AS WE GOT CLOSER TO THE LAKE, I SAW THAT A CRUDE SORT OF DIRT RAMP HAD BEEN BUILT LEADING FROM THE GROUND TO THE ICE. THE LEAD TRUCK PULLED FORWARD slowly; I held my breath as it rolled onto the frozen surface. The five trucks behind him, including us at the rear, followed. Remarkably, snow had been removed from the lake, defining a narrow road just about wide enough for two trucks.
“Why don’t they leave the snow on it?” I asked, with a sudden feeling of nervousness in my stomach. “Wouldn’t that keep it colder? Wouldn’t we be less likely to fall through the ice?”
“No, Ivan. It’s the opposite. Snow warms things because it insulates them. Think of a snow cave or an igloo. Without the snow on top of it, the water is able to freeze more quickly and more deeply.”
Five minutes passed, then ten, as we traveled slowly, steadily in our little convoy. If I read the speedometer through the glass correctly, we were going about fifteen miles an hour. “Did Yanik say it was twenty miles across the lake?” I asked.
“Yes.” Auntie kept her eyes straight ahead. She reminded me of a carved figure on the bow of a ship.
“If we keep going at this pace, it won’t take more than an hour and a half before we’re there!”
That thought kept me content until I heard the familiar, heart-piercing drone of an airplane about thirty minutes later. The sound ripped through our little group like an evil wind, and guttural cries of fear erupted from some of the women, while others grabbed their children and covered them with their own bodies.
“What do we do?” I cried, scanning the skies.
“Look,” Auntie answered, squinting and staring into the distance, “it’s just one.” She was right, and it was flying low. The convoy picked up speed; we were going twice as fast in seconds. It felt bumpy, as if there were suddenly fist-size rocks under the wheels. “This is bad,” she whispered. “If the trucks go too fast, it creates waves under the ice. It makes it more likely to crack.”
“What does it matter?” I cried. “The bombs will kill us first!”
“Listen to me. Kneel down, then bend over and cover your head with your duffel bag. Do it now!”
I dropped to my knees, even as the plane zoomed closer. The temptation to watch it was almost overwhelming. I grabbed my duffel bag and pulled it across my head and neck. The muffled sounds of Auntie’s voice broke through as she yelled for the others to do as she’d instructed me. The rough wooden floor of the truck slapped against my cold face hard, and I tried to keep a few inches away from it. Children were screaming and crying, mothers yelled for them to get down, telling them everything was going to be all right. The malevolent presence of the plane felt like it hovered just above us.
I waited for the bombs to hit, wondering what they would sound like as they smashed into the ice. Or would they rip right through it and sink to the bottom?
The explosions never came.
I pushed the duffel bag away and got up on my knees. The plane was so far past us, I could hardly see it. I stood up. All six trucks were still moving. “We’re safe!” I shouted. “Auntie, look — we’re safe!” She poked her head out from under her little suitcase. Everyone sat up in slow motion, with fear, relief, and disbelief on their faces.
But we were no longer a calm, coordinated convoy. None of the drivers slowed back down. They fought hard and recklessly for the lead position. After ten or fifteen minutes of weaving and bobbing along the narrow road, as Yanik tried repeatedly and unsuccessfully to pass the truck in front of us, our truck suddenly slowed down and stopped.
“What’s happening? Why are we stopping?” We all asked these questions out loud at the same time. Yanik got out of the cab but left the engine running.
I pushed my way over to his side of the truck and yelled, “Where are you going?”
He turned his craggy face to see who was talking to him. “I’ve got to pee,” he announced.
“No, no, come back!” I cried as he lumbered off.
“Go get him. Make him come back,” Auntie told me. I clambered over the side of the truck and dropped to the ground.
“Yanik!” I called, running toward him through the snow. His back was to me, his shoulders hunched. “Please come back. The engine could freeze up. We’d all die out here.”
He threw me a scornful look as he turned away and urinated in the snow as if I wasn’t there. “You call this cold?” he said with a laugh as he buttoned up his pants. “It’s not even snowing.”
“But it looks like it will soon. It could cover the road and we’d be lost out here forever. We could die.”
“One more cigarette,” he announced.
“Let’s walk toward the truck while you smoke it.”
“Get away from me, little wasp,” he said with a wave of his hand. “Go back to the women and children where you belong.”
I glanced back at the truck where everyone was watching us, then noticed something behind them; it was snowing up ahead.
“Yanik, look over there.” I pointed to a place I guessed was about a half mile from us. “It’s starting to snow.”
He looked from side to side. “Where?”
“There.” I continued to point into the distance.
“I can’t see it.”
“You can’t …” I stared at him in disbelief, shaking my head.
Suddenly, a brief expression of worry passed over his face. “Let’s go.” He trudged past me in the snow. I ran toward the truck without another word. We were no more than ten feet from the idling truck when the engine suddenly died.
Yanik rushed into the cab and cranked the engine. It sounded like it had the first time it had died when we were still on the shore of the lake. Unfortunately, this time it didn’t start on the first try … or the seventh, or the tenth, or the twentieth.
“Start!” Yanik yelled as he pumped the accelerator and tried the key once more. It gave one last wheeze and moan. He stared straight ahead and then turned to look through the back window. We locked eyes, and I knew then there was no hope of the truck starting again.
I leaned in close to Auntie and said, “What are we going to do?”
“I was doing some thinking while you were talking to Yanik. I think we went seven or eight miles before the bomber flew by. After the trucks sped up, I’m guessing we covered another seven or eight miles. The distance across the lake is twenty miles. That means —”
“We’re about six miles from the shore,” I said, interrupting her as the weight of the facts fell on me. What do we do?” As if by agreement, we both turned to look at our truckload of fellow passengers. Every single mother was watching us, their faces full of fear.
“We can walk six miles, but we have to leave immediately. It’s snowing up ahead. It could cover the road, and we’d freeze to death out here.”
“What about everyone else?”
She smiled and touched my shoulder. “They’re coming, too, of course.” How children as young as three or four were going to walk that distance in the cold, fighting the wind and maybe the snow, I had no idea.
“What about Yanik?”
“He can do what he wants, but he’s not in charge. Always remember that at times like this. If you want to live, you make your own plan.”
The driver’s door slammed and out came Yanik. “Listen up,” he said, as though talking to a reluctant work crew. “We’ve got a problem with the engine. Everybody stay calm. We’re going to wait here till somebody comes back for us. So settle down and stay put.” He climbed back in the cab and slammed the door.
The women began to murmur and shake their heads. Auntie clapped her gloved hands. “Ladies, ladies … may I have your attention?” All heads turned in her direction. “It is my opinion that the safest thing for all of us to do is to walk the rest of the way across the lake.”
“What?” a young mother exclaimed. “That man just said someone would come and get us.”
“There is no assurance of that whatsoever. I figure that we have six miles to go; it may be more, it might be less. It’s beginning to snow up ahead. That could easily obscure the road for Yanik or a rescuer. We must get out of this weather and go toward the shore.” A woman in the back began to whimper. “If we walk at a normal pace, it should take us one and a half to two hours.”
I thrust my hands in my pockets and pulled out the three red napkins Auntie had given me. “We’ll tie these together like a rope,” I said, “and the people in the front will carry it so we can be seen from a distance.”
A young mother seated not too far from us with one of the youngest children said, “What if we want to stay?”
Auntie nodded thoughtfully. “That is your choice. But I implore you to come with us. If no one comes to rescue you, both you and your child will die.” Auntie paused to give those words their full weight. “If you want to walk with us, take a moment and give yourself and your children a little something to eat or drink. We will leave in three minutes.”
There was a flurry of activity as the women gathered their things and took sips of water and bites of bread and fed the same to their children.
“Open the back gate of the truck, Ivan,” Auntie instructed me. “Help them get down.”
I jumped over the side of the truck and slid the back bolt out of its locked position. The women began climbing out, their children scrambling into their arms after them.
“Hey!” It was Yanik, lunging out of the cab. “What are you doing? Get back in there! Get back in the truck!” he howled, seeing that everyone was ignoring him.
I held up my arms to help Auntie down after she’d thrown her suitcase and my duffel bag to the ground, then looked around the truck bed quickly to make sure nothing had been left behind. She walked confidently over to Yanik.
“We’ve all decided to walk the rest of the way. Would you like to join us?”
“You can’t do that!” he fumed.
“Nevertheless, that’s our plan. Are you staying here or coming with us?”
Yanik looked furious. “You can all freeze to death for all I care!” He yanked his knitted cap from his head and threw it on the ground in anger.
“As you wish,” Auntie said. “But I’d keep that cap on if I were you. It’s going to get cold.”
He swooped down to snatch the hat, then stomped away from us and back into the cab, yelling, “Stupid women! Of all the idiotic ideas …” He was still yelling even after he’d slammed the truck door closed.
“Come on, Ivan,” Auntie said. “Let’s get our things. We have to get moving.”
“Where are your red scarves?” one of the women asked as she held her young son to her side.
“Right here!” I began to tie them together. Once we added Auntie’s three napkins, the red “rope” was about ten feet long.
Auntie, the oldest and most experienced person among us, gave quick instructions. “Ivan, you stand on the left side of the road and hold one end of the rope. I’ll hold it on the right side. Ladies, two of you and your children come up and stand between us.” We were now six abreast on the ice road, the red rope stretching at waist height from one side to the other. “Now,” she continued, “let’s get the last eight of you directly behind us.” That was it: two lopsided rows of humans and their meager possessions marked by a bright red line.
“Does anyone have a watch?” Auntie asked.
“I do,” one of the women answered.
“I want you to tell us every time fifteen minutes has gone by. We should be able to walk a mile in that time. Can you do that?”
“Of course.”
“All right. Everyone ready?”
The women and even some of the older children eagerly responded “Yes!” and off we went.
A boy of about six years was on my right, holding his mother’s hand and looking excited by the adventure. “Do you know any songs?” I asked him. His mother glanced at me gratefully as he nodded. “What song do you like best?”
“‘The Frog and the Fairy.’”
“Can we hear it?”
After a few seconds he sang:
There was an old frog
Who lived in a pond
A-way, a-way, a-way-o.
And a fairy he did come upon
One day, one day, one day-o.
With eyes so blue
And long red hair
On pink little wings
She flew through the air.
“Oh, dear little fairy, can’t you see?
You should marry a frog like me!”
And so began our six-mile walk to shore, to the tune of “The Frog and the Fairy.” Yanik caught up to us about ten minutes after we left. He said nothing, and no one spoke to him. The woman with the watch called out the time every fifteen minutes. The snow flurries we’d seen in the distance had moved on, a dusting of white the only sign they’d ever been there.
Gusts of wind hit us like invisible fists. The youngest child was knocked down by them twice. Perhaps to redeem himself, Yanik carried the child for a mile or so until she demanded to be handed to her mother.
I think the strain and effort hit us all hardest at the five-mile point, not quite an hour and a half after we started. We seemed to stop as one. Using as few words as possible to conserve our strength, we agreed on a five-minute rest. Most sat down on their bags or suitcases. Then we took our places, picked up our bags, stretched the red rope in front of us, and marched slowly eastward.
Auntie’s calculations had turned out to be fairly accurate; it was another half hour before we saw the other trucks and some people milling about on the shore. When they saw us, a truck came roaring toward us. “We thought you were lost!” the driver declared with a grin. He explained that none of the trucks had enough gas to go on a rescue mission to look for us. If any of us had waited for them, we would have been frozen statues by morning. He drove us to shore. A lakeside house had been requisitioned by the government as a place for the new arrivals to revive themselves before setting off on the next leg of their journey.
“How do we get to Vilnov?” Auntie asked one of the three men in army uniforms.
“Vilnov? Are you sure you want to go there?”
“Why wouldn’t I?” she asked with a frown.
The soldier made a clicking sound with his mouth. “There’s fighting not twenty miles from there. Bad fighting. But that’s the case anywhere between here and Moscow, so I suppose it’s as good as any.” He turned away as another person approached with a question.
Auntie looked at me for a long time. “What do you think, Ivan?”
I glanced around the wide room at my fellow refugees. Tired, hungry women and children and a few older people, who probably had as little idea about what the future held as we did.
“Well, we can’t go back to Leningrad,” I said, trying hard not to think of my mother and my friends. “The country is at war. No one knows what will happen. Let’s go to your sister-in-law’s house and see if you’re welcome there. If not, or if it’s too dangerous, we’ll both go up to my uncle Boris’s cabin.”
Auntie smiled broadly. “Spoken like someone who’s just walked on water. Let’s see if we can find a ride.”