Riga with the clothes on our backs.”
The daughter wore several layers of clothing and carried a heavy winter coat. Her mother’s dress was a simple blue cotton shift. The older woman walked with a determined step while her heavy-set daughter stopped to rest every hundred yards.
“Did you have any warning?” Rachel asked the mother.
“Are you mad? Who is there to warn us?” Her daughter shot her a look, but the old woman ignored it. “They didn’t care what happened to us. Stalin conquered us so that we’d be in the way of the Nazis. He wanted us to be there to slow them down. Our only hope is that the rest of the world kills Hitler and gives us back our country.”
“I agree,” Rachel said. “I had a friend. He was supposed to meet me in Talsi on Saturday, but he never arrived.”
“Was he a Jew?”
“Yes.”
“Well that explains it.” Now her daughter shook her head. The mother hesitated.
“Please. It’s very important to me.” Rachel grasped the woman’s bony arm.
She glanced at her daughter and sighed. “They came and arrested our neighbor, Mr. Pearl. Seventy years old. Friday night. I heard they took every Jew they could find.”
“Who? The Russians or the Germans?”
“The Reds.”
“Thank you.” Rachel released her arm. “I might never have known.”
“They say they put them all in boxcars headed for the front. Cannon fodder to slow down the Germans.”
Rachel glanced at Lily. “First Mother, then Father, now Michael.”
“If you’re looking for someone to blame, try your father. I’m not interested in spending the next few days salving your conscience. Let’s concentrate on getting to Moscow and finding Stephen.”
“You’re right, Lily.” If they were to survive, they had to focus on the present. If you survive, she told herself, then you can drown yourself in guilt.
“You and your sister have something to eat.” The mother held out a red kerchief filled with hard biscuits and a jar of water.
“We’re not hungry. But we’ll have some water, thank you.” Rachel took a long swallow and handed the jar to Lily. “Did you see the Germans?”
“They passed us hours ago. In a great hurry to get to Leningrad before it snows.” She laughed, taking the jar back from Lily. “You two go ahead. We’re too slow. Young, pretty girls like you don’t want to be caught by the swine at Pskov.”
Her daughter winced. They thanked them and moved on.
At least, Rachel reflected, she now knew why Michael hadn’t come to Talsi.
“I’m a marked woman, Lily.”
“You think Michael gave them your name?”
“He didn’t have to. It’s on the travel passes.”
“But why!”
“We’re not spies. It was the best we could do.”
Moving side by side, they kept pace with the fast walkers on the outer edge of the road.
“You look like you’re burning up,” Lily said, studying Rachel’s face. She took off her cap and put in onto Rachel’s head.
Immediately her face felt cooler and she smiled. “My first taste of hell,” Rachel said.
“There are plenty in line ahead of you.”
The column moved ceaselessly, impervious to the sun. Once night fell, those too exhausted to go further slept in the fields. Rachel fought off her weariness by imagining that Michael was ahead of her. She liked the twinkling of cigarettes along the column, suddenly glowing and then fading like fireflies. The smell of burning tobacco wafted above their heads, sweet, but not sickening. Don’t be dead, Michael. Don’t be dead. She moved her feet to the rhythm of her refrain.
Day came, and by afternoon the summer heat combined with the lack of food to cause many to drop to the pavement. Automatically, with barely a pause in the forward motion of the column, groups formed to carry the stricken to the roadside.
“Onward Christian soldiers,” Rachel declared.
“Not me,” Lily replied. “I’m ready to sell my soul right now for a drink of water.” The sun had already darkened her face, but she hadn’t burned. Rachel thought her eyes, set against her olive skin, appeared more beautiful than ever.
With grim determination they put one foot in front of the other, maintaining a silent count that forced them to keep up their paces. By evening they saw funnels of smoke to the east. A shiver of apprehension rolled back to them through the column. The endless hours of walking had lulled them into a stupor; but now they surged forward, quickened by fear that the Germans might bomb them. A smoky haze suffused the night air, acrid and bitter.
At dawn they heard the planes coming out of the east. Rachel had seen pictures of the Stuka in action over Poland in the fall of 1939; after the Soviet invasion, such pictures had been censored, but she immediately recognized the ugly snout of the insect-like machine.
Horror and fear gripped her as several of the Stukas split off and rolled in an arc that could only bring them down on a line parallel to the road. The roar engulfed her and people flung themselves to the ground. Rachel blocked her ears and fell to the pavement. Lily was suddenly on top of her. The air ignited and fire swept over her as the road buckled from the explosions. All around them she heard moans and cries as Lily helped her to her feet. In her imagination she heard the sirens of ambulances arriving. But there was only the stillness of the morning and blood shining on the cement.
Lily grabbed her and they moved to the edge of the highway. She felt blood seeping into the woven fiber of her shoes, but she fought back panic. Her hatred grew with each step as she made herself open her eyes to all of it, sketching it into her memory.
“I don’t know who’s worse,” she remarked. “Hitler or Stalin.”