Jason Overstreet: Beneath the Darkest Sky

Trying to describe what hunger feels like is akin to trying to explain what being stabbed feels like. Unfortunately, I could now say I’d experienced both. When James and I had first been taken, all I was consumed with were thoughts of my wife’s and daughter’s well-being. I needed relief, to know that they were at least safe. But as the days passed, those thoughts, those very instinctive ones, were overtaken by the desperate feeling of hunger.

It’s not that my concern for them subsided; it was simply supplanted by science. My body had been deprived of nutrients and had gone into protective mode, trying to conserve energy at all costs. And make no mistake, the simple act of thinking about someone’s well-being consumes a lot of energy. There is not a human being on this earth who, when faced with the overwhelming pain of hunger, doesn’t become selfish, wholly consumed with survival.

After these ten days of travel, I realized that starving someone had to be the cruelest form of punishment. It leaves one feeling nothing but ache in every fiber of their being, right down to their bone marrow. I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy. It only takes a few days of having nothing substantive to eat to make you totally aware of the fact that you are already starting to die, your body decaying with each passing hour, the hunger siphoning every ounce of clear thought from your brain, save for the one telling you that your body is eating itself.

Accompanying all of this mental anguish was the physical reality of our situation. We’d been sitting on wooden seats in tight quarters with little ventilation for ten days—unable to move about, other than the brief visits to the hole. My back ached—from neck to pelvis. My head was throbbing. My legs felt numb. My skin was sensitive to the touch. My muscles were tender.

Perhaps the twenty years I’d spent doing Kodokan Judo had all been in preparation for this journey into hell, this no-end-insight test of will. I’d kept my hand on James’s thigh for most of the time, choosing to simply see him as a literal extension of my body, a third leg if you will. I’d convinced myself early on in the trip that my internal strength would flow through him this way. My meditative training would touch his soul. My physical presence and tough veneer would cocoon him.

It was on the eleventh day that, much to our surprise, the train came to a stop and a guard said something new, prompting me to wonder if maybe this would be the day that a substantive meal might actually await us.

“Wake up, you filthy wreckers!” he yelled, as the lanterns were turned on. “We are going to let you off the train to walk outside. You can stretch. You can shit. You can drop dead if you want. You will get a little bit of food. We don’t want you to die before we even get to the last city.”

The guards began to laugh after those words had been spoken. Each of them spoke Russian with deep, menacing voices. I could feel their hate with each word they uttered.

“All of you walk slowly!” he yelled, as the fence began to slide open. “One of you makes any fast move and I will shoot you through the fucking eye.”

Once we were outside, the temperature around sixty-five degrees Fahrenheit, we all stood there for a period just adjusting to the painful light. Then I squinted in both directions at the sea of prisoners. There was a river behind us and we’d just crossed a large bridge. Was I dreaming? My eyes still not even half-open, I looked up at the sky and peeked directly at the sun for a while, my face wrinkled up, the first time I’d done this in my life. I didn’t care about the pain in my eyes, the burn. I kept squinting, wanting every ray to recharge my mind, revitalize my spirit. There was life in these rays, and I knew I needed to stay alive somehow, someway.

Slowly peeling off the tape and gauze from my ear, I closed my eyes and contorted my face several times, just trying to awaken my senses. I looked down at my brown patent leather shoes. Had purchased them in Paris back in 1929. How far they’d traveled!

I looked left and then right. Nothing but barren land in all directions, save for one shabby log building close by—some type of maintenance post it seemed, a place to resupply goods and inspect the train. Perhaps a few kind souls inside had made us a decent meal.

I gazed at the other men in my compartment group. The six of us had grown more attached to one another than we’d realized, because though we were free to roam about along the river, we remained huddled up, even standing in the exact arrangement of our seats. We had our eyes barely open, but we weren’t actually looking at one another. It was as if we were staring straight ahead at the past and what we’d left behind. The old man who’d been sitting in the middle seat facing me began to cough—so heavy that I worried about him surviving the journey itself.

“Vy nuzhna voda?” I asked him, reaching out and offering what little warm water was left in the canteen, as it was my turn to have the last sip.

“Nyet!” he said, refusing to take it, closing his eyes, the wrinkles on his tan face full of grime.

The short young man with the blue newsboy hat who had been seated across from James seemed rather interested in the water. But if the old man didn’t need it, I’d best keep it for now. I casually pretended to ignore the young man’s stare.

“Is there anything I can do to help you, comrade?” I asked the old man in Russian.

“I am okay,” he said, squinting, his khaki shirt and pants damp with sweat. “My name is Abram. You should give the water to your boy there. If I die it’s normal. Your boy is too young to die.”

“He can’t die,” I said, as Abram began violently coughing, his white hair soaking wet.

“I have five children,” he finally said, his voice trailing off at the end of every sentence. “Three are in Leningrad, two in Poland. My wife died of stomach sickness two years ago. Do you have a wife?”

“Yes, her name is Loretta. I also have a daughter named Ginger. They were put on the trains the same day we were.”

“They went on the train north then,” said the old man. “I’m certain. You should hope you can see them again.”

“You won’t!” said the young man. James and the other two prisoners stayed quiet. “We are all going to die. Such is the will of Stalin. I counted sixty people on our car. The blue top said there are fifty cars. That means three thousand dead. They tell me I was arrested for taking a trip to Berlin.”

“For simply taking a trip to Berlin?” I said.

“Yes, that is what they do. Stalin has taken what Marx and Lenin and… Trotsky—”

“Shh!” said Abram, waving his frail hand. “Don’t say his name. They will shoot you on the spot.”

“I know this,” whispered the young man, his healthy white skin closer to olive than pale. “What I am trying to say is that Stalin has taken something pure and perverted it. Communism at its core is pure. They are arresting people for simply visiting other countries because they claim we have been tainted by outside influences. We can no longer be trusted . We are to be replaced by a select breed of proven Stalin loyalists. What constitutes proven is a mystery to all of us. I’m sure the list of so-called loyalists is not written in ink.”

“How old are you?” I asked. “And what is your name?”

“I am twenty-two. My name is Yury. I had just been hired to write for the state newspaper, Izvestiya . Your name… age?”

“Prescott. Forty-three.”

“I can only hope they shoot me while I’m not looking,” said Abram, coughing again. “But every time one of the officers comes walking by our compartment, I fear that this is going to happen while my eyes are wide open. They know an old man like me is of no use to them. They hope I die before we arrive at wherever we’re going.”