SOME PEOPLE IN the car were like saturated ground, full of too much change and shock already. The fact they were not going back to Poland after all simply sat on the surface like more heavy rain.
‘My garden will be so neglected,’ a woman said. ‘I’ve been away for months now, and you can be certain none of my selfish neighbours have bothered with it, even though they promised they would.’ She was the one who had drawn lines on the floor, in a family of young women. They all had the same beautiful thick black hair, and nodded along to the woman’s words, murmuring about her garden: I remember your lawn, Aunt Riane; don’t you have an apple tree?
‘Didn’t you hear what she said?’ a man called out to them. ‘Blathering on about lawns! North, she said! Didn’t you hear?’
‘And?’ someone else snapped. ‘There’s a war on, in case you hadn’t noticed! Don’t you think there are broken rails, bombed bridges, detours?’
‘I’m sorry,’ said the woman who had stood up to look at the sky.
The currents of argument died down quickly and everyone returned to their little whispering groups, reassuring themselves, or sat in silence, if alone, like Janina and the man who had shouted at Riane. Soon they knocked on the adjoining walls, called through the windows to the other cars, listened to the voices in return. Hey, what are you doing about a toilet? Hey, what did they say to you? Yes, Russia, it has to be Russia. Do you have a pipe at the back of the car? It goes directly onto the tracks … They found it, erected sheets around it which they tucked into the wooden slats. Riane hung more blankets around her little set, their bare feet sticking out.
The sun was setting. Alicia watched the roof-square, the size of a sketch, turn twilight blue, then there was the warmth of that rosy light she so loved to paint in. Amid the whispering of the car, Jozef’s voice came to her, to her younger self standing at the window in the apartment at home, the Wawel behind her, yesterday and a lifetime before.
‘It’s best at dawn, a cleaner light. Paintings made in twilight skew the colours too much,’ Jozef said, but smiling, and mixing up the touches of gold for her hair or the bright red for her dress and the roses. Karolina said something in reply, something about writing in the early hours, ‘Yes, clean is how I think of morning work too, the evening is for reading and editing …’ That was probably too much, Alicia realised, but she liked to extend the sound of her sister’s voice in her head.
‘But we need the warmth,’ Alicia had insisted. ‘Dawn light is too cold,’ and Jozef stopped and looked out of the window at the fading day, murmured to Karolina, ‘Yes, I see what she means,’ before Alicia lost him for a while as he gazed between Karolina’s face, the fading light and her painting.
‘Papa’s waiting for us there,’ she said now to her mother. ‘He’s in the apartment, with Janie … we have to get to him and to Karolcia. We’ll get my painting back and then—’
‘I know, darling.’
‘Papa won’t know where we are.’
‘Yes, but he’s very patient, he’s waited this long, and you mustn’t worry,’ Anna said, guilt squeezing her insides until she felt her stomach would disappear.
‘I wish I had a sketchbook and some paints.’
The angry man, the one who had shouted, raised his voice once more. ‘Paints?’ he cried. ‘You want to worry about food and water! Or lights, it will be dark soon! Didn’t you know? Paints! Or men with guns and a noose—’
‘It will be a long journey if you keep that up,’ Anna said. ‘Why don’t you have a good yell out of the window, get it out of your system so we don’t have to smother you in your sleep?’
‘Mama!’ Alicia said, delighted.
‘As for light, it’s a clear night,’ came the voice of the woman who had told them they were moving north, smoothly cutting through the row. ‘The moon is almost full, and will be free to shine. Look,’ and her outstretched arm blocked some of Alicia’s view of the sunset, ‘soon it will be silvering the sky.’
Alicia stayed quiet, waiting for more.
‘I’m Leo,’ the woman’s voice came again, nudging Alicia a little. Anna leaned over to shake her hand. ‘Sorry for causing drama, only it’s true. At least there’s a good full moon.’
‘You don’t seem so worried,’ Anna said.
‘How do you know it’s full if you can’t see it?’ Alicia said.
Leo shrugged to Anna’s words. ‘There’s no point panicking. It’s important,’ she dropped her voice to barely a whisper, ‘to accept the truth.’ She nodded to where Riane and the black-haired young women were still talking feverishly about some Polish garden, its rot and trampled leaves.
‘But what truth? Where are we going?’ Anna said.
‘Russia, you stupid bitch,’ replied the shouting man. ‘Didn’t you know?’
A thousand old curses rose to Anna’s mouth, from the days before she was married. In Kraków she would have used every ounce of influence she had to remove this man, discredit him, complain to his bosses, even destroy him. All lost to her now. She ignored him, floored by her powerlessness. Alicia imagined a giant hand ripping off the roof of the car, plucking the man out and bashing him against rocks. She mouthed along the words, Dashed their heads against the floor as though they were puppies.
‘Be quiet, Frank,’ Leo said.
‘He’s with you?’ Anna asked.
‘Not really.’
‘Not really?’ The car creaked as Frank came over to them, picking his way through sitting figures. He towered over Leo. ‘We hid together in Lwów! We hid – unbelievable! Now you’re denying you know me?’
‘Don’t be ridiculous, Frank. Sit down,’ Leo said, in the tone of a parent on their last nerve. Frank sat.
‘We hid together, we’re friends,’ he said. ‘Didn’t you know? We hid behind an oven,’ he said, taking Anna’s arm in confidence; she slapped him away, and he continued, in the same newly friendly tone, ‘a couple from a church hid us there – so clever, they’d hollowed it out – did you know they were hanging people, taking them away and hanging them in the square? So we hid, didn’t we, Leo, for weeks—’
‘Frank, stop it,’ Leo snapped. The car had fallen silent, only the music of the train and the voices carrying on the evening air.
‘That isn’t true,’ Anna said, the car swaying around her, and Alicia’s breaths seeming very loud next to her. ‘Why did you say that? That isn’t true. No one was taken to be killed.’
‘Didn’t you know?’
Alicia tried to stand up, but Anna held her tight. She could hear Janina whimpering. ‘It isn’t true – shut up, Janina! – we stayed with family and there was never any – they took people to police stations,’ she said, looking around, but in the faded light there were only the silhouettes of faces. She leaned over to Leo. ‘Make him say it isn’t true,’ she hissed.
‘No, I won’t,’ the man said, in childish defiance.
‘So we imagined our dead father then?’ one of the dark-haired young women said to Anna, her voice stretched thin and sharp to a needlepoint.
‘I – they told me the arrested ones would be on the same trains as us,’ Anna said.
‘Didn’t you know?’ Frank echoed.
‘Frank,’ Leo said. ‘It’s time for silence now. You’re upsetting people and I know you don’t like to.’
‘But—’
‘Was that silence?’
He shook his head.
‘Come here and I’ll talk to you about the sky.’
‘But,’ Alicia said. Her mother’s face was stone as she looked towards Janina. ‘Mama,’ pleaded Alicia, feeling if she didn’t have arms around her she would fly apart, out of the tiny square windows, through the bars. Anna was completely still, so Alicia went to the old woman, who flinched as she approached. ‘Alicia, I—’ she began. ‘Oh, there, there,’ she continued, as Alicia curled up next to her, under her arm. ‘She’s all right, I’m sure Karolina’s all right.’
‘I hate you,’ Alicia whispered, burrowing further under her arm, wrapping herself around Janina’s thick waist. ‘It’s your fault.’
‘It’s all right,’ Janina said, stroking her hair. ‘It’s all, all right.’
Leo beckoned Frank closer to her. He sat with his legs crossed as she began, ‘That star there is the North Star …’
A banging on the wall of the car stopped her, silenced them all, even Alicia’s tears. Anna jumped out of her stillness.
‘We’re slowing down,’ a voice called, from above.
They stood and tried to jump up to the windows, but none could reach. Leo lifted herself up again. ‘Hello? Oh!’ She looked down at them all. ‘We’re pulling into a station.’ She leaned further out, and her words were carried away by the cool dusk air.
‘Let my husband up to look,’ a woman said, pulling at Leo’s dress. She jumped down so that a heavy man could balance on the rivet, heave himself up. Their two children watched with her: they were a miracle, a complete set, like a pack of Russian dolls with none missing.
‘Well?’ his wife called. ‘Gregor, are you going to just stare?’ She hit him on the leg.
‘Get off me, woman!’
‘Oh get down, you great lump, let me look!’
He shook her off his leg, as hands came through the slats holding canisters. Gregor said thank you in Russian, handed them down to Leo, still standing beneath him; she opened and sniffed one. ‘Soup,’ she announced, to a chorus of Oh thank God, they aren’t starving us to death, while Frank spoke through them, ‘It’s poison, that’s how they’ll do it, didn’t you know?’
After the shocked quiet and false calm of the clanking train, the clamour was deafening. There were roars of anger, plaintive cries, and bangs along the cars as though they were being struck from within or without. Frank caught the idea and began kicking at the car. ‘Let us out! You didn’t say you would lock us in!’
‘Gregor, ask them when they’re opening up the car again,’ his wife said.
‘Is there water too?’ Riane called up.
‘Ask them about the arrested people,’ Anna said. ‘A man at the station said there was a list. Ask about the list!’
Up at the window, Gregor was asking someone, ‘We were told Poland, where are we going? You said we were going home—’ before he fell back, pushed by one of the bodiless hands, stumbled over Janina. A rising voice, speaking Polish, carried above the din outside the car. ‘Where’s your thanks? Stalin is saving your lives!’
Anna pulled herself up onto the rivet, looked out to see a twilit station, soldiers ambling down the platform, shooing small crowds that had formed around the cattle cars. She tried to twist her neck one way then another, but couldn’t see far beyond the metal bars. A figure stood to one side, wearing a greatcoat, gazing across the tracks. ‘Sir,’ she called, ‘my daughter was arrested in Lwów, and I was told she’d be on the train with us, or sent the same way, there was a list, please can I … sir? Hello?’ Laughter was rippling down the platform, and anger chafed her. ‘I just want to know where she is, my God – sir, I know you can hear me—’
‘Careful,’ Janina called up to her. ‘They’ll push you back down.’
A woman approached, all headscarf and yellow teeth in the near dark. Her laughter was quelled by Anna’s face. She handed Anna a package.
‘Don’t worry, I’m sure he’s taken care of your daughter too.’ She nodded to the figure. Anna craned her neck again, saw the glint of the dying light against the statue she had been harassing. The ringing laughter of the passing boys in uniform made sense. She nodded a thank you to the woman and jumped down.
‘Well, I made friends with Stalin,’ she said, showing the package to Alicia. ‘We’re sure to get anything now.’ Leo laughed long and deep, and the mood shifted. They had food. Anna felt she would fall to the floor and howl and then kick at the doors until they let her out to walk back along the tracks to Lwów, back to Karolina, but she sat on the floor with the others, cradling the woman’s package in her lap like a baby, waiting for the canister to be passed her way. I’m a failure, she thought. I have failed Karolcia every day since the moment I first held her in my arms, and I felt nothing but relief the pain was over, and now her father is in France with his lover and son, and she has only me, and here I am being pulled away from her and she’s in a cell somewhere and—
‘What’s inside?’ Leo asked, gently prising the package from Anna’s grip. She had torn the paper a little, and Leo tugged at it. Inside was a pack of cards and some cigarettes. Some pamphlets in Russian, which Leo threw to the side. They had no matches, so the car took turns smelling the tobacco.
‘We could chew it, like Americans,’ Janina said.
‘And spit out black bile all over the sheets and blankets?’ Anna snapped, and Janina was quiet, went back to sniffing the cigarette, rolling it around in her fingers.
‘We could ask for a match, at the next station,’ Frank said. ‘And set a fire!’
‘No, Frank,’ Leo warned.
‘What, it’s wood, isn’t it?’ He tapped the floor. ‘Then they’ll let us out, for air, they’ll have to!’
‘Or let us burn and suffocate,’ Janina said. ‘Sorry,’ she added, for this had prompted a chorus of Mamas from two young boys, and the woman in charge of them had begun singing to distract them. ‘I always say the wrong thing.’
Janina sipped the lukewarm soup. It was like in Lwów, endless watery baby food, pap and grey vegetables. Still, she thought, eyeing the lumps in the broth, someone had chopped these, and warmed them for the strangers in the cars, even if only under orders, checked and stirred and poured for them. That gave her comfort; she sent up a silent thanks to the stars beyond the barred windows.
By the middle of the next day they had realised no one was coming to open up the car, and their faces turned inward, categorising each other, making mental notes of names and groups. They were made up of three families and three strays: Janina (whom Anna enjoyed savagely cutting out of her own family group in her mind), Leo and Frank, whose early anger Anna quickly realised was from a terror more profound than the rest of them put together. He was a tall, timid creature, jumping at unexpected bangs from down the cars, and the only one to refuse to stand up to the windows at stations: ‘You’ll see, they’ll shoot us through those, that’s what they do with cattle, didn’t you know, that’s what the windows are for …’ This was his verbal tic: didn’t you know? Didn’t you know they’ll execute everyone, this is for the newsreels, this part, didn’t you know? Didn’t you know that Stalin and Hitler had an agreement, and we’re all being drafted into the Russian army as soon as we arrive? Yes, even the children! Didn’t you know? Every few hours he would start weeping, using up precious rags to blow his nose. The only person who could calm Frank down was Leo, who sat with him sometimes, talking in soothing tones about what constellations might be out that night, or the phases of the moon. She whispered to the car when Frank was asleep or behind the sheets in the corner of the car, ‘He’s different, I’m sure you’ve noticed, he’s like a child, a frightened child, please be patient with him, if he shouts …’
Leo was everyone’s favourite. A German astronomer, at night she talked about the stars they could sometimes see glinting through the high windows. If there were no stars, she would talk about the importance of things that could not be seen, the forces high beyond the stars, the vast expanse of the whole of what was to be found if you kept on going up and up. She had a beautiful voice and spoke in the gentle, lazy way of one completely relaxed, which Anna liked about her. She warmed to her still more when she discovered that Leo, belying her smooth skin and thin waist and the pert breasts that showed under her thin cotton dress, was forty-five. She loved to hear about the huge open spaces beyond the wooden roof of the car, beyond the sky.